CNN: GO AHEAD, ADMIT YOU’RE A RACIST.

Nice move there CNN editors, joining the New York Times and the Atlantic by insulting your entire audience. So how’s that strategy working out for you?

● Step One: Declare Your Audience Racist.

● Step Two: ?

● Step Three: Ratings Gold!

Or perhaps not.

NEWS FROM TENNESSEE: Senators to review gender neutral pronouns.

I’d rather they held hearings on the university’s sexual assault policy, which it chose to adopt even though at least two courts have found it “ridiculous.”

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: French farmers kidnap Alps park chiefs, demanding protection from wolf attacks. “French farmers have kidnapped the head of a national park in the Alps, demanding stronger measures against wolves that are attacking their flocks. France’s rising wolf population is causing concern for many sheep farmers, mainly from Provence to the Hautes Alpes area. The number of wolf attacks nationwide has doubled in the past five years and the population – now at around 300 – has tripled since 2005.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: SAT scores at lowest level in 10 years, fueling worries about high schools. “Kids don’t make a whole lot of gains once they’re in high school. It certainly should raise an alarm.”

It certainly should.

NATIONAL REVIEW COLUMNIST APPROVES GWEN IFILL’S “TAKE THAT BIBI” ADMISSION. At the Corner, Jay Nordlinger writes:

I’ve said it a million times: The anchorman of CBS News should attend Democratic fundraisers (as happened). The Supreme Court reporter of the New York Times, a.k.a. the paper of record, should march in abortion-rights rallies (as happened). And PBS news figures should be open partisans.

Yesterday, when Senator Barbara Mikulski declared for the Iran deal, meaning that this deal could not be blocked by the Senate, Gwen Ifill spiked the football. “Take that, Bibi,” she tweeted. Aha! Good one, Gwen!

The PBS ombudsman has written about this matter disapprovingly. I’m not sure I disapprove. What I disapprove of is pretending — the pretending that these news organizations are neutral and dispassionate, instead of on the left.

Nomsayin? Know what I’m saying? It seems so . . . elementary. Let your true colors fly, and we’ll have a good ol’ democratic debate.

Exactly. There’s no such thing as “objectivity,” and news consumers should know about the worldview of journalists and/or Democratic operatives with bylines such Ifill, in order to make informed choices. (Particularly in the case of PBS and NPR, as we’re legally required to partially foot the bill for these networks.) The MSM’s cry of “objectivity” dates back to the 1920s through the end of the 1970s, when limits in technology created a mass American media consisting of just three national radio networks, the forerunners to the three national commercial TV networks, a handful of wire services, and for most large cities, only a couple of newspapers. That media world hasn’t existed for decades.

I thought self-styled “Progressives” didn’t want to live in the 1950s anymore — why rely on an Eisenhower-era trope to dodge responsibility for your statements?

LOOK AROUND AT OBAMA AND HILLARY DEFYING THE LAW WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE, and then, even if you read it when it first came out, reread The Coming Middle Class Anarchy. “What’s really important is that law-abiding middle-class citizens are deciding that playing by the rules is nothing but a sucker’s game. . . . When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy. TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry — the upright citizenry — throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.”

Nobody likes to feel like a sucker.

SWEDEN: Secret anti-immigration blogger’s name exposed.

‘Julia Caesar’, an anonymous right-wing blogger who has blasted Swedish journalists for writing an “epoch of lies” about the benefits of immigration, is herself a former reporter for Sweden’s biggest broadsheet, Dagens Nyheter, according to a Swedish tabloid.

The controversial writer, who has sought to keep her identity secret, has been causing a huge stir on social media since 2010. Her blog posts lay into mainstream politicians and what she describes as “the corrupt media” for promoting what she argues is an “epoch of lies” about immigration. They also praise the rise of the nationalist Sweden Democrat Party.

“It simply isn’t possible to lie about the blessings of multiculturalism or mass immigration forever when citizens clearly see with their own eyes how their country is being dismantled in front of them,” reads one of her recent posts, which has also been translated into English on a separate blog by one of her supporters.

On Wednesday, Sweden’s Expressen tabloid revealed that the blogger – who has also published three books – is herself a former journalist for Dagens Nyheter (DN), a Swedish newspaper. . . .

“It is clear that it is not an obvious decision to publish the name of somebody who wants to remain anonymous,” wrote Expressen’s Head of Culture and Deputy Managing Editor at Expressen, Karin Olsson as the newspaper exposed Barbro Jöberger as being behind the far-right blog.

“But given her great influence and role in alternative debates online, we have decided that her name should be made available so that we are able to have an open debate.”

“It is reasonable that such an influential opinion maker should be made accountable,” she said.

Uh huh.

ANDREW CUOMO’S WAR ON TATTOOS:

Full disclosure: I’m not inked, and I have no intention of ever getting inked. But I can follow along on the tattoo artists’ arguments. Basically, in the quest to end the virulent outbreak of Hepatitis C among the population Andrew Cuomo signed a law mandating that all tattoo ink must come in prepackaged, single-use ‘ink shots.’ This stopped New York tattoo artists dead in their tracks, apparently because this is roughly equivalent to handing a professional portraitist a set of kindergarten crayons and telling him to go make a living, using only that. Not to mention the fact that there’s not actually a virulent outbreak of Hepatitis C going on right now. At least, not more of one than usual.

Two more points on this story. First off, the tattoo artists allege that state legislators neglected to talk to people actually in the industry before they passed this law (the legislators said that they did, for what it’s worth). Given that said legislators are acting genuinely surprised at the uproar that they caused, I suspect that there was, as they say, a failure to communicate.

I know tattoos are now a bipartisan phenomenon, but given the state the law was issued in and its largest city, reading Moe Lane’s post, I’m having distinct flashbacks to this Libertarian Party ad that ran during the Left’s Occupy Wall Street phase in 2012:

HOPEY-CHANGEY: China, India, Japan, US and Europe have weakening or underperforming GDP growth.

KENTUCKY CLERK WHO REFUSED TO ISSUE MARRIAGE LICENSES AFTER SCOTUS RULING SENT TO JAIL FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT.

To borrow from Glenn’s tweet earlier today, alternate headline: Yet another Democrat official arrested for violating the law. (And thus, gay marriage comes full circle, with California Democrats breaking the law before Obergefell, and a Kentucky Democrat afterwards.)

RELATED: On Twitter today, Dan McLaughlin of Red State places Kim Davis’ arrest into context with the rise of Sanders and Trump:

(more…)

AT AMAZON, deals on Designer Sunglasses for Men.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Despite Demagogy By Leaders, Ordinary Americans lead the way on racial healing.

PEACE IN OUR TIME: Iran Commander: We’re Getting Prepared to Overthrow Israel:

“The US officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation.”

Also today, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said they have work to do.

The IRGC’s top commander in Tehran province, Brigadier General Mohsen Kazzemeini, told operating units undergoing drills in the capital that “they (the US and the Zionists) should know that the Islamic Revolution will continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and liberates Palestine,” according to Fars.

“And we will continue defending not just our own country, but also all the oppressed people of the world, specially those countries that are standing on the forefront of confrontation with the Zionists,” Kazzemeini said.

Headline via Chamberlain at Munich, Barack Obama at the start of his second term, and most recently, Democrat Rep. Patrick Murphy, Florida man.

TRUMP V. CARSON: WHAT THE LATEST POLL TELLS US: “Are we looking  at a Trump/Carson ticket…. or even the other way around?,” Roger Simon asks, adding parenthetically that it’s “(Hard to see Trump playing second fiddle to anyone.)  But the doctor should be very attractive to Trump. He anesthetizes Donald against myriad accusations.”

ARE ROBOTS EXPERIENCING a Cambrian Explosion? “About half a billion years ago, life on earth experienced a short period of very rapid diversification called the ‘Cambrian Explosion.’ Many theories have been proposed for the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, with one of the most provocative being the evolution of vision, which allowed animals to dramatically increase their ability to hunt and find mates (for discussion, see Parker 2003). Today, technological developments on several fronts are fomenting a similar explosion in the diversification and applicability of robotics. Many of the base hardware technologies on which robots depend—particularly computing, data storage, and communications—have been improving at exponential growth rates.”

CLINTON AIDE WILL TAKE 5TH AMENDMENT OVER PRIVATE SERVER: The former Clinton presidential campaign and State Department aide, Bryan Pagliano, has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Benghazi Committee but has already indicated he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Pagliano set up Clinton’s private email server in her New York home in 2009.

“While we understand that Mr. Pagliano’s response to this subpoena may be controversial in the current political environment, we hope that the members of the Select Committee will respect our client’s right to invoke the protections of the Constitution,” his attorney, Mark MacDougall, wrote.

Two other Senate committees have contacted Pagliano in the past week, according to a copy of the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. The requests came from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, according to people familiar with the requests.

The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Wednesday that it sought to ask Pagliano about his work for Clinton.

“In response to questions . . . Mr. Pagliano’s legal counsel told the committee yesterday that he would plead the Fifth to any and all questions if he were compelled to testify,” a spokesperson for committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Benghazi committee, had subpoenaed the computer staffer Aug. 11 and ordered that he appear for questioning before the committee Sept. 10. Gowdy also demanded that Pagliano provide documents related to the servers or systems controlled or owned by Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Pagliano, who worked in the State Department’s information-technology department from May 2009 until February 2013, left the agency when Clinton departed as secretary. He now works for a technology contractor that provides some services to the State Department.

But hey, there’s nothing criminal here–move along–because according to Media Matters, there is no evidence that Clinton “knew” that she was mishandling classified information. This shows utter ignorance of what the “knowing” scienter standard means in criminal law. According to the Model Penal Code, “knowingly” means:

(b) Knowingly.

A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when:

(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist; and

(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.

So Clinton (and/or her aides) had to be “aware that [her] conduct [of using a private server to send and receive classified information] is of a “nature” that such mishandling could exist, or alternatively had to be “aware that it [was] practically certain that [her] conduct” would cause such a mishandling of classified information.  Under either approach, the use of a private server while Secretary of State, alone, indicates such culpable awareness.

Nice try.

RELATED: Another 57 Clinton email threads contain foreign government’s (and thus likely classified) information.

YEAH, BUT TO BE FAIR, WHO DOESN’T? DARPA Wants Swarms of Cheap “Gremlin” Drones.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Robots Lay Three Times as Many Bricks as Construction Workers.

SO AFTER THE CHATTANOOGA SHOOTING, WE HAD ARMED CITIZENS PROTECTING RECRUITING CENTERS. Now with all the cop shootings, I’m seeing stuff like this:

Perhaps, instead of a growing middle-class anarchy, we’re seeing the reverse.

VIKINGS ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Despite Demagogy By Leaders, Ordinary Americans lead the way on racial healing.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 847.

TRUE! Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn’t.

At the New Republic, Malcolm Harris asks an interesting question: Was the Soviet Union’s problem that Communism can never work? Or did the Soviets just need a lot more MacBook Airs?

Actually, Harris is channeling Paul Mason, the author of the book he is reviewing, and unfortunately, he doesn’t really try to answer the question. Instead he makes the stridently timid argument that this won’t happen because the capitalists won’t let it, at least without a healthy dose of revolutionary action.

I’ll swing for the fences and argue that no, even with better computers, Communism isn’t going to work. Nor some gauzy vision of post-capitalism that looks like Communism, but with YouTube videos.

In retrospect, Communism seems wildly stupid, or at least, incredibly naive. Did the people who dreamed up this system not understand the enormous incentive problems they were creating? As Ayn Rand dramatized the problem in “Atlas Shrugged”: “It’s miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm — so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother’s. How else could it be done?” The incentives of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” drive toward falling production, which means there won’t be enough to cover the needs.

Or as a former colleague who fled Communist Poland once told me, “They pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work.” There is a reason that basically all the Communist and Socialist regimes ended in some degree of authoritarianism.

To most people espousing communism, the authoritarianism isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. All the talk about “sharing” and “compassion” is just to fool the rubes. People espousing communism should be treated as if they are on the same moral plane as people espousing Nazism, because they are.