MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Hey, We Just Might Get That Trump-Sanders Race!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor requires students write 8-page ‘commitment to social justice,’ Students also told to Like left-wing Facebook pages.

ONCE THEY DECIDE HILLARY CAN’T WIN, THEY MAY ACTUALLY start to pay attention.

JOURNALISM: Gawker Sued Again, This Time For Breaking Their Word With A Source.

THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS FINALLY NOTICED: 90s Scandals Threaten to Erode Hillary Clinton’s Strength With Women.

Only three weeks behind this column of mine. Advantage: InstaPundit!

THE ART OF THE DEAL: Iran to build two new nuclear plants as Ayatollah Khamenei warns of American “deceit and treachery” on nuclear issues.

CELINA DURGIN LOOKS AT EVERY POLICE SHOOTING IN DECEMBER, 2015 and reports: In Most Police Shootings, Cops Shoot Only Under Great Duress — Here Are Some Facts. “In December, police killed 92 people — 21 blacks, 40 whites, 17 Hispanics/Latinos, five Asians/Pacific Islanders, and nine of unknown race. Fourteen were unarmed, including five blacks. Those who were unarmed reportedly still posed other types of threats to officers. These threats included physical violence and ramming officers with a vehicle. Most of these reports are based largely on the accounts of eyewitnesses and the officers involved and so might not include all relevant details, such as results from ongoing police investigations. But the available facts fail to support the claim, made most prominently by the movement Black Lives Matter, that police systematically target unarmed black men. Of note among those who were killed is, however, the prevalence of mental illness.”

KIRSTEN POWERS: Can Hillary take ’13 Hours’ of truth? Audiences can decide who to believe about Benghazi — self-serving bureaucrats or the men who lived through it.

RANDY BARNETT ON U.S. v. Texas and the President’s Duty of Good Faith Performance.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 986.

ON DUKE UNIVERSITY’S CAMPUS, A CLIMATE OF FEAR: “During our time here at Duke, we have encountered a community that values identity politics over reasoned discussion and debate when confronting real—and at times misperceived—instances of injustice. Actions taken that emphasize identity politics create a climate of fear on campus whereby people who publicly dissent from the policies being proposed are afraid of being personally attacked and slandered. In this climate, fewer students feel able to speak their mind, and we are concerned that this undermines Duke’s integrity as an institution of open exchange and learning.”

Sounds like a hostile educational environment.

BARACK OBAMA, ARMING OUR ENEMIES AND DISARMING OUR CITIZENS SINCE 2009: ‘Fast & Furious’ rifle capable of taking down helicopter found in ‘El Chapo’ cache. “A .50-caliber rifle found at Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s hideout in Mexico was funneled through the gun-smuggling investigation known as Fast and Furious, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News. . . . When agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked serial numbers of the eight weapons found in his possession, they found one of the two .50-caliber weapons traced back to the ATF program, sources said.”

Remember, the purpose of this program was to put weapons in Mexican gangsters’ hands that could be traced back to American sales, as a pretext for stricter gun regulations here. They were willing to accept increased deaths as collateral damage.

YES, HILLARY, please run on reparations.

FLINT, MICHIGAN’S BLUE MODEL CRISIS:

Where there’s a crisis in a modern American city, blue model failures—in particular, bankrupt pension funds or intractable public unions—are probably lurking not far below the surface. That is certainly the case for the water contamination disaster in Flint, Michigan, which is traceable to the city’s desperate efforts to save money by switching its water source from the City of Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. As the Daily Caller‘s Blake Neff reports, the city made that decision under heavy budgetary pressures, caused, in part, by its untenable public pension system. . . .

Does the emergency in Flint point to the politics of the future, in which tapped out blue cities will increasingly be unable to supply the basic needs of their citizens, and be forced to appeal to the federal government for help? As other blue cities face increasingly serious crises of governability, there are reasons to worry that it might.

The Democratic presidential candidates earned applause last night for denouncing Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s handling of the Flint situation. But have any of them offered a plan for addressing the underlying cost problems plaguing Flint and other Democratic-controlled urban areas? As we’ve written before, the federal government will likely need to get involved, at some point, with the deepening budgetary disasters plaguing these cities. But this involvement must be guided by the concept of relief-for-reform, in which the bankrupt cities get limited assistance in exchange for real changes to the policies that led to this mess. Those policies include, but aren’t limited to, high wages and pension promises (usually underfunded) for unionized public employees, zoning restrictions, enterprise-killing regulations, unrealistically high levels of tax combined with “exemptions” and carve-outs for crony capitalist special interests, and an overstuffed bureaucracy to give jobs to the politically well-connected.The Democrats are comfortable talking about more money for American cities, but not so much about that whole reform idea—at least, not yet.

Insufficient opportunities for graft.

HMM: More Air Force drones are crashing than ever as mysterious new problems emerge.

FEDS SPEND $75 MILLION DESIGNING AND CONSTRUCTING SPACIOUS NEW BUILDING … FOR THE WRONG AGENCY! What is about the General Services Administration that attracts such corruption, incompetence and idiocy? Whatever it is – GSA is Uncle Sugar’s housekeeping agency – nobody there consulted with the Federal Protective Service about what it needed in the new building. When the building was completed, FPS looked it over and refused to take it.

Why? Because, it turns out, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson, GSA didn’t talk to FPS because GSA thought it was building the facility for the Army Corps of Engineers! Trust me, Watson isn’t making this up, her report is based on a Government Accounting Office analysis. GSA oversees more than 5,900 federal facilities. Your government is in the best of hands.

THE INSTA-WIFE’S MEN ON STRIKE THESIS FINDS AN INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE.

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