MILO YIANNOPOULOS RELEASES A Tape Of George Takei Joking About Child Molestation. That’s different because shut up.

SCOTT JOHNSON: American attitudes to Jews.

It is somehow reported as big news that President Trump denounced anti-Semitism yesterday. Was his attitude seriously in doubt? He is a proud supporter of Israel and vocal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu. His appointed ambassador to the United Nations is Nikki Haley, who is trying to right wrongs against Israel committed by the United Nations and, ahem, the Obama administration. His daughter converted to Judaism. He has Jewish grandchildren. In the Clintonian world of as-if, he may be the first Jewish President. To those who found President Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime indicative of nothing important, I can only put it this way for public consumption: Give me a break.

Incidentally, the Jewish Community Center to which I belong in St. Paul was one of the 11 subjected to bomb threats on Monday. Even if those threats were empty, the vandalism perpetrated at the Jewish cemetery in University City, Missouri is real. And there seems to be something going on at main campus of the University of Minnesota as well.

Obama imports a lot of antisemites. Incidents of antisemitism rise. And it’s Trump’s fault because, well, what isn’t?

BYRON YORK ON THE HARVARD LUNCH CLUB PODCAST: On enforcing immigration laws: “It’s one of those things Trump can do on his own. His radical agenda was to enforce the existing immigration laws; not in a draconian way, but going after people who, in addition to being in the country illegally, have committed or have been accused of committing crimes – and sometimes quite serious ones…It’s something he can do on the basis of his executive authority just as Obama used his executive authority to choose not to enforce those laws.”

PROGRESS: Amazon plans to sell beer and wine at its new high-tech convenience store.

The e-commerce giant confirmed to Recode on Monday that it plans to sell beer and wine from the Seattle store. The confirmation came after I inquired about a flyer I spotted on the store’s window that mentioned its application for a liquor license.

“When we start offering beer and wine, there will be an associate checking identification,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote in an email.

Dubbed Amazon Go, the store concept allows shoppers to grab prepared food and drinks off of shelves and automatically be billed without stopping to pay on the way out. Amazon accomplishes this feat by making shoppers scan an app on the way in, and then uses a mix of sensors, cameras and computer vision to track the items that each customer takes. When the computers can’t figure it out, humans step in.

When the business histories of the early 21st Century are written, it may turn out that Amazon had to destroy retail in order to save it.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE — UNDERSTANDING THE MILO PHENOMENON: “Those on the receiving end of group polarization experience a wall of ignorance and intolerance. Spend much time on an elite campus, and you’ll be amazed at the sheer paucity of conservative voices. Entire faculty departments don’t include a single conservative voice. The result is a community that often can’t conceive of a single, non-bigoted reason for classical conservative social views. There is no good answer to this group polarization, but conservatives have generally tried three different approaches: Reason with the machine, replace the machine, or rage against the machine.”

Read the whole thing.

FRIENDS AGAIN? Mattis Says ‘Valiant,’ Resilient Iraqi Army to be Highlighted in ISIS Plan to Trump.

BECAUSE HE’S SMART? AND PAYS ATTENTION? Why Judge Gorsuch Is A Regulatory Skeptic.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Tragedy of the Public Good: Why the U.S. Shouldn’t Quit NATO.

The latest news is that Defense Secretary James Mattis has told NATO allies that if they don’t start carrying their weight, the U.S. is going to “moderate its commitment” to the region. Now, as an abstract matter of principle, I’m firmly behind this. Only five NATO countries actually hit their targets, and three of them are a lot poorer than the sponging grifters that have cut their militaries back … while enjoying the safety of the U.S. security umbrella.

The freeloading countries don’t even send a fruit basket to Washington to say thanks. In fact, as a rightish American who’s spent a bit of time abroad, I can personally attest that many of those NATO members’ citizens feel free to disparage our massive military budget, as if their smaller budgets were some sort of moral sacrifice rather than an unearned benefit paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

There, I got that off my chest. I hope we all feel better.

Nonetheless, even for me, Mattis’s statement is a sort of “gulp” moment. The Europeans aren’t the only people who benefit from the American security umbrella. The fact that the world’s biggest rich economy is willing to spend so much of its GDP on the military doesn’t just mean that other countries don’t have to; it also means that other countries don’t bother, because they can’t possibly catch up.

Like dealing with slobbish roommates, it may make sense to keep cleaning the toilet yourself, but a credible threat to leave may encourage them to do a bit less free-riding.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Facing death chants and hate crimes, Sweden’s Jews live in a climate of fear.

ALL THE BETTER TO FRIGHTEN YOU WITH, MY DEAR: Climate Models Are Warming Earth Two Times Faster Than Reality.

“So far in the 21st century, the GCMs are warming, on average, about a factor of 2 faster than the observed temperature increase,” Dr. Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist who now runs her own climate forecasting company, wrote in a report for the U.K.-based Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Curry has been one of the foremost critics of climate models, arguing that while they can be useful, there are too many uncertainties and issues to rely on models for public policy decisions.

Curry’s report gives a detailed rundown of why models can be useful for modeling complex climate systems, but also points out that GCMs fail to capture natural variability in the climate.

“The reason for the discrepancy between observations and model simulations in the early 21st century appears to be caused by a combination of inadequate simulations of natural internal variability and oversensitivity of the models to increasing carbon dioxide,” wrote Curry.

Read the whole thing.

Reality must be made to better conform to the models, which are of course correct.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Trump haters: Please do these 2 thought experiments.

THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: The Latest Sex Trend: Spraying Vaporized Liquid Nitrogen on Your Genitals. No, thank you.

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TRANSPARENCY: Is James O’Keefe About To Smoke CNN? Tells Hannity He’s Set To Release “Hundreds of Hours” Of Newsroom Footage “Wikileaks Style.” Why should journalists be immune from investigative journalism?

Well, when you have people like Mika Brzezinski saying that it’s “our job” to “control what people think,” a little transparency is in order.

Related: MTV News reporter admits joining anti-Trump protests.

HILLSDALE PROF TO NY TIMES: ‘I Am Proud’ We Don’t Promote ‘Social Justice.’

He should be — there’s no justice in “social justice,” which also happens to be anti-social. Other than that, it’s a fine term.

NORTH KOREA’S CRIMINAL REALITY IS INTOLERABLE: Spy novel assassination, whodunnit missile proliferation. Kim Jong Un’s regime is criminal and dangerous.

CHANGE: These Republicans didn’t like Trump at first. They do now.

“Trump’s a buffoon,” David Searles said before casting a vote for Marco Rubio in the New Hampshire primary.

“He scares me,” Rebecca Meyer said before settling on Ben Carson in South Carolina’s primary.

“He’s not presidential,” Gail Francioli said after backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich in that state’s primary.

Yet like nearly nine out of 10 Republicans nationwide, Searles, Meyer and Francioli supported Trump in the general election. And like the vast majority of Republicans, they support him still.

In fact, these one-time-skeptics are part of the bulwark that is bolstering a President whose first month in office roiled the nation.

Hilary Clinton and the prospect of two or three Supreme Court vacancies was enough to seal the deal for me, but Trump himself had me at “Gorsuch.”

SO-CALLED FERAL HOG APOCALYPSE IN TEXAS: Apocalypse overstates the case. But there are a lot of’em. The article discusses an option the state is considering: poisoning the feral hogs.That doesn’t strike me as appropriate. Go with the 7.62 mm solution.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Lawyers For Adelsons, Magbanua Attack Prosecution’s Case Against Their Clients In Dan Markel Murder.

I THOUGHT THE RIGHT WAS DONE WITH THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD: It was a beautiful dream. If They Take Milo down, You’re Next.

ENERGY IN THE EXECUTIVE: Trump readies slew of new orders targeting EPA.

President Trump is planning to issue executive orders this week to begin rolling back the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate change agenda with several other regulations.

Trump is expected to soon issue the orders targeting regulations put into place by the Environmental Protection Agency, including the Clean Power Plan, which directs states to cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.

The EPA climate plan was halted a year ago by the Supreme Court until the courts can rule on litigation by 28 state attorneys general, the coal industry and hundreds of individual companies and industry groups.

The order is expected to direct the agency to redo the climate change rule, which would be different from asking the agency to rescind the regulation altogether. Ultimately, direction on what to do about the greenhouse gas rule will have to come from the courts.

But Trump isn’t planning on stopping there. The president also will issue a separate order targeting the EPA’s Waters of the U.S. Rule, which greatly expanded the agency’s jurisdiction over waterways to include everything from major waterways to drainage ponds on private lands. Both the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the U.S. Rule have been long-time targets of the Republican Party.

Reports also say to expect a third Trump action to end the Department of Interior’s moratorium on new coal mining leases put in place by the Obama administration.

He has a pen and a phone.

OH: The U.S. is largely underprepared to detect or respond to the threat of a radiological terrorist attack on American soil.

WHEN YOU’RE A LOW-KEY GUY LIKE ME, YOU’RE USED TO BEING OVERLOOKED: “The big oversight is that Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit isn’t listed.”

THE INSTAWIFE: Trump: The Sweet Smell of Success.