ARCHIBISHOP OF CANTERBURY SPEAKS ON PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS: I like the part about resisting persecution, but the “without violence” bit is a pipe dream.

Meanwhile, British political leaders speak out. Did Obama say anything today? Did I miss it?

21ST CENTURY DENTISTRY: Florida man pulls son’s tooth with his Camaro.

AT AMAZON, take 30% off sunglasses. Summer is coming.

Plus, big savings on Storage & Organization Solutions.

SCIENCE: Nanoneedles deliver nucleic acids inside cells: Jabbing a cell may be an easier route to gene therapy.

SCIENCE: How Europeans evolved white skin. “By comparing the ancient European genomes with those of recent ones from the 1000 Genomes Project, population geneticist Iain Mathieson, a postdoc in the Harvard University lab of population geneticist David Reich, found five genes associated with changes in diet and skin pigmentation that underwent strong natural selection.”

UNHAPPY WITH ANGIE’S LIST? There’s always the new Amazon Home Services.

READER BOOK PLUG: From David Clark, What A Piece Of Work Is Man.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Work Begins on Brain Stimulator to Correct Memory.

WELL, WELL: Author of Discredited Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story Will Apologize Tonight; Columbia’s report will be released at 8 p.m.:

Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of Rolling Stone’s much-maligned story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia, plans to formally apologize for her mistakes, according to CNN’s Brian Stetler.

Erdely stopped responding to questions and interview requests at the beginning of December, as reporters began to call into question the details of the story. (Richard Bradley and I were the first to do so.) Since then, the story has completely collapsed and was essentially confirmed as false by The Washington Post and the Charlottesville police department.

Essentially?

PHOTOS: Cassini Shows Us The Details of Rhea.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Should Your Child Resist His or Her School?

A review of the Student Resistance Handbook.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 696.

BLUE MODEL MELTDOWN: “Reform for Relief” Coming to Blue Cities.

Chicago is broken — and Democratic ideas can’t fix it, at least at the local level. That’s one takeaway from John Judis’ recent article in the National Journal. Judis, one of America’s most thoughtful leftists, looks at the city’s mayoral runoff between Rahm Emmanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, and finds both candidates lacking in solutions for city’s gargantuan problems. Those problems include deeply underfunded pensions, a decline in low-skilled jobs, and a dramatic gap in wealth, employment, and educational attainment between poorer (and often African American) residents and wealthier residents.

In facing these challenges, Emmanuel may be a better manager, but his policies marginalize the city’s poor and seem incapable of reversing the city’s fiscal slide. For example, on jobs and the economy, Garcia has argued that Emmanuel has favored development in the wealthy downtown area instead of poorer ones. But Garcia himself is short on alternatives. . . .

Add all this up, and it’s likely that a European theme is going to be sounding in American politics in the future: reform for relief. That is, many Democratic, deep blue cities will be approaching state and federal treasuries with cap in hand for some time to come. First, because they don’t have the money to pay their bills, these cities will need help with exploding pension liabilities (and their pension problems are only going to become more urgent). Second, because their system has become unsustainable, they are likely to face gridlock at home. Black and Hispanic voters may be pulled apart rather than pulled together. Hispanics look like more of a conventional immigrant group wanting help from government aimed at promoting upward mobility, while the problems facing black Chicago may be more intractable. Competition over power and resources between these groups could be an important factor in the future of urban politics.

Republicans could exploit this, if they were smart.

FROM SARAH HOYT: An Update On The Hugos. “To be asked for civility from the side that’s been emptying the slops bucket on our head ever since their favorites didn’t get the call is all too precious and rich. The people who were screaming at us that ‘Women are allowed to write science fiction too’ apparently didn’t notice the women on this side and on the ballot (I know, we’re wrongwomen and wrongfans.) And the idiots who for years have said that this was all because Larry wanted a Hugo owe him a giant apology. Until I see that I’m all out of f*cks to give about their precious hurt feelings.” Fight the power!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Is This A Good Time TO Apply To Law School? “Law school enrollment has plummeted to the lowest level in decades. If a bottom has been reached, is now a good time to go to law school?” It depends.

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

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food. It’s good to have some food on hand.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

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

WELL, YES: Open Government Experts: Hillary’s Use of Personal Email ‘Brazen Decision’ to Flout Law.

Even more disturbing is the fact that Clinton said she deleted the remaining e-mails — about 30,000, supposedly personal, messages — and wiped her personal server clean, meaning it’s unlikely anyone at the State Department or other agencies will be able to double-check whether any of those messages should have been preserved.

“This amounts to a flouting, if not a violation, of the Federal Records Act, which says all federal agency employees have an obligation to take some steps to preserve things for posterity,” Metcalfe said.

Critics are also suspicious of the 30,000 figure. It would be highly unusual, Metcalfe says, to find fully half of the e-mails a secretary of State sent during his or her tenure were personal in nature.

She’s a criminal who was covering up crimes. Her supporters realize this, they just applaud it.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE: 5 hands among thousands mark rare votes of dissent during LDS Church’s General Conference.

Some responded unjudiciously.

Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/6wmoAQjoJc

— Terry W. Virts (@AstroTerry) April 5, 2015

THIS IS A REAL POSER FOR LEFTIES, WHO LIKE TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO EAT AND DRINK — BUT NOT WHEN THEY’RE PEOPLE ON GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE: Missouri considers banning purchase of soda, chips with food stamps.

Missouri state legislators want to tighten the rules for how food stamps can be spent in that state.

Rick Brattin has sponsored legislation that would ban using taxpayer dollars to buy “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak.” The current system allows the funds to spent on anything with a nutrition label.

The formal title of the federal food stamp program is Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, but the Department of Agriculture, which administers it, has shown little interest in making sure the program provides for nutrition.

Obesity and related ailments like diabetes are now most common in poor communities, and are among the most serious — and expensive to taxpayers — health challenges. That means taxpayers are paying once to buy soda for the poor, and paying again for the health problems that result.

National debate over Brattin’s bill has focused on the “seafood or steak” component, with liberals saying that seafood and steak are healthy and that the language could include canned tuna and low-grade beef cuts.

I think there should be a limited formulary of low-cost items — sort of like they way they do with Medicare and drugs. . . .

Plus:

The Agriculture Department has refused to release data from bar codes showing how many times each type of product is bought with SNAP cards.

And convenience stores, soda and junk food manufacturers have spent millions hiring K Street lobbyists to make sure they can continue to profit off the program. . . .

Days of monitoring food stamp transactions in D.C. by the Washington Examiner found that virtually all purchases were for soda and snacks like Ho-Hos and Little Debbies.

Out of hundreds of transactions, only one person bought bread, and no one bought vegetables.

No one was observed buying lobster or filet mignon, either — though a nearby seafood mart that specialized in lobster did advertise that it accepted the stamps.

Ouch.

CONFESSIONS OF A VULTURE JOURNALIST. Meh. I don’t mind the journos who circle around tragedies so much. I mind the ones who — as with Ferguson, the UVA rape hoax, or the Indiana pizza parlor — actively incite tragedies for political and pecuniary gain. With Ferguson, the purveyors of the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie were perhaps too numerous to call to account, though someone should try. But with UVA it was Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone, and with the Indiana Pizzeria it was Alyssa Marino and ABC57 News, all of whom are identifiable defendants. . . .

That said, author Winston Ross, with his unselfconscious language about “a family of wingnuts,” is probably a putz.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Politicians Take Note: The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much. “In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000. . . . By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions. Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.”

Shocking. I mean, who knew?

HANS FIENE: Gay Marriage Isn’t About Justice, It’s About Selma Envy: My generation willfully ignores the real debate about gay rights and religious freedom because we want halos without sacrifice.

Comparisons of RFRA to Jim Crow — see this lazy, partisan and clueless one by Ron Fournier are not only ahistorical, but also racist, as they deliberately underplay the real sufferings of black people under Jim Crow by comparing them to, say, someone who has to shop elsewhere for a wedding pizza. Here are some thoughts on that from Julian Sanchez, and here is a rather understated example from the Supreme Court’s Heart of Atlanta Motel case:

Negroes in particular have been the subject of discrimination in transient accommodations, having to travel great distances [p253] to secure the same; that often they have been unable to obtain accommodations, and have had to call upon friends to put them up overnight, S.Rep. No. 872, supra, at 14-22, and that these conditions had become so acute as to require the listing of available lodging for Negroes in a special guidebook which was itself “dramatic testimony to the difficulties” Negroes encounter in travel. Senate Commerce Committee Hearings, supra, at 692-694. These exclusionary practices were found to be nationwide, the Under Secretary of Commerce testifying that there is “no question that this discrimination in the North still exists to a large degree” and in the West and Midwest as well. Id. at 735, 744. This testimony indicated a qualitative, as well as quantitative, effect on interstate travel by Negroes. The former was the obvious impairment of the Negro traveler’s pleasure and convenience that resulted when he continually was uncertain of finding lodging. As for the latter, there was evidence that this uncertainty stemming from racial discrimination had the effect of discouraging travel on the part of a substantial portion of the Negro community.

RFRAs, at the federal or state level, do nothing like this. The comparison is odious, and reflects very poorly upon those making it.

REJECTED: European leaders never thought they’d miss George W. Bush.

Recent headlines chronicling the breakdown in U.S.-Israeli affairs and the personal loathing between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have overshadowed the continuing ructions in Washington’s relations with its traditional allies in Europe.

Josh Rogin at Bloomberg View has reported that Mr. Obama delivered what can only be regarded as an extraordinary slight to Jens Stoltenberg, who became the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization six months ago. Obama is one of the few Western leaders who has not yet met with Stoltenberg and in fact deliberately passed up an opportunity to see him last week when Stoltenberg was in Washington. Rogin noted that the NATO chief was finally able to secure a last-minute meeting with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, but that Stoltenberg requested a meeting with Obama well in advance of the visit but never heard back from the White House.

The upshot is that Obama missed a good opportunity to demonstrate NATO solidarity in the face of Moscow’s on-going depredations against Ukraine. As Rogin concluded, “the message Russian President Vladimir Putin will take away is that the White House-NATO relationship is rocky, and he will be right.” Moreover, given that Stoltenberg is a two-time prime minister of Norway, a meeting would have sent a useful message to Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark that are facing increased Russian provocations (here, here and here).

Mr. Obama’s disinterest in America’s European allies is a long-standing story, however. In September 2009, as part of his “reset” of relations with Moscow, he abruptly shelved plans to deploy ballistic missile defenses in eastern Europe that Poland and the Czech Republic had signed on to at considerable political risk. As a Washington Post assessment notes, administration officials “failed to give a heads-up to the Poles and the Czechs, making it appear like a diplomatic snub at their expense.” Characterizing the U.S. consultation process, a senior national security official in Warsaw lamented that “we heard through the media.”

Obama then skipped out on a November 2009 meeting with European Union leaders at the White House, conspicuously assigning the hosting duties to Vice President Joe Biden. Reports (examples here, here and here) were soon circulating that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy – the latter being the most pro-American leader in Paris in decades – felt they were being ignored.

Well. . . .

European leaders, with few exceptions, quite deliberately undermined Bush and promoted Obama. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.