WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s Iran Deal Falls Well Short Of His Own Goals.

GOOD GRIEF: The ongoing saga of the Virginia State Bar and Israel: It’s time for the bar president and president-elect to apologize.

IN THE WASHINGTON POST: Why you can’t solve income inequality by sending people to college.

Do tell.

IT CAN’T BE ALL THAT BRIEF: A brief history of Obama’s capitulations to Iran since 2007.

POLLS: Democrats Turn Against Religious Freedom Laws. Voters Don’t Agree With Them.

Webb aside, it’s now expected for Democrats to denounce RFRAs, just as large corporations are denouncing them. In doing so, all of the critics are on the wrong side of public polling. According to a March edition of the Marist poll, 54 percent of Americans agreed with “allowing First Amendment religious liberty protection or exemptions for faith based organizations and individuals even when it conflicts with government laws.” By a two-point margin, 47-45, even a plurality of Democratic voters agreed with that.

The margins were even larger in opposition to laws that proposed “penalties or fines for individuals who refuse to provide wedding-related services to same sex couples even if their refusal is based on their religious beliefs.” No Democrat is seriously proposing this; the nearest cultural analogue may be the story of Memories Pizza, the Indiana shop whose owner said that he would decline to provide pies to gay weddings, and saw its Yelp! page firebombed with angry comments. (The popularity of delivery pizza at gay wedding ceremonials is well known.) Still, according to Marist, Americans oppose penalties on businesses like Memories by a 65-31 margin. The margin among Democrats: 62-34 against.

Republican presidential candidates may have gotten over their skis, and backed the current version of the Indiana law before Pence (and Hutchinson) started scrambling to change it. Democrats are endorsing something more radical than voters are comfortable with.

Well, perhaps they expect voters’ views to change. Or maybe they’d just rather talk about this than about ObamaCare, Iran, Hillary’s emails, the IRS Scandal, Benghazi, etc. . . .

WELL, GOOD: Chris Christie pardons mom arrested for carrying licensed firearm. This is good, but I think we need federal civil rights legislation to protect innocent people from being victimized this way — say, something setting the maximum penalty for carrying a firearm in violation of state law, on the part of a person entitled to own a firearm under federal law, at $500. Or maybe $50.

THE SLOW DEATH OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSROOM:

In the Roberts era the paper sold nearly 700,000 copies in the city, it now sells just over 150,000. Advertising revenue has fallen three-quarters from $460m in the past decade. . . .

I wonder what kinds of stories the Inquirer trades most successfully in these days?

“The stories that receive the most clicks on philly.com,” Steacy suggests “are weather stories, celebrity stories, sex stories. I guess best of all is a celebrity sex story with a good weather angle…”

Well, the truth is a lot of former readers don’t trust the papers with anything more serious these days.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Texas A&M Law School Dean’s Ten Reasons To Be Cheerful About The Future Of Legal Education.

AT AMAZON, shop the Spring Patio, Lawn & Garden Sales Event.

Plus, STEM Toys & Games For Kids.

ETHICS IN GOVERNMENT: N.J. Democrats who ripped Christie over George Washington Bridge give Menendez benefit of doubt.

IT WASN’T AN AFFAIR, it was performance art. Bow down and don’t criticize, philistines!

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I can’t get over my wife’s sordid sexual past.

WATCH OUT, TIM COOK: Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: The iPhone 6 Has Met Its Match.

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.

Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

I LIKE ROUND POSTERIORS, AND I AM INCAPABLE OF PREVARICATING ABOUT IT: How the Gluteus Became Maximus. “Men want healthy offspring, so, the thinking goes, they wanted women who could get their butts out there, literally, and forage like champs. This preference was passed down from the era of mammoths to the epoch of Match.com, and to this day, it might explain why some women do everything from wear 5-inch heels to balance stemware on their rears.”

FIFTY YEARS of Moore’s Law. “Fifty years ago this month, Gordon Moore forecast a bright future for electronics. His ideas were later distilled into a single organizing principle—Moore’s Law—that has driven technology forward at a staggering clip. We have all benefited from this miraculous development, which has forcefully shaped our modern world. In this special report, we find that the end won’t be sudden and apocalyptic but rather gradual and complicated. Moore’s Law truly is the gift that keeps on giving—and surprising, as well.”

I’M NOT FEELING ESPECIALLY GOOD ABOUT THIS: Preliminary Agreement Reportedly Reached in Iran Nuke Talks.

SCIENCE: “Exercise and vitamin D supplements may help prevent injurious falls in older adults, a randomized trial found.” Of the two, exercise was more important, but exercise with vitamin D was better still.

BETTER TIME THAN I’VE EVER DONE: This Guy Drove Across the USA in Just 27 Hours.

UPDATE: It’s a hoax. Sorry.

PETER THIEL: “I worry that the conformity problem is worse today than it was in the 50′s.”

ASHE SCHOW: Why aren’t we taking rape seriously? “You would think the issue was being taken seriously, given the mattress-carrying demonstrations and numerous marches with hand-made signs spouting catchy slogans like “non-consensual sex is rape.” But according to the activists, the solution to this problem — this so-called rape culture — is not to send serious crimes to the police, but to campus courts where the worst an accused student can face is expulsion.” That’s because it’s about empowering activists, and campus administrators who work hand-in-hand with the “activists,” rather than about actually solving the problem.

IN THE MAIL: The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 2015: Students on Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know, 41st Edition.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Save 77% on a Jackery Giant+ Premium Portable Charger. It’ll keep your phone or tablet going for a long time, with 12000mAh capacity. Not bad for $29.95.

And, also today only: Eton Rugged Rukus All-Terrain Portable Solar Wireless Sound System, $44.99 (65% off).

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 693.

JOURNALISM: Story About First Business to ‘Publicly Vow to Reject Gay Weddings’ Was Fabricated Out of Nothing.

See, the attack on this poor small-town pizza place is what bothers me here. I’m at best lukewarm on RFRAs at both the federal and state level, and I have increasingly been of the opinion that Scalia was right in Smith, but I understand why a lot of religious folks fear that otherwise the state will reach right into their churches and ceremonies. And what’s really troubling here is the sheer meanness of the gay rights community, as shown in the aftermath to Proposition 8, the Brendan Eich affair, and now this. I was in favor of gay marriage long before those Johnny-come-latelies Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I may even have been in favor of gay marriage before Dick Cheney. And nothing from the opponents of gay marriage has shaken my belief. The supporters, on the other hand. . . .

UPDATE: Matt Welch: Burn Her! She Would Act Like a Witch in a Situation That Will Never Come Up! The anti-pizzeria mob loses its mind. “There is no to-be-sure paragraph about what happened yesterday. A virtual mob, acting at least partly on bogus information, gleefully trashed a business that hasn’t (to my knowledge) discriminated against a flea. After which a local pol stood up and yelled ‘Encore!'”

Mobs enjoy mobbing. It’s fun for them. And politicians cash in.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Stop Giving Everyone A Student Loan:

People get taken by scams every day, often with the help of government money. Should Fannie Mae forgive the mortgages of people if the buyer misrepresented the condition of the house? Should the Small Business Administration forgive the debt of some guy who pledged his house to back a no-hope franchise operation? For that matter, what about people who go to a big, public party school and major in sports marketing or tourism? The taxpayer cannot be made responsible for every unwise decision every individual makes, even if the government finances it.

That’s not to say these students shouldn’t get relief. They should. Happily, we already have a system for dealing with people who are burdened with excess debt: the bankruptcy system. The government should change the law to make it easier to bankrupt student loans.

But at the same time, this case points to an issue that I’ve highlighted before: the need for better underwriting in student loans. Simply allowing students to borrow large amounts of money and then bankrupt it is a recipe for big government losses. We should allow people to bankrupt student loans, but the corollary to that is that we need to be more careful about the loans we make in the first place.

Right now the system indiscriminately lends to any marginally well-equipped institution that can claim to be teaching anyone any skill, even if that skill isn’t going to increase a student’s ability to repay their loan. It’s no wonder that institutions are setting up lots of useless programs to collect those tuition checks; the real wonder is that there aren’t more stories like these.

The best thing we could do to bring educational costs under control would be to eliminate, or at least cap, student loans.