OBAMA IS NOT GIVING AN ENDORSEMENT OF HIS OWN VP AFTER LAUNCHING CAMPAIGN:

Former Vice President Joe Biden officially launched his 2020 campaign Thursday morning after months of speculation. While he may be at the top of most public opinion polls, he hasn’t gotten an endorsement from the man he served alongside for eight years—former President Barack Obama.

Obama’s spokeswoman Katie Hill offered kind words about Biden but there was no endorsement.

“President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made,” she said. “He relied on the Vice President’s knowledge, insight and judgment, throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency. The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today.”

Dwight Eisenhower nods.

I ENJOY REALLY SPICY FOOD, BUT NO: Conquering The Carolina Reaper Requires Self-Deceit, Milk, And A Lot Of Barf.

HOWIE CARR: Finally, accountability in the courtroom:

This is huge – a lunatic hack state judge is indicted and charged with cutting loose a twice-deported Dominican illegal immigrant arrested with drugs after throwing an ICE agent out of her courtroom so that the criminal could escape.

For what appears to be the first time, someone in a “sanctuary” jurisdiction has to answer for the coddling of these illegal immigrants who are perpetrating this a massive tidal wave of crime on the law-abiding, taxpaying citizens of the United States.

More, please.

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Don’t rule out Michelle Obama as Democrats’ Hail Mary Pass to prevent a Bernie electoral apocalypse.

VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN Is Not Happy With Bernie Sanders…

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Hiding Anti-Vaccine Ideas Only Makes Them More Powerful: Amazon and Netflix should resist government pressure to remove dangerous books and videos from their catalogs.

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NOW JOE IS REALLY IN THE RACE: President Trump Already Has a Nickname for Joe Biden.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BATHROOM BATTLES’ WAR ROOM: NYT Institutes Double-Locked, Tampon-Equipped Gender-Neutral Bathrooms.

THE SCRUTON TAPES: An anatomy of a modern hit job.

The hit job on Sir Roger can be seen as a classic of the genre: he was sacked within five hours of the Twitter storm breaking. His fate offers a perfect case study in the art of modern character assassination. Except that in this instance, it unravelled and the whole nature of the trick can now be exposed. It is worth examining in some detail.

Read the whole thing.

POPULATION BOMBED! Ever since Malthus, one environmental panic after another has been driven by the idea that there are just too many people on the Earth. Now comes a book from Profs. Pierre Derochers and Joanna Szurmak, who I had the pleasure of meeting in person, that goes a long way towards explaining why we’re not dead yet – and how the pessimists just keep getting it so wrong.

FLASHBACK: When Rape Matters, And When It Doesn’t.

MASSACHUSETTS JUDGE, COURT OFFICER CHARGED WITH OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE:

Judge Joseph, the indictment alleges, allowed an illegal immigrant wanted by immigration officers to leave Newton District Court without being detained for possible deportation.

“I’m not gonna allow them to come in here,” the judge is alleged to have told the man’s defense attorney. She was basically keeping an ICE officer on the outside of the courtroom.

Read the whole thing.

COLD WAR II: Analyzing The First Images Of Russia’s Huge Doomsday Torpedo Carrying Special Missions Sub.

It’s big. Really big. And carries some threatening weapons. But it’s an extended-hull version of the Oscar II-class subs, which weren’t quiet even by 1980s standards when the first boats were first commissioned.

AMERICAN GREATNESS: PERSONIFIED

COLLEAGUE TO ME: “Congratulations. I don’t think I’d have been able to pull that argument off.”

Me to colleague: “Well, you’re a tax lawyer. Me, I’m more of a bullshit lawyer.”

Colleague: “We need to teach those skills to our students.”

Me: “Oh, I do.”

GLENN DEFEATS REAGAN! John Merline explains why that Morning Consult poll on Biden and Trump doesn’t mean much, contrary to Drudge.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: THESE Are the Most Telling Failures of Socialism.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: “Joe Biden’s Career Is A Testament To The Hard Left Turn Of The Democratic Party. The number of stances a former moderate has to reject to be accepted by his party’s base is amazing,” David Harsanyi writes at the Federalist. Although to be fair, that hard left base isn’t cozying up to Ol’ Joe just yet:

Shades of the twists and turns Hillary had to make in 2016 to be both nostalgic of the 1990s, while rejecting virtually all of Bill’s policies.

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PRIORITIES: San Fran. Government Concerned with E-Cigs, Not Poop, Drug Needles.

THE TROUBLE WITH DENTISTRY: It’s much less scientific—and more prone to gratuitous procedures—than you may think. I much prefer it to the alternative.

“WE HAVE A REAL IMMIGRATION CRISIS AND THAT THE SOLUTION IS A HIGH WALL WITH A BIG GATE — BUT A SMART GATE,” says…the NYT’s Thomas Friedman?

“We have a president who actually, when you think about it, Wolf, he has the chops with his base,” Friedman continued. “If he were to sit down, call Nancy Pelosi up, say, ‘We’re going up to Camp David. You bring your immigration team, I’ll bring mine. I’ll leave Stephen Miller at home, and we will actually sort out a compromise here.’ … Democrats were ready to fund more border security, but at the same time we’re going to create a legal pathway for people here, limits the number of ICE arrests and we’re going to have a rational inflow of people.”

As David Martosko of London Daily Mail quips on Twitter, “First Cher, and now Thomas Friedman. These things happen in threes, so it’s your move [Kathy Griffin].”

FIVE WAYS MUELLER TEAM BROKE THE RULES: Ever heard of Rule 3.8? If you have, you are likely a lawyer or somebody who regularly works with lawyers. Rule 3.8 is the ABA’s directive to prosecutors that, among much else, they “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused …”

Adam Mill, writing in today’s edition of The Federalist, cites Rule 3.8 in his analysis of “Five Times The Mueller Probe Broke Prosecutorial Rules That Ensure Justice.” The third of the five cited by Mill is, at least IYTSHO, especially egregious as it points to the intrinsically partisan nature of the Mueller enterprise.