FINALLY, A CANDIDATE WHO UNDERSTANDS THE MEDIA: “I actually stopped him and I said, ‘You know what? No, she’s not [nice]. She wants to destroy you. Nothing would make her happier than to take your life and filet you on the front pages. And don’t think for a minute that because she smiles and is friendly to you, that it’s anything else.’”

I once had a girlfriend who left journalism to go into PR because, she said, PR is more ethical. She was right.

HE HIT SOME GOOD SPOTS, BUT MISSED SOME, TOO: A $50 Day in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Here’s The Original Freezo, mentioned in the piece.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

MATT WELCH: ‘His name was Jefferson Davis Hogg!’ If The Dukes of Hazzard was racist, it sure had a funny way of showing it. It’s all about knee-jerk banning, not about any rational consideration. The point is to wield power. If it’s wielded arbitrarily and capriciously, so much the better, as that makes people feel less secure.

FINE, BUT WHEN DOES THE RX-9 COME OUT? The 2016 Mazda Miata has Finally Landed in America.

ELLEN PAO FACES Reddit Revolt. “Reddit is in meltdown. The hugely popular link-sharing site is in a state of virtual lockdown after the volunteers who run some of the site’s biggest communities (known as “subreddits”) went on the digital equivalent of a general strike. This followed the sacking of Victoria Taylor, a popular site admin, after a Reddit Q&A with the Rev. Jesse Jackson went badly for the activist preacher.”

ANDREW KLAVAN: Cowboy Up, Conservatives – And Happy Fourth. “Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of conservatives saying things like, ‘It’s over. The left has won. This is no longer America. I’m not even going to celebrate the Fourth of July this year.’ I confess this disturbs me. I expect feminists to squeal like hysterical little girls. . . . I expect conservatives to act like men and women — men and women who understand they are part of a fight for liberty that began when Moses killed the Egyptian slavedriver and will not end until Jesus comes again. Open your eyes. The hills are filled with chariots of fire. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Endorsed. Show some backbone.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Toward advanced nanotechnology: Working solid state molecular shuttle.

LET’S GET A STAKE AND A MALLET, JUST TO BE SURE: Is the Carbon Tax Dead?

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: A 21st Century Submarines arms race could see numbers exceeding the 1000 German U-boats of WW2.

WHY IT’S STILL IMPORTANT FOR YOUR FAMILY TO WATCH FIREWORKS: “Show your kids the importance of celebrating their nation’s birthday. Make it personal for them, and don’t be afraid to let them know about some super-cool, ancient guys and gals who persevered for their cause — even though society deemed them wrong — and in the process founded a new world where we are free to create life, enjoy liberty, and pursue happiness. Take time to tell them why we have huge displays in the skies and hot dogs to eat, and why you may get teary at the sound of our National Anthem. Maybe it will spark a conversation; they may even find a new hero. At the very least, they will beg to go see the fireworks in person.”

THE CULTURE-WAR PUSHBACK BEGINS: Video: Flag burners “dispersed” by veterans, bikers. Whose streets? Our streets!

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here Are The Fireworks Laws In Every State.

Fireworks bans, as reported so many years ago by Henry Reed, were the entering wedge of nannyism.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 785.

ANDREW MICHTA: Grexit May Be Europe’s Teaching Moment: The unfolding Greek tragedy is about more than economics. It’s also about the EU’s democracy deficit.

The European idea of a common market expanding into a larger community of nations remains as valid today as it was in the 1950s. Trade, cross-investment, and the sharing of resources for infrastructure projects, insofar as they benefit economic growth, are all part of the manifest successes of the original vision of a European community. Still, the EU as it is presently conceived has produced more than its share of hubris and bad ideas, beyond the notion of bringing Greece into the Eurozone. The partial de-nationalization of the state and the partial limits on state sovereignty in the name of peace still lie at the foundation of the original European project, but they have since given way, especially since the end of the Cold War, to a European bureaucratic fantasy of what should constitute the “Union.” The idea of a common market has been knocked out from its central place by the vision of a pan-European quasi-state entity, whose workings few in Europe understand, and which, most importantly, has consistently failed to generate a new Europe-wide identity in place of national allegiances. This is not just a Greek problem; bureaucratic empire building has its limits, and we call those limits “citizens.” The stirrings across Europe, from the United Kingdom through Spain to Poland, show that the issues at hand are not purely economic, and that traditional national identity, citizen participation and sovereignty remain just as relevant to democracy today as they were in years past.

The Common Market was about free trade. The EU was about creating an economic – and, especially, political — counterweight to America. It was a venture that put politics ahead of economics, which explains its current problems.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR SPIES: Hudson Institute senior fellow Gabriel Schoenfeld on “The Central Inclusiveness Agency.”

The Central Intelligence Agency is once again mired in crisis. CIA Director John Brennan finds himself “deeply concerned.” The spy agency he runs suffers from an affliction that he says has “persisted despite repeated efforts by Agency leaders to address it.”

What is ailing this vital guardian of national security? The CIA’s upper echelon, Mr. Brennan said on Tuesday, does “not reflect the diversity of the Agency workforce or of the nation.”

Mr. Brennan was commenting on the “Director’s Diversity in Leadership Study,” an unclassified report released that day. The study comes to the “unequivocal conclusion,” he said in a statement, that there has been a major failure at the agency in the “crucial” area of diversity and inclusiveness. . . .

The report is unsparing. Senior positions at the “highest levels of the CIA” are “consistently occupied by white male career officers.” While minority officers make up 23.9% of the CIA workforce, the higher echelons of the CIA don’t come close to that number. For example, the Senior Intelligence Service, the crème de la crème of the spy agency’s personnel, manages only a 10.8% minority composition. Spies with disabilities and LGBT spies, according to the report, are no better represented in the CIA’s upper leadership, though women are generally faring well.

Yeah, I was just thinking to myself the other day, “Why, oh why, aren’t there more disabled and LGBT spies?” And of course there’s only one logical answer (at least to the Obama Administration): discrimination.

The solution? For one thing, “all leaders, managers, and supervisors” in the CIA should be subject to “mandatory stand-alone diversity and inclusion training.” This must include such “well-established tools” as “unconscious bias training” so that all CIA officers can “learn how societal forces and their own experiences mold their daily decisions and perceptions.” 

I’m glad my tax dollars are now going to go toward remedying this atrocity. Because, you know, how on earth can we gather reliable intelligence if we don’t have enough transgendered or gay spies? They will be particularly useful in our efforts to infiltrate ISIS, I’m sure.

UPDATE: Fixed broken link.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Way to Day-Drink Is With Low-Alcohol Brews. Small beer was once a staple, but I prefer coffee.

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!

DID OBAMA REOPEN MIDDLE EASTERN SLAVE MARKETS BY EXECUTIVE ORDER? “Wednesday, President Obama publicly announced that he is issuing an executive order that the U.S. government will no longer criminally prosecute families of American hostages for paying ransom. In so doing, he created a public market for the selling of American citizens—and raised the price on their heads considerably.”

Read the whole thing.

GOVERNMENT AS CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY: Double trouble? IRS lawyer now heads Clinton email production.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Greece, Capital Controls, and Cloud Computing. “Just as individual Greeks are losing access to Apple’s iCloud, as the Athens staff of Bloomberg News recently discovered, so companies are finding themselves cut off from services critical to their ongoing operations. The problem demonstrates a hidden risk in today’s otherwise efficient vertical disintegration. Taking for granted the easy flow of money across borders, system designers never foresaw a situation in which companies with adequate funds would find that they couldn’t pay foreign vendors.” Plus, the surprising generosity of Silicon Valley.

ASHE SCHOW: New campus sexual assault laws go into effect in Virginia.

Three new laws aimed to curb campus sexual assault in Virginia went into effect on July 1.

Two of the laws deal with reporting requirements for colleges and police departments. The other law, regarding transcript notations, has created some confusion.

Local station WHSV reported that, under the new law, “Any student under investigation for an offense involving sexual violence will have a special notation on their transcript.”

This is not what the law says, however. The law actually states that schools must “include a prominent notation on the academic transcript of each student who has been suspended for, has been permanently dismissed for, or withdraws from the institution while under investigation for an offense involving sexual violence under the institution’s code, rules or set of standards governing student conduct…”

So no, students under investigation will not have their transcripts noted unless they subsequently withdraw from the university while the investigation is ongoing.

Also, universities under the law would be required to “adopt a procedure for removing such notation from the academic transcript of any student who is subsequently found not to have committed an offense involving sexual violence under the institution’s code, rules or set of standards governing student conduct.”

Of course, the likelihood of a student being able to overturn a finding of responsible after the notation has been made is probably rather slim.

While it is good news that this law doesn’t automatically condemn students just for being accused (the whole process does that already), there are still problems with the other laws that went into effect on Wednesday.

Both laws dealing with reporting requirements use the term “victim” throughout, indicating a clear bias against the accused. This has been a common issue with campus sexual assault bills.

Read the whole thing.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Ousted Bill de Blasio aide Rachel Noerdlinger provided insider info and ‘talking points’ to Al Sharpton.

A former top aide to Mayor de Blasio’s wife served as a backchannel messenger to both the mayor and the Rev. Al Sharpton, emails released to the Daily News Thursday reveal.

Rachel Noerdlinger provided Sharpton, her former boss, with insider info and delivered “talking points” to Sharpton to have him attack unfavorable stories on de Blasio, the emails, provided to the News as part of a Freedom of Information request, show.

She also got Sharpton to lend a hand when de Blasio was under fire for interceding on behalf of a supporter, the Rev. Orlando Findlayter, who’d been arrested for outstanding warrants related to traffic violations and a civil disobedience arrest.

Al doesn’t speak truth to power. He speaks for power against truth.