UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Florida man threatened to destroy town with army of turtles.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Muscle power might be key to long life.

POLITICO: White House messaging falls in line with Trump’s sanctuary cities proposal. “Sanders’ acknowledgment that administration officials are revisiting the proposal follows denials from The White House and Department of Homeland Security to The Washington Post late last week that the idea was still under discussion.”

When White House messaging is in disarray, that’s a disaster. As opposed to stories like this one about White House messaging coming together, which is a disaster.

#NTTAWWT: 2 dads, 1 mom: Bald eagles raising 3 young in rare single nest and you can watch.

WEIRD, WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM? Europe at risk from spread of tropical insect-borne diseases.

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Measles outbreaks kills 1200, mostly children, in Madagascar.

SURPRISING EXACTLY NO ONE: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘I Support Impeaching This President.’

BREAKING: Massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

More to come.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Abolish the Income Tax, Abolish the IRS. “Everybody hates income taxes. Some people say there are too many loopholes, or too few incentives, or that they’re too high, or too low, or that the system is rigged against (insert your favorite group here), or biased in favor of (insert your least favorite group here) or that the IRS is abusive, or the IRS is too lenient, and — almost everybody agrees — the whole thing is corrupt and corrupting.”

And all the complaints are correct. How about a Fair Tax instead?

Much more at the link.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Treating gut bacteria could help ease autism symptoms.

HOW A BREWERY comes together. I have to say, the craft-brew revolution has been one of the more dramatic changes of the past few decades.

WHEW? Julian Assange’s lawyer: Poop-smearing story is total crap.

IS DOJ’S CRIMINAL REFERRAL PROBE OF CHRISTOPHER STEELE CLOSED? The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland poses a key question and offers a disturbing possible answer.

DISEASE IS ANTI-VAX, TOO: Measles Cases Continue to Soar, Stirring Concern Over Long-Term Effects.

The virus continues to flare up in the U.S. among groups whose vaccination rates are low, often after exposure to overseas travelers who return with the disease. An outbreak among Orthodox Jews in New York City this year has led to a surge in U.S. cases. New York City health officials said Friday that there have been 285 measles cases in the city, and more than 11,000 people have been exposed to the virus.

Researchers who study the virus say that concern about these outbreaks extends beyond the effect of the initial infection to longer-term implications for the health of the victims.

The virus may leave the immune system in a temporary state of amnesia, leaving the body’s defenses unable to remember and effectively attack some invaders it has seen before, according to emerging research. Immune-system memory loss could leave the body prone to more severe infections for two to three years, until it relearns from hard-won experience how to fend off attackers, researchers have said.

“You don’t have that quick response,” said Michael Mina, an assistant professor at Harvard University who studies immune-system response to the virus. “You have to create it from scratch again.”

I’ve always thought we’d beat infectious disease in the 21st Century, at least in the developed world, but things like this make me wonder.

BLUE ON BLUE: A Shouting Match, Nasty Personal Attacks and a Growing Rift Among N.Y. Democrats.

FLASHBACK, MAY 2017: Was Obama administration illegal spying worse than Watergate?

In 1972, some employees of President Nixon’s re-election committee were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant a bug. This led to Nixon’s resignation and probably would have led to his felony prosecution had he not been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

But if a single bugging of the political opposition is enough to bring down a presidency — and maybe lead to an unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former president — then what are we to make of the recently unveiled Obama administration program of massively spying on political opponents in violation of clearly established law?

Because that’s what was unveiled last week.

It’s now become much clearer what happened. And yes, it was much worse than Watergate, since it involved the perversion of existing government agencies into political spying and persecution.

Plus:

Will the Justice Department investigate and prosecute former Obama officials? It seems hard to imagine. But then, so did Nixon’s resignation, when the Watergate burglary was first discovered.

This debacle also raises serious questions about the viability of our existing “intelligence community.” In the post-World War II era, we gave massive power to the national security apparatus. In part, that power was granted in the belief that professionalism and patriotism would lead people in those agencies to refuse to let their work be used for partisan political purposes.

It now seems apparent that we overestimated the patriotism and professionalism of the people in these agencies, who allowed them to be politically weaponized by the Obama administration. That being true, if we value democracy, can we permit them to exist in their current form?

Answer: No.

UM… I Got Stoned and Did My Taxes. “Being comfortably high makes the burden of taxes a bit less awful.”

UGH: Why Is Mitch McConnell Telling 2020 GOP Candidates to Run ‘Independent of Trump’? “McConnell’s admonition shows he is woefully out of touch with the realities of the 2020 campaign.”

THE SMARTEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRATING EX-FELONS INTO THE ECONOMY IS BY EMPLOYER TAX INCENTIVES: The dumbest way is the EEOC’s way—accusing employers who shy away from hiring ex-felons of race discrimination.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Are there any limits to illegal immigration? Not unless illegal aliens start voting Republican.

“I’LL NEVER FORGET WHERE I WAS AND WHAT I WAS DOING THE MOMENT CHER BECAME A REPUBLICAN:” Cher Reverses Course On Mass Immigration — ‘if My State Can’t Take Care Of Its Own, How Can It Take Care Of More?’

WHO? WHAT? Presidential Hopeful Marianne Williamson on Reparations: ‘Whatever It Costs’ It’s a ‘Debt We Owe.’ “Williamson says reparations to descendants of slaves would create a ‘spiritual force’.”

FLASHBACK: HOW AND WHY HAMAS FOUNDED CAIR.