LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGE ACQUISITION from studying songbirds.

SCIENCE: Living Near The Ocean Is Good For Your Health.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Even Salon is catching on.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 54.

LAWS (AND TAXES) ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Hedge Fund Billionaire Who Gave $9.6 Million to Obama in 2012 Skirts Law to Pay 15% Tax Rate.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Snowden Fallout: Bad PR For Obama In Europe.

The report, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has gotten a number of politicians up in arms across the Atlantic. Françios Hollande described the allegations as unacceptable, and a spokesman from German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested the US was treating its European allies like Cold War enemies.

We’ll have to wait for the details to come out to see whether or not this is a tempest in a teapot. Espionage is a complicated game, and allies do sometimes keep an eye on each other in ways that aren’t exactly aboveboard. Indeed, the Times piece referred to a 2003 report alleging that the Justus Lipsius Building in Brussels, where many Eurocrats have their offices, was allegedly bugged by other Europeans.

Nevertheless, apart from the national security implications, the Snowden leaks have certainly caused a major PR headache for the administration. President Obama’s first-term ambition to restore America’s image in Europe after that rotten cowboy Bush had tarnished it appears to be in serious trouble.

And, frankly, it wasn’t doing all that well before.

TECHNICAL HURDLES CLEARED FOR FIRST HUMAN HEAD TRANSPLANT. Isn’t it really a body transplant?

AT AMAZON, coupons galore on Beverages & Coffee.

Also, today only: Sphero iOS and Android App-Controlled Robotic Ball, $84.99 (35% off).

DON’T FEAR THE LEAKER: My USA Today column, on leaks and legitimacy.

ED DRISCOLL ON OBAMA AND DEMOCRACY IN EGYPT: Promise Meets Expiration Date.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: George W. Bush renovates a women’s clinic in Zambia.

JAMES TARANTO: ‘Cracking’ the Case: A racial turnabout in the George Zimmerman trial.

“It’s not about racial profiling,” said lawyer Daryl Parks about the murder trial of George Zimmerman. “We never claimed this was about race.”

What makes these statements “head-scratching,” as New York’s Daily News describes them, is that Parks represents the family of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, whom Zimmerman fatally shot in February 2012. Zimmerman is pleading self-defense. The media narrative was that Martin was a victim of racial profiling–that Zimmerman, who is white and Hispanic, wrongfully saw the unarmed Martin as a threat because Martin was black.

“The whole point of the Trayvon Martin case,” according to Slate’s Justin Peters, was supposed to be to serve as “a referendum on how comfort and privilege deal with the unfamiliar.” By “comfort and privilege,” Peters means white people; by “the unfamiliar,” he means blacks. Martin’s killing even provoked an unusual appeal to racial solidarity from Barack Obama: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” the president said a few weeks after the shooting.

But last week the prosecutor’s star witness, Rachel Jeantel, turned the racial narrative on its head. She was on the phone with Martin in the moments before the deadly confrontation, and she testified that Martin described Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” that last word being an antiwhite slur. So that it seems Martin racially profiled Zimmerman. That does not exclude the possibility that the profiling was mutual, but it certainly complicates matters for the “referendum” crowd.

But that’s okay. The goal behind racializing the Zimmerman case — which, actually, involves no actual white people — was to incite racial outrage and gin up black turnout for the 2012 election. Mission accomplished!

Plus:

But whatever George Zimmerman’s culpability in Martin’s shooting, he is not to blame for the social order of pre-civil-rights America. He has every right to mount a vigorous defense, and the judge and jury have a duty, as in any criminal trial, to give the defendant the benefit of any reasonable doubt.

The rightful term to describe a criminal trial that serves as a “referendum” is “show trial.”

Indeed.

CASS SUNSTEIN: How Not To Misunderstand Scalia. “Those who disagree with Scalia are entitled to object to his votes and his tone. At the same time, they should understand that his broadest commitment is to the rule of law. They should honor that commitment, and they should respect his efforts to develop an approach to interpretation that is compatible with it.”

SHOCKER: The Hill: Poll: Clinton tops Bush, Rubio among Hispanic voters for 2016. “The survey, by Latino Decisions, also revealed Republican candidates continue to significantly trail among Hispanic voters, with even champions of immigration reform like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush significantly behind top Democrats.” It’s like amnesty isn’t a secret key to unlock hispanic votes or something.

ARE DEMOCRATS PLANNING to call in SWAT attacks against Republicans in Texas?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, EUROPEAN EDITION: Why Italian Unemployment Is So High:

Like people in other rich countries, Italians tend to look down on manual work, however skilled, and families prefer to push their children towards careers in the professions and the public sector. The education system, at all levels, generally provides a poor preparation for working life. Italian universities are full of youngsters studying subjects in which they are not interested but which their parents think are good, regardless of the job prospects.

The outcome is poor.

BYRON YORK: No, Immigration Reform Won’t Make Social Security Solvent.

MICKEY KAUS: You may not be interested in amnesty, but amnesty is interested in you. “What GOP House members hear from constituents this week while back in their districts will affect what they decide to do at their big upcoming July 10 meeting. So if you see your Congressperson at a local town hall meeting, be sure to tell him or her your mind.”

Related: The Atlantic: Are Liberals Turning On Immigration Reform?

IN RESPONSE TO MY “DO BOYS READ?” POST FROM THE OTHER DAY, reader Ed Bradley writes:

Yes they definitely do. I work in the Library Technical Department for the School District of Hillsborough County (eighth largest school district in the US). When I started here, the middle school director was very concerned about the reading gap. So I ran some queries of circulation for Library Books. Boys read just as much as girls, though they do read different things. Girls read more fiction, boys read more non-fiction and biographies (sports heroes).

Guess which kind of book tends to be assigned in class?

ROGER SIMON: Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th? “Ironically, if our society enters a revolutionary phase, liberals will find themselves in the role of the Islamists, defending a shopworn and reactionary ideology on religious grounds, because it is only their faith that holds their ideas together at this point. The facts of the American decline tell us otherwise.”

INDEED: Dianne Feinstein’s Support For NSA Defies Liberal Critics And Reputation.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Barack Obama seeks to limit EU fallout over US spying claims.

ZIMMERMAN UPDATE: How Much Injury Is Required Before Self-Defense is Justified?

Thoughout the week the State has sought to minimize the apparent seriousness of Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries. These efforts reached an almost ludicrous stage during Friday afternoon’s re-cross of Lindzee Folgate, the physician’s assistant who examined Zimmerman the day after the shooting. Apparently frustrated at Mr. O’Mara’s masterful performance on cross-examination (see Zimmerman Trial Day 5 – Analysis & Video – State’s own witnesses undercut theory of guilt for our analysis) Mr. de la Rionda asked, as if he meant it, whether all people have perfectly round heads or wasn’t it true that a person can have a bumpy or raised area of their head as a normal state of affairs, and not solely as the result of traumatic injury. . . .

The very idea that the State is seeking to establish–that self-defense is conditional upon actually suffering serious injury–is, of course, ridiculous on its face. The purpose of the law of self-defense, particularly in the context of the use deadly defensive force, is to be able to protect yourself from an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm before that harm occurs, not to require that you actually experience death or grave bodily harm before you may act to protect yourself.

Not very impressive.

WELL, DUH. HOW ELSE WOULD PRETTY WOMAN HAVE BEEN A HIT? French Director Francois Ozon Says Lots Of Women Fantasize About Being Prostitutes.