MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Pick A Non-Lawyer For The Supreme Court.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1043.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE SPACE INSTITUTE is looking to hire an Executive Director.

SANITY: Tennessee Law Would Outlaw Punishing Students For Speaking Freely, ‘Microagressions.’

Unfortunately, opponents of the bill — which is to say, supporters of educational bureaucrats and crazed PC — managed to turn this into a question of whether ISIS should be allowed to recruit at colleges.

That’s funny, because while actually signing people up and shipping people off to the Mideast would be action, not speech, and not protected by the First Amendment, speaking about the desirability of doing so (except in time of declared war, when it might be treason) would, in fact, be fully protected speech. And for decades, lots of people defended the right of students and faculty to speak about the desirability of supporting communists, etc., with full protection from the courts and the bureaucracy. But that’s different.

I love this from Rep. John DeBerry (D-Memphis): “DeBerry argued that the world has changed from the days of the 1960s, which he said was an era of protest and time of change.” Translation: Free speech for us was good. Now that we’re on top, free speech for those who disagree with us is bad.

DeBerry’s characterization of today’s college students as “half-baked,” alas, seems all too correct. But if they’re too immature to handle free speech, then they’re too immature to obligate themselves to student loans. Or to vote . . .

WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT? Tomorrow Belongs To… Who?

The far-right victories in Germany was powered by the votes of discontented youths, who abandoned the center-left as well as center right in droves. . . .

This should make all of Europe sit up and take notice: Europe has a lot of unemployed young people (France and Italy: 25% and 40% youth unemployment respectively). If they turn to the far-right to deal with their problems, the discontented youth population would provide a massive reservoir of energy for extremist parties.

We’re not there yet, or anything like it, but it’s worth remembering what lies down the end of this road: the (literal) foot soldiers of the fascist movements of the 20s and 30s were discontented youths convinced that a new, post-democratic politics, with a heavy emphasis on solidarity, was the wave of the future. . . .

The AfD aren’t the Nazis, and they aren’t overrunning Germany—yet. But if the crumbling liberal center of European politics wants to stave off an increasingly menacing series of right-wing threats, it will need to do the hard work to find answers for Europe’s struggling youth, and convince them of what was until recently blithely assumed: that the future still belongs to liberalism.

Fascism, like communism, is an opportunistic infection of the body politic, one that occurs when the institutions — and officeholders — of liberal democracy are too corrupt, or too weak, or both, to sustain business as usual. If you don’t like this outcome, don’t be weak and corrupt.

Related: “Politics is a business often insulated from the ramifications of failure.” More here.

BEN WEINGARTEN: THE SENATE SHOULD IGNORE MERRICK GARLAND and suggest its own diversity candidate instead: “Push for the appointment of Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the Supreme Court. While the president is singularly responsible for appointing Supreme Court justices, nothing precludes the Senate from using its advisory power to suggest its own favored nominees.”

RECREATE ’68! (PART II) VIDEO: Harvard students debate whether whites should kill themselves due to ‘[white] privilege.’

There’s a lot of jump cuts in the Drudge-linked post; and I wonder if there’s some “ransom note editing” going on to produce the desired result. On the other hand, regarding what can be heard, as Amy Alkon writes in linking to the clip, “If speaking comprehensibly is part of debating, this starts off with a fail.”

But in any case, haven’t we seen this all before? As veteran lefty author Todd Gitlin wrote in 1987 book, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage:

Over the next few months, Weatherpeople rarely surfaced among unbelievers. When they did, one of their themes was that all white babies were tainted with the original sin of “skin privilege.” “All white babies are pigs,” one Weatherman had insisted in Flint. [Feminist poet] Robin Morgan recounts that one day, a Weatherwoman saw her breastfeeding her baby son in the [radical journal] Rat office. “You have no right to have that pig male baby,” said the Weatherwoman. “How can you say that?” said Morgan. “What should I do?” “Put it in the garbage,” was the answer.

In a December article in the Politico, Josh Zeitz, another lefty historian, suggested that today’s “Campus Protesters Aren’t Reliving the 1960s:”

In some ways it is: Today, as in the 1960s, a collegiate generation raised with an expansive understanding of its own rights and entitlements is fusing macro political issues to personal, everyday experience and demanding changes both in the halls of government and in the college dining hall.

But there is a startling inversion of logic in the progression from the 1960s and today. Fifty years ago, college students self-identified with repressed minorities at home and abroad and demanded freedom from the shackles of in loco parentis supervision and stewardship. They clamored to be treated as emancipated adults and foisted on their elders a noisy and disruptive free speech culture. Today’s students, who are certainly no less politically minded than their forbearers, are demanding the opposite. Far from freeing themselves of stewardship, they demand faculty “create a home” in which they remain children in the protection of more powerful elders. They insist on protection from ideas and voices that upset them and require a nurturing and therapeutic environment that bears no relationship to the real world of politics (or, for that matter, of business, technology, art or culture).

Today’s protesters may think they are marching in the footsteps of those who came before. In fact, they are undoing much of that generation’s enduring accomplishment.

Perhaps – but they’ve sure internalized the radical racist vocabulary of their late 1960s predecessors haven’t they?

UNFIT TO SERVE: Hillary Faces National Security Establishment ‘Uprising’ Over Emails.

“The way I’m reading this is that there’s this uprising in the national security bureaucracies to prosecute Mrs. Clinton,” Tom Fitton told TheDCNF. Fitton is president of the nonprofit government watchdog Judicial Watch, which is preparing to depose top Clinton aides and possibly her as well, in litigation stemming from the State Department’s maladroit handling of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Fitton’s group has also won multiple federal court victories regarding release of 55,000 pages of emails sent to and from Clinton’s use of a private email address and server located in her New York home to conduct official government business during her four years as the nation’s chief diplomat.

“There’s just this kind of ‘just-the-facts approach’ out of the national security establishment on this,” Fitton told TheDCNF. “I don’t see Mrs. Clinton escaping prosecution here.”

Before or after the election?

RECREATE ’68! (PART I) “Man Who Charged Trump Rally Charged with Misdemeanor,” Michael Walsh writes, adding that “This was just the opening salvo in what promises to be a street fight against Trump’s candidacy, and a deliberate attempt by the thug Left to interfere with the American political system…Gonna be a long, hot summer. 1968, anybody?”

(Classical reference in headline.)

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ISN’T EVERYTHING? “APPARENTLY, ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO STAND UP FOR THEMSELVES IS ‘RAPE CULTURE:’” “Honestly, the advice on the T-shirt could apply to any one of approximately 9 million scenarios. Why do people automatically jump to assuming that it’s about rape and victim-blaming? Because social-justice warriors are so hell-bent on looking for offensiveness in everything that they see — you know, for their latest tweet or hot-fire blog post — that there really is no room left in their brains for anything else.”

No wonder SJWs feverishly demand “trigger warnings” on virtually everything they read. Or far more likely, don’t read; as Ray Bradbury predicted in Fahrenheit 451, books will be burned as much to protect everyone’s feelings as much as to block the ideas within them.

ON THE SUBWAY:

This just happened.  I was on the subway to work, and a fellow steps into the car.  In a mellifluous, but loud enough, voice he announces that he recently lost his job and has medical bills to pay.  He has 2 children who are staying with relatives.  He has been looking for a new job, but in the meantime has needed to rely on handouts from strangers.  It’s a nice enough story, not too dissimilar to those I’ve heard with some regularity on the train.  Depending on the look or feel of the person, I will hand them a buck or two.  This guy looks legit.

However, as he passes one fellow, he collects a business card.  In handing the card, the charitable soul says “This is a soup kitchen nearby, you can bring your children here and get hot meals.”

The fellow looks up and replies, “Free food?  Here, in Manhattan?”

Read the whole thing.

Related: From 2008, Steven Malanga of City Journal on “The Professional Panhandling Plague.”

WHAT WE NEED IS A DIALOGUE ON PUNISHING FALSE ACCUSERS AND THOSE WHO ENABLE THEM: The ‘it started a dialogue’ excuse for false accusations.

Falsely accusing someone of a crime is never okay and society should never excuse it. Sadly, today’s culture allows anyone to accuse someone of rape or racism and seek forgiveness by claiming the false accuser just wanted to “start a dialogue.”

In the recent race hoax at State University of New York at Albany, where three black women started a fight on a bus and accused a dozen white people of attacking them for being black, a professor at the school claimed they were justified because they started a conversation on race.

“My white students have said this has opened up conversations,” said Sami Schalk, an assistant professor in SUNY Albany’s English department. “Things that are inadvertent, small, but that these white students have no experience with, not being a person of color on this campus.”

The three women who claimed to be the victims of a racial attack are currently being charged with assault (as videos show one of them threw the first punch) and filing a false report.

Another recent hoax, this one involving a lesbian professor at Central Michigan University who claimed she was attacked for her sexuality by a man at a Tony Keith concert, also included the “starting a dialogue” excuse. Professor Mari Poindexter said she made up the story (and punched herself in the eye to fake evidence) “because she wanted to raise awareness about the social hardships of people in the LGBTQ+ community.”

After Rolling Stone’s article about an alleged gang-rape at the University of Virginia was proven to be a hoax, media outlets — including MTV — rushed to suggest that the article “may have unintentionally started a conversation that’s bigger than the controversy itself.”

Oddly, but not unexpectedly, that “conversation” was not about avoiding a rush to judgment when accusations check all the boxes in preferred narratives, but about accusers needing to be believed.

When they say “it started a dialogue,” what they really mean is “it enabled our monologue.”

NORTH KOREA JAILS US TOURIST FOR 15 YEARS HARD LABOR AFTER HE ATTEMPTED TO STEAL A PROPAGANDA BANNER: “Spare a thought for the parents of Otto Warmbier today. Their child is in the hands of the North Korean regime, sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for ‘crimes against the state’. It may well be that Mr Warmbier, a 21-year-old student at the University of Virginia, does not in fact serve that sentence. The North has a habit of bartering back Western prisoners as part of its bizarre diplomatic game with the US. But there’s no certainty of that, and if it does happen, who knows how long they’ll have to wait before their boy is home?… How did their son come to be in this situation? The answer stirs strong emotions too, some of them less generous than the compassion we should all have for the Warmbiers.”

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER RUBE SELF-IDENTIFIES: “Bill Press, a liberal radio and television host, has authored ‘Buyer’s Remorse,’ a distillation of the Obama years that comes down to ‘yes, but’…‘The transformative new era of leadership Obama promised never happened,’ Press laments. ‘His presidency looms as a huge opportunity wasted.’”

Sucker. Or as David Brooks once admitted, “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap,” but Press (and Brooks) are far from alone in that department.

WE’RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT, AND WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU: Was EPA Unwilling to ‘Go Out on a Limb’ for Flint?

In the depth of Flint, Mich.’s water crisis – months after federal and state officials learned that the city’s tap water showed alarming levels of lead and bacteria but months before they alerted the public – an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official discouraged a colleague from using federal money to buy water filters for the city residents.

“I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for,” Region 5 Water Division Branch Chief Debbie Baltazar wrote to the regional administrator and others, in a September email disclosed at a congressional hearing Tuesday. Baltazar went on to express concerns about the city’s past use of sewer and water fees for other priorities.

Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said this and other documents showed a pattern of indifference among federal and state officials toward the plight of the residents of Flint – a largely African American community that is among the poorest and most crime-ridden cities in the country.

“Was this driven by race? Was this driven by the fact that this was a poor city? Was this because they were underserved?” Chairman Justin Chaffetz, R-Utah asked during opening statements.

“Why isn’t Flint the community they go to? Of all the communities out there, the one having the toughest time is the one that needs the most protection.”

Why is the EPA so racist?

CHANGE! Vietnam Invites US Army to Return.

‘OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK’!: MSNBC’S CHRIS MATTHEWS CLUTCHES PEARLS OVER ‘SEXISM’ OF TRUMP’S BARKING-HILLARY AD.

Reminder: This is the network whose anchors demanded that when the Democrat primary was going on too long in their estimation in the spring of 2008, that one of  “superdelegates” needed to level the boom on Hillary, “Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” And in November of 2013 that someone defecate and urinate down Sarah Palin’s throat. Comcast-owned NBC and its affiliated networks laid the ground rules for political discourse and employed Trump as a host for nearly a decade; his current ad seems positively mild by MSNBC’s standards.

THE LEFT’S MORAL ROT PRECEDED THE RISE OF TRUMP:  Violent Democrat Congressman’s Ex-Wife ‘Disgusted’ by ‘Trump Effect’ on Kids.

WELL, GOOD: No hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, McConnell says.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday shot down the idea of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland getting a hearing.

McConnell insisted in a floor speech that the vacancy should be filled by the next president.

“The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country, so of course the American people should have a say in the court’s direction,” he said.

“The Senate will continue to observe the ‘Biden Rule’ so the American people have a voice in this momentous decision. The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration. The next president may also nominate somebody very different. Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in filling this vacancy.”

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) stood by McConnell’s decision.

“This has never been about who the nominee is. It is about a basic principle. Under our Constitution, the president has every right to make this nomination, and the Senate has every right not to confirm a nominee.

“I fully support Leader McConnell and Chairman [Chuck] Grassley’s [R-Iowa] decision not to move forward with the confirmation process. We should let the American people decide the direction of the court.”

Caving on this would wreck the party. McConnell seems to realize that.

THIS SHOULD BE INTERESTING: RNC weighs scrapping convention rule book to head off anti-Trump maneuvers.

Top Republicans will try to force more transparency at the party’s national convention in July, aiming to scrap their 1,500-page rule book in favor of simpler procedures that they hope will head off arcane maneuvers designed to deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination.

The changes wouldn’t guarantee Mr. Trump the nod but would make it easier for all sides to see what sorts of changes anti-Trump factions are attempting.

More transparency is a good thing, especially if the RNC wants to keep Trump voters from bolting if he doesn’t win the nomination.

But what will the RNC do to keep more traditional conservatives from bolting?

“MEET MOVEON.ORG: THE NEW KKK.”

To be fair, Woodrow Wilson would certainly approve of both groups.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Re: Merrick Garland, it’s a bit late for the Obama administration and its supporters to appeal to constitutional norms requiring Senate consideration.

Second, as I describe in “Lawless,” the Obama administration, with its aggressive assertions of executive power (some of which, I should note, I would support on policy grounds), is in a poor position to appeal to constitutional norms. The administration showed a severe lack of respect for constitutional norms when, for example, contrary to decades of precedent that the Justice Department will defend any federal law with a plausible defense, it refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act before the Supreme Court (after defending it a year earlier in the court of appeals!); when the administration forced Common Core standards on local education without anything resembling explicit congressional approval or even debate, based on an aggressive reading of vague existing law; when the administration unilaterally changed immigration policy via executive order, after Congress failed to pass legislation that would have accomplished similar ends; when the president has simply refused to enforce provisions of Obamacare that proved politically problematic; and, for that matter, when the president advocated for and signed perhaps the only major piece of American social legislation (Obamacare) that not only failed to win widespread bipartisan support, but also attracted not a single vote in either house of Congress from the other party. More generally, President Obama has repeatedly promised to try to circumvent Congress using any arguably legal means available, on the rather extra-constitutional grounds, contrary to the norms attendant to the separation of powers, that “we can’t wait” for Congress to pass legislation that the president favors.

No one forced the president to ignore preexisting constitutional norms to advance his political agenda. And it’s just a little too cute for his administration, heedless of constitutional norms in a variety of contexts, to appeal to them with regard to the Garland nomination.

When they hold the whip hand, norms and traditions are stuffy and outdated. When they don’t, it’s all “have you no decency, sir?”

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? MSNBC Turns Intolerably White?

GEORGE KORDA: ‘Everyone I don’t like is Hitler’ and why everyone we don’t like is not.