THE HILL: Day of ‘technical’ glitches puts lawmakers on edge.

Lawmakers are having a hard time swallowing the idea that a major stock exchange, a global airline and a prominent media outlet coincidentally suffered major outages on the same day.

The New York Stock Exchange halted trading for roughly four hours Wednesday, and United Airlines had to ground all of its flights in the morning, both citing technical problems as the culprit. And shortly after the stock exchange went down, the homepage for The Wall Street Journal crashed.

The Obama administration said there were no signs the outages were caused by nefarious outside actors, but lawmakers were having a tough time buying it could all be a coincidence and are vowing to look into the matter.

“I’d like to know some more information,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). “To have three outages in three important places on the same day raises a lot of questions. I haven’t gotten answers yet.”

Dissections of what exactly happened in each case were in the preliminary stages Wednesday, but members of Congress were quick to question if foul play was involved, despite assurances the problems were technical, not malicious.

“I think it has the appearances of a cyberattack,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has authority over many Internet issues.

Asked if he was not confident in the exchange’s own assurances that the suspension wasn’t the result of a cyberattack, Nelson responded, “to be determined.”

Coincidences happen. But so does hostile action.

RIDE THE CHRIS MATTHEWS MOBIUS LOOP:

Chris Matthews — the long-time host of MSNBC’s Hardball weeknight program — surprised his fellow commentators by asserting that the billionaire [Donald Trump] can be as deadly as a former dictator in the Middle East.

“He has a lot of information on everybody,” Matthews told moderator and Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. “He’s ready to go after a guy like Charles Krauthammer,” a popular commentator on the Fox News Channel. Trump “has already done the oppo (opposition research) on every journalist around. He’s ready with the worst stuff to throw at you.”

At that point, the Hardball host made an outrageous claim about the GOP candidate:

It’s like you used to read about in the days of Baghdad under (former Iraqi dictator Saddam) Hussein (who was executed on Dec. 30, 2006).

You didn’t want to be in a restaurant with one of his kids because they might make eye contact with you, and you might make eye contact with their girlfriend at the time, and you’re dead the next day.

“So it’s going to be dangerous territory out on that (Republican debate) stage,” he added.

—”Chris Matthews: Donald Trump Can Be as Dangerous as Saddam Hussein,” NewsBusters, yesterday evening.

MATTHEWS: I still think a reasonable question is, would we be better
off with Gadhafi and Bashar al-Assad still in there and Mubarak still there
and Saddam there than the crap we have got looking at us now?

EUGENE ROBINSON: We could be worse off.

MATTHEWS: With ISIS and all — I think it`s still — I begin to get a
tad of nostalgia.

—NBC Transcript of Matthews’ May 15th Hardball segment.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Study: Federal student loans increase tuition, not enrollment.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that federal student aid programs are doing more harm than good. When subsidized federal loans have the effect of “relaxing students’ funding constraints,” universities respond by raising tuition to collect the newly available cash.

The resultant tuition hikes can be substantial: The researchers found that each additional dollar of Pell Grant or subsidized student loan money translates to a tuition jump of 55 or 65 cents, respectively. Of course, the higher tuition also applies to students who don’t receive federal aid, making college less affordable across the board.

Do tell.

MAP: DO YOU LIVE IN A SANCTUARY CITY?

AUSTIN BAY ON CHINA: Background to Asia’s Expensive Naval Arms Race.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Red States Outperform Blue In Managing Taxpayer Money.

Pop quiz: What do the most fiscally sound states have in common? Good weather? Oil? Blind luck? Or is it conservative policies such as keeping taxes low, regulations reasonable and spending under control?

A new report from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center ranks all 50 states based on 14 measures designed to determine whether states can pay their short-term bills and meet their long-term obligations — debt, pension liabilities and such. The data go through 2013.

The best-run states have enough cash to pay its current bills, enough revenue coming in to meet its fiscal year needs, a cushion for economic shocks, and management long-term liabilities.

The worst states, in contrast, have “tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities — constituting a significant risk to taxpayers in both the short and the long term.”

When USA Today looked at the Mercatus ranking, they noticed that a few of these states have a lot of oil. “Energy-rich states are leading, and Northeastern states with big pension obligations lagging,” it said.

But that doesn’t explain why states like Florida or Ohio rank so high. Or why California, which has an overabundance of natural resources, is the seventh worst state in terms of fiscal health. (Oil-rich Texas, by the way, ranks 19th.)

Nor can you attribute states’ fiscal health to things like the weather, since few are likely attracted to North Dakota for its winter season. And

Luck can’t be the reason either. Ohio (seventh from the top) suffered from rust-belt deindustrialization as much as Pennsylvania (ninth from the bottom).

Location a factor? Doubtful. Otherwise, why would Illinois be so much worse off than the three other states that border Lake Michigan?

There’s only one factor these fiscal winners and losers share in common. And that’s their political leanings. Of the top 10 states in the Mercatus ranking, just two — Florida and Ohio — voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in the past four elections, and just one — Montana — has a Democratic governor. Even if you look at the 25 best-performing states, only three could be considered reliably liberal.

At the other end of the list, just two of the 10 lowest-ranked states — Kentucky and West Virginia — have voted for the Republican in the past four presidential elections.

America has voted for the Democrat in the last two presidential elections. . . .

WHEN THE USER BASE IS UNHAPPY: Reddit Chiefs Eat Humble Pie as Competitor Voat Approached by Venture Capitalists.

AT AMAZON, deals in Office Supplies & Electronics.

Also, take an extra 20% off Grohe Kitchen & Bath Products.

WELL, THAT SEEMS FAIR: Man mistakenly detained for child porn wants public apology. “I had no idea what was going to happen. I see all the time people are accused of this. They get put into the system and their lives are completely destroyed. . . . I want to know how they could make such a ridiculous mistake. . . . They had Fultz’s picture on the piece of paper. They showed me it later. This was a 21-year-old kid who is half my size. How can you mistake that for me?”

No fear of consequences.

DANIEL DREZNER ON CHINA’S STOCK MARKET COLLAPSE: “So while every international affairs pundit and their mother are focused on the travails of an economy the size of Louisiana, the second-largest economy is experiencing a teeny-weentsy stock market meltdown.”

BOB BELVEDERE: On Sur-Reality And Blood Libel.

CATHY YOUNG: Lab Rats: How the Misogyny Police and Sloppy Journalists Smeared a Top Scientist.

UCL is now under growing pressure to reinstate Dr. Hunt at its next council meeting on July 9. The ranks of his British supporters have been joined by Americans such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author and professor at New York University’s School of Engineering, who is boycotting the London school to protest Hunt’s treatment.

Of course, there is a backlash against the backlash. Slate science columnist Phil Plait still insists that Dr. Hunt meant what he said. Others assert that even if Mr. Hunt was joking, he was making women the butt of his sexist jokes—even though he seems to have been poking fun mainly at himself. Predictably, the counter-backlash portrays Mr. Hunt’s supporters as men defending male privilege. In fact, half of Hunt’s former students, postdoctoral fellows and staff scientists who wrote to the Times on his behalf were women. His most vocal champions include former British MP and journalist Louise Mensch, a self-proclaimed feminist who believes Dr. Hunt is a victim of “fauxminism,” and UCL honorary research associate genealogist Debbie Kennett.

While Dr. Hunt’s poor judgment played a role in his plight, he has been wronged. His off-the-cuff remarks were almost certainly reported in truncated and out-of-context form, while voices disputing these reports were ignored. The journalists who covered the story never bothered to find out details that didn’t fit the misogynist caricature: for instance, that before the ill-fated luncheon, Dr. Hunt had participated in a conference event where two European Research Council grantees, both women, presented their work. In the media storm, many were eager to use Dr. Hunt—not the real person but his caricature—as proof that entrenched sexism in science is real.

Dr. Hunt deserves to be vindicated. Cultural disapproval of sexism is, without question, a good thing. But when “fauxminist” outrage over a minor faux pas can ruin a career, this is not good for women, for science, or for the culture.

First Shirtstorm, now this. Women are apparently too delicate for science.

SPACE: 8-Bit Video Shows the Moon Charon Orbiting Pluto.

TWO SLATES IN ONE!

The snobby, Northern, mostly liberal crusade to shame people for using air conditioning. http://t.co/z7GY6T8izJ pic.twitter.com/Ai5ukY4kWf

— Slate (@Slate) July 8, 2015

Such as a Washington DC-based Website called Slate back in 2006:

The deluded world of air conditioning. http://t.co/bOgsCs6Zp3 via @slate

— Ed Driscoll (@EdDriscoll) July 8, 2015

I’m glad Slate has had a change of heart on this topic, but as Groucho was famously attributed as saying, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

THEY’RE NOT JUST HERE, THEY’RE IN CHARGE: Tom Nichols at The Federalist: “The New Totalitarians are Here.“

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: For The 10% Of Law Students Able To Snag A Summer Associate Position, The Living Is Easy (And Remunerative: $3,000/Week). But the debt is just as high for the other 90%.

POLL: RAISE THE SMOKING AGE TO 21: Isn’t it about time someone introduced an amendment repealing the 26th Amendment?

DEAR ARIANA GRANDE: LICKING DONUTS ISN’T GOING TO HELP FAT KIDS.

RELATED (So Very Related): High-Profile Hillary Clinton Supporter: ‘I Hate Americans. I Hate America.’

HOMELESSNESS AND EMPTY STORES BECOMING THE NEW NORMAL IN NYC, John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post:

These three anecdotes are all examples of what made living in pre-Giuliani New York City so problematic. It wasn’t crime per se that made you uncomfortable (even at the height of its troubles, New York had a lower per-capita crime rate than other US cities). No, the problem was a general feeling of menace — the sense that violence could break out around you at any moment.

* * * * * * *

Yet now, the evidence of our eyes and ears makes it clear our neighborhood is simply more menacing than it was a year or two ago, and that civil society is decaying.

I’m not offering an explanation for why this has happened. I’m only describing a change in mood.

And if I were Bill de Blasio looking ahead to 2017, I’d take this very seriously. He won election in 2013 in part because the argument that he would return the city to the bad old days didn’t resonate with voters.

But if they feel two years from now as though the city is a worse place to live than it was when he took office, the 73 percent of the city’s eligible voters who didn’t vote for de Blasio in 2013 will have no difficulty sending the moving truck to Gracie Mansion and shipping him right back to Park Slope.

When the “don’t believe de Blasio’s radical chic rhetoric, it’s all blustery boob bait for the bobos” articles were making the rounds in the fall of 2013, I strongly suspected New York’s decline was soon to follow — if only because I remember being told to disregard the more outré statements from another aficionado of radical chic in 2008.

RELATED: On the other hand, to paraphrase Lily Tomlin on the first season of Saturday Night Live, from the depths of New York’s Death Wish/Taxi Driver/Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 era:

Cheer up, New York, ’cause you’re okay
Though the President says you won’t last another day.
I’m here to say you’re here to stay
And mention, by the way, if I may
You got the greatest culture, symphonies and plays
Also shopping, eating, meeting places and subways
Take pride in yourself, you could be Baltimore.

TREY GOWDY: HILLARY CLINTON IS FLAT-OUT LYING ABOUT US NOT SUBPOENAING HER.

To be fair, though:

Come on you haters, expecting Hillary to remember all her subpoenas is like expecting Bill to remember all his intern blow jobs.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 8, 2015

UPDATE: “In short, she’s lying about everything.”

THIS SEEMS SMART: Report: Jeremy Clarkson’s Netflix Deal Looking More Likely. “Thanks to a non-compete, Clarkson can’t talk cars on British TV until 2017. But that doesn’t apply to Netflix, with whom the Top Gear host has apparently been chatting.”

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.

Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

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SMART REPUBLICAN STEALS A MARCH ON DONALD TRUMP. So this morning I noted that, in response to Donald Trump’s drum-beating on murder by illegal aliens, even Democrats like Steny Hoyer and Hillary Clinton were condemning “Sanctuary Cities.” And I commented: “I mean, with Steny Hoyer and Hillary Clinton coming out against sanctuary cities, who can disagree? Don’t turn illegals over to ICE, lose all your federal funding. Trump can barnstorm on this one every time there’s a splashy new crime by an illegal.”

As far as I know, Trump hasn’t picked up on this, but I just got this from Sen. Tom Cotton’s office: Cotton Introduces Legislation to Block Sanctuary Cities from Receiving Federal Law Enforcement Grants. Maybe Republicans are learning. . . .

OTHER REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES CAN LEARN FROM THIS, IF THEY’RE SMART ENOUGH: Trump Steamrolls NBC Reporter, Takes Shots at Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg.

10 REASONS ESPN IS MSNBC WITH BETTER VIDEO: Just as MTV used to run rock videos many years ago*, ESPN used to show sports programming until it became all politics, all the time. Olbermann transferring there really was simply a lateral move for him, wasn’t it?

In the second of his Three Laws of Politics, Robert Conquest famously noted, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” Not coincidentally, in the media, anything that’s non-political will become absolutely saturated with left-wing politics during that transformation, and both print and TV sports journalism is one of the worst offenders in this area.

Kids, ask your parents about this. It’s true, I swear.