FREE SPEECH POLICE: City Of London Police Keep Shutting Down Websites With No Court Order.

SCIENCE: Lost Genes May Explain The Origin Of The Black Death. “About 6,000 years ago, a bacterium underwent a few genetic changes. These allowed it to expand its habitat from the guts of mice to that of fleas. Such changes happen all the time, but in this particular instance the transformation eventually resulted in the Black Death. It wiped out a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century.”

LAURA DATTARO: It’s Time To Stop Babying Mars. Is the fear of contaminating other worlds with life from Earth stymying explorers?

TO AGE WELL, WALK. This study doesn’t seem especially strong to me. It started with sedentary old people, and while I’m sure they benefited at least somewhat from moving around more, the benefit is actually not all that huge here. The thing is, the best time to start exercising, like the best time to plant a tree, is 20 years ago. Or, when you’re 82, 60 years ago.

I remember something my grandmother said to me in her last year as I headed off to the gym: “Getting in shape for your old age, are you? You’d better!”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Humanity Could Go Extinct Before 2100.

I AGREE. SHUT THEM DOWN NOW! MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry: NBA Is About ‘Profit From the Sale of Black Bodies.’

UPDATE: From the comments:

The typical NBA owner got rich before he bought an NBA team. He didn’t need the NBA to get rich. If the NBA never existed, he would still be rich.

The typical NBA player has no way to make anywhere near the money they’re making in the NBA other than the NBA. If the NBA never existed, “LeBron” at best would be a pretty good construction worker somewhere in northeast Ohio. Most of the rest of the players would be mediocre french fry jockeys.

Well, you can’t make a social justice omelet without breaking a few eggs. If abolishing the NFL and NBA would drastically shrink the number of black millionaires, so be it.

PAUL MIRENGOFF LOOKS AT THE ASSAULT ON DOUG LAYCOCK: “It’s clear by now that if you publicly oppose gay marriage or give money to those who oppose it, the gay speech police will try to ruin you (and may succeed). But it turns out that even supporting gay marriage isn’t enough to protect you from attack if you make statements on collateral matters that gay marriage proponents find harmful to their cause. . . . No longer will scholarly discourse and legal positions be judged on the merits. From now on they will be judged on whether they are “used to hurt the LGBTQ community.” Thoughtfulness and moderation is no defense. Leading scholars must be educated by their gay activist students.”

The names of the people acting thuggishly here are Heather Cronk, Greg Lewis, and Stephanie Montenegro.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Case Against Reparations.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 384.

YOU SPELLED “CORRUPT” WRONG: Liz Peek: More Weak Justice From Eric Holder.

GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE’S IMAGE PROBLEM: Most important casualty of Veterans Affairs scandal could be Obamacare.

WELL, TO BE FAIR, WHAT HAS HE FIXED, BESIDES MAYBE AN ELECTION HERE AND THERE? Megan McArdle: Why Obama Can’t Fix The VA.

The scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs is not going to bring down the administration of President Barack Obama. Nonetheless, it does seem to have legs. Even the administration’s supporters are resorting to half-hearted attempts to blame Congress, or George W. Bush, rather than dismissing the charges as a nonscandal being hyped by ideologues.

As it happens, I believe the administration’s supporters when they say that this scandal was a long time in the making, and that no one president can be entirely to blame. Fundamentally, this points to the difficulty of reforming any institution, and especially a government agency. Yet it also points to one of the cardinal weaknesses of Obama’s presidency: his prolonged hubris about how much a really smart, caring president could change the way government operates.

Obama’s experience with the VA is a testament to the danger of big promises — and high expectations.

Well, that’s pretty much the story of his whole presidency. Followed by disappointment, excuses, and finger-pointing.

THE FOURTH BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT: Learning about problems in his own government through random news reports has become one of Obama’s common refrains. Sadly, the news media aren’t doing their job any better than the other branches, these days.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: If Purdue Can Freeze Tuition, So Can Others.

AT AMAZON, the Get Ready For Summer Sale.

Also, deals in Camera, Photo & Video.

JIM TREACHER: Ronan Farrow Is Every Bit As Funny As His Real Dad, Woody Allen. Schindler’s List is always a good punch line.

Plus: “Those Holocaust survivors are always whining about how tough they’ve had it, but what do they know about pain? Try putting yourself in Touré’s shoes. He has to deal with problems most of us can’t even imagine. He’s stuck on MSNBC in the middle of the afternoon. He wrote a whole book about Prince, and nobody bought it. He has to sit in first class with a bunch of white people who have no idea who he is.”

No wonder MSNBC hosts are always having to apologize. The stress.

NEWS GALORE FOR A WORLD GONE MAD: Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

THE MARINES: Stranded Offshore.

WAIT, I THOUGHT THE TEA PARTY WAS DEAD AGAIN: Tea Partier Unseats Oldest Congressman. Hall’s reaction is refreshingly straightforward: “I just got whipped and got beat.” I testified before his committee some years ago — he was a sprightly 70 at the time, I believe — and he was a nice guy. But at 91, maybe it’s time for some fresh blood. . . .

JAMES TARANTO: No ‘Dumping’: Obama acts to protect workers from ObamaCare.

The word that got our attention, though, is dump. It appears in the headline, too: “I.R.S. Bars Employers From Dumping Workers Into Health Exchanges.” If the New York Times were our only source of news, we’d be very confused right now. (Well, OK, we’d be very confused almost always.) For months the Times has been touting the quality of ObamaCare policies, scoffing at those who liked their previous plans and were victimized by President Obama’s fraudulent promise that they could keep them.

Now all of a sudden the exchanges are a garbage dump? Or is it that the exchanges are a pristine wilderness into which workers are the garbage being dumped?

The Times quotes Obama at a February press conference: “I don’t think that an employer-based system is going to be, or should be, replaced anytime soon,” he said when a reporter asked “whether over the long term you see a future where health insurance is less tied to the workplace.”

You can see why the president would take that position. If employers start dropping medical benefits, the number of people directly victimized by the you-can-keep-your-plan fraud would multiply, and with it Obama and the Democrats’ political problems. Thus the administration is in the ironic position of writing regulations to make sure its “comprehensive reform” isn’t too comprehensive.

ObamaCare is so great that they’ve exempted all their friends, and they won’t apply it to anyone else until the elections are safely over.

ED MORRISSEY: Operation Choke Point: A Harbinger of Big-Government Activism To Come?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: University of Arizona Law School Cuts Nonresident Tuition by 30% (on Top of This Year’s 8% Cut); Takes Aim at Arizona State, California Law Schools.

Related: Charleston Law School Founders Withdrew $25 Million in Profits, Leaving School in Precarious Financial Condition.

YA THINK? Byron York: With new troubles, questions mount about Obama’s competence.

WITH OVER FOUR THOUSAND DOWNLOADS, my The Second Amendment As Ordinary Constitutional Law is still at #1 on SSRN.