SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: The Lesson of Charlie Gard.

RED ON RED: GOP Senator’s Anti-Trump Op-Ed: ‘Faustian Bargain… Was Not Worth It.’

FASTER, PLEASE: Trump isn’t letting Obamacare die; he’s trying to kill it.

This is Salon, so they’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.

CRIMESTOPPERS: Texas woman shoots, kills home intruder.

A 60-year-old Texas woman wasn’t taking any chances Monday morning when she heard two intruders enter her home, grabbing her pistol and shooting one of the would-be thieves dead, police said.

The woman, who was not immediately identified, confronted the two armed men after they entered her Harris County home through an open garage door around 11:30 a.m., WTSP reported.

Cathy Hanks, a neighbor, said it’s not surprising the woman fired her pistol when she saw a threat in her home, explaining: “That’s really how we are. That’s just Texas.”

“It’s the state of Texas. If you’re going to go into someone’s home, you’re going to get shot,” Hanks said.

Noted.

ALLIES: DOD concerned by Turkey purchase of Russian air defense system.

The Pentagon is concerned by Turkey’s decision to buy a Russian air defense system, Defense Department spokesman Jeff Davis said Monday.

Davis said that Defense officials “certainly are aware of the reports” that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is currently in talks with Russia to buy the S-400 surface-to-air missile system.

“Our only concern about it is one of interoperability,” Davis told reporters at the Pentagon. “Turkey is a NATO ally. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea for allies to buy interoperable equipment.”

Interoperability depends on with whom one wishes to interoperate.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Marine veteran whistleblower hired at VA, years after attempts to silence him.

PROGRESS: Jordanian legislators repeal ‘marry the rapist’ clause.

STEALTH SINGLE-PAYER: We Need To Break The Law To Make Obamacare Too Big To Fail.

On Monday, a bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House released their list of “solutions” regarding Obamacare. Developed over the past several months, the list can easily be summed up in a single phrase: Single payer.

The lawmakers didn’t come out and say as much, of course, but that would be the net result. In funding more bailout spending for insurers, the proposal clearly states that Obamacare is “too big to fail”—that no amount of taxpayer funding is too great to keep insurers offering coverage on the health exchanges. Enacting that government backstop would create a de facto single-payer health-care system—only with many more well-priced insurer lobbyists around to demand more crony capitalist payments from government to their industry.

Read the whole thing, but the short version is that the Democrats thoroughly screwed us in 2010, and the Republicans are too cowardly to unscrew us is 2017.

BREAKING: New Details on 173-Man Islamic State Terror Team Headed Towards Europe.

GOP BORDER LAWMAKER: ‘Can’t Double Down’ on 3rd-Century Wall to Solve 21st-Century Problems.

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), who has voiced support for a technology-driven solution over President Trump’s border wall, has introduced legislation in support of building a “Smart Wall” that would entail high-tech detection and tracking systems.

“Violent drug cartels are using more modern technology to breach our border than what we are using to secure it,” Hurd said in a statement last week introducing the Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology (SMART) Act. “We can’t double down on a Third Century approach to solve 21st Century problems if we want a viable long-term solution.”

Hurd, whose district includes 800 miles of U.S.-Mexico border, said during a congressional hearing last week that he favors the U.S. investing in a “smart wall” rather than spending billions to build the 700- to 900-mile border wall that Trump has envisioned.

I’m all in favor of modern solutions to old problems, but we are talking the U.S. government here. You have to wonder if a smart wall might end up as the world’s biggest — and hackable — Internet of Things device.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Many Ice Cream Sandwiches Don’t Melt In The Sun.

FINGERS CROSSED: North Korean missiles may reach US, but lack effective re-entry.

U.S. and South Korean experts said Tuesday that Japanese video footage capturing the Hwasong-14’s re-entry vehicle shortly before it crashed into the sea suggests it failed to survive the extreme heat and pressure after re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere following its launch from northern North Korea last week.

The apparent failure likely means the rogue regime will conduct more flight tests of the Hwasong-14 missile to ensure the warhead could survive the re-entry from space and hit its intended target.

After analyzing video from a rooftop camera operated by Japan’s NHK television on the northern island of Hokkaido, U.S. missile expert Michael Elleman concluded that Hwasong-14’s re-entry vehicle “disintegrated” before it landed at sea.

Denying Pyongyang the ability to improve its reentry vehicle might be the best reason to impose a “missile quarantine,” already proposed as one possible option by our own Austin Bay.

SCIENCE: Why Kids and Adults Taste Blueberries — and Sweets — Differently.

“Kids live in a different sensory world than adults,” said Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, an author of the study. “When it comes to sweet taste, children are really vulnerable. They use sweet in deciding what they like — and it can be used for good.”

In the new report, researchers from Monell and the University of Florida offered two harvests of blueberries to 49 children and their mothers. They tested three different varieties of blueberries. When asked to pick their favorites, adults and children chose the sweetest berries picked during the first harvest fairly equally, but in the second harvest, the children — aged 6 to 16 — picked the sweeter fruit, while the adults like each variety equally. The study was published last month in The Journal of Food Science.

Mennella says that science can help parents channel the sweet preference to a food humans evolved to like – healthy fruits. Young children are more tolerant of both sweetness and saltiness. Somewhere in mid-adolescence, those windows narrow.

“It’s a really smart biologic response,” said Mennella. “Sweet taste is a signal for calories, and salt is a signal for minerals.”

Although I’m unsure of any evolutionary advantage, I lost my sweet tooth at age 25 when I discovered scotch.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How much will the new iPhone cost?

HMM: McMaster ducks question on why Venezuelan power grab got sanctions but Erdogan power grab drew U.S. congratulations.

HUH: US detects ‘highly unusual’ North Korean submarine activity.

The US military has detected “highly unusual and unprecedented levels” of North Korean submarine activity and evidence of an “ejection test” in the days following Pyongyang’s second intercontinental ballistic missile launch this month, a defense official told CNN on Monday.

An ejection test examines a missile’s “cold-launch system,” which uses high pressure steam to propel a missile out of the launch canister into the air before its engines ignite. That helps prevent flames and heat from the engine from damaging either the submarine, submersible barge or any nearby equipment used to launch the missile.

Carried out on land at Sinpo Naval Shipyard, Sunday’s ejection test is the third time this month — and fourth this year — that North Korea has conducted a trial of the missile component that is critical to developing submarine launch capabilities, according to the US defense official.

That’s disconcerting.

NO. WAY. Australia Weather Bureau Caught Tampering With Climate Numbers.

Meteorologist Lance Pidgeon watched the 13 degrees Fahrenheit Goulburn recording from July 2 disappear from the bureau’s website. The temperature readings fluctuated briefly and then disappeared from the government’s website.

“The temperature dropped to minus 10 (13 degrees Fahrenheit), stayed there for some time and then it changed to minus 10.4 (14 degrees Fahrenheit) and then it disappeared,” Pidgeon said, adding that he notified scientist Jennifer Marohasy about the problem, who then brought the readings to the attention of the bureau.

The bureau would later restore the original 13 degrees Fahrenheit reading after a brief question and answer session with Marohasy.

“The bureau’s quality ­control system, designed to filter out spurious low or high values was set at minus 10 minimum for Goulburn which is why the record automatically adjusted,” a bureau spokeswoman told reporters Monday. BOM added that there are limits placed on how low temperatures could go in some very cold areas of the country.

Now why would that be?

MULTICULTI: Celebrating Norwegian Christianity – With a Muslim Imam.

HUH: Drug prosecutions at historic low under Sessions’ “crackdown.”

At a time when President Trump has publically called Sessions “very weak,” legal experts and former prosecutors say the Senate’s inaction confirming new U.S. attorneys and a federal hiring freeze instituted by the Trump administration have left the attorney general without the tools he needs to reverse a five-year decline in drug prosecutions. Without his own people implementing tough-on-crime policies on the ground, local investigators may still be operating under Obama-era reforms and bringing less cases to the feds for prosecution.

“For four years people got used to doing things a different way,” said Mark Osler, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit. “Sessions doesn’t have the people on the ground to do the shoving.”

As the country’s highest ranking law enforcement officer, Sessions has vowed to punish drug offenders with the harshest possible sentences, a drastic shift from drug policy under President Obama. In a memo to U.S. Attorneys in May, he reversed an an Obama-era reform, urging prosecutors to enhance sentences for those who violate federal drug laws.

But so far Sessions’ changes have not registered in drug prosecution data.

Maybe he is weak after all.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES: Pentagon Should Declassify Report on Afghan Military Sex Abuse.

The U.S. government’s Afghanistan watchdog has asked the Pentagon to declassify a report about alleged sexual abuse of children by members of the Afghan security forces.
…
“At the request of a bipartisan, bicameral group of 93 members of Congress, SIGAR this quarter issued a report to Congress on DOD and State’s implementation of the Leahy Laws in Afghanistan,” says SIGAR’s quarterly report. “Because DOD has classified much of the information on which the SIGAR report is based, the report is classified. SIGAR has requested that DOD declassify the report so that it can be released to the public.”

A Defense Department official said the report is undergoing a security review and the information may be declassified. The official could not say why the information was classified in the first place.

At a guess, because going public raises issues about our mission in Afghanistan which few people are comfortable talking about.

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: OPEC Has a Crippling Problem: Its Members Can’t Stop Pumping.

Eight months after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries announced a plan for its 14 members and 10 allied countries to withhold almost 2% of the world’s oil every day to boost prices, seven of the 11 OPEC members that pledged to cut appear to be producing more oil than promised.

Crude prices have actually fallen, by 7.6% to $52.52 a barrel, since the beginning of the year—half what the cartel called a fair price just three years ago and a level that some say is here for the long term.

Previously, low production costs meant OPEC members profited even when oil prices fell. These days, members have ramped up government spending to keep populations happy and cover military expenses, and don’t have a cushion to let oil revenues slip. Their strained budgets can be covered only through increasingly high prices per barrel, and if prices are low they need to produce more.

The inability to control output poses a potentially existential threat to OPEC’s influence.

OPEC’s existential crisis is due almost entirely to frackers — have you hugged one today? — which means that after almost 50 years, we are indeed drilling our way out of that problem.

KELLY’S UP, KATIE’S OUT, AND DEEP THROAT’S BACK (NOT REALLY): All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

TITLE IX BLUES: Kicker Matt Boermeester was removed from USC after an unfair investigation, girlfriend says.

Zoe Katz, 22, a senior, said in a two-page statement her attorney emailed to The Times that Boermeester “has been falsely accused of conduct involving me.” Katz confirmed that the statement was hers. Her attorney, Kerry L. Steigerwalt, said that USC alleged that Boermeester shoved Katz outside her home.

USC suspended Boermeester in February while the school investigated what it called a “student-conduct issue.”

Mark Schamel, an attorney representing Boermeester, said Boermeester was not permitted to return to USC following the school’s investigation, in which USC alleged that Boermeester assaulted Katz. Katz has denied this, as did Boermeester, through his attorney.

In the statement, Katz said she and Boermeester have dated for more than a year. The Title IX investigation began, Steigerwalt said, after a neighbor witnessed Boermeester and Katz roughhousing. The neighbor told his roommate, who told a coach in USC’s athletic department that Boermeester was abusing Katz. The coach then reported the incident to the Title IX office.

Katz said she was summoned to a mandatory meeting with Title IX officials, where she told investigators that the two were playing around. Katz was subsequently told that she “must be afraid of Matt,” she said. She told officials she was not. Boermeester has not been arrested or charged with a crime.

Clearly, Katz is not yet woke enough to understand that she’d been abused, and like other college women must be treated as a virtual ward of the state.

OH: “Overwhelming” Support For More Background Checks Not So Overwhelming After All.

How often have you heard gun control advocates quoting figures which indicate that “more than 90%” of gun owners, NRA members, hunters or whoever else support “universal background checks” in the past couple of years? If you follow this subject even casually your answer was most likely pretty often. It’s been repeated enough that we generally see it accepted as part of the conventional wisdom. But as is so often the case these day, the “conventional wisdom” is frequently neither. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action has dug into some of the actual numbers on this question and more, finding that how a question is phrased to the public can have a significant impact on the data.

Read the whole thing — which is much more than most people reporting the “numbers” have done.

KEEP PORTLAND VULNERABLE: Sanctuary City Leaders Silent After Homeless Illegal Alien Rapes Woman in Pricey Portland Neighborhood.