TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 846.

HEADLINES FROM 1973: What the Times Square Topless Girls Will Teach My Son.

“We knew DeBlasio would return New York to the 70′s. We just didn’t think that return would involve topless women shaking it for tourists’ tips…I’ve been to Times Square since DeBlasio took over. Its a hole. The fact that women willfully parade around half naked with their pimps lording over them does not surprise me. Its a behavior that gels with the seedy vibe. I felt cleaner after watching Midnight Cowboy than I did after walking that sorry neck of Midtown.”

SEE, I LOVE RAMIREZ, BUT I THINK THIS CARTOON GETS IT EXACTLY BACKWARD. Police don’t actually protect law-abiding citizens from criminals so much as they protect criminals from the much-rougher justice they’d get in the absence of a legal system.

Burglars would be hung from lampposts, and shoplifters would be beaten and tossed into the gutter if there were no police, as in fact happens in countries where there isn’t a reliable justice system and a civil-society culture that restrains vigilantism. Reminder to the criminal class: Ultimately, we’re not stuck in this country with you. You’re stuck in this country with us.

IS THERE NOTHING HE CAN’T DO? NOT THE ONION: The Associated Press Claims Obama STARED DOWN A GLACIER in Alaska.

No word yet how the pathetic humiliated glacier held up under the pressure of the president’s intense, withering gaze.

THIS IS GOOD, BUT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HIT THEM, PASS THESE OUT AT THE “ROAD SHOW” EVENTS FOR PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS: Due process group distributes warning flyers to campus men.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

IS IT 1968 AGAIN? CRIME RISING “UNEXPECTEDLY:” How bad is it? So bad that as Steve Hayward writes at Power Line, even the New York Times has noticed – and of course, the Times passage that Steve quotes listing the cities of Baltimore, New Orleans, Washington DC and St. Louis is a classic “Name that Party” moment.

I was about to make a cheap Fox Butterfield joke goofing on his series of unintentionally hilarious late-1990s Times headlines culminating in “Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction” from 2000, but it’s worth noting that Hillary is openly running against all of her husband’s successful law and order related policies of the 1990s.

THIS WILL TURN OUT WELL: Disturbing Graffiti of Police Officer at Gunpoint Appears Around Houston. Meanwhile, a message to the law enforcement community: A lot of you supported Obama in spite of all the obvious reasons not to because he’s a Democrat and you’re, well, government employees. How’s that workin’ out for ya?

VIDEO: Ted Cruz schools two separate Climate Change activists who were trying to work him over:

Cruz- “Can I ask you Kaity, is there a single issue on any public policy issue whatsoever that you disagree with the standard liberal position?”

Kaity- “Probably.”

Cruz- “Can you name one?”

Kaity- “I’d rather not right now.

Transcript of both botched leftwing “gotcha” moments at link.

THE OLD BRITISH INVASION WAS MORE FUN THAN THIS ONE: Screaming passengers threatened to smash windows of Eurostar after being trapped in dark and sweltering carriages FIVE HOURS after migrants climbed on train roof. “At least four UK-bound trains were delayed for several hours, with two of them sent back to Paris, as police attempted to remove the trespassers from the tops of carriages in Calais. With no lighting, no air conditioning or no way to communicate with Eurostar staff, conditions on board one of the sweltering trains deteriorated to the point that passengers threatened to smash the windows, the Telegraph reported.”

CRONIES GONNA CRONY: Julian Castro Helps Wall Street Criminals Dodge Accountability.

Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase appeared to score a significant victory Tuesday after the Department of Housing and Urban Development suggested it won’t punish lenders for major crimes committed by their corporate parents.

The announcement concerns a requirement that lenders in HUD’s mortgage insurance program certify they haven’t been convicted of violating federal antitrust laws or other serious crimes. Citi and JPMorgan in May pleaded guilty to felony charges that they broke federal antitrust laws for their traders’ participation in a yearslong scheme to manipulate currency markets for profit. Both companies own banks that make mortgages that are later insured by the HUD-overseen Federal Housing Administration.

But on Tuesday, Secretary Julián Castro’s housing agency proposed modifying the required certification in a way that would apply only to HUD-registered lenders. The lenders’ parent companies wouldn’t be on the hook, thus seemingly enabling Citi and JPMorgan’s HUD-registered units to continue certifying that they haven’t pleaded guilty to federal antitrust charges.

Laws are for the little, unconnected people.

IS THE GROUND BEING PREPARED TO CRY FOUL IN OHIO’S VOTING? Betsy Newmark spots this story in the Politico:

Meanwhile, Ohio leaders are largely ignoring what a bipartisan federal panel called an “impending crisis:” voting equipment that’s at least a decade old and in need of replacement. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted sounded the alarm two years ago in testimony before President Obama’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration. “The next time we go to the polls to elect a president, these machines will be 12 years old,” he said. “That’s a lifetime when it comes to technology.”

As the Professor might note, perhaps Ohio’s solution lies in a well-proven, long-lasting technology that has best served the test of time.

ALTERNATE HEADLINE: Jeb Bush Trails In Key White-Voter Demographic: “Bush does worse than your average Republican among whites and notably better among Hispanics. While 39 percent of whites report a positive impression of him, that number is 43 percent for Hispanics. It’s almost unthinkable that a national GOP figure would face such a dichotomy these days.” White people don’t trust him. He needs a white-voter outreach program, maybe focusing on issues that this important-but-misunderstood sector of the electorate cares about.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Off-Grid Administration: The Many Ways Obama Officials Have Ducked Public Accountability.

Since the 1960s the government has been subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to view those records. In 2009 the National Archives issued rules requiring agencies to preserve employee work on nonofficial accounts in a government record-keeping system.

Then came the Obama Administration, whose modus operandi has been to hide from this legal regime. This year the world learned that Hillary Clinton conducted most of her correspondence as Secretary of State on a private, homemade email system that she failed to disclose and kept away from the federal government.

We have since learned that at least one of her aides, Huma Abedin, also had an account on that private system. When the press exposed the system, Mrs. Clinton deemed herself the arbiter of what she would allow the American people to see. Mrs. Abedin still hasn’t bothered to deliver her government records to State. In late July another Clinton aide, Philippe Reines, gave State 20 boxes of work-related emails, taken in part from his private email account.

In August the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a motion in court to gain access to the private email account of White House science czar John Holdren, who may have used it for government work. Some years ago CEI helped bring to light that then-EPA Chief Lisa Jackson used a secret alias, “ Richard Windsor,” when emailing on the EPA system. This seemed designed to thwart FOIA requests for her conversations, since “Lisa Jackson” appeared nowhere on her emails.

In 2013 an Associated Press report revealed the practice was rampant among Administration officials, including the Secretaries of Agriculture, Labor, and Health & Human Services. All had secret government email accounts that neither Congress nor the public knew about.

Last Monday the IRS was forced to acknowledge to a federal court that it recently discovered that Lois Lerner (of political targeting fame) used a second, private email to conduct government work. The account was set up under the name “ Toby Miles,” and the IRS still can’t account for its contents.

It has been two years since Congress first subpoenaed Ms. Lerner’s emails. In 2013 when Mrs. Lerner was still directing the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit, she cautioned colleagues to be careful what they said on email; then she inquired whether the agency’s instant-messaging system was archived. Told it wasn’t, she responded by email: “Perfect.”

Last week a federal court subpoenaed former EPA official Phillip North after a complaint by a mining concern called the Pebble Partnership. Mr. North worked from inside the EPA with outside activists to scuttle Pebble’s proposed Alaskan mining project, and he did so on private email.

Think of this administration as an ongoing criminal enterprise and you won’t be far wrong.

BERNIE SANDERS: VIETNAM CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR:

Somehow I’m not really sure that this is a disqualifier among Democrats these days, assuming it ever was. Hillary supporters seem to be getting desperate enough to lob some actual shots across Bernie Sanders’ bow now, and one of them was an accusation that he tried to secure conscientious objector status to keep himself out of the Vietnam war.

So is the insinuation that in the 1960s, Sanders, to coin a phrase, loathed the military? Why would Hillary supporters of all people think that story would hurt his chances of securing the Democratic nomination?

THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE. SHE EXPLICITLY DENIED DOING THIS. Washington Post: Clinton Used Private Server To Send And Receive Classified Emails.

I’M HAPPY TO SEE THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW ON THIS LIST AGAIN THIS YEAR: 10 Law Schools That Leave Grads With the Least Debt.

QUOTES OF THE MORNING: BEFORE & AFTER THE 1929 CRASH.

My favorite is John Maynard Keynes promising in 1927, “We will not have any more crashes in our time.”

Similarly, the before and after quotes of 2008-era Obama supporting journalists will be fun to collate as well.

(Via SDA.)

JACK DUNPHY: LAPD URGES OFFICERS TO BE COMMUNITY GUARDIANS, NOT WARRIORS ON CRIME: “We can be grateful that assassinations of police officers are rare events.  So are shark attacks, but it doesn’t take many before people think twice about swimming in the ocean.  After years of decline, crime is on the rise again in cities all over the country.  Only good police work will bring it down again.  Will good cops be there to do it?”

Not if the left can help it.

ANDREW KLAVAN ON THE FIRST RULE OF AMERICAN MSM NEWS COVERAGE: “Whenever the prejudices and illusions of left-wingers are confirmed by an individual incident, the incident is treated as representative; when those prejudices and illusions are contradicted, the incident is considered an aberration — and treating it as representative is deemed hateful.”

Because, as Jim Treacher sagely observed last year on Twitter, “Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

HYPOTHESIS: LEFTIES FAVOR GUN CONTROL BECAUSE THEY LACK SELF-CONTROL. White House staffer indicted on assault charges.

A White House staffer has been indicted on assault charges stemming from a dispute in which she allegedly fired a gun at her U.S. Capitol Police boyfriend.

Police say Barvetta Singletary texted her boyfriend to meet at her home in suburban Maryland on Aug. 7, where she confronted him about another woman.

Singletary then allegedly grabbed her boyfriend’s gun and phone out of his bag. Demanding the phone’s password, she pointed the gun at her boyfriend.

“Don’t think I won’t use it,” she allegedly said, firing it at a sofa 10 feet away.

Plus: “Singletary has served as a special assistant to the president since 2014.” Some quality people we’ve got working in this White House.

PAULINE KAEL, CALL YOUR OFFICE: MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle: I Want To Live As Far Away From Anti-Establishment Voters As Possible:

JOHN HEILEMANN: Trump, Carson, Cruz and Fiorina add up to 53% in Iowa.

MIKE BARNICLE: 53%? So that means that if I lived in Iowa, I would want to know where each of those members of that 53% lived, and I would want to live as far away from them as possible, because there is something seriously wrong with the Republican party if those people combined have a majority of the voters.

Those people? Blow that racist dog-whistle!

THEY CLAIM THEY’RE AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE, THEN TRY TO GET THEIR POLITICAL OPPONENTS SHOT: Gun control groups accused of ‘swatting’ open-carry permit holders, putting lives at risk.

As more states relax rules about open-carrying of guns, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has taken to social media to urge the public to assume gun-toters are trouble, and to call the cops on anyone they feel may be a threat.

“If you see someone carrying a firearm in public—openly or concealed—and have ANY doubts about their intent, call 911 immediately and ask police to come to the scene,” the group wrote on its widely followed Facebook page. “Never put your safety, or the safety of your loved ones, at the mercy of weak gun laws that arm individuals in public with little or no criminal and/or mental health screening.”

That approach, according to a blog post by Ohio-based Buckeye Firearms Association, could give rise to needless, tense confrontations between police and gun owners. The association and other similar groups liken the tactic to “swatting,” or the act of tricking an emergency service into dispatching responders based on a false report. Many online harassment campaigns have been known to participate in the practice.

“This practice is exactly what they [Coalition to Stop Gun Violence] are doing,” said Erich Pratt, spokesman for Virginia-based Gun Owners of America. “It’s one thing if someone is using a gun in an illegal or unlawful manner. No one is questioning that. But this clearly sounds like swatting.”

Lefties don’t oppose gun ownership because they’re anti-violence. They oppose gun ownership because they’re pro-control.

“KEEP J STREET OFF MY STREET:” Iran Nuclear Deal Opponents Pack Maryland Synagogue.

IT’S FAIRER THAN BLAMING SARAH PALIN FOR CLIP ART. Cruz lays blame on Obama for inciting killing of Texas deputy.