CHOCOLATE RATION RAISED TO TWENTY GRAMS A WEEK! Politico Editor: Falling GDP Is Good.

John Kerry and Claire McCaskill agree that bad economic news is certainly good for Gaia.

POWER LINE’S DRONES GO ROGUE (VIDEO): I think Steve Hayward is just kidding around in this video, but in any case, it reminded me that it’s all fun and games playing with a drone until it decides it’s done talking to the remote control. I discovered that the hard way last month a couple of times when operating the drone we rented for video overflights of the location in Texas where we’ll be having Bullets & Bourbon in December. (Where Glenn Reynolds, Dana Loesch, Ed Morrissey, Roger L. Simon, Kevin D. Williamson, VodkaPundit Steve Green and Mark Rippetoe will be speaking.) That’s why I had to chuckle at a link from Glenn last week to the New York Times, who noted, “As Stress Drives Off Drone Operators, Air Force Must Cut Flights.” As Glenn wrote in response:

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.

Exactly. In a video game, if you crash the plane, all that’s hurt is your pride; you reboot the program and start again. But crashing a drone, even a small video drone such as the DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus we rented has real world consequences – it can tangle into a power line; it can crash onto the roof of a house (err, like my house!) it can crash into people. And for an Air Force operator, the risk of crashing a large armed drone into someone who wasn’t intended to be its target has got to be an enormous constant fear. Particularly given the tenuous connection between the drone and its operator is likely little more than a video screen and a computer interface, which must feel very different than being inside the cockpit of a traditional aircraft. The higher the drone we rented flew, and when it overflew the lake at Rough Creek Lodge in Glen Rose, TX, the more bullets I was sweating, if you’ll pardon the pun.

[jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”209088″]

That said, as I was packing up our drone to go back to the rental agency, I had the same feelings I had when I first used an Altair 8080 computer in 1976 at Doane Academy, and logging onto CompuServe and assorted BBSs for the first time about five years later on my TRS-80: good or bad, this was a glimpse of the future.

Hopefully though, as drones increase in numbers, things won’t be anywhere near as scary as this Hitchcock-esque recent BWM commercial…

WHICH STATES HAVE THE MOST LIBERTARIANS? THIS MAP WILL TELL YOU. “Montana and New Hampshire look promising, but most of the East Coast is a no-go zone,” Reason magazine notes.

THE PHRASE ‘TRIGGER WARNING’ IS NOW ALSO A TRIGGER:

Well, it’s all come full-circle. According to the Feminist Internet, the phrase “trigger warning” is now in itself also a trigger.

The blog Everyday Feminism recently re-published an article explaining the idea of “trigger warnings” to those of us who are not as culturally literate and sensitive as they are, and began it with the following disclaimer:

Like this phenomenal article, Everyday Feminism definitely believes in giving people a heads up about material that might provoke our reader’s trauma. However, we use the phrase “content warning” instead of “trigger warning,” as the word “trigger” relies on and evokes violent weaponry imagery. This could be re-traumatizing for folks who have suffered military, police, and other forms of violence. So, while warnings are so necessary and the points in this article are right on, we strongly encourage the term “content warning” instead of “trigger warning.”

Nonsense. As long as you’ve taken a sufficient dosage of soma tablets, then trigger warnings should generate no trigger warnings.

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING:

How many divisions has it got? pic.twitter.com/GvODbk7mK0

— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) June 27, 2015

SCOTT WALKER JUMPS THE MARRIAGE SHARK: The Supreme Court did the Republicans a favor by taking gay marriage off the table, Roger Simon writes. Why has Walker put it back on?

AMERICAN HISTORY SALE: One-day Kindle deals include Black Hawk Down, David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing and Paul Revere’s Ride, Amity Shlaes’s Coolidge, and more. Check them out here.

“DOES FRANCE FEAR INNOVATION?” asks Imran Amed, the Canadian-British founder of Business of Fashion, an influential website that started as a blog. Turns out that anti-Uber strike coincides with the week for men’s fashion shows.

Only in Paris would it be acceptable (or logical) for taxi drivers to go on strike and block train stations and airports and think it would create support for them amongst the public. Harassing Uber drivers who are just trying to do their jobs and haranguing customers who should have the right to choose how they get around only does their cause a disservice. Instead of inconveniencing a whole city, they should offer a better service, use technology and get with the times.

When I recounted my situation on Instagram, the response from the BoF community came fast and furious.

“Think about the people that have to live with that nonsense everyday,” commented Le Monde’s Carine Bizet.

“Absolutely typical of the French Government who do not acknowledge the fashion industry as something REAL,” added Lady Amanda Harlech, muse to Karl Lagerfeld.

Indeed, not only was it a terrible start to Fashion Week, it also made me wonder about what is happening generally in France — one of the most important nodes in the global fashion industry — and the country’s archaic and self-defeating approach to innovation and change.

Worth a quick read.

DOES “LOCHNER” EQUAL “LIBERTY?” I’ll leave it to the lawyers to discuss the substance and merits of the many opinions in the gay-marriage case, but Chief Justice Roberts’s Lochner obsession reads to this layperson like “Ewwww, liberty–Justice Kennedy said a bad word.” Maybe that explains the many separate dissents.

LIBERTARIAN TRIUMPH?  Since the beginning of Instapundit Glenn has called for married gay couples with closets of assault weapons and we’re basically there!  Now we just need to keep hustling for marijuana and prostitution and we’re getting somewhere.  In 2010 Glenn and I made the following wager: Will marijuana be legal in all fifty states before or after January 1, 2020?  Glenn took before (optimist!) and I took after.  A Chipotle burrito bowl (or steak tacos in Glenn’s case) awaits the winner, so the stakes are high.

AND FOR TONIGHT’S INSOMNIA THEATER: “KNOWLEDGE STARTS AS OFFENDEDNESS” – Check out this video featuring Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Rauch on “hate speech” and his book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.

READ THIS LEARNED FOOTNOTE: Texas Supreme Court Justice Willett rejects “the Lochner bogeyman”

Writes David Bernstein:

As I pointed out earlier, Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent today ignores the last thirty years of scholarship and uses Lochner as a bogeyman to reject a due process challenge to states’ refusal to recognize same-sex marriage. Roberts’s description of Lochner is embarrassingly ahistorical.

By contrast, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett’s concurring opinion today (joined by two other Justices) in Patel v. Texas Dept. of Licensing, blogged in detail by Eugene below, explicitly rejects what he calls “the Lochner bogeyman.”

In a footnote, he proceeds to provide a scholarly, accurate account of Lochnerand economic liberty in historical context, making Roberts’s opinion look even worse by contrast–especially because Willett’s opinion refutes several of Roberts’s claims.

Read Justice Willett’s learned footnote here.

ATTENTION OUTER PARTY MEMBERS, LATEST VERSION OF NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY NOW ONLINE: Univ. of WI Releases List of Microaggressions; Saying “Everyone can Succeed” Now Racist.

IS THIS WEEK THE RIGHT’S VALLEY FORGE? From Rick Moran at the PJ Tatler:

Even the low point of the Revolutionary War turned into a reason for optimism. We all know the story of Valley Forge, the worst winter of the war, where thousands perished of the cold, disease and hunger. But in the midst of the suffering, there arrived a somewhat comical Prussian officer named Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who presented himself as a general but really held the rank equal to captain in the Prussian army.

Von Steuben set about training the American army in the European tradition — a deficiency that had prevented the Continental army from engaging in a stand up fight with the redcoats. In this, he was successful beyond anyone’s dreams — including Washington’s. The regulation drill instilled a sense of pride and professionalism in the notoriously individualistic American soldier and was evident at the next big engagement of the war, the Battle of Monmouth. After initial setbacks, the Americans rallied and nearly won the day.

Conservatives certainly don’t need a pep talk from anyone. But recognizing the situation  and dealing with the consequences rationally is far better than giving into despair.  To believe that constitutional government is lost or the rule of law overthrown isn’t logical. Our Constitution has withstood a lot more than anything that John Roberts and Barack Obama can throw at it. It may be a little tattered and frayed around the edges. It may be disrespected and ignored in some cases. But the structures that the Founders built and that have stood the test of 227 years are still sound and ready to be redeemed.

We wouldn’t be an exceptional country if we weren’t capable of reinventing ourselves as often as we have in the past. The present will become past soon enough and a reordering of history is not out of the question. It may not mean that Obamacare will go away or gay marriage declared illegal again. That is highly unlikely. But it may be more realistic to believe that we can return to the path laid out by our Founders in the Constitution that the Supreme Court has so cavalierly wandered away from.

Read the whole thing.

THE FAST WAY TO BETTER HEALTH: A Periodic Diet that Mimics Fasting Promotes Multi-System Regeneration, Enhanced Cognitive Performance, and Healthspan, from Cell.com.

THE CLASSICIST PODCAST, WITH VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: DROUGHT AND DECLINE IN CALIFORNIA: “Tired of being depressed by Supreme Court rulings? Why not switch it up a little and get depressed by California?”

REFUTING RADAR ONLINE’S RACIST ATTACK ON NIKKI HALEY.

YEAH, SURE, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?: Obama administration to release former bin Laden bodyguard from Gitmo.

Abdul Rahman Shalabi, 39, has been cleared by the Periodic Review Board to return to Saudi Arabia after a nine-year hunger strike protesting his confinement, The Associated Press reported.

The board, which was set up by the Obama administration in 2011, “acknowledges the detainee’s past terrorist-related activities,” but will send him to a Saudi rehabilitation program for Islamic radicals anyway, AP reported.

The al Qaeda associate’s lawyer said in April that his client, who was never officially charged, has been force-fed through a nasogastric tube for nine years.

Being fed through a nasogastric tube for nine years? Good thing he’s not some radical or anything. And sending a former OBL bodyguard who is so nutty that he’s refused food for nine years to a “Saudi rehabilitation program for Islamic radicals” sounds like a reasonable move by the President. I mean, it’s not like the Saudis are radical or anything–I’m sure they’ll have a terrific twelve-step rehab program — a Terrorists Anonymous or something.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

TOTAL IDENTITY POLITICS ARMAGEDDON: Jonah Goldberg warns that “The center will not hold” in his latest G-File “News”letter:

My real fear isn’t that the left will win. I still have some faith that the American people, including large portions of the Democratic base, don’t actually buy all of this nonsense, or at the very least it’s reasonable to assume they won’t continue to buy it for long. Why? Because it’s exhausting. What’s the correct word today? What are we allowed to think? How long must we discuss a world that doesn’t bear much resemblance to the one we actually live in?  Most people don’t want to be politically engaged constantly. We won’t all be assimilated by the Borg. (Though it is kind of amazing that the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show had been warning us about this for so long and we never listened; “borg-a-borg-borg-borg!”)

No my real fear is that the center will not hold. I’ve discussed this a bit when it comes to the debate over Islam. I don’t like the practice of insulting Muslims — or anybody — just to prove a point. But what I like even less is the suggestion that Muslim fanatics have the assassin’s veto over what we can say or do. So I am forced to choose sides, and when forced, I will stand with the insulters over the beheaders. But that is not an ideal scenario. That is the Leninist thinking of “the worse, the better.”

So what I fear is something similar in our own society; that the left gets what it’s been asking for: Total Identity Politics Armageddon. Everyone to your tribe, literal or figurative.

Spending as much time as I do on the internet, it’s easy to think this world has already arrived. It’s basically how political twitter operates. But what I fear is that it spills over into real life, like when characters from The Matrix walk among us.

The Left’s identity-politics game is a bit like the welfare states of Europe, which exist solely by living off borrowed capital and unrequited generosity. Europeans can only have their lavish entitlements because they benefit from our military might and our technological innovation. Left to their own devices, they’d have to live quite differently.

Similarly, identity politics is fueled by generous subsidies from higher education, foundations, and other institutions designed to transfer resources to the Griping Industry. But if you spend enough time teaching people to think that way, guess what? They’ll think that way.

Read the whole thing.

MUST READ: FIRE Intern James Altschul responds to San Diego State student Anthony Berteaux’s condemnation of Jerry Seinfeld’s recent statement that today’s college students are too politically correct. Altschul and Seinfeld are right: many of today’s students can’t seem to take a joke. In fact, FIRE, the DKT Liberty Project, and director Ted Balaker and Korchula Productions have a forthcoming feature documentary about just this, titled Can We Take a Joke? Be sure to check out the Can We Take a Joke? website, like it on Facebook, and follow it on Twitter.

WE WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN? GOP Hopefuls Must Have Plan to Avoid Another Roberts/Kennedy

The key is a demonstrated commitment to following the original meaning of the Constitution, whether that leads to upholding or invalidating a “popularly-enacted” law. Avoid those who advocate “judicial deference,” “judicial restraint,” “judicial minimalism” or who condemn “judicial activism” or “legislating from the bench.” None of those catch phrases concern how to interpret the Constitution, and those who utter these largely empty homilies about judicial role are very likely to disappoint. And don’t let your nominees use “precedent” as an out either. By now, much precedent is pretty bad, and is itself merely living justices deferring to dead justices (when they care to). The confirmation hearing will be tougher, but no pain, no gain.

And you better have a Republican Senate that is will not restore the filibuster.

TO RECAP: Insist on a demonstrated commitment to follow the “original meaning” of the text wherever it may lead.

BONUS TIP: Don’t let a Bush nominate any justices.

HERE’S WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT, AMERICA: Canada legalized gay marriage ten years ago.

(H/T: Kathy Shaidle.)

A REAL ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT: The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science. Matt Ridley, the brilliant science writer, is losing faith in science’s ability to test hypotheses and correct mistakes. That would interfere with the agenda of activist scientists and their protectors in the media.

These scientists and their guardians of the flame repeatedly insist that there are only two ways of thinking about climate change—that it’s real, man-made and dangerous (the right way), or that it’s not happening (the wrong way). But this is a false dichotomy. There is a third possibility: that it’s real, partly man-made and not dangerous. This is the “lukewarmer” school, and I am happy to put myself in this category. Lukewarmers do not think dangerous climate change is impossible; but they think it is unlikely.

I find that very few people even know of this. Most ordinary people who do not follow climate debates assume that either it’s not happening or it’s dangerous. This suits those with vested interests in renewable energy, since it implies that the only way you would be against their boondoggles is if you “didn’t believe” in climate change.

They keep saying the science is settled, but consider Ridley’s summary of findings from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

The IPCC actually admits the possibility of lukewarming within its consensus, because it gives a range of possible future temperatures: it thinks the world will be between about 1.5 and four degrees [Celsius, or about 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit] warmer on average by the end of the century. That’s a huge range, from marginally beneficial to terrifyingly harmful, so it is hardly a consensus of danger, and if you look at the “probability density functions” of climate sensitivity, they always cluster towards the lower end.

What is more, in the small print describing the assumptions of the “representative concentration pathways”, it admits that the top of the range will only be reached if sensitivity to carbon dioxide is high (which is doubtful); if world population growth re-accelerates (which is unlikely); if carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans slows down (which is improbable); and if the world economy goes in a very odd direction, giving up gas but increasing coal use tenfold (which is implausible).

But the commentators ignore all these caveats and babble on about warming of “up to” four degrees (or even more), then castigate as a “denier” anybody who says, as I do, the lower end of the scale looks much more likely given the actual data. This is a deliberate tactic. Following what the psychologist Philip Tetlock called the “psychology of taboo”, there has been a systematic and thorough campaign to rule out the middle ground as heretical: not just wrong, but mistaken, immoral and beyond the pale. That’s what the word denier with its deliberate connotations of Holocaust denial is intended to do. For reasons I do not fully understand, journalists have been shamefully happy to go along with this fundamentally religious project.

Read the whole thing.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Confederate Flag Purge Goes Nuts Almost Immediately, Hits Harmless Strategy Games.