IT SEEMS CLEAR THAT THEY’RE LESS RARE THAN MANY CLAIM: Ashe Schow: Even if false rape reports are rare, they shouldn’t be ignored.

Whenever a high-profile account of alleged campus sexual assault comes crashing down – such as Rolling Stone’s gang-rape accusation – activists predictably fall back on the claim that only 2 percent of rape accusations are false.

This isn’t accurate. First, the 2 percent figure refers to false reports made to the police. Making a false police report carries a penalty, which exists to deter people from doing so (although sometimes that penalty isn’t enforced, such as with the Duke Lacrosse rape hoaxer). No such penalty exists on college campuses. (Indeed, even the accuser in the Rolling Stone article, though proven to have lied, did not face any punishment from the school.)

Not having that penalty is meant to make accusers feel more comfortable coming forward, although it’s difficult to see how being punished for lying would make truthful victims fearful. Regardless, a lack of consequences makes it easier for student accusers to come forward and punish fellow students who may have hurt them or with whom they had a previous regretted encounter that has come to be seen as assault. . . .

So what does this all mean? Francis Walker, who runs an exceptional blog taking down statistics such as the MAD study, has done the math. He found that from all the statistics listed above, just 7.8 percent of rape reports in the MAD study could be classified as true.

“From this we can see that 39.1% of the cases end in either a guilty verdict or a guilty plea. Multiplying that by the 20% of police cases that result in arrest, we are left with the 7.8% I used at the start of my first post,” Walker wrote. “Even this isn’t a good number to use though. If a confession that a report is false isn’t enough to classify the report as false, then the corollary is that a guilty plea isn’t enough to classify a case as true. After all, it would not be difficut [sic] to imagine a scenario where, for any number of reasons, someone pleads guilty to a crime that they didn’t commit. 20% x 5.9% leaves us with a ‘true’ rate of just 1.2%. Even if we decide to be generous and include not just the 20% arrested, but also the 17.9% exceptionally cleared, the number still only goes up to 2.2%.”

From all of this one could determine that 15.6 of reports could reliably be determined as false, another 17.9 percent weren’t actually crimes and just 1.2 percent (or 2.2 percent) could be reliably determined as true. The remainder would fall into a “we’ll never know for sure” category.

Perhaps only 2 percent of rape reports are false. That doesn’t necessarily mean that 98 percent are true. But assuming that is the case, one can’t possibly know which category a report falls into until after a proper investigation (which would include due process). And to pretend that false reports don’t happen just because they are rare minimizes the impact such reports have on those falsely accused.

And beyond all of this, none of this data can be applied to reports of campus sexual assault. There is no data available on the number of campus sexual assault accusations that turn out to be false, as it hasn’t been studied. And again, without a penalty associated with false police reports, false accusations made to campus administrators are likely to increase.

People behave differently when there are consequences, and when there are not.

NO HONOR AMONG SJWs: Star Of Viral New York Catcalling Video Is Reportedly Suing For Compensation.

S.E. CUPP: Obama’s dangerous commutation that no one noticed.

While most people now agree life in prison is too stiff a punishment for drug possession or even drug trafficking, Herring’s case is different than all the others, and it should raise significant questions as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle advocate for prison reform.

One of Herring’s convictions — unnoticed in March, when it was buried in the White House press release listing the commuted felons and their crimes — stands out: “Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.”

While Herring might not be a danger to his community now at the age of 76, at one point in his life he was a very dangerous man — a convicted felon who still managed to get possession of an illegal gun. Can we properly define criminals with guns as “nonviolent”? Aren’t those the very people we should want off the streets?

For some of America’s big cities, the recent rise in gun violence is almost incomprehensible.

I dunno. While I’m okay with laws banning felons from possessing firearms — though given how promiscuously felonies are designated these days, it might depend on which felonies we’re talking about — I don’t think that simple possession of a gun is a violent act, even where a felon is concerned.

MARK STEYN: IRAN DEAL IS “FAR WORSE THAN MUNICH.”  During his interview with Hannity last night, “Sean started by cross-cutting Barack Obama on Tuesday with Neville Chamberlain in 1938,” Steyn writes. But I thought that comparison was unfair to Chamberlain. He was an honorable man who loved his country and just happened to get the greatest issue of the day wrong. You can’t say the same of Obama.”

Read the whole thing.

THE BIGGER BIG ONE: An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when. “When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries. Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. (Watch what your fingertips do when you flatten your hand.) The water will surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the earthquake begins. By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, ‘Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.'”

FORMER CLINTON AIDE TURNED CNN COMMENTATOR OBSESSED WITH HILLARY’S ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Freshman Orientation At UNC: Conform Or Be Cast Out.

The skits set forth various scenarios. The first showed an Indian woman talking to a white friend, who unintentionally acted racist. In another, a man aggressively flirted with a woman who was clearly uncomfortable. The next skit showed two friends asking another friend of lesser means to go out to lunch and immediately assuming he had the means to do so. The final skit showed a gay man react with offense at the use of the word “gay” as a derogatory term.

Instead of showing that all people are equally deserving of human dignity, the theater group created its own caricatures: the “villains” in each of the skits were either white, male, heterosexual, middle class, or some combination of the four. Perhaps, if the objective had been solely to learn how to navigate a community whose citizens hail from increasingly diverse backgrounds on ethnic, religious, and cultural lines, this exercise would have been helpful, if ham-handed.

However, learning to get along wasn’t the real purpose. The actual intent was revealed in the discussions that took place afterwards. We were given an opportunity to ask the characters from each scenario and the event leaders questions. Most of them weren’t memorable (“how did that make you feel?” and “why did you think that was okay?”) but a few of them brought the real direction (not to mention, hypocrisy) of the program to light.

Read the whole thing. Taxpayer dollars at work, advancing a narrow agenda of hate and exclusion.

THE SUSPENSE IS OVER — IRAN WILL GET THE BOMB: “There are some things which are expendable. If you’re expendable, it’s important to know,” Richard Fernandez writes at the Belmont Club, adding that “in the president’s world, if you’re not at the table you’re on the menu… It should broadcast to the Sunni states and Israel in no uncertain terms that they are on the menu.”

MAX BOOT: The Dawn of Iranian Empire. What could go wrong?

GENDER GAP: Hillary Clinton’s White Male Voter Problem: Democrats fear that their party’s declining appeal with white voters, particularly white men, will bite them in 2016 despite strong performance with growing demographics. Well, you know, spend a few decades telling people they’re the root of all evil and they may be less inclined to vote for you.

AT AMAZON, new deals on Men’s Classic Clothing.

Also, deals on Classroom & School Supplies.

INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT? Rich Lowry: Why Democrats Hate Uber.

NUNS FORCED TO PAY FOR OBAMACARE CONTRACEPTION: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled today that the Little Sisters of the Poor must abide by Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. You may recall that the Little Sisters took their religious liberty objection to the mandate all the way to the Supreme Court last summer–and won an injunction therefrom, pending disposition on the merits by the Tenth Circuit.  But when considering the merits, the Tenth Circuit nonetheless ruled against them:

In response to religious concerns, the Departments implementing the ACA— Health and Human Services (“HHS”), Labor, and Treasury—adopted a regulation that exempts religious employers—churches and their integrated auxiliaries—from covering contraceptives. When religious non-profit organizations complained about their omission from this exemption, the Departments adopted a regulation that allows them to opt out of providing, paying for, or facilitating contraceptive coverage. Under this regulation, a religious non-profit organization can opt out by delivering a form to their group health plan’s health insurance issuer or third-party administrator (“TPA”) or by sending a notification to HHS.

The Plaintiffs in the cases before us are religious non-profit organizations. They contend that complying with the Mandate or the accommodation scheme imposes a substantial burden on their religious exercise. The Plaintiffs argue the Mandate and the accommodation scheme violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) and the Religion and Speech Clauses of the First Amendment.

Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of Plaintiffs’ beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme relieves Plaintiffs of their obligations under the Mandate and does not substantially burden their religious exercise under RFRA or infringe upon their First Amendment rights.

The Tenth Circuit’s contortions to reach this result are remarkable. The court seems to have no recognition of the fact that the Obama Administration’s regulatory “accommodation” is a sleight of hand, allowing the insurer/third party administrator to move the contraceptive coverage “off the books” and “pay” for it themselves. But of course burdening the insurer/administrator in this fashion is merely a shell game, and the cost of contraceptive coverage is ultimately borne by the employer and individual beneficiaries. The coverage is not magically free, no matter how hard the Obama Administration tries to make it “look” free via regulation.

So now we have Catholic nuns who religiously object to paying for certain types of contraception being forced to do so anyway (despite the smoke and mirrors), in contradiction to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The founders would be rolling over in their graves. But hey, what a bunch of dead, old white guys who wrote and ratified the Constitution thought or wanted isn’t relevant anymore anyway, right? We shall see. The Supreme Court may grant review to hear the Little Sisters case again.

“SLUGGISH SCHIZOPHRENIA” WAS THE DIAGNOSIS: Judge Orders Anti-Obama Filmmaker D’Souza Receive Psychological Counseling. “The psychiatrists D’Souza was first ordered to see found no signs of depression, but U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman overruled their findings.” Berman is a Clinton appointee.

SPACE: New Horizons Emerges Unscathed from Pluto Flyby. “At 8:53 P.M. Eastern time, the New Horizons control center here received radio confirmation that the space probe had made—and survived—its closest approach to Pluto, passing 12,500 kilometers above the planet’s sunlit hemisphere. The transmission was the first since 11:30 P.M. ET last night, ending a radio silence imposed so that the spacecraft could avoid interrupting its observations.”

THE DANGERS OF NSAIDS: Experts Urge Sparing Use of Nonaspirin Painkillers. “The Food and Drug Administration warned last week that the risk of heart attack and stroke from widely used painkillers that include Motrin IB, Aleve and Celebrex but not aspirin was greater than it previously had said. But what does that mean for people who take them? Experts said that the warning reflected the gathering evidence that there was risk even in small amounts of the drug, so-called nonaspirin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or Nsaids, and that everyone taking them should use them sparingly for brief periods. Millions of Americans take them.”

SPECULATION RUNS WILD: A $200 privacy device has been killed, and no one knows why.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: “Most of the American electorate has probably been ready for a woman president for some time. But that woman must have the right array of qualities and ideally have risen to prominence through her own talents and not (like Hillary Clinton or Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner) through her marriage to a powerful man.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “Being the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua is not a qualification for the office of President, or even dog catcher for that matter…”

“Dowager Empress of Chappaqua.” Heh.

UPDATE: Apparently, that phrase was coined by