VAN PLOWS INTO PEDESTRIANS OUTSIDE OF MOSQUE IN LONDON: “One report says that the man arrested shouted ‘kill all the Muslims’ during the attack. You can draw your own conclusions about the veracity of that statement. We will certainly hear more about this incident as the day goes on. Right now, we can only hope there were no fatalities and that the injured are not too badly hurt.”

FROM JACK SHAFER AT POLITICO: “MEGYN KELLY PANTSES ALEX JONES:”

“The censorious powers of the heckler’s veto have evolved now to the point that people are willing to call for the banning and shunning of works of journalism not yet published. Former Fox News Channel and current NBC News anchor Megyn Kelly got the treatment this week as news of her Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly interview with InfoWars mainspring Alex Jones, well before it was scheduled to air July 18, made the rounds. At least the Ayatollah Khomeini waited for the publication of Satanic Verses before he issued a fatwa ordering the murder of its author, Salman Rushdie.”

Heh, indeed.™

YOU STAY CLASSY, MSNBC: Host Joy Reid Labels Rep. Scalise an ‘Extremist’ While He Lies in Hospital Bed.

ANDREW KLAVAN: THE ATTACK ON ‘JULIUS CAESAR’ WAS WRONG IN EVERY WAY.

A wide swatch of Andrew’s readers don’t seem to agree with him. What’s your take? Let us know in the comments, either here, or at Andrew’s column.

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I’m LOOKING FORWARD TO GUEST-BLOGGING while Glenn and Helen are m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶l̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶P̶u̶t̶i̶n̶ on vacation and contributing some thoughtful or at least interesting stuff! www.charlesglasser.net

IRAN FIRES MISSILES AT ISLAMIC STATE TARGETS IN SYRIA: The missiles were launched in western Iran. Their flight path traversed northern Iraq. According to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the missiles struck targets “in the Deir Ezzor region in Eastern Syria.” The missiles were “retaliation” for the Islamic State terror attacks in Tehran (June 7).

MORE FROM THE COMBAT ZONE: U.S. Navy Super Hornet shoots down Syrian jet. Here’s a rather cool photo of two Super Hornets — one’s on the verge of breaking the sound barrier. Or maybe just broke it.

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DOWNBEAT REVIEW: Downbeat Magazine reviews the Ojai, California classical music festival (held June 8 to June 11). The Ojai Festival is now “safe for jazz.” The article goes on a bit but it’s a good read for fans of classical and jazz music.

HOUSING POLICIES THAT LED TO 2008 COLLAPSE STILL IN PLACE, SAYS FREDDIE MAC ECONOMIST.

What could go wrong?

SPIRIT RIDER IN THE SKY: Fine photo of a B-2 bomber banking — an interesting angle. It was taken at an air show held at Scott Air Force Base. I’d like to have been at the air show and seen this fly-by firsthand.

TRULY A BOOK FOR OUR TIMES: The Social Justice Warrior Handbook. “Whether you’re a militant feminist, social media activist, workplace warrior, privileged college student, or Hollywood actress desperate to be taken seriously, The Social Justice Warrior Handbook will help you navigate the complex, exciting world of activism with minimal effort.”

INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE:

Every policy difference, no matter how trivial, has been cast as a matter of life and death. Proposed changes in federal Medicaid reimbursement practices will consign “tens of thousands of people” to early death, according to Senator Bernie Sanders, while rolling back federal guidelines on transgender bathroom signage will cause more teenagers to kill themselves, according to ThinkProgress. Abandonment of the non-enforceable and voluntary Paris Accord on Climate

Change will doom the world to “catastrophe” and imminent mass extinction, according to Jill Stein.
In the last few weeks, the violent rhetoric crossed a fever line. CNN personality Kathy Griffin posed deadpan holding a severed and bloody head resembling Donald Trump; on television the next day, she tearfully denounced the many “old white men” who have supposedly bullied her. New York’s venerable Shakespeare in the Park is currently performing a modern-dress version of Julius Caesar, in which a Trump-qua-Caesar character is murdered every night in a particularly bloody and graphic staging.

Following the shooting, liberal Twitter erupted in cynical snark. Op-ed writer Malcolm Harris wondered if the shooter could plead self-defense, in the event he had a pre-existing condition. Sonia Gupta, a Louisiana former prosecutor, counseled her followers not to be too sad about the wounding of Representative Steve Scalise, because “he’s a racist piece of shit and hateful bigot.” David Frum, though not a liberal, reminded us that “the president is the country’s noisiest inciter of political violence,” though the violence he has supposedly incited appears to be mostly from the other side.

As Iowahawk asled today on Twitter, “I’m genuinely curious. Has this assassination attempt caused anyone to engage in self reflection, other than Ted Nugent?”

WEEKLY STANDARD: Don’t Look Now, but Congress Is Getting Stuff Done.

THEY DID NOT SEE THAT COMING: “Leftists said if Trump won, that there’d be violent mobs of hate, and intolerant fascists would try to silence those with whom they disagree. And they were right. It just was by a group of people from which they didn’t expect it: themselves. What is happening, in the larger sense? Historians will study this election and our times as unique, but what seems to be unfolding in politics and America overall is stunning not only in its scope, but hypocrisy.”

As the photo atop the article suggests, today’s violence from the left isn’t happening entirely “unexpectedly.”

Related: Extremism Experts Are Just Starting To Worry About The Left Now?

Bill Ayers, Leonard Bernstein, and the folks who brought you the blue-on-blue riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention  could not be reached for comment.

BATTLE FOR MOSUL CONTINUES: Iraqi units are pushing into the Old City. The ISIS holdouts are dug in for a last stand.

RELATED: The slow build to the battle of Mosul. The column is from October 2016.

JOEL KOTKIN: IS AMERICA NOW SECOND RATE? And note this:

Xi has played the gullible West with a skill that would have delighted his fellow autocrat, Joseph Stalin, who did much the same in the 1930s. (“Purges? What purges?”) Of course, Xi does not have to worry much about criticism from the media — or anywhere else. Trump may tweet insanely and seek needless fights with the media, but critics of the Chinese Communist Party end up in prison — or worse. To accuse Trump of loving dictators and then embrace Xi seems a trifle dishonest.

It does rather undercut the narrative the left created to save face after Hillary imploded, that Trump is the Manchurian Candidate, when, as Kotkin notes, Jerry Brown is swanning about with the man in who’s actually in control of Manchuria.

Read the whole thing.

NOTE THAT THIS IDIOTIC EFFORT TO OUTLAW “CULTURAL APPROPRIATION” IS BEING PUSHED BY AN AMERICAN LAW DEAN:

Speaking to the committee Monday, James Anaya, dean of law at the University of Colorado, said the UN’s negotiated document should “obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions.” . . .

Anaya is one of several Indigenous leaders at this round of negotiations who are questioning just how seriously some member states are taking the negotiations.

The committee has been working on three draft documents for 16 years, and member states are now going through them line by line.

It is a painstaking, slow process, and some Indigenous leaders say they are frustrated and disenchanted about the committee’s future.

Good, because it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Nobody owns a culture — and if someone can, then these people are appropriating the Anglo-American legal culture of complaint, and should be forced to stop. . . .

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why We Should Look For Alien Megastructures Around Pulsars.

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SO I’M HEADING OFF TO A SECURE, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, and leaving the blog in the capable hands of my co-bloggers, and with some additional guestblogging from Charles Glasser, a media law expert, guitarist, Jaguar collector/restorer, and generally cool guy. I’ll be pretty much offline, which at this point is a much-needed respite. See you later!

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Wesleyan must pay fraternity nearly $400,000 for shutting it down over coed dispute.

Warning to social justice warriors in presidential palaces: Juries don’t automatically share your enlightened authoritarianism.

A jury found that Wesleyan University President Michael Roth grossly exceeded his authority when he shut down Delta Kappa Epsilon’s house shortly after it submitted a plan to comply with the school’s new coed mandate on the eve of the 2015-2016 academic year, Hartford Courant reports.

DKE sued the school more than two years ago, claiming it let every other identity group live together in its own housing but fraternities.

Roth’s emails brought to light during the trial suggested he was only willing to take on the fraternities if Wesleyan – a Yale wannabe that’s opening a $220,000-a-year center for social justice – could obtain their valuable real estate in the end.

Shortly after DKE’s lawsuit, the school’s last remaining residential fraternity (and early adopter of the coed mandate) accused Wesleyan of shutting it down on the pretext of a drug bust whose drugs the school refused to name. (It has since recovered its status.)

See, on TV it’s always greedy capitalist businessmen who act this way.

Now the fraternities need to go on the offensive, demanding pro-Bro diversity training for all administrators, and pushing gender diversity at the Title IX office.