At Rolling Stone, "journalistic integrity" is an oxymoron. That's the upshot of the magazine's response to a 12,000 word report issued Monday (4/06) on the bogus story Rolling Stone published last November, which claimed a fraternity at the University of Virginia used gang rape as an initiation rite. The story was based on the unverified word of "Jackie," who claimed she was raped during a party for pledges at the Phi Kappa Psi house the night of Sept. 28, 2012. If Ms. Erdely or Rolling Stone had themselves checked the key details of Jackie's story, they'd have learned before publication there was no party at the Phi Kappa Psi house the night the rape allegedly occurred; that the fraternity rushes in the Spring. And if she or the magazine's fact checkers had contacted the three friends Jackie said would back up her story, they'd have learned her friends didn't, as the Washington Post found out when it talked to them after the story was published. Warning signs were ignored because Ms. Erdely wanted to write, and her editors wanted to print, a story supporting the narrative white fraternity boys are responsible for an "epidemic" of sexual assaults on college campuses. Neither Ms. Erdely nor her editors have expressed a word of contrition to the frat boys they smeared. They're sorry they got caught, not sorry for what they did.

Given the furor that's erupted, you'd think Indiana was the first state - not the 20th -- to pass a law to protect freedom of conscience. The Indiana law would permit discrimination against gays, said Apple CEO Tim Cook in the Washington Post. Singer Miley Cyrus and actor Ashton Kutcher said much the same thing, more crudely. Apple "will never tolerate discrimination," Mr. Cook said. Apple does business in 4 of the 10 countries where homosexuality is punishable by death; builds many of its products in China, where Christians are persecuted. But Mr. Cook is by no means the only hypocrite among critics of Indiana's law: Illinois passed its RFRA in 1998. State Sen. Barack Obama voted for it.  Indiana's law, like those in the other 19 states, mimics the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Congress approved nearly unanimously and proudly signed into law by Bill Clinton. "The anti-Indiana backlash is a perfect storm of hysteria and legal ignorance, supercharged by the particularly censorious self-righteousness of the Left," said National Review Editor Rich Lowry.  It's yet more evidence that lefties aren't "liberals" at all - they're fascists.

Do you think the government should be able to seize your property if you have not been convicted of any crime? Most people are not aware that one of the most odious activities of federal, state and local tax and police authorities is that of "asset forfeiture." Asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement to seize and keep property of individuals and businesses without a criminal conviction. The practice has been rife with abuse by law enforcement officials, often using seized property of innocent individuals for their own use. As a result of the outcries about the abuse, there was a unanimous vote by both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate in New Mexico to end the practice of civil asset forfeiture in the state. The bill now awaits the signature of Gov. Susana Martinez. Former federal prosecutor and director of the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Office, Brad Cates, now a resident of New Mexico, is one of the leading advocates of repeal of asset forfeiture laws at both the state and federal levels. Mr. Cates and the first director of the federal Asset Forfeiture Office, Judge John Yoder, in an article in The Washington Post last September, wrote: "We find it particularly painful to watch as the heavy hand of government goes amok. The program began with good intentions but now, having failed in both purpose and execution, it should be abolished." President Obama's nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the current U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, strongly defended civil asset forfeiture during her Senate confirmation hearings, despite major abuses by her own office. This may now be jeopardizing her confirmation.

Who's been reading Hillary Clinton's email? "She thinks they're erased," said Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, whose reporting (with Carl Bernstein) brought the Watergate scandal to light. "The Chinese or Iranians probably have them." Hillary's private intelligence network reminds him of Iran Contra, and of the scandal involving ex-CIA officer Ed Wilson, who was convicted in 1983 of illegally selling weapons to Libya, said Jeff Gerth, who wrote with Sam Biddle an investigative report on it. Ms. Clinton conducted official business on a private server to evade the requirements of federal law.  But what's really bad about what Hillary did is private servers like hers are notoriously easy to hack. Her personal emails could have become "a priority target for foreign intelligence services," the chairmen of the Senate committees on Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Homeland Security said in a letter to the State Department's inspector general. Her obsession with secrecy has caused some to call Hillary "the Democrats' Nixon." Which may be unfair to Nixon.