EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES IS USING THIS DESCRIPTION OF OBAMACARE: Anatomy of a Health Care Mess. The book in question is Steven Brill’s America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.

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ASHE SCHOW: Institutionalized victim blaming is making a comeback.

For the past several years, activists have been telling us that any suggestion relating to protecting oneself from becoming a victim is victim-blaming. Tell a woman not to walk down dark alleys at night, and you’re essentially telling her that it’s her fault if she ends up being assaulted, robbed or murdered.

But now, outright bans on risky behavior — all in the interest of protecting women — are suddenly coming back into fashion.

First, sorority women at the University of Virginia were banned from attending parties with boys this weekend by their own National Panhellenic Conference. The reason for the ban, which carries undisclosed sanctions if broken, was “safety concerns,” due to sexual assault allegations in the past. . . .

As if the U.Va. ban wasn’t bad enough (it was based off of a discredited rape allegation in Rolling Stone, after all), Dartmouth has decided to ban hard liquor on campus — in part to cut down on sexual assaults.

It was just last year that telling women not to drink so much was considered victim blaming, but now it’s okay?

We seem to be going back in time; telling women where they can go, whom they can associate with — even what they can drink. At least it’s all in the name of protecting us poor, fragile ladies, am I right?

Heh.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Truth About American Sniper: Chris Kyle wasn’t a savage; he killed savages.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Washington Post: Why college isn’t always worth it: A new study suggests the economic return on a college degree may be a lot more modest than you think.

“‘Ticket’ implies a college degree is something you can just cash in,” said Alan Benson, assistant business professor at the University of Minnesota. “But it doesn’t work that way. A college degree is more of a stepping stone, one ingredient to consider when you’re cooking up your career. … It’s not always the best investment for everyone.”

Benson, along with M.I.T.’s Frank Levy and business analyst Raimundo Esteva, co-authored a new paper, released this week, examining the value of public university options in California. Factors like how long it takes to complete a degree — often longer than four years — and whether students make it to graduation, he learned, can significantly diminish the value of pursuing higher education. . . .

“The return to a college degree in 2010,” researchers wrote, “could be less than the interest on unsubsidized Stafford loans.”

Do tell.

CHANGE: Walker Surging in Iowa Poll as Bush Struggles. Hillary Clinton is running away from the potential Democratic field.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is surging, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is an also-ran and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is dominating in a new poll of Iowans likely to vote in the nation’s first presidential nominating contest.

The Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, taken Monday through Thursday, shows Walker leading a wide-open Republican race with 15 percent, up from just 4 percent in the same poll in October. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was at 14 percent and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, stood at 10 percent.

Bush trailed with 8 percent and increasingly is viewed negatively by likely Republican caucus-goers. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is in even worse shape, with support from just 4 percent. More troubling for Christie: He’s viewed unfavorably by 54 percent, among the highest negative ratings in the potential field. At 9 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson pulls more support than either Bush or Christie.

Not that big a surprise.

BOB ZUBRIN: “The US Department of Defense is sponsoring an essay contest to honor the Saudi King. Here is mine.”

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Instagram vs. Traditional Photography: How Entrepreneur Aubrey Chernick Created “Mystical” Filters in 1976.

ED DRISCOLL: The Left Devours Itself.

Certainly we’re seeing that played out on a national scale this month, with the crude Vietnam-era attacks from Michel Moore, Seth Rogen, Howard Dean, Bill Maher and others on the far left on Chris Kyle’s legacy due to the blockbuster success of American Sniper. These double as thinly-veiled (often not-so-thinly veiled) slurs on the rest of Red State America as well, of course, with “soft America” seething at the resurgence of “hard America,” to use Michael Barone’s phraseology from his 2004 book. How angry is soft America these days? As John Nolte noted last night at Big Hollywood, the Onion’s otherwise often enjoyable A.V. Club film and TV Website took a nasty shot this week at the owner of a small restaurant chain in Michigan who symbolically “banned” Michael Moore and Seth Rogen after their submoronic anti-American remarks. “And how does the AV Club respond to this symbolic but righteous protest? By using no fewer than 7 paragraphs to relentlessly mock the Little Guy and his business,” Nolte writes, “the saddest piece of starf**king I’ve ever come across.”

Actually, that phrase is a pretty good description of most Left politics, in particular the cult of Obama.

SCIENCE: Why Mars’s Two Hemispheres Are Completely Different.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Female drama teacher charged with raping male student. “A former drama teacher accused of raping a 15-year-old student appeared in court Wednesday, facing multiple charges and accusations she manipulated the boy by threatening to kill herself after he exposed their secret relationship. . . . Attorneys for the state said that McCrea coached the boy on what to tell police and urged him to deny everything. They said the two even set up fake Facebook identities, so they could communicate secretly online.”

Plus: Teacher and basketball coach charged with sexually abusing female students. “Cara Labus, 30, met the two alleged victims when they were 14 and 16 while working at a Chicago high school. Labus, who also taught basketball at Jerling Junior High School, is said to have engaged in sexual acts with the two.”

Related: Have Teacher-Student Sex Crimes Become A National Crisis? “In October, a male victim of rape by a female teacher killed himself seven years after his initial report to the school district superintendent failed to lead to her arrest, and in 2014, eight different teachers accused of being in relationships with students eventually committed suicide. ‘These are devastating, life-alternating and sometimes life-ending crimes,’ says Abbott.”

I think the gender imbalance has created a culture of female entitlement in schools. We obviously need federal Title IX-type legislation to force equality. For the children. #EndTeacherRapeCulture!

THIS IS HOW HOME INVASIONS SHOULD END: Grandchild Defends Grandmother In Deadly Home Invasion. “Police say Isai Robert Delcid, 18, was shot and killed by the resident’s grandson. His brother, 22-year-old Carlos Delcid, was arrested later Tuesday night. . . . Police say the brothers were reportedly trying to break into the home when a 14-year-old, who was visiting his grandmother, shot Isai Delcid. Delcid was pronounced dead at the scene. Carlos Delcid ran from the scene. He was located and arrested later that night. . . . Wyant said that his grandson did a good job, and that he’s thankful he was there. ‘What would have happened if he wasn’t there?'”

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IT’S NOT SURPRISING THAT GASOLINE ENGINES ARE GOOD. THEY’VE HAD WELL OVER A CENTURY OF CONSTANT REFINEMENT, UNDER HEAVY COMPETITIVE PRESSURES. The Car of the Future May Run on Gasoline: For all the talk of electric cars, the old-fashioned internal combustion engine is proving to be hard to beat.

When most of us picture the high-tech personal mobility of the future, we tend to imagine a sleek, dead-quiet electric car, packed with voice- or motion-directed gizmos and self-driving features. We see ourselves gliding around almost effortlessly, free to talk, work or text as we see fit.

What few of us conjure up is having this sort of experience in a gasoline-fueled car. But that may be changing in the face of recent design advances. The internal combustion engine—the workhorse of the industrial age—is proving to be much more than a stubborn technological incumbent.

More than a century after becoming the dominant way that people move around, gas-powered cars are challenging ostensibly more advanced electric vehicles. It has proved hard to beat engines in which fuel is ignited, drives pistons and propels a vehicle. Even in 2040, according to forecasting agencies such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration, cars with gas- and diesel-powered engines will still represent some 95% of the international car market.

A fully refined technology can be hard to beat.

A MODEST PROPOSAL TO REDUCE “INEQUALITY:”

So Obama has had to abandon his plan to tax 529 college savings plans to pay for his “free” community college proposal, because lo and behold lots of middle class people are 529 savers. But Republicans could still enable Obama to pay for this proposal with a tax that actually hits the genuine rich: a surtax on large private college endowments—say on all endowments that are more than something like $1 million per student. This would hit the ivy league schools that these days are raking in nearly $1 billion a year in contributions according to the latest reports. (I recall an old line from Conan O’Brien—a Harvard grad—about Harvard’s donor pitch: “We’re Harvard. We don’t need your money. We just want it.”) Or instead of a surtax directly on endowments, reduce the tax deductibility of donations to college endowments above a certain level.

And if Republicans really want to start riots in faculty clubs, they should pass Obama’s community college plan with one proviso: that all community college credits be fully transferrable to any four-year college that accepts any federal funding (which is every institution of higher learning except Hillsdale and one or two others). Watch the four-year colleges sputter with indignation. Watch Obama veto the bill.

More suggestions at the link.

MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME: Two burglars were thwarted by a University of Central Florida student with a gun, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

HEH: Even Liberals Disgusted With Ignorant White Students’ Efforts To Police Language.

UPDATE: Illiterates complain that Army’s use of term “chink in armor” is racist. More here. What’s really sad is that one of the complainers is a USMC Public Affairs Officer.

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ALL OVER A STORY THAT EVERYONE ADMITS WAS FAKE: U-Va. sorority sisters ordered to stay home Saturday night for their own safety – while fraternity brothers party. This seems like a Title IX violation itself. On the other hand, “Boobytrap” spelled backwards is “Partyboob.”

NO, IT’S VANDALISM: Eugene Volokh: No, pasting over anti-Islam ads with images of ‘Ms. Marvel’ isn’t free speech.

A group that is sharply critical of Islam recently bought space for anti-Islam ads on San Francisco buses. San Francisco had a First Amendment obligation to allow such ads; as a court recently held, once a city opens up a bus advertising program, it may not reject such ads based on their anti-Islam viewpoint.

But earlier this week, some people pasted over parts of the ads with a picture of Ms. Marvel, a Muslim American superhero recently introduced by Marvel Entertainment, and with stickers bearing various messages, including “Free Speech Isn’t a License to Spread Hate.” Is this action itself constitutionally protected free speech, as some have suggested?

No — just as it wouldn’t be protected free speech to take a pro-religious-tolerance advertisement (or a mosque advertisement) and paste anti-Islam messages over it. People have no right to just attach their own messages to city vehicles. Indeed, attaching messages that write over lawfully purchased advertising messages likely qualifies as “[d]amag[ing]” another’s property, or as “[d]efac[ing]” it by “mark[ing]” over it. (Attaching stickers is considered “mark[ing]” property, and marking is considered defacing even if it’s easy to remove. The statute I cite requires that the defacing or damaging be done “maliciously,” but that would likely be understood here as simply requiring that the defacing or damaging was done intentionally, rather than by accident.)

Now a government entity could permit people to freely write things on certain government property, or attach things, even when it obscures what other people have written or attached. For instance, some universities have “free speech walls” that are designed for that; likewise, if chalking sidewalks is generally allowed, then overwriting someone else’s chalking with your own might be, too. But I highly doubt that San Francisco has opened up its buses for everyone to paste materials on. Instead, it has allowed people to buy advertising space, without letting others paste over that advertising space.

So the pasting over the ads is illegal. Moreover, the city has to treat this sort of defacement the same way it would treat defacement of other speech. If, for instance, the city has a practice of removing such material pasted over ads, and replacing the original ads that were legally paid for, then the city has to do the same here. Conversely, if the city decides to tolerate and not remove such pasted-on material — and its advertising contract lets it do so — then the city has to equally tolerate any anti-Islam material pasted over other ads in the future.

Well, we’ll be watching. And if “free speech isn’t a license to spread hate,” then “free speech isn’t a license to spread communism.”

PETER WEHNER: America’s Anti-Israeli President.

IF THIS IS ALL THEY’VE GOT. . . . Ann Althouse is unimpressed with the Boston Globe’s Jeb Bush High School Expose. “Boys lifting up other boys. Not even tackling them. Lifting them. So what?! What I’m reading here is an absence of cruelty and a damned modest amount of rowdy fun. This is all you’ve got, Globe? It’s just dumb.”

The Globe hopes you’ll remember the adjectives its writers inserted, and not pay attention to the facts. For the Globe’s readership, that’s probably a fair bet.

AMY CHUA, MOM OF THE DECADE: “Dogs are so much nicer than daughters.”

PAUL RAHE: The Party Of The Living Dead. “A few days ago, in India, Barack Obama gave a three-minute speech in which he referred to himself 118 times. That speech is emblematic of his entire administration. . . . Thanks, in part, to the self-absorption of their standard-bearer, the Democratic Party now controls fewer Congressional seats than at any point in my lifetime. Its presence in the Senate is at a near-record low, and one would have to go back nearly 90 years to find a time when it was in as bad a shape in the state assemblies and senates.”

UPDATE: Tom Maguire emails a typo-correction:

The headline to which Mr. Rahe linked was this:

Watch Obama Refer to Himself 118 Times in Three Minutes

But the text says this:

The president went on to refer to himself an astonishing 118 times in the short 33-minute speech, touching on injustices in the United States and in his own personal life.

And per the WH transcript, the speech was 34 minutes.

You know, 118 times in 3 minutes seemed like a lot to me, even for Obama, but then I thought, well, it is Obama. I note that the headline says 3 minutes, but the URL says 33, so I guess it is just a typo.