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...

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...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...

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Normally when we read about climate change in the press, the stories center around the affect that human technology and carbon emissions have on the planet’s climate. So, we get doom and gloom, handwringing and finger-pointing stories like this one yesterday at Al Jazeera. 

What we tend to read less about is the manner in which climate conditions shape us. To wit, there’s a new study out by tree-ring scientists at Columbia University that suggests that the medieval warming period contributed significantly to the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire:

Pederson and Hessl analyzed 17 trees to chart a yearly record...

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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...

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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...

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Our Esteemed editors have at time expressed a desire to know what is happening "out there on the ground." Here goes:

Minnesota is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”. It is also the Land of 1,000,000 socialists, courtesy of the labor movement in the mining industry and the collectivist instincts of the Scandinavian immigrant farmers (who included my grandparents on both sides). I don’t know offhand of other states that elected two socialist governors in the 1930’s -- the party was actually named the Farmer-Labor Party to enforce Marx’s labor theory of value -- and Floyd...

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With so many White House scandals—and new ones popping up every day—how are average citizens supposed to keep track? Wouldn't it be nice if Obama went on ESPN and mapped them all on a bracket?

Why wait for next year's March Madness when you can start May Madness today? Introducing the Obama Scandal Bracket! Click here for a full-size version and vote for the scandal you think will bring down the president.

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Since reading Kevin Williamson’s post at NRO’s The Corner on his abbreviated night at the theater (previously discussed here on Ricochet), I’ve pondered how I, as a police officer, might respond to a similar set of circumstances if such were to unfold in Los Angeles. 

For those not yet abreast of the facts, they can be distilled thus: Last Wednesday, Mr. Williamson and a date attended an off-Broadway performance of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.  They were chagrined to find members of the audience “talking, using their phones, and making a general nuisance of themselves....

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Just when you think you have seen it all …

We’ll start by noting yet more evidence that the IRS’s audits of political groups was entirely inequitable in nature:

When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.

The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.

The 34 days...

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Alongside the big three scandals currently rocking the nation, another is brewing within the U.S. military. According to a recent Pentagon report, 26,000 service members were sexually assaulted last year—that’s up 35 percent from 2010. The increase is due to victims being more willing to report the crimes and also a broadening of the definition of “sexual assault.”

Contrary to the Pentagon's report, there have been reports that these numbers are incorrect due to false reports of sexual assault:

False complaints of sexual abuse in the military are rising at a faster rate than overall reports of sexual assault, a...

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Rock and Roll can only happen - really happen - in the Free World. The protesting, rebelling and emoting; the open lusting, longing and exulting - these are Free World luxuries. Rock and Roll expresses the bigness of our wishes, hopes and dreams, and expresses our anxiety, frustration, and confusion in response to what the Free World has become. The joyful side of today's version of freedom, and the dark side, are both there.

I like a good road trip with good rock and roll. I've recently taken a couple trips in my new car, and have particularly enjoyed the...

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“With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans, what difference, at this point, does it make?”

Thus did Hillary Clinton dismiss the question of why she blamed the attack on our Benghazi compound, resulting in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, on a purportedly “spontaneous” protest in response to a “disgusting” anti-Muslim video found only on YouTube.

Just weeks earlier, Mrs. Clinton thought the genesis of the attack was important enough...

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Corruption is a slow change, a slow devolution, from what you ought to be … to something less. You still keep the façade, but the reality is much less, or much different. In physical terms, the body doesn’t have its former strength or smoothness. In moral terms, corruption is the distance between what you ought to be doing versus doing something else. Corruption is the distance between façade and reality.

• Power corrupts when it’s given for one purpose but used for another. If you have power that belongs to your office to perform public service, but then you use it...

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Lady Ricochet readers: If you were upset about potentially losing your right to bear an oversize soft drink in New York City, perhaps you will take comfort in knowing that at least some rights remain vigilantly protected by the Bloomberg regime:

The command was read [in February] at 10 consecutive roll calls. Each of the city’s 34,000 officers, in theory, got the message: For “simply exposing their breasts in public,” women are guilty of no crime.

Whether any officer encountered such a brave-hearted, bare-chested soul is not clear, nor is the reason for the Police Department’s concern about such...

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The audience question at an otherwise sleepy conference that allowed the IRS to ever so slightly frontrun the revelation that it targeted conservative organizations was, it turns out, planted by the IRS. 

The Internal Revenue Service wrote and planted the question asked on May 10 that led to the IRS scandal, the questioner said in a statement today.

Celia Roady, a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in Washington, said she received a call May 9 from Lois Lerner, the mid-level IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations. Both were planning to attend a tax conference the next day...

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This week, we've been told over and over just how much members of the Obama Administration know they didn't know.

It's the week of:
• the IRS "I dunno"
• the Benghazi blame dodge
• and the AP-AG answer refusal/alleged recusal.

But today I discovered something else that a member of the Administration maybe didn't know she didn't know. And this time it hit close to home. You see, last summer, I had the audacity to suggest that the Department of Education ought to fine Yale University for failing to report multiple cases of sexual assault -- as required by...

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I've had occasion recently to read or re-read most of the works of C. S. Lewis. It's been a great experience, but it has caused me to ponder an issue that was often on Lewis's mind: Lewis was never comfortable with the modern world, and had an active dislike for much of it.  

His literary world was that of Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, and the first Queen Elizabeth. His religious world was orthodox Christianity (with the miraculous and supernatural included)-- which he saw fading before his eyes. On the other hand, he didn't try to live a...

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Back in January I posted here lamenting the sudden absence of Milt Rosenberg from the WGN radio lineup. Today I was gratified to discover that he has launched his own program on the Internet. Appearing as his first guest is friend of Ricochet Mark Steyn. What’s not to like about that?

If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Rosenberg you can consider yourself blessed to discover him now. If, like me, you were a regular listener to his show on WGN, you can consider yourself equally blessed to hear his voice once again.

Welcome back, sir.  We’ve missed you.

(And a note to...

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While we're all lost in the Benghazi, DOJ, and IRS scandals (and the anticipation that the President will eventually just decide to hit for the cycle and quarter troops in the homes of Americans), it bears noting that an earlier White House exercise in making the Constitution an outhouse accessory came back to the fore this week. From Damon Root at Reason:

In a decision handed down Thursday morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that Obama violated the Constitution by making a recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board in 2010 when the Senate...

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So, now that summer is here, we will replace our DVR patterns with off-season fare like AMC's Longmire and USA's Psych and Burn Notice. We also cycle through Netflix collections of British stuff. We loved Foyle's War and Inspector Lewis, and have  now started George Gently. We need more stuff to watch in our Instant Queue while we escape the Texas heat. What are some recommendations, fellow Ricochetti?

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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...

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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...

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Republicans are, once again, squandering a critical opportunity. Mitch McConnell's "The truth will come out, no matter how long it takes" is cold comfort to those of us with any sense of urgency about the disastrous course this country is on, and any experience with Republican "effectiveness" in fighting this administration. And John Boehner's Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife, "I want to know who's going to jail!" idiocy is entirely missing the point.

There are three critical common elements in Scandalpalooza. First and foremost (and to be repeated ad nauseum) these scandals all had the intent (and...

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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...

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