FAST TRACK: House passes law to accelerate adoption of self-driving technology.

BUT THEY PROMISED TO TURN ALL OF THEM OVER: Did Israel Just Bomb a Syrian Chemical Weapons Plant?

Flashback: Susan Rice Praises Obama for Ridding Syria of Chemical Weapons Without Use of Force.

ON SALE: The Kindle Version of John Lott’s The War On Guns is just $1.99.

NOW PAIR IT WITH ONE THAT KILLS CANCER IN SECONDS: New device accurately identifies cancer in seconds. Faster, please.

HMM: House Intel Committee Subpoenas FBI, DOJ Over Trump Dossier.

IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME: Will the Southern Poverty Law Center Brand the Roman Catholic Church a Hate Group?

UH-OH: Hackers Gain Direct Access to US Power Grid Controls.

The latest collection of power grid penetrations went far deeper: Security firm Symantec is warning that a series of recent hacker attacks not only compromised energy companies in the US and Europe but also resulted in the intruders gaining hands-on access to power grid operations—enough control that they could have induced blackouts on American soil at will.

Symantec on Wednesday revealed a new campaign of attacks by a group it is calling Dragonfly 2.0, which it says targeted dozens of energy companies in the spring and summer of this year. In more than 20 cases, Symantec says the hackers successfully gained access to the target companies’ networks. And at a handful of US power firms and at least one company in Turkey—none of which Symantec will name—their forensic analysis found that the hackers obtained what they call operational access: control of the interfaces power company engineers use to send actual commands to equipment like circuit breakers, giving them the ability to stop the flow of electricity into US homes and businesses.

Glenn has been warning Instapundit readers for years that our power grid is vulnerable. Be prepared.

POTENTIAL NORTH KOREA WAR SCENARIOS.

FROM ROBERT STEINBUCH: Thoughts on LSATs and law school admissions.

UNEXPECTEDLY: The Inconvenient Truth About Obamacare’s Premium Spiral.

The biggest reason for Obamacare’s rate hikes? Two of its most popular provisions, guaranteed issue and community rating. These are the technical terms for Obamacare’s ban on insurance companies denying coverage or charging people who are sick more.

The McKinsey report found that in Georgia, these mandates added between 44 and 52 percent to premiums. In Ohio, they were responsible for 41 to 50 percent of the hikes — and in Pennsylvania, as much as 62 percent. In Tennessee, guaranteed issue and community rating accounted for between 73 and 76 percent of premium increases.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. A study by Milliman, a consultancy, in 2013 predicted that Obamacare’s guaranteed issue and community rating rules would sharply increase premiums.

If you’re going to charge younger, healthier people more like older, sicker people, and force insurers to sell “insurance” to people who are already sick, then premiums are going to go WAY up — which many of us warned back in 2009, 2010.

SOME CIVIL RIGHTS GOOD NEWS: Betsy DeVos: The Era of Weaponized Title IX in Campus Rape Cases Is Over: “Through intimidation and coercion, the failed system has clearly pushed schools to overreach,” says DeVos. “No one could accuse DeVos of pulling punches. Her speech accuses her predecessors of ‘weaponizing’ federal regulations and turning them against students.” Well, male students.

BUT THIS IS PEANUTS COMPARED TO WHAT IT COULD DO: The Sun Just Erupted The Biggest Solar Flare in 12 Years And It Has Affected Earth.

TYLER O’NEIL: 47 Nonprofit Leaders Denounce the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate List’ in Open Letter to the Media.

I THINK THEY’RE LOOKING FOR A PLACE THAT’S OUT OF RANGE OF NORTH KOREAN NUKES: Amazon Announces Plans for Huge New North America Offices.

THEN MAYBE THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT: China Fears Radioactive Fallout From North Korea Blast.

Chinese government agencies said no radiation has been detected thus far but they will continue to test air, water and soil samples in a network of radiation-monitoring stations that has steadily expanded since 2013 and is due to grow by at least two more stations in the next few months.

The slightest risk of a leak is of huge concern, with more than 100 million people living in China’s three northeastern provinces bordering or near North Korea. The Punggye-ri test site, where the blast took place, is less than 50 miles from China’s border. Nuclear blasts produce radioactive forms of elements such as iodine, exposure to which can cause cancer in humans—or even death in extreme cases.

Sunday’s test shook buildings in Chinese cities near the border and could be felt hundreds of miles away. Some people ran into the streets and posted videos of shaking chandeliers in their apartments. Others have since taken to social media to express alarm.

North Korea wouldn’t still exist if China hadn’t intervened in 1950, and Chinese support has helped keep the virulent Kims in power.

HUMA ABEDIN, WHEN FBI RE-OPENED HILLARY EMAIL PROBE BECAUSE OF ANTHONY WEINER: “This man is going to be the death of me.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof hands out white privilege checklist, then warns students who stereotype will be punished.

FAKE HATE CRIME: New York Man Admits to Painting Swastikas on His Own Home.. “Jewish leaders said that King, who was interviewed by the local media in front of his defaced home wearing a kippah, is not Jewish.”

WAIT, WHAT? Capitol Police report: Wasserman Schultz’s laptop found in phone booth at 3am w/ note to US attorney from Imran. “The laptop had the username ‘RepDWS,’ even though the Florida Democrat and former Democratic National Committee chairman previously said it was Awan’s computer and that she had never even seen it.”

UPDATE: Former Democratic IT Staffer to Return From Pakistan, Face Charges. “Hina Alvi will return to the United States ‘during the last week of September 2017’ under the condition that she is not arrested in front of her children, the Washington Examiner reported. Alvi is the wife of Imran Awan, who served as IT staffer to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) while she was the Democratic National Committee chairwoman.”

Related: ‘Big fish’ Debbie Wasserman Schultz watches as ‘small fish’ start to cut deals.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1582: Is The IRS Scandal About To Break Wide Open? About time, if so.

MY COLLEAGUE BEN BARTON’S BOOK, Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law, co-authored with Stephanos Bibas, gets a really positive review in the Wall Street Journal.

‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Proposed by Dick the Butcher, a nefarious rebel in “Henry VI, Part 2,” the line often gets a laugh. But it also makes a serious point: Fewer lawyers would make it easier to overthrow the king and install a new regime. Lawyers, Shakespeare implies, are the guarantors of justice.

Or are they? According to Benjamin Barton and Stephanos Bibas, law professors at the University of Tennessee and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively, the answer is “not necessarily.” In their brief and accessible “Rebooting Justice,” Messrs. Barton and Bibas observe that, when it comes to securing justice in an efficient and affordable fashion, lawyers can in fact be the primary obstacle.

As the authors note, the legal profession presents a “paradox.” “America has more lawyers than any country in the world,” they write, “and law schools are graduating more new lawyers than there are jobs. Yet legal education and legal advice are horrifically expensive.” Even basic legal services at small or mid-size firms may cost more than $200 an hour, placing meaningful legal representation beyond the reach of many Americans. . . .

A large portion of “Rebooting Justice” is devoted to the authors’ ideas for systemic changes aimed at reducing the reliance on lawyers. They note that in medicine, for example, paraprofessionals like nurse practitioners and physician assistants increasingly provide basic services at lower costs. There’s no reason that paralegals, notaries, social workers and others with relevant training could not do the same in law.

Messrs. Barton and Bibas are also hopeful that evolving technologies can fill many legal-service needs. Web-based databases have expanded public access to once-arcane legal rules and judgments, and companies like LegalZoom offer inexpensive, download-able forms to cover basic legal matters, like living wills or articles of incorporation. . . .

As exciting as technology is, Messrs. Barton and Bibas recognize that it will not be enough to fix what ails our legal system. Their more radical suggestion is to restructure the system so that many processes are specifically designed to omit lawyers. For example, instead of trying to fund lawyers for litigants who might otherwise represent themselves, legal processes could be made more friendly to pro se representation.

Interestingly, one of the reasons Richard Posner gave for retiring was poor treatment of pro se litigants.

THEY’RE FANTASIES, BUT THEY CAN BE LUCRATIVE FANTASIES: Impossible Environmentalism: Green groups promote utopian fantasies.

BUT OF COURSE: Twitter Flags Saying ‘Islam Is NOT a Religion of Peace’ as Possible ‘Hateful Conduct.’

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Christians and Jews are still fair game.