HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bernie Sanders is Wrong: College Is Not A Right.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 729.

MICKEY KAUS: Team Hillary Knows It’s Pandering. “It’s worth noting because it suggests: a) Activists care more about work permits than citizenship, which gives the lie to the central conceit of the Gang of 8 bill (which assumes illegals want citizenship so much that their advocates would never block enforcement measures, even after they have work permits, if it might prevent them from becoming full citizens); and b) Hillary is wary of voter antipathy to executive amnesty, so when talking to a general audience she stresses a contrast with Republicans on a legislative issue (citizenship). That’s all the triangulation we’re going to get, apparently.”

MY PROBLEM WITH THIS ANALYSIS IS THAT I DON’T THINK OUR POLITICS IS ACTUALLY CLEANER THAN IT USED TO BE:

We shouldn’t try to get corruption to zero because fighting corruption is costly. Think, for example, of government contracting, which mindlessly awards contracts to the low bidder, as if quality and reliability were irrelevant considerations. This sloppiness inevitably adds time and costs. Or the various requirements we impose on civil service workers to make sure that not one of them enjoys so much as a stray sandwich on the taxpayer dime … and thereby ensure that normal business practices, like sitting down for an inexpensive group meal to discuss something, are almost comically difficult to arrange. All these procedural rules make government less effective and more costly. My father, who was the head of a trade association for contractors on heavy infrastructure projects, estimates that adding federal money to a project adds about five years to its completion date.

There’s even more reason not to strive for zero corruption: Politics is the art of getting widely disparate factions to come to some sort of policy agreement, and “clean graft” greases those wheels. Now, calm down — I’m not advocating that we move to a full-on kleptocracy like Russia. What I’m suggesting is in attempting to root every last vestige of pork and patronage out of the system, we have inadvertently produced the partisan gridlock that we now decry. Anyone who thinks that this is a crazy statement should read Jonathan Rauch’s terrific new e-book, “Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy.” At a trim 55 pages, it is a fast read, and at $0, it is the bargain of the century.

Among other insights, Rauch divides politics into two groups: amateurs and professionals. The amateurs are the high-minded folks we all admire, who pursue a single issue, or a narrow set of them, with purist zeal. The professionals are the ones we despise: party men and women who are primarily focused on winning elections and making deals so that they can win more elections. It’s a grubby business, this professional politics. But as Rauch points out, it’s also necessary to actually get things done. Left to their own devices, the activists will pursue total war rather than an unsatisfactory armistice, and the rest of us will be left to wander through the barren landscape they’ve shelled to pieces.

For a little more than a century, the amateurs have also been waging war on professional politics, with increasing success. Many of these successes, like the professional civil service, were good things. But fighting corruption offers decreasing returns. The more recent victories had high costs, and less certain benefits — or even a net cost.

Actually, I think the “professional” civil service is looking awfully corrupt today, itself.

EUGENE VOLOKH: No, there’s no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment.

I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.

To be sure, there are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment. But those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with “hate speech” in any conventionally used sense of the term.

“Hate speech” is a made-up term used to justify censorship. It’s an un-American idea, used by anti-American people. It’s a marker for fascism.

Related: Council on Islamic-American Relations Dallas chapter head wants discussion about restricting speech. Of course they do. CAIR is an anti-American organization.

AUSTIN BAY: Remembering Okinawa. “All told, Okinawa killed 12,500 Americans and wounded approximately 50,000. It was the U.S. Navy’s biggest killer, with 4,907 sailor deaths and 4,874 wounded. Japan lost an estimated 75,000 military dead. As for civilians? Estimates run from 50,000 to 110,000.” Today, America is afraid of offending a few savages with cartoons.

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HOPEY-CHANGEY: Number of Americans Renouncing Their U.S. Citizenship Hits Yet Another All-Time High.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Why Feminists Need To Take Carly Fiorina Seriously.

HAPPY V-E DAY!

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: America’s Politicized Tax Enforcement Is a Harbinger of Decline.

REPUBLICANS COMPLICIT IN OBAMACARE FRAUD?:  Brendan Bordelon at NRO has a great story documenting the complicity of 5 Senate Republicans in covering up a fraudulent application by Congress to D.C.’s Obamacare exchange.  The application stated that Congress had only 45 employees, and listed fake employee names.

The relevant language of the Affordable Care Act is found in section 1312(d)(3)(D) of the Act, which states:

(D) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE.—

(i) REQUIREMENT.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a

Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are—

(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or

(II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).

The language pretty clearly indicates that Members of Congress and their staff can “only” obtain health insurance that is created by the Act or offered on an ACA exchange.  However one slices it, this means that Congress and its staff cannot continue to obtain the rich FEHBP health insurance subsidies that it has historically enjoyed.  But of course, President Obama came to the “rescue” and, by executive fiat, decided Congress would continue to get the subsidies anyway.  The “solution” announced by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), was to allow Congress to obtain subsidized insurance on the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), which is open only to employers with 50 or fewer full-time employees– and Congress clearly has more.

Senate Small Business Committee Chair David Vitter has fought the congressional exemption for years, and he recently sought to subpoena the original copy of the application Congress made to the DC exchange, as it would reveal who in Congress was responsible for its fraudulent misrepresentations.  Vitter ran into a problem, however:  To issue the subpoena, he needed either the sign-off the the Small Business Committee ranking member, Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), or a majority of his own, Republican-dominated Committee.

Oddly, 5 Republicans on Vitter’s Committee (plus all Democrats)– Senators Rand Paul, Mike Enzi, James Risch, Kelly Ayotte and Deb Fischer–voted against issuance of the subpoena.

So why are Republicans passing up an opportunity to rectify an Obamacare amendment-by-executive-fiat?  Self-interest, of course.

Tar and feathers are too good for these unprincipled weasels.  I say bring back the Sicilian Bull.

DAVID PRYCE-JONES: Westminster Election Diary. “The pundits repeated in unanimous chorus that the Conservatives and Labour were neck and neck. Through the night, though, the Conservatives were winning seats by ever-larger margins, and Labour was losing them. By now, David Cameron is evidently able to form a Conservative government unshackled by a coalition. The astonishment and disbelief of those chorusing pundits, especially on the BBC, is a comedy that lightens the spirits. The cause of the Labour downfall is simple enough. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, proves to be a hard-line Leftist, believing that the state should control the individual and the individual should have no control over the state. Resenting capitalism, he wants to control markets and punish through taxation everyone who has benefitted from markets. He reminds me of Mikhael Gorbachev whose policy of perestroika was supposed to have the edge over reality. One look at him has been enough for the people of England.” Would that Americans had been so discerning.

Plus: Tunku Varadarajan: 10 UK Election Takeaways. “When you compute Tory gains, and the astounding likelihood (as of this writing) that UKIP ranks third among the parties for votes polled in England, you have a picture of a defiant, nationalist England. The Scots will separate, but on England’s terms.”

UPDATE: “What’s so absolutely astonishing is the British public gave Tories a majority in spite of being told not to by so many comedians. Weird.”

INDEED: “If government could pass a law to create fracking, it would be history’s most successful social program.” Instead, of course, it happened without the government, and often in spite of it.

SO I JUST FINISHED JOHN BIRMINGHAM’S NEWEST, Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters, the first in his new David Hooper trilogy. It’s an interesting change for Birmingham, in more of a Larry Correia direction, but it was quite enjoyable, and I recommend it.

JOURNALISM: Huffington Post updates article one year after charges dropped against innocent man.

The Huffington Post has finally updated an article about a California man being charged for allegedly “sexting” a minor — one year after charges were dropped.

On Aug. 6, 2013, Huffington Post author Nick Wing wrote an article about the arrest of Scott Hounsell, former executive director for the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. On May 4, 2015, following a Washington Examiner report on the story and its aftermath, HuffPo updated its original article.

This update, nearly two years after the original article was posted, comes almost exactly one year after the charges were dropped on May 14, 2014.

To its credit, HuffPo is one of the few news outlets to make any kind of update to its original story about Hounsell, and in fact altered the headline to reflect the new information.

High standards these days.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Pentagon Employees Used Government Charge Cards for Gambling and ‘Adult Entertainment.’

HE’S PRETTY IMPORTANT: Is Matt Drudge the second most influential man in America? “MSNBC may claim it is liberal and Fox News may be the house organ for conservatives, but if you turn on either in the morning, you will often see the guiding hand of Drudge. The New York Times may consider itself the finest newspaper in the world, but while one of the Times’ political reporters is reduced to writing ditties complaining that Hillary Clinton does not answer her questions, one entry on the Drudge Report can trigger 100 questions to any politician in America. Network anchors come and go, but Drudge remains, the omnipresent force who is required reading for political editors, television producers and campaign managers from all parties.”

PATRIK JONSSON, IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: What Freddie Gray’s knife says about police power in America.

Courts have given police officers “fair leeway” to make mistakes in their enforcement of the law, including a United States Supreme Court decision on the subject in December. This is necessary “for enforcing the law in the community’s protection,” the high court said.

But the concern raised in Baltimore is that this power has been abused during the tough-on-crime era that emerged in New York in the 1990s and spread nationwide.

“The problem is, when we expand an officer’s right to intrude into our lives, there’s always the question of the appropriate use of discretion,” says Rob Kane, a criminologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia who specializes in police authority. People “are taking pause [after Freddie Gray’s death] … because social science evidence shows that police are going to be most prone to abuse that discretion in disenfranchised neighborhoods.”

Knives have been a favorite target for police under political pressure to clean up the streets, argues Jon Campbell of the Village Voice. Seizing a particular kind of knife has been a cornerstone of New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy, which allows officers to frisk anyone who they reasonably think might be breaking the law.

Police shouldn’t get leeway. We’re expected to know the law, and we don’t get “fair leeway.” They enforce it with a gun.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Man is raped at gunpoint by THREE women so they could collect his semen in a cooler box and ‘steal’ it in South Africa. “The method is part of a growing trend.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Florida woman had sex with teen boy, police say: Brittany Sonnier, 23, previously accused of having sex with dog. “Police said Brittany Sonnier enticed the teen to perform sexual acts knowing that he was underage. Police said she was also in possession of marijuana and shared the drugs, as well as alcohol, with him.”

To be fair, I’m pretty sure the dog consented.

YOU CAN’T TAKE THE SKY FROM ME: Rand Simberg: Social Justice Warriors Make Their Claim On Space.

PROGRESSIVES LOSING INTEREST IN DEMOCRACY:

“The political Right,” maintains the progressive economist and columnist Paul Krugman, “has always been uncomfortable with democracy.”

But today it’s progressives themselves who, increasingly, are losing faith in democracy. Indeed, as the Obama era rushes to a less-than-glorious end, important left-of-center voices, like Matt Yglesias, now suggest that “democracy is doomed.”

Yglesias correctly blames “the breakdown of American constitutional democracy” on both Republicans and Democrats; George W. Bush expanded federal power in the field of national defense while Barack Obama has done it mostly on domestic issues. Other prominent progressives such as American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner have made similar points, even quoting Italian wartime fascist leader Benito Mussolini about the inadequacy of democracy.

Huh. Somebody should write a book on this liberal-fascism thing.

But, of course, progressives have always faced the problem that the American electorate — composed, remember, of those awful, hateful flyover people — isn’t progressive enough. That’s why they want to import a bunch of new voters who’ll be reliable constituents for the lefty machine. This is what happened in Britain.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Saudi Arabia Considers Nuclear Weapons to Offset Iran. Most telling sentence: “They also increasingly distrust the U.S., the traditional guarantor of Gulf security.” Well, they’re smart to, at least until 2017. And now that we’ve elected one unserious Administration to serve two terms, other countries have to worry that it could easily happen again, and make their plans accordingly.