SUMANTRA MAITRA: No, Trump Is Not To Blame For NATO’s Chaos, Nor For Breaking Up The Liberal Order.

NATO is a mess — and that’s nothing new:

NATO enlargement post-Cold War was essentially a push from the liberal internationalist lobby within the Clinton administration, led by Madeleine Albright and backed by the German leaders like Volker Rühe. Evidence suggests there was significant academic opposition to NATO expansion during that time, including from the father of the strategy of Cold War containment, George F Kennan. He said NATO expansion would end up being the greatest blunder of our times.

There still remains a significant academic as well as strategic opposition to further NATO expansion, as almost everyone in the strategic community foresaw that an inexorable push of frontiers towards a former superpower like Russia would not only invite an understandable military backlash but install a hardline regime with a siege mentality within a former adversary.

Also, the cost-benefit analysis of providing an American taxpayer-funded security umbrella to corrupt, violent smaller countries not only is a heavy and needless burden based on a flawed strategy but encourages those smaller countries to risk conflict assuming that American cavalry is just around the hills.

However, the current ongoing debate on NATO funding is not that. It is not new, either. One of the strongest speeches against NATO was from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2011. He highlighted, almost prophetically, that if NATO leaders failed to immediately increase their funding and improve hardware, retention, and deployment capabilities, future American presidents would find it hard to justify to the electorate why they should pay for rich countries like Germany to have bloated social security programs, and not invest more in their submarine fleet or air force. Incidentally, Germany has only four serviceable Typhoons in the Luftwaffe and has refused to increase its NATO budget.

Ideally, after winning the Cold War, NATO should have thrown itself one hell of a victory party, then promptly disbanded. The former member states could have maintained close military relations in a strictly de facto entente cordiale, but a defensive alliance with no external enemy is a contradiction in terms. That contradiction, plus unwise expansion into Eastern Europe, have given us the worst possible outcome: Provoking Russia while encouraging allied free-ridership.

ALL 12 BOYS AND THEIR COACH ARE RESCUED FROM THAI CAVE AFTER 2 WEEKS.

MY TAKE ON THE KAVANAUGH APPOINTMENT is up at USA Today.

HOW THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MADE IT TOUGH FOR TEACHERS TO MAINTAIN ORDER IN THE CLASSROOM:  Over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Top Six Unhinged Reactions to Kavanaugh Nomination.

BECAUSE THEY’RE VICIOUS AND UNAMERICAN? Why the Unfair Sex Tribunals of Title IX Are Losing Ground.

JONATHAN ADLER: Initial thoughts on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

BLUE WAVE? Heidi Heitkamp faces reality of losing seat as race re-classified to ’tilt Republican.’

The classification increases the pressure on Heitkamp, who has been busy forging herself as a moderate Democrat not afraid to work with President Donald Trump and Republicans while fighting for the interests of North Dakotans.

Heitkamp has been forced to move toward the center because she’s defending a seat in a state that Trump won by more than 30 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016. To make matters worse, Heitkamp endorsed Clinton during the 2016 presidential race, an endorsement she has since rescinded.

When Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, Heitkamp’s plate became even fuller. To appease North Dakota voters and help herself in November, Heitkamp will likely be forced to vote against her party and in favor of whoever Trump nominates to the Supreme Court.

To put it kindly, Heitkamp is vulnerable and Inside Elections’ analysis only confirms what political observers predicted about the race.

Don’t get cocky.

BACK IN 2004, JOHN PERRY BARLOW THREATENED TO DISRUPT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION THROUGH “SPONTANEOUS DANCING,” to which I responded that “this would work, if the Republican Convention were taking place in the movie Footloose.”

In Iran, on the other hand, women have been doing just that. Yet the support for these women from progressives remains. . . muted.

DUE PROCESS WIN: A judge has ordered the University of Southern California to pay an accused student’s legal fees – $111,965 – after administrators were overheard calling the student a “motherf—er.”

COMEDY: Chelsea Handler Says Sarah Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Could ‘Benefit From Being Held In Cages.’

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Conservatives win free speech fight against UMass Amherst.

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MY TAKE ON THE KAVANAUGH APPOINTMENT is up at USA Today.

DAVE KOPEL: Judge Kavanaugh And The Second Amendment.

THEY’VE BEEN RUNNING THE SAME SCRIPT FOR GOING ON 40 YEARS: “If you sense a synthetic quality to the outrage greeting the nominating of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by President Trump, you aren’t mistaken.”

ONE LEFTY TALKING POINT IS THAT TRUMP PICKED KAVANAUGH BECAUSE KAVANAUGH WOULD PROTECT HIM FROM INDICTMENT. Christopher Scalia explodes it: “The theory implies that Kavanaugh said that *the courts* should protect a president from such situations. But in fact, it’s clear that Kavanaugh says that only *Congress* has the authority to do so. See the excerpts below.”

LAST CHARGE OF THE 11th CAV: A fancy change of command ceremony at Fort Irwin.

LITERALLY HITLER: Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Allegedly Called Hillary Clinton the B-Word.

PAUL BEDARD: Poll: Most ‘better off financially’ under Trump than Obama.

For the second time in two weeks, a new national survey has found that most Americans — and especially Hispanics — feel that they are better off under President Trump than they were under former President Obama.

The latest survey is from Emerson College which on Monday said that 42 percent feel better off, compared to 26 percent who feel worse off. Some 30 percent said that their financial situation is about the same as it was in 2016.

The mid-year Emerson College ePoll also found that Trump’s job approval rating has increased to 43 percent and it gave credit to the financial confidence people are feeling.

“The financial situation of voters could be a major reason for the improvement in Trump’s approval rating. When asked if they (voters) were better or worse off financially than they were two years ago 42 percent responded better off, while 26 percent said worse off. Males appear to be doing better in a Trump economy than females: 49 percent of males reported doing better, while 21 percent said they were doing worse. Alternatively 36 percent of females reported they were better off, while 30 percent said they were doing worse. Perceptions of the financial situation varied by party and race, Democrats had the lowest improvement at 33 percent, with 32 percent doing worse. Among Hispanics, a distinct majority – 62 percent believed they were better off,” said Emerson.

Another poll from Zogby Analytics also found that voters feel their finances will be better in four years under Trump.

So we’ll find out if “it’s the economy, stupid” is still the rule.

EXCELLENT NEWS: All 12 boys, coach rescued from flooded Thai cave.

LAST NIGHT I JOKED THAT THE PROTESTERS WITH PREPRINTED ANTI-KAVANAUGH SIGNS MUST HAVE HAD BINS FULL OF SIGNS FOR ALL THE POTENTIAL NOMINEES: And I was right!

ANALYSIS: TRUE. #PermitPatty Showcases the Dangers of Overregulation.

The real face of overregulation has been in the news in recent weeks, after bystanders called the police on three young people in different states for peaceful behavior. The incidents serve as a reminder that an overly broad “rule,” even if rarely enforced, can be weaponized at any time. Such rules can serve to empower pettiness and bigotry that otherwise might have been limited to rude speech.

The three incidents all went viral, from the pathetic marijuana-corporation executive who called the police on an eight-year-old girl for the “crime” of “illegally selling water without a permit” on a hot summer day, to the neighbor who called the police on a 12-year-old for his summer lawn-mowing business, to the 16-year-old boy who was cuffed and arrested in Charleston, S.C., for selling palmetto roses (a longstanding Charleston tradition). Luckily, the police did not act on the complaints in the first two cases — but the very fact that people feel empowered to call the police over harmless behavior shows the pernicious reach of the regulatory regime. In each of these cases, the regulations in question were the sort justified on health-and-safety grounds.

And in all three cases, the children were black. These regulations may not have been written with race in mind, like those of the hallowed Progressive Era were, but the fact remains that this all-encompassing regulatory regime allows racists to act on their prejudice with force. Those who oppose bigotry, and yet support high levels of regulation with good intentions, ought to bear in mind that enforcement often falls upon those who are already marginalized, as we have also seen with drug and gun laws.

Never agitate for a government power you wouldn’t trust your political opponents to wield — because someday they will.