ASHE SCHOW RESPONDS TO MADAMS STEINEM & ALBRIGHT: Women Can Support Whomever They Want. And did, as yesterday’s results show.

MICHAEL HIGDON: State Misdemeanant, Federal Felon: Adolescent Sexual Offenders and the INA.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS FACED BY HURTFUL GENDERED PERFORMANCES: Rutgers students smear themselves with fake blood to protest ‘Most Dangerous Faggot.’ Plus the inevitable: “'[Rutgers groups] should not be inviting anyone like Yiannopoulos because what we stand for is inclusion and diversity,’ student activist Nyuma Waggeh told The Daily Targum. ‘If a speaker makes someone feel unsafe or uncomfortable, then they should not come to campus.’”

Why so homophobic, Nyuma? And really, trying to protest a homosexual man by invoking the tired anti-gay cliche that they’re repulsed by menstruation? Pathetic.

Plus:

“The strangest thing, however, was that when the floor was opened up for questions, I didn’t see any of the protesters behind me raise their hand,” the student continued. “Yiannopoulos and others were clearly open to hear the position of the left, and when someone with an opposing view DID have a question, it was respectfully answered with a libertarian perspective.”

“The purpose of university is to interrogate new ideas, discover ourselves, meet new people, and explore the world. What it ought to be is a free space without trigger warnings. In my view, anyone who asks for a trigger warning should be expelled. What they’ve demonstrated is that they are incapable of being exposed to new ideas,” Yiannopoulos said.

As Milo often says, to survive in an outrage culture, it pays to be outrageous. Video here. The protesters certainly lived up to IowaHawk’s description as “screaming campus garbage babies.” You could run excerpts in a Trump ad. . . .

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1007.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Ross Perot’s Former Campaign Manager’s Advice to Presidential Candidate Bloomberg.

TO BE FAIR, IT’S JUST THERE AS A BASE-PLEASING ELECTION YEAR GESTURE: Obama’s Oil Tax Is Running on Empty.

President Barack Obama’s proposal to levy a $10-a-barrel tax on oil reminds me of an eternal truth that applies to almost all working humans: Once you know you are on short time, about to be transferred or discharged, a certain puckish insouciance seeps into the performance of your daily duties.

Presidential budgets are always more wish list than “To Do,” of course. Assumptions are made, hopeful suggestions offered, and then Congress chuckles and says “Good one, chief” before returning to whatever they were doing before. This is especially true when the opposition controls both legislative houses. And it is most very especially true during the last year of a presidency, when a lonely nation’s eyes turn toward the folks vying to replace you. . . .

After almost eight years of minimal economic growth, the fall in oil prices has brought some welcome relief to strained household budgets. Many U.S. oil companies are losing money, particularly the shale oil folks, making the workers and local economies that depend upon them anxious. Jacking up the price of gas and home heating oil is going to upset all those people, who will in turn do their best to upset any legislators who propose such a thing. Congressional Republicans are certainly not going to stick out their necks for an opposition-party president with whom relations have never been warmer than “testy.”

The administration has made some gestures toward mitigating this opposition, notably by claiming that the tax will be paid by oil companies. But this is obvious nonsense. Oil companies currently have few profits from which to pay the tax. Whoever is responsible for filing the paperwork, the cost will be paid by consumers in higher fuel prices, and the administration surely knows this.

They know, but when have they ever cared that something they said was untrue?

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: More US troops to be sent to Helmand, military says.

HMM: Majority of NY Jews View Hillary Unfavorably, Would Vote GOP. Well, NYC Jews have been trending more conservative for years, because that’s who’s having kids.

NO SURPRISE: Federal Student Aid, Not Faculty Salaries, Is Primary Driver Of Escalating Tuition.

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THAT THERE WILL BE SOME ESTABLISHMENT IS INEVITABLE, ALL RIGHT. BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE CURRENT ONE IS HISTORICALLY AWFUL. Ralph Hancock: The Anti-Establishment Delusion.

And while democracy is a pretty lousy tool for making specific decisions, it is a decent reset-button for a system that isn’t working — and there aren’t many alternatives given that, for the establishment, the system is always working.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: European banking’s slow-motion crisis is picking up speed — and it’s all a lot simpler and scarier than you think. “You know it’s bad when the finance minister of Germany has to publicly state he has ‘no concerns’ about his country’s biggest lender – Deutsche Bank – as Wolfgang Schauble did on Tuesday while bank shares plummeted. It’s been brewing for a while. The business models available to European banks, the methods by which they make money on a consistent basis, are disappearing fast and investors are taking flight.”

YOU’RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE, YOU KNOW: Jeb: I’m Not Dead Yet!

DESPERATION: Hillary Hires Ex-Obama Aide In Bid for Youth Vote.

OPPORTUNITY MISSED. Republicans fail to scream at the lunacy of drafting women:

A proposal from the chief of staff of the Army and the commandant of the Marine Corps to require that women register with the Selective Service seemed at first like an effort to highlight the absurd end point of the rush to put women in combat, but top Republicans duly saluted and fell in line.

Asked about the proposal at the recent Republican debate, Marco Rubio said that “Selective Service should be opened up for both men and women in case a draft is ever instituted.” He makes it sound as though women would completely miss out should a large-scale conventional war break out and they not be compelled to fight in it through the coercive power of the state.

Chris Christie agreed. So did Jeb Bush, who gamely — and cluelessly — added that “we should not impose any kind of political agenda on the military.”

Of course, a political agenda — namely the insistence there is no meaningful difference between men and women, even when it comes to military combat — is the entire point.

This would have been an excellent moment for the GOP debaters to challenge the assumptions of the moderators as vigorously as they did during the infamous CNBC debate in October and present Americans with the opportunity to vote for a choice, not an echo, to coin a phrase.

HMM: Putin Corners Himself in Ukraine. We Would Be Crazy to Placate Him Now.

MORE TRUMP VOTERS CREATED: Controversial film shown at VA high school slammed as ‘White guilt’ video.

A 25% EXCISE TAX ON REMITTANCES WOULD BUILD A PRETTY GOOD WALL: “Last week, Mexico’s central bank reported that for the first time since statistics have been kept, the $24.8 billion in immigrant remittances received have surpassed Mexico’s $23.4 billion in oil earnings, meaning that the government of Mexico is more dependent than ever on the earnings of maids and gardeners in the U.S. to keep itself afloat.”

THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN: Thousands of Britain’s curry houses face closure because of immigration rules.

What a multicultural train wreck; as Kathy Shaidle writes, the “But what about all the great restaurants?!” cliche takes quite a turn.

ANALYSIS: CONDITIONALLY TRUE. New Hampshire proves Americans hate politicians.

But given that Sanders is an outright socialist, and Trump is no believer in small government, Americans may hate politicians, but ultimately, far too many have learned to stop worrying and love an ever-expanding government.

MARK JUDGE: China Wants Male Teachers, and We Should Too.

Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom.

In Zhengzhou, a city on the Yellow River, schools have asked boys to sign pledges to act like “real men.” In Shanghai, principals are trying boys-only classes with courses like martial arts, computer repair and physics. In Hangzhou, in eastern China, educators have started a summer camp called West Point Boys, complete with taekwondo classes and the motto, “We bring out the men in boys.”

I love that they name it after West Point, which itself meanwhile is feminizing as fast as it can.

ROGER SIMON: MY PRIVATE MARCO.

Read the whole thing.

BRYCE COVERT: “Of course Hillary Clinton is a victim of sexism”

Of course.

Clinton’s staggering loss in New Hampshire has nothing to do with her party’s hard leftward shift under Barack Obama, youthful enthusiasm for an anti-establishment opponent in a season of anti-establishment fever in both parties, voter preference for a local candidate, misgivings about her handling of Top Secret information as Secretary of State, her lack of accomplishments as SecState or as a Senator, or her own poorly managed campaign.

No, the voters of New Hampshire — largely the same voters who saved Clinton’s campaign with a convincing win over Obama in 2008 — suddenly noticed the Clinton is a woman and decided “We can’t have that!”

Of course.

HOUSING REGULATION AS A ROOT CAUSE OF INEQUALITY: Joel Kotkin: This Is Why You Can’t Afford A House.

There’s little argument that inequality, and the depressed prospects for the middle class, will be a dominant issue this year’s election. Yet the most powerful force shaping this reality—the rising cost of housing—has barely emerged as political issue.

As demonstrated in a recent report (PDF) from Chapman University’s Center for Demographics and Policy, housing now takes the largest share of family costs, while expenditures on food, apparel, and transportation have dropped or stayed about the same. In 2015, the rise in housing costs essentially swallowed savings gains made elsewhere, notably, savings on the cost of energy. The real estate consultancy Zillow predicts housing inflation will only worsen this year.

Driven in part by potential buyers being forced into the apartment market, rents have risen to a point that they now compose the largest share of income in modern U.S. history. Since 1990, renters’ income has been stagnant, while inflation-adjusted rents have soared 14.7 percent. Given the large shortfall in housing production—down not only since the 2007 recession but also by almost a quarter between 2011 and 2015—the trend toward ever higher prices and greater levels of unaffordability seems all but inevitable.

The connection between growing inequality and rising property prices is fairly direct. Thomas Piketty, the French economist, recently described the extent to which inequality in 20 nations has ramped up in recent decades, erasing the hard-earned progress of previous years in the earlier part of the 20th century. After examining Piketty’s groundbreaking research, Matthew Rognlie of MIT concluded (PDF) that much of the observed inequality is from redistribution of housing wealth away from the middle class.

Rognlie concluded that much of this was due to land regulation, and suggested the need to expand the housing supply and reexamine the land-use regulation that he associates with the loss of middle-class wealth. Yet in much of the country, housing has become so expensive as to cap upward mobility, forcing many people to give up on buying a house and driving many—particularly young families—to leave high-priced coastal regions for less expensive, usually less regulated markets in the country’s interior.

It’s as if Blue areas are all about feudalism, despite all the talk about ending inequality.