RUSH: Some of you will remember what happened in 2013 when Los Angeles educators decided to hand out taxpayer-funded iPads supposedly to help low-income students.

The iPad program cost over a billion dollars, and guess what happened next? Large numbers of iPads soon went missing or were reported stolen. Teachers were never properly trained on how to use them; many didn’t see the need for them. Internet access in the schools was spotty.

The iPad-for-poor-kids program ended up as a total disaster. Even the Los Angeles Times called it “ill-conceived and half-baked.”

Well, now New York State is about to embark on a new program. They’re going to give free tablets to all of their inmates in prison.

Supposedly these tablets will not be able to connect to the internet all the time. There will be controlled access so that prison inmates can email loved ones to help them stay in touch. And they’ll be allowed to purchase e-books, videos, and other entertainment.

Anybody with a brain can predict where this is going before it happens. You put this kind of technology in the hands of criminals in prisons already overrun by gangs and all sorts of deadly miscreants, it’s not going to end well. And we haven’t even talked about pornography yet.

But when liberals fail at something, folks, they never learn the lesson. They double down and they fail up and keep failing up until they get to the top of the failure ladder.