QUESTION OF THE DAY: “If the Norwegian Nobel Committee gives John Kerry the peace prize for the Iran deal, and Iran goes nuclear, will he throw away his Nobel medal?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Roll Model: A Step-by-Step Guide to Erase Pain, Improve Mobility, and Live Better in Your Body. I foam-roll regularly, and it does help.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Gene Hackers Resurrect Ancient Virus, Create Powerful Gene Therapy Vector.

RUGS VERSUS PLUGS: Dear Democrats: If We Get Trump, You Get Biden.

OK, so if it’s not a rug, what is the story with Trump’s hair?

“WHEN YOU’VE LOST NORMAN LEAR, IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO SAY?” Lear was America’s premier SJW in the first half of the 1970s, in that far more than any other producer at CBS during that period, his comedies pushed forced leftwing agitprop over laughs. As a result, of all of the sitcoms to air on CBS in the early 1970s after the “great rural purge,” his series stand up today the least. In contrast, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore and (arguably) Bob Newhart all leaned to varying degrees to the left, but all (including M*A*S*H during the earlier funnier days when Larry Gelbart was its showrunner) emphasized comedy first, before any social messages. Today, as with fellow leftist Jonathan Chait’s blue on blue cri de coeur earlier this year, and Jerry Seinfeld’s similar rebuttal, Lear is simply angry that the SJWs have begun pounding on his doors, rather than, like Lear in the 1970s, exclusively aiming their attacks on the right.

VIDEO: Tesla slaughters a Hellcat in drag race. Meh. I’d like to see this repeated with the new Tesla “ludicrous mode.”

HOW TO RAISE GRATEFUL KIDS IN AN ENTITLED WORLD: From Kristina Ribali at the PJ Media Parenting section. What items would you add to Kristina’s list?

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama Gets It Right On Occupational Licensing.

SO AFTER ABOUT 4 HOURS, SCOTT WALKER IS FARTHER AHEAD IN THE INSTAPUNDIT READERS’ POLL THAN I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED. And this lead has been consistent from the very beginning.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 816.

SHE’S NOT SAFE UNTIL SHE CAN PARDON HERSELF: John Fund: Hillary’s Two Races: To Keep Ahead of the Investigators, and to Win the White House.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Salem On The Thames: At Connecticut College, the outrage machine claims another victim.

Academics like to think of themselves as autonomous thinkers, and academia—meaning literally the protected realm of free speech—gives professors not only the right to speak their minds but also, via the institution of tenure, protection against losing their livelihoods by displeasing those more powerful than themselves. The fact that civil polities treasure safe spaces for free speech attests to their progressive bona fides. Especially in our times, when new social networks can turn ominously feral, one would hope that academics and their institutions, especially small, face-to-face college communities, could return that investment and resist anonymous, predatory, crowd behavior.

Yet mob rule is precisely what happened this past semester at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, along the Thames River. Over the course of the past spring semester, philosophy professor Andrew Pessin was driven from campus based on a malevolent reading of a Facebook post in which he depicted “the situation” in Gaza as one in which the Israelis had confined a “rabid pit bull” to a cage, while animal rights activists protested for the poor beast’s release. Although Pessin didn’t specify in the text, he and a commenter did make clear that this metaphor referred to Hamas terrorists, not to the population generally.

But in an attack spearheaded by a Muslim student who in high school had begun a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and a Muslim professor, recently appointed head of the new Global Islamic Studies Program, a small group of activists, given the run of the school paper by its editors, accused Pessin of comparing all Palestinians to rabid dogs and calling for them to be “put down.” Pessin, they claimed, “directly condoned the extermination of a people. A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.” The editor who arranged for the publication of all three letters did not ask Pessin for a response in the same issue.

Shock and horror spread through the community, triggering among many traumatic memories of verbal, racial, dehumanizing abuse, and arousing heretofore silenced “marginal voices.” A great cry went up against racists and hate-speakers of all kinds. Racist graffiti, probably written by an outsider, found in the Student Center bathroom, added to the cries of hurt and indignation.

What a pathetic, evil, clown show. Cost of attending Connecticut College for one year: $62,965.

THE L.A. TIMES’ TED RALL VERSUS THE LAPD: HE MADE IT UP. AND HE GOT CAUGHT: “Unlike politics, in the newspaper business, it only takes one lie for people to call you a liar,” the LAPD’s Jack Dunphy writes.

MELTDOWNS: Greek Politicians Should Learn From Latvia.

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!

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama Gets It Right On Occupational Licensing.

DEMOCRATS HATE YOUR GUTS, SAYS P.J. O’ROURKE: “Democrats need your vote and they’ll do anything—no matter how low and degrading—to get it. They hate you the way a whore hates a john.”

Read the whole thing.

BRITISH AND FRENCH INTERIOR MINISTRIES beginning to rethink their positions on immigration. “What we are currently facing is a global migration crisis. This situation cannot be seen as an issue just for our two countries. It is a priority at both a European and international level. Many of those in Calais and attempting to cross the Channel have made their way there through Italy, Greece or other countries. That is why we are pushing other member states – and the whole of the EU – to address this problem at root.” Until you make the prospect of immigration less attractive than that of staying home, people will keep doing it.

CRUMBLE: Americans now oppose Iran deal, 28/57.

YES, WE’LL BE HIRING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW THIS FALL: Here’s the info.

WHY DO FEMINISTS HATE YOUNG MEN AND WANT TO DESTROY THEM? Ashe Schow: Opponent of new campus due process bill doesn’t hide her contempt for basic rights.

An opponent of a new bill aimed at providing due process rights to students accused of sexual assault disparaged the thought of such constitutional rights because schools “must prioritize the needs of survivors first and foremost.”

That’s all well and good, but one does not know whether someone is truly a “survivor” unless his or her story can hold up to scrutiny, something deliberately absent from current campus hearings. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sarah Merriman, a spokeswoman for SAFER Campus, who told the Washington Post why she opposes the “Safe Campus Act.”

I suspect deep-rooted psychological problems. But then, there’s also this observation from Joan Didion:

“Marxism in this country had even been an eccentric and quixotic passion. One oppressed class after another had seemed finally to miss the point. The have-nots, it turned out, aspired mainly to having. The minorities seemed to promise more, but finally disappointed: it developed that they actually cared about the issues, that they tended to see the integration of the luncheonette and the seat in the front of the bus as real goals, and only rarely as ploys, counters in a larger game. They resisted that essential inductive leap from the immediate reform to the social ideal, and, just as disappointingly, they failed to perceive their common cause with other minorities, continued to exhibit a self-interest disconcerting in the extreme to organizers steeped in the rhetoric of ‘brotherhood.’ And then, at that exact dispirited moment when there seemed no one at all willing to play the proletariat, along came the women’s movement, and the invention of women as a ‘class.’…”

And, finally, they found someone willing to swallow the bullshit whole. And, you know, you have to break a few young-man eggs to make the feminist omelette.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: “Trump Sues Chef Who Backed Out Of Restaurant Deal” for $10 mil after chef Jose Andres got the vapors over Trump’s comments on illegal immigrations and apparently reneged on a previously announced new restaurant in a Trump property in DC.

By the way, the article is at ABC and uses the phrase “illegal immigrants.” No word yet if chastisement from ABC’s own Orwellian language bot will be forthcoming.

SOME KNOXVILLE FRIENDS ARE INVOLVED IN THIS: Jewelry Television® First Shopping Network to Broadcast Reality Show. And one of the contestants is the daughter of a woman I went to high school with.

THE INSTAPUNDIT POLL: I’ll repeat this after the GOP debate.