AT AMAZON, back-to-school shopping made easy.

Plus, soak up summer deals while they last.

THE TOP 10 THINGS TO DO in Cleveland.

This list omits my favorite thing that I did in Cleveland, touring the U.S.S. Cod, a World War II era submarine. But then, I was a big fan of Run Silent, Run Deep.

THE MORE WE KNOW, the bigger deal the Fermi Paradox becomes.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: UAW decides to skip election and form union at VW anyway.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Excerpts of Navy Yard report: 160 cameras and no one watching. “A private security guard was in an office with monitors showing the feeds from 160 security cameras while the shootings occurred. Those cameras, police now know, covered almost every inch of Building 197 and were documenting in real time every move by gunman Aaron Alexis. But the guard locked the door, hid and notified no one that he was there with access to the information.”

R.I.P., Tommy Ramone.

BLACK AMERICANS: The True Casualties of Amnesty. “The black unemployment rate is almost 11 percent, far higher than that of any other group profiled by labor statistics. African Americans are disproportionately employed in lower-skilled jobs – the very same jobs immigrants take. As Steven Camarota asked in a recent column, why double immigration when so many people already aren’t working?”

When my local car wash let go of its illegals a few years back, most of the replacements — probably at a higher wage — were black.

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING LIGHT: “As one participating scientist points out, to miss the mark by so much means what we understand about the universe is fundamentally wrong. The universe continues to be exciting, a little scary, but mostly—a mystery.” Just when you thought the science was settled.

CHANGE: Europe is dying, says France’s leading demographer, and Britain would be better off with the Anglosphere. This realization may help explain the anti-EU preference cascade that appears to be taking hold in Britain.

Plus, a nice plug for Jim Bennett & Michael Lotus’s America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity In The 21st Century. Here in the states, that’s a book that every 2016 candidate — or aspiring issues director — should be reading now.

WIRED: WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Whistleblowers Tell Congress about Culture of Retaliation at the VA.

IN THE MAIL: From Timothy Zahn, Cobra Slave (Cobra Rebellion).

Also, today only at Amazon: Basis Health Tracker for Fitness, Sleep, and Stress, $139.99 (30% off).

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 429.

ROSS DOUTHAT ON REFORM CONSERVATIVES AND THE CULTURE WARS. Excerpt:

As much as cultural outreach matters, I wouldn’t want the kind of conservative political party that essentially declines to represent populist and social conservatives at all on many issues, enforcing an elite consensus instead of representing its own constituents wherever those constituents seem too disreputable or insufficiently cosmopolitan. This is what you have on the center-right in many European countries, Sullivan’s native isle at times included, and I don’t think it’s worked out particularly well: When it hasn’t led directly to disaster (see Eurozone, disastrous anti-democratic expansion of), it’s often shunted important issues (immigration, religious identity, crime, multiculturalism, etc.) to a back burner, where they simmer and simmer until some crisis makes them boil over, and the next thing you know you have to deal with a Marine Le Pen (if not a Golden Dawn). And to a lesser extent this is the dynamic that’s made the Tea Party so angry, uncompromising and intermittently destructive in our own politics — the sense, often somewhat accurate, that their leaders want their votes but not their ideas, and that there are semi-deliberate conspiracies to deceive them about what their elected representatives are really after.

The reality is that, except in truly exceptional cases, our politics is better off in the long run when views held by large proportions of the public are represented in some form by one of our two parties. Right now (to run down a partial list of divisive cultural issues), a plurality of Americans want the immigration rate decreased; about half the country opposes affirmative action; more than half supports the death penalty; about half of Americans call themselves pro-life. Support for gay marriage and marijuana legalization has skyrocketed, but in both cases about 40 percent of the country is still opposed. Even independent of my own (yes, populist and socially conservative) views, I think these people, these opinions, deserve democratic representation: Representation that leads and channels and restrains, representation that recognizes trends and trajectories and political realities, but also representation that makes them feel well-served, spoken for, and (in the case of issues where they’re probably on the losing side) respected even in defeat.

As opposed, I guess, to an “I won” philosophy.

POINTS AND FIGURES: Should Robots Be Enabled To Kill?

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THE INSTA-WIFE: Helping Young Men Fight Back On College Campuses.

EXPIRATION DATE, REACHED: White House says photo ops have some value, after all.

ADVICE TO EDITORS: Before you assign or publish an article, ask yourself, “Will this article be more enjoyable than the Gawker blog post viciously mocking the article?”

That’s not setting the bar especially high. And yet. . .

YEAH, GOOD LUCK GETTING THEM TO FOLLOW THAT LAW, OR ANY OTHER, WHERE INCRIMINATING MATTER IS INVOLVED: National Archives Reminds IRS that Instant Messages Must be Retained.

“INDOCTRINATE” IS THE KEY WORD HERE: Sen. McCaskill Would Indoctrinate Judges About “Rape Myths.”

STAND UP AGAINST THE ABUSE: Stop Violence Against Men Day. Violence against men. There’s a lot of it. Who knew?

NEW YORK’S CAR WASHES STAFFED BY ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Are these jobs that Americans won’t do? As I’ve reported before, back when Knoxville had a brief spike in immigration enforcement, the car wash I go to somehow found American workers. But they probably had to pay them more.

GRAPHIC: Who Does Your College Think Its Peers Are?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students Face Debt By 1,000 Fees.

That $4 is not a large fee. Even the poorest student can probably afford it. On the other hand, collectively, UCLA’s student fees are significant: more than $3,500, or about a quarter of the mandatory cost of attending UCLA for a year.

Those fees are made up of many items, each trivial individually. Only collectively do they become a major source of costs for students and their families and potentially a barrier to college access for students who don’t have an extra $3,500 lying around. . . .

Colleges seem to be subject to this budget problem in spades, because until very recently, passing on all the costs to the consumer was very easy. Highly motivated coalitions get together to demand something, and eventually the byzantine, quasi-democratic institutional governance often delivers that thing, along with the associated cost. Each of these new demands — a better gym, a new student center for underrepresented groups, fancy new buildings for alumni to put their names on (but not pay to maintain) — generates a small individual cost per student. Over time, however, those little individual costs aggregate into college bills that grow much faster than inflation year after year, decade after decade.

If UCLA had had to treat this as a budget problem — in other words, if they’d had to take money from something else in order to fund the concerts — then they probably would have decided that “more famous concert headliners” are not a core part of delivering a UCLA education. But instead, they made it part of someone else’s budget problem. Someone who is probably just going to sigh and increase the student loan a bit.

Or not, if they’re reasonably well-informed.

EVEN ELEANOR CLIFT IS CATCHING ON TO THE SCAM: Is the Campus Rape Crisis Overblown?

THE REAL REASON WHY CHILDREN FIDGET. “Fidgeting is a real problem. It is a strong indicator that children are not getting enough movement throughout the day. We need to fix the underlying issue. Recess times need to be extended and kids should be playing outside as soon as they get home from school. Twenty minutes of movement a day is not enough!”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Museum Of Natural History Is Hosting A Grown-Up Sleepover.

LAWRENCE CUNNINGHAM: Babe Ruth, Warren Buffett, and True Icons.

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PICKING UP FOOD STAMPS IN A MERCEDES.

SCIENCE: Does Birth Control Coverage Pay for Itself? Maybe Not. Huh. I thought the science on this was settled.

SCIENCE: Murder rate drops as concealed carry permits rise, study claims. The science is settled. Don’t be a science-denier.

SADLY, FOR TSA “ISN’T AS STUPID AS IT SOUNDS” IS A MAN-BITES-DOG STORY: The TSA’s Ban on Uncharged Cellphones Isn’t as Stupid as It Sounds.

SPYING AND LYING: DEA Gets Unchecked Access To Call Records; Taught To Lie About Where They Got Them.

SPYING: The airborne panopticon: How plane-mounted cameras watch entire cities.

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BASE POLITICS: Obama aims to keep Democrats happy while he coasts to 2016.

DIVERSITY PROBLEMS: It’s not good for students — even girls — to have only female teachers.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Calculating Your Mate With Moneyball.

15 THINGS THE NEXT WAR WILL TELL US ABOUT AMERICA.

FARMING THE APOCALYPSE: When my life came crashing down I took shelter on my farm, surviving with 11th-century tools like the sickle and scythe. “Blackberries, spreading beneath the ground, erupted, their briars making familiar pathways impassable. The first emergence of an invader is the time to catch it – something I failed to do. This year’s seedling pines are next year’s forest covering a portion of a favourite meadow.”

IN THE MAIL: Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic.

Plus, today only at Amazon: The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection (Amazon Exclusive), $59.99 (70% off).

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 428.

ANOTHER AUDI REVIEW: So, following up on my A8 review, a while back the Audi folks gave me an RS7 to play with for a week, and it’s taken me a long time to put together a review because I really couldn’t find much to say beyond “Awesome!” and “Fast!” But here goes.

First, it’s awesome and fast. The key is this turbocharged V8 engine, producing 560 horsepower, and 516 lb/ft of torque, delivered through an 8-speed tiptronic transmision.

A couple of years ago, I test drove an Audi A7. It was pretty awesome, and pretty fast. The next step up in awesomeness and fast-ness is the S7. The RS7 is the fastest and most awesome version that Audi makes. And it’s really awesome and really fast.

Top speed is 174 miles per hour. Zero-to-60 time is 3.7 seconds. (Bear in mind that this is a four-door sedan). When you mash the throttle down, stuff in front of you gets closer really fast, and stuff in your rear view mirror gets much smaller, really fast. I’ve driven other really fast cars with rapid acceleration, but the combination of all this torque with the Quattro all-wheel drive and sticky rubber means that it’s a weird combination: At one level, it’s a snarling beast. At another, it’s super-smooth. Tootling around town, it’s a four-door luxury car. Stamp on the accelerator, and it’s . . . well, a snarling beast, but one with terrific grip and surefootedness. The engine note goes from barely-there to rip-roaring, and the sense of being shoved back into the driver’s seat is deeply physical. Also fun: Involuntary grins on driver and passenger are almost unavoidable.

But, of course, the seat you’re being pressed into is fine, quilted leather, heated and cooled, nicely bolstered, and ultra-comfy. Take it out on twisty roads and it handles like a sports car. Okay, a 4500-pound sports car with adaptive cruise control, a heads-up display, and power soft-door-closers, but on some known segments I was able to achieve speeds similar to what I could do on my much lighter RX-8. At some subliminal level, you can tell that the car is a lot heavier, but in terms of how it goes through the turns, it’s as fast. Steering feel through the electromechanical steering isn’t as good as the RX-8′s, but it’s not bad at all. The car feels totally surefooted, even when you’d think it would be working at the limit. (Interestingly, there’s also a mild backfire-sound on lifting off the accelerator that reminds me of the Mazda.)

When you’re not roaring through the turns, there’s a $5900 Bang & Olufsen sound system, which I liked but thought — as with the A8 I reviewed last year — that the upper frequency ranges were perhaps hyped a bit to compensate for aging Baby Boomer ears.

Unlike the A8, this is a car that you can drive like a sports car, but like the A8, you could also take it on a family road trip. The trunk is surprisingly large.

The backseat, on the other hand, suffers a bit from the swooping roof line that looks so cool and provides a .30 drag coefficient. I’d be comfortable riding there for a short distance — say going out to lunch — but not on a road trip. The A8′s cavernous back seat is a clear winner here, but the A8 won’t go zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds, or reach a top speed of 174 miles per hour.

One place where RS7 outdoes the A8 is price. As tested, the RS7 was stickered at $122,545, while the A8 squeaked in at just below a hundred grand. But did I mention it goes zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds, and has a top speed of 174? On the other hand, the A8 was a TDI model that could make it from Knoxville to Palm Beach, over 800 miles, on one tank of fuel. The RS7, meanwhile, slurped gas mightily when driven hard — but, then, those 560 horsepower have to come from somewhere. And if you can lay down $122,545 for a car, you can probably spring for the fillups.

Is it worth it? Well, that depends. An A7 gives you a lot of the bang for a lot less buck. But if you want a four-door sedan that outperforms the supercars of my youth — and has fancy features they never dreamed of — well, it’s not so expensive, really.

And it’s really awesome. And really fast. So much so that it actually gave me writer’s block for a bit — and nothing does that.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: The atomically precise manufacture of quantum dots.

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: There Are Now 50 Colleges That Charge More Than $60,000 Per Year.

Good grief.

RACISM IN ELIZABETH WARREN’S SIGNATURE AGENCY: Staffer: CFPB Run Like A “Plantation.” “A former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Wednesday compared the workplace atmosphere to a ‘plantation,’ because of how black employees such as himself were treated. In the third House Financial Services subcommittee hearing to address claims of discrimination against the CFPB, Kevin Williams, a former quality assurance monitor at the agency, painted a picture where black employees were constantly belittled – even to the point where they were stereotypically offered fried chicken at company lunches.”

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney . . . oh, hell, you know the rest.

RANDALL PARKER IS KIND OF PESSIMISTIC ABOUT THE NEXT 20 YEARS.

I prefer Kurt Schlichter’s vision. Which is more plausible? That depends on what you do.

YOU CAN ALL GO TO HELL — I’M GOING TO TEXAS! Connecticut-Based Mossberg® Announces Expansion of Texas Manufacturing Facility.

HMM: Roll Call: No Criminal Charges in Miriam Carey Shooting at Capitol.

No federal criminal civil rights or local charges will be filed against Capitol Police and Secret Service officers who were involved in a fatal shooting just blocks from the Capitol, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced Thursday.

After a review that included interviews of more than 60 witnesses, detailed examination of all crime scene evidence, ballistics reports, videos and photos of the events that unfolded on Oct. 3 between 2:13 p.m. and 2:20 p.m. — plus a review of the autopsy report for Miriam Carey — officials concluded that no criminal prosecutions would follow.

“After a thorough review of all the evidence, the U.S. Attorney’s Office concluded that the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers who were involved in the shooting used excessive force or possessed the requisite criminal intent at the time of the events,” the office said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

The report came as “no surprise” to Eric Sanders, an attorney representing the Carey family in a civil suit against the Capitol Police and the Uniformed Division of the U.S. Secret Service.

Following a chat with Justice Department officials, Sanders told CQ Roll Call he intends to proceed with the wrongful death claim filed on behalf of the woman’s sister, Valarie Carey, seeking $75 million to compensate the family for its loss.

“They’re not saying it was justified,” said Sanders, who had called for immediate identification and termination of all officers, supervisors, managers and other related employees involved in the shooting.

The whole thing seems fishy.

GEORGE LEEF: Law Schools Peer Into The Abyss But The American Bar Association Blocks Serious Change.

I SENSE A CERTAIN LACK OF EMPATHY AND SELF-AWARENESS: Do Gun Owners Have Any Rights Which Liberals Are Bound to Respect? Opponents of gun rights underestimate what’s at stake. They usually do.

WRIST, SLAPPED: IRS staffer suspended for Obama cheerleading. “An IRS employee has been slapped with a 100-day suspension for exhorting taxpayers seeking assistance to vote for President Obama. . . . The suspension marks the latest headache for the IRS, which still faces pressures from a wide range of quarters for its improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups.” Politicized and weaponized, the entire agency should be suspended.

I note that it doesn’t say whether the suspension is with or without pay. . . .

BUT OF COURSE: After saying he’s not interested in photo-ops, Obama concludes Texas trip with … a photo-op.

ROGER SIMON: Obama Talks To Netanyahu — Did Bibi Tell Barry To Stuff it? “Enough already. Bibi, it’s up to you. Western civilization’s last stand.”

THAT’S HIS JOB: RUNNING INTERFERENCE FOR CROOKS AND INCOMPETENTS. Elijah Cummings: The Democrats’ first line of defense against Republican attacks. And if you criticize him for that, you’re racist.

AND THE NEW YORK TIMES IS ON IT! Glamour Photos Replace Selfies For Personal Branding.

JACOB SULLUM: Obama’s ‘Third Way’ Looks a Lot Like the War on Drugs.

We know President Obama is committed to “drug policy reform” because he keeps telling us he is. Since April 2012, when the phrase first appeared on the White House website, it has been mentioned there 65 times. But what does it mean? According to the latest National Drug Control Strategy, which was released today by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), “we must seek to avoid over-simplified debates between the idea of a ‘war on drugs’ and the notion of legalization as a panacea.” Fans of Obamaspeak will appreciate the way that sentence poses a false choice while renouncing false choices. After all, legalization need not be a “panacea,” or anything resembling one, to be better than the disastrous war on drugs, which Obama himself once called “an utter failure.”

What is the president offering in its place? “Drug use and its consequences are complex phenomena requiring an array of evidence-based policy responses,” the ONDCP says. Understanding this reality, “the Administration remains committed to charting this ‘third way’ toward a healthier, safer, and more prosperous America.” But in practice, Obama’s “third way” looks an awful lot like the first way, because he refuses to renounce the use of violence to stop people from consuming politically incorrect drugs.

So, pretty typical, then.

FIGHT THE POWER: Lyft defies New York City taxi agency’s ban, to launch Friday.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: The U.S. Just Sent Thousands of Draft Notices to Men Born from ’93 to ’97—1893 to 1897.

Alternate headline: John Scalzi, call your office!

I LOVE THE WAY THE LEFT WILL DO ANYTHING TO TRY TO MAKE ITS TARGETS SEEM TOXIC: AFSCME Ends Support For United Negro College Fund After Fund Accepts Koch Brothers Grant. This exposes just how sour and petty they’ve become — and, possibly, also how financially pressed.

And speaking as a public employee myself, the grifters at AFSCME don’t speak for me. The sooner they’re all out on the streets selling pencils, the better for America. Including, quite clearly, black America.

THE HILL: IRS ordered to explain lost emails.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Missouri voters will consider strengthening state constitutional right to bear arms.

I’M SURE THE SPLC WILL BE ALL OVER THIS HATE-GROUP STORY: Felon, Former Black Panther Party Leader Hosts Fundraiser for Democratic Senate Candidate Michelle Nunn.

REALLY? “WE?” We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse by Cutting Down Forests. Well, I haven’t cut down any forests. But if you replaced “we” with “Africans,” some people might think you were racist or something.

JAKE TAPPER 1, PLO Adviser 0.

PEGGY NOONAN: Is A Nation Without Borders A Nation? “No one’s in charge! No one is taking responsibility. No one who wants to help has authority, and no one with authority is helping.”

TRUST US, WE’RE SCIENTISTS. “On July 8, scientific publisher SAGE announced that it was retracting a whopping 60 scientific papers connected to Taiwanese researcher Peter Chen, in what appears to be an elaborate work of fraud. This case is one of what appears to be a recent spate of scientific malfeasance. So what’s going on here? Is this just a uniquely bad run? Or does the recent spate of scientific misconduct point to a flaw in the peer-review process?”

MY LAW REFORM PROPOSAL: When police trespass on your property to stop you videoing them, you should be allowed to kill them, put their heads on pikes as a warning to others, sell their organs to Chinese organleggers, and use the money to buy billboards mocking their superiors for lawlessness.

It’s a modest proposal, but it would probably reduce misconduct.

THIS KEEPS HAPPENING: More probably-incriminating files “accidentally” destroyed.

STEPHEN GREEN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: 007 Had It Right with the Martinis. “Next time you order a martini, think shaken, not stirred. New research shows that shaken martinis not only taste better, but they may have some age-fighting properties.”

SO THIS PIECE ON PROFESSORS DATING GRAD STUDENTS misses the point. The real problem is the structure of PhD programs, which give people immense and unaccountable power over others’ careers. Forget dating — look at somebody wrong in the hallway or criticize their favorite movie and they might turn against you. And the reasons for approving or disapproving dissertations are extremely nebulous and difficult to assess. When the Insta-Wife was getting her PhD I was struck by how much warmer and friendlier a place the law school was than her graduate program in psychology. But I think that’s because we have (1) anonymous grading in most classes; (2) clear standards; and (3) litigious students who would be harder to push around. At the law school, if you take the classes and pass them you get your degree. In a graduate program, you can do everything you’re supposed to, only to have the rug jerked out from under you at the end. We adopted this system from the Germans in the 19th Century. Maybe it’s not a good one for the America of the 21st Century.

Also, note the sexism in assuming that such relationships are always between a senior male and a junior female. Not so. And one final question: If it’s okay to regulate relationships because they are “bad for the department,” not withstanding “the disingenuous guise of a ‘private life,’” would it then be okay to regulate relationships in general because they produce negative externalities for society? Because if so, then shouldn’t we be punishing single motherhood, which quite clearly does just that?

AT AMAZON, introducing new, curved-screen 2014 TVs.

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NEW ZEALAND’S PROPOSED RAPE LAW “REFORMS:” No “right to silence,” and burden of proof shifted to the accused.

ADAM BELLOW: 21 Conservative Writers To Read At The Beach.

By the way, they’re running a crowdfunding effort for Liberty Island. I’ve donated.

STEPHEN CARTER: Hollywood Should Give Women a Chance to Blow Up Stuff.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: The Audi A8 is the perfect car for the tech-obsessed plutocrat.

Here’s my review of the A8. And I’ll have a review of the lightning-fast Audi RS7 coming tomorrow.

AT AMAZON it’s the Kindle Daily Deal.

Also, this week’s featured 99-cent songs.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: FingerReader Is A Ring That Reads Out Printed Text To Visually Impaired People.

DRIFTING A BMW on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

WE’RE THE (OUT OF SHAPE) KIDS IN AMERICA: Young Americans Becoming Less Fit. “For the past few decades, accumulating data and anecdotal evidence have shown that children in the United States are becoming more sedentary. Less than a third of young people ages 12 to 18 are said to achieve the recommended levels of physical activity for their age group, which would be about an hour a day of exercise.”

Give ‘em a copy of Rippetoe and a gym.

VIDEO: Electric Miata smokes Tesla Model S at the track. A Tesla Roadster would be a fairer comparison.

SCIENCE: How Scotch Distilleries Innovate Without Changing a Thing.

DAVE BRAT SLAMS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ON ISRAEL: An exclusive from PJM’s David Steinberg.

UPDATE: From David Goldman in Tel Aviv: “Sunny with Light Missile Cover.”

IN THE MAIL: How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule for Turning Your Business Network into Profits.

Plus, today only at Amazon: 50% or More Off Backpacks & Bags.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 427.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Who’s The Real Hobby Lobby Bully?

Here’s the most interesting thing to me about the long, loud debate over the recent Hobby Lobby decision: Both sides believe that they are having someone else’s views forcibly imposed upon them. . . .

Cards on the table: I think that institutions Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor are obviously correct — they are being forced by the government to buy something that they don’t want to buy. We can argue about whether this is a good or a bad idea, but the fact that it is coercive seems indisputable. If it weren’t for state power, the Little Sisters of the Poor would be happily not facilitating the birth-control purchases of its employees; the Barack Obama administration has attempted to force them to do otherwise. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this coercion violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and it must therefore cease.

All this is old ground. The interesting question is why people on the other side view ceasing the coercion as itself coercive while arguing that the original law did not, in fact, force anyone to violate their religious beliefs.

I think a few things are going on here. The first is that while the religious right views religion as a fundamental, and indeed essential, part of the human experience, the secular left views it as something more like a hobby, so for them it’s as if a major administrative rule was struck down because it unduly burdened model-train enthusiasts. That emotional disconnect makes it hard for the two sides to even debate; the emotional tenor quickly spirals into hysteria as one side says “Sacred!” and the other side says, essentially, “Seriously? Model trains?” That shows in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent, where it seems to me that she takes a very narrow view of what role religious groups play in the lives of believers and society as a whole.

Not surprising, given her background.

WELL, IT’S PRETTY MUCH THE BUSINESS MODEL: Liberals go to the barricades to defend crony capitalism.

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NOW ON YOUTUBE: Proving Who’s the Daddy: Men Don’t Get a Fair Shake in Paternity Cases. The Insta-Wife interviews paternity fraud activist Carnell Smith in another video from the Detroit men’s rights conference.

#WARONWOMEN: Virginia Democrat Offers Reward For Nude Photos of Big Game Hunting Texas Tech Cheerleader Kendall Jones. “I’m sure she’s sent a nude selfie to some random guy out there who’s just waiting to expose her.”

ANNALS OF THE .0001 PERCENT: Following Her Parents’ Lead, Chelsea Clinton Takes Stage as a Paid Speaker, at $75,000 A Pop.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama’s Chickens, Our Roost: From the Middle East to Russia to our own southern border, Obama’s bills are coming due.

NEW CLASS PRIORITIES, BRITISH EDITION: Council blows £214,000 over five years on fruitless hunt for blogger who insulted councillors as he promised to ‘expose the truth.’

MICHAEL BARONE: Where do our political views come from? Presidential performance or policies with personal impact?

To get a sense of how people born in different years have differed, I looked at the percentages Republican or Democratic for those both in each year in the election of 2012 (the graphs show a percentage only for the majority party, and I calculated percentage Republican, assuming that 1 percent did not vote for either party). Viewed that way, the Republican percentages by birth year varied from a high of 56 percent (birth years 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968) to a low of 45 percent (birth years 1984, 1985).

Party preference doesn’t change much from birth year to birth year, usually remaining the same or changing by just 1 percent. But you do see some flexion points. Republicans predominated in 2012 among those born in birth years 1937-48 and 1955-80, Democrats among those born 1949-54 and 1981-1994. These dates tend to support Gitza-Gelman’s theory that perceived presidential performance shaped attitudes, but not entirely: those born 1937-48 turned 18 not only during the second Eisenhower presidency but in the Kennedy-Johnson years, including time when those Democratic presidents had high job approval; those born 1949-54 turned 18 mostly during Richard Nixon’s years in office, including some when he had high approval as well.

The biggest flexion point—the biggest difference between one birth year and the next—is between those born in 1954 (49 percent Republican) and those born in 1955 (53 percent Republican). That’s double any other difference between adjacent birth years. What accounts for that? I think it’s this. There was a military draft in 1972, the year those born in 1954 turned 18. There was no military draft in 1973, the year those born in 1955 turned 18.

I also note that the 2012 Republican percentage slipped below 50 percent among those born in 1949, who turned 18 in 1967, as we were ramping up to the maximum troop numbers in Vietnam.

Which is funny, as LBJ was President then, and people hadn’t yet started blaming the GOP for the war.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Inside Silicon Valley’s ‘jungle camp’ where hundreds of homeless live in tents, caves and tree huts – just a short walk from rows of digital millionaire’s mansions.

THE HOPE AND CHANGE JUST KEEPS GETTING HOPEY-CHANGIER: America’s Impending Tuberculosis Epidemic.

IRS COMMISSIONER: Hey, there’s absolutely nothing suspicious about Lois Lerner asking if Instant Messaging is searchable.