WEIRD SCIENCE: Scientists Create 1st Living Organism From Artificial DNA.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS:  Florida man demands right to wed computer.

Because marrying dolphins is sooo 2006. But wouldn’t it make periodic upgrades much more expensive?

Related: And just as a warning to the future couple, some marriages between man and technology can become rather tempestuous….

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Students Remember Lectures Better Taking Notes Longhand Than Using Laptops.

MONICA LEWINSKY’S BACK AND HILL WILL PAY: Add Benghazi to the mix, and “This is shaping up to be a really bad couple of weeks for Hillary Clinton.”

ELLIOT ABRAMS: Will the army save Egypt’s economy? The Egyptian military runs much of the economy like a plantation, and that’s not going to change, so the answer is no.

IS THERE NOTHING THEY CAN’T DO?

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) yet again went off on the Koch brothers, this time blaming them for climate change.

“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly contributing experts at contributing to climate change. That’s what they do very well. They are one of the main causes of this. Not a cause — the main cause,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

Emmanuel Goldstein, call your office. But why does Harry object to the Koch brothers? Is it due to their anti-War On Terror stance, their pro-gay marriage, or pro-legalization of drugs stance?

FEDERAL JUDGE SMACKS DOWN JOHN DOE INVESTIGATION IN WISCONSIN. This was the secret investigation into conservative groups whose political speech in issue ads helped Governor Scott Walker in his recall campaign. The judge cited some crazy thing called “free speech.” Imagine! Just when the investigation was squelching the Club for Growth’s fundraising in an election year, intimidating the local conservatives, some busy-body federal judge waltzes in and says it’s “unconstitutional.” Have you ever heard of such a thing?

ADDED: From the district court opinion:

The current John Doe investigation has devastated [the ability of Eric O’Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth] to undertake issue advocacy with WCFG. O’Keefe Dec., ¶ 40. O’Keefe lost most of his fundraising abilities for the Club immediately because: (1) it would be unethical to raise money without disclosing that he is a target in a criminal investigation; (2) it would be unwise for prospects to invest the time required for them to independently evaluate any risks; (3) the secrecy order purports to bar O’Keefe from disclosing the facts of the investigation and the reasons he believes that WCFG is not guilty of any crimes; and (4) O’Keefe cannot assure donors that their information will remain confidential as prosecutors have targeted that information directly. As a result, O’Keefe estimates that the Club has lost $2 million in fundraising that would have been committed to issue advocacy. Id., ¶ 49.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor Teaching Class on “Obama Phenomenon” Threatened to Kill Ted Cruz Supporting Students.

TWO SIERRA CLUBS IN ONE! Shale gas is bad, but airplane fuel is okay?

WE’RE GOING TO TAKE THINGS AWAY FROM YOU ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON GOOD: Hillary Clinton: Gun Laws Are Too Lenient, Must Be ‘Reined In.’

Geez, in-between bitter clinger gaffes, even Obama was smart enough to lie on this issue while on the campaign trail, as was Joe Biden.

Earlier this week, Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay busted the wall of secrecy surrounding the Democracy Alliance’s Chicago confab. Democracy Alliance is the high-dollar assembly of Democrat fatcats that provides a dark-money pass-through for liberal activist groups like Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress.

Today, according to the Washington Examiner’s Sean Higgins, it turns out that two of Democracy Alliance’s members are leaders of a powerful union that represents thousands of newspaper reporters and other news industry workers at major media outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC and ABC. But that wouldn’t explain why Democracy Alliance almost never suffers negative coverage in the mainstream media. Would it?

YES. WHEN WE’RE NOT DOING PLENTY TO DERAIL THEM: Can We Build Entrepreneurs?

Related: “The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That’s the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978,” the Washington Post reports today.

Presumably, the Jeff Bezos-owned Post views this as a bad thing. Previous management at the dawn of the Obama era? Not so much.

CHANGE: The Climate Change Debate Is Over, And Environmentalists Lost:

The bloodcurdling National Climate Assessment is here and it portends catastrophe; floods, clouds and other assorted weather events are imminent! … but , says the report, “there is still time to act to limit the amount of climate change and the extent of damaging impacts.”

Have you noticed that we’re always at the cusp of a cataclysm, yet the deadline to act always moves to a politically convenient not-too-distant future? I guess when the time to act runs out – it will at some point, right? — we can begin thinking about defunding all these panels and reinvesting in something more productive: like figuring out how we can adapt to the future.

You mean like former NASA scientist James Hansen?  “January 17, 2009 – NASA’s James Hansen told us that Obama had only four years to save the planet.”

And that was on top of declaring in 2004, as the American Thinker noted, “that there is only a ten-year window to act on AGW (presumably by transferring mass quantities of taxpayer funds to global warmist causes) before climate Armageddon destroys humanity.”

And then there were all of the not-so-final countdowns that were made on the first Earth Day, which have long since quietly expired, and Al Gore declaring in 2008 that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years,” before tacitly declaring Mission Accomplished on radical environmentalism by selling out last year to big oil?

No, never noticed.

Related: Obama Is Getting A Pass On Global Warming Fibs.

THE SULTAN OF BRUNEI imposes harsh Islamic criminal code.

The law applies to those of all religions in the sultanate, where Muslim Malays constitute a 70% majority of the country’s 400,000 citizens, the news agency reported. Non-Muslim Chinese account for about 15% of Brunei’s population.

A second phase of the law, which will come into force later this year, provides for severing of limbs and flogging for property crimes. A third phase set for late 2015 will allow the justice system to sentence offenders to death by stoning for crimes including adultery and gay sex.

Travel companies are responding by boycotting Brunei-owned hotels, and the Bererly Hills city council voted unanimously to divest. Who wants to be the first to impose sanctions?

AMERICA: FOUNDED FOR PEACE: “How did our national-security state arise? What can we expect from it?”, asks Angelo M. Codevilla at the Hoover Institute.

OF COURSE HE DOES: FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation — like PACs.

RACISM STRAIGHT UP: MSNBC apologizes (again) for drunken Cinco de Mayo segment.

Follow the link above for earlier racially-based insults from the NBC/Comcast-owned network that’s been dubbed Jim Crow TV.

REMEMBER WHEN THE LEFT LIKED TO CLAIM THAT BIG BUSINESS WAS INHERENTLY CONSERVATIVE? “Twenty-nine of the 30 Dow Jones (INDU) Industrial Average index companies have given money or in-kind support to projects branded by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, according to a review of Clinton Foundation and U.S. State Department reports.”

DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Ben Carson: Rethinking America’s decline.

WHEN YOU REJECT WESTERN INFLUENCE: Who’s to Blame for Global Polio Emergency?

NO LAW STUDENT LEFT BEHIND! “If law schools were serious about evaluating teaching effectiveness, we’d ….”

THE IRS SCANDAL, DAY 363, at TaxProf blog.

BUT OF COURSE SHE DOES: Nancy Pelosi wants even split on new #Benghazi committee — unlike committee she picked when Speaker, Byron York writes at the Washington Examiner.

However, “Elections have consequences,” Moe Lane writes, linking to a CNN report that says, “House Republicans have decided the select committee to investigate the Benghazi terror attack will include seven Republicans and five Democrats, according to two senior House GOP leadership aides.”

HOLLYWOOD’S SEXUAL PREDATOR PROBLEM EXPLODES, Michelle Malkin writes:

“Everyone’s ducking for cover,” Paul Petersen, a former child actor and child actors’ advocate, told Entertainment Weekly in 1997. “It’s a complete and total breakdown of the protections Hollywood pretends it accords children.”

The same industry that sanctimoniously convenes anti-bullying summits with the Obama White House and falsely accuses conservatives of waging a “war on women” has allowed countless children to be stalked, groomed, beaten, molested and raped on casting couches, in movie trailers, and at drug- and alcohol-drenched parties by Tinseltown predators. The alleged child rape scandal exposed by Egan does not exist in a vacuum[.]

Yet another reason to repeal the Hollywood tax cuts.