THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY . . . Judge Rules For Polygamists in Sister Wives Case.

WELL, THAT’S CHARMING: Woman Jailed For Falsely Accusing Grandfather of Rape In Bid To Get Her Inheritance Early. “She eventually admitted she had made up the sex attack claims – but only after her innocent grandfather had spent time in a police cell following the allegations.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “And just think, Wendy ‘Abortion Barbie’ Davis, dem candidate for Texas governor, wants to remove the statute of limitations for rape prosecutions.”

FIGHTING FOR LEGROOM AT 40,000 FEET.

As I have mentioned before on various incarnations of my blog, I’m 6-foot-2 and all leg, so I’m very sympathetic to folks who complain about legroom. However, like many tall people, I also have a bad back, so I’m very sympathetic to folks who want to recline their seats. Heck, I’m even sympathetic to the airlines that are cramming people into planes with the wild abandon of college freshmen filling their trunks for summer break.

But it’s hard to sympathize with anyone in this story: United Airlines diverted a flight after a passenger used a “knee defender,” apparently in violation of United’s clear policy, and refused to remove it when the flight attendant told him to … and the traveler who was thus prevented from reclining threw a cup of water at him. . . .

Air travel is marvelously cheap and convenient these days, but part of making it so cheap and convenient is cramming lots of people into a very small aluminum tube with as little fuss as possible. This calls for greater self-restraint and politeness, not the unleashing of all the pent-up rage lurking in the reptilian recesses of our brains. Everyone in this story should be ashamed of themselves, except the hapless fellow passengers who were subjected to this collective tantrum. Unfortunately, if experience is any guide, the offending parties probably feel more self-righteous and justified than ever.

Indeed.

THIS HAS WORKED SO WELL FOR BRITAIN: White House considers proposals to sharply increase legal immigration.

WANT RELIGIOUS FREEDOM? GET A REPUTATION FOR KILLING PEOPLE WHO OFFEND YOURS: Eugene Volokh On A Sixth Circuit Debacle: Thuggery wins, free speech rights lose. May Judges Donald and Mays have joy of the incentive for thuggery they have created in this shamefully awful opinion.

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NEW YORK POST: IRS back-up baloney.

Some 15 months after Americans learned about the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, we still have no clue how such an abuse was allowed to happen. And every day, the story only gets murkier.

This week, for instance, a government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, said administration officials admitted that all the “missing” e-mails belonging to Lois Lerner (the woman at the heart of the scandal) had been backed up after all — as part of a practice to back up all the government’s e-mails.

No government official had said anything like that before.

As House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., describes it, these reports are another part of “what’s emerging to be just an amazing sequence of cover-up, delay, denial. ”

An administration official later denied it had said anything new to Judicial Watch and claimed the group was mischaracterizing the facts. The problem for Americans is that the government’s story has always seemed incredible — so why believe anything it says now?

There’s more: According to a sworn declaration, Lerner had two Blackberries, one of which contained all of the e-mails that would have been sent to her crashed computer.

But that Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012” — even after the hard drive “crash” and months after an initial congressional inquiry. How did that happen?

Not by accident.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Quoting Al Sharpton Is Racist, Because He’s Black And He Represents All Black People On Earth.

YASMIN ALIBHAI BROWN: The Rotherham child abuse scandal is a tale of apologists, misogyny and double standards.

BRITAIN: British jihadists should be stripped of citizenship says top police officer.

British jihadists fighting abroad should be stripped of their citizenship and banned from returning home, the country’s most senior police officer has said.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, also vowed tougher action against preachers of hate and other extremists who take to the streets to air their air their rants.

The senior officer became the latest senior figure to call for a change in the law to combat the threat of home grown Islamist fanatics.

He also backed Boris Johnson’s demands for those returning from Syria or Iraq to be presumed as terrorists unless they can prove their innocence.

Hmm. Related: Norway considers revoking citizenship of people who take part in terror activities or wars abroad – echoing the call of Boris Johnson.

Prediction: There’ll be more citizenship-stripping in the future, as European countries come to regret their openness to immigrants who have no interest in assimilating.

FEDS: Russian Hackers Attacking US Banks.

STEVEN HAYWARD: Is The Left Approaching A Kool-Aid Moment? “I guess this is what happens when you run out of other people’s money: thieves fall out among themselves on how to divide up the dwindling spoils. Should be fun to watch. Almost as much fun as watching Argentina thrash around—once the fourth richest nation in the world a century ago before the country caught the socialist bug. Maybe it was just bad luck, like those decades of Soviet grain harvests.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: National debt has doubled since financial crisis: budget office. “The federal debt this year will be double what it was before the financial crisis, Congress’ official budget scorekeeper projected Wednesday morning. The debt is on pace to reach 74 percent of the country’s economic output by the end of the year, double what it was in 2007 and the highest percentage since 1950, according to the Congressional Budget Office.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “In an effort to address sexual assault, college campuses are on the verge of entering into an Orwellian nightmare.”

HOW ABOUT WE END FEDERAL FUNDING TO LOCAL POLICE INSTEAD: McCaskill Comment Reinforces Mark Levin’s Warning Regarding Nationalization of Local Police.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Will IRS’s Strategy of Destroying Evidence Pay Off?

CIVIL RIGHTS NEWS: Eugene Volokh: The 10 most practically significant — yet potentially legally vulnerable — restrictions on availability of guns for self-defense.

#ROTHERHAM FOLLOWUP FROM BREITBART LONDON: Muslim Gang Rapists are Springing Up Everywhere. Why Can’t We Be Honest About It? Because it would blow the narrative. As honesty typically does. . . . “It is difficult to overstate how awful these crimes were, nor how completely victims were failed by the authorities. One girl was doused in petrol and told she would be set on fire if she didn’t comply. Others were forced to watch rapes and told they would be next if they spoke out. The police regarded these girls with as much contempt as the rapists. . . . The political Left shrieks blue murder over the slightest indication of overbearing male behaviour when it’s a white man. The tone-deaf ‘Everyday Sexism’ project is a weapon wielded almost exclusively at white middle-class men by white middle-class women. But it makes excuses for rapists and even child abusers when the criminals are black, or, especially, from a Muslim community.”

ED DRISCOLL: Video: ‘Yeah, I’m With the Media. Screw You.’

LOVE CONQUERS ALL: Boston Marathon Bombing Survivor James Costello Weds Nurse He Met During Recovery.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Across the Country, the Federal Government Fights For Muslim Worship Spaces. “If an administration could be shown to consistently favor one religion over others, would that constitute a violation of the First Amendment? Of course. But, as with so many other Obama administration scandals, long before the judicial system could even begin to address the issue on its merits, the malefactors will be long gone.”

UPDATE: Reader Eric Rassbach from the Becket Fund says this is wrong:

I hold no brief for the federal government – the Becket Fund is the firm that beat DOJ at the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case last Term and in the Hosanna-Tabor case two years before that. And we have a number of other religious liberty lawsuits pending against DOJ right now, including the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College cases.

So I am not writing because I think DOJ does a good job protecting religious freedom—far from it. But RLUIPA land use litigation is one area where DOJ gets it largely right. If you look at this somewhat incomplete list, you will see that DOJ has a pretty good cross-section of religious land use cases, including Jewish, Christian, and Muslim houses of worship:

http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/hce/caselist.php#rluipa

DOJ has taken the side of rabbinical schools in Rockland County, NY, and Baptist churches in Arizona, among many others. So it is inaccurate to characterize DOJ’s RLUIPA work as focusing only or primarily on Muslims, as your posts do. And since this is one area of religious liberty law where DOJ gets it mostly right, I don’t think you will advance the religious liberty of any group – Christians, Jews, Muslims, or non-believers – by painting an inaccurate picture of how RLUIPA works, or how it has been enforced. In fact you are more likely to increase your readers’ opposition to religious liberty statutes like RLUIPA that are good for our country, not least because they restrict government power.

I stand corrected.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Hello Kitty is not a cat. Everything is a lie. “Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”

EUROPE IS HAVING A BAD YEAR: Two European Navigation Satellites Placed In Wrong Orbits.

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THEY FIGURE NOBODY’S PAYING ATTENTION ANYMORE: Russia Hardly Even Trying to Disguise ‘Stealth’ Invasion of Ukraine.