FRACKING UPDATE: Some Shale Still Profits at $30. “Crude prices have dipped to their lowest level in more than six years, with Europe’s Brent trading close to $48 per barrel, and America’s WTI benchmark down under $43. That’s good news for consumers, but oil producers are having to make tough decisions as higher-cost plays become unprofitable. Many, therefore, expected that a bearish crude market might prove fatal to the shale boom; fracking is a relatively expensive process and just a year ago it was generally thought that few wells could operate profitably below $50 per barrel. But as Bloomberg reports, the price plunge has proven to be a galvanizing event for many in the American shale industry, and a number of firms are finding ways to make money.”

SCOTT JOHNSON: Who Ya Gonna Call?

I’ve noted the anti-Semitic themes and canards on which President Obama has unsubtly drawn in promoting the deal with Iran. He’s injected anti-Semitism into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. He hasn’t been reticent and he’s hardly been called on it.

Despite its liberalism and its Democratic tilt, the organized Jewish community has to a substantial extent come out against Obama’s Iran deal. AIPAC is lobbying against it. The Anti-Defamation League has come out against it. The American Jewish Committee has come out against it. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has come out against it. To say the least, opposing Obama does not come naturally to these organizations.

I should think that the opposition of these groups is little more than an inconvenience to Obama, yet that’s not how he’s treating it. He’s treating it as though it matters. He’s treating it as thought it is an offense to him personally. He’s treating it as though he doesn’t care about the damage he’s doing. Who ya gonna call?

You’re gonna call someone who can pit blacks against Jews. You’re gonna call Al Sharpton.

Lefties — well, Andrew Sullivan, anyway — shrieked when I called Obama a racist hatemonger back in 2012 but, well, the evidence keeps growing.

When you elect a racist hatemonger, you get racist hatemongering.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 829.

REPORT: Trump at the Iowa State Fair: Chopper Rides for Kids, Golf Cart Tour — But no Butter Cow.

WELL, SOMEBODY SHOULD: Pakistani Brit Calls Out Lefty Indulgence of Islamism.

Maajid Nawaz is a sharply dressed, cosmopolitan European campaigner against “theocracy” and patriarchal society, so you’d think that he’d win plaudits from the left. Instead he’s been attacked in the pages of the Guardian—because he’s a Brit of Pakistani descent campaigning against Islamic radicalism. Somewhere in the past few years, the international left’s wires seem to have gotten crossed on the subject of Islam, such that the angriest voices in Islam are treated as the most “authentic” (frequently by privileged white Western lefties), while those in Islam who speak out against such voices, no matter how just their cause or how deep their roots in the community, get little support. . . .

Well, Nawaz himself isn’t backing down. And sometimes the simplest truths take the most courage to say.

Yep.

GREAT. NOW LET THEM CARRY GUNS. Pentagon leaders honor troops killed in Chattanooga.

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STEPHANIE SLADE: Why I Am A Pro-Life Libertarian.

There’s a belief on the American left that says it’s impossible to be both a principled libertarian and a principled pro-lifer—that the two positions are somehow intellectually incompatible. It’s been popping up more often lately as liberal writers look for ways to criticize Sen. Rand Paul, as in this Salon piece, where the author says Paul and his father “have always played fast and loose with their libertarian principles when it comes to reproductive health.”

The unstated premise on which that statement relies is that No True Libertarian could also be against abortion. But in reality, it’s not the case that all libertarians believe women should have the right to terminate a pregnancy. More to the point, it’s flatly incorrect to suggest that opposition to legal abortion is irreconcilable with the belief system that places a person in the libertarian camp.

What is true is that most libertarians—at least historically—have held pro-choice views. In their 2012 book The Libertarian Vote, David Boaz, David Kirby, and (former Reason Foundation polling director) Emily Ekins looked at the data and confirmed as much. “According to our analysis of 2008 [American National Election Study] data, 62 percent of libertarians are pro-choice versus 37 percent pro-life, similar to percentages of the national population,” they wrote. Stated otherwise, as recently as 2008, a six-in-ten majority of libertarians thought women should be able to legally get an abortion. . . . Recall as well that the authors of The Libertarian Vote found more than a third of libertarians opposing abortion. There’s even reason to suspect that number might be on the rise. Although millennials are routinely painted as socially liberal, a 2014 Pew Research study found that people 18 to 29 are actually more likely than those 30 to 64 to say the practice should be illegal. A majority of Hispanics, the fastest-growing demographic in the country, also said it should be banned.

Libertarians are on both sides of the issue.

WHITE HOUSE TOOL: Sharpton calls for black churches to lobby on Iran deal.

Rev. Al Sharpton will push America’s black churches to lobby in favor of the Iran nuclear deal, a new report says.

Sharpton is launching his push backing President Obama’s pact with Tehran this weekend, according to The Huffington Post.

“I am calling on ministers in black churches nationwide to go to their pulpits Sunday and have their parishioners call their senators and congressmen to vote yes on the Iran nuclear plan,” he said Friday.

“We have a disproportionate interest, being that if there is a war, our community is always disproportionately part of the armed services, and that a lot of the debate is by people who will not have family members who will be at risk,” Sharpton added.

He also argued Friday that his efforts would counter a coordinated national effort against Obama’s historic diplomatic achievement.

Actually, the “community” isn’t disproportionately a part of the armed services, especially not of the combat arms. But truth never mattered to the “Reverend” Al.

THIS IS SAD: Ralph Luker, pioneer history blogger, has passed away at age 75. “Ralph taught American history at a number of schools and was the author of numerous studies. He also edited two volumes of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers. Many of you, however, know Ralph from his days at History News Network’s Cliopatria blog. Our paths crossed almost immediately after I started blogging back in 2005. Even at that early stage Ralph was already promoting history blogging and bloggers.”

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD: Bernie Sanders: I’ll fight hardest to end racism.

BRING OUT YOUR CUTE FUZZY CRITTERS: Yosemite campground shut because of plague-infected squirrels.

OF COURSE THE SHOW WAS ‘APOCALYPSE NOW’: Hillary Clinton steals the show at Iowa Democrats meet.

SHE’S NOT A WOMAN: My friend Cedar Sanderson has been declared not a woman.  So have I.  And yet we exist.  And we refuse to let the crazies speak for us.

I’D SAY PACK OR HORDE: David Cameron insists describing migrants as a ‘swarm’ wasn’t ‘dehumanising’.  Seriously, should he bow before referring to them?  Maybe “Gentlemen who honor us by coming to our country” would be enough.

TAMARA TABO: Waco Biker Shootout Autopsies Released, Questions Remain.

KEEP CALM AND IGNORE THE SCREAMS: Ignore the dire warnings about our lives because it’s just hysteria.

HEH: Hillary Hell: Loses primary then Carly runs grating Clinton audio of “isn’t it time to have a woman in the WH?” rest of ’16.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: What You Missed This Afternoon At SPJ Airplay From Christina Hoff Sommers. “This afternoon multiple bomb threats were called in to a Society of Professional Journalists debate about GamerGate. I’ve been passed the remarks my fellow panellist, AEI scholar and feminist academic Christina Hoff Sommers, was planning to make.”

Funny how the GamerGate folks are always called terrorists, but the bomb threats always seem to come from the SJW crowd.

POLITICAL MODERATION: “On marijuana, the single most popular position was full legalization. On immigration, it was ‘the immediate roundup and deportation of all undocumented immigrants and an outright moratorium on all immigration until the border is proven secure.'”

HMM: Jeff Flake comes out against Iran deal. “Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of the few potential GOP supporters of the international accord over Iran’s nuclear program, announced Saturday he would oppose the deal, dealing a blow to the White House. . . . Flake, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been viewed as more willing than most Republicans to support foreign policy objectives on the part of the Obama administration, including its moves with Cuba. He had been one of only two Republicans who was either undecided or had not voiced a position on the Iran agreement, according to The Hill’s Whip List, and had been lobbied by the White House to vote in favor of the deal.”

WHO ARE TRUMP’S SUPPORTERS? Not Who You Think. I think to some degree it depends on what you mean by “supporters.” Lots of people support Trump’s kicking sand in the faces of the media and GOP establishment who don’t actually support him for President.

UPDATE: It’s paywalled for some people, apparently, but I can get through fine. But here’s an excerpt for the gist, for those who can’t read the whole thing.

Today’s prototypical conservative base voters are infamously principled. Their views are hardened, their heels dug in. They are armed with all kinds of litmus tests and purity tests to make sure the “fake” conservatives are weeded out from the good ones, often to the chagrin of the party.

It shifts with time, but at the moment the ideological guillotine falls on issues like immigration (are you for a pathway?), abortion (are you for exceptions?), guns (are you for universal background checks?), education (do you support Common Core?) and climate change (do you think it’s real?). Departing from doctrine on just one of these can cast a foreboding shadow of skepticism upon an otherwise devout and disciplined conservative.

For Republican base voters, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush are unforgivably moderate. While to the rest of the country people like John McCain and Mitt Romney are sufficiently conservative if not “severely” conservative, to use Romney’s phrasing, to the hardened base voters the 2008 and 2012 presidential losses were proof that voting for the so-called electable candidate, instead of the principled one, leaves them with nothing to show for it. They got neither the satisfaction of voting their conscience — be it for Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum — nor the consolation of a less than conservative Republican in the White House.

The idea that in 2016 these voters would simply turn off their hard-wired orthodoxy and support a guy who has voted for Democrats, said “the economy does better under the Democrats,” refused to pledge to support the Republican nominee if it’s not him, openly defended Planned Parenthood, approved of exceptions to abortion bans, supported a single-payer health care system, backed an assault weapons ban and advocated a one-time 14.25 percent mega-tax on the wealthy to erase the national debt is, to put it in Trumpian language, really, really stupid.

Base voters will stick with candidates like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, who demonstrated their conservative bona fides by shutting down the government, filibustering the Patriot Act and pledging to repeal Obamacare. The more evangelically inclined will support Huckabee and Santorum, or maybe even Marco Rubio, who recently said he personally opposes any exceptions — rape, incest, health of the mother — for abortion.

So who is the Trump supporter, if not the conservative base? I’d argue it’s mostly disaffected moderates who no longer strictly identify with either party. They think the political system is rigged. They think politicians are corrupt. They want a total collapse of the ruling political class.

While Trump probably gets more support from the right, running as a Republican, he attracts from the left as well.

So there.

WELL, IT’S DANGEROUS: 2 Parachutists Injured at Chicago Air Show: One hit a building on the way down, is in critical condition.

SOUND SCIENCE: Next Time Government Gives You Dietary Advice, Consider Doing the Opposite. From scares over skipping breakfast to too much salt, the government’s been wrong a lot.

Often wrong, but never in doubt. I’m sticking with Gary Taubes myself.