DUE DATE UNCERTAIN: Healthy Pregnancy Can Vary in Length Up to Five Weeks.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 Things You Didn’t Know About The Male Orgasm. Have you noticed that the male orgasm gets a lot less attention than the female orgasm? Just more evidence of the #waronmen.

AT AMAZON, Deep Discount Warehouse Deals.

Also, end of season markdowns on Gardening Tools.

BREAKING LEGAL NEWS: To count as being loaded, a gun must actually be, you know, loaded. “[I]n this country, ownership and use of standard pistols and revolvers is not only widespread and generally accepted as lawful, but also implicates constitutional rights.”

This kind of thing is consistent with the analysis in my Second Amendment Penumbras piece — for many years, firearms law treated gun ownership as almost a deviant activity, to be engaged in at one’s peril. Now that it’s clearly normal behavior that implicates constitutional rights, stick-it-to-the-defendant sophistry seems to be on the wane, though obviously not among the prosecutors in this New Hampshire case. I hope they feel some pressure from their constituents; perhaps someone might mail them a copy of Second Amendment Penumbras. . . .

TAKEN: Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing? It’s government theft, from an increasingly predatory state.

MATHEMATICS IS THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE. ALSO THE INTERNET. Upvotes, Downvotes, and the Science of the Reddit Hivemind.

THAT WAS A HOAX? MY FAITH IN JOURNALISM IS SHATTERED: Blind spot: How a hoax about eye licking went global.

THE HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF SCARY CLOWNS.

TEST-DRIVING THE NEW BMW 4-SERIES COUPE.

STEVE CHAPMAN: OBAMA MISLEADS ON SNOWDEN. “The president says he would have preferred “a lawful, orderly examination of these laws.” Whose fault is it that we didn’t have one? It’s only because of Snowden that the administration’s program has come under review. Before that, we didn’t know what there was to review. And the secrecy was Obama’s choice. Snowden, he said, could have used a whistleblower protection order that Obama signed to get the information out. In fact, the measure would not have protected Snowden.” It’s like you can’t trust the President to tell the truth.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Russian foreign minister tells US to behave ‘like grown-ups.’ Good thing we’ve got smart folks like Obama, Hillary, and John Kerry running things, instead of that dumb cowboy Bush.

CLETA MITCHELL: The IRS Scandals Part 3.

ROGER KIMBALL: Bright Spots In The Higher Education Bubble: The Case Of St. John’s.

MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE? Were the Watergate coverup defendants denied due process? “It turns out that the notion that no man is above the law’ somehow didn’t apply to judges or prosecutors involved in the cover-up trial. Documents I have uncovered indicate that the efforts to punish the wrongdoings of Watergate led to further wrongdoing by the very officials given the task of bringing the Watergate defendants to justice. . . . The new documents suggest that defendants in the Watergate cover-up trial, held before Judge John Sirica, received anything but a fair trial. Indeed, they suggest prosecutorial and judicial misconduct so serious –- secret meetings, secret documents, secret collusion — that their disclosure at the time either would have prevented Sirica from presiding over the trial or would have resulted in the reversal of the convictions and the cases being remanded for new trials.”

I DON’T THINK IT’S AL QAEDA THAT’S ON THE RUN: U.S. Pulls Staff From Pakistan Consulate.

There are some who say that the Obama administration overreacted to the intercepted al-Qaeda communications that caused the diplomatic closures. Without a security clearance, we can’t know much about whether or not the actions were warranted, but the truth of the matter is that the Obama administration’s assertions that the war on terror is over were plainly premature. Terror groups in Pakistan are causing the US to fear for the safety of its citizens and diplomats. Al-Qaeda is threatening enough to force the closure of diplomatic missions worldwide. “God is great! America is in a condition of terror and fear from Al-Qaeda,” a jihadist wrote in an online forum, as the NYT reported yesterday. “The mobilization and security precautions are costing them billions of dollars. We hope to hear more of such psychological warfare, even if there are no actual jihadi operations on the ground.”

In general, the Obama administration’s foreign policy work in difficult areas like the Middle East and Pakistan hasn’t lived up to its initial promise.

Do tell.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Layoffs Hit Purdue Regional Campus. “The size of the faculty will shrink by about 7 percent, as part of a response to a deficit brought on by lower than expected enrollments.”

AT AMAZON, big markdowns on women’s shoes, sandals, and handbags.

Also, today only: Up to 52% Off Duracell CopperTop Batteries. You can never have too many.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 93.

JAMES TARANTO: John Q. Feminist: A Hilarious Defense Of Eliot Spitzer. “Apparently abstract feminism is considerably more appealing than actual feminists–which is consistent with Eliot Spitzer’s being one of them.”

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Washington’s Latest Special Favor: Of the nation’s 143 refineries, one was exempted from the EPA’s ethanol mandate. Why?

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Welcome To The Jungle: The Silicon Valley Oligarchy Comes To Washington. “That all rich people are equal, but some are more equal than others, is an unspoken axiom of American politics. It has created all sorts of confused and sloppy reporting of which the Bezos story is only the most recent and high profile example. And it has led reporters and editors to overlook one of the most important stories of our time: The connection between the liberal ideology of the global financial elite and the social pathologies—inequality, communal dissolution, family breakdown—that plague liberal society. Inward looking and self-obsessed, status seeking and conniving, the press is all too eager to ask what the sale of the Washington Post means for its industry, and all too complacent about what the deal says about power in America.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Philly Schools Chief: I Need $50M To Open Schools:

Students in the Philadelphia School District could get an extended summer vacation if the city doesn’t make funds available for the district’s operation costs for the upcoming year.

If a written guarantee of $50 million in funding for bare bones operational costs is not given to the school district by August 16th, Superintendent Dr. William Hite says there’s a possibility schools may not open or there may be shortened class days.

“We will not be able to open all 218 schools for a full day program without the funds to restore crucial staff members. We cannot open functional schools, run them responsibly, or provide a quality education for students.”

Mayor Michael Nutter is hoping City Council will support the Governor Tom Corbett’s plan to make the temporary sales tax hike permanent so the city can borrow $50 million against that revenue for the school district. . . . Mike Mullins, whose son attends second grade at Penn Alexander Elementary school in West Philadelphia, has gone on a hunger strike to raise awareness of the financial crisis facing the school district. He says he is not sure right now if he is comfortable sending his child to a city public school.

Mr. Mullins is beginning to catch on. The costs keep going up, but the product is not improving. I am not surprised at stories like this.

RAND PAUL HAS FOUND A DRONE HE LIKES: It delivers beer.

I’m beginning to like the cut of this fellow’s jib.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Barack Obama’s cancellation of his Russian visit is the normal sort of diplomat payback for insult and injury — in this case the asylum offered Edward Snowden in the face of administration pleas to send him home for punishment. But with Obama, as with everything with Obama, the about-face invokes irony, hypocrisy, and paradox, because it is just the sort of normal Neanderthal tit-for-tat that was not supposed to happen under an Obama pathbreaking foreign policy.

He entered office chastising the Bush administration for its failure to talk with the Iranians and Syrians. The subtext was that Bush lacked both his own charm and insight into human character that together would produce results that Texan right-wingers stuck in Cold War prisms could hardly appreciate.

The Snowden putdown proved the proverbial icing on the cake, given that the Obama administration had always combined the worst of both diplomatic worlds with Putin, as it so often does with its empty redlines and deadlines: loud sermonizing without commensurate toughness. . . . Putin — earlier than other leaders — grasped that the U.S. was back to a utopian Jimmy Carter mode. And so, not content in finding advantage, he also seeks fun in publicly humiliating the U.S. He was always an unapologetic Russian nationalist, stung by the loss of prestige after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but reenergized by huge oil revenues. His stock and trade has always been pointing out Western moral hypocrisies — from supporting cruel anti-democratic Islamists to distorting U.N. resolutions on no-fly zones and humanitarian aid in Libya.

In that sense, he is the perfect antithesis to Obama.

What cruel synthesis is even now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born?