QUID PRO NOTHING:  The Obama Administration today officially removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

State Department officials said they conducted a thorough review to back their recommendation to remove Cuba from the list and received assurances from the Cuban government they wouldn’t support terrorist activity in the future. Officials cited Cuban President Raúl Castro’s condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris earlier this year as an example of the government’s stance against terror operations.

Cuba also harbors fugitives wanted in the U.S., including Joanne Chesimard, who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. Cuba granted her asylum after she escaped from prison in 1979. State Department officials said last month that Cuba had agreed to talk about fugitives as part of a broader dialogue on law enforcement issues.

So Castro condemns the Charlie Hebdo attacks and that’s evidence they aren’t sponsors of terrorism anymore? But of course, Cuba has promised the Obama Administration it won’t support terrorism.  I feel better now.  House Speaker John Boehner was right when he said today, “The Obama administration has handed the Castro regime a significant political win in return for nothing,” 

RECHARGING “EMISSIONS FREE” ELECTRIC CARS with a big diesel generator. You know, this just makes clear what’s always going on when you charge an electric car.

#AGEISM BY CNBC AGAINST RUBIO: The CNBC Squawk Box crew enjoyed a round of “he’s too young” criticism of GOP contender Marco Rubio today, with one reporter, John Harwood, saying Rubio “looked like a schoolboy.”  Another panelist, co-host Joe Kernen, sarcastically suggested that “Hillary needs to sue…Rubio for age discrimination” since “[h]e keeps bringing up this 23-year difference in age.”  Rubio is 44 years old; Hillary Clinton is 67.

Yeah, well, the “youthfulness” of Obama–inaugurated at age 47–never seemed to be a problem for CNBC or anyone else in the liberal/progressive mainstream media. And the mainstream media had fun suggesting that Mitt Romney (in his mid-60s) was “too old” to be President.  But of course one shouldn’t expect any principled consistency from the likes of CNBC or the mainstream media.

SECULARISTS VS. SUICIDE BOMBERS: Patrick Buchanan has an interesting piece in CSN News today, offering a commonsense explanation why, as Secretary of Defense Ash Carter recently lamented, the Iraqi forces have “no will to fight” ISIS.  Buchanan observes:

Tribe and faith. Those are the causes for which Middle Eastern men will fight. Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists will die for the faith. Persians and Arabs will fight to defend their lands, as will Kurds and Turks.

But who among the tribes of the Middle East will fight and die for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom and marriage equality?

“Expel the Crusaders from our lands!” — there is a cause to die for.

Yep.  If ISIS is going to be defeated, it isn’t going to be by home-grown Iraqi forces.

I’LL BE ON JOHN STOSSEL’S SHOW TONIGHT IN THE 9PM ET HOUR, talking about higher education.

AT THE CORNER OF EMINENT DOMAIN ABUSE & FREE SPEECH:  The Supreme Court will decide soon whether to grant review in Central Radio Co. v. City of Norfolk, a case in which a small business owner in Norfolk, Virginia displayed a large banner to protest the city’s eminent domain attempt to seize the business’s property.  The banner read: “50 YEARS ON THIS STREET / 78 YEARS IN NORFOLK / 100 WORKERS / THREATENED BY / EMINENT DOMAIN.” The banner also depicted an American flag, Central Radio’s logo, and a red circle with a slash across “Eminent Domain Abuse.”

A local zoning ordinance limited the size of signs, except governmental or religious “flags or emblems” or noncommercial “works of art.  The city issued citations to Central Radio for displaying an over-sized sign and for failing to obtain a sign certificate prior to installation.  Lower federal courts have upheld the actions against Central Radio as content-neutral restrictions on speech.

The Institute for Justice, representing the business owners against the city, raises First Amendment claims it hopes the Supreme Court will take up:

We argued that the sign code violated the Constitution because it exempted other types of messages of the same magnitude, such as certain flags, emblems or works of art. In addition, we asserted that requiring someone to receive municipal approval before displaying a sign amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech.

As the banner issue worked its way through the judiciary, Wilson received welcome news in September 2013, when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority did not have the right to seize the properties it was targeting. The decision effectively killed the city’s efforts to take out Central Radio. . . .

[T]he notion that the city’s move to banish the sign had nothing to do with its content doesn’t pass the smell test.

As Post blogger Radley Balko noted in April, “Imagine if another building a few miles down the road put up a banner celebrating the city’s wise and prudent development policies. Does anyone honestly think the owner of that property would need to go to court to keep his banner?”

Balko’s question answers itself.  These sign ordinances are out of control around the country, not just Norfolk.  I once litigated a case in Michigan against a township that wouldn’t let a bakery owner fly an American flag in front of his business because of an ordinance that banned all flags, putatively because they “distracted” drivers.  Presumably the ordinance at issue in Central Radio is grounded in a similar unsupported assertion that large signs are “distracting.”  But once government starts allowing some signs and forbidding others, that rationale becomes patently arbitrary and irrational, and inherently suggests favortism for the content of some speech over others.

BRIBERY EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON HILLARY & CLINTON FOUNDATION:  Two legal experts have told Breitbart that they believe the activities of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, undertaken while Clinton was Secretary of State, violate the federal statute prohibiting bribery of public officials, 18 USC 201.

When asked if the donations to the Clinton Foundation by defense contractors including Boeing (which subsequently received State Department approval of sales of their products to foreign governments) constituted a violation of domestic bribery statues, Law School Professor and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) expert Michael Koehler tells Breitbart News, “I’ll answer that question by quoting a former law professor who was fond of saying ‘if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck chances are it is a duck’”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andy McCarthy thinks there’s enough evidence for the FBI and DOJ to launch an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton broke federal statutes that prohibit the bribery of public officials.

“There is certainly a reasonable basis for federal agents and prosecutors to investigate whether there was an understanding that Secretary Clinton would be influenced in the performance of her official duties by lavish donations to her family foundation, and, indeed, that the Clinton Foundation was operated as a racketeering enterprise,” McCarthy tells Breitbart News.

“This is the theory on which the Justice Department has proceeded in the prosecution of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — in fact, the main difference between the two cases may be that the staggering sums of money that were poured into the Clinton Foundation by supplicants who benefited from Hillary Clinton’s stewardship of the State Department dwarf the amounts involved in the Menendez indictment,” McCarthy continues.

The statute is broad and, like all criminal statutes, requires proof of a quid pro quo, but this could be (and indeed, generally must be, absent direct video or audio evidence from the horse’s mouth, so to speak) proven by circumstantial evidence. The U.S. Attorney in either D.C. or New York (where the Clinton Foundation is located) would need to initiate an investigation. But I won’t hold my breath that these Obama nominees will do so.

DRIVING Richard Petty’s Superbird in North Carolina.

MILEAGE CHAMP: 2015 Audi A3 TDI: Slick and stingy, far from quick.

ERIK WEMPLE: CNN’s Jake Tapper won’t moderate panel discussion at Clinton Global Initiative confab. “The switcheroo on the workforce panel caps a frenzy of negotiations between CNN and the Clinton Foundation. About a week ago, USA Today reported that the CGI site had listed Tapper as a ‘speaker’ at the event, a characterization that CNN contested. Testiness over just how Tapper was being presented likely wouldn’t have arisen if not for context: The Clinton Foundation these days is the target of feisty journalistic investigations stemming from Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, and ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos sustained a media beating over revelations that he gave $75,000 to the foundation from 2012 through 2014.”

He’s being replaced by CNN’s Poppy Harlow, though, so while Jake may not be running a panel for the Clintons, someone from CNN will be. Wemple reports that while the Clinton website no longer calls CNN a “broadcast partner,” the Clinton people still do.

CHANGE: Free Same-Day Delivery Is Amazon’s Gambit to Own All Retail.

AT AMAZON, Father’s Day Gifts in Kitchen & Dining.

Plus, 15% off on Athletic & Outdoor Shoes.

EHRs: ANOTHER OBAMACARE FAILURE: Another provision of Obamacare is proving to be utter nonsense, beyond the Democrat’s lies about keeping your doctor and your health plan if you like them.  This shouldn’t be all that surprising, given that the entire 1,200+ page law was rushed into law without any serious thought as to its consequences. Charles Krauthammer on “Why Doctors Quit“:

I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors’ group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”

You may have zero sympathy for doctors, but think about the extraordinary loss to society — and maybe to you, one day — of driving away 40 years of irreplaceable clinical experience.

And for what? The newly elected Barack Obama told the nation in 2009 that “it just won’t save billions of dollars” — $77 billion a year, promised the administration — “and thousands of jobs, it will save lives.” He then threw a cool $27 billion at going paperless by 2015.

It’s 2015 and what have we achieved? The $27 billion is gone, of course. The $77 billion in savings became a joke. Indeed, reported the Health and Human Services inspector general in 2014, “EHR technology can make it easier to commit fraud,” as in Medicare fraud, the copy-and-paste function allowing the instant filling of vast data fields, facilitating billing inflation.

That’s just the beginning of the losses. Consider the myriad small practices that, facing ruinous transition costs in equipment, software, training and time, have closed shop, gone bankrupt or been swallowed by some larger entity.

This hardly stays the long arm of the health-care police, however. As of Jan. 1, 2015, if you haven’t gone electronic, your Medicare payments will be cut, by 1 percent this year, rising to 3 percent (potentially 5 percent) in subsequent years.

Sounds good: Let’s force doctors to spend a lot of money to become technology dependent and adopt electronic health records when the old way of doing things was working just fine.  And hey–as a bonus, our health information is now more vulnerable to hacking and we can lose some privacy along the way! Electronic health records haven’t saved a single life or a single dollar, but they have created a lot of expense, confusion, and tremendous demoralization for our health care providers.  It wasn’t broken, and it shouldn’t have been “fixed.”  If the Republican Congress was smart, it would repeal this onerous, useless provision of Obamacare.

EBOLA UPDATE: How Computer Modelers Took On the Ebola Outbreak: Did real-time epidemic modeling save lives in West Africa?

BECAUSE THEY LIKE HIM!:  FIFA members reelect president Sepp Blatter amid league corruption charges.

Afghanistan kicked off the voting as delegates handed over secret paper ballots in alphabetical order at the meeting Friday. The winner needed a two-thirds majority but Blatter was one vote shy of that, receiving only 133 votes, to Prince Ali’s 73 of the 206 valid votes.

In a second round of voting, Blatter won another four-year term by receiving a simple majority of the votes. Forcing the ballot to a second round represented a victory of sorts for Blatter’s critics, denying the incumbent president an emphatic mandate in his next term.

Yeah, I’m sure that was a fair election.

OBVIOUSLY, THIS CALLS FOR A HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE: Robots Start to Grasp Food Processing: Advances in robotics make it possible to automate tasks such as processing poultry and vegetables.

AT AMAZON, Father’s Day Gifts in Tools.

ED DRISCOLL: Interview: Jimmy Wallace on the Annual Dallas International Guitar Festival.

CAN BEDBUGS CARRY “TRENCH FEVER?” “The present work demonstrated for the first time that bed bugs can acquire, maintain for more than 2 weeks and release viable B. quintana organisms following a stercorarial shedding. We also observed the vertical transmission of the bacterium to their progeny. Although the biological role of bed bugs in the transmission of B. quintana under natural conditions has yet to be confirmed, the present work highlights the need to reconsider monitoring of these arthropods for the transmission of human pathogens.” (Thanks to Chuck Simmins for the link.)

NJ JETTISONS COMMON CORE: Potential GOP presidential contender New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced yesterday that NJ will pull out of Common Core.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 750.

GOOD QUESTION & THE ANSWER IS “NO ONE”: Byron York asks, If Hillary becomes president, who will make her obey the law?

Last year, before Hillary Clinton’s secret email system became publicly known, Congress passed a law to keep presidents from trying the same trick. If Clinton wins the White House, the law could well be put to the test.

The statute is the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. It recognizes that government officials sometimes (or in Clinton’s case, all the time) want to use private email accounts — in the words of the law, “non-official electronic messaging accounts” — to conduct government business. Such communications are still federal records, Congress declared, and must be preserved in accordance with existing laws requiring not just the president but all federal officials to preserve their documents. . . .

Ultimately, the Presidential Records Act depends on the honesty of the president. That’s not Clinton’s strong suit. Recent polls have shown substantial numbers of Americans do not believe she is honest and trustworthy. After the State Department experience, they would have good reason to be suspicious of her in the White House.

Indeed.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Four U.S. lab workers treated for anthrax exposure. “More than two dozen lab workers, including four in the U.S., are now being treated for anthrax exposure.”

HEY, HE BRIBED ‘EM FAIR AND SQUARE: Putin Fumes over FIFA Arrests.

Vladimir Putin is loudly railing against the dramatic U.S. arrest of FIFA’s top officials in Zurich for massive corruption, using his favorite rhetorical tricks of reversing the narrative and demonizing America. . . .

One of the reasons Putin may be so exercised is that the whole affair could call the location of the 2018 tournament into question. Putin is a man who loves sports, and and it was a huge point of pride for him when he secured the rights to host last year’s Winter Olympics in, of all places, Sochi, the seaside southern resort town where he likes to summer. The games cost a record-smashing $51 billion dollars (with some critics estimating that embezzlement accounts for more than half of that figure). That victory was multiplied when Russia’s bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup in 13 cities, including Sochi, won out. The Russian Sports Minister told state media that Russia’s right to host the Cup was not in danger, but given the investigation into how the decisions to award the tournament to South Africa, Russia, and Qatar were made, there are good reasons to doubt that. . . .

There’s a second reason Putin might care about the FIFA arrests. His claim that the U.S. doesn’t have rightful jurisdiction because none of the alleged criminal activity is related to America is complete bunk and almost certainly an intentional misreading of how international criminal jurisdiction works (and that’s not to mention that the Russian president hasn’t exactly been leading by example on the issue of maintaining great respect for other countries’ inviolable territorial sovereignty). Recently, he trotted out the same invalid objection about the U.S. securing an extradition order for a Russian citizen accused of industrial espionage in Sweden. A world with more prosecution of corruption is a world that’s harder for Putin to operate in.

Yeah, you’d think he and Obama — and Hillary — would be on the same page there.