WAIT, I THOUGHT OBAMACARE WAS GOING TO FIX ALL THIS: Maternal Mortality Rate in U.S. Rises, Defying Global Trend, Study Finds. “The United States has become an outlier among rich nations in maternal deaths, according to data released Wednesday by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research group funded by the Gates Foundation and based at the University of Washington. There were 28 maternal deaths — defined as deaths due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth — per 100,000 births in the United States in 2013, up from 23 in 2005, the institute found. The rate in 2013, the most recent year for which the institute had detailed data for the United States, was more than triple Canada’s.”

ARE THEY TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING? Cast of Old TV Show About a President Hiding a Debilitating Disease to Stump for Hillary in Ohio.

QUESTION ASKED: Can the Bat Man of Mexico also be Tequila’s Super Hero?

Bats have long been among the world’s most despised animals, due largely to myth and Hollywood’s fascination with vampire bats. But Rodrigo Medellín is trying to lead a the perceptual transformation of the bat, from blood-sucking demon to unsung nature hero, and hopes a bat-friendly tequila will provide a major public relations boost.

Aside from consuming loads of crop-destroying insects, bats are plant pollinators, and Medellín’s prized lesser long-nosed bat pollinates the cactuslike blue agave plant, the single plant species from which Mexican tequila is produced.

Habitat destruction has been especially harmful to the lesser long-nosed bat, first listed as a threatened species in Mexico in 1994. By 2008 it was well on its way to recovery, thanks largely to Medellín, a tireless advocate who’s been dubbed the “Bat Man of Mexico” for his work with bats.

Clearly this man deserves a Nobel or an Oscar or whatever we can give him.

THIS BODES POORLY: Italy’s Fertility Day Falls Flat Amid Claims of Sexism, Racism.

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THE ROTTEN IMMUNITY DEALS BEHIND THE FBI’S ROTTEN INVESTIGATION: Here we go again. FBI Director Comey’s recommendation not to prosecute Hillary stank when he made it and the stench just gets worse. Don’t let FBI Director Comey put a criminal in the White House.

NOBODY CARES: The Crisis Of America’s Nonworking Men.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): COPS: Cheerleading Coach Romped Naked With Teen, Offered Exotic Oral Sex. “Investigators began looking into Duncan’s extracurricular activities after the mother of the unidentified 14-year-old teen contacted Tishomingo police. . . . The pair, separated in age by 34 years, used Snapchat to communicate — laboring under the apparent belief that their messages would eternally disappear into the Internet ether forever.”

NOTHING GOOD: Roger Simon: What Happens When You Can’t Trust the FBI and the Department of Justice? “Besides being totalitarian in essence, the obfuscatory policies of Lynch and Comey have made certain that Hillary Clinton, should she win the presidency, will never have anything close to the consent of the governed. She will never be reliably cleared and an extremely high percentage of the public will never believe her — and will be correct in doing so.”

REBOOT: ABC Developing Female-Centric ‘Magnum P.I.’ Sequel Series.

My wife insists that the original Magnum starring Tom Selleck was plenty female-centric.

FIRE’S ROBERT SHIBLEY writes on my situation.

Related: John Stuart Mill and me.

TEST DRIVING THE 2016 Porsche 911R.

REPORT: TED CRUZ TO SUPPORT TRUMP, POTENTIALLY AS SOON AS TODAY.

I’m sure the two will consummate their newfound friendship over the finest bottle of Trump wine.

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AND FOUR OTHER CLINTON AIDES, TOO: FBI Gave Clinton Aide/Lawyer Cheryl Mills Immunity Deal in Clinton Email Probe.

“The FBI was handing out immunity agreements like candy.”

Heads should roll, starting with Comey’s.

SO TECHNICAL DATA AREN’T FREE SPEECH? 3D-Printed Gun Files Aren’t Free Speech, Court Rules.

The State Department was the federal agency that acted in this case, and not the more obvious Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), because by the nature of the internet, the 3D-printed gun files can cross international borders. The State Department seized on this fact to say that transferring technical data like this counted as an export.

Shortly afterwards, Defense Distributed took down the files and then reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to see if they could help with this as a free speech fight.

Last December, the EFF filed a brief in support of Defense Distributed, arguing that the State Department’s enforcement of arms regulations this broadly was in fact a threat to free speech.

So is hosting files for printing a gun protected under the 1st Amendment? Not if there’s national security at stake, ruled the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. . . .

As Ars Technica notes, the opinion of the dissenting judge finds instead a complete lack of concern for free speech from the State Department, is using such a broad interpretation of the law to stop the sharing of these specific files online.

This isn’t a good decade for free speech.

FASTER, PLEASE: World Leaders Agree at U.N. on Steps to Curb Rising Drug Resistance. “Infectious disease doctors have long warned that overuse of antibiotics in people and in animals puts human health at risk by reducing the power of the drugs, some of modern medicine’s most prized jewels. The problem is global, because the bugs are mobile. Overuse in pig production in China, for example, has spawned superbugs that have surfaced in the United States and Europe. The numbers are sobering. Jim O’Neil, chairman of the British review on antimicrobial resistance, estimates that 700,000 people a year die from drug-resistant infections. In the United States, about two million people fall ill from drug-resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die from those infections.”

GO ON WITH YOUR BAD SELF: Obama’s debate advice to Clinton: ‘Be yourself’

Yes, please do.

SO I’M NOW READING Kurt Schlichter’s People’s Republic, and it’s really quite good. I’m about halfway through and it’s a page-turner. To be honest, I expected the ideas to be good but the execution to be so-so, since it’s a first novel, but it’s very well-done.