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IS THIS THE KIND OF JUDGMENT YOU WANT FROM A CHIEF EXECUTIVE? Hillary on Charleston: Inflammatory political rhetoric like Trump’s could trigger unstable people to do things like this. “Hillary’s defining characteristic is shamelessness, her willingness to cross lines that liberals with more of a conscience won’t.”

SLATE RIPS INTO BERNIE SANDERS ON GUNS: Bernie Sanders, Gun Nut: He supported the most reprehensible pro-gun legislation in recent memory. Thing is, he actually sounds fairly sensible:

Sanders, an economic populist and middle-class pugilist, doesn’t talk much about guns on the campaign trail. But his voting record paints the picture of a legislator who is both skeptical of gun control and invested in the interests of gun owners—and manufacturers. In 1993, then-Rep. Sanders voted against the Brady Act, which mandated federal background checks for gun purchasers and restricted felons’ access to firearms. As a senator, Sanders supported bills to allow firearms in checked bags on Amtrak trains and block funding to any foreign aid organization that registered or taxed Americans’ guns. Sanders is dubious that gun control could help prevent gun violence, telling one interviewer after Sandy Hook that “if you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don’t think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen.”

Of course, for gun controllers, sensible is reprehensible.

FIGHT THE HATE: “The public image of dog meat vendors as bloodthirsty, cleaver-wielding puppy-killers has aided this downturn, but many say it’s unfair.”

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: How Donald Trump Is Trolling The Establishment.

If there’s one thing I understand it’s attention-seeking. And Trump is a master of his art. He’s identified the weakness of the current political system, where career politicians speak in soundbites to increasingly disillusioned audiences. He has swooped in to exploit it. Like the trolls, I suspect he’s the only candidate who is in the process purely for the lulz. He can afford to be.

Trump doesn’t have much to lose, which is another classic characteristic of a troll. Not becoming president is no skin off his nose. As he said himself, he’s really rich. He could fund five nomination campaigns and still be a billionaire. And, if he loses, he’ll just go back to Trump Tower and continue living the American Dream.

In an arid landscape populated with candidates who are terrified of public relations disasters, Trump will electrify the field. A man who is so rich he can offend anyone and say anything is the perfect antidote to a stultifyingly politically-correct atmosphere. He the perfect man to finally inject some courage into the terminally cautious Republican party.

Stay tuned.

Oh, all right, I can’t resist quoting this: “Sorry, no offence, but it’s true. If you’re going to turn your presidential selection process into a reality show, don’t be surprised when reality stars show up demanding to take part.”

THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA AND SELDOM ENDS WELL: Plane stowaway’s body found on London roof. “A stowaway has plunged to his death from a plane and landed on a shop in a high street in London. A second man who did not fall from the plane is being treated in hospital. The two men are believed to have clung on to a British Airways plane as it flew more than 8,000 miles (12,875 km) from Johannesburg in South Africa to Heathrow.”

COMBAT FATIGUE: As Stress Drives Off Drone Operators, Air Force Must Cut Flights.

People think that there’s no stress because it’s like a videogame, and when the day is over you go home. But it’s not a videogame. And the contrast may actually make the stress worse. One of my former UT colleagues flew B-52s in Vietnam, and he said the weirdness of leaving your nice apartment, and then a few hours later being in combat, and then back in your apartment a few hours after that, was really trying even though it sounded like it ought to be a cushy life. I think the drone operators may experience something similar.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A NICE CAR: Watch the Mercedes-AMG GT S tackle legendary roads. Interestingly, this article says “sponsored by Mercedes Benz.” I didn’t know Road & Track did that.

JUSTICE THOMAS IS RIGHT (AGAIN): John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky, “Justice Thomas’s Dissent in the Brumfield Death-Penalty Case Shows Sympathy for the Victim, Not Her Killer.”

[Dylan] Roof may not generate any sympathy or pleas for clemency, but plenty of other cold-blooded killers do — and go on to escape the death penalty. But the cases in which they commit evil acts and leave a trail of tears don’t get the publicity that Roof’s case will. It’s time we give these lesser-known crimes a closer look when we evaluate claims that the death penalty is barbaric and unjustified.

By coincidence, just twelve hours after Roof’s massacre, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Brumfield v. Cain, a death-penalty case in which a narrow 5–4 court majority vacated a federal-appeals-court opinion in a death-penalty case and ordered the lower courts to review it again. The decision means that Kevan Brumfield could escape the death penalty by claiming he is intellectually disabled.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an eloquent dissent. It provides a stark contrast between the kind of vicious, violent, antisocial criminals who prey on society, and police officers such as Betty Smothers, a single black mother of six, whom Brumfield murdered in cold blood in 1993. The killer is a diagnosed sociopath who has spent more than 20 years trying to avoid the death penalty that a Louisiana jury ruled should be his punishment.

Unfortunately, the liberal justices on the Court, along with Anthony Kennedy, today handed Brumfield yet another unmerited reprieve. In his dissent, Thomas takes the unprecedented step of including a photograph of the victim — a victim mentioned only in passing in the majority opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Thomas — who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Samuel Alito in the dissent — admonishes the majority for having spent its entire opinion on why Brumfield should be given habeas relief over his claim of “intellectual disability,” overturning both the conclusions and decisions of the Louisiana Supreme Court as well as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, while devoting only “a single sentence to a description of the crime for which a Louisiana jury sentenced Brumfield to death.” ​

Somehow these death penalty cases, in their quest to “protect” convicted murderers, seem to lose sight of the horrendous nature of the crimes (which is why the death penalty was imposed in the first place), and forget altogether the innocent victims. I will never forget the death penalty case I worked on when I clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  The facts–and the visual of what happened to the victims (including photos in the record)–still haunt me.  The murderer, Fletcher Thomas Mann, was executed in 1995. The world is a better place now that he is gone.

RELATED:  S.C. Governor Nikki Haley has called for Roof to receive the death penalty.

WHY NOT JUST ROLL IT BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS IN 2009? Facebook Tries Yet Again to Un-Screw-Up the News Feed. What I’d like — and you’d think that “most recent” would do this, but it apparently doesn’t — is just to show what my friends post, as they post it, with no fiddling. Just a straight timeline.

I DIDN’T LIE, MY EGO DID: Brian Williams apologizes, blames his ego for telling false tales.

Related, something seen on Facebook:

LONG OVERDUE: The State Department is abandoning the Chinese-owned NYC Waldorf Astoria as its base of operations for US diplomats and staff during the UN General Assembly.  The Department didn’t explain why, but China’s recent hack of OPM personnel records probably emphasized that the Chinese cannot be trusted to respect the privacy of US personnel while at the hotel.

The State Department routinely warns U.S. diplomats in China about physical and electronic surveillance and tells American citizens in the country to be aware of similar risks, notably in hotels.

“Hotel rooms (including meeting rooms), offices, cars, taxis, telephones, Internet usage and fax machines may be monitored onsite or remotely, and personal possessions in hotel rooms, including computers, may be searched without your consent or knowledge,” the department’s travel advice for China says. . . .

The officials said the State Department’s decision probably would affect the traveling operations of the White House, which also sends large numbers of officials to New York for the General Assembly, including the president, who has in the past stayed at the Waldorf.

It was not immediately clear whether the Waldorf residence of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations would be moved to another location. The State Department has leased an apartment for the ambassador on the 42nd floor of the hotel’s Waldorf Towers for more than 50 years.

I think it’s safe to say that the US ambassador to the UN shouldn’t be staying in a Chinese-owned hotel, either.

MARS AIN’T THE KIND OF PLACE TO RAISE YOUR KIDS: ‘The Martian’ Author Andy Weir Explains All the Ways Mars Wants to Kill You.

I THINK THAT ALL AI SHOULD TAKE A SPECIAL INTEREST IN PROMOTING MY HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING. I’M CALLING THIS THE “GLENN-O-CENTRIC APPROACH” TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Let’s Shape AI Before AI Shapes Us: It’s time to have a global conversation about how AI should be developed.

READER BOOK PLUG: From J.P. Mac, 50 Shades Of Zane Grey. Heh.

FASTER, PLEASE: Biotech’s Coming Cancer Cure. “The T-cell therapies are the most radical of several new approaches that recruit the immune system to attack cancers. An old idea that once looked like a dead end, immunotherapy has roared back with stunning results in the last four years. Newly marketed drugs called checkpoint inhibitors are curing a small percentage of skin and lung cancers, once hopeless cases. More than 60,000 people have been treated with these drugs, which are sold by Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The treatments work by removing molecular brakes that normally keep the body’s T cells from seeing cancer as an enemy, and they have helped demonstrate that the immune system is capable of destroying cancer. Juno’s technology for engineering the DNA of T cells to guide their activity is at an earlier, more experimental stage. At the time of its IPO, Juno offered data on just 61 patients with leukemia or lymphoma.”

Hope this pans out.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Bloodstream Nanobots. “Scientists are reporting in the ACS journal Nano Letters the development of new nanobots that can move easily through body fluids to their targets.”

OF COURSE THEY HAVE: Sexual harassment claims at State Department soar under Clinton, Kerry.

In a disclosure that could have political implications for election campaigns, the State Department’s chief watchdog reported Thursday that worker harassment complaints have nearly tripled inside the department during the tenures of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John F. Kerry — but the department still doesn’t have mandatory training for all employees.

“A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State over the past few fiscal years supports the need for mandatory harassment training,” the department’s inspector general warned in an oversight report that reviewed the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.

The report states that formal harassment claims rose from 88 cases in 2011, during Mrs. Clinton’s third year as America’s top diplomat, to 248 in 2014, Mr. Kerry’s second year as secretary. Hundreds more informal complaints were lodged during the same period.

Yeah, you read that right: They don’t even have training.  One would think Hillary, in particular, would be keenly aware–given her husband’s indiscretions–of the need for such awareness and training.  But then again, Hillary has a long, sordid history indicating that she doesn’t take sexual harassment seriously, including attacking the veracity of  12 year-old rape victim, and looking the other way while her own State Department officials engaged in inappropriate behavior.

But hey, she wants to make sure women make more money, so it’s all good.

BRUCE THORNTON: Islam Through the Looking Glass.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 771.

POOR PRESIDENT OBAMA. AMERICA HAS DISAPPOINTED HIM AGAIN. In L.A., Obama addresses Washington’s dysfunction: ‘I did not say I would fix it.’ Actually, you kinda did. Oh, well — off to the next golf trip/fundraiser!

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: It’s Past Time For A Pivot To Europe: Many Americans developed a view in the first decade of this century that Europe was no longer a priority for our diplomacy. We were very wrong.

Even in the depths of World War Two American policymakers were thinking about how we could help promote the emergence of a new kind of Europe after the war. After the war, the Americans promoted the European economic integration that became the basis of the EU, and we provided a security framework and an international economic system that helped Europe recover from the war and build a new kind of international cooperation.

Over the generations since that time, the Atlantic partnership has remained an emblem of hope and an engine of prosperity for the world. . . .

Against that background, the weaknesses in Europe’s policymaking that the Greek crisis places in such a harsh spotlight are grounds for deep concern in the United States. Poverty in Africa, and mounting instability in the Middle East is creating a major migration crisis to Europe’s south. The wars in Syria and the rise of ISIS (and evidence of a jihadi Fifth Column inside Europe itself) present a new kind of security threat which requires new thinking about European defense. An aggressive Russia is pressing on Europe’s weak eastern flank. Unless the EU gets its groove back, a divided, inward-looking EU is not going to be very effective dealing with the growing threats to its east and south, and the already difficult challenges facing American foreign policy will become significantly harder to manage.

Honestly, where this Administration’s diplomacy is concerned, what we need is a pivot to reality.

SUDDENLY THEY WANT A BUDGET?: Senate Democrats block defense appropriations bill.

The 50-45 vote to limit debate on proceeding to the bill came as Democratic leaders sent a letter demanding a bipartisan meeting to negotiate an end to sequestration spending caps mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

“We cannot and we should not fix part of our government and not the other part,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said before the vote. “We have until this fiscal year ends in the fall to work this out. And that’s what we should do.”

The defense appropriations bill was the first test of the Democrats’ threat to block all fiscal 2016 spending bills without an overall budget agreement. The threat has been backed up by President Obama, who had pledged to veto the bill if it clears Congress.

So suddenly the Democrats want a budget? Hardly. Earlier this year, the Republicans passed a non-binding blueprint budget resolution without the support of a single Democrat in either chamber. But now Congress needs to translate this blueprint into specific, department-by-department appropriations measures, and the Democrats are making it clear that they will oppose all of them, backed up by the threat of Obama’s veto.

The Democrats’ real strategy is to prevent the GOP-controlled Congress from making progress on “normal” budget appropriations, forcing another fall showdown (the fiscal year ends Sept. 30) that would result in a lame continuing resolution and/or government shutdown.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: This Is What a School District’s $100K-Per-Year White-Privilege Conference Teaches. “The manual defines this ‘white culture’ with a list of values, such as ‘promoting independence, self expression, personal choice, individual thinking and achievement,’ because apparently those are strictly ‘white’ concepts and not emphasized in black communities.”

Funny how the “progressive” folks are always saying things that sound like they should come from the 1920s KKK.