JON BON JOVI TO ROGER WATERS: Drop Dead.

A PERSON WHO CONSIDERS BLOCKING HER PREFERRED POLICIES VIA DEMOCRATIC MEANS AS “TERRORISM” DESERVES THE NAME “STASI:” Linda Stasi: State Dept. must list NRA as terrorist organization.

IF YOU SUPPORT GUN CONTROL, YOU WANT MORE BLACK MEN THROWN INTO PRISON: Gun Control: More Racial Disparities Than the Drug War. “Many gun control advocates seem to be under the impression that governments can pass new felony legislation that will take guns off the streets without requiring more aggressive policing, without putting more people in prison, and without the racial disparities in enforcement that characterize the rest of our criminal justice system. This is a fantasy: Gun control and tough-on-crime politics are two sides of the same coin. If governments are serious about cracking down on illegal guns in a meaningful way, they will need to use all of the same tools that they used to crack down on crime from the 1970s onward—tough criminal penalties (i.e., long prison sentences for offenders) and aggressive policing, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods that tend to have the highest rates of crime. Indeed, as Reason‘s A. Barton Hinkle pointed out, New York’s notorious stop-and-frisk policy, which left-wing mayor Bill DeBlasio led the charge against, was arguably one of the most effective gun control policies in the country.”

HMM: The new IBD/TIPP poll has Ben Carson in the lead — with 24% — and Trump at 17%. “How incredibly strange… and this follows on Carson’s much-noticed statement that he wouldn’t accept a Muslim as President. Can it be that what seemed like an unforced error actually helped his cause? Trump boosted his cause by making statements that look — to mainstream commentators — as though they outright disqualify him from being taken seriously. Perhaps it’s not Trump’s style and bluster that have put him in the lead, but the substance itself, the very substance that horrifies moderates. Because here’s Carson, with his completely different demeanor and tone, vaulting ahead saying something that anybody serious was supposed to know you just don’t say.”

ERICH PRATT IN USA TODAY: Gun-Free Zones Are Killing Us.

AT SOME POINT, YES: Should older drivers undergo road tests to keep licenses?

Of course, it’s easy for me to say that. By the time I’m that old, we’ll have self-driving cars and it won’t matter.

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INFERIORS ARE SUPPOSED TO AVERT THEIR GAZE: 12-Year-Old Boy Suspended for Looking at a Girl. At Her Face. That’s It.

There’s a War On Boys, all right. If a principal did this to my kid, I’d make a point of turning his/her life into a living hell. Which, I’m happy to see, this boy’s mom seems to be doing.

JOE PAPPALARDO: 3 Things the U.S. Could Do About Syria, And Why They’re All Bad Choices. I kinda like #1, but I think it’s a no-go for Obama, who seems not to much like the Kurds for some reason.

MARS MOVIES: The Good, The Bad, And The Ridiculous.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK, BUSTED: By Slate, astonishingly enough.

BIAS OF ASSOCIATED PRESS SHINES THROUGH: While casually flipping through the Saturday edition of a local paper, the Key West Citizen, I happened upon a short piece under the “Nation” section about Carly Fiorina, the title of which caught my eye: (as I’m sure it did many others) “Fiorina makes distortion of Planned Parenthood a centerpiece.”

After Googling this title, it turns out that the larger, “parent” piece (no pun intended) of the blurb was written by Bill Barrow at AP, as it appears in newspapers throughout the country, and contains the typical mainstream media’s minimal, begrudging attempt at “balance,” which is then robustly counterbalanced with thinly disguised bias, as evidenced in word choices and selective quotes.

But the patently biased headline itself–without any content at all– appears on the webpages of multiple local papers and televisions stations throughout the country (here, here, here, here, and here, for example).

And the blurb that is being spawned from Barrow’s larger piece is so one-sided that I almost spit out my coffee.  The Key West Citizen piece is not available online (the paper’s horrible search engine turns up nothing on “Carly Fiorina” at all). But it’s very short, so I will reproduce it in toto for the Insta readers to enjoy:

Fiorina makes distortion of Planned Parenthood a centerpiece

Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina has spent the last two weeks repeating an erroneous description of videos secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists. That seems bound to continue as she makes her opposition to Planned Parenthood a centerpiece of her 2016 campaign.

Campaigning in South Carolina on Friday, Fiorina said she “absolutely” stands by her criticism of Planned Parenthood. She accused the women’s health organization–it’s also the nation’s largest abortion provider–of pushing “propaganda” against her while being “aided and abetted by the media.”

Oh, the irony of that last sentence!

The AP’s aiding and abetting of a hit job against Fiorina aside, notice the incredibly lopsided content of this blurb. It contains several assertions:

1.  Carly Fiorina has spend the last two weeks lying;

2.  She has been lying about Planned Parenthood videos that were “secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists”;

3.  Fiorina opposes Planned Parenthood; and

4.  Planned Parenthood is a provider of “women’s health,” which just happens to also include a large number of abortions.

There is no discussion of the content of the videos at all. The piece implies that there are some loony bin, right-wing activists who have secretly recorded some videos that distort Planned Parenthood, a provider of “women’s health.” Most readers, who rely on the mainstream media, have probably never even seen these disgusting Planned Parenthood videos. So they read this piece and assume that Cary Fiorina is going around lying about them simply because she–like other conservatives, of course–is opposed to “women’s health.”

She is, in short, a woman who cannot be trusted on women’s issues. The desired implication for the reader of the AP piece is that Carly Fiorina is a liar and opposed to “women’s health.” 

One cannot even imagine the AP running a piece on Hillary Clinton that is so overtly biased. I mean, Hillary would never lie or distort anything, right? 

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Hypertension Drugs May Be More Effective if Taken at Night.

DIAL 911 FOR THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG SQUAD: Greenwich CT police captain investigates Common Core opponent.

FIGHTING ISIS ONLINE: The Islamic State is an Internet phenomenon as much as a military one. Counteracting it will require better tactics on the battlefield of social media.

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THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: MURDERED FOR EATING BEEF:

On the day Narendra Modi returned from the United States, having wowed Silicon Valley with his openness to all things digital, a Muslim man was murdered in a village a mere 30 miles from the PM’s residence, his life pulped out of him by a Hindu mob that believed that he’d eaten beef for dinner.

The contrast between the modernity of the PM’s diplomacy and the unhinged primitiveness of the mob was so stark as to appear almost make-believe, like some sort of passion play staged to remind us that — for all our pretensions as a global power — we’re still a benighted land mired in the muck of bigotry. Drive 30 miles from 21st-century New Delhi and you’re in the midst of “junglies” from the Dark Age.

Read the whole thing.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF NEW YORK WERE HIT SQUARELY BY A SUPERSTORM? “If New York—part of the Northeast megaregion—suffers a direct hit, workers will spend weeks pumping a billion gallons of brackish water out of its subway and train tunnels. The salt will corrode power lines, transformers and thousands of brakes and switches that control the trains. Some subsystems could take a year or more to restore.”

RECYCLING IS STILL GARBAGE: I was curious to see the reaction to my piece in today’s New York Times on the follies of recycling. It’s a sequel to a 1996 article that set a record for hate mail at the New York Times Magazine, and I wondered if green-minded readers would be any more receptive this time. A few of the commenters have offered counter-arguments and raised other issues, like the supposed blight of plastic garbage in our oceans — a myth that was masterfully debunked in Katherine Mangu-Ward’s recent article, “Plastic Bags Are Good For You.” But the typical reaction is nicely summarized by Carl V. Phillips, who posted a reflection on his fellow commenters:

It is quite remarkable how at least 80% of the comments so far consist of someone saying, in effect, “but I just know it is right” (without responding to Tierney’s cogent analysis), picking fights with straw man points, or pontificating about grand ideas that do not change the simple economics of the real world. I have not seen any substantive bit of analysis that finds fault with Tierney’s core points, and yet there are numerous conclusions that he is wrong. I would guess that that recycling enthusiasts fancy themselves to be more open-minded and scientifically literate than average. Apparently such “open mindedness” is reserved for criticisms of other special interests, and they dig in their heals when it is their own rites that are being questioned.

I realize that true believers don’t need rational reasons for their religion, but it would be nice to see a little soul-searching in regard to some stats in the article: To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger’s round-trip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in the front of the plane, it’s more like 100,000 bottles — and you have to make sure not to rinse any of them with hot water, because that little extra energy could more than cancel out any greenhouse benefit of your labors.

I presume Al Gore and his fellow preachers are too busy to deal with all those bottles, so will they stay home? Or at least start flying coach?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 878.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. Navy Prepares Confrontation in the South China Sea.

The United States is preparing to maneuver naval warships and aircraft close to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea, in what would be the Obama Administration’s toughest response yet to Beijing. Reportedly, the White House is readying plans to send warships within twelve nautical miles of several of the islands—a move that China claims would be an illegal violation of its sovereignty. Citing a U.N. treaty, the United States argues that man-made outposts cannot be construed as legitimate territory. . . .

President Obama has been under increasing pressure from, for example, Arizona Senator John McCain to be more assertive in the South China Sea, and in the run-up to last week’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the White House promised to address the South China Sea disputes. Yet although Obama and Xi made some headway toward resolving other issues, their meeting concluded without any agreement about this issue, and China expert Bill Bishop remarks that these Defense Department comments may indicate the Xi–Obama meeting didn’t go as well as Chinese media outlets (and some American journalists) have been reporting. If the U.S. follows through on sending the ships, that could very well open a new, and more aggressive, chapter in recent Sino-American relations.

It’s like we’re giving ground to our adversaries everywhere at once.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is ‘Game of Thrones’ Really ‘Progressive’?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why It Was Easier To Be Skinnier In the 1980s.

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