JOURNALISM: White House to Media: Sit Down and Don’t Interview.

ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS about Ebola.

Related: US Ebola case is first diagnosed outside Africa. Might we want stricter controls on travel from affected areas?

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Uber Improves Life, Economists Agree.

GET READY FOR “BAD LUCK” AT THE Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals.

Also, Warehouse Deals on Small Appliances.

THIS SEEMS TO BE A HABIT WITH THEM: IRS Erased Key Records in Lawsuit, NetJets Says. “NetJets is claiming in a lawsuit that as part of its tax dispute with the agency the IRS ‘wiped clean a number of computer hard drives containing emails and other electronic documents that the Government was required to produce.'”

The hard drives may be clean, but the IRS is dirty.

TWO WEEKS AGO: CDC issues Ebola checklist: ‘Now is the time to prepare.’

I think they’ve been more worried about this than they’ve been letting on.

CAN ANYBODY PLAY THIS GAME? Secret Service didn’t file paperwork on Atlanta incident. “Agents became alarmed during Obama’s trip to Atlanta after discovering that a private security contractor working for the CDC with a criminal record had a gun within arms-length of the president, but superiors told them not to file ‘any paperwork’ or initiate an investigation, according to two sources familiar with the case. . . . The elevator case is another embarrassing blow to Secret Service leaders and exposes a breakdown in security protocols. One source called it a prime example of a pervasive ‘culture of cover-up’ at the agency.”

TURNING MECCA INTO “an amalgam of Disneyland and Las Vegas.” One does not expect refinement from the Saudis.

AN ANTI-LANDRIEU AD FROM ELBERT GUILLORY: “You are not Mary’s cause. . . you are just a vote. . . . You are a means to an end.”

Yeah, I know I posted this last night, but I’m posting it again this morning because it’s just that good.

EXUDING CONFIDENCE: From shaming to semi-stalking, Democrats flood inboxes for last-minute campaign cash. But as a consultant once told me, if you think this kind of stuff is ineffective, it just means you’re not the target demographic.

REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT: Hong Kong protest sees biggest crowds yet on holiday celebrating communist party. “On a holiday meant to celebrate the birth of China’s Communist Republic, Hong Kong residents instead swarmed the streets Wednesday to protest Beijing’s iron grip over their government and demand democratic reforms. The massive crowds appeared to be the biggest yet amid a week of demonstrations that have brought large parts of the city to a standstill. Throughout Hong Kong, it was a day of jarring images and symbolism as authorities tried to carry on with National Day celebrations only to have protesters respond with acts of emotional though peaceful defiance.”

THEY GROW UP SO FAST: P.J. Media Enters Its Second Decade.

LEADERSHIP: The Hill: White House huddles as ISIS advances toward Turkey.

MARGARET WENTE: The New Campus Sex Puritans.

Sixty years ago, sexual behaviour among the young caused deep alarm among the puritanical religious right. Today, it causes deep alarm among the puritanical progressive left. Like their forebears, they are doing their best to restrict and regulate it.

This weekend, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that makes universities redefine consensual sex. From now on, students must effectively obtain the “affirmative consent” of their partners, which must be “ongoing” every step of the way. Those accused of violating the consent rule will be judged on the preponderance of the evidence. Perpetrators face suspension or expulsion, and universities face heavy penalties for failure to enforce.

The new measure is designed to stem a tidal wave of rape on campus that, in fact, does not exist. (Violent crime, including sexual assault, has been in decline for 20 years.) Even so, universities across North America have set up vast new administrative apparatuses to deal with the crisis. Many of them have also expanded the meaning of “sexual violence” to include anything that makes you feel bad.

You don’t have a right not to feel bad, after sex or at any other time.

I THINK HE JUST STANDS ALOOF, PERIOD: Michael Barone: Obama stands aloof from America’s four foreign policy traditions.

WOMAN SPENDS MONTH IN JAIL for possession of SpaghettiOs that cops mistook for meth. She should be given a choice of $10,000 a day for the time spent in prison, or the chance to horsewhip the cops and DA naked through the streets.

WISCONSIN: Here’s why you don’t steal your jobs plan from other candidates’ websites. “The Republican Governors Association on Tuesday released an ad questioning the integrity of Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. The new commercial states that her campaign’s plagiarism scandal raises serious questions about her character.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Vanessa Williams Sheds Light on Female-on-Female Rape. “Vanessa Williams is many things: actress, singer, model, mother. She is also one of an estimated 17.7 million American women who’s been a victim of attempted or completed rape. On Oprah’s Master Class, Williams revealed that she was molested by an 18-year-old when she was just 10. But what’s really caught the attention of news outlets and the general public is this salacious detail: Her perpetrator was (yes) a woman.”

THAT MAY NOT STOP HIM: GAO says Obama administration can’t bail out insurers without Congress.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Lewis & Clark Law School closes downtown legal clinic, cites enrollment, revenue decline.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: The Gelded Age: The inequality bed-wetters are misleading you. “The inequality police are worried that we are living in a new Gilded Age. We should be so lucky: Between 1880 and 1890, the number of employed Americans increased by more than 13 percent, and wages increased by almost 50 percent. I am going to go out on a limb and predict that the Barack Obama years will not match that record; the number of employed Americans is lower today than it was when he took office, and household income is down. Grover Cleveland is looking like a genius in comparison.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Congo’s Forgotten Curse: Epidemic of Female-on-Female Rape. “Rape in conflict zones has long been the subject of news reports and academic study and large amounts of donor funding is channeled to organizations that respond to it. But rape specifically perpetrated by women has received less attention. Recent studies suggest the problem is more widespread than many experts previously believed. In 2010, Harvard academic Lynn Lawry and a team of researchers conducted a survey of human-rights abuses in over 1,000 households in conflict-ridden eastern Congo. It was the same year that Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, dubbed Congo ‘the rape capital of the world.’ Lawry’s study asked victims of sexual violence to specify their assailant’s gender. It found that 40% of the women — and 10% of the men — who said they were subjected to sexual violence were assaulted by a woman.”

ROGER SIMON: In Praise Of Benjamin Netanyahu.

This man, whatever his failings, is better able to articulate the global situation than any political leader currently in a position of power in any country by yards. In fact, virtually no one else is even attempting to do it. (Tony Blair did for a while before he turned, but he’s not in Bibi’s league.) Netanyahu may not be Churchill when it comes to courage, but he is Churchill, or close, when it comes to a precise mastery of the English language, ironic since he is the prime minister of a Hebrew-speaking nation. He is able to tell the truth about the important issues, when all others, including, notably, our president and secretary of State, are prevaricating or spinning, trying desperately not to offend the reprehensible, and he did it again the other day at the United Nations. (Full text here.) He told the truth about radical Islam to a half empty house whose Moslem delegates had left and whose remaining attendees sat there terrified of agreeing publicly with the Israeli prime minister lest some imam or dopey liberal NGO accuse of them of Islamophobia. He made that speech at an institution that has institutionalized anti-Semitism, not world peace or even basic common sense, as its modus operandi, as its very raison d’être.

What would the UN do if it were unable to bash Israel? How would it spend its time?

Who cares? Would the world be worse if the UN ceased to exist? I’m not sure it would even be much better. The UN is a fundamentally trivial body, staffed, and admired, by fundamentally trivial people.

WAIT, I THOUGHT WE HAD EVOLVED PAST TRADITIONAL SEX ROLES: For millennial women, ‘the one’ must have a steady job. “For most of Western history, marriage was a political and economic transaction (for both the spouses, and the communities they belonged to). In the late 18th century, it began transforming into an institution based on love and soul-mating. Now, it’s about politics and economics once again.” Fundamentally transformed back.

HOME NURSING: Woman Saves Three Relatives From Ebola. “Fatu stayed healthy, which is noteworthy considering that more than 300 health care workers have become infected with Ebola, and she didn’t even have personal protection equipment — those white space suits and goggles used in Ebola treatment units. Instead Fatu, who’s in her final year of nursing school, invented her own equipment. International aid workers heard about Fatu’s ‘trash bag method’ and are now teaching it to other West Africans who can’t get into hospitals and don’t have protective gear of their own.”

Perhaps we should teach it to Americans, too.