THE EMPRESS HAS NO CLOTHES: Congressional crybully alert — Democrat lawmaker flips out on professor who says transgenders should not be indulged:

When the professor quipped: “Does that mean you think I am a Russian princess?”  [Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA] could only respond “I have no idea.”

Read the whole thing. Of course Lofgren knows the answer to San Diego law school professor Gail Heriot’s deliberately absurdist query, but it’s one that she dare not express under her ideology’s Stalinist culture of fear, lest she commit doubleplus ungood gender thoughtcrime.

SCOTT RASMUSSEN: Supreme Court Concern is Just Tip of the Iceberg for Conservatives.

The biggest impact any president can have on the nation is the ability to shape the Supreme Court. Conservative voters are especially concerned about this because they believe the Court has become too liberal in recent years. With the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, conservative concerns about the Court have reached panic levels. Given the age of current Justices, the next president could shape the Court for a generation.

The importance of this issue was highlighted by Donald Trump releasing names of his potential nominees. It was a good strategic move giving conservatives a reason to unify behind his campaign. For most potential Republican voters, Trump’s choices were far preferable to those Hillary Clinton would nominate.

But, the issue of Supreme Court nominations is just the tip of the iceberg. When you look beneath the surface, conservatives face a far greater challenge with courts and the legal system.

Research by Northwestern University Law Professor James Lindgren shows that the legal system feeding cases to the Supreme Court over-represents Democrats and under-represents Christians. While 41% of the working population are Democrats, 61% of lawyers claim that affiliation. At the same time, 68% of lawyers are Christians compared to 78% of working Americans. That’s a bit problematic, but not overwhelming.

When you go a little deeper and look at who’s teaching the next generation of lawyers, the differences become truly astounding. Nationally, there are a few more Democratic voters than Republicans and Independents, but the overall numbers are fairly even. However, among law school faculty, 82% are Democrats, 11% Republican, and 6% Independent. Fewer than half are Christian.

If we want our legal system to look like America, the nation’s law schools are not even close.

Fix law schools’ diversity problem, NOW!

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Wells Fargo launches 3% down payment mortgage.

Yeah — this will end well. Thanks Bill and Hillary!

PRESIDENT OBAMA GIVES ONE OF THE MOST REPULSIVE SPEECHES IN AMERICAN HISTORY IN HIROSHIMA, Ben Shapiro writes:

Obama noted that war is not unique in human history; he even went full moral relativist with regard to World War II itself: “the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.”

This is disgusting. If you can’t spot the bad guys and the good guys in World War II, of all conflicts, you’re on the side of a valueless nihilism that allows the possibility of future world wars – after all, you can’t take a strong stand against evil if it doesn’t exist. Japan was wrong. America was right. Germany was wrong. America was right. End of story.

Related: “Following Obama’s Hiroshima speech, Adam Baldwin presents a frightening ‘what if’ scenario,” asking, “Imagine Obama as CiC during WWII.”

Considering that Obama allowed his chief speechwriter to work the Chamberlain-eque phrase “peace in our time” into his second inaugural address, it’s easy, albeit terrifying to imagine what World War II would have been like with Obama as America’s president. But if you’d like a refresher course, just read Robert Harris’s brilliant what-if novel, Fatherland. But even there, reality has outpaced fiction – Harris posited an alternate reality where President Joseph P. Kennedy is negotiating détente in the mid-1960s with an evil socialist empire. I doubt even the most brilliant of novelists would have written about an America actively giving nuclear technology to one – or at a minimum, as Jed Babbin wrote in 2013, paraphrasing Obama’s worldview, “If Iran likes its path to the bomb, it can keep following its path to the bomb.”

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

DEBRA SAUNDERS:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi rails against the GOP “culture of corruption.”

And in the most boneheaded political move of 2006, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., just handed her extra rope.

This has been a sorry year for congressional ethics. Cunningham pleaded guilty. Under indictment and with news reports linking him to Abramoff, Rep. Tom DeLay has announced his resignation. When he pleaded guilty, Abramoff implicated Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. Last month, Alan Mollohan, D-W.V., stepped down from the House ethics committee after The Wall Street Journal reported that he was under investigation for directing federal spending to nonprofits with which he has financial ties. So when the FBI raided the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., Hastert should have kept his head down and, for a change, let Pelosi do the squirming.

Instead, Hastert and Pelosi issued a joint statement demanding that the federal government return “the papers it unconstitutionally seized.” Bush responded by sealing the seized records for 45 days.

Be it noted that the FBI had a subpoena and the House raid followed a search of Jefferson’s home last August that netted $90,000 stashed in Jefferson’s freezer — money that allegedly came from a $100,000 bribe captured on videotape. The feds had tried to get Jefferson to honor the subpoena for months — but to no avail.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., told The Washington Times, “Make no mistake, the American people will come to one conclusion — that congressional leaders are trying to protect their own from valid investigation.” That’s certainly how I see it.

Me too.

SUSPECT MAKES TERRORIST GROUP CLAIMS DURING ASSAULT ON ARLINGTON POLICE: KTVT, the Dallas CBS affiliate’s Website, at least works the T-word into its headline, but you have to read down to the ninth paragraph to discover the buried lede:

Agents with the FBI were contacted because police say during the arrest [Wahib] Sadek claimed to be affiliated with the ISIS terrorist group.  Federal officials are looking into those claims, but say at this point they have not been validated.

Flashback: “Garland, Texas, shooting suspect linked himself to ISIS in tweets,” CNN reported last year in the terrorist attack on Pam Geller’s Draw Mohamed event.

STARTING SUMMER READING WITH A SALE: Start of Summer Indie Author Sale. Azounding is a new group promo effort. All Authors Human Wave. 99.9 percent of us well to the right of Lenin.  You might want to bookmark and check now and then for free stuff and cheap stuff and nifty stuff. We are not the left.  We build.

THE JOKES DO WRITE THEMSELVES.  I’M JUST TRYING TO STOP THEM: 10-Foot-Long Snake Slithers Up Man’s Toilet and Latches Onto His Penis — for Half an Hour.

WILL NO ONE THINK OF BERNIE? Quark Stars Might be the Densest Bodies in the Universe.

WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN WHO NEED TO GROW UP? Cause and Effect Milo / DePaul Edition.

OH, THAT DEATH OF THE ADULT: ‘Frozen’s’ Elsa Doesn’t Need a Girlfriend—She Needs PC Adults to Let It Go.

IMAGINING THEY’RE GREAT BECAUSE THEY CAN STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS AND P*SS DOWN: He Was Expendable. California refuses to honor John Wayne, but the state lavishes tributes on liberal-friendly figures guilty of similar (or worse) sins.

WITH US FROM THE BEGINNING: The Jews of the American Revolution.

A PAN EUROPEAN ARMY: I pity the translators! MPs warn voters being ‘conned’ as Brussels keeps plans for EU army secret until after referendum.  As for the secret army, this is my shocked face.  Un-elected bureaucrats who regulate the curvature of bananas trying to seize more power?  No!!!!  Who would have thought it.

AND NOT IN A FUN WAY: Or in a fun way, but not that fun way. The man who seducedthe 7th Fleet. Crony capitalism and big government are natural bed mates.  REMEMBER that.

A NATION THAT TREATS ITS VETERANS THIS WAY HAS SERIOUS TROUBLE: ‘Catastrophic Failure’: Over 100 Vets Unable To Get Surgery At Long Island VA After Rust Particles Spewed From Operating Room Vents.

ENDORSED: Why ‘Crooked Hillary’ is likely to stick.

I saw CNN tonight, where Wolf Blitzer was forced to read Trump’s statement that he would debate the Democratic nominee, who would probably be “Crooked Hillary.”

ROD DREHER: Re-Tribalizing America. “Donald Trump and Milo Yiannopoulos are provocateurs, no question. But they are proving something important about the militant left: that it is often racist against whites, and has no intention of allowing any opinions other than its own to be voiced in the public square. And whether in the streets or in a university lecture hall, it will use violence to impose its will. . . . Trump is a vulgar, crass, alpha-male brute. But he doesn’t care what SJWs and liberals say about him. He fights, and sometimes fights as dirty as they do. That’s not nothing. White liberal middle-class society and many bourgeois conservatives have demonized within themselves, collectively and individually, the instinct that would have given them the strength to fight civilization’s enemies on the Left and on the Right.”

Punch back twice as hard, as another provocateur once said.

ANALYSIS: TRUE: The betrayal of our boys: They’re falling behind girls in almost every way. And, says SARAH VINE, the feminisation of society, especially our schools, is to blame.

REST IN PEACE: British WWII submarine with 71 bodies inside found off Sardinian coast.

WELL, UNIVERSITIES HAVE BEEN VIOLATING PROMISES TO PEOPLE WHO DONATE MONEY FOR YEARS, SO. . . Bodies Given to N.Y.U. Ended Up in Mass Graves, Despite Donors’ Wishes.

AT AMAZON, deals galore in Training & Fitness.

And shop the Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals. When bad things happen, it’s good to have food.

Plus, Generators and Portable Power for Storm Season. Or if a generator isn’t practical, consider an inverter.

And with all the Zika news, I’m guessing that the mosquito control stuff will be a big item this year.

COOL: SpaceX successfully lands Falcon rocket booster.

THIS WAS A MISTAKE; IT WOULD HAVE MADE FOR GREAT CAMPAIGN VIDEO: Trump Backs Out of ‘Easy Payday’ Bernie Debate.

Not to mention, a great practice bout for October’s debates with Hillary.

On the other hand, perhaps The Donald doesn’t wish roughing up a potential veep…

Update: Dan Riehl tweets an interesting take: “think chess not checkers. It’s a thing of beauty, he’s now saying he won’t debate Bernie but he sure elevated him.” It should certainly put a little wind in Bernie’s sails for the last phase of the far left’s internecine version of 2008’s “Operation Chaos.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: CSULA Staff call Ben Shapiro a “neo-Nazi,” Conspire to Block Conservative Speakers (Video).

Neo-Nazi? You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.

Though given the state of the 21st century academia, it would be fun to ask the modern campus crybully Jonah Goldberg’s response when smeared with the N-word: “Aside from the murder and genocide, what exactly don’t you like about National Socialism?” As Jonah has written, “I’ve never met a real social-welfare state leftist who could answer [that] question without having to think real hard.”