‘HOW IS THIS NOT RACIST?’ WaPo gives airtime to blatant bigotry about Bobby Jindal.

“And incidentally, if you think Jindal’s having it tough from WaPo today, wait until Nikki Haley starts creeping up the VP ranks,” Allahpundit warns at Hot Air. “Jindal retains his identifiably Indian surname and his wife is Indian-American; Haley’s husband is white and she took his Anglophone surname in marriage, so she’s extra inauthentic ‘n stuff. And candidly, she’s much more of a threat to Democrats politically than Jindal is at the moment: His polling right now is pitiful whereas she’s a legit contender to balance the GOP ticket against Hillary, especially after yesterday.”

FRANCO STILL DEAD, IRAN STILL A STATE SPONSOR OF TERRORISM. The State Department released a report accurately describing Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The White House has yet to fully address why an Iranian government, when it receives the estimated $150 billion windfall from unfrozen assets that’s to follow sanctions relief plus the benefits of reopened trade, will not significantly increase its terror-sponsorship in the short term.

That is a bit of a hitch. Any “deal” that Washington and Tehran might theoretically cobble together won’t even begin to address this. The Iranian regime wouldn’t even sign it, let alone honor it.

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? “Britain faces FREEZING winters as slump in solar activity threatens ‘little Ice Age.'”

A couple of years ago, someone astutely mashed up video of the late climate scientist (read socialist political activist) Dr. Stephen Schneider appearing on Leonard Nimoy’s old In Search Of series in 1978 to scare the bejesus out of Nimoy’s viewers by forecasting intense global cooling, followed by a shot of Schneider in 2008 scaring viewers by forecasting intense global warming. (Peter Gwynne, who wrote Newsweek’s 1975 article on global cooling and in recent years recanted his story of arctic doom was similarly called out last year by Breitbart’com’s James Delingpole.) I wonder if we’ll able to do a triple-play if this latest round of global cooling speculation continues?

(Headline via one of Glenn Reynolds’ recurring Insta-leitmotifs.)

Update: The whole “In Search of the Coming Ice Age” segment is online at YouTube, and is yet another classic example of 45 years of climate psychosis that today seems straight out of Reefer Madness. (H/T: James Lileks.)

A NEW REFERENDUM IN MOSCOW. Muscovites may soon vote in their first referendum since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the issues they’ll be deciding is whether or not they should re-install a statue of the monstrous idealogue Iron Felix who founded the Cheka, the secret police that later became the KGB.

Here’s to hoping it goes down in a landslide, but if they think that sort of thing is a good idea, they deserve what they’re going to get. They’ll be giving Vladimir Putin permission to crank up the whole operation all over again. (Not that he needs their permission.)

GOING AFTER HATE SPEECH. I’ll be on FOX News’s The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly in about 30 minutes (roughly 9:20 p.m. EDT) to talk about the constitutionality of prosecuting individuals for hate speech. Those of you who have cable can stream it on FOX’s website. You can also join in on Twitter by tweeting with us at @megynkelly and @glukianoff.

A MAYORAL CAMPAIGN OF HATE. George Galloway, the loudmouth former member of Britain’s parliament who declared the town of Bradford an “Israel-free zone,” is running for mayor of London.

ARE CARRIER GROUPS, FIGHTER WINGS, AND INFANTRY DIVISIONS ANACHRONISTIC IN FUTURE WARFARE? Of course not, says former Marine, Reagan assistant secretary of defense and best-selling author Bing West at the Hoover Institute. “Having thrown a few bouquets, let me now raise two looming challenges: our force structure such as carriers and fighter wings is decreasing at a perilous rate, while our operational command procedures are becoming too centralized.”

Read the whole thing. As Moe Lane joked last year, “Attention, whoever in the White House monitors this site. Google ‘Lyndon Johnson micromanagement Vietnam.’” Obviously, they never did — unless the now famously ahistoric Obama administration considers LBJ’s military mismanagement to be a how-to guide, and not a warning.

“VERY OFFENSIVE. VENDORS SHOULD STOP SELLING THE WASHINGTON POST:”

Well played, @gabrielmalor. pic.twitter.com/LjzQnZr6mu

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 23, 2015

FASTER, PLEASE. Syrian Kurds are closing in on the ISIS capital in Raqqa. They were initially concerned with just reclaiming and holding onto their territory, but offense is often the best defense, and it looks like they’re up to the job. If we want to back proxies over there, forget whatever’s left of the Free Syrian Army. The Kurds are it.

WHAT THE FUSS IS ALL ABOUT. You may have heard that Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, is stirring up megacontroversies with his new book, Ally, about the relationship between the Jewish state and America, and for his comments on President Barack Obama.

I know him personally and have read his first two books, Six Days of War, and Power, Faith and Fantasy. He appears in my own book, The Road to Fatima Gate. I can vouch for him as a brilliant historian and an eminently reasonable person. He’s precisely the kind of individual you’d want as a diplomat.

But don’t take my word for it. Read what he has to say for yourself, starting with his essay in Foreign Policy magazine.

Understanding Obama’s worldview was crucial to my job as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Right after entering office in June 2009, I devoted months to studying the new president, poring over his speeches, interviews, press releases, and memoirs, and meeting with many of his friends and supporters. The purpose of this self-taught course — Obama 101, I called it — was to get to the point where the president could no longer surprise me. And over the next four years I rarely was, especially on Muslim and Middle Eastern issues.

One need not wallow in silly conspiracy theories like Obama being a secret Muslim (Oren certainly doesn’t) to write something that’s critical, reasonable, and accurate. We all have our flaws and our blind spots. That includes every president we’ve ever had, even the current one.

IS OBAMA DISAPPOINTED BY THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE IN CHARLESTON?

Perhaps we could narrow things down by listing which regions of the world haven’t disappointed the president.

RAND PAUL: Confederate Flag “Inescapably A Symbol Of Human Bondage And Slavery”

“There have been people who have used it for southern pride and heritage and all of that but really to, I think, to every African-American in the country it’s a symbolism of slavery to them and now it’s a symbol of murder for this young man and so I think it’s time to put it in a museum.”

UH-OH: HILLARY CLINTON CONFEDERATE FLAG PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MERCHANDISE SURFACES ON EBAY.

BABY KILLERS: ISIS crucifies two children for eating during Ramadan when they were supposed to be fasting.

I have no idea how many people strictly observe Ramadan in the Syrian hinterlands when the threat of crucifixion doesn’t hang over their heads. I lived in Beirut during Ramadan, though. Restaurants were a little less busy, but plenty of people were eating. And I lived on the Muslim side of the city, not the Christian side.

CREATING GUN-FREE FREE-FIRE ZONES: Charleston shooting prompts gun-rights supporters to call for more concealed-carry at churches

He was a young gunman bent on shooting as many worshippers as possible, but Matthew J. Murray never got as far as Dylann Roof, the suspect in Wednesday’s South Carolina church massacre.

Murray had already shot and killed two people in the parking lot when he burst into the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Before he could pull the trigger again, however, the 24-year-old shooter was gunned down by Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard with a concealed-carry permit.

That was eight years ago, but even though Ms. Assam was credited for saving as many as 100 lives that day, a dozen states continue to restrict the carrying of concealed firearms in churches — including South Carolina.

Just because the argument that fake “Gun Free Zones” invite crazed and evil killers by advertising the defenselessness of the persons therein is oft-repeated after each outrageous attack on a fake “Gun Free Zone” makes it no less valid. Increasing the risk for crazed or evil killers is likely to be a more effective response to mass shootings than eliminating offensive flags, as they are rarely so crazy that they can’t locate a nearby fake “Gun-Free Zone.” (For a recent exception, see the evil Garland Texas mass shooter wannabes.) But this assumes one truly cares about preventing rather than exploiting mass shootings.

CAL WATCHDOG: FARMWORKERS RESIST STATE AGENCY ‘IN CAHOOTS’ WITH UNION: “In a turnabout for California’s storied history of migrant labor, Latino field hands are fighting to get the United Farm Workers, the union that carries on the legacy of founder Cesar Chavez, out of their lives and pockets.”

Considering how Chavez spent his last days, at least according to the Atlantic, that seems wise.

HOW KICKSTARTER IS BEING USED TO FUND the Second Wind of the Paper-and-Pen Role-Playing Game Industry: from Moe Lane at PJ Lifestyle blog.

MICHAEL OREN FINALLY REVEALS THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA AND ISRAEL, AND LEFTIST JEWS CAN’T STAND IT, Ron Radosh writes at PJM.

“CONGRATULATIONS! YOU OPPOSE THE CONFEDERATE FLAG. NOW WHAT? “I can’t help but notice that no one is calling to rename the Woodrow Wilson bridge right by my house, even though Wilson’s racism was personal, political, focused on eugenics and far more recent than any Civil War-era leader,” Mollie Hemingway writes at the Federalist.

Plus this: “I wouldn’t put Confederate kitsch up in my house, but mainstream media figure Claire Shipman and former Obama press secretary Jay Carney put up Communist kitsch in their house. There is something intriguing about how the elite left tolerates art celebrating those who killed 100 million people in the last century, but seeks the erasure of anything associated with the Confederacy.”

SO WHAT IS AILING THE AMERICAN LAWYER?  In my new book I divide the causes into four different “deaths,” in homage to the late, great Larry Ribstein’s famous article “The Death of Big Law:” death from above, death from below, death from the state, and death from the side.

“Death from above” assesses the challenges facing Big Law.  Big Law grew exponentially in size, revenues and profits between 1950 and 2008.  But what goes up eventually goes down, and corporations grew tired of seeing the price of legal work outrun inflation.  Clients responded by pressing for more fixed price billing and using a combination of insourcing, outsourcing, and computerization for more straightforward legal work.

Paradoxically, clients have continued to pay more for true “bet the company” transactional and litigation work.  This is why the post-2011 uptick in revenues and profits have accrued almost exclusively to the richest, “best” firms: clients will pay ever more for specialized work (think of the Apple-Samsung litigation), but ever less for less complicated, more rote work.  Big Law is living out Matthew 25:29 – “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance.  Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

“Death from below” applies Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive technologies to describe how computerization is replacing bread and butter legal work.  LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, and others are horning in on traditional areas of practice like drafting incorporation papers and wills.  Websites offering free or very inexpensive legal advice have also proliferated.  So far, these websites are harvesting only the lowest hanging fruit, offering the equivalent of pre-made forms.  Over time increased volume and the feedback loop of the internet economy will make these products more sophisticated and an even bigger threat to lawyers.

“Death from the state” argues that courts and legislatures have successfully reined in litigation since the 1980s.  Regardless of whether you think this is great or bad policy, it is clear that tort reform has made tort law less lucrative for all the lawyers involved.

“Death from the side” tell us why there has been a thirty-year decline in solo practitioner earnings.  Duh, there are too many lawyers and too many law grads.  A recent comparison of the number of Juris Doctor holders, the number of licensed lawyers (not all of whom work as a lawyer), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) estimate for the actual number of lawyers reveals that since the 1980s JD holders have vastly outnumbered practicing lawyers.  If the BLS count is right, almost half of the individuals who earned a JD in the last 40 years are not working as lawyers.  During the same period NALP data shows that roughly 1 in 3 law school graduates were unable to find work that required a JD.  And note that law school graduates who do not practice law earn less and are less satisfied with their careers than their lawyer counterparts, so don’t get me started on “you can do anything with a law degree.”

THE MAN WHO CREATED THE PINK PLASTIC FLAMINGO — the Official City Bird of Madison, Wisconsin — Donald Featherstone has died. Featherstone was an important figure in Leominster, Massachusetts, where he worked for Union Products for 43 years and, with his wife Nancy, dressed in matching (often flamingo-patterned) clothes for 35 years, but he was important, too, in Madison, where citizens will never forget that day in 1979 when the Pail & Shovel Party installed 1,008 plastic flamingos on the hill in the center of the University of Wisconsin campus to celebrate the victory in the student government election of candidates who said they’d convert the budget to pennies and dump them Library Mall to be scooped up by students using pails and shovels. As one of the winning candidates said: “The student government at that time consisted of the self-appointed descendants of the superstar leftists of the sixties…. It was very closed, very humorless and extraordinarily serious.” That’s what the flamingos mean to us here: Resisting humorless politics since 1979.

VIDEO: HUGH HEWITT VISITS HUFFPO: “According to Hewitt, Texas Senator Ted Cruz is in the best position to win the Republican nomination due to a favorable election calendar and deep support on social media.”

On the other hand, Hugh giveth and he taketh away; his new book is titled The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second “Clinton Era,” which Hugh appears to argue could be a foregone conclusion based on the Electoral College numbers. If so, Hugh tells the at times swarmy Huffington Post interviewer Josh Zepps that once elected, Hillary will nominate Kirsten Gillibrand to the Supreme Court.

What could go wrong?

SUSETTE KELO’S HISTORIC FIGHT AGAINST THE GOVT’S EMINENT DOMAIN ABUSE COMING TO BIG SCREEN: As Randy mentioned earlier today, June 23 marks the 10th anniversary of the infamous Kelo decision. Fittingly, Ted and Courtney Balaker of Korchula Productions, who you may remember from my post yesterday, are excited to announce that their feature narrative, LITTLE PINK HOUSE, is fully funded and filming is scheduled for September! If you have a second, please show Ted, Courtney, and Susette your support by liking the film on Facebook and signing up for email updates. (Then make sure to do the same, here and here, for CAN WE TAKE A JOKE?, the forthcoming feature documentary about comedians and free speech that stars Adam Carolla, Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli, and many others, including me!)

HERE ARE SOME TOP NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS JOKING ABOUT MASS KILLINGS: “Asked by email about his part in staging the photos, [former Times editor Bill Keller] responded: ‘This is what journalists did with their childish impulses before there was Gawker.’”

They were simply taking a cue from their publisher, who according to the New Yorker, was joking about murder long ago.