From Politico:

Lois Lerner will invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself when she appears tomorrow before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, her lawyer told the panel in a letter.

Lerner is the IRS official who triggered a Washington scandal by acknowledging that the agency wrongly targeted conservative groups. In the letter, Lerner's lawyer, William Taylor, asked Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to excuse her from appearing at tomorrow's hearing.

"Requiring her to appear at the hearing merely to assert her Fifth Amendment privilege would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her," Taylor wrote.

Well, yeah. That's kind of the point. Are you telling us she wasn't embarrassed already?

Once again, I want to mention that I am really sick of writing about this issue. But it deserves the maximum amount of attention possible.

First off, it would appear that the Obama administration knew that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny back in the 2012 campaign:

There were new questions Saturday night concerning if anyone in the White House was aware of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

Inspector General Russell George said he informed a deputy at the Treasury Department in June of 2012 about the probe into the IRS.

The Treasury Department confirmed the timeline but said they did not know the details of the investigation until last week.

It’s the first evidence that someone within the Obama administration knew about the practice during the presidential campaign.

It is unknown whether anyone in the White House was told of the federal investigation.

I can only hope that someone will be allowed to ask questions regarding this issue without hearing complaints that such questions are “offensive.” Speaking of the issue of what certain people knew and when they knew it …

The White House’s chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.

That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time.

Can we ask questions about this as well?

A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

(Emphasis in the original.) Meanwhile, I am pleased to note that Glenn Kessler has eaten his wheaties:

In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.

The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue, as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone, were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged.

“But between 2010 and 2012, we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving, and many of these organizations applying more than doubled, about 1500 in 2010 and over 3400 in 2012.”

Lerner made this comment while issuing a seemingly impromptu apology at an American Bar Association panel. (It was later learned that this was a planted question — more on that below.) In her telling, the tax-exempt branch was simply overwhelmed by applications, and so unfortunate shortcuts were taken.

But this claim of “more than doubled” appears to be a red herring. The targeting of groups began in early 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC was announced on Jan. 21. The ruling led to increased interest in a tax-exempt status known as 501(c)(4). Most charities apply under 501(c)(3), but under 501(c)(4), nonprofit groups that engage in “social welfare” can also perform a limited amount of election activity.

At first glance, the inspector general’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applications actually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735.

But it turns out that these are federal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the Supreme Court decision was announced.

Astonishingly, despite Lerner’s public claim, an IRS spokeswoman was not able to provide the actual calendar year numbers. By allocating one-quarter of the fiscal year numbers to the prior year, we can get a very rough sense of the increase on a calendar-year basis. (Figures are rounded to avoid false precision; 2012 is not possible to calculate.)

2009: 1745

2010: 1865

2011: 2540

In other words, while there was an increase in 2010, it was relatively small. The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented. Also, it appears Lerner significantly understated the number of applications in 2010 (“1500”) in order to make her claim of “more than doubled.”

Four Pinocchios are given to Lerner for her misstatements, though Kessler notes in the title of his post that she deserves “a bushel.” I couldn’t agree more.

Finally, let it be noted that the best satire has the ring of truth about it.

On behalf of all conservatives living in California (a form of dhimmitude), I'd like to apologize to the rest of the nation -- but particularly to Oklahoma -- for the conduct of Senator Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer, who has a nasty habit of twirling a baton at the front of the idiot parade. From the Daily Caller:

California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer blamed the tornado that devastated Oklahoma on global warming during a Senate floor speech Tuesday, using the opportunity to push her own plan to tax carbon dioxide emissions.

“This is climate change,” Boxer said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather: Not just hot weather, but extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago — it’s been a while — the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather.”

“Carbon could cost us the planet,” Boxer added, plugging her own carbon tax bill, co-sponsored by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy."

Yet, as noted by Anthony Watts, at Watts Up With That?:

Here’s a germane question for these geniuses. 

Tell us, what could any tax, law, edict, or protest have done to stop yesterday’s tornado outbreak? And what makes this one somehow different from the F5 Oklahoma city tornado of 1999 that also hit the city of Moore?

What made this somehow AGW enhanced or different from the F5 tornado that destroyed the Oklahoma city of Snyder in 1905, or the 1955 Great Plains tornado outbreak which produced an F5 striking Blackwell, Oklahoma, killing 20 with another F5 from the same storm strik[ing] Udall, KS, killing 80?

Tell us you Canutian meteorological geniuses, how could you have changed the outcome yesterday?

Watts then produces NOAA charts showing the U.S. annual count of strong to violent tornadoes (F3 or higher) from 1954 through 2012; the U.S. inflation-adjusted annual tornado trend and percentile ranks; and the daily count and running annual trend of U.S. tornadoes. All three show us currently running well below average (you should really check out the original post to see the data visualized).

Watts concludes:

And when is the hottest part of the year in the USA? July and August of course. When is the peak tornado season? In the spring when it is cooler. Seasonal heat is not aligned with tornadic activity.

But tornadic activity does seem to be aligned with political grandstanding. Apologies, America. Californians keep reelecting this woman -- perhaps just because they know that it's the best way to minimize the amount of time she actually spends in the state.

According to US Senate investigators, Apple paid no corporate income tax to any national government on $74 billion in overseas income from foreign units over the past four years. Two key points: First, investigators found no evidence Apple did anything illegal. Second, Apple concedes the entities didn’t pay corporate taxes but denies they were designed as part of a tax avoidance scheme.

Does all this argue for tax reform? Yes, both Democrats and Republicans say — not that this acknowledgement really moves the ball. To those on the left, in particular, Apple’s tax situation argues for closing loopholes so Apple and other multinationals pay more taxes to the US Treasury. At a hearing today, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, more or less portrayed Apple’s tax avoidance as contributing to crushing austerity here at home.

Beyond a defense of Apple, CEO Tim Cook offers his ideas for tax reform:

Apple has always believed in the simple, not the complex. This is evident in the Company’s products and the way it conducts itself. In this spirit, Apple has recommended to the Obama Administration and several members of Congress – and suggests to the Subcommittee today – to pass legislation that dramatically simplifies the US corporate tax system. This comprehensive reform should:

• Be revenue neutral;

• Eliminate all corporate tax expenditures;

• Lower corporate income tax rates; and

• Implement a reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows free movement of capital back to the US.

All pretty run-of-the-mill suggestions. Maybe Cook should take this opportunity — borrowing the old Apple slogan — to “think different.” Instead of corporate tax reform, Cook should argue for corporate tax elimination. Just get rid of the sucker.

1. An OECD study concluded: “Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes, and then consumption taxes.”

2. AEI economists Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur have found that “corporate tax rates affect wage levels across countries. Higher corporate taxes lead to lower wages. A 1 percent increase in corporate tax rates is associated with nearly a 1 percent drop in wage rates.”

3. While estimates certainly vary — with one study finding workers bear 60% of the burden, another finding capital bears 80% — certainly corporate taxes do fall on workers, at least to some significant extent.

4. We should want companies to deploy capital and make business decisions based on potential return on investment, not because of potential tax liabilities.

5. Imagine the decline in lobbying.

6. One less thing for the IRS to worry about.

How to make up for the lost tax revenue? Eliminating corporate income taxes would likely not lose as much money as a static analysis would suggest. To fill whatever shortfall there might be, we could scale back or eliminate the special tax treatment for dividends and capital gains for wealthy taxpayers like Cook. There are other great ideas for tax reform, of course. But if Apple wants one that is simple and elegant, this would be it.

Transcript from dispatch center:

911 Operator: 9-1-1, what is your emergency?

Caller: I’m calling from 1324 Elm Street. I’m upstairs hiding in a closet, and some men with guns just broke in downstairs and they’re robbing my family.

Operator: Hmmm. 1324 Elm Street. I don’t think we have anyone in that area.

Caller: What?

Operator: Well, that’s pretty far from the police station. I don’t think we can have anyone get there in time.

Caller: But they’re downstairs right now!  I can hear them!  They’re threatening to kill my family!

Operator: And besides, we can’t send officers into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.

Caller: But I just told you what’s going on! There are men downstairs with guns robbing us and threatening to kill my family!

Operator: Are you sure you didn’t do anything to bring this on? Have you angered these men in some way? Does your family have a history of disrespecting their faith traditions, perhaps?

Gunshots and screaming are heard in the background.

Caller: They’re shooting them now! They’re killing them! Are you sending anyone?

More gunshots and screaming, then silence.

Caller: Hello?  Are you there?

Operator: Yes, I’m here.

Caller: I just heard the men leave. I think my whole family is dead. Is anyone coming?

Operator: What difference, at this point, does it make?

Caller: What?

Operator: We’ll send someone out in a couple weeks to investigate.

 A click is heard as the line goes dead.

I have trouble reading these stories about the death and destruction that hit Oklahoma yesterday. When disaster strikes, I try to focus on what I can do to help. My husband and I give to LCMS World Relief and Human Care.

That so many people voluntarily respond to help others in need is a beautiful thing. I wanted to highlight Operation BBQ Relief:

Operation BBQ Relief is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation founded in May, 2011 in response to a need for relief efforts in tornado-stricken Joplin, Missouri. On Sunday evening, May 22, a massive multi-vortex EF5 tornado plowed through the southwest Missouri community of about 50,000 residents, killing over 140 people and injuring more than 1,000. It left a path of almost total destruction six miles long and over a half mile wide. It is now classified as the second deadliest tornado in U.S. history.

In the wake of this nearly unprecedented destruction, competition barbecue teams from eight states answered the call to help feed displaced families and police, fire, National Guard and emergency personnel. The group, headed by Stan Hays (County Line Smokers), Jeff Stith (Big Creek BBQ) and Will Cleaver (Sticks N Chicks BBQ), was able to serve over 120,000 barbecue meals in less than two weeks during the operation in Joplin. Food was served from our location in the community and delivered to shelters, hospitals, senior living communities and the Humane Society. Volunteers also loaded food into vehicles and delivered directly to families in the impacted areas within the tornado’s footprint. The operation was made possible by many businesses who contributed food and supplies and people from across the country who donated cash.

As a result of efforts in Joplin, Operation BBQ Relief was born. The Joplin operation will be used as a model for future disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, floods and other tornados. We are a not-for-profit corporation registered in all fifty states and ready to respond to natural disaster emergencies across the United States.

But of course competition barbecue teams joined together to feed people in need! How beautiful is that?

Any other good stories to share on this sad day?

Back when this IRS scandal first broke, Lois Lerner, director of the Exempt Organizations Division, was defended as an upright public servant.

The Daily Beast, for example, published an article headlined "IRS Scandal’s Central Figure, Lois Lerner, Described as ‘Apolitical.’"

Yesterday, though, the Washington Post wrote up a series of her lies, which you can read about in "A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner."

And now it turns out that that, as my husband writes, "IRS's Lerner Had History of Harassment, Inappropriate Religious Inquiries at FEC."

You have to read the piece for the details, but I actually had my mouth agape while reading the late 1990s exchange between the FEC and Oliver North about prayer.

The Christian Coalition was ultimately absolved of any FEC wrongdoing in 1999, and Lerner was promoted to acting General Counsel at the FEC in 2001 before eventually moving on to the IRS.  Bopp, who's all too familiar with the aggressive and inappropriate tenor she set leading the FEC's Enforcement Division, says he became concerned about what would happen as soon as Lerner joined the IRS. "When she left the FEC, I thought, 'Wow, this means the not for profit division is gearing up politically,'" he said. "It didn't bode well, because of the way [the FEC] approached cases."

This is depressing, if unsurprising:

It's a cartoon that was published today by al-Kutla al-Islamiya (the Islamic Bloc), the Hamas-affiliated student union in Gaza. The figure is constructed out of a Palestinian flag, and he (it?) is dropping a Star of David into a garbage can. The text is translated by Arutz 7 to read, "Keep the world clean."

Note that Pal-man is not dropping an Israeli flag into a trash can. He is dropping a Star of David into a trash can, which represents Misty Rabinowitz in Shaker Heights as readily as it represents any of us here in Israel.

The Hamas student union apparently operates in high schools and universities throughout Gaza. It claims to educate Gazan youth on the need to resist Israeli occupation, which seems curious at first, since Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005. It isn't curious at all, though, since Hamas believes all of Israel to be occupied territory. The cartoon would suggest that not only are all Israelis the enemy, but all Jews everywhere are the enemy. This comes as little surprise to most of us here, but it's a useful reminder to those viewing our conflict from a greater distance. 

It's rather refreshing, in a dismal kind of way, when our enemies lay their cards on the table.

If this story doesn’t end up impacting the 2016 presidential election, then I am going to call shenanigans on the political process. And you should too:

The State Department, under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, created an arrangement for her longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while serving as a top adviser in the department.

Ms. Abedin did not disclose the arrangement — or how much income she earned — on her financial report. It requires officials to make public any significant sources of income. An adviser to Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said that Ms. Abedin was not obligated to do so.

The disclosure of the agreement that Ms. Abedin made with the State Department comes as her husband, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, prepares for a mayoral run in New York City. Politico reported the arrangement on Thursday afternoon.

Ms. Abedin declined a request for an interview, but the picture that emerges from interviews and records suggests a situation where the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin’s work in the high echelons of one of the government’s most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider.

While continuing her work at the State Department, in the latter half of 2012, she also worked for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. Teneo has advised corporate clients like Coca-Cola and MF Global, the collapsed brokerage firm run by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey.

At the same time, Ms. Abedin served as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and worked in a personal capacity for Mrs. Clinton as she prepared to transition out of her job as secretary of state.

It is not clear what role Mrs. Clinton played in approving the arrangement. Some good-government groups have been critical of such situations, saying public employees’ loyalty should be solely to the public and their government work, rather than private firms and figures.

I’ve gotten used to the notion of a revolving door between the public and the private sectors. I don’t much have a problem with the presence of that revolving door; after years in government, it makes sense that people who serve the country may eventually have to go into the private sector to make the money they weren’t making as public servants. Many of those people have families to take care of and kids’ college tuitions to worry about, after all. But I never thought that we would do away with even the pretense of a revolving door by allowing public servants to make money on the side from the private sector while they are ostensibly supposed to be devoting their waking hours to serving the American people.

Hillary Clinton appears to be up to her neck on this issue, as does the Clinton Foundation. Both she and the people who run the foundation ought to answer questions regarding Huma Abedin’s special arrangement. And if Hillary Clinton cannot answer those questions, then in the event that she runs for president, we ought to wonder whether she has the judgment and the ethics to serve honorably in the White House. Oh, and if Anthony Weiner really does end up running for mayor of New York, he might well have more than just some errant tweets to haunt his campaign.

Tomorrow morning, Amity Shlaes, author of Coolidge, will be joining me here at Stanford to record an episode of Uncommon Knowledge. Amity’s book represents a high achievement: an entirely successful attempt to combine portraiture with historical and economic analysis—and to demonstrate the relevance of the Coolidge agenda of some nine decades ago to the American predicament today. Completely engrossing—a serious lesson, but also a total delight.

To whet the appetite:

Coolidge served for sixty-seven months, finishing out Harding’s term after Harding died in early August 1923 [Coolidge had been elected vice president on the Harding ticket in 1920] and remaining until early March 1929.

Under Coolidge, the federal debt fell. Under Coolidge, the top income tax rate came down by half, to 25 percent. Under Coolidge, the federal budget was always in surplus. Under Coolidge, unemployment was 5 percent or even 3 percent….

When in 1929 the thirtieth president climbed onto a train a Union Station to head back home to Massachusetts after his sixty-seven months in office, the federal government was smaller than when he had become president in 1923 ….

Whereas other presidents made themselves omnipresent, Coolidge held back. At the time, and subsequently, many have deemed the Coolidge method laziness. Upon examination, however, the inaction reflects strength. In politics as in business, it is often harder, after all, not to do, to delegate, than to do. Coolidge is our great refrainer.

She writes:

This isn't about differences of opinion on the war on terror.  It's about pure, raw, election politics, and calculus about headlines, and counting votes, and the fear it will look bad if Osama bin Laden's death didn't solve very much at all.

There is no politician in America who has the right to sacrifice another man's life to avoid a difficult headline.

Just so. Read the whole thing.

The unfolding of the Obama Administration's aggressive attitude towards the media continues to reveal the same sorry themes as the other scandals erupting inside the Beltway. 

The first is partisanship. This weekend came news that the Justice Department conducted an invasive investigation into the daily activities of Fox News reporter James Rosen, to the point where the Department judged him a "conspirator" in violating the laws against leaking classified information. Does anyone recall a similar pursuit of New York Times and Washington Post reporters during the Bush years? No? I didn't think so. Both outlets published extremely sensitive classified information that harmed our national security during the Bush years, and in the last five years both papers have published sensitive information on the operation of the drone programs and the bin Laden killing.

To an outside observer, it appears that the Obama Justice Department has selected for investigation the media outlets whose editorial views are most hostile to its political leaders while giving a pass to friendly organizations that might have published leaks that benefit the White House.

The second theme is the lack of adult supervision over the most important functions of the U.S. government. I am sure that, in all of these cases, there were career prosecutors who would like to have pursued the media. It is the job of the political appointees in any administration to stop cases that -- while they might fall within the letter of the law -- make terrible sense in terms of the use of the executive branch's resources or of broader values that might not occur to career civil servants. 

The fact that the political leadership of the Obama Justice Department must have signed off on this investigation shows how mediocre the appointees in the Department have become. On the other hand, if the Obama folks blame it all on the career prosecutors, it shows that their appointees cannot even do their job of managing the department. The fact that this negligence has occurred in one of the executive branch's most important, unique functions -- investigating and prosecuting crime -- only raises deeper doubts that this administration cannot manage the government competently.

In the Bush administration, there were some who wanted to pursue the media over classified leaking. I, for one, thought that these proposals were ill-conceived and raised problems under the First Amendment's protection for a free press. I don't believe that the Bush Justice Department -- allegedly so hostile to civil liberties -- undertook any of them. The only example I can think of was the independent counsel investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity to the press, which only went to show how bad an idea most independent counsel investigations are. Only the Obama administration has authorized tailing reporters, monitoring their phone calls and emails, and surveilling their sources. 

Add up all the recent scandals and the message is clear: the Obama Administration is showing that it cannot be trusted with the basic functions of government -- law enforcement (surveillance of reporters), taxation (IRS scandals), and national security (Benghazi).

Democrats and Republicans agree on only one thing these days: Justin Bieber. The LA Times reports:

A majority of Democrats (23% favorable-54% unfavorable), Republicans (17%-52%), and independents (18%-56%) all bagged on the Biebs.

It took a Canadian pop star to bring this country together.

Take a long look at this photo and ask yourself: Is this the price of national unity?

At the Billboard Music Awards last night, Mr. Bieber opened his mouth and this came out:

"This is not a gimmick. I'm an artist and I should be taken seriously and all this other bull should not be spoken of. I want to thank my manager, Scooter Braun. I want to thank my family at home. I want to thank my mother, my father. I want to thank Jesus Christ."

When an E! Network reporter contacted Jesus Christ late last night asking if he cared to comment, the LORD reportedly said: "No, I just can't."

From Fox News:

The Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about a Fox News correspondent's conversations and visits as part of an investigation into a possible leak, The Washington Post reported Monday -- in the latest example of the government seizing records of journalists. 

This follows the charge that the department secretly obtained two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a separate leak probe. The department in this case, though, went a step further, as an FBI agent reportedly claimed there's evidence the journalist in question -- Fox News' James Rosen -- broke the law "at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator." 

That detail would potentially send the case into unprecedented territory. No reporter has been prosecuted for seeking information. Such cases often target the suspected leaker, but not the journalist who published sensitive or classified information. 

...

In the case involving Rosen, a government adviser was accused of leaking information after a 2009 story was published online which said North Korea planned to respond to looming U.N. sanctions with another nuclear test. 

The Post reported that federal investigators, in pursuing the case, obtained email records from Rosen -- but also records of his visits to the State Department headquarters by tracking security-badge information. According to the article, a court affidavit said they used the badge records to log his visits as well as the movements of the adviser, Stephen Jim-Woo Kim. 

An FBI agent said in the affidavit that the visits suggested a "face-to-face" meeting. 

The documents reportedly show investigators seized two days of Rosen's personal emails, including exchanges with Kim, as well as two months of phone records from Kim's office.

Asked about the story, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney only noted that it was an "ongoing criminal investigation" and that President Obama is a "firm defender of the First Amendment and freedom of the press."

And no, there is no third option. Today's Supreme Court decision in Arlington v. FCC involves a basic question: who gets to determine the scope of a federal agency's power: the agency itself, or the courts? On this question, the Court's conservative bloc split in two. Justice Scalia, writing for a majority that included Justice Thomas, held that federal courts must defer to the decisions of administrative agencies -- even when those agencies make decisions about the scope of their own power. 

The dissent, penned by Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Kennedy and Alito, argues that even though courts may show deference to the substantive decisions of agencies (this is known as "Chevron deference" after a 1984 decision involving that company), courts do not have to defer to agency decisions setting their own jurisdiction. In his dissenting opinion, Roberts effectively shows how administrative agencies basically run the country and that it is, therefore, very dangerous to give them free rein to set their own boundaries.

But wait, says Scalia. Every time an agency interprets its governing statute it is making a decision about the scope of its own power. There is no real distinction between "jurisdictional" decisions and non-jurisdictional decisions. "Chevron deference" is designed to protect the rule of law by giving us administrative certainty rather than having federal courts second-guessing the Executive Branch's decisions. According to Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts' attempt to carve out a area of agency rulemaking exempt from "Chevron deference" represents a judicial power grab in an area where courts should exercise that rare quality: judicial restraint.

What do you say?  Should we empower judges to set the limits of agency discretion?  Or should we trust the bureaucrats who are -- at least to some extent -- accountable to Congress and/or the President? Personally, I'm with the dissent on this one, but any opinion of Justice Scalia (and joined by Thomas) is worth a long, hard look.

Prior to President Obama's recent surge of dinners and golf outings with members of Congress, the knock on the Commander-in-Chief was that he didn't have a great social game. He was aloof, distant, and imperious. He lacked a human touch, unable to alternately charm and cudgel with the effectiveness of a Lyndon Johnson.

I've always found this criticism a little overblown. Sure, charm offensives may matter at the margins, but there's a parallel here to the belief among segments of the diplomatic corps that world peace is always one amiably-worded communique away from realization. When you come right down to it, most people -- particularly those who inhabit positions of power -- are more likely to be driven by self-interest or ideology than flattery. And let's be honest -- those who bend their votes based on a dinner invitation are likely not long for the political world anyway.

Still, an anecdote in former Senator Olympia Snowe's forthcoming book (the answer to a question that no one is asking) may provide some insight as to why Obama doesn't rely on a lot of glad-handing: he's not very good at it. From the Portland Press Herald:

In an earlier phone call, Obama had told the Republican that she could be "a modern-day Joan of Arc" by supporting his health care bill, now known as "Obamacare." When Snowe pointed out Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake, Obama reportedly replied: "Don't worry, I'll be there with a fire hose!" She still voted against the bill on the Senate floor.

The use of the word "still" in that final sentence represents a massive amount of undue credit to the President. If his most persuasive pitch is to invite U.S. senators to imagine themselves immolated ... well, maybe it's for the best that he doesn't work the phones that often.

One of the environmental left’s favorite pictures to paint is of North America as a pristine ecological paradise prior to the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Often, the most hysterical headlines about climate change employ alarming phrases such as “For the first time in human history!” and “Never before seen levels!” and “All-time highs!”

I’ve always been a little skeptical. Weathermen often announce the breaking of temperature records set in 1885 and 1917. How could that be? If weather variations are all explainable by carbon levels in the atmosphere, what exactly could have caused the odd 87-degree, late-November day in New York City during the administration of Grover Cleveland?

Anyway, there’s a story in this morning’s Wall Street Journal about a plan being considered to ban the use of fire pits on beaches in Southern California. Roasting marshmallows with sand between your toesies is evidently a treasured local tradition. Sounds nice to me.

Naturally, a killjoy commission has been established to examine the environmental effects of the area’s 857 beach-fire pits. It’s called the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Last week, the air-quality board released preliminary findings of a study on the fires, which found that in one evening a pit emits as much fine-particulate pollution as "one heavy-duty diesel truck driving 564 miles."

I’m not that good at math, but Google is. If every one of those fire pits was working at full capacity every night of the year (857 X 564 X 365) that would be the equivalent of about 176.5 million diesel truck miles worth of fine-particulate pollution annually. So, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District report, the fire pits of Southern California are capable of belching into the air every year roughly the same amount of pollution that you’d expect from a heavy-duty diesel truck making 36,526 round trips between Huntington Beach, California and Jacksonville, Florida.

Okay, so the fires aren’t blazing every night. But the story got me thinking about a time when they were—and on a scale bigger than in Los Angeles or Orange Counties.

The Native American population north of the Rio Grande at the time of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas was—at a minimum—10 million. Who knows how many tribes, families, and discreet social units were to be found in a population of 10 million? But for the sake of argument, let’s make a very conservative guess that this 10 million was broken up into 1 million families of 10 people each.

Can we agree that semi-nomadic, pre-modern peoples—especially hunter-gatherers—built fires for cooking and such? Can we agree further that they probably did so every night? So, let’s estimate that 1 million families north of the Rio Grande built an open-pit, wood fire every night during the pre-Colombian era.

Using the South Coast Air Quality Management District report figures, that’s 564 million miles worth of diesel-truck pollution in the United States and Canada every night in a time when not a single car, truck, airplane, or factory was anywhere to be found. It’s almost 206 billion miles worth of diesel-truck pollution in the atmosphere annually—the equivalent of about 43 million round trips between California and Florida.

Of course, once the Europeans got here, the number of fires built every evening in North America expanded alongside the rapidly multiplying population. Cough cough.

There are three possible conclusions as I see it. Either:

1. The South Coast Air Quality Management District report is really over-estimating the amount of smoke these fires throw off;
2. The North American atmosphere in the pre-Colombian era was a lot more polluted than has been previously appreciated; or
3. The hysteria about global warming has reached an absolute fever-pitch of insanity.

What do you think?

If you are in the D.C. area, please join me tomorrow as I discuss abortion with a few other libertarians:

As a political philosophy, libertarianism stresses concepts such as self-ownership, voluntary consent, and non-agression. In many areas of human activity, the application of such ideas seems relatively straightforward. In others, reaching clarity is far more difficult.

On Tuesday, May 21, from 2pm to 3pm in Washington, D.C., Reason will host a discussion tackling one of the most controversial and debated issues of the day: abortion. Among self-identified libertarians, there's a wide variety of positions, ranging from support for all forms of abortions to the prohibition of the same...

The topics discussed will include

• When does human life - and when do rights - begin?
• What's the role of science - and religion - in setting abortion policy?
• Is there a role for the state in prohibiting, regulating, and providing abortion?

You can either join us at Reason HQ or stream the event online.

Fellow panelist Katherine Mangu-Ward will be taking the "abortion is totally awesome" side of things and I'm unsure what the views of Ron Bailey are. He'll probably argue for how science should play a role in the debate. I'll be representing the pro-life side of things and Nick Gillespie will moderate. In his book The Declaration of Independents, he said that about a third of libertarians are pro-life. That sounds about right to me.

Even though a majority of libertarians are pro-choice, the movement is not as hostile to pro-life thought as you might think.

So, what would you like covered in this discussion? And what do Ricochet's libertarians have to say about the topic?

A couple of weeks ago, the National Education Association asked people to share their favorite memories of good teachers.

My mom was a public school teacher for 40 years, and a fantastic one at that, but as soon as I read the NEA request, I could only think of some of my worst teachers.

Actually, I had pretty good teachers. My brother had epically awful teachers. He was one of those incredibly bright children who skipped grades and picked everything up with almost frightening speed. When we moved from California to Colorado, his 6th grade teacher gave him all As and a B. My parents wanted to find out more about why and the teacher actually told them, "No one comes from California and gets all As."

There was also the time that my brother and I were in junior high school together. I had spent the previous year doing way more study of the Mayan Indians than I needed to for my independent study class. He spent a weekend writing a report on the Aztec. Our Spanish teacher brought us into the principal because, due to her laughable ignorance about native peoples, she believed my brother must have cheated.

What about you? Who were your worst teachers?

Just before he left the presidency, Dwight Eisenhower famously cautioned the nation that "[i]n the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

In that same address, he offered a less heralded warning:

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Surely the most notorious example of this corruption of and by science was the 2009 University of East Anglia global warming scandal. Publication on the Internet of hacked emails revealed a global conspiracy of scientists facilitated by strategically-placed researchers at the British university that served as the international clearing house for climate change data. A multi-continent network of scholars had suppressed climate change findings and inquiries that conflicted with a theory that promised power and a steady flow of public dollars to their community.  

In the next edition of The American Spectator, I review a brilliant new account of the climate change issue, The Age of Global Warming: A History by British policy intellectual Rupert Darwall. The prescience of Eisenhower's warning is on full display throughout the story -- from the gaming of computer models to the stacking of the peer review process to projections of catastrophic harm made to sound imminent but in fact nearly a millennium in the future.

But my question here is: can climate change be the only area in which science has been corrupted by politics and money? In recent years we have seen reports of scientists linking with activists in other areas, attacking new technologies based on studies -- the data and methodologies they would not share -- but reaping grant support as a result.

The link of science and public money may be here to stay, but shouldn't receivers of public dollars come under a more critical public scrutiny? Shouldn't it be required, for example, that findings be independently replicated, that data generated at public institutions be publicly shared, that data showing an absence of correlations and test results that disprove or call into question theories be published?  In other words, shouldn't we expect more searching scientific debate over the methods and results of publicly-funded science? 

None of what I am suggesting is new. But it seems to me that Eisenhower's warning about the corruption of science and the danger of a scientific-technological elite capturing public policy needs to be taken much more seriously.

Because they don't have anything else to worry about in Brussels.

If you want ever again to dip your bread into a bowl of olive oil on your table at a restaurant in Europe, or to pour olive oil onto it from a quaint, refillable jug, you'd better hurry up. It'll be illegal in January 2014:

The small glass jugs filled with green or gold coloured extra virgin olive oil are familiar and traditional for restaurant goers across Europe but they will be banned from 1 January 2014 after a decision taken in an obscure Brussels committee earlier this week.

From next year olive oil "presented at a restaurant table" must be in pre-packaged, factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labelling in line with EU industrial standards.

The use of classic, refillable glass jugs or glazed terracotta dipping bowls and the choice of a restaurateur to buy olive oil from a small artisan producer or family business will be outlawed.

Let's see. This move will benefit large industrial producers at the expense of small, artisanal olive oil makers, require non-eco-friendly, mass-produced generic packaging, and kill off one more vestige of what remains of European charm. 

The decision, which will be automatically adopted by the commission in the next few days, has dismayed many officials who are concerned that a ban crafted to help industry will damage the reputation of the EU at a time of growing hostility to Brussels bureaucrats.

"This is sort of thing that gets the EU a deservedly bad name. I shouldn't say so but I hope people disobey this ban," said an official.

"It will seem bonkers that olive oil jugs must go while vinegar bottles or refillable wine jugs can stay."

Responding to the ban, Martin Callanan MEP, the leader of the European Conservative and Reformist group, asked: "Is it April 1st?".

"With the euro crisis, a collapse in confidence in the EU, and a faltering economy surely the commission has more important things to worry about than banning refillable olive oil bottles?"

The Telegraph is having none of this:

There are bigger reasons to desire renegotiation of our relationship with the EU, but its obsession with olive-oil dipping does add to its aura of authoritarianism. What next? If the EU tries to tell the British how much milk or sugar to put in their tea, we predict a riot.

...But probably nothing good.  From BetaBeat:

A new survey of 19,000 parents worldwide said their kids browse porn as early as age six and begin e-flirting at eight years old. The news comes from Bitdefender, a Bucharest-based antivirus company, that compiled the results from talking with parents and monitoring which sites parents block.

The Internet-addicted generation is also using instant messaging services and playing video games at younger ages than ever before, Bitdefender said. The survey found kids playing video games as young as five, and 17 percent of those surveyed registered for social media sites at 10 years old. Those sneaky kids also figured out that they could get around several sites’ 13-year-old minimum age by–get this!–lying about their ages.

What I hope, of course, is that this is all overblown. What I know -- deep down -- is that we're coarsening ourselves and our children and doing it faster and faster. It used to take generations for things to get lousy and decrepit. Now, at internet speeds, we can achieve it all within one generational cycle.

The real problem is, what happens when all of those six year-olds grow up to be blasé and bored by what used to be deep and mysterious urges? Will Seen that ever replace Done that as key human driver?

It is, to use one of President Obama's more overwrought phrases, a "teachable moment." To be sure, it is neither the lesson nor the moment he had in mind, but liberalism is nothing if not an ongoing tutorial in unintended consequences. Less than a fortnight after the President urged the American people to reject those who, as he disparagingly put it, "…warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner," his administration proceeded to provide a taste of tyranny's power and reach.

For his part, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough acknowledged that, "My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals. People say, 'Hey, if they do this with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights?'" On CNN, no less a champion of liberal causes than Piers Morgan conceded:

I've had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here, saying to me, 'Well, the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government,' and I've always laughed at them.  I said, 'Don't be so ridiculous, your own government won't turn itself on you,' but actually, this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government. I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior. I think what the Department of Justice has done to the AP is bordering on tyrannical behavior.

Concerning which, a few observations:  

1.  The point many of us have been making is not, as the President so fatuously claimed, that "tyranny is always lurking just around the corner." Rather, ours is the historically incontrovertible position that, A) government is organically inclined to aggrandize power unto itself, and that, B) such aggrandizement, incremental though it may be, typically occurs at the expense of human freedom, sovereignty, and dignity.  

2.  When a government seeks out and punishes select citizens on the basis of their political beliefs using its most powerful, its most feared, and its most unaccountable enforcement agency, unashamedly and belligerently stating before the people's elected representatives that it retains the legal prerogative to do so, that government is quickly growing out of control.

3.  When the acting chief of this tax collecting agency refuses to denounce his agency's inquiries into the content of a private citizen's prayers, we are entitled not only to observe that the government no longer works for the people, but to draw quite obvious conclusions on the wisdom of entrusting this agency or this government with our healthcare.

4.  When unprecedented intrusions on First Amendment protections of a free press are treated so cavalierly by an Attorney General who breezily testifies to his contented ignorance of it all, our concern over the security of the rest of the Bill of Rights is entirely justified.

5.  When the President voices his continued faith and confidence in this blissfully incurious and benighted Attorney General, we are right to be alarmed.

6.  When, in the midst of these fundamental transgressions on our liberty, the President departs to a campaign stop, from which remove he labels these assaults as "fleeting issue(s)," he betrays a disturbing indifference to such rights as he took an oath to uphold.

7.  In so doing, the President has not only underscored the folly of his earlier denunciation of those who remain skeptical of ever-expanding government; he has not just validated Lord Acton's warning that,  "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely;" but he has vividly re-certified the continuing relevance of America's Founders.

8.  James Madison's observation in Federalist 51 is as fresh and relevant as the morning's headlines:  "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." And Thomas Jefferson appears to have read the Democratic Party's platform when he advises that:

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on his ground: That all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people (10th Amendment).  To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.

So while we welcome the epiphanies of Messrs Morgan and Scarborough, and hope they will hang around awhile and help the rest of us in a continuing defense of the Bill of Rights, along with the rest of the Constitution, it's not an assurance we can "take to the bank," as they say. The liberal infatuation with centralized authority runs deep, after all. From Franklin Roosevelt's early admiration of Mussolini's handiwork to the gushing praise of American progressives over Stalin's governance (typified by Paul Robeson's remark upon his return from a visit to the Soviet Union that, "From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!"), the liberal heart swoons to the siren song of paradise on earth and of human perfection, accomplished through the force of persuasion if possible, at the point of a gun if necessary.

"I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony," goes the old Coca-Cola jingle.  The liberal, upon learning that not everyone wants to sing, and that perfect harmony is unachievable without total conformity to a prescribed sheet of music, goes from teaching to instructing. Individualism is at first discouraged, and then eventually rooted out as instruction yields to regulation. For those who still cling to their individual sovereignty, refusing to conform to the designs of the liberal maestro, harassment and coercion are the order of the day, resulting in headlines announcing the IRS's tormenting of those who resist the designs of the state on their lives, beliefs, and property. It is all utterly predictable, utterly diabolical, and totally unfathomable to adherents of paternal government.  

It is likely only a matter of time before Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, Dana Milbank, Piers Morgan, Joe Scarborough, the Associated Press and the rest make their prodigal way back to the welcoming arms of Barack Obama and his legions of government enthusiasts. Unfortunately, more epiphanies are coming, not the least of which will be the colossal train wreck of Obamacare.  When it is too late, perhaps a few of them will understand that the masterpiece of modern liberalism was unveiled long ago by Alexis de Tocqueville:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Do you ever feel as though you've stepped into some kind of fictional parallel universe? The IRS scandal is starting to take on the dimensions of a dark satirical netherworld -- Evelyn Waugh with a dollop of Orwell thrown in.

The Coalition for Life of Iowa applied for tax-exempt status in 2008, opening itself up to 10 months of interrogation by the IRS. The organization's board was ordered by the IRS to sign a sworn declaration that they would never protest or picket Planned Parenthood, and they were obliged to answer questions like the following:

Please detail the content of the members of your organization's prayers.

IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, asked about this during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, couldn't bring himself to say that such a demand was out of line. The most he would offer was that it was surprising.

Not anymore, it isn't.