WHAT PASSES FOR FREE SPEECH IN FRANCE: French Court (Re-)Considers Philippe Karsenty’s Fate: The man who uncovered the Al-Dura video fraud is still being tried for defamation.

HERE’S DAVE HARDY’S LETTER TO TED CRUZ on the “assault weapon” fiction and gun control. Excerpt:

An “assault rifle” is by definition full automatic (also known as select fire). A semiautomatic version is simply a semiautomatic rifle of less power than WWII semiautomatic rifles.

So what is the origin of the idea that there is such a thing as a “semiautomatic assault rifle,” and that it is somewhere especially dangerous? Back in the 1990s, the Violence Policy Center, an antigun group, issued a report that proposed making such rifles a focus, because in the popular mind they were easily confused with fully automatic firearms. It essentially proposed a public relations campaign based on deception.

An attack on recognized constitutional rights, based upon deception and taking advantage of mistaken popular impressions, seems questionable to anyone who holds a commitment to the Constitution. Let us go into more detail.

Read the whole thing.

JIM TREACHER ON POLITICO’S RACISM.

JAMES HUFFMAN: The Disenfranchisement of Rural America. “To some extent, their disenfranchisement is the inevitable result of a century of urbanization and economic centralization. But the erosion of self-governance in rural America is also the result of a generally well intentioned but simplistic understanding of democracy and the associated elimination of institutional protections of local democratic governance.”

SARAH HOYT: Drinking Their Own Ink.

UPDATE: Link fixed.

“PRIVATELY, THEY MUST BE DYING FOR HIM TO GO:” Let the 89-year-old Senator Frank R. Lautenberg decide when it’s time to yield to the younger generation, the Dems are saying to the 43-year-old Newark mayor.

TESLA SHOWDOWN: Elon Musk vs. The New York Times.

WITH NEARLY 12,000 DOWNLOADS, my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece is still #1 on SSRN.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Missing in action: Obama’s entrepreneurship agenda. With a troubling graphic.

PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION: It’s not just who you prosecute, it’s also who you don’t:

In one meeting, Swallow reportedly told donors on hand that they were in a “high-risk” industry, and that customers who have second thoughts can demand refunds and make complaints to regulators if they aren’t satisfied.

“We understand this business, and we have these things come across our desk all the time,” one of the men recalls Swallow saying during his pitch. “If it’s somebody we’re not familiar with, we’re just going to treat it normally and prosecute it like we normally would,” the business owner said, describing Swallow’s comments. “But if you donate to the campaign, you’re going to lunch with Shurtleff. He’s going to know you. He’s going to know what you’re doing. And when we get complaints coming across our desk, we’ll take that into consideration.”

So there you are.

BUT REMEMBER, WHEN THEY RAISE YOUR TAXES IT’S ALWAYS FOR THE CHILDREN: Tennessee DCS deleted pages from child death records. “Because the documents were redacted on a computer, it was impossible to tell that many sentences and paragraphs had been completely removed. These included potentially damaging information about caseworker actions.”

OUTRAGEOUS: Ted Cruz’s “Evil Empire” Moment. If you start talking about things as they are, there’s no telling what might happen. Luckily, the press is there to nip it in the bud. Unluckily, the only people watching Morning Joe are right-leaning bloggers.

BUSINESS: CEOs: Anywhere But California.

When corporate CEOs in your state are ready to exchange HQs with Pacific Ocean views for those of a landlocked desert, you know you’re doing something wrong. That’s what’s happening in California, where nearly two dozen firms are considering dumping the Golden State for its drab and arid neighbor, Arizona.

Like Texas, Arizona smells the blood in the water and is getting ready to invest time and resources into luring businesses away from its rich but troubled neighbor. . . . The firms interested in making the move include software, tech, aerospace defense, engine technology, and life-science companies—in other words, the industries (apart from Hollywood and agriculture) that made California rich.

The motivating factor in these cases isn’t so much that cities like Fort Worth and Phoenix have suddenly found the perfect formula for luring away coastal business elites. Rather, it’s that California’s business climate is so toxic that regions hitherto considered commercial backwaters now seem perfectly acceptable, if not preferable.

Ouch. Related: Please Don’t Secede, Texas — We Need You!

THE OLD CIVILITY: Reader Rick Rezabek finds something in the archives.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Fix Copyright For A Creative World.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Bestsellers In Electronics.

Also, today only: Up to 65% Off Robert Graham Polos and More for Men. Polo shirts, button-downs, blazers, and more.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama Peddles a Dangerous Fantasy About the Debt Crisis.

KIRSTEN POWERS: Same Old, Same Old From Obama. He’s always been a one-trick pony. But to be fair, it’s a trick that’s worked out pretty well for him.

JAMES TARANTO: Pravda On The Hudson: The New York Times’s weird coverage of the president and the pope.

UNDUE INFLUENCE? Watchdogs: Private funding influenced public education policy. “Education watchdogs are raising concerns over the Gates Foundation’s involvement in shaping public education policy, saying the private foundation’s influence in public education policy interferes with the democratic process and local input. . . . Gates has spent $173 million in grants to develop Common Core standards and win support for the curriculum, according to a Heartland analysis of the Foundation’s grant database. The Foundation’s funding amounts to a marketing campaign for Common Core, Jane Robbins, a senior fellow with American Principles Project, told The Washington Examiner.”

Well, it would be if it came from the Koch brothers.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D JUST BE AIR-RAIDING VILLAGES AND KILLING CIVILIANS IN AFGHANISTAN — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! “At least nine civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in a Nato air strike in Kunar province in Afghanistan, officials say. . . . Earlier this month a UN report accused the US of killing hundreds of children in air strikes over the past four years.”

Remember the fierce moral urgency of change? Me neither.

BRYAN PRESTON: The State of Our Union Rendered in a Fractured Bizarro Lens.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, OUR WAR-ON-TERROR POLICIES WOULD IGNORE CIVIL LIBERTIES AND LEGAL ETHICS — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! At Guantanamo, microphones hidden in attorney-client meeting rooms.

ROLL CALL: Lew Faces No Blockade to Treasury Approval. Wait, but he has Cayman Islands investments. I thought those were practically criminal. . . .