KYLE SMITH: 5 Reasons Why Duck Dynasty Is a Great All-American Show.

PROOF THAT WE NEED A BALANCED-BUDGET AMENDMENT? After Six Budget Showdowns, Big Government Is Mostly Unchanged. So much for all the sequester-doomsaying. Alas.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Another Reason For Britain To Frack.

Britain is the latest battleground where advocates and opponents of fracking are arguing over the controversial method of extracting oil and gas from shale. The British Geological Survey doubled its estimates of the country’s technically recoverable shale gas reserves earlier this summer. Green activists have stalled exploratory drilling in the tiny village of Balcombe, prompting a national debate over what, exactly, the UK ought to do with its gas. British Prime Minister David Cameron has entered the fray, hailing the resource as a boon to his country’s economy and energy security.

The case for fracking got a boost this week, as the offshore drilling industry group Oil and Gas UK announced that British oil production in the North Sea fell by almost 22 percent this year. Output has fallen every year since 1999, and the decline is expected to continue. . . .

The country’s oil and gas industry is extremely important to the overall health of the British economy, and supports roughly 450,000 jobs. But most of the easy stuff has been drilled, and are now every barrel requires more work and expense.

In this context, it makes even less sense to spurn a new source of energy. The situation in Balcombe has gotten so heated that at this point Cameron might be best served ordering a strategic retreat to a more remote location to drill exploratory wells. But kowtowing to the emotional pleas of greens anxious about the opening up of a new fossil fuel resource—despite the fact that shale gas is green—would unnecessarily threaten the UK’s economic recovery and energy security.

I think a “Sod off, swampy!” response is merited.

ROBERT FERRIGNO thanks Elmore Leonard for life-changing advice.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 108.

CONN CARROLL: How ObamaCare Killed Amnesty.

HOW DID I MISS THIS LAST WEEK? Intelligence Official Says He Was Fired For Not Lying To Congress; Says Rogers & Feinstein Don’t Know What’s Happening.

A veteran intelligence official with decades of experience at various agencies identified to me what he sees as the real problem with the current NSA: “It’s increasingly become a culture of arrogance. They tell Congress what they want to tell them. Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein at the Intelligence Committees don’t know what they don’t know about the programs.” He himself was asked to skew the data an intelligence agency submitted to Congress, in an effort to get a bigger piece of the intelligence budget. He refused and was promptly replaced in his job, presumably by someone who would do as told.

I’m losing confidence in our institutions.

TAXPAYER-FUNDED ELECTIONEERING: HHS to Award $30,000 in Taxpayer-Funded Cash Prizes for Obamacare Promotion Videos.

WELL, YES: Space Settlements Represent Hope for Humankind.

SALENA ZITO: Scranton: Obama showcases his own failure.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Obama’s Failed Grand Strategy in the Middle East. “This is dangerous. Just as Nikita Khrushchev concluded that President Kennedy was weak and incompetent after the Bay of Pigs failure and the botched Vienna summit, and then proceeded to test the American president from Cuba to Berlin, so President Vladimir Putin and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei now believe they are dealing with a dithering and indecisive American leader, and are calibrating their policies accordingly. Khrushchev was wrong about Kennedy, and President Obama’s enemies are also underestimating him, but those underestimates can create dangerous crises before they are corrected. . . . President Obama now faces a moment similar to the one President Carter faced when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The assumptions that shaped key elements of his foreign policy have not held up; times have changed radically and policy must shift. The president is a talented leader; the world will be watching what he does.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS: False Accusation Of Rape: Man Spends Four Years In Jail; False Accuser Gets 60 Days To Be Served On Weekends.

JOHN LEO: Why Did The Oberlin Administration Take So Long To Admit “Racial Incident” Was A Hoax Once It Knew The Truth?

JIM TYNEN: So, Are We All Doomed?

THOUGHTS ON trust, and the lack thereof.

YEAH, BECAUSE UNIONS WERE ON THE FOREFRONT OF RACIAL EQUALITY: Pro-union message rings out from civil rights rally at Lincoln Memorial.

PACKING for the Apocalypse

BEWARE THOSE CRAZY PEOPLE WHO STILL BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION: Defense Department Education Materials Warn of ‘Extremists’ That Speak of ‘Individual Liberties, States’ Rights, and How to Make the World a Better Place.’ “The guide is reportedly authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a Defense Department-funded diversity training center. Further, the documents cite the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when identifying ‘hate groups.'”

I suspect that this kind of thing is costing the military a lot of credibility with people who normally support it. I also suspect that Obama’s fine with that. And given the SPLC’s record, does this mean that soon we’ll see drone attacks on “pickup artists?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Use Emojies in Your Dating Life.

CULTURE OF ABUSE: NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests. “National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said. The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.” I’ll bet further inquiry would revise the frequency estimate up significantly.

TARGETING: IRS is targeting the American Legion with new set of guidelines. “The Internal Revenue Service is targeting the veterans’ organization the American Legion, and a U.S. senator believes that Lois Lerner — a key figure in the IRS scandal – is to blame.”

A DISTURBING TREND IN AMERICAN BANKING.

I LOOK FORWARD TO THE DAY WHEN WE CAN CHOOSE OUR RACE THE WAY CHELSEA MANNING CHOSE HER GENDER: “I graduated from an all-black high school. I just did not know white people. And even though I am very fair, everyone knew my family and they knew I was black.” In both photos, her white husband is darker.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Eating Out Cheaper Than Cooking At Home?