DAVID FRENCH IS A GOOD MAN, BUT IT WAS STUPID TO PUT HIM IN THIS POSITION: Inside the #NeverTrump Candidacy that Almost Was. The idea that a guy with no name recognition was going to take enough votes to matter was silly.

A MODEST PROPOSAL BY JAMES LILEKS: Time for Federal Licensing of Journalists.

My God — if that idea catches fire, politicians will be keeping reporters in designated roped-off areas like they were cattle and arresting videomakers as a dodge for their own malfeasance. Where will it end?

(In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss James’ proposal with him person, he’ll be at Bullets & Bourbon in Texas this December. I’m not sure if Texas is ready for Lileks, but we’ll find out soon enough…)

THEN: JFK PROPOSES THAT AMERICA LAND A MAN ON THE MOON WITHIN A DECADE. Now? State Dept. Says It Would Need 75 Years to Release Clinton Emails.

Oliver Stone, call your office!

I’M GLAD THAT PEOPLE ARE STANDING UP AND RESISTING DONALD TRUMP’S COARSENING OF THE CULTURE: Dem to Trump: ‘Take your border wall and shove it up your ass.’

VIRTUE SIGNALING: BuzzFeed cancels $1.3 million ad buy by RNC because Trump is “hazardous to our health.” “If BuzzFeed has the right to refuse business because a potential customer supports a policy that offends their conscience, why don’t Christian bakers who are being asked to cater a gay wedding have the same right?”

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR HOW WE GRAFT TOGETHER: Bloated, Broke, and Bullied — Mired in debt and strong-armed by its unions, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey  lavishes outlandish pay and benefits on its workforce.

JOHN MCGINNIS: Hillary Clinton is a Greater Threat to Constitutional Jurisprudence than Trump.

Ilya Somin has disagreed with me that Trump is likely to be better for constitutional jurisprudence than Clinton. But his arguments rely on the implausible premise that Trump is likely to change the jurisprudential commitments of the Republican party. Even more importantly, he does not address the elephant in the room: Clinton’s appointments would likely return us to a Court unconstrained by our fundamental law.

Ilya is right that if Trump could change the Republican’s basic philosophy of judges from originalism to something else, that would itself impose long-term harm to nation. But Trump’s election is unlikely to have this effect. Trump is not coming into power with a parliamentary majority and or even at the head of a well entrenched ideological movement. The way to think of Trump is that has rented the party for his own ambitions and that he will be forming a coalition with orthodox Republicans who will make up the vast majority of Republicans in the legislature. He is thus going to have to deal with the Republicans who have an independent power base and who hope to be there long after he leaves. That not only includes legislators but the Republican establishment. And as in coalitions generally, he will focus on the issues most important to him where there is least resistance from his partners.

Of course, that does not mean Trump would be without power. On issues where Republicans are divided or where there is substantial populist sentiment on his side, he may transform the party toward his policies, many of which are indeed very bad. Free trade is a paradigm example. But appointments to the Supreme Court are the opposite kind of issue. Republicans are pretty united, and it is an issue dominated by elites. Are members of Federalist Society—the single most important conservative elite in this respect—going to change their views of what makes a good judge because Trump becomes President? That elite was even able to squash an appointment of Harriet Miers that George W. Bush wanted to make. Trump recognizes this point and that is the reason that he has embraced Republican orthodoxy on judicial appointments by putting out a list of sound judges he would consider appointing.

And that orthodoxy does not embrace an extreme deference that would countenance such acts as discrimination against Muslim citizens. It is true that that justices appointed might be more deferential than Ilya would like and less likely to interpret the Constitution as abstractly. But there is a range of views already on this subject among originalists, as my own work on deference and abstraction shows.

Ilya also slights the disaster of Clinton presidency to the Supreme Court and the rule of law. She surely will have two appointments—to Scalia’s seat and to Ginsburg’s. And a third with some substantial probability- Kennedy’s. Even in the first case a strong progressive majority would emerge with the four youngest judges likely all progressives and in the latter case a progressive majority would last for decades.

If the Presidency and the Supreme Court were less powerful, the stakes in elections would be much lower.

THERANOS NEWS: How To Lose $4.5 Billion Overnight.

Plus, some good observations on housing:

There’s a lesson here for normal people. The one highly illiquid asset that many middle-class people pour a huge percent of their wealth into is their house. Houses are time-consuming and expensive to sell, and if you borrow against your house you’ll have to pay interest on the loan. So houses are illiquid. This implies that many middle-class homeowners are very under-diversified because they have so much of their personal wealth tied up in residential real estate.

In other words, your house is a little bit like Elizabeth Holmes’ stock in her own company. On paper it might be worth a lot, and much of that does reflect real value. But if your local housing market crashes, your net worth is in big trouble. I think more people should consider that before making the decision to buy instead of rent.

True. Though at least you can keep living in a house, regardless of its value. Unless, that is, you have to move for some reason.

CHRIS MOONEY, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Left Is Just as Guilty of Anti-Science as Right.

GOOGLE’S GOTTA GOOGLE: Google Neglects to Recognize D-Day on Homepage.

Not even the 80X80 or so pixel flag they grudgingly fly on Memorial Day after years of being shamed by conservatives.

SO WITH THE CALIFORNIA PRIMARY TOMORROW, THE AP SUDDENLY DECIDES TO CALL THE RACE FOR HILLARY? If I were a Bernie supporter, this would really piss me off, and with good reason. If I were a Bernie supporter in California, I’d make damn sure to vote tomorrow. . . .

FASTER, PLEASE: Plan to Turn Asteroids Into Spaceships Could Spur Off-Earth Mining.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Powerful nanoengine built from coated nanoparticles.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: For True Equality, Ban The Box: The College Box. “College is sold as a source of social mobility because getting an education improves your chance of getting a job. But there’s another way of looking at things: College isn’t so much a source of mobility as the lack of college is a barrier to moving up, a barrier that disproportionately affects the poor. . . . So if you want equality, the best thing to do is to ban employers from asking students where they went to school and, perhaps, even if they went to college at all.”

SO THEY’RE GOING TO DO WHAT THEY DO TO EVERY REPUBLICAN NOMINEE THEN? WaPo Columnist: Let’s Gang Up On Trump! “We always knew that this is how liberals think, but it is unusual to see one of them put it in writing.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Cancer cell therapies could be approved next year: Juno, Kite Pharma.

A new wave of experimental cancer drugs that directly recruit the immune system’s powerful T cells could begin reaching patients next year, according to companies presenting new data at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

In interviews with Reuters, Kite Pharma Inc and Juno Therapeutics Inc both said they could receive initial regulatory approvals next year for a type of immunotherapy treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies.

CAR-T therapies involve a complicated process of extracting immune system T cells from an individual patient, altering their DNA to sharpen their ability to spot and kill cancer cells, and infusing them back into the same patient.

The technique is being tested against a range of different cancer types, but first in blood cancers. Kite aims to file this year for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of its therapy, KTE-C19, for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), according to Chief Medical Officer David Chang.

Like I said, faster, please.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Texas on record-setting pace for inappropriate teacher-student relationships. “The issue in Texas shot back into the national spotlight after it was revealed last week that former Houston-area teacher Alexandria Vera, 24, had been impregnated by a then-13-year-old former student. . . . According to the probable cause document, she aborted the pregnancy after a child welfare investigator questioned her in February about the relationship, which she denied at the time.”

Related: Why Are So Many Female Teachers Sleeping With Students?

AS PREDICTED, THE RULES WILL PUNISH THOSE WHO ARE HURTING WHILE DOING LITTLE TO LIMIT ACTUAL ABUSE: New Opioid Limits Challenge the Most Pain-Prone.

If you’ve come to rely on opioids for chronic pain, as a growing proportion of older adults has, you may have noticed that the drugs are becoming more difficult to get.

Something had to be done, surely: More than 165,000 people died from overdoses from 1999 to 2014.

But recent restrictions on access to these painkillers are likely to disproportionately affect the elderly — despite the fact that abuse and misuse of these painkillers have historically been lower among older patients than younger ones.

Older patients are simply more apt to have chronic pain. Some of their doctors are going to get an earful when they suggest different medications or nonpharmacological alternatives, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in new opioid guidelines in March. . . .

For patients who want to get or refill prescriptions, “you have to jump through more hoops,” Dr. McPherson said. At clinics and hospitals, at pharmacies, “everyone’s level of suspicion is higher.”

Along with the C.D.C. guidelines, which urge more careful monitoring, doctors face a wave of state laws restricting access. The Drug Enforcement Administration also reclassified certain opioid formulations in 2014, making them less readily available.

This represents a major swing of the medical pendulum. For years, doctors were warned against paying insufficient attention to pain.

Medicine by fad. This will work out well.

FLASHBACK: IRS Employees Erased 422 Backup Tapes Containing 24,000 of Lois Lerner’s Emails. Government as criminal conspiracy.

FLASHBACK: Prof. Bainbridge: Donald Trump is the beta test of a cure for The Revolt of the Elites.

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Plus, deals on Musical Instruments & Accessories.

AIRBRUSHING THE ‘80s OUT OF HISTORY:

Shot: Nearly Forgotten: Reagan’s Second Great Speech on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day.

Chaser: NBC Hails Muhammad Ali’s Left-Wing Activism, Skips Reagan Endorsement.

Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past, to coin a doubleplus good slogan.

BEER, IS THERE ANYWHERE IT CAN’T BE BREWED? Classic Sodastream gadget can now instantly turn water into beer.

FORBIDDEN PANTSUIT: Steve Green on the Monsters from Hillary’s Id!