TODAY IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SCOPES TRIAL. Let me just note that what you think you know about it is probably wrong — especially if what you think you know about it comes from watching Inherit The Wind. I highly recommend Ed Larson’s excellent treatment, A Summer For The Gods. And here’s a Court TV special on the case from some years back, featuring me, Larson, John Seigenthaler, and Arthur Miller.

SCOTT JOHNSON: Reckon with this.

After Dylann Roof murdered nine pastors and churchgoers in the course of Bible study in Charleston, President Obama couldn’t wait to use the occasion for his narrow political purposes. “Let’s be clear,” he said with urgency in his voice. “At some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence … doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.” The implication, of course, was that additional gun control legislation was required but that his political opponents refused to see the light.

Now we learn in whose power it was to do something about it, and it wasn’t anyone Obama was talking about. The Washington Post reports: “Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people at a church in South Carolina three weeks ago, was only able to purchase the gun used in the attack because of breakdowns in the FBI’s background-check system, FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday.” The White House, of course, declines to comment.

If there has ever been a smaller man or bigger jerk than Barack Obama holding the office of president, we need to know now.

What I notice is that the worse Obama does at his job, the more racist America seems to become.

COOKING WITH tinfoil hobo packs.

BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T LOOK LIKE SHE COULD BE HIS CHILD: Megyn Kelly: Why hasn’t Obama commented on the killing of Kate Steinle by an illegal? Also, the fact that the killer’s gun belonged to a federal agent is awkward.

CHANGE: Is There A Light At The End Of The Law School Tunnel? “The June 2015 figure is even more impressive because it reflects a whopping 10.9% increase in first time LSAT takers from June 2014. LSAT also reports that law school applicants are down only 2.0% for the Fall 2015 entering class.”

Maybe the glass really is half full.

BY ITS FRUIT, THE TREE IS KNOWN: Janice Fiamengo: Was Feminism Always Bad?

I WONDER HOW OFTEN STUFF LIKE THIS HAPPENS AND NOBODY NOTICES? The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá: After a hospital error, two pairs of Colombian identical twins were raised as two pairs of fraternal twins. This is the story of how they found one another — and of what happened next.

After six months, Janeth left Strycon for another job, but even then, whenever she and her boyfriend ran into William, she wondered if she should have told Jorge about his double. That question tugged at her until finally, on Sept. 9, 2014, a slow day at her new job, Janeth texted Laura an image of William to show Jorge.

Laura went upstairs to piping to get Jorge’s reaction to the photo. Jorge, smiling, took a look at her phone. He swore. ‘‘That’s me!’’ he said. He stared at the image.

William was wearing a yellow Colombian soccer jersey, practically a national uniform on the day of big matches. Jorge often wore one just like it, which made it all the more apparent just how thoroughly the young man in the photo looked like him. A friend was walking by Jorge’s desk, and Jorge flagged him down for a second opinion.

‘‘Tell me what you think of this photo,’’ he told his friend, handing him the phone.

You look fine, the friend said.

‘‘Except it’s not me,’’ Jorge said. He could not stop staring at Laura’s phone.

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER CONSUMER REVOLT DRAWS BLOOD: Ellen Pao Out as Reddit CEO; Co-Founder Huffman Takes Over.

UPDATE: Ellen Pao Steps Down as CEO After Reddit Revolt. All those readers and volunteers turned out to be equity holders, actually.

Meanwhile, IowaHawk is on it!

Olbermann, Archuleta, Pao #theycomeinthrees

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 10, 2015

Thanks to Ellen Pao, Asian-Americans will no longer be saddled with the insidious stereotype of being bright, hardworking and competent.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 10, 2015

Anybody know of $500k+ tech industry job openings for a lawsuit-happy SJW with no technical experience? Asking for a friend

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 10, 2015

NOBODY’S PERFECT: Alexander Stokloss: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Tesla Model S P85D Road Trip.

FOCUSING ON THE IMPORTANT ISSUES: “Day Before Hack Announced, OPM Released ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination’ Guide — OPM’s seven ‘top priorities’ includes ‘diversity’ but not ‘security.'”

Which is reminiscent of former New York Times editor Howell Raines’ classic line regarding the program that resulted in the hiring of Jayson Blair: “This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.” As Wlady Pleszczynski of the American Spectator wrote in 2003, “you’ve got to love that Freudian slip, in which Raines puts a higher premium on diversity than on quality.”

Which sums up both ends of the Northeast Corridor rather well this week, doesn’t it?

https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/619599476857171968

On #TheLead: FBI messed up racist shooter's gun background check; OPM director resigns in wake of cyber disaster; VA hospital boondoggle

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 10, 2015

LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT-CHECKERS AND EDITORS: Washington Post Writer Who Accused Amy Schumer Of Racism Never Saw Her Standup or TV Show:

The Interrobang; Have you ever watched Amy’s television show… in preparation for the article?

Stacey Patton: Nope. Not at all.

The Interrobang: Her stand up set[s]? have you ever watched any of them?

Stacey Patton: Nope. None of them.

Who needs facts and research, when you have feelings that need expressing? Even after Patton smeared Schumer as a racist, her interviewer is still willing to give her a pass. Because, once again, feelings:

I don’t doubt that Dr. Patton means well.

In an era where the left can point their finger at anyone and weaponize him or her as a racist — including their own — I do.

And note this:

https://twitter.com/AutumnFlorek/status/619606058407960576

Which is exactly how Patton lashed out on Twitter earlier this week to anyone who complained, when her article was originally greenlit by her enablers at the Post. As John Schindler asks today on Twitter, “Why is WaPo giving a forum to these sorts of low-information #SJWs?”

SO CAN WE BAN THE FBI NOW, LIKE WE DID THE CONFEDERATE FLAG, SINCE THEY PLAYED A BIGGER ROLE? FBI Admits: Breakdown in background check system allowed Dylann Roof to buy gun.

Also, remember, the San Francisco shooter used a federal agent’s gun.

Will anyone go to jail? Will anyone even lose their job? Will anyone be sued? Of course not. Accountability is for the little people.

UPDATE: “With this Roof failure, I think it’s time to impose civil liability on govt workers whose incompetence kills.”

RIP, OMAR SHARIF: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA STAR DIES AGED 83:

Egypt-born Sharif won two Golden Globe awards and an Oscar nomination for his role as Sherif Ali in David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia.

He won a further Golden Globe three years later for Doctor Zhivago.

Earlier this year, his agent confirmed he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

His agent Steve Kenis said: “He suffered a heart attack this afternoon in a hospital in Cairo.”

While he was under contract in the 1960s to Hollywood impresario Sam Spiegel, Sharif starred in some of the biggest films of the era; the aforementioned Lawrence, Dr. Zhivago, and alongside Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl. His career tapered off in the 1970s, and concurrently, his love of the gaming tables increased, which did not serve him well:

‘I don’t think I could live without a deck of cards in my hands,’ he declared, when asked on BBC radio’s Desert Island Discs in 1978 what luxury he would need most as a castaway. But the cards and the casinos were bankrupting him.

After losing £750,000 in one night at roulette, he was forced to sell his house in Paris, and announced: ‘I don’t own anything at all apart from a few clothes. I’m all alone and completely broke. Everything could have been so different if only I had found the right woman.’

His gambling addiction, he admitted, was madness, but he could not stop. He blamed boredom, and the loneliness of living out of a suitcase. His agent became used to Sharif’s desperate calls, demanding work so that he could pay urgent debts.

Often, the actor even had to reverse the call charges. But however many shoddy movies he made, he was always ‘one film behind my debts’.

He hated the roles. Though he could act in six languages — English, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Greek — he had an accent in all of them, and so was always cast as ‘a foreigner’: a Sultan, a Spanish priest, a Mexican cowboy, or Genghis Khan.

However, Sharif’s cinematic immortality is assured thanks to Spiegel and David Lean. Lean gave Sharif arguably the best entrance for a virtually unknown actor in the history of cinema in Lawrence:

Thanks to Lawrence’s blockbuster success, Spiegel convinced Sharif that the Oscar was his, but it wasn’t to be:

Spiegel was intent on making Peter O’Toole the focus of Lawrence of Arabia’s American promotion, and consequently he refused to fly Omar Sharif to the U.S. But O’Toole balked when he heard the plan. “He said, ‘Bollocks,’ and he meant it,” Sharif recalled. “‘Omar is going and we’re going together.’” It was fortunate that the Egyptian actor was included, since he was a great asset to the campaign, winning over reporters everywhere, whereas O’Toole behaved disgracefully, leading Spiegel to remark, “You make a star, you make a monster.” When the blond leading man wasn’t giving interviews while drunk, he was demanding outrageous sums for appearing on television.

Lawrence of Arabia received 10 Oscar nominations. A few hours before the ceremony, Sharif went to Spiegel’s suite in the Beverly Hills Hotel. “The only sure thing, that year, was that I was going to get the Academy Award,” Sharif said. “David told me, ‘Now, Omar, when they call your name, I want you to walk slowly up the aisle, like you did in the film—don’t rush, don’t run.’ … Sam said, ‘Baby, walk slowly.’” The actor was so prepared that as soon as Rita Moreno started reading the nominees, he got off his chair. “I was walking slowly, as David had told me. Then she said Ed Begley.”

Ouch. However, as with Peter O’Toole, the film made Sharif a much in-demand actor during the 1960s. And would lead to a star turn of his own. After O’Toole refused the role, Lean gave Sharif the chance to star in Doctor Zhivago. Zhivago was pummeled by New York critics during its initial release in 1965, likely because of its anti-Soviet theme, but much beloved by the general public. Its success staved off the collapse of MGM until the end of the 1960s.

It’s the one big film from the ‘60s I’ve never seen on the big screen and would love to. It’s a stunning film on Blu-Ray, and long overdue for a reassessment as one of the last great old-style epics from Hollywood before it too succumbed to a sort of Soviet-style cultural revolution in the late ‘60s and early 1970s.

MAKING ECONOMY-CLASS AIRCRAFT SEATING even worse?

BARACK TO THE FUTURE: “Until the new mega-fixes are in place” at OPM, Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club writes in a post appropriately titled “God Help Us All,” “proposals have been floated to return the entire system to paper,” such as this one:

The Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have figured out how to keep the security clearance process going while the Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing (e-QIP) system is offline for cybersecurity fixes.

Under the new interim procedures, OPM and ODNI said the applicant must provide hard copies of forms SF86, SF85, SF85P to the sponsoring agency, but not to OPM or ODNI.

“When the e-QIP has been restored, the applicant will re-enter his or her personal information history into e-QIP so that the required investigation may be completed through the regular process,” the memo said. “Agencies shall maintain a list of all investigations initiated using these interim procedures and the subsequent date the investigations are processed through e-QIP when e-QIP service is restored.”

“Reverting to paper may actually improve security.  Consider why this might be so,” Richard adds:

The great benefit of paper clearance forms (and one might add, paper ballots) is that it limits the ability of bureaucrats to play games with data.  The lower tech medium puts the kibosh on all the plans, mandates and improvements they are just dying to implement. All that gender stuff is hard to implement when you’re faced with a stack of paper reaching to the ceiling, besides making the information harder to leak, misuse or steal.  It disempowers the bureaucrats.

The fact that reverting to lower tech may actually improve security suggests that lack of money isn’t the problem, nor are the shortcomings of computer hardware. The biggest shortage plaguing the elites today is a deficit of intelligence. They are a menace to themselves and to the public; and are not even smart enough to know how dumb they are.

The reason why reducing OPM to low tech paper may help things is akin to why taking the Bugatti keys away from an irresponsible teenager prevents an accident from occurring. “Just take the skateboard kid. It’s really all you can handle.”

In the meantime, the Democrat operatives with bylines at CNN know where the real blame in this scandal lies:

Republicans acknowledge to @evanperez they didn’t properly vet Archuleta’s qualifications http://t.co/1PeEHUgmGU pic.twitter.com/qwuDlQIIqs

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 10, 2015

How about, you know, the guy who appointed her? https://t.co/xIM4t2dLN4 — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 10, 2015

The MSM is there to help ensure that the buck never stops on Obama’s desk — unless it’s good news.

UPDATE: Just as a reminder, in 2013, “Hispanic groups threatened the GOP, if they should filibuster the unqualified walking Security Risk Katherine Archuletta:”

@JoeFL65 @AceofSpadesHQ And screengrabbed, just in case that dissappears. pic.twitter.com/8pz1ZM3E7Z

— Stoo (@_s2_11) July 10, 2015

I GUESS THEY DON’T GET OUT MUCH: The Washington Post seems surprised that libertarians support legalized prostitution.

JOURNALISM: Facebook Instant Articles Just Don’t Add Up for Publishers.

Here’s the deal. When economies of scale were high, and cost of capital was too, this created a barrier to entry that let print publications earn relatively high profits. With barriers to entry low, that doesn’t work anymore.

BREAKING: OPM HEAD KATHERINE ARCHULETA RESIGNS: “Now, at least, the White House can claim with a straight face that they are trying to turn a corner at OPM. That won’t do much for the 21 million people whose most-sensitive personal and economic data ended up in hostile hands, but at least they no longer have to listen to Archuleta’s pathetic refusal to take any responsibility for the disaster.”

And just as a reminder:

Speaking of which, “I miss having grownups running the country. I really and truly do,” Moe Lane writes. Instead, with the current administration, it’s only because Archuleta has gone from loyal foot soldier to “Public Relations problem, she becomes an actual problem, a real problem worthy of Obama’s attention, and so she must go,” Ace of Spades adds.

ANDY KESSLER: A Dearth Of Tech IPOs May Mask Bubble Trouble: Only eight companies backed by venture capital have gone public in 2015. That’s a long way from last year’s 115.

Aside from Tesla and a few others, most of the hot companies with eyebrow-raising values are staying private. Uber is rumored to be raising $2 billion in funding for a valuation of $50 billion. Blue Apron, which ships three million meal kits a month to hungry millennials, has taken in $135 million at a $2 billion valuation. Food-delivery companies Instacart and Delivery Hero are worth a few billion each.

Yet none is going public. The delay can perhaps be blamed in part on Sarbanes-Oxley, a 2002 law that beefed up oversight and made it more expensive to be a public company. There’s also the 2012 JOBS Act, which increased the threshold for public reporting to 2,000 shareholders from 500. Whatever the causes, there is no longer a rush to go public if companies can raise sufficient private capital. “Now, after the IPO, it’s much worse,” Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma put it in June. “If I had another life, I would keep my company private.”

As a shareholder and a lifelong bubble watcher, I’m disturbed. Public markets enforce discipline on companies and push them to improve. . . .

But with Uber at $50 billion, surely we’re in a bubble? Remember: A bubble is not created by high valuations. A bubble is a psychological phenomenon in which investors are tricked—by the company or themselves—into believing that a profit stream is sustainable when it really isn’t.

Case in point is the dot-com bust of the late 1990s. Many companies told me at the time that Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley would take them public as soon as they could strike a deal with AOL. So AOL would invest on the stipulation that the company buy pop-up ads on various sites within AOL. Thus AOL turned its cash into sales. The madness stopped when companies ran out of money and AOL ran out of companies.

In 1999, Microsoft invested $250 million in the online ailment manual WebMD in exchange for WebMD paying $30 a month for thousands of physicians for dial-up Internet via, you guessed it, Microsoft’s MSN. Amazon invested $30 million in Drugstore.com in exchange for Drugstore.com paying $105 million over three years for a branded tab on Amazon. It all looked good, but it couldn’t last. It is no different from Bear Stearns using its balance sheet to spike mortgage-backed securities from 2005-08.

Today’s startups aren’t passing money in circles like this yet, though I suspect it will happen. With so many private firms holding wads of cash, the ability to use their balance sheets to drive sales will be too tempting. But without the disclosures required of public firms, this logrolling may be hidden from view.

Hmm.

READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Reader Joe Roselius emails: “I would appreciate it if you could plug my brother-in-law, Ashlee Vance’s new book, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.”

RECENT ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS ARE MAKING ME THINK SKYNET HAS ALREADY TAKEN OVER: 3D-Printed Explosive Jumping Robot Combines Firm and Squishy Parts.

TRANSPARENCY: Sacramento Mayor Sues Own City, Local Journalist To Keep Public Records From Being Made Public.

Kevin Johnson: Three-time NBA All-Star. Former (embattled) president of the National Council of Black Mayors. Outgoing (non-embattled) president of the US Conference of Mayors. Frequent litigant. Destroyer of public records. Suer of his own city. Only a couple of these can be considered flattering.

In his latest litigious effort, Mayor Johnson is mounting a multi-pronged attack on both a Sacramento journalist and his city government. At the center of it are documents Johnson claims should be exempt from public records requests: emails sent from his personal Gmail account but which discuss official business.

See, he should have had his own email server.

LOOKING FOR PARENTING-RELATED BLOGS AND ADVICE? The new PJM Parenting section has your Real Life Parenting Weekend Link Roundup.