TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 705.

WHAT’S THE REAL DEAL WITH CORKER-MENENDEZ?  Is it a congressional cop out, because it cedes  Senatorial power to ratify treaties  (by 2/3 supermajority)? Or is the treaty power irrelevant, because the bill merely modifies the President’s authority, under existing statutes, to waive Iranian sanctions, thus requiring only majority approval by both houses (and possibly 2/3 of both houses, in the event of a presidential veto)?

And if Congress can somehow get Corker-Menendez enacted, would it bind the President, or would he be free to ignore it, claiming his own, independent Article II authority to negotiate “executive agreements” with other nations?

My own opinion, FWIW, is that any modification of statutorily-imposed sanctions on Iran (and there are many) would require amendment to those statutes, which is what Corker-Menendez seeks to accomplish.  I am deeply concerned, however, that Obama will veto Corker-Menendez, Congress won’t have the votes to override, and Obama will (once again) act unilaterally, claiming broadly worded waiver provisions in existing statutes give him the authority to lift sanctions in his discretion.   He will then support a UN Security Council resolution lifting sanctions (with little to no verification regime).  Once this is done, the US will have little practical ability to back out, as Iran will have the “blessing” and cover of the world community/international law.

No one could stop the President under this scenario, btw, unless courts are willing to recognize congressional standing to sue the President when he fails to faithfully execute Congress’s statutes.

Or maybe, as this (idiotic) political science professor asserts, Corker-Menendez is “counterproductive to foreign policy success”? Well, geez, why have a Congress at all if they’re always standing in the way of presidential desires? We might as well just adjourn Congress permanently.  It’s so, like, 1787.

ROGER SIMON: John Fitzgerald Rubio? “Not only is Rubio the best speaker and the most attractive candidate, the buzz machine is right. He could be a Republican JFK. (Let’s leave aside whether JFK himself was JFK. We’re talking myth here.) He has youth, brains and charm. As of now he is easily the most charismatic candidate the GOP has had since Ronald Reagan. I know that’s not saying much. The GOP hasn’t been long on charisma. But Rubio clearly has got it.”

ACTUALLY, THERE AREN’T ANY ECONOMISTS WRITING FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Paul Krugman claims “there basically aren’t any libertarians.”

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

AT USA TODAY, A COLUMN BY MARCO RUBIO: Revive Lincoln’s ‘One Country, One Destiny.’ “By demanding America live up to its calling as a nation where our rights come from God, and where government exists to protect those rights without prejudice, Lincoln took it upon his generation to test, as he put it, ‘whether that nation, or any nation so conceived or so dedicated, can long endure.'”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Temperature Rises In Law School Crisis Debate.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WE’D SEE RACISM ACROSS ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Kentucky judge criticized for telling parents they fostered racist behavior in daughter. “A Kentucky judge blamed two parents for their young girl’s ‘constant fear of black men’ after an armed robbery she witnessed, local reports said. The parents argued for a tougher sentence for the man convicted of busting into their Louisville home at gunpoint while their daughter watched ‘Spongebob Square Pants,’ according to the Courier-Journal. Judge Olu Stevens blasted Jordan and Tommy Gray’s victim impact statement at a court hearing in February and again recently in a Facebook post he later deleted. . . . Stevens contends the statement played no role in his decision to sentence the robber, 27-year-old Gregory Wallace, who pleaded guilty to the March 21, 2013, crime, to only five years’ probation.”

POLITICAL OFFSPRING: THEY’RE JUST LIKE US! Flashback: Chelsea Clinton buys new $10.5 million apartment across the street from her husband’s $4 million ‘starter pad’ bought just before they married.

FORMER WHITE HOUSE AIDE KATHLEEN WILLEY: Hillary’s a joke, a ‘serial liar’: Expect ‘scandal a day.’

ASHE SCHOW: Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz backing away from the ‘war on women’ narrative?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was one of the biggest boosters of the “war on women” narrative that worked so well in 2012 but failed so hard in 2014. Now it seems the Democratic National Committee chairwoman is backing away from the favored talking point.

Wasserman Schultz is now saying that issues like abortion won’t be as important to voters as the economy — a stark change from just last year, when abortion and birth control seemed to be the only issues Democrats thought were important to women. . . .

Wasserman Schultz’s comments came as a response to presidential hopeful Rand Paul, who asked last week if the DNC chairwoman would be okay “with killing a seven-pound baby that is not born yet.” It was a play on typical mainstream media attempts to paint Republicans as anti-abortion extremists without asking Democrats whether they believe in any restrictions for abortions. (The vast majority of Americans believe late-term abortions should be illegal.)

Wasserman Schultz responded at the time by saying she supports “letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved — period,” suggesting she is okay with late-term and even partial-birth abortions. She later doubled-down on her position and accused Paul of not answering for his own beliefs on the issue.

Wasserman Schultz added: “If that’s what [Rand] thinks is the central issue and priority for the American voters and will drive the ultimate choice they make, then he’s more out of touch than I thought.”

Funny, because that was the entire premise of Democrats’ “war on women” campaign from the start. Apparently Wasserman Schultz is admitting she has been out of touch for the past three years?

I think Rand Paul single-handedly torpedoed that narrative with one question. Funny the rest of the GOP didn’t think of that sooner.

Related: Hillary Clinton: The Candidate Of Meh.

MAYBE NOW THAT DICKERSON HAS TAKEN OVER, FACE THE NATION CAN BE RENAMED FACE LEFT:

Dickerson is an extreme case. His appointment raises once again the question, why should Republicans go on television programs that are nothing but partisan left-wing operations? Why grant them that apparent legitimacy? Dickerson is on record as wanting to destroy the Republican Party, so why play his game? In my view, any Republican who goes on Face the Nation at this point is foolish.

Bear in mind, too, that in all election cycles prior to this one, hostile “journalists” like John Dickerson presided over GOP presidential primary debates. Their objective was to make all the Republican candidates, and the party as a whole, look bad. Reince Priebus has, I hope, finally put that practice to rest (although leftists will still preside over the general election debates). But incalculable damage has been done, over the years, by Democratic Party activists masquerading as objective journalists. Once they have been unmasked, there is no reason to cooperate in their efforts to, as Dickerson put it, “destroy the GOP.”

Nope. And here’s some related advice from Margaret Thatcher.

CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER: OPEC Complains That United States Is Pumping Too Much Oil. “We are often reminded that in today’s multilateral world, where continents, regions and countries are increasingly becoming interconnected, there is little room for unilateral action, especially in the vast and intricate world of commodity trading. Today, operating purely through self-interest is quite simply frowned upon. As the old adage says, a problem shared, is a problem halved. Yet, when it comes to the supply of petroleum, there is a stubborn willingness of some non-OPEC producers to adopt a go-it-alone attitude, with scant regard for the consequences.”

Heh. But wait, it gets better: Egyptian TV Host Begs Netanyahu To Bomb Iran.

You know, this “smart diplomacy” stuff may not be working out very well, but it’s damn entertaining.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: Donald Barber, Fired B.C. Teacher, Sues After Student’s False Rape Accusations.

A Vancouver Island teacher who was falsely accused of raping and torturing a student is seeking compensation after the girl’s claims were found to be based on a popular TV crime show.

Donald Barber was suspended in 2012 after the then-Grade 10 student came forward saying the veteran teacher had been sadistically assaulting her for years.

The girl reported being raped, tortured, and burned to the point of scarring, according to an arbitration decision last year. Diary entries describe her alleged encounters with Barber, including one where she said she was sold to a uniformed police officer for sex.

Barber was arrested, then suspended. But charges were never laid due to a lack of evidence.

The Qualicum school district hired lawyer Marli Rusen to look into the case. Her 2013 investigation supported the student’s allegations, and recommended that Barber be banned from the school district altogether. Soon after, Barber was fired.

The longtime teacher with a spotless record fought for his job. Ultimately, an arbitration hearing uncovered that all of the student’s claims were lifted from the TV show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” The girl testified that she had watched every episode of the drama at least three times, and some as many as 10 times.

Hysteria: It’s real, not a male chauvinist invention.

A BOY-COTT? Number Of Applicants to UVA Drops For First Time Since 2002.

The university also has become more selective, as acceptance rates fell from about 38 percent in 2005 to about 30 percent last year.

But despite a big boost in early applications, the number of overall applications went down. The early applications were due before the release of an article in Rolling Stone — now largely discredited — detailing an alleged gang rape at UVa.

The due date came after the nationally publicized search for second-year student Hannah Graham, whose body was recovered in Albemarle County on Oct. 18.

The administration does not yet know what’s driving the decline, de Bruyn said.

Related: Learning nothing from Rolling Stone, U.Va. institutes radical sexual assault policy.

If Men’s Rights activists were like lefties, they’d haunt the UVA Admissions traveling roadshows for prospective applicants — those probably start this summer — with demonstrations about how UVA hates men.

SO, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CBS6’S ALIX BRYAN, who made that baseless, politically inspired fraud charge against the Indiana pizza place?

ED DRISCOLL: Trapped Inside ‘The Architecture of Fear:’ Blacklisting Myself, Silicon Valley-Style. “Now that the left are threatening to burn down Midwestern pizza parlors, and getting Silicon Valley CEOs fired for doubleplus ungood oldthink, you don’t see many commercials from them these days like this 1981 Amnesty International ad toasting freedom and celebrating speaking your conscience, huh?”

I BLAME MODERN WOMEN’S PERVASIVE SENSE OF SEXUAL ENTITLEMENT: Madonna is basically ‘Sue’ from the office party who gets too drunk and doesn’t realise that the way she flirts with the interns is scarring.

WELL, THAT SEEMS ABOUT RIGHT: Iowa students preparing for Hillary’s first ‘listening’ session think she’s a ‘control freak’ who will be ‘talking s**t’ and only wants immigration reform because the Democratic party needs voters.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Just wait until the Governor of Wisconsin gets the GOP nomination and Hillary is yet again engaged in a struggle with a Walker.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Rubio Takes Aim at the Left.

CRIMINALIZING CHILDHOOD: Maryland free-range kids held by protective services for being at a park alone.

AT AMAZON, take 30% off Jewelry.

Also, take 20% off watches.

And, 20% off new Spring shoes, for men, women, and kids.

And for a limited time, take $20 off the Kindle Paperwhite.

#WARONMEN: Sexism In Science: Leading scientists favour women in tenure-track hiring test: US science and engineering professors preferred female job candidates by two to one.

A 13 April study finds that faculty members prefer female candidates for tenure-track jobs in science and engineering — by a ratio of two to one. That result, based on experiments involving hypothetical job seekers, held true regardless of the hirer’s gender, department, career status or university type, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.

“We were shocked,” says Wendy Williams, a psychologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a co-author of the study. With fellow Cornell psychologist Stephen Ceci, she surveyed 873 tenure-track faculty members in biology, psychology, economics and engineering at 371 US universities. One experiment presented participants with three hypothetical job candidates, of which two were identical except for their gender. Another experiment added descriptions of marital and parental status, to test whether underlying assumptions about gender choices affected hiring. “You don’t frequently see that level of attention and sophistication” in statistical analysis, says Robert Santos, vice-president of the American Statistical Association in Alexandria, Virginia.

Nothing seemed to sway study participants’ preference for female job candidates. The authors say that this is interesting given their previous finding that a relatively low percentage of female PhDs in the social and biological sciences secure academic positions — in part because they are less likely than men to apply for these jobs. Other research suggests that in the physical sciences, women and men are just as likely to secure a tenure-track position within five years of earning a PhD.

There are more signs that science is inching towards gender equality.

Yeah, this isn’t “progress” toward “gender equality,” it’s sex discrimination, straight up. But note that the take-away seems to be that we must do more for women!

JERRY POURNELLE ON Iran, the Bomb, and our feckless ruling class. “Our choices are few, and our technical capabilities are uncertain. Strikes at Iranian nuclear capabilities will be bloody given their locations. Commando style raids would make the destruction more thorough but would be far more costly. The Iranians have been clever in their designs and location. Uncertainties about the success of a surgical denuclearization attack are quite high for the US or any conceivable coalition working with us.”

We should conduct a test of a one-megaton bomb. We should then tell the Iranians that there are 50 of those with their name on them as soon as they detonate any nuclear device anywhere. Of course, we’ll do no such thing — and with our current leadership, they probably wouldn’t believe us anyway, though a big aboveground explosion might get their attention. . . .

Think this is an outrageous approach? Maybe, but not compared to the one we’re actually employing. Of course, with a less feckless ruling class — say, one that had supported the Iranian revolts of 2009 — we wouldn’t have this problem at all.