DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA’S NEWEST, FRIENDLIEST, MOST CURIOUS ALLIES: “Cops have caught ‘hostile’ Iranian snoops shooting pictures and video at key city sites at least six times since 9/11 — twice the number previously reported.” Not to mention “a man named Mohammed Alavi was arrested for providing Iran with the floor plan of America’s largest nuclear power plant.”
Gosh, someone should tell Ben Rhodes and John Kerry about this stuff. I’m sure the president would want to know.
DAVID MCCULLOUGH GOES FULL GINSBURG: Scholars Steeped in Dead Politicians Take On a Live One: Donald Trump.
Authoritative and measured, Mr. McCullough typically strikes a tone of determined neutrality. In public appearances, he said, he deliberately avoids commentary on contemporary politics.
“Very often, during question-and-answer sessions, people ask me some question about the president or other would-be candidates,” he said in an interview this week. “I’ve always said, ‘My specialty is dead politicians.’ In that way, I could sidestep the question without getting myself involved.
“But this time around, I don’t feel that way any more.”
Now Mr. McCullough and Ken Burns, the filmmaker and author, have assembled a group of distinguished American historians to speak about the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in videos being posted to a Facebook page, Historians on Donald Trump.
Seems panicky to me.
HOPE: Bernie’s Uninspiring Endorsement
So said Sanders at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, where he appeared on stage with Hillary Clinton as an ally for the first time. As big events go, it felt pretty small, with Sanders waving his arms around and offering up his usual list of shouted slogans.
Sanders avoided subjects like war and foreign affairs, since he and Clinton disagree violently on those things. He harped on his successes, which was understandable, but it was passing strange when he claimed that he and his backers “showed the world that we could run a successful national campaign based on small individual contributions.”
Yes, if you define successful as losing.
Clinton — who actually wrapped up the nomination more than a month ago — stood next to him looking uncomfortable, nodding endlessly like a bobblehead doll and smiling at odd, seemingly random moments.
Never give up, Bernie Bros, never surrender.
SURPRISING NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS BIAS IN POLICE USE OF FORCE BUT NOT IN SHOOTINGS: “’It is the most surprising result of my career,’ said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California.”
So he began his study expecting a predetermined result? As Steve Hayward writes at Power Line, in a post that explores relations between the police and the public they serve in “Chicago, San Francisco, and Other Progressive Utopias,” “I love it when Harvard professors are ‘surprised.’ Happens a lot.”
THIS IS WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO GO AFTER THE LEFT — IT’S THE ONLY WAY THEY EVER APPRECIATE THE CONSTITUTION: Liberal AGs Invoke States’ Rights in Climate Change Feud With Congress.
The Tenth Amendment states’ rights movement is typically associated with tea party activists.
But two blue-state liberal state attorneys general are invoking the U.S. Constitution’s limits on federal powers in a showdown with a GOP-led congressional committee looking into their climate change investigations.
A coalition of law-enforcement officials led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been digging into whether Exxon misled investors and the public by downplaying the impact of global warming.
The inquiries have the drawn the ire of Republican leaders of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee who say Mr. Schneiderman is mounting a campaign of intimidation in coordination with environmental groups and trial lawyers.
Mr. Schneiderman’s office and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, another charter member of the so-called “Green 20″ coalition, have until Wednesday to deliver to the committee a sweeping array of internal documents related to their climate change probes.
Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) last week threatened to subpoena the attorneys general for the records unless they met his deadline.
Just remember, the 10th Amendment doesn’t trump state actors’ liability for conspiracy to deprive people of their First Amendment rights.
THE ’68ERS RUIN EVERY INSTITUTION THEY PASS THROUGH: GOP rep: Ginsburg’s Trump attacks ‘inexcusable.’
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg crossed a line attacking Donald Trump.
“It was totally inexcusable and unprofessional for Justice Ginsburg to insult a presidential candidate,” he said Tuesday on the House floor, according to The Washington Examiner. “It hurt the credibility of the Supreme Court and it showed bad judgment.
“It will be difficult for the American people to believe Justice Ginsburg can be impartial in any rulings that involve political issues,” added Smith, who has endorsed Trump. “[It will] only contribute to the public’s feeling that justice system may be rigged.”
Ginsburg on Monday escalated her recent criticism of Trump, calling him “a faker” who must release his tax returns.
“How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?” she asked that night. “The press seems to be very gentle with him on that. He really has an ego.”
“I think he has gotten so much free publicity,” Ginsburg added of the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. “At first I thought it was funny. To think that there’s a possibility that he could be president.”
Ginsburg said last Friday “everything is up for grabs” if Trump can make Supreme Court appointments.
Actually, Ruth, you’re making me feel better about that. After all, what’s he going to do, stack the court with ideologues who have no sense of judicial propriety?
COPS WALK OFF WNBA GAME OVER BLACK LIVES MATTER JERSEYS: “A police union official says four off-duty Minneapolis officers working a WNBA game walked off the job at the city’s Target Center arena Saturday after Minnesota Lynx players wore pregame warm-up jerseys supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.”
But if the police are really as evil and dangerous as BLM and its supporters imagine (which presumably includes Lynx management, who didn’t stop its players from politicizing the game), isn’t it really for the best that the police left the arena to let the public and the players fend for themselves?
SENATE REPORT: STATE DEPARTMENT FUNDED EFFORT TO OVERTHROW NETANYAHU.
As Jennifer Rubin adds at the Washington Post, “Netanyahu survived the election, of course, and Obama will not face the voters again. Nevertheless, the report won’t help the unprecedentedly antagonistic relationship between the U.S.’s and Israel’s elected leaders. If an Israeli NGO had attempted to do the same in an American election, there would be howls of protest. No matter who the next president is, the U.S.-Israel relationship is likely to improve. Nevertheless, Obama’s successor would do well to apologize to Israel for the current president’s divisiveness.”
WHEN CONTROLLED OPPOSITION ENDS: Generation Broflake: Bernie Bros Freak As Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton.
SOMEWHERE, OUT THERE, IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, WE’LL FIND $200,000 AND A SASQUATCH...MAYBE: A very cold case from 1971, but so intriguing. The FBI has closed the Dan “D.B.” Cooper airplane hijack case. The article says closing the case means the FBI has “redirected resources.” Any chance those resources can find more of Hillary’s national security damaging emails?
NOT OVER YET: Still a few hours left in Amazon Prime Day, so don’t miss all the special Prime Day deals! And if you’re not a Prime member, you can start a 30-day Free Trial and still access all the deals.
PRESIDENT DRONEKILLER Q. PENANDPHONE WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: NYT laments: Conservatives own the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’
POOR SALESMANSHIP: Refugee Activists Worry Anti-Rape Laws Will Hurt Muslim Migrants. “This is the left. Remember that. They pretend to be feminists, but they put Muslim rapists over female victims.”
THE BABY BUST: Definitely worth the read.
Key paragraph:
A scarcity of people, or at least the end to a constantly increasing surplus of laboring bodies, in short, has an enormous influence on politics, economics, and ecology. Demographers have been observing falling fertility rates around the world for many decades.4 Our ideas about geo-politics, social relations, economics, and ecology, meanwhile, have scarcely evolved at all.
Yes, old news but often unacknowledged news. The article includes new data gathered in India:
As in most states throughout southern India, the fertility rate in the state has fallen to 1.8, and for many years has been well below the rate at which new births can replace those who naturally pass away.2 Population is getting smaller, influencing wages, farming practices, and habitat. Zero population growth has arrived in southern India: a Baby Bust.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Bourbon Review Magazine names best 80 bourbon bars in America.
My personal favorite is the one in my living room.