SOONER OR LATER THEY TELL US THE TRUTH: A Sense-Free Opinion Piece.

BEATS OBAMA’S MOTORCADE: Sight Of 400 War Elephants On Horizon Marks Hillary Clinton’s Arrival In Swing State. (And yes, it is a joke.)

STAND UP: The Real Benghazi Investigation.

EW:‘Buffy the Perv Slayer’? Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ‘just hanging’ with Bill Clinton [photo].

MUSH HEADED: Russian Scientists Build Monument To Honor Lab Rats. Is there a monument honoring the kulaks, sacrificed in an attempt to risk an impossible future?  Mush headed.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED:  Muslim Brotherhood official, former Clinton Foundation employee arrested in Cairo.

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN CAMELOT: The Heart Of The Kennedys.

REVOLUTIONARY OR A FLUKE: Scientists Sequence First Ancient Human Genome From Africa.

ARISTOS BY ANY OTHER NAME:Meet the ‘Know-Betters,’ America’s Not-So-Secret Political Party Squeezing the Life Out of You.

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH A CULTURE OF VICTIM GLORIFICATION: The Real Problem With Susan Taffe Reed and Fake Indian Tribes.

BREAKING THE OODA LOOP.

THOUGHT: The Tea Party wing of the GOP has put paid first to Eric Cantor, and now to Boehner. What’s left of the GOP establishment is saying that the insurgency is stupid. But if the GOP establishment had done its job, there wouldn’t be an insurgency. So who’s stupid here?

As Ed Morrissey notes: “In 2010 and again in 2014, Republicans won back control of Capitol Hill by promising not just to stop Barack Obama’s agenda but reversing it, even though simple majority control in Congress isn’t sufficient to do so while Obama remains president. The GOP overpromised and under delivered–a classic set-up for discouragement and backlash.”

INCOME INEQUALITY EXPLAINED: “The researchers found that credit scores — or whatever personal qualities credit scores might represent — actually play a pretty big role in whether people form and stay in committed relationships. People with higher credit scores are more likely to form committed relationships and marriages and then stay in them.”

OBAMA DOES WHAT HE WANTS WITHOUT REGARD FOR THE LAW. WHY SHOULDN’T THE REST OF US DO THE SAME? Obama weighs expanding background checks through executive authority.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Report: U.S. Concedes Air Superiority Over Syria to Russia.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TERROR: The Link Between Mass Shootings and Terrorism: Young men self-radicalize and become killers because they lack meaning in a modern age.

THE PHANTOM FAME: HOW SPACE GHOST COAST TO COAST SECRETLY BECAME TV’S MOST INFLUENTIAL SHOW.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ON TAXES AND MIGRATION: Are America’s tax migrants bringing California and New York’s high-tax views to sunny low-tax shores of Texas and Florida? “If I were one of those conservative billionaires (hello, Koch brothers! hi, Sheldon Adelson!) who are always donating tens of millions to support Republican candidates, I think I might try spending some of the money on something more useful: A sort of welcome wagon for blue state migrants to red states. Something that would explain to them why the place they’re moving to is doing better than the place they left, and suggesting that they might not want to vote for the same policies that are driving their old home states into bankruptcy.”

THE GOP COULD DO FAR WORSE — AND LIKELY WILL: Newt Gingrich Open to Returning to Speakership.

IS FACEBOOK REALLY A PLAYGROUND FOR NARCISSISTS? MAYBE NOT. “The results were fascinating: The more narcissistic the posters, the less social attention they received from Facebook. In particular, this trend was driven by individuals scoring high in exploitativeness and entitlement, two components of narcissism. Notably, exploitativeness (i.e., taking advantage of others) and entitlement (i.e., believing that one is the best) are some of the most noxious and insufferable facets of narcissism. Simply put: Facebook friends recognized these individuals and distanced themselves from them by ignoring them.”

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Plus, save big on Open-Box Speaker Deals.

HOW DID THE DEMOCRATS BECOME FAVORITES OF THE RICH? John Podhoretz dubs this New York Times article “an important piece by Tom Edsell, which is not something I usually say:”

Democrats now depend as much on affluent voters as on low-income voters. Democrats represent a majority of the richest congressional districts, and the party’s elected officials are more responsive to the policy agenda of the well-to-do than to average voters. The party and its candidates have come to rely on the elite 0.01 percent of the voting age population for a quarter of their financial backing and on large donors for another quarter.

The gulf between the two parties on socially fraught issues like abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage and voting rights remains vast. On economic issues, however, the Democratic Party has inched closer to the policy positions of conservatives, stepping back from championing the needs of working men and women, of the unemployed and of the so-called underclass.

In this respect, the Democratic Party and its elected officials have come to resemble their Republican counterparts far more than the public focus on polarization would lead you to expect.

Well, speak for yourself, Tom. We’ve been writing about this trend since at least 11 years ago, when the Democrats nominated the second coming of Thurston Howell as their presidential nominee, a man who makes FDR seem positively plebeian. (As Mark Steyn asked around the same time, “Could Kerry slum it in the White House?”) As to the reason why, well, James Delingpole dubs it “The Drawbridge Effect” — “You’ve made your money. Now the very last thing you want is for all those trashy middle class people below you to have a fair shot at getting as rich as you are.”

This has its drawbacks — the left can’t preach what it practices, Charles Murray memorably wrote in Coming Apart. “That is certainly true,” William Tucker added at the American Spectator in his review of Murray’s 2012 book. “No one who has been through the American educational system can feel comfortable telling high school graduates that they should work hard, get married, and practice the virtues of thrift and honesty—even though they adhere to those values themselves.” Jonah Goldberg named this disparity “hypocrophobia,” noting that the wealthy have a far greater cushion in terms of both money and the protection it buys, when things go wrong:

What drives me crazy is when rich liberal single parents think they have legs to stand on when speaking on behalf of low-income single parents. I certainly understand the defensiveness, and no doubt they have some shared experiences. But the most infuriating problem with elite culture is its refusal to understand that it can afford its sins — or if you prefer something more secular, its mistakes.

People with lots of financial and social capital can afford to make bad choices that would be devastating for others. Rich single parents can afford nannies and tutors and play groups and summer camps. And parenting is only one aspect of it. The elite can afford rehab. If they get a DUI, they can afford a good lawyer. If they lose their license, they can take Uber. In terms of social capital, they get second and third chances from judges, schools, employers, landlords, et al.

But it’s good that the Times has finally noticed that the party for which they serve as house organ is the chief political party of the One Percent, as their (Gray Lady-approved) shock troops back during Occupy Wall Street would have dubbed their fellow Democrats.

HOUSE SPEAKER SELECTION DELAYED: Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has dropped out of the race for House Speaker. Boehner has delayed the GOP conference vote (slated for today) indefinitely.

It happened suddenly. A source close to McCarthy told National Review on Wednesday that the majority leader was confident that he had secured about 200 votes, and possibly gotten all the way to 218. At 1:00 P.M., just an hour after the scheduled meeting at which he withdrew from the race, came a statement from his office: “Over the last week it has become clear to me that our conference is deeply divided and needs to unite behind one leader. I have always put the conference ahead of myself. Therefore, I am withdrawing my candidacy for speaker of the House.”

Almost immediately, new names for the position began to float on Capitol Hill. Trey Gowdy (“If the Hillary hearing goes well, Trey Gowdy will get a tremendous amount of pressure,” says one House Republican, referring to the Benghazi committee’s scheduled interview with the former secretary of state, set to take place later this month. “I don’t know that he has the heart to do it.”) Peter Roskam. Jason Chaffetz. An interim speaker. Somebody, anybody.

In a phone call, McCarthy tells National Review he wants Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan to run, but Ryan issued a statement Thursday ruling out a bid. So right now, McCarthy says, the conference may be ungovernable. “I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom.”

McCarthy’s move followed something of a political rock bottom of his own that stretched over two brutal weeks. Even before he announced his bid, he faced resistance from conservatives who viewed him as too closely tied to Boehner, the outgoing Speaker. All week, the Tea Party Patriots had been circulating T-shirts on Capitol Hill with the term “McBoehner” emblazoned across the front, along with an orange, wine-swilling, cigarette-smoking amalgam of Boehner and McCarthy.

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL)–a former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives–is now emerging as a more likely contender, obtaining the official endorsement of the House Freedom Caucus. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is still in the race, but appears to have fewer votes lined up than Webster.

Chaffetz was expected to finish third in the GOP caucus vote after McCarthy and Rep. Daniel Webster, a Florida Republican who on Wednesday nabbed the endorsement of the 40-something-strong House Freedom Caucus.

Rep. Steve King, one of the House’s more conservative members, said that he saw Webster with up to 70 votes in the race so far and that he was far ahead of Chaffetz.

“What I saw was Webster’s numbers growing,” King said. “I didn’t see that Chaffetz’s numbers were growing and they may have shrunk, I don’t know.”

King said McCarthy’s withdrawal was an opening for Webster, not Chaffetz.

Asked whether Chaffetz now had a better shot, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was abrupt.

“No,” said the former chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Chaffetz now heads.

Boehner has not scheduled a new date for the GOP conference to vote on his replacement. Rumors are flying that Boehner is maneuvering to stay on as Speaker until a clear GOP consensus emerges. I have even heard rumors that Boehner is considering staying on as Speaker after his term of office expires (he has also announced that he will not seek reelection), as the Speaker of the House does not have to be an elected member of the House.

If Boehner stays on as Speaker much longer, it will be horrific for the GOP, further deepening the anger of the base and dividing the members of the House. It’s long past time for him to go, and his feeble attempts to stay on any longer is only harming, not helping, the GOP.

The GOP conference needs to pick a replacement as soon as possible. Once the GOP conference has picked its candidate, it will be incumbent upon all members of the GOP to unite and support that candidate, regardless of which “side” the candidate is on. To do otherwise would be to allow the Democrats to pick the next Speaker.

BUT ACKNOWLEDGING THIS DOESN’T FEED HILLARY-FRIENDLY “WAR ON WOMEN” THEMES: Barbara Kay: Don’t sell fathers short: They are as crucial to a child’s well being as a mother.

BUT IF THERE’S NO CRISIS, WHAT WILL THE CONSULTANTS DO? Brian Hall: There Is No Diversity Crisis In Tech.