CHANGE: Death toll from Veterans Affairs delays, incompetence climbing.

OBSTRUCTION BY JUSTICE: Issa subpoenas Justice Department on IRS. “House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) issued a subpoena to the Justice Department for documents about the IRS Tea Party-targeting controversy, saying the agency was stonewalling his investigation.”

WORTH REPEATING: Todd Akin Was Not a Tea Partyer, and the Tea Party is Not Costing Republicans the Senate. “I’d say you can only blame ‘the Tea Party’ for a net loss of two Senate seats since 2010. That’s a period during which it helped send Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul to the upper House — during which ‘establishment’ candidates like Denny Rehberg, Heather Wilson, Rick Berg, Josh Mandel, George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Carly Fiorina, and Dino Rossi totally failed to win seats.”

NEWS FROM THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “A U.S. appeals court has ordered a new sentencing for an immigration defendant after chiding the Justice Department for its handling of a prosecution in which it misinformed a trial judge about the facts of the case. . . . During appellate arguments this month, Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit spent several minutes attempting to elicit a straightforward concession from Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter S. Smith that the Justice Department’s previous representations were plainly erroneous.”

A DISASTER-PREP STORY FROM SAN DIEGO: Buy Your Own Fire Hose?

It’s a real estate cliché: location, location, location. When Bardon and his wife, Rhonda Hyatt, were house hunting in 2010, agents touted the fact that the new places lining Cinnabar Way were surrounded by a natural preserve.

“NO ONE,” an online ad promised, “WILL EVER LIVE BEHIND YOU.”

For this couple, though, acres of chaparral and eucalyptus weren’t comforting. Former Fallbrook residents, they had lived through several wildfires. When Bardon had difficulty obtaining fire insurance for the new house, he took matters into his own experienced hands.

“I’m a depend-on-yourself kind of guy,” he said.

On a website, he ordered $1,000 of firefighting equipment — $400 for four lengths of hose, each rated at 150 pounds per square inch; $250 for the nozzle; $50 for an adapter; $300 on fire-retardants and other items. He stored the gear in one of the tool cabinets lining his tidy garage. . . .

As fires hop-scotched the county last week, thousands of residents faced an agonizing choice. Did they evacuate their imperiled homes and businesses, or stay and fight? On Cinnabar Way, several chose the latter course. These civilian defenders stressed that they always obeyed authorities’ orders, and praised the professionals who — attacking by land and air — routed a wall of flame and saved their block.

But these amateurs helped.

“It was a joint effort,” said Elliot Merhar, who lives next door to Bardon.

Still, wasn’t he surprised to see his neighbor running to a hydrant, lugging his own fire hose?

“No,” Merhar said. “I know him.”

Well, it worked.

JONAH GOLDBERG ISSUES A TRIGGER WARNING: “I am going to make fun of ‘trigger warnings.’ . . . Now, the Internet is a very big place, and there’s nothing wrong with obscure websites catering to the boutique anxieties of troubled people. But now the cancer has spread to the college campus.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST. Attorney General Speaks At Segregated School. On Saturday last, the attorney general of the United States spoke at a segregated school. He spoke, without a trace of irony, as the nation celebrated the 60th anniversary of Brown v. The Board of Education, which, to quote the Washington Post, ‘ended — legally at least — racial segregation in public education.'”

YOU KNOW, I’VE NEVER DONE MUCH WITH ORGANIZED SCIENCE FICTION FANDOM, and now I’m glad.

I BOUGHT LAST NIGHT’S DINNER AT THE FOOD-DESERT TRADER JOE’S: Knoxville’s Federally-Designated “Food Deserts” Include Super Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger. Plus a couple of tasty oriental supermarkets. “If the federal government wants to be taken seriously, they really need to try harder.”

AT AMAZON, deals on Wearable Electronics.

Plus, fresh Coupon Deals on pretty much everything.

KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: K.C. Johnson: More on Vassar’s Rigged Sex Hearing.

According to the filing, Vassar’s Title IX investigator, who had been on the job for nine months, “could not remember any training he received.” The investigator subsequently admitted–at his deposition in the lawsuit–that Walker’s Facebook messages undermined her statement to the Vassar tribunal, but that he didn’t recognize the problem during his inquiry. And he added that while he looked into Walker’s alleged intoxication, it wasn’t Vassar’s policy to inquire about the alleged intoxication of the male student. Yet since Vassar (like most schools) holds that sex after a certain level of intoxication constitutes rape, how can the level of intoxication of both parties not be relevant? This would seem to be a Title IX issue of treating females differently than males.

It seems all but certain that in future years, lots of male students will suffer Yu’s fate. Parents of future students would be well-served in taking a look at how Vassar treated him.

Six figures for a chance at being branded a rapist in a Kangaroo Court? Not much of a deal. But these procedures seem vulnerable to all sorts of lawsuits, not just limited to Title IX. At some schools they may rise to the level of conspiracies to deprive people of civil rights, and possibly even RICO violations.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “I jokingly refer to OkCupid as the Man Catalog. Clicking through profiles feels like sifting through the pages of the latest fall trends.”

So, binders full of men?

WHILE WE WAIT FOR TRUE MOLECULAR MANUFACTURING, THE TRANSITIONAL NANOTECH CAN STILL BE HUGE: Nanotechnology to provide efficient, inexpensive water desalination.

WHEN AUTOMOTIVE TRAGEDY STRIKES: Million-dollar Mercedes 300SL Gullwing destroyed at Mille Miglia.

STEPHEN HUNTER’S NEW BOOK, Sniper’s Honor, is out. He talks about it at Power Line.

ABC, NATIONAL JOURNAL: White House fumbling VA scandal.

ER, BECAUSE IT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO ROYALLY SUCK? Why Tech’s Best Minds Are Very Worried About the Internet of Things.

AT AMAZON, for Memorial Day, 40-60% off Select Clothing. For men, women, and kids.

Plus, up to 50% off on Makita Tools.

DEA RAIDING SMOKE SHOPS, SILENCING VICTIMS? “Part of the bond restrictions is that my sister retract all her statements from the press and say that I was never assaulted and that she lied.”

NIEMAN LABS: Hey, look — Vox is catching up with InstaPundit!

Plus, they’re already asking: Whatever happened to Vox and FiveThirtyEight?

THIS IS JUST SAD: Comcast Says It’s Going To Slap All Of Its Customers With Data Caps, Makes Half-Hearted Attempt To Walk Back Earlier Statements When Backlash Kicks In.

FREE SPEECH UPDATE: California bill would safeguard consumers’ rights to criticize firms online.

ALZHEIMER’S: A Neglected Epidemic? “According to a study from Rush University Medical Center in March, the number of deaths attributable to the disease had been vastly undercalculated. The research showed that Alzheimer’s was the underlying cause in 500,000 deaths in the United States in 2010, a figure close to six times the estimate from the Centers for Disease Control. This means that in a single year, Alzheimer’s claimed nearly as many lives as AIDS — responsible for 636,000 deaths in this country — had taken in more than three decades.”

CLAIRE MCCASKILL’S WAR ON MEN. “McCaskill said she also wanted to codify in the legislation a requirement that colleges use the ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard in adjudicating sexual assault cases on campus. The Obama administration has told colleges that it believes such a standard is required by Title IX, but McCaskill said that it should be written into law.”

VIDEO: Watch This Scary Supercell Form Over Wyoming.