FIVE TRUTHS ABOUT public employee pensions.

WORLD’S LONGEST OPED COLUMN: What Mayor Bloomberg Doesn’t Know About Police and Guns.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Jobless Claims Increase.

AT AMAZON, bestselling student software.

Also, today only: Evolution Robotics Mint Plus Automatic Hard Floor Cleaner, $239.99. I’ve seen the ads, but I don’t know how these stack up compared to a Roomba.

METAPHOR ALERT: Obama stiffs California city $35,000 while Romney pays his bill. “Here’s how much financial trouble Barack Obama’s presidential campaign appears to be in: He’s stiffing the California city of Newport Beach $35,000 for extra security costs incurred when the campaigner-in-chief held a fundraiser in the oceanfront community early this year. The bill is already nearly two months overdue.”

Advice to future venues: Demand cash up front.

UPDATE: Durham, New Hampshire, too.

CALIFORNIA: THE GOLDEN BROKEN STATE. Stockton Police Chief’s $204,000 Pension Contributes to Bankrupt City’s Woes. “He lasted eight months and left the now-bankrupt city at age 52 with an annual pension that pays more than $204,000 — the third of four chiefs who stayed in the position for less than three years and retired with an average of 92 percent of their final salaries.”

AT 9:30 ET TODAY, Rand Paul talks about Internet freedom.

CAPTIVE MINDS: Conformity on Campus.

OVERSIGHT: House Hearing Today to Consider Illegal IRS Rule Implementing Health Care Reform. “Among the subjects of the hearing is a recent IRS rule authorizing tax credits and subsidies for the purchase of qualifying health insurance plans in federally-run exchanges. Although the plain text of the PPACA only authorizes tax credits in state-run exchanges, the IRS promulgated this rule to ensure the credits (and associated subsidies) area available nationwide. This rule will affect quite a few states because somewhere between 15 and 30 states (if not more) will fail to create exchanges by 2014. The rule is also illegal.”

ED MORRISSEY: How The Government’s Assault On The First Amendment Will Hurt The Economy. I’m more worried about how it will hurt the First Amendment.

GEORGE WILL: “Ted Cruz’s victory in Tuesday’s Texas Republican runoff for the U.S. Senate nomination is the most impressive triumph yet for the still-strengthening Tea Party impulse.”

TRACY QUAN: Where Were The Sex Workers At The International AIDS Conference?

PROPPING UP THE MEDIA MACHINE: Washington Post Receives Ford Foundation Grant. The L.A. Times got one too.

NAT HENTOFF: Police Scan Us: Soon We’ll Scan Them. “When people know they’re being watched, they tend to behave well.”

PROF. JACOBSON: Conservatives – good at buycotts, bad at boycotts.

IRA STOLL: Why Elizabeth Warren Wants America To Be More Like Communist China. I eagerly await her big speech at the Democratic Convention.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): CBS MarketWatch Writer: It’s a Depression, Not a Recession.

BOB OWENS: The Cluck Heard ‘Round The World.

Clearly, this is more than a “buycott” over gay marriage. If the smattered of people I’ve talked to are representative, homosexuality is a side issue.

This strikes a much deeper, more foundational chord.

The massive crowd reaction locally and nationwide are driven by a loathing of arrogant politicians like those in Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco who feel they have the power and the authority to tell a businessman like Dan Cathy what personal opinions he can and cannot hold if he wants to do business in “their” towns.

They trampled on his religious beliefs. They trampled on his freedom of speech. They attempted to deny him and his franchisees the rights to start small businesses, merely because a free American dared to share what he believed.

Maybe it is a preference cascade. If so, you can thank Rahm.

BILL QUICK: Hey – Some Guy Told Me Harry Reid Is A Pederast…. You know, I think I heard that, too.

Obviously, it’s incumbent on Harry to dispel these rumors posthaste.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Obama Campaign: Like Demagoguery, Only Dumber.

AT AMAZON, August Deals in Patio, Lawn & Garden.

TRANSPARENCY: W.H. declines to address off-site meetings. “Carney dodged questions about White House officials arranging official meetings at a coffee shop near the White House to avoid having names of who he was meeting with show up on official White House visitor logs.”

ORNL: Wrapup On Another Stunning Day At Y-12. “In an extraordinary effort to address more security concerns following Saturday’s break-in by protesters at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, the government’s contractor shut down all nuclear operations, placed the working stocks of enriched uranium in secure vaults, and set up a schedule for thousands of Y-12 workers to take refresher courses on security do’s and don’ts.”

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: How tea party and its unlikely allies nixed Atlanta’s transit tax. “It was the Davids versus the Goliaths. On one side of a $7.2 billion referendum aimed at unsnarling Atlanta’s traffic stood the two most powerful men in Georgia, and an unlikely pair to boot: Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat. On the other side stood the little guys: Debbie Dooley of the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots and Colleen Kiernan from the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club. Despite seemingly dueling ideologies, they found common cause to lobby against a 1-cent-on-the-dollar tax to pay for 157 traffic-friendly projects in the metro area over 10 years.” And the NAACP. “The proponents of the plan reportedly were caught flat-footed when urban blacks and environmentalists, which should have been their natural partners, coalesced against the project.”

CALIFORNIA IN THE ERA OF JERRY BROWN: San Bernardino Files Emergency Bankruptcy Petition.