READER BOOK PLUG: Running Into Darkness, from reader D.A. Bale. “I never intended to kill the President. As a doctor, I swore an oath to protect life – not take it. But that was before…”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: North Carolina Ends Teacher Tenure, Automatic Pay Increases for Higher Degrees. The latter, of course, will impact the higher education bubble, since there are a lot of programs — particularly in education colleges — that exist largely to serve the automatic-pay-raise-for-degree market.

R.I.P.: Virginia Johnson: The ‘first woman of sex therapy.’

MEGAN MCARDLE: We Don’t Need Tougher Standards For Self-Defense.

Right now, it feels wrong to many people because a boy who was walking home with Skittles and iced tea has ended up dead. But as lawyers say, “hard cases make bad law.” The law will always have some sad cases that can’t be prosecuted, or some cases where someone doing something understandable gets jail time for breaking the law. Laws written in response to public outcry about those hard cases are usually bad laws. They are the equivalent of deciding to give everyone an ANA test because of the tragic death of someone with undiagnosed lupus.

In both cases, we’re focusing on the emotional impact of the false negative that is right before us, and not all the other cases where false positives could be disastrous. Imagine that someone you have had words with — your editor, perhaps — attacks you, and there are no witnesses to the attack. Fearing for your life, you stab him, and he dies. Should the law require you to prove that you acted in self-defense, beyond a reasonable doubt? How could you?

Imagine now that it is a black teenager attacked by a racist 23-year-old looking for a fight, or a woman whose abusive boyfriend finally threatened to kill her. Do you want those people to have to prove that it was self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt? Should the prosecution be able to send them to prison for decades because it’s possible that they were the aggressor — not even likely, just possible? Should they have to wait until they have suffered life-threatening damage in order to justify protecting themselves?

That seems insane to me.

Which is why you’ll never get a gig at MSNBC. But, to be fair, many of these people would be happy with special rules for black youths, or battered women, or whatever, so that they get the result they want. And if the categories don’t fit, well — you can always re-arrange them ad hoc, as the media did when they turned part-black, part-hispanic George Zimmerman into the reincarnation of Bull Connor.

Related: Cathy Young: Zimmerman Backlash Continues Thanks To False Media Narrative.

This narrative has transformed Zimmerman, a man of racially mixed heritage that included white, Hispanic and black roots (a grandmother who helped raise him had an Afro-Peruvian father), into an honorary white male steeped in white privilege. It has cast him as a virulent racist even though he once had a black business partner, mentored African-American kids, lived in a neighborhood about 20 percent black, and participated in complaints about a white police lieutenant’s son getting away with beating a homeless black man.

This narrative has perpetuated the lie that Zimmerman’s history of calls to the police indicates obsessive racial paranoia. Thus, discussing the verdict on the PBS NewsHour, University of Connecticut professor and New Yorker contributor Jelani Cobb asserted that “Zimmerman had called the police 46 times in previous six years, only for African-Americans, only for African-American men.” Actually, prior to the call about Martin, only four of Zimmerman’s calls had to do with African-American men or teenage boys (and two of them were about individuals who Zimmerman thought matched the specific description of burglary suspects). Five involved complaints about whites, and one about two Hispanics and a white male; others were about such issues as a fire alarm going off, a reckless driver of unknown race, or an aggressive dog.

In this narrative, even Zimmerman’s concern for a black child—a 2011 call to report a young African-American boy walking unsupervised on a busy street, on which the police record notes, “compl[ainant] concerned for well-being”—has been twisted into crazed racism. Writing on the website of The New Republic, Stanford University law professor Richard Thompson Ford describes Zimmerman as “an edgy basket case” who called 911 about “the suspicious activities of a seven year old black boy.” This slander turns up in other left-of-center sources, such as ThinkProgress.org.

It has to be 1963 forever. Otherwise they’d have to ask some tough questions — of themselves. Read the whole thing.

CHARLIE MARTIN: 13 Weeks: A Meditation On Diet.

AT AMAZON, Deals And Markdowns in The Denim Shop.

Also, today only: Dremel Ultimate 3-Tool Combo Kit, $169.00 (57% off).

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 80.

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check Out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES: Metadata mining fight far from over: The good guys lost the House vote, but they’ll be back.

National security officials have tried to make it sound as if their intrusions are modest, testifying they used the authority to “query” particular phone numbers just 300 times last year from a database of tens of millions. But for each number queried, analysts may go out two or three “hops.” This means an analyst will look at everyone a target has called (the first hop), then at everyone those contacts have called (the second hop) and then at all the numbers called by those contacts. With all this hopping, the National Security Agency has likely looked at the communication patterns of millions of people, the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer testified last week. This bears closer scrutiny.

The administration has overplayed the effectiveness of its approach, initially testifying that the phone program and another that involves international e-mails had helped disrupt “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11.” When pressed, however, it turned out that the e-mail program has been most successful in thwarting terrorism; the phone database “contributed” to understanding 12 events and not necessarily to preventing them.

The administration and its allies have underscored the oversight provided by congressional intelligence committees and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But lawmakers on the committees are muzzled by their oaths of confidentiality. And the court operates in secrecy, hearing only the government’s side.

This is grossly excessive, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., hinted this week that there is more still that has not been disclosed.

A month ago, just a handful of senators was warning that the security programs had gone too far. With more than 200 House members joining the chorus, the program might finally get the intensive public review that it so badly needs.

Wow.

UPDATE: How Nancy Pelosi Saved The NSA Surveillance Program. “It’s an odd turn, considering that Pelosi has been, on many occasions, a vocal surveillance critic.” Mostly on occasions when there was a Republican in the White House.

BYRON YORK: Obama On Unilateral Action: Lawyers? I Don’t Need Lawyers.

In an interview after his speech Wednesday in Galesburg, Illinois, President Obama was asked if he consulted White House lawyers before unilaterally delaying the employer mandate in Obamacare. Since Congress, in the Affordable Care Act, specified that the mandate is go to into effect at the start of next year, reporters from the New York Times asked if the president investigated whether he had the legal authority to put it off without going through Congress.

Obama didn’t exactly answer the question. But judging from what he said, his answer was: No, I didn’t consult White House lawyers because I know a lot more about the Constitution than the Republicans who are complaining about it. And besides, they don’t think I’m legitimately the president, anyway.

So take that, wingnuts. But does that last mean that President Obama thinks that James Taranto’s “President Asterisk” designation — suggesting that Obama’s re-election hinged on illegal government action neutralizing the Tea Party — is getting traction?

CREDIT WOULD BE NICE, but The Economist picks up on my “They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney” gag.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, BRITISH PUNDITS WOULD MOCK OUR PRESIDENT’S CLUMSY SPEECHES. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! President Obama calls the United States and Europe ‘developing countries’ in latest embarrassing gaffe. “As we’ve seen on a number of previous occasions, Barack Obama clearly struggles with his words when he is without his beloved teleprompter. He famously claimed to have visited 57 states in his 2008 campaign, and recently was unable to tell the difference between England and Great Britain. I don’t think any American president, however, has ever referred to the United States, leader of the free world, as a “developing country” before, and nor is Europe a country, as much as the emperors of the European Commission would like the EU to be a superstate. In addition to being embarrassing, the president’s interview will prove controversial in parts of Europe, and won’t go down well in Berlin and London.”

THE HILL: ObamaCare funding battle pits Tea Party vs. establishment GOP. “The Tea Party is ready to take a stand on defunding the divisive healthcare law and willing to risk a government shutdown in the process. Establishment Republicans worry the strategy will repeat the Clinton-era government shutdown showdown, which hurt Republicans in the 1996 elections. Tensions will reach a boiling point after the August recess, when lawmakers start negotiations over how to keep the government open. In the meantime, old-guard Republicans are sending a clear message to conservatives: The shutdown isn’t worth the risk.”

Related: Maryland consumers could see 25-percent premium increases under ObamaCare.

PATRICK POOLE: A Bad Week For The Muslim Brotherhood. “Two weeks ago, Muslim Brotherhood leaders from across Africa and the Middle East gathered in Istanbul to regroup following the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. (Morsi, as I noted previously here, was recruited into the group while studying in the U.S.) But after even more setbacks suffered by the Muslim Brotherhood in a number of countries this past week, another meeting might be in order.”

THE HORRORS OF GLOBAL WARMING: Bikinis In The Siberian Summer.

FORBES: Hackers Reveal Nasty New Car Attacks–With Me Behind The Wheel (Video). “Stomping on the brakes of a 3,500-pound Ford Escape that refuses to stop–or even slow down–produces a unique feeling of anxiety. In this case it also produces a deep groaning sound, like an angry water buffalo bellowing somewhere under the SUV’s chassis. The more I pound the pedal, the louder the groan gets–along with the delighted cackling of the two hackers sitting behind me in the backseat. . . . As I drove their vehicles for more than an hour, Miller and Valasek showed that they’ve reverse-engineered enough of the software of the Escape and the Toyota Prius (both the 2010 model) to demonstrate a range of nasty surprises: everything from annoyances like uncontrollably blasting the horn to serious hazards like slamming on the Prius’ brakes at high speeds. They sent commands from their laptops that killed power steering, spoofed the GPS and made pathological liars out of speedometers and odometers. Finally they directed me out to a country road, where Valasek showed that he could violently jerk the Prius’ steering at any speed, threatening to send us into a cornfield or a head-on collision.”

WHAT IS THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INDUSTRY REALLY ABOUT? Hint: Not domestic violence.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals In Video Games.

MICHAEL HASTINGS’ CRASH caught on surveillance camera.

THAT SEEMS AWFULLY YOUNG: Hacker Barnaby Jack dies in San Francisco aged 35: Jack, who became famous after demonstrating an ATM hack, died on Thursday – but coroners did not give details.

REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS AMERICANS BRAGGING ABOUT HOW MUCH LIVELIER WE WERE THAN THOSE DRAB NO-FUN RUSSIANS? Welcome to the 21st Century.

ANNALS OF CRONY CAPITALISM: Costco backs Obama, Obama touts Costco.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why There Are Bibles In Hotel Rooms.

DEREK KHANNA: One of the most important changes in mobile policy in nine years: Legalizing cellphone unlocking.