CLARK AT POPEHAT, ON THE KEN WHITE VS. VOX DAY SLAPFIGHT: “Anyway: I respect both of these guys, and I wish they wouldn’t be dicks.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 745.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Hillary’s Real Libya Problem.

In my opinion, Hillary’s biggest problem isn’t Benghazi per se, it is the broader issue of Libya. Why were Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans murdered? Because by September 2012, Libya was a terrorist playground. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Libya has become a failed state, a 21st century source of boat people, as refugees from ubiquitous violence stream across the Mediterranean. Libya is now a haven for ISIS and other terrorist groups; it was on the Libyan coast that ISIS beheaded 30 Christians. Some of the “refugees” now making their way into Europe are, in fact, ISIS agents. In short, Libya is a disaster.

Whose disaster? Hillary Clinton’s. It was Hillary who, more than anyone else, pushed to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi. Why? No compelling reason. Qaddafi had been tame ever since the Iraq war, which he interpreted as a threat to his rule. Almost incredibly, Clinton and her cohorts in NATO overthrew Qaddafi (who was subsequently murdered by a mob) without having a plan for what would come next.

Who says Hillary Clinton is responsible for the Libya fiasco? She does. In fact, at one point she was poised to claim Libya as the notable accomplishment of her term as Secretary of State.

And, in fact, it was. . . .

MARY KATHARINE HAM: Mindy Lahiri And The Dumb Loves of Real, Smart Women.

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!

THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Woman who helped launch the current uproar over sexism in tech is sorry.

In 2013, Elissa Shevinsky wrote an article titled “That’s it, I’m finished defending sexism in tech.” The article was based on her concerns that a major tech expo would open with a presentation with an app called “Titstare,” which, as the name implied, allowed users to take photos of themselves staring at women’s breasts.

Shevinsky had been in the tech industry for a decade at that point, and said she had put up with sexism all the time. She concluded her article by writing that one of the solutions to the problem was to get more women in tech.

Her article received 40,000 views and was shared around the web, helping to spark a debate about the lack of women in the tech industry, a debate with the notable accomplishment of making a grown man — a comet scientist — cry on live TV because the shirt he was wearing offended some.

Because of the movement she helped create, Shevinsky has been described as a “social justice warrior” — a usually derogatory term applied to those who engage in hostile arguments in the name of righting a perceived social injustice.

Shevinsky is now sorry for whatever role she played in creating all of this outrage and silliness. She’s sorry, she writes in her new book, Lean Out, and she adds that her initial position was “flawed.”

“I’m glad to come out in ‘Lean Out’ and say that my original essay — the one that has been the foundation for people assuming that I am [a social justice warrior] — was deeply flawed,” Shevinsky told the Washington Examiner. “I do see sexism and gender issues, a culture war, in Silicon Valley, but the knee-jerk responses (recruit more women! attack the men!) are not the answer.”

Do tell.

Related: Why the Left Waged the #WaronNerds: They’re Losing the Oppression Olympics.

There is no obvious answer. Indeed, the obvious facts seem to fly in the face of explanatory power, in just the same way it does when one sees an unrepentantly patriarchal religion with more than a few troubling inclinations toward medievalism being defended by the Left. Feminists, for instance, have spearheaded much of the sneering and hysterical censoriousness where popular nerd pastimes like comic books and video games are concerned. All this despite the fact that most nerds are hardly the obvious examples of “rapey” masculinity that, say, UVA frat boys might be (though the author takes pains to note, similar accusations are slander in their case as well).

In fact, as the ever excellent liberal author Scott Alexander notes, nerds are the absolute psychological polar opposites of rapists. That a movement designed to protect women from the most ungallant members of society would start with a group about whom the stereotype is that they run around talking and acting like unshaven medieval knights is odd, to say the least. True, there is a degree to which this species of man can be found in the sphere of pickup artistry as well (yet another feminist bette noir), but there, too, it’s not immediately obvious why they’d start here. Say what you like about pickup artistry, but at least it’s about winning enthusiastic sexual consent from its targets, which presupposes the necessity of consent in the first place. Not exactly something you’d expect from unapologetic rapists.

Dig beneath the surface, however, and you find two very compelling explanations for the #WaronNerds. The short version is that it is simply a manifestation of cynical, bullying cowardice combined with emotivist, envious resentment. The long version? Well, read on for the first part.

In the visceral and terrifying musical Parade, written about the Leo Frank lynching, a yellow journalist enthusiastically describes how he will play on the fears of his audience to drum up readership by attacking Frank, or the “little Jew from Brooklyn with a college education.”

“So give him fangs, give him horns
Give him scaly, hairy paws
Have him drooling out the corner of his mouth
He’s a master of disguise
Check those bugged out creepy eyes
Hell, that fella’s here to rape the whole damn South!”

Sam Biddle, know thyself.

The comparison between today’s feminist rape lynch mobs and those of the Jim Crow era has been made before, and is apt.

Also: The Media Is Losing The War On Nerds.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Legislating AP credit: Higher Education bubble sign or . . . The Insta-Daughter, who took just about every AP credit she could feasibly take, thinks AP is a scam. AP calculus is worth about the first 3 weeks of calculus at Georgia Tech. . .

TERRORISM ISN’T A PRODUCT OF POVERTY. IT’S A PRODUCT OF LOW-FUNCTIONING INTELLECTUALS WITH DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: Osama bin Laden, perpetual impoverished grad student. “If you think of Osama bin Laden as a thrifty, frustrated, nth-year graduate student, this all makes sense.”

POOR OBAMA. WHY DO BAD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO HIM? Why Obama has come to regret underestimating the Islamic State: The terrorists that the White House once dismissed as amateurs are closer than ever to creating a viable nation state.

PRESCIENT: Camille Paglia on feminism from 1995. “I began to realize this in the Seventies when I thought women could do it on their own. But then something would go wrong with my car and I’d have to go to the men. Men would stop, men would lift up the hood, more men would come with a truck and take the car to a place where there were other men who would call other men who would arrive with parts. I saw how feminism was completely removed from this reality. I also learned something from the men at the garage. At Bennington, I would go to a faculty meeting and be aware that everyone hated me. The men were appalled by a strong, loud woman. But I went to this auto shop and the men there thought I was cute. ‘Oh, there’s that Professor Paglia from the college.’ The real men, men who work on cars, find me cute. They are not frightened by me, no matter how loud I am. But the men at the college were terrified because they are eunuchs, and I threatened every goddamned one of them.”

Plus: “[You can’t have] the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man’s reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail. My definition of sexual harassment is specific. It is only sexual harassment–by a man or a woman–if it is quid pro quo. That is, if someone says, “You must do this or I’m going to do that”–for instance, fire you. And whereas touching is sexual harassment, speech is not. I am militant on this. Words must remain free. The solution to speech is that women must signal the level of their tolerance–women are all different. Some are very bawdy.”

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Reverse Swing: Look East, India.

REPORT: Riots In Cleveland. “Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell ruled on Saturday that white Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo is not guilty of two charges of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two black individuals after a police chase in November of 2012.”

THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK: So I upgraded to an iPhone 6 a while back, and it’s a nice phone, but honestly the biggest improvement, I think, is the screen protector. I got one of these Tech-Armor screen protectors (they have ’em for most phones), which is actually a stick-on sheet of tempered glass. Unlike the plastic ones I had before, this one is perfectly clear, and feels like the natural iPhone screen instead of like plastic. I really like it.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

WE SHOULD MAKE THEM SEPARATE, BUT STILL, YOU KNOW, EQUAL. Higher Education: Ethnic Minorities Deserve Safe Spaces Without White People.

AT AMAZON, 61% off Colombo, The Complete Series. I’ve just got a few more questions, ma’am.

Plus, Memorial Day Savings Across Amazon.

LIFE AMONG THE CHURCHIANS: “My problem is that no church I know makes it clear what the wife’s obligation to her husband is.” In contemporary society, men have obligations. Women have entitlements.

DO WE LIVE IN A “RAPE CULTURE?” OR IN A “BREATHLESS HYSTERIA ABOUT RAPE CULTURE?” Sexual Assault Case Against Venice High Schoolers Collapses. “A high-profile LAPD raid on Venice High School that made international headlines after 15 male students were arrested on charges of sexual assault has resulted in prosecutors’ decision not to prosecute anyone in the case. The large number of students arrested in mid-March and the high number of law enforcement personnel that descended on the school’s campus and led students away in handcuffs drew widespread attention on the case. But now, over two months later, prosecutors with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office cited ‘insufficient evidence’ as the reason that no charges would be pursued, the Los Angeles Times reported.”

SO IF THIS REPORT IS TRUE, ISIS IS “BLOWBACK” FOR OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SUPPORT FOR ANTI-ASSAD REBELS: Secret Pentagon report reveals West saw ISIS as strategic asset. Well, you know, when the Germans put Lenin on that train to Moscow, they saw him as a strategic asset, too.

So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria. . . . The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies. . . . The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.

That would make Obama’s Iraq failure even bigger than previously assumed, on a par with his (and Hillary’s) Libya failure.

UPDATE: From the comments: “His Egypt failure is more epic than anything in Libya.” You can’t tell all the failures without a scorecard.

BYRON YORK: Clinton emails silent on deadly danger facing Americans in Benghazi.

The newly released Hillary Clinton Benghazi emails do not contain any communications relating to security from the critical last month before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Libya. During that period, Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who along with three other Americans would die in the attack, warned Clinton and other State Department officials of a growing danger, indeed a security emergency, in Libya. Stevens specifically noted that the possibility of an attack on Americans was growing, and, if such an attack occurred, the U.S. contingent did not have the strength to repel it. But to judge from the emails made public Friday, Clinton gave not a thought to the matter.

Go back to August 2012. On the 15th of that month, U.S. security officers in Libya held an “emergency” meeting to address the very real possibility that growing violence in the area could soon target Americans. The next day, Aug. 16, Stevens sent a cable to Clinton concluding that the Americans in Libya could not defend U.S. facilities “in the event of a coordinated attack, due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound.”

It was a clear call for help, one that, judging by the newly-public emails, went entirely unheard at the highest level of the State Department. Apart from some hugger-mugger analyses of Libyan politics by Clinton’s friend Sidney Blumenthal, there is nothing at all in the emails concerning Benghazi from the month before the attack. . . .

The period leading up to the Benghazi attacks is the most critical time in the entire tragic episode. What did Clinton know about the danger to American officials there, and what did she do about it? That is the key question of Benghazi. What happened afterward — the blame-the-video spin — can be interpreted as an attempt to cover up Clinton’s inaction before the attack. Yes, the spin campaign was dishonest. But the more serious offense was allowing the conditions that led to the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans. The crime is worse than the cover-up. And if Republicans thought they would receive any new information in the Clinton-edited version of the emails released Friday, they will surely be disappointed.

Contrast Hillary’s earlier “We came, we saw, he died.”

Related: Pew: Hillary’s ‘favorability’ plummets 17 points, lowest in 7 years.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Lisa Loeb: If You Want Children, Do It Sooner Rather Than Later. “I hate to say it because I want women to be able to do anything whenever they want, but if you want to have your own child, it’s something that you really do need to focus on — the sooner, the better.”

SPACE: New POV video from SpaceX takes you for a ride on Crew Dragon’s first flight. “The two-minute video shows the Dragon capsule blasting off from its Florida launchpad, separating from its trunk and reaching a maximum velocity of 345 mph, according to SpaceX. The Crew Dragon flew about 5,000 feet into the air before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean under its parachutes.”

SO IN THE EXPECTATION OF MORE HILLARY-BOOSTING “WAR ON WOMEN” RHETORIC, I’m just going to rerun this post:

PROF. MARK PERRY: My Top Ten Gender Charts For The Year 2014.

A couple of highlights:

Oh, and what the hell, one more:

#WARONWOMEN: Islamic State burned a woman alive for not engaging in an ‘extreme’ sex act, U.N. official says. Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.