JAMES TARANTO: ‘Speech Nuts:’ Does the left like anything in the Bill of Rights?

“The First Amendment has something in common with the Second Amendment,” writes the New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh: “Both are unusually broad legal guarantees that mark a difference between America and the rest of the world.”

Swells you up with patriotism, doesn’t it? (Or envy, if you’re from Canada, France or one of the other non-U.S. countries too numerous to mention.) But Sanneh means it as an invidious comparison. He writes: “Speech nuts, like gun nuts, have amassed plenty of arguments, but they—we—are driven, too, by a shared sensibility that can seem irrational by European standards.”

As that parenthetical “we” suggests, Sanneh’s essay—which is about free expression, and mentions the Second Amendment only for the sake of this comparison—is more nuanced than the “speech nuts” epithet might suggest. He counts himself among the nuts, but only equivocally: “Perhaps America’s First Amendment, like the Second, is ultimately a matter of national preference.”

One further similarity between the First and Second amendments is that these days the political left is relatively hostile to both. That’s long been true of the Second but is a relatively recent development with regard to the First. Although we were not reading the New Yorker in 1987—when, as now, it was America’s leading forum of middlebrow left-liberalism—we feel fairly confident in saying an article like this would not have appeared there then.

In those days, by and large, liberals were the “speech nuts,” and they reacted with outrage when conservatives argued that free expression had in some respects gone too far. In a 1971 law-review article, Robert Bork described pornography as “a problem of pollution of the moral and aesthetic atmosphere precisely analogous to smoke pollution.” The left pilloried him for that during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1987. By 2013, as we noted at the time, no less than the New York Times editorial page was demanding federal action against “polluting” speech (though not pornography).

To the left, civil rights are like a subway. When you reach your stop, you get off.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: DONALD TRUMP IS JUST LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA WHERE IT COUNTS.

Really? Do tell.

GENDER EQUITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Bernie Sanders’ Equal Pay Hypocrisy.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: GAO Employees Indicted for School Lunch Fraud.

Five employees with the Government Accountability Office, and one GAO employee’s spouse, were indicted Tuesday for working to illegally obtain reduced-price lunches for their children.

The indictment resulted from the legislative branch agency’s own investigation into the school meals program, which found that some of the GAO’s employees applied for the program and underreported their income to gain access to the reduced-price lunches. After the agency discovered the illegal activity, the GAO reported applications to the agency’s Inspector General.

“There is no excuse for stealing funds intended to go to children whose parents cannot afford the school lunches,” Maryland’s Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said in a news release announcing the indictment. “Their actions are made even worse by the fact that some of them claimed to have not just low income, but no income at all, even though they were working full-time jobs at the GAO.”

The GAO, which notes on its website that it is often referred to as the “congressional watchdog,” investigates federal spending. GAO spokesman Chuck Young wrote in an email to CQ Roll Call that GAO employees were “both disappointed and surprised” to learn that their colleagues were potentially committing fraud.

Well, I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

NEWSWEEK: THE POW-MIA FLAG IS TOTALLY RACIST: “It’s Tuesday, so you know what that means: it’s time to get outraged about something stupid and inconsequential,” Sean Davis wrote yesterday at the Federalist in response:

If you’re wondering where the proof is of the POW-MIA flag’s racist heritage, you’re not alone. It turns out there is none, nor does the author attempt to make anything approaching an argument on the topic. At least outlets like Salon and Slate humor their readers with convoluted arguments that make no sense. Newsweek, accurately realizing that it’s probably not worth the effort to cobble together anything approaching coherent content for what’s left of its dwindling readership, apparently figured that stupid headlines are even cheaper to produce than stupid articles.

Since late 2007, when Barack Obama overtook Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential campaign, it’s been obvious that anyone or anything can be temporarily weaponized as racist. Bill, Hillary, and even their rank-and-file Democratic primary voters were declared racist in 2007 in 2008; this year, Bill and Hillary are being offered a ticket back to the White House in 2017. (Engraved by those who declared “Hillary ‘White Power Clinton” as “spouting Klan-style talking points” in 2008.) John McCain was declared racist in 2008, and then welcomed back to polite society as soon as he returned to bashing his fellow Republicans. Mitt Romney was smeared as racist, and then once the 2012 campaign was over, was seen as the GOP’s sane, sensible elder statesman. Words such as “golf” and “Chicago” were declared racist until they weren’t. And now, for no particular reason other than click bait, the POW-MIA flag is racist.

I hope Democrats understand that implications of their scorched earth campaign, which has long since denuded the R-word of the sting it once carried: Ultimately, if everything is potentially racist, then in reality, nothing is.

THE PLIGHT OF THE UNARMED PERPETRATOR: Neo-Neocon responds to a recent post by Power Line’s John Hinderaker:

One effect of the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie is to tell would-be perpetrators that they’re better off defying a cop than surrendering, because it won’t help them to put their hands up since the cop will shoot them anyway. So the covert message is that they may as well try to attack the police officer (or run), who would just as soon shoot them as not no matter what they do.

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER SIGN OF OBAMA’S LAME-DUCK WEAKNESS: Dems rally around Schumer despite Iran stance.

Related: Democrats’ Heir Apparent Looks Past Obama Era on Iran Deal.

KEEP ROCKIN’! Actual tweet by the L.A. Times: “Dozens arrested overnight in Ferguson, but no violence other than frozen water bottles, rocks.”

So other than throwing rocks* at the police, there was little need for the arrests last night of the “relatively peaceful” protestors.

And really, other than that minor attack on Pearl Harbor, there was little need for America to enter World War II.

Fox Butterfield, call your office — and you keep rockin’!, L.A. Times.

RELATED: “With the Help of a Tea Party Group, This Ferguson Woman Is Rebuilding Her Shop. One Year Later, It Was Robbed After New Protests,” the Daily Signal reports.

And at the London Daily Mail, video of the moment when a mostly peaceful Ferguson protester ‘pulled a gun from his waistband minutes before he was shot by cops.’

* I would imagine a frozen water bottle could make a rather painful projectile upon impact to the face as well if thrown with sufficient force.

BERNIE SANDERS DOESN’T HAVE A BLACK LIVES MATTER PROBLEM. HE HAS A GEORGE SOROS PROBLEM: Readers School Politico Writer on Real Reason for Sanders BLM ‘Problem.’ “Seems a bit odd it hasn’t happened to Hillary, doesn’t it?”

AIRBRUSH: “State by State, Democratic Party Is Erasing Ties to Jefferson and Jackson.”

WELL PAINT ME GREEN AND CALL ME ESMERALDA: Hillary Clinton agrees to provide private e-mail server to FBI. You mean that server is not pining for the fjords?

POLL: Bernie Sanders surges ahead of Hillary Clinton in N.H., 44-37. “Sanders leads Clinton 44-37 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, the first time the heavily favored Clinton has trailed in the 2016 primary campaign, according to the poll of 442 Granite-Staters. Vice President Joe Biden got 9 percent support in the test primary match-up. The other announced Democrats in the race, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and former Virginia Gov. Jim Webb, barely register at 1 percent or below.”

HOW LONG ARE THEY LIKELY TO NEED AFTER ALL? Sweden: The Defense that Disappeared.

According to a 2013 statement by Sweden’s Supreme Commander Sverker Göransson, Sweden can, at best and in five years, defend itself in one place for one week.

This is what happens when you rely on other people for your defense.

A SUFFICIENTLY ACCURATE PARODY CAN LAND YOU IN TROUBLE: Tangent Online Special: Androgyny Destroys SF Review of Lightspeed. Considering how the social justice devotees behave in science fiction and the things they say in all seriousness, it’s almost impossible to be so outrageous that parody is obvious.  Which means this issue got strange reactions.  So, laugh or cry for what it’s worth.

YEAH, I SPOTTED THAT TOO: The Doublethink Strategy of the Cultural Elitists. Remember that politics is downstream from culture.  This is a war we also must fight.

LISTEN AND LEARN: Claire McCaskill: How I Helped Todd Akin Win — So I Could Beat Him Later.

IT JUST GETS WORSE: ‘Top Secret’ emails found as Clinton probe expands to key aides.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: In Canada, Roosh V’s Crackpot Critics Have Got It All Wrong. “Truth be told, my research team is divided on the subject of Roosh, which is why I found it interesting that my most liberal colleague was the one who stepped up to do the work on this article. He didn’t say why, but I suspect he did it for the same reason I’m writing this article: because he’s more worried about a world where ideas cannot get their day in court than anything Roosh V writes on his blog.”

AT AMAZON, build your own Nerf Blaster.

At Amazon, Fall Denim Deals.

BADASS OF THE MONTH: Australian man involved in a shark attack beats shark to death with his own severed leg. Maybe it’s true.

RUBEN NAVARRETTE: Grossed Out: I Don’t Know If I’m Pro-Choice After Planned Parenthood Videos. For the last 30 years, I’ve supported abortion rights. This year may be different. “It’s jarring to see doctors acting as negotiators as they dicker over the price of a fetal liver, heart, or brain, and then talk about how they meticulously go to the trouble of not crushing the most valuable body parts. This practice is perfectly legal, and for some people, it is just a business. With millions of abortions each year in America, business is good.”

JON GABRIEL: Scott Walker and a ‘Return to Normalcy.’

This isn’t the first time a politician listed “aggressively normal” as a selling point. In 1920, America’s political climate was in even greater tumult than today’s. President Wilson had fundamentally transformed the federal government into an oppressive entity that regularly jailed detractors, instituted a then-unimaginable level of regulation, and created the first income tax. Our battered soldiers returned from the charnel houses of Europe to find an executive branch pushing for an even more robust internationalism. By the time the president was incapacitated by stroke (a fact hidden for months), most Americans had had enough.

In a field of flashy candidates, a dull Midwesterner caught the zeitgeist by calling for a “Return to Normalcy”:

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding’s promise of a boring four years delivered a landslide victory from an exhausted electorate. After dying in office he was replaced by our dullest president, Calvin Coolidge, who was succeeded by a third steady hand, Herbert Hoover.

In many ways Walker is the heir to Silent Cal; a leader focused on concrete results with minimal rhetoric and even less drama.

Glamour got us into this fix.

SO HOW MUCH MONEY DOES MARK HALPERIN GET? No, North Korea did not offer support for ‘noted scholar’ Donald Trump. To be fair, an awful lot of people have been fooled by this fake Twitter feed.

FRANK J. FLEMING’S Superego is the Audible Deal Of The Day.

IS SOUTHERN CULTURE A THING OF THE PAST? Football, Faith, and Flannery O’Connor: A Love Letter to the South is the new eBook by frequent PJM contributor Chris Queen.