Check out my op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal about the crazy campus overreach coming from the Department of Education and the Department of Justice: 

The scandals roiling Washington over the past two weeks involve troubling government behavior that had been hidden—the IRS targeting of conservative groups and the Justice Department's surveillance of the Associated Press, among others. Largely overlooked amid the histrionics has been a shocker hiding in plain sight. Last week, the Obama administration moved to dramatically undermine students' and faculty rights at colleges across the country.

The new policy was announced in a joint letter from the Education Department and Justice Department to the University of Montana. The May 9 letter addressed the results of a year-long joint investigation by the departments into the school's mishandling of several serious sexual-assault cases. The investigation determined that the university's policies addressing sexual assault failed to comply with Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

But the joint letter, which announced a "resolution agreement" with the university, didn't stop there. It then proceeded to rewrite the federal government's rules about sexual harassment and free speech on campus.

... The letter rejects the requirement, established by legal precedent and previous Education Department guidance, that sexual harassment must be "objectively offensive." By eliminating this "reasonable person" standard—which the Education Department has required since at least 2003, and which protects the accused against unreasonable or insincere allegations—the right not to be offended has been enshrined in a federal mandate.

You can read the whole piece here.

Before anyone calls me on Godwin's Law, I'd just like to say that I don't believe in Godwin's Law. (For reasons we can perhaps discuss another time.)

Anyway, to my headline. Though I'm not saying Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler are peas in a pod, I do think there are certain similarities going on in the way their administrations work - as I argue in more detail here.

Did Obama personally order the IRS to persecute Tea Party and Conservative charities? I doubt it. No more than he directly ordered his Department of Justice to launch those two raids on Gibson; nor than he ordered the EPA to launch its various hit jobs on the coal industry.

But then, he didn’t need to. It’s called the Fuhrer Prinzip. You don’t need to get a direct order; you just need to anticipate the leader’s wishes and act accordingly. Get it right and much career success will follow. Get caught and the leader can plausibly deny that he didn’t know anything about this nefarious scheme which of course, had he known, he would have nixed.

The thing I love about you Americans is that you take your checks and balances very seriously. And your guns. If this goes on much longer, you're going to need them all.

I'm in New York, where I attended the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's annual Canterbury Medal Dinner last night. This year's winner, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, spoke about the rising threats to religious liberty. You can read his remarks here.

The Becket Fund is something of an ACLU for religious liberty. Their events tend to look like the World Parliament of Religions. Last night's official program included a Pentecostal minister, an LDS leader and an Orthodox Jewish rabbi (if it means anything for a Lutheran to have a favorite Orthodox Jewish rabbi, this guy, Meir Soloveichik, is mine). Also, I got to see Ricochet's own Bill McGurn.

Last night's dinner was festive, but the overall climate is difficult. A highlight for me was meeting members of the Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby stores. At great cost to themselves, they're refusing to abide by HHS regulations that violate their religious liberty. The Becket Fund has taken on their case, for which oral arguments are next week before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

This is a long way of introducing what I remain worried about this morning. Of the many poor responses to the Benghazi tragedy, one of the worst was how some of our political leaders deliberately led people to believe Benghazi occurred because of someone exercising his rights of speech and religion. Further, they suggested, this should lead to voluntary or forced limits on religious expression. From Reason magazine's "Hall of Shame" on this point:

Fourteen days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered by Islamists, President Barack Obama stood up in front of the United Nations and  declared that the "message" of a movie virtually no one will ever see "must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity," that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam," and that we all should "condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims."

Stephen F. Hayes' piece in The Weekly Standard this morning is a must-read. He briefly and clearly explains what remains troubling about the latest version of the talking points story, including concerns about how our country came to blame a YouTube video maker.

Religious liberty is the canary in the coal mine of civil liberties. And I suppose it should be no surprise that even presidents fail to appreciate its importance. But kudos to the Becket Fund for defending our rights to religious liberty, no matter our religion, against threats by local, state and federal governments.

All you 24 fans can grab your popcorn and beer because Jack is back. Fox is rekindling the popular show as a miniseries called 24: Live Another Day, starring Kiefer Sutherland.

Unfortunately, it will run at half the length, with 12 episodes instead of the full 24. The show will be in chronological order but will skip some hours and is expected to kick off on Fox in the summer.

While I can’t wait to hear Jack Bauer say in those raspy tones, “Do Your Job!” and kick some terrorist butt, I’m disappointed by the 12-episode series. A big part of the excitement of 24 is the seamless ride through the entire day. I wonder how much that will change by skipping hours.

While this new “limited edition” of 24 is being slated as a “miniseries,” I’ve noticed that most dramatic series these days run about half the time they used to. Nothing is more frustrating, and unsatisfying, than settling in for a good show and having it over in 10 episodes (Game of Thrones!). Just when you’re really getting into it, it’s over. And even worse is when, after three or four episodes, they play a re-run or take a break for several weeks (ahem, Lost!).

I remember the days when a series started in late summer or fall, ran straight for 25 to 30 weeks, and then the re-runs would start. But, those were the good ole days.

I understand the shortened seasons are due to money. It’s just more expensive to make television now. But isn’t advertising more expensive too? Don’t you make money with every show you air whether there are 12 episodes or 24—especially if it’s a popular series? If anyone can explain this trend to me, I’d appreciate it.

As for the show, any other 24 fans out there looking forward to seeing some subtle conservative-minded antics on display and good old-fashioned heroism that spawned “Jack Bauer for President” bumper stickers? I, for one, can’t wait. It will be a welcome relief from watching news of real-life scandals where there aren’t any Jack Bauers to save the day.

There's no real reason to post this, except I think it's cool:

I found it, and some other cool Cold War stuff, here.

For some reason, this stuff still seems more thrilling to me than an iPhone.

Because now, even more information has come out.

Start with the fact that we have yet another resignation:

President Obama on Thursday appointed senior budget adviser Daniel Werfel as the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, as that agency manages a scandal stemming from its targeting of conservative groups. The appointment is effective May 22.

More changes in the IRS leadership team were announced Thursday as well, with Joseph Grant, Commissioner of Tax Exempt/Government Entities Division, planning to retire on June 3, according to an IRS statement.

Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting IRS commissioner, Steven Miller. The president said it is important to have a new leader for the organization while it attempts to put in safeguards to ensure the special screening of political advocacy groups does not happen again. Werfel has agreed to remain in the new job through Sept. 30.

Anyone who thinks that Grant’s resignation is just coincidental likely would be a good target for those seeking to unload subprime mortgage packages. Also, this is yet another nail in the coffin of the claim that responsibility for bad behavior was confined to low-level employees.

It’s also worth noting that the latest incredibly ridiculous excuse for the IRS scandal—courtesy of incredibly ridiculous people—is that the IRS abuses were justified by a “doubling” of claims from tea party groups for tax exempt status since the Citizens United ruling. The problem is that this excuse is utterly shredded by, you know, facts:

Applications for tax exemption from advocacy nonprofits had not yet spiked when the Internal Revenue Service began using what it admits was inappropriate scrutiny of conservative groups in 2010.

In fact, applications were declining, data show.

Top IRS officials have been saying that a “significant increase” in applications from advocacy groups seeking tax-exempt status spurred its Cincinnati office in 2010 to filter those requests by using such politically loaded phrases as “Tea Party,” “patriots,” and “9/12.”

Both Steven Miller, the agency’s acting commissioner until he stepped down Wednesday, and Lois Lerner, director of the agency’s exempt-organization division, have said over the past week that IRS officials started the scrutiny after observing a surge in applications for status as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups. Both officials cited an increase from about 1,500 applications in 2010 to nearly 3,500 in 2012. President Obama ask Mr. Miller to resign on Wednesday.

The scrutiny began, however, in March 2010, before an uptick could have been observed, according to data contained in the audit released Tuesday from the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

The number of 501(c)(4) applications for all of 2010 was actually less than in 2009.

“It doesn’t bear out the statement that there was a surge in 2010,” said Bruce Hopkins, a tax attorney specializing in nonprofits. “That’s inconsistent with what Lois said last week.”

Facts don’t matter to liars, of course. But they should and do matter to those of us who are morally decent and intellectually honest.

As noted over on the Member Feed, I spoke to the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin about Attorney General Eric Holder's claim that he recused himself in the case of the Justice Department obtaining extensive phone records from the Associated Press, yet said that there was likely no written evidence of that fact. For the benefit of the Ricochet audience, I thought I'd share with you what I told her:

The recusal issue is just plain strange, but shows how irregular things are getting at the Justice Department. There must be a recusal in writing to at least the Deputy Attorney General -- he couldn't make it public at the time because the whole search was secret, but it must still exist.  Otherwise, how will others know how far the recusal goes, when it takes effect, what the grounds are, and so on?  Does the AG just give oral recusals when he doesn't feel like answering a question?

I cannot think of another example of this kind of surveillance of the media that was both (a)  this broad and (B) didn't turn out to be unauthorized. The only comparable instance are cases where a court tried to get a journalist to reveal a source. But I cannot think of actual monitoring of reporters and editors. If something like this had ever come up during my time in the Bush Justice Department, I would have said it was unconstitutional.

I have a lot to write about.

I’ll start with the fact that the president has asked for the resignation of Steven Miller, the acting director of the IRS. There was a lot of tough talk from the president about how the IRS’s actions were supposedly inexcusable and intolerable, but note that the IRS makes it very difficult to actually bring it to account for any abuses it engages in:

The IRS has usually done an excellent job of stifling investigations of its practices. A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee.

The agency also has a long history of seeking to intimidate congressional critics: In 1925, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes to Michigan’s Republican Sen. James Couzens—who had launched an investigation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue—as he stepped out of the Senate chamber. More recently, after Sen. Joe Montoya of New Mexico announced plans in 1972 to hold hearings on IRS abuses, the agency added his name to a list of tax protesters who were capable of violence against IRS agents.

Meanwhile, for anyone who is still under the ridiculous impression that the IRS didn’t engage in any abuses when it came to its treatment of tea party groups …

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

I don’t envy anyone who is tasked with trying to defend this behavior, although some port-side commentators are still desperately trying to do so because, in this case, the IRS targeted people they don’t like.

I’m going to link to an excerpt a bunch of material courtesy of Jim Geraghty’s excellent Morning Jolt below. Excerpt one:

At the time when tea party groups were targeted, Miller was a deputy commissioner who oversaw the division that dealt with tax-exempt organizations.

The report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration does not indicate that Miller knew conservative groups were being targeted until after the practice ended. But documents show that Miller repeatedly failed to tell Congress that tea party groups were being targeted, even after he had been briefed on the matter.

Excerpt two:

The director of the Internal Revenue Service division under fire for singling out conservative groups sent a 2012 letter under her name to one such group, POLITICO has learned.

The March 2012 letter was sent to the Ohio-based American Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the Exempt Organizations Division.

As Geraghty points out, this shows that “low-level employees” weren’t the ones primarily responsible for this scandal. Excerpt three:

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups. They included:

• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red, white and blue bus to “drive the progressive change.” According to its website, its mission includes “support (for) progressive politicians with the courage to serve the people’s interests and make tough choices.” It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April 2011.
• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage. “It would be fair to say we’re on the progressive end of the spectrum,” said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after “a pretty simple, straightforward process.”
• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January 2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama’s signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls. “We’re busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot take your call right now,” the group’s voice mail said.

Like the Tea Party groups, the liberal groups sought recognition as social welfare groups under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, based on activities like “citizen participation” or “voter education and registration.”

And finally, excerpt four from Geraghty:

Eight months passed without word from the agency about the group’s application, Ryun said. In February 2012, Ryun’s attorney contacted the IRS to ask if it needed more information to secure its non-profit status as a 501(c)3 organization. According to Ryun, the IRS told him that the application was being processed by the agency’s office in Cincinnati, Ohio—the same one currently facing scrutiny for targeting conservative groups—and to check back in two months.

As directed, Ryun followed up with the IRS in April 2012, and was told that Media Trackers’ application was still under review.

When September 2012 arrived with still no word from the IRS, Ryun determined that Media Trackers would likely never obtain standalone non-profit status, and he tried a new approach: Starting over. He applied for permanent non-profit status for a separate group called Greenhouse Solutions, a pre-existing organization that was reaching the end of its determination period.

The IRS approved Greenhouse Solutions’ request for non-profit status in three weeks.

Tell me again how this is not a scandal.

As expected, the White House continues to blame everyone but itself for the scandal. The newest scapegoat is the Treasury department. Because God forbid that the White House itself start taking some responsibility for how unbelievably awful this scandal has gotten. Dana Milbank is one of the worst columnists around, but unlike the Obama administration, at least Milbank has eaten his Wheaties:

… Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration. As the president distances himself from the actions of “independent” figures within his administration, he’s creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes. Certainly, a president can’t know what everybody in his administration is up to — but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone calls.

Mitt Romney had his faults as a presidential candidate. But anything would be better than having a pretend president right about now.

Tech exec gives a speech to a bunch of educators. “The good news” he says, “is that my online education business will pay teachers a million dollars a year.” The crowd cheers. “The bad new is that I’ll only need six of you.”

Hah! Now here is the reality. From Inside Higher Ed:

The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors.

Georgia Tech will work with AT&T and Udacity, the 15-month-old Silicon Valley-based company, to offer a new online master’s degree in computer science to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its current degree. The deal, announced Tuesday, is portrayed as a revolutionary attempt by a respected university, an education technology startup and a major corporate employer to drive down costs and expand higher education capacity.

Georgia Tech expects to hire only eight or so new instructors even as it takes its master’s program from 300 students to as many as 10,000 within three years, said Zvi Galil, the dean of computing at Georgia Tech.

The university will rely instead on Udacity staffers, known as “mentors,” to field most questions from students who enroll in the new program. But company and university officials said the new degrees would be entirely comparable to the existing master’s degree in computer science from Georgia Tech, which costs about $40,000 a year for non-Georgia residents.

Recall Alex Tabarrok’s three advantages to online education: 1) leverage of the best teachers; 2) time savings; 3) individualized teaching via new technologies. All will likely be at play here.

Further proof that a huge swath of academic research being done today results from researchers daring each other to see how bizarre their projects have to get in order to scare off funding. From Science Daily:

Men's upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

...  The researchers collected data on bicep size, socioeconomic status, and support for economic redistribution from hundreds of people in the United States, Argentina, and Denmark.

In line with their hypotheses, the data revealed that wealthy men with high upper-body strength were less likely to support redistribution, while less wealthy men of the same strength were more likely to support it.

"Despite the fact that the United States, Denmark and Argentina have very different welfare systems, we still see that -- at the psychological level -- individuals reason about welfare redistribution in the same way," says [researcher Michael Bang] Petersen. "In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution."

Men with low upper-body strength, on the other hand, were less likely to support their own self-interest. Wealthy men of this group showed less resistance to redistribution, while poor men showed less support.

There are a couple of crumbs of crazy here. First is the fact that someone actually underwrote this study (although it becomes more intelligible when you learn that the research came out of California and Denmark). Second is the fact that -- reading this account, anyway -- it's not clear that the findings actually support the conclusion. Based on this account, there seems to be an awful lot of variability within the strength classes based on income. Maybe the spread is tiny by comparison to the difference between groups, but you can't tell from how this is written.

What rankles the most, however, is the characterization of opposing redistribution as the "self-interested position." We're talking about the confiscation of property here, albeit legally. If you think it's more important to retain a chunk of your income to support your wife and kids than to have that money deployed to make sure that the CEO of Solyndra has just the right Montblanc rollerball on his desk, is that really the apex of avarice?

What about those who think minimizing redistribution is the practical position? Those who acknowledge the need to pay taxes and are probably even amenable to a social safety net, but who believe that, beyond that threshold, it quickly devolves into a sucker's game for all involved? If a logically thought-out position results in you keeping more of your own money, does that still render it intrinsically greedy?

If we had no New York Times, where would we get our morning humor? From "An Onset of Woes Raises Questions on Obama Vision," today:

Yet Mr. Obama also expresses exasperation. In private, he has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

First things first. If you are not familiar with the film (heck, even if you are), read John Podhoretz's brilliant review from 1998.

OK, so Obama wants to go Bulworth? What would that mean? The point of Bulworth is that a senator stops being a phony who says what he has to and starts promoting socialism. No, really. A major part of the film is when, um, Warren Beatty starts rapping about socialism.

My husband asks, "How would Obama even "go Bulworth"? Let us know just how liberal he is? Let us know he hates the GOP leadership? We got it, em kay?"

And who better to illustrate that than Dita von Teese, a Vargas girl made flesh.

Behold: Dita is wearing the first-ever 3D-printed dress, created by designer Michael Schmidt:

With the help of architect Francis Bitonti, Schmidt used digital rendering technology to design the dress and then collaborated with Shapeways, a 3D printing company, to create the dress with a fabric-like substance called powdered nylon. The final product was painted black and covered with 12,000 black Swarovski crystals.

The gown is made of thousands of plastic joints that are tiny enough to allow the material to drape like fabric. Bitonti started with Schmidt's iPad sketch of the gown and then created a computer model of the "network of curves" of Dita's body to match the gown to her shape. "Her body actually became an input for the software," he said. 

The technology is intriguingly disruptive, in that it hands a jealously guarded creative pursuit -- fashion design -- to the hoi polloi. "You can use an iPhone app to take 40 photos of an object, and the software will then stitch the photos together so you can recreate, modify and print the design," explained Duann Scott, a "designer evangelist" at Shapeways, the 3D printing startup that manufactured the gown. 

For now, anyway. From Politico:

Tonight's episode of Hardball saw Matthews delivering a rare, unforgiving grilling of the president as severe as anything that might appear on Fox News.

"What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn't like dealing with other politicians -- that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn't particularly like the press.... "

"So what part does he like? He likes going on the road, campaigning, visiting businesses like he does every couple days somewhere in Ohio or somewhere," Matthews continued. "But what part does he like? He doesn't like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn't like selling to the press. He doesn't like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn't seem to like being an executive.”

Okay, obviously this isn't going to last. They'll all come purring back to Master, begging forgiveness. This is an adolescent temper-tantrum. It'll all be over in a trice, and the lickspittle press will be licking and spittling with enthusiastic abandon at every part of Obama's anatomy.

So, for now anyway, let's enjoy it.

Feel free to collect and post your own favorite examples below.  

Below, a meditation for times of scandal, in the words and voice of T.S. Eliot.

Does the "resignation" solution to scandal show that we live in an era in which there is no statesmanship?  Are we "resigned" to this state of affairs?

 T.S. Eliot.  "Difficulties of a Statesman" from Coriolan

The first thing to do is to form the committees:
The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees

. . . I a tired head among these heads . . .

What shall I cry?

We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation
RESIGN RESIGN RESIGN

Ricochet members, please join us tomorrow at 8AM PT/11AM ET for another live recording of the Ricochet Podcast with guests Texas governor Rick Perry and author and columnist Kevin Williamson. 

Come by and listen and chat with your fellow members -- maybe even get a shout out on the show. It happened to Franco, it can happen to you. 

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My colleagues from the campaign and political punditry universes often ask why I made the switch from domestic politics to full-time advocacy and foreign policy. Why am I concerned with development? Why global health? Isn't everyone anti-genocide? Why is ending sexual and gender-based violence that is happening thousands of miles away relevant? Why, why, why. The short version is that I am a survivor. The long version is that I am an American and with that comes responsibility. Also, hypocrites really tick me off.

When others affiliate themselves with a cause, take their selfies at $1,000 a plate dinners, and pretend that the occasional humanitarian impulse is enough, I am compelled to speak out. It would be better to not show up, to not be a hypocrite. These events are a staple in DC, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and beyond. The thing is, a couple of hours exposed to real human trauma is all most of us can stand.

Recognition of suffering is tough work, and sometimes it is best left to survivors, like myself, that found our way out of darkness and into purpose.

Victims are the dead. Survivors are the witnesses. Enter empathy: the poignant human connection we discover in news stories and fundraising emails from NGOs, think tanks, at award ceremonies in the White House, at the United Nations, hotel ballrooms and university auditoriums. The video rolls: gaunt faces, distended bellies, flies and mosquitoes landing on the faces of tiny children, mothers and sisters cradling babies in brightly colored wraps, families hiding in caves. Then come the images of scorched earth and devastation, which finally blur and give way to softer images. The music changes, signaling relief. Men and women arrive in matching logo emblazoned t-shirts or medical scrubs. Pallets of medicine and food aid are being unloaded and opened as the tents and temporary structures of refugee camps are assembled.

At last.

Your donations are making a difference. Together, we are changing the world.

It takes more than aid to keep people alive. Understanding the financial cost and the impact is relevant. Saving a life is the right thing to do. Lives matter. For the suffering, the aid for their souls that comes with a shared sense of humanity is priceless. For us too. It contributes to the prevention of new conflicts. That means justice. Being pro-life is about more than unborn children; it is about loving our fellow beings. It is about standing against moral relativism. It is about understanding the difference between good and evil, and selflessness when the lives that need saving are not just down the street, but are thousands of miles away. Exporting goodness, compassion, and individual liberty costs so very little compared to ignorance and war.

Justice is what comforts those who have been devastated by crime. There is no logo on a t-shirt that can mend a soul and body torn apart by evil. Only love, only redemption, only justice can repair the wrong. Whether in San Francisco, Congo, Ohio, Sudan, Cambodia or Paris, the horror human beings inflict on each other can only be stopped by a greater force of good.

In Sudan, war crimes rage beyond Darfur. In the Nuba Mountains, across Southern Kordofan, and the Blue Nile, criminals indicted by the International Criminal Court act with impunity. It is a grave reminder that justice, not revenge, must triumph. Too often, it is the language of revenge that prevails. This tactic exacerbates and exploits the pain of survivors. Religious, ethnic, and gender violence is never justified. Any advocate whose language incites retribution and revenge delays and denies justice.

The language of moral equivalence also empowers evil. Dr. Mukesh Kapila, a professor and former UK diplomat that blew the whistle about the genocide occurring in Darfur while he served as the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, spoke earlier this year at the Sudan Emergency Action Summit, hosted by Act for Sudan at George Mason University's Arlington Campus. "So it is that Darfur burned while people fiddled with the different protocols." He knows, because he was there.

"When the premiere institution of the world, the United Nations system, created after all that happened in the Second World War, in the image of this country [the U.S.] subcontracts out its principle business then don't be surprised that what happens is not a legitimate outcome as far as the world is concerned or at least as far as some countries are concerned."

The freedom from fear is a blessing for so many in the West, particularly in the United States. We feel inherently safe. We are isolated from real suffering. We are also isolated from a violent, brooding, and calculating evil that flourishes when there is no system for accountability or justice. We view rape and murder almost casually because we trust the perpetrators will be caught, the victims or their families will see a conviction in a court, and we'll be able to go back to our daily lives. We view justice as entertainment. Courtroom dramas are a staple in our entertainment diet. We don't object to the desensitization of our children.

The truth is this: real heroes, real champions for virtue, love, forgiveness, redemption, and justice exist.

Americans and our international allies have moral responsibilities. After the Holocaust, we vowed to never enable evil to commit genocide again. The time for moral equivalence is over. The time for complaining about the financial cost is over. It is more economical to convince people to live, to embrace justice. Allowing a genocide to occur, then complaining about the cost of cleaning it up is heartlessly selfish. Ending systematic rapes and genocide is the right thing to do.  Americans must call on President Barack Obama to contribute to fighting the scourge of rape and genocide, just as we called President George W. Bush to end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Who can forget the stain of the Rwandan genocide on President Clinton's watch?

As human beings, we must remember those images on the screen. The babies, the kids, the young women and men, the fathers and brothers, the colleagues who love and stand by the women scarred by rape deserve our empathy -- but also our action. The salve to the soul is kindness. The soft touch of a champion, the acknowledgement that rape and violence do not define a survivor compels healing, compels action. It inspires faith. We become whole again. Americans have long lit the path towards freedom and self-determination because we understand all the costs, all the sacrifices are worth giving of ourselves.

Wearing couture, taking selfies, and congratulating ourselves on our isolation from such sadness seems beneath the dignity we afford the Constitution and the fields of our dead from Arlington National Cemetery to Normandy. Let us begin to right the ship of state so that we may inspire others to do more, do better, and find their own way towards justice and a culture of life.

The Department of Justice has started an FBI investigation into the IRS and its targeting of Tea Party groups, and today President Obama made a token move by forcing the IRS commissioner to resign, but more must be done. In particular, a special counsel needs to be named to ensure that the job is carried out fairly, objectively, and, more importantly, exhaustively—that means finding out who was involved no matter how high it goes.

Of course, the U.S. Attorney General himself is the one who assigns a special counsel, but will Eric Holder step forward and make that assignment? Will President Obama force him? Will the Republicans raise hell until every person responsible for violating the constitutional rights of Americans is brought to justice?

It’s clear from the scope of the scandal and the insidious nature of targeting conservative groups (as well as transferring their private information to news outlets) that these actions are not only illegal, but also damaging to free speech. Groups and individuals who wanted to express their views through legitimate processes were intimidated and in many cases silenced by the IRS.

The power of the tax department is legendary and strikes terror in the hearts of even the most upstanding of citizens. One woman who wanted to start a Tea Party group said she stopped the process after she read through the intrusive questions on the IRS tax-exempt forms and found out that she could be charged with perjury if she didn’t answer correctly. She threw up her hands and said, “I’m a pregnant stay-at-home mother on one income. Oh my goodness, I’m not doing anything.”

The IRS’s actions against conservatives can only be interpreted as an effort to suppress political opposition to the current administration and to shackle free expression. In many cases, the plan worked. Groups were silenced. Individuals were intimidated. Obama won. Freedom of speech was lost.

What must be emphasized now is that if the IRS is not thoroughly investigated, if the rat nest isn’t emptied, and if the roaches aren’t flushed from every crack and crevice, then the chilling effect on free speech will be even worse than before the scandal broke. It will extend beyond the Tea Party and other groups targeted in this scandal to all Americans because what was once only an imaginary fear for many has been shown to be true—the IRS will target you if you step out of line. And as long as nothing is done about it, who is to say it won’t happen again—to you, to me, to any one of us?

If that fear is not removed through an investigation by a special counsel, if the case is closed and tossed under the table along with Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and every other nefarious government venture no one has had the courage to pursue, then that fear will spread. Americans will think twice before speaking truth to power because of fear that they will be abused by the IRS or that their personal information will be exposed for others to use against them. Or worse, once Obamacare is implemented with the IRS as its enforcement mechanism, they won't get the care they need because they're on the wrong side of the political spectrum.

Enforcement of law is not just about bringing the guilty to justice; it’s about securing liberty and peace of mind for the innocent. If President Obama does not appoint a special counsel, then he is just as responsible as those in the IRS for suppressing free speech, because he will be perpetuating a toxic environment of fear and repression that has infected our nation as a result of this scandal.

If Congress does not do everything in its power to uncover the truth—even if that means every committee carrying out its own investigation to bring the facts to light—it too will be complicit in chilling free speech because it will fail to assure the American people that their liberties will indeed be protected and secured by the full force of the law.

From Attorney General Holder's testimony earlier today in front of the House Judiciary Committee:

As the Los Angeles Times reports:

In ground-breaking action, the Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to ban suspensions of defiant students, directing officials to use alternative disciplinary practices instead.

The packed board room erupted in cheers after the 5-2 vote to approve the proposal, which made L.A. Unified the first school district in the state to ban defiance as grounds for suspension. The action comes amid mounting national concern that removing students from school is imperiling their academic achievement and disproportionately harming minority students, particularly African Americans.

As a parent living in Los Angeles, I find this policy outrageous. It is one more reason why my wife and I will not allow our children to attend L.A. public schools.

A few years ago, while I served on the faculty oversight committee for UCLA admissions, I discussed a new potential policy with a colleague.  The idea was to make admissions at UCLA more like that at the University of Texas, where a student is guaranteed admission if his or her grades are among the top 10% at his or her high school. The colleague, a liberal whose children had attended L.A. public schools, cautioned, "You gotta be careful. At some of the L.A. Unified schools, you basically get a B+ just for not throwing spit balls at the teacher." 

Los Angeles public schools are truly awful. The new policy, I am certain, will only make them worse.

I wish California policy makers would think seriously about the consequences of their proposals. The new policy will not make kids smarter, nor better citizens. It will not help to make California businesses more productive once the kids graduate.

I'm only partially joking when I suggest this: I wish Rick Perry would make a commercial where he would note the new policy and ask, "Hey, California business owners:  In 10 years the pool from which you hire employees will be even worse. Maybe it's time you come check out Texas."  Such a commercial, I believe, would cause California lawmakers to wake up and realize how silly some of their policies are.

Over at Foreign Policy (where you may have to register -- for free -- to get the whole piece), Ricochet's own Richard Epstein is headlining today, lighting into the Obama Administration for its recent round of scandals. To wit:

The very president who has pledged himself to the most open and transparent administration ever is now perceived on all sides of the political spectrum as a secretive soul who skulks about in the shadows, so sure of his own moral rectitude that he thinks that it is all right to ignore the procedural safeguards that the U.S. Constitution wisely puts in the path of less wise and omniscient presidents. Long ago, James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 that the Constitution had to be rigged for bad times because it is in the nature of politics that "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." Madison's time has come.

And later:

For the president and his aides, the first item on the agenda is damage control. The administration is likely in full-blown (but secret) polling mode, seeing how high the tides of dissent and resentment will rise, and who they will envelop. My guess is that Holder is history. Right now, it looks as if Obama will survive, though probably as a lame duck, just four months into his new term in office. It is a sad fall for an administration that has always prided itself as having escaped the muck of ordinary politics. But not this time. We are past the point where presidential protestations that the administration is innocent on all charges will be treated as evidence that it is covering up its own misdeeds. Cheap talk is dangerous in all professions, even in politics. The real tragedy is that the president and his attorney general believed overmuch in their own exalted rhetoric; the nation, and the world, is all the poorer because of their excesses. "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16.18 should now be required reading in Washington.

Ever heard of something called the "Lavender Graduation" at Louisiana State University? Neither had I until this morning.

Apparently homosexual graduates at LSU had their own special graduation ceremony this year, hosted inside a campus ballroom. There'd be nothing wrong with that, I guess, if they were the ones paying for it. On the other hand, since taxpayers are footing the bill... then maybe it's one publicly-funded ceremony too many.

In addition to their own special ceremony on Tuesday, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students were given lavender-colored sashes to wear as they march in the main "heterosexual-inclusive" graduation ceremony on Thursday. All thanks to the generosity of Louisiana taxpayers.

In unrelated news, LSU's Interim Chancellor Dr. William Jenkins sent out an email in March, warning faculty and staff about the looming budget crisis the university faces, and calling on state lawmakers to increase tuition rates. "We need the resources," he wrote.