RON FOURNIER ON HILLARY: The Queen of Paradox and Her Crumbling Stone Wall.

For once, Hillary Rodham Clinton seemed to be a decent candidate. Taking aim at weak spots in the GOP lines, she attacked Jeb Bush on women’s health, Marco Rubio on abortion, Scott Walker on college costs, and Donald Trump on sexism.

Then the stone wall crumbled around the Queen of Paradox: Hillary Clinton, both a political colossus and a catastrophe. We learned Tuesday night:

—She will give the FBI a private, illicit server that housed her official email during her four years as secretary of State, including thousands that she covertly deleted.

—Her attorney will give agents a thumb drive containing copies of the self-selected emails she returned to the State Department after discovery of the rogue server.

—A top intelligence official reviewing just a handful of those emails told Congress that top-secret information had been contained in two emails that passed across the server.

Where do I start? How about with the Clinton campaign’s ridiculous suggestion that coughing up the server and email were voluntary acts. We know that’s bunk—because Clinton herself said she wouldn’t surrender the people’s records without a fight.

Well, she lies a lot.

KEEP ROCKIN’! L.A. Times Columnist: Carly Fiorina Should Shut Up About Beating Cancer.

ANOTHER GOVERNMENT HEALTH ADVICE FAIL:

The National Institute of Health’s We Can! program, which aims to help children maintain a healthy weight, steers families toward low-fat foods. The program lists diet soda and ketchup as foods to eat “almost anytime,” but says low-fat milk should be consumed only “sometimes.” The NIH program puts whole milk in the most restricted category as cookies, doughnuts and French fries, to be consumed only “once in a while.”

Soda good, whole milk bad. Because the Evil Fatz. Somebody send them a copy of Gary Taubes’ book, stat!

DR. CARSON GOES TO WASHINGTON: Roger Simon ponders if the ticket order in 2016 will be Trump-Carson, or Carson-Trump?

OH GOODY: The Iran deal will unchain top ayatollah’s terror slush fund.  Because, you know, life was getting way too easy and simple.  Not.

SCAPEGOATS NO MORE: The Goat Kicks Back.  The culture wars in science fiction continue. And they’re standing on my last nerve.

JOSHUA SHARF: President Obama has lost the argument on Iran. “When your best argument for an agreement is that the deal’s opponents are ‘making common cause’ with your negotiating partners, it’s safe to say you’ve lost the debate.”

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT LEFTISTS DO THAT ISN’T HYPOCRITICAL? The British left’s hypocritical embrace of Islamism.

A DEEP AND MOVING CONFESSION: Putting Down The Man Gun: Why I Switched To 9mm.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders — compare and contrast.

Plus: “Speaking of Trippi, why has Fox News replaced him with Bill Burton as its house leftist on political matters? Trippi is insightful and intellectually honest, plus he has run consequential political campaigns. Burton, a deputy White House press secretary for President Obama, is a hack mired in partisan talking points.”

THE HILL: Turmoil mounts surrounding Clinton emails. Did Hillary really make a “decision to give the FBI her private email server?” Decision? I thought they were “seized.”

HISTORY: Global eavesdroppers: In World War II, dozens of radio operators in Scituate dialed into enemy conversations worldwide. “Reception was incredible: They could pick up tank-to-tank communications among Rommel’s Afrika Korps.”

COMIC CANARIES IN THE POLITICAL COAL MINE: Steven Hayward at Power Line ponders how the “Late-Nite Comic Indicator” portends trouble for Hillary Clinton:

I don’t know if any quantitative political scientist has ever devoted the time to see whether there is any correlation between the frequency of jokes by late night TV comics and the fortunes of a political figure, but my hunch is if the data are waterboarded long enough, you’ll find one. In any case, given that pop culture is a leading indictor, Hillary is in trouble.

From last night, first, Conan:

A new poll shows that Hillary Clinton is only six points ahead of Bernie Sanders. Today a very confident Hillary said, “Oh, please. Like I’m going to lose the Democratic nomination to a left-wing senator nobody’s ever heard of?”

Well, we know that the late night funnymen like Letterman, O’Brien, Fallon, Stewart are all thinly disguised Obama shills, possessing the typical Hollywood/journalist self-identification as liberal/progressive Democrats. When you lose this crowd, you’re definitely in trouble.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Arranging molecular chromophores on DNA brick nanobreadboards.

AT AMAZON, shop the Farm & Ranch Supply Store.

Also, deals on Hardware.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump-Sanders 2016, that’s the ticket! (Bumped).

COVER-UP: MAJOR NEWSPAPERS KEEP HILLARY’S E-MAILS OFF THE FRONT PAGE, NewsBusters reports:

Four of the country’s largest newspapers on Wednesday kept the latest developments in Hillary Clinton’s growing E-mail scandal off the front page (one kept it out of the paper completely). The revelation that the Democratic candidate had top secret information on her server was relegated to the bottom of page A13 in the New York Times.

The Washington Post managed to place the news that Clinton will finally turn over her server on A2. The Los Angeles Times hid the story on A9. All of these newspapers, however, did better than USA Today, which completely skipped Clinton’s scandal in the print edition. 

Fortunately, the London Daily Mail is on the case. Note this interesting detail, which is consistent with what Roger Simon and Victor Davis Hanson have recently been writing about the Hillary-Obama relationship: “Washington sources say Vice President Joe Biden is waiting in the wings for the Obama administration to run her over so he can step in and run for president.”

Or to put it another way…Soon:

HEALTH: A Milestone in Africa: No Polio Cases in a Year.

It has been one full year since polio was detected anywhere in Africa, a significant milestone in global health that has left health experts around the world quietly celebrating.

The goal had seemed tantalizingly close in recent years, but polio always managed to roar back, particularly in Nigeria. Then officials embraced a vigorous new approach to vaccination and surveillance in that country, hiring thousands of community “mobilizers” to track down the unvaccinated, opening operations centers nationwide to monitor progress and seeking out support from clerics and tribal chiefs.

The result has been remarkable.

The last African case of polio was detected in Somalia on Aug. 11, 2014, the final sign of an outbreak with its roots in Nigeria — the one country where the virus had never been eradicated, even temporarily. But the last case in Nigeria was recorded on July 24, 2014.

Africa has never gone so long without a case of polio. But in an indication of how nervous experts still are that the disease may resurge, even the announcement from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was tentatively headlined “Is Africa Polio-Free?”

Let’s hope.

WHEN DOES A CANDIDATE BECOME A CANDIDATE? It’s an interesting legal question, posed by law professor and former FEC Chair Brad Smith in this Daily Caller piece:

A group supporting more campaign regulations called the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that four candidates violated federal law by not declaring their presidential candidacies until June.

When one officially becomes a candidate matters because becoming a “candidate” triggers a host of legal requirements under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). A candidate has to publicly disclose detailed, personal financial information. A campaign’s fundraising is heavily regulated, along with a candidate’s ability to raise funds for other causes, to be reimbursed for travel to speak at colleges or to civic groups, and even to accept volunteer help.

CLC’s main target is Governor Jeb Bush. CLC complains that, well before his June announcement, Bush had been raising money, not for his campaign, but for two political action committees, Right to Rise PAC and Right to Rise Super PAC, which promote issues and candidates aligned with his political agenda.

However, raising money for other candidates and issues, even if it might indirectly help a person run for office, doesn’t make one a candidate. In fact, FECA specifically defines a “candidate” as someone who raises or spends more than $5,000 to run for office. . . .

In September of 2014, for example, Hillary Clinton appeared at a “Steak fry” in the early caucus state of Iowa. Does paying for a flight to Des Moines, buying a tank of gas, and eating a steak, more than two years before an election make one a candidate? Under CLC’s bizarre approach, it might. Or it might not. Guess wrong, and Secretary Clinton could be fitted for an orange pantsuit.

Smith is adept at pointing out the inconsistency in CLC’s approach to interpreting the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). And as much as I like the idea of seeing Hillary Clinton in an orange jumpsuit surrounded daily by large, short-haired and heavily tattooed inmates, I’m not willing to restrict her First Amendment speech and association rights to classify her informal candidacy explorations as the legal equivalent of an actual candidacy (nor is Smith). That principled stance, however, is never shared by liberal/progressive campaign finance “reform” groups like CLC, whose rage is never directed at leftist ideological comrades.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Mark Steyn’s new book on Michael Mann is entitled A Disgrace To The Profession. Here’s a review. “Steyn realized the word of a political pundit like himself can only travel so far in certain circles, and in a brilliant move, he has gathered a compendium of what other scientists have to say about Mann’s work.”

MORE NOSTALGIA: So Long, Columbia House. And Thanks for Making Me Cool. “That was 1995, making me part of the last generation to experience the service before the post-scarcity era of online music. Today my young rural counterparts have smart phones that can stream millions of songs for free, provided they’re willing to sit through a few ads. Sites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud provide an entire galaxy of obscure indie music to which only people reading the hippest `zines of the old era would ever have been privy.”

JIMMY CARTER DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER AFTER LIVER SURGERY: “Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body,” the 90 year old 39th president said in a statement. “I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare” in Georgia, the Washington Examiner reports. “A more complete public statement will be made when facts are known, possibly next week.”

YOU HATE IT FROM BARACK OBAMA. BUT YOU LOVE IT FROM DONALD TRUMP, Rick Wilson writes at IJ Review:

You hated how Obama rode the wave of constant attention from the mainstream media into office, and how they played along with his game, draining the life out of every other candidate by describing him as an inevitable juggernaut, an unstoppable political force, and a game-changer who was tapping into something deep and powerful in American political life.

But you love it from Trump.

You hated how Obama’s naive ignorance of the real and brutal world of international affairs was papered over by his hollow promises to make the world respect the United States again.

But you love it from Trump.

You hated Obama’s casual disdain for people who weren’t from a major city where, you know, all the rich, smart, educated, liberal people like him live.

But you love it from Trump.

And as Sonny Bunch adds at the Washington Post, both men are a product of the pop culture of the last two decades:

Instead of looking to Mike Judge as the explanation for The Donald’s appeal, maybe we should look to Aaron Sorkin. He’s spent a career insisting that straight-shooting, real-talking, non-bush-beating pols are what get the people all hot and bothered. Who can forget the rousing finale of “The American President” when the triangulator stops triangulating and spits hot truths about gun control and crime bills and the environment. Let’s not forget “Bulworth’s” bravado or “The West Wing’s” response to the wickedness of the Bush presidency and the squishiness of the Clinton years.

In this fantasyland, Sorkinesque Real Talk inspires not snickering but action, not plummeting polls but massive new support. The courage of a pol’s convictions will carry him far.

Especially when he’s the World’s Biggest Celebrity, whether it’s 2008 or the road to 2016:

RELATED: Rand-Donald Feud Escalates as Paul Releases Video of Trump Praising Dems.

BERNIE SANDERS TELLS RECORD CROWDS HOW BAD ECONOMY IS AFTER LAST 7 YEARS:

The Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders draws 10,000-15,000 people at every event, while his rival Hillary Clinton’s largest crowd was only 5500. However, Sanders isn’t telling Americans how great the Obama years have been, but how bad things are. Yet you won’t hear any of that on the networks or read about it on any news sites…they only focus on the crowd size.

Gee, I wonder why?

Sanders also noted that millions of Americans are in desperate need of jobs as he said the unemployment numbers coming from the Obama administration aren’t to be trusted.

“Every month government comes out with a statistic on unemployment. Last statistic said that official unemployment was 5.3 percent but what they forgot to tell you is that statistic doesn’t include those people who have given up looking for work, those people who are working part time. Add it all together and real unemployment is over 10 percent.”

Whoever ultimately is the Democratic nominee (or perhaps a stranger from Indian country…) that soundbite should be prime fodder for his or her GOP opponent, which even beyond his opposition to Hillary, explains why it’s not getting traction in the media. But for those tasked to create the B-roll for GOP campaign video, here you go:

IT WOULD BE CHILD ABUSE NOW, BUT SINCE IT HAPPENED IN THE ’70s YOU’RE ALLOWED TO WAX NOSTALGIC: The 70s groupies who broke the rules of style and sexuality. “Starr was only 14 years old when she started hanging out on the Strip, with a 13-year-old Lori Lightning (real name Mattix) joining the now established gang soon afterwards. The hangouts of choice were spots like the Rainbow Bar and Grill, Whiskey a-go-go and the E Club ­– later renamed Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. . . . Lori Lightning, who fell in love with Jimmy Page aged 14, has no regrets. As she tells fellow ex-groupie Pamela de Barres in the latter’s book, ‘It was such a different time—there was no AIDS—and you were free to experiment.’ Nobody can ask Starr, now – the ballsy queen of the babies eventually got clean and had kids, but died aged 51 in 2009. Regardless of what really went on, there’s a kind of power to be found somewhere amid the gushing interviews and romanticised editorials of Star. Addressing its teen readers without patronising them, Star cut straight to the heart of the sexual desires of girlhood like no other magazine would dare.”