GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN’T REPORT HERE, THIS IS A PRESS BRIEFING! State Dept threatens to arrest Washington Free Beacon reporter for covering Iran talks:

VIENNA—Officials with the Department of State threatened to call security Monday on a Washington Free Beacon reporter who was attempting to report on a briefing held by senior Obama administration figures in Vienna on the eve of an expected nuclear agreement with Iran.

Two State Department officials booted the Free Beacon from a room where Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was talking to reporters, despite the Free Beacon’s being credentialed by the Austrian government for the ongoing Iranian nuclear talks.

Western observers present in Vienna for the talks linked the State Department’s behavior to jitters over media coverage revealing a still growing list of concessions being made to Iran by the Obama administration.

Melissa Turley, a State Department official, approached a Free Beacon reporter and demanded that he leave the room.

“You’re not registered with the U.S. press,” Turley said after being informed that the Free Beacon was attending the event.

“You have a press pass from the [European Union], not from me,” Turley said, after being informed that the Free Beacon was officially credentialed to cover the event.

Turley and her colleagues then threatened the reporter, instructing him to leave the room or be dealt with by “security.”

As even the New York Times (via Democrat true believer Albert Hunt) noted last year, “Under Obama, a Chill on Press Freedom.”  The Times’ James Risen has dubbed Mr. Obama the “greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”

“LEADING ON RACE: COMMUNITIES, NOT ELITES,” Salena Zito writes at the Pittsburgh Tribune:

In a week that began with a white woman masquerading as black, the ensuing silliness of talk about being “transracial,” and the president unnecessarily invoking the mother of all racial epithets, it was the American people who showed how to lead on race.

In a show of profound unity and forgiveness, Charleston residents responded not with the lowest common denominator of social-media commentary or violent anger, but with promise.

More than 15,000 of them, of every size and color, put Southern solidarity into perspective by gathering on both sides of the city’s Ravenel Bridge. They met in the middle; they wept, smiled, laughed, hugged, turned strangers into friends. Homemade signs with messages of outreach, love and solidarity flapped in the wind, as prayers and hymns filled the air.

There wasn’t a major network or cable news channel, only local TV crews, rolling cameras to record America doing what it does best — opening its heart; the networks always seem to be on hand for looting or rioting. Yet, for the most part, Charleston’s participants didn’t care about being largely ignored, because that moment on the bridge was about them, about their community and, above all, about how to lead.

Their response, their unity, showed leadership. The president, dropping the “N-word” to an entertainment podcast, reeked of showmanship and his signature divisiveness.

What will linger in most minds, long after the history books are closed, is how a community impacted by the deaths of nine innocent people reacted — not a politician.

That sounds awfully selfish to me — if communities act calmly and humane, and refuse to self-detonate, what will CNN and MSNBC do for their nightly riot porn? How will Obama and Hillary gin up the voters?

THE OPM HACK AND OBAMA’S POLITICIZATION OF THE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY: Jim Geraghty writes at National Review Online that “it’s clear that hackers — believed to be tied to the Chinese government – stole files from the Office of Personnel Management that amount to a giant ‘how to blackmail anyone in the federal government’ manual. This was America’s ‘cyber 9/11,’ exposing an administration full of true believers in the expansion of government who can’t handle the most basic tasks of secret-keeping.”

Including Katherine Archuleta, who prior to becoming OPM’s head, “had no background in the kind of work the agency does,”  Geraghty adds. But she certainly was a loyal Democrat foot soldier, which is far more important than actual competence in the Clinton and Obama administrations:

Before becoming the head of OPM, Katherine Archuleta had no background in the kind of work the agency does. Archuleta, a lawyer and former Clinton administration official, was national political director for President Obama’s reelection campaign. She served as the chief of staff to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solís, and was the City of Denver’s lead planner for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Like the president, she has roots in “community organizing”: She co-founded the Latina Initiative, a Colorado organization aimed at getting more Hispanic voters involved in politics. (In 2011, the Latina Initiative suspended its operations, citing insufficient funding.) Nothing in this record suggests any expertise in the vitally important human resources and record-keeping functions OPM is supposed to serve.

Before the hack, Archuleta’s primary goals at OPM appeared to be increasing the diversity of the federal workforce and implementing Obamacare’s changes to federal workers’ health-insurance options.

Her July 2013 confirmation hearing was brief and relatively controversy-free. Senator Mark Udall, (D., Colo.), introduced her and declared, “she has an impressive range of accomplishments that make her completely, totally well-qualified to be director of OPM.”

Archuleta mentioned her determination to “build on OPM’s health care experience” including “implementing its provisions of the Affordable Care Act.” She did say she would “prioritize the improvement of the agency’s Information Technology systems” and pledge to create the position of Chief Technology Officer, but that came in the context of a discussion on OPM’s difficulty in moving to a digital system for handling retirement services for federal workers. The topic of cyber security only came up during a brief discussion of whether OPM had sufficiently skilled personnel in that area.

“When news broke of the first of those breaches, in early 2014, Archuleta went so far as to insist in public that there was nothing that needed fixing,” Geraghty writes, noting that “Archuleta was quick to downplay the breach, declaring in a July 21, 2014 interview with Washington’s ABC affiliate that, ‘We did not have a breach in security. There was no information that was lost. We were confident as we worked through this that we would be able to protect the data.’”

There is no iceberg; the ship is perfectly fine; you can resume your dining and dancing without fear. Happy sailing and enjoy the rest of your evening!

ELENA KAGAN IN 2009: “THERE IS NO FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.” As Prof. William A. Jacobson writes at his Legal Insurrection blog,  “Then she was a nominee for Solicitor General, now she is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Then she was bound to follow the law, now she gets to make it.”

BRADY CENTER ORDERED TO PAY AMMO DEALER’S LEGAL FEES: Judge orders Brady Center to pay ammo dealer’s legal fees after dismissing lawsuit.

THE IRS SCANDAL, DAY 781: Judge Demands Answers from the IRS by Month’s End; It’s Past Time for Orange to be the New Black for Lois Lerner.

THE LEFT-RIGHT GAP IN LANGUAGE: Liberals and conservatives use much different sets of words, according to an extensive textual analysis of chat rooms, news websites and State of the Union speeches. The analysis, published in the current Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, draws on a psychological distinction between the basic needs for “affiliation” and “power.” Liberals manifest their yearning for social connectedness by using words like care, help, kind, neighbor and volunteer more often than conservatives do.  Conservatives more frequently use power words like boss, coerce, hero, strong and victory. 

The team of German and American researchers say this is the first study to reveal this difference. And, as usual in social science, the difference is presented in a way that looks bad for conservatives. Citing previous research, the authors write:

These results, although novel, seem intuitive in capturing a fundamental difference by political ideology.
For example, the policies more greatly favored by liberals include social welfare programs and affirmative action, both of which appear affiliation-oriented from a broader perspective. By contrast, the policies more greatly favored by conservatives include increased defense spending and the death penalty, both of which are consistent with a desire to be powerful. Indeed, conservatives are often more invested in the trappings of power such as wealth and status.

Ah, those good-hearted liberals, uninterested in status and money. (The Obamas and their fellow liberals vacation on Martha’s Vineyard only because the beaches are so pretty.) And those deadly power-crazed conservatives, reluctant to even utter nice words like volunteer. (Never mind the studies showing that conservatives actually do more volunteer work than liberals do.)

But here’s another way to look at the results. Liberals talk about politics in language that appeals to our primal socialist instincts, developed on the savanna when we belonged to small clans of hunter-gatherers who really did look out for their kin. Conservatives discuss politics in language that reflects modern reality: socialism doesn’t work in groups larger than a clan, because people do not behave selflessly when they belong to a large group of unrelated strangers. Liberals believe in what the economist Daniel Klein calls “The People’s Romance,” but that fallacy has been exposed by Adam Smith, de Toqueville and Darth Vader, among others.

When liberals say that “government is the word we give to the things we choose to do together,” they score high on affiliation, and some of them may even believe government is one big happy collaboration among equals. But conservatives know that philosophy just means giving one small group of people in the capital more power to boss and coerce the rest of us.

BIG NEWS: Important affirmative action case returns to the Supreme Court. Ilya Somin comments:

Earlier this morning, the Supreme Court chose to hear Fisher v. University of Texas, an important case challenging racial preferences in admissions at the University of Texas. The outcome is likely to have important implications for the future of affirmative action. . . .

It seems unlikely that the justices would have chosen to hear this case again, if a majority were satisfied with the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on remand. Most likely, the five more conservative justices decided to take it because they intend to overrule the Fifth Circuit and forcefully reiterate the requirement that judges must not defer to universities on the narrow tailoring issue. The Court could potentially expound on the need to avoid deference on the narrow-tailoring requirement in greater detail than it did in Fisher I, so as to reduce lower court judges’ room for discretion and prevent them from continuing to defer, as the Fifth Circuit essentially did in its post-remand decision. If that happens, supporters of racial preferences in admissions might end up worse off than they would have been if the Fifth Circuit had not chosen to be obstreperous after the remand, and had struck down the Texas program, as many expected it would.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Is it possible to reconcile Judge Posner’s take on Holmes and Lochner, and Roberts and Obergefell?

RELATED: When a Judge criticizes a Justice, it’s best if the judge doesn’t make mistakes of his own

ISIS WHACKS EGYPT’S CHIEF PROSECUTOR.

HOW UBER SURGE PRICING REALLY WORKS: “The data . . .  suggest that surge pricing doesn’t seem to bring more drivers out on the roads, but rather pushes drivers already on the job toward neighborhoods with more demand–and higher surge pricing.”

EVERYBODY SETTLE DOWN: The Greek debt crisis—the Energizer bunny of debt crises—has stocks plunging around the world as bank lines grow in Athens, but Walter Russell Mead argues that it won’t necessarily be a disaster if Greece abandons the Euro.

A Greek exit may end up strengthening the credibility of the euro by removing the one member that all agree should never have been allowed to join in the first place.

NICE SPEECH CASE WIN FOR THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE:

In an important decision at the intersection of free speech and property rights, the U.S. Supreme Court today vacated a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judgment that had allowed the city of Norfolk, Va., to suppress a banner protesting the government’s illegal attempt to seize private property by eminent domain. Today’s decision sends the case, Central Radio Company v. City of Norfolk, back to the 4th Circuit so that it can reconsider the case in light of recent guidance the Supreme Court has provided on sign regulations and free speech in Reed v. Town of Gilbert.

“PIZZA COULD BE AS POPULAR…AS THE HAMBURGER IF AMERICANS ONLY KNEW MORE ABOUT IT.”

CONSTRAINT vs DEFERENCE:  Two possible meanings of “judicial restraint”

On Saturday, I criticized Jeb Bush’s stated criteria for choosing judges as what has led to continued disappointment by conservatives in Republican nominated justices. He said: “You focus on people to be Supreme Court justices who have a proven record of judicial restraint.” But what does “judicial restraint” mean?  There are two quite different possibilities:

1. Constraint: “Judicial restraint” could refer to confining oneself to following the meaning of the text of the Constitution (and of statutes) — by which is meant its original meaning — whether this leads to upholding or invalidating properly enacted statutes; or
2. Deference: “Judicial restraint” could refer to deferring to the will of the majority as reflected in the acts of the more “democratic” branches — i.e. “unelected unaccountable” judges should avoid wherever possible thwarting the will of the people, by which is meant the political preferences of the majority of the electorate. The emphasis here is not on the correctness of constitutional analysis, but on judicial deference to majority will.

What is of utmost importance is that these are not the same thing. . . .

Read the rest on the Volokh Conspiracy.

RUN JOE, RUN!

LOTS OF ACTION IN THE SUPREME COURT THIS MORNING. The lethal injection is saved in a 5-4 decision. There’s a lively Breyer dissent rejecting the death penalty across the board, to which Scalia and Thomas respond vividly in concurrences. Alito writes the main opinion (which I typo’d as “the man opinion” on my home blog). Arizona’s use of an independent commission for legislative redistricting is upheld 5-4. Scalia has the EPA case, which is also 5-4, so you can picture where that came out. All 5-4 cases, all in the conventional liberal/conservative split. Sorry not to write more on all of this over here!

ADDED: From Alito’s opinion in the death penalty case (Glossip v. Gross, PDF):

[W]e find it appropriate to respond to the principal dissent’s groundless suggestion that our decision is tantamount to allowing prisoners to be “drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake.” That is simply not true, and the principal dissent’s resort to this outlandish rhetoric reveals the weakness of its legal arguments.

AND: To be clear, Justice Breyer finding “highly likely” the death penalty is unconstitutional across the board and calls for a full briefing on the subject.

“FROM TEA PARTY STAR TO A LEADER OF THE NEW SOUTH” is how a Washington Post headline describes Nikki Haley, as if there’s some contradiction. I don’t see one (unless you’re referring to the various tax breaks New South politicians have long used to lure corporations to relocate).

LEGALZOOM SUES NORTH CAROLINA BAR FOR ANTITRUST VIOLATIONS – In case you missed it, LegalZoom has sued the North Carolina Bar for antitrust violations.  Here’s the WSJ lawblog post and a copy of the complaint.  This is on top of LegalZoom’s ongoing North Carolina fight over whether online legal services are the unauthorized practice of law.  LegalZoom has had some success in South Carolina on this front and with more of a mixed result in Missouri.  The bottom line is that LegalZoom is still operating in all fifty states, which is how I count wins and losses in this sort of game.

An antitrust suit is a horse of a different color, however, since it challenges the very structure of American lawyer regulation.  S**t just got real.  In my book I talk a bunch about what a tight spot the ABA and state bars find themselves in.  They could try to shut down LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer through new regulations or even prosecution for the unauthorized practice of law, but the public outcry would be LOUD and the downside risk – an antitrust suit or other attempts to strip lawyers of self-regulation – is very real.  Bar associations have been cursed to live in interesting times indeed.

ECONOMIC FUTURES: The Mercatus Center has announced its fall lineup for “Conversations with Tyler,” in which Tyler Cowen, of Marginal Revolution blogging fame, will discuss the future of capitalism with Luigi Zigales, the future of globalization with Dani Rodrik, and the future of money with Cliff Asness. If you’re in DC, you can attend in person (info at the link). Otherwise, the conversations will be available online. Earlier, Tyler talked with Peter Thiel about the future of innovation and with Jeffrey Sachs about the future of economic development. (You can watch those videos at the links.)

10 SONGS BY ROCK STARS ABOUT HOW BAD IT SUCKS TO BE A ROCK STAR: Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon’s first real solo endeavor, his so-called “primal scream” album, was a dramatic gesture in 1970 with its skeletal rock and roll sound after the lush orchestrations of George Martin and Phil Spector on the Beatles’ last albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be, respectively. But Lennon’s introspective ruminations on how he became a self-described “working class hero” unintentionally sure set off a terrible trend in pop music, with rock stars grousing about how awful things are inside their chosen profession. (I’m surprised this VH-1 article doesn’t include Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” which is Mark Knopfler making the same whine one removed; from the point of view of his blue collar department store kitchen installation man who just can’t fathom how hard Knopfler works to produce his music.)

IT’S BAD ON MULTIPLE LEVELS: My Los Angeles Times oped today with David Rivkin, “The Supreme Court’s Bad Call on the Affordable Care Act.”

When judges take it upon themselves to “fix” a law — or to bless an executive “fix” — they diminish political accountability by encouraging Congress to be sloppy. And they bypass the political process established by the Constitution’s separation of powers, arrogating to itself — and the executive — the power to amend legislation.

This leads to bad laws, bad policy outcomes and fosters the cynical belief that “law is politics.”

The progressive left’s belief that “law is politics” is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Andrew McCarthy pointed out in NRO this weekend, there was no speculation about whether one of the four liberal/progressive Justices would vote in any of the recent high profile, controversial cases precisely because liberal/progressive Justices don’t “wander off the reservation.”

For some reason, it’s the GOP-nominated Justices who turn out to be unpredictable.  As I said this morning on Fox & Friends, the GOP-nominated Justices are, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.

MEET THE ‘KNOW-BETTERS,’ AMERICA’S NOT-SO-SECRET POLITICAL PARTY SQUEEZING THE LIFE OUT OF YOU: From Charlie Martin at PJ Media.