WELL NOW, ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?: Federal judge slams DOJ lawyers for lying to the court on immigration deportations.

The constitutional challenge to President Obama’s executive action on immigration keeps getting more remarkable. A federal judge has now exposed how the Justice Department systematically deceived lower courts about the Administration’s conduct, and he has imposed unprecedented legal measures to attempt to sterilize this ethics rot.

On Thursday District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas found that Obama Administration lawyers committed misconduct that he called “intentional, serious and material.”  In 2015 he issued an injunction—now in front of the Supreme Court—blocking Mr. Obama’s 2014 order that rewrote immigration law to award legal status and federal and state benefits to nearly five million aliens.

When 26 states sued to block the order in December 2014, Justice repeatedly assured Judge Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security would not start processing applications until February 2015 at the earliest. Two weeks after the injunction came down, in March, Justice was forced to admit that DHS had already granted or renewed more than 100,000 permits.

Justice has also conceded in legal filings that all its lawyers knew all along that the DHS program was underway, despite what they said in briefs and hearings. One DOJ lawyer told Judge Hanen that “I really would not expect anything between now and the date of the hearing.” As the judge notes, “How the government can categorize the granting of over 100,000 applications as not being ‘anything’ is beyond comprehension.”

Justice’s only explanation is that its lawyers either “lost focus on the fact” or “the fact receded in memory or awareness”—the fact here being realities that the DOJ was required to disclose to the court. The states weren’t able to make certain arguments or seek certain legal remedies because the program supposedly hadn’t been implemented, leaving them in a weaker legal position.

More to the point, an attorney’s first and most basic judicial obligation is to tell the truth. Judge Hanen concludes that the misrepresentations “were made in bad faith” and “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” Many a lawyer has been disbarred for less.

As a result, Judge Hanen ordered that any Washington-based Justice lawyer who “appears or seeks to appear” in any state or federal court in the 26 states must first attend a remedial ethics seminar on “candor to the court.” He also ordered Attorney General Loretta Lynch to prepare a “comprehensive plan” to prevent such falsification. Such extraordinary judicial oversight is usually reserved for companies with a pattern of corruption or racially biased police departments. Justice is sure to appeal, and whether Judge Hanen has the jurisdiction to impose his plan is uncharted legal territory.

I’ve written about the DOJ’s astoundingly unethical behavior in the immigration case before here, here, and here, as well as other cases such as the litigation involving IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Liars gonna lie, I guess.  Usually, the threat of losing one’s law license is enough to prevent such blatant lies to the court. For some reason, the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice seems unable/unwilling to tell the truth. They must think they’re  “special.”

WHY ARE IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Asian-American group to file discrimination complaint against Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth.

I wrote about this problem a while back.

MY LIFE’S NOT VERY SECRET: The Secret Lives Of Right Wing Professors. But higher-ed’s diversity problem does have its casualties.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will skip his own Congressional impeachment hearing.

Related: IRS Employee Admits He Would Go After, Target, and Try to End Conservative Groups.

Unexpectedly.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SCIENCE IS SUBSERVIENT TO POLITICS. Scientists: Michelle Obama’s Nutrition Label Guidelines Lack ‘Scientific Rigor.’

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hey Sanders Saps, Hillary Is Laughing At You! What Are You Gonna Do About It?

ANDREW KLAVAN: Why The Third Party Bus Is Going Nowhere.

THE ROAD TO IDIOCRACY RUNS THROUGH AUSTIN: “Austin is chasing its tail on ride-sharing,” Ellen Troxclair writes in the Austin American-Statesman:

Yes, there was life before Uber and Lyft, and life can go on after. There was also life before the wheel, before electricity, and before high speed internet, but no one wants to go back to living like cavemen, in the dark, with dial up.

No one? When the New York Times’ writers aren’t personally railing against the evils of air conditioning and jet planes, the paper runs approving Unabomber-esque features on urban hipsters looking to reprimitivize on a regular basis. NBC hectors its viewers over their electricity and light bulb use. A presidential candidate vows to bankrupt the entire coal energy, and the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle silently approve.

But beyond Uber given the boot, Austin is full of examples of progress running backwards. For example, last weekend, my wife and I were in Austin so that Nina could meet a client from Slovenia (who also has an office in Silicon Valley) in town for a tech conference and give him and his fiancé a taste of some real Texas barbeque, courtesy of a short drive to Kreuz Market  in the neighboring town of Lockhart. (It was mouth-wateringly good. Just fabulous.)

While in Austin, we stayed in the Hyatt Regency, located across the street from the offices of the aforementioned Austin American-Statesman newspaper. Evidently, their large parking lot is used for medium-sized concerts and other outdoor events on weekends, weather permitting. From 4:00 PM on Saturday, shortly after we returned to the hotel from our excursion to Lockhart, until 11:00 PM, the entire hotel shook from the sound of the incredibly loud sub-octave bass bins being employed by the JMBLYA 2016 rap concert, “featuring Future, Rae Sremmurd, Carnage, Kevin Gates, Kehlani, Keith Ape, Jazz Cartier & More.” (No, I’ve never heard of any of these guys, either.) But it wasn’t the genre of music – a lily-white death metal concert played at the same volume with the same sound system would also shake the hotel’s walls just as much.

I’m not exaggerating. Nina and I went down to the restaurant in the lobby for dinner at around 7:00 PM, and we could still hear the bass waves from the concert despite being in the center of a massive 16 story 448 room concrete and steel hotel. There’s a reason why a city like Philadelphia placed its hockey arena which hosts rock concerts out in the hinterlands, where the only neighboring businesses are meatpacking plants that presumably close at 5:00 PM before Van Halen shakes the concrete.

As James Lileks would say, World War I called our concert and asked them to turn it down. While the bands at the concert across the street were deafening their audience and shaking the walls of our hotel, a high school was having its prom in ballroom of the hotel; dozens of teenagers tromping up the escalators in rented tuxes and gowns, corsages ready to pinned, a last vestige of a way of life being fundamentally transformed.

Speaking of fundamental transformation, in the past, the newspaper and its physical plant was seen by the community it served as a staid middlebrow paragon, a place where reporters would keep local politicians honest, and critics would advise local readers what books to read, what films to see, what galleries to attend. This sniffy 1964 Newsweek cover story on the Beatles’ arrival at JFK is exactly how every contemporary newspaper would have covered the event, which boils down to four words: Not Our Class, Dear.

As late as 1970, Jimi Hendrix’s death was announced on the ABC evening news with more than hint of disdain; you may have heard about this crazy guitarist from your kids; we know you don’t listen to him, gentle respectable viewer. But during the ‘60s and especially the 1970s, a counterculture formed that would entirely sweep away grown-up culture. Evidently in 2016, the Austin American-Statesman isn’t worried about what hosting rock and rap concerts will do to its reputation in “Keep Austin Weird” Austin. But it’s curious that the same week that the tourist-hungry city banned Uber, it sanctioned a concert so loud, it could disrupt neighboring hotels. Idiocracy, here we come, even in Texas.

Click for a larger version of the photos of the concert I shot from our hotel room; that last shot is from the day after; as with Woodstock, a concert isn’t officially over until the Port-o-San man says it is.

AT AMAZON, Deals Of The Week in Movies & TV.

Plus, Warehouse Deals in Camera & Photo.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When leaders cheat, followers … follow: The trust that underlies a law-abiding society is rotting away thanks to double-dealing in Washington.

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT WHEN HER C-IN-C IS PRESIDENT SELFIE? West Point Cadet, Apparently On Phone During Graduation March, Sparks Outrage.

Some men just want to watch themselves watch the world burn.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Veterans Affairs Secretary: Waiting For Medical Care Is Like Waiting In Line At Disneyland. “‘When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what’s important? What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?’, [Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald] said according to the Washington Examiner. “‘And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.’”

Of course he would.

FROM CHARLES C.W. COOKE, A QUESTION FOR THE LEFT: “Has Donald Trump’s remarkable rise done anything to change your mind as to the ideal strength of the State?”

COVERING THE IMPORTANT STORIES: JJ Abrams announces Paramount/CBS has agreed to drop Star Trek: Axanar lawsuit: “A few months back there was a fan movie, Axanar that was being fan made, and there was this lawsuit between the studio and these fans. And Justin was sort of outraged by this as a longtime fan. And, we started talking about it and realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans should be celebrating this thing, we all [as] fans are part of this world. So he went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now within the last few weeks it will be announced that this is going away and the fans will be able to [continue] their productions.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Group Wants To Fatten Up Cartoon Characters So Fat Kids Won’t Feel Bad About Themselves.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Is Twitter Freaking Out Over Vagina Bones? “Vagina bones have a storied history in popular culture. They shouldn’t be used to denigrate gamers, but celebrated as the absurd catch-all term for the enigmatic pelvic region only the most seasoned anatomists truly comprehend.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Six Surprising Tips for Choosing Seats on an Airplane.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When leaders cheat, followers … follow: The trust that underlies a law-abiding society is rotting away thanks to double-dealing in Washington.

LOS ANGELES INVADED BY GIANT YELLOW SPACE BANANA:

For months, Los Angeles has been gearing up for the transport of a huge space shuttle fuel tank, aka the giant yellow space banana, from Marina del Rey to Exposition Park, where it will join the space shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center. (The Endeavour made its own cool, parade-like trip through LA a couple years ago.)

Now, the fuel tank, ET-94, is here and it’s gearing up for its move, and that means some brief street closures. LADOT, via KPCC, has maps listing when the streets will be closed and when they are roughly anticipated to be open again, but cautions that the reopening times are dependent on everything going smoothly—the tank moving through and the utilities getting back online in a timely manner.

I’m old enough to remember these tanks flew to an altitude of 70 miles at several times the speed of sound, rather than being driven through city streets at about 10 mph. But that was before NASA was “fundamentally transformed” right out of its old job into something, far, far more important than going into space.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Marine barred from graduation walk over uniform.

BREAKING: Freddie Gray Arresting Officer Edward Nero Found Not Guilty On All Charges.

Baltimore’s last Republican mayor left office the same year the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper; will current mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who is also secretary of the Democratic National Committee and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors provide “those who wished to destroy space to do that” in abundance tonight?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1110.

MULTILATERAL INSECURITY: Threat from Russian and Chinese warplanes mounts.

Air Force Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, who leads Air Combat Command, said in an interview with USA TODAY that meeting the challenge from the Russian and Chinese to flights in international airspace is essential but dangerous.

“Our concern is a resurgent Russia and a very, very aggressive China,” Carlisle said.

Both countries are intent on expanding their spheres of influence — Russia in eastern Europe and the Pacific with China focusing much of its effort over the disputed South China Sea.

“Their intent is to get us not to be there,” Carlisle said.

Now where do we pivot?

PLUTONIAN LIVES MATTER, MAN. The News from Pluto: a Fable by David Solway.