TWEET OF THE DAY: “Weird, all 3 Dem candidates keep talking about how things have gotten worse over past seven years. This seems newsworthy.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Homeland Security Adviser Mohamed Elibiary Goes on Hate-Filled Anti-Christian Rant, Attacks Jindal as ‘Bottom Feeder.’

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION:

How did Hastert happen to have enough money lying around that paying out $3.5 million was even within the realm of possibility?

Hastert’s ability to participate in the blackmail is, after all, itself a general indictment of D.C.’s “revolving door” money culture, in which former lawmakers move easily from government into lobbying.

Time for my revolving-door surtax.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Organizer of Phoenix Anti-Islam Rally Going Into Hiding, Says ‘Tyranny Is in America.’

VIDEO: My appearance on John Stossel’s show last night, talking about higher education.

IT’S HARD TO PICK A “FAVORITE,” SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY: Jonah Goldberg on “The Clintons’ favorite way to lie.”

There are no “new” Hillarys. There are, on occasion, new strategies to dupe people into thinking there is a new Hillary. But these Potemkin do-overs are usually as pale, thin, and see-through as the skin of an agoraphobic Goth computer programmer. The simple fact is: This is her. There is no other her. There is no other Bill, either, by the way. They are Clintons and they are eternal, Aesopian, unchanging. The tackiness and the lying, the parsing and corner-cutting, the entitlement and fakery: This is what they do. Scandals swirl around the Clintons like the cloud of dirt surrounding Pigpen not because the Clintons are the victims of their enemies, but because the Clintons are their own worst enemies. They do this to themselves. They create these problems. They are the authors of their own torment because this is who they are.

Yep–the Clintons are Potemkin villages all the way down.  Hard to believe anyone falls for their populist facades.

CHANGE: Women Are a Driving Force in Nation’s Shift from Gun Control to Gun Rights.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

KEEP YOUR GUNS HANDY: ISIS fighter who trained several times in counter-terrorism programs sponsored by the State Department makes a video declaring, “God willing, we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you.”  I suspect our “training” programs for counterterrorism are teeming with ISIS wannabes.

WE’RE GOING TO SEE MORE OF THIS: Passenger jet approaching LaGuardia has close call with drone.

THE END OF THE MASON JAR. Unless you’re canning. But yeah, as a drink-consumption item, it’s jumped the shark.

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CONNECTICUT SENATE PASSES “SAY YES” SEXUAL CONSENT BILL: The Connecticut legislature this week approved a bill that would require all colleges and universities in the State to a “yes means yes” policy for sexual consent by students.  Shockingly, the bill passed with only one vote against it, by Senator Joe Markley (R-Southington). What happened to the other 14 Republican Senators?  The bill now must obtain House approval. An oped in the Hartford Courant by a retired University of Connecticut social worker, Cynara Stites, points out the perversity of the bill:

According to Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, who spearheaded this bill, college students would be required to “say yes” or indicate nonverbally through “physical cues” that they are willing to have sex with another college student.

CHANGE: Aging nuns, their orders no longer able to provide care, get care at Jewish nursing home.

Rooney and 57 other sisters, ages 73 to 98, have since adjusted nicely to their new accommodations and neighbors, becoming an active part of classes and continuing their ministry with good deeds like holding the hands of dying patients on the hospice floor.

“This is home now,” said 83-year-old Sister Grace Henke. “When we first came, we were fish out of water.”

It’s an unusual situation that reflects a reality of the nation’s Catholic nuns in the 21st century: Fewer young women are devoting their lives to religious orders, and those who are already nuns are aging and facing escalating health care needs.

There are now more sisters over age 90 than under age 60, said Mary Gautier, a researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. The center’s 2009 study found that 80 percent of the nuns in the country were over 60.

“Their model of caring for their older sisters is no longer sustainable,” said Robin Eggert, president of the Realm consulting group, which has worked with several nuns’ orders to find solutions.

Of course, there’s a downside: “I miss the bacon.”

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: ‘Devious Defecator’ Case Tests Genetics Law. “Frustrated supervisors at a warehouse outside Atlanta were trying to figure out who was leaving piles of feces around the facility. They pulled aside two laborers whom they suspected. The men, fearing for their jobs, agreed to have the inside of their cheeks swabbed for a genetic analysis that would compare their DNA with that of the feces. Jack Lowe, a forklift operator, said word quickly spread and they became the objects of humiliating jokes. . . . The two men were cleared — their DNA was not a match. They kept their jobs but sued the company. On May 5, Judge Totenberg ruled in favor of the laborers and set a jury trial for June 17 to decide on damages. She determined that even though the DNA test did not reveal any medical information, it nonetheless fell under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA.” Seems questionable to me.

YOUNG PEOPLE WITH SKILLS AND DECENT-PAYING JOBS?:  This is the answer to the question posed by Rolling Stone’s Mike Konczal, who asks, “What’s left after higher education is dismantled?”  This answer is inconceivable to Konczal, who argues instead for more public funding of dysfunctional higher education:

[T]hese stories tell us what is likely to happen as the public university system weakens: nothing. No one will step in to fill this crucial role of providing quality, mass higher education. In the first case, resources will go to bidding wars over whose name will go on a fancy building – vanity projects perfect for this age of inequality that will do nothing to provide education. In the second case, resources are extracted out to shareholders and executives in imploding Ponzi schemes, leaving behind nothing but students with poor educations saddled up to their eyeballs in debt.

Mass higher education – starting with the land-grant schools in the Nineteenth Century, and continuing through the GI Bill and the mid-century expansion – has always been a public project. And we need to embrace it.

This is why the recent proposals to expand and solidify public free higher education are essential.

Exactly wrong. There’s nothing of particular “quality” at public universities–they are as full of progressive, dollar-driven non-education as anyplace else.  The fundamental problem is that there are far too many young people going to college in the first place. If they obtained skills that society actually needs–plumbing, electrician, HVAC, carpentry, mechanics–they would get good, decent-paying jobs very quickly, and they wouldn’t be saddled with debt and forced to work in unskilled jobs. Throwing more money at higher education is akin to giving heroin to an addict: it just enables their destructive behavior, and they’ll greedily take it.

YEAH, WELL, HOW I FEEL ABOUT THAT DEPENDS ON WHICH SCIENCE FICTION WE’RE TALKING ABOUT: Our Robotic Future Is Going To Look Like Science Fiction.

IF YOU CAN’T BAN IT, REGULATE THE HECK OUT OF IT:  Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has introduced the Firearm Risk Protection Act, which would require mandatory liability insurance for all gun owners; non-compliance would trigger a $10,000 fine.  It won’t go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress, but it is a reminder of what the Democrats would do if they could (and they would do much more).

VA WHISTLEBLOWER CALLS FOR SECRETARY’S RESIGNATION: The VA scandal continues.  A whistleblower at the Phoenix VA, Jared Kinnaman, has written a letters to the interim director of the Phoenix facility and the VA Secretary, Robert McDonald, asking for their resignation:

According to Kinnaman, one of the most egregious examples of dangerous behavior at Phoenix is understaffing in the emergency room. The leadership has long known of the problem, having been informed numerous times that this long-standing scenario is like a ticking time bomb that threatens the safety of veterans and their family members.

The Phoenix VA has maintained from the very start that the ER is staffed 24/7 by a licensed social worker. However, The Washington Times recently obtained an email chain indicating the VA is scrambling to fill all the scheduling gaps, essentially driving their employees to the breaking point. Even officials appeared shocked. According to the emails, the problem was copied to Grippen, the current director, but whether any practices changed as a result is unknown. . . .

The response to whistleblowers raising the issue with leadership, Kinnaman says, has included gag orders, character assassinations and illegal office searches. 

Not much has changed at the VA–except the media has lost interest and moved on. Obama’s solution was to throw more money at the VA, and Congress agreed, passing a “reform” measure about 9 months ago.  But as Michelle Malkin recently observed:

Obama condemned the “inexcusable conduct” at VA hospitals across the country (and under his own watch).

He vowed to “do right by all who served under our proud flag.” He promised America’s veterans new “reform,” “resources,” “timely care” and an end to the disgraceful disability backlog.

The bill he signed, in case you’d forgotten, included $10 billion in emergency funding to pay for veterans to go outside the chronically dysfunctional VA system if they are facing long wait times or live 40 miles or more from a VA facility, plus another $6.3 billion to set up 27 new clinics and hire doctors, nurses and other medical staff.

So, how’s it all working out? About as well as every other “success story” Obama has signed his name to: abysmally, ineffectually and incompetently.

Read the whole thing.

THE FAIRY TALE OF GRANDMA’S COOKING. “As I’ve noted before, in Europe and much of Asia, the idea that everyone was constantly enjoying meat and fresh produce, or any of those lovingly hand-produced foods that Grandma liked to stuff you with, is ahistorical. The reason those are cherished family recipes is that they were special. Daily diets for regular people, especially outside summer and fall, frequently consisted of a lot of dried and processed grains and/or beans, prepared with minimal seasoning. Spices were a luxury good, not something you despair of ever fitting into a single kitchen cabinet. . . . When Grandma got richer, she started feeding you the stuff that rich people ate Back in the Day, the stuff that was a nice treat for her peasant ancestors. And now we think that’s ‘real people food.’ Which it was — if your ‘real people’ happened to be unusually prosperous or living in a place where it was Christmas every day.”

POPE NANCY: Nancy Pelosi paints Marco Rubio as a bad Catholic.  His “sin”? Supporting traditional marriage.

AS A MAN WITH A CYBORG WIFE, I AGREE: The Importance Of Protecting Bionic Bodies From Hacking.

NOW THAT IS LOVE:  A man rigs up an underwater “wheelchair” (more like a hoist, really) to keep his ailing goldfish upright. He definitely gets points for creativity.

IF HE’D BEEN A CHILD MOLESTER, HE’D HAVE GOTTEN LESS TIME. IF HE’D BEEN AL SHARPTON, HE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN PROSECUTED. Sunk: How Ross Ulbricht Ended Up In Prison for Life.

DROPOUTS: All 5 women given a second chance to complete Army Ranger School have dropped out.  The remainder of the class–195 men–will move on to the next phase.  Three of the women, plus two male candidates, were given the opportunity to try again with the next class, which begins June 21.

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