MEDIA JUST MAKING STUFF UP: Here’s ABC News Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd:

And here is some actual data. Netanyahu’s favorability/unfavorability rating among Jewish Americans: 45 percent favorable/38 percent unfavorable. This isn’t even the same universe as “eighty percent opposed.”

As for Trump, the most recent poll shows American Jewish disapproval at 69%. Note that this is “disapproval,” not “opposition,” though at least 69 percent is in the same general galaxy as 80%. (Note that Jews being disproportionately urban, coastal, irreligious, and concentrated in blue states demographically one would expect them to be significantly less approving of Trump than the population as a whole, Jewishness aside).

Anyway, what does it tell you when a “big 3” network’s chief political analyst just feels free to make things up that are contrary to easily obtainable data?

ACADEMIC HISTORY IS BUNK: How Twitter is Corrupting the History Profession. In my academic work, I’ve done a great deal of historical research. I find that whenever I research something myself, the “standard” historical story is replete with errors of fact, and extremely dubious interpretations, especially with regard to anything that requires a modicum of understanding of economics. There are ideological biases, of course, but there are also many situations in which one famous historian essentially made something up based on dubious or incomplete or distorted evidence, and other historians just repeat the invention for generations, without anyone bothering to check the original sources. In short, professional standards in academic history tend to be quite low, which is why it’s easy to corrupt historians.

FIND A SPOUSE WHO LOOKS AT YOU… THE WAY LINDA SARSOUR LOOKS AT HERSELF:

LINDA SARSOUR RESPONDS–STILL LYING: Earlier, I noted that Sarsour had tweeted that “right-wing Zionists” were hanging out with KKKers who were holding Confederate flags protesting a speech she gave in March. Here and on Twitter, I presented photos and video of the event that showed no sign of any KKKers or Confederate flags (much less both!), and noted that she had once again shown herself to be a lying antisemite. Here is Sarsour’s response on Twitter:

You don’t have to be especially astute to notice that while there is one guy holding a Trump flag, one guy holding a Betsy Ross and Gadsen flag, several Israeli flags, several modern American flags, several Christian flags (utterly mainstream), and one guy with an “Armed infidel” flag, there are no Confederate flags to be seen, nor any indication that anyone is affiliated with the KKK. Nor, for that matter, is there any indication that the Israeli flag-wavers are “right-wing Zionists,” as opposed to people of whatever ideology appalled by Sarsour’s antisemitism-laden genocidal hostility to Israel. So, still a liar.

SHOCKER! LINDA SARSOUR IS LYING:

I was able to track down a picture of the protest of Sarsour’s speech in Hillsborough from the local newspaper. No Klansmen. No Confederate flags. The “right-wing Zionists” appear to be one women waiving an Israeli flag, and someone holding up a sign that says “Women Against Antisemitism.” Neither this nor any other story about her speech mention any KKK presence, nor the presence of Confederate flags.

UPDATE: A Twitter friend sent me a Facebook link to video of the protest and counter-protest. No KKK, no Confederate flags. Shocker. And just to clarify: the first set of pictures are from Rep. Meyer’s tweet of yesterday about events of yesterday. Sarsour is claiming the the KKK and Confederate flags were present at her speech in March, for which I have provided contrary photographic evidence. She is lying.

YOU MEAN ONLY NATIVE-BORN WHITE AMERICANS CAN BE SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES?: Politico on Mike Pence and Nikki Haley: “While the two could hardly be more different — Pence is a 60-year-old social conservative, she is a 47-year-old daughter of Indian immigrants — those close to them say they have long had a warm relationship.”

WHILE ILHAN OMAR IS BUSY RUNNING HER OWN MIDEAST FOREIGN POLICY: Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District Listed As Worst District For Black Americans To Live.

Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, represented by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, was listed this week as the worst congressional district in the country for black Americans.

The financial website 24/7 Wall Street compiled a list of the 30 worst districts for black Americans by using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Specifically, the list-makers honed in on metrics like median-household income, homeownership, unemployment, poverty, and educational achievement.

The numbers produce a stark picture of the 5th Congressional District, which encompasses Minneapolis and several surrounding suburbs.

“Black area residents are about four times more likely to live below the poverty line than white residents and three times more likely to be unemployed,” the list-makers noted, citing a legacy of historic racism as a source of the disparities. “Minneapolis is one of several Midwestern cities that enacted restrictive housing covenants and exclusionary zoning policies in the early 20th century. These policies impact residential patterns to this day.”

But if you can’t indulge your Jew-hatred, what’s the fun of being a Congresswoman?

OUCH: David Harsanyi: Israel Has Every Right To Block Rashida Tlaib And Ilhan Omar. “In 2012, the Obama administration denied a visa to Michael Ben-Ari, a member of the hard-right Israeli Kach party [sic: At that point, Ben-Ari was a member of the more moderate National Union party]. Ben-Ari is no more radical than Tlaib or Omar. I don’t remember widespread angst about the state of American democracy. Surely we were secure enough in our beliefs to handle his presence, right?”

UPDATE: Jonathan Greenberg, @JGreenbergSez: “It’s totally different bc rage blargle!”-every leftist in my feed.

WE SHOULD GO BACK TO BLAMING “CULTURE” AND “DESPERATION” FOR HORRIFIC VIOLENT CRIMES, BECAUSE FOCUS ON PURPORTED ROOT CAUSES WORKED SO WELL IN THE ’60s: Here is how a daughter and her mom react to a violent daylight rape in their neighborhood:

“That somebody was raped here at 7:30 — we live in a rape culture, and I think we’re going in the wrong direction with it. It doesn’t feel like we’re progressing right now,” Melanie Flaxer, 26, said. “It’s horrifying, it’s horrifying, and it’s really a shame that there’s so much desperation,” her mother, Linda Flaxer, added.

So police should put out an APB for “rape culture” and “desperation?”

CHUTZPAH, THY NAME IS NEW YORK TIMES: Times: Epstein Suicide Conspiracy Theories Show How Our Information System is Poisoned. This is the same New York Times that, just for example, completely misreported the Trayvon Martin case (going so far as to deem George Zimmerman a “white Hispanic” to further its narrative, a phrase the Times never otherwise used) and was the leader of the lynch mob over phony rape allegations against the Duke lacrosse team. Just last week oped columnist Michelle Goldberg reiterated the myth that Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” But it’s the rest of the “information system” that’s poisoned. Physician, heal thyself.

LET THEM IN, BUT THROUGH THE HAMAS TERROR TUNNELS IN GAZA INSTEAD OF THE TEL AVIV AIRPORT: Trump tells advisers Israel should bar entry to Reps. Omar and Tlaib.

Given that they oppose Israel’s existence and are apologists for terrorism, this would be fitting.

YESTERDAY, TRUMP WAS A NAZI WHOSE SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL WAS INSINCERE; TODAY: Donald Trump and the perils of loving Israel just a little too much.

THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES WASN’T MEANT TO BE A HOW-TOO BOOK: First, we’re told that fourteen year-old girls are supposed to pretend that the classmate in their locker room with the penis is really a girl. Today, we’re told that women on the slightly darker side of European-Caucasian skin tone (that is, Reps. AOC and Tlaib) have “brown skin.” Aaron Blake: The unmistakable ugliness of Trump urging brown-skinned congresswomen to ‘go back’ to their countries.

And it’s not just the U.S. Remember when the fair-skinned Algerian Malia Bouattia was declared to be “first Black president” of the UK’s National Union of Students?

“WHY DON’T WE JUST RELEASE MIGRANT CHILDREN IN DETENTION TO THEIR RELATIVES IN THE U.S. WHO WANT TO TAKE THEM IN?”: Here’s one reason: Rapid DNA testing reveals a THIRD of migrants faked family relationship with children to claim asylum during ICE pilot of the procedure in Texas.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I watched a lifeguard quickly and efficiently scoop a drowning boy of our local public pool today. This pool has excellent, well-trained life guards. But not all pools do, and even excellent life guards can miss things. The kid was with a county camp group, and clearly shouldn’t have been in deep water. I know this pool gives the camp kids a swim test and then tells them where they are allowed to go, but no one is really watching them, given maybe 2 or 3 counselors and 18 or so kids. In short, if your kid doesn’t know how to swim, don’t let him go on a day camp trip to a public pool that has water over his head. And btw, this wasn’t the first camp kid I’ve seen fished out of the deep (i.e., 3.5 feet) water by a lifeguard over the years.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I post this every summer, but one more time: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning. “Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.”

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY HAVE AN AGENDA OR SOMETHING: Since its founding in 1998, Birthright has sent approximately six hundred thousand young Jews to Israel on free ten-day tours to connect them with their Jewish heritage. Other than a couple “stranded or brave tourists during wartime” type stories, the Times has covered these trips exactly twice. Once in 2000, when the focus was on a controversy over the costs of the trip and who, if anyone,  should be paying for them, and once in 2007, albeit relegated for some reason to the “New York region” section of the paper.

Over the past year, several groups on the left have protested Birthright, on the typical leftist theory that any nonprofit organization must have a left-wing agenda or die. As a result, the Times has run no less than two anti-Birthright stories, one in June focusing on protests against Birthright for not focusing on “the occupation,” the second yesterday on a politicized “alternative” trip sponsored by the left-leaning JStreet.

It doesn’t take a news maven to see what is objectively the bigger story: Birthright itself, with its 600K participants and one of the most innovative and successful religious/ethnic programs in recent American (most participants are American, as are most diaspora Jews) history, or the handful of activists protesting Birthright plus the forty participants on the “alternative” tour. But the Times has determined that the latter is actually the more important story, because it fits their agenda of hostility to the mainstream Jewish community’s support for Israel.

This is less interesting as a comment on the Times and Israel, and moreso, in my opinion, as an excellent example of how the Times and other MSM outlets don’t simply report the news, they actually shape it by deciding based on their own agendas what to cover and how much.

NOTICE ANYTHING MISSING?: Latest Suicide Data Show the Depth of U.S. Mental Health Crisis.

Mental health problems manifest in a number of ways and encapsulate a wide range of conditions, including substance abuse disorders, crippling anxiety, schizophrenia, and suicidality. A person’s susceptibility depends on genetic, social, and environmental factors. These contributors are believed to be intertwined; psychological stressors can activate a genetic predisposition, so life circumstances matter a lot. And the U.S. is home to some particularly challenging ones: stagnant wages; rising health-care costs; the proliferation of highly addictive opioids after a marketing push from major drug companies; the disappearance of well-paid blue-collar jobs and the emergence of the gig economy; the lack or limited availability of treatment and services. The destructive powers of technology, be it in the form of social isolation or cyberbullying, have been cited in the rising number of teens killing themselves. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for 10- to 34-year-olds. Then there’s the prevalence of guns, which are used in half of all suicides. 

These articles (this one is from Bloomberg Business) almost always leave out the most obvious psychological stressor in the U.S., the breakdown of the family.  We have a 40% divorce rate and a 40% out of wedlock birth rate, each significantly higher among those with fewer economic resources. There seems to be a tacit conspiracy of silence among the journalistic elite and the “experts” to not mention that this may have something to do with the feelings of desperation of loneliness and desperation that could lead to mental health crises (including substance abuse).

SJW LOGIC VS. COMMON SENSE: No wonder Oberlin got socked with a huge punitive damages award for libeling a local bakery as racist after detaining students who wound up pleading guilty to shoplifting. Here’s Oberlin’s litigation position, from its court filings: “Gibson bakery’s archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.” Get that? Whether the students accused of shoplifting had actually been shoplifting or not was irrelevant to whether it was fair to accuse the store of racism etc for detaining the students as shoplifters. The fault lay with the bakery owners for daring to actually stop and prosecute shoplifters!

This is the kind of b.s. that gets you A’s at Oberlin with a certain type of SJW professor, but that normal people rightly think defies common sense. But it can pay off in academia. A very prominent law professor got an Ivy League job after writing a silly book which, among other things, argued that whether the Al Sharpton-promoted Tawana Brawley hoax was true or not was besides the point, because the real issue was whether society was silencing African American girls like her who surely had something bad happen to them.

BARGAIN ALERT: Amazon has my book Lawless, with a foreword by Senator Cruz, for only $5.24 with free Prime shipping, which I believe is the lowest price it’s ever sold for.

UPDATE, 6:48 pm: Well, that was quick, Instareaders bought up all of Amazon’s copies, and now it’s only available from third-party sellers for $13.00. You can still get the Kindle for $5.22, though.

THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL WAS BASED ON LIES AND MISREPRESENTATIONS: Iran-linked terrorists caught stockpiling explosives in north-west London. But this was hidden from the public, lest opinion turn against the nuclear deal, then pending, which was based on false representations of cooperation with Iranian “moderates.” I have what I think is the most comprehensive (and footnoted) collection of the lies, misrepresentations, and illegal activities undertaken by the Obama administration in support of the nuclear deal in Part III of this paper.

WHY BUREAUCRATS TEND TO IGNORE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS ON THEIR POWER: A Skeptic’s Look at Administrative Constitutionalism. Now a Notre Dame Law Review article, by yours truly.

HISTORIANS HAVE ADOPTED AN INACCURATE, POLITICIZED PRISM THROUGH WHICH TO UNDERSTAND AMERICAN ETHNIC HISTORY? SAY IT AIN’T SO!: The Weakness of the “Whiteness” Literature.

WHEN YOU CAN’T TELL THE KKK FROM THE “PROGRESSIVES” PROTESTING IT: Israeli Flag Burned At KKK Rally…By The Counterprotesters.

MORE ON BOGREN VS. HAWLEY: Ed Whelan at NRO:

With all respect for Senator Hawley, I am less enamored than others are of his criticism of Bogren.

For starters, from my review of the exchange, Bogren was making exactly the point of principle that I have made: To argue that a principle that applies to A also applies to B is not to “compare” A and B or to assert that they are equivalent.

Further, Bogren made it clear that he was advancing legal arguments on behalf of his client, not expressing his personal views. (Hawley seems to have understood the exchange otherwise.) Bogren’s arguments strike me as exactly what you’d expect from someone representing his client.

Do conservatives really want to embrace the general proposition that arguments that a lawyer makes on behalf of a client should, without more, be held against the lawyer? That’s a proposition that, apart from being unsound, could redound to the detriment of conservative nominees who have defended religious liberty or pro-life legislation in unpopular contexts.

And here’s the link to my Volokh post on Hawley’s demagoguery.

IT’S ONE WAY FOR A FRESHMAN SENATOR TO GET ATTENTION FOR HIMSELF, BUT NOT  A GOOD WAY: Senator Josh Hawley is becoming a first-class demagogue.