RIP: Alan Bean, 4th man to walk on the moon, dies at 86.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: “WYFF News 4 Investigates has obtained new records in the case of the Clemson University student who said she was sexually assaulted. Sarah Campbell is now charged with a felony for filing a false report.”

THIS IS WHERE BANS ON “HATE SPEECH” LEAD: UK Arrests Islam Critic For Reporting On Grooming Gang Trial.

Anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson was arrested Friday outside of a British court hearing on a gang accused of forcing women into sex, prompting protests Saturday.

Robinson was livestreaming on Facebook outside of a Leeds court when police arrested him for allegedly breaching the peace, according to The Independent. The Independent attempted to downplay Robinson’s claim of reporting on the grooming gang trial by putting “reporting” in quotes.

Video shows Robinson being whisked off by police as he demands to know the reason for his arrest. “This is ridiculous, I haven’t said a word…I’ve done nothing,” he said.

Robinson was sentenced to 13 months in jail for the crime, while the judge prohibited reporting of the verdict within the United Kingdom. No major British outlet reported on the sentence, and Breitbart redacted Robinson’s name from its report on the case.

According to The Independent, a contempt of court offense can be used to silence reporting on criminal procedures. Robinson was arrested while on a suspended sentence for a similar offense. In 2017, he was arrested and convicted of filming accused rapists as they headed into court.

Just by existing, he’s a threat.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: CPAP machines may help your sex life.

In a semi-related note, one of my friends recently remarked that being single in your 40s nowadays means taking a CPAP along to a booty-call.

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FASTER, PLEASE: Every 3-5 years SpaceX is adding a decade lead on competitors.

FYI: Jordan Peterson’s Reddit Ask Me Anything.

IN MY CASE, I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Could eating more fish boost fertility?

CINEMA TECH HISTORY: Joe Pappalardo: There Are Secrets In The Texas Theatre. Being a projectionist was once dangerous work.

FASTER, PLEASE: Nanoparticles Loaded With Drugs Could Be Used to Attack The Worst Type of Brain Cancer.

BETTER START STOCKING UP ON BLU-RAYS OF MORGAN FREEMAN’S MOVIES: Morgan Freeman the Subject of CNN Expose Alleging Sexual Harassment of Female Journalists.

And right on cue:

● Visa Stops Morgan Freeman Commercials After Sexual Harassment Report.

● TransLink to pause Morgan Freeman SkyTrain announcements over sexual harassment allegations.

● SAG-AFTRA ‘Reviewing’ Morgan Freeman’s Lifetime Achievement Award Following Misconduct Accusations.

Will the last person out of Hollywood please turn off the lights and hang up the airbrush?

DISPATCHES FROM THE FINAL FRONTIER. How Star Trek Became A Tribal Battleground Of PC Art: Why is it ‘weird’ for Ted Cruz to be a Star Trek fan? Because the left is using PC didacticism to mark off parts of the culture as their tribal territory.

It has become commonplace to lament that we don’t have a common culture any more—a repertoire of art that we can all enjoy regardless of our political loyalties. Well, maybe it’s because we have a lot of people trying to mark off parts of the culture as their tribal territory, off-limits to partisan enemies.

I thought of this when someone sent me a link to a recent podcast for science-fiction fans, in which political commenter Ana Marie Cox puzzles over the fact that Ted Cruz is a big Star Trek fan. (To save you some trouble, it’s about 28 minutes in.) Why is this such a mystery? “The original Star Trek universe, for its time even, was pretty social justice warrior-y.”

Try not to spit out your coffee. To paraphrase Dr. Carol Marcus, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a social justice warrior.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Ace of Spades is dunking on the new Solo spinoff’s box office misfire as only he can: “Soylo: A Soy Wars Soyry Will Be Disney’s Lowest-Earning Soy Wars Entry Yet.”

NOBODY SAW THIS COMING: Berkeley, others parts of California see rise in sexually transmitted infections.

I JUST WANT TO TELL YOU GOOD LUCK — WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU. Starbucks Prepares to End Racism with ‘5/29’ Racial Bias Training.

(Classical reference in headline.)

CRAZED SEX POODLE GETS SALTY: Al Gore uses eliminationist rhetoric in address to U. Maryland graduates. Urging that a presidency be “terminated early” is worse than any of the stuff Sarah Palin was pilloried for. To be fair, Sarah Palin is a former candidate people actually listen to.

MARK LEVIN: What if the press is ‘contributing to the deterioration of liberty’?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UNH prof gloats about disrupting conservative speaker. “One of the protesters who temporarily disrupted a speech by Dave Rubin at the University of New Hampshire on May 1 turns out to be a Women’s Studies professor at the school. Shortly after the event, Dr. Joelle Ruby Ryan gleefully tweeted that ‘we were able to disrupt this man’s hate speech as much as possible,’ declaring that ‘”civil discourse” with him is impossible.’ Ryan will be teaching a course called ‘Trans/forming gender’ next fall, which is reserved exclusively for incoming freshmen and will ‘explore the multiple ways in which gender is constructed.'”

At least some of it seems to be constructed out of shrieking harpies with no regard for the rights of others.

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PRESSURE STARTS TO MOUNT ON IRAN: From the Wall Street Journal (scroll down for story).

Iran’s widening influence in the Middle East — already under pressure from the U.S. — also faces growing resistance from within its close regional allies, Syria and Iraq.

In Iraq, discontent among the country’s Shiite Muslim community with Iranian influence was reflected in cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s victory in this month’s election. Mr. Sadr, himself a Shiite, is a fierce nationalist whose supporters sometimes chant slogans criticizing Iran, the region’s top Shiite power.
Syrians in the largely secular capital, Damascus, have meanwhile accused Iran of stoking religious tensions. And Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s other main foreign partner, Russia, has showed impatience with Iran’s growing military presence in Syria, which Israel has moved to contain with airstrikes.

The pushback poses another challenge for Tehran as it tries to defend its gains in the region and avoid international isolation following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the landmark 2015 nuclear accord.

Earlier this month the Israeli Air pushed back, unambiguously. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration starts to apply maximum pressure.

JUMPING ALL AMERICAN WEEK: Army paratroopers jump in the 82nd Airborne Division Airborne Review at Fort Bragg, N.C., May 24, 2018. A great photo.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama officials’ spying on Trump a departure from norms.

“FBI used informant to investigate Russia ties to campaign, not to spy,” read the headline on a lengthy New York Times story May 18.

“The Justice Department used a suspected informant to probe whether Trump campaign aides were making improper contacts with Russia in 2016,” reads a story in the May 21 Wall Street Journal.

So much for those who dismissed charges of Obama administration infiltration of Donald Trump’s campaign as paranoid fantasy. Defenders of the Obama intelligence and law enforcement apparatus have had to fall back on the argument that this infiltration was for Trump’s — and the nation’s — own good.

It’s an argument that evidently didn’t occur to Richard Nixon’s defenders when it became clear that Nixon operatives burglarized and wiretapped the Democratic National Committee in June 1972.

Until 2016, just about everyone agreed that it was a bad thing for government intelligence or law enforcement agencies to spy (er, secretly collect information?) on a political campaign. Especially a campaign of the opposition party. Liberals were especially suspicious of the FBI and the CIA. Nowadays, they say that anyone questioning those agencies’ good faith is unpatriotic.

Well, they’ll say anything. But I think the matter was serious enough that it probably had to be authorized from the top.

LEE SMITH: “The New York Times, which proudly published the Pentagon Papers, provided cover for an espionage operation against a presidential campaign.”