NEWS YOU CAN USE: Five Easy Ways To Save Time And Money In The Garden.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Sylvia Sarno, Sufficient Ransom.

SLATE: What’s Shakin’? L.A. Earthquakes Don’t Foretell the “Big One” This Time. Plus: “OK, joking aside, this really is something you need to take seriously. Like with asteroid impacts, if you wait long enough, statistically speaking, your chance of getting hit by an earthquake goes up (they occur in all 50 states, I’ll note, and don’t even get me started with the New Madrid fault which affects seven states in the Midwest and South). My advice? If you live near a fault, have an earthquake kit handy. And since there are other natural disasters no matter where you live, everyone should have a kit ready in case of whatever emergency might come along.” Yes.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Pheromone parties: one way to sniff out a new lover.

POPULAR MECHANICS: Who’s Packing What: The Weapons Of The Leland Yee Scandal.

So, if you’re keeping score, CNN has now been scooped on a political scandal by Popular Mechanics.

WATCH OUT ROKU: Introducing Amazon Fire TV. I ordered one.

EDUCATION: We Need Better Teachers: For the sake of K-12 students, we need to validate and reward our best instructors and get rid of our worst ones.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 328.

REALLY? BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND THAT FREE BIRTH CONTROL IS. Kirsten Powers: Yoga pants isn’t a civil right. I do love the argument that a middle-school ban on yoga pants is “rape culture.” Then again, isn’t everything rape culture now?

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Cuomo 1, De Blasio 0.

The first round of Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fight over the city’s charter schools has ended with a decisive victory for Cuomo. De Blasio made hay during the campaign with his pledge to end the city’s practice of allowing charter schools rent-free access to public school facilities. But the new budget deal that passed yesterday in Albany takes the matter out of his hands, requiring all cities to provide space, free of charge, to charter schools if it is available. If not, the cities will be required to pay up to $40 million in rent to install them at alternative accommodations. Even more pointedly, it explicitly authorizes the three Success Academy schools that de Blasio rejected earlier this month. . . .

De Blasio and Cuomo are still on good terms in public, and the Mayor has taken pains to say that these new developments will not derail his plans. But this is a major blow to his education agenda. Less than six months after winning on an anti-charter platform, de Blasio’s New York City will be even more hospitable to charter schools than it was under Bloomberg.

The contest between Cuomo and De Blasio is the contest between the suicidal and non-suicidal wings of the Democratic Party.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Myth of Working Your Way Through College. “Once upon a time, a summer spent scooping ice cream could pay for a year of college. Today, the average student’s annual tuition is equivalent to 991 hours behind the counter.”

Do tell.

AT AMAZON, fresh coupons on pretty much everything. Browse and save.

Also, 25% or more off on Outdoor Smokers. Summer is coming.

UPDATE: Smoker link was wrong — fixed now. Sorry! One day I’ll master cut-and-paste.

TAXPAYER-SUPPORTED RACISM: Being a white person is “like being an alcoholic.”

UPDATE: I’ll bet nobody thought to invite Tom Kratman.

SOHRAB AMARI: The Turkish Ballot-Box Revolt That Wasn’t: Young, secular and unhappy with the Erdogan government, but without a credible agenda to win over their countrymen. It takes more than dissatisfaction to overturn a regime, something that people in America should remember, too.

ASHE SCHOW: Critics want to silence film exposing the real war on women in the Middle East. Of course they do. It’s an inconvenient truth, on many levels.

JAMES TARANTO: Yes, We Can — Wait: Want medical insurance? Get in line.

But it was the line photos that we found arresting. And it’s clear McGuinness was advancing a White House line. Press secretary Jay Carney opened his daily briefing yesterday with the following gasconade: “As you can see by the lines around the country this weekend, we are seeing a surge in enrollment.”

The first thing we thought of when we saw the pictures was the photos we’ve recently seen on Twitter of Venezuelans waiting in bread lines. Waiting in line to purchase necessities is a characteristic not of a prosperous free society but of command economies under repressive regimes. Closer to home, one doubts even the Transportation Security Administration would be so tone-deaf as to advertise long airport lines as an indication it’s doing a great job.

So what in the world could the White House have been thinking? Here’s a guess: They look at the ObamaCare lines and think not of communist subjects queuing up for bread or toilet paper, or Americans for driver’s licenses, but something more like the lines of consumers eager to be the first to get the new iPhone or the latest Harry Potter book. Affluent people often wait in line for things about which they have a particular enthusiasm–or for special experiences, like an amusement park ride, concert or meal at a favorite restaurant.

One obvious difference is that whereas the iPhone and Harry Potter queuers are eager to get the new thing first, the ObamaCare ones are presumably anxious not to miss the deadline (even if it’s not rigorously enforced). ObamaCare lines might have been impressive if they’d begun to form in the last days of September. At the end of open enrollment, the White House boast is akin to the IRS’s citing a “surge” in filing of tax returns two weeks from now as evidence that the income tax system is popular and well designed.

Well, as Chief Justice Roberts informed us, ObamaCare is a tax.

THEY’RE ACTING TERRIBLY BECAUSE THEY’RE TERRIBLE PEOPLE: Compassion: Anti-Obamacare cancer patient smeared by Harry Reid now receiving death wishes from liberals. “Indeed, unleashing left-wing wrath on ordinary people for the sin of speaking out must be a pretty effective method of stifling dissent — which is precisely what Reid wants.”

WAPO: Here’s Why It Doesn’t Matter If 7 Million Signed Up For ObamaCare:

Of course, we still need to learn how many paid their premiums to complete enrollment. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday said it’s anywhere between 80 and 90 percent, so official enrollment (and not just signups) could be anywhere between 5.7 million to 6.4 million. Those numbers would still likely rise over the next few months for those who can sign up later because of hardships or changes in life circumstances.

Other things we don’t know yet: How many of the previously uninsured signed up for private plans or Medicaid? How many people skipped the exchanges and signed up directly with insurers? How well did insurers predict their mix of enrollees in 2014? Will people actually like the coverage they now have?

How many people who signed up did so because they lost better insurance because of ObamaCare mandates?

UPDATE: Shikha Dalmia: Don’t Pop The Cork For ObamaCare: Untangle the administration’s enrollment numbers to see how overstated they are. “So, to recap: ‘Obamacare’ has extended coverage to a far smaller portion of the uninsured than expected, caused millions of others to lose coverage, raised out-of-pocket costs for many middle-income consumers, diminished patient choice of doctors and hospitals and exposed Americans to future premium hikes. This is why Americans are not popping the cork. Nor should the administration.”

NO. NEXT QUESTION? IRS Targeting: Is the Obama Administration Conducting a Serious Investigation?

POST-GUN-SMUGGLING INDICTMENT, those old Leland Yee press releases take on a different flavor.

My favorite: Senator Yee Named Clean Money Champion. But there are many to choose from.

SLOW LEARNERS: Republicans Catch on that Negative Advertising Works: Early spending by outside groups on attack ads has put Democratic incumbents on the defensive.

PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: Obama subsidizes private jets for high-flyers abroad.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Indicted Charlotte mayor used access to White House in making plans for pay-offs.

Plus: “The AP did a round-up of ‘big-city’ mayors caught up in corruption cases, which may be the single greatest example of Name That Party ever executed.”

THAT’S NOT A JAB. IT’S MARCHING ORDERS. Obama jabs press: Future HealthCare.gov outages ‘won’t be news.’