NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: 36 Climate Models Overestimated Warming in U.S. Corn Belt.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Wayne State: The challenges of obtaining public records from a public university.

WELL, YES: Justice Alito Has Done Nothing Wrong: The people saying otherwise don’t care; they’re just mad at his decisions and refuse to accept the outcomes.

We should start by dispensing with the pretense that this campaign against the conservative justices and the conservative legal movement is being waged in good faith or with genuine concern about ethics. It has instead been characterized by comically flimsy hit pieces, bad analogies that whitewash history, and dishonest character assassination. There is a long history of liberal and progressive judges finding implausible justifications to avoid recusal in hot-button cases, a history which continues into the biggest case of this term and is generally defended or ignored by legal commentators on the left. The institutional apparatus of universities, bar associations, journalism, and left-leaning foundations has long surrounded the justices with comfortable influences pulling them leftward, especially on social issues, and much of the current angst is about the breaking of that monopoly. You won’t find these same outlets investigating the liberal justices’ social circles or the deficiencies of their financial disclosures.

Nope. Plus: “The progressive objective, openly stated by a number of these groups, is to build support for Court-packing or similar efforts to either break centuries of precedent dictating how the Court is staffed or encourage the government to defy the Court’s rulings.”

All while bleating sanctimoniously about ethics and the rule of law.

FALLOUT: Russia Covers Up Key Budget Spending Data as War Swells Deficit. “The federal budget deficit meanwhile reached 3.41 trillion rubles ($41 billion) in the first five months of 2023, narrowing slightly in May but still exceeding the full-year plan by almost a fifth. Energy revenue shrank by over a third last month, hit by lower crude prices amid international sanctions and reduced gas exports to Europe.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Admit It Libs — Even You Wouldn’t Want Hunter Biden Dating Your Daughter. “The Biden crime family got a break this week when its junkie slow kid son was given a sweet deal thanks to godfather Giuseppe Biden’s influence, which made everyone investigating his boy understand that they’d be feeding the fishes if they actually did their jobs. That does not, however, mean that those of us on the side of truth and reality have to let the story go.”

SKED FOR 9:56 AM ET TODAY: Watch SpaceX launch 56 Starlink satellites today.

THE CARE STASI: California Moves Toward Giving Therapists Unconditional Power To ‘Emancipate’ 12 Year Olds From Their Parents.

Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D.) and state senator Scott Wiener (D.), the co-authors of the bill, reiterated on Tuesday that they simply seek to give all children equal access to mental health services, as privately insured minors from age 12 can already receive outpatient therapy without parental consent. The bill would only apply to kids on Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid program that provides health coverage to eligible low-income residents.

“This bill protects children. It makes children safer. It makes children healthier,” said Wiener. “It’s unfortunate that this bill, like so many, has been caught up in this right-wing outrage machine.”

“We would never move a piece of policy that takes away parental discretion, to allow children to not have access to their parents,” Carrillo assured the assembled parents, drawing audible scoffs from the room. “There’s been a lot of misinformation and lies about this bill to the point that it has national and international attention as to how we treat mental health services for young people in the United States and California.”

But the bill would leap beyond the autonomy granted to children under existing law. There would be no obligation, as there is for minors on private insurance, for therapists or counselors to show that a 12-year-old patient is mature enough or in a dangerous situation before transferal to a “residential shelter.” Whether or not to inform the parents of the move would also be left to the discretion of the mental health professional, who could be an intern or trainee.

Gooder and harder, California.

DOMESTIC TERROR AND INSURRECTION: Top Tennessee Republicans Receive Suspicious Packages, Radical Trans Activism Suspected.

Speaking of radical trans terrorism, where’s the trans shooter’s manifesto?

DON SURBER: The Wages of BLM. “Congratulations, Democrats. You have demolished America’s cities and with that demolition, you crippled a civilized nation.”

Perhaps that was the goal all along.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: ProPublica’s lame hit on Alito: a ‘dark money’-funded assault on high court. “Since the Supreme Court shifted right, media coverage has, well, flip-flopped from hagiography to hit pieces fast enough to make your head spin.”

WELL, YEAH: AI Says Conservative Women Are More Attractive Than Liberal Women.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Totally unrelated.

TWO-TIER JUSTICE: Months Before Hunter Biden Plea, DOJ Touted Crackdown on Gun-Related Crimes: The Biden administration has touted its enforcement of gun-related crimes.

Well, there are no real crimes by the Nomenklatura. There aren’t allowed to be.

HMM: China Is A Dying Paper Dragon.

Last year India surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation. That might be a marginal consideration until specifics are examined. The fact is, China’s population fell for the first time in 60 years, and China is now the fastest-aging nation in human history. As most know, the population replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman. China’s 2011-2020 census (as far as CCP numbers can be trusted) shows their replacement rate is 1.3 at best. Peter Zeihan has reported the replacement rate of women in highly populated urban areas like Shanghai is 0.7!

Replacement rates, and these charts, tell us that China’s demographic collapse will occur within one generation – within a human lifetime! China’s worker-age population peaked in the last decade, and by 2050 will be less than half of what it was in 2020.
…
Further evidence of the growing economic maelstrom is the Chinese debt to GDP ratio and the level of private credit. The United States debt ratio, after spending trillions in the last two years, was 123.4% of GDP in December 2022. Chinese debt is now 279.9% of GDP. The growth of private credit in China beggars belief, making ludicrous any notion the yuan could ever challenge the dollar as a global reserve currency.

The Soviet Union looked very strong to most outsiders right up until it didn’t.

In Gorbachev, the Soviets had a leader who wasn’t willing to spill (much) blood to maintain the illusion. Whether Xi or one of his successors has such restraint remains to be seen.

DEMAND FOR HATE IN AMERICA OUTSTRIPS DEMAND: Police uncover hate hoax in San Diego. “A 39-year-old man in San Diego named Scott Rowin said he was harassed and then set on fire by a couple of men who targeted him because he is gay. . . . As described this really would be a terrible crime. But police did investigate and found the story was quite a bit different from what Rowin claimed. . . . What does seem clear is that Rowin was not set on fire by a pair of angry gay-bashers roaming the streets of San Diego looking for victims. So at this point, his story is looking like Jussie Smollett 2.0. Not coincidentally, the updated story below notes that Rowin has stopped responding to the reporter’s texts and calls seeking a reaction to the new information. Rowin should probably stop talking to the media and consider hiring a lawyer as his prior statements are not going to play well in court if he winds up facing assault charges.”

WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF POSSIBLE DAYS:  I’m still waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard/UNC cases.  I am somewhat less optimistic than I was before Allen v. Milligan.  But hope springs eternal.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Vegan Activist Group Goes After Minor League Baseball Team.

FIGHT THE POWER: NCLA Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Second Circuit, Hold CFPB’s Funding Method Unconstitutional.

WELL, WE KNOW HOW TO DO THAT, I THINK: What the World Needs Now: More CO2, Not Less.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: ProPublica’s lame hit on Alito: a ‘dark money’-funded assault on high court. “Since the Supreme Court shifted right, media coverage has, well, flip-flopped from hagiography to hit pieces fast enough to make your head spin.”