ROGER KIMBALL ON BREXIT: A Freer, More Democratic, More Internationalist Britain:

I cannot tell what proportion of Brexit hysteria is feigned.  Among ordinary people, who have listened to months of skirling  admonition from Project Fear politicians and special interests, I suspect that the unhappiness is genuine if uninformed.  But what are we to make of such hyperbolic absurdities as today’s front-page, above-the-fold headline in The Times: “England’s Darkest Day”?

Is it really? Is taking a step to recover your sovereignty really worse than, say, the Blitz? Worse that the first day of the battle of the Somme, when some 57,000 Brits lost their lives?  There is a lot of manufactured melodrama about and Dan Hannan did a splendid job of quashing it.

In contrast, Labour frontman Jeremy Corbyn is generating plenty of melodrama of his own: “Labour crisis: Jeremy Corbyn refuses to resign after losing confidence of 172 MPs as Angela Eagle eyes up leadership challenge,” the London Telegraph is currently reporting.

A GOVERNMENT AGENCY MAKING FARMERS’ LIVES MISERABLE – Besides the EPA, We Mean:

The farm sector has spent the last century-plus dramatically reducing its number of participants (thank you very much, private sector advancements). In 1900, 40% of Americans worked on farms. Today, a mere 1% do.

But the agency overseeing the sector? It “experienced enormous growth in both size and complexity” – and today “is among the largest federal employers and its 2014 budget exceeded $160 billion.”

In the private sector – that makes zero sense. In government – that’s how things work.

Not to mention likely bringing plenty of “bad luck” along the way.

SCIENCE: An N.Y.U. Study Gone Wrong, and a Top Researcher Dismissed. “New York University’s medical school has quietly shut down eight studies at its prominent psychiatric research center and parted ways with a top researcher after discovering a series of violations in a study of an experimental, mind-altering drug. A subsequent federal investigation found lax oversight of study participants, most of whom had serious mental issues. The Food and Drug Administration investigators also found that records had been falsified and researchers had failed to keep accurate case histories.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN: History Returns to Europe: “The EU is a brilliant idea… The actually existing EU, though, isn’t so brilliant. It includes all the good stuff, yet it’s crushed by a staggering amount of centralized regulatory bureaucracy and a disregard for the wishes of its individual member states. It’s hardly a gulag empire, but it’s autocratic enough that Europe’s democracy deficit has its own Wikipedia page. And its internally borderless nature is bringing more immigrants than can be absorbed all at once without shocks to the system.”

If nothing else, Brexit has certainly been a useful exercise in watching elite euro-leftists drop the mask and “revolt against the masses,” to coin a phrase.

THE FAST FOOD WARS ARE GETTING VICIOUS: Ronald McDonald shot outside Sonic.

AU REVOIR: Days after Brexit, the EU is already trying to get rid of English.

Bonne chance avec ça, mauvais perdants.

RIP: LEGENDARY NFL DEFENSIVE MASTERMIND BUDDY RYAN DIES AT 82.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1146.

I’M SENSING A THEME HERE: President of the EU Parliament Slams Britain For “Violating the Rules:” “It Is Not The EU Philosophy That The Crowd Can Decide Its Fate.”

Meanwhile, back at the Post, “The EU’s biggest threat is the will of its people.”

Good news, citizens of Europe: The Washington Post openly loathes you almost as much as it hates evangelical Christian Americans!

WASHINGTON POST DISCOVERS WE AREN’T ALL SOCIALISTS NOW, THROW TEMPER TANTRUM: ‘WaPo’: Brexit Shows Some Things Shouldn’t Be Decided by the People.

(Newsweek’s infamous “We Are All Socialists Now” headline in early February of 2009 ran when the magazine was still controlled by the Post, before being offloaded for $1.00. The late Sidney Harman definitely overpaid.)

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Abbas aide advises, ‘Wherever you see an Israeli, slit his throat’

POLITICAL SCIENCE: Political Diversity and the Daycare Wars.

A new National Affairs essay highlighting some of the overlooked deficiencies of universal daycare (now a mainstay of the Democratic policy agenda), raises an interesting question: Why is there so little reliable public information on the costs and benefits of such programs? . . .

In other words, as the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (the lead author of the study in question) put it on Twitter, “daycare research may be biased by fact that nearly all researchers want to reach conclusion that there’s no downside.”

The essay reinforces a point that we have emphasized in these pages before: The reason America needs more political diversity in the social sciences is not because moderates and conservatives in academia need an affirmative action-style spoils system. Rather, it’s because the knowledge-creation process—the system by which scientists create knowledge and that knowledge is disseminated to the public and incorporated into political decisions—functions better if there is disagreement and debate among the scientists. Findings are more robust if they have been repeatedly challenged and refined over time.

Conservatives upset with the state of academic research have often emphasized the way non-progressives are discriminated against suppressed in many fields. And that may be true. But a more productive approach may be to highlight the way that their absence undermines the integrity of science itself—and, in the long run, the quality of public policy decisions.

To be fair, it’s intended to do that.

VIDEO: What Is Ed Rendell’s Problem With Women In Government? “Warren is out there talking up Clinton constantly and bashing Trump for his supposed misogyny, and meanwhile Big Ed is going on cable news on a weekly basis and reinforcing the idea that two women on the ticket will put the voters off their feed. Remind me who’s organizing this War on Women again?”

Why is the Democratic Party such a cesspit of misogyny?

DAVID SOLWAY ON THE STANFORD ‘RAPE’ TRIAL.

I’D RATHER THEY FOCUSED ON ZIKA, EBOLA, AND YELLOW FEVER: The CDC on Domestic Violence and Sexual Orientation.

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FINAL BENGHAZI REPORT RELEASED: Obama, Clinton Lied, Didn’t Take Action To Save Lives.

Gowdy’s findings questioned the administration’s dubious reasons for placing diplomatic personnel in Benghazi despite clear and consistent warnings of violence in the area.

The temporary mission in Benghazi was on the road to becoming a permanent facility in the fall of 2012, when Stevens and a skeleton security team headed to the coastal Libyan city to prepare the announcement of a lasting U.S. presence there.

According to the committee’s report, U.S. officials had reported an “increase in extremist activity” in June 2012 as other Western powers in the area withdrew their people out of concern for their safety.

Other investigations had detailed the string of attacks in Libya that preceded the Benghazi raid, but none had exposed the motivations behind Stevens’ activities in the region, laying the groundwork for an upcoming visit from Clinton, where she hoped to announce the establishment of a permanent diplomatic post in Benghazi.

Related: GOP Benghazi report charges Obama-Clinton did nothing to save lives.

Also: How The White House Spun Benghazi.

New evidence obtained by the House Select Committee on Benghazi suggests the Obama administration forged ahead with a narrative that blamed the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi on a protest over a YouTube clip, despite clear and consistent signs that the violence was planned and executed by a terrorist group.

In a 48-page summary of the committee’s findings that was penned by a pair of Republican committee members and made public Tuesday, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Pompeo argued the administration presented the public with an explanation that had little basis in fact because President Obama was preoccupied with declaring terrorism dead ahead of his reelection.

Although then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has attempted to attribute the misinformation in her early statements on Benghazi to the “fog of war,” Pompeo said Clinton was among the many administration officials with almost immediate access to intelligence that indicated the attack was carried out by Islamic terrorists.

“It’s largely undisputed that she had that information, and that’s the way that she articulated it privately that night,” Pompeo told the Washington Examiner in an interview.

But they still jailed a filmmaker, for political distraction purposes.

Plus: Final Benghazi report details administration failures. Note this humiliating detail for Hillary’s State Department: “The panel also found that former senior officials in the defunct Qadhafi regime helped evacuate Americans to safety, a surprising finding given that the U.S. was backing the rebels fighting against the regime. The GOP committee staffer noted that the rebel forces State had worked to befriend did not come to the Americans’ aid.”

Also: “The committee also blasts the State Department’s internal investigation of the attack, known as the Accountability Review Board, for allegedly coordinating with Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. Such reviews are traditionally independent.” Traditions of that sort seldom survive contact with the Clintons.

Also: Politico: Weapons trafficking questions remain unanswered in Benghazi report.

UPDATE: Report: Mills’ influence tainted review board. In 2012, I attended a dinner with Condi Rice in L.A. where she told us that these reviews were meticulous and unbiased. That was no doubt true when she was Secretary of State, but her confidence that the same would obtain under the Obama Administration is, I’m afraid, sadly typical of the GOP leadership’s lack of imagination, or maybe perception.

TIME-WARNER-CNN-HBO’s REALLY TAKING #BREXIT HARD: CNN’s Zakaria: Journalists ‘Better Educated’, ‘More Comfortable With Diversity’ Than Ordinary People.

Know your place, peasant!

Earlier: Time-Warner-HBO-CNN Spokesman John Oliver Calls Boris Johnson A ‘Shaved Orangutan’ And David Cameron A ‘Pig-F***Er’ In Nine-Minute Anti-Brexit Rant On Us Tv: “Prominent pro-Brexit politician and leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage was savaged as having a ‘punchable face.’”

THE NEW RULES OF DEMOCRACY: There Are No Rules Just Give Me What I Want.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Clinton Foundation Auditor Has Troubled Regulatory History.

BKD has made news in other ways, however. It was indicted by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Depository Insurance Corporation for “unprofessional conduct” and “gross negligence,” according to federal court documents

And the Public Company Oversight Accounting Board (PCOAB), the nation’s top federal oversight agency for American accounting firms, reported that BKD violated auditor independence rules over the years, which its inspectors reported as “significant deficiencies.”

BKD — which stands for founders Baird, Kurtz & Dobson — also has been hauled into court by unhappy clients who have charged it with “malpractice” and the manipulation of accounting books.

For certain clients, malpractice might be a feature, not a bug.

TRUMP’S GOT PROBLEMS, BUT SO DOES HILLARY: Clinton struggling in some reliably blue states.

Despite an increasing lead over businessman Donald Trump in head-to-head matchups, presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is struggling to connect in some reliably blue states.

Washington Post authors Philip Rucker and John Wagner report that there’s concern among Clinton supporters who believe Trump might do well in three Rust Belt states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“In Michigan, Pennsylvania and, to a lesser extent, Wisconsin, an affinity for Trump’s message of economic populism and nationalism has surprised many Democrats,” Rucker and Wagner wrote. “These are big, industrial states they have carried for the past three decades — and where Clinton, so far, has not fully focused.”

In Pennsylvania, Clinton and Trump are in a statistical tie, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages. In Michigan, Trump closed the gap between the two candidates considerably once he became the GOP nominee, and now trails Clinton by just 4 points (though the last poll was taken at the end of May). . . .

Even in swing states where Clinton’s campaign is more confident, the polls aren’t much better. Clinton leads Trump by 3.5 points in Florida and nearly 3 points in Ohio.

Stay tuned. Related: Right-Wing Populism Is Prevailing in Left-Wing Strongholds Around the World. “It’s a problem for Democrats. They are a lot more dependent on the Northern white working class than the prevailing narrative of recent electoral contests tends to acknowledge. Northern working-class whites represent a larger share of the electorate than generally believed, and Democrats have been winning a larger share of them than has been typically understood.”

HEH: Journalist Who Called For Murder Of GOP Suddenly Concerned About Rhetoric.

KEY BACKER OF IRAN DEAL WAS ON BOEING’S PAYROLL BUT DIDN’T DISCLOSE IT:

A $25 billion deal is nothing to sneeze at.

So does Iran. Its air fleet is said to contain some of the oldest and most dangerous planes in the world. Now Iran can modernize the fleet.

According to Rep. Pete Roskam, Iran could use its new planes to ferry troops and weapons around the Middle East. But that’s no skin off of Boeing’s back. Or Pickering’s.

Read the whole thing.

R.I.P.: Pat Head Summitt.