JONATHAN TURLEY: Trump Critics — From Sally Yates to James Comey — Failing Their Own Ethics Tests.

GET TO KNOW CODERS: Over at the new Coder Intros site (“Meet the people who created the software that powers the modern world”), interviews with Peter LaSorte of Goldman Sachs, Kathryn Knauth of Amazon, and Greg Horvay of Ultimate Software.

I THINK WE SHOULD WITHOLD FEDERAL FUNDS FROM ANY SCHOOL THAT DOESN’T ALLOW OPEN DISCOURSE: Thanks to blocked lecture, Ben Shapiro has a message about free speech for Berkeley defender Dianne Feinstein.

The University of California, Berkeley’s decision to block another conservative lecture, this time featuring popular author Ben Shapiro, rightfully sparked a fresh round of disgust among free speech advocates on Wednesday.

The school is under heavy fire from conservatives for a series of First Amendment controversies that unfolded over the course of the last school year, even facing a lawsuit from Young America’s Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans over Ann Coulter’s canceled lecture in April. Between the riots that blocked Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking and the university’s decision to cancel Coulter’s lecture, Berkeley has become a high-profile battleground of the contemporary campus speech movement.

During a Senate hearing last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, criticized the school in his remarks decrying the state of free speech in higher education. In response, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ardently defended her state’s flagship university.

“I know of no effort at Berkeley, at the University of California, to stifle student efforts to speech,” she said at the time, continuing, “And if there is a specific effort, I would certainly appreciate it if people brought that to my attention.”

Ben Shapiro is happy to help.

“If there is no effort to stifle free speech at Berkeley,” Shapiro responded in an email to the Washington Examiner, “why has Berkeley failed to protect Milo Yiannopoulos’ event, cancelled Ann Coulter’s event, and now makes excuses about lack of availability for a speech already cleared by the College Republicans?”

“If Feinstein is so unconcerned about this, she should push her fellow Democrats in California to sponsor legislation requiring the suspension or expulsion of students who utilize violence to prevent others’ free speech,” he concluded.

The left approves of this violence, and uses it.

21ST CENTURY EUGENICS: Inmates could get out of jail earlier if they get a vasectomy or birth control.

UNEXPECTEDLY!: The Obama-Ayatollah Nuclear Collusion Fraud isn’t working.

OK, The National Interest article is titled “The Iran Nuclear Deal Isn’t Working,” but I think my title is more accurate.

RELATED: Not so unexpectedly. (I’m so old I remember 2015.)

ALLIES: Turkey says it would reciprocate German threats.

Turkey’s foreign minister has accused Germany of engaging in “blackmail and threats” against Turkey and says Ankara would reciprocate those threats.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Cyprus, Mevlut Cavusoglu said as a once close friend and ally, Germany would know “that Turkey would never bow to blackmail and threats.”

Germany is calling on Turkey to release a German human rights trainer, who was arrested pending trial on suspicion of links to terror groups.

The Turkish minister accused German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel of making “ill-tempered statements” against Turkey after the country rejected an alleged request for “Turkey to interfere in the judiciary.”

Erdogan’s Turkey reminds me in one small way of ISIS — picking fights with nearly everybody around. Turkey can’t afford to be the Middle East’s next pariah state, but that’s the direction Erdogan is taking his country.

THIS IS STARTING TO REMIND ME OF THE MICHAEL BELLESILES SAGA: Did Nancy MacLean make stuff up in ‘Democracy in Chains’?

HMM: DHS: Laptop ban put in place after explosive test destroyed airplane. “A U.S. intelligence official told CBS News that the new ban was put in place because of an intelligence report that found a terrorist plot seeking to use explosives hidden in a laptop to destroy a commercial flight.”

TRUMP’S SIX-MONTH REVIEW, MUELLER’S RED LINE, AND SPICER’S EXIT: All that and more on Hot Mic’s morning brief.

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for the traveling Liz Sheld again today.

UH, EVERYTHING? What Nancy MacLean Gets Wrong About James Buchanan.

EARLIER THIS WEEK IT WAS SHIPS WITH LASER BEAMS: Navy’s Hypervelocity Railgun Could Be A Gamechanger.

“Hypervelocity” is a term of art in physics that has a somewhat fluid definition. In the case of artillery rounds, it denotes muzzle speeds in excess of about 1,000 meters per second. The railgun technology the Navy is testing today can achieve about twice that speed, potentially delivering much greater range than a conventional gun. At that velocity, many types of targets could be destroyed through the sheer energy of impact, without requiring an explosive warhead.

But the array of threats that warships must counter is constantly growing, so the Navy isn’t counting on kinetic energy alone to kill targets. The Hypervelocity Projectile will carry a guided warhead capable of delivering diverse effects depending on the mission. When mated to a railgun, it will create a shipboard defense system unlike anything else in existence. Not only would the survivability of warships be greatly enhanced, but their versatility in contributing to other missions like fire support of forces ashore would be boosted.

The lasers mentioned in the headline are for close-in defense, but a hypervelocity railgun is a long-range offensive weapon. Very long range. And if you’re on the receiving end of one, very offensive.

DAVID HARSANYI: Be Very Worried About The Future Of Free Expression: If you don’t believe political correctness is a threat to free speech, you haven’t been paying attention.

Related:

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: EVERGREEN COLLEGE, FREE SPEECH, AND THE MEANING OF SOCIAL JUSTICE. “It is no accident that the students’ own speech is so foul and disrespectful, indeed, dehumanizing.”

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Three Years Into Cheap Oil, Gulf Is Still Depending on a Rebound.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have curtailed subsidies and introduced new taxes to bolster non-oil revenue and reduce ballooning budget deficits. Much of the savings, however, have been due to spending cuts and the pace of reforms has slowed across the region, said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. Overall progress in economic diversification has been limited, she said.

Absent a rebound in oil prices, analysts say it’s unlikely that these nations can repair their finances without deeper spending cuts that could further hurt growth. The standoff between a Saudi-led bloc and Qatar is also undermining investor confidence at a time when the GCC is seeking foreign funds.

That’s less money and attention the GCC states have for giving headaches to the West and funding Islamist madrassas around the world.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Two Thumbs Up For Claremont McKenna’s Suspensions Of Student Protesters. “If a handful of students demonstrate that they will not abide by college rules—to say nothing of liberal principles or civilized norms—there are, literally, hundreds of qualified students on the wait-list who would happily take their place.”

CHARLIE MARTIN: In the 48th Year of Space.

Of course, Richard Nixon decided that now that we had gotten to the Moon, it wasn’t important to continue. NASA has been refocused again and again, from Earth science to low-orbit bus service to Muslim outreach, and even more destructively, has been consumed by creeping bureaucracy.

But it doesn’t matter. Now we have SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and a half-dozen other commercial space companies. We have people seriously looking at mining the asteroids and Elon Musk seriously trying to colonize Mars. And if those don’t work, the Chinese and the Japanese and the Indians will go.

I hope it’s us. Americans do best when we have a frontier.

CLUTCHING THE PEARLS OF THEIR IGNORANCE: ‘Jezebel’ Shows Why It’s Impossible to Take Feminism Seriously.

PSSSST!  SOMEONE TELL GORE WE’RE NOT LIVING IN THE WORLD OF TIERS: Gore: ‘Some Levels of the Earth System Have Crossed a Point of No Return’.

YOU’D BETTER LEARN TO SWIM, OR YOU’LL SINK LIKE A STONE: For the times, they are achanging. The Shift.

I THINK HE SERIOUSLY UNDERESTIMATES THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE MAD ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:Graham: If You Don’t Back DREAM Act, ‘I Don’t Want You to Vote for Me’.

OKAY, ALL RIGHT, MY FRIENDS ARE WEIRD: Desperately Seeking Tentacles. (No, that’s not what it sounds like,but I found it funny.)

INDEED: Legalized Highway Robbery: Civil Asset Forfeiture.

BUT THEY WEREN’T SIGNALING VIRTUE LOUDLY ENOUGH!  Why ‘Vogue’’s Attempt to Embrace ‘Gender Fluidity’ Backfired.

IT’S TRUE: Dogs Have A Few Gene Mutations Similar To Ones In Humans With Williams-Beuren Syndrome. i.e. Every dog is genetically a very good boy.