AT AMAZON, deals on bestsellers in Kitchen & Dining.

Also, coupons galore in Household Supplies.

And, last chance: 75% off Star Trek: The Original Series on Blu-Ray.

BILL WHITTLE: Firewall: DANGER! DANGER!

I recommend the first season.

THE REVOLUTION ALWAYS EATS ITS OWN: Univ. of Chicago students offended by gay activist’s “transphobic slur.”

You get more of what you reward. If you reward people for being offended, they become exquisitely thin-skinned.

SPYING: NSA Chief Defends Facial Recognition Database By Denying Claims That Weren’t Made.

STINGRAYS: How Florida cops went door to door with fake cell device to find one man.

THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, frequently plugged here at InstaPundit, is now in development as a TV series. Cool.

A TESLA MODEL THAT’S designed for women.

IT’S COME TO THIS: In response to leaked video, T. Boone Pickens Challenges President Obama To 1-Hour Workout. “T. Boone Pickens is 86 years old.”

Advice to Obama: Call Rippetoe first.

ANDREW MOSEMAN: Spaceflight Needs A Rethink.

NICK GILLESPIE: Amazon Is Not The Putin Of Publishing. “After launching almost 20 years ago and making virtually every book—new, used, dead-tree, electronic, audio, and I’m guessing any day now, olfactory—available to everyone in America at good-to-great prices, the company’s true character now stands revealed. It’s not pretty, folks. Despite a huge market share, Amazon apparently still wants books, especially the e-books that everyone agrees are the future of the medium, to be cheaper than what publishers and big-name authors want you to pay for them.”

RUSSELL BERMAN: The New American Isolationism. I’m opposed to isolationism in general, but with Obama so clearly inept, a do-nothing strategy may be the most prudent thing for the next couple of years.

Related: Walter Russell Mead: Obama’s Failing Foreign Policy, Groping For A Reset. “You don’t demonstrate your mastery of world events by making smart speeches about how intelligent your foreign policy is; you demonstrate your mastery of world events by having things go your way.” Well, that goes beyond the core competency. Plus, from the comments: “Some of us saw this coming a mile away. But we’re racists and bitter clingers.”

ED MORRISSEY: Relentless Incompetence: Americans Are Giving Up on Obama. It’s a pity more folks didn’t pay attention earlier.

Related: Adriana Cohen: Democrats Beginning To Get The Problem. “It isn’t entirely clear if the Democrats now distancing themselves from President Obama fully get why trading terrorists for a suspected deserter and the ongoing implosion of Obamacare are problems. But it is increasingly evident, given the growing blowback from the American people, that they understand that they are problems.”

INSTAVISION: I talk with Elizabeth Price Foley about Supreme Court term limits, and the lefty attempt to get Justice Ginsburg to step down early. Plus, should Supreme Court Justices be elected?

Her book is The Tea Party: Three Principles. From Cambridge University Press.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 392.

THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE JUST KEEPS GETTING HOPEY-CHANGIER: Feds Reanimate the Janet Reno–Era “Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee.” “”Given the already lenient standards for when the government can launch an investigation, the announced task force is both unnecessary and an invitation to investigate Americans because of the beliefs they hold, not because of any wrongdoing.”

To the folks in this administration, that’s not a bug, but a feature.

“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Former Obama Ambassador Blasts Syria Policy Failures.

President Obama’s former Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, publicly lambasted the Administration yesterday, stating that its Syria policy was a failure, and that he resigned because he could no longer support it. He further argued that timely intervention could have empowered moderates and prevented violent jihadists from gaining the upper hand in the Syrian resistance. Instead, new terrorist threats are now emerging, not just in Syria but in the U.S. and Europe. . . .

Obama personally selected Ford as his Ambassador to Syria, going so far as to give him a recess appointment in the teeth of Republican resistance. Ford now joins the ranks of former Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in criticizing their old boss’s Syria strategy. Ford made it crystal clear that “it’s on record now that the State Department, for a long time, has advocated doing much more to help the moderates in the Syrian opposition.” Such blunt comments from an ex-official make it clear that America’s inaction was a personal decision of the President, made against the counsel of his advisers.

As an example of his security concerns, Ford cited Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen and Florida native who drove a truck full of explosives into a Syrian Army outpost in a suicide attack on behalf of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Abu-Salha’s case exemplifies a much wider failure. Not only have we renounced control of the Syria situation; the U.S. can’t even gather enough intelligence to keep track of what’s going on there.

Deploy the hashtags!

MICHAEL MUKASEY: The ghastly transaction that freed Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

JESSE WALKER: The Sultan of Sewers: William Burroughs’ anti-authoritarian vision. It’s a review of the Burroughs biography, Call Me Burroughs: A Life.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Lawn, Patio & Garden. Browse and save. Summer is coming!

Also, deals on Bestsellers in Kitchen & Dining.

Plus, top Kids & Family titles in Entertainment.

2014: Wargaming The Senate. “Would Harry Reid make an excellent Senate minority leader? Indeed he would.”

TWEET OF THE DAY: Obama’s legacy may be that he rescued George W. Bush’s legacy.

SO IN 2009, NPR ASKED: Is Obama The Most Athletic President Ever?

I think we can safely say no, now.

Can somebody send him a copy of Mark Rippetoe’s book? Please?

UPDATE: Hey, at least Obama isn’t always going around with his nose in a book, like George W. Bush.

ANOTHER UNIVERSITY DEFENDS ANOTHER LAWSUIT OVER SEXUAL ASSAULT KANGAROO COURTS: Drew University: Our sex assault investigation wasn’t biased against men.

Student Kevin Parisi was never charged with any crime related to the sex assault claim, and the school ultimately found him not responsible. His accuser notified police of the alleged sexual assault, but then never came to police headquarters to give a further statement, and the case was eventually closed, police have told NJ.com.

But he alleges in a federal lawsuit Drew’s investigation derailed his academic career, and his prospects for a good life secured by a college education. . . .

Treatment of those accused of sexual misconduct, he alleges in the suit, is inherently biased against men since more men than women face such allegations.

“Male respondents in sexual misconduct cases at defendant Drew are discriminated against solely on the basis of sex. They are invariably subjected to discipline without the benefit of due process,” he says in his suit. . . .

Parisi’s lawsuit, in addition to alleging sexual discrimination, also names his accuser and her boyfriend — whom he says lied about a consensual night of sex Parisi and the accuser had after she and her boyfriend split up. The accuser had hoped to return to her boyfriend and didn’t want him to know about the sex, he says. Parisi says his accuser admitted as much to a close friend, and tried to get that friend to lie as well.

These lawsuits seem to be a growth industry. If I were a plaintiff’s lawyer in a college town, I’d be putting ads on park benches: FALSELY ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT? SUE THE B*ST*RDS!

JAMES TARANTO: ‘Suck It Up and Salute:’ Bergdahl, Kerry and the left’s view of the military.

“If I’ve lost Neuman, I’ve lost Middle America.” That’s how we imagine President Obama reacting to being scathed by MAD magazine. The Usual Gang of Idiots tweeted a parody poster yesterday for “Barack Obama’s Unfortunate New Movie,” titled “Trading Private Bergdahl.” The tag line: “They got five Taliban leaders. We got one deserting weasel. The mission is a disaster.” Obama is depicted as the lead actor, with the Taliban quintet in supporting roles. The picture is rated “NC” for “No Congressional Approval.”

How in the world did an administration known for political competence, if for no other kind, manage to pull off such a public-relations disaster? The answer is that the left has a very large blind spot when it comes to military culture. . . .

The Bergdahl deal, then, was a rare example of competent execution by this administration–albeit of a policy that was the product of atrocious judgment.

But the administration seems to have been taken completely by surprise by the hostile reaction to the deal’s purported upside, Bergdahl’s release. That Time report contains a clue as to why: “Obama’s move was an ultimate victory for those at the White House and the State Department who had previously argued the military should ‘suck it up and salute,’ says the official familiar with the debate.”

That would be John Kerry’s state department. There are some intriguing similarities between young Bergdahl and the young Kerry, as well as between the administration’s current adversity and that which faced Kerry when he ran for president in 2004.

Indeed.