SOMEBODY WILL TOP THIS BEFORE 2016, I PREDICT: Read the Puffiest Hillary Clinton Puff Piece of All Time.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 435.

VIDEO: Joe Biden Admits That That Whole Hope-And-Change Thing Didn’t Happen.

TAMMY BRUCE: Sloppy scenario at the CDC: Only government would leave deadly anthrax in an unlocked fridge.

CARBON TAX: TORN ASUNDER DOWNUNDER.

Australia just abolished its tax on carbon on a 39 to 32 vote. Prime Minister Tony Abbott campaigned on this repeal, and after two years of debate, he can now claim victory on the issue. . . .

The green agenda was toxic for the government that brought it in and materially contributed to Abbott’s victory. The biggest consequence for the green movement won’t be the relatively trivial amount of carbon emissions that repeal of the law entails; it’s the political shadow over the green agenda worldwide. The core green strategy is to tax and harass “bad” energy sources ranging from coal to oil and so forth, while showering subsidies on “good” energy technologies like solar and wind. This will drive investment away from “bad” (but relatively efficient) methods of energy generation to “good” (but inefficient and expensive) ones.

What the aborted Australian experiment with this system shows is that consumers really, really hate the higher energy bills that this approach involves. Very affluent voters may not notice the size of their energy bills, but the hard pressed middle and lower middle classes emphatically do. That (and the effects on job creation of higher taxes and energy prices) made opposition to the Australian green program a huge vote winner for Abbott’s party.

That suggests that the green agenda in developed countries worldwide is in deep trouble—that Europe isn’t a trendsetter but an outlier. And it suggests that Canada and the U.S., two other large energy producing economies whose politics and culture aren’t all that dissimilar from Australia’s, could be heading the same way. Without the energy titans of the English speaking world on board, the conventional global green program is DOA.

If you care about global warming, you’ll support fracking and nuclear power. If you don’t support fracking and nuclear power, you don’t really care about global warming, you’re just using it as an excuse.

#WARONWOMEN: Today in 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne died in Ted Kennedy’s car as he fled the scene.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: My interview with Katie Pavlich about her new book, Assault and Flattery: The Truth About the Left and Their War on Women.

AT AMAZON, deals on bestsellers in Kitchen & Dining.

Also, coupons galore in Household Supplies.

RON CHRISTIE: An Open Letter to Attorney General Eric Holder: It’s Not About Race. “You are the first attorney general in the history of the United States to be held in contempt of Congress. This had nothing to do with your skin color, and everything to do with your failure to explain how the United States government provided guns to Mexican drug cartels that were eventually used to kill Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010. This story may have disappeared from the headlines, but many of your fellow citizens are still upset our federal government would ever give guns to foreign criminals. Compounding this tragic error, neither you nor anyone else in the administration has explained what happened the night Terry lost his life. All we really know is that he was at the wrong end of a gun you approved handing over to drug dealers.”

MIKE RAPPAPORT: Is Griswold v. Connecticut Consistent with the Original Meaning?

I wrote on this topic myself some years ago.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Diversity” Plan Involves Grading By Race And Ethnicity. “Professors, instead of just awarding the grade that each student earns, would apparently have to adjust them so that academically weaker, ‘underrepresented racial/ethnic’ students perform at the same level and receive the same grades as academically stronger students.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Hackers Steal Personal Information of US Security-Clearance Holders. “This is a big deal. If I were a government, trying to figure out who to target for blackmail, bribery, and other coercive tactics, this would be a nice database to have.”

ROLL CALL: U.S. Chamber Backs Justin Amash Primary Opponent. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed GOP Rep. Justin Amash’s primary challenger in Michigan’s 3rd District. The group’s support could translate into television airtime for Brian Ellis, a former East Grand Rapids School Trustee, before the Aug. 5 primary. The primary has become one of this cycle’s top battles inside the GOP, with the party’s libertarian wing backing Amash and national business interests boosting Ellis.”

So the Chamber’s priorities are noted.

“LAW OF THE LAND:” The administration just took Obamacare away from the territories.

ED DRISCOLL: The Cut-And-Paste President. “See, that’s the problem when the president is utterly dependent on his speech writers and teleprompter programmer that he’ll relentlessly stick to the script on such a grim news day.”

Related: Video: Semi-retired president interrupts burger run to issue brief statement on plane being blown up.

INDEED: Content, not quantity, is what makes Obama’s unilateral initiatives unsettling.

GEE, WHAT COULD BE DIFFERENT ABOUT TEXAS? Houston: America’s Opportunity City.

Urban aesthetes on the ocean coasts tend to have a low opinion of the flat Texas landscape—and of Houston, in particular, which they see as a little slice of Hades: a hot, humid, and featureless expanse of flood-prone grassland, punctuated only by drab office towers and suburban tract houses. But Wolff and Hightower, major land developers on Houston’s outskirts for four decades, have a different outlook. “We may not have all the scenery of a place like California,” notes the 73-year-old Wolff, who is also part owner of the San Francisco Giants. “But growth makes up for a lot of imperfections.”

A host of newcomers—immigrants and transplants from around the United States—agree with that assessment. Its low cost of living and high rate of job growth have made Houston and its surrounding metro region attractive to young families. According to Pitney Bowes, Houston will enjoy the highest growth in new households of any major city between 2014 and 2017. A recent U.S. Council of Mayors study predicted that the American urban order will become increasingly Texan, with Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth both growing larger than Chicago by 2050.

I wonder why other parts of the country aren’t growing as fast. Just bad luck, I guess.

SMART DIPLOMACY: WaPo: Kerry flunks the laugh test on Iran.

THE HILL: Cruz introduces ‘stop amnesty’ bill.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Manipulating Citation Rankings?

WELL, THAT MAKES SENSE, DOESN’T IT? Millennials Favor Private Accounts for Social Security Even if Benefit Cuts to Current Seniors Required.

ANOTHER PRESS RELEASE FROM PROF. JOHN BANZHAF:

Illegals Crossing Border Have More Rights Than College Students Accused of Rape

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, both children and adults, now streaming across the border, have more procedural protections – like the right to an impartial hearing, to require the production of documents, to present evidence, to cross examine those testifying against them, and to have their own lawyer present – even though it appears that most will never be deported, and those who are deported will simply be returned to their homes, whereas the much smaller number of college students who face expulsion and all of its life-altering consequences for alleged date rape have no such rights.

The disparity in procedural protections is likely to shortly become even worse, with a just-filled law suit seeking to require that each of the 60,000-plus unaccompanied children who have come across the border since November get taxpayer-funded representation at deportation hearings.

President Obama has just requested $15 million for attorneys to represent unaccompanied minors in deportation removal proceedings, and an additional $1.1 million for “immigration litigation attorneys” who, presumably, would assist adult illegal immigrants in their proceedings.

“The president is asking U.S. taxpayers to spend millions to help illegal immigrants who knowingly broke our laws to avoid deportation,” says Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies; a decision which may have dire consequences for our entire immigration policy.

Indeed, if these and other budget requests are not approved, other border functions will have to be cut, said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. “At the current burn rate, ICE is going to run out of money at mid-August and we project CBP will run out of money in mid-September,” Johnson said.

In sharp and dramatic contrast – even though the issues in typical “he said, she said” date rape proceedings tend to be far more complicated to resolve, and often require skilled cross examination to get to the truth – students accused of date rape and other sexual assaults are often not permitted to even have their own attorneys present, much less to conduct cross examination, something which would cost colleges nothing.

Indeed, even cross examination to test the veracity of what is often the only direct evidence of wrongdoing – the testimony of the complainants, some 60% of whom are so intoxicated that they have no clear memory of the event, and some 33% who had mental health issues prior to the alleged assault – often is not permitted in college adjudicatory proceedings.

This is especially upsetting when the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution requires Due Process procedural protections – including cross examination and the right to counsel – before other arguably less serious consequences such as the loss of disability benefits, cuts in welfare benefits, wrongful terminations, etc.

So far, more than a dozen students have successfully sued their universities for improperly finding them guilty of date rape, and more than a dozen more cases are pending, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who first spotted the trend.

Because so many of these law suits involve allegations of violations of Due Process, judges may soon begin determining exactly what procedures are required by the Constitution, taking these controversial issues out of the hands of both legislators and college administrators, he predicts.

“The Supreme Court has determined that judges – not legislators or regulators – have the final say in determining under the Constitution which procedural protections a person is entitled to, and has set forth a formula which requires that judges consider both the seriousness of the loss to the accused and the importance of the procedural protection for preventing that loss,” says Banzhaf.

Like I keep saying, there’s a lot of low-hanging legal fruit in the higher-education sector.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Summer America Fell Apart.

SHOCKER: Company Cofounded by Paul Pelosi Jr. Charged with Securities Fraud; SEC: Environmental investment company Natural Blue Resources run by criminals.