SPACE: Watch as NASA’s Cassini Speeds Past Saturn’s Rings in This Awesome View.

Cassini took the 21 photos that make up the video in a 4-minute stretch on Aug. 20, during the probe’s latest plunge between Saturn’s cloud tops and the planet’s innermost rings. Cassini has been performing such dives every 6.5 days since late April, during the “Grand Finale” phase of its venerable mission.

“The entirety of the main rings can be seen here, but due to the low viewing angle, the rings appear extremely foreshortened,” NASA officials wrote in a description of the video.

Cassini was launched almost exactly 20 years ago, but everything comes to an end on September 15. The probe has been on-station for 13 years — reporting back thrilling images for far longer than its planned six-year primary mission.

It’s post-Apollo NASA at its best.

GOOD LORD: German Nurse Is Thought to Have Killed at Least 86, Officials Say.

TRUMP: “All options are on the table” after last night’s North Korean missile launch.

DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BASEBALL BATS: After melees, Berkeley mayor asks Cal to cancel right-wing Free Speech Week.

In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest.

“I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,” said Arreguin, whose city has been the site of several showdowns this year between, on the one hand, the left and its fringe anarchist wing, and on the other, supporters of President Trump who at times have included white nationalists.

“I am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem,” Arreguin said. “It’s something we have seen in Oakland and in Berkeley.”

If the mayor wants to hand over protection of free speech to the right wing, I suppose we should thank him for recognizing that we’re better prepared for the task.

(Thoroughly modern reference in the headline.)

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: Berkeley Mayor Is Member of Antifa Facebook Group that Organized Riots.

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: What’s in Japan’s Record 2018 Defense Budget Request?

Details of the request are yet to be fully finalized, but officials indicated that Japan will request money for: the introduction of the Aegis Ashore land-based missile defense system (amount unspecified because needs to be negotiated with the United States); SM-3 Block 2A intercept missiles (47.2 billion yen); PAC-3 MSE missiles (20.5 billion yen); the enhancement of the automatic warning and control system’s detection capacity (10.7 billion yen); the development of a next-generation radar capable of tracing stealth aircraft (19.6 billion yen); two destroyers that can remove sea mines (96.4 billion yen); six F-35A stealth fighters (88.1 billion yen); four Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft (45.7 billion yen) the maintenance of facilities for Self-Defense Forces units stationed on the southwestern islands of Okinawa (55.2 billion yen); the development of a high-speed glide bomb for use in contingencies on such islands (10 billion yen); the development of a system to monitor space activity (4.4 billion yen).

China, predictably, is unhappy with such developments.

Well, good — that probably means Beijing has estimated Japan is serious again about defending itself.

MADE FOR TELEVISION: Trump ‘Assumed the Ratings Would be Far Higher’ Announcing Arpaio Pardon as Hurricane Started.

ARMY GREEN ON POLICE BLUE: White House reverses Obama ban on police getting military equipment.

Former President Obama put a halt to the so-called 1033 program in 2015 after images of heavily armed police responding to protests in Ferguson, Mo., shocked the nation.

Obama’s initiatives blocked the transfer of armored vehicles, grenade launchers, armed aircraft, bayonets and guns and ammunition of .50 caliber or higher.

Semi-militarizing the police was never a good idea. Their job is to “protect and serve,” not to occupy. That’s a job for the National Guard, on the rare occasion that the need arises.

FRITZ LODGE: Israel and Hezbollah Eye Their Next War.

On August 15, Israel’s Channel 2 news revealed satellite photos of an Iranian missile production facility near the town of Baniyas in northwestern Syria, capable of producing long-range rockets. Iran’s formidable military presence in Syria is nothing new, but the revelation of this production facility underlines how deeply the war in Syria has changed the balance of military power in the eastern Mediterranean.

Faced with the possible collapse of Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime, Iran and its regional proxies have poured millions of dollars and thousands of soldiers into its Syrian ally. Now, with Russian help, that investment has paid off, and the regime has reestablished control over much of central Syria, and is stabilizing the front along “de-confliction zones” guaranteed by Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

This is a problem for Israel. As the battle lines in Syria begin to stabilize, Iran and its allies will be able to focus more energy and attention on the Jewish state. Nowhere is this threat clearer than in Lebanon, where the Iran-allied and financed group of Hezbollah boasts thousands of soldiers, deep political influence in the Lebanese government, and an arsenal of up to 150,000 rockets.

Israel perhaps will pay the largest price for Obama’s dithering over Syria and his execrable deal with Iran.

YOU DON’T SAY: Lurid Trump allegations made by Louise Mensch and co-writer came from hoaxer.

Claude Taylor tweeted fake details of criminal inquiries into Trump that were invented by a source whose claim to work for the New York attorney general was not checked, according to emails seen by the Guardian. The allegations were endorsed as authentic and retweeted by his co-writer Louise Mensch.

The source’s false tips included an allegation, which has been aggressively circulated by Mensch and Taylor, that Trump’s inactive fashion model agency is under investigation by New York authorities for possible sex trafficking.

The hoaxer, who fed the information to Taylor by email, said she acted out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Taylor and Mensch. Their false stories about Trump have included a claim that he was already being replaced as president by Senator Orrin Hatch in a process kept secret from the American public.

“Taylor asked no questions to verify my identity, did no vetting whatsoever, sought no confirmation from a second source – but instead asked leading questions to support his various theories, asking me to verify them,” the source said in an email.

After being approached for comment by the Guardian on Monday, Taylor posted what he described as a “mea culpa” on Twitter. “As a ‘citizen journalist’ I acknowledge my error and do apologize,” he wrote.

Mensch denied using the bogus information and said her allegations about Trump’s model agency came from her own sources.

I wonder if this means Mensch stands by her claim that “the Supreme Court notified Mr. Trump that the formal process of a case of impeachment against him was begun” after he’d been secretly indicted, or that “Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is being given security briefings to prepare him for the Presidency.”

AFTERMATH: Looters Ransack Stores in Houston as Waters Recede.

Meanwhile… Good Samaritans help woman rescue 21 dogs from floodwaters in southeast Houston.

THIS IS NOT NEWS TO INSTAPUNDIT READERS: OPEC-Shale War Could Freeze Oil at $40 to $50.

BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL: Amazon slashes Whole Foods prices by up to 43 percent on first day.

Amazon had said last week that it would cut prices when the deal closed so that Whole Foods — whose natural and organic products often carried premium prices that resulted in the upscale chain being derisively dubbed “Whole Paycheck” — would instead start to become “affordable for everyone.”

“It’s impressive they would execute the pricing strategy so quickly,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com.

More price cuts on more items are expected at the 470 Whole Foods stores in the United States, Canada and Britain, and Whole Foods said the price cuts were not temporary.

It’s that aggressive approach to pricing, a hallmark of Amazon, that has sent shock waves through the $611-billion U.S. grocery industry.

Whole Foods had experimented with cutting prices to drive more food traffic, but without much success. I suspect part of the reason may have been a consumer expectation that, Whole Foods being Whole Foods, the cuts would be short-lived. With Amazon in charge, the expectation game might change.

J CHRISTIAN ADAMS: NBC’s Jane Timm Sparks Outrage in Attacking Trump’s Election Commission.. “The former fact checker needs a fact checker.”

Ouch.

THE WHITE GIRL’S BURDEN: “A large part of the scandal in Rotherham, and other similar scandals in Oxford, Newcastle etc., was that many (most? all?) of the girls who ended up being groomed and abused were in the care of the local authorities and were in foster homes or institutions. When these girls attempted to report their abuse the various officials tended to ignore them or even do the victim blaming that feminists get worked up about when the alleged attacker is a white male frat boy. Needless to say, despite all the official inquiries and reports and so on, these officials and their superiors have all faced minimal punishment.”

The victims were less intersectional than the perpetrators.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela Eyes Censoring Social Media After Public Shaming Wave.

Venezuela is considering banning messages that promote “hate” and “intolerance” on social media and messenger services, according to Delcy Rodriguez, the president of the country’s all-powerful constituent assembly.

Rodriguez told reporters on Monday that the South American nation is looking to limit messages that fuel bigotry and confrontation between Venezuelans in a so-called anti-hate law, which is currently being debated by the legislative super body, known as the constituyente.

“We’re going to regulate and control because, in recent years, Venezuela has been victim of laboratories of physiological war that, through messages and social medial, promote a fratricidal war between Venezuelans,” Rodriguez said. “We’re not going to allow what happened in Rwanda repeat itself in Venezuela.”

Comrades, we must protect the Revolution from wreckers, hoarders, and… tweeters.

JOHN BOLTON: How to Get Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Although candidate Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement, his administration has twice decided to remain in the deal. It so certified to Congress, most recently in July, as required by law. Before the second certification, Trump asked repeatedly for alternatives to acquiescing yet again in a policy he clearly abhorred. But no such options were forthcoming, despite “a sharp series of exchanges” between the president and his advisers, as the New York Times and similar press reports characterized it.

Many outside the administration wondered how this was possible: Was Trump in control, or were his advisers? Defining a compelling rationale to exit Obama’s failed nuclear deal and elaborating a game plan to do so are quite easy. In fact, Steve Bannon asked me in late July to draw up just such a game plan for the president — the option he didn’t have — which I did.

Here it is. It is only five pages long, but like instant coffee, it can be readily expanded to a comprehensive, hundred-page playbook if the administration were to decide to leave the Iran agreement. There is no need to wait for the next certification deadline in October. Trump can and should free America from this execrable deal at the earliest opportunity.

I offer the Iran nonpaper now as a public service, since staff changes at the White House have made presenting it to President Trump impossible.

Sad. But read the whole thing, which is too long to properly excerpt here.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Harvey Pummels, NKorea Launches, ACLU Files and Much, Much More.

THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: Obamacare Causes New York’s Largest Hospital Network to Leave Insurance Market.

ACT OF WAR? North Korea Has Fired a Missile Over Northern Japan.

“North Korea’s reckless action is an unprecedented, serious and a grave threat to our nation,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters.

Abe said Japan was seeking an urgent meeting at the United Nations to strengthen measures against Pyongyang. The test was a clear violation of UN resolutions and the government had protested against the move in the strongest terms, he said.

South Korea also condemned the launch. “We will respond strongly based on our steadfast alliance with the United States if North Korea continues nuclear and missile provocations,” the South’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

North Korea fired what it said was a rocket carrying a communications satellite into orbit over Japan in 2009. The United States, Japan and South Korea considered that launch to have been a ballistic missile test.

“It’s pretty unusual,” said Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies at Monterey, California. “North Korea’s early space launches in 1998 and 2009 went over Japan, but that’s not the same thing as firing a missile.”

It’s time for the White House to implement Austin Bay’s “return of serve” option for dealing with North Korea.

PATRICK POOLE: Islamic Terror Attacks Are Literally Changing the Face of Europe — And America.

HMM: College Students With Asperger’s Could Sue Over Hate Speech Policies, Says Professor.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Woke, Predictable VMAs Ignore Antifa Violence, Hate.

Even WaPo is taking notice of the violence inherent in Antifa’s system, and recent attacks on a reporter and a photographer ought to make more in the MSM recognize the truth.

LET’S CALL THEM WHAT THEY REALLY ARE THEN: Democratic operatives with baseball bats.

If Antifa becomes the arbiter of legitimate political speech in this country, then we’re really in trouble.

STEPHEN KRUISER: New Filter Claims to Remove Hangover-Inducing Ingredients From Wine.

I’ll have two of whatever Kruiser is having.

THE ATLANTIC: Did Climate Change Intensify Hurricane Harvey?

Before we look into that question, perhaps first we should investigate all of those hurricanes which went missing between Katrina and Harvey.

UPDATE: Link was missing for about 90 seconds. Fixed now — sorry!