BEWARE: Phishing scam that penetrated Wall Street just might work against you, too.

VIDEO: Watch a 100-Year-Old, 28.5-Liter Engine Scream to Life. “This thundering thing is the Beast of Turin. The Fiat S76 land speed record car. It’s a behemoth, nearly as tall as a man, with a four-cylinder engine displacing a staggering 28.5 liters. In 1911 that massive engine propelled the Fiat S76 to 135-mph, an extraordinary accomplishment at the time, and one that snatched the land speed record away from the Germans.”

Meanwhile, I drove 135 in a Mitsubishi Eclipse years ago, with air conditioning and an awesome stereo.

TEST DRIVE: 2016 Volkswagen Golf R Manual.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Ferguson And The Rule Of Law. To the activist crowd, undermining the rule of law isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 572.

MEGAN MCARDLE: UVA Should Help Police Catch Alleged Rapists — Now.

I wrote last week about the explosive rape allegations against a University of Virginia fraternity in Rolling Stone. This morning I see that Richard Bradley, a former editor at George who had the unhappy distinction of having been taken in by Stephen Glass, is raising questions about the story and the reporting by the author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

I read Bradley’s article and thought, “well, if there are problems with Erdely’s story, it will probably come out eventually, because there’s enough detail that can be checked.” But there’s a corollary to that: If the Rolling Stone article’s allegations are true, there’s also enough detail to put at least a couple of people in jail, and possibly the whole group, even if Jackie (the victim) is reluctant to assist the investigation.

For starters, there are two people whom the university can surely identify right now. First is “Drew,” the boy who worked as a lifeguard at the university pool with her, invited her to the party, and handed her over to his brothers to be raped. There are about 80 brothers in this fraternity; the odds that more than one of them was an upperclassman lifeguard in 2012 seem pretty small, unless this happens to be the swim team frat.

Second is the kid who raped her with a beer bottle when he found himself unable to maintain an erection; she says she recognized him as a classmate from a small anthropology discussion group. The story strongly implies that the rape was an initiation ritual for the fraternity, and since fraternity rush takes place in the second half of freshman year at UVA, this boy was almost certainly a sophomore, or maybe an upperclassman who transferred in. At any rate, it’s very unlikely that there is more than one young man who was a new member of Phi Kappa Psi in 2012, and also a member of lower-level anthropology class. The university ought to be able to identify these two young men in a matter of a few hours.

But the university may well be able to identify everyone, because the story strongly suggests that an entire new class of Phi Kappa Psi brothers participated in a gang rape, either of Jackie or of the two other girls who she learned were also gang raped at the fraternity around the same time that she had been. As far as I can tell, Virginia has no statute of limitations on rape, which means the police should be aggressively investigating these sickening allegations. The university has a duty to its own community, and to the community at large, to do its utmost to identify as many rapists as possible, and help the police to bring them to justice.

And yet, what it’s done instead is to visit watered-down collective punishment on the entire Greek system. What does that say?

IT’S KIND OF CHEESY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES TO RUN this Neil de Grasse Tyson rehab piece without mentioning that The Federalist busted him for his bogus quotes. Nor was Tyson very forthcoming about admitting his error.

OUR NEXT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Ashton Carter?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law Schools Engage in ‘Hand-to-Hand Combat’ Over Declining Applicant Pool.

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IT’S CUTE HOW THEY ACT LIKE THIS ONLY HAPPENS TO WOMEN: A Female Writer’s New Milestone: Her First Death Threat. When I get death threats, it’s not national news, because it can’t be coopted to support a narrative. Headline aside, though, the piece is actually fairly sensible.

UPDATE: Hey, if I were female, this comment from commenter KillYourselfGlenn would be a “death threat.” But note that according to this Pew study, men are harassed online more often than women.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Only 19 Paterson Students Ready For College. “In Paterson, New Jersey only 19 kids who took the SAT’s are considered college ready. This means that they scored at least a 1500 out of 2400 on the standardized test, and this number is truly shocking considering how large the school district is.”

Plus, this predictable kicker: “However, the Paterson school district said that they no longer use SAT scores to gauge students’ success.” Of course not.

Told ya so.

CHARLES C.W. COOKE: In Defense of ‘Antigovernment Militias.’

In the United States, police forces exist as a public service, not as a replacement for civil society. As the Supreme Court has made clear, police are under no obligation to help or to protect you. They can choose to, certainly. But they do not have to. And, even if they did have to, it would still be the case that they could not possibly be everywhere at once.

Nor are they intended to be. For much of American history, there was no serious distinction drawn between the citizenry, the militia, the military, and the police. Instead, there were a few elected or appointed roles — watchmen, constables, sheriffs, etc. — and then there was the people at large. Those people were expected to bandy together and to help one another, to be responsible for their own protection, and to help to keep the peace — both under the control of authorities and of their own volition. When standing police forces came into being, Americans did not give up this system; they added to it.

Which is to say that there is no reason whatsoever for us to abandon either our penchant for self-reliance or our preference for volunteerism simply because we have a series of professional police forces running in parallel to civil society. Nor, for that matter, should our out-of-control licensing systems and incomplete self-defense protections be permitted to become an impediment to our security. I’m no great fan of Oathkeepers as an outfit. But if they wish to help out during a protest, so be it. If a collection of black Ferguson residents wishes to protect a white-owned gas station from looters, so be it. If the Huey P. Newton Gun Club wants to march around Dallas protecting black citizens, so be it. If a spontaneous, unlicensed group of Korean Los Angelenos wishes to take up arms and protect their property from rioters, so be it. The United States represents a collection of free people who elect to have police forces — not the other way around. So some of our actors don’t much like the government. Who cares?

What has the government done to make itself likable, lately?

Plus, more from Jesse Walker:

A member told The New York Times that there were “more than five, less than 500.” He also said that he had been vetting prospective volunteers to weed out any racists, and that about 10 percent of the group’s guards were black. I’ve seen some worries in the press that the Oath Keepers’ presence “could inflame tensions further,” but I have not seen any reports of violence either by or against the group’s St. Louis patrols. The locals quoted in the Times and Post-Dispatch pieces seem to think their presence served as a deterrant. . . . (The Oath Keepers’ basic position on the situation is that the government has trampled the rights of peaceful protesters while neglecting their duty to protect lives and property.)

Better your home or business should burn than that the police should face competition. How about a federal civil rights law protecting citizens forced to resort to self-help from interference by local authorities?

THE BELMONT CLUB: Left Out Of The Narrative. “The media’s ability to define the narrative is so enormously powerful it almost distorts reality. . . . Just as things can be made to disappear, certain persons or objects can be made larger than they are by frequent repetition.”

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

THAT’S GOOD: Obama to provide funding for 50,000 police body cameras. Though, sadly, as someone on Twitter said, the first thing that occurs is that an Obama donor is in the body-camera business.

TO KEEP HIM FROM TALKING. Eli Lake & Josh Rogin: Why Is The FBI Still Targeting Petraeus?

ASHE SCHOW: Amid outrage, questions emerge about U.Va. gang-rape allegation.

When I first wrote about this story, I found it baffling that the woman in charge of U.Va.’s Sexual Misconduct Board was so apathetic toward an allegation of a brutal gang rape. That question still stands.

I had some lingering questions about the account, namely some clarifying details about how Jackie was able to recognize someone in a supposedly “pitch black” room and whether Jackie would cooperate with police now that the story has become so public. Erdley did not respond to a Washington Examiner request for information and U.Va. never returned a request seeking to confirm that a student even came to the administration with a story about gang rape.

But as Richard Bradley pointed out, questions do not equal untruth. The only people who know for sure what happened in that fraternity room two years ago are Jackie and Drew, and the seven men who allegedly raped her and the other man who was egging them on and possibly her friends at the time. But none of them are talking.

Well, luckily we’ve got the solid-gold imprimatur of Rolling Stone on this story.

UPDATE: New Republic: That Rolling Stone Rape Story May Not Be Entirely Accurate.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: Guardian: 109 women prosecuted for false rape claims in five years, say campaigners.

Of course, the gist of the story is activists’ claim that punishing women for lying about rape is unfair to women!!! “But Prof Claire Ferguson, a forensic criminologist from the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia, said it was not the norm to prosecute women for false allegations and that only those in the most egregious cases were charged, often where the accused man had spent time in custody.” So how many more false claims were there?

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MORE ON THE WAR BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATS’ GENTRY-LIBERAL AND URBAN-BLACK FACTIONS: Obama Shafts Hillary With Amnesty and Ferguson.

Obama can remain a player with a 35% constituency, but Hillary needs 50% + 1 to win. The Obama coalition/Democrat base has the Chablis-swilling limo libs from Marin County, the AFSCME-dues paying DMV diversity consultants, and the big screen-watching EBT cardholder vote nailed down. Everyone else, not so much anymore. And Obama is clearly fine with that.

Hillary was supposed to do what Bill did and bring back those blue collar Dems – the people who make things with their hands, the people who didn’t go to Wellesley, and the government employees like Officer Darren Wilson who actual perform a useful service. But Obama doesn’t need or even want them, and he’s happily driving them away to strengthen his own coalition. He’s refused to stand up against the race hustlers and rioters. And he’s hung the executive amnesty around Hillary’s neck, ensuring that she’ll spend the next two years promising not to undo it – in contrast the GOP nominee who will be talking about little else.

Hillary faces two problems that have potentially mutually exclusive solutions. One is keeping the Obama coalition behind her, and it’s already making noises about fleeing to Big Chief Warren. The other is expanding the coalition to once again include normal people. An executive amnesty she could undo with a pen stroke is not going to be any help with that. Nor are media images of businesses burning because some hardworking cop refused to allow himself to be murdered to please the likes of Al Sharpton.

With another Democrat in the White House, Obama’s a has-been. With a Republican and an angry 35% constituency, he’ll matter — basically, Al Sharpton writ large.

THAT’S RATHER A LOT, REALLY: CDC: More Than 1,400 People in U.S. Being Actively Monitored for Ebola. But I guess the new Ebola Czar is doing his job, because it’s out of the news.

“GOVERNMENT” IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: FDA Recruits Minors For Online Cigarettes Purchases. “The FDA did not respond to an email inquiry why this particular investigation requires the involvement of actual minors.”

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO IGNORE: Also no coverage at the New York Times of the arrest of Obama bundler Terry Bean for child rape. It’s like they have an agenda to distort the news for partisan reasons or something.

MEN DON’T LIE ABOUT RAPE: Shia LaBeouf’s Collaborators Confirm Rape Allegations.

Early Sunday morning, two of Shia LaBeouf’s creative collaborators, Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, tweeted some clarifications about the actor’s claim that he was raped during his #IAMSORRY project. (LaBeouf told Dazed that a female audience member “whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me” during an early February performance.) Rönkkö wrote that as “soon as we were aware of the incident, we put a stop to it and ensured the woman left.”

All you people who doubted him — I’m looking at you, Piers Morgan — you’re sexist rape-enablers.