AND YET IT’S USUALLY WOMEN WHO INITIATE DIVORCE: Divorce May Be Bad for the Heart, Especially for Women. “After controlling for age, race and ethnicity, obesity, hypertension, smoking, alcohol consumption and other health and lifestyle factors, the researchers found that compared with a woman who was continuously married, a woman who had been divorced once had a 24 percent increased risk of heart attack. Those who had been divorced twice had a 77 percent increased risk, and remarried a 35 percent increased risk. In men, only those who had divorced more than once had an increased risk of about 30 percent. Men who stayed married or who remarried had no increased risk.”

PERSONALLY, I FIND ALL COFFEE PRETTY SEXY: A recipe for “Sex Coffee.”

THIS DOESN’T SOUND GOOD: Mysterious disease that kills patients within 24 hours leaves 17 dead in Nigeria.

BAD NEWS FOR CHINA, IF THIS PANS OUT: Boron-based atomic clusters mimic rare-earth metals.

HEY, WAIT, THAT’S ME: Mother’s Day Gifts For The Coffee, Tea & Wine Lover.

Also: Shop The Star Wars Event.

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN THING ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT: Leonardo DiCaprio the ‘eco warrior’ flew on a private jet from NY to LA SIX times in SIX weeks, Sony hack documents reveal. I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Chinese Journalist Jailed for Exposing Ban on Free Speech.

China has just sentenced 71-year-old ace journalist Gao Yu to seven years in prison on charges of “leaking state secrets overseas.” And what are those secrets she is accused of leaking? They center on renewed efforts by the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping to suppress free speech.

We have here a sort of infinite regress of absurdities. If China’s authorities consider it a state secret that their policies are to smother free speech and punish dissent, then they themselves are broadcasting this secret by jailing a journalist for exposing it. Presumably, any Chinese journalist who might dare to delve into this could be accused of exposing the exposure of this secret — which is actually no secret at all.

But that’s the very point: To shut up other Chinese journalists, and chill discussion more broadly among those who cover China. Censorship is easier to practice when people are afraid even to suggest that it exists.

Indeed.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Student-Loan Problem Is Even Worse Than Official Figures Indicate. “Nearly one in three Americans who are now having to pay down their student debt–or a staggering 31.5%–are at least a month behind on their payments, new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests. That figure is far higher than official delinquency measures reported by the Education Department and the New York Fed. And it’s also likely the most accurate.”

BRINGING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT ISN’T ALWAYS A BAD IDEA: Katana-wielding homeowner – 1, Four pistol-packing burglars – 0. “Unlike the “Middle-Aged Mormon Ninja Bishop” who simply needed to brandish a sword to thwart an assault, a 49-year old Argentinian homeowner went positively Medieval on the quartet of thugs who broke into his home recently. Things did not go well for the burglars.” Well, good.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Christopher Lansdown, A Stitch In Space.

A NEW MERCEDES BENZ PICKUP? Well, they’ve always made good trucks.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): A teacher had sex with a student and got a plea deal, but it’s what she did after that is truly disgusting.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  President Obama’s labor-dominated NLRB agrees to hear a petition by Columbia grad students who seek the right to unionize.  The grad students want to join the United Auto Workers (that’s not a typo) because they claim they’re being treated like serfs by universities who understand that there is a glut of Ph.D.s and that most grad students will never score permanent, tenure-track positions.According to today’s Wall Street Journal editorial:

The universities argue that unionization would make the nature of their relationship with students adversarial. They too have a case. Most of America’s top universities aren’t unionized. So the schools have valid concern about elevating union interests over academic merit. Meanwhile, NYU is a rare private university that has voluntarily recognized a grad-student union.

But none of this lets academe off the hook. For one thing, the universities contribute to a glut of Ph.D.s by admitting students who take out loans (some 40% of the $1 trillion in student debt is for graduate school) even when they know few will ever work as full professors. By admitting them into graduate programs, the schools in effect are producing for themselves a low-paid work force.

“To put it crudely, they are hiring their own serfs,” says Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist who runs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. He says it’s “as much a moral issue as an economic one.” A university truly devoted to the well-being of its students would be more honest to grad students about the dismal job prospects for Ph.D.s—and more candid to undergrads about their actual instructors.

Unionization isn’t the best solution for grad students or universities. Mr. Vedder has a better idea when he suggests that universities accept some responsibility for defaults on student loans or pick up some of the tab for students who can’t find jobs after graduation.

Of course the real solution is to shut down the bulk of these duplicative, unneeded Ph.D. programs, eliminate the supply glut, and let these students put their talents to work in another field.  Unionizing grad students only kicks the can down the road, giving them more money while they’re in school, with no improvement in their prospects for long-term employment.  More importantly, unionization will further raise the cost of tuition for everyone.

GARY HART: Dare We Call It Oligarchy?

If the presidency were to pass back and forth between two or three families in any Latin American nation we would call it an oligarchy.

I’m ready. Hillary, by the way, tried to suppress this parody. Because nothing says “not an oligarchy” like trying to shut up your critics.

And as proof that the editors of Time have a sense of humor, here’s what’s at the bottom of Hart’s piece: Read next: Chelsea Clinton Gets Ready to Take the Stage.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 709.

TOO VAGUE TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL: Two indecipherable criminal laws passed in the 1980s now face scrutiny at the Supreme Court.

The legal philosopher Lon Fuller once invented an earnest monarch named Rex who discovered many wrong ways to make law. First, Rex wrote a detailed code of laws, but, to avoid confusing the public, kept it secret. “To Rex’s surprise this sensible plan was deeply resented by his subjects. They declared it was very unpleasant to have one’s case decided by rules when there was no way of knowing what those rules were,” Fuller wrote. So Rex refined his code even further and made it public. But its detail and precision made it “a masterpiece of obscurity.” Soon “a picket appeared before the royal palace carrying a sign that read, ‘How can anybody follow a rule that nobody can understand?’”

Next week the Supreme Court will look at cases in which two criminal defendants make similar pleas. On Monday, a violent neo-Nazi contends that he is facing 15 years in prison under a law that not only he but some of the most learned judges in the country find incomprehensible; the next day, a dealer in “designer drugs,” claims that he is facing prison under a law so complex that its prohibitions are effectively ​secret from anyone except skilled chemists.

I recommend that the Court read Michael Cottone’s article. Also, mine.

DEROY MURDOCK: The Unbearable Lightness Of Obama’s Anti-Terror Policies.

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MESSAGE TO STRAIGHT WHITE MEN: “SIT DOWN AND LET US ABOLISH YOU.” The left isn’t even trying to hide its eliminationist fantasies any more.

Though you’d think a writer would be clearer on the distinction between “less” and “fewer.”

UPDATE: “This was an important exercise in adolescent self-importance.”

EXPLOSIVE VIDEO: Marco Rubio orders at Chipotle.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Texas set to approve open carry of handguns, seen as win for gun-rights activists. This is hardly a radical step. In Tennessee, we’ve had open carry for years — our permits aren’t “concealed carry permits,” they’re just “carry permits.” Most people carry concealed for a variety of reasons, but that’s a choice, not a requirement.

GEORGE WILL: Shriveled Grapes, Shriveled Liberty. “In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the government defend its kleptocratic behavior while administering an indefensible law. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 is among the measures by which New Dealers tried and failed to regulate and mandate America back to prosperity. Seventy-eight years later, it is the government’s reason for stealing Marvin and Laura Horne’s raisins.”

TOM MAGUIRE: Armenians Died, Obama Lied. “Interesting – so many more questions for the press to not ask Obama or especially Hillary. For the record, Candidate Hillary in 2008 matched Barack in the empty promises area, then backed her boss as Secretary of State.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Even sexual assault activists want a fair campus process.

The activists point out that they do not believe what due process activists have been saying for over a year — that the pendulum has swung and that now accused students are the ones who are treated unfairly.

The activists, members of the group “Know Your IX” – named after the law that has been interpreted to require colleges to adjudicate campus sexual assault, Title IX — provide a list of some basic protections needed to ensure a fair process. Some of their requests include “the right to guidance from a trained advocate” and “the right not to self-incriminate if criminal charges are possible or pending.”

These are all good things, but the problem for activists is that a fair process might lead to fewer students being punished based solely on an accusation. It might mean having to accept the fact that some accusers truly aren’t victims (think Rolling Stone’s Jackie, Duke’s Crystal Mangum and any number of “survivors” who regretted an encounter and were coached by a feminist professor into thinking they were raped).

As to one of the requirements mentioned by the activists — having a trained advocate — some schools are looking beyond that to actual lawyers. This should be something all schools allow, because a fair process can’t stem from two scared kids who aren’t lawyers trying to adjudicate something that is actually a felony. And just as it’s not fair that the accused student is going up against an accuser with the Title IX office and current culture behind them, it isn’t fair then to provide attorneys to only the accused, since then the accuser would be going up against a trained professional.

Or, you know, we could leave the whole thing to the criminal justice system . . . which, you know, handles criminal justice problems.