TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 843.

CYBERWAR: America Becomes The Perfect Target.

There is an increasingly loud (and public) debate within the U.S. government about how to respond to Cyber War. The U.S. has lost hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of technology to China. While much of this stuff is covered by patents, details that must accompany the patent application do not contain all you need to replicate the patent illegally. China has been going after these unpublished trade secrets and other essential items not made public but essential to make stolen technology work. This involves a lot of trade secrets considered too valuable (to illegal duplication) to even patent. China has stolen a lot of stuff and that includes purely military secrets like wartime plans and procedures.

The Department of Defense has lots of useful ideas about how to retaliate but lawyers and American war planners have so far blocked these plans. Some of the retaliation plans involve dismantling China’s internal Internet spying and censoring system as well as making Chinese Internet based information and control systems unusable. Some government lawyers consider many of these operations illegal, or at least unclear in the legality department. Some American war planners caution that it is best to not reveal just how much damage we can do because that gives the Chinese an opportunity to adjust their defenses. A growing number of Department of Defense officials believe the Chinese are already on the offensive in the Cyber War department and the U.S. is not helping itself by waiting for the lawyers and paranoid planners to be placated before actually doing something to discourage the Chinese and other nations waging Cyber War against the United States.

You know, I’m beginning to think that our military is on the verge of being overlawyered.

MOLLY BALL: Joe Biden And the Democratic Vacuum. Vacuum? What vacuum? They’ve got septuagenarians coming out of their ears!

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HISTORY: Brendan Loy’s Katrina timeline from 10 years ago.

Hey, he got it right with Sandy, too.

Plus, Katrina On The Hudson: The horror stories of New Jersey’s Sandy relief program.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Teacher keeps $90K job after being late 111 times. “I have a bad habit of eating breakfast in the morning, and I lost track of time.”

More:

The decision is one of dozens issued this year by arbitrators under the state’s Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey, or TeachNJ.

The tenure reform law, signed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2012, is supposed to make it easier to remove bad educators from the classrooms, although most of the arbitration decisions this year have returned teachers to their jobs, favoring job suspensions rather than terminations.

In Anderson’s case, the arbitrator said the district failed to provide the teacher with due process by providing him with a formal notice of inefficiency or by giving him 90 days to correct his failings.

While Anderson was unable to “plausibly” explain his lateness and — in the arbitrator’s words — relied on “micro-quibbles of a few unpersuasive explanations” while arguing “even when he is late he nevertheless delivers a superb educational experience to his grateful students,” the arbitrator felt that “progressive discipline” was fairer than termination.

It’s like the teacher’s unions don’t really care about the kids’ welfare at all.

THIS IS WHAT GOVERNMENT TRANSIT LOOKS LIKE. BUT GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE WILL BE AWESOME! Metro: Track Defect Deleted From Inspection Report.

A technician “erroneously” deleted information from a July inspection report about a serious track defect that caused a train to derail Aug. 6, Metro said in an investigation report released to the public on Friday. . . .

Defective rail fasteners were the root cause of the track problem known as wide gauge that caused the derailment, Metro found. The agency, formally known as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, said the rails weren’t properly held in place, spread too far apart, and caused a wheel axle to lose its grip and derail outside Smithsonian station.

The wide gauge problem fell into a category that requires immediate attention because “the track is at risk of failure if operations continue.”

Ya think?

THE HILL: Enraging industry, labor board asserts its power under Obama.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become a lightning rod for controversy under President Obama, with its aggressive actions fueling sustained warfare between business and labor.

From the labor board’s bitter fight with Boeing, to the creation of new union election rules, the NLRB has repeatedly moved to the forefront of political debate, drawing in Congress, the White House and even the Supreme Court.

The NLRB’s latest bombshell was dropped on Thursday, when the board determined the waste management agency Browning-Ferris should be considered a “joint employer” of temporary workers.

The decision expands the definition of what it means to be an employer in the United States, and could put companies on the hook for labor violations committed by business partners and contractors.

Business groups condemned the decision, portraying it as the latest example of the NLRB blatantly favoring unions during Obama’s tenure.

You know, if you folks had backed Romney this wouldn’t be happening.

GO TO BED: A nap a day could save your life, research suggests.

INSOMNIA THEATRE (PSYCHOLOGY EDITION): LUKIANOFF AND HAIDT ON ‘THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND’ – As some of you might have seen, best-selling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and I co-wrote the cover story of the September issue of The Atlantic. The article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” examines the latest manifestation of PC culture on college campuses and how it may be harming students’ mental health. The Atlantic has received a lot of reader feedback on the piece and is sharing some of its favorite reader comments (next week they will posting our responses to some of the criticisms). You can check out some of the highlights from those comments here. And, if you haven’t seen it already, here is a video of Haidt and me discussing the article as well as some personal reflections on what led us to write the piece.

LOVING YOUR ENEMIES: is one thing.  Paying their legal bills is another.

DON’T CRY FOR ME GREAT BRITAIN: Jeremy Corbyn’s Falklands plan tantamount to surrender to Argentina, warns wounded veteran Simon Weston.

YEAH, THAT WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM: Citigroup braces for world recession, calls for Corbynomics QE in China.

I BLAME THE PRUDES WHO RUN HOLLYWOOD: Why Are Sex Scenes For The Over-60s So Taboo?

IS IT TIME TO BRING BACK THE BATTLESHIP? “For decades, naval architects have concentrated on building ships that, by the standards of the World Wars, are remarkably brittle. These ships can deal punishment at much greater ranges than their early 20th century counterparts, but they can’t take a hit. Is it time to reconsider this strategy, and once again build protected ships?”

HOW MANY MORE WILL DIE BECAUSE OF OBAMA’S RACIALLY CHARGED RHETORIC? Suspect arrested, charged in ambush killing of Texas county sheriff’s deputy.

Hickman said the motive for the killing had not been determined but investigators would look at whether Miles, who is black, was motivated by anger over recent killings elsewhere of black men by police that have spawned the “Black Lives Matter” protest movement. Goforth was white.

“I think that’s something that we have to keep an eye on,” Hickman said. “The general climate of that kind of rhetoric can be influential on people to do things like this. We’re still searching to find out if that’s actually a motive.” . . .

In an earlier news conference on Saturday, Hickman and District Attorney Devon Anderson both had strong words for what they said was an unprovoked attack targeting law enforcement, while touching on the recent climate of tension between civilians and law enforcement.

“We’ve heard black lives matter, all lives matter. Well, cops’ lives matter, too,” Hickman said.

Anderson said that there are bad individuals in every field, but that “there should not be open warfare on law enforcement officers.”

Goforth, 47, was near a gas pump when the gunman approached him from behind and opened fire, Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ryan Sullivan told The Associated Press.

I remember when Sarah Palin was called an accomplice to murder over clip art.

HISTORY: Discovery of ancient cave paintings in Petra stuns art scholars. “Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti. Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose “exceptional” artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.”

HEH: Last night my friend asked to use a USB port to charge his cigarette, but I was using it to charge my book. The future is stupid.

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WELL, TO BE FAIR, THEY’RE READING JOSEPH NOCERA. IN THE NEW YORK TIMES. TigerHawk: Joseph Nocera thinks his readers are idiots.

Amazon is up 10 times since Blodget made the call that Nocera ridicules, or 988% vs. around 200% for the Nasdaq and the Dow, notwithstanding the popping of the Internet bubble in early 2000. I know this in part because I shorted Amazon in 1998 for basically the same reasons that Nocera attacks Tesla now. It was a very useful learning experience for me.

The point, of course, is not to vindicate Henry Blodget or rescue Adam Jones, who is more than capable of defending himself. Indeed, Nocera seems to have justified Jones better than Jones ever could. The next Amazon, you say? Bring. It. On.

But how do you write that column, and how does your editor publish that column, without a whisper of a hint of an acknowledgement that, well, people who acted on their belief in Blodget in 1998 (and had the discipline to maintain their conviction for a few years) are far happier today — or at least wealthier — than people who believed Nocera? We don’t even get a single “to be sure”?

You need to read the NYT so you know what is going on inside the lefty echo chamber, but it is very hard to believe anything on its editorial pages at face value. Otherwise, for example, you would think that Joe Nocera can distinguish a good securities analyst from a bad one.

Well, none of their columnists can tell a good presidential candidate from a bad one, so. . . .

THIS IS COOL: Is ‘Pastor Paul’ The World’s First ‘American Nollywood’ Film?

FROM MARK RIPPETOE, AN UPDATE ON THE GOVERNMENT’S LAME EXERCISE RECOMMENDATIONS: “Once again, the NIH has spent $2.6 million dollars on a website that encourages elderly people to ‘exercise’ in ways that cannot effectively address the concerns that exercise for the elderly should address.”

COMPETITION IS A WONDERFUL THING: NYC’s Taxis Finally Launch an App to Compete With Uber.

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