FOR PITA’S SAKE, LEAVE THE FOOD TRUCKS ALONE:  An oped in the Wall Street Journal argues for loosening of the ridiculous regulations on food trucks imposed by various municipalities:

Philadelphia’s vendors must carefully read a 20-page list of prohibited streets, including the entirety of customer-rich Center City. Other locales prohibit trucks from operating within a certain distance of traditional restaurants. Las Vegas once had a 1,320-foot restriction but has since lowered it to a still-high 150 feet.

Chicago’s ban is slightly worse, at 200 feet. But food trucks there must also install GPS trackers so regulators can monitor them for infractions—the definition of bureaucratic micromanagement. That’s still better than Palm Springs, Calif., where food trucks are banned outright.

The list goes on. Yet customers want more access to food trucks, not less. . . .

True. Food trucks are fun and often have very creative, delicious food. The regulations are too often driven by the paranoia of brick and mortar restaurants, who view food trucks as competition. Basic health inspection makes sense, but much of the rest of regulations seem more directed at squelching economic opportunity.

HOUSE GOP REVOLT GROWS: House rebels warn of blowback for Boehner. Matt Fuller over at Roll Call reports on the intensifying revolt by House Freedom Caucus members against Speaker John Boehner:

The House Freedom Caucus has a secret it wants to share with Democrats.

“If the Democrats were to file a motion to vacate the chair and were to vote for that motion unanimously, there probably are 218 votes for it to succeed,” one member of the House Freedom Caucus told CQ Roll Call Tuesday night, as he exited an meeting in the basement of Tortilla Coast.

If that’s true, Democrats could certainly use a vote to remove SpeakerJohn A. Boehner as leverage in any number of upcoming battles: the Export-Import Bank, a highway bill, all sorts of spending measures. But absent any real talk from Democrats, the official response from Boehner’s communications director, Kevin Smith, was simply to dismiss CQ Roll Call’s reporter. . . .

The HFC looks ready for war, as does GOP leadership and more moderate Republicans who are sick and tired of conservatives voting against the team — and that could signal more retaliation to come from both sides.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the HFC chairman, and Raúl R. Labrador, one of the founding members of the secretive conservative group, had plenty to say to CQ Roll Call Wednesday about leadership’s recent moves against members who voted against the rule for Trade Promotion Authority.

“The reason this is happening is pretty clear,” Labrador said of Meadows’ demotion and the dismissal of other HFC members from the whip team. “The leadership is afraid.”

Labrador said GOP leaders sense their influence slipping, as 34 Republicans defied Boehner and others on the TPA rule. “And they know that that 34 is really not 34,” Labrador said. “They know that that number is really much larger.”

I admire these Freedom Caucus members for standing on their principles. It would be in the best interests of Speaker Boehner to find a way to welcome and work with these GOP members rather than treating them like the enemy. His inability to do this evinces a failure of leadership. Boehner seems more interested in working with President Obama these days than his own party.

RELATED: Boehner doles out new GOP punishment. According to The Hill, The latest victim of Boehner retribution is Ken Buck (R-CO), who “could be stripped of his title as GOP freshman class president on Thursday morning.”

Buck told reporters a freshman colleague approached him on Tuesday night and gave him a choice: Resign or get ousted by his peers. When Buck refused to step down, his colleague issued a threat: “Well, then we’re going to call a meeting.”

Later that evening, the chief of staff to Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), the freshman liaison to leadership, sent out an email asking for freshman members to gather at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

In a brief interview, Walters declined to disclose exactly what the meeting would be about. But in a statement, she said, “a majority of the freshman class has expressed concerns I share regarding the leadership of our class president.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) joked that he’s “still got the record for being kicked off two committees.” House GOP leaders removed him from the Budget and Agriculture panels in 2012 as payback for repeatedly bucking the party line.

He accused the GOP leadership of having misplaced priorities.

“Leaders unite, they don’t divide. That’s been the Republican concern about President Barack Obama, that he’s a divider. And we have our leadership doing the same thing,” he said.

Exactly.

BECAUSE MANNERS MATTER TO SOUTHERNERS: Jason Riley: What Charleston tells us about race relations.

The reaction to the carnage in Charleston represents racial progress of the type today’s liberals have no interest in acknowledging. The post-1960s left derives political power, in the form of voter fealty, from encouraging blacks to view themselves primarily as helpless victims of white racism. The struggles of blacks are the fault of whites, in other words, and until the Dylann Roofs are no more, nothing has really changed.

But the shooting victims deserve to be remembered as individuals, not politicized symbols of black struggle.

Mr. Roof may have his sympathizers, but they are largely relegated to the anonymous fever swamps of the Internet. Racism still exists, alas, and no one reading this is likely to see the day when it doesn’t. But antiblack animus doesn’t explain racial gaps in employment, crime, income, learning and single-parent homes. Furthermore, attitudes and behaviors in the U.S. have evolved to a point where a twice-elected black president has asked the second black attorney general to investigate a shooting in a Deep South state with a black senator and Indian-American governor.

The black left guards its victim status fiercely. Witness the “Black Lives Matter” brigades that reject replacing the slogan’s adjective with “All.”

Riley’s right. The individuals who were murdered in Charleston are being mourned by a tight knit, Southern community, where a lot of racial progress has taken place since the civil rights movement. While those who have never lived in the South love to demean Southerners in various ways and assume they are all redneck racists, the truth is that Southerners–of all colors–are some of the best mannered, polite people in the world. They value community, family and God. When tragedy strikes, the first instinct is to help, and to unify, not to hate, or riot. Yes, there is still racism (flowing in both directions) in the South, but having lived all over the country (except the west coast), I believe Southerners are no more racist that the rest of the country, and perhaps in some ways, less so.

As someone who grew up in the South, I have a hard time imagining the Baltimore riots happening in Charlotte, Charleston, or Savannah. And before someone starts lecturing about how Baltimore is a “Southern” city that had a lot of confederate sympathizers (it did), I know few Southerners–those from the deep South, rather than border states– who would ever characterize Baltimore as a “Southern” city. When I was in high school, a family moved into our neighborhood from Maryland, and we all referred to them as the “Yankee family” for awhile. It was just good-natured joking around, of course (the girl in that family became a good friend), but the family definitely wasn’t “Southern” in its mannerisms and culture.  Nice, to be sure, but not Southern, bless their little hearts.

So when I see what’s happening in Charleston, I am not surprised. I see a bunch of nice, well-mannered, God-fearing Southerners coming together to mourn the loss of good people and condemn an evil act.

DAVID FRENCH: Don’t tear down the Confederate flag.

It is telling that the South’s chosen, enduring symbol of the Confederacy wasn’t the flag of the Confederate States of America — the slave state itself — but the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee’s army. Lee was the reluctant Confederate, the brilliant commander, the man who called slavery a “moral and political evil,” and the architect — by his example — of much of the reconciliation between North and South. His virtue grew in the retelling — and modern historians still argue about his true character — but the symbolism was clear. If the South was to rebuild, it would rebuild under Lee’s banner.

Since that time, the battle flag has grown to mean many things, including evil things. Flying it as a symbol of white racial supremacy is undeniably vile, and any official use of the flag for that purpose should end, immediately. Flying it over monuments to Confederate war dead is simply history. States should no more remove a Confederate battle flag from a Confederate memorial than they should chisel away the words on the granite or bulldoze the memorials themselves.

One cannot erase painful history by pretending it doesn’t exist, and trying to wipe out all reminders thereof. England had slavery until 1833, so should we consider the Union Jack a symbol of slavery and racism, too? Of course not. A flag symbolizes many aspects of a culture and society, not one aspect that has been long-since abolished.

RELATED: Memorial to Confederate soldiers in downtown Charleston is vandalized with spray painting that reads, “Black Lives Matter.” So apparently now, all historical “reminders” of the Confederacy are microaggressions that must be stamped out.

OF COURSE HE DID: Emails reveal Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber worked closely with the White House. According to the Washington Examiner:

[I]n 2013 Gruber referred to the “stupidity of the American voter” and the “huge political advantage” the healthcare legislation’s lack of transparency would provide in getting the bill passed.

The ensuing public furor against Gruber for his comments caused the Obama administration to distance themselves from the former adviser.

But the 20,000 pages of emails provided by the House Oversight Committee to The Wall Street Journal paint a different picture.

The emails show Gruber kept HHS abreast of his conversations with health reporters and lawmakers: He let them know when a conversation went well and a story would post; when he got pushback about his undisclosed contract he revealed only their description of his activities; and that he worked to convince Sen. Mary Landrieu to support the bill.

“There’s no doubt [Gruber] was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah), chairman of the committee that released the emails, reported the Wall Street Journal. “He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce.”

He was undoubtedly the White House’s academic frontman. And his attitude about the “stupidity” of Americans wasn’t aberrational, but shared by his compatriots in the Obama Administration. And you know what? He was right, because the Democrats in Congress fell for numerous Obamacare lies hook, line and sinker.  

SERIOUSLY, KARL?: Karl Rove: Violence will continue until the Second Amendment is repealed. During the Sunday airing of Fox New Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Karl Rove how America can stop violent attacks like the one the country witnessed in Charleston, South Carolina. Rove responded:

So, we have come a long way. Now, maybe there’s some magic law that will keep us from having more of these. I mean, basically, the only way to guarantee that we would dramatically reduce acts of violence involving guns is to basically remove guns from society, and until somebody gets enough oomph to repeal the Second Amendment, that’s not going to happen. I don’t think it’s an answer.

No wonder so many conservatives mistrust the GOP Establishment. Geez, Karl, get a grip; you sound like Hillary. 

ILYA SOMIN: Lessons from a little pink house, 10 years later.

June 23 marks the 10th anniversary of Kelo v. City of New London, when the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 ruling that government could use eminent domain to take private property for “economic development.” At issue in the case were 15 homes, including a little pink house owned by Susette Kelo, in the city of New London, Conn., which wanted to transfer the properties to a private nonprofit with plans to revitalize the area. But after the court ruled and the houses were razed (with the exception of Ms. Kelo’s, which was moved at private expense), those plans fell through.

The condemned land remains empty, housing only a few feral cats. After Hurricane Irene in 2011, the city used it as a dumping ground for debris. Yet the first real development since the Supreme Court’s controversial decision might now be on its way: New London Mayor Daryl Finizio, who was elected in 2011 as a critic of the government taking, recently announced a plan to turn the former site of Ms. Kelo’s house into a park that will “serve as a memorial to all those adversely affected by the city’s use of eminent domain.”

It would be a fitting tribute. Although the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo was consistent with precedent, it was nonetheless a serious error.

Kelo is a disaster that needs to be overturned. As Somin points out, there has been some decent post-Kelo progress in eminent domain reform at the state level, but it’s not enough. Read the whole thing.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO EVERYONE: The virtue of fathers.

CRUZ PUNCHES BACK ON IMMIGRATION: Ted Cruz introduces bill to drain amnesty slush fund subsidized by legal immigrants.

The Immigration Slush Fund Elimination Act would stop the executive branch from using fees collected from legal immigrants who obeyed U.S. immigration law to pay for the ongoing illegal alien naturalization surge. Thanks to the million or so legal aliens flocking to America every year, that’s a lot of cash. Cruz notes that USCIS Chief Financial Officer Joseph Moore can lay claim to nearly $1 billion in application fees. Cruz’s bill would return the pursestrings back into Congress’s hands — and perhaps most importantly, stop the White House from ramping up legal immigration and issuing more and more fees in order to grant more illegal aliens amnesty.

Legal immigrants can wait up to ten years to become legalized and pay thousands of dollars in fees. Once Obama enacted his DACA executive amnesty order in 2012, wait times for legal immigrants tripled.

It’s a travesty that the Obama Administration has gotten away with taking money from legal immigrants and using it to subsidize the President’s unconstitutional, unilateral lawmaking executive action on immigration. In typical Obama upside-down fashion, this fund-shifting rewards the lawbreakers and punishes the law abiders.  Obama will of course veto Cruz’s bill if it ever clears Congress, but the important question to me is the preliminary one: Does the GOP-controlled Congress have the guts to defend its power of the purse and pass the bill in the first place?

GOP LEADERSHIP EXACTS RETRIBUTION: House Speaker John Boehner and his “leadership” team are exacting retribution against numerous conservative GOP members who have bucked leadership on a variety of issues, most notably voting against Boehner as Speaker, and against Obamatrade.  The most recent victim is Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), who has been removed from his chairmanship of the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Meadows was also one of the 25 Republicans who did not vote for Boehner to be speaker at the start of the 114th Congress, and he has often shown a willingness to vote with the conservative wing of the party. It appears as if the rule vote, in which 34 Republicans went against GOP leadership, was the final straw.

The punishment is yet another indication of the intensifying clash between conservatives and more moderate Republicans in the House GOP conference.

Trent Franks, who was one of the three House Freedom Caucus members kicked off the whip team earlier in the week, told CQ Roll Call on Wednesday that “there’s a polarization taking place” between conservatives and leadership, as right-wing voices are now being locked out of strategy sessions with House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.

It’s basically a purge being conducted against those who don’t toe Boehner’s line. There’s a reason why conservative Americans don’t trust Congress–even under the control of the GOP.  The Establishment GOP treats the party’s conservative/tea party wing as a political enemy to be defeated, rather than respected colleagues with whom they have occasional disagreements.

Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), who was among the 34 Republicans to vote against the rule last week, said Boehner hasn’t spoken to him about his vote. He accused GOP leaders of catering too much to Democrats at the expense of losing support from conservatives.

“This is the second or third time that they negotiated with Democrats and then Democrats go back on their word. And they still don’t come to the conservatives,” Labrador said at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation Tuesday morning. “We can help them with this process.”

“Voting against the rule is almost like committing a capital crime here,” Labrador said of the leadership’s attitude.

Yep. To have a winning Republican “team,” there needs to be leadership that is open to all points of view, and doesn’t banish its brightest based on principled disagreement.

RELATED: Conservative Rep: It Takes ‘Moral Courage’ To Stand Up To GOP Leadership.

Scott Perry, 53, is a sophomore congressman from Dillsburg, Penn. Exuding a humble intensity and a mindfulness of his oath to the U.S. Constitution, his daily orientation in public office means he takes no vote for granted. 

“It’s a fight every day,” Perry says in this 22-minute exclusive video interview with The Daily Caller. . . .This interview was filmed June 10, prior to a series of divisive trade votes in the House. Perry, believing his leadership was mistaken on what was best for America on these votes, felt the wrath of opposing the Republican leadership. He was one of the 34, 54, 158 and 50 Republicans who challenged the prevailing pressure by GOP leaders to grant President Obama new trade powers at the risk of eroding national sovereignty. . . .

Yet, Republican leaders, increasingly governing by fear, risk continuing dissension and disarray. Evidence is building that Republicans, who are failing to persuade those members with differing opinions, and catering to monied interests in Washington, are alienating Americans who voted for them.

These are good members of Congress (there are some), and their idealism is being crushed by Mafia-like, inside-the-Beltway interests.

BUT I THOUGHT HE WAS A RACIST?: Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio to send armed volunteers to protect black churches.

Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio will send armed volunteers into 60 predominantly black churches Sunday in response to the shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church.

Arpaio said he was responding to a request from Rev. Jarrett Maupin, who USA Today reported is a progressive Baptist preacher and civil-rights advocate, to provide the volunteers.

Arpaio said Maupin told him he was worried about racist white supremacists in the area, according to USA Today. “I am the elected sheriff of this county. He asked me to help, and I’m going to help,” Arpaio said.

HEH: HILLARY LECTURES ON WHITE PRIVILEGE, IS TOLD HOW SHE CAN END IT.

Hillary Clinton on Charleston: ‘We Can’t Hide’ From Truth of White Privilege http://t.co/yfKBzAdSmi (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/raFOD2ugce

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) June 20, 2015

So… Resign and let a non-white get the nomination, @HillaryClinton https://t.co/xUhOGyxmsE

— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) June 20, 2015

 

@AaronWorthing @HillaryClinton @Mediaite I nominate Elizabeth Warren

— preka (@preka99) June 20, 2015

BUT MR. PRESIDENT, A 21 YEAR-OLD ISN’T A “KID”: Obama expresses desire to block ’21 year-old kid’ from buying handguns.

Referring to the church shooting in Charleston, Obama insisted that mass shootings were “unique” to America because of its gun laws, adding such events don’t happen as often in other “advanced countries.”

“It’s not because there aren’t violent people or racist people or crazy people in other countries; it’s that a 21-year-old kid can’t just walk in and buy a firearm and, oftentimes, through gun shows, avoid background checks, and then act on this hatred,” he said. “And we’ve got to change that, and it’s not enough for us to express sympathy — we have to take action.”

In every State in the country, a 21 year-old is considered an adult. So basically, Obama wants to ban adults from buying handguns.

To be fair, our former adjunct professor of constitutional law taught before the Supreme Court decided DC v. Heller (2008) and  McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010). But surely he’s aware of them now. Oh wait–I’m assuming the current President of the United States actually cares about the Constitution. My bad.

THERE’S A LOT TO SEE HERE, I SUSPECT: Federal Judge Reopens Suit to Obtain Huma Abedin’s Clinton E-Mails.

A federal judge has reopened a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that aims to obtain e-mails between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her longtime aide, Huma Abedin, saying that the discovery of Clinton’s private server warranted the revival of the case.

Abedin is essentially Hillary’s right hand, and arguably much, much more. She is the wife of disgraced NY Congressman Anthony Weiner, and has been intimately associated with Clinton for many years. Her emails are just as essential to see as Hillary’s.  Good for Judicial Watch for pursuing this.

THE FERGUSON EFFECT: Gallup: Confidence in police at a 22-year low:

The poll found that 25 percent of Americans said they had “a great deal” of confidence in the police while 27 percent said they had “quite a lot,” 30 percent said “some,” 16 percent “very little,” and 2 percent said “none.”

According to Gallup, the 18 percent total of “very little” and “none” is the highest it has seen.

Gallup attributed the decline in confidence to recent police actions in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, Staten Island, New York, and North Charleston, South Carolina where black men were killed by white police officers.

“These events likely contributed to the decline in confidence in police, although it is important to note that Americans’ trust in police has not been fundamentally shaken — it remains high in an absolute sense, despite being at a historical low,” the Gallup report reads.

Overall the group that saw the largest drop in confidence were Democrats, who experienced a 13 percentage point decline over the past two years.

Well, yes — Democrats are the ones driving the decline in confidence. After all, to liberals/progressives, law is just politics, so this notion filters down to law enforcement as well. Ironically, the ones hurt the most by this attitude are the residents of low income communities — mostly blacks — who have pledged unwavering political fidelity to Democrats.

TOO BIG TO FAIL, OBAMACARE EDITION: Obamacare’s Oligopoly Wave.

The five largest commercial health insurers in the U.S. have contracted merger fever, or maybe typhoid. UnitedHealth is chasing Cigna and even Aetna; Humana has put itself on the block; and Anthem is trying to pair off with Cigna, which is thinking about buying Humana. If the logic of ObamaCare prevails, this exercise will conclude with all five fusing into one monster conglomerate. . . .

[T]he economics of ObamaCare reward scale over competition. Benefits are standardized and premiums are de facto price-controlled. With margins compressed to commodity levels, buying more consumers via mergers is simpler than appealing to them with better products, to the extent the latter is still legal. Synergies across insurer combinations to reduce administrative overhead and other expenses also look better for shareholders.

The mergers reflect the reality that government—Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage and the ObamaCare exchanges—is now the artery of insurance profits, not the private economy. The feds “happen to be, for most of us now, our largest customer,” Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said this month at a Goldman Sachs conference. . . .

A healthier market would have many new competitive entrants given the transformative pace of technological and biomedical discovery. Health-care finance and delivery ought to be evolving along with these innovations, but the only disruptive force under ObamaCare is government. So five years into the glories of “health-care reform,” the same antiquated incumbents dominate as they did before, only with less accountability to patients. Cartels don’t care about quality, safety or costs to consumers.

It’s not a flaw; it’s by design. Next stop: single-payer, unless Obamacare is repealed, and soon. 

JUSTICE THOMAS IS RIGHT (AGAIN): John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky, “Justice Thomas’s Dissent in the Brumfield Death-Penalty Case Shows Sympathy for the Victim, Not Her Killer.”

[Dylan] Roof may not generate any sympathy or pleas for clemency, but plenty of other cold-blooded killers do — and go on to escape the death penalty. But the cases in which they commit evil acts and leave a trail of tears don’t get the publicity that Roof’s case will. It’s time we give these lesser-known crimes a closer look when we evaluate claims that the death penalty is barbaric and unjustified.

By coincidence, just twelve hours after Roof’s massacre, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Brumfield v. Cain, a death-penalty case in which a narrow 5–4 court majority vacated a federal-appeals-court opinion in a death-penalty case and ordered the lower courts to review it again. The decision means that Kevan Brumfield could escape the death penalty by claiming he is intellectually disabled.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an eloquent dissent. It provides a stark contrast between the kind of vicious, violent, antisocial criminals who prey on society, and police officers such as Betty Smothers, a single black mother of six, whom Brumfield murdered in cold blood in 1993. The killer is a diagnosed sociopath who has spent more than 20 years trying to avoid the death penalty that a Louisiana jury ruled should be his punishment.

Unfortunately, the liberal justices on the Court, along with Anthony Kennedy, today handed Brumfield yet another unmerited reprieve. In his dissent, Thomas takes the unprecedented step of including a photograph of the victim — a victim mentioned only in passing in the majority opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Thomas — who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Samuel Alito in the dissent — admonishes the majority for having spent its entire opinion on why Brumfield should be given habeas relief over his claim of “intellectual disability,” overturning both the conclusions and decisions of the Louisiana Supreme Court as well as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, while devoting only “a single sentence to a description of the crime for which a Louisiana jury sentenced Brumfield to death.” ​

Somehow these death penalty cases, in their quest to “protect” convicted murderers, seem to lose sight of the horrendous nature of the crimes (which is why the death penalty was imposed in the first place), and forget altogether the innocent victims. I will never forget the death penalty case I worked on when I clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  The facts–and the visual of what happened to the victims (including photos in the record)–still haunt me.  The murderer, Fletcher Thomas Mann, was executed in 1995. The world is a better place now that he is gone.

RELATED:  S.C. Governor Nikki Haley has called for Roof to receive the death penalty.

LONG OVERDUE: The State Department is abandoning the Chinese-owned NYC Waldorf Astoria as its base of operations for US diplomats and staff during the UN General Assembly.  The Department didn’t explain why, but China’s recent hack of OPM personnel records probably emphasized that the Chinese cannot be trusted to respect the privacy of US personnel while at the hotel.

The State Department routinely warns U.S. diplomats in China about physical and electronic surveillance and tells American citizens in the country to be aware of similar risks, notably in hotels.

“Hotel rooms (including meeting rooms), offices, cars, taxis, telephones, Internet usage and fax machines may be monitored onsite or remotely, and personal possessions in hotel rooms, including computers, may be searched without your consent or knowledge,” the department’s travel advice for China says. . . .

The officials said the State Department’s decision probably would affect the traveling operations of the White House, which also sends large numbers of officials to New York for the General Assembly, including the president, who has in the past stayed at the Waldorf.

It was not immediately clear whether the Waldorf residence of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations would be moved to another location. The State Department has leased an apartment for the ambassador on the 42nd floor of the hotel’s Waldorf Towers for more than 50 years.

I think it’s safe to say that the US ambassador to the UN shouldn’t be staying in a Chinese-owned hotel, either.

OF COURSE THEY HAVE: Sexual harassment claims at State Department soar under Clinton, Kerry.

In a disclosure that could have political implications for election campaigns, the State Department’s chief watchdog reported Thursday that worker harassment complaints have nearly tripled inside the department during the tenures of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John F. Kerry — but the department still doesn’t have mandatory training for all employees.

“A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State over the past few fiscal years supports the need for mandatory harassment training,” the department’s inspector general warned in an oversight report that reviewed the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.

The report states that formal harassment claims rose from 88 cases in 2011, during Mrs. Clinton’s third year as America’s top diplomat, to 248 in 2014, Mr. Kerry’s second year as secretary. Hundreds more informal complaints were lodged during the same period.

Yeah, you read that right: They don’t even have training.  One would think Hillary, in particular, would be keenly aware–given her husband’s indiscretions–of the need for such awareness and training.  But then again, Hillary has a long, sordid history indicating that she doesn’t take sexual harassment seriously, including attacking the veracity of  12 year-old rape victim, and looking the other way while her own State Department officials engaged in inappropriate behavior.

But hey, she wants to make sure women make more money, so it’s all good.

SUDDENLY THEY WANT A BUDGET?: Senate Democrats block defense appropriations bill.

The 50-45 vote to limit debate on proceeding to the bill came as Democratic leaders sent a letter demanding a bipartisan meeting to negotiate an end to sequestration spending caps mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

“We cannot and we should not fix part of our government and not the other part,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said before the vote. “We have until this fiscal year ends in the fall to work this out. And that’s what we should do.”

The defense appropriations bill was the first test of the Democrats’ threat to block all fiscal 2016 spending bills without an overall budget agreement. The threat has been backed up by President Obama, who had pledged to veto the bill if it clears Congress.

So suddenly the Democrats want a budget? Hardly. Earlier this year, the Republicans passed a non-binding blueprint budget resolution without the support of a single Democrat in either chamber. But now Congress needs to translate this blueprint into specific, department-by-department appropriations measures, and the Democrats are making it clear that they will oppose all of them, backed up by the threat of Obama’s veto.

The Democrats’ real strategy is to prevent the GOP-controlled Congress from making progress on “normal” budget appropriations, forcing another fall showdown (the fiscal year ends Sept. 30) that would result in a lame continuing resolution and/or government shutdown.

WELL, YES: John Lott: Gun-free zones an easy target for killers.

The horrible tragedy last night that left nine people dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., probably could have been avoided. Like so many other attacks, the massacre took place in a gun-free zone, a place where the general public was banned from having guns. The gun-free zone obviously didn’t stop the killer from bringing a gun into the church.

Indeed, the circumstantial evidence is strong that these killers don’t attack randomly; they keep picking the few gun-free zones to do virtually all their attacks.

For some reason, people who would never put up a “gun-free zone” sign in front of their own homes, put up such signs for other sensitive areas that we would like to protect.

Time after time, we see that these killers tell us they pick soft targets. With just two exceptions, from at least 1950, all the mass public shootings have occurred in these gun-free zones. From last summer’s mass public killers in Santa Barbara and Canada, to the Aurora movie theater shooter, these killers made it abundantly clear in their diaries or on Facebook how they avoided targets where people with guns could stop them.

It’s an inconvenient truth for gun control votaries. Predictably, President Obama immediately used the SC shooting tragedy as an excuse to trumpet gun control again.

PUNCHING BACK: Sen. Ted Cruz is introducing legislation to fine the State Department for its failure to release a report on Iran.

The Obama administration was legally obligated to release a full report outlining the state of Iranian human rights by Feb. 25 but has so far declined to do so.

Cruz and other senators petitioned the State Department in May to comply with federal law compelling the report’s public release.

“That report was due by law on February 25,” Cruz told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview. “The Obama State Department simply ignored the law. They refused to produce the report. Months have gone by and they continue to refuse to produce the report.”

Angered by this delay, Cruz is gearing up to file legislation this week that would fine the State Department 5 percent of its budget for every 30 days it postpones releasing the report, according to a copy of the bill viewed by the Free Beacon.

Obama would veto the bill if it ever passed both chambers. But it’s at least an attempt to use the power of the purse to punch back and gain some leverage with this recalcitrant Administration.

Sadly, this is just another example of the Obama Administration ignoring federal law, as it did with the Bowe Bergdahl swap for the Taliban 5, and a whole host of other instances. Ignoring Congress–including the laws it has passed–has become the defining characteristic of the Obama presidency.

OBAMA GALS LIVIN’ LARGE: An upcoming vacation to Italy and London by Michelle Obama and her two daughters is estimated to cost taxpayers about $600,000–for airfare and lodging alone.  The estimated tab does not include the costs of security, staff, other transportation and food. My, my–that is quite a trip. Is this what Obama meant when he said we ought to spread the wealth around?

CURRENCY GENDER PARITY?: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has confirmed that a woman will grace the $10 bill beginning in 2020. The $10 bill has heretofore exclusively displayed the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, and he is apparently going to continue to appear in some capacity, as yet to be determined. The identity of the woman has not yet been revealed but there are some clues:

The only criterion under law is that the chosen person must be dead, but the Treasury said Mr. Lew was looking for a woman “who was a champion for our inclusive democracy.” That would include the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who was the top choice on social media of a campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill.

Other names being floated include Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Rosa Parks. Lew will make the final decision on who will grace the currency, and the Treasury Department is continuing to solicit public input over social media with the hashtag #TheNew10.

I kind of feel sorry for Hamilton. He was a key founder–one of three authors of the Federalist Papers–the first Secretary of the US Treasury, and the most ardent proponent of the first National Bank. Now he’s being downgraded, in a sense, due to political correctness.

RAND PAUL: Blow up the tax code and start over. His oped in the WSJ today argues for a 14.5 percent flat income and corporate tax:

[T]he tax code has grown so corrupt, complicated, intrusive and antigrowth that I’ve concluded the system isn’t fixable.

So on Thursday I am announcing an over $2 trillion tax cut that would repeal the entire IRS tax code—more than 70,000 pages—and replace it with a low, broad-based tax of 14.5% on individuals and businesses. I would eliminate nearly every special-interest loophole. The plan also eliminates the payroll tax on workers and several federal taxes outright, including gift and estate taxes, telephone taxes, and all duties and tariffs. I call this “The Fair and Flat Tax.” . . .

Even Mr. Obama’s economic advisers tell him that the U.S. corporate tax code, which has the highest rates in the world (35%), is an economic drag. When an iconic American company like Burger King wants to renounce its citizenship for Canada because that country’s tax rates are so much lower, there’s a fundamental problem.

Another increasingly obvious danger of our current tax code is the empowerment of a rogue agency, the IRS, to examine the most private financial and lifestyle information of every American citizen. We now know that the IRS, through political hacks like former IRS official Lois Lerner, routinely abused its auditing power to build an enemies list and harass anyone who might be adversarial to President Obama’s policies. A convoluted tax code enables these corrupt tactics.

Read the whole thing; it’s worth the time.