OH NOES! THEY’RE ONTO ME! The plot thickens: ‘Who is Instapundit protecting?’ I’ll never betray Helen Thomas or Sen. Mikulski.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 478.

I DUNNO, THIS SOUNDS A LITTLE DESPERATE: Obama: Social Media’s Fault Americans Think the World is ‘Falling Apart.’

Related: Reassurance From Alfred E. Obama.

WELL, THIS IS A CONFIDENCE-BUILDER: FBI National Domestic Threat Assessment Omits Islamist Terrorism. “The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats, despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting—both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.”

If we get hit again, it’ll be because they were too busy spying on Tea Partiers.

WE DON’T HAVE A STRATEGY: ISIS’ Appeal Spreads to Jordan, Africa.

There are already more than 2,000 Jordanians among the ISIS fighters, and authorities fear that still more will cross the border or become “sleeper cells” inside the country itself. They have reason to suppose that some Jordanians may identify with the militants. As Reuters points out, it was a Jordanian who founded the branch of al-Qaeda that broke off to become ISIS. . . .

This, perhaps, is the greatest threat of ISIS: It may have heightened the zeal and ambition of jihadists everywhere, no matter their affiliation, location, or relative strength. Whether or not this group eventually evanesces, it may have already made its mark.

We should have moved swiftly to make an example of them. But we don’t have a strategy. Or, if we do, we’re not talking about it.

JOHN KERRY FLIP-FLOPS INTO SUPPORTING THE BUSH 41 IRAQ WAR COALITION, and Tom Maguire is mightily amused. Well, at first, until he gets to this reflection: “As to the notion that the world stage today has counterparts to Bush, Baker and Thatcher – we wish it were so.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Could Mr. Darcy Afford A Stately Home Today?

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Plus, outlet deals in Sports & Outdoors.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Suffolk Law School Offers Buyouts to All Of Its Tenured Faculty.

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Early Check Out: The World Gets Crazier and Obama Goes Golfing.

AMNESTY: Top Judiciary Republicans Demand Answers on DACA Changes.

Top Republicans on the House and Senate Judiciary committees are asking the Obama administration to explain changes made this summer to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that they say loosen requirements and invite fraud.

House Judiciary Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Charles E. Grassley of Iowa sent Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson a list of 25 questions Friday on revisions to the 2012 executive order.

The lawmakers zeroed in on a change made to the DACA website’s “Frequently Asked Questions” page that states officials “may verify information” submitted on applicant documents — imprecise language, Grassley and Goodlatte contend, that does not require the government to actually verify anything. . . .

Goodlatte took issue with the changes at the time, arguing that there would be no explicit requirement for the the administration to verify “documentary evidence” that an applicant submits to prove that he or she meets the standards for a stay of deportation. He also challenged what he deemed new “loosened” education requirements “to allow those who are enrolled in an ‘alternative program’ (without defining what this means) to benefit from [DACA].”

The letter from Goodlatte and Grassley comes as President Barack Obama, in conjunction with Johnson and other administration officials, is weighing broad executive action to expand DACA’s reach and grant stays of deportation to the families of DACA participants, the “Dreamers.”

It’s unpopular, so Obama will wait until after the elections to do anything.

ED DRISCOLL: The Scowling Face Of The State.

SORTA LIKE WARREN BUFFETT AND BURGER KING: ObamaCare contract muddles Dem message on tax dodgers.

The Obama administration is employing an ObamaCare contractor that was once based in the tax haven of Bermuda, even as it assails corporations for lacking the “economic patriotism” to pay taxes.

Accenture was awarded a contract in January that’s now grown to well over $100 million to make improvements to HealthCare.gov, the federal enrollment portal that has caused a slew of headaches for President Obama.

The company is currently incorporated in Ireland, where it moved in 2009. Before that, Accenture had set up shop in both Switzerland and Bermuda, a noted tax haven, and has been called a tax dodger by a variety of mostly Democratic lawmakers for more than a decade.

Yeah, but now they’re Obama-approved so it’s all fine.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE IVY LEAGUE, CONT’D: Rev. Bruce Shipman’s letter to Yale Daily News and a segue to the progressive left and the roots of anti-Semitism. “Unfortunately, it’s a well-trodden path from devotion to Palestinian nationalism to apologizing for the likes of Hamas to implicitly using growing anti-Semitism in the name of anti-Zionism as a bludgeon against supporters of Israel, as Shipman did in his initial letter, or, worse, to deny that the anti-Semitism exists.”

Perhaps Rev. Shipman will suggest that Muslim countries need to be less violent so that Muslims in Europe will feel safer. “Some Muslims in Northern Ireland have announced plans to leave the country to avoid anti-Islamic violence. The announcement comes after an attack on a Muslim family in the city of Belfast, when crazed rioters broke into their home and assaulted them. . . . BBC reports that hate crimes in the country are up 30% from last year, but successful investigations into attacks has plummeted to 20%.”

But I’m sure he won’t. Only Jews are held responsible for what their co-religionists do overseas.

THE SAME WAY LABOUR LIKES ITS VOTERS: Emma Jackson, Victim of #Rotherham Rape Gangs: ‘They Like Us Naive.’ “If you do the math, you realize that Emma’s exploitation began in 2002-2003. The failure of British officials to crack down on this horrible trafficking of young girls is inexplicable and inexcusable.” Inexcusable, yes. But it’s explicable as a combination of PC cowardice and — I strongly suspect — law enforcement being involved, or on the take, or both.

SPENGLER: The trouble is that Obama DOES have a strategy.

RICH BAEHR: Hillary Is In No Rush.

PAUL BLOOM: Against Empathy. “I’ve come to realize that taking a position against empathy is like announcing that you hate kittens—a statement so outlandish it can only be a joke. And so I’ve learned to clarify, to explain that I am not against morality, compassion, kindness, love, being a good neighbor, doing the right thing, and making the world a better place. My claim is actually the opposite: if you want to be good and do good, empathy is a poor guide.”

JAMES JAY CARAFANO: What Could Terrorists Do To Vegas?

COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY: George Galloway Beaten Up – Left With Smashed Jaw. “The MP for Bradford West is no stranger to verbal scuffles, but this evening he found himself at the tail end of a physical one, when a man apparently shouted comments about the Holocaust and proceeded to beat up the MP as he posed for pictures.”

You know, after World War II there was a group of Jews and sympathizers — including, interestingly, Vidal Sassoon — in London who beat up Jeffrey Hamm’s Nazi sympathizers. I don’t know that there’s a connection here, but . . .

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT IN ILLINOIS: The skulduggery of ousting Illinois candidates. “The Sun-Times has reported that armed investigators who work for Palos Township GOP Committeeman Sean Morrison’s security firm visited the homes of people who had signed or circulated Libertarian petitions. The newspaper cited two examples of security company employees, with holstered weapons visible, allegedly telling the people that the petitions were fraudulent — a lie — and urging them to retract their signatures. . . . Earlier this year, state House candidate Antonio “Tony” Favela told us how a pair of men linked to the Democratic Party started visiting people who had signed his petitions to get on the March primary ballot. Favela was challenging one of House Speaker Michael Madigan’s incumbent lawmakers, state Rep. Kathleen Willis. Numerous Favela supporters said the men banged on their doors, claiming they were inspectors with the state election board. The men told people who had signed Favela’s petitions that the petitions were fraudulent — they were not — and convinced some signers to nullify their signatures. Favela managed to stay on the ballot, but only after aggressively fighting to preserve his petitions.”

Tar. Feathers.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND: “I have never… ever… heard a person of Pakistani or Arab origins called ‘Asian’ in the UK other than in the mainstream media. Never. Not even once. It is a measure of how disconnected the media is from the society it ‘serves’. Come to think of it, that was precisely why I started blogging in November 2001.”

Related: Politically correct evasiveness fails on its own terms.

HEY, BARACK! READ THIS! Advice On Strategy From Dilbert.

STACY MCCAIN: Homelessness: Myth and Menace. “Back in the 1980s, this became an ‘issue’ because Democrats wanted to leverage homelessness as a way to impugn Ronald Reagan’s policies. But the problem had nothing to do with Reagan and everything to do with a series of court decisions that had made it more difficult to lock up insane people in lunatic asylums, and nearly impossible to enforce laws against vagrancy. The so-called ‘deinstitutionalization’ of the mentally ill was a policy that had been pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberals during the 1970s. This coincided with other trends — including rising rates of divorce and drug abuse — that had the combined effect of creating a population of dopeheads, alcoholics and crazies who had no families to take care of them, and no place to go.”