CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Shooting Instructor Receives Apology for NRA Cap Incident at Polling Place. “A Georgia man who was instructed to remove his NRA Instructor cap before being allowed to participate in early voting at a Douglas County polling place in October 2014 has agreed to drop his lawsuit against elections officials and has subsequently received a written apology for the incident. A press released issued by Southeastern Legal Foundation earlier this month reports that a settlement has been reached, including an apology, in the case of Bundy Cobb. In addition, the Douglas County Board of Elections and Registration (BOER) agreed to officially clarify its policy regarding what constitutes illegal campaigning at a polling place.”

SPACE: First Pluto data reveals lots of terrain that is “not easy to explain.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Airless Tires Roll Towards Consumer Vehicles. I mean, tires are so good now that flats are very rare. But still. . . .

HMM: Once Again, Elizabeth Warren Attacks Citigroup (Hillary Clinton’s Largest Source of Campaign Donations).

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 800.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Scott Walker Inquiry Shows the Danger of Secrecy.

In 2010, Wisconsin convened a “John Doe” investigation into the misuse of funds in the Milwaukee county executive’s office. In the state, a judge can allow prosecutors to carry out a John Doe investigation, requiring secrecy from everyone involved. Stuart Taylor explains: “This ‘gag order’ provision, almost unique in American law, effectively disables targets or witnesses from publicly defending themselves or responding to damaging leaks.” In 2012, this somehow spawned a second John Doe probe of Wisconsin conservative groups, who were accused of illegally coordinating with Governor Scott Walker’s campaign, as he tried to hold his office during the recall election.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has finally ended that investigation, which has been stalled for many long months as its targets sued their way through the courts. The ruling mostly relied on technical legal questions: Was the campaign finance statute upon which prosecutors relied unconstitutionally vague? (Yes.) Did Judge Gregory Peterson, the second judge to supervise this investigation, step outside of his remit when he quashed subpoenas and effectively ended the investigation? (No.) Did the judges and prosecutor act wrongly when they accepted their jobs running this investigation? (Also, no.)

But the summation is brutal. It seems clear that the Wisconsin Supreme Court would like to make a broader ruling targeting the behavior of the prosecutors (which you can read about here), and the court’s decision fires a few well-placed shots in that direction. . . .

I found myself nodding along at every word. This investigation never should have taken place. This would be true if conservatives are correct that the investigation’s amoeboid spread and pattern of selective leaks indicate a politically motivated prosecutor doing his best to take down a controversial Republican governor. It would still be true if we are looking at merely one more instance where a special prosecutor roamed out of control, dizzy with a superheroic mandate to hunt down all malefactors wherever they might be found. Either way, the fundamental problem is the same: Government power gone wildly beyond the limits of common sense.

This was a politicized effort by corrupt prosecutors to kill the political opposition for political reasons. For this abuse of power they should wind up broke, disbarred, and in jail.

ONE YEAR LATER: Dan Markel Deserves Justice.

GAWKER STAFF SMEARS FECES ON ITSELF, BOARDS A SCHOOLBUS LOADED WITH GASOLINE AND NAPALM, THEN INTENTIONALLY DRIVES THAT SCHOOLBUS INTO A CARGO TRAIN TRANSPORTING TOXIC WASTE AND RETARDED CLOWNS: Heh, indeed.™ Though once you get beyond the headline written in his patented inimitable style, Ace’s post contains a good concise rundown on what actually transpired, if you’re coming in cold to this disgusting train wreck of a story.

RELATED: “Weeks before the gossip outlet took down a reprehensible article amid outcry,” Gawker publisher Nick Denton seemed to suggest to Michael Wolff of the Hollywood Reporter, via an email “apologizing for a personal attack [on Wolff and his pregnant girlfriend] that there is a lack of responsibility for the consequences of the site’s content in the new age of after-the-fact mea culpas.”

Or to put it another way:

https://twitter.com/SonnyBunch/status/622168889892454400

TED CRUZ: Chattanooga Shooting Shows Need for Immigration Overhaul, Arming Military on Bases.

“We need to see with clarity what has happened,” Cruz said. “We can immediately call for Congressional hearings on the need for our enlisted men and women to have the right to be armed in military facilities.” What’s more, Cruz said, the shooting illustrated the need to tighten immigration laws. According to CNN, Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait and had citizenship in Jordan, but had become a naturalized U.S. citizen. In response, Cruz said, Congress should “pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act that would allow our government to stop Americans who travel overseas to train with terrorist groups from coming back to attack us at home. We can thoroughly overhaul our broken immigration system that is allowing this type of individual to gain citizenship.”

Related: Rand Paul on Tennessee Terror: Restrict Immigration from Muslim Nations.

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YA THINK? American Voters See Obama as Too Weak Against Iran, Islamic State, Poll Shows.

WASHINGTON POST: Admirably intended, this D.C. bill on campus sex assault is deeply flawed. I don’t think you should give the proponents credit for good intentions. They’re basically sexual Stalinists.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE EDITION: 22-year-old college student blows her $90,000 college fund and blames her parents: “Maybe they should have taught me to budget or something.”

MEDIA STUNNED AFTER LEARNING WHO ORGANIZED CONFEDERATE FLAG “WELCOME” FOR OBAMA.

ASHE SCHOW: Lessons from the California court ruling campus sex assault hearing ‘unfair.’

The California ruling will most certainly be cited by lawyers for accused students in the future because it was the first time that a judge has declared that the process used to find a student responsible was “unfair.” Pressman ruled that the accused student wasn’t able to defend himself through meaningful cross-examination, as the questions he wanted to ask had to be approved by the hearing chair. Most of the accused students weren’t asked, even those dealing with relevant information like how the accuser acted after the alleged rape. When a question was asked, the accused student was given no opportunity to follow-up.

It is an issue that is prevalent across the U.S. when it comes to campus sexual assault hearings. Accused students are afforded extremely limited due process rights. This makes a mockery of the justice system. Students must pay for their own lawyers – if they’re even allowed to have one. The lawyer, if allowed to be present, cannot speak on the student’s behalf. Witnesses and evidence are disallowed on the whims of hearing panels set up by the university’s Title IX office, which is supposed to act as a victim’s advocate. Guilt, it seems, is assumed from the start.

So yes, Pressman’s ruling will be used to guide further discussion of campus sexual assault adjudication, as it should be. Colleges and universities need to read his ruling and see how fundamentally unfair it is to eviscerate due process for the purposes of appeasing political interests.

Indeed they do.

ARTHUR LAFFER: TAX AND TARIFF HIKES CRUSHED 1930s AMERICA.

As a UCLA press release noted back in 2004, “FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years,” which is why back in 2010, diehard Keynesian* Paul Krugman was praising the economic “miracle of the 1940s” — also known as a little thing the rest of us like to call World War II.

* Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve overheard vicious rumors that Obama is a Keynesian himself…

WHICH IS NICE: Donald Sensing: But Iran is tamed, so we got that going for us.

NEWSWEEK: IS DONALD TRUMP A NATIONAL SOCIALIST?

Huh. According to Newsweek, isn’t everyone these days?

Seriously though, I’d say Obama’s more of a corporatist myself, but that’s just splitting hairs (no matter how thick and luxurious, albeit man-made and strangely coiffed they may be).

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Open-carry advocate sues U. of Michigan over gun ban.

WELL, GIVEN THAT TERRORISTS HAVE SPECIFICALLY AND PUBLICLY TARGETED MILITARY INSTALLATIONS IN THE U.S., THAT MAKES SENSE: Senate Republican will roll out bill to arm troops at military facilities.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law School Scholarships Foist Surtax On The Neediest Students: Students with less-educated parents and lower LSAT scores accrue the most debt.

“THE LAST DECADE COULD BE DESCRIBED AS THE COMEBACK OF SOCIALISM,” Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation writes:

Wall Street is acting as though more government intervention will calm financial markets, when it is excessive intervention of government that created the crisis in the first place. Greece is socialism on steroids — a place where the government gives a lot of things away for free, few people work, and millions receive government pensions, paychecks or welfare benefits. Fifty percent of young people don’t have a job and over half of Greeks retire before age 60. The wagon is full and no one is left to pull it. Now Greece thinks that the Germans or the, EU, the IMF or the United States is going to pay for it all. The crash is coming very soon and the standard of living in Greece will surely plummet. Thank you, socialism.

But there are so many more dominoes that could come crashing down. Almost all of Europe is a financial sink hole. The debts as a share of gross domestic product are 100 percent or more and the public spending as a share of GDP is now just shy of 50 percent.

Pundits on the left such as Paul Krugman can only lamely respond to the European meltdown by arguing that there is “too much austerity” even as debt loads keeps rising every year. The one nation in Europe that didn’t use massive Keynesian stimulus, Germany, is the one place where the economy is still functioning.

We shouldn’t discount two subsets of socialism – corporatism and the Gleichschaltung. And speaking of both of them, back in October of 2008, Jeff Dobbs morphed Goldman Sachs’ and Obama’s logo together, which Glenn has run numerous times over the last several years to highlight Obama’s cozy relationship with Wall Street in general, and that brokerage firm specifically. Dobbs has updated his Photoshop with a new version:

Let’s hope it won’t be getting a regular workout after November of 2016.

RELATED: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. made hundreds of partners rich when it went public in 1999. Its performance since then has turned Lloyd Blankfein into a billionaire.” It helps to have friends in high places.

INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT: How the U.S. Just Knee-Capped the ‘Gig Economy.’

MIKE GLENN: Will slain Marines mean an end to DoD’s gun ban?