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.”

BYRON YORK: Public opinion left out of picture in Obama immigration drive.

Gallup recently asked adults around the country a very simple question about immigration: Are you satisfied, or dissatisfied, with the level of immigration into the United States today? Are too many immigrants coming? Too few? Or is the number just about right?

Before giving the results, it’s important to note what that number is. The U.S. awards legal permanent resident status — a green card, which means lifetime residency plus the option of citizenship — to about one million people per year, a rate Sen. Marco Rubio calls “the most generous” on earth. In addition, the government hands out more than a half-million student and exchange visas each year, tens of thousands of refugee admissions, and about 700,000 visas to temporary workers and their families. The percentage of foreign born in the U.S. population is heading toward levels not seen since the period of 1890 to 1910.

So is that too much, or too little? Gallup found that 47 percent of Americans believe the level of immigration should stay where it is. Thirty-nine percent want to see it decreased. And just seven percent want it increased. (The remaining seven percent said they don’t know.)

Put another way, 86 percent of Americans would like immigration into this country to remain at today’s level or to decrease, versus seven percent who want to see it increase.

Obama doesn’t care about public opinion, since he’s constructing an all-new public more in line with his own views.

ROLL CALL: GOP Senators Seek to Put Focus Back on VA Scandal.

A group of Republican senators hopes to return attention to accountability issues at the Veterans’ Affairs Department that have disappeared from the headlines.

“The television cameras may have turned their focus elsewhere, but we will not,” Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran said in a statement Thursday announcing he’s spearheading the Senate companion to a bill designed to give more power to the VA secretary to discipline senior executives engaged in improper practices.

“Despite the passage of the Choice Act last year, the VA is still not doing enough to hold those responsible accountable for their corrupt behavior when treating our nation’s veterans,” Moran said, calling for dismantling of a “system that rewards mediocrity and failure.”

He’s joined on the effort by Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida, according to an advance release obtained by CQ Roll Call. McCain has consistently said that more needs to be done in the aftermath of the scandal that originated out of the VA hospital in Phoenix.

Among the changes, the bill would allow for senior employees to face reductions in their pensions after relevant criminal convictions, and an overhaul of the way the VA handles performance evaluations.

Reductions in their pensions after criminal convictions?

UNIVERSITIES REALLY NEED TO GET OUT OF THE SEXUAL-ASSAULT BUSINESS: All charges dismissed against 5 William Paterson students in sex assault case.

Ron Ricci, an attorney for Latimer, said the case was presented to a grand jury on Monday, and the panel declined to indict after a one-day presentation.

“The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office conducted a thorough investigation, and they presented the case honestly to a grand jury on Monday. The grand jury declined to indict all the defendants,” Ricci said.

“I am not going to get into the specifics, just that the facts demonstrated that this was not a sexual assault, and the actions of those young men were not in violation of the law. It clearly wasn’t a crime,” he said.

Ricci said all the defense attorneys had provided evidence to prosecutors “that this was not a sexual assault.”

The outcome “just proves that schools and deans should be careful before they make comments that boys are guilty of sexual assault,” Ricci said. “These boys were not suspended; they were expelled. They never got a hearing in front of the school, and there were damaging statements made by school officials.

“It was outrageous that these young men had to go through the publicity they had to go through. My client’s family is extremely disappointed by how the investigation was handled by William Paterson University and its police department.”

In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, Kathleen Waldron, the president of William Paterson University, said, “We respect the decision reached through this legal process. The University has its own student conduct process that is independent of the state’s legal proceedings and the University process will continue.

You know, this kind of thing could easily create a hostile educational environment where male students are discouraged from learning.

I’D MAKE HIM WEAR OUT THAT VETO PEN: Senate votes to build Keystone, defying veto threat from Obama.

The Senate on Thursday voted 62-36 to build the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, delivering Republicans the first legislative victory of their new majority.

Nine Democrats joined with Republicans in voting to approve the $8 billion project, five votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a promised veto from President Obama.

As somebody said on Twitter, I’m sure that Mary Landrieu is happy this thing finally passed.

WELL, HE’S A MOCKER: Obama mocks Mitt Romney’s poverty pitch. But Obama must love poor people. Look how many more of them he’s created.

UPDATE: Romney punches back.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Vancouver teacher accused of raping student released from jail. “An Evergreen High School teacher accused of raping a 15-year-old student appeared in court Wednesday and then posted bail hours later. According to state prosecutors, Stephanie McCrea manipulated the boy during their nearly two-month relationship, threatened to kill herself and then attempted suicide two weeks ago. In court, McCrea stood stoic and said very little, often looking down at the ground as the judge spoke. She faces several charges, including four counts of child rape, sexual misconduct with a minor and tampering with a witness. . . . A judge on Wednesday set McCrea”s bail at $40,000 and ordered her not to have any contact with minors, except for her 9-year-old son. She was also prohibited from using any type of electronic communication device. She posted bail and was released from the Clark County jail just before 4:30 p.m., refusing to talk to reporters as she walked out.”

I wonder if a male teacher would have gotten such light bail.