CRACKING DOWN ON DISSENT IS EXCESSIVE: U.N. cites systematic use of excessive force in Venezuela crackdown on dissent.

DAVID FREDDOSO: Why you should never use the term ‘anti-fascist.’

THEY TOLD ME IF DONALD TRUMP WERE ELECTED PRESIDENT, DISSENTERS WOULD BE CRUSHED. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant.

Related: Dissent-crushing Google Needs A New CEO.

CREEPY: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won’t Tell Me How.

The People You May Know feature is notorious for its uncanny ability to recognize who you associate with in real life. It has mystified and disconcerted Facebook users by showing them an old boss, a one-night-stand, or someone they just ran into on the street.

These friend suggestions go far beyond mundane linking of schoolmates or colleagues. Over the years, I’d been told many weird stories about them, such as when a psychiatrist told me that her patients were being recommended to one another, indirectly outing their medical issues.

What makes the results so unsettling is the range of data sources—location information, activity on other apps, facial recognition on photographs—that Facebook has at its disposal to cross-check its users against one another, in the hopes of keeping them more deeply attached to the site. People generally are aware that Facebook is keeping tabs on who they are and how they use the network, but the depth and persistence of that monitoring is hard to grasp. And People You May Know, or “PYMK” in the company’s internal shorthand, is a black box.

Would you hand the White House keys to someone with that much data on everyone?

I WAS GOING TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, BUT EUGENE VOLOKH BEAT ME TO IT, AND HE’S BETTER ANYWAY: University fires professor for tweeting that hurricane ‘kinda feels like [instant karma] for Texas.’

Storey’s comments were nasty and mean-spirited; and I should note that the University of Tampa is a private university, in a state that doesn’t limit private employers’ ability to fire employees for their speech. The university’s actions thus seem legal (assuming they didn’t breach any contract). And Storey’s comments also weren’t academic or likely to be part of a serious political debate.

But the university’s action strikes me as further undermining the freedom of expression and debate at American universities, including the freedom to say things that are much more thoughtful. If you were an untenured faculty member at the University of Tampa, would you feel free to express your views on controversial subjects, when you saw how the university reacted to this tweet? Even if your views were very different politically, what do you think the University would do if people started pressuring for your dismissal, pointing to the Storey incident as precedent?

I’ve talked before about “censorship envy,” one mechanism through which these sorts of speech restrictions can grow: “If my neighbor — and especially my political adversary — gets to ban speech he reviles,” the thinking goes, “why shouldn’t I get to do the same?”

If a university has a strong policy of protecting speech, including offensive speech, administrators can point to that policy as a means of resisting calls for firing a controversial faculty member, and they can appeal to people’s desire to see speakers on their own side protected, and use that desire to help protect speakers on all sides. But once the university starts firing some people for speech “that do[es] not reflect [the university’s] community views or values,” that makes it much harder to resist calls for more suppression. Indeed, at that point tolerating speech starts implicitly conveying the message that the speech does reflect the university’s community views or values — and to avoid that implication, the university would have to fire any speaker who offended some sufficiently influential constituency.

It’s amazing how much trouble you can save yourself by having principles, and how much trouble you can get into by not having them, and it’s amazing how few university administrators realize that.

ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE: Firebrand Trump’s response to Kim’s latest missile test was cool and crafted.

WAIT… WHAT? L.A. Mayor: Repealing DACA Would Hurt Hurricane Harvey Recovery.

PREDICTION: Hard Brexit.

SWAMP DRAINING NEWS: Secretary of State Tillerson is trimming State Department staff, particularly suspect positions Obama created.

Of the 38 positions created under the former administration, 23 will be either removed or reassigned, a senior Trump administration official told Fox News on Tuesday. The staffers whose positions will be eliminated are those who worked on projects such as closing Guantanamo Bay, implementing the Iran Deal and the transparency coordinator position created in response to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Read the whole thing.

MARC THIESSEN: Yes, antifa is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.

The Washington Post editorial board is coming out against Antifa too, though mostly just because it makes the Left look bad.

UPDATE: From the comments: “I know he’s getting up in years, but surely Jeff Sessions can remember the Klan Laws he’s so celebrated for employing previously.”

THE NAVY’S SM-6 ABM HAS A SUCCESSFUL TEST INTERCEPT:

The United States conducted a successful missile defense test that intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile off the coast of Hawaii early Wednesday morning, according to a statement from the US Missile Defense Agency.

The Standard Missile-6, built by major US defense contracter Raytheon, intercepted the missile target at sea in its final seconds of flight after being fired from the USS John Paul Jones.

BACKGROUND: A StrategyPage report on the SM-6 (July 2017).

THINK BEFORE TWEETING: University fires professor who called Harvey ‘karma’ for Texas GOP.

“I dont believe in instant Karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas. Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesnt care about them,” Kenneth Storey reportedly tweeted Sunday.

The tweet, which was met with instant backlash, led Storey to be fired two days later, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The university rebuked Storey’s remarks in a statement Tuesday, saying the comments Storey made on his private Twitter account to not align with the views or values of the school.

“We condemn the comments and the sentiment behind them, and understand the pain this irresponsible act has caused,” the school’s statement read in part. “As Floridians, we are well aware of the destruction and suffering associated with tropical weather. Our thoughts and prayers are with all impacted by Hurricane Harvey.”

Storey, who appears to have deleted his Twitter account, tweeted an apology a day later, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The rush to be clever on social media seems to result in a lot of public stupidity.

BLUE ON BLUE: All White People Are Socialized to Be Racist & Tina Fey Made That Clear.

OBAMA MUST BE SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED: OK, he isn’t shocked. He’s busy playing golf.

Iran won’t let U.S. inspectors check out its nuclear weapons sites.

Iranian officials have rejected U.S. demands for United Nations inspectors to visit Tehran’s military sites, which is part of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

“The Americans should take the dream of being able to inspect our military sites, be it under the pretext of the [agreement] or based on any other justification, to the grave,” Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khameneii, told reporters.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, which is the pivot of resistance in the region, will not allow the Americans and non-Americans to inspect [its] military sites, which are a crucial and strategic part of national security,” he added.

I saw this one coming: The Real Deal With The Iranian Deal (from 2015).

QUESTION ASKED: Is America Now Officially Crazy?

No — but immersing yourself in the fine product and spokesotherkins of the DNC-MSM-Academia Industrial Complex, it’s easy to come to that conclusion.

Back in the real world, “Harvey Awakens a Divided America’s Better Angels.”

Somewhat related, when you see headlines such as this: “No Shame: MSNBC Whines That Trump Is Going to Texas Too Quickly,” you know Trump made the right decision to get out there personally, to prevent the DNC-MSM from immediately crafting the “cold aloof president” narrative that ultimately became a cudgel to allow the Democrats to regain both houses of Congress in 2006, and the White House in 2008. Though years later, as Donna Brazile admitted in her CNN column, once it was politically safe to do so, “Bush Came Through on Katrina.”

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS — NOT JUST FOR GRADUATES ANYMORE: Due Process for Sexual Assault Charges Is Returning to Georgia Campuses.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Shot: Whose Side is the New York Times On? 

—John Hinderaker, Power Line, today.

Chaser: Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.

—Daniel Okrent, then the public editor of the Times, July 25, 2004.

FASTER, PLEASE: German Students Hit 201 MPH in SpaceX Hyperloop Contest.

CLIVE CROOK: Why People Still Support Trump:

There are two main theories of Trump’s support. One is that a large minority of Americans — 40 percent, give or take — are racist idiots. This theory is at least tacitly endorsed by the Democratic Party and the mainstream liberal media. The other is that a large majority of this large minority are good citizens with intelligible and legitimate opinions, who so resent being regarded as racist idiots that they’ll back Trump almost regardless. They may not admire the man, but he’s on their side, he vents their frustration, he afflicts the people who think so little of them — and that’s good enough.

It’s disappointing that Charlottesville hasn’t changed their minds — but then it hasn’t changed my mind either. I still think the first theory is absurd and the second theory basically correct. . . .

This sense that democratic politics is futile if not downright dangerous now infuses the worldview of the country’s cultural and intellectual establishment. Trump is routinely accused of being authoritarian and anti-democratic, despite the fact that he won the election and, so far, has been checked at every point and has achieved almost nothing in policy terms. (He might wish he were an authoritarian, but he sure hasn’t been allowed to function as one.) Many of his critics, on the other hand, are anti-democratic in a deeper sense: They appear to believe that a little less than half the country doesn’t deserve the vote.

The second theory — the correct theory — is a terrible indictment of the Democratic Party and much of the media. Why aren’t the intelligible and legitimate opinions of that large minority given a hearing? Why must their views be bundled reflexively into packages labelled “bigotry” and “stupidity”? Why can’t this large minority of the American people be accorded something other than pity or scorn?

Because Democrats still can’t deal with losing, and a large part of belonging to the left is the satisfaction of feeling superior to ordinary Americans.

LARRY O’CONNOR: Why Won’t Media Demand Dems Condemn Antifa?

Democrats have been all over cable and network news over the past several weeks as they participate in the tag team pile-on of any Republican who dares to show the slightest support of President Trump. Where are Wolf and Mika and Don and Anderson and George and Chuck and all the rest confronting these Democrats, boxing them in and challenging them to condemn, in no uncertain terms, the Antifa thugs once and for all?

Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines providing cover for Democratic operatives with baseball bats, and it all makes sense. Although to be fair, more Democrats (the kind with D after their names) are coming around to condemning Antifa all own their own.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEFTIST-SELF-DESTRUCTION EDITION: Evergreen State College faces $2.1M budget shortfall, cites enrollment drop, issues layoff notices. As with Mizzou, you can wreck your university trying to make lefty activists happy, but they’ll never be happy because they don’t want to be happy.

AT AMAZON, fresh new releases, updated hourly.

Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.

And shop the Digital Deals Of The Day.

NORTH KOREA’S FAT KID HAD TO SHOOT AGAIN: Dictators can’t lose face and keep power. But did Kim really save face by lobbing a missile over Japan?