IN LIGHT OF THE OKLAHOMA BEHEADING, it’s worth taking another look at Jonah Goldberg’s “Do It Yourself Jihadism” piece from last week.

SPYING: Apple, Google default cell-phone encryption “concerns” FBI director; Bureau chief says encryption allows “people to place themselves beyond the law.”

Hell, I’d be happy if the Justice Department didn’t place itself “beyond the law.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: In Response To Exposure Of Neil Tyson’s Fabrications, Wikipedia Activists Trying To Eliminate The Federalist’s Online Entry. Jimmy Wales, call your office.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: Paralyzed Rats Take 1,000 Steps, Orchestrated by Computer. “To produce their results, the Swiss scientists severed the spinal cords of a half-dozen rats and then implanted flexible electrodes into the lower part of their spinal cords. The animals were also given a type of drug known as a serotonin agonist, which Courtine says readies the spinal cord to communicate with the legs, an ability that’s depleted after an injury. With their weight supported by a harness, the rats were placed on a treadmill or on a runway with obstacles.”

STALE AND STUPID: The Hill: Democrats’ ‘war on women’ falling flat in Colo. Senate race.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Fired Band Director Filing Lawsuit Against Ohio State University.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Three Questions You Should Be Asking About Bombing Syria.

TODAY IN “WORKPLACE VIOLENCE:” FBI probing suspect’s recent conversion to Islam in Oklahoma beheading.

UPDATE: Stopped by “a good guy with a gun.”

Lewis confirms that Hufford was stabbed several times and that Nolen “severed her head.”

At that point, Lewis claims Nolen met 43-year-old Traci Johnson and began attacking her with the same knife.

Officials say at that point, Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy and a former CEO of the business, shot him as he was actively stabbing Johnson.

“He’s a hero in this situation,” Sgt. Lewis said, referring to Vaughan. “It could have gotten a lot worse.”

Yep.

“AMERICA’S FIRST SOVIET ATTORNEY GENERAL:” Roger Simon Will Not Miss Eric Holder.

Related: Nick Gillespie: Eric Holder’s Legacy: Duplicity, Incompetence, and Obliviousness. “From A. Mitchell Palmer (who rounded up and deported real and imagined Communists) to John Mitchell (convicted on perjury charges related to Watergate) to Janet Reno (who ordered the disastrous assault on the Branch Davidians and spent years threatening to censor cable TV), the position has long been a holding tank for low-performing miscreants.”

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 505.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: New York high school bars National Guard recruiter from distributing National Guard T-shirts (and bars students from wearing them). “The T-shirts in question say ‘National Guard’ across the top and then show the silhouette of a soldier holding a gun in front of the American Flag. The school district says it has a very strict policy forbidding students from wearing any clothing that has a weapon on it.”

Seriously, why would you entrust your children to people like this?

OH, PLEASE DON’T: Sources: Milton Wolf weighs Greg Orman endorsement. I can understand a grudge after how the NRSC treated him, but still. No. Oh, but NRSC: this is what happens when you treat people this way.

Or maybe this is smarter than the headline makes it sound: “But there’s a big catch: To win Wolf’s endorsement, Orman must first agree to caucus with the Senate GOP if he were to defeat Roberts in the general election.” Comment: “I think if Orman agrees to Wolf’s terms, it means the end of Roberts.” The question is, can you trust him to keep that promise?

THE PERFECT STORM OF EUROPEAN ANTI-SEMITISM.

Fast on the heels of Haaretz‘s calling this the “year of blaming the Jews,” the NYT has a disturbing look at rising anti-Semitism in three European countries: France, Belgium, and Germany. The incidents cited in the story sadly sound all too familiar: the firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany; a shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels that left four dead; violent riots in Sarcelles, France; and the mainstreaming anti-Semitic jokes and comments. But the overall picture emerging from these cases is complicated.

There appear to be three streams of anti-Semitism at work across Europe. First, there’s radicalized Muslim immigrants, or the radicalized children of more moderate Muslim immigrants. Many of the worst cases of violence and anti-semitic slurs at rallies seem to be linked to these cohorts, but, as the Economist points out, governments are wary of drawing too clear a line between radical Muslims and anti-Semitism, lest that lead to threats against moderate Muslims, who are themselves in a precarious position in Europe. The NYT reports that organizations that give teachers and other workers anti-discrimination training are seeing far more demand for workshops on Islam than on Judaism. Moreover, insofar as radicalized Muslim immigrants are behind the recent surge in anti-Semitism, it seems questionable to call the phenomenon truly “European.” It’s not so much about the resurgence of an old European hatred as it is an injection of a new one.

But that’s not the whole story. On the native Euro left and right, there are worrying signs too. . . . Many also worry that European left-wing opposition to Israel sometimes slips into suspicion of Jews as a whole. For Europe’s Jews, these three strains are building up into the perfect storm. The NYT reports that more than 40 percent of European Jews are now hiding their identity.

Europe will never be able to forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.

IRAQ: DEATH FROM ABOVE MAKES A COMEBACK.

AT AMAZON, Kindle Bestsellers in Science Fiction & Fantasy.

Also, This week’s featured 99 cent songs.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: InstaVision: I talk to Joel Kotkin about his important new book, The New Class Conflict.

RADLEY BALKO: Mass shooting hysteria and the death of John Crawford. “Last month, the California State University San Marcos campus was put on lockdown and a SWAT team was sent in after someone mistook a staff member carrying an umbrella for a mass shooter. Umbrellas have caused similar lockdowns in Issaquah, Wash.; Fort Washington, Pa.; and Akron, Ohio.We’ve seen other recent lockdowns after cellphones (again here, here, and here), camera tripods (again here), a silver watch, and a folded-up apron were all mistaken for guns; an arm cut was mistaken for a bullet wound; an exploding basketball was mistaken for a gunshot; surveyors and an unarmed jogger were mistaken for gunmen; other various ‘mistaken identity’ errors; and when someone misheard the lyrics to the theme song from ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’ (Yes, really.)”

And don’t forget the school put on lockdown because a student was wearing a “military-style” jacket.” When did authority figures become such cowering, bullying pantywaists?

BYRON YORK: Would a midterm loss crack the Dems’ stonewall on the Keystone pipeline?

THIS LITTLE BIT OF STUPIDITY WILL NO DOUBT MAKE THINGS LESS SAFE FOR OUR TROOPS THERE: A professor in U.S. is telling Liberians that the Defense Department ‘manufactured’ Ebola.

REVEALING: Burson-Marsteller Rejects Israel As a Client; Accepts Muslim Brotherhood.

GOP TO OBAMA: Don’t replace Holder in lame-duck Congress.

Conservatives are warning President Obama against using a lame-duck session of Congress to push through Attorney General Eric Holder’s replacement, even as the White House signals its intention to fill the post quickly.

Holder’s announcement that he will resign as the nation’s top law enforcement officer reverberated Thursday around Washington, where speculation has already begun to mount about who might fill the Cabinet position.

Republican lawmakers quickly vowed that whomever Obama taps would be subject to intense scrutiny following an era when the GOP was often at odds with the Justice Department.

But even if, as many predict, Republicans reclaim control of the Senate in the approaching midterm elections, they would be largely powerless to block Democrats from using their current majority to confirm an attorney general before the new Congress is gaveled into session in January.

Certainly there’s nothing they can do if Harry Reid is willing to go nuclear. Though that would set a precedent they might regret.

HEATHER WILHELM: Emma Watson And The Chamber Of Feminist Conundrums: It’s somehow not remarkable what Emma Watson didn’t discuss in her recent United Nations speech.

ASHE SCHOW: Democrat ‘war on women’: AG office blames victim of rape. “Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, is having a rough year. To add to the problems she caused herself several months ago by quashing a corruption investigation into fellow Democrats in Philadelphia, her office has just gone to court and blamed a woman who was raped in a state prison for what happened to her.”

TRUE: The greatest cultural victory of the Left has been to disregard the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “Why do we downplay that memory? Largely because it doesn’t fit with what happened later. When Hitler attacked the USSR – to the utter astonishment of Stalin, who initially ordered his soldiers not to shoot back – it was in everyone’s interest to forget the earlier phase of the war. Western Communists, who had performed extraordinary acrobatics to justify their entente with fascism, now carried out another somersault and claimed that the Nazi-Soviet Pact had only ever been a tactical pause, a moment when Stalin brilliantly stalled while building up his military capacity. Even today, the historiographical imprint of that propaganda lingers.”