At the Wall Street Journal, Michael Moynihan reviews A Difficult Woman, a biography of Lillian Hellman, written by Alice Kessler-Harris.  Moynihan puts it all in perspective with:

Despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, Ms. Kessler-Harris insists that Hellman’s “concern for accuracy persisted throughout her life.” Not when it came to her memoirs and certainly not when it came to communism’s crimes.

Hear, hear.  It’s about time these things stopped being soft-lighted and people full of supposed social concern stopped being given a pass for supporting unspeakably evil regimes.  Read the review here.  And if you haven’t, just for the sake of perspective, consider buying and reading  The Black Book Of Communism.

IS COPYING MATERIAL WITHOUT CITATION PLAGIARISM?  IT DEPENDS ON WHAT “IS” IS:   Ah, the joys of academia. These days it is virtually impossible to condemn someone for plagiarism. They simply blame a student research assistant, freelance editor, or other third party.  And it gets even more complicated when the faculty member in question is a member of a minority group. The latest tale from the history department at Arizona State University.

WHO AM I???:  I feel so mysterious.  For those of you who have expressed curiosity, forgive me for not properly introducing myself. My name is Elizabeth Price Foley, and I’m a law professor at Florida International University College of Law, where I teach constitutional law and health care law.  I also practice constitutional law, serving as the Executive Director of the Institute for Justice, Florida Chapter. You can find out more about me on my personal webpage.

THE WHITE HOUSE’S GAY MARRIAGE DANCE.

RELATED: At The Week, “Joe Biden embraces gay marriage: 5 possible repercussions.” And from Allahpundit at Hot Air, “Jake Tapper to Carney: How about you cut the crap and admit that Obama supports gay marriage?”

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey, Allahpundit’s co-blogger at Hot Air, explores the topic in his column at The Week: “Pundits are racing to cast the vice president’s embrace of gay marriage as a gaffe. But make no mistake: It was a deliberate political gambit.”

I NEVER THOUGHT I’D LONG FOR THE HALCYON DAYS OF LARRY KING: “Backfire: Piers Morgan and the churlish interviewer,” is Hugh Hewitt’s latest column at the Washington Examiner:

C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb set the standard for author interviews. No one can match him, but everyone can try, and when a writer as skilled as, say, Del Wilber, whose “Rawhide Down” hasn’t had a negative review yet from anyone who read it, says an interview was the best he has had, well then, that’s a compliment worth receiving.

Which is why Piers Morgan’s non-interview of Jonah Goldberg last week ought to have been an embarrassment to Morgan and his network, CNN. Morgan had quite obviously not read Jonah’s wonderful “Tyranny of Cliches,” and seemed almost afraid to let Jonah speak a complete sentence, for fear that the Los Angeles Times columnist and NationalReview.com contributor might have wielded his well-known wit against his host.

So Morgan launched a fusillade of bizarre questions, few of which had anything to do with the book and none of which genuinely sought or allowed an answer. Goldberg kept his cool and repaid gracelessness with graciousness, but should he have done so? Hitchens would never have put up with such behavior by someone so obviously unprepared and also so churlish, but the American way is to smile and look quizzically at the boorish host.

CNN’s ratings are in the tank, and it is because the network increasingly allows new and unprepared hosts to displace pros like Wolf Blitzer, Candy Crowley and John King, or CNN burdens a good interviewer like Anderson Cooper with an inane slogan like “Keeping Them Honest” and obliges him to repeat it in an exercise designed to discredit whatever follows.

Speaking of repeating, Morgan has offered Jonah a second interview, to air tomorrow night. But based on this report at Breitbart News, it doesn’t sound too promising:

Right now, Goldberg and Morgan are engaged in a furious Twitter battle, with Morgan firing:

Looking forward to our re-match tomorrow night @JonahNRO – hope you bring your self-fabled A-game this time…. #CNN

Goldberg quipped:

Not sure why @piersmorgan is so eager for my “A” game when he had so much trouble with my C-game.

Game on.

Where have you gone Larry? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

RELATED: At Twitchy.com, “Piers Morgan’s attempt at smack talking NRO’s Jonah Goldberg goes limp.”

IRONY CAN BE AWFULLY IRONIC SOMETIMES: Obama Advises French Not To End Austerity Measures:

President Obama’s spokesman warned the new socialist president-elect of France not to implement his campaign agenda of ending austerity measures, indicating that such a reversal could damage the world economy.

…

French President-Elect Francois Hollande called for an increase in government spending and taxes.

As Ace writes, “If France crashes, it offers America a preview of where Obama’s policies will take us, so he… doesn’t want France to implement Obama’s policies. He doesn’t want that heads up. Not before the election.”

…AND WE’RE BACK: Yes, the site was down for a bit, but if you’re able to read this, we’re back online. Scroll down for any posts you might have missed while we were offline.

OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN STAFF “TOO WHITE”?:  Ah, the post-racial days of the Obama Administration, where everyone is valued for the content of their character, not the color of their skin!  Oh, wait, sorry– I was hallucinating again.  Actually, turns out the great post-racial healer’s campaign staff is now being criticized as “too white.” According to the Daily Caller report, “That skewed workforce is starkly visible in an April photo released by Obama’s Chicago office, which shows roughly 100 of the office’s staff. Only two of the people in the photo, far in the back, are clearly African-American, far below their 13 percent of the national population, and their 33-percent representation in Chicago.”

Wonder if a staff could be “too black” or “too Hispanic”?

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION? WOMEN LAWYERS AT GITMO TRIAL SHOULD WEAR THE HIJAB TO PROTECT THE SOULS OF THE 9/11 ACCUSED:  Really?   If it were me, I’d  wear the highest heels and shortest skirt I could find. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Cheryl Bormann, a lawyer for Mr. bin Attash, was dressed in an abaya, a loosefitting garment worn by observant Muslim women, leaving only her face exposed, and suggested that women on the prosecution team follow her example. They should dress modestly “so that our clients are not forced to not look at the prosecution for fear of committing a sin under their faith,” Ms. Bormann said.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Business & Investing.

GREEK NAZIS IN PARLIAMENT are acting like Nazis. As they say, fascism is forever descending on America, but landing in Europe.

THE ANCHORESS IS BORED BY THE SMUGNESS OF STEPHEN COLBERT:

When a friend of mine sent this clip from the Colbert Report — a chat between Stephen Colbert and Georgetown’s Father Thomas Reese on why Paul Ryan’s budget bothers Catholics — I expected to like it. I like Colbert. I like Jesuits. I like Father Reese. Though I’m not a Ryan “fan” he seems smart, and I like the idea (the very novel idea!) of an actual budget being proposed within our government.

And yet, I found myself not much liking the clip at all.

Read the whole thing.

A KURDISH MAJORITY IN TURKEY? The birthrate for ethnic Turks is now below the replacement level while the birthrate for the Kurdish minority is well above it. Some now believe Turkey may have a Kurdish majority within two generations. I rather doubt that will actually happen, but the Middle East will change dramatically if it does.

WHEN CUPCAKES ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE CUPCAKES: In Massachusetts, “Bake sales, the calorie-laden standby cash-strapped classrooms, PTAs and booster clubs rely on, will be outlawed from public schools as of Aug. 1 as part of new no-nonsense nutrition standards, forcing fundraisers back to the blackboard to cook up alternative ways to raise money for kids.”

RELATED: Shocker: FLOTUS’s plan to weed out “food deserts” failing to bear much fruit.

UPDATE: An Insta-reader emails some thoughts on the Orwellian doubletalk in the “War on Food:”

Food desserts are alleged to cause obesity. I am talking about the alleged epidemic of “hunger”.

“The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act is a significant step forward in our effort to help America’s children thrive and grow to be healthy adults. Thanks to the dedication of this Congress and First Lady Michelle Obama, more kids will have access to healthy, balanced, nutritious school lunches. By increasing the number of students eligible to enroll in school meal programs and improving the quality of food served, this legislation simultaneously tackles both hunger and the obesity levels currently affecting too many communities across this nation.”

— U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

How can we have epidemics of starvation and obesity at the same time? A statement like the one highlighted above should be the subject of constant ridicule (e.g. The Fat Children are Starving…). At the very least the government should be forced to pick one or the other area in which to overreach.

My children (who are not overweight in the slightest) are subject to monitoring and now food restrictions at school. Meanwhile, they are dragged to community service at the local food pantry and badgered about “walking for hunger”. This is Orwellian doublespeak at its finest, and nobody is talking about it.

This sounds like it would make for great updates to the next editions of both Liberal Fascism and the Tyranny of Cliches.

PILLS CONTAINING POWDERED FLESH OF HUMAN BABIES SEIZED IN SOUTH KOREA:  Yuck.  Apparently believed to be  a “stamina booster.”  Another high quality product Made in China.

ANOTHER READER BOOK-PLUG REQUEST: Reader Hugh Thorner writes: “My brother and I are long time fans and daily readers. I have no talent but he’s written a book. It’s a hard-boiled detective novel set against the backdrop of 1991 Poland during the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Here it is: Tombs of Prussia, 99 cents on Kindle.

FUTURE FRENCH FIRST LADY NICKNAMED ‘ROTTWEILER:’ Obama Immediately Extends Invitation to White House:

The 57-year-old Socialist has openly admitted that he “does not like the rich” and declared that “my real enemy is the world of finance”. This means taxing the wealthy by up to 75 per cent, curtailing the activities of Paris as a centre for financial dealing, and ploughing millions into creating more civil service jobs.

Add an explicit threat to renegotiate the euro pact to replace austerity with “growth-creating” spending, and you have one of the most vehemently left-wing programmes in recent history.

“France is doomed, but you already knew that,” blogger JammieWearingFool adds. At the Corner, they’re tolling the funeral bell for the rest of the continent as well:

In one sense, Europeans have no place left to go. They tried fascism and Communism; those proved deadly flops. That left state socialism’s “mixed economy.” The European Union was created in 1992 at the end of the Cold War — a victory, we note, of America’s making, not Europe’s — as a monument to socialism’s ideal of large centralized planned economies and societies. It’s the same ideal Obama and his liberal friends have worshiped for a generation — with only slightly less disastrous results here.

* * * *

Who knows. Maybe at the end of all this, Europeans will discover their own culture buried under two centuries of socialist and Marxist garbage: the Europe of Adam Smith and Tocqueville, of von Mises and Hayek, of Aristotle and Aquinas. Maybe they’ll realize their birthright as the original home of liberty and freedom, at long last.

I suspect “the end of this,” when and if Europe stumbles over what Tom Wolfe calls “The Great Relearning,” will be a long and painful time arriving in Europe.

TEXTING AND OPEN MEETINGS LAWS. It was so much easier when people just whispered to each other during City Council meetings.

“GAY MONEY IN THE ELECTION HAS REPLACED WALL STREET MONEY,” said NBC Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd, purporting to explain why “they are so sensitive to Biden” embracing same-sex marriage.

ADDED: Sorry I had the wrong link here before. If you were wondering what “What Dogs Are Thinking” had to do with Chuck Todd and gay people… the answer is: nothing. (I think. I mean, wouldn’t it be a kick in the head if the dogs were wondering about Joe Biden getting out ahead of the pack?)

NY POST CALLS ELIZABETH WARREN A “FRAUDSTER”:  Ouch.  But c’mon, calling yourself a Native American because family lore says an ancestor five generations back was one?  Such is the reality of law faculties these days, however.  If you can “tick a box,” you get many unspoken bonus points.  Doesn’t anyone realize this isn’t helping race relations? Or maybe that’s the idea….

WHY IS BILL AYERS SPEAKING AT GREENFESTIVAL? “The green movement isn’t just a subset of the progressive philosophy. Rather, it’s the religion that’s taken over the left and whose underlying principles are such that Weather Underground terrorists and Occupy activists fit right in at their family-friend festivals.”

A composite of multiple aspects of the far left, you might say.

UPDATE: Link was missing before, Fixed now. Sorry!

(Bumped.)

SHAM ELECTIONS IN SYRIA: Parliamentary elections are supposedly being held in Syria today, but don’t you believe it. The opposition is boycotting the elections and calling them “a sham,” and they’re right to do so.

The amount of nonsense written about this country does not cease to astound me. If you want to know how that place really works, read The Truth about Syria by Barry Rubin, In the Lion’s Den by Andrew Tabler, The Strong Horse by Lee Smith, and, if you trust me, check out my own book, The Road to Fatima Gate.

BLIND DISSIDENT CHEN GUANGCHENG will apparently leave China with his family and study in the United States.

Science you can use — apparently buying happiness IS a matter of knowing where to shop.  And how.  And having the money.  At least to a point.

DELTA DAWN: At Reason, a look at “How Sears, Roebuck & Co. midwifed the birth of the blues.”

Found via Orrin Judd, who writes, “If you read about the birth of Rhythm and Blues–and Deep Blues by Robert Palmer, Mystery Train by Greil Marcus and Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick are three of the best–it’s astonishing how often a performer’s first guitar was ordered from the Sears catalogue.  For B.B. it replaced plucking a wire strung on the wall of a barn.