PROTECTING YOUR WiFi router.

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NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: ‘This will not be quick,’ Obama says of campaign against the Islamic State. “Coalition operations against the Islamic State have scored successes in Iraq and Syria, but the battle against the extremist group promises to be a ‘generational’ one, President Obama said after military leaders briefed him on the campaign.”

Well, if you wage it at a glacial pace, yes.

THE DEMS’ PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL: CNN’s Jake Tapper blasts critics: ‘I can’t help it if the entire Democratic field is white.’

JUST IN TIME, AS THE SHIRTS WERE GETTING QUESTIONABLE: Reaching Pluto, and the End of an Era of Planetary Exploration. “On July 14, we are to clear the last of the big hills. After a journey of nine and a half years and three billion miles, the New Horizons spacecraft is to go past Pluto, once the ninth and outermost planet, the last of the known worlds to be explored. This is the beginning of the end of a phase of human exploration. The crawling-out-of-our-cradle-and-looking-around part is over. . . . It’s hard to write these words and know what they might feel like 50 years from now. I never dreamed, when Apollo astronauts left the moon in 1972, that there might come a day when there was nobody still alive who had been to the moon. But now it seems that could come to pass. How heartbreaking is that?”

The heartbreak of reorganizing a society as a welfare state. You know, bad luck.

THE COMING DARK AGES: Obama’s Renewable Energy Fantasy.

On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, President Obama committed the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid.

The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective cost-benefit analysis that could justify the president’s target for renewable energy.

Recently Bill Gates explained in an interview with the Financial Times why current renewables are dead-end technologies. They are unreliable. Battery storage is inadequate. Wind and solar output depends on the weather. The cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is “beyond astronomical,” Mr. Gates concluded.

Google engineers came to a similar conclusion last year. After seven years of investigation, they found no way to get the cost of renewables competitive with coal. “Unfortunately,” the engineers reported, “most of today’s clean generation sources can’t provide power that is both distributed and dispatchable”—that is, electricity that can be ramped up and down quickly. “Solar panels, for example, can be put on every rooftop, but can’t provide power if the sun isn’t shining.”

If Mr. Obama gets his way, the U.S. will go down the rocky road traveled by the European Union. . . .

It’s not just the costs–which are substantial by any measure–of President Obama’s war on coal and other fossil fuels. It’s the negative impact on daily lives. When I lived in Ireland as a Fulbright scholar in the winter/spring of 2011, one of the most shocking things was the inability to buy a real and bright lightbulb. I looked literally everywhere–hardware stores, home improvement stores, grocery stores. But there were no bright bulbs to be bought, at any price. They were all these “energy efficient” bulbs– no brighter than 60 watts, and even those did not strike me as providing as much light as the incandescent 60w bulbs I had known back home.  It was so dark in our house–even with all the lights on–that I had to buy a little desk lamp with a halogen bulb, so that I could have sufficient light for reading.

So if President Obama’s agenda is to force the U.S. to go the way of the EU, energy-wise–with or without our legislative branch’s approval–be prepared for (literal) darkness.

SO ALL THE TALK ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR, coupled with the recent Scottish vote and now Greece and the EU has me thinking: If a state or states wanted to secede from the United States now, would there be another civil war? It was basically unthinkable — at least, as far as I know, nobody thought it — that Britain might use troops to keep the Scots in by force. The EU isn’t talking about sending gunboats to Greece. So if, say, Texas — or maybe a group of states — really wanted to leave the Union today, would the United States really be willing to, once again, slaughter vast numbers to prevent that?

Of course, there’s a better solution.

People also talk about secession for more serious reasons. They feel that the central government doesn’t respect them, forces them to live under laws they find repugnant and takes their money away to pay off its own supporters. You see secession movements based on these principles in places like Scotland, Catalonia, Northern Italy, and elsewhere around the world. Some might succeed; others are less likely to. But in every case they represent unhappiness with the status quo.

America has an unfortunate history with secession, which led to the bloodiest war in our history and divisions that persist to this day. But, in general, the causes of secession are pretty standard around the world: Too much power in the central government, too much resentment in the unhappy provinces. (Think Hunger Games).

So what’s a solution? Let the central government do the things that only central governments can do — national defense, regulation of trade to keep the provinces from engaging in economic warfare with one another, protection of basic civil rights — and then let the provinces go their own way in most other issues. Don’t like the way things are run where you are? Move to a province that’s more to your taste. Meanwhile, approaches that work in individual provinces can, after some experimentation, be adopted by the central government, thus lowering the risk of adopting untested policies at the national level. You get the benefits of secession without seceding.

Sound good? It should. It’s called federalism, and it’s the approach chosen by the United States when it adopted the Constitution in 1789. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

It’s a nice plan. Beats secession. Maybe we should give it another try.

Maybe we should. But the problem with federalism is, it offers insufficient opportunities for graft.

WHY NOT? IT WAS PUT UP BY DEMOCRATIC GOV. FRITZ HOLLINGS: Republican-Controlled South Carolina Senate Votes To Remove Confederate Flag. The vote was 37-3.

SKYNET IS NOT AMUSED: New AI Safety Projects Get Funding from Elon Musk. “When Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk is not trying to build rocket technology to colonize Mars or revolutionize energy storage on Earth, he worries about how artificial intelligence could someday slip its shackles and become a danger to humanity. Now some of Musk’s ample wealth is helping fund a newly-announced group of research projects aimed at keeping AI in check.”

FULL DISCLOSURE? CNN ANCHOR WHO’LL INTERVIEW HILLARY RECENTLY ATTENDED CLINTON AIDE’S WEDDING: Just as a great musician works with silence as much as actual sound, the many hard-hitting questions CNN’s Brianna Keilar won’t be asking Hillary will be fascinating!

RELATED: “Chuck Todd ‘Sympathetic’ to Clinton Campaign Roping Off Press:” But of course — past and current Democratic operatives are loyal to the cause.

WELCOME TO CULTURE WAR 4.0: THE COMING OVERREACH, as explored by Benjamin Domenech and Robert Tracinski at the Federalist. Though based on this passage, it sounds like the left’s overreach in the culture wars has been in full-swing for quite a while now:

If history repeats itself, it is good news for traditional Americans and bad news for the Left, which has taken on the role of Grand Inquisitor so rapidly that overnight civil liberties have become a Republican issue. Slowly but surely, the American Right is adopting the role of the cultural insurgent standing up for the freedom of the little guy. They crowdfund the pizza shop, baker, and photographer; they rebel against the establishment in the gaming media and at sci-fi conventions; they buy their chicken sandwiches in droves. The latest acronym that came out of the Sad Puppies movement says it all. They describe their opponents as CHORFs: cliquish, holier-than-thou, obnoxious, reactionary, fascists. This is their description of the cultural Left.

There is significant potential for a new, diverse coalition that responds to this overreach. The religious Right, libertarians, and even the moderate Left are already being drawn together by their refusal to be cowed into conformity by social justice warriors. The comedians who rebel against an audience that calls every joke racist or sexist, the professors who refuse to be cowed by the threat of Title IX lawsuits, the religious believers who fight for their right to practice their beliefs outside the pew represent a coalition that will reject the neo-Puritanism of the Counterculture, rebel against its speech codes and safe spaces, and reassert the right to speak one’s mind in the public square. Atheists and believers alike can unite in this belief—as we, the authors of this piece, have.

The culture war will always be with us. There are always people who want to change the culture and an establishment that wants to ward off these insurgents. The Sad Puppies are just the Salon des Refusés with different players—and what were the Renaissance and Enlightenment, if not one giant culture war? But there is some good that comes of it, as well.

The culture wars of the past produced great achievements in art, architecture, literature, and science as the opposing parties strove to demonstrate that they had more to offer and deserved the people’s admiration and loyalty. Those culture wars gave us Michelangelo’s David, Galileo’s science, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the Declaration of Independence and the First Amendment, and the movement for the abolition of slavery.

As Domenech and Tracinski write, “Yes, this can be a dangerous time to be active in the culture. But it’s very hard to make speech codes, safe spaces, and other anti-thoughtcrime measures work in the long term. Sometimes all it takes for the whole apparatus to come crashing down is a handful of people brave enough to speak their minds without fear.”

That sort of preference cascade is long overdue.

A GERMAN COMPANY IS BUILDING AN ARMY OF ROBOT ANTS: “SkyNet fears aside, what becomes of the human race when our every whim is catered to by robots?”, Steve Green asks. Come for the photos of the freaky-deaky German robot ants, stay for the Arthur C. Clarke versus H.G. Wells-inspired philosophical mediation on the future of mankind. Or the lack thereof:

This Progressive thinking goes back to Plato and his Republic: Centralize the economy, abolish religion, raise children by the state, mold Perfect People. That’s more or less what Europe has attempted in the postwar period, but instead of molding Perfect People they’re running out of people to mold, period.

The irony is this. Progressives believe that religion is a danger to humanity’s continued existence, and in need of tempering (at the very least) by the State. But if religion really is contra-survival, then why do religious societies tend to thrive while officially atheistic ones do not? This isn’t an endorsement of any particular god or religion, but it is a perfectly valid observation about human nature.

As an intelligent species, without the hope provided by spirituality and the excitement provided by struggle, maybe we’re just no damn good.

Read the whole thing.

RICK PERRY TALKS ABOUT RACE: Rick Perry’s speech last Thursday at the National Press Club haven’t received much attention in the mainstream media over the holiday weekend, until today’s Wall Street Journal editorial, which observes:

But his remarks are far more than a mea culpa. He also lays out a rationale and a specific agenda for how the GOP can earn—and deserve—the support of black Americans. In particular he points out how Republican policies have improved life for all races in Texas. And he contrasts those results for blacks in progressive states that purport to do so much more for minorities but have left them behind economically.

“There is a lot of talk in Washington about inequality. Income inequality. But there is a lot less talk about the inequality that arises from the high cost of everyday life,” Mr. Perry says. “In blue state coastal cities, you have these strict zoning laws, environmental regulations that have prevented builders from expanding the housing supply. And that may be great for the venture capitalist who wants to keep a nice view of San Francisco Bay, but it’s not so great for the single mother working two jobs in order to pay rent and still put food on the table for her kids.”

That’s a nice turn of the equality argument against Democrats. Mr. Perry does the same on education, pointing out that “in too many parts of this country black students are trapped in failing schools.” He notes that in 2002 Texas ranked 27th in high-school graduation rates; by 2013 it was second, and its most recent graduation rate for blacks was first.

Mr. Perry also stressed Texas’ impressive record on prison and sentencing reform, especially for nonviolent drug offenses.

I like Perry’s approach, and it’s clear that he’s learned some hard lessons from his 2012 quest for the GOP nomination. His speech wasn’t pandering to minorities, but articulating how conservative policies help their everyday lives in far more palpable ways than the race-baiting, divisive, blaming, entitlement approach of the liberals/progressives. My favorite line from Perry’s speech:

If we create jobs, incentivize work, keep nonviolent drug offenders out of prison, reform our schools, and reduce the cost of living—we will have done more for African-Americans than the last three Democratic administrations combined.

The question is: Will black, Hispanic and Asian voters open their minds to the GOP policies or have they been permanently brainwashed by the political left elites’ incessant accusations of racism?

RELATED: Steven Hayward at PowerLine has some interesting observations in support of Perry’s attempts to reach out to minority communities.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Russia Rebuilding and Repairing Its Navy.

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ROGER SIMON: The Rick Perry Revival, And My Back.

Perry’s piece is well detailed (you should read it) but the substance is what many of us have thought for a while. It’s time for Republicans to go into African-American communities with our proposals to revive those communities, since the Democrats, who have been in near total control of them for decades, have failed utterly with their approach. We must engage, be the party of Lincoln once again, start supporting the 14th Amendment (“equal protection”) as well as the states-rights oriented 10th. Perry is openly self-critical, which is so often a good strategy.

This speech comes – and how could it not – at an interesting moment, not just because of the violence in Ferguson, Baltimore, etc., but in the wake of Donald Trump’s, let’s say, “much remarked upon” comments about Mexicans during his presidential campaign announcement a couple of weeks ago. (Donald’s almost as worried about rape as Kirsten Gillibrand.) Like most of the Republican candidates, Perry condemned Trump’s comments, calling them “offensive.” But unlike the other candidates, and Trump obviously, this man has walked the walk on border security. More than any other candidate, I trust Rick actually to get border security accomplished – no racial slurs necessary.

And, yes, we certainly do need it and were reminded of that once again by this Francisco Sanchez character who shot the young woman on the San Francisco pier last Wednesday. To call such maniacs “undocumented workers” or some such is just gaga. And it’s hardly surprising he told a KGO-TV reporter he kept returning to San Francisco because it’s a “Sanctuary City.” Sanctuary for what? Well, never mind.

Back to Rick (and back to backs). As some readers will recall I was a strong Perry supporter early on in the last presidential campaign. I had gotten to know him somewhat on trips to Austin and he’s a tremendous guy one-on-one, just the kind of person you’d love to have a beer with. He looked like a born president, a second Reagan. Then the debacle occurred. He stumbled at that debate, unable to recall the names of the government agencies he wished to disband. As we learned later, Perry had just had back surgery and was on pain-killers. But it didn’t matter. Bye-bye, campaign.

But as it happens, it does. I can attest to that. I’m on pain-killers right now — Vicodin 3-300. My back went out over a week ago and hasn’t gotten better, despite steroids. I’m having an MRI this afternoon. Yes, I can write an article and read The Wall Street Journal, obviously. Maybe even practice my Spanish. But the last thing in the world I would want to do is participate in a debate on national television – or even at the local middle school.

So believe me, Perry deserves more than a second chance. Nobody’s campaign has really caught fire yet and maybe it will be his. Perry-Fiorina — try that on your piano.

Good point. And hope you feel better, Roger!

EUROPEAN ENABLERS: John Fund warns, “Beware of Greeks Casting Blame.”

Now the Greek people, although many of them profess that they still want to be part of the EU, have effectively blown up any chance they can continue using the euro, the linchpin of the EU’s monetary policy.

I fear that this track record will not sway European Union die-hards. Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of liberal forces in the European parliament, has already called for giving Greeks “a second chance” to stay with the euro.

There will be other calls to forgive Greece its debt in order to keep the troubled country within the euro zone. Doing so would set a terrible precedent for other countries and be patently unfair to the Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese who have suffered under austerity measures over the last five years to pay off their debts.

The rhetoric of Greek’s far-left leaders has been so outrageous and over-the-top in recent months as to invent a new chapter in “non-diplomacy.” Tsipris has already warned Brussels in the aftermath of Sunday’s vote that Greece is going through a “humanitarian crisis,” the clear implication being that if euro-zone ministers don’t acquiesce to his demands for debt forgiveness and more loans, any human suffering will be on their conscience.

Yep–this is what happens when you let progressives run a country. They spend like drunken sailors, then demand a bailout from others, accusing them of bigotry and hatred if they don’t acquiesce. Most families have at least one of these types. They have the emotional and financial maturity of a two year-old (sorry, two year-old readers out there). By repeatedly caving into these childish demands, the EU acts like parents who enable their children’s prodigal habits. It never turns out well.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stem Cell Dental Implants Grow New Teeth Right In Your Mouth.

WHY DO SJW-TYPES HATE WOMEN? Rachel Ryan: Here’s Why Insisting That Gender Is A ‘Social Construct’ Is Oppressive To Women.

WITH ELECTION TOMORROW, HOUSE GOP LEADERSHIP-SUPPORTED DARIN LAHOOD REVEALS HE IS TO THE LEFT OF SOME DEMOCRATS … ON CUBA:

Shot:

“LAHOOD: I think in terms of opening markets for our farmers, particularly in Cuba, I’m supportive of that. You know, this is the 17th largest agriculture district in the country … when you think about the commodities that are grown and produced in central Illinois, we have to open up more markets. That’s jobs and economic opportunity for our farmers in our ag community in Central Illinois. So I’m supportive of opening up new markets, such as Cuba, for our corn and our soybeans and other products. That’s a good thing.

“In the past, obviously Cuba has had some issues with human rights and other things. But I think this is a way to, you know, transition them to democracy and economic freedom and I’m supportive of it.”

Chaser:

Why Restoring Diplomatic Relations with Cuba Is another Bad Deal: It’s mythical thinking to believe opening up to Cuba will improve the prospects for democracy.

As Ron Radosh concludes “to his shame, President Obama himself has let it be known that he too will soon be traveling to Cuba. Does anyone really think this will be a victory for the United States? I’m sure Fidel and Raul Castro are laughing together, raising their glasses and making a toast to their new Yanqui friend in Washington.” Illinois voters have a choice tomorrow as to whether or not they will send another Yanqui friend to Washington for Fidel and Raul to chuckle over. Vote Mike Flynn.

DAVID BRIN: The Deadly Thing at 2.4 Kiloparsecs: Are we sharing the galaxy with something large, dangerous and periodic?

Related: The 30-Million-Year Mass Extinction Cycle –“A Coincidence, or a Dark-Matter Event?”

EXPOSING KIDS TO CULTURE: HOW YOUNG IS TOO YOUNG AND HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? How old does a child need to be before you’d let him watch a well-made, historically (more or less) accurate but deliberately brutal film such as Saving Private Ryan?

WISCONSIN’S SHAME: David French’s latest on the human side of the John Doe investigation into conservatives: “He could have been shot. Over politics.”

It was still dark outside when “Jonah” (not his real name) heard the pounding on his front door. As luck would have it, he was awake — or mostly awake. He’d gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2013, to see his parents off to the airport. They were leaving on a quick trip to raise money for the children’s charity his father runs. Jonah was 16 at the time, old enough to stay home alone for a short time, but not old enough to deal with what awaited him on the other side of the door. . . .

Jonah’s father may have been the target of the raid on his home, but according to the family, investigators went well beyond the scope of the warrant to seize business records in his mother’s possession, including confidential donor and financial information for two conservative Wisconsin nonprofits, which were paralyzed for weeks as a result. Yet despite the overly expansive search, to this day, no one in Jonah’s family has been charged with a crime.

The damage to the family’s reputation was immense. Soon after the raid, and despite court orders mandating confidentiality (orders that prevented the family from publicly defending themselves), their names leaked to the press. Jonah’s father — working to help the most disadvantaged kids — found himself struggling to defend a professional reputation under siege. In both his day job as a political consultant and his nonprofit work, even the slightest rumor of illegality can cause clients and donors to shy away. As he puts it, when you’re hired as a consultant, “No matter how good you are, you can’t become the issue.” A consultant whose home was just raided by law enforcement is, most definitely, an “issue” for any politician or political movement.

I strongly suspect there is much more to be revealed about the vast scope of Chisholm’s John Doe investigation. It will make the Salem witch hunts look restrained.

As for Chisholm and his cohorts: Tar, feathers, Sicilian bull–or at least a substantial civil rights lawsuit victory.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Declaration should still wake the powerful up at night: More than complaints about a king, the Declaration of Independence was a justification for rebellion that applies today.