PRINCIPLES: Byron York: Rebel states sell info they hide from Trump voter commission.

In response, state officials not only refused to provide Kobach the requested information — at least 45 have said no so far — but have tried to outdo each other in expressing patriotic outrage that the commission would even consider asking such a thing.

“My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico,” wrote Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann.

“[The] Constitution ensures voters ballot choices will always be secret. Americans have died protecting this freedom,” tweeted South Carolina’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster.

“I find this request for the personal information of millions of Marylanders repugnant,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. “It appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote.”

“I have no intention of honoring this request,” said Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. “This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November.”

For commission members, the responses are hard to understand. “The reaction to this has been absurd,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a former Bush Justice Department official, former member of the Federal Elections Commission, and head of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, who is now serving on the Trump commission. “The commission is asking for voter registration and other information that is publicly available. Not only do all of the political parties buy this information routinely from secretaries of states — so do candidates.”

It’s true. Just look at, say, the Department of Elections webpage in Terry McAuliffe’s Virginia. The department lists “client services” that include the purchase of voter lists. To candidates, parties, campaigns, and “members of the public seeking to promote voter participation,” the state of Virginia will sell:

Registered Voter List (RVL) and Newly Registered Voter List (NRV) — full name, residence address, mailing address, gender, date of birth, registration date, date last registration form received, registration status, locality, precinct, voting districts and voter identification number.

Want the data in slightly different form? Virginia also sells:

List of Those Who Voted (LTWV) — full name, residence address, mailing address, gender, date of birth, registration date, date last registration form received, registration status, locality, precinct, voting districts, voter identification number, election date, election type, and whether the voter voted in-person or absentee.

For another example, look at the state of Maine, which has also refused to cooperate with the commission, but which by law spells out the types of voter information it will sell. . . . Notice that much of the information for sale in Maine and Virginia is similar, if not identical, to the data requested by Kobach. Many states have similar provisions. Which raises the question: If voter information is for sale, why is it a matter of principle to refuse to provide it to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity?

Read the whole thing. They’re either posturing, or they’re trying to hide something, or both.

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: Dallas Shooting Suspect Targeted White Officers, Was Killed When Officials Detonated Bomb. “As this city mourned five police officers killed in a deadly rampage, officials on Friday said the gunman had stockpiled weapons in his home and was targeting white officers as revenge for the past week’s killings of black men by law enforcement. The revelations about the suspect, identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old Army veteran, emerged as the city came to a standstill with hundreds of mourners gathered in a local square, and as authorities began to unravel the motives behind the deadliest single incident for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11 attacks. Seven additional officers and two bystanders were also wounded in the shootings, which broke out in downtown Thursday night during a protest sparked by the fatal shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.”

Weird how this hardly ever comes up anymore.

RICH LOWRY: Trump defends the West — and the Left screams foul. To be a leftist is to oppose the West. It’s all part of the Gramscian Damage.

AT AMAZON, Leatherman – Wave Multitool, Stainless Steel with Leather Sheath.

PEGGY NOONAN: Trump’s Defining Speech:

The White House description of Donald Trump’s speech Thursday in Warsaw was simply, “Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland.” In truth, Mr. Trump’s remarks were directed at the people of the world. Six months into his first term of office, Mr. Trump finally offered the core of what could become a governing philosophy. It is a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition.

To be sure, Mr. Trump’s speech also contained several pointed and welcome foreign-policy statements. He assured Poland it would not be held hostage to a single supplier of energy, meaning Russia. He exhorted Russia to stop destabilizing Ukraine “and elsewhere,” to stop supporting Syria and Iran and “instead join the community of responsible nations.” He explicitly committed to NATO’s Article 5 on mutual defense.

But—and this shocked Washington—the speech aimed higher. Like the best presidential speeches, it contained affirmations of ideas and principles and related them to the current political moment. “Americans, Poles and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,” he said. This was more than a speech, though. It was an argument. One might even call it an apologia for the West. . . .

This is a warning to the West and a call to action. By remembering the Poles’ invocation of God, Mr. Trump is clearly aligning himself with the same warning issued to Europe some years ago by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s argument was that Europe needed to recognize that its turn toward aggressive secularism posed a real threat to its survival. In Mr. Trump’s formulation of that threat, we are obliged to “confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.” He warned about a “lack of pride and confidence in our values.”

Mr. Trump is taking a clear stand against the kind of gauzy globalism and vague multiculturalism represented by the worldview of, say, Barack Obama and most contemporary Western intellectuals, who are willing, even eager, to concede the argument to critics of the West’s traditions.

This is the speech Mr. Trump should have given to introduce himself to the world at his Inauguration.

Actually, if you go back and read that speech, they’re not as different as you might think.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: Tax Policy In The Trump Administration.

POLITICS IN 2017: Katy cookie store reverses decision to suspend employee after he paid for police officer’s order.

A young man was temporarily suspended after he offered to pay for an on-duty police officer’s order, which upset a family who witnessed the act.

The man is an employee at Great American Cookies at Katy Mills Mall, where he was working Sunday. During his shift, an officer approached the store and placed an order. His mother said her son purchased it with his own money, and the officer thanked him before walking away.

A family who was in line behind the officer allegedly became upset because he would not pay for their order, too.

Hmm. I’d like to know more about who these people were. They don’t sound very nice:

The next family walked up and said “are you going to buy mine too?” My son replied with “I’m sorry I bought his because he is wearing a badge”…… then this customer started verbally attacking him, calling my son a racist, & threatened to beat him up. His wife threatened to go back there and slap him.. The middle aged man sat down his little daughter and tried to come behind the counter to attack him. Thankfully his coworker defused the situation. The man then said “I will get you fired”.

Nice to see Great American Cookies come to its senses, though it’s disturbing that senior management wanted him fired, not suspended.

HAMILTON AND LAW SCHOOL DEANING.

HOW BAD ARE THINGS FOR THE MEDIA? THIS BAD. TV networks hide bad ratings with typos, report says: TV networks will intentionally misspell the names of shows when submitting episodes with poor viewership to Nielsen, reports The Wall Street Journal. “This fools the system into separating that airing out as a different show and keeping it from affecting the correctly-spelled show’s average overall rating.”

RICH LOWRY: TRUMP IS WINNING THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE.

With his penchant for tweeted insults and GIFs, Donald Trump will never be mistaken for a master of the sweet art of persuasion. Yet he is clearly winning the public argument on the issue of immigration.

He isn’t doing it through sustained, careful attention. He tweeted the other day that the media will eventually have to cover his success at the border, even though he himself has devoted more energy to his war with CNN than promoting the reduction in illegal border crossings.

No, it is the sheer fact of his November victory, and the data showing the importance of the issue of immigration to it, that has begun to shift the intellectual climate.

It had been assumed, even by many Republicans like Sen. John McCain, that opposition to amnesty and higher levels of legal immigration would doom the GOP to minority status forevermore. Trump blew up this conventional wisdom.

Now, intellectuals on the center-left are calling for Democrats to rethink the party’s orthodoxy on immigration, which has become more and more hostile to enforcement and to any skepticism about current high levels of immigration.

The swing here was enormous. A Trump defeat in November after running on an exaggerated version of immigration restriction would have sent Republicans scurrying back to the comfortable, corporate-friendly cliches about so-called comprehensive immigration reform. And if Hillary Clinton had won on a platform that doubled down on Obama’s executive amnesties, serious immigration enforcement would have lost its political legitimacy.

Trump probably wouldn’t have won without running so directly into the teeth of the elite consensus.

That’s true. Plus: “The pull of the left’s cosmopolitanism is strong. In an attack on Beinart, Dylan Matthews of Vox argues that the left’s egalitarianism can’t stop at the nation’s borders—’it means a strong presumption in favor of open immigration.'”

Well, if Trump can get the Dems to double down on open borders, while also calling Western Civilization fascism and praising Jihad, he could take 45 states in 2020.

NY TIMES DISCOVERS SOVIET COMMUNISM NOT SO GOOD:

Earl Browder concluded that the American-Soviet alliance of World War II would continue after the defeat of Nazi Germany. For this reason, in 1944, he boldly engineered the transformation of the C.P.U.S.A. into a pressure group designed to work within the Democratic Party.

What’s oddly missing in this all-too-late discovery? You can start with any mention of Walter Duranty,  the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times from 1922 to 1936. The New York Times would not admit to his being a pawn of the U.S.S.R. and publishing Stalinist propaganda in The Times until 1990.

DON SURBER: Trump Speech Shows Why They Hate Us. And him.

THIS COLLOQUY makes me think that morale among “mainstream journalists” must be awfully low.

AT AMAZON, Save 20% on Select Home Services Leading Up to Prime Day.

Plus, Up to 40% Off Kindle Unlimited.

And on July 11, Prime Day 2017 – 30 Hours of Deals. It’s like Christmas in July, but with math jokes.

IT’S NOT JUST POLICE OFFICERS WHO ARE GETTING CAUGHT OUT BY PERVASIVE CAMERAS: Sheriff exposes white, liberal columnist’s traffic stop tale for the lie that it is.

So is journalism that much worse in 2017, or are they just getting caught more often?

BOB MCMANUS: Comrade de Blasio doesn’t care about New York.

AT AMAZON, save on Fire Extinguishers and Smoke Detectors.

MICKEY KAUS BUSTS PETER BEINART FOR HYPOCRISY:

See, when you start with the axiom that Trump’s a racist fascist, it’s easy to interpret everything he says as racist fascism.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO POLITICAL SCIENCE PROF. CHARLES LIPSON: Trump’s Powerful Speech In Poland. “It was everything the Poles had hoped for, and more. They remember, with a shudder, how President Obama tried to buy goodwill from the Russians in 2009 by reneging on the United States’ promise to Poland to install an anti-missile defense system. Obama got nothing in return, and the Poles were left twisting.”

RANDY BARNETT WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT REPLACEMENT: D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown to step down.

MEANWHILE, CNN CLAIMS THAT AN AMUSING GIF IS INCITING VIOLENCE: Man arrested for making threats to Senator Ernst (R-Iowa).

DEMOCRATS: WE’RE THINKING, WE’RE THINKING! Which Is Worse, Nuclear Annihilation or Donald Trump?

HEY HEY, HO HO, WESTERN CIV HAS GOT TO GO: Some of the critics of Trump’s Warsaw speech reject the idea of the greatness of Western Civilization.

WILLIAM GENSERT ECHOES KURT SCHLICHTER: The Left is really hating the new rules.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS JEZEBEL. Jezebel Rants: Mixed-Race Couples in Movies Promote ‘White Supremacy.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You’re using your nonstick pans all wrong — here’s the right way to care for your pans. Well, most of this is pretty obvious. I endorse the part about using olive oil or butter instead of cooking spray. I have to say, we’ve had our ScanPans for several years — which are supposed to be safe for metal utensils — and they’re still just as nonstick as when new. I haven’t had any other pans that did as well.

MARTIN DAUBNEY: Will Darwinism Kill Feminism?

Using all her mighty intellect, Prof Inhorn proffered, “Maybe women need to be prepared to be more open to the idea of a relationship with someone not as educated”.

At this point, most men will probably be face-palming to the point of whiplash, slugging scotch directly from the bottle or changing their Tinder settings to exclude late-30s careerists.

But the professor is onto something, only she’s looking down the wrong end of the telescope. So, allow me to mansplain.

On the manosphere, hypergamy – the concept that women will only cynically “marry up” in terms of status and wealth – is a recurrent bone of contention.

Yet the comments under the Telegraph piece show this cynicism is bleeding hard into the mainstream.

Having forlornly waited decades for Mr Right, haunted by the tick-tock of their biological clocks, these women instead now want a Mr Right Now. Who’s basically a walking sperm donor.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many men don’t want to play that game – especially those ultra-desirable, highly-educated, alpha males these women covet.

What the Yale team have spectacularly failed to grasp is that these men aren’t intimidated by these careerists. Increasingly, they just don’t want them. But why not?

Related: “Marriage is essential to the feminist dream of having it all, they just don’t want to waste a day more of their youth and fertility on their husbands than absolutely necessary.”

Weird that men aren’t all-in for this. Sexism, I guess.

Plus: Karol Markowicz: The Best Time To Get Pregnant Is Right Now. “You’re having a child, not dying (kicking the bucket), so why do you need a bucket list? Since when do we have this strange notion that having a family is what we do when we’re all done having a life? . . . There’s this idea that there comes a point in your life when everything can pause for a bit as you take time off to have a baby, secure in your finances and the knowledge your career will pick up right where it left off. It doesn’t actually work like that — for women or men.”

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, IT’S ALL DOUBLE STANDARDS ALL THE TIME, APPARENTLY: Mizzou will ban students from using ID credit cards to buy nonacademic items from campus store, saying it will promote better spending habits. But students can still buy campus massages with their IDs and use their credit cards for other things.

JOURNALISM: Victim’s Father: Need for Advocacy Group on Illegal Immigrant Crime Shows ‘Journalistic Bankruptcy.’

VIDEO: James Clapper Confronts CNN’s Narrative… While on CNN.

RETAIL BLUES: Sears, Kmart to close 43 more stores.

“It is obvious that we don’t make decisions to close stores lightly. Our efforts have been, and will continue to be, fact-based, thoughtful and disciplined, with the goal of making Sears Holdings more relevant and more competitive for our members and other constituents.”

The new closures include four Kmarts in Florida and three in Ohio, and three Sears locations in Indiana. (See the full list.)

Sears is one of many retail giants struggling to find its footing, or simply survive, amid a landscape dramatically transformed by a shift to online shopping and rise of Amazon.

J.C. Penney has said it will shutter 138 locations, roughly 14% of its stores, and give buyouts to 6,000 employees. Macy’s plans to shut 68 stores. Radio Shack, which has sought bankruptcy protection twice in two years, has closed more than 1,000 locations since Memorial Day weekend. And one-time mall favorites Bebe, The Limited, and Wet Seal have closed or are in the process of shuttering all of their storefronts.

“Mall favorites” sounds incredibly dated.

JOURNALISM: MSNBC, CNN Forced To Eat Crow After Learning Trump Pressed Putin On Election Meddling.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Man, Jezebel morphed into Stormfront so slowly, I hardly even noticed. Why are Democrat-controlled Websites such cesspits of anti-miscegenist racism?

Or as Rod Dreher wrote in February, “I don’t believe the alt-right’s view of the world any more than I believe the [DNC-MSM-Hollywood-Academia] Cathedral’s. If the alt-right’s racist ideas are going to gain ground in American politics, they aren’t going to do it through my agency. But here’s what the Cathedral left needs to know: you aren’t going to be able to count on conservative people like me to help you oppose the alt-right, because you are their ‘respectable’ left-wing mirror image.”

Though it is fascinating (in watching a car-wreck sort of way) watching “Progressivism” return to its racist roots of a century ago.

EVEN OBAMA CRONIES ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT CNN THESE DAYS: James Clapper Confronts CNN’s Narrative — While on CNN.

WORRISOME: Hackers Are Targeting Nuclear Facilities, Homeland Security Dept. and F.B.I. Say.

AT AMAZON, Outdoor Survival Gear Kit 10 in 1.

I DUNNO, LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER WINNING LAWSUIT FOR MILO: Washington Metro Authority Pulls Milo Ads.

VIDEO: This Is How Quickly You Need to Think In a Major Racing Accident.

AT AMAZON, save in Vacuums and Floor Care.

Plus, deals in Sports and Fitness.

THEY’RE HITTING THE BROWN ACID AGAIN AT MSNBC:

● ‘GOTTA be sh*tting me’! Chris Hayes defends poor CNN against ‘flat-out mob intimidation’… CNN would know ALL ABOUT mob intimidation.

—Twitchy, today.

● MSNBC Promo: ‘Love for the Constitution’ Is Reason We Knock Trump.

—NewsBusters, last night.

Past performance really is no guarantee of future results at MSNBC!

● Flashback: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Spews Hate at James Madison, Father of the Constitution.

—NewsBusters, December 18, 2013.

● Flashback: Lawrence O’Donnell: ‘I Am A Socialist. I Live To The Extreme Left Of Mere Liberals.’

—NewsBusters, November 5, 2010.

● Flashback: [Brian Williams and Andrea Mitchell] Animated by View U.S. Presidents Were “Terrorists.”

—The Media Research Center, July 5, 2005.

● GOP Rep. Gives Al Sharpton a Constitutional Lesson During On-Air Battle — But Was He Right?
– The Blaze, September 20, 2013. (Hint: yes.)

● Exit quote:

COURAGE: Michigan’s GOP Governor Brands ‘Choose Life’ Plate Too Politically Divisive.

JONAH GOLDBERG ON THE DANGERS OF ARROGANT IGNORANCE:

For many historians, the Polish-born pope’s Mass in Victory Square, more than anything else, set in motion the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall a decade later and the dissolution of the Soviet Union soon thereafter. The people in attendance knew exactly what President Trump meant when he spoke of how the millions of Poles attending that Mass “did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: ‘We want God.’”

But I wasn’t in the audience; I was watching it on TV and following Twitter’s response to the speech. It was remarkable how many people immediately assumed Trump was talking crazy or just making stuff up (I am paraphrasing very charitably here).

I understand that response. Trump often does say crazy things. He does make stuff up — but usually not in prepared texts at big events.

It struck me how a lot of our political polarization is fueled by plain old ignorance.

* * * * * * * *

It is a common human foible to think you know more than you do and to assume that when someone, particularly someone you don’t like, says something you don’t understand that the fault must be in the speaker, not the listener. “It’s a universal law — intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education,” observed Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”

Read the whole thing.

TAMARA KEEL: Review: Smith & Wesson M&P M2.0 Pistol.

SPENGLER: Good News and Bad News From Poland.

Just read the whole thing.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do Cats Purr When Humans Aren’t Around?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Trump Meant When He Said ‘Everyone’ Was Talking About John Podesta.

RETRO ASTRONOMY: Researcher uses Game Boy Camera to capture 2-bit photos of space.

SKYNET SMILES: Stabilized Drone with machine gun and grenade launcher.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO ABDUCT: Amber Alert issued after 16-year-old boy is abducted by woman in Los Angeles.

EVEN GUATEMALAN GARDENERS’ JOBS AREN’T SAFE FROM THE ROBOTS: Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot, and What’s So Hard About Consumer Robotics.

I’M GLAD THAT TRUMP WENT AHEAD AND KEPT THIS PROMISE. I JUST WANT TO SEE THE NEWSPACE PEOPLE IN CHARGE, NOT THE OLD GUARD FROM NASA: Revived National Space Council Could Mean Space Policy Rethink.

TRUMP MEETS PUTIN: U.S. President Predicts ‘Very Positive Things Happening.’

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Milo Yiannopoulos Files $10M Lawsuit Against Simon & Schuster For Pulling His Book.

SALON, IS THAT YOU? Think Trump’s attack on CNN made him look bad? Think again: He’s a master marketer, and his fan base ate it up.

Yes, Salon.

Sure, the article is full of smears and the like — it is still Salon, after all — but it looks like some on the Left are starting to grasp the bigger picture.

OH: Mars covered in toxic chemicals that can wipe out living organisms, tests reveal.

Working with Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at Edinburgh, Wadsworth looked at what happened to Bacillus subtilis, a common soil bacterium and regular Earthly contaminant found on space probes, when it was mixed with magnesium perchlorate and blasted with ultraviolet rays similar to those witnessed on Mars. She found that the bugs were wiped out twice as fast when perchlorate was present. Other perchlorates found on Mars had a similar bactericidal effect.

Further tests found that the UV rays broke down the perchlorate into other chemicals, namely hypochlorite and chlorite, and it is these that appear to be so destructive to the bacteria.

The scientists followed-up with another round of experiments that looked at the toxic effects of iron oxides and hydrogen peroxide, which are also found in Martian soil. These tests yielded even more bad news for microscopic Martians: when the bacteria were hit with UV rays in the presence of perchlorates, iron oxide and peroxide, the bugs were killed 11 times faster than with perchlorates alone. Writing in Scientific Reports, the researchers say that the inhospitable conditions on Mars are caused by a “toxic cocktail of oxidants, iron oxides, perchlorates and UV irradiation.”

This is not the Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs had me hoping for.

DEFENSE: Can U.S. defend against North Korea missiles? Not everyone agrees.

Briefing reporters on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said: “We do have confidence in our ability to defend against the limited threat, the nascent threat that is there.”

Davis cited a successful test in May in which a U.S.-based missile interceptor knocked down a simulated incoming North Korean ICBM. But he acknowledged the test program’s track program was not perfect.

“It’s something we have mixed results on. But we also have an ability to shoot more than one interceptor,” Davis said.

An internal memo seen by Reuters also showed that the Pentagon upgraded its assessment of U.S. defenses after the May test.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on a multi-layered missile defense system, the United States may not be able to seal itself off entirely from a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile attack.

Experts caution that U.S. missile defenses are now geared to shooting down one, or perhaps a small number of basic, incoming missiles. Were North Korea’s technology and production to keep advancing, U.S. defenses could be overwhelmed unless they keep pace with the threat.

I know people who work on this program, and they’re confident in what they do. That said, there’s probably no bigger pucker factor than spending a couple of decades working to stop a hypothetical nuclear threat — and then watching it become real.

ROGER SIMON: Does Europe — Subconsciously — Expect America to Save It Again?

IN THE MAIL: The Year One Challenge for Men: Bigger, Leaner, and Stronger Than Ever in 12 Months.

Plus, today’s Gold Box Deals and Lightning Deals. Get them before they’re gone!

PRIORITIES: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Skips NYPD Swearing-in Ceremony to Attend G20 Protest in Germany.

FASTER, PLEASE: USAF asks industry for air-launched hypersonic missile concepts.

I hope “Faster, please,” doesn’t sound too presumptuous when the subject is hypersonic missiles.

FLIPFLOP: Breaking at NYT: Communists Were Anti-American Soviet Tools:

As part of its weekly essay series on the legacy of the Russian Revolution, the New York Times has earnestly broken the news to its readers that the American Communist Party wasn’t a principled and well-meaning organization but an anti-American espionage operation. . . .

It will be interesting to read the pieces that come out 25 to 50 years too late, as the august Gray Lady awakens to other important news:

The Muslim Brotherhood hated Western ideas of freedom.
Iran was a committed enemy of the United States.
Cuban communists were anti-democratic thugs.
Abortion was an unspeakable tragedy that led to millions of unnecessary deaths.
Press bias and lack of self-awareness plus elite policy failures made the Trump presidency possible.
Social programs like Medicare were actually bankrupting the country.
Public service unions blighted the prospects of generations of immigrants and poor people of color in American cities.
Anti-Asian discrimination dominated college admissions offices under the guise of ‘racial justice’.
The collapse of free speech on college campuses was abetted by cowards and time servers who betrayed fundamental American principles.

Better late than never, we suppose…

Ouch.

THIS IS PROBABLY SOMEHOW TRUMP’S FAULT: 100 Billion Failed Stars May Be Hiding in the Milky Way.

FAKE BODY SLAMS ON ANIMATED CORPORATE LOGOS REMAIN OUR CHIEF CONCERN: Scalise Remains In ‘Serious Condition’ Following Surgery.

Get well, Congressman.

AUSTRALIA CONSIDERING TRADE SANCTIONS ON CHINA OVER NORTH KOREA?: The Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is clarifying an earlier statement by the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce. Australia doesn’t support sanctions against China but against Chinese companies that violate UN sanctions on North Korea. But the subject has been raised. Beijing will read it as a diplomatic signal.

On July 6 Joyce, commenting on North Korea, said:

“The United States is not going to allow the capacity for a despotic dictator from North Korea to fulfill his rhetoric and develop a nuclear warhead that could hit the US or its allies — for which, we are one.”

Joyce said North Korea is testing the resolve of the U.S. and in his opinion “that’s a very foolish thing to do.”

Well, it’s a foolish thing to do when Donald Trump is president. If Barack Obama were still in charge — perhaps not so foolish.

1RM, NOT SO MUCH, BUT OTHERWISE, YEAH: Why CrossFit Girls Are Stronger Than You.

AT AMAZON, on sale, Feyachi Reflex Sight – Adjustable Reticle, Both Red and Green in one sight!

AT AMAZON, fresh New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, today’s new Kindle Daily Deals.

And shop the Digital Deals of the Day.

ROD DREHER ON THE LEFT’S RESPONSE TO TRUMP’S SPEECH: Yes, They Really Do Despise Their Civilization.

Not by accident. The Gramscian Damage runs deep.

PROWLER IN THE SKY: A USMC EA-6B Prowler refuels while supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. The photo was taken July 1. The USMC will fly this old electronic warrior at least through 2019.

IT’S ON: 4chan/pol/ Declares The Great Meme War of 2017.

My money’s on 4chan.

TRUMP’S WARSAW SPEECH: It was a hit. “The West will never be broken.” Here’s the entire transcript.

POLAND ACQUIRES PATRIOTS: Poland will deploy Patriot PAC-3 anti-ballistic missiles. Poland’s defense ministry made the announcement yesterday.

HMM: Ships Exporting Iranian Oil Go Dark, Raising Sanctions Red Flags.

Some 47 of 55 ships carrying Iranian oil products from Iran to the United Arab Emirates for two U.A.E.-registered companies failed to emit signals from the system that transmits their position and course, for part or all of their journey, according to an analysis of the two firms’ shipments that was completed for The Wall Street Journal by ship-tracker Windward Ltd., an Israeli firm that uses satellite imaging to map shipping routes.

The shipments, made by two U.A.E.-registered traders, Silk Road Petroleum FZE and Petrochemix General Trading LLC, accounted for 17% of Iran’s fuel-oil and gas-oil exports during the six-month period, according to records compiled by the oil-product traders.

The records, based on information from state-run National Iranian Oil Co. that shipping agents combine with their own information and provide to traders, listed the vessels’ cargo as fuel oil or gas oil. Iranian authorities didn’t return calls and emails seeking comment about the shipments.

Thanks, Obama.

THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED, ALL THE OLD TROPES OF RACISM WOULD RETURN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Jezebel: I’m Tired of Watching Brown Men Fall in Love With White Women Onscreen.

CHANGE: Dept. of Justice Drops Efforts to Force Washington Redskins to Change Team Name.

JOBS: 244,000 Added In June. Versus 179,000 forecast.

BLUE STATE BLUES: Illinois House Overrides Gov. Rauner’s Veto on Tax Hike, Budget Bill.

The Illinois House voted to override Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto of the income tax hike and budget bill. This is the first budget Illinois has passed in two years.

The House voted 71-42, which is the bare minimum House Speaker Mike Madigan needed, after a security incident delayed the vote for two hours.
…
The budget bill lacks… A LOT. Illinois has “unpaid bills to state contractors and vendors that’s reached about $14.5 billion and roughly $130 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.” Last Friday, a judge ordered the state to “start paying $293 million in state money toward Medicaid bills every month and an additional $1 billion over the course of the next year.”

They’ve run out of other people’s money. Now they’re running out of time.

JAY CARUSO: The media depend on trust, and they’re losing it with lazy reporting.

Journalists are not always going to get it 100 percent right. But in this case, the New York Times issued a retraction regarding the same mistake just over a week ago. As for Acosta and Tur, they are not some stringers out trying eke out a living, selling stories to the highest bidder. Acosta is the senior White House correspondent for CNN, and Tur is a news anchor for “MSNBC Live.” As such, they should know better.

The mainstream media has a trust problem with the public. Recent mistakes have given fuel for Trump, people in his administration, and supporters enough reason to show “Fake news!” The kind of errors made by Acosta and Tur only serve to further the distrust the public has for the media to the detriment of the public. A healthy and robust media is needed to help keep the electorate informed. If the public doesn’t trust them, what’s the point?

They are short on self-control.

BIGGER THAN THE TRUMP/PUTIN MEETING: U.S. Energy Exports To Europe. If Trump were really in Putin’s pocket, he’d be putting the kibosh on this, probably citing bogus environmental concerns.

Related: Can Trump Use Fracking To Break Putin’s Stranglehold On Eastern Europe?

BUT FOR WHOM? Pentagon Says War Against North Korea Would Be ‘Catastrophic.’

Even a so-called surgical strike aimed at the North’s partially hidden nuclear and missile force is unlikely to destroy the arsenal or stop its leader, Kim Jong Un, from swiftly retaliating with long-range artillery that could kill stunning numbers in South Korea within minutes.

An all-out conflict could then ensue. And while Trump’s Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis, says the U.S. would prevail, he believes it would be “a catastrophic war.”

North Korea’s position has been allowed to evolve unimpeded over three decades and three Administrations. Pyongyang can use its nuclear capability — their own arsenal and the threat of sales to unsavory types — to blackmail the West into providing food and goods. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has its artillery just north of Seoul to hold South Korean civilians hostage against American action. They’ve got us by the …this… and by the …that.

That’s an outsized position for a small and impoverished nation ruled by an apparent sociopath.

And Beijing no doubt delights in having such an inexpensive ally creating such an expensive headache for their rivals here in the West.

There were never any easy outs with the Norks, and at this late stage there aren’t even any left which are merely ugly.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Dem rep blasts Hollywood after ‘Hawaii Five-0’ pay equality dispute. I think that President Trump should seize on this issue and make an example of them.

TRUMP PREPARES TO MEET PUTIN, THE TRAVEL BAN STAYS, AND THE SNUB THAT WASN’T: All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

A PROMISE OR A THREAT? Republicans are starting to admit they may have to work with Democrats on healthcare.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday said during an event in Kentucky that if GOP senators fail to reach an agreement on a bill that can get 50 votes in the chamber, they would have to work with the other party on a way to stabilize the Obamacare insurance markets.

“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” McConnell said.

McConnell pointed to increasing premiums in the individual insurance marketplaces as the reason Republicans would have to reach across the aisle.

This sounds to me like making your E.R. doc take advice from the madman who slipped a mystery poison into your drink.

If you thought RyanMcConnellTrumpCare was just ObamaCare Lite, wait until you see RyanMcConnellTrumpSchumerCare.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: ‘Collusion’ as Farce: The Hunt for Hillary’s Hackers.

WELL, WELL: Congress joins Trump war on regs, cuts a year’s worth in one week.

Congressional lawmakers have gone all in on President Trump’s bid to slash Obama-era regulations, targeting $19 billion in rules and the elimination of enough red tape to free up 5,200 federal workers, according to a new analysis.

The cuts proposed by the House Appropriations Committee this week amount to a year’s worth of regulations under the Obama administration, said the report from American Action Forum.

Analyst Sam Batkins wrote, “The suite of appropriations bills released this week goes further, curtailing more than $19 billion in total regulatory costs and eliminating 10.4 million hours of paperwork, the equivalent of eliminating all regulations from 2006 and freeing 5,200 employees from paperwork compliance.”

His report, provided to Secrets in advance of its release today, said that the committee’s funding bills target regulations in the areas of financial services, agriculture and energy. The biggest ticket item: “Repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill’s Volcker rule, which originally estimated $4.3 billion in costs and 2.3 million new paperwork burden hours.”

Batkins, AAF’s director of regulatory policy, explained that Congress can be very slow in cutting regulations, but added that appropriators are moving with unusual speed at the same time Trump’s team is also targeting rules within federal agencies for elimination.

Faster, please. Related: Could Trump Really Be Draining The Swamp? The water appears to be receding at key Beltway bureaucracies.

The Senate still hasn’t voted on ObamaCare reform, U.S. workers are still waiting for tax cuts to drive economic growth and President of the United States Donald Trump is trading insults with the co-hosts of an MSNBC talk show. Yet Mr. Trump appears to be making progress in what might have seemed the most difficult task given to him by voters in 2016: reducing the power of Washington’s permanent bureaucracy.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wasn’t exactly dying to move to Washington to run a federal department, but he seems to have warmed to the task. Max Bergmann, a former Obama Administration official now at the leftist Center for American Progress, writes in Politico that the “deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.” Discounting for the usual Beltway hyperbole, this probably isn’t as good as it sounds.

All kidding aside, the State Department is one federal agency that was actually contemplated by America’s founders. Conducting foreign policy is an important and necessary task for our central government. But like so much of the Beltway bureaucracy State has been overfunded and undermanaged for years. Now, despite what you may have read about untouchable bureaucrats unaccountable to the public they are supposed to serve, Mr. Tillerson has found ways to clean house. . . .

The former Obama appointee is apparently so unnerved by the Trump-Tillerson era at State that he lets slip the fact that the career staff didn’t think much of the previous management either, and that the conservative critique of the department is at least partly true.

More, please.

ENERGY: Renewable energy surpasses nuclear power — for now.

Utility-scale wind and solar power have been on the rise in the U.S., and a wet year in the West has fueled spikes in hydroelectric power. All three sources of renewable power have broken generation records this year, according to the Energy Department.

Record rainfall and snowpack in California contributed to a 14 percent increase in hydro power. Between March 2016 and March 2017, wind power increased by 16 percent and solar power increased by 65 percent.

But dominance of renewable sources over nuclear is fickle, for the time being.

Nuclear power plants are often taken offline during the spring months for maintenance. The Energy Department expects that monthly nuclear generation will again surpass renewable resources this summer, and that nuclear power plants will generate more energy than renewables for the year.

All I’m asking for is a standardized design for small thorium reactors which can be mass-produced and installed wherever plentiful and safe zero-carbon energy is wanted.

ALL IS PROCEEDING AS I HAVE FORESEEN: Why one of the largest counties in Texas is going back to paper ballots. “Denton County is planning a complete return to paper ballots. The move is in part a response to voter distrust of electronic voting machines.”

Well, paper ballots aren’t immune to fraud, but they can’t be changed by some guy sitting in a basement halfway around the world.

INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE: Hamas-Linked Women’s March Organizer Calls for ‘Jihad’ Against Trump.

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SHOULD INVESTIGATE THIS THOROUGHLY: House Dem IT Suspects Wanted Untraceable Payments — And Sure Enough, Millions Disappeared.

A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing “ghost employees” on the congressional payroll.

Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?

Capitol Police revoked the Awans’ access to the congressional IT system in February 2017 after a major data breach was detected. Their access had allowed them to read emails and files of dozens of members, including many serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

House Democrats have been nonchalant about the allegations, with some saying it was just a misunderstanding or the Capitol Police framed the Awans due to Islamophobia.

But official documents, court records and multiple interviews suggest the crew may have engaged in tax fraud, extortion, bankruptcy fraud and insurance fraud and the money could have been funneled overseas. Abid has hired high-profile attorney James Bacon who specializes in anti-money laundering litigation.

The Awans share modest homes, drive unremarkable cars and report little in the way of assets on congressional disclosures. The family owns significant amounts of Virginia rental properties, which are heavily financed, with second mortgages sometimes taken out. It’s unclear where the rental income goes because the Awans insist tenants pay in odd ways.

Weird that this is getting so little attention. Okay, not all that weird.

BUT WHAT ABOUT NASA’S VITAL ROLE OF BOOSTING MUSLIM SELF-ESTEEM? BREAKING | President Trump reestablishes National Space Council.

IT’S BOTH REFRESHING AND SHOCKING (IN A REFRESHING WAY) THAT THEY’RE NOT JUST SCREAMING GLOBAL WARMING: Millions of ‘Sea Pickles’ Invade Northwest Waters.

BUT OUR PRESS REFUSES TO SEE IT: There’s real tyranny going on in Venezuela .

SURE QUACKS LIKE A DUCK:Obamacare’s “People Will Die” Canard.

ABOUT TIME SOMEONE DEFENDED WESTERN CIVILIZATION:President Trump’s Remarkable Warsaw Speech.

IN THE EMAIL FROM M. C. TUGGLE: The Genie Hunt.

REPORTS OF THEIR EXTINCTION WERE EXAGGERATED: Another pack of gray wolves spotted in California.

FASTER PLEASE: Alzheimer’s breakthrough could lead to new treatment.

WHY CNN’S INTIMIDATION PLOY IS A VERY BAD MOVE: On Anonymity.

AT AMAZON, deals on Bestselling Digital Cameras.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE! Woman, 25, convicted for making up fake rape claims against 15 innocent men. Her stories seem facially implausible.