MANNERS MAKYTH WHIT STILLMAN.

JIM FIXX, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “Woman climbs Mount Everest to prove vegans aren’t weak, dies.”

Related: “The Crazy Crash of New York’s Hottest Vegan:” “When Melngailis asked for a vegan diet at Rikers, her request was denied. She says she makes do with peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, apples and fresh-sliced cucumber.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1109.

TO SOME, THAT’S A FEATURE, NOT A BUG: John Walsh: ‘The Border Is as Porous as the Ocean.’

“BEGRUDGING” IS THE KEY WORD HERE: Begrudging WaPo poll: Trump 46%, Clinton 44%. “It’s not the headline, and it takes 219 words to get there, but a new Washington Post poll on the presidential race reveals that Republican Donald Trump leads Democrat Hillary Clinton among registered voters 46 percent to 44 percent. . . . But instead of focusing on Trump’s surge, the Post highlighted the feeling among the unfavorable view voters have of both candidates, and that Clinton is more qualified.”

It’s almost as if they’re in the tank for Hillary.

GREEN FANTASIES: Wind and Solar Can’t Replace French Nuclear Reactors.

Three quarters of France’s energy comes from its fleet of nuclear power plants, but many of those reactors are aging, forcing a reevaluation of the country’s energy mix. Renewables are en vogue in Europe these days, with Germany’s energiewende supposedly setting some kind of “green” precedent (despite the fact that Berlin’s massive subsidization of wind and solar energy has perversely led to a sizable increase in consumption of dirty lignite coal), and there’s a push to replace France’s nuclear reactors with renewables. But, as Reuters reports, the head of the French utility EDF is pouring cold water on that approach. . . .

Environmentalists have never taken kindly to nuclear power, despite the fact that it’s one of the only energy sources capable of contributing zero-emissions baseload electricity. The legacy of meltdowns has been enough for greens to discount nuclear’s eco-merits, but the fact remains that anyone looking to craft a 100 percent zero-emissions energy mix needs nuclear power—wind and solar can’t do it on their own. Those renewable energy sources aren’t just expensive (ask a German household for more on that), they’re intermittent, and lacking commercially viable energy storage options that means they can’t provide power on the consistent basis society demands.

In many ways, France provides a better model of a viable and green energy mix than Germany, and the EDF chief is absolutely right—wind and solar can’t replace nuclear power, no matter what clueless environmentalists might have you believe.

If you’re worried about carbon emissions, you need to support nuclear power. If you don’t, you’re not serious.

FASTER, PLEASE: Did U.S. Drone Strike Take Out Taliban Leader?

DAN MITCHELL: Paul Krugman Beclowns Himself…Again.

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THAT’S ODD. I UNDERSTAND HE USED TO BE AN ECONOMIST OR SOMETHING. Krugman Flunks Basic Labor Economics.

YEAH, I’M WITH THE MEDIA. SCREW YOU:

Shot: This is how the strongman wins: Donald Trump’s single greatest weapon is America’s hatred for its press.

—Neal Gabler, Salon.com, yesterday.

Chaser:

“My reaction to that button [`Rather Biased’] and others, in part, is a button I bought yesterday that says `Yeah, I’m In The Media, Screw You!’….I do understand why a lot of people are upset with us, why we rank somewhere between terrorists and bank robbers on the approval scale. We do criticize. That’s part of our role. Our role is not just to parrot what people say, it’s to make people think. I think that sometimes I want to say to the electorate `Grow up!’”

—The late Ginny Carroll, bureau chief in first Detroit and then Houston of the then-Washington Post-owned Newsweek, on C-Span after admitting she wore a button labeled “Yeah, I’m In The Media, Screw You!” at the 1992 Republican convention.

BUT TRUMP IS THE DUMB ONE: Clinton Advisor Says Heller was “Wrongly Decided,” Has No Idea What Case is About.

SPORTS “JOURNALISTS” ARE THE SORRIEST BUNCH OF PC-WHIPPED WUSSES AROUND: Redskins name offensive to sports journalists, but not to 90 percent of Native Americans.

A SELFIE FOR COEXISTENCE — EXCEPT WITH THE JEWS.

JUST THINK OF HIM AS YET ANOTHER “JUSTICE-INVOLVED INDIVIDUAL:” Black Lives Matter ‘Activist’ Was Invited To White House AFTER His Arrest For Allegedly Pimping 17 Yr Old Girl. 

While President Ash Carter has been simultaneously fighting ISIS and “fundamentally transforming” the military SJW-style, our semi-retired POTUS has been on quite a streak this year:

● Obama Hosts Vile Thugs To Discuss Criminal Justice Reform.

● Rapper Rick Ross’s Ankle Monitor Goes Off During Minorty Youth Empowerment Program at White House.

● Before his final State of the Union address, Obama met in the White House with rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose cover artwork to his album To Pimp a Butterfly features a dead judge and his murders posing in front of the White House.

● Yuri Kochiyama, admirer of Osama bin Laden, honored this past week with a Google splash page despite(?) being an admirer of Osama bin Laden, was also “honored during March — which is Women’s History Month — by the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. So the Obama administration has as many questions to answer about this as Google.”

Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” — a warning for the rest of us, a how-to guide for the Obama White House.

Earlier: Obama doesn’t think rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers are criminals.

THE HILL: GOP Hispanic leaders open to reconciling with Trump.

Alfonso Aguilar, a former White House official under President George W. Bush who now leads the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said he’d be open to a conversation.

Aguilar has criticized Trump in the past, but he praised the presumptive nominee’s decision to send a video to this weekend’s National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). Trump’s video aired Friday night, along with one from Clinton.

“If in the process of unification, he were to seek my support and show he’s willing to change his tone and be open to some form of legalization, I would be willing to reconsider my position,” he said.

“He’s done with the Latino community, he’s done with the Latino conservatives,” Aguilar said on Fox News in October. “If Donald Trump is the GOP candidate, we won’t work to support him and we are sure he will lose the general election because there’s no way a GOP candidate can win the White House if they don’t get more support from Latino voters.”

There are signs that Trump is seeking to change his image with Hispanics.

Besides the video address to the Christian conference, he met at Trump Tower earlier this month with Rev. Mario Bramnick, a member of the group’s board.

Bramnick told Time Magazine that Trump “showed a tremendous understanding and concern for the undocumented immigrants.”

While Trump would not commit to any specific policy changes, Bramnick told Time the general takeaway was one of inclusion.

“We all came out really sensing his genuineness,” he said.

So stay tuned.

FIGHTING NOT GOOD. BUT IF MUST FIGHT, WIN: it’s Time for the Miyagi Doctrine.

TEXAS’ TWEETER LAUREATE: Justice Don Willett, the boy from Talty, takes Twitter by storm, and maybe SCOTUS, too.

CATHY YOUNG: UVA’s Jackie Made Up Her “Rapist.” Will Fauxminists ‘StandWithJackie’?

In the department of news that will surprise exactly no one, the latest reports from a University of Virginia dean’s lawsuit against Rolling Stone over its 2014 “Rape on Campus” article have revealed new evidence that the story’s main source, Jackie, fabricated not only her brutal frat-house gang rape but the handsome date who set it up, Haven Monahan.

In this latest twist, it appears someone accessed “Haven’s” email account, , from the office of Jackie’s lawyers on March 18.

No need to page Perry Mason: even without this final clue, the case of the fictional gang rape was basically wrapped up by the end of 2014, a few weeks after the Rolling Stone cover story first rocked the nation.

First, press investigations showed that there was no party at the fraternity named by Jackie anywhere near the date she gave; that her account changed (according to friends) from forced oral sex to vaginal rape and from five assailants to seven; and that she had looked uninjured after a violent attack that she claimed left her bruised and bloodied.

Then, it turned out that the alleged rapist, named “Drew” in the Rolling Stone story but known by the Harlequin-romance name Haven Monahan to Jackie’s friends, seemed to be a ghost. There was no one by that name on the UVA campus or anywhere else; “Haven’s” text messages to Jackie’s friends were fake (and came from fake phone numbers registered to texting-via-Internet services), and his photo matched a former high school classmate of Jackie’s who lived outside Virginia. The catfishing scheme was apparently an elaborate play for the affections of Jackie’s friend and fellow student Ryan Duffin, who had previously rebuffed her romantic overtures—and whom she called for help after the alleged rape.

It was enough to make Anna Merlan, a writer for the feminist website Jezebel.com, apologize to blogger Richard Bradley and Reason writer Robby Soave for calling them idiots after they publicly wondered if the UVA gang rape story was a hoax. But not enough for either feminists or the mainstream media to call a fake a fake, instead of politely referring to “discrepancies” in Jackie’s story and piously intoning that traumatic memories can be unreliable.

In March 2015, when the Charlottesville Police Department released the results of its investigation into Jackie’s alleged assault—which found “no substantive basis” for her claims and explicitly disproved many of them—CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin repeatedly emphasized that “we have to be very careful” not to call Jackie a liar. Asserting that only two percent of rape reports are false according to the FBI, Hostin concluded, “The suggestion that she just sort of made this entire thing up flies in the face of statistics.”

Apart from the bizarre logic—a two-percent chance is hardly the same as “never happens”—this analysis was flawed in more ways than one can count. FBI statistics actually show that around 9 percent of rape reports are classified as “unfounded” by local law enforcement; however, it is nearly impossible to obtain a reliable estimate of false reports. Some “unfounded” complaints are mislabeled as false; on the other hand, some unresolved cases and even some rape convictions involve false allegations. What’s more, false report statistics track only formal complaints made to the police or to college officials; Jackie never filed such a complaint.

CNN wasn’t the only media outlet dancing around the facts. The New York Times story never mentioned the evidence that “Haven Monahan” was fabricated, stating only that “the police were unable to track Mr. Monahan down.” (They were also unable to interview Santa Claus.) . . .

By the way, the judge in the Rolling Stone case ruled that Jackie’s records must be turned over to Eramo and her attorneys, obviously disagreeing with NOW. According to The Washington Post, Jackie’s lawyers have claimed that their client was “not in possession” of “Haven Monahan’s” correspondence and was not withholding any documents. But it turns out that just four days before that letter was sent, someone using the law firm’s network logged into “Haven Monahan’s” email account.

You have to wonder what the people who still “stand with Jackie” will make of the news. Maybe the dastardly Haven broke into the law firm’s office or hacked the server. Or we could always go with the “shape-shifting alien” theory.

It’s important for SJW types to feel good about themselves. Any damage done along the way is acceptable.

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WONT GO FAR WRONG: Former White House Reporter: Media ‘Happy to Be Managed’ by Obama.

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN WORD ABOUT GLENN REYNOLDS’ CARBON FOOTPRINT: Leonardo DiCaprio Flew 8,000 Miles on Private Jet to Accept Environmental Award.

WHAT DO THEY TEACH THEM IN SCHOOLS THESE DAYS? Nobody Knows Anything About Fascism. Fascism was an ideological movement, with intellectuals, detailed theories, conferences, and agendas. It was only in the post World War II era that it was transformed into a synonym for “things we don’t like.”

WELL, YES: Dershowitz and Other Professors Decry ‘Pervasive and Severe Infringement’ of Student Rights.

A group of law professors are accusing the civil rights office of the U.S. Education Department of taking “unlawful actions” that have led to “pervasive and severe infringements” of speech rights and due-process protections on college campuses.

An open letter signed by Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz and 20 other legal scholars blasts a series of directives issued by the federal office to schools on dealing with sexual misconduct and harassment complaints from students.

Excerpt:

We recognize that sexual harassment represents unacceptable conduct, and those found responsible should be appropriately sanctioned. Some of us have witnessed the injustices resulting from institutions that downplay or ignore sexual harassment on their campuses, and we commend [the Office of Civil Rights] for taking a proactive approach to this problem.

In pursuing its objectives, however, OCR has…ignored constitutional law, judicial precedent and Administrative Procedure Act requirements by issuing numerous directives, and then enforcing these directives by means of onerous investigations and accompanying threats to withhold federal funding. OCR has brazenly nullified the Supreme Court definition of campus sexual harassment. These unlawful actions have led to pervasive and severe infringements of free speech rights and due process protections at colleges and universities across the country.

Read the whole thing.

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