FOOD EXPIRATION DATES: They’re more of a guideline, really.

SO I GUESS DONALD TRUMP HAS STARTED ONE OF THOSE “NATIONAL CONVERSATIONS” PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS CALLING FOR, ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME: Top Dem Steny Hoyer To Sanctuary Cities: Inform Feds About Felons.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMAN ON THE PLANE WHO YELLED AT MY BABY: To be honest, as someone who doesn’t have kids and can get a little irritable when trapped in a tiny coach seat on a long flight, I’m sympathetic to both sides of the argument.

VIDEO: DC RESIDENTS SAY TAKE DOWN JEFFERSON MEMORIAL, RENAME WASHINGTON, DC:

“It should come down,” one D.C. resident told PJ Media, referencing the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.

“If we do that, though, George Washington owned slaves. Should we rename Washington, D.C.?” he was asked.

“You have to draw the line at some point, I guess, maybe take a poll across the country and see what people think about it and if they want to rename the city, do it,” he said. “I would support changing the American flag as well. America is based on a lot of mass killings and slavery and the history is just – look at the Germans, they own up to the Holocaust, nobody is proud of their history. Americans, at least, you should not be proud of any mass killing. You should not be proud of anything wrong that’s been done in the past or any symbols that represent that and that’s all.”

Leave no black armband behind.

RELATED: Perhaps it’s time to rename the Washington Post, considering its namesake’s background. Either that or admit, as Marc Thiessen does within its pages that “Our country is in a miasma of political correctness,” and that “The recent criticism of the Confederate flag is really not about a flag — it is about the people of the South. It is driven by the notion that most Southerners are a bunch of racists who agree with the Charleston shooter’s murderous actions. As we saw after the shooting, nothing could be further from the truth.”

UPDATE: Heh, indeed:™

https://twitter.com/cfraizer/status/618548401651773440

SO HOW MANY STORIES LIKE THIS ARE THERE? Previously-Deported Illegal Alien Charged With Murdering Washington Woman And Her Son.

“SHUNNED”: A FILM ABOUT PALESTINIAN GAYS AND LESBIANS IN ISRAEL:

See, in North America, we argue over whether or not bakeries should be compelled to bake gay wedding cakes. In much of the Muslim world, the gay rights issues are different: they debate whether to hang gays, as they do in Iran; or throw them off the tops of buildings, as they do in the new Islamic State.

Shunned shows western liberal audiences — who often condemn Israel, for trumped up “human rights offenses” — that when it comes to basic civil rights, Israel is miles ahead of any other country in the region.

Video at link.

WAPO OP-ED BLAMES AMY SCHUMER FOR ‘INSPIRING’ CHARLESTON SHOOTER:

All this time we were blaming the Confederate flag, it turns out comedienne Amy Schumer was the only who “inspired” Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof to murder nine African-Americans.

So argues a Washington Post op-ed written by Stacey Patton and David J. Leonard, who are regrettably both college professors. Titled “Don’t believe her defenders. Amy Schumer’s jokes are racist,” the pair rip apart Schumer for racial insensitivity in her comic material.

C’mon – it was really Sarah Palin’s clip art, wasn’t it? I bet it was the clip art.

UPDATE: “Turns out the writer sliming ‘racist’ Amy Schumer is a NASTY piece of work,” Twitchy notes, archiving her many deleted race-obsessed tweets.

No, free speech does not end when it touches something that offends you, and you have no equivalent right to silence those who are insensitive to your feelings.

No, you have no right to feel safe.

You have no constitutional right. You have no moral right. You have no right at all.  You have a right not to be physically harmed, but your feelings, just like everyone else’s, are fair game for bruising.  No one says you have to suffer in silence. Don’t like how your Columbia professor uses classic literature that “triggers” your unsafe feelz? Go to Dartmouth. Don’t like how other people on the internets call you stupid? Don’t be stupid. Or turn off the computer. Or only click on links to cute kitteh pics.

SECURITY: Proxy Services Are Totally Unsecure. Here Are Alternatives.

MSNBC’S LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: ‘ESSENTIAL TRUTH THAT WE’RE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW’

Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell gushed over Bernie Sanders’ authenticity and the consistently large crowds he has acquired in his speeches across the country. The July 6 edition of The Last Word featured a panel discussion which emphasized that the Vermont senator’s policies aren’t that far outside the mainstream.

O’Donnell asked former Vermont governor Howard Dean if Sanders has “managed to educate Vermonters to the essential truth that we’re all socialists now?”

Huh — Newsweek told me at the start of 2009 that newly minted President Barack Obama meant “We Are All Socialists Now:”

So how are seven years of those socialist policies working out for everyone?

RELATED: Video Flashback: Senator Obama Endorses Socialist Bernie Sanders For U.S. Senate.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Republican Rubio calls U.S. higher education system ‘cartel,’ urges overhaul.

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio on Tuesday called for an overhaul of the U.S. higher education system, saying colleges were operating as a “cartel” and were not meeting the needs of students or the economy.

“We do not need timid tweaks to the old system. We need a holistic overhaul,” Rubio said in a policy speech in Chicago. “We need to change how we provide degrees, how those degrees are accessed, how much that access costs, how those costs are paid, and even how those payments are determined.”

Well, he’s right.

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I EXPECTED: The Battle For Control of the Breast Milk Industry.

BOBBY JINDAL IN TIME: Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Would Both Turn Us Into Greece: You can’t make it impossible for business to thrive and expect the economy to grow.

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers find off switch for atherosclerosis.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Turns Out the EPA Didn’t Come Up with the Talking Points for Its Controversial Power Plant Program. “Newly-surfaced emails revealed that a prominent left-wing group played a large role in the creation of the talking points for the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial new power plant regulations.”

MICHAEL WALSH: Remember When Space Was ‘the Final Frontier’? The decline of NASA mirrors America’s own emasculated, downward spiral.

I dunno, space policy has actually been one of Obama’s more successful areas.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hollywood Resists Revealing Details Of Its Cozy Relationship With Mississippi AG Jim Hood, But Glimpses Come Out.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Eliminate Unfriendly AIs.

GOOGLE MUST APOLOGIZE FOR ITS HIGH-TECH BIGOTRY: Probing the Dark Side of Google’s Ad-Targeting System: Researchers say Google’s ad-targeting system sometimes makes troubling decisions based on data about gender and other personal characteristics. Uh, dude, that “dark side” thing is problematic.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Robots Build Large Structures With Brick and Concrete.

YA THINK?: The Washington Post editorializes, “U.S. Response to Iran’s Cheating is a Worrying Omen.”

If it is reached in the coming days, a nuclear deal with Iran will be, at best, an unsatisfying and risky compromise. Iran’s emergence as a threshold nuclear power, with the ability to produce a weapon quickly, will not be prevented; it will be postponed, by 10 to 15 years. In exchange, Tehran will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief it can use to revive its economy and fund the wars it is waging around the Middle East. . . .

That’s why a recent controversy over Iran’s compliance with the interim accord now governing its nuclear work is troubling. The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium, but required that amounts over a specified ceiling be converted into an oxide powder that cannot easily be further enriched. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran met the requirement for the total size of its stockpile on June 30, but it did so by converting some of its enriched uranium into a different oxide form, apparently because of problems with a plant set up to carry out the powder conversion.

Rather than publicly report this departure from the accord, the Obama administration chose to quietly accept it. When a respected independent think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, began pointing out the problem, the administration’s response was to rush to Iran’s defense — and heatedly attack the institute as well as a report in the New York Times.

When the United States is more interested in protecting and defending Iran and its nuclear “deal” than confronting Iran’s cheating behavior, it acts like an insecure, vulnerable spouse making excuses for a cheating husband/wife because fear prevents him/her from confronting the sad reality. If the U.S. looks the other way now, the precedent will be set, the cheating will continue, and predictably will become more brazen. No good can come from the Obama Administration’s tactic of sweeping such transgressions under the rug, and certainly not from attacking experts and officials who report the transgressions.

IT’S ONLY BECAUSE THE SCIENTISTS WERE WEARING THE WRONG SHIRTS: Don’t Believe the Hype About Life on Philae’s Comet.

RANKING THE STATES by fiscal condition. Tennessee does pretty well. New York, California, Illinois not so much. . .

SCIENCE: Researchers learn to measure aging process in young adults. “Most participants clustered around an aging rate of one year per year, but others were found to be aging as fast as three years per chronological year. Many were aging at zero years per year, in effect staying younger than their age.”

Measuring aging: Good. Slowing aging: Better. Reversing aging: Best. Faster, please.