CARRIE LUKAS: Paycheck Fairness Fraud: It isn’t about equality for women as much as it is about paving the way for more lawsuits.

JAMES TARANTO: On ‘Asymmetric Stupidity:’ The unwitting autobiography of Paul Krugman.

Even more hilariously unreflective than Krugman’s insistence that conservatives are biased and liberals aren’t are the two explanations he offers. One is “that liberalism goes along with a skeptical, doubting–even self-doubting–frame of mind.” That probably described some forms of liberalism at some times in history, but today’s American left-liberalism is anything but. To return to “climate change,” liberal dogma today holds that skepticism is contrary to science when in reality it is the very essence of science.

“Another possible answer,” Krugman goes on, “is that it’s institutional, that liberals don’t have the same kind of monolithic, oligarch-financed network of media organizations and think tanks as the right.”

That’s right. Krugman is complaining that conservatives have “monolithic . . . media organizations”–on the website of the New York Times.

Heh.

WAPO FACT CHECKER SAYS WHITE HOUSE PAY IS MORE UNEQUAL THAN AVERAGE FOR WASHINGTON, DC: “Carney noted that the White House wage gap was narrower than the national average, but the White House actually lags the District average calculated by the BLS: 95 cents.”

OUT: EQUAL PAY DAY. IN: EQUAL LAY DAY: Would Legalizing Prostitution Free Men’s Sexuality From Female Control? I think that’s the fear.

IF THAT’S TRUE, THEN THERE’S NO ROOM FOR THEM TO COMPLAINT-MONGER! House Democratic women take on White House economist who said wage gap isn’t caused by discrimination.

House Democratic women on Tuesday contradicted a White House economist who said that the wage gap between men and women reflects different professional choices that women make, rather than workplace gender discrimination.

“We’re saying one thing: equal pay for equal work,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “A woman with the same qualifications, education, experience and job should make the same amount of money as her male counterpart. It isn’t about if you decide to take a different kind of a job, or anything like that, this is about equal pay for equal work. It’s apples and apples. It’s not apples and oranges.”

Pelosi maintained that her position was not at odds with White House economist Betsey Stevenson, but Stevenson told reporters Monday that the oft-repeated statistic that women make 77 percent of what men make is not a statement about women and men in the same job.

“Seventy-seven cents captures the annual earnings of full-time, full-year women divided by the annual earnings of full-time, full-year men,” Stevenson said. “There are a lot of things that go into that 77-cents figure. There are a lot of things that contribute and no one’s trying to say that it’s all about discrimination, but I don’t think there’s a better figure.”

Stevenson discussed this issue at greater length with MSNBC last week, as National Review’s Patrick Brennan noted.

“I agree that the 77 cents on the dollar is not all due to discrimination,” she said. “No one is trying to say that it is. But you have to point to some number in order for people to understand the facts. And what it represents is the fact that women on average are put in situations every day that for a variety of reasons mean they earn less. Much of what we need to do to close that gap is to change the constraints that women face. And there are things we haven’t tried.”

Nobody seems that interested in equal occupational fatalities, equal prison time, equal reproductive rights, or equal life or car insurance rates.

ED DRISCOLL: The Rise Of The Anti-Tech California Left. “A Civil War between the grassroots Left, in other words, which is occurring simultaneously and intersecting with the ongoing battle for control among the party’s elite.”

STEVEN HAYWARD: Civil War On The Left? “The better evidence of how the Democratic Party could come to blows comes from California, which right now rivals China for one-party control. Never mind the three Democratic state senators all heading for the hoosegow for corruption: the bigger story is how Democratic ethnic factions are viciously turning on one another.”

KERRY’S ROLE IS TO MAKE HILLARY LOOK GOOD IN RETROSPECT. DESPITE ALL HER DEBACLES, HE’S TRYING HARD: McCain blasts Kerry’s ‘trifecta’ of disasters on foreign policy.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday accused Secretary of State John Kerry of presiding over a “trifecta” of foreign policy disasters.

McCain lambasted his former Senate colleague at a hearing in which Kerry faced wide-ranging criticism about the administration’s handling of crises in the Middle East and Ukraine.

“I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” McCain declared.

“Geneva II [a Syrian peace meeting] was a total collapse, as I predicted to you that it would be. … The Israeli-Palestinian talks, even though you may drag them out for a while, are finished,” McCain said. “And I predict to you that, even though we gave the Iranians the right to enrich, which is unbelievable, that those talks will collapse too.” . . .

The tough talk from McCain, a fellow Vietnam War veteran whom Kerry considered asking to be his vice presidential running mate, underscored the difficulties the former senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate is now enduring.

Since taking office last year, he has dived into a series of challenges with the attitude of someone who knows he is in his last job, racking up frequent flier miles shuttling between the Middle East and Europe to convince the Israelis and Palestinians to start talking; stop Russia from a further invasion of Ukraine; resume nuclear talks with Iran; and try to get Syria to give up its chemical weapons as agreed.

Republicans are skeptical that Kerry is making progress on any of those issues, and there have been whispers that in his pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, he has his eye on a Nobel Prize.

Kerry is also taking friendly fire from Democrats. With the Middle East talks teetering on collapse last week, administration officials anonymously sniped at him to the press.

Well, it’s never too early to start the battlespace prep for a scapegoating operation. But to be fair to Kerry, while his talents are modest, the real problem is that no one abroad respects, or fears, his boss.

PUNCHING BACK AT ZERO TOLERANCE, TWICE AS HARD: Bryan Preston: It’s Time to Start Suing Schools and Officials — Personally — for Abusing Students.

KIRSTEN POWERS: Liberals’ Mob Rule: Kickstarter’s attempt to censor film about convicted abortion doctor is another example. They’re always trying to shut up someone.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW: Bronx prosecutor bashed and barred from courtroom for misconduct: Assistant District Attorney Megan Teesdale was banished from Bronx Judge John Wilson’s courtroom after failing to reveal evidence that would have freed a man held at Rikers Island on bogus rape charges. Isn’t this a gender-motivated hate crime?

THE OBAMA ERA JUST GETS WORSE: Brace yourself: The bacon shortage is coming.

Just in case, I’m stocking up!

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Washington Post Corrects, Disingenuously. “Still unanswered is the question why it was published. Why did the Washington Post print an article on Keystone that was entirely false and that had no apparent news value, based, as it was, on a six-month-old report by a goofy left-wing organization that hardly anyone has heard of? Why was the Post’s story–published, as the authors acknowledge, for political reasons–almost immediately seized on by Congressional Democrats to justify an attack on Koch Industries? Did the Washington Post act in cooperation with Congressional Democrats? That is a very serious question, to which I do not know the answer. But the facts that we do know are damning. So is the fact that neither the Washington Post nor Senator Whitehouse nor Congressman Waxman will respond to our questions about whether they did or did not collaborate on the March 20 story.”

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EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Archie Comics To Kill Archie. Spoiler: He comes out as gay, and then is immediately shot by a gun-nut teabagger RWNJ.

IS “OK CUPID” THE “ANTI-GAY CUPID?” OKCUPID FOUNDERS PROMOTED ‘DIS’ GENERATOR WITH GAY INSULTS.

HEY, LOOK: CNN FINALLY COVERS LELAND YEE, JUST A WEEK LATE. They don’t mention his party until the fourth paragraph, though.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF OWNING A DOG: You meet people. If you want to meet women, buy a French Bulldog. If you want to meet men, buy a Great Dane.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON THE ANTI-TECH PROTESTS AND THE CULTURE THEY REPRESENT: Vanishing Point.

Oddly enough people reach the pinnacle of society these days being activists, polemicists, digital figures, gurus, tech evangelists, civil rights leaders, First Ladies and talk show hosts. So you have to sympathize with the Occupy People who think that, having tried to do all that, they ought to be somebodies.

Welcome to the world of forced perspective; where Eich can get pilloried for voting the wrong way on Proposition 8 and Kevin Rose can get picketed for being able to buy stuff from the people who are picketing him. It lifts the lid on a strange world. A place where Vladimir Putin, al-Qaeda, and or asteroids from space don’t exist except as things that George Bush should have taken care of; it gives a glimpse into a universe where gas drilling is just a bad word and the armed forces a job where crazy people earn a living whenever they’re not driving pickup trucks; it provides a peek into a tableau where people actually think food comes from the store and gas comes from the gas pump and money to house everyone in the woods will come from Google’s $3 billion in spare change.

Brother can you spare a tera-dime?

And yet for some reason the glimpse is not reassuring. One could just turn the page and dismiss these as scenes from a freak show, except in the characters in this exhibition are on the stage of an industry with the power of life or death over our privacy; except for the vague fear that this is how America wandered into the Obama era in the first place.

Indeed. When the societal immune system is weakened, all sorts of opportunistic infections can appear.

BRUCE MCQUAIN ASKS: Are global warming alarmists just a conglomerate of eco radicals and third world grifters?

ROLL OVER, STRADIVARIUS: In blind test, soloists like new violins over old. “Ten world-class soloists put prized Stradivarius violins and new, cheaper instruments to a blind scientific test to determine which has the better sound. The results may seem off-key to musicians and collectors: The new violins won handily.”

CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS IN TENNESSEE: Senate votes for open gun carry without permit.

CHANGE: Why Google’s Modular Smartphone Might Actually Succeed.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ON SILICON VALLEY’S TRUST PROBLEM: Silicon Valley Scares Americans.