Boston mosque refuses to give Tamerlan Tsarnaev an Islamic funeral, NBC reports.

A Boston-area mosque has refused to hold a funeral for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the dead suspect in the attack on the Boston Marathon, his aunt said Wednesday.

American authorities have told the family that they can have Tsarnaev’s body, and an uncle approached the mosque to request a burial and funeral but was declined, said the aunt, Patimat Suleimanova. … A spokesman for the mosque, run by the Islamic Society of Boston, has said that congregants have been questioned by the FBI. The mosque did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday from NBC News.

Is this first time in history an economic study has been ridiculed on a television comedy program? (H/T Business Insider)

In ads like this, Marco Rubio is betting his career on the immigration bill. 

According to POLITICO, this particular ad is financed by Mark Zuckerberg and others in the technology industry.

FWD.us, the organization formed to push Silicon Valley’s priorities in Washington, will advocate for a new immigration law through a subsidiary group created specifically to court conservatives. Americans for a Conservative Direction will spend seven figures to run ads in more than half a dozen states, according to strategists who sketched out the organization’s plans.

About that "90 percent of Americans favor background checks" line... well, it seems support only runs so deep.

Quote of the day.

"[H]e was angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.”

From an e-mail to a New York Times reporter by the former brother-in-law of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, explaining the Boston bomber's motives.

Doctor blogger Aaron Carroll highlights an interesting study that suggests there's a better way than a mere calorie count to get people to reduce the calorie count of their meals:

Noah Kristula-Green lauds the efforts of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abo to stimulate the economy now, while restoring Japan to a pattern of higher growth in the long term. (Also, he explains what "Abenomics" means, which you may find quite helpful).

The Jewish Journal asks, "Did Tamarlan Tsarnaev kill his Jewish friends?"

The Boston Globe is reporting that the former friends of the man assumed responsible for the Boston marathon bombings now wonder if Tamarlan Tsarnaev, who died after the bombings in a shootout with police, was the perpetrator in a grisly unsolved murder that took place in 2011.

On September 12, 2011, Brendan Mess, Raphael Teken, 37, and Erik Weissman, 31 were found stabbed to death in an apartment in nearby Waltham. The men had deep wounds to their necks, their bodies were strewn with thousands of dollars worth of marijuana, and police recovered $5,000 in cash at the scene. There was no sign of forced entry. Police said they believe the murders were "targeted and not a random act of violence."

Mess, who was Jewish, was a close friend of Tsarnaev. So friends thought it was especially strange when Tsarnaev did not show up at Mess's funeral.

When reminiscing about the “good-old days,” Republicans often recall the 1980s, when the Reagan coalition won three presidential landslides. But to get back in the game, party leaders may need to look farther back — to a deeper GOP magic of which the Gipper and George H. W. Bush were the last acts.

GOP dominance in national elections after World War II did not start with Dutch Reagan but actually peaked with him. In the presidential elections from 1952 through 1988, Republican candidates went 7 for 10, and averaged 367 electoral votes. Since 1992, Republicans have gone 2 for 6 — 1 for 6 in the popular vote — and their electoral-vote average has plummeted to 211.

Here's a terrible story. A girl is sexually assaulted at a high school that ignores the offense to protect a star athlete.

... According to the complaint, in 2010 the victim was sexually assaulted by a star player on the school’s basketball team.

The assault took place on campus in a sound proof band room at Forest Hills Central High School. The victim notified a teacher who in turn reported the assault to the principal.

But rather than open an investigation into the allegations, the principal discouraged the student and her parents from filing charges, telling them that doing so could ruin the assailant’s prospects at being recruited to play basketball for a Division 1 school. …

It's a buyer's market for fortresses in upstate New York. Heck, a 36,000 square foot castle will run you less than a million bucks.

A year ago, I wrote a CNN column about the Paris taxi shortage and what it says about the European job crisis.

Prolonged mass unemployment in Europe has triggered a global debate about the euro currency, and rightly so. Yet it's also true that every day, people in Europe are denied work by dumb laws that prevent willing customers from hiring them.

Soon afterward, I received an email from Dave Ashton, an American living in Paris who had launched a company called Snapcar, a limo service ordered by smartphone application, very like the Uber service we know in the US. Dave urged me to try his service when next in Paris.

My original article concerned over-regulation, but I'm not immune to the fascination of #problemsofthe1%. I happened to be in Paris last weekend and was able to give Snapcar a try - and it was a transforming experience. Instead of standing in the rain waving arms - then sitting in a car suffering the driver's musical choices - we pressed a button and consistently within 10 minutes found ourselves inside a comfortable car driven by a non-radio-playing driver.

On April 19th, I wrote a post regarding the Boy Scouts changing their policy on gay scouts. That day, FrumBeast recieved an email from the BSA Public Relations Director, Deron Smith.

Whatever function they once served, America’s producer-side farm subsidies no longer have any valid public purpose. The much-romanticized family farm is, for all intents and purposes, dead: The number of farms producing enough income to support a family (more than $100,000 in gross revenues) has declined every year since World War II. As of 2012, only about 400,000 commercially viable farms—less than three-tenths of 1 percent of all households—exist in the United States. The great bulk of subsidies flow—directly or indirectly—to wealthy people and agribusiness. The Environmental Working Group found that 26 businesses got over $1 million each in crop insurance premium subsidies during 2011 alone. Furthermore, many of the most promising sectors of the agricultural economy—boutique organic farms and wineries—are also those that receive the least support from the government.

In the New Yorker, Susan Faludi describes the madness of Shulamith Firestone, the founding mother of radical feminism:

Her friend Robert Roth, the editor of the literary magazine And Then, recalled her wandering the East Village in disguise—sporting odd clothes and hairdos, and calling herself Kathy. Sometimes she kept far out of sight.

She took a summer fellowship at an art school in Nova Scotia, where she tried, unsuccessfully, to work on the multimedia project, and then lived, for a time, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she worked, unrecognized, as a typist at M.I.T. John Duff recalled visiting her in the early seventies at her Tenth Street apartment and “this cockroach was walking across her desk.

She went to crush it, and its guts smeared out in this really grotesque awful mess. And her remark? ‘That’s the story of my life.’ ”