CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: IRS Finds 6,400 New Lois Lerner Emails, Gives DUMBEST EXCUSE YET For Not Releasing Them. “Department of Justice lawyers Geoffrey J. Klimas and Stephanie Sasarak, acting as counsel for the IRS, submitted a U.S. District Court filing June 12 in the case Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service. The court filing, provided to The Daily Caller, claims the IRS received new Lerner emails from the Treasury Department’s inspector general (TIGTA) but can’t fork over the emails to Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group suing to get the emails. Why? Because the IRS is busy making sure that none of the emails are duplicates – you know, so as not to waste anyone’s time.”

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Investor’s Business Daily: IRS’ Latest Email Excuse Draws It Closer To Rogue Agency Status.

HOW THE AP REPORTS ON TWO DIFFERENT FEMALE CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT:

AND THE PRESS, LIKE JOHN DICKERSON HERE, ALWAYS LETS THEM GET AWAY WITH IT: Hillary campaign manager denies poll reality.

EXPLOITERS OF THE LESS FORTUNATE: Hillary Clinton’s unpaid intern limbo: a grassroots campaign of ‘free help.’

MAYBE SHE SHOULD HAVE ASKED JEB, OR TED, OR MARCO TO GIVE IT A QUICK READ-OVER: Hillary’s Spanish-Language Website Filled With Mistakes.

You know, after the “reset” fiasco, you’d think she’d have tightened up her foreign language operation.

IT’S LIES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Documents challenge Clinton claim no classified intel on personal emails.

OF COURSE THEY HAVE: Sexual harassment claims at State Department soar under Clinton, Kerry.

ELIANA JOHNSON: Does It Matter That Hillary Clinton Can’t Give A Decent Speech?

THERE’S A LOT TO SEE HERE, I SUSPECT: Federal Judge Reopens Suit to Obtain Huma Abedin’s Clinton E-Mails.

A federal judge has reopened a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that aims to obtain e-mails between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her longtime aide, Huma Abedin, saying that the discovery of Clinton’s private server warranted the revival of the case.

Abedin is essentially Hillary’s right hand, and arguably much, much more. She is the wife of disgraced NY Congressman Anthony Weiner, and has been intimately associated with Clinton for many years. Her emails are just as essential to see as Hillary’s.  Good for Judicial Watch for pursuing this.

Just finished up a couple notable texts

Tom Wood's Nullification.  Good text.  Well documented.  Perhaps even over documented.  The last half of the book is a collection of writings from the 18th and early 19th Century supporting nullification.  IMHO an Article V Convention is a better route but the book is a readable contribution to the current literature.

The other is a short (60 pages?) essay from Hans Herman Hoppe called

From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy - Mises Institute

Goes a little farther than I'd like it to.  I'm not a Rockwellian yet but writing like this could push me there.  Recommended.

WHEN BLACK IS WHITE, AND MEN ARE WOMEN: So now that NAACP’s Rachel Dolezal has been “outed” as “white,” it makes me wonder: What is “white” anyway? Okay, admittedly, Dolezal doesn’t appear to have any African ancestry in her blood, as her parents say she is of German, Czech, and Swedish ancestry, with a smidgen of Native American in there somewhere.

Reminder:  Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the famous “separate but equal” Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, was 7/8 white and 1/8 black, and so he was required, by Louisiana’s law, to ride in the “colored” railway car.

last graph:

The problem with progressive thinking is that black is white, male is female, and as Orwell observed in 1984, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” After all, if one can destroy words,“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Let me begin by saying I believe the POTUS SHOULD have fast track trade negotiating capacity.  Even THIS one.

And whever decided to re-name it "Authority" should be shot.

That being said:

DEMS IN DISARRAY: CNN: House Democrats sink part of Obama Trade Bill.

Related: House Democratic Rep #1 re: POTUS visit to Hill: “He was fine until he turned it at the end and became indignant and alienated some folks.”

Well, you know, Obama gonna Obama. It is funny to see Dems complaining about the same intransigence, pettiness, and contempt that Hill GOPers have complained about for 7 years.

MICKEY KAUS TO PAUL KRUGMAN: It’s not “dysfunction” just because your side loses.

And if you're REALLY interested I'd recommend this:  Separating Fact from Fiction in the Trade Debate

• How “the case that could topple Obamacare” began — background on how the arguments behind this litigation developed.
• What the Supreme Court said about the IRS tax credit rule — how SCOTUS decisions in UARG and Bay Mills bear on Halbig and King.
• On Halbig and statutory interpretation (with a reply to Professor Bagley) — a discussion of the Halbig decision and its significance
• Why the DC Circuit’s interpretation of the ACA in Halbig v. Burwell is far from “absurd” — Ilya Somin on the D.C. Circuit decision in Halbig v. Burwell.
• Michael Greve on Halbig and its aftermath
• Oklahoma district court rejects IRS tax credit rule — a discussion of the second judicial decision against the administration’s position.
• Since when was health reform authored in the House? — a response to erroneous arguments made by congressional supporters of the PPACA.
• Will the Supreme Court grant certiorari in King v. Burwell — a discussion of why the Court might consider taking the case (which it eventually did).
• Why did the Court grant cert in King v. Burwell? — a brief discussion of why the Court likely took the case, and what it means.
• Debating King v. Burwell (with comments on Krugman) — a corrective to some of the common arguments made by political pundits who know little about the law.
• The Test to Textualism in King v. Burwell — A Reply to Abbe Gluck — a textual analysis of the PPACA and response to a prominent advocate for the government’s position.
• The administration, the IRS, and the ACA: Will the courts rein in the President’s pen? — a guest post by Vanderbilt law professor James Blumstein.
• Activist litigation and statutory text: We’ve seen this one before — a comparison of King v. Burwell and TVA v. Hill.
• Lobbying the Chief Justice (again) — Professor Randy  Barnett on the latest effort to sway the Chief Justice in an Obamacare case.
• Have the practical effects of a plaintiffs’ victory in King been exaggerated? (And does it matter?) — a discussion of the Consumers Research amicus brief written by Ronald Cass
• Did the IRS engage in reasoned decisionmaking? — a consideration of what the IRS did (and did not do) when issuing the tax credit rule.
• Did the challengers in King really ignore federalism? — a guest post by C. Boyden Gray, Adam White, and Adam Gustafson.
• Good textualism v. bad textualism — an critical examination of the amicus brief filed by law professors on textualism.

If, somehow, all this is not enough, here’s the video of my recent Federalist Society debate on the case and here’s a link to the amicus brief I co-authored with Michael Cannon.  All the other briefs are available here.

Without doubt, there will be more posts on this case to come.

UPDATE: Here are some of the VC’s post-argument posts:

• Things we learned in today’s oral argument in King v. Burwell — initial reflections on oral argument
• Avoiding constitutional avoidance — Randy Barnett on the constitutional undercurrents raised at oral argument
• Oklahoma’s response to Justice Kennedy — What one state AG thinks of the federalism questions
• What happens when we all stare at five words too long? — David Post on the text
• Could King v. Burwell overturn parts of New York v. United States? — considering the implications of some of the federalism arguments raised in defense of the government’s position.
• James Blumstein on the King oral argument
• Dana Milbank predicts “social upheaval” if the USSC rules against Obamacare — David Bernstein on Dana Milbank’s unintentional self-parody

ADDITIONAL UPDATE (6/19/15):

• Ilya Somin on federalism arguments in King v. Burwell (with additional responses to Rick Hills and Abby Moncrieff)
• Will Baude on the President’s options if he loses King (with links to responses)
• New scholarship on King v. Burwell
• How the IRS repeatedly rewrites Obamacare tax credit provisions as documented by UIowa’s Andy Grewal (with another example here)
• On the origins of “established by the State” in the Affordable Care Act
• Obama says King v. Burwell is an “easy case” that “probably shouldn’t even have been taken up”

THE OPM HACKING DEVELOPMENTS LED TO RICK WILSON UNLEASHING AN EPIC RANT ON TWITTER. NOW IT’S STORIFIED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE: “1/ Do I have to do all of this myself? Yes, the Chinese pwned us beyond all pwnage with the OPM hack. This is your government.” Read the whole thing, including his concrete suggestions on what the U.S. Government should do.

CHINA BASICALLY OWNS US NOW: Officials: Second hack exposed military and intel data.

Related: Federal Employees Describe “Collective Panic” After Massive Hack. “You don’t understand how detailed the forms are. It’s over a hundred pages of you listing everything about yourself – who you are sleeping with, who your friends are – it’s like a cheat sheet to your life. . . . It just seems like if there was ever anything that you should protect, it would be these files.” Well, remember, these are the people who set up Healthcare.gov and ran secret email on insecure private servers.

Forget Trump! We dare you to watch this video from the House hearing on the OPM hack and not grab a pitchfork.

Might I suggest this model?

with some fun swipes at math and education thrown in:  Grandma Learns About Data Adjustment: A little story about how data adjustment might work in everyday life.

SHOCKER: FRACKING IS SAFE: The EPA Fracking Miracle.

An IT expert’s view on climate modelling.  Hint: GIGO

Baylen Linnekin on Exposing the Crap Science Behind Federal Dietary Guidelines

I had this discussion, which was quite brief, with a leftist earlier this week. 

CHARLIE MARTIN: Why The Science Is Never Certain:

If you’d asked a physics teacher in 1886 if Newton’s Laws were absolutely certain, they most likely would have said yes. They probably would have in 1890, even though the Michelson–Morley experiment was the beginning of showing there were some things that weren’t quite the way people expected. By 1920, anyone up to date would have had to say, “Well, yes, except for some special conditions.”

Galileo’s teachers undoubtedly assured him that it was absolutely certain that heavy things fell faster than light things; by the time he died, people — at least the ones who’d heard of Galileo’s experiments — knew it wasn’t true, and wrapping this back to Newton, knowing that objects actually all fell at the same speed led Newton to formulate the Law of Universal Gravitation.

These were some of the greatest advances in science — and all of them would have been impossible if Galileo, and Newton, and Einstein had believed that science is ever certain.

Science doesn’t approach certainty until it can be reduced to engineering. And there are some things that work in engineering even though the science behind them isn’t clear.

The Top 10 Detective Films of All Time

My list varies a bit.