WHO KNEW SPEED RACER’S NEMESIS, THE MAMMOTH CAR, WAS A PROTOTYPE FOR 21st CENTURY MASS TRANSIT? Futuristic straddling bus allows cars running underneath.

SCOAMF WATCH: The Secret History — Obama Is a Nincompoop, writes Andrew Klavan.

Analysis: oh so very true. But nincompoops can do plenty of damage as well.

TRUMPING THE WASHINGTON POST: “The daily, relentless attacks on Trump have an interesting effect. Meant to set the agenda and discredit him, the stories make Trump the focus of the campaign. This works on the minds of the punditry in Washington who think income tax returns matter (they don’t; we know he’s rich and doesn’t like to pay taxes). But there is a bigger arc at work here,” Don Surber writes.

Read the whole thing.

WILL 2016 BE THE YEAR THE RUNAWAY TRAIN IS FINALLY STOPPED?”I think it is more important to stop the trends initiated by Obama and the increasingly radical Democrats than to attempt any serious foreign policy initiative,” Michael Kennedy writes at the Chicago Boyz econo-blog. “I have been using the analogy of pulling the cord to stop the train when it is headed for the cliff, even if you don’t know what happens next. I see that Richard Fernandez has now adopted the analogy.“

NOTHING GETS PAST THE GRAY LADY: NY Times: Say, People Are Just Barely Getting By In Obama’s Economy.

Hey, Obama’s operatives with bylines promised America a new FDR in 2008; they just didn’t realize that it was a warning, not a compliment.

Found via Maggie’s Farm. So which candidate does the Times think will be the best successor to The One’s stagnant economic policies?

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Judicial Watch: DHS Quietly Releasing Vanloads of Illegal Aliens Into the United States.

WHY THE CAMPUSES MATTER:

Conservative and center-left criticism of the illiberal mischief of anti-free speech college students is often dismissed as overblown and sensationalized. And surely it sometimes is. But the efforts by left-wing protesters to shut down Donald Trump’s peaceful rally in San Jose show that the beliefs and tactics that were first put into practice on college campuses are not contained there. . . .

Liberal norms are fragile, and once they start to fray anywhere in our society there is a risk that the decay will spread. This is especially true when the institutions under threat are responsible for molding the minds of the next generation of norm-setting elites.

And it’s not just about free speech: As we’ve noted before, some of the authoritarian sex codes first pioneered on campuses a generation ago have suddenly come roaring into the mainstream. If a generation from now we find ourselves living in a world where shouting down speakers is a widely accepted strategy of political engagement, small-l liberals of all political stripes will have wished that they engaged the campus problem earlier and more forcefully.

Take the fight to the enemy. Don’t let campuses be anyone’s political safe space.

TODAY, WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT CHINA? “The truth is that in all the 67-year history of China’s People’s Republic, the Tiananmen uprising of 1989 was, for China’s people, their finest hour,” Claudia Rosett writes on Tiananmen’s 27 anniversary.

Read the whole thing.

ROBERT SPENCER: How Facebook and Twitter Are Treating Death Threats Against Me.

Not very well at all, yet another reminder that this isn’t the 21st century we were promised as kids.

IS THE LEFT CLOSING IN FOR THE KILL ON AMERICA? If that strikes you as an unbalanced question, consider that the guy posing it is Kim Holmes, a former Assistant Secretary of State and a long-time foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation. Holmes new book – The Closing Of The Liberal Mind: How GroupThink and Intolerance Define the Left – lays out all of the disturbing facts.

Holmes sat down with Ginni Thomas of the Daily Caller (yes, and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) to explain why he believes the Left’s various contemporary outrages constitute “a mopping-up operation and they’re going in for the kill.” Rather than merely dismissing this as another despairing old conservative, you would do well to read and hear Holmes make his case.

TRANSPARENCY! Scrubbing Texts Is Nothing New For Obama.

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QUITE SURPRISING TO SEE THE BOSTON GLOBE COVERING THIS IN SUCH A BIG WAY: Criminal Immigrants Reoffend At Higher Rates Than ICE Has Suggested.

Will they cover this next? More than one-third of refugees in Vermont test positive for tuberculosis.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: THE LEFTIST ATTACK ON TRUMP FANS IN SAN JOSE IS ANTI-AMERICAN, AND IT WILL BACKFIRE. To which, Allahpundit adds:

I wonder how many protesters really fear the backfire potential of a Trump victory. If they knew for a fact that beating on Trump fans makes a Republican win in November more likely, would that discourage or encourage them? Trump winning would “heighten the contradictions” between left and right more than Hillary winning would. They’ve spent eight years suppressing the impulse towards “direct action” because mainstream Democrats aren’t going to go along with mass protests on Obama’s watch. With Trump in power the left will be united against a common enemy, and that unity will help to foster greater acceptance of radicalism, however uneasy liberals like Chait might be about tactics. Naturally, that radicalization will encourage people on Trump’s side to radicalize in response and then it’s off we go towards a more European society. That’s another reason why well-meaning people on both sides were so dejected about the riot last night. It’s easy to see where this is going and it’s plain that some on each side want it to go there. What can you say to people like that?

Read the whole thing.

ALBERTO GONZALES: Trump has a right to ask if Judge Gonzalo Curiel is fair.

Certainly, Curiel’s Mexican heritage alone would not be enough to raise a question of bias (for all we know, the judge supports Trump’s pledge to better secure our borders and enforce the rule of law). As someone whose own ancestors came to the United States from Mexico, I know ethnicity alone cannot pose a conflict of interest.

But there may be other factors to consider in determining whether Trump’s concerns about getting an impartial trial are reasonable. Curiel is, reportedly, a member of a group called La Raza Lawyers of San Diego. Trump’s aides, meanwhile, have indicated that they believe Curiel is a member of the National Council of La Raza, a vocal advocacy organization that has vigorously condemned Trump and his views on immigration. The two groups are unaffiliated, and Curiel is not a member of NCLR. But Trump may be concerned that the lawyers’ association or its members represent or support the other advocacy organization. Coupled with that question is the fact that in 2014, when he certified the class-action lawsuit against Trump, Curiel appointed the Robbins Geller law firm to represent plaintiffs. Robbins Geller has paid $675,000 in speaking fees since 2009 to Trump’s likely opponent, Hillary Clinton, and to her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Curiel appointed the firm in the case before Trump entered the presidential race, but again, it might not be unreasonable for a defendant in Trump’s position to wonder who Curiel favors in the presidential election. These circumstances, while not necessarily conclusive, at least raise a legitimate question to be considered. Regardless of the way Trump has gone about raising his concerns over whether he’s getting a fair trial, none of us should dismiss those concerns out of hand without carefully examining how a defendant in his position might perceive them — and we certainly should not dismiss them for partisan political reasons.

Read the whole thing, for a side you’re not hearing much about. At any rate, after Obama’s state-of-the-union assault on the Supreme Court, and the (successful) bullying campaign aimed at John Roberts in the ObamaCare case the idea that Trump’s behavior is anything new is absurd.

And yeah, that’s too bad. But the uproar over Trump’s behavior as compared to Obama’s is precisely why he’s the safe choice for President — he won’t get the pass that Obama has, and that Hillary will.

WHAT EVERY COLLEGE STUDENT needs to know.

ASHE SCHOW: How one mother urged her daughters not to be —’that’ kind of feminist.

When Dawn’s oldest daughter began discussing feminism in the context of her “out of control” friend who blames every problem in her life on sexism, the mother of two daughters started thinking about what values she wanted to instill in her children.

“I have been really paying attention to how young feminists are conducting themselves these days, especially on campus. Both of my girls want to go to college; I’m concerned about the environment,” Dawn told the Washington Examiner on Twitter. “So when my oldest brought it up specifically last week, it got me thinking about specific behaviors and attitudes that I would/would not ideally like them to have going into that situation.”

So Dawn wrote a post for a small blogging website called Far Beyond the Beltway about what kind of feminist she would like her daughters to be. She wanted to make sure her daughters knew and appreciated all the things past feminists have done, like getting women the right to vote and obtain a higher education degree.

But she also knew that what her daughters would face in college was a different kind of feminism — a culture that thrives on self-victimhood and bears an unhealthy persecution complex.

Dawn presented a list of Do’s and Do Nots for being a feminist. The Dos include being “respectful of all people and their own decisions, as long as they earn your respect” and choosing “whatever path will make you happy and is best for you and your family.” She emphasized that whether a woman wants to be a CEO or a stay-at-home mom (or both) is her decision, is valid and important and “available to you because of feminism.”

But she warns against falling into the modern feminist trap. The “Do Not” list includes putting “down people who do not agree with you,” arguing one’s “positions with irrational emotional outbursts and fake victimhood” and expecting “the government to provide for you.”

Good.

JUST THINK OF HER AS A DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE WITH A BYLINE, AND YOU’LL BE SPOT-ON: Katie Couric’s Career of Attacking Gun Rights.

ROLL CALL: Court Rejects N.C. Redistricting Challenge: Ruling leaves in place GOP-drawn districts with primary set for Tuesday.

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH. Flashback: Muhammad Ali Endorsed Reagan — ‘He’s Keeping God In Schools And That’s Enough.’

THE HILL: Sanders, Clinton fight for green vote in tight Calif. race.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are both hoping green voters will put them over the top as they near the end of a tight California primary fight.

Clinton this week locked up two key endorsements — from an environmental group and Gov. Jerry Brown (D) — both thanks to her positions on environmental issues.

Sanders, meanwhile, is taking his environmental message directly to California voters. He’s endorsed local efforts to block new fracking operations, an issue where he argues Clinton is weak, and pushed her on other initiatives dear to greens.

“I urge Secretary Clinton to be bolder,” Sanders said at a climate change press conference on Thursday.

“Of course she recognizes the reality of climate change, but I want her to join me in supporting a tax on carbon. I want her to change her views on the very important issue of fracking.”

Polls show a near dead-heat between Clinton and Sanders in California, the biggest prize on the Democratic primary calendar with 475 delegates up for grabs. It’s a critical state for Sanders’ hope of winning the nomination.

Sanders needs a good result in the state to help make the case to uncommitted superdelegates ahead of the July convention.

It would help.

IT WAS NECESSARY TO ASSAULT THE CROWD IN ORDER TO SAVE IT: San Jose police fretted that protecting Trump supporters would further ‘insight’ the mob.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

ANN ALTHOUSE: Why I didn’t blog Adam Liptak’s “Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say.”

In fact, an obvious riposte popped into my head immediately: All Presidents threaten the rule of law! That’s supposed to cause you to understand the levels of my annoyance at the headline. I don’t like the “could,” since mere possibility is already built into the word “threaten.” Any governmental power can be abused, so there is always a threat. Don’t back off and portray the threat as mere potential. The threat is omnipresent.

Let me just quote James Madison, Federalist 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The other level of annoyance is, as my riposte makes clear, that the headline singles out Donald Trump. What about Barack Obama? What about Hillary Clinton?

Yes, what about them? Well, they’re less constrained than Trump would be by the media and the Deep State.

I NOTICED THAT HE WENT OUT OF HIS WAY TO DING THEM — TOO PATRIOTIC AND AMERICAN, I GUESS. VFW fires back at Obama: Politics not ‘confused.’

Amusingly, I’m working on a law review article on the Constitution and military coups, which happens to contain this passage: “A million people with rifles, unorganized, aren’t an army: That takes discipline, organization, and some degree of direction. Absent some sort of pre-planning (e.g., ‘if the Internet goes down, we all show up at the federal building with guns’) or some sort of organizational framework (if I were a coup plotter, I might worry about the Veterans of Foreign Wars, or other groups collecting together people with military experience), they are not likely to act before a coup is complete.”