JOURNALISM: “Note the erasure of the racial element. As The Daily Beast reported: Harper’s father is white and his mother black.”

It’s like the “White Hispanic” thing again.

ASHE SCHOW: Overly broad definition of sex assault ensnares innocent students.

As I wrote in my column yesterday, not all accusations of campus sexual assault are black and white. Yet colleges are treating accusations as if the accused were a potential rapist, even when the accusation involves nothing more than requesting social media connections one too many times.

Kimberly Lau, a lawyer who has defended wrongly accused students in more than 40 cases, released a statement regarding a recent survey purporting to show that one-in-four women will be sexually assaulted while in college.

Lau notes what other critics of the survey, including me, have pointed out: that it relies on an overly broad definition of “sexual assault” in order to inflate its numbers for scary headlines. Lau has specific knowledge of the ways normal interactions, though possibly jerkish, have been elevated to the level of assault, warranting severe punishment.

One of Lau’s cases involved a male student who received a deferred suspension, was banned from his graduation and branded a sex offender on his transcript for stealing a kiss and exchanging inappropriate text messages that were later deemed harassment. Another case saw a male student suspended for a year because he sent multiple Instagram follow requests to a female student and once looked at her on campus.

Even a cat may look at a king. But apparently, males should keep their eyes averted at all times, in a proper show of subservience.

ROLL CALL: Senate Economist Warns Debt Limit Fight Could Raise Interest Rates.

The White House push for a debt limit hike got some ammunition Friday from the chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee, who warned failure to increase the limit soon could cause interest rates to rise on newly issued federal debt.

In a budget bulletin, economist William Beach, who formerly worked at the Heritage Foundation, warns the nation risks higher borrowing costs if it even gets close to exhausting the extraordinary measures used to avoid hitting the debt limit, now pegged by Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew as occurring on or about Nov. 5, about a month earlier than expected.

The new date has the effect of making it a must-do item for outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, as he goes about cleaning up a “dirty barn” for his successor. Options for Boehner include passing a straight-up debt limit hike, attaching it to a must-pass deal on transportation due by the end of the month, or some other combination. Tying it to anything opposed by President Barack Obama risks a default crisis given that Obama has repeatedly warned he will not pay a ransom again after agreeing to hand Boehner north of $2 trillion in spending cuts for a debt limit hike in 2011.

Even a momentary failure to pay the nation’s debts could cause long-term increases in borrowing costs, Beach said, warning a mere technical error in 1979 caused a 60-basis-point hike in interest rates that persisted for nearly a year.

I dunno, these days it seems as if nothing can increase interest rates. But if interest rates do go up, it’ll help relieve the Senior Squeeze.

THE HILL: Democrats’ Benghazi panel talking point proven false.

Democrats claimed this week that the House’s special committee investigating the 2012 violence in Benghazi, Libya, was the longest inquiry of its kind, but fact-checkers on Friday proved them wrong.

In fact, there have been at least four special congressional committees charged with investigating various incidents that have run longer than the Benghazi panel, Politifact discovered.

The claim that the Benghazi committee had been in existence longer than any other special investigation committee was incorrectly reported by The Hill as well as The New York Times, ABC News and other media outlets.

The existence of the former committees pokes a hole in a frequent talking point for critics of the Select Committee on Benghazi, including the campaign of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of State during the 2012 attack.

Honestly, at this point that’s the least of her problems. But yeah.

BON JOVI TO ROGER WATERS: DROP DEAD! “I have no idea whether Bon Jovi is a Christian, but he evidently shares the excitement that Christians, Jews and others feel at the prospect of visiting the Holy Land. Good for him. He evidently will not be deterred by a left-wing, has-been bully. Somehow, I am not surprised.”

AMERICA, BEFORE THE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Houston:

It was September 16, 1989 and Yeltsin, then newly elected to the new Soviet parliament and the Supreme Soviet, had just visited Johnson Space Center.

At JSC, Yeltsin visited mission control and a mock-up of a space station. According to Houston Chronicle reporter Stefanie Asin, it wasn’t all the screens, dials, and wonder at NASA that blew up his skirt, it was the unscheduled trip inside a nearby Randall’s location.

Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”

Of course he was right — but alas, eventually there was a revolution in both countries. As one blogger warned in 2006, “Americans Hate Their Fabulous Economy.”

It was great — literally the envy of the world — while it lasted.

Related: With a hat tip to the Gipper, Mark Steyn writes, “There’s a Bear in the Sand:” “Obama isn’t leading from behind, he’s leaving from behind: America is departing the world stage.”

LOVE WINS: She was a conservative pundit. He was a liberal activist. At home, none of that mattered.

BULLIES BULLY BECAUSE THEY CAN: UCC Shooting: The Culture of Helplessness.

THE LEFT EMBRACES SHUNS DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT: Breitbart Editor Ejected From Amber Rose Slut Walk By Police.

ENGLAND’S NHS, THE TERRIBLE WARNING: NHS cancer bonuses ‘are abhorrent, risky and misguided’.

Leading doctors speak out amid a growing backlash against new schemes offering doctors payments to cut referrals.

INSOMNIA THEATER (DEPT. OF ED​. EDITION) – ​ICYMI, last week I posted a video of Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) challenging Department of Education (ED) Deputy Assistant Secretary Amy McIntosh about past statements made by Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Lhamon had testified that she expected colleges and universities to comply fully with OCR’s Title IX guidance, despite the fact that federal guidance is not binding. Huh?

McIntosh quickly backtracked from Lhamon’s comments, telling Alexander that “guidance that the Department issues does not have the force of law.” Then, in another congressional hearing just a week after this exchange, a second ED official, Under Secretary Ted Mitchell, also admitted that ED’s guidance “does not hold the force of law.”

I can tell you that after working on campuses for 15 years, I can’t think of one college that actually believes that following any ED ukase is optional, and I can’t believe that ED (which has power over federal funding of universities!) really believes that either.

This week FIRE’s Joe Cohn explained just how OCR’s actions both overstep its authority, violate the Administrative Procedure Act, and intimidate institutions into complying with its “non-binding” guidance.

You can watch the back-and-forth between Alexander and McIntosh in the video below or, for the hardcore issue fans, there’s also the full video of the hearing on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ website.

YEAH, THEY DO THAT: Feminists abused my mother’s suicide, says Sylvia Plath’s poet daughter.

IT IS THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY: Scientists Invent a New Steel as Strong as Titanium.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Well done, feminism. Now men are afraid to help women at work.

I’D WAKE UP SCREAMING: only it’s more like one of those dreams where the horror comes closer and you can’t move.  The Coming Defeat of NATO.

I’D SAY: Vassar College Says Ban on Israeli Foods ‘A Mistake’.

A BIT OF HISTORY ABOUT OUR FOUNDING: A word from Stephen Knott, professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College and the coauthor of a new book on the relationship between George Washington, the indispensable man, and Alexander Hamilton, an indomitable genius among the founders.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Penn State vs. The State Penn?

ARTHUR CHU WANTS TO BE YOUR BIG BROTHER: Arthur Chu’s Grand Vision of Repressive Tolerance.

WELL, THAT’S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Gun Control: If Journalists Were Being Murdered Instead of School Children.

I THOUGHT EVERYONE KNEW THIS: Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by an almost-identical double.

AT AMAZON, deals galore in Training & Fitness.

And shop the Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals. When bad things happen, it’s good to have food.

Plus, Generators and Portable Power for Storm Season.

MOORE’S LAW HASN’T GIVEN UP YET! IBM Scientists Find New Way to Shrink Transistors.

SELL YOUR CLOAK AND BUY A SWORD: Tennessee’s Lt. Gov: ‘Fellow Christians’ should consider handgun permits. “I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit. . . . I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise.”

IT’S NICE TO SEE PEOPLE RESISTING HYSTERIA: Still Strong Support for Gun Rights in Oregon Town Rocked by College Shooting.