THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Study: College-Age Concealed Permit Holders Don’t Fit Left’s Lawless Portrayal.

GENDER IN ACADEMIA: Chronicle of Higher Education:

In addition to women’s superiority in judgment, their trustworthiness, reliability, fairness, working and playing well with others, relative freedom from distracting sexual impulses, and lower levels of prejudice, bigotry, and violence, they live longer, have lower mortality at all ages, are more resistant to most categories of disease, and are much less likely to suffer brain disorders that lead to disruptive and even destructive behavior. And, of course, they can produce new life from their own bodies, to which men add only the tiniest biological contribution — and one that soon could be done without. . . . To call being male a syndrome is not an arbitrary judgment.

The eliminationist rhetoric just gets more and more open.

THAT’S PRETTY GOOD IN ANY VEHICLE: 58 hours, 55 minutes! Team drives Tesla P85D from LA to NYC in record time.

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NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Foresight Institute Awards Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology to Amanda S. Barnard, Joseph W. Lyding.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, INDOCTRINATION EDITION: Rutgers University offers Hillary Clinton-centric class called ‘A Woman for President?’

QUERCETIN FOLLOWUP: So a while back I mentioned that although I was taking Quercetin as an anti-aging supplement, I also found that it helped with allergies. I’ve continued taking it through peak allergy season here in allergy-awful East Tennessee and it’s definitely made a big difference. Ordinarily at this time of year I’d be taking Sudafed most days; this year I’ve taken half a dose a couple of times as a precaution but I’ve never really needed it. It seems to help the sinus congestion a lot; it doesn’t do as much for my other allergy symptom of itchy eyes, though it seems to have helped somewhat on that front. Anyway, I’m pretty pleased.

UPDATE: From Rand Simberg: “On your advice I’ve started taking Quercetin, too. It’s helped a lot with chronic sinusitis I’ve had all my adult life.”

KARL LAGERFELD: “I hate rich people when they try to be communists or socialists. I think it’s obscene.”

IN BRITAIN, A BRILLIANT TAX REFORM PROPOSAL:

The sorts of people who get recruited by political causes as celebrity supporters – television personalities, comedians and the like – should have to pay a special “fame levy” of around 20 per cent of their income. This tax would reflect the fact that they get paid to do really cool things, and are at the same time asked to opine about politics without the bother of getting themselves elected to anything.

It would, however, be voluntary. All the celebrities would need to do, to avoid the toll, is sign a public declaration to the effect that they wanted to opt out.

They’d be free to sign or not to sign. Either way, the rest of us would know whether or not to take them seriously when they assured us that they “wouldn’t mind paying a bit more tax” in order to “make society fairer”.

Heh.

ROGER KIMBALL: Jihad In Catalonia: Police raid Spanish Jihad cell, arrest 11, break up plot to bomb builidings and behead random victims. “While Barack Obama is busy telling Americans that Islam is ‘woven into the fabric’ of America since its founding, police in Spain have just arrested eleven members of a jihadist cell that, woven into the fabric of Spain, was plotting to bring ISIS-style beheadings to a western city near you. As Soeren Kern notes in an important and depressing post at the Gatestone Institute web site, police have accused the cell of planning to bomb various public and private buildings in and around Barcelona and of—this is especially nice—plotting to kidnap and behead a random person. I’m not sure that the Muslim presence in Spain has gotten the attention it deserves here, but as Kern points Catalonia not only has the largest Muslim population in Spain, it also has the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe.”

My biggest worry is that this might provide talking points that will stoke an anti-Islamic backlash in the West.

CAR OF THE WEEK: This 1970 Hemi ’Cuda Has 81 Original Miles—and You Can Own It.

21ST CENTURY POLITICS: Social Justice Bullies: The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice. “The modern social justice movement launched on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Jezebel, Slate, Huffington Post, et al. is far more reminiscent of a Red Scare (pick one) than the Civil Rights Movement.” Yeah, the lefties’ only real problem with McCarthyism is that it was aimed at them. They were fine with the methodology, just not the targeting.

WASHINGTON FREE BEACON: The Men Who Started the Hugo Awards Controversy; Review: The Work of Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen.

THIS KIND OF THING HURTS CHRIS CHRISTIE’S BRAND: New Jersey man denied gun permit for crime he didn’t commit. Not so much the stories themselves, which are horrific, but Christie’s failure to oppose New Jersey’s authoritarian, prohibitionist firearms regime.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 715.

SUPREME ETHICS:  Democrats on the Hill, led by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY), are once again pushing legislation that would impose a code of ethics upon the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court itself has repeatedly rejected the idea of adopting such an ethics code, including the current Roberts Court.  Members of the Court do voluntarily agree, however, to follow the same rules as other federal judges on honoraria, gifts, and outside income.

There is a Judicial Code of Conduct for United States Judges— which binds all federal judges except the U.S. Supreme Court–which requires recusal in certain instances of bias and prohibits federal judges from engaging in various acts that may create an appearance of partiality, including engaging in political activities. So why doesn’t this Judicial Code of Conduct also apply to Supreme Court Justices?  Because the Supreme Court is the only court that is constitutionally required to exist, with all lower federal courts existing only insofar as Congress wishes to establish them.  The lower federal courts, therefore, are “creatures” of Congress, established and controlled by it.  Congress’ ability to impose a code of conduct upon judges it creates is thus clear, as a legal matter.

But the Supreme Court is not created by Congress; it has independent constitutional existence.  While Congress has power to regulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, give Senatorial advice and consent to Supreme Court nominations, impeach Justices, control the Supreme Court’s budget and even to enact legislation defining the number of Justices that sit on the Court, it otherwise lacks a clear textual authority to regulate the way the Court adjudicates cases.  The Court’s historic position is that because it isn’t created by Congress, Congress cannot impose a code of ethics upon it; doing so would violate separation of powers.

While having the Supreme Court abide by a Code of Ethics sounds good at first blush, the question isn’t really whether it should have such a code, but whether Congress should be able to impose one upon a co-equal branch of government.  And the reasons cited for congressional enactment of such a code focus exclusively on supposed unethical behavior by conservative Justices.  For example, Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his spouse’s income from conservative groups, necessitating several years of revised disclosure forms.  Justices Antonin Scalia and Thomas have attended events at the National Lawyers’ Convention of the Federalist Society.

But of course, liberal Justices have engaged in the exact same behavior.  Justice Ginsburg has lent her name and given speeches to the NOW Legal fund and recently made comments about same-sex marriage cases that clearly indicate her prejudgment on the issue. Justice Elena Kagan refused to recuse herself from the recent Obamacare subsidy case, King v. Burwell, even though she served as the U.S. Solicitor General and was intimately involved in the defense of the law. And like Ginsburg, Kagan’s comments and officiating at a same-sex marriage ceremony have called for her recusal from the same-sex marriage cases now pending before the Court.  Justice Breyer has faced his own calls for recusal, based on potential financial conflicts.

The point is that while it may be a good idea for the Supreme Court voluntarily to adopt ethics rules for itself (which it de facto seems already to have done), I am highly skeptical about Congress imposing them, and the political mischief that could ensue.  Indeed, liberals/progressives are already overtly attempting to bully the Court, calling for term limits (which, btw, would require a constitutional amendment), and generally calling for “reforms” of a Court they think is too conservative (and likely to stay that way for some time).

My hunch is that congressionally-imposed SCOTUS ethics rules would only further politicize the Court, which would not be good for the rule of law.

FUNNY HOW THIS IS THE ONE TIME WHEN THE GOVERNMENT CARES WHERE ITS MONEY GOES: Megan McArdle: When Deadbeat Dads Can’t Catch a Break.

When you look at the havoc these policies wreak on the lives of poor people, it’s obvious that there’s something very wrong in the system. And yet when you try to come up with a solution that wouldn’t result in these penalties, you start to see how we got here in the first place. Shouldn’t parents support their children? Of course they should. Should the government be paying benefits for children when the mother or father could be contributing? Of course not; benefits are for people who can’t take care of their children, not for people who don’t want to.

So you demand that parents pay child support. But if you simply set the support at a fraction of their income, you will encourage people to work off the books and hide their incomes from the court, or get back at their ex-partners by minimizing their income so as to yield very little in the way of support checks. So judges set child support at the amount that a parent could be expected to earn working a full-time job.

Naturally, it’s not enough to just mandate payment; you also have to mandate penalties, or else selfish mothers or fathers will simply refuse to pay. Punishments were set up for noncompliance, and systems were set up to automatically garnish paychecks. It all seems very fair — unless the system makes a mistake, or Mom or Dad genuinely can’t find enough work, at which point it suddenly becomes Kafkaesque. I once watched a colleague struggle through New York state’s bureaucracy, which through its own screw-up had garnished so much of his paycheck that he basically had no money for food or rent. The error took months to fully resolve, because why should they care about some deadbeat dad feeding himself?

They care about the moms a lot more. But there’s no pity for the dads. Given all the stories of horror, it’s amazing that so few of them go postal.

HEH: Bruce Jenner ‘just trolled the entire media,’ says, ‘Of course I’m a Republican.’

Related: ‘Tolerant’ Liberals Are VERY ANGRY Bruce Jenner Is A Republican!

CRAZY CHICK BECOMES WOMAN SCORNED, GETS ELEVATED TO FEMINIST HEROINE: Robby Soave: Student Falsely Accused of Rape By ‘Mattress Girl’ Sues Columbia U., Publishes Dozens of Damning Texts; Sulkowicz made life a living hell for Nungesser. Well, that’s certainly what it looks like.

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PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Breaking! Anti-Israel boycotters don’t like being boycotted! “After years of being a boycott punching bag, supporters of Israel are fighting back.”

OH, PLEASE. I MEAN, SURE, SHE’S PUT ON A LITTLE WEIGHT, BUT . . . ‘Hillary Thinks She Is Bigger Than God.’

JOURNALISM: NYT Refuses To Publish Pushback Letter From Cruz’s Debate Partner.

Rob Marks, the liberal who served as Sen. Ted Cruz’s college debate partner, is alleging that a recent New York Times article “greatly mischaracterizes” Mr. Cruz’s career as a Princeton debater, and “ignores the context of some of these debates.”

The Times has posted at least four articles on the subject, but has declined to publish Marks’ letter to the editor, now obtained by The Daily Caller. . . .

Cruz’s spokesman responded in the Times story, saying that “25-year-old alleged college campus recollection stories, based on anonymous hearsay and reported as ‘fact,’ shouldn’t be taken [seriously] at all. This is ridiculous.”

Hey, the Times is actually publishing bad news about Hillary. You can’t expect them to simultaneously publish things that benefit a Republican candidate.

UNRAVELING: Liberal Common Cause demands Clinton Foundation, Hillary audit.

The financial issues plaguing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign have become too much even for liberal groups, and now Common Cause is calling for an independent audit of donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Amid suggestions that foreign governments donated to the foundation in hopes of getting special treatment from President Obama’s State Department when Clinton was his top diplomat, the group on Friday said a “thorough review” is needed.

The Clintons’ spin yesterday — that this was all a dastardly “conservative” smear — is looking even weaker.