WHAT COULD GO WRONG? There’s a Sweeping Changeover Happening Among the US Military’s Top Brass.

WELL, THERE’S NO POINT LOOKING FOR INTELLIGENCE IN WASHINGTON, DC: $100 Million Hunt for Aliens Aims to Survey One Million Stars.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama’s Dangerous Rhetoric. “President Obama has a habit of asserting strategic nonsense with such certainty that it is at times embarrassing and frightening. Nowhere is that more evident than in his rhetoric about the Middle East.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Indiana Tech Law School Gives 100% Scholarships To Every Student In Effort To Retain 57 2Ls/3Ls, Recruit 20 1Ls In Wake Of Accreditation Denial.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 805.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: GAO: ‘Americans Still Vulnerable to IRS Audits Over Personal Beliefs.’

Reminder: In 2009, President Barack Obama “Joked” About Auditing His Enemies.

HBO IS OKAY WITH MURDER AND MAYHEM. But an ammo company’s logo? There have to be some standards of decency.

STANDING UP FOR SCIENCE: America’s Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly.

I’ve worked with Germans. And Brits. And Swedes. And Dutch people. And French people. All of whom professed themselves absolutely baffled by our insistence on wasting so much energy cooling our offices and homes, when we could just build buildings that cool themselves naturally if we open the windows occasionally.

For Europeans reading this, I may actually be able to clear up this baffling issue: Americans use air conditioning more because America is a lot hotter than Europe is. For example, in Washington, where the weather is apparently “pretty similar” to Berlin, it is expected to be 87 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius) tomorrow. In Berlin, Weather.com informs me that temperatures are expected to be a torrid, sultry … 75 Fahrenheit (23 Celsius).

Of course, on any two random days, the weather might be unseasonably cold or unseasonably hot. You really need to look at monthly averages. And lo and behold, when we look, we discover that Washington has an average temperature of 88 degrees in July, while Berlin has an average temperature of … 73 (yes, that is indeed 31 and 23 Celsius).

And we’re not talking about a place that’s really hot, like Dallas (average July temperature is 96, or 36 Celsius) or Phoenix (106, or 41 Celsius). We’re just talking about a rather ordinary American city in roughly the middle of the country’s north-to-south span.

We do have some cities with more European temperatures, including San Francisco and Seattle, but they are not our largest population centers. The rest of the country, even places that are frozen wastelands in the winter, experiences summertime average highs above 80 degrees. That’s not a rogue heat wave, the kind that Northern Europeans complain about endlessly while futilely fiddling with their fans. That’s just what we Americans call “summer.” A heat wave is when it’s 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and your dog won’t go outside because the pavement burns his feet. . . .

You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you’d be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That’s actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York — the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from — you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.

On average, the move from cold areas to warm ones has actually saved energy, not caused us to use more. So why are we so down on air conditioning, while accepting flagrant heat use as normal? In part, it’s because air conditioning still seems optional. Unlike a cold winter with no heat, a hot summer with no cooling won’t definitely kill you.

Also, snobs, busybodies and puritans seem to occupy colder climates for some reason.

THE CORRECT ANSWER IS THAT IT’S BECAUSE EVEN THEY AREN’T CYNICAL ENOUGH: Why Hillary Clinton and her rivals are struggling to grasp Black Lives Matter. “Black Lives Matter” is an unabashedly racist movement led by unabashed racists.

APPARENTLY, MEDIEVAL-THEMED VIDEO GAMES ‘LEGITIMIZE’ ‘WHITE SUPREMACY:’ “The Middle Ages is a space where white supremacy is legitimized,” [Victoria Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leeds in England] said, according to an article on Medievalists.net. “The maintenance of white privilege. The gamer community use ‘historical facts’ to legitimize this kind of literacy.”

Wow, wait ‘til she discovers Monty Python and the Holy Grail…

THIS WHOLE THING STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN: Waco Is Suppressing Evidence That Could Clear Innocent Bikers. “The city is fighting to keep videos of the May shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant out of the press, and still hasn’t confirmed how many victims were shot by police.”

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CNN’S SALLY KOHN BLAMES ABORTION VIDEOS ON ‘WHITE SUPREMACY.’

Planned Parenthood founder and Hillary Clinton muse Margaret Sanger could not be reached for comment.

KASICH REVEALS HILLARY CAME TO HIS ENGAGEMENT PARTY:

Sean Hannity, who interviewed Kasich after his announcement on Tuesday, asked the Ohio governor about comments he’s made downplaying the IRS and Benghazi scandals.

“You said, ‘I’m more worried about how we’re going to fix America than Hillary’s email server and you said, ‘I don’t believe you beat her by talking about Benghazi or her emails–”

“No, you don’t,” Kasich interrupted Hannity.

While he said these issues would likely come up in a campaign, Kasich said, “My opinion, the Republican that can best articulate a big  message…”

Kasich trailed off, but then added, “Look, I’ve known Hillary a long time. When I got engaged to be married she came to the party, OK? ”

Hannity asked if Kasich agrees with the fifty-seven percent of Americans who find Hillary to be dishonest and untrustworthy.

“I’m not going to start questioning people’s honesty or — I just don’t do that, Sean. I mean, where does that get us?” Kasich said. “I want the county to be unified.”

“Let’s put the country first and the personal attacks second,” he added. “We can all have opinions, but I don’t want to be a voice of negativity in America.  I want to be a voice of positivity in America.”

And establishment GOP types wonder why Trump and his pugilistic tone is sucking the oxygen out of the big tent.

ASHE SCHOW: Ever had drunk sex? That’s rape, according to this university.

Have you ever had sex after consuming alcohol (any amount)? If so, then you’re a rapist – or rape victim, depending on your sex.

Coastal Carolina University, in South Carolina, is continuing its apparent quest to become the biggest panderer to the extreme wing of the campus sexual assault crusaders with a new poster claiming that only sober people can consent to sex.

Nearly a decade ago, the same university hung up posters around campus claiming that women could not consent if they had been drinking, heavily implying that men could. That poster was discovered after an old coworker of mine sent me a photo of it on Twitter.

The poster claims that while Jake and Josie were both drunk, only Josie was unable to consent, making Jake an automatic rapist. “A woman who is intoxicated cannot give her legal consent for sex, so proceeding under these circumstances is a crime,” the poster read.

Forget the fact that an “intoxicated” man should also be unable to consent, this poster implies that women are weak, unable to handle themselves when drinking and therefore need additional protections. By this same logic, a woman who is caught driving while drunk should be innocent because hey, she’s a woman, she shouldn’t be responsible for the things she does after drinking alcohol.

Women are obviously too weak for college. They should be kept at home under parental supervision, until they’re old enough to be married off and placed under a husband’s control.

AUSTIN BAY: To Counter Domestic Terror Attacks, Selectively Arm Military Personnel. “Most recruiting stations are in civilian facilities, and they are soft targets. However, uniformed service members staff these soft targets, and they are unarmed. Our terrorist enemies know it. Official Pentagon weapons policy is public knowledge. That policy is scandalous. Troops on Army posts remain unarmed, despite Maj. Nidal Hasan’s November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas. The Obama administration still cannot call that attack what it clearly was: a terror attack by an Islamist terrorist.”

HOUSTON-AREA MOM ARRESTED FOR ‘ABANDONMENT’ OF KIDS 30 FEET AWAY:

Browder sat her children down inside the food court near a McDonald’s and went to her interview, she said. The interview wasn’t for a job at the mall, but the food court was a meeting ground for each party.Browder said she wasn’t more than 30 feet away from her children at any point and they were always in her line of sight. After Browder returned to her children, a police officer was on scene and arrested her.

The charge was “child abandonment.” How can you abandon your children when they remain in sight?

Unless there’s some other element to this story that isn’t initially being reported, as Glenn likes to say: Tar. Feathers.

ROLL CALL: Freedom Caucus Forms ‘Fight Club’ in House.

Six months after the House Freedom Caucus was founded, it’s still unclear what exactly it is — or will be — beyond two key characteristics: its commitment to secrecy and to being a thorn in the side of House Speaker John A. Boehner.

There is no official roster. Leaders of the hard-line conservative group won’t say exactly how many members are in the caucus, which has already made its mark. The last count, based on conversations with members who are trying to keep track, was 42, but members are being added almost every week; CQ Roll Call has observed 38 attend at least one caucus meeting.

“It’s like ‘Fight Club,’” says Rep. Jim Bridenstine, an Oklahoma Republican and caucus member, referring to a film dialogue in which the first rule is that you don’t talk about it, and the second rule is that you don’t talk about it. . . .

The caucus has taken three official positions to date — and has notched a solid record.

The group opposed reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, and watched its charter expire last month. It called for a disapproval resolution of a Washington, D.C., abortion law, and the House adopted one (HJ Res 43). And it endorsed a bill (HR 2802) to protect the tax-exempt status of churches that refuse to perform same-sex weddings. Idaho Republican Raúl R. Labrador, the sponsor of the bill and a caucus co-founder, is optimistic it will get a vote.

They haven’t been without losses. The caucus was at the forefront of the failed effort to block President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration earlier this year.

It’s nice when people fight.

THE SUPER BOWL OF SUPERHOLES: This past weekend, Donald Trump dominated the headlines for his assholish attack on John McCain’s war record. But back in the late 1990s, as Mark Steyn notes in a new article, the DNC-MSM were more than happy to blackout coverage of the asshole side of John McCain, because he was their kind of asshole – a Republican who, the vast majority of the time, bashed fellow Republicans. Flash-forward a decade and a half:

Trump’s right: This country treats its veterans appallingly, far worse than most other civilized societies, consigning far too many to food stamps and entrapping them in a third-class health-care system. A New Hampshire neighbor of mine, a Vietnam vet exposed to Agent Orange and thus given cancer as a war-losing bonus, just received the usual letter from the VA telling him his benefits were being cut. Oddly enough, he loathes McCain and is gung-ho for Trump. Do you want to bet he’s in a minority down at the Legion? John McCain doesn’t embody the grand variety and diversity of America’s warriors; John McCain embodies John McCain: That’s it. So, when the Republican establishment spends two news cycles huffing about the amour propre of a wealthy career politician, they’re only reinforcing Trump’s critique: that the GOP is a party of “losers” and “failures” obsessed with peripheral trivia nobody else cares about, while ignoring everything that’s killing your future.

Finally, re that “asshole” business, I should add that I don’t mean it as a criticism. Personally, I’d like it if Calvin Coolidge were on the ticket, or indeed the Marquess of Salisbury. But they’ve decided to sit out Campaign 2016, so one must take what one can get. And a citizenry that votes for an asshole is less deluded than one that votes for a messiah. Thus, voting for, say, Silvio Berlusconi (a kind of wealthier mini-Trump, and yet the third longest serving prime minister in Italian history, after Mussolini and Giolitti) is less psychologically unhealthy than voting for Barack Obama. And, come to that, less damaging to republican virtue than voting for the previous guy’s wife or brother.

Read the whole thing.

And then check out John Nolte of Big Journalism, who notes the folly of GOP consultants, like McCain himself last week, attacking and belittling Trump’s supporters. As Nolte writes, “There are all kinds of good arguments to convince a Republican to turn away from Trump. But when the delivery system is a smug, condescending dickishness, we’ve already lost.”

See also: Election of 1992.

AWESOME: CARLY FIORINA SCHOOLS CNN, HILLARY ON ABORTION ‘EXTREMISM:’ “Carly Fiorina put on a clinic on CNN yesterday, parlaying an abortion question designed to put conservatives on defense — and offering her an opportunity to score points against a fellow Republican — into an aggressive attack on Hillary Clinton’s abortion extremism. Flip the premise.”

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: The DHS Planned to ‘Plug’ Federal Officers Into the Ferguson Protests, Documents Show.

As the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri considered whether to indict police officer Darren Wilson over the shooting death last August of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was working on a plan to “plug” federal officers into protests to “perform surveillance” and “collect intelligence in the crowd.” . . .

It’s unclear, however, whether DHS executed the plan. Some information in the documents was withheld on grounds that it would reveal law enforcement techniques, procedures, and trade secrets, or potentially endanger the life of an individual, DHS said.

Kade Crockford, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology for Liberty project, told VICE News that sending officers into protests “to spy on dissidents is both relatively routine and extremely problematic.”

“The First Amendment protects our right to criticize the government and agitate for social and political change, and this kind of law enforcement activity directly threatens that right,” she said. “DHS’s choice to spend taxpayer dollars spying on today’s black civil rights activists shows that federal law enforcement continues to view black people’s demands for basic rights and equality as somehow threatening.”

Yeah, it’s not just black people.

SEXISM ALERT:

You learn a lot by following progressives on Twitter. When Vice President Joe Biden was dispatched to the University of Illinois to speak to students about the “It’s On Us” campaign, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan specifically requested of the audience, “If somebody tells you they’ve been a victim of sexual assault, I want you to believe them.”

Why then, is this victim being mocked by the left?

GOVERNMENT AS CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY: Oklahoma Official Used Asset Forfeiture to Pay Back His Student Loans; Another lived rent-free in a confiscated house.

Plus: “State Sen. Kyle Loveless, a Republican, has sponsored a bill to make these practices less common. He would prohibit asset forfeiture unless a suspect was actually convicted of a crime, and stipulate that the money go to the state’s general fund.”

THINK HOW MUCH TROUBLE THEY’D BE IN IF THE PRESS WEREN’T ON THEIR SIDE: Fears on the left growing for Planned Parenthood.

Critics of Planned Parenthood on Tuesday released a second secretly recorded video related to fetal parts, putting the group on the defensive and spurring fears on the left of a new ACORN scandal.

The new video shows Dr. Mary Gatter, a Planned Parenthood official, apparently negotiating the price of fetal tissue for medical research. The Center for Medical Progress, which is behind the video, says it shows Planned Parenthood illegally profiting off the sale of fetal organs.

Planned Parenthood rejects that claim. In both videos, the officials in question say they are looking for compensation for expenses, not profit.

But there are also embarrassing statements in both videos that are painting the organization in an unflattering light.

At one point in the latest video, Gatter jokes, “I want a Lamborghini,” when negotiating prices. She also refers to using a “less crunchy” technique for keeping fetal body parts intact. In the first video, the group’s senior director of medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, is heard candidly describing the uses of fetal organs in between sips of wine and bites of salad.

It’s amazing what you find when people on the right do actual journalism.