OBAMA’S TRUE LEGACY: How a Divisive Presidency Invigorated the GOP: A detailed, state-by-state look at concrete conservative progress spurred by Obama’s attacks.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 839.

GREEN CORRUPTION: Carbon Offsets May Have Dramatically Increased Emissions.

That’s the finding of a new report from the Stockholm Environment Institute, which investigated carbon credits used to offset greenhouse gas emissions under a UN scheme. As one of the co-authors of the report put it, issuing these credits “was like printing money.” . . .

The SEI sampled 60 random projects and found a whopping 80 percent of them to be of questionable green merit. The majority of these bogus Russian and Ukrainian offsets were used by the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (the EU ETS), a program already bogged down with problems pricing carbon. “[T]he poor overall quality of [Joint Implementation] projects may have undermined the EU’s emission reduction target by some 400 million tons of CO2,” said Anja Kollmuss, one of the leaders of the study.
This has huge implications, then, for Europe’s green goals. For years EU members have chosen to outsource emissions cuts with these carbon credits, but the lack of proper oversight at the UN level of the projects abroad supposedly generating these cuts now leaves the supposedly eco-conscious bloc in a bind. “If the EU was taking its climate targets seriously, then at least 400 million ETS certificates would have to be deleted to counter that,” Kollmuss pointed out.

But perhaps worst of all are the perverse incentives the SEI report alleges these credit swaps have created for actually increasing emissions. According to a study released in the journal Nature Climate Change, plants in Russia “increased waste gas generation to unprecedented levels once they could generate credits from producing more waste gas,” resulting in an increase in emissions as large as 600 million tons of carbon dioxide—roughly half the amount the EU’s ETS intends to reduce from 2013 to 2030.

It’s like the whole thing is just one big scam.

WHY PEOPLE HATE LAWYERS: A federal appeals court has upheld a settlement in which Southwest Airlines passengers got free drink vouchers but lawyers who sued the airline got $1.65 million in cash.

GUNMAN, STILL AT LARGE, SHOOTS, KILLS two Virginia TV journalists on live TV.

Here are a couple of screengrabs of him. Somebody out there knows who this is.

UPDATE: Shooter is apparently another reporter at the station, who has shot himself now. “Becky Coyner, with the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office, said authorities had been looking for Vester Flanagan, 41, whose used the name Bryce Williams while working for WDBJ. Video has been posted on what appears to be Williams’ Facebook page showing the shooting from the perspective of the shooter. The gun is visible and a victim, Alison Parker, is seen being shot.”

I predict a rapid falloff in media interest now that it’s clear the shooter was a black guy and a journalist. “Flanagan, whose TV name is Bryce Williams and was employed by WDBJ7, began tweeting Wednesday at 11:09 a.m. ET about the incident. Flanagan tweeted that Parker made racist comments and that he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report. He also tweeted that Ward went to human resources on him ‘after working with me one time!!!'”

But don’t worry, the press has figured out what group is really at fault:

If she’d blamed his entire race, instead of his entire gender, she’d never work again. Because bigotry is unacceptable!

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INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: IRS Scandal: Toby Miles, Secret Government Employee.

IMMIGRATION: Refugees race into Hungary as border fence nears completion. “Thousands of refugees, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been snaking northward through the Balkans in recent days, confronting a Europe woefully unprepared to deal with them at every step. Most endured a perilous crossing to Greece aboard rafts and boats, some barely fit to sail. They traversed Greece, a nation paralyzed by economic crisis and too poor to handle a flow of people that in July hit a record high. At the border with Macedonia late last week, they trudged through a wall of riot police, who fought them back with tear gas before relenting. Now, the asylum-seekers, thousands a day, are racing into Hungary, which is rushing to complete a barbed-wire border fence by the end of the month to force them to seek other routes.”

ASHE SCHOW: Mozilla’s Discriminatory Anti-Discrimination Crusade:

Setting aside the irony of telling an employee who does not like the current attitudes of activists in the tech industry that their kind doesn’t belong at Mozilla, Beard is continuing a new tradition at the company.

The former CEO, Brendan Eich, was forced to resign after it was discovered he had donated — six years previously — to an anti-gay marriage initiative, Proposition 8, in California. Same-sex marriage supporters protested the years-old donation by boycotting Mozilla, resulting in Eich’s departure.

The boycotters conveniently ignored the fact that Proposition 8 passed comfortably in the liberal state of California in 2008. Incidentally, when Eich made the donation, then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama was still saying marriage was “between a man and a woman.”

But at Mozilla, holding someone accountable for views that do not jibe with the present moral authority is apparently a company policy. And those who dare to question the acceptable narratives are cast out as heathens.

Unsurprisingly, as Silicon Valley has gotten less and less productive of revolutionary new products, it’s gotten more and more into “social justice” crusades. Or, hey, maybe it’s the other way around.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs:

Ten months after graduation, only 60 percent of the law school class of 2014 had found full-time long-term jobs that required them to pass the bar exam.

Even that improvement over the class of 2013 (a 57 percent employment rate) came with three asterisks: Last year, the American Bar Association changed the job-reporting rules to give law schools an extra month for the class of 2014 to find jobs; graduates employed in law-school-funded positions count in the employment rate; and the number of jobs that require bar passage fell from 2013 to 2014.

Amazingly (and perversely), law schools have been able to continue to raise tuition while producing nearly twice as many graduates as the job market has been able to absorb. How is this possible? Why hasn’t the market corrected itself? The answer is that, for a given school, the availability of federal loans for law students has no connection to their poor post-graduation employment outcomes.

Students now amass law school loans averaging $127,000 for private schools and $88,000 for public ones. Since 2006 alone, law student debt has surged at inflation-adjusted rates of 25 percent for private schools and 34 percent for public schools.

The rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t owe more than your first year’s salary. Few legal jobs start at $88,000, fewer still at $127,000.

DID A LOCAL NEWS STATION JUST COME OUT AGAINST DONALD TRUMP? “Here’s a very interesting screen cap of a post now removed from the ABC7 Los Angeles Facebook page. Their original question accompanying the video of Trump and Ramos: ‘How long will the GOP allow this?’”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hillary Pulls In Contributions From Twice As Many Lobbyists As Nearest Candidate.

In early March, lobbyists were fretting over whether Hillary Clinton would allow K Street contributions to flow into her campaign. Now, Hillary is leading the pack when it comes to money pouring in from Washington-based lobbyists.

Hillary tops not just her Democratic rivals, but also Republicans. In fact, her nearest threat to K Street donations received contributions from half as many lobbyists as she did thus far into the election cycle.

Remember, she’s running as the candidate of the middle class.

NO. NEXT QUESTION: Will Joe Biden Have To Answer For His Long Record of Terrible Decisions?

SO MUCH FOR “SAFE, LEGAL AND RARE:” Eighth Planned Parenthood Video: ‘They’re a Volume Institution.’

SALENA ZITO: Of alternate universes and the pitfalls of populism. “First: it’s early. We have no idea what the field is going to look like in January when the first caucus and primary votes are cast… and certainly no idea what it will look like by the time primary races matter in February and March. Second: there is always an insurgency candidate who early-on captures the imagination of voters and the press… until competition, the candidate’s own behavior and public scrutiny brings them back down to earth. The only populist candidate ever to really capitalize on voters’ discontent and win the presidency was Andrew Jackson.”

WELL, SHE’S A KENNEDY, WHICH MAKES HER EVEN MORE ENTITLED THAN A CLINTON: US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy used private email for official business.

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BRENDAN O’NEILL: The Calais migrants and the moral bankruptcy of PC.

AN ADMINISTRATION THAT WENT TO WAR ON FAULTY INTELLIGENCE: Inquiry Weighs Whether Data on ISIS Was Distorted. “The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry. The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Stock up on canned food for stock market crash, warns former Gordon Brown adviser.

ACTUALLY, WHEN A STAR BECOMES A BLACK HOLE, THE “LOST” INFORMATION APPEARS ON A THUMB DRIVE IN HILLARY CLINTON’S LAWYER’S OFFICE: Stephen Hawking believes he’s solved a huge mystery about black holes.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: No, You Do Not Have To Drink 8 Glasses Of Water A Day. I’m beginning to think that a lot of the health pronouncements we’ve been hearing for years are bogus.

TRUMP’S “I’M PAYING FOR THIS MICROPHONE” MOMENT? Trump security man ejects Univision’s Jorge Ramos after he attempts to hijack press conference.

Alternate headline: The Donald finally picks on someone who isn’t with Fox News.

(Not that you need it, but here’s the headline explanation for our younger readers.)

Ramos is yet another Democrat operative with a byline; yesterday on CNN, he “accused Donald Trump of spreading ‘hate’ by referring to illegal immigrants as ‘illegals’ and the children of illegal immigrants as ‘anchor babies.'” And as Allahpundit adds today in his post on Trump’s ejection of Ramos (“Alternate headline: ‘Trump rises another 10 points in Republican polls'”), “He’s the most shameless amnesty shill in American media and makes no apologies for it; his advice to colleagues in journalism is ‘Don’t be neutral. Neutrality is for referees in a football game.'”

But from global warming to gay marriage to amnesty, is there any topic left that today’s “reporters” are actually still neutral on?

UPDATE: “Journalists angry at Trump for tossing out Ramos, when’s the last time you had the balls to challenge Obama as voraciously?”

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