TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 993.

MARK STEYN: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow. “Great news! Anglican bishops are moving toward the same position on facial hair as Mullah Omar: ‘Vicars should grow BEARDS to reach out to Muslims in their areas, says Bishop of London.’”

Goodnight western civilization — it’s been a nice run!

WE WERE POISED FOR REAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM, BUT “BLACK LIVES MATTER” POISONED THE WELL: Resistance Mounts to Prison Reform.

Momentum for prison reform, driven by a bipartisan coalition of civil rights oriented Democrats and small government Republicans, has been building for years. The issue of over-incarceration is in the public consciousness like never before, state prison populations are falling, and the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill overhauling federal sentencing with support from heavyweights on both sides of the aisle. But we are now seeing some signs that the “prison reform moment” may be on hold—or at least, that the dissenters will be more vocal than they were last year or the year before. . . .

The failure of the sentencing reform bill to sail through the Senate is partly a story about election year politics—as Michelle Cottle explained in the Atlantic, one reason the bill has yet to come to the floor is that New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte is facing a tight re-election race in New Hampshire, a state with an acute opioid epidemic magnified in the media by its early presidential primary. But it also points to deeper trends: In particular, the rise of the Jacksonian wing of the Republican Party, and the retreat of the Jeffersonians. For a few years during the Obama presidency, it appeared that Jeffersonians like Rand Paul, who supported reining in the NSA, softening the criminal justice system, and scaling back the war on terror, represented the future of the GOP. But the Jeffersonian moment is over, and the nationalist Jacksonians have come roaring back. Crime, terror, immigration, and general law-and-order toughness is Andrew Jackson’s bread-and-butter. It’s no surprise that the Jacksonian revival would frustrate criminal justice reform efforts, at least temporarily.

Also all the rioting, traffic-blocking, name-calling, death-threatening nonsense. I don’t think that Black Lives Matter’s well-poisoning was accidental, either.

SLOW LORNA, as spotted by Tim Blair:

Lorna June McCue was denied tenure and ultimately dismissed after 11 years at the university in part because of her failure to submit a single piece of peer-reviewed research during that time.

McCue has alleged that peer-reviewed research is contrary to indigenous oral traditions and that UBC’s research standard effectively discriminated against her “race, colour, ancestry, place of origin … and sex.”

Saul Bellow, call your office.

COMMON CORE WILL COST FOUR TIMES MORE THAN PROJECTED: And as is so often the case, California is getting the worst of it.

A California commission has just decided the technology costs for Common Core tests are an unfunded mandate, which will require state taxpayers to cough up approximately $4 billion more to local school districts, Californian and former U.S. Department of Education official Ze’ev Wurman tells The Federalist.

This adds to the extra $3.5 billion the legislature gave schools for Common Core in spring 2015 and a separate infusion of $1.7 billion Gov. Jerry Brown snagged for Common Core spread across fiscal years 2014 and 2015. That makes a total of approximately $9.2 billion above and beyond existing tax expenditures Californians will pay to have Common Core injected into their state.

This even though both vested and independent analyses found that California’s pre-Common Core curriculum mandates were of higher quality than the Common Core that replaced it. You read that right: Californians got their kids worse instruction, and are paying $9.2 billion extra for it.

I have a fourth grader subject to Common Core math, and I can tell you there’s also a huge hidden cost in having to re-teach my child the right way to do his homework.

ASHE SCHOW: Due process advocates starting 2016 off strong. “Advocates for due process on college campuses have come out in full force in the first months of 2016. Law professors, legislators, editorial boards and even a presidential candidate have stepped up to defend the constitutional rights of those accused of sexual assault on college campuses.”

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!

NEW PRIORITY FOR THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION: Fighting Sexual Harassment. “The NSF statement followed a letter this month from Charles Bolden, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, that also urged colleges and universities to take these issues more seriously.”

Entirely unrelated: As Tech Progress Slows, Say Goodbye To Golden Age Of Growth.

YET ANOTHER FINAL COUNTDOWN EXPIRES: Rush Limbaugh’s Algore Countdown — created in 2006 after the Goracle claimed that “unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return,” expired earlier today. Rush promises “a surprise” today in honor of one of the most high profile of the many doomsday environmental countdowns since the first “Earth Day” in 1970* expiring without incident.

Related: State of the Climate: 10 years after Al Gore declared a ‘planetary emergency’ – top 10 reasons Gore was wrong.

* The Reefer Madness-style doomsday predictions made during the first “Earth Day” are also fun to look back on to see how the original Chicken Littles on the left got things so wildly wrong. Not the least of which, their not forecasting — or caring — that eventually, there would be a central information network where their predictions could be easily found and mocked.

In the two screenshots below, you can see the earth both in its final minute, and in its wrecked form after its final countdown expired. Viewer discretion advised concerning the horrors to follow:

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Muslims are ‘not like us’ and we should just accept they will never integrate, says former racial equalities chief Trevor Phillips. “Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said it was disrespectful to assume that Muslim communities would change. He told a meeting at the Policy Exchange think tank in Westminster on Monday that Muslims ‘see the world differently from the rest of us’. According to The Times, he said: ‘Continuously pretending that a group is somehow eventually going to become like the rest of us is perhaps the deepest form of disrespect.'”

Well, it’s the deepest form of something, I guess.

HEADLINES FROM 1917, 1945, and 2016: Military Ombudsman: German army is ‘short of almost everything.’

Related: “The governments in Paris, London and Brussels have completely lost control, they are not able to maintain the rule of law and they are miserably failing to protect their citizens.”

KOCH BIOGRAPHER JANE MAYER’S STRANGE DENIALS OF HER FAMILY NAZI CONNECTIONS.

VET IMMIGRANTS? THEY CAN’T EVEN VET AMERICANS: AP INVESTIGATION: Feds’ failures imperil migrant children:

As tens of thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America crossed the border in search of safe harbor, overwhelmed U.S. officials weakened child protection policies, placing some young migrants in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Without enough beds to house the record numbers of young arrivals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lowered its safety standards during border surges in the last three years to swiftly move children out of government shelters and into sponsors’ homes. The procedures were increasingly relaxed as the number of young migrants rose in response to spiraling gang and drug violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to emails, agency memos and operations manuals obtained by AP, some under the Freedom of Information Act.

First, the government stopped fingerprinting most adults seeking to claim the children. In April 2014, the agency stopped requiring original copies of birth certificates to prove most sponsors’ identities. The next month, it decided not to complete forms that request sponsors’ personal and identifying information before sending many of the children to sponsors’ homes. Then, it eliminated FBI criminal history checks for many sponsors.

Since the rule changes, the AP has identified more than two dozen children who were placed with sponsors who subjected them to sexual abuse, labor trafficking, or severe abuse and neglect.

Government is just another word for the things we choose to screw up, unaccountably, together.

IT’S COME TO THIS: University of Oregon Debates Removing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Content of His Character” Quote From Statue, Due to Not Being “Diverse” Enough.

The revolution always devours its own eventually. I know MLK was never a Republican (and veered into full-on socialism in his last days), but if the left wishes to abandon his rhetoric — they long ago abandoned his notion of a color-blind society — I’m sure the right will be happy to be the home for his legacy.

Related: “The problem with going down certain roads is that they are very steep, and it’s hard to stop on them once you’re on them, and… look, there’s a reason why we don’t let young kids run things, OK?”

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: Homeland Security Chairman: ‘Bit of a Disgrace’ Terror Attacks Left Out of Obama Speech.

To be fair, Obama and reality have never been on the best of terms with each other.

WELL, IT’S NOT LIKE THERE’S A BENIGN GLOBAL HEGEMON WHO CAN ENFORCE ORDER: Pursuing critics, China reaches across borders. And nobody is stopping it.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: The Democrats’ Jobs Problem.

Earlier: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

FROM THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS, a statement on The Architecture Of Intellectual Freedom.

RACISM STRAIGHT UP: Matthews: Who’ll Watch ‘The Two Cuban Guys’ If Trump Doesn’t Debate?

No seriously — if you’re going to blow the racial dog whistle at words such as “golf” and “Chicago,” you don’t get a pass at slurs such as this one.

HACKERS HIT ISRAELI POWER AUTHORITY:

“The virus was already identified and the right software was already prepared to neutralize it,” Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told attendees of a computer security conference in Tel Aviv, according to this article published Tuesday by The Times of Israel. “We had to paralyze many of the computers of the Israeli Electricity Authority. We are handling the situation and I hope that soon, this very serious event will be over … but as of now, computer systems are still not working as they should.”

The “severe” attack was detected on Monday as temperatures in Jerusalem dipped to below freezing, creating two days of record-breaking electricity consumption, according to The Jerusalem Post. Steinitz said it was one of the biggest computer-based attacks Israel’s power authority has experienced, and that it was responded to by members of his ministry and the country’s National Cyber Bureau. The response included shutting down portions of Israel’s electricity grid. The energy minister didn’t identify any suspects behind the attack or provide details about how it was carried out.

Also in Reason, a look at how long the U.S. could go without electricity.

BIAS BY OMISSION: Networks Cover Panda Cub’s Debut 26x More than March for Life.

VACUOUS VOX BOXES ITSELF in an effort to smear Ronald Reagan’s role in the conclusion of the Iranian hostage standoff.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR: “Playing with Fire, Republican Bigwigs Want to Take Out Cruz.”

To many out­side ob­serv­ers, the wave of seasoned Re­pub­lic­an of­fi­cials and strategists sound­ing in­creas­ingly com­fort­able with Don­ald Trump as the GOP’s pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee is a sign of sur­render. Wheth­er it’s Iowa Gov. Terry Bran­stad root­ing for Ted Cruz to lose the Iowa caucuses or Or­rin Hatch “com­ing around a little bit” on Trump’s can­did­acy or the paucity of money spent at­tack­ing Trump on the air­waves, it feels like of­fi­cial Wash­ing­ton has sided with Trump over Cruz.

In real­ity, many are try­ing to sal­vage the cam­paign of Sen. Marco Ru­bio (or any oth­er more-main­stream al­tern­at­ive), and are bet­ting that it’s easi­er to de­feat Trump in a one-on-one show­down than Cruz em­boldened by a strong show­ing in Iowa. To di­min­ish Trump at this point, Re­pub­lic­an strategist Alex Cas­tel­lanos wrote in an email Monday, “per­versely helps both Cruz and Trump, which is not what many con­ser­vat­ives in­tend.”

Read the whole thing.

The Establishment has moved from denial, to panic, to denial and panic barely disguised by a veneer of accommodation. Voters are sick of the denial, can smell the panic, and see through the veneer.

I don’t know who the Republican nominee will be, but it’s easy to predict that this won’t be the Year of the Insider.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Goodbye, Golden Age of Growth.