THE SCIENCE OF Itching. “Why is it that watching someone else’s finger being hit with a hammer will usually not make us withdraw our own fingers, but watching someone scratch will make us feel itchy and cause us to scratch as well? The best guess is as follows: Through most of our human history, we have been routinely exposed to disease- and toxin-bearing parasites. In situations where these occur, if you notice that the person next to you is scratching, there is a good reason to believe you are also being exposed to the same dangerous insect, worm, etc., and it’s therefore adaptive for you to feel itchy and scratch in order to reduce your own chance of harm. Pain, in contrast, is weakly social contagious, because the cause of most pain is not generally spread from person to person.”

A LIFESTYLE SO GOOD, IT’S MANDATORY: “California has effectively decriminalized marijuana (possession of less than an ounce is a civil matter roughly equivalent to a speeding ticket — a rarely written speeding ticket), and the state has a medical (ahem) marijuana program that is, for the moment, largely unregulated. At the same time, the state is launching a progressive jihad against ‘vaping,’ the use of so-called e-cigarettes that deliver nicotine in the form of vapor. . . . If that seems inconsistent to you, you are thinking about it the wrong way: For all of its scientific pretensions and empirical posturing, progressivism is not about evidence, and at its heart it is not even about public policy at all: It is about aesthetics. The goal of progressivism is not to make the world rational; it’s to make the world Portland.”

LONGTIME GAMING SITE JOYSTIQ POISED TO BITE THE DUST. “Joystiq‘s position on major ethical issues in recent years mean it will not be missed by many readers.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: SCHOOL CHOICE MOVEMENT SHOWING REMARKABLE GROWTH.

WHILE I WAS OUT RUNNING ERRANDS AND AT THE GYM, Mitt Romney Announced He Won’t Run. I hope, however, that he’ll keep taking shots at Obama, Hillary, et al. Meanwhile, does this mean that my prediction about a “head fake” toward the presidency was right? Stay tuned.

HEY, WHEN HE’S RIGHT, HE’S RIGHT: Joe Biden: ‘The Past Six Years Have Been Really, Really Hard For This Country.’

A “FOUR DOOR CORVETTE?” The 2016 Cadillac CTS-V.

JOHN FUND: The Scandals At Justice: Did Justice “steamroll the truth” in attempt to extort a settlement?

HOW LICENSE PLATE READERS ARE being abused by law enforcement.

I had a Popular Mechanics column on that a while back.

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: What Liberty Looks Like: Stories of Freedom. “If America is not evil, then the Left is out of business.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 631.

JONI ERNST AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS: When Bread Bags Weren’t Funny.

Last week, in her State of the Union response, Joni Ernst mentioned going to school with bread bags on her feet to protect her shoes. These sorts of remembrances of poor but honest childhoods used to be a staple among politicians — that’s why you’ve heard so much about Abe Lincoln’s beginnings in a log cabin. But the bread bags triggered a lot of hilarity on Twitter, which in turn triggered this powerful meditation from Peggy Noonan on how rich we have become. So rich that we have forgotten things that are well within living memory. . . .

I am a few years younger than Noonan, but I grew up in a very different world — one where a number of my grammar school classmates were living in public housing or on food stamps, but everyone had more than one pair of shoes. In rural areas, like the one where Joni Ernst grew up, this lingered longer. But all along, Americans got richer and things got cheaper — especially when global markets opened up. Payless will sell you a pair of child’s shoes for $15, which is two hours of work even at minimum wage.

Perhaps that sounds like a lot to you — two whole hours! But I’ve been researching historical American living standards for a project I’m working on, and if you’re familiar with what Americans used to spend on things, this sounds like a very good deal. . . . Your average middle-class person was, by the standards of today, dead broke and living in abject misery. And don’t tell me that things used to be cheaper back then, because I’m not talking about their cash income or how much money they had stuffed under the mattress. I’m talking about how much they could consume. And the answer is “a lot less of everything”: food, clothes, entertainment. That’s even before we talk about the things that hadn’t yet been invented, such as antibiotics and central heating.

Now some people — mostly billionaires, or at least Hollywood millionaires — say we should get by with less.

Plus:

In every generation, we forget how much poorer we used to be, and then we forget that we have forgotten. We focus on the things that seem funny or monstrous or quaint and darling. Somehow the simplest and most important fact — the immense differences between their living standards and ours — slides right past our eye. And when Ernst tried to remind us, people didn’t say “Wow, we’ve really come a long way”; they pointed and laughed.

Well, that’s just because she’s a Republican woman.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANTS! Bedford reprimands students for tweets critical of superintendent for not cancelling school Wednesday. “On Wednesday, the Union Leader received an anonymous tip that four Bedford High students had been suspended for inappropriate responses to McGee’s tweet. On Thursday, neither McGee nor Principal Bill Hagen would confirm that students had been suspended, citing privacy issues.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): 23-year-old NEISD teacher arrested, charged with sexual relationship with student.

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POLITICO: Exclusive: Hillary Clinton may delay campaign: Top Democrats give a new date for the campaign’s likely start. Love the photo. A cynic would say that Hillary isn’t running — perhaps her health isn’t up to even a fake campaign — but that they want to keep the possibility alive as long as possible to maximize speaking revenues and political leverage. Or they may have just found out that she polls best when she’s out of the public eye. . . .

UPDATE: Related thoughts on Romney: “As for bulling through the GOP field and still having what it takes to fight the well-rested and untested wife of the ex-President who only ever won an election in New York state and served a rather lackluster term as Secretary of State, I think he’s up for that fight.”

Related: Hillary’s Poll Numbers Are Collapsing. They’re already warming Elizabeth Warren up in the bullpen.

SEE, THAT’S WHY I’M ONLY USING UBER: Former Beltway Cabbie Added to Most Wanted Terrorists List.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hillary Clinton Faces Scrutiny for Use of Private Jets. “Hillary Clinton took more than 200 privately chartered flights at taxpayer expense during her eight years in the U.S. Senate, sometimes using the jets of corporations and major campaign donors as she racked up $225,756 in flight costs.”