PAUL RYAN ON IMMIGRATION: “Get serious about enforcing our laws.”

12 CLASSIC MOVIES TO WATCH WITH YOUR CHILDREN BEFORE THEY BECOME TEENAGERS: Curiously, the oldest movie namechecked in this PJM Parenting article is Star Wars from 1977. But I can remember watching The Wizard of Oz (in network reruns every year), the Hope and Crosby road movies (because my dad worshipped Crosby) and plenty of other pre-1960s movies with my parents.

Can kids no longer handle black and white movies or any films that pre-date the founding of Industrial Light & Magic?

IT’S POTEMKIN VEHICLES ALL THE WAY DOWN: VW’s emissions scandal spreads to gas-powered cars.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 909.

POLITICIZING TAYLOR SWIFT: Erick Erickson describes Red State readers outraged over Erickson taking his ten year old daughter to see Taylor Swift. “According to the emails and tweets, it was inappropriate for me to take my child to see her favorite singer because her favorite singer is supporting a Democrat:”

I just don’t get that attitude. Why must everything be politicized? In fact, Taylor Swift did not politicize her concert. There was no Hillary for President banner anywhere. It never came up. The only people I see politicizing anything are the people who declared I should not have gone.

That must be a miserable existence. I don’t know that any television show or movie or music, except for long dead Classical composers, would be acceptable if I limited myself based on the political affiliations of performers.

Then there are the people who get upset over where you shop. I’ve been criticized before for eating at Arby’s because of positions they’ve taken. Others are enraged by Chick-Fil-A.

Personally, I think life is too short to get upset by the fact that a singer might support a politician you don’t like especially when it’s not like the singer is in your face about it. And I don’t have enough time or energy to figure out the political leanings of the various grocery stores, restaurants, and other facilities I use.

Exactly — leave the politicized life to the left, who both invented the concept and all-too-frequently wallow deeply in it; as Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard once warned, “It’s hard work, politicizing your whole life.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What We’re Buying With $1 Trillion+ in Student Loans:

You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This is certifiable. College is too expensive, so have the government make it easier to finance — then keep shifting more and more of the cost burden to the government, without doing anything about the underlying cost inflation that is making it necessary for government to get into the finance business.

Obviously, this can’t go on indefinitely. The income-based-repayment programs are relatively new, so the government hasn’t yet been handed the bill for the loan forgiveness that will be necessary as we give people payment rates that are often less than the interest on the loan. But when the government gets that bill, people are going to notice that this is a costly business.

Over decades, the government has restructured the educational system to make it look more like the health-care system, with the costs paid by third parties while the service is consumed by individuals who have no incentive to think about price. The effects are predictable for both. . . .

Does college actually make people much more economically productive? Yes, yes, I know: People who go to college earn substantially more than people who don’t, and that earnings premium has been increasing in recent decades. But what, exactly, do they learn in college that makes them so much more productive? In certain technical professions, the answer is obvious; engineers and nurses do need to master the rudiments of their trade before they are unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

But that doesn’t describe the whole higher educational system. It doesn’t even seem to describe the majority of college degrees. Administrators defending the value of degrees in “business” or liberal arts rely on nebulous claims that they are teaching students “how to think.” However, they provide little objective evidence that these programs impart thinking skills worth tens of thousands of dollars.

There’s at least some evidence that a lot of the benefit of a college degree comes not from what you learn in college, but from signaling to employers that you are the kind of conscientious, hardworking student who can get into college and stick with it long enough to get a degree. In other words, much of what we do in school is not learn anything in particular, but obtain a credential that certifies us as good potential employees.

Do tell. If you understand the federal student aid system as a means for transferring money from taxpayers to an industry that’s basically a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, it makes more sense.

WHY WE NEED SPACE COLONIZATION: The Chilling Regularity Of Mass Extinctions.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

SO FILMS TITLED BODY HEAT, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, AND SOME LIKE IT HOT ALL GOT IT WRONG? Bloomberg News: Climate Change Kills the Mood: Economists Warn of Less Sex on a Warmer Planet:

Hot weather leads to diminished “coital frequency,” according to a new working paper put out by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Three economists studied 80 years of U.S. fertility and temperature data and found that when it’s hotter than 80 degrees F, a large decline in births follows within 10 months. Would-be parents tend not to make up for lost time in subsequent, cooler months.

An extra “hot day” (the economists use quotation marks with the phrase) leads to a 0.4 percent drop in birth rates nine months later, or  1,165 fewer deliveries across the U.S. A rebound in subsequent months makes up just 32 percent of the gap.

As John Hinderaker quips at Power Line, “People in places like Brazil and India don’t have much of a sex life; it’s too hot. It explains, too, why beautiful women are referred to as ‘cold,’ and why animals in the mood for sex are described as being ‘in cold.’ And why couples looking for a romantic rendezvous schedule trips to Lapland and Siberia rather than the Caribbean.”

Heh. And just as a reminder — in the 1970s, the twin concerns of the far left were overpopulation and global cooling:

In any case, while the arguments change, as Roger Kimball writes at the New Criterion, in an essay titled “Misanthropic nostalgia,” the goal remains the same: “No matter what the crisis, massive government intervention is always the answer.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, ANTISEMITISM EDITION: Israeli academic shouted down in lecture at University of Minnesota. “The protests were apparently organized by a group calling itself the ‘Anti-War Committee,’ which bragged on its Twitter feed about having disrupted the lecture and complained that the protesters’ ‘free speech’ rights were violated when a few were arrested.”

They’re not “anti-war,” they’re just on the other side. And they don’t care about free speech, or they wouldn’t be shouting down speakers. More evidence of the toxic environment on many campuses today.

THIS STORY IS BAD FOR THE NARRATIVE, SO THE NATIONAL MEDIA WILL LARGELY IGNORE IT: Kentucky’s New GOP Lt. Gov. Is Black Tea Party Activist. “Hampton’s path certainly represents triumph over adversity. Born in Detroit, the 57-year-old Hampton and her three sisters were raised by a single mom who lacked a high school education and couldn’t afford a television or a car. But Hampton was determined to better herself. She graduated with a degree in industrial engineering and worked for five years in the automobile industry to pay off her college loans. She then joined the Air Force, retiring as a Captain. She earned an MBA from the University of Rochester, moved to Kentucky and became a plant manager in a corrugated packaging plant. Then she lost her job in 2012. She used her free time to start a career in politics and becoming active in the Tea Party. She ran a losing race for state representative in 2014 but won an early endorsement from Senator Rand Paul. She was tapped by Bevin to be his running-mate earlier this year.”

Related: ObamaCare Loses Big In Kentucky. “Even some residents who are enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program or an exchange plan supported Bevin. Stanley and Deborah Harp, who own a business in Georgetown, Ky., were among Americans who saw their policies canceled after the Affordable Care Act went into effect. They now qualify for Medicaid, but they aren’t happy about it and they voted for Bevin.”

PENN STATE MORE INTERESTED IN POLITICS THAN IN SAVING A MALE STUDENT’S LIFE:

Pennsylvania State University appeared to be more concerned with federal pressure to “do something” about campus sexual assault than the life of one its students.

The student was found responsible using a process even the federal government has deemed unfair (more on that later) and suspended for two semesters. The problem is, the fourth-year architectural engineering student says that if the suspension is upheld he will be forced to return to war-torn Syria, where two members of his family have already been killed due to the civil war. . . .

The student in question was accused of sexual assault earlier this spring, months after a sexual encounter last December. The encounter, which occurred at a campus fraternity house, involved a young woman who went to the basement during a party, where Doe and two of his friends were, and performed oral sex on all three.

Doe says in his lawsuit that the woman initiated the encounter. She told the university that she had been too drunk to consent to such behavior. It was her sister that reported the encounter to police, but after an investigation, the police declined to file charges. The accuser then went to the school, which initiated its own investigation into the matter, using a single-investigator model of adjudication.

The single-investigator model used by Penn State replaced a hearing procedure where students could call witnesses and cross-examine their accuser. The new model employed by Penn State had one person interview the accuser, accused and any witnesses they provided, then present their findings to a hearing panel, without the students being able to participate.

The Education Department has deemed the single-investigator model to be unfair, as it creates conflicts of interest.

If it’s too unfair for the Department of Education, it’s too unfair. And shame on universities who care more about sucking up to federal educrats than they do about their own students. Which, sadly, seems to be nearly all of them.

JOHN PODHORETZ ON THE MEANING OF BEN CARSON’S STUNNING RISE:

The fact that together Trump and Carson are scoring 50 percent in the polls is remarkable only if it persists into the voting season. Trump’s lack of momentum may mean his supporters will be taking a second look around the GOP field. And Carson’s newly won supporters may only be weakly attached to him and ready to move elsewhere as they pay closer attention.

Republicans want a candidate they can believe in. But they also desperately want to win in November 2016. Political campaigns are courtships.

Most of those who are telling pollsters they support the outsiders are basically dating Trump and Carson. They’ll likely settle down with someone else.

Especially when as Steve Green writes, “Carson Feels the Burn Rate,” spending a large chunk of money to build his direct mail list, and as Steve warns, Carson’s “email fundraising efforts are strictly amateur hour… It’s no bold prediction that if Carson gets the nomination, Clinton’s high-tech, Google-powered machine will clean the floor with him.”

WASHINGTON POST: From coast to coast, conservatives score huge victories in off-year elections. “Even in San Francisco, the sheriff who steadfastly defended the city’s ‘sanctuary city’ policy went down.”

WELL, GOOD: Paul Ryan refuses to rule out riders on spending bill.

New Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday refused to rule out attaching legislative policy riders to an omnibus spending bill, foreshadowing a possible confrontation with President Obama next month.

“This is the legislative branch and the power of the purse rests within the legislative branch, and we fully expect that we’re going to exercise that power,” Ryan told reporters at his first news conference since he was elected Speaker last week.

Obama and congressional leaders struck a major deal last week that lifts sequester spending caps, sets spending levels and raises the debt ceiling for two years.

But House and Senate appropriators will need to pass an omnibus spending bill to prevent a government shutdown by Dec. 11. That’s when a stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, is set to expire.

Obama and Democrats are insisting on a clean spending bill, free of controversial policy riders or “poison pills.” But conservatives will be pressing their GOP leaders to attach a slew of amendments, including one to defund Planned Parenthood.

“Poison pills” means “provisions we don’t like.” I’d send Obama a lot of separate spending bills, and put the riders on legislation that his constituents need to pass. Go ahead, veto welfare spending or Department of Education funding. Make my day!

AND IT’S STILL ONLY 2015: 6 Of The Most Racist Things The Media Has Said About Marco Rubio.

WOW! TV REPORTER EXPLAINS SECOND AMENDMENT AND MAKES CASE AGAINST GUN CONTROL (VIDEO).

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: GOP students ‘intimidated’ on campus, say views less tolerated.

FRANK RICH: ‘FASCISTIC’ GOP DEBATE LETTER APPEARS ‘TO HAVE BEEN DRAFTED BY STALIN.’

This is recurring speech tic of Rich whenever he’s confronted by someone who might shrink government by even a minuscule amount — in November of 2009, with a mammoth case of Tea Party Derangement Syndrome fueling his paranoia, Rich wrote an article with the hilarious title, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”

As Matt Welch of Reason counseled Rich, “Only Stalinists Use Words Like ‘Stalinist’.” Both instances are made all the more curious considering the glowing terms in which the New York Times, Rich’s longtime former employer praised Stalin’s “accomplishments” upon his well-deserved death in 1953. (See also: Pulitzer Prize-winning Timesman, Duranty, Walter.)

A WORLD OF THEIR OWN: Richard Fernandez writes that “The New York Times has a series of articles examining the causes of why an entire generation ‘has become less tolerant of free speech’ noting the growing list of subjects or persons that are now banned on campuses to prevent people from freaking out:”

The safe spaces they crave don’t exist in in the ambient environment. To maintain a “nuclear free” or “gun free” zone someone has to do the distasteful work of maintaining it.  Probably some guard, soldier or policeman with a gun. Cafeterias and dorms have to be supplied with meat, fossil fuels and dirty pharmaceuticals; the wrong people have to be shown the door by the academic equivalent of a bouncer.  All this takes labor and costs money.

* * * * * *

In the past, when schools still regarded it  their job to prepare the young for a world of danger and disappointment, mentors were expected to teach their students how to look unflinchingly at the facts.  In those days educated men were distinguished by their ability to gaze full upon the truth armed with a free speech, which as Eugene Volokh reminds, opened our eyes to the pleasant and unpleasant alike.

Today, we don’t want to know.  We don’t even want to know what we don’t know.  In all the wide world the only trigger warning that is forbidden is the one which alerts us to our own ignorance.

Related: “A liberal New York Times writer told a liberal MSNBC host that the problem with conservatives is they exist in their own ideological echo chamber. Without a sense of irony, All In host Chris Hayes on Monday night wondered, ‘What do you make of this sort of inward turning that we’re sort of seeing effectuated in the Republican field?’” 

I’M YASSER ARAFAT AND I APPROVE THIS BILINGUAL OBFUSCATION: Emails show Clinton had 2 Benghazi stories: 1 for Libyans, 1 for Americans.

ROGER SIMON ON BEN CARSON AND THE DEMOCRATS’ ‘WAR ON GOD:’

Now, with Carson a frontrunner in national and Iowa polls, not to mention the only Republican tied with Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical matchup, what I recently called, channeling Stalin, the media/Democrat “plot against the doctor” I fully expect to metastasize to a full-on “War on God.”  But — take it from this agnostic — that will be a very risky war because it will be based on the assumption that Carson is wacky in his belief.  He isn’t.  He is to be admired and, in my case, envied.

Read the whole thing.

Related: ABC, NBC Knock ‘Hardline’ Ben Carson on Political Experience; ‘Issue’ ‘He Will Have to Address.’

Funny, I don’t remember this being an issue in 2008 (expect when the MSM-DNC needed to destroy the only person with executive experience in the race, of course.) Perhaps Carson could answer his critics by mystically replying, “I serve as a blank screen, on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

After all, it wouldn’t be the first time Americans would be “putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know,” to coin a CNN-approved phrase from the conclusion of that election cycle.

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? The Climate Iceman Cometh.

RON FOURNIER: When The Clinton Scandals Boil Away, A Residue of Distrust.

Clin­ton has taken re­spons­ib­il­ity for se­cur­ity lapses at the U.S. com­pound in Libya, but she hasn’t ex­plained her role in an ad­min­is­tra­tion-wide at­tempt to mis­lead Amer­ic­ans about the reas­on for the at­tacks. In the heat of Pres­id­ent Obama’s reelec­tion cam­paign, the White House ini­tially blamed the raid on an anti-Muslim video rather than a ter­ror­ist strike.

Con­gres­sion­al in­vest­ig­at­ors un­covered evid­ence that Clin­ton knew with­in hours that ter­ror­ists were be­hind the raid. Ac­cord­ing to the fath­er of a former Navy SEAL who died in the raid, Clin­ton stood be­fore his son’s coffin and privately told him the United States would ar­rest the film­maker re­spons­ible for the at­tack.

Clin­ton has apo­lo­gized for put­ting all her of­fi­cial email on a private serv­er but con­tin­ues to claim in­cor­rectly that the ac­tions had pre­ced­ent and were au­thor­ized. She vowed in March that no clas­si­fied ma­ter­i­al was ever on the serv­er, a claim proven false. She now tells voters none of the emails were marked clas­si­fied, which she must know is ir­rel­ev­ant; people are pro­sec­uted for mis­hand­ling un­marked U.S. secrets.

Fur­ther­more, Clin­ton in­sists that she vol­un­tar­ily turned over the email to the State De­part­ment, though in fact, she had kept the gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments secret un­til Con­gress dis­covered her stash. She in­sists she vol­un­tar­ily turned over the serv­er, fail­ing to men­tion the FBI’s strong de­sire to scour the stor­age unit as part of its on­go­ing in­vest­ig­a­tion of her ac­tions.

Be­cause of all this, and more, the Benghazi and email stor­ies could boil away, and there will re­main the bit­ter residue of a char­ac­ter is­sue likely to stick to Clin­ton throughout the cam­paign—and throughout her pres­id­ency, should she win. People don’t trust her.

Well,they shouldn’t, because she’s untrustworthy.