AT AMAZON, 50% off on Top-Rated Multitools.

Plus, deals on 2014 Golf Pro Gear.

Also: TV Deal Of The Week: Up to 80% off on CSI on DVD. In all the various episodes and spin-offs.

JIM GERAGHTY: The American Dream Peddlers: Progressives’ vision of government requires it to be the gatekeeper to the good life.

Is it really in the country’s best interest to enable every aspiring college student to attend college? Right now the federal government is in the business of loaning money to young people to attend college, only to watch significant numbers — 600,000 or so last year — fail to pay the money back. College students are defaulting on federal loans at the highest rate in nearly two decades, with one in ten defaulting on their loans in the first two years. This is not merely one late check; to meet the Department of Education’s definition of default, a borrower’s loan must be delinquent for 270 days — nine months.

The college gets its money, the taxpayer loses theirs, and the deadbeat student can be left with all kinds of frustrating consequences — seized tax refunds, garnished paychecks or benefits, or a lawsuit. (Though the deadbeat student is often in this situation because their college education failed to prepare them to find a job in a mediocre-at-best economy and make a living, so there may not be much money in their wages to garnish.)

How many of those students really should go to college? If college is supposed to represent some sort of advanced or more demanding level of education, why has it become a national priority to send every kid to college? Wouldn’t the nation be better off if at some point it said to these young people, “you can go to college if you want, but we’re not paying for it”?

Yes.

WELL, SANITATION, TO START WITH: O’Reilly To Bundy Supporter: What’s The Difference Between Bundy And Occupy Wall St?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More support for my “adjunct administrator” proposal:

I support the move toward “adjunct administrators.” It used to be widely understood that a college or university travels on the quality of its faculty, not its climbing walls, dining halls, or number of administrators. The University of Arkansas’ Jay Greene found that between 1993 and 2007, the number of administrators at research universities grew by 39 percent per 100 students while the number of employees directly involved in research and teaching grew by just 18 percent. More damning, spending on administration grew 50 percent faster than spending on instruction. Administrators don’t just add to the open-air prison climate on many campuses, they directly add to rising costs.

Indeed.

I USED TO LOVE WATCHING THIS SHOW AND DRINKING BEER WITH MY BROTHER. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Married Lesbian Threesome Expects Baby In July. “‘I had always wanted to get married and I guess Doll and Brynn indulged my wishes! I had a very traditional upbringing and marriage had always been an important symbol of commitment for me. We wanted to celebrate our love in a wedding like everyone else.’ . . . Doll, Kitten and Brynn are faithful to each other and say they don’t plan on adding anyone else to their throuple. They hope to show the world that polyfidelity is an acceptable choice of love.”

They plan to homeschool.

IF THEY REALLY DID THAT, WOULD THE U.S. GOVERNMENT BE PROMOTING THEM? US Promoting Mesh Networks; Reporters Misleadingly Think They Somehow Stop Digital Spying.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN is on campus administrators who abuse their power.

CONTEST: Can You Write A Better Bedtime Story Than The USDA?

HEY, WAIT, I THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED! Nutritional Folklore:

Dr. Walter C. Willett, a Harvard epidemiologist who has spent many years studying cancer and nutrition, sounded almost rueful as he gave a status report. Whatever is true for other diseases, when it comes to cancer there was little evidence that fruits and vegetables are protective or that fatty foods are bad.

About all that can be said with any assurance is that controlling obesity is important, as it also is for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke and other threats to life. Avoiding an excess of alcohol has clear benefits. But unless a person is seriously malnourished, the influence of specific foods is so weak that the signal is easily swamped by noise. . . .

The hypothesis that fatty foods are a direct cause of cancer has also been crumbling, along with the case for eating more fiber. The idea that red meat causes colon cancer is shrouded in ambiguity. Two meta-analyses published in 2011 reached conflicting conclusions — one finding a small effect and the other no clear link at all. If hamburgers are carcinogenic, the effect appears to be mild. One study suggests that a 50-year-old man eating a hefty amount of red meat — about a third of a pound a day — raises his chance of getting colorectal cancer to 1.71 percent during the next decade, from 1.28 percent. Spread over a population of millions, that would have an impact. From the point of view of an individual, it barely seems to matter.

Yet all the nutritional commands — like the command to avoid sunlight — have been issued in the Voice Of Authority, with doubters and skeptics condemned as disrespecters of science. There’s even the suggestion that the war on tobacco caused people who quit smoking to gain weight, with more cancers resulting from obesity than from cigarettes. If that proves out, will the anti-smoking folks be targeted like the tobacco companies were?

HOW CANCER RESEARCH SHOULD BE GOVERNED. “The ethics review system, implemented by research ethics committees (in Commonwealth countries) or institutional review boards (in the United States), was immediately successful, promoting subject safety and snuffing out unethical research. It deserves credit for this achievement. This benefit, however, comes at a dear price. Unethical cancer research has been curbed, but ethically sound cancer research must work in handcuffs.”

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Low Vitamin D in Mothers Tied to Cavities in Babies. I’m not crazy about this study, but it won’t hurt to get a little bit of sun.

ROGER SIMON ON the Republicans’ failure to communicate. “Rather than dealing with these realities, both sides — establishment and Tea Party — spend their time aiming fusillades at each other. How infantile and suicidal.”

FRED PHELPS IS DEAD, but Jeremiah Wright is alive and speaking in Kansas City tonight. He’ll be delivering the “Cleaver Lecture on Religion and Public Life,” which “was established at the St. Paul School of Theology by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and others in 1999 to honor U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.”

Cleaver, of course, is up for re-election next year. He’s also having his Congressional salary garnisheed to pay for a bad small business loan. I doubt that Wright will discuss that. “Garnishing the wages of a sitting congressman appears to be rare.” Cleaver is a rare item himself.

SO DON’T DO THAT: Bug can cause deadly failures when anesthesia device is connected to cell phones.

ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: 10 Cool Mustangs From The Pony Car’s 50th Anniversary.

SCUBA DIVING in Brooklyn.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ & HARVEY SILVERGLATE: Ed Markey’s “Hate Speech” Proposal Threatens Internet Free Speech. Which is, of course, its purpose.

ORIN KERR: Six thoughts on Navarette v. California. “No one should be surprised when Justice Breyer votes for the government and Justice Scalia votes for the defense in Fourth Amendment cases.”

WILLIAM SUTER: Executive Power on Steroids: In four recent Supreme Court cases, the Obama administration takes a crabbed view of individual rights.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Toss Out Abusive College Administrators.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 349.

A PRETTY MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA FAIL, for the NYPD.

NOPE, BUT IT WOULD EMPOWER THE POLITICAL CLASS, WHICH IS ITS REAL PURPOSE. Piketty’s Tax Hikes Won’t Help the Middle Class.

I am not disputing that something unhappy is going on in the global economy. Nor am I disputing that this unhappiness is unequally distributed. But the proportion of this unhappiness due to income inequality is actually relatively small — and moreover, concentrated not among the poor, but among the upper middle class, which competes with the very rich for status goods and elite opportunities.

If we look at the middle three quintiles, very few of their worst problems come from the gap between their income and the incomes of some random Facebook squillionaire. Here, in a nutshell, are their biggest problems:

Finding a job that allows them to work at least 40 hours a week on a relatively consistent schedule and will not abruptly terminate them.
Finding a partner who is also able to work at least 40 hours a week on a relatively consistent schedule and will not be abruptly terminated.
Maintaining a satisfying relationship with that partner over a period of years.
Having children who are able to enjoy more stuff and economic security than they have.
Finding a community of friends, family and activities that will provide enjoyment and support over the decades.

This is where things are breaking down — where things have actually, and fairly indisputably, gotten worse since the 1970s. Crime is better, lifespans are longer, our material conditions have greatly improved — yes, even among the lower middle class. What hasn’t improved is the sense that you can plan for a decent life filled with love and joy and friendship, then send your children on to a life at least as secure and well-provisioned as your own.

Well, here in America, part of the problem is that the middle class is being targeted for destruction by a coalition of the very rich and the poor.