YES: There is an Existential Threat to the Very Idea of American Citizenship and Democrats are Leading the Charge.

SECULAR PURITANS FEAR SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW SOMEONE IS DEVOUT: Greg Weiner’s paraphrase of H.L. Mencken’s famous crack about Puritans is found in the former’s excellent essay today on Law & Liberty concerning the Supreme Court’s Bladensburg Cross decision.

Weiner offers lots of good sense, including this: “Secularists need not snuff the approach of tyranny in every expression of ‘Merry Christmas,’ and Christians need not interpret the greeting ‘Happy Holidays’ as a war on Christmas. Both need the self-confidence to believe they can flourish on their merits without a conquest of the political.”

But what if the “constitutional morality” that encouraged such prudential tolerance as Wilmoore Kendall and George Carey argued came to us via The Federalist Papers is beyond restoration?

TRACKING U.S.-DPRK RELATIONS ON THE 69TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE KOREAN WAR:

Overall, President Trump appears to still maintain a healthy amount of mistrust of Kim Jong-un, refusing to remove troops from the Korean peninsula and maintaining all sanctions. Secretary of State Pompeo embodies this mistrust when he underlines that there will be no sanction relief until the complete, verifiable denuclearization of North Korea.

As President Trump continues to engage with Supreme Leader Kim, he must stand his ground and never give too much, or else he risks threatening what the U.S. did to help South Korea 69 years ago.

Read the whole thing.

OK, CHIEF: Warren Calls for Decriminalizing Illegal Border Crossing.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: University offers ten separate orientations for Native Americans, black students, others. I guess universities can replace those knocked-down statues of Thomas Jefferson with statues of George Wallace and Lester Maddox.

I DID ENJOY IT: Enjoy this video of a screaming Antifa protester being detained for assault.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, HOORAY-FOR-THE-SHAKERS EDITION: ‘Having one less child’ best way to reduce CO2 emissions, former prof says.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Agrees to Resuscitate Dying RUSSIA-Collusion Hoax. “Why? Well, the politically expedient RUSSIA-collusion hoax is fading from the news cycle. The late night court jesters are short on unfunny material to quack out. Current and former subpoenaed WH administration officials are not providing the ammunition information for show trial hearings and their contested appearances are going to be held up while the Democrats’ demands work their way through the legal system. How to keep this story alive? Let’s get Mueller to testify! Mueller always plays ball.”

Indeed.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Conditions On The Streets Of San Francisco Are Comparable To “The Slums Of Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, Jarkarta, And Manila.”

When Leilani Farha paid a visit to San Francisco in January, she knew the grim reputation of the city’s homeless encampments. In her four years as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, Farha has visited the slums of Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, Jarkarta, and Manila. The crisis in San Francisco, she said, is comparable to these conditions.

Related: Gavin Newsom to California’s critics: State is ‘still the envy of the world.’

VIDEO: IL Sen. Taunts Gun Owner: Forget The Fine, Maybe We’ll Just Take Your Firearms.

The concerned gun owner pointed to SB107 and said the purpose of it was “to take away [his] semiautomatic firearms.”

Morrison then interjected that the purpose was not to take them, but to prevent any future sales.

The gun owner responded by pointing out that the ban on future sales included a fine for current owners who did not hand their guns over. He said, “You want me to turn them over to the state police unless I pay a fine for each firearm and register them, then I get to keep them.”

Morrison concurred, saying, “Okay.”

The gun owner then asked, “If I get to keep it–if I pay a fine and register it–then, how dangerous is it in the first place and why do you need to ban it all?”

People in attendance applauded the gun owner’s point and once applause died Morrison said, “Well, you just maybe changed my mind. Maybe we won’t have a fine at all, maybe it’ll just be a confiscation and we won’t have to worry about paying the fine.”

Charming.

I’M EXPECTING A SHIP-SHATTERING KABOOM: Navy’s Railgun Now Undergoing Tests In New Mexico, Could Deploy On Ship In Northwest.

“The installation of the railgun began earlier this year and required a large effort for the mount, gun, power controls, displays, and functional ties into the range,” Site Manager John Winstead said in an official statement. “The object of the test was essentially a shakedown of the newly-installed mount with accompanying power containers, controls, and a fully functional execution team.”

At least one live-fire test occurred on May 15, 2019, according to the Navy. This involved the firing four rounds for diagnostic and verification purposes.

“Initial estimated test dates were reduced from three to two days due to the success of the firings,” an official news item explained. “The tests were very successful and alleviated the need to have further installation and check-out testing required for verification,” Winstead added.

Impressive. Most impressive.

FLASHBACK: Russians! Under my bed!

LESS THAN ZERO: Iran to abandon more nuclear deal commitments after slamming U.S. sanctions.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HAVING IT BOTH WAYS: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, along with The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and others, have filed a brief in the Fourth Circuit asking the appellate court to affirm that Maryland’s Online Electioneering Transparency and Accountability Act is unconstitutional. (A federal district court held it unconstitutional in January, and the State of Maryland is taking an appeal to defend the law).

What’s that law about? You might remember certain newspapers (*ahem*) have been pounding the drums for two years now about dark and secretive influences online responsible for “hacking our democracy” and putting The Bad Orange Man in the White House. Thousands of column inches (not to mention hours of cable TV time) have been dedicated to demanding that government step in and make sure the “correct” political voices are heard and the “fake” ones be filtered out.

So what’s the problem here? Oh, buried in the RCFP’s press release is this telling nugget:

“The brief also notes the significant and adverse financial impact that the law will have on news organizations if they must comply with the disclosure requirements, noting that Google stopped accepting political advertisements in Maryland when the law went into effect. “The Act would be especially devastating to local and regional newspapers,” the brief states, emphasizing the financial burden smaller news outlets would incur in order to simply comply with the advertising reporting requirements.

Allocating staff time and financial resources to reporting advertisements could directly take away from the amount of journalism that the news organization can produce, Reporters Committee Staff Attorney Caitlin Vogus said. If news outlets were required to disclose publication-specific advertising information, it could also potentially compromise their competitive edge in the local news market.”

So the core of the matter is that our Gatekeepers of Democracy want accountability in political advertising, but are not willing to share the burden. They want the glorious ad revenue (and believe me, political season is Christmastime for publishers) but want someone else to carry the expenses associated with that revenue. As my ConLaw Professor Burt Neuborne once said: “The First Amendment is not a license to print money.”

STARSHIP TROOPERS: Beto O’Rourke Proposes ‘War Tax’ On Everyone Who Hasn’t Served In The Military.

YES: Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge.

I’m interviewing Chris, a 52-year-old man living a small coastal town, for the second time. We’ve been exploring the new checkout process for a client’s redesigned website. The new site isn’t performing as well as the company thought it would, so I’m exploring why and seeing what we can learn from competitors.

“Only 2 rooms left? They don’t expect me to believe that do they? You see that everywhere.”

I leave with a wry smile. The client won’t be happy, but at least the project findings are becoming clear. Companies in certain sectors use the same behavioral interventions repeatedly. Hotel booking websites are one example. Their sustained, repetitive use of scarcity (e.g., “Only two rooms left!”) and social proof (“16 other people viewed this room”) messaging is apparent even to a casual browser.

For Chris the implication was clear: this “scarcity” was just a sales ploy, not to be taken seriously.

Much more at the link.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Jonathan Turley: Washington owes Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch an apology.

WEALTH TAXES AND INCOME INEQUALITY, AND BUFFOONERY:

Eli Broad has written a column for the New York Times that manages to be wrong at almost every opportunity it has to be wrong — economically, politically, grammatically, etc. It’s really quite something.

It’s Kevin Williamson doing an old-fashioned Fisking, so read the whole thing.

AND STILL DO NOTHING TO REDUCE COSTS: Bernie’s College Debt Plan Would Erase Debt, Even for the Wealthy, By Taxing Investments.

FLASHBACK: ‘Tolerant’ educators exile Trump voters from campus.

TO BE FAIR, TV AND BOOKS DEPICT PEOPLE AS WORTHLESS BECAUSE THEY ARE WRITTEN BY LEFTISTS WHO KNOW ONLY OTHER LEFTISTS:  Most People Are Not Assholes.

MORE ON OCCASIONAL CORTEX’S SEMANTIC DERANGEMENT AND CONTAGIOUS EVIL:  Fallacy of Equivocation.