CALIFORNIA SENATOR INTRODUCES BILL TO TEST OUT TAXING MOTORISTS FOR EVERY MILE THEY DRIVE, reports CBS-LA.

Perhaps Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, (D-Concord),  didn’t get the memo that Glenn Reynolds’ latest USA Today column, published Sunday night, was a warning, not a how-to guide.

TO REDUCE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS, HOW ABOUT PRESS CONTROL?

Whenever there is a school shooting, liberals try to capitalize by pushing for more gun control. But a recent story here in Minnesota reinforces a point that we have made before: would-be “shooters” are usually copycats who admire the fame that prior mass murderers have achieved. If we really want to cut down on school shootings, in particular, the most effective measure would be to prohibit news media from reporting on them; or, perhaps, bar them from reporting the name of the shooter.

Considering all of their tut-tutting about civility, eliminationist rhetoric and talk of banning gun-related words from public discourse in early 2011, I’m sure the MSM will eagerly go along, right?

WELCOME TO JIHAD CITY, SYRIA: The Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Syria) is so supremely awful that even Al Qaeda condemns it.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Allen Mitchum, The Reprisal.

AFTER A FIFTY YEAR HIATUS, Malaria returns to Venezuela.

TWO ADMINISTRATIONS IN ONE!

● “President Obama racked up close to $3 million in flight costs this year on two trips he billed as business but spent playing golf.”

— Headline, the London Daily Mail, April 30^th, 2014.

● “The Obama administration, in a massive, new report on the dangers of climate change, warns that global warming is already harming Americans and that conditions will worsen significantly if carbon emissions aren’t reduced.”

–The Washington Examiner, today.

As the Insta-Professor likes to say, I’ll believe that global warming is a crisis, when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.

Related: “Liberals: Exempt from Scrutiny,” from Victor Davis Hanson.

OUCH: The end of breast implants miracle bra UNDER skin stops by sagging using cups and straps screwed into woman’s ribs. Okay, so I’m the sort of stick-in-the-mud who won’t have surgery unless it’s REALLY needed but still “Screwed into woman’s ribs?”  OUCH.

MONICA WILL ALWAYS LOVE BILL. “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship.” Shouldn’t we avert our eyes? But Drudge is calling attention to this new word from Lewinsky, perhaps because she mentions him: “thanks to the Drudge Report, I was… possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet.” Landmarks in humiliation… something to be proud of.

OBAMA BIOGRAPHER: ‘THE WORLD SEEMS TO DISAPPOINT HIM:’

“The profile [of President Obama] that I published in the New Yorker was somebody that eerily, eerily seemed to be claiming himself–it was a sense of not giving up, but of deep frustration–that was the profile that I published in the New Yorker. Somebody frustrated and disappointed,” said [David] Remnick, who has proven to be deeply sympathetic to this president.

“And that’s what’s frustrating to me sometimes about Obama is that the world seems to disappoint him,” he continued to laughter from others on the TV set. “Republicans disappoint him, Bashar al-Assad disappoints him, Putin as well. And the fighting spirit sometimes is lacking in the performative aspects of the presidency.”

“Obama’s sad little minions are now touting his sociopathy as a benefit. It’s our fault that Barry is so very uncomfortable with reality. We’re to blame for his inability to see the world as it is, not as he’d like it to be,” Jim Treacher writes in response. “Nothing is ever his fault. How could it be, you racist hillbilly teabaggers?”

Heh. Actually though, Obama’s minions were touting his sociopathy as a benefit as soon as it became too obvious to ignore. In 2009, the media – who view the world through print, the camera lens, and leftwing groupthink — excused away Obama’s myriad flaws and massive ego combined with a staggering naivety about the world by dubbing him “President Spock.” This helped, at least temporarily, to explain away his lifetime spent trapped in the academic-political bubble, rather than the real world of business or even actual executive accomplishments in political office being being dubbed leader of the free world. But sooner or later, President Spock had to attempt to govern, and Remnick’s pathetic summation today — too much apparently for even MSNBC — is merely the latest apology by the media for their original lack of vetting.

Related: It’s a World of Wonder…

“A POSITIVE ABORTION STORY…. I remember breathing and humming through it like I was giving birth. I know that sounds weird, but to me, this was as birth-like as it could be.”

CLAIM: “Hillary Language On Benghazi Identical To Rhodes Email — 1 1/2 Days Before!” from Dick Morris:

On September 13, 2012, — one and a half days before Obama aide Ben Rhodes sent an email advising UN Ambassador Susan Rice to blame the Benghazi attacks on a protest over an anti-Muslim Internet video — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the identical language embedded in a statement about the attacks.

The congruence of the two word-for-word statements suggests, at the very least, a close coordination between and White House and Hillary Clinton to deceive the American people about the true nature of the attack in Benghazi. And it may also be evidence that Hillary Clinton engineered that decision immediately following the attacks. Was the cover-up Hillary’s idea? The emails beg the question. Now Congress must investigate and decide what the answer is.

Read the whole thing.

(H/T: Roger Simon.)

QUENT CORDAIR FINE ART SALE: Longtime Instapundit reader and occasional sponsor Linda Cordair emails to note:

The sidewalk construction in front of the gallery is causing us more problems than we anticipated. Last night the demolition crew snagged one of the gas lines. They are going to have to replace all of the gas line to bring it up to code which will be invasive to the interior of the gallery. On the upside, we’re getting new pipes. On the other side, more closed days are likely.

In any case, I decided to have a “No-Sidewalk Sale.” We are offering 5% off anything in the gallery for the next two days. I would be very grateful for any assistance you care to lend to promote it.

Happy to help; stop by their Website, here.

THE IRS SCANDAL, DAY 362: At TaxProf Blog.

VEGETATIVE STATE MISDIAGNOSES:   . . . are more prevalent than many (even physicians) think.  The case of Canadian Scott Routley is another example.  Diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for years, new research using functional MRI has demonstrated that Routley is aware of his surroundings and capable of answering simple yes or no questions by being asked to think of certain things for “yes” and other things for “no,” which light up different areas of his brain, visible on the MRI.

I explored this topic extensively in my book, The Law of Life & Death and in a recent TEDx talk.  The research is truly a game-changer for severe brain injury, and proves rather definitively that many PVS patients are actually in a minimally conscious state (MCS) instead.

OBAMA’S HIGHWAY TOLLS TAKE CASH, TIME AND PRIVACY, Glenn Reynolds writes in his latest USA Today column.

#BENGHAZI AND THE STREISAND EFFECT: “There’s a limit to how often you can scream and mock and dismiss something as being irrelevant before people start thinking that you’re protesting too much, particularly if the press isn’t playing along.  And enough of them are not this time to make the strategy a little too obvious,” Moe Lane writes.

Read the whole thing.™

Related: “Kerry might not be anxious to testify before Congress, but he’d do better against Issa than he will against Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor.”

WITH OVER 3,549 DOWNLOADS, my The Second Amendment As Ordinary Constitutional Law sits atop the SSRN Top Ten Recent Downloads list.

Thanks to everyone who was interested enough to download it!