CHANGE (IT BACK): Idaho Brings the Firing Squad Back to Center Stage. “The state has now made the firing squad its primary method of execution. Lethal injection remains available as a backup, but Idaho has moved the rifle ahead of the needle because the old system has become slow, fragile, and legally tangled.”

NICK KRISTOF, DOG-RAPE ENTHUSIAST:

SPACE: ‘PROMISE’ me the moon? NASA wants to send spare nuclear-powered Mars rover to the lunar surface.

Isaacman also announced the potential repurposing of an engineering development model built to mirror the agency’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars. “There is another,” Isaacman said, quoting Yoda’s line from “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”

That test rover is called PROMISE, short for “Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration” (though it was formerly known as Optimism). PROMISE was developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, where it has been used as a test platform for fixes or commands that engineers want to try on the ground before permanently sending them to Perseverance and Curiosity. Now, NASA wants to send PROMISE on a mission of its own.

Though sending PROMISE to the moon would leave Perseverance and Curiosity — both of which remain active on Mars — without an Earth-based testbed, Isaacman thinks it would be worth it.

“We’ve had years now of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we’ve got this hardware that the taxpayers have invested a lot in,” he said. “So the question was posed: ‘What if we send it to the moon?'”

Beats the hell out of staying in California.

THE MICROCOSM WITH A MICRO AUDIENCE:

THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, HOW DOES IT WORK?

Of course, we know how the Left works:

Change the incentives, change behavior.

TNSTAAFL:

KEMI BADENOCH: “DEFENSE OF THE REALM IS THE FIRST DUTY OF GOVERNMENT.”

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE — WHEN IT’S NOT BOGUS, WHICH IS SELDOM, APPARENTLY:

Flashback: We’re told to ‘follow the science’ — yet some of it is just plain wrong.

EVOLUTION WITHIN EVOLUTION ABOUT EVOLUTION: Things are getting really interesting in the long-running Intelligent Design/Neo Darwinian Materialism debate on the origins and development of life.

There are recent discussions among some advocates of the latter perspective on whether it’s time to concede the conventional evolutionary wisdom is in need of a tune-up. It’s on HillFaith where you can check out conservative media voice Michael Knowles interviewing Dr. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute and “Return of the God Hypothesis.”

GOODER AND HARDER, NEW YORK:

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I’m Rather Enjoying the Democrats’ ’50 Shades of Commie’ Fight. “The reason that establishment Dems don’t call out the freaky fringe is that they don’t disagree with them. Any of them, no matter how whacked-out they are. The wilder commie youth have been the Democrats’ useful idiots in the streets since the 1960s. What’s happening now is that the useful idiots want an elected seat at the table. And they are not fans of the elected officials who have been using them.”

UNEXPECTEDLIES STILL PLENTIFUL: Minimum wages rise in Chicago, Cook County.

Minimum wages have gone up for workers in Chicago and Cook County, but efforts to raise state and federal minimums remain on hold.

As of July 1, Chicago’s minimum wage is $17.05 per hour for employers with four workers or more, up from $16.60 the day before.

The $12.96 minimum for tipped workers remains in effect after the city council moved in May to pause a scheduled increase.

Cook County’s minimum wage increased from $15 to $15.40 on Wednesday, and the tipped minimum rose from $9 to $9.25.

National Federation of Independent Business Illinois State Director Noah Finley said minimum wage hikes impact small businesses’ ability to grow.

“Small businesses often have smaller margins, and raising the cost of labor puts additional pressure on them,” Finley said.

For the well-connected (and well-heeled) who push these measures, that’s the whole point.

LEADERSHIP MATTERS:

FASTER, PLEASE:

Besides, Conan tells me that Haiti is a much nicer place than Massachusetts:

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: So Who’s Winning the Air War? “Back in January, I wrote a Thursday Essay headlined, “So How’s That Russo-Ukraine Oil War Going?” I won’t drag you through the whole thing, but my conclusion back then could be fairly summed up as, ‘Not very well because Kyiv remains too obsessed with Crimea to wage an effective, systematic campaign on Russia’s energy infrastructure.’ Well, times change.”

THE “WARMTH OF COLLECTIVISM” WILL ALSO BE “WARM TO POLITICAL VIOLENCE:”