THAT’S BECAUSE THE VICTIMS ARE MEN: Prison: The “Rape Culture” That Everyone Ignores.

DAVE WEIGEL: Rolling Stone, Lena Dunham, and the ‘Rape Culture’ Backlash: Why sensitivity to rape victims might have led to flawed reporting. “Breitbart News was pilloried for investigating this. The attacks were of the sort Cooke was arguing against; they seemed to imply that anyone questioning a rape story was endorsing the culprit over the victim. That wasn’t what Nolte was doing. As Eugene Volokh explained in the Washington Post, Dunham might have opened herself to a libel suit from ‘identifiable conservative Barry.’ To many people, not just conservatives, the media’s sensitivity to ‘rape culture’ seemed to lead to lower standards that damaged peoples’ reputations. Hence the backlash.”

There are a lot of women in media who will shriek at anyone, male or female, who departs from the preferred narrative. Fear of them produces lousy journalism and, sometimes, expensively libelous mistakes.

AN INTERESTING JONATHAN GRUBER EXCHANGE:

“If there are fewer elderly people, particularly poor elderly people, wouldn’t that save a ton of money too? … And do you understand the dangerous implications of going down this path?” Massie asked.

“I have no philosophy of abortion. I have no philosophy of end-of-life care,” Gruber answered. “My job as an economist is to deliver the empirical facts so that you all can make the necessary decisions.”

Pressing further, Massie asked Gruber if he advocates the rationing of end-of-life care, and “as an economist, does it save money?”

“I do not advocate that the federal government should ration end-of-life care,” Gruber answered.

Uh huh.

TELL ME AGAIN HOW ANYONE WHO DOUBTED THIS CONFABULATION WAS JUST A MISOGYNISTIC RAPE-DENIALIST: U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of attack.

The scene with her friends was pivotal in the article, as it alleged that the friends were callously apathetic about a beaten, bloodied, injured classmate reporting a brutal gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The account alleged that the students worried about the effect it might have on their social status, how it might reflect on Jackie during the rest of her collegiate career, and how they suggested not reporting it. It set up the article’s theme: That U-Va. has a culture that is indifferent to rape.

“It didn’t happen that way at all,” Andy said. . . .

They said there are mounting inconsistencies with the original narrative in the magazine. The students also expressed suspicions about Jackie’s allegations from that night. They said the name she provided as that of her date did not match anyone at the university, and U-Va. officials confirmed to The Post that no one by that name has attended the school.

And photographs that were texted to one of the friends showing her date that night actually were pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a junior at a university in another state, confirmed that the photographs are of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hasn’t been to Charlottesville for at least six years. . . . He said it appears the photos that were circulated were pulled from social media Web sites.

And remember, based solely on that Rolling Stone story, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan illegally suspended all Greek activity. Now it’s not even clear that there was a fraternity involved at all.

UPDATE: “We are approaching the point at which one could construct a case in favor of the whole thing’s having been made up from scratch.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Early doubter Robby Soave: “The degree to which everyone involved in this travesty of journalism failed at their jobs is almost unbelievable. But unlike the story of a gang rape at UVA, we now have incontrovertible proof of it.” Plus: “If the friends’ narrative is accurate, it seems doubtful that “Drew” exists at all, and is instead the product of some kind of catfishing situation. Compare that with Rolling Stone editor Sean Woods’ initial claim that ‘I’m satisfied that [the perpetrators] exist and are real. We knew who they were.'”

Pathetic.

MORE: Ashe Schow Notes How The Story Changed.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Smartphone Theft Is An Epidemic, So Secure Yours Now.

SHOWDOWN: Dave Brat Offers Omnibus Amendment To Defund Amnesty.

SCIENCE: Why Running Hurts Every Part of Your Body.

See, that’s why I do the Rippetoe thing.

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NEWS FROM THE “LIVING CONSTITUTION” WORLD: Judge Posner Says NSA Should Be Able To Get Everything & That Privacy Is Overrated.

I made the “living Constitution” point when we interviewed Posner for the late, lamented Glenn & Helen Show.

LIES! IT’S ALL LIES! Steve Wozniak Says the Apple Garage Was a Myth.

ON SALE FOR $3.99: Sarah Hoyt’s Wings, on Kindle.

MICROSOFT: All The World’s Servers Do Not Belong To The US Government.

THE HILL: Maurice Stucke and Allen Grunes: Dancing Around Data. “So why is it that the market has not responded to the privacy concerns that are so prevalent among American consumers? One major reason is that our own antitrust authorities are not looking at the amassing of data. Privacy and competition issues shouldn’t neatly fall into distinct compartments – but most enforcers have blithely left them there.”

FORGET PERSON OF THE YEAR: Maybe We Should Pick A “Person Of Just One Minute.” “The nominees would be people who were cheated of their fifteen minutes and got a lot less national attention than they deserved. An obvious example would be Zemir Begic, who was killed in a hammer attack in St Louis following the Ferguson riots. Was this a hate crime refocusing our national conversation on race? Are you kidding? The NY Times carried one AP article that was race free. Nothing to see here.”

SPACE: SpaceX Will Try to Land Rocket on Floating Ocean Platform Next Week.

ASHE SCHOW: More evidence the gender wage gap is due to choice, not discrimination. “Despite continued claims from the White House and media that women earning less than men is solely or entirely due to discrimination, a new Bureau of Labor Statistics report puts that explanation to rest. The report, released this week, found that women on average made 82.1 cents to the dollar that men earned. At first glance, this 17.9-cent gap still seems high, even though it’s lower than the oft-cited 23-cent figure. But dig deeper, and one will find that the gap is nearly entirely due to the choices women make in their personal lives.” Men and women want different things. Who knew?

WILLIAM H. DAVIDOW AND MICHAEL S. MALONE: What Happens To Society When Robots Replace Workers?

PAUL GREGORY: The Fatal Conceit Of Jonathan Gruber.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 580.

LENA DUNHAM: It doesn’t matter if my libelous story was true, it’s all about my feelings.

I DUNNO, PEOPLE SURE SEEM TO BE DOING IT A LOT LATELY: Megan McArdle: You Can’t Just Accuse People Of Rape.

People are frustrated by rape on campus and want it to stop. Their frustration is righteous, their goal laudable. In the name of this goal, however, they are trying to drive the rate of false negatives down to zero, and causing a lot of real problems for real people who are going through real anguish that goes far beyond weeping in the doctor’s office. The main character is a boy who had sex with a friend. According to his testimony and that of his roommate (who was there, three feet above them in a bunkbed), the sex was entirely consensual, if extremely ill-advised. According to Yoffe, after the girl’s mother found her diary, which “contained descriptions of romantic and sexual experiences, drug use, and drinking,” the mother called the campus and announced that she would be making a complaint against the boy her daughter had sex with. Two years later, after a “judicial” process that offered him little chance to tell his side, much less confront his accuser, he is unable to return to school, or to go anywhere else of similar stature because of the disciplinary action for sexual assault that taints his record.

As I’ve written before, the very nature of rape makes these problems particularly difficult. On campus, especially, sexual assaults usually offer no physical evidence except that of an act that goes on hundreds of times every day, almost always consensually, at those campuses. It involves only two witnesses, both of whom were often intoxicated.

The goal — and be clear, I don’t mean an unintended consequence — is to make campuses a hostile environment for men.

APPLYING A “BROKEN WINDOWS” APPROACH to police misconduct.

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DEMOCRAT SEN. BOB KERREY: Partisan torture report fails America. That description — “partisan” and “fails America” — is a good epitaph for Harry Reid’s Democratic Senate. Good riddance.