OUCH: Lloyd Grove: ABC Colleague: George Stephanopoulos ‘Really Isn’t a Journalist.’ “Even as he acknowledged error in making his Clinton Foundation donations—having been caught by the right-leaning Washington Free Beacon and Politico—Stephanopoulos continued to insist that disclosing it would have been ‘go[ing] the extra mile’ rather than a basic journalistic requirement. In other words—to paraphrase another famously beleaguered public figure whose blunders were inconveniently exposed—he might not have volunteered information, but at least he was legally accurate.”

SO OBAMA’S NATIONAL SECURITY/FOREIGN RELATIONS BIG-BRAIN doesn’t even know that the Columbia University mattress-girl rape story is a hoax. Or, worse, knows and doesn’t care. The replies are fun, though.

ENVY AND INSECURITY MAKE A LAME COALITION: “The pseudo feminists, the pseudo Marxists, the pseudo power-and gender-freaks… I call them all, in capital letters, the School of Resentment.”

AT AMAZON, take up to 60% off Luggage.

Plus, save up to 55% on Movies & TV.

NONSENSE, WE’RE JUST GEARING UP FOR RECOVERY SUMMER #7! Tyler Cowen: Don’t Be So Sure the Economy Will Return to Normal.

I PASSED THROUGH KANSAS CITY AND LAWRENCE THIS WEEK, and both do look somewhat more prosperous than when I went through a couple of years ago: Seeded With Tax Cuts, Kansas Harvests the Benefits: Unemployment has dropped to 4.2% from 5.5% in 2013, and wages and job growth are steadily climbing.

MARTIN O’MALLEY FLAUNTS HIS MALE PRIVILEGE: “Images of Martin O’Malley without a shirt are continually popping up as if to say look what I can do that Hillary can’t.”

FLASHBACK: 1996: Why ABC shouldn’t hire Stephanopoulos.

George Stephanopoulos was one of the most partisan of partisan warriors ever — just look at “The War Room,” the documentary from the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. So it was something of a surprise in 1996 when ABC News hired Stephanopoulos, fresh out of the Clinton White House. And there was some confusion about what the deeply partisan Stephanopoulos’ role would be: Analyst? Pundit? Straight news reporter? At the time, I asked ABC about it and was assured Stephanopoulos would be a pundit — like William Kristol, who was then with ABC News — and would not do any news reporting.

Plus:

The announcement created some confusion about Mr. Stephanopoulos’s role. A press release issued by ABC last Wednesday stated that he “will serve both as a political analyst and as a correspondent.” Vice President of News Joanna Bistany now says Mr. Stephanopoulos will be just an analyst; he will not report news or question guests on “This Week.” Ms. Bistany says his role will be similar to that of ABC contributor William Kristol, who was Dan Quayle’s chief of staff. “We want a mix of voices,” she says, adding that Mr. Stephanopoulos “won’t do anything that has any appearance of conflict.”

But, wait:

As it turned out, that didn’t last long. Just three years later, in 1999, as the 2000 presidential campaign got under way, Stephanopoulos had shed his pundit’s role and was reporting on the campaign.

It’s like it was a scam all along.

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: Living After a Police Officer Dies: Where do families turn when their police officer dies?

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Democrats sic identity politics on their own: The left has handicapped its ability to debate policy, even among themselves.

RAND PAUL VOWS FILIBUSTER:  He’s threatening to filibuster the Patriot Act reauthorization. The Act automatically expires on June 1, unless Congress reauthorizes it.  Senator Paul is opposed to section 215, which has been interpreted by some courts to allow NSA to collect so-called “metadata” on cell phone usage.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently interpreted section 215 more narrowly.

Congress is slated to recess by Memorial Day.

WOULDN’T DNA HAVE BEEN EASIER? Scientists Find Proof of Pharaohs’ Incest: They did so by measuring the height of 259 Egyptian mummies.

MEGAN MCARDLE: The Wages of Crying Sexism:

People who carelessly toss around the “s” word are trying to have things both ways: They want sexism to be something very, very bad that forces the refs to stop the action and pull you out of the game, and they also want to be able to level this charge at every minor verbal tic that might be sexist. Even if it might just be, you know, politics. In this and other contexts, this is not a bargain that a modern society will strike. If you make the punishments draconian, people will hesitate to apply them widely. This is true in law enforcement, and it is true of social sins as well. To claim “sexism” too often just robs the word of its power.

So if we want to keep the norm that sexism is very bad, we need to think twice about when we pull out those accusations. Before you shoot, remember that you’re not a movie hero with an unlimited supply of ammunition. You’re the guy with a single six shooter crouching behind the bar. You have to make every shot count. Aim carefully. When in doubt, hold your fire.

That would require self-discipline, which is not our ruling class’s strong suit. Also, your cowboy-gunfight metaphor is a microaggression.

THE RISE OF Pedialyte As A Hangover Cure.

THE FUTURE OF WIND TURBINES: NO BLADES. Well, I suppose that’s good news for the birds that are currently being slaughtered.

THEY’RE NOT POOR AT ALL, ACTUALLY:   A New York Times writer named Wednesday Martin has an unbelievably sexist hit piece about Upper East Side women she demeaningly refers to as Glam SAHMs (Stay At Home Moms).  

The women I met, mainly at playgrounds, play groups and the nursery schools where I took my sons, were mostly 30-somethings with advanced degrees from prestigious universities and business schools. They were married to rich, powerful men, many of whom ran hedge or private equity funds; they often had three or four children under the age of 10; they lived west of Lexington Avenue, north of 63rd Street and south of 94th Street; and they did not work outside the home.

Instead they toiled in what the sociologist Sharon Hays calls “intensive mothering,” exhaustively enriching their children’s lives by virtually every measure, then advocating for them anxiously and sometimes ruthlessly in the linked high-stakes games of social jockeying and school admissions.

Their self-care was no less zealous or competitive. No ponytails or mom jeans here: they exercised themselves to a razor’s edge, wore expensive and exquisite outfits to school drop-off and looked a decade younger than they were. Many ran their homes (plural) like C.E.O.s.

Okay, so the implication is that there’s something wrong with being married to a rich, powerful man? And there’s also something wrong with “intensive mothering,” which apparently means being intensively involved in your child’s upbringing?  As for “self-care,” should we all not strive to keep ourselves attractive and fit, regardless of whether our spouse is rich and powerful?  Clearly, to Ms. Martin, however, such things–being rich, a good mother, and taking care of one’s self–are suspicious, odd behaviors worthy of “research.”

Her conclusion from observing what she clearly views as another species?:

Rich, powerful men may speak the language of partnership in the absence of true economic parity in a marriage, and act like true partners, and many do. But under this arrangement women are still dependent on their men — a husband may simply ignore his commitment to an abstract idea at any time. He may give you a bonus, or not. Access to your husband’s money might feel good. But it can’t buy you the power you get by being the one who earns, hunts or gathers it.

The wives of the masters of the universe, I learned, are a lot like mistresses — dependent and comparatively disempowered. Just sensing the disequilibrium, the abyss that separates her version of power from her man’s, might keep a thinking woman up at night.

So these women are just dependent little slaves– no better than mistresses. I’ll put aside the “mistress” label, since I hardly think most mistresses are “dependent and comparatively disempowered.”  But more to the point, if this is slavery–being married to a rich/powerful husband, being able to stay at home with one’s children, and having time to get involved with charitable causes–I think a lot of women would willingly sign up.

Only a hardcore feminist would think such a life is odd enough to pen an anthropological essay about it in the New York Times.

CUE THE PROGRESSIVE AUTOMATIC RESPONSE:  U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) has used the recent Amtrak derailment as an opening to demand an increase in federal funding.

“We should not, the Congress should not put Amtrak in the position of choosing between positive train control and fixing crumbling bridges,” Casey told host Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We have to do both,” he said.

“And we’ve got to make sure they have the resources to do that,” he said. “We don’t know the connection between funding and this incident, but regardless, Amtrak needs more funding.”

How about just making sure engineers don’t drive the trains at dangerous speeds? But that wouldn’t grow the federal government, so it’s not an attractive option for progressive/liberal federal politicians.