READER BOOK PLUG: From Dr. Michael Kennedy, War Stories: 50 Years in Medicine.

This isn’t his first book: He’s also the author of A Brief History of Science, Disease and Medicine.

IN THE 21ST CENTURY, MANY DISEASES ARE DISGUISED AS SUCH: Orthorexia Nervosa: The ‘Disease Disguised as a Virtue.’

HEALTH: New Alternatives to Statins Add to a Quandary on Cholesterol.

IS DONALD TRUMP PAT BUCHANAN’S HEIR? That’s the question that Jim Geraghty is asking:

A pugnacious, television-savvy, anti-trade, anti-illegal-immigration candidate comes out of nowhere, attracts intense enthusiasm from an angry Republican grassroots, gets denounced by a disgusted media, and suddenly endangers the hopes of a presidential frontrunner named Bush.

That was Pat Buchanan early in the 1992 presidential election; that is Donald Trump today.

Read the whole thing.

STUDY: BLIND PEOPLE CAN BE RACIST: “Twenty-five people? This is more like a large focus group than any sort of quantitative endeavor. It makes a good headline but this is hardly scientific.”

But then, starting in 2007, anybody could be weaponized by the left and declared racist if it advanced the narrative. As we approach 2016, anybody can be weaponized and declared sexist as well.

You could be next — yes, you!

VLAD, GET OFF THOSE GIRLY-MAN WEIGHT MACHINES AND TRY READING MARK RIPPETOE INSTEAD. THEN YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A REAL MAN. Putin launches a new arms race: Action man Vlad’s latest photo stunt shows him and Russian PM Medvedev pumping iron in the gym.

Of course, when your competition looks like this, it’s easy to put on airs, so don’t get cocky, Vlad.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, this New Republic piece on Randy Barnett and the libertarian constitutional movement is really pretty good. But I thought this part was revealing:

Barnett believes the Constitution exists to secure inalienable property and contract rights for individuals. This may sound like a bland and inconsequential opinion, but if widely adopted by our courts and political systems it would prohibit or call into question basic governmental protections—minimum wages, food-safety regulations, child-labor laws—that most of us take for granted. For nearly a century now, a legal counterculture has insisted that the whole New Deal project was a big, unconstitutional error, and Barnett is a big part of that movement today.

If your entire program is called into question by the notion that individuals have property and contract rights, maybe the problem is with your program.

And to the extent that, as believed by many, the Supreme Court’s eventual accommodation to the New Deal was the product of duress in the form of FDR’s court-packing scheme, then isn’t that accommodation, in fact, illegitimate?

WILL THE PHRASE, TECHNICALLY, NOT A FELON, FIT ON A BUMPER STICKER? Petraeus prosecutor: Clinton has committed no crime. But I remain unconvinced. Readers may ask which characteristic of the author is more important: That she prosecuted Petraeus, or that she donated to Hillary’s campaign? At least it’s acknowledged.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Katrina Lessons, Ten Years Later: Who can you trust when disaster strikes? Not the media. And definitely not the government.

DOES FREE SPEECH OFFEND YOU? This is the topic I explore in my new video for Prager University, in which I discuss the threats freedom of speech faces worldwide, including European governmental censorship, campus speech codes, as well as newer challenges posed by trigger warnings and the policing of microaggressions. I also cover these topics in more detail in my short book Freedom From Speech and “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the article I co-wrote with Jonathan Haidt for The Atlantic.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 844.

HMM: ‘Pendulum Factor’ could land Trump in White House.

If you’re having trouble understanding the phenomenal rise of Donald Trump, buck up — you’re not alone. Even political pros are dumbfounded.

They were shocked when the reality-TV star and businessman first grabbed the lead in national GOP polls. Now they’re double shocked as he soars in primary states, grabbing a 24-point lead in New Hampshire and a 15-point lead in South Carolina.

In one survey, Trump more than doubled his favorability ratings among Republicans in a single month, from 20 percent to 52 percent. The Hill newspaper called the turnaround “political magic” and the poll’s director, Patrick Murray of Monmouth University, called it ­“astounding.”

“That defies any rule in presidential politics that I’ve ever seen,” Murray told The Hill.

Other pollsters made similar comments, but a closer look shows an explanation. I call it the Pendulum Factor.

It reflects the fact that the legacy of each president includes the political climate he leaves behind. In plain English, Barack Obama’s most ­important failures as a leader begat Donald Trump’s success.

This sounds a bit like the Insta-Daughter’s Theory Of Presidential Opposites.

THEY OUGHT TO BE FIRED: It’s back to school time, and progressive professors at Washington State University are gearing up to suppress speech they personally find “offensive,” such as saying “illegal alien,” using the terms “male” or “female,” or failing to “defer” to the “experiences of people of color”:

In his “Introduction to Multicultural Literature,” for example, professor John Streamas informs students in his syllabus that he expects white students who want “to do well in this class” to “reflect” their “grasp of history and social relations” by “deferring to the experiences of people of color.”

The taxpayer-funded critical studies professor also writes in his syllabus that Glenn Beck is a member of a group of “insensitive whites.”

Streamas, who obtained his Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University, is most notable because he told a student who supports limits on illegal immigration: “You are just a white shitbag.” . . .

A second Washington State faculty member, Selena Lester Breikss, warns students in her “Women & Popular Culture” course this semester that they risk “failure for the semester” if they use the terms “male” or “female.” . . .

“Students will come to recognize how white privilege functions in everyday social structures and institutions,” Breikss adds.

Finally, not to be outdone, Washington State American studies professor Rebecca Fowler similarly warns students that she will lower their grades if they utter the phrase “illegal alien” at any time in her “Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies” course.

The taxpayer-funded Fowler proclaims that she bans students from using the phrase “illegal alien” because the Associated Press stylebook “no longer sanctions the term.”

The Associated Press stylebook is purely an advisory publication for professional journalists. It has no force of law whatsoever. . . . Public university students who dare to use the phrase “illegal alien” “will suffer a deduction of one point per incident,” Fowler warns.

Apparently these sensitive little snowflake professors cannot tolerate any disagreement. For their failure to tolerate a diversity of views and engage in actual teaching (rather than proselytizing), they should be terminated for “cause.” Parents and students should avoid this university at all costs, unless/until the University’s administration takes appropriate disciplinary action to ensure that all viewpoints are welcomed, even those that are “offensive.” It’s called “free speech,” and yes, it protects offensive speech, too.

THIS WAS A DEBACLE OF THE FIRST ORDER, AND HASN’T GOTTEN THE ATTENTION IT DESERVES: China and Russia are cross-indexing hacked data to target U.S. spies, officials say.

THE CREATIVE APOCALYPSE THAT WASN’T: In the digital economy, it was supposed to be impossible to make money by making art. Instead, creative careers are thriving — but in complicated and unexpected ways.

Well, actually, not entirely unexpected.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Katrina Lessons, Ten Years Later: Who can you trust when disaster strikes? Not the media. And definitely not the government.

HENCE THE POPULARITY OF TRUMP AND SANDERS: Poll: Nearly three-fourths of Americans unhappy with country’s direction. How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

I’M PRETTY SURE SHE WAS ALREADY INFECTED: Christie: Clinton caught ‘disease’ of lawlessness from Obama White House.

Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) said on Sunday that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is careless for using a private email server at the State Department.

“No one is above the law,” Christie told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Unfortunately with the Obama administration, there has been lawlessness in this country,” said Christie, a 2016 GOP presidential contender. “Apparently Hillary Clinton has caught this disease as well.”

Christie argued on Sunday that Clinton’s actions as secretary of State flaunted her disregard for the laws governing transparency and national security.

He added that she is now presenting a haughty attitude while defending her technology habits on the 2016 campaign trail.

Well, that’s certainly true.

IT’S ALWAYS THE FAULT OF “HOARDERS AND WRECKERS,” NEVER THE FAULT OF THE CENTRAL PLANNERS: China pins market plunge on financial journalist, airs ‘confession.’ Just in case you thought they’d become civilized or something. Nope. Still commies when push comes to shove.

MIGRANTS: EU calls emergency immigration summit.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Obama’s Stonewall Tactics: A Case Study. “The Obama administration has proved to be the least transparent in our modern history. To an unprecedented degree, the administration is staffed by scofflaws who flout their legal obligations. When confronted with requests for information, let alone actual investigations, Obama’s habitual response is to stonewall. This strategy has been remarkably successful in avoiding accountability, in part because legal processes are so slow. We have seen this pattern dozens of times. One instance, which is highlighted by a federal court order issued on Friday, illustrates how the administration has operated from the beginning of Obama’s term in office.”

MORE ON OBAMA’S BIGGEST FAILURE:

Perhaps as much as any senior government official, Holder argued in support of a quota regime, which at its logical extreme guarantees that even the children of black billionaires get preferences easier than a white kid brought up in an Appalachian hovel.

Yet this is the same official who gently treated Wall Street malefactors—the very people in large part responsible for millions of foreclosures, including those that affected many blacks—to an extent that even the usually pro-Obama Rolling Stone openly wondered if he was a “Wall Street double agent.”

The Obama years—following the previous disasters left over from the Bush regime—have been largely an economic disaster for black America. Child poverty is at the highest level in 20 years, and among African Americans it stands at a disastrous 38 percent, rising even during the recovery. After decades of gradual decline, concentrated urban poverty has grown rapidly over the past decade.

Nor have African Americans benefited much from the recovery. White American unemployment is either about the same or below what it was before the recession levels, while the gap with African Americans has grown, in some states two and a half times that of the majority population. In Washington, D.C., the fundamental center of blue-state America, it’s five times as high.

Far more helpful than expanding racial quotas would have been steps to put African Americans to work, particularly teenagers, who suffer nearly 30 percent unemployment rate, twice the national average.

This is a point that Bernie Sanders has been making, actually, but the press doesn’t report what Bernie says much, just his crowd numbers, because what he says reflects badly on Obama.

VDH ON HOW ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FINALLY TURNED OFF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC: “If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented,” Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Sometime in the last five years, the public woke up and grasped that Latino elite activists were not so much interested in illegal immigration per se, but only to the degree that the issue affected other Latinos. Were 3,000 Chinese illegally entering California per day by ship on the Northern California coast, Latino activists and politicians would probably be the first to call for enforcement of federal immigration law.

It is difficult for the National Council of La Raza to attempt to airbrush away vocabulary like “anchor baby” and “illegal immigration,” while insisting that its own nomenclature “La Raza” has nothing to do with race. The public knows that La Raza means “The Race,” and that those who founded that organization chose that racially charged noun for the precise purpose of ethnic triumphalism — in the way that every infamous 20^th-century Latinate racist demagogue from Mussolini to Franco found a use for Raza/Razza, a mostly taboo term in Mediterranean Europe today. In an age when the Washington Redskins earn a presidential rebuke, it is inconceivable that the chief illegal-immigration advocate is a federally subsidized group known as the National Council of La Raza. No other organization would dare use such a term. In the public mind illegal immigration has gone from the old narrative that racists were enforcing the law to keep out mostly brown people to a new generation of racists who are trying to subvert the law to bring in mostly brown people.

Read the whole thing.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Anger builds at EPA over radioactive landfill.