PERMANENT VACATION. Krauthammer: Obama Is on a ‘Holiday Trip’ to Cuba as ‘The World Burns.’

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Toward a College Testing System.

The paper, while attentive to concerns about unreliability and unintended consequences, is cautiously optimistic about the impact such an assessment system would have on higher education quality. And it suggests that the results could help the federal government control tuition increases by steering subsidies away from low-performing schools.
There’s one other potential benefit of a carefully-constructed college assessment system that DeBoer doesn’t mention: It might help level the playing field by allowing students from less prestigious schools prove that they’re as capable as their Ivy League counterparts. As we’ve argued before, elite colleges and high-powered employers are in a symbiotic relationship of convenience that is deeply unfair to students who either didn’t want to go to a prestigious university or who couldn’t impress an admissions committee when they were 17 years old.

One important way that social inequality is maintained in America is that students at top schools have a leg up in many professional fields no matter how much they learned or didn’t learn. A standardized college testing system just might help address this problem.

Even better, let’s make where people went to school matter less.

WITH DNC IN MIND, CITY BANS CARRYING URINE, FECES: ABC’s Freeform, Joel Silver Developing Transgender Bathroom Drama Series.

SO MUCH FOR “BLACK LIVES MATTER:” “This is what happens when a Democrat takes over after a Republican: minorities will suffer when it comes to education. The new Democratic governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, is putting limits on the very successful school choice program that has helped low-income, mostly minority students in that state.”

SO TRUMP SUPPORTERS ARE basically just old-fashioned Democrat voters.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Dick Heller Transformed Gun-Rights Law—and He’s Not Finished.

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OUR RULING CLASS CERTAINLY ISN’T: Are We Ready for Reality after the Brussels Terror ?

“IT’S TIME FOR THE SYMBOLIC ILLUMINATION PHASE OF THE USELESS GESTURE PAGEANT,” Iowahawk tweets, with a link to a New York Times article noting that “the Eiffel Tower would feature the colors of the Belgian flag on Tuesday night in solidarity with Brussels.”

And speaking of the Useless Gesture Pageant, it was only four days ago that “Eiffel Tower turns off lights as part of global Earth Hour.”

But then, it helps to maintain a certain schizophrenia when dealing with the two faces of reprimitivization.

DON’T DO STUPID SH*T: Obama Admin Engaged in Secret Talks to Pay Iran Nearly $2 Billion.

“Officials admit delays in informing Congress.”

More:

The Obama administration has spent three years engaged in secret talks with Iran that resulted in the payment of nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to the Islamic Republic, with more payouts likely to come in the future, according to a recent letter issued by the State Department and obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The administration’s disclosure came in response to an inquiry launched in January by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), who was seeking further information about the Obama administration’s payment of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to Iran, which many viewed as a “ransom payment” for Iran’s release that month of several U.S. hostages.

What, you think testing banned missiles is cheap?

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Bet You Didn’t  Know US has 5,000 Troops in Iraq.

If only Obama hadn’t pulled them out in the first place as a reelection brag.

HE’S ONLY PRESIDENT FOR THE GOOD THINGS!

VENN DIAGRAM: PAUL KRUGMAN 1998 VERSUS 2015.

MAYBE WE SHOULD ELECT THEM TO 9-YEAR TERMS, WITH A LIMIT OF TWO. Proposal: Limit justices to one 18-year term.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Student cleared of sex assault charges sues for malicious prosecution.

A New Jersey student who had charges of sexual assault dismissed against him is suing the police who investigated him, alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution.

The accused student, who will not be named here because he is currently innocent under the law and no longer being charged or investigated, spent two weeks in jail because he was unable to post the $250,000 bail. He was eventually released on his own recognizance, and the charges were administratively dismissed 20 days later, without the case ever going before a grand jury.

The accused alleges in his lawsuit that the “probable cause” report that was used to justify the arrest was produced after the arrest was made, as the time of the arrest was mentioned.

Related: Sex assault charges dropped against Univ. of Tennessee football player. “Last year, the Knox County district attorney dropped sex assault charges against a University of Tennessee football player. Now the police file has been released and we know why. Police investigated the accusation for three months. A DNA test was performed and found no evidence of semen or anything else from the accused player.”

Plus: “Highlighting what it’s like for accused students, even those who are not charged, one need look no further than the Tennessean article. After the first two paragraphs about charges not being brought against the player, writer Anita Wadhwani switches topics to talk about a lawsuit against the university from eight women who claimed they were sexually assaulted.”

POLL: Kasich, Cruz voters prefer Trump as second choice.

Nearly half of the supporters of Ohio Gov. John Kasich would vote for Donald Trump, not Ted Cruz, as their second choice, according to the results of a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday. And more than half of Cruz’s backers suggested they would do the same with their man out of the race.

Asked whom they would like to win the GOP nomination, 43 percent of the 652 Republicans surveyed said they wanted Trump to emerge as the party’s choice in Cleveland, followed by 29 percent for Cruz and just 16 percent for Kasich, with 9 percent undecided.

Cruz is reportedly trying to “entice Kasich to drop out of race,” but if the Quinnipiac poll is correct, that would only nudge Trump even closer to 50% — or higher.

RON RADOSH: Obama Confounds Critics and Surprises Raul Castro with His Strong Defense of Democracy in Communist Cuba: “Obama may not have given the exact speech conservatives would have hoped he would give, but it was better than any of us expected. So I praise him for saying what he did. I’m sure Raul Castro and his henchman had a very different reaction.”

Read the whole thing.

Related: Good catch by Stephen Miller on Twitter: “Watch it again. [Obama] says 2 Cubans, 1 Black President, a woman, and then a democratic socialist,” adding, “Favorite thing about this.. Obama recognizes candidate heritages but then comes to Sanders’s ideology because Jewish…I mean gosh, why would Obama skip over Sanders’ Jewish heritage?”

THE ISIS ATTACK YOU DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT TUESDAY: Christian Convert Hacked to Death.

JEB AND MARCO CAN ATTEST TO THIS: Money Can’t Buy Love — or in Some Cases, Even Elections.

On the surface, the 2016 presidential election looks like an important milestone for those who want to limit the influence of money in politics. After all, populists from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders and billionaire Donald Trump, have made campaign finance a major focus. Both argue that their competitors have been bought and paid for, and are looking out for their big-dollar donors instead of the average middle-class Jane.

But to