O.J. SIMPSON DIES OF CANCER AT AGE 76, FAMILY SAYS: “Simpson, whose life as an American sports hero quickly turned when he was charged with the 1994 murder of his wife and her friend, died on Wednesday at the age of 76, his family announced on social media.”

UPDATE: Found via Joel Engel, the New York Times’ obit for Simpson contains this showstopping moment:

O.J. Simpson, who ran to fame on the football field, made fortunes as a Black all-American in movies, advertising and television, and was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation, died on Wednesday. He was 76.

The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media. The announcement did not say where he died.

A jury in the murder trial, which held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, cleared Mr. Simpson, but the case ruined his world.

As Engel replies, “Nicole and Ron slaughtered. O.J.’s world ruined.”

Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: O.J. Simpson Excited For God To Tell Him Who Real Killer Was.

CHANGE: Highly Skilled Professionals Want Your Work But Not Your Job. “At almost every company we talk with, managers are facing the same recruiting challenge. They simply do not have the talent they need in-house, and they’re unable to persuade highly skilled professionals to come on board full-time. As a result, companies are embracing the freelance model more than ever before. ‘To stay competitive in our manufacturing, digital, and veterinary services,’ says Michele Cefola, the global vice president of talent acquisition at Mars, ‘we must continually attract people with the latest skill sets.’ This is particularly true for tech and digital experts, her colleague Jeremy Andrulis, the vice president of talent, told us. ‘And people with the most sought-after skills are more than likely to be freelancers.’ He went on to explain why this works for Mars: ‘Freelancers tend to jump from one project to another. That’s essentially what we’re paying for—their accumulated experiences and the fresh external perspectives they bring.'”

QUESTION ASKED: Eclipse visitors were supposed to overwhelm Texas and its roads. Where was everybody?

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE! Mayo Clinic argues it has legal right to punish professors for voicing unpopular opinions.

These opinions aren’t even “unpopular,” except among the kinds of people who run institutions like the Mayo Clinic.

ENDORSED: Republicans Should Refocus on School Choice Amid All of the Dems’ Abortion Noise.

COLLUSION: Florida Professor sues over law aimed at stopping Chinese Communist influence in universities.

SEAN TRENDE: Will Black Voters Back Republicans? A Political Science Perspective.

At this point, there’s not much dispute that polling shows a substantial swing vis-à-vis 2020, which is particularly strong among minority voters. Horse-race polls in the 2024 rematch typically show Donald Trump attracting in the neighborhood of 20% of the black vote, which would be a historically strong showing.

Some want to dismiss these findings. I’m certainly surprised by and even a bit skeptical about them. After all, neither Ronald Reagan nor Richard Nixon had won anything approaching 20% of the black vote during their landslide reelection victories. To see Trump winning the largest share of the black vote since Richard Nixon in 1960 is jarring, to say the least.

At the same time, whenever you find yourself questioning a poll result – much less repeated poll results – you should ask yourself, “Why do we read polls in the first place?” If we’re going to be dismissive of findings that contradict even strongly held prior assumptions, there really isn’t much use for this kind of social science. That doesn’t mean you abandon prior views instantly in the face of contrary evidence, but rather that an effort should be made to incorporate the data into those views. And as the data mounts, those views should gradually shift.

Which brings us to White and Laird. The fundamental question that they ask themselves can be summarized as this: Why, when around one-third of black voters self-describe as “conservative,” do blacks still give upwards of 90% of their votes to the liberal party? As the authors demonstrate, this isn’t just a matter of black voters defining “conservative” in a different light than white voters. Across a variety of issues – including some racial issues – a large portion of the African American electorate is conventionally conservative.

White and Laird aren’t the first to consider this question. They look at previous theories – including that black voters share a sense of linked fate, or that they simply view themselves as a part of a “team” – and find them insufficient. Instead, they offer a theory they call “racialized social constraint.”

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that I believe Republicans could earn more black votes, if more Republicans — aside from just Donald Trump, that is — would do the campaigning necessary to earn them.

INFLATION IS TRANSITORY, OR A MYTH, OR SOMETHING: USPS Proposes Raising Prices of Stamps to 73 Cents.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Does the US Military Suck With Small Arms?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: RFK Jr.’s X Factor Cred Is Picking Up Some Steam. “Near the end of the Briefing the morning after the announcement I said that I hoped that Kennedy would continue ‘to be a mild source of dyspepsia for the Biden administration.’ They’re already popping Prilosec like crazy over on Team Biden whenever they’re waiting to see what drunken Klingon dialect he’s going to speak during a public appearance.”

THREE INVASIONS ON THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S WATCH: They approach near-simultaneous crises.

Three invasions with extraordinary global impact and history-shaping consequences have occurred since January 2021 — the month Joe Biden became America’s president and his administration began directing U.S. foreign and federal domestic policy.

The invasions in reverse chronological order:

1. Hamas’ October 2023 genocidal invasion of Israel. Hamas is committed to Israel’s elimination, which means committing genocide.

2. Vladimir Putin-led Russia’s February 2022 all-out conventional attack to seize Ukraine.

3. The illegal alien disruption and “political transformation” invasion that began in spring 2021 after Biden, by presidential directive, effectively ended U.S. border controls.

My latest Creators Syndicate essay.

VERY RELATED: Communist China’s TikTok War To Disintegrate America

I NEED ONE OF THESE: Compressed Air Duster 3-Gear Keyboard Cleaner. #CommissionEarned I just ordered one, my keyboard is a mess since I started working on a new book.

WHAT WERE THEY DOING IN GERMANY? Married ISIS couple who ‘raped two Yazidi slave girls aged 12 and FIVE and would punish them with a broomstick or scalding hot water’ are arrested in Germany. “The Iraqi suspects, identified only as Twana H. S. and Asia R. A., are accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership of a foreign terrorist organisation, the federal prosecutor’s office said.”

COVID FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY:

As Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times a few days later in 2020: When Coronavirus Lockdowns Go Too Far. The closures were necessary. Chasing picnickers and closing paint aisles is petty overreach.

The tweet shows two silhouettes, extending in familiar policeman shapes. The text is as cheery as a beat-walking bobby in an Edwardian children’s book: “If you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location no one will find you, don’t be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows!” And the message, directed in this case to the inhabitants of Central Bedfordshire in England, is an example of how even when they’re essential, anti-pandemic policies are always at risk of going a little bit insane.

I’m a skeptic, to put it mildly, of the skeptics of lockdowns and social distancing requirements. At best they make an argument for more speed and optimism in reopening*, not a case that there’s an alternative world where the American economy stayed open** and steady while the virus was killing more people weekly than car crashes, flu or cancer and New York’s monthly death toll was climbing above that of September 2001***.

But the skeptics’ determination to catalog every petty tyranny inflicted in the name of quarantine is an important public service — not just because overreach always needs critics, but because petty tyrannies today are obstacles to the adaptation we need to get to semi-normalcy tomorrow.

In response to the overreach of the Central Bedfordshire rozzers, James Lileks noted:

If you sneak off into the woods for a picnic, you could be killing people and crippling the NHS, so shadowy peelers should manifest themselves and issue tickets.

Turns out this wasn’t well received:

Utter nonsense. Huge stonking heaps of bollocks. Walking to the dunes for a picnic, or heading to the field off Potter’s Lane to enjoy the sun, is absolutely harmless, and everyone knows it, and it’s corrupting the trust people would normally grant the authorities. As I once wrote about small-minded public officials: “I don’t make the laws, sir, I just enforce them with a great deal of enthusiasm.”

Back in 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.” The lockdowns gave the British police all the excuse they needed to get their inner Mosley on.

* In retrospect, Sweden would like a word here.

** As John Hinderaker wrote at Power Line a couple of weeks ago, “The New York Times looks back on covid, four years down the road, and says ‘Here’s what we’ve learned.’ I would say we have learned some things that the Times doesn’t touch, like the idiocy of shutting down stores, businesses, churches and, especially, schools.”

*** New York Times quietly admits COVID deaths were overcounted by ‘almost one-third.’

BIDEN IS SUCKING UP TO HAMAS SUPPORTERS IN MICHIGAN AND MINNESOTA, BUT WHATEVER, SWEETHEART: Marie Harf accuses Trump of antisemitism in heated Fox News interview.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: In his analysis of this year’s law school rankings, David Lat notices something: “UC Law, San Francisco, formerly known as UC Hastings Law, dropped 22 spots in this year’s ranking to #82, after falling nine places in last year’s ranking. So since its board of directors voted to change its name in 2021 (because of Serranus Clinton Hastings’s involvement in the killing and dispossession of Native Americans), the school has dropped by 31 spots. Are respondents to U.S. News reputational surveys confusing UC Law, San Francisco, with the lower-ranked University of San Francisco School of Law (#165)?”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Librarian Encouraged Libraries to Have Books and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.

WE SHOULD MAKE “ACTIVISTS” PAY DAMAGES FOR THE GLOBAL C02 EMISSIONS DUE TO KILLING NUCLEAR POWER: Activists Want Energy Companies To Pay Climate Damages. That Could Imperil US National Security, Former Joint Chiefs Say.

The “activists” are never held responsible for the damage caused by their activism.

YOU DON’T SAY: Iran Smuggles Arms to West Bank, Officials Say, to Foment Unrest With Israel.

Iran is operating a clandestine smuggling route across the Middle East, employing intelligence operatives, militants and criminal gangs, to deliver weapons to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to officials from the United States, Israel and Iran.

The goal, as described by three Iranian officials, is to foment unrest against Israel by flooding the enclave with as many weapons as it can.

The covert operation is now heightening concerns that Tehran is seeking to turn the West Bank into the next flashpoint in the long-simmering shadow war between Israel and Iran. That conflict has taken on new urgency this month, risking a broader conflict in the Middle East, as Iran vowed to retaliate for an Israeli strike on an embassy compound that killed seven Iranian armed forces commanders.

Many weapons smuggled to the West Bank largely travel along two paths from Iran through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, the officials said. As the arms cross borders, the officials added, they change hands among a multinational cast that can include members of organized criminal gangs, extremist militants, soldiers and intelligence operatives. A key group in the operation, the Iranian officials and analysts said, are Bedouin smugglers who carry the weapons across the border from Jordan into Israel.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the endless “humanitarian relief” supplies allowed directly into Gaza provide even more cover.

SO EXPEL THEM AND PROSECUTE THEM: Anti-Israel Agitators Derail Dinner at Home of UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

Related: A Mostly Peaceful Castration: CNN Eulogizes a Terrorist.

Also: Berkeley Students Post Anti-Semitic Cartoons, Disrupt Dinner at Dean Chemerinsky’s Home: “I never thought I would see such blatant antisemitism.”

When you import and reward antisemitism, you get more of it.

Plus: Flashback: Welcome to the Party, Pal!

THE NAVY IS HAVING A BAD DECADE: US Navy warship commander mocked for holding rifle with scope mounted backward.

WELL, THAT’S PRETTY MUCH THEIR JOB: Univision Tosses a Softball Interview to Biden as he Panders to Hispanic Voters.

KAKISTOCRACY AT WORK (CONT’D): Trouble At The Fed: Investigation Into Lisa Cook’s Academic Record Raises Questions.

Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.

Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously. . . .

In a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals without proper attribution. Both practices appear to violate Michigan State University’s own written academic standards.

We will review several examples which, taken together, establish a pattern of careless scholarship at best or, at worst, academic misconduct.

This keeps happening. I will note, though, that “plagiarism” comes from the Latin word for “kidnapping,” so one cannot (in my opinion) plagiarize oneself, anymore than one could kidnap oneself. More thoughts from me on plagiarism here.

INDEED: John Fetterman Continues to Defy Expectations.

A NEW LEFTY TALKING POINT IS THAT ELON KILLED TESLA, BUT ACTUALLY THE WHOLE EV INDUSTRY IS IN TROUBLE: Poll: Even More Americans Refuse to Consider EVs.

The truth is, even cool EVs are a niche product. Nothing wrong with a niche product, except that the Biden Administration and the media — but I repeat myself — have sold them as a panacea.