THE CASE FOR SCOTT WALKER:

Does Walker sizzle? Not exactly. Is he a particularly charismatic speaker? No, he isn’t. But does he sit upon a throne made of the skulls of his enemies? Yes, yes he does.

Heh.

OH, YES: Republicans May Get Gruber Under Oath. “Just make sure to get him in Congress under oath ahead of the Supreme Court’s look at the exchange issue. He’ll surely provide more useful soundbites about how he and the Democrats lied to everyone, gamed the CBO, and knew all along that the subsidies/exchange issue was not a typo, but was put there for a reason. Maybe Gruber will insult Chief Justice John Roberts specifically while he’s under oath, too. The Chief is one of the ‘stupid’ ones, after all, according to Obamacare’s architect.”

IRA STOLL: “The smartest minds on the center-right are circulating lists of legislation for the new Republican Congress to pass.”

THE HILL: Voter stupidity remark gives GOP new ammo on ObamaCare.

Comments about voter stupidity made by an ally of the Obama administration are turning into conservatives’ newest weapon against the president’s healthcare law.

A series of unearthed videos of ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber insulting U.S. voters while saying a “lack of transparency” helped Congress pass the healthcare law are attracting serious attention on the right just as Republicans prepare to take control of the Senate.

The newly discovered remarks — revealed so far in three videos circulated by conservative media — add fuel to the GOP’s claim that Democrats were deliberately obscuring pieces of the law to assure its passage.

Add a wave of interest from Republican lawmakers and increasing scrutiny from the mainstream media, and you have the latest flashpoint in the abiding partisan war over ObamaCare, just ahead of the start of the law’s second enrollment periodon Saturday.

Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also helped craft that state’s healthcare reform law, said Tuesday that he regrets saying ObamaCare passed because of the “stupidity of the American voter.”

Two additional videos have been released since then. In those clips, Gruber said the law’s passage relied on “basic exploitation of [voters’] lack of economic understanding,” and that Americans are “too stupid to understand” the law’s so-called Cadillac tax.

Republicans have pounced on the remarks and are already weighing congressional hearings, which would create an enormous headache for Democrats.

It’s interesting that this stuff didn’t come out before the election.

THE NEW BOHEMIA: Not Where You Expect.

There’s an established image in the collective imagination of the kinds of places artsy types tend to live: the painter in a Paris garret, the actor in a Brooklyn brownstone, the musician in a San Francisco Victorian, or the playwright in a fisherman’s shack on Cape Cod. It’s all very romantic. We currently associate these places with vacation destinations and cutting edge high culture so of course that’s where the avant garde would naturally congregate. But people forget that in their day these were the cheapest least desirable locations available. These spots were economically depressed, populated by the lower working class, immigrants, “working girls”, and the substance abusers of their day. In short, they were places that respectable people avoided and where the authorities generally turned a blind eye. How else could artists survive without family money or the income that comes with full time employment in the mainstream economy? And where else could fringe elements of various subcultures thrive without inhibition from the dominant culture? It’s only after decades of anonymous incubation that these neighborhoods eventually became safe and vibrant enough to attract middle class residents in search of good food, nightlife, and tourist photo opportunities.

The current reality is that the so-called “Creative Class” is being priced out of the places they helped make so desirable in the first place.

Well, artists are increasingly members of the one percent, or trustafarians anyway.

REMINDER: In 2009, Barack Obama “Joked” About Auditing His Enemies.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: CDC Spokeswoman Not Sure if Agency Has List of People Entering U.S. from Ebola Countries.

AUBREY CHERNICK IS matching donations to the Carson Scholars Fund.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Ruth Marcus denounces campus sexual assault policies.

Ruth Marcus, a self-identified liberal and columnist for the Washington Post, had some harsh words for supporters of new campus sexual assault policies.

“[D]on’t drink so damn much,” Marcus wrote as advice from a parent to their daughter leaving for college.

That advice is crucial because, as Marcus wrote, “the line between consensual sex and sexual assault is not always comfortably clear.”

Her advice as a parent to their son going off to college revolved around being sure that whoever they sleep with consents, because the “consequences of misjudgment can be life-shattering.”

As an example, Marcus relays the account of a Yale student accused of rape by a woman claiming she was too drunk to consent, even though she invited the male student over via text. Two months after the encounter, the female student emailed the male student accusing him of rape.

“Let’s just start with objective fact: you raped me,” she said in the email. “You are a rapist.”

Thirteen months after the night in question, the woman filed charges against the man. He was eventually found not guilty.

Marcus notes the outcome of situations such as the one at Yale hurts men and women.

“To a young woman who sincerely believes she has been raped but seems, at least from afar, to have been pushed by the prevailing culture into viewing a bad choice as a quasi-criminal event,” Marcus wrote. “To a young man who lived under the shadow of accusation and expulsion.”

That “shadow of accusation and expulsion” is far more damaging that Marcus lets on (or realizes). As with the case of Kevin Parisi, whose anxiety disorder was exacerbated by a prolonged investigation of a sexual assault complaint lodged against him. Parisi, like the Yale student, was found not guilty, but just being accused was enough to cause him irreparable harm.

So too was the case of the male student accused by Emma Sulkowicz, who now carries a mattress for performance art and to protest the university’s ruling in favor of the student she accused.

I’m beginning to believe that women are just too fragile to handle a college environment. Perhaps they should be kept at home until they marry, or at most sent to single-sex finishing schools.

HEH: Time Magazine Suggests Ban on Word ‘Feminist,’ Freakout Ensues.

If you’d like to vote, the list is here.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: BREAKING: 9th Circuit Court Denies Peruta Appeal; California Gun Rights Restored.

Related: More Californians may carry concealed guns after ruling. “A ruling with the potential to expand the number of Californians permitted to carry hidden, loaded guns in public to almost 2 million won’t be reheard by an appeals court as the state’s attorney general requested. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 Wednesday to deny a bid by California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a gun control organization and two police lobbying groups to challenge the court’s February ruling that any responsible, law-abiding citizen is entitled under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment to possess a concealed firearm in public for self- defense. Harris may appeal the decision. Her spokesman, David Beltran, said the office is reviewing it.”

HEH. Seen on Twitter.

OH, GOODY: First Outbreak Quashed, Ebola Reappears in Mali.

AS PEOPLE ARE STARTING TO SAY ON TWITTER, “WHAT A GRUBE!” Wendy Davis was warned in January of an embarrassing defeat. “Consultants for former Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis warned the campaign in January that it was heading for a humiliating defeat on Election Day if it didn’t make changes quick, according to a memo obtained by the Texas Tribune. The campaign took that advice and made one change in particular — it fired those consultants.”

With that approach, you can see why she was an Obama favorite.

WELL, THAT SOUNDS PROMISING: Detroit Emerges From Bankruptcy, Pension Risk Intact. “The pension system that the settlement leaves behind has some of the same problems that plunged the city into crisis in the first place — fundamental problems that could also trip up other local governments in the coming years. Like many other public systems, it relies on a funding formula that lags the true cost of the pensions, and is predicated on a forecast investment return that the judge, Steven W. Rhodes, himself sharply questioned during the trial on Detroit’s bankruptcy plan.” So, basically, they missed a chance to fix a major structural problem.

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I THINK I KNOW THE ANSWER. DOES THAT GET ME AN “A?” Do Education Programs Dole Out Too Many Easy A’s?

Are teacher-training programs rigorous enough? A new study, completed by a group that has long been critical of the quality of teacher preparation, makes the case that they’re not.

Education students face easier coursework than their peers in other departments, according to the study, and they’re more likely to graduate with honors.

The report—”Easy A’s and What’s Behind Them,” which is to be released Wednesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality—argues that a more-objective curriculum for teaching candidates would better prepare them for careers in the classroom.

Yes, but the point is to prepare them for government funded positions in the Democrats’ public-employee voter farm.

DID I MENTION THAT FRANK J. HAS A BOOK OUT? Punch Your Inner Hippie: Cut Your Hair, Get a Job, and Make America Awesome Again. Buy one, buy three! Great Christmas or Hanukkah presents! Great gifts for weddings, wakes, and bar mitzvahs! (Bumped).

INTERESTING: Virtual reality study shows echolocation in humans not just about the ears. My own experience is that (1) Moving your head back and forth drastically improves your echolocation ability; and (2) Skin surfaces — probably sensing reflected body heat — also play an important role in navigating in the dark.

STACY MCCAIN OFFERS A Lesbian Theory Of The Penis. “Anything a man may claim to know about this own anatomy, his own beliefs and behavior, is unacceptable if it contradicts feminist theory.”

DO TELL: Bruce Springsteen & Dave Grohl’s Cover Of ‘Fortunate Son’ Draws Criticism.

The thing is, I love Creedence Clearwater Revival, but even in its original form the song Fortunate Son is a big steaming pile of hypocritical horseshit. John Fogerty wrote it after doing one-weekend-a-month Army Reserve duty designed to keep him away from Vietnam. It was the sort of deal a lot of people got, not just “Senator’s sons,” and his bandmate Doug “Cosmo” Clifford — the most underrated drummer of rock’s ascendancy — swung a similar Coast Guard gig.

Meanwhile, Fogerty says he wrote the song as “my confrontation with Richard Nixon,” but in fact Nixon refused the military exemption he was entitled to as a Quaker and served in the Pacific during World War Two.

Basically, whenever lefties go all moralistic, you can be pretty sure they’re being hypocritical. Because that’s just how they rock and roll.

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THREE STRIKES: Another video shows Obamacare architect Gruber talking about the ‘exploitation’ of American voters. I wonder how many Senate seats the GOP would have gotten if this had come out two weeks ago?

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FORMER SPACE STATION COMMANDER: Private Space Must Move Forward. Yes. Don’t let Congress and the bureaucrats ruin things.