I THOUGHT WE WERE TO ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE: Europa Lander may not have to dig deep to find signs of life.

The 1,900-mile-wide Europa harbors a huge ocean beneath its icy shell. What’s more, astronomers think this water is in contact with the moon’s rocky core, making a variety of complex and intriguing chemical reactions possible.

Researchers therefore regard Europa as one of the solar system’s best bets to harbor alien life. Europa is also a geologically active world, so samples of the buried ocean may routinely make it to the surface — via localized upwelling of the ocean itself, for example, and/or through geyser-like outgassing, evidence of which has been spotted multiple times by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA aims to hunt for such samples in the not-too-distant future. The agency is developing a flyby mission called Europa Clipper, which is scheduled to launch in the early 2020s. Clipper will study Europa up close during dozens of flybys, some of which might be able to zoom through the moon’s suspected water-vapor plumes. And NASA is also working on a possible post-Clipper lander mission that would search for evidence of life at or near the Europan surface.

I’ve been waiting for this mission since reading 2010: Odyssey Two when it was first published in 1982. But since the post-Clipper lander mission isn’t even scheduled yet, I’ll have to wait a good while longer.

Faster, please.

ALLIES: Turkey vows to keep buying Iranian oil: ‘We will not obey.’

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Hollywood Left and Never Trumpers Unite To Hound President.

INSANE: Santa Barbara Authorizes Jail Time for Handing Out Straws.

Santa Barbara’s ordinance “is likely the most severe straw ban in the country,” according to Reason, but it’s far from the only straw ban. Seattle banned plastic straws earlier this month, mandating a a $250 fine for violators. Santa Barbara, however, has gone much further than Seattle — even aside from the harsher punishments its law imposes. Santa Barbara has banned not only plastic straws, but also compostable straws. Oh, and each individual straw counts as a separate infraction, meaning that if someone got busted handing out straws to a table of four people, he or she could end up facing years behind bars.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution says that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” But I doubt the Framers had the scourge of recyclable paper straws in mind when they wrote those words.

SWAMPLAND: McCaskill’s Husband Scored $131 Million In Federal Housing Contracts During Her Senate Tenure.

HEH: Trump to Bail Out Farmers, iPhone Users, Hurt by Tariffs.

OVER AT THE PJ LIVE BLOG: Is it even possible not to own the libs?

Plus: Portland’s Occupy ICE cleanup required a hazmat team.

KEEP PORTLAND… PLEASE: Portland ICE Occupiers Finally Evicted After Terrorizing Neighborhood, Shutting Down Food Cart, Spewing Racial Slurs at Cops. “The fight goes on and this has been great tactic.”

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Islamic State kills about 100 in southwest Syria attacks.

The coordinated attacks were the deadliest to hit government territory in many months. Some 96 people were killed and 176 wounded in total, the head of the Sweida health authority told the pro-Damascus Sham FM radio.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said 156 people were killed. Islamic State said in a statement that it had killed more than 100 people in the attacks.

Northeast of Sweida city, the jihadists launched simultaneous attacks on several villages where they clashed with government forces, state media and the Observatory said.

In the city itself, at least two attackers blew themselves up, one near a marketplace and the second in another district, state television said. State news agency SANA said two other IS militants were killed before they could detonate their bombs.

With about half a million dead, another eight million internally displaced, a further five million or so refugees in neighboring countries, various Kurdish groups in control of the northeastern third of the country, and no end in sight, Syria as it was known has ceased to exist.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Germany Is Running Out of Beer Bottles.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Amazon Prime members can now get Whole Foods groceries delivered in South Florida.

BILL ROGGIO: Afghan military suffers significant casualties since end of government’s ceasefire.

US Army Major General Andrew Poppas, Resolute Support’s deputy chief of staff for operations, claimed on July 21 that Afghan operations resulted in the killing or wounding of over 1,700 Taliban, Islamic State, and other insurgents. Poppas’ figures are derived from the Afghan ministries of Defense and Interior, which are notorious for inflating casualties. Even if Poppas’ stated figures for insurgent casualties are accurate, he did not explain how the body count equated to progress on the ground. Afghan forces have not wrestled districts from Taliban control during this time period, and the Taliban remains on the offensive. [See LWJ report, NATO command touts body count of ‘Taliban irreconcilables’.]

The estimated 150 Afghan security personnel killed since July 12 was derived from press reports on significant attacks by the Taliban on Afghan bases, security checkpoints, and district centers. A significant attack defined as one where more than five Afghan security personnel were killed. Smaller scale attacks, such as roadside bombings and assassinations, were not included.

We’ve spent most of two decades training up the Afghan National Army.

LET’S GET FRACKING: Could oil prices skyrocket to $200 a barrel … or more?

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Connecticut is drowning in debt. Should the rest of us have to pay?

JUSTICE: Prison Radicalization Risk Figures Into Judge Sentencing Terror Group Funder to Time Served. “Kane noted in his ruling that ‘many commentators warn against unnecessarily lengthy sentences for terrorism offenses’ because of lack of programs to counter extremism.”

Well, we wouldn’t want a terrorist fundraiser to become extreme or radicalized.

BUT OF COURSE: Nancy Pelosi Leads Democrats in Slamming Faith-Based Adoption as a ‘License to Discriminate.’

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT HOW I’D HOPED: Sweden Struggles To Address Child Marriage.

TRILLION-DOLLAR LOG-ROLLING: Senate plots to avert government shutdown with massive spending bundle. “That bill would make up two-thirds of all discretionary funding, most of which goes toward the Pentagon. That would make the package difficult for President Donald Trump to veto, even though the domestic piece of it, which includes health and education programs, would vastly exceed his own budget request.”

MICHAEL WALSH: Toronto Discovers the Joys of ‘Diversity.’ Rising violence, increasing fear — so naturally Canadian officials blame guns.

JA. NÄCHSTE FRAGE? Is Germany’s Navy Dead?

The Luftwaffe ist kaput, too.

NOW THAT’S REAL SOCIALISM: Venezuela Inflation Could Reach One Million Percent by Year’s End.

Everyone knows you never go Full Zimbabwe.

Plus, this friendly reminder that the only thing socialist states never run short of is zeros.

HMM: Tariff Backlash Could Cost Republicans the Senate.

Heading into the mid-term elections the Real Clear Politics Battle for the Senate map suggests it it is extremely unlikely for Democrats to take control of the Senate.

The Republicans have 46 safe or not up seats, and two more likely. To take control of the Senate, Democrats would have to win all nine likely or leans, plus six of seven tossups.

The math is not as daunting as it looks. Democrats are leading in Florida, Tennessee, and Nevada. I expect those leads to hold. That Republicans were only up by 1 percentage point in Indiana looks problematic for Republicans to say the least. For the sake of argument, put that in the Democrat column.

That just gets things to 49 where things stand right now.

This is some in-depth analysis from a Hillary-hating Trump voter, so if you have the time I recommend you read the whole thing.

From where I sit, the Senate playing field is so tilted towards the GOP that it’s practically a wall — but walls do get breached.

CHANGE: North Korea Is Tearing Down Parts of a Launch Site. Is It a Sign of Things to Come?

The analysis from 38 North, a North Korea-focused website affiliated with Washington-based non-profit Henry L. Stimson Center, found that Pyongyang, in recent days, started tearing down a rail-mounted processing building where rockets are assembled before being moved to a nearby launch pad and a rocket engine test stand.

The dismantlement at Sohae Satellite Launching Station, located near the Chinese border and about two hours’ drive from North Korea’s major facility for producing nuclear bomb fuel, serves as the sole example of North Korea’s willingness to work with the Trump Administration since the landmark summit in Singapore on June 12.

It might be only one, but that’s not such a bad example.

GOOD ADVICE: Don’t Underestimate the Socialist Surge on the Left.

National Democrats are terrified of the rise of Ocasio-Cortez, and for good reason. They may not have any more influence over the socialist surge than Republicans had over Donald Trump’s rise in 2016. Trump broke through Republican “establishment” opposition as if it didn’t exist — because it didn’t. Today’s national parties are event planners for movements. Parties belong to movements more than movements belong to parties. Movements like the Tea Party, and now Democratic socialism, have supplanted party structures as organizers of ideas and debate.

As a longtime aide to U.S. Rep. and then-Sen. Tom Coburn, I can testify to the fact that confronting entrenched power was not mere theory. In fight after fight — especially our successful campaign to eliminate congressional earmarks — we experienced the overwhelming strength of grassroots movements and weakness of national party structures.

Joe Lieberman, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, is right to warn that Ocasio-Cortez’s policies could bankrupt America, but today’s Democratic Party left Lieberman long ago. Today’s Democrats lack the credibility and political power to stop the socialist surge.

As I wrote yesterday at the PJM live blog, political power is usually cyclical, and the GOP is rarely more than one crisis away — real or manufactured — from losing it. And today’s “Democratic” Socialists don’t want to move the ball in between the 40-yard lines, to borrow Charles Krauthammer’s memorable phrase — they want just enough time in power for a Hail Mary attempt all the way into Venezuela.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Pompeo Heads to Hill for Interrogation and Much, Much More. “With Flake and Corker on the committee along with numerous unhinged Democrats, I expect this to be a real circus. The hearing will be on C-SPAN so tune-in.”