HAS THE CALIFORNIA GOP FOUND A CANDIDATE WHO CAN WIN A STATEWIDE ELECTION?:  I am a pessimist, but you never know.

THAT TREE HAS TOO MANY BRANCHES:  Charles Lipson on Controlling the Fourth Branch of Government.

HARD HATS DIDN’T JUST FALL FROM THE SKY; SOMEBODY HAD TO INVENT THEM:  Edward Bullard was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during WWI.  He noticed something that was obvious, but it’s funny how many people fail to see things that are obvious:  Helmets work.  They saved the lives of many a doughboy from shrapnel, bullets, and whatever else came flying at them.  When Bullard returned home to San Francisco and to his family’s business, which sold equipment to miners, he wanted develop a helmet that could protect miners, too.  His “Hard Boiled Miner’s Helmet” eventually evolved into the modern hard hat.

Bullard was posthumously inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame just this year.

IS HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLODING?:  “Wages Fell for Professors this Year in Largest Drop on Record, Report Says.“

MATT DeLISI & JOHN PAUL WRIGHT:  “Mass Incarceration Hysteria: Those Alleging that the United States Imprisons Too Many People Rely on Faulty History and Bad Facts.”

A VACCINE FOR RABIES:  Working toward a rabies vaccine, Louis Pasteur and his collaborator Emile Roux had learned to grow the virus in rabbits and then weaken it by drying out the infected nerve tissue.  They had tried the vaccine that resulted from this novel approach on dogs, and it seemed safe.  But at the time 9-year-old Joseph Meister was mauled by a mad dog, it hadn’t yet been tried on human beings.

On this day in 1885, young Meister became the first to be treated with the vaccine (actually a series of vaccines).  He survived.

(Meister went on to be caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.  His story, however, ends sadly.  In 1940, days after the Nazis marched into Paris, he urged his family to flee Paris, but refused to leave his post at the Institute.  Somehow he got it into his head—falsely—that his family had been captured and killed.  He therefore killed himself.  They returned to find him dead.)

SPIKED:  Boris Johnson is finished.  Maybe.

I SURE HOPE THIS STORY TURNS OUT TO BE A FALSE ALARM:  “Washington State School Board Director to Teach Sexual ‘Pleasure’ Class [in her private capacity] to 9-Year-Olds at Sex Shop.”

HOW TO REALLY BE AN ANTI-RACIST:  Teach Black Kids to Read.  (And don’t give me any more crap about the “Whole Language Method” versus the “Phonics Method.”  Go with phonics.)

POST-INDEPENDENCE-DAY THOUGHT:  I know I’ve said this before, but I have a hard time imagining anything more destructive of freedom than  law that makes everything (or almost everything) presumptively illegal.  For employers, there really isn’t anything you can do that can’t get you in hot water.

HEROES:  Ordinary Americans continue to do great things.

THE WORLD WAS READY FOR A LITTLE FUN THAT YEAR:  On this day in 1946, Micheline Bernardini, modeled a skimpy two-piece swimsuit at a press conference held at a public swimming pool in Paris.  The swimsuit’s designer, Louis Réard, called it a “bikini” after the Pacific atoll where the United States had recently conducted a nuclear weapons test.

Bernardini was an 18-year-old nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, not a professional runway model.  Réard had been unable to find a runway model willing to pose in his little creation.

The bikini was a scandal … or so the newspapers wrote.  But it was also a hit—especially with men.  Bernardini received over 50,000 fan letters.

Réard didn’t do badly either.  The former automotive engineer had inherited his mother’s lingerie business sometime during the war.  His bikini sold well (and … well … the cost of materials was low enough to allow for a decent profit margin).

I CAN’T KEEP UP WITH ALL OF BIDEN’S LGBT EXECUTIVE ORDERS:  But this blog post might help me.

RANDY BARNETT: The meaning of the Declaration of Independence.

LISTEN TO MR. JEFFERSON:  This morning I suggested that readers take today to re-read the Declaration of Independence.  If it’s late where you are, and you just can’t keep your eyes open, you can instead listen to Mr. Jefferson himself (or rather a computer generated facsimile) read it to you.  

GLENN LOURY:  “The Case for Black Patriotism.”  (From January of this year.)

RE-FUND THE POLICE:  Ibram X. Kendi has stated, “When it comes to defunding the police, many Americans have historically supported inflated police budgets on the premise that it’s police who are able to bring down crime levels.  But there’s no data that supports that.”

Paul Taylor cites the data that Kendi says doesn’t exist.  He also discusses the fact that, back in 1990s, there was considerable support among black leaders (even Eric Holder) for tough on crime policies.  At the time, they understood that blacks were both disproportionately the perpetrators and victims of crime.  They took seriously their duty to protect those innocent victims instead of mouthing empty platitudes about how “black lives matter.”

These days Kendi’s ill-informed views seems to be typical:  You’re a racist if you even mention the possibility that there has been a rise in crime.

(More from Taylor on race and crime here.)

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE SINCE YOU WERE IN SIXTH GRADE, WHY NOT READ IT TODAY?:  Today’s a holiday for many of you.  It’s a short document.  And there’s no time like the present.

Here’s my favorite clause in Jefferson’s litany of offenses by the king:  “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”  I love that word “swarms.”

CHILDREN’S BOOKS DESIGNED TO INDOCTRINATE:  Here’s a book that will teach your children that (1) prior to the arrival of Columbus, America was a deliriously happy paradise; (2) Columbus was an ugly ogre, from a continent of ugly ogres, who destroyed the paradise;  (3) things have been terrible ever since; but (4) the ugly ogres who have been in charge for centuries will soon get their comeuppance.  It’s called Christopher the Ogre Cologre, It’s Over.

If you think that’s just a tad one-sided, you might want to pay attention to what your children are reading.   The book seems to be getting more publicity than I would have predicted.

Here’s the sequel:  Rebeldita the Fearless in Ogreland.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED TO THE USA ON JULY 4?:  You’ve probably heard that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826—the 50^th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  But here are a few more American events that happened that day:

1827:  Slavery officially ended in New York.

1831:  “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” was first performed at a children’s Independence Day celebration in Boston.

1831:  President James Monroe died.

1863:  The Siege of Vicksburg ended with a Confederate surrender.

1997:  NASA’s Pathfinder landed and began its exploration of Mars.

2004:  The cornerstone to the Freedom Tower was laid on the site of the previous World Trade Tower.

Of these, I have a recollection only of the 1997 Pathfinder exploration.  It was very cool.

MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN:  Two Fundamentally Irreconcilable Constitutional Visions.

HILARIOUS ROAD RAGE EVENT:  Scroll down slightly from the headline (which is for a story a little further down).

BABYLON BEE:  “Democrats Argue That Clarence Thomas Should Only Have 3/5 of a Vote.”

(Yes, it’s satire … just in case you’re an idiot from Snopes.)

JOHN FUND:  West Virginia v. EPA: The Supreme Court Strikes a Blow on Bureaucrats.

IT’S JUST A SITCOM, MARTA:  Are you sure you’re feeling white guilt?  Is it possible you’re just trying to get some good old fashioned publicity for yourself?