HOW “AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT” LAWS CRIMINALIZE EVERYONE: If a student throws her arms around her boyfriend and kisses him without his permission, even if she has done this dozens of times before, she has violated affirmative consent policies. “Affirmative consent laws trivialize sexual assault by turning nearly everyone who has ever dated into a sexual offender.” But only disfavored students will ever be prosecuted.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Florida School Suspends 11-year-old Girl for Video Recording Teacher Threatening to Hurt Other Student. “The evidence Brianna Cooper recorded was enough to get the teacher fired from Samuel Gaines Academy in Fort Pierce, about two hours north of Miami. But administrators say it was also enough to earn the student a five-day suspension. After all, they claim, the teacher, had an expectation of privacy in the classroom.” How can anyone have an “expectation of privacy” in a classroom full of people?

JUDICIAL WATCH: Corruption Scandals Led to Harry Reid’s Abrupt “Retirement.” “You’d never know it from the mainstream media puff pieces of Harry Reid’s sudden retirement, but it was a long string of corruption scandals—including a recent one involving his attorney son—that drove the veteran Nevada senator to abruptly leave public office.”

HEH: I took a panoramic picture of our living room. But my cat decided to walk through.

UH OH: Video: One dead, two wounded at Fort Meade’s NSA gate after vehicle attack. “A bizarre attack on the NSA access gate has left at least one person dead and two more wounded, after guards opened fire on an SUV attempting to crash through the barriers. Initial news reports say that two men dressed as women attempted to force their way into Fort Meade, and the gunfight ensued.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: You’re Probably Breaking The Law Right Now.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 690.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: MOOCs Could Save the World.

America’s higher education system is an example to the world—and that’s not necessarily all to the good. In a lead article as well as a special feature, the Economist argues that America’s higher ed system is increasingly spreading across the globe, with more and more people going to universities that resemble America’s colleges. However, as the Economist notes, America’s education system is good at delivering excellence but become increasingly dysfunctional—and very expensive. One of the main reasons is that some colleges have become credential mills, where earning a degree is more important than learning. . . .

Another reason why higher ed’s bang-to-buck ratio is lower these days, ironically, is that generous federal student loans have helped subsidize an expensive system and even perhaps made it pricier. The Economist’s special report argues that technology, especially MOOCs and online courses, could help in this regard by lowering costs. But many colleges—and college faculty members—resist them because they have a lot invested in the status quo.

In fact, the adoption of MOOCs may be a case in which the U.S. can learn from the rest of the world. Unmentioned by the Economist is that MOOCs (though offered by companies of American origin) are popular in other countries like India and Trinidad and Tobago. The rest of the world might surpass us, in other words, in embracing and legitimizing educational tech—particularly if it permits people who wouldn’t ordinarily have access to a traditional, brick-and-mortar college to start attending classes online. If that’s true, American colleges should start taking a page out of foreign colleges’ playbook.

But they won’t because the foreign colleges’ playbook offers insufficient remuneration for administrators.

HEH: Martin O’Malley: The Challenger Who Dares Not Speak Clinton’s Name.

THE RISE OF THE SEXUALLY CONSERVATIVE MILLENNIAL? Young Americans may be more demographically diverse than older generations, but many embrace surprisingly traditional views on relationships.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: You’re Probably Breaking The Law Right Now.

THIS STORY IS SEVERAL MONTHS OLD, BUT SOMEHOW IT’S GOTTEN NEW SOCIAL-MEDIA LIFE, AND IT WAS NEW TO ME: There are more museums in the U.S. than there are Starbucks and McDonalds – combined.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Academic dishonesty at Stanford: What compels elite students to cheat? For some, perhaps many, that’s how they got there. Others learned once they arrived. Neither phenomenon speaks well of college as an improving enterprise.

BYRON YORK: Reid Senate career a story of money and muscle.

In 1998, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid paid $400,000 for two pieces of residential land outside Las Vegas. It was a complicated deal. Reid secretly transferred ownership of the property to a company set up by his friend and lawyer Jay Brown, who then convinced the local government to re-zone the land for commercial development. In 2004, Brown sold it to a group of developers and Reid walked away with $1.1 million.

“The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown’s company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later,” the Associated Press reported in 2006. “Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview.”

It was a classic Harry Reid transaction: legal but a little shady, and undoubtedly lucrative. Business deals like that allowed Reid to do very well during his years in the Senate, spent of late in a luxury condominium in Washington’s Ritz Carlton.

Democrats: Fighting for the little guy.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Wanted: New, ‘Politically Correct’ White House Fence.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What happens when you find out a year of college costs $71,000? “The sticker price at NYU gained attention earlier this week when incoming freshmen, Nia Mirza, started a petition to get the school to lower the cost of attendance. Mirza, a 19-year-old from Pakistan, claims the price went up after she committed to early admission to the class of 2019. She said she thought it would cost roughly $64,000 to attend the tony private school.”

Hey, those Presidential beach houses on Fire Island don’t come cheap.

THE HILL: O’Malley: Nuclear Iran ‘greatest man-made threat.’

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Sunday said that a nuclear-armed Iran would present the gravest “man-made” danger to American interests.

“The greatest threat that we face right now in terms of man-made threats is a nuclear Iran and related extremist violence,” O’Malley told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I don’t think you can separate the two,” he added.

O’Malley, a likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, said climate change served as the worst environmental threat to national security. He said that Tehran possessing atomic bombs, however, was still a preventable catastrophe.

If nothing else, he’s provided the GOP with a TV-ad sound bite.