I CAN’T EVEN; I LITERALLY CAN’T EVEN: Ken Starr Thinks Mitch McConnell Should Fill Scalia’s Seat.

NO ONE EXPECTS THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS! Bernie Sanders’ Wife: Daily News interview ‘more of an inquisition.’

Which is shorthand for ZOMG — how dare they treat my husband like a Republican!

Bernie’s spent his entire adult life as a socialist; but presumably he always dreamed of leading the show trials, not being the defendant in one.

(Headline via Sonny Bunch.)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Report claims Dyson Airblades ‘spread germs 1,300 times more than paper towels.’

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The strangling of free, open commentary on Islam in Europe has had an impact that is as predictable as it is dire.

NEW BALANCE SHOE COMPANY: Obama Administration Pressured Us to Stifle Our Opposition to Trans-Pacific Partnership By Dangling a Defense Department Contract Over Our Heads.

“Such a scandal-free administration,” Ace of Spades deadpans.

EPA POURS TOXIC WASTE INTO RIVER, REFUSES TO PROTECT LOCALS: Remember that yellow river EPA created in Colorado last year? Agency officials dumped an estimated 880,000 pounds of toxic metals waste from a mine into the Animas River, which supplies drinking and working water for millions of people in three states and the Navajo Nation.

Nearly eight months later, reports Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, EPA officials concede they essentially have no plan in place in the event storm water runoff swells the river. That’s likely to happen in Spring and Summer and when it does, the swirling water picks up the toxic waste and deposits it further downstream.

“The EPA is also using a recreational standard, which allows 40 times more lead in the river, even though people in three states and the Navajo Nation depend upon it as a primary water source, New Mexico Environmental Secretary Ryan Flynn said in February,” Barton said. In other words, the same bureaucrats who can raise environmental standards to make work for themselves can also lower the standards to avoid work when it suits them.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO PERISCOPE THEIR UNDERAGE FRIEND GETTING RAPED: Ohio woman accused of livestreaming alleged rape of teen friend.

Marina Lonina and Raymond Gates, 29, were charged Wednesday with rape, kidnapping, sexual battery and pandering sexually-oriented matter involving a minor. The indictment said the alleged rape involved intercourse by force and the charge was not related to the alleged victim’s age.

Lonina was also charged with illegal use of a minor in a nudity-oriented material or performance, related to the alleged use of the social media livestreaming app Periscope.

Periscope, an app for smartphones, uses a video function to allow users to stream events live.

O’Brien said Lonina and the victim were socializing with Gates at a home in Columbus on Feb. 27 when Gates raped the 17-year-old girl. Lonina used the Periscope app to livestream the assault, O’Brien said.

Good lord.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Want a good night’s sleep? Eat dark chocolate: Nutrient found in treat and leafy greens ‘keeps body clocks running on time.’

MINNEAPOLIS ‘MODERATE MUSLIM’ TRIES TO JOIN ISIS: “The Obama administration, deeply invested in the theory that poverty and lack of economic opportunity cause terrorism, has established a federal program intended to help young Muslims feel less ‘alienated,’ Robert Spencer writes. “The administration awarded $400,000 in taxpayer-funded grants to organizations working with Somali Muslims in Minneapolis in hopes of keeping young Muslims in the area from joining the global jihad — as dozens from the area have already done. There’s just one catch: this approach was doomed to fail on the drawing board. The sad story of Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame reveals why.”

Read the whole thing.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ON THE FRUITS OF LEFTY GOVERNANCE: Empty Dorms, Empty Mansions.

MONICA CROWLEY ON THE LEFT’S LONG WAR AGAINST CLARENCE THOMAS — A new HBO drama reprises the left’s ‘high-tech lynching.’

Related: Kerry Washington Defends HBO’s ‘Confirmation’: “It’s Not a Propaganda Movie”

Except that it is.

MICHAEL MCCONNELL: Obama’s Unconstitutional Immigration Order.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1071.

WHAT DID AMERICANS KNOW AS THE HOLOCAUST UNFOLDED? QUITE A LOT, IT TURNS OUT: “The project, History Unfolded, is an initiative of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is using crowdsourcing to scour newspapers across the country for articles that ran between 1933 and 1945 on the plight of Europe’s Jews. As it turns out, there were a lot of them. Since the project was launched in full in February, the museum has received 1,030 submissions from articles published in 46 states and the District. So far, 610 people have signed up, including 32 teachers working on the project with their students.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Isn’t Always Worth It:

Across the Anglosphere, the elite conventional wisdom holds that a college degree is the only ticket to a middle-class career. But a new study suggests that for some students, at least in the UK, the the much-hyped ‘higher-education premium’ may be inflated or nonexistent. The Sunday Times reports . . . .

There are of course differences between the UK and U.S. higher education systems, and (to our knowledge) no identical study has been conducted here. But the economist Allison Schrager has crunched comparable numbers on American students and found that, “for every degree short of a graduate degree, there’s a decent chance that a good high school graduate will out-earn you.” In other words, it’s not unlikely that marginal students in marginal programs—in the U.S. as well as the UK—would do better to avoid student loans, avoid the opportunity cost, and seek technical or vocational training. The idea that everybody needs four or even two years of academic instruction after high school is madness. When so many students leave high school with something much less than an adequate proficiency in key subjects, it makes much more sense to fix the fundamentals of the system than to tack on more and more years at the end.

Academics and professionals who loved school and did well in it have a hard time understanding that not everybody wants, needs or enjoys drawn-out academic instruction—and that these people can and do make worthwhile contributions to the common good. An education system that made more room for vocational programs in areas like carpentry, plumbing, med tech, and practical nursing would waste less time trying to pound round pegs into square holes.

Do tell.

FOUR SIGNS ‘CONFIRMATION’ WILL BE HOPELESSLY BIASED: “We’re about to relive the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings all over again, courtesy of HBO.”

And those last three letters are the only sign you need.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): “This week’s female teacher busted for having a bunch of sex with a 16-year-old male teenager is Maria C. Chappell. . . . The now-fired teacher taught English to freshmen, sophomores and juniors. She also taught a freshman course called ‘ethically speaking.’ Chappell, a married mother of two, rented a room at a local Holiday Inn Express & Suites on Feb. 29 — a Monday — for a tryst with the student, investigators say.”

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Clinical Law Prof Questions Indoctrinating Students With Social Justice Morality And Requiring Pro Bono By Students, Not Faculty And Administrators. “Ms. Lawton says many of the legal educators emphasizing social justice have a laudable goal: to try to diminish gaps in access to justice. But by dedicating so much resources into social justice programs, she argues, law schools are ‘imposing their own morality upon students’ and limiting exposure to competing ideas.”

Nonsense. When institutions are turned to serve the goals of the Left, it’s just common-sense and good government. It’s when they even look like they might promote a goal of the right that we see concerns about partisanship and indoctrination.

LATEST HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT: CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: “Way to go Fusion, you forced us to have to defend Justin Bieber. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.”

YOU CAN HAVE SOCIALISM OR STYLE. CHOOSE WISELY: Venezuela Energy Crisis: President tells women to stop using hairdryers and go with ‘natural’ style to save electricity.

Related: Reason Mocks Bernie Sanders Deodorant Economics.

QUESTION ASKED: “What I find striking is how Donald Trump has made Ted Cruz possible. Without Trump, would so many Republicans be supporting Cruz?”

THE MEDIA’S CROCODILE FEARS OVER DONALD TRUMP’S AUTHORITARIANISM: “Progressivism — the proper name for the governing philosophy of those people who used to be called ‘liberals’ — is inherently authoritarian, and its primary products are lamentation, and mourning, and woe.”

You can’t say, “We Are All Socialists Now,” as the Washington Post did in early 2009 through its then-outlet, Newsweek, endorse Obama in 2012 and (c’mon we all know it’s coming) Hillary “We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good” Clinton in 2016 and then say, “Hold it a minute, maybe we need to rethink this authoritarianism thing.”

Related: Who is the Biggest Demagogue of Them All?

WHY WOULD MEN EVER VOTE FOR HILLARY? Hillary Clinton laughs at idea of letting men into her cabinet.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is so down with the idea of a matriarchy that she laughed at the notion of letting a man into her presidential cabinet.

During an interview with Newsday, Clinton was asked if there would be “gender parity” in her cabinet. Clinton responded: “Sure, absolutely, because I sure would love to reach that.”

But when asked a follow-up question by Newsday’s Lane Filler about whether she would “at least let one man” into her cabinet, Clinton laughed and said: “I’m still considering that.”

OK, I get it. This was a joke, and if I had been there I probably would have laughed. We as a society need to chill on this kind of stuff and not be so sensitive when it comes to obvious jokes like this. . . .

The issue here — and the reason I’m writing this when I generally think we should lay off politicians who tell dumb jokes — is the double standard. If a male candidate had this exact same exchange about a woman being in his cabinet (and wasn’t joking, but simply stating that he would be looking at resumes and considering the best person for the job — regardless of gender), he would be excoriated.

Case in point: When former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney discussed his quest to ensure qualified women were hired in his administration as Massachusetts governor, he was lambasted because he said he had “binders full of women”, referring to resumes. Romney was specifically talking about making sure he included women in his administration, and he was made fun of and accused of sexism.

Now here we are, with a female presidential candidate joking about the possibility of excluding a sex from her candidate, and laughter’s had all around.

In another follow-up question, Newsday editor Rita Ciolli asked Clinton if she had “a list” of women she was considering for positions. Her colleague Filler jokingly added: “Binders?” And all three laughed once again.

So when Romney suggested hiring more women, he was a sexist, but when Clinton suggests not hiring men, she’s a comedian?

Dems get a pass, Republicans get mocked and excoriated, because the press is a bunch of Democratic operatives with bylines. And that goes double — if that’s even possible — for the press’s female members.