THE LATEST IN WORKPLACE VIOLENCE: Officials: 2 military facilities attacked in Tennessee.

At least one gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire at two military facilities Thursday in Tennessee, sending troops scrambling for safety in an Army recruiting office, officials said.

It was not immediately clear how many people may have been hurt. Maj. Paul Greenberg with the Office of U.S. Marine Corps Communication said “we cannot confirm any casualties at this time.”

Chattanooga police said in a tweet Thursday afternoon that the active shooter situation was over, though there was no word on what had happened to the suspect or suspects.

Mayor Andy Berke said at a news conference that there’s “an officer down” at a military reserve center. He did not release any other details. Berke called it a “very terrible situation.”

The U.S. Navy said in a tweet that there was a shooting at a Navy recruiting building on Amnicola Highway in Chattanooga.

A facility 7 miles away on Old Lee Highway also was attacked. Brian Lepley, a spokesman with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky, said his recruiters there were told by law enforcement that the shooter was in a car, stopped in front of the facility, shot at the building and drove off.

The Army recruiters at the facility told Lepley they were not hurt and had evacuated; Lepley said he had no information about recruiters for the other branches at the facility.

A lot of conflicting information at the moment, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: 4 killed, 1 injured at Chattanooga military recruiting center.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that the shooting suspect was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.”

ABOUT TIME: Introducing a New Material for Invisibility Cloaks.

THE SOUNDS OF MARS: The first alien sounds of Mars are so damn spooky.

THE STATE OF THE SMARTWATCH: Should you buy one now? Steve Green straps on the Apple Watch  to investigate.

What’s the verdict from tech-savvy Insta-readers?

EDUCATION: Get Much Smarter About Electricity in 231 Seconds.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Five Driving Techniques Every Car Enthusiast Should Know.

GOOGLE IS HONORING IDA B. WELLS TODAY. I don’t know if she was a Republican like Harriet Tubman, but she was another gun-toting black woman:

Surveying the landscape in the summer of 1892, Ida B. Wells advised, that “the Winchester rifle deserved a place of honor in every Black home.” This was no empty rhetorical jab. She was advancing a considered personal security policy and specifically referencing two recent episodes where armed Blacks saved their neighbors from lynch mobs.

Twice within one month, lynch mobs formed, one in Paducah, Kentucky, another in Jacksonville, Florida. Square in their sights were hapless Negroes who were on track to the same fate as many others before them. But in both cases, the mobs were thwarted by armed Blacks, though the record demands some speculation about how many of their guns were actually Winchester rifles. Other similar episodes in Mississippi and Georgia confirmed for Ida Wells the importance of armed self-defense in an environment where the idea of relying on the state for personal security or anything else was an increasingly absurd proposition.

For Wells and for many of her contemporaries — the “New Negroes” of the late nineteenth century — the Winchester Rifle was a potent rhetorical tool. . . .

But the Winchester was more than just a rhetorical tool of militant journalists. In Memphis, after the lynching of Ida Wells’ good friend Tom Moss, Reverend Taylor Nightingale pressed his congregation all to buy Winchesters as a practical response to the surrounding threats. And from the Black settlements of the west comes the report that “the colored men of Oklahoma Territory mean business. They have an exalted ideal of their own rights and liberties and they dare to maintain them. In nearly every cabin visited was a modern Winchester oiled and ready for use.”

Read the whole thing. Maybe put her on the $10 bill?

UPDATE: Sure enough, Ida B. Wells was a Republican.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE HOLLYWOOD OF TOMORROW: I loved 2004’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and saw it twice in the theater; longtime readers of my friend Steve Green’s VodkaPundit blog will recall the Sky Captain-themed masthead that Stacy Tabb designed for him that summer. Today, a whole host of Hollywood mega-productions and even DIY fan movies such as Star Trek: Axanar have taken Sky Captain’s concept of green screens and computer-generated virtual sets and have run with it big time. In a new article, the London Telegraph looks back and asks whatever happened to its creators? “Over a decade ago, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow laid the foundations for today’s effects-driven blockbusters. Why haven’t its creators made a film since?”

Kevin Conran, and by his inference his brother, seem unusual in the realm of Hollywood’s sad stories in that they don’t really blame other people for their misfortune. Every explanation given by Conran points to something he and his brother got wrong, or failed to understand about the Hollywood game. Conran never once suggests anyone else is culpable. Trying to get him to talk about his and his brother’s achievements is like trying to get a straight answer out of a politician. He just can’t blow his own trumpet. When the subject of the greatest endorsement of his career comes up, that call from George Lucas and the subsequent summit, he evades the question and paints himself as the loser.

“It was entirely surreal and continues to be so,” says Conran. “It feels like something that didn’t really happen… George Lucas personally invited us, flew us up there, put us in his place for a long weekend, with all these amazing luminaries, who were genuinely interested in hearing what we had to say. It was unbelievable. I remember the first morning we went down to breakfast. We walked into the dining room and there’s this big table in the middle and it’s George and James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis and Brad Bird, Caleb Deschanel, Robert Rodriguez to name some.

“Kerry and I were so intimidated we went and sat at a separate table. We didn’t know what to do! They all turned around, almost en masse, and were like, ‘What are you idiots doing over there? Get over here!’ Then I’m sitting next to Robert Zemeckis.”

Conran laughs, but then goes quiet for a few seconds and sighs. “Much to my eternal embarrassment we never stayed in touch with any of those guys.”

This may be part of what kept the Conrans out of the Hollywood playground, their inability and discomfort with hustling or acting as if they belong. The brothers have never been good at self-promotion. In a New York Times interview from the set of Sky Captain, the reporter noted that the first two things Kerry said to him were, “I’m shy” and “I am basically an amorphous blob of nothing”.

Read the whole thing. Woody Allen famously said, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” Perhaps the other 20 percent is acting you belong there in the first place.

OOPS: Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri Becomes Stuttering Mess When Asked About Bill Cosby and Clinton Foundation.

USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES: S.F. ‘sanctuary’ policy violates common sense: Killing of Kathryn Steinle reflects costs of lack of cooperation with immigration authorities.

Lopez-Sanchez was in the San Francisco County jail in April and should have been deported yet again. Federal immigration authorities had lodged a “detainer,” seeking to get custody and do just that. All they needed was a call or other contact from the sheriff’s office.

The contact was never made, not because of some ghastly mistake or miscommunication but because of a city ordinance that prohibits police from honoring detainers except in rare cases. And, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, because of a policy by the local sheriff that bars contact with immigration authorities. After a local charge against Lopez-Sanchez was dropped, he was held for three weeks, then put on the street.

On July 1, less than three months later, Steinle, 32, was dead, collateral damage in a long-running feud between the local and federal governments over deportation.

Say, have we ever found out the name of the federal agent whose gun Lopez-Sanchez used? The best I could find was that it was an unnamed agent of the BLM. I’m guessing that if it were a gun stolen from or lost by a private citizen we’d know who it was. But if it’s one of the anointed, the rules are different.

THIS CHILLING VIDEO MIGHT MAKE YOU KICK YOUR KIDS OUT OF THE HOUSE — TO PLAY OUTSIDE:

One of my favorite parenting blogs, Free Range Kids, posted this absolutely incredible (and somewhat chilling) advertisement from the health food company Nature Valley Today. In it, grandparents describe their childhoods, filled with fishing, blueberry picking and even fending off bears. What do the kids spend their time doing? It involves a lot of glowing screens.

The video is chilling. What can we as parents do?

Let your kids play outside? Why on earth would you risk having Child Protective Services confiscate them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=is5W6GxAI3c

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 798.

NEWS FROM ACADEMIA: Alice Goffman’s Much-Acclaimed Philadelphia Story Continues To Fall Apart. “Rather than celebrating On the Run as a landmark text in sociology, readers should view it as a cautionary tale of what can happen when researchers confuse their own voices with their subjects, and arrange the facts to support a broader, even if admirable, agenda. . . . Goffman’s argument that any piece of information that might lead back to one of her subjects should fall under her confidentiality agreement presents a false dilemma: The only certain way to keep her subjects’ names from re-appearing in the public record is to not ask questions about her work. . . . Goffman has admitted to another failing: putting drama ahead of the truth. She is asking readers to trust her. But how can we trust her if she has altered her story in ways that go well beyond simple anonymization?” Lies in support of an “admirable agenda” are still lies.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Global Public Opinion on Territorial Aggression Not So Global After All.

Pew has released the Spring 2015 Global Attitudes Survey, its latest worldwide poll of what worries whom where. Overall, the survey found that problems seen as global cause the most fretting; climate change took gold and ISIS silver, while economic instability came in third. Further on in Pew’s report, in a section titled “Territorial Tensions Remain within Regions,” we find out why geopolitics doesn’t even make the podium, so to speak. . . .

On the face of it, this all seems pretty sensible. Each of the top three concerns listed above is a serious threat that citizens and policymakers will have to stay aware of and in some cases adapt to. And it’s obviously reasonable that countries closer to Russia and China should fret more about territorial aggression than other countries. “Threatened countries feel threatened” shouldn’t be a revelation.

But the rest of the world shouldn’t yawn at the tensions in East Asia and in Russia’s environs. It’s not that respondents should care about the problems of others’ regions out of empathy but don’t. Rather, it’s that they are wrong to see these problems as merely regional (which they perhaps do because a complacent post-Cold War media has not quite realized that geopolitics has returned). A quarter-century after the fall of the Berlin wall, the instability of something so abstract and remote as the ‘world order’ may seem unimportant. But it isn’t; the end of history is over. And the tensions in Asian waters and those between Russia and its Baltic neighbors are a real threat, and a global one at that.

Well, don’t worry. We’ve got Smart Diplomacy^TM on the job.

RACIST ATTICUS: The Littlest Victims. “Go Set a Watchman is a threat not just to readers’ heroic idea of Atticus Finch, but also to the many, many children who have been named in his honor.”

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JOHN DOE: Wisconsin Supreme Court orders end to investigation into GOP presidential hopeful Walker. The full opinion is here.

Gabriel Malor is tweeting excerpts. Here’s one:

Here’s another:

This was a shameful and shameless abuse of power for political purposes. I hope that the victims sue these prosecutors, and that the Department of Justice — if not in this, possibly complicit, administration, then in the next — will pursue a criminal civil rights investigation.

DRIP, DRIP: With New Documents, Stench of IRS Scandal Reaches into its Third Year.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: NYC Firm Refuses To Hire Ivy League Law Grads: Top Students From Lower Ranked Schools Are Hungrier, More Ambitious. I think that’s smart. The Ivy League teaches its students to be genteel drones for institutions that don’t have to worry too much about money. That’s not how things work in the legal world any more.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Front Page Of NY Post On Iran: “They’re Laughing At Us.”

PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S BLOODY BUSINESS: ‘A LOT OF PEOPLE WANT LIVER.’

ABLEIST DISCRIMINATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: University policy suggests disabled people can’t consent to sex.

An Armstrong State University sexual misconduct policy seems to indicate that students with physical or mental impairments cannot consent to sexual activity.

In its policy (accessed July 15, 2015), the university explains consent, mostly following “yes means yes” policies that consent must be ongoing and that silence does not equal consent. However, the final point regarding consent seems aimed at minors and persons with disabilities.

“In addition, persons under the age of 16 and persons who have a physical and/or mental impairment are unable to give consent,” the policy reads.

At first glance, this appears to indicate that a student in a wheelchair would not be able to ever consent to sexual activity simply because of his or her physical handicap. . . .

The idea that a person with a physical disability is unable to consent to sex simply because of that disability makes little sense. In a feature for WebMD, Gina Shaw broaches the subject of sex while disabled, writing that “Sexuality doesn’t end when a person suffers a disability.” This would also apply to those born with disabilities, obviously.

The policy also brings up the difficult subject of sex with someone who is mentally impaired. There are some mental impairments that would obviously negate consent, but without a clear definition of what those are, the issue is subject to questioning. Is a person on anti-depressants — a mood-altering drug — too mentally impaired to consent?

That would be a substantial fraction of campus women.

ARTHUR BROOKS’ CAMPAIGN BIBLE: Roger Simon has a review of The Conservative Heart: How To Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America, the new book by Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and describes it as “terrific and upbeat read in dark times.  Campaign managers and advisers to the umpteen Republican presidential contenders would be well-advised to pick up copies and pass them on to their bosses.  They should do it quickly — in time for the first debate on August 6 — because I believe Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, has provided Republicans with a template for how to win the 2016 election.”

Read the whole thing.

OH MY: TED CRUZ’S BOOK NOW AT NO. 7 ON NYT BESTSELLER LIST: “The Cruz campaign has called for the NYT public editor to examine how it is that a book with 11K+ in a week of sales with no evidence of bulk sales missed the list the first week. I look forward to the answer.”

Note too, the slimy partisan dissembling from Timesperson Kate Philips when her paper was caught – and the well-deserved pushback she received.