THE PROBLEM IS, NOBODY TRUSTS THE IRS OR THE FBI ANYMORE, AND WITH REASON: IRS: No Political Influence In Comey|McCabe Audits.

#RESISTANCE: Beverly Hills will defy Los Angeles County mask mandate if it is reinstated. “How refreshing.”

TURLEY CRITIQUE OF ANTI-FREE SPEECHERS: And speaking of censorship, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley has in recent years found himself increasingly on the “wrong” — that is, pro liberty, pro freedom of expression — side of multiple issues.

Despite that positioning, the Journal of Law & Public Policy, an independent publication of Right Harvard students, has published Turley’s lengthy and richly detailed analysis of the history of free speech in America since John Stuart Mill. Highly recommended from this corner because of Turley’s superb explication of how contemporary censorship advocates corrupt Mill’s concept of Harm and liberty.

NOTE: This post has been updated to correct Turley’s law school and to more accurately describe the Journal of Law & Public Policy. Apologies to readers for the errors and thanks to my ever-vigilant friend, Eugene Volokh, for diplomatically pointing them out.

I’M ACTUALLY SURPRISED BY THIS: W.H.O. on monkeypox: Gay men should maybe consider limiting their sexual partners.

WE’RE LAUGHING AT THEM, NOT WITH THEM: The Left Can’t Meme: Stacey Abrams Edition.

LEFTISTS ARE TOTALITARIAN BY NATURE: At This Manhattan Middle School School, Sixth-Graders Are Asked To Surveil Friends and Family for ‘Microaggressions.’

SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS ACTIVELY AIDED CDC CENSORSHIP: A treasure trove of documents obtained by the America First Institute and shared with the Washington Free Beacon make clear the active partnership between Facebook, Twitter and Google with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in censoring what the government viewed as “misinformation” about COVID-19.

“Over the course of at least six months, starting in December 2020, CDC officials regularly communicated with personnel at Twitter, Facebook, and Google over ‘vaccine misinformation.’ At various times, CDC officials would flag specific posts by users on social media platforms such as Twitter as ‘example posts,'” according to Joseph Simonson.

One of the many emails included among the documents is an email that “shows a senior CDC official appeared at Google’s 2020 ‘Trusted Media Summit.’ The conference, according to its website, was ‘for journalists, fact-checkers, educators, researchers and others who work in the area of fact-checking, verification, media literacy, and otherwise fighting misinformation.'”

SCOTT MCKAY: No, America Isn’t Over. “But a political era — that of the New Deal Democrats — is coming to its inglorious end.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I’m a professional bridesmaid, which means brides hire me to stand in their wedding. Brides call me for many reasons, but my hiring is usually a secret — sometimes even from their partner. “At most of the weddings I work at, the client asks me to make sure nobody knows I’m hired — sometimes including the person they’re marrying. The bride wants me to fully pretend that I’m her real friend, and to make sure that happens, I often change my identity. I do this mostly by changing my hair color and my name.”

I remember in the movie Dream Lover, the psychopathic Mädchen Amick character hired temps to play her friends at the wedding, since she didn’t have any. What once was a Hollywood fairy tale is now reality!

LONG STORY SHORT ON DARWIN’S DOUBT: Charles Darwin was a smart guy and he recognized one very big problem with his theory of evolution. As this new Discovery Science video on HillFaith makes clear, it’s still a big problem.

I tend toward the theistic evolution side of things, so this may not be a show-stopper but people who are a lot smarter than me have been debating it for a century and a half now, so it’s well-worth serious attention.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Cruz Says ‘Democrats Are Openly Racist,’ and It’s True. “Modest gains by Republicans in support among Hispanic and African-American voters significantly threaten the electoral prospects of Democrats.”

Megan Fox: I Do Not Consent to Public Displays of Kink and I Don’t Care Where You Fall On the Oppression Meter. “It’s time to have this conversation, folks. It’s time to talk about kink.”

Yours Truly: From World War III to Ukraine: Are the Russians &#%-(@^ Crazy? “Forgive the silly headline, but it was the best this history nerd could come up with after a recent news report had me going on a deep dive into the bad old days of the Cold War.”

HE’S A JERK. ALSO, HOW’S THAT SHOOTING INVESTIGATION GOING? ‘Who is Alec Baldwin?’ examines actor’s fame, many scandals: ‘Zero capacity to care.’

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The space economy grew at fastest rate in years to $469 billion in 2021, report says.

SINCE BIDEN WANTS TO REDEFINE A RECESSION: Jeff Dunetz at The Lid helpfully offers a number of suggested new definitions. For example, recession could be redefined as “when the economy is so bad that President Biden reopens the Keystone pipeline and allows drilling at ANWR.” Jeff is a creative fellow and he has a bunch of alternatives you will appreciate.

REINFORCE SUCCESS, NOT WEAKNESS: SpaceX requests spectrum to upgrade Starlink mobile services.

OPEN THREAD: For your delectation.

KINDA-SORTA SPACEFLIGHT: Space Perspective unveils capsule design for balloon-borne tourist flights (images).

THEY’LL DO AS WELL AS THE CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY: Former Republicans and Democrats form new third U.S. political party. “Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials announced on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America’s dysfunctional two-party system. The new party, called Forward and whose creation was first reported by Reuters, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics, founding members told Reuters.”

The two parties we have now stink, but I’ll be surprised if this gets a lot of traction. Why? “The party, which is centrist, has no specific policies yet.”

AND HERE I THOUGHT RESISTANT STARCH WAS BAD FOR YOU: Dietary Supplement Cuts Risk of Hereditary Cancer by 60%, Scientists Find. “To be clear, this trial was carried out on people already genetically predisposed to developing cancer and doesn’t necessarily apply to the broader public. But there could be a lot to learn by better understanding how resistive starch can help protect against cancer.”

IT’S NOT SO MUCH A BEACHHEAD AS A FIFTH COLUMN: Our Study: Critical Race Theories Have “Established a Beachhead at the Military Service Academies.”

REPORT: Joe Manchin Agrees to Tax Hikes, Spending Increases, Green New Deal Agenda Items.

As John Cooper of the Heritage Foundation tweets, “Screwing over your own state is a rare feat, but boy is [Manchin] about to do it.

NIH WANTS TO SUPPRESS NAME IT MADE PUBLIC MONTHS AGO: A federal judge has agreed with the remarkable request by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to withhold the name of a Chinese scientist and his NIH correspondent.

What makes the agency’s request remarkable is that NIH made both names public two years ago! Zach Steiber at The Epoch Times has the details that scream something is really, really rotten in Denmark/NIH.

PERHAPS IF ENGINEERS WERE TREATED BETTER WITHIN ORGANIZATIONS, MORE PEOPLE WOULD WANT TO BE ENGINEERS: Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems. “The graph the company showed at the latest VLSI Symposium, however, was a real shocker. While computer science course take-up had gone up by over 90 percent in the past 50 years, electrical engineering (EE) had declined by the same amount. The electronics graduate has become rarer than an Intel-based smartphone.”

BREAKING: Trump to Sue CNN, Other Media Outlets for Defamation.

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: Our children will not know it is a different country. All we can hope to leave them now is money debt.