TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 448.
Archive for 2014
July 31, 2014
SCIENCE: Isaac Cohen: An ‘Ether Of Sexism’ Doesn’t Explain Gender Disparities In Science And Tech.
The most relentlessly cited statistic was that women make up only 16% of the tech workforce. At first glance, this looks pretty lame. But once you catch your breath, you realize that most of these jobs require a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Women only earn 18% of such degrees awarded to United States residents. Not such a bad effort, then, by Google and company. Still, that didn’t stop the public shaming. Earnest apologies were issued, and calls were made for reform.
Who deserves the brunt of our collective outrage over these lopsided ratios? More importantly, who should be charged with fixing them?
One highly controversial theory — the one that got Larry Summers in deep trouble — argues that there are male advantages in math-related cognitive ability, especially at the so-called “right tail” end of the bell curve. But it’s not necessary to hit that third rail, because even the most capable women shy away from engineering and computer science.
To my knowledge — I’m biased — no school enrolls more fiercely intelligent women than Yale. Yet even there, women are only 18% of computer science majors. The figures are similar at other high-flying schools that admit the best and the brightest women. Not unexpectedly, the prevailing narrative at Yale is that these numbers reflect some kind of glaring injustice. But what exactly is Yale doing wrong? . . . In fact, despite the mainstream media’s insistence that sexism is rife, there exists very little evidence of pervasive bias. Studies occasionally pop up that point to overt or subtle bias in academic hiring or funding, but they are debunked as often as they are trumpeted. And the discrimination that social scientists claim to demonstrate is rarely strong enough to explain observed disparities.
One explanation I’ve seen is that most women don’t want to date science-and-engineering guys. Thus, they avoid those majors. . . . But read the whole thing.
ED MORRISSEY: Obama’s Command Economy: Incompetent At Every Level.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Case Against The D.C. Court’s Halbig Ruling Crumbles.
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MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Latest Intelligence Failure, And The Next One.
JIM TREACHER: “Remember when North Korea wasn’t the least of our problems? Ahhh, the good ol’ days.”
Plus: “Apparently, even the highest ranks of North Korean government aren’t allowed unfettered access to western media. Otherwise, they’d know that the White House is the last place you’ll find Barack Obama these days. If they really want to get him, they should aim for his latest golf course and/or fundraiser.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, RICH PEOPLE WOULD CONTROL THE GOVERNMENT. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Report: Liberal Billionaires Are “Hijacking” EPA.
IN TODAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL, David Rivkin, Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley: The Case for Suing the President: Rewriting ObamaCare laws on the fly is a violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.
‘So sue me” is President Obama’s message to Congress. And on Wednesday the House of Representatives took up his taunt, authorizing a lawsuit to challenge the president’s failure to faithfully execute provisions of the Affordable Care Act as passed by Congress. The House lawsuit is no “stunt,” as Mr. Obama has characterized it. The lawsuit is necessary to protect the Constitution’s separation of powers, a core means of protecting individual liberty. Without a judicial check on unbounded executive power to suspend the law, this president and all who follow him will have a powerful new weapon to destroy political accountability and democracy itself.
Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress. Article II imposes a duty on the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” When a law is unambiguous, the president cannot rewrite it to suit his own preferences. “The power of executing the laws,” as the Supreme Court emphasized in June in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, “does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.” If a law has defects, fixing them is Congress’s business.
These barriers between the branches are not formalities—they were designed to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in one branch. As the Supreme Court explained in New York v. United States (1992), the “Constitution protects us from our own best intentions: It divides power among sovereigns and among branches of government precisely so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in one location as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day.”
The barriers also reflect the Framers’ belief that some powers are better suited for a particular branch of government because of its institutional characteristics.
Yep. And, relatedly, the Wall Street Journal editorializes: So Sue Him: Forget impeachment. The House lawsuit is the real threat to Obama.
The House challenge involves crucial questions about the architecture of American government and the separation of powers—questions that haven’t been joined in this kind of challenge at the courts. Mr. Boehner contends that Mr. Obama’s habit of amending or suspending (not enforcing) statutes that conflict with his political goals have usurped “all legislative powers herein granted” by Article I to Congress. . . .
The Supreme Court has already responded when this President’s law-breaking has been challenged by private parties. This past term the Supreme Court rebuked the White House for its unilateral overreach in appointment powers (Noel Canning), unlawfully rewriting the Clean Air Act (Utility Air Regulatory Group) and infringing on religious freedom (Hobby Lobby). . . .
Yet Mr. Obama’s claim that he can pick and choose which laws to enforce is far more offensive to the American tradition than anything the government has done in the name of antiterrorism. The House challenge is an opportunity to vindicate the genius of the Framers to prevent the exercise of arbitrary and centralized power.
Stay tuned.
FROM MATTHEW YGLESIAS, A PLAN FOR MIDEAST PEACE THAT JUST MIGHT WORK:
AFTER THE LATEST DEPRESSING news from the Middle East I think we have to start asking just how inhumane it would be for Israel to just expel the Palestinians from the occupied terroritories. The result would probably be out-and-out war with the neighboring Arab states, but Israel could win that.
All forced population transfers are humanitarian disasters, of course, but so is the current situation. It’s not like there’s not any room in the whole Arab world for all these Palestinian Arabs to go live in, it’s just that the other Arab leaders don’t want to cooperate.
Congratulations for thinking outside the box, Matt!
HE MADE THE MISTAKE OF CROSSING MICKEY KAUS: Roll Call: The Almost Invisible Final Days of Eric Cantor. “You may be a rooster today, but you’ll be a feather duster soon enough.”
MORE ON THE INTERNAL DEMOCRATIC REVENUE SERVICE SCANDAL: Not crazy for you: Lois Lerner, former IRS official, slammed conservative Republicans with colorful language, emails show.
You know, a FOIA request for emails from senior IRS officials mentioning “Republican” or “Tea Party” would probably turn up a lot of this kind of thing.
IT’S CRONYISM ALL THE WAY DOWN: State Department approved 215 Bill Clinton speeches, controversial consulting deal, worth $48m; Hillary Clinton’s Chief Of Staff copied on all decisions.
Some of the speeches were delivered in global hotspots and were paid for by entities with business or policy interests in the U.S.
The documents also show that in June 2011, the State Department approved a consulting agreement between Bill Clinton and a controversial Clinton Foundation adviser, Doug Band.
The consultancy with Band’s Teneo Strategy ended eight months later following an uproar over Teneo’s ties to the failed investment firm MF Global.
State Department legal advisers, serving as “designated agency ethics officials,” approved Bill Clinton’s speeches in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Panama, Turkey, Taiwan, India, the Cayman Islands and other countries.
The memos approving Mr. Clinton’s speeches were routinely copied to Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s senior counsel and chief of staff.
Bribery.
WAR ON SCIENCE: Civil Rights Commission Member: We Need Campus Speech Codes Because Young Adults’ Brains Are Different Or Something.
Eugene Volokh comments: “I thought I’d pass this along, as expressing the views of a political figure who holds a significant position in the federal civil rights establishment.” I’m beginning to think that establishment doesn’t care much about, you know, actual civil rights.
JUST LOOK AT THE PHOTO OF CLAIRE MCCASKILL: IS THIS THE FACE OF SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE REGULATING COLLEGE STUDENTS’ SEX LIVES? Sex Assault Bill Unveiled.
I almost think that if Republicans were really Macchiavellian, they would get 110% behind this bill so as to accelerate the process of higher education’s eating itself.
WAPO: Tea party opposition puts fate of House Republican border bill up in the air. Tea Party? I thought the Tea Party was dead. I blame Mickey Kaus.
SHE’S NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE CONGRESSIONAL DRAWER: We Never Tried To Impeach Bush, Says Democratic Lawmaker Who Co-Sponsored Bush Impeachment Bill.
NICE TO SEE SOMEONE POINTING THIS OUT: “When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, he did so in an unusual way for a Democrat: As the candidate of the rich. He raised more in large-dollar donations than any of his rivals and raked in more cash from Wall Street than John McCain. In November, he won the upper class’s votes: By 52 percent to 46 percent, according to exit polls, Americans making more than $200,000 cast their ballots for Obama.”
AND THE FUNCTIONALITY IS SO AWESOME: Obamacare Website Has Cost $840 Million; A slew of management failures led to the site’s disastrous launch, according to a new GAO report.
THE HILL: Dems Fear A Debacle On Turnout.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, STATES WOULD BE MICRO-REGULATING TEEN DATING. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!