MICHAEL TOTTEN: Yemen Falls Apart.

Suicide-bombers killed at least 137 people and wounded more than 350 in Yemen at two Shia mosques in the capital city of Sanaa on Friday. The very next day, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized control of the city of al-Houta, and the day after that, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel movement conquered parts of Taiz, the nation’s third-largest city. Rival militias are battling for control of the international airport in the coastal city of Aden, and the US government just announced that American troops are evacuating Al Anad airbase.

ISIS is taking credit for the Sanaa attacks. “Infidel Houthis should know that the soldiers of the Islamic State will not rest,” it said, “until they eradicate them and cut off the arm of the Safavid (Iranian) plan in Yemen.” Al Qaeda has a much larger footprint in Yemen, so the ISIS claim is a little bit dubious, but ISIS is on the rise there and its attitude toward Shia Muslims is more bloodthirsty—more explicitly genocidal as the quote above shows—than Al Qaeda’s.

Regardless of who committed the latest round of atrocities, everything in Yemen is about to become much, much worse. The region-wide storm of sectarian hatred has been gathering strength by the year for more than a decade, and it blew the roof off Yemen earlier this year when the Houthis, who are Shias, seized control of the capital and sent Sunni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi into semi-exile in Aden. . . .

Far more likely than a comprehensive Houthi takeover is a new and more dangerous phase of Yemen’s endless self-cannibalization—more dangerous because this otherwise parochial and irrelevant conflict has been internationalized, with ISIS, the Saudis, and Iran squaring off against each other in yet another regional proxy war.

Funny, and just a few months ago a Nobel Peace Prize winner was calling Yemen a success.

PEW POLL: “The public sees the nation’s tax system as deeply flawed: 59% say ‘there is so much wrong with the federal tax system that Congress should completely change it.’ Just 38% think the system ‘works pretty well’ and requires ‘only minor changes.'”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: Man puts ‘crazy’ case behind him; rape charges dropped after he spent 7 months in jail. “I think she just has lots of issues and I just happened to be the scapegoat that was there.”

MORE ON THIS STORY FROM GREG LUKIANOFF: Must Read: University Ex-Admin Alleges She Was Pressured to File False Harassment Claim Against Faculty Critic.

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MEN WHO DON’T PAY: “Though the men described above had been educated at the nation’s top universities or were professionals who worked at respectable institutions, none had any qualms about behaving without chivalry, courtesy or decency. The reason? Their attitudes are widely shared by their contemporaries across the country.” Chivalry, as I never tire of pointing out, was a system, one that imposed obligations upon women as well as men. When women kicked over the traces, why should men have remained in harness?

ANN ALTHOUSE ON TED CRUZ’S OPENING: “This is a truly powerful speech. Just brilliant.”

Plus, from the comments: “This has to be a hoax like the moon landing!! How can he deliver such a stirring speech without a tele-prompter!?!? It’s just not possible!!”

THAT CAN BE EITHER A BUG OR A FEATURE: Pill Used To Treat Parkinson’s Disease Makes People More Empathetic.

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS: Former U.S. soldier joins militia to defend Christian faith in Iraq.

STEVEN HAYWARD: Could Liberal Disgust With Campus Brownshirts Be Reaching Critical Mass? “Left unsaid in any of these lamentations, however, is the deliberate role of the Obama Administration in fomenting this campus climate with its extreme application of Title IX.”

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: “I’ve been in academe for about a decade now, and the only professors I’ve known who have slept with or dated students were female.”

Plus:

Personally, liberal students scare the shit out of me. I know how to get conservative students to question their beliefs and confront awful truths, and I know that, should one of these conservative students make a facebook page calling me a communist or else seek to formally protest my liberal lies, the university would have my back. I would not get fired for pissing off a Republican, so long as I did so respectfully, and so long as it happened in the course of legitimate classroom instruction.

The same cannot be said of liberal students. All it takes is one slip—not even an outright challenging of their beliefs, but even momentarily exposing them to any uncomfortable thought or imagery—and that’s it, your classroom is triggering, you are insensitive, kids are bringing mattresses to your office hours and there’s a twitter petition out demanding you chop off your hand in repentance.

Well, every leftist enclave eventually eats itself, and academia has become a leftist enclave.

WELL, A LOT OF MURDEROUS DICTATORS WERE FAILED ARTISTS, YOU KNOW: The Dark Side Of Creativity. “And there’s something about the artist’s desire for total control over his or her work of art that seems to find resonance with the dictator’s desire for total control over society. Indeed, some dictators seem to regard themselves as artists, artists who work with people and nations.”

More on that here.

ED DRISCOLL: The Giver: A Chilling Cinematic Peek into Hillary Clinton’s Infamous Village. “When people have the power to choose, they choose wrong. Every single time.”

WHY ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS still suck. “Even in preventing medical mistakes — a central rationale for computerization — technology has let us down.”

POPEHAT ON NPR’S TED CRUZ RACISM: “First time I ever heard NPR use the term ‘White Hispanic’ was George Zimmerman. Second time today. Never for Castro, who’s white as snow.”

The “White Hispanic” thing is a case of dog-whistle othering, telling people that the target is outside the protection of the Democrats’ racial coalition and thus can be freely attacked. By engaging in such signalling, NPR is also signalling that it’s a full-blown part of the Democratic Party apparat, though that’s not really news. . . .

ASHE SCHOW: Police: No Evidence To Support Rolling Stone Gang-Rape Story.

EASTWALL: Japan opts for massive, costly sea wall to fend off tsunamis.

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THERE’S A CHARLIE STROSS STORY IN THIS SOMEWHERE: Argentine archaeologists find secret Nazi lair in jungle. “Stone structures in the remote region of Misiones are thought to be the ruins of a hideout build by Nazis, in case their leaders needed to flee Germany.”

WHAT TO DO IF THE U.S. WEST SUFFERS A MEGA-DROUGHT? “Could we build a a large fleet of nuclear power plants to desalinate water and pump it several hundred miles inland? Picture massive amounts of water pumped to the head waters of the Missouri river and rivers that flow into it such as the Milk, Yellowstone, North Platte, and South Platt? Then also pump massive quantities to the head waters of the Columbia, Spokane, Colorado, and Arkansas? Also to the inland valleys of California? What is at stake: The plains bread basket farm fields. The viability of many states as places to live with all the infrastructure, homes, office buildings, and factories that have been built up in them. One has to compare all that sunken cost to the cost of bringing in enough water to supply enough for agriculture, industry, and residential living.”

You can count on environmentalists to oppose it, whatever you do. While calling for equally- or more-sweeping changes that will accomplish nothing except disrupting our lives.

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AND YET, STRANGELY, OUR ENEMIES THINK WE HAVE BECOME WEEK AND EFFETE: Brooklyn pre-K for adults is the latest thing in self-indulgence.

Whimsy is having a moment. In New York, men with full beards ride skateboards to work. Thirty-somethings join kickball leagues. Folks wait hours in line for novelty baked goods.

But a preschool for adults? . . .

Preschool Mastermind, which runs Tuesday nights in her Park Slope duplex, is doing well, she says. Her six students are enjoying activities such as snack time, nap time and show-and-tell. They are channeling their inner super heroes. Last week, they had a slumber party.

“It’s for adults seeking play and adventure and excitement in their life and community,” says Ms. Lapidos.

But wait, there’s more: “The school is not all play, all the time. Projects have also included writing self-affirmations in the form of commercials (in rhyme, of course), and envisioning an inner super hero who can conquer adult problems, such as procrastination.”

Take that, Putin.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: GOP Could Score Big By Targeting Hollywood, Silicon Valley — But Can Republicans Bring Themselves To Criticize Big Business?