COMMENT ISSUE SHOULD BE FIXED NOW.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Libel law and the Rolling Stone / UVA alleged gang rape story — an update, in light of the Columbia School of Journalism report.

THE MARION BARRY DEFENSE: Rolling Stone publisher: U.Va. accuser an ‘expert fabulist storyteller.’

IT’S NOBLE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC TO celebrate a Republican victory over a Democrat-controlled regime. “150 years ago this week, Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union. Let’s celebrate it—every year.”

I DON’T THINK THIS IS GOOD FOR APPLE: The Hill: Carly Fiorina blasts Apple CEO’s ‘hypocrisy’ over Indiana law.

Fiorina, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, said Cook had a double standard and cited Apple’s operations in other countries with controversial laws about gays and women in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina argued. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that.”

If the GOP thought like the Democrats, they’d schedule hearings about working conditions in plants that manufacture Apple gear.

ASHE SCHOW: 16 things we learned from the review of the Rolling Stone gang-rape story.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: What ARE the Russians up to? NATO fears grow over why ‘research vessels’ sent by Moscow have taken over mothballed secret Arctic base in mountain hideaway.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules. “You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind.” Especially when the targeted outnumber the targeters, as they do here.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 20 Illustrated Guides Every Manly Man On Earth Should Know.

ROBBY SOAVE: Columbia’s UVA Rape Report: Jackie Lied. End of Story? No one was fired from Rolling Stone. Not even Erdely. Basically, the Marion Barry defense.

YEAH, THERE’S SOMETHING HINKY GOING ON WITH THE COMMENTS. I’ve emailed the tech guys.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Rolling Stone’s Rape Hoax: Why Did It Happen? “Notably missing from Erdely’s apology, at least by any specific reference, are the people she actually hurt: members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, whom Erdely accused of casually (and, one might infer, habitually) encouraging the gang rape of young women who wander into their parties, and the administrators at U. Va. whom Erdely accused of self-interested callousness toward rape victims. Ms. Erdely seems to believe that her story was really ‘true’–men who belong to fraternities are animals, and university administrators are corrupt buffoons–and she only chose the wrong vehicle to express these verities.”

A FEW ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE ROLLING STONE STORY: One person who shouldn’t get off the hook here is UVA President Teresa Sullivan. She essentially found the fraternity guilty based on a story in a music tabloid. She could have told the University community that “we don’t convict people based on stories in the media,” that she was going to independently investigate the accusations, and that people named in tabloid stories should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty in the American tradition. She did no such thing. She hastily imposed a group punishment on the entire Greek system, and pretty much stood by while angry crowds mobbed and vandalized the fraternity house. (Faculty members didn’t help by staging their own marches; they may want — especially now — to characterize those marches as “anti-rape” or “pro-woman,” but there’s no getting around the fact that they were perceived at the time, and probably meant, as targeting the accused. In this case, the falsely accused.) As I’ve said before, there’s no place in America today where the authorities are more likely to be found siding with (or at least enabling) a lynch mob than on a university campus, and that’s a disgrace.

University presidents, along with the rest of the administration and faculty, talk a lot about a “university community.” But when it comes time to show students who produce bad press the kind of fairness that any member of an academic community should expect as a matter of right, they often drop the ball. At the very least, Sullivan owes these fraternity guys, and the Greek community, an open, public, and contrite apology. If I were on the UVA Board of Visitors, I’d be demanding her resignation.

UPDATE: U.Va. president: Rolling Stone story “damaged serious efforts” to combat sexual assault. “Sullivan, in her statement Sunday, made no apology to those fraternity members she treated as guilty without evidence.”

BACK TO BLOOD: America’s New Age Of Antiquity continues apace.

JOURNALISM: They Were Hiding From an Armed Jihadist When Reporters Revealed Their Hiding Spot on Live TV. Now They’re Hitting Back at the Station. Punch back twice as hard. Journalists need more accountability.

REMEMBER, THIS IS THE MODIFIED-LIMITED-HANGOUT VERSION, LIKELY PUT TOGETHER IN CONTEMPLATION OF LITIGATION: Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report. It’s still devastating for Rolling Stone. And why not identify “Jackie” for the public, now that it’s clear she’s not a rape victim, and that there never was the described “rape on campus?”

And here’s the big takeaway:

The same media machine that lied about the UVa. rape story will report on the 2016 campaign. All they do is lie.

— jon gabriel (@exjon) April 6, 2015

CHANGE: DARPA’s Unmanned Submarine Stalker Could Change Naval Warfare Forever.

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And, Deal of The Week: Halloween: The Complete Collection.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Surprise! Some colleges still accept free speech. But it is a shame that’s newsworthy.

CONSEQUENCES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: No firings at Rolling Stone over flawed story, ‘A Rape on Campus.’ By “flawed,” they mean “false and dishonest.” Hey, it’s not like anyone criticized the Obama girls’ outfits.

THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME CNN HAS FAILED GEOGRAPHY: Oops! CNN places Tanzania in Uganda.

SABRINA ERDELY AND ROLLING STONE HAVE DONE DAMAGE THAT AN APOLOGY CAN’T FIX.

This unintended ironic juxtaposition on @mashable shows UVA story did its damage, no matter what the retractions now. pic.twitter.com/cLteXc42Gm

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 5, 2015

How about finding a way to teach journalists not to lie? Oh, who am I kidding? Meanwhile, I’m betting that Erdely’s apology will say that, well, this story may not have been true, but there’s a lot of campus rape that doesn’t get covered in Rolling Stone and we should really be focusing on that, not on her misdeeds. . .

THE HAZARDS OF LIVING ON A SINGLE PLANET: What zoonotic diseases are, and how to stop them. “New human pathogens arise in two ways. They may evolve from old ones, or they may jump to humanity from other species. The second is the more common route. Infections that jump in this way are called zoonotic diseases, or zoonoses. This seems to have been the route taken by Ebola fever, the latest outbreak of which has claimed more than 10,000 lives. . . . Zoonoses are particularly likely to develop when people and animals live in close proximity to each other. One reason southern China often spawns them (SARS was not unique; a lot of influenza begins there, too) is that the region has a plethora of small farms, in which many species of animal live in close quarters with each other and with human beings. The constant crossing of pathogens between the species involved makes it more likely that one will emerge that can thrive in people.”

HOW MUCH DOES ITALY OWE AMANDA KNOX? A Lot.

The money question is not far-fetched. The families of both Knox and Sollecito have indicated they will seek damages. And why shouldn’t they collect after all they’ve been through? To cover her defense the Knox family mortgaged their house and drained retirement funds. Every year Italy pays around 12 million euros to those who have been imprisoned and then later exonerated, as CNN reported.

Even more to the point, as I observed for Vanity Fair, more than a year before Knox was convicted of killing Kercher, there was never a strong case against the American student. She was 20 at the time with no record of violence. And those in authority knew as much. Lacking hard evidence, their judgments were consistently stuffed with irrelevancies.

Who do the Italians think they are? A campus sex assault tribunal?

TECHNOLOGY: Graphene Finds Its Path in Supercapacitor Commercialization.