USING CELLPHONE SIGNALS TO FIND PEOPLE AFTER A DISASTER.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Executive Privilege Kicks Off Regular Season:

President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege today is a bit like the kickoff for the NFL regular season. It doesn’t end the Fast and Furious scandal; it just takes it to another level. Everything so far was the pre-season. Now people will start to pay attention.

A president doesn’t assert executive privilege lightly. It is a relic from the powers of the king. Some things were not for parliament’s eyes, such as national security statecraft. This new phase of the Fast and Furious scandal begins with Americans who had paid no attention to the scandal hearing the news today and asking, “what are they trying to hide?”

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “E-mail messages were flying among leaders of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia in the weeks leading up to the ouster of Teresa A. Sullivan as president of the university. The e-mail messages show that one reason board leaders wanted to move quickly was the belief that UVa needed to get involved in a serious way with online education.”

Isn’t it interesting that these emails came out immediately, while U.Va. fought bitterly to avoid releasing the ClimateGate stuff? . . . .

PUNCH GROPE BACK TWICE AS HARD: Ex-TSA agent gropes supervisor at the airport where she once worked after being subjected to ‘aggressive pat-down.’

An angry traveler turned the tables on a Transportations Security Administration (TSA) officer when she groped her after complaining about being subjected to an intrusive pat-down at a Florida airport, according to officials.

A security video of the April incident shows passenger Carol Jean Price, 59, putting down her carry-on luggage dramatically and grabbing a female TSA supervisor in what appears to be the crotch area.

Price claimed an agent at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers grabbed her breasts and crotch during a screening, and that she was just showing the supervisor how she was manhandled.

Seems fair.

WHITE HOUSE ASSERTS EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE OVER DOJ FAST AND FURIOUS DOCUMENTS. At the PJ Media Tatler, Bryan Preston has a long, continually updated post, plus this: Video Flashback: Obama Claims He Learned of Fast and Furious ‘On the News,’ But Before AG Holder.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: The Plot Thickens: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege to Block Fast and Furious Disclosures.

THE ADIDAS SHACKLE SHOE: Not Actually Racist. Don’t be silly. If it’s perceived as racist, it is racist. There’s no court of appeal. Anyway, Adidas has canceled the shoe, which was, racist or not, also butt-ugly.

LEARNING TO SING: A matter of physical fitness. “Poor muscle control, not aural perception, underlies most cases of bad singing.”

TEENAGER SHOT WITH SPEAR THROUGH HEAD SURVIVES. “Yasel Lopez, 16, was fishing with a friend in Miami when their three-foot spear gun went off unexpectedly, piercing Lopez through his head. Doctors are calling his survival from the accident, nearly two weeks ago, a miracle. . . . Not one but three miracles kept Lopez alive: The side through which the spear pierced his head, the fact that it managed to miss important blood vessels and that it avoided damaging vital brain structures all contributed to his survival.”

DAVID HENDERSON: Following World War II, government spending cuts led to an incredible economic boom.

EUGENE VOLOKH: The Second Amendment and People Who Have Past Misdemeanor Convictions for Nonviolent Gun Possession.

Chicago law bans gun possession without a license, and provides that licenses may not be issued to anyone who has “been convicted by a court in any jurisdiction of … an unlawful use of a weapon that is a firearm.” Shawn Gowder has a misdemeanor conviction for “unlawful use of a weapon” based on simple possession of a gun; the conviction dates back from 1995 (it was originally a felony but was later redefined a misdemeanor because of a state court decision holding that struck down the law making the conviction a felony on state single-subject-clause grounds).

Gowder sued, and today a federal district court (Gowder v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill. June 19, 2012)) held that the law violated Gowder’s Second Amendment rights. While the Supreme Court has held that felons may be barred from possessing guns, and the Seventh Circuit held the same about people who have violent misdemeanor convictions, the district court held that nonviolent misdemeanants with convictions for nonviolent gun possession offenses do not permanently lose their Second Amendment rights. I think this is likely correct, and will likely be upheld on appeal (though that’s always hard to tell).

Indeed.

CHANGE: Asians Pass Latinos as Biggest Immigrant Group.

Perhaps the most important factor in this shift is the collapse of the American construction industry, which has traditionally welcomed low-skilled workers. As construction work dries up, many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin, and others are deciding not to leave in the first place. Asian migrants, meanwhile, more frequently qualify for the higher paying, higher skilled jobs that are still relatively plentiful.

The immigration shift is also driven by demographic changes in Latin America, and especially in Mexico, where birthrates have fallen dramatically and the number of new workers entering the labor force will soon begin to fall, even as economic growth is creating more and better jobs. Mexicans who twenty years ago would have moved to America in search of opportunity now like their chances at home.

It’s good for diversity, too.

THE OBAMA ERA: Government As Black Swan.

ITUNES UNIVERSITY GOES INTERACTIVE:

iTunes U has been great at replicating the sit-and-listen part of the college learning experience. It’s been less great, however, at replicating the thing that has traditionally made the university such a great learning environment: class discussion, the lively back-and-forth that can come from the seminar setting. And it’s been less great at that, of course, because it hasn’t tried to be any good: iTunes U has been a clearinghouse for college lectures, and that, so far, has been more than enough.

Until today, that is. Now available on the iTunes platform is a Stanford class, “App Development for the iPhone and iPad,” which allows, for the first time, interactive class discussions. The class — to date, the most popular among Stanford’s many iTunes U offerings — will employ the course discussion infrastructure of Piazza, which Stanford has already been using as an online supplement to its in-person discussions. Students in the class — which is still free to take — will get to interact with each other, asking questions and working through problems.

Where, I wonder, could this be leading?

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ASTROTURF: Anti-Romney Protesters Say They’re Paid To Heckle. “Two protesters and an Obama official say ‘Good Jobs Now’ protesters are compensated for their time. A protest leader denies it.”

UPDATE: An Insta-reader emails in to note, “The thing that stood out to me was that the man said he was paid $17/hour and the woman said she was paid $7.25. Whatever happened to equal pay for equal work?”

DAD WHO KILLED MOLESTER WON’T BE CHARGED.

MICHAEL BARONE ON THE WHITE WORKING CLASS VOTE:

What’s up with the white working class vote? For years the horny-handed blue collar worker was the star of the New Deal Democratic coalition. It was for him, and his wife and family, that Democrats taxed the rich, invented Social Security and supported militant labor unions.

Well, that was then and this is now. White working class voters — or white non-college voters, the exit poll group most closely approximating them — are now a mainstay of the Republican coalition.

Ronald Brownstein, a clear-sighted and diligent analyst of demographic voting data, provided some useful perspective in his most recent National Journal column. His bottom line is that in order to win this year, Mitt Romney must capture two-thirds of white non-college voters — about the same percentage that voted for Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide re-election.

The reason Romney must do so well is that white non-college voters are a smaller part of the electorate now than they were then. In 1984 they comprised 61 percent of all voters. In 2008 they comprised 39 percent.

The good news for Romney is that Republicans have been running near these levels for some time.

That’s because white working class voters don’t think Obama cares about people like them.

MICKEY KAUS: “Is the General Motors-Peugeot alliance violating the sanctions on Iran by continuing to ship car parts? … That might knock a hole in the Glomar Explorer theory. … Who owns this GM outfit, anyway?”

ANDREW MALCOLM: Obama’s Immigration Ploy Gains Him Nothing In The Polls. “Three days later, Romney had improved to 48. Obama had slipped to 44.”

MEMO TO NBC: What The Hell Is Wrong With You?

THE VIRGINIAN: Higher Education Bubble Update: The Virginian Pilot Has Called for the Ouster of Helen Dragas … Which Means She Is Perfect for the Job.

BOSONS, AND RUMORS OF BOSONS: Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery.