TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 726.

YEAH, THAT SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT: Hillary’s Biggest Problem Isn’t That She’s Old, It’s That She’s Corrupt And Incompetent.

Well, when you “gotta pay the bills,” you’re going to cut corners. As an aside, what’s wrong with Bill in this picture? He looks like he’s getting the Al Sharpton Lollipop physique.

UPDATE: Hillary’s Honesty Numbers Nosedive. “The bad news for Democrats is that the chinks in Clinton’s armor are growing wider. A year ago, only 29 percent of voters gave her a “very poor” grade in being honest and straightforward. Now that has risen to 43 percent in the wake of her e-mail and Clinton Foundation scandals. Only 42 percent of voters overall view her positively, and that number falls to 34 percent among independents. . . . What is remarkable about Team Clinton’s efforts to contain the e-mail and fundraising controversies is that they have until recently relied on a string of old-time loyalists such as James Carville and Lanny Davis to defend their position on television. When that didn’t work, they wheeled out Bill Clinton, the master communicator. But he apparently isn’t easily coached and was much less convincing than Team Clinton hoped.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Red Higher Ed Reforms Put Pressure on Carolina Blue.

A right-leaning public policy foundation is making waves in North Carolina’s public university system. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on how the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy is getting traction among the state’s Republican political leadership. The Center, the Chronicle tells us, aims to “[make] public colleges more accountable to the public, by holding them to their ‘chief goals of scholarly inquiry and responsible teaching’” and many believe its stances have influenced legislative proposals as well as the Board of Governors of the state’s university system, largely appointed by the GOP. . . .

The Center’s work and influence can be seen as part of a trend: red states are beginning to lean forward on their skis in dealing with universities—institutions that have historically been bastions of Democratic and left-wing ideas. With higher ed costs rising inexorably, many conservative state representatives are likely wondering just why the state is offering tenured professorships in Transgressive Gender Studies with lots of time for ‘research’, and they are becoming more aggressive in trying to shake-up the higher ed system.

There is a lot of anti-intellectualism mixed up in all of this, in addition to some good old fashioned score settling. But there’s also a lot that’s right. Costs really are rising unsustainably, and many administrative bureaucracies have lost touch with common sense—to say nothing of being economically useless administrative make work bailiwicks. Moreover, a number of disciplines are so dominated by one political point of view that they look more like PACs and NGOs than like assemblies of disputatious scholars.

Which is why complaints that reforms are politically motivated are so transparently self-serving. And why all is proceeding as I have foreseen.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Urban school closures help students academically. “Shutting down poorly-performing urban charter and traditional schools in Ohio helped students, according to a new study published by the Fordham Institute. School closures are often denounced as hurting public education. The results from Ohio give reason to question this conventional wisdom. The disproportionately black, economically disadvantaged, or low-achieving students affected may actually be fortunate their low-performing schools closed.”

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GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Who Pays When The DEA Destroys Your Vehicle And Kills Your Employee During A Botched Sting? Hint: Not The DEA.

Yet another reason why governmental immunity should be abolished.

ORWELLIAN DOUBLETHINK, RAPE EDITION: “Inspired by the recent performance of The Vagina Monologues” on the Claremont-McKenna College campus, student Jordan Bosiljevac has penned an exegesis of the progressive view of sexual relationships, titled, “Why Yes Can Mean No.”  Ms. Bosiljevac explains:

In discussing this experience with friends, we coined the term “raped by rape culture” to describe what it was like to say yes, coerced by the culture that had raised us and the systems of power that worked on us, and to still want ‘no.’ Sometimes, for me, there was obligation from already having gone back to someone’s room, not wanting to ruin a good friendship, loneliness, worry that no one else would ever be interested, a fear that if I did say no, they might not stop, the influence of alcohol, and an understanding that hookups are “supposed” to be fun.

For me, and many others like me, consent isn’t easy. Yes doesn’t always mean yes, and we misplaced ‘no’ several years ago. This experience isn’t random, but disproportionately affects oppressed communities. Consent is a privilege, and it was built for wealthy, heterosexual, cis, white, western, able-bodied masculinity. When society has taught some of us to take up as little space as possible, to take all attention as flattery, and to be truly grateful that anyone at all could want our bodies or love, it isn’t always our choice to say yes.

. . . . When you’re poor, disabled, queer, non-white, trans, or feminine, ‘no’ isn’t for you. I don’t mean to insist that every person oppressed in these systems of power can’t have empowering consensual experiences, and I know many who do. What I do mean to say is that for me, finding ‘no’ is a process, consent is elusive, and sometimes, even when people don’t mean to—they hurt me.

It should be sufficient to point out that consent is the basis of much of law, and if “yes” doesn’t mean “yes,” then there will be no objectively fair principles upon which to judge human interactions, whether one is “wealthy, cis, white, wester, able-bodied” or otherwise.  Ms. Bosiljevac may not yet understand it, but the presumption that individuals– other than minors or those non compos mentis— are capable of giving consent to transactions evinces a deep respect for individualism, and indeed is the embodiment of equal treatment under law that progressives such as she purport to support.  It is also a fundamental basis for the legitimacy of any government–progressive or otherwise. In the words of the Declaration of Independence,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed 

Perhaps Ms. Bosiljevac should brush up on her liberal political theory.  She should have a lot of time, since I rather suspect she won’t be getting any dates anytime soon.

GIVEN THAT TWO HEAVILY ARMED JIHADIS WERE DISPATCHED BY ONE TEXAS COP WITH A PISTOL, WHAT’S THERE TO TAKE CREDIT FOR? Islamic State claims responsibility for Texas attack outside Muhammad cartoon show.

One does not simply “shoot up” a Texas art show.

TRUE: Carly Fiorina: Hillary Clinton ‘clearly is not trustworthy.’

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is officially running for president, and she’s quite explicitly framing herself as the Hillary Clinton antidote.

Hillary Clinton “clearly is not trustworthy,” Fiorina told ABC Host George Stephanopoulos on Monday. “She peddled a fiction about [Benghazi, Libya] for a month, she hasn’t been transparent about her server and her emails and now we see now all of these foreign government donations to the Clinton Global Initiative.” . . .

At least part of Fiorina’s appeal is her ability and willingness to combat the Left’s “war on women” narrative — in particular her ability to counteract Clinton’s strategy of collecting votes just for being a woman.

I like her. She fights.

USUALLY, YOU WAIT UNTIL YOU’RE ELECTED TO START STONEWALLING: Clinton refuses GOP request to testify twice on Benghazi. Alternate headline: Subpoenas are for the little people!

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Scott Ott reviews Charles Murray’s new book, By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: What Didn’t Happen Next.

A couple of ISIS wannabes tried to shoot up an exhibition of cartoons in Garland, Texas, and the police put them down before the civilians could get to them: a triumph for duty and marksmanship. What didn’t happen next?

There is a mosque in Garland, Texas. It was there yesterday, it’s there today, and it will be there tomorrow. After two radical Muslims attempted to massacre some infidels down the road a bit, there was no angry mob of Texans storming the place with F-350s and rifles. If any vehicle full of armed men rushed to the Muslims’ place of worship, you can be sure that it was the local police exercising an abundance of caution and nothing more.

It’s easy to be snarky–”Oh, yay for us! No massacre, give Texas a cookie!” But only those parochial minds with the narrowest of experience could fail to appreciate how unusual that is in the world.

People who say it’s okay — or at least “understandable” — to go after others who are “provocative” need to remember that a lot of people are exercising more self-restraint than that now.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Like Digging Through Whistleblowers’ Medical Records To Retaliate Against Them.

USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES: Only the Clintons seem blind to foundation’s conflicts: Our view.

As it is, the foundation is a mess. With Hillary Clinton running for president twice and serving as secretary of State in between, it was bound to be viewed as a way for foreign donors to get close to the Clintons — a danger the foundation appears to have discounted.

Much like the Clintons themselves, the foundation has seemed intent on playing by its own rules, and is highly defensive when confronted on its errors.

Its efforts at limiting influence-seekers have been, at best, weak. Earlier this year, the foundation admitted that it had accepted $500,000 from the government of Algeria, violating an agreement struck with the Obama administration to accept gifts only from governments that had a record of giving before Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.

More recently, the foundation admitted errors in not listing thousands of contributions on tax forms. One came from Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who has many issues before the U.S. government and has given the foundation millions.

In 2005, Giustra won a lucrative mining concession in Kazakhstan shortly after visiting there with Bill Clinton. Then, in 2013, he won approval from the U.S. government to sell his company to the Russian government, giving Vladimir Putin vast uranium resources around the world, including 20% of U.S output.

There is no evidence of a quid pro quo for the Giustra contributions, or from any other source. And Hillary Clinton was not involved in the decision to allow the Russian purchase.

Even so, the appearance of impropriety is hard to avoid.

Yeah, it’s more than just an appearance.

CIVIL WAR: Alan Grayson rips into national Democratic Party ‘bosses.’ I love Grayson’s slam on “out-of-touch party bosses sipping cognac in a smoke-filled room in Washington, DC.”

FIGHT THE POWER: TN Gov. Signs Bill Prohibiting State Cooperation with Fed Gun Control Laws. “Sponsored by Senator Richard Briggs (R-Dist. 7), SB 1110 ‘prohibits the use of any public funds, personnel, or property to enforce any federal law or regulation that regulates the ownership, use, or possession of firearms, ammunition, or firearms accessories.’ SB 1110 passed the house by a margin of 74 to 20 and the senate by a margin of 24 to 1.”

UPDATE: Michael Walsh emails: “Interesting to note historical parallel — this is exactly how some states responded to fed Prohibition law: by ignoring it and refusing to enforce. Certainly was true in NY state which, partly due to gangland influence, simply stopped cooperating with the feds on booze raids. In one famous case, as I learned when writing my Owney Madden novel, the NYPD tipped off Madden that the feds were going to raid his brewery on 10th ave. So he cleaned it up (it was the Phoenix Cereal Company) and had his crew take up all the parking spaces within blocks, so that when the feds got there they had to double-park. Then the NYPD came and ticketed and towed their illegally parked cars.”

Heh.

HEH: “Apparently, Satan is keen to distance himself from Amanda Marcotte.”

JUST $2.99 ON KINDLE: Sarah Hoyt’s Witchfinder. She’s got a sequel coming out soon.

THE INSTA-WIFE: Is Pam Geller the Bravest Woman in the U.S.? “Love her or hate her, you have to admit that what she is doing is brave. How many women in this country (or men for that matter) would fight the good fight for free speech and do it at the risk of his or her life? How many Americans anymore really believe Patrick Henry’s famous words: ‘Give me liberty or give me death?’ Ms. Geller has shown by her words and actions that she believes these words and believes in her freedom and that of her fellow Americans.”

CHARLES C.W. COOKE: LIVING ON BORROWED WISDOM.

If it sometimes feels as if the Bill of Rights is the only thing standing between the little guy and majoritarian tyranny, that’s possibly because it is. Americans may be freer than most, but it is often thanks to Supreme Court decisions and not to public opinion that America remains an outlier. It is because judges have stepped in that it is legal to burn the American flag in protest; that the Westboro Baptist Church may stage its execrable funeral demonstrations without fear of tort liability; that seditious speech may not be punished by the government; that disgusting videos may not be banned; that conservative Christians have been spared the indignities of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate; that collections of citizens may engage in political criticism; that parents caring for their children may not be forced by the state to join a union; that the residents of Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other “blue” cities may buy and own handguns for their protection; that the government is prohibited from searching cell phones without a warrant; and so on and so forth. Looking around the country — and examining the attitudes that prevail in Washington, D.C., on our college campuses, and in our hopelessly excitable media — can we honestly conclude that three-fourths of We the People would vote today to so restrain ourselves? We are living on borrowed wisdom.

Borrowed wisdom, indeed. That reminds me of this from Neal Stephenson’s In The Beginning Was The Command Line:

But more importantly, it comes out of the fact that, during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abbatoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.

We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and values systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not reading books any more, though we are literate. We seem much more comfortable with propagating those values to future generations nonverbally, through a process of being steeped in media.

Given the quality of our media, that’s probably a mistake.

WHEN FEMINISM IS HATE: Cathy Young: Bomb Threat Targets GamerGate Meetup (Hear From Somebody Who Was There). “If I had any doubts about defending GamerGate from its detractors, #GGinDC put them to rest. The men I saw were not creeps, and the women I saw were definitely not doormats. And while the bomb threat was fake, the meetup was a blast.”

Related: “Sadly for Chu and his supporters, Local 16 declined to eject the lesbians, blacks, transsexuals, gays and feminist professors who met up to share their love of video games and to advocate for higher standards in games journalism and a rejection of loony left-wing feminist criticism. . . . Contrary to the uniformly straight white middle-class conferences at which social justice warriors bang on about ‘structural oppression,’ the GamerGate meetup was packed to the rafters with ethnic and sexual minorities who came together to share their love of video games. ‎Between 200 and 300 people showed up in the end. . . . It doesn’t surprise me that when an NPR reporter got in touch with me about the event and I told him to come down and have his prejudices challenged, he suddenly lost interest in the story. GamerGate is winning in spite of the headlines and prejudiced reporting. It’s incredible.”

HOW LOW CAN THEY GO? NBC Anchor: Geller Caused Texas Shooting Herself, by Setting Muslim ‘Mousetrap.’ Well, if NBC wants to risk charges of racism by calling Muslims vermin. . . .

WHY DIETS DON’T WORK:  Actually, I think this is true, at least long-term.  Everyone has a “set weight” that one shouldn’t fight against, but simply accept.  But I’m a exercise junkie who doesn’t own a scale, eats junk food regularly, and have been blessed with apparently good “weight genes.”  I think exercise is the key–finding what you love to do, and doing it habitually.

UPDATE:  Fixed broken link!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Students Universities ‘Cannot Afford to Fail.’ “A recent investigative news program combined with a report from a governmental anticorruption commission have stirred up a debate in Australia about the prevalence of fraud in international student recruitment and the alleged slippage of academic standards as the country’s universities have grown increasingly dependent on the tuition these students bring. The debate in Australia — where international students account for more than a fifth of university enrollments, compared to just about 4 percent in the U.S. — arguably has implications for American universities as they seek to grow international student enrollments and increasingly embrace the use of commissioned agents in recruiting, a practice widely accepted in Australia.” Some American universities are already quite financially dependent on foreign students, and I’m sure it’s already affecting their behavior.

JUDICIAL IDENTITY DISORDER: Ed Whelan over at National Review labels a metastasizing legal disorder. “Unfortunately, no effective treatment for the condition is currently available.”  But at least we can identify the environmental cause:  long-term exposure to progressive ideology.