HMM: Cheap Solar Power—at Night: New solar thermal technologies could address solar power’s intermittency problem.

AT AMAZON, 69 cent songs on MP3.

Also, big savings on Outlet Deals galore.

FASTER, PLEASE: First Successful Regeneration Of An Organ In A Mammal. “A team of researchers has gotten immune-system organs called thymuses in mice to grow, The Economist reports. After the researchers’ treatment, the mice’s thymuses grew more than twice as large. The thymuses, which normally change in structure and become less efficient as animals age, also returned to a more youthful structure.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Violates Student’s Rights, Follows It Up By Deleting Critical Comments From Its Facebook Page. “Now it’s completely gone, save for a sanitized version preserved by Google’s cache. It’s truly sad that a school would feel strongly enough about supposed ‘harassment’ and ‘threats’ to violate a student’s rights, but not strongly enough to step up and defend its actions to critics. This certainly explains its decision to block Saucier from presenting his recording in his defense as well as its banning of any recordings of its closed hearing. The school’s policies cannot survive even the simplest challenge.”

Shut up, they explained. It’s an approach that seems very popular lately. But why should institutions that behave this way get tuition or taxpayer money?

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: LAPD officers monkey-wrenched cop-monitoring gear in patrol cars.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Tuition levels are the result of universities’ own decision-making–above all, their insatiable drive to expand their student services bureaucracy.”

Yep. Somebody should write a book on this.

DEBUNKING JUNK SCIENCE: “Despite his work’s scientific flaws, Mangano is popular with antinuclear activists. Actor Alec Baldwin, a supporter of RPHP, wrote an introduction to Mangano’s 2012 book on the risks of nuclear power plants.”

HUH: Could a popular arthritis supplement be the key to a longer life? Glucosamine could extend life ‘by 8 years.’ “Tests on mice found glucosamine extended lifespan by almost 10 per cent – equivalent to an extra eight years in human terms. It is thought the sugar-like supplement, which has long been used to keep joints healthy and ease the pain of arthritis, extends life by altering the metabolism. The Swiss researchers said they could not be certain it would work in humans. But scientist Michael Ristow, who has started taking glucosamine himself, claimed: ‘The chances are good.’. . . In two large-scale human studies, people who took glucosamine lived longer than others – but Dr Ristow said more research is needed to prove its effectiveness.” Well, it’s common and cheap.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Beef Prices Hit All-Time High.

POLITICAL OPERATIVES: Dallas IRS Office Plastered With Pro-Obama Stickers, Screensavers. “In another case, a worker at the tax agency’s customer help line urged taxpayers ‘to re-elect President Obama in 2012 by repeatedly reciting a chant based on the spelling of his last name,’ the Office of Special Counsel said in a statement. . . . Another IRS employee in Kentucky has agreed to serve a 14-day suspension for blasting Republicans in a conversation with a taxpayer. ‘They’re going to take women back 40 years,’ the IRS employee said in a conversation that was recorded. The employee also said that ‘if you vote for a Republican, the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer.'”

MEET THE NEW OLIGARCHS, same as the old oligarchs.

#SEXISTOBAMA: Washington Post: Is This What The White House Thinks Women Wear To Work?

ROLLING STONE CALLS TEA PARTY IGNORANT. Also thinks John Hancock signed the Constitution.

BRUCE THORNTON: Illiberal Liberalism: The left’s disdain for ordinary Americans has deep historical roots.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 335. It’s a big one today.

THE REVENGE OF GEOPOLITICS: Is the Neo-Isolationist Moment Already Over?

As the domestic political debate over these crises heats up, we are seeing a classic American pattern in action. America’s success abroad breeds stupidity and hubris in U.S. foreign policy. This hubris and stupidity leads to bad choices and magical thinking. We begin to believe, for example, that the world can become safer and more democratic even as we scale back our involvement. These bad choices and bad ideas then lead to huge global challenges. Those challenges ultimately spark smarter, more purposeful American engagement, usually after we’ve tried a few unsuccessful gambits first. That engagement finally leads to American success, which leads back again to American stupidity and hubris. And so on.

Contrary to Jeffersonian legends, what drove increasing American engagement over the 20th century wasn’t the missionary itch of the Wilsonians, or corporatist, Hamiltonian plots to build spooky New World Orders to Bilderberger specifications. It was the reality that when Americans got foreign policy wrong or ignored the outside world, the consequences were so severe that we were continually forced back into the “game” of world politics. What Seib is gesturing to is the reappearance of this reality. A mix of poor foreign policy choices—under President Bush as well as President Obama—added to the consequences of a tentative American pivot away from global engagement have led to a sharp deterioration in the world situation. Accordingly there will be more momentum behind broader U.S. international involvement as global security continues to get worse.

Things have only begun to unravel, and there’s no evidence that the Obama/Kerry/Powers team is up to the problems.

ROGER SIMON: A New Campaign Song For Rick Perry.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Government Can’t Fix The Real Gender Pay Gap. “The answer seems to be that almost all of the gap is driven by choice of occupation, and working hours, with an emphasis on working hours. Childless women who work the same hours as men make very close to what men do. . . . Most of the gap, however, seems to be driven by the fact that women work less, and that in many high-paying professions, how much you get paid is a function of how much you work … but not a linear function. There are outsized rewards to working the kinds of hours that make it very hard to care for a family.”

AT AMAZON, 50% off on Fishing Supplies & Equipment. Summer is coming.

Plus, deals galore at the Levi’s Store.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN PENNSYLVANIA: Attorney General Kathleen Kane caught lying (again). “Kathleen Kane won the election to become Attorney General in Pennsylvania, basing much of her campaign on a promise to investigate whether political connections dragged out the Commonwealth’s investigation and charging of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on child sexual abuse charges. Mrs Kane cast herself as a fearless crusader against political corruption, but it’s looking like that was a false front.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer says she’s not telling the truth:

Federal prosecutors reviewed the case in early 2013 after a top state prosecutor took it to them through a back channel.

When The Inquirer disclosed last month that Kane had ended an investigation that sources said had caught at least five Philadelphia elected officials on tape pocketing cash or gifts, Kane said that the officials had committed crimes, but that federal law enforcement officials agreed with her that the case was “flawed and nonprosecutable.”

But Williams and the other sources say the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia never made such a judgment about the sting during the several months that prosecutors reviewed the case file. . . . During 19 months of taping, undercover operative Tyron Ali captured five leading Philadelphia Democrats – a Traffic Court judge and four state legislators – on tape taking money or gifts, according to interviews and investigative documents.

After taking office and conducting her own review of the evidence, Kane, a Democrat, shut down the probe without bringing charges – or notifying the state Ethics Commission that lawmakers had taken money.

Looks to me like she was flying cover for corrupt Dems, and got caught at it.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Pro-Business or Pro-Market: The GOP Can’t Have It Both Ways Anymore. Running hard against cronyism would be a strong electoral position for the GOP. But then you’d have to be against cronyism.

SCOTT JOHNSON: Obama’s War On Science And Gullible Women. “Obama knows his line is a fallacy, yet he can’t resist. It is useful to him. It helps him take advantage of women who don’t know better for his own narrow partisan political purposes.”

LELAND YEE UPDATE: Pro-Gun-Control Senator Pleads Not Guilty To Gun, Bribery Charges.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: House Committee is expected to vote to refer ex-IRS official to Justice Department for possible criminal investigation.

Related: Lois Lerner’s Bad Week.