MORE FUN WITH JONATHAN CHAIT.

Plus, my interchange with Chait yesterday made Twitchy. It’s always nice to make Twitchy.

KNIFE RIGHTS: Freddie Gray death: Should it really be illegal to carry a knife in the city?

No, it shouldn’t be.

In the end, Freddie Gray paid the ultimate price for the crime of clipping a common knife to his pocket.

After Mr. Gray ran from police seconds after “making eye contact,” officers quickly grabbed the 20-something black Baltimore man and arrested him for carrying what they called a concealed deadly weapon banned by Maryland – what turned out to be a short-bladed folding-knife similar to ones worn everyday by millions of law-abiding Americans.

A week later, Gray was dead from injuries received while in police custody. The Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into his death, and the mayor of Baltimore was publicly questioning whether anything Gray did or wore should really have been a precursor to arrest. Large protests have erupted in Baltimore after a coroner found that Gray’s vertebrae were broken while he was in custody, and that he was refused immediate medical care for injuries that eventually became fatal. Six officers have been suspended with pay.

Hey, lefties: Want more government? This is more government.

A DUE PROCESS WIN: Ashe Schow: North Dakota Students Now Have Right To An Attorney.

What seems like an obvious right is sadly not so obvious for today’s college students. But a new law in North Dakota is reaffirming one of the basic elements of due process — the right to legal representation — for college students.

The bill, SB 2150, unanimously passed the state’s House of Representatives on April 8 and passed the Senate on April 17 with just one senator voting against. Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed the bill into law on Wednesday.

By signing this bill, Dalrymple, a Republican, has made North Dakota the third state in the nation to allow students facing non-academic disciplinary charges the ability to hire an attorney. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education credits part of the decision to enact the law on the case of Caleb Warner, who was expelled from the University of North Dakota for sexual assault despite evidence of innocence. His accuser was later charged with filing a false police report.

Because of the injustice done to her son, Warner’s mother, Sherry Warner-Seefeld, helped found the Families Advocating for Campus Equality, a group dedicated to due process for college students.

“It is so gratifying to know that parents of students enrolled in North Dakota’s public colleges will no longer have to worry that their children might be railroaded the way my son was at UND,” Warner-Seefeld told FIRE. “Basic fairness necessitates that colleges determining young people’s futures provide the kind of procedural protections now required by SB 2150.”

North Carolina and Arkansas are the only two other states with laws that allow some kind of legal representation during campus hearings.

If I had a hearing in one of the other states, I’d be tempted to bring a kangaroo.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: States Wrestle With Restrictions On Drones.

ROLL CALL: Vitter’s Obamacare Probe Continues With Subpoena Vote.

Sen. David Vitter’s crusade against government contributions to congressional health care plans continues this week with a vote to subpoena documents from the D.C. government, but he may have some dissenters in the Republican ranks.

The Louisiana Republican is the chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee, and he has used his perch to investigate congressional enrollment in the District of Columbia’s small-business exchange, which allowed for a government contribution to congressional health care plans. But his investigation has some members questioning whether this is an issue for his committee.

“I’m not even confident it’s within the jurisdiction of the committee, so I still have serious questions about it,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., told CQ Roll Call Wednesday. “I have two concerns: whether we have jurisdiction and whether that’s the proper role of this committee.”

Ayotte is one of 10 Republicans and nine Democrats on the committee who will vote Thursday on whether to subpoena the D.C. Health Benefit and Exchange Authority for un-redacted congressional applications to the small-business exchange. A recent taxpayer lawsuit obtained the applications, showing that the House and Senate claimed to have fewer than 50 employees and were also classified as “state/local government,” but the names of the House and Senate employees who verified the applications were redacted.

In February, Vitter asked House and Senate administrators to reveal which employees signed the applications, but administrators did not supply the information. So after months of unanswered requests — and an appeal to Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, for help — Vitter is making a last-ditch effort to force DCHBEA to comply by issuing a subpoena.

But to do so, Vitter either needs the support of ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., or from the majority of committee members. Shaheen confirmed Wednesday she is a “no,” so Vitter will likely need all the panel’s Republicans to support him.

Not sure why they wouldn’t go along here.

SLEAZY NEVADA LEGISLATORS WANT TO MAKE IT EASIER TO FILE BOGUS LIBEL SUITS AGAINST CRITICS: If you live in Nevada, call your legislator and ask them to vote against SB 444.

WELL, THIS BESPEAKS A SERIOUSNESS ABOUT SECURITY: Facing Threat In Congress, Pentagon Races To Resettle Guantanamo Inmates.

Facing a potential showdown with Congress, the Pentagon is racing to move dozens of detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in coming months before lawmakers can block future transfers and derail President Obama’s plan to shutter the U.S. military prison.

As a first step, officials plan to send up to 10 prisoners overseas, possibly in June. In all, the Pentagon hopes that 57 inmates who are approved for transfer will be resettled by the end of 2015. That would require “large muscle movements” by at least two countries, which officials hope will each agree to take in 10 to 20 Yemeni detainees, who cannot be repatriated because of security conditions in their war-torn homeland.

“I am aware of the clock ticking,” a defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning. “It’s going to take high-level leadership, and it’s going to take some big asks to some countries.”

The issue of what to do with those remaining detainees on trial in military commissions or who are deemed too dangerous to release also looms over a White House that is facing the end of Obama’s second term in 2017.

This has been handled with Obama’s usual skill and tact.

HMM: Conservatives Surprisingly Optimistic About Ending Ex-Im Bank.

THE HILL: House GOP unveils spending cuts for 2016.

House Republican appropriators on Wednesday approved spending preliminary allocations for fiscal 2016 that stick to the overall $1.017 trillion cap under sequestration by slashing billions from government agencies.

“As we all know, we’re operating under a very constrained budget this year,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who described the allocations as “fair and balanced.”

Rogers said the panel prioritized funding and made “tough choices” to balance out budgetary increases.

Appropriators are proposing to cut funding next year in the following funding bills: Financial Services and General Government; Labor Department, Health and Human Services, and Education; and Interior and the Environment.

The figures point to a brewing conflict between the GOP-led Congress and the White House that could lead to another government shutdown fight in October.

Can we just shut it down and leave it that way?

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT HER: SHE FIGHTS. Fiorina to launch presidential bid on May 4.

HEADLINES FROM THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: DEA Chief To Resign After Sex Party Scandal.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Teacher arrested for alleged sex with student; boy’s mom found texts from teacher on phone then reported her.

Amber Leigh Anderson, 27, a math teacher, engaged in the relationship with the student mostly during summer 2013 when the boy was a 15-year-old freshman at the school, according to an East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office report.

In April 2013, another student gave the victim Anderson’s cellphone number. As time progressed, Anderson and the victim “became extremely close to one another,” the Sheriff’s Office report says.

Text messages between the two soon became sexually charged, and in July, Anderson began having sex with the student, the report says.

The relationship lasted a few more months until the boy’s mother found some of the text messages on her son’s cellphone that had been sent by Anderson. At that point, the mother confronted the teacher, told her to quit texting her son and “reported the matter to the school’s administration,” the report says, effectively bringing an end to the relationship between Anderson and the student.

Is it just me, or do these women all have a certain look?

LIZ SHELD: No, Newt Gingrich, We Should Not Double the NIH Budget.

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I DON’T KNOW WHO ROLLING STONE’S LIBEL INSURANCE CARRIER IS, BUT I HOPE THEY HAVE DEEP POCKETS: UVA Dean Maligned by Rolling Stone Received Death and Rape Threats, Hires Lawyer

Nicole Eramo, the UVA dean of students portrayed as the face of administrative neglect of rape victims in Rolling Stone’s now-discredited story, revealed in a letter to the magazine’s publisher that she received death and rape threats as a result of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s reckless reporting.

She has hired an attorney and may pursue legal action against the magazine, which has never really apologized for defaming her.

Her letter, written to Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, alleges that the magazine’s representatives claimed as recently as February that Erdely’s portrayal of Eramo was “fair.” That’s rather damning, if true; Rolling Stone should have had some idea by February that its fact-checking process had fundamentally failed and no aspect of the story was beyond reproach. And indeed, the police and Columbia investigations later determined that Eramo had directed Jackie to go the police, contrary to what Erdely wrote.

It’s seeming as if Erdely wrote a work of fiction, but used real people’s names.

JUSTIN KATZ: Clarity in the Obama Era (How Reasonable People Let It Happen). “One silver lining of living during the Obama Era is that we get to witness something that many of us found inexplicable when we learned about it in school: How a civilized country can be brought to the heel of ideologues and thugs. It’s always seemed a bizarre mystery why a large majority of reasonable people would let things that are so patently wrong, so clearly corrosive of everything we value, go on… and expand.”

KIRSTEN POWERS TO OBAMA: Stop hectoring Christians and start protecting them.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Mrs. Clinton and the 1 Percenters:

To be a member of the hated, reviled, filthy, wicked “1 percent,” one needs a household income of about $400,000 a year. That’s no small thing — 99 percent of us don’t manage it in any given year — but it’s not Jay-Z money, either. (What, your wife didn’t do like Mrs.-Z and give you a $5 million watch for your 43rd birthday?) A generously compensated high-school principal can make a 1 percent income solo, and a couple of married high-school principals can hit 1 percent territory with relative ease. If your name is Clinton, you do not even need a full year to make that kind of money — you need an hour. . . .

Mrs. Clinton has been doing a fair Elizabeth Warren impersonation of late on the issue of executive compensation, which has led a few critics to point out that at approximately $300,000 an hour, Mrs. Clinton as a maker of speeches out-earns all of the highest-earning American executives on an hourly basis or a daily basis. And we’re talking about Fortune 500 guys, there.

Read the whole thing.

HEALTH: Year two of chikungunya in the Americas.

CHANGE: W.H.O. Promises Reform After Criticism Over Ebola Response.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Problem Of Law School Tuition.

INDEED: “You are my guest. So I advise you, in pure friendliness, not to impugn the power of my words.”

AND YET IT’S A HIGH-STATUS OCCUPATION: Most authors earn less than minimum wage from their writing, survey finds.

TURNING YOUR THUMBNAIL into a trackpad.

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