FAKE ETHICS: Why Gorsuch’s speech to a private group at the Trump Hotel does not raise serious ethical issues.

As Peter Morgan and I noted some time ago, most “ethics” charges are made by people for less-than-ethical reasons.

IF YOU HAVEN’T STARTED WEIGHT TRAINING, YOU MAY BE AFRAID TO. DON’T BE. THE FIRST YEAR IS GLORIOUS! Mark Rippetoe: Who Wants To Be A Novice? You Do! “It’s not bad to be a novice. I wish like hell I were a novice again, knowing what I know now. Your novice months, done correctly, will show you the fastest gains in size and strength you’ll ever make in the weight room, quite literally faster than advanced guys using steroids.”

JIM TREACHER: There Goes Charlie Hebdo, Practicing Free Speech Again.

“I’M YOUR HUCKLEBERRY:” Fired Google Engineer James Damore Hires Harmeet Dhillon As Lawyer. “The engineer who was fired by Google after he criticized the company’s diversity policies for ignoring differences between the sexes has hired civil rights lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who was widely reported months ago to be a contender for a top job in the U.S. Justice Department. . . . Her firm is also seeking other potential plaintiffs who feel they’ve been discriminated against at Google based on their political views or their opinions about the company’s hiring practices.”

DRUGS, BODYBUILDING, AND ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER:

Drug testing was and is scrupulously avoided by the IFBB. It is the freakish physiques that fill the auditoriums to overflow capacity, not cleanliness. There was a short time when the IFBB became righteous and actually instituted drug testing. This lasted for a year. This was back in the 1980s and when the physiques deflated almost as fast as the box office receipts, quietly, and without any fanfare, drug testing was dropped. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been particularly hypocritical on the issue: as the Governor he was the chief law enforcement officer of the State of California, yet the contest with his name on it awards its highest honors to the most drugged men on the face of the planet. The female bodybuilders look like cyborgs and it is obvious that all Arnold competitors were, are, and forever shall be gassed to their blood-shot eyeballs.

Ouch. But I resent the “cyborg” line. I’m married to a cyborg and she looks nothing like that.

Related: The Death of Female Bodybuilding and the Rise of “Man Face.”

GOOD THING SHE NEVER GOT THAT 3AM PHONE CALL, I GUESS: “So Hillary admits that she couldn’t think of what to do under pressure. She needs a pause button. Is that like a reset button? There’s no such thing.”

You know, sometimes a president only has four minutes.

S.E. CUPP: AFTER ESPN’S ROBERT LEE MOMENT AND OTHER INSANITY, IT’S CLEAR: TRUMP HAS WON THE MONUMENT DEBATE. “The decision to remove an Asian-American announcer named Robert Lee from calling University of Virginia’s home opener — ‘simply because of the coincidence of his name,’ as ESPN inexplicably admits — unsurprisingly lit up the Internet with outrage, jokes and memes. It also rendered inarguably true the assertion made by President Trump himself as well as many others that this debate will descend quickly and embarrassingly down a slippery slope. I’d argue the pre-emptive removal of an Asian-American sportscaster, who had nothing to do with the Civil War or slavery, from a college football game simply because his name sounds similar doesn’t represent a gradual slope, but a 1000-foot cliff.”

Political correctness is infantilizing.

SCOTT ADAMS: The Magical Thinking Opposition. “My hypothesis is that the political side that is out of power is the one that hallucinates the most – and needs to – in order to keep their worldview intact.”

This reminds me of Jane’s Law: “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.” Truer today than it was in 2004. But when Dems are hallucinating, their craziness is amplified by the media.

MAKE HATS GREAT AGAIN: Here’s What Happened When I Decided to Wear my MAGA Hat in Public.

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT — WHETHER IT’S AL-QAEDA OR ANTIFA, AT REUTERS, ONE MAN’S TERRORIST IS STILL ANOTHER MAN’S FREEDOM FIGHTER: Reuters tweets, then later deletes, “Pro-Trump supporters face off with peace activists during protests outside a Trump rally in Phoenix,” to describe rock-throwing Antifa activists.

Stephen Jukes could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE: Bang-up day for Reuters’ social media team, who are also unsure if ESPN’s Robert Lee is the Confederate general’s doppelgänger or his namesake.

HMM: Two October surprises could boost oil prices above $50.

The first potential shock Croft and her team at RBC are monitoring is a debt default by Venezuelan oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Oil production from the state-owned PDVSA has steadily slipped as the country grapples with a financial crisis after the collapse in crude prices in 2014 and years of economic mismanagement.

“They have $3.5 billion in national oil company debt coming due in October-November. If they default, that could be significant for Venezuela’s production outlook,” Croft told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday.

Lower crude production from Venezuela would tend to support the oil market, which has been oversupplied for years.

The second surprise would come if the United States abandons an international deal that lifted sanctions on Iran. President Donald Trump could refuse to certify that Iran is complying with an accord that puts limits on its nuclear program. That could lead to the renewal of sanctions, which could impact Iran’s oil production.

A spike would provide relief to American frackers, who have trouble turning a profit at today’s prices. And taking Iran or Venezuelan oil off the market would give American frackers more opportunity to take market share.

Both of which would tend to drive prices back down.

DON’T ASK ME WHY: Billy Joel dons Jewish star against Neo-Nazis.

JIM GERAGHTY: Parasitic Progressivism at ESPN, Marvel, and the University of Missouri.

Notice that the progressive-minded revolutionaries in these three cases did not seek to found their own university in Missouri, their own cable sports network, or their own line of comic books. That would require a great deal of patience and effort and risk of failure. They moved into preexisting, relatively apolitical institutions and steered the ship in a new direction, aligned with their political and social goals.

And then they hit the rocks.

EVERGREEN:

LUCKY KIDS: This Generation Doesn’t Remember a Bad Corvette.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals in Arts Crafts and Sewing.

Plus, save in Herbs Spices and Seasonings.

DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s Time for Some Conventional Political Finesse.

I THINK THEY’VE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD WITH THAT ONE: 47% say media blocking Trump’s agenda, helped Obama.

The public appears to agree with President Trump that the media is out to get him and stop his agenda.

A new Rasmussen Reports survey on the day Trump was railing against the media found that 47 percent believe the media is blocking his administration from scoring successes.

The public appears to agree with President Trump that the media is out to get him and stop his agenda.

A new Rasmussen Reports survey on the day Trump was railing against the media found that 47 percent believe the media is blocking his administration from scoring successes.

More and more people are realizing that if you think of the press as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, it explains nearly everything.

FALLOUT FROM A PREVIOUS WAVE OF MASS HYSTERIA: Dan and Fran Keller compensated $3.6M for time served.

The couple was accused of satanic and ritual abuse of children in their care in the early 90s. A jury found them guilty and sentenced them to 48 years in prison. In 2013, a court ruled they didn’t get a fair trial and released them.

In June of this year, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore formally dismissed the cases against them. According to the motion to dismiss, there is “no credible evidence” that the Kellers, now 75 and 67 respectively, committed the crimes they were accused of, including sexually abusing the children at their day care in 1991.

Honestly, that doesn’t seem like enough. But remember: These waves of hysteria crest and fall, but the damage they do to people’s lives lives on.

CHINA’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION, OF COURSE, WAS FOMENTED FROM THE TOP OF THE PARTY: How American Anarchy Parallels China’s Cultural Revolution.

THE PLAME GAME: Ex-CIA Officer Trying to Buy Enough of Twitter to Ban Trump.

Kal Penn tried to get the president banned from Twitter by invoking the social network’s Terms of Service. Valerie Plame Wilson is going a step further. The former CIA officer has launched an effort to raise enough money to buy a controlling stake in the company and then shut down President Trump’s account, reports USA Today, which notes Twitter is currently worth just shy of $12 billion. The GoFundMe page has a long way to go on its $1 billion goal, a lofty amount that Wilson describes as “a small price to pay to take away Trump’s most powerful megaphone and prevent a horrific nuclear war.”

That seems sane.

TECHNOLOGY YOU CAN’T TRUST, RUN BY PEOPLE YOU CAN’T TRUST: Spyware backdoor prompts Google to pull 500 apps with >100m downloads. “The apps contained a software development kit called Igexin, which makes it easier for apps to connect to ad networks and deliver ads that are targeted to the specific interests of end users. Once an app using a malicious version of Igexin was installed on a phone, the developer kit could update the app to include spyware at any time, with no warning. The most serious spyware installed on phones were packages that stole call histories, including the time a call was made, the number that placed the call, and whether the call went through. Other stolen data included GPS locations, lists of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and lists of installed apps.”

UNEXPECTEDLY? Migrant crisis: Italy lurches to the right as tolerance wears thin.

As cowering locals filmed Catania’s first ever interracial street fighting on their phones, Mr Salice, 54, climbed into his white van and drove it towards the Senegalese, then reversed before careering into a stall, scattering those who had avoided being run over.

His subsequent claim that he was trying to get his van to safety did not convince Tidiane Diamanka, a Senegalese hawker. “He was trying to hit people — this was an act of terrorism,” he said.

The battle on July 19, which police are investigating, was a turning point for Catania. Italian traders in this port of 300,000 people in the shadow of Mount Etna used to help African hawkers to dodge the police. Now, after the arrival of more than 600,000 migrants in Italy in the past four years, locals are increasingly saying basta — enough. And not just in Catania.

The summer has been peppered with reports of violence and hostility to migrants as Italians adjust to the likelihood that many tens of thousands of the newcomers will be staying permanently. The country’s tolerance is waning, its politics being reshaped. The anti-establishment and increasingly migrant-hostile Five Star Movement is well placed to win next year’s parliamentary elections.

Interesting report, and with serious longterm implications for Europe.