IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Tea party groups win Round 1 in court as federal judge demands IRS’s list of all 298 conservative nonprofits it targeted. “The decision from U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott means right-wing groups are a step closer to being allowed to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the IRS. The agency has admitted playing political favorites with the tax code beginning in 2010, when it began applying extra scrutiny to groups with red-flag words like ‘patriots’ or ‘tea party’ in their names. While those organizations’ applications were held up for years, liberal groups sailed through the process.”

Perhaps the Congress could award them compensation via legislation.

HE HAS MORE TO SAY, TOO: It’s cheaper to get Matthew McConaughey to speak at your college than Hillary Clinton.

FREE SPEECH WINS: After Outcry, Buffalo State Student Government Quickly Reverses Freeze of Newspaper’s Funding.

According to The Record, USG’s Executive Vice President initially emailed the newspaper on Wednesday, alerting its staff that its “budget has been frozen.” What’s more, the student government informed The Record that all copies of the April Fool’s Day issue, titled The Wreckard, had to be “removed from campus” by Thursday at 5:00 p.m. The Vice President explained this decision by writing, “It has come to our attention from many students and faculty members that some of the topics discussed in the ‘Wreckard’ satire addition [sic] were offensive to members of Buffalo State and the surrounding community.”

As my colleague Sarah McLaughlin reminded readers yesterday, expression by students at public universities does not lose its First Amendment protection merely because it is controversial or deemed offensive. USG didn’t specify which articles were supposedly worthy of censorship. But FIRE sees nothing in the issue that falls into one of the few, narrowly defined categories of unprotected speech, like incitement to imminent lawless action and obscenity (or anything that comes even remotely close, for that matter).

Very glad that FIRE is on the job.

IN THE BROWN DAILY HERALD, A VOICE OF STUDENT SANITY: Playing it safe — too safe.

At the 1962 Yale commencement, President John F. Kennedy said, “Too often … we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” He could have spoken those words with equal accuracy today. Many students seem to avoid engaging at all costs with ideas that scare them.

You have a right to be safe on campus. The creators of safe spaces usually have good intentions. If students actually have a panic attack during a lecture given by a controversial figure, they should have a safe place in which they could recuperate — I imagine a dorm room would probably suffice. Puppies and Play-Doh seem a little infantile to me, but I understand the intention. No one should be harmed by an educational event, but since we can generally avoid lectures, talks or screenings with which we disagree, I have trouble understanding why students would attend an event knowing it would harm them.

The problem arises when the idea of “a right to be safe” is extended to “a right to be comfortable” — and demanded. I found an example of this overreach in an online piece from Bluestockings Magazine entitled “Geographies of Safety: Mapping Safe Spaces for Students of Color at Brown University.” On Google Maps, the author, Aanchal Saraf ’16, purported to show a map of safe and unsafe spaces at Brown for students of color. Green indicated “safe,” while red marked places that she deemed were “unsafe.” And each marker had comments submitted by students specifying the reasoning behind a particular delineation.

I found a few I considered utterly ridiculous. Graduate Center was marked unsafe because it was “dingy.” Plantations House was considered unsafe because it has mice. New Dorm and Young Orchard are unsafe because “rich/international people live there.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of these markers. The author abused the rationale of safe spaces. Even the Nelson Fitness Center and the president’s house were marked as unsafe — the commentators felt a “fear of physical violence” in those buildings. I’m sorry, but unless you’re benching without a spotter, you’re probably safe in the Nelson. And I can say from personal experience that President Paxson’s P’19 dogs don’t bite.

It’s worth remembering that, although it may seem that college students have all gone crazy, it’s actually a small number of “activists,” in cahoots with “Student Life” administrator types, who are making all the noise. Ignore the activists, and fire the administrators, and colleges would be much better places.

PROPAGANDA: The DeBoer Tendency: How Progressives Belittle Violence Against Jews; The five stages of anti-Semitism denial, as it relates to racism and the concept of ‘privilege.’

BECAUSE I’VE GROWN CYNICAL, I ASSUME THAT DUKE’S CONCERN FOR PRIVACY MEANS THE STUDENT ISN’T A WHITE FRATERNITY MEMBER: Duke Student Admitted To Hanging Noose In Tree, Duke Won’t Release Any Information. “School officials believe federal education laws protecting information about students and their grades prevent the school from describing the culprit’s gender, race or whether the student had been in trouble in the past, Schoenfeld said.”

Uh huh. Plus this: “He said state and federal law enforcement officials are also considering whether the student should face criminal charges.” What crime, exactly, would be involved here?

ACE: Kill Your TV and Save Your Life. Well, mine currently doesn’t work, so there.

“LIKE YESTERDAY’S TRASH:” ACLU LAYS OFF 7 PERCENT OF ITS EMPLOYEES. “The very organization entrusted with protecting civil liberties didn’t even respect the civil rights of its own employees.”

What I hear is that they’ve moved too far left, too fast, and it’s hurt their donations.

UPDATE: From the comments:

A few years back I sent them some money. And of course, they used it to send me mail asking for more money.

Their pitch in those letters was about how horrid the Republicans were, how they had to fight these GOP fascists at every turn, how judges like Thomas and Scalia were against the Bill of Rights (!), and ever darn thing possible, just short of saying “VOTE DEMOCRAT!”

Then I started donating to IJ (http://www.ij.org) instead.

IJ is a good outfit.

CONDEMNING IS GOOD. BUT WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? Pope Francis decries persecution of Christians.

NICE TO SEE THAT MY INFLUENCE EXTENDS TO THE YORKSHIRE POST:

Prince Charles delivered another of his finger-wagging lectures last week instructing people to switch off all their lights and sit in the dark in order to save the planet from global warming.

A few days later he made the 80-mile journey from his home to Ascot racecourse by private helicopter – burning 200 gallons of aviation fuel and releasing 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Matthew Hancock was in Aberdeen to sign a new climate change deal with the Mexican president – before chartering a private jet for the trip back to London, despite there being 16 scheduled flights for the same journey available that day.

To quote American blogger Glenn Reynolds: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

Yep. And they’re not.

ED DRISCOLL: The Rise of the Megalothymiamanical Memories Pizza Truthers.

Related: Indiana pizzeria owners go underground as donations near $1 million. You know, the left’s freeze-and-destroy Alinsky tactics work less well when the “frozen” target winds up a millionaire. I mean, you’re supposed to be afraid to be their next target, right?

UPDATE: Conor Friedersdorf: Should Mom-and-Pops That Forgo Gay Weddings Be Destroyed? The attack on Memories Pizza and its implications.

The owners of Memories Pizza are, I think, mistaken in what their Christian faith demands of them. And I believe their position on gay marriage to be wrongheaded. But I also believe that the position I’ll gladly serve any gay customers but I feel my faith compels me to refrain from catering a gay wedding is less hateful or intolerant than let’s go burn that family’s business to the ground.

And I believe that the subset of the gay-rights movement intent on destroying their business and livelihood has done more harm than good here—that they’ve shifted their focus from championing historic advances for justice to perpetrating small injustices against marginal folks on the other side of the culture war. . . .

Is there a financial loss at which social pressure goes from appropriate to too much? How about putting them out of business? Digital mobs insulting them and their children? Email and phone threats from anonymous Internet users? If you think that any of those go too far have you spoken up against the people using those tactics?

(If not, is it because you’re afraid they might turn on you?)

A relatively big digital mob has been attacking this powerless family in rural Indiana,** but I don’t get the sense that its participants have reflected on or even thought of these questions. I don’t think they recognize how ugly, intolerant and extreme their actions appear or the effect they’ll have on Americans beyond the mainstream media, or that their vitriolic shaming these people has ultimately made them into martyrs. I fear that a backlash against their tactics will weaken support for the better angels of the gay rights movement at a time when more progress needs to be made, and that they’re turning traditionalists into a fearful, alienated minority with a posture of defensiveness that closes them off to persuasion.

And that’s a shame.

The religious impulse to shy away from even the most tangential interaction with gay weddings can be met with extremely powerful and persuasive counterarguments so long as we’re operating in the realm of reason rather than coercion–so long as we’re more interested in persuading than shaming or claiming scalps.

The thing is, there are a lot of people for whom the primary appeal of “social justice” is an opportunity to shame and claim scalps. They are not good people who are misguided or overzealous. They are bad, awful people who are parasites on social movements — parasites that, if not controlled, will destroy their host.

Related: How should we punish grandma and grandpa for opposing gay marriage? Be careful. Grandma and Grandpa may not care what you think of them, or have much to lose.

RASMUSSEN POLL: America Is Still A Strongly Christian Nation. I wonder if it will become more, rather than less, that way? I was talking the other day to a fellow academic who said that he’s always been a near-agnostic Christmas-and-Easter kind of guy, but that lately, he’s feeling stirrings of actual Christianity in response to Boko Haram, etc. Could the pressures we’re seeing today convert unobservant cultural Christians into active believers?

BUY GUNS: Europe: An Unsafe Place For Jews? How will Europe respond to the rise and spread of a new anti-Semitism?

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WELL, THIS DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: Florida State Fraternity Brothers Help Stop Assault On Female Student.

The legal system failed us when it released 24-year-old Patrick Furman onto the streets of Tallahassee, Florida. He was fresh off of five years in lockup after being convicted of aggravated battery with intended harm and escaping a treatment program. Only three days after he was released from Gadsden County Prison, he found himself back in cuffs in the custody of the Florida State University Police Department.

Yesterday, just after midnight, Furman approached a young woman from behind and began grabbing her chest and attempted to pull her away with him. As the victim struggled, several Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brothers were walking near the Oglesby Student Union when they unknowingly walked into a crime in progress. That’s when he released the victim, and the fraternity brothers gave chase.

He was caught, and charged with felony kidnapping and aggravated assault.

AIRBRUSHING: TopGear.com erases Clarkson, Hammond and May’s faces: In the wake of Jeremy Clarkson’s firing by the BBC, TopGear.com has scrubbed all three hosts’ faces from its top banner.

WIRED: Back To Basics With The New Porsche Boxster.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: So in the comments to this piece on me and Virginia Postrel talking about liberal arts, someone posts W.H. Auden’s syllabus from 1941. Yeah, most liberal arts courses aren’t as rigorous as that.

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How to negotiate a better financial aid package.

Plus, I’m not sure that this is true any more: “He added that even when a college will review the financial aid offer from another college, they never get into bidding wars for students.” But to the extent it is, isn’t it an antitrust violation?

SCIENCE TAKES A BOLD STAND: Mothers Who Eat a Newborn’s Placenta May or May Not Benefit. “Proponents of the practice say it can help relieve postpartum depression, but there are no data to back their assertions.” Well, okay then.

IT’S SAD THAT THIS KIND OF THING IS NEWS: U. of Maryland’s President Loh Responds to Offensive Email, Remembers First Amendment.

Public college presidents are sometimes faced with pressure to expel or otherwise punish students expressing controversial or offensive opinions, even if the speech is unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. The University of Oklahoma’s (OU’s) President David Boren and the University of Maryland’s (UMD’s) President Wallace Loh both faced this pressure recently.

On March 10, Boren, ignoring due process and the First Amendment rights he is bound to uphold, chose to expel two students who were among those filmed singing a racist fraternity chant. Boren’s eagerness to oppose racism is understandable, but his willingness to disregard students’ rights in the process is not.

Loh recently faced a similar situation when a racist and sexist email sent from a student and Kappa Sigma fraternity member at UMD was uncovered. Yesterday, Loh emailed his campus regarding the outcome of UMD’s investigation into the email. Loh, succeeding where Boren failed, spoke out against the email and attested to the harm it caused to the campus community, but recognized that the speech was protected by the First Amendment and thus did not seek to punish the student responsible for it. . . .

Loh recognized that the student’s speech was constitutionally protected and could not be penalized at a public university. He also reaffirmed UMD’s role as a place where offensive speech is countered with more speech, not punished.

But, alas, this kind of thing is newsworthy today.

TRADE IN YOUR USED BOOKS AND OLD VIDEOGAMES at the Amazon Trade-In Store.

STAY TUNED: Inexpensive Electric Cars May Arrive Sooner Than You Think.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: 2 men accused of bomb plot during Ferguson protests indicted. “Brandon Orlando Baldwin, 22, and Olajuwon Davis, 22 were indicted on charges involving the conspiracy to maliciously damage and destroy a building, vehicle and other property with explosives and the illegal purchase of firearms from a Cabela’s store. The indictment stated that Baldwin stated that he wanted multiple bombs to use against people, buildings, vehicles and property.”