RUSH LIMBAUGH: Pay Attention To Carly Fiorina.

GLENN LOURY AND JOHN MCWHORTER talk about Ta-Nehisi Coates and the religion of “authentic blackness.”

MY ADVICE TO THE CANADIANS: MAKE YOUR MOVE NOW, OBAMA WILL FOLD LIKE HE ALWAYS DOES: The tiny islands where Canada and America are at war.

ACE: The Donor Class, Which Is Stupid, Has Mistaken Itself for Clever, and Other Things You Already Knew.

AT AMAZON: Back to School Duffel Bags and Backpacks.

SOLVING THE BLOOD SHORTAGE BY draining the dead? “Roughly 15 million pints of blood are donated each year by approximately 9.2 million individuals. Over the course of the same year, about 2.6 million Americans will — sadly — pass away. If hospitals were to harvest the blood from a third of those people, roughly 4.5 million liters would be added to the reservoir. . . . Draining the blood from a body is hardly out of the ordinary; it’s actually a regular part of the embalming process. To prepare a dead body for funeral services and eventual burial or cremation, morticians pump out all of the blood and interstitial fluids and replace them with an embalming solution, typically containing formaldehyde and methanol. Would it not make more sense to remove the blood at the hospital soon after death, rather than let it all go to waste?”

CRAZY LAWS AND OVERREGULATION: I will be on the John Stossel show tonight @ 8pm, Fox Business Channel, talking about an array of crazy laws–most of which will probably surprise you. Tune in if you can!

VERMONT STRUGGLES WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY:

When the Green Mountain power company, Vermont’s largest utility, announced earlier this year it will be buying nuclear power from New Hampshire’s Seabrook reactor, many environmentalists felt betrayed.

“This is exactly why we closed Vermont Yankee, because we didn’t want any nuclear power,” they complained. But consumer demands left Green Mountain with no other choice. Nuclear is the ultimate reliable source of power – reactors operate more than 90 percent of the time – and Green Mountain needs back-up in case other sources stop working or if demand exceeds supply on a hot summer day. Vermont is struggling with its desire to be clean and green. The state closed down Vermont Yankee, which provided 600 megawatts of power, when public opinion against it became overwhelming. The state only consumers 1100 megawatts on the hottest day.

* * * * * * *

“Vermont is finding — like California and Germany before it — that the fastest way to a clean energy future is to close down local sources of power and import it from other regions. California gets more than half its energy from neighboring Arizona, Nevada and Washington State, the largest import energy bill in the nation. Both New York and New England are looking to Quebec hydro for future clean power.”

Not to mention, the giant smug cloud in permanent geosynchronous orbit above Vermont, which also makes receiving solar power much more difficult.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Choose The Right Glue. I remember the Insta-Daughter proudly telling her uncle that her broken bookcase was better because “Daddy fixed it with glue.” And a couple of c-clamps. I’m a big fan of Gorilla Glue, myself, though traditional Elmer’s is underrated for wood fixes that don’t have to be waterproof.

UPDATE: In the comments, lots of love for Titebond.

RELAX CHAMP, YOU’VE HAD MUCH BIGGER FAILURES THAN THAT: Obama tells BBC he is ‘most frustrated’ with failure to get tougher gun laws.

TRUMP ON THE 2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS: “I DON’T THINK THE DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE DONE THAT:”

Giving Democrats a pass on the financial crisis is like giving Bill Clinton a pass on the rise of Al Qaeda in the years before 9/11. If you wanted to choose one single soundbite from the past two months to support the case that Trump’s a Democrat in Republican clothing, this would be it. On the other hand, the way populist hero-worship works is that whatever the hero says is true and correct whether it contradicts ideological orthodoxy or not. If Trump says Republicans alone were to blame for the crash, well … that’s just his way of reminding the Beltway RINOs that they’re complicit in the subprime crisis too. He’s trying to tear down the GOP establishment. Why would we begrudge him this hugely damaging lie in service to that noble cause? The most important thing now is to stop Bush; reminding the world that Jeb’s brother presided over the crash helps do that, even if Democrats are destined to pull this soundbite and beat the hell out of the eventual GOP nominee with it in attack ads. The reason it’s called a “cult of personality” is because, ultimately, it’s about personality, not about correctly apportioning blame for the biggest economic slump since the Great Depression in the middle of a presidential race.

Gee, I was really looking forward to Trump’s nuanced insights into Bill Clinton’s role in radically expanding the Community Reinvestment Act:

But as Allahpundit writes above, “The most important thing now is to stop Bush.” And play the role of stalking horse for Clinton. It’s deja ’92 all over again.

RELATED: The Donald is Still Hillary’s Best Friend.

PATHETIC: HILLARY CLINTON’S CAMPAIGN ‘STEAMROLLED NYT FOR A REWRITE’ (AND GOT IT):

As BuzzFeed’s C.J. Ciaramella tweeted, “Passive voice: the politician’s best friend.” Much more from Dylan Byers of the Politico:

The Times also changed the headline of the story, from “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email” to “Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account,” reflecting a similar recasting of Clinton’s possible role. The article’s URL was also changed to reflect the new headline.

As of early Friday morning, the Times article contained no update, notification, clarification or correction regarding the changes made to the article.

One of the reporters of the story, Michael Schmidt, explained early Friday that the Clinton campaign had complained about the story to the Times.

“It was a response to complaints we received from the Clinton camp that we thought were reasonable, and we made them,” Schmidt said.

Just as the Politico’s Glenn Thrush described Hillary’s home-brew email server as “badass” in March, earlier this week, New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal admired her efforts at stonewalling his newspaper and other news sources:

“How do you think this crazy pack of Republican candidates and the level of their conversation has made the race for Hillary?” Susan Lehman, the podcast’s host, asked editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal about six minutes into their discussion.

“I think she’s basically ignoring it, which is extremely intelligent,” he responded. “And this is going to sound rather strange coming from a journalist,” Rosenthal added, apparently referring to himself, “but she’s also ignoring the press which I don’t think is such a terrible idea.”

“I don’t think [Hillary Clinton’s] not talking to the press is an issue,” Rosenthal continued. “Sincerely, who cares?”

Obviously no one at the Times — gee, why could that be?

SHOCKER: Hey Look, Amazon Actually Turned a Profit.

VIDEO: TED CRUZ ACCUSES MITCH McCONNELL OF LYING IN FLOOR SPEECH:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) went off on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the Senate floor this morning, claiming that McConnell told him there would be no vote allowed on renewal of the Export-Import Bank.

“It saddens me to say this. I sat in my office, I told my staff the majority leader looked me in the eye and looked 54 Republicans in the eye. I cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie, and I voted based on those assurances that he made to each and every one of us,” Cruz said.

As Ace writes, “Skip to 12:55 for the best part, as he gets into the part about McConnell’s ‘corrupt,’ ‘cronyist’ lies, but the whole thing is good.”

AT AMAZON, deals galore in Training & Fitness.

And shop the Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals. When bad things happen, it’s good to have food.

Plus, Generators and Portable Power for Storm Season. It’s hurricane and tornado season, you know.

DISPATCHES FROM THE ERA OF NEW CIVILITY: Boston Globe/Slate Freelancer: ‘It Would Be Funny If All Gun Rights People Got Shot Dead.’

RYAN CALO: Can Americans Resist Surveillance?

WELL, MORE-CROWDED DESTINATIONS, TO BEGIN WITH: What would low cost international flight tickets and no jet lag mean for your future vacation planning?

SPACE: How Outer Space is Becoming the Next Internet.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Nanostructured Glass Can Switch Between Blocking Heat and Blocking Light.

DELIBERATELY CREATING A HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR MEN: Ashe Schow: A double-standard on campus sexual assault hearings.

Across the country, young college men are being accused of sexually assaulting young college women based either solely on an accusation or occasionally on flimsy witness statements.

No one is arguing that sexual assaults never happen. But the degree to which the definition has been broadened in order to “fix” the “epidemic” has ensnared many young students who are not the monsters the media would have you believe.

And the narrative being pushed by activists has been one of black and white, good and evil. According to them, accusers, mostly women, always tell the absolute truth, and the accused, almost universally men, are awful even if proven innocent. That double-standard has led to policies that treat accused students as guilty-until-proven-innocent. These policies also have to carve out special provisions that ensure accusers are innocent of sexual assault even when both parties would have a reasonable claim.

This double-standard has produced policies that state that an accuser who has been drinking alcohol (any amount) is absolved of anything they willingly consented to that night on the grounds that they wouldn’t have done so sober. Conversely, accused students who were also drunk are not absolved of their decisions.

Notice the double-standard? If being drunk means you can’t consent, presumably a drunk accused student would also be unable to consent, meaning that the two students essentially sexually assaulted each other. But of course findings such as this won’t help schools prove to the Department of Education that they take accusations seriously, thus the one-sided policies.

We saw this play out recently at Amherst College, when a student who was in an alcohol-induced, black-out state received oral sex, only to be accused of sexual assault nearly two years later.

Bring on the lawsuits.

THE BANALITY OF EVIL: Why Everyone Hates Dolores Umbridge So Much.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Revenge Of The Radical Middle: Why Donald Trump Isn’t Going Away. “What Republicans are trying to figure out is not so much how to handle Trump as how to handle his supporters. Ignore or confront? Mock or treat seriously? Insult or persuade? . . . What the radical middle has seen in recent years has not given them reason to be confident in our government, our political system, our legion of politicians clambering up the professional ladder office to office. Two inconclusive wars, a financial crisis, recession, and weak recovery, government failure from Katrina to the TSA to the launch of Obamacare to the federal background check system, an unelected and unaccountable managerial bureaucracy that targets grassroots organizations and makes law through diktat, race riots and Ebola and judicial overreach. And through it all, as constant as the northern star, a myopic drive on the part of leaders in both parties to enact a ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ that would incentivize illegal immigration and increase legal immigration despite public opposition.”

If you don’t want their votes, it’s because you don’t want to win. “Our political commentary is confused because it conceives of the Republican Party as a top-down entity. It’s not. There are two Republican parties, an elite party of the corporate upper crust and meritocratic winners that sits atop a mass party of whites without college degrees whose worldviews and experiences and ambitions could not be more different from their social and economic betters. The former party enjoys the votes of the latter one, but those votes are not guaranteed. What so worries the GOP about Donald Trump is that he, like Ross Perot, has the resources and ego to rend the two parties apart. If history repeats itself, it will be because the Republican elite was so preoccupied with its own economic and ideological commitments that it failed to pay attention the needs and desires of millions of its voters. So the demagogue rises. The party splits. And the Clintons win.”

IN THE MAIL: Stop the Clock: The Optimal Anti-Aging Strategy.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Sylvania 7-Inch Portable DVD Player, $39.99 (43% off).

And, also today only: Up to 40% Off Select Lifestraw Products. Good to have in an emergency.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 806.

MUTUAL ASSURED INTERNET DESTRUCTION? Senator Suggests Waging ‘Comparable’ Cyber Attack in Response to OPM Hack:

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) suggested the U.S. wage a “comparable” cyber attack in response to the Office of Personnel Management hack, reportedly carried out by China.

“We are very good at what we do but there are other countries who are constantly working to get better. The Russians are very good at what they do. The Chinese are as well. Iran and North Korea continue to get better, that’s why it’s so important that we develop a policy because I think we’re getting close to a point where it will be close and we will need a policy in place in order to address actions that take place,” Fischer, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said at the Hudson Institute.

Fischer serves as the chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, which deals with cybersecurity issues.

“What can we do? The United States could react in a number of ways whether it’s going into their systems to let them know we can. Whether it’s to do a retaliatory attack that would be comparable — but anytime we would do something like that whoever we’re going after learns something about what we have as well,” she said, referring to the OPM hack, which resulted in the theft of millions of federal employees’ personal information.

“So it’s a balance there on what we can do. Is it deterrence where you would say if you do a major cyber attack on us, we turn around and would do a major one on you, which would have the same consequences if not greater? Again, that goes to policy,” she added.

Hmmm. If that’s a bluff, sooner or later, someone will call it. Otherwise, Jim Geraghty described the OPM hack as America’s “Cyber Pearl Harbor” last month. Is Sen. Fischer suggesting the cyber Hiroshima in response?

THERE’S NO GREATER CRIME THAN MAKING THE POWERS-THAT-BE LOOK BAD: Army To Recruiters: Call Cops If Armed Citizens Show Up To Guard Your Offices.

PAUL BRACKEN ON THE IRAN DEAL DEBACLE:

Any negotiation can be looked at in two different ways. First, there is the immediate deal and how it is reached. The focus is on who won and who lost, and whether the deal is one-sided or reasonably balanced. The questions are how shrewd were the negotiators, could they have gotten more, or were they hoodwinked into giving up too much? Call this focus “the art of the deal.”

The other approach looks at the long-term consequences of a negotiation. Here the questions are how the agreement fits into each side’s strategy, and how unanticipated political and strategic developments could affect behavior. Most important, a longer-term framework focuses on the residual capability that exists after an agreement. Are organizational structures dismantled, systems taken down, and key staff dispersed?

The biggest mistake in any negotiation is to confuse these two approaches. Rather, the two approaches should be integrated into a balanced overall strategy. In the Iran agreement the focus has been on the art of the deal, that there was no better deal to be had, and that the United States got more in the agreement than many people expected. All of these things may be true—and to a reasonable extent I think that they are. But this isn’t a “good deal” from the long-term point of view. Highlighting the laudable energy put into the agreement by the United States team makes good political sense. After all, the deal has to be sold. As a practical matter putting the focus on the art of the deal is one way to do this. But it doesn’t put the spotlight where it belongs, on the consequences down the road.

There are two such consequences that are worrying. First, the Iran agreement is likely to increase the spread of nuclear weapons, both in Iran and in the Middle East; it doesn’t alter the strategic environment in any way, nor are there other initiatives underway to do this. The other feature of the agreement that is worrying is that it barely touches Iran’s residual capability to get a bomb. All of the knowhow, institutes, and systems to do so remain in place, even if some of them are monitored. A largely unrestrained residual nuclear capability remains in a strategic environment that Iran considers extremely dangerous. This gives Tehran considerable scope for strategic and political moves to get atomic weapons.

So, about what you can expect from the Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight. Meanwhile, I still love this picture:

I wonder if you can get this t-shirt translated into Farsi?

AMY SCHUMER’S ‘TRAINWRECK’: A CONSERVATIVE CRITIQUE OF THE HOOK UP CULTURE:

Finding true love and settling down is so much a part of the Hollywood script that it may seem a leap to call it a conservative movie just because of that.  But the reason I walked out wondering if Schumer or Apatow were among the Hollywood crypto-conservative cadres has more to do with what came before the ending.  Ms. Schumer is famous for sexually explicit humor, a kind of caustic feminism, and a certain generational outrageousness.  And yet, in her maiden film, she consciously depicted every single sexual encounter of her liberated heroine as dreary and unenviable.  They vary from tedious to visibly empty and frustrating. The viewer is forced to wonder why she lies there, when it’s doing nothing for her; why she goes home with someone just because he asks; and what it means when she says that she likes sex, when she clearly does not like the actual sex she manages to have. No young woman watching this movie, including the 19-year-old I was with, could walk out of the theater thinking anything about the protagonist’s lifestyle was appealing. The movie could be used as part of aversion therapy. All of that changes, of course, when she meets the good doctor, and has to figure out how to have a real relationship.

A conservative moviemaker could do worse than to depict the millennial hook-up culture as so empty that marrying a doctor and joining the suburban bourgeois looks like salvation.

To be fair, even Klute ended with Jane Fonda’s character chucking her lucrative call girl career and leaving swinging New York to go live in the country with Donald Sutherland’s small town detective character, a remarkably conservative ending despite both actors being at the peak of their far left anti-American activist phase.

I’m sure it added several million at the box office, which must have pleased Fonda, even as she was insisting, “If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist. . . . I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism.”

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: America Is Even Less Socially Mobile Than Previously Thought. Want more social mobility? Make success less dependent on expensive educational credentials and burdensome occupational licenses. On the other hand, the suggestions in this piece are just more of the same.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

ORWELLIAN MUCH? HILLARY PUTS ‘FUN CAMPS’ ASIDE TO PROPOSE ‘CARING CORPS.’

Yet another reminder that Jonah Goldberg’s early 2008 book Liberal Fascism was written with the assumption that Hillary would be the Democratic frontrunner that year; quotes from her on her worldview make up several of its later chapters.

For a cinematic look at what Hillary’s “Fun Camps,” the village it takes to raise a child, and the Caring Corp which would oversee both might look like, last year’s chilling dystopian sci-fi film The Giver starring Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep is also well worth checking out.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: GOP to IRS: Just admit Tea Party was targeted.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS HANDED GOP CANDIDATES A GIFT — THEY’RE RUNNING WITH IT: “The strategy is simple: No Republican politician should answer a question about abortion without first demanding that Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton answer for their positions.”

DEM SPIN: TRUMP IS BEHIND THIS! Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email. “Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday. The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton’s private account contained ‘hundreds of potentially classified emails.’ The memo was written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.” (Bumped).

LIZ SHELD: Lone-Wolf Crazy White Guy Shoots Up Louisiana Theater. “I know he was a white man because I was watching CNN at 4 a.m. this morning and they repeated that about 100 times: ‘HE WAS A WHITE GUY’.”

A THEATER SHOOTING IN LOUISIANA AND THIS IS WHAT A BUZZFEED EDITOR TWEETS? JUST BIZARRE.

Not to mention a possible violation of the much vaunted BuzzFeed Editorial Standards And Ethics Guide, introduced in January:

On public activism:

But when it comes to activism, BuzzFeed editorial must follow the lead of our editors and reporters who come out of a tradition of rigorous, neutral journalism that puts facts and news first. If we don’t, it makes it harder for those reporters to do their jobs.

On political speech:

While we understand that many BuzzFeed editorial staffers are passionate and thoughtful and hold personal views on policy issues or candidates, we must maintain one blanket rule for all of editorial: Political partisanship may not be expressed in public forums, including Twitter and Facebook.

The lack of repercussions for Zarrell and the dissembling in defense of it by BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith will be fascinating to observe.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Slut-Shaming The Military:

In the wake of the massacre in Chattanooga, Tenn., Defense Secretary Ash Carter approved a series of “immediate force-protection steps” designed to protect service members. One of those steps was to ask recruiters not to wear their uniforms in public.

Regular readers (all two of you; I’m being generous) will recognize this attempt to “protect” people by telling them what not to wear as “slut-shaming” or “victim-blaming.” At least, that’s what it’s called when the protection is meant for young women on college campuses.

In this case, soldiers are being told not to wear their uniforms because it may make them targets of another shooting. College women used to be told not to wear skimpy clothes to avoid being raped.

The obvious difference here is that a military uniform clearly identifies someone as a member of the military, whereas a short skirt doesn’t identify someone as wanting to have sex. In both instances, however, an authority figure is at least in part blaming the victim for the crime perpetrated against them.

Where are the protests?

HOW OBAMA IS USING CHUCK SCHUMER TO NUKE THE US-ISRAEL ALLIANCE: “Would Schumer the shomer throw America’s allies under the bus and allow Obama to drive a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem? If Schumer won’t answer that question directly, his handling of the Iran deal will.”

HILLARY CLINTON NEEDS TO ADDRESS THE RACIST UNDERTONES OF HER 2008 CAMPAIGN: From left-leaning journalist Ryan Cooper at The Week.

Should Hillary address the racist overtones of her 2016 campaign as well? Hey, if her campaign is still around in 2016, absolutely.

RELATED: “The stakes are high in 2016 – more so for Democrats than they were in 2012, when Barack Obama’s allies went so far as to accuse Mitt Romney of complicity in negligent homicide. We may come to look back on that campaign as an epoch of civility. If the GOP nominates a competent candidate, and they have a variety from which to choose, Hillary Clinton and her allies will have to scorch the earth in order to win. The torches are already lit.”

REALLY? BECAUSE WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE SEEM TO ALWAYS BE TURNING THE THERMOSTAT DOWN: Latest front in the War On Women: Air Conditioning.

And it’s sad to see Petula Dvorak end with such a sexist remark: “I’m talking short suits. They’re adorable! Plus, we’d all love to see your knees, guys.” Really? Really?

And nobody tell Ann Althouse.

NY TIMES MOVES CRUZ BEHIND JIMMY CARTER ON BESTSELLER LIST DESPITE SELLING 58% MORE BOOKS.

Their editors can try to hide it as much they like, but isn’t it obvious by now how deeply in the tank the Gray Lady is for Ben Nelson’s presidential bid?

MILLENNIAL WOMEN HAVE FIGURED OUT THAT you can’t actually “have it all.”

AFTER BLASTING TRUMP FOR MEXICO COMMENTS, CNN SMEARS ENTIRE AFRICAN COUNTRY AS ‘HOTBED OF TERROR:’  “What CNN’s racially-driven smear might do to damage Kenya’s future tourism and business economy is yet to be seen.”

ORIN KERR: Sandra Bland and the “lawful order” problem.

Sandra Bland was pulled over for failing to signal while changing lanes. A lot of readers have watched the traffic stop which led to Bland’s arrest for assaulting an officer. If you haven’t, you should.

The Bland video brings up an overlooked problem with the law of police-citizen encounters. The police can back up their orders with force because it’s often a crime to disobey a lawful order from a police officer. But from a citizen’s perspective, it’s often impossible to know what is a lawful order. As a result, it’s often impossible for citizens to know what they can and can’t do during a police encounter.

The first problem is knowing what counts as an “order.” If an officer approaches you and asks you to do something, that’s normally just a request and not an order. But if there’s a law on the books saying that you have to comply with the officer’s request, then the request is treated as an order. You can’t know what is an “order” unless you study the law first, which you’re unlikely to have done before the officer approached you.

The even bigger problem is knowing when an order is “lawful.” An order is lawful if forcing compliance would not violate any law. But a citizen is in no position to assess that. Even if the police pulled over the world’s greatest legal expert, the citizen still couldn’t know what orders are lawful because the laws often hinge on facts the citizen can’t know.

Abolish governmental immunity and let the police officer bear the risk, not the citizen.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: ALIEN CRIME WAVE IN TEXAS: 611,234 CRIMES, 2,993 MURDERS: Read the whole thing.

CENSORSHIP: The Left Versus The Internet: The Right has enthusiastically embraced Internet culture, even if the defenders of that culture are sometimes leery of the Right.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Minority Wars: Why The Next Ten Years Will Set Everyone Against Everyone.

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Martin O’Malley came face to face with the tragic state of American progressivism last week, when an 11,000-strong rally of progressive activists was disrupted by #BlackLivesMatter protesters.

Activists marched into the room chanting protest songs before taking the stage in front of a bemused O’Malley to demand concrete commitments on police violence.

Never mind that O’Malley and Sanders are, among presidential candidates, by far the most sympathetic to the concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement: because they’re white, they cannot be trusted, and deserve to have whatever they’re talking about shoved off the agenda by thugs with placards.

It may sound racist and bizarre to be suspicious of candidates like Sanders and O’Malley on the basis of their ethnicity alone, but when you consider the primacy of identity politics in the progressive movement today, it really isn’t that surprising.

Since the 1970s, social psychologists have been aware that emphasising differences between groups leads to mistrust and hostility. In a series of landmark experiments, the psychologist Henri Tajfel found that even wearing different-coloured shirts was enough for groups to begin displaying signs of mistrust.

So guess what happens when you tell everyone that their worth, their ability, their right to speak on certain subjects and – shudder – their “privilege” is based on what they were born with, rather than any choices they’ve made or who they are?

So long as there is power in dividing people, demagogues will divide people.

J. EDGAR HOOVER’S WAR ON GAYS: “For J. Edgar Hoover, homosexuals — or, in his lexicon, ‘sex deviates’ — who worked in the federal government were as much a threat to the republic as any embedded Soviet spies:”

According to Penn State historian Doug Charles in his book Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI “Sex Deviates” Program, this initiative was the launch of a massive campaign against homosexuals by the Bureau. By the 1970s, the FBI had collected 360,000 files on gays and lesbians in the federal government. Dates and places of their “acts” were included in the files. From police reports and “individual complaints,” agents collected names of these “unsuitable,” “unstable” “security risks.”

Read the whole thing.

AT AMAZON, deals on Men’s Shoes.

Plus, up to 40% off on Tumi Luggage.

LESSONS LEARNED IN GOING FROM BOTSWANA TO UT LAW: “Having lived in Appalachia, I discovered a new form of diversity that was not restricted to skin color.”

RELAX, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT: America Has A Lot Of Potentially Active Volcanoes.

STEREOTYPE CONFIRMED: Clinton: Sight Of Black Man With Hoodie Creates ‘Fear’ Among Open-Minded White People.

STEREOTYPE BUSTED: Report: Chicago’s Neighborhood With Most Gun Carry Permits is 55% Black, 34% Hispanic.

SLATE’S MALE FEMINIST: I Hate That I Love TO Grill. Really? Really?

OBAMA’S TRUE LEGACY: Poll Shows Most Americans Think Race Relations Are Bad.

Seven years ago, in the gauzy afterglow of a stirring election night in Chicago, commentators dared ask whether the United States had finally begun to heal its divisions over race and atone for the original sin of slavery by electing its first black president. It has not. Not even close.

A new New York Times/CBS News poll reveals that nearly six in 10 Americans, including heavy majorities of both whites and blacks, think race relations are generally bad and that nearly four in 10 think the situation is getting worse. By comparison, two-thirds of Americans surveyed shortly after President Obama took office said they believed that race relations were generally good.

We elected the wrong black man for the job. And this remains evergreen, alas:

Worst president ever.

FEMALE PRIVILEGE: ‘Horndog High’ teacher says NYC Ed Department gave her ‘unfair’ 2-year suspension for after-school tryst with female colleague in suit.

OH, BY THE WAY, A NEW WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM DEBUTS NEXT WEEK: “Excited about the imminent release of Windows 10? You may want to wait,” Computer World suggests, which is often good advice whenever Microsoft introduces new software. But is anyone excited about a new Windows OS? I can remember back in 1995, when Windows 95 actually seemed like a planet-changing event. (For a look back at the surprisingly pivotal year, author/journalist W. Joseph Campbell has you covered, placing the Windows launch and the early days of the World Wide Web into the context of the times, in his latest book 1995: The Year the Future Began.) These days? Meh.*

Speaking of that bygone era, the answer is none. There is none more nineties than this, a Microsoft-produced video introducing Windows 95 to the world, with Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, and character actress Marilyn Pasekoff channeling the ghost of Nancy Walker:

* Unless Windows 10 contains a cute paperclip-shaped animated avatar. Then that changes everything.

FASTER, PLEASE: Tweaking One Enzyme Doubles A Worm’s Lifespan: It could work the same way in humans.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Procedures Faulted in Army Lab’s Shipment of Anthrax.

TOM COBURN: A Deficit Of Debt Discussion.

America’s cumulative borrowing is rapidly approaching $20 trillion, while the federal government’s unfunded liabilities (future expenditures minus future tax revenue) now exceed a whopping $127 trillion — better than $1.1 million per taxpayer.

That’s not merely unsustainable; it’s suicidal.

Following a similarly risky path, Greece has now defaulted on its obligations, sending a shock wave through financial markets around the world. This was a crisis that could have been avoided through sound fiscal policy, but the Greek government has for years lacked the political will to do what it takes to secure that nation’s financial health. The nightly news showcases the unfolding Greek tragedy as though it were another TV reality show. A country on the verge of collapse, full steam ahead on a similar trajectory as the American economy — and journalists are largely silent.

Closer to home, Puerto Rico teeters on the edge of financial ruin and risks enormous damage to municipal bond funds and other instruments relied on by millions of Americans to help protect their long-term financial security.

Let’s be clear: The United States must end the cycle of endless and unsustainable debt that we’ve seen elsewhere around the world, or it will face the same fate as other nations before us.

Doing nothing to improve Social Security’s solvency will only result in an empty trust fund and risks to future benefits for everyone. The same is true of every other budget-busting program in our bloated federal budget.

With these facts in mind, I must ask those running for the White House to lead America as our next president, particularly those in my party: What is your plan to deal with this? To the news media, why are you not asking our future leaders this question?

No one in the political class — and this very much includes those bylined operatives in the press — wants to shut down the gravy train, regardless of consequences.

THE TOXIC WORLDVIEW OF TA-NEHISI COATES, from Rich Lowry at (astonishingly enough), the Politico:

White Americans don’t even have the highest incomes of any group in the country that they have allegedly built to serve their interests with malice aforethought. Asians do. They, of course, didn’t experience chattel slavery, or the hideous discrimination of the Jim Crow South. But they still encountered prejudice, overcome with relatively intact families and high levels of education.

Coates reminds us of the shame of the American inner city, where kids have so few social supports and live with little margin of error. His account of slavery and the ensuing discrimination against blacks is powerful and true. But his is a stunted version of America. Here’s hoping his son reads more widely.

Read the whole thing.

HUFFPO ‘DATA JUSTICE’ DIRECTOR: ‘WILL UBER HELP KILL THE PLANET?’ “And when you take a step back, the fight over Uber and its future likely use of driverless cars has enormous implications for whether our nation and the world can stop climate change from killing the planet.”

If that’s the baseline assumption, shouldn’t the Huffington Post “data justice” director want to ban air-conditioned electrically-intensive server farms first? Or at least set an example to the world by demanding your own Website voluntarily going offline?

NASA: THIS PLANET COULD BE ‘EARTH 2.0:′

Wow. NASA on Thursday announced the discovery of a planet that could be the first found outside our solar system capable of sustaining human life. The planet, which is officially named Kepler-452b, is being described by NASA’s Jon Jenkins as Earth’s “older, bigger cousin” and it is the smallest planet discovered so far in the so-called “habitable” zone in a solar system in which a planet is capable of sustaining pools of water on its surface.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is all about — I discovered Earth II decades ago. Close-up, it didn’t look like all that much…

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): San Pedro Teacher, 28, Suspected of Sexual Abuse of 15-Year-Old Student. “Michelle Yeh was on a temporary teaching assignment at the San Pedro school’s science department in February, according to a news release from the Los Angeles Police Department. At the end of the 2015 school year, she ‘reached out to the victim and arranged private meetings,’ the release stated. The alleged victim, who was one of Yeh’s students, disclosed in July that he was sexually abused by Yeh on multiple occasions, according to police. It was not immediately clear if the boy or his family went to police, or how LAPD learned of the allegations.”

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION STORY, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Arctic expedition to study global warming put on hold because of too much ice.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East? ISIS and other extremist movements across the region are enslaving, killing and uprooting Christians, with no aid in sight.

Obama doesn’t much seem to care, and even the Pope seems more interested in climate change.

CHICAGO’S EXCITING XBOX / CLOUD COMPUTING TAX! “So, basically, avoid living in Chicago if you enjoy living in the 21st Century. Or working in it, because they’re also going to tax the cloud. That’s why everybody outside of Chicago is excited about this. It’s not every day that a major city decides to deliberately drive non-geographically fixed companies out to the suburbs.”

Well, it is when that city is Sacramento and the suburbs are colloquially referred to as “Texas”…

COAL EXECUTIVE SLAMS OBAMA AS ‘NATION’S GREATEST DESTROYER’ That’s such an impolite phrase. Best to go with “fundamentally transformed,” instead.

WAIT A SEC: UN INSPECTORS WILL BE FORCED TO RELY ON SAMPLES PROVIDED BY … IRAN? “In other words, if nuclear inspectors get a hot tip that Iran is conducting (or conducted in the past) atomic-bomb work at a secret site, they don’t get to go to the site themselves and take samples from the soil, the walls, etc, to see if there’s uranium present,” Allahpundit writes at Hot Air. “They get their samples … from Iran. That’s like drug-testing a junkie by asking him to bring a sample from home.”

Plus this: “Exit quotation from Philip Klein: ‘The premise of every Kerry answer is — Iran was the stronger power here, they had all the leverage. We were lucky to get anything.’”

So is Kerry there to make Hillary’s tenure at Foggy Bottom look infinitely better by comparison, or is he setting up his own entry into the Democratic presidential race? Or both?

NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR: ISN’T IT AWESOME HOW HILLARY’S STONEWALLING THE PRESS? If you’ve ever thought that among all the major American newspapers, the Gray Lady existed the most in its own alternate universe, Sean Davis of the Federalist confirms your worst suspicions, with a profile of Andrew Rosenthal, the Times’ editorial page editor.

Rosenthal provided the initial spin on the George H.W. Bush supermarket scanner incident in 1992 as a claim that the former head of the CIA was a technological luddite. This week he critiqued the performance of GOP presidential candidate “Ben Nelson” by declaring “Everything Ben Nelson says is ridiculous,” (audio at link) and recently proclaimed himself a postmodern D-Day(!) truther, according to Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

CRUZ CONTROL: “During a rally Thursday protesting the Iran deal not including the release of four imprisoned Americans, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was met with boisterous protests from the anti-war group Code Pink. Instead of ignoring the protesters, he debated them,” including Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin.

Video at link.

SHOCKER: Health Care Tax Faces United Opposition From Labor and Employers.

A FREE SPEECH VICTORY EIGHT YEARS IN THE MAKING: $900,000 settlement points the way to making campus censors pay for unconstitutional abuses.

If individual administrators had to worry for even a second that they might be held personally liable for violating students’ clearly established constitutional rights, you can guarantee one thing: Incidents of abuses of student free speech and due process rights would plummet. As I explained last year in my announcement of FIRE’s Stand Up for Speech Litigation Project, many administrators choose to overreact to speech because they feel that there is no downside for doing so, whereas there is a host of potential consequences for failing to act, including harassment lawsuits, tort lawsuits, and investigations by the Department of Education. However, administrators’ fear of personal liability would likely often outweigh their fear of these other consequences, making them think twice before violating student and faculty rights. But insurance and university policies undermine this potentially elegant solution.

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.

Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

And please remember: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your shopping through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support this blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. I very much appreciate it when you do.

KERRY ‘FLEECED’ AND ‘BAMBOOZLED,’ SENATORS TELL HIM; BOXER CALLS THEM ‘INSULTING:’

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) rushed to the aid of Secretary of State John Kerry this morning, claiming that Senate Republicans were impugning his character by noting he got “bamboozled” and “fleeced” in the Iran nuclear deal.

“Not unlike a hotel guest that leaves only with a hotel bathrobe on his back, I believe you’ve been fleeced,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told Kerry today at the top of a hearing to review the deal.

“In the process of being fleeced, what you’ve really done here is you have turned Iran from being a pariah to now Congress, Congress being a pariah,” Corker added.

“With all due respect, you guys have been bamboozled, and the American people are going to pay for that,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) later added.

Boxer began her comments by stressing that she does think Congress faces a choice between accepting the deal and going to war with Iran — “at the end of the day, that’s really the option, which everyone tiptoes around.”

“I support the right of my colleagues to say anything they want, but you’ve sat there and you’ve heard two of my colleagues go after you with words that I am going to repeat. You were fleeced, one said. The other said you have been bamboozled,” she said.

“So putting aside the fact that I think that’s disrespectful and insulting, it — that’s their right to do. There are other ways to express your disagreement, but that goes to the — your core as a human being and your intelligence, and I think you are highly intelligent.”

Now there’s a vote of confidence. Besides, I thought Boxer appreciated senators when they’re “speaking truth to power,” especially to the Secretary of State.

UPDATE: As Ace writes: “Oh, Kerry got fleeced?”

Because I thought a bunch of dumbass, sell-out, go-along-to-get-along Republican Senators got fleeced by Obama and Kerry into approving this treaty before it was even finished.

So now we’re in the “I just can’t believe the outrageous things I already voted for” phase of the Failure Theater performance.

It’s DC — there’s enough failure to go around for everyone.

SLOWING IS GOOD. REVERSING IS BETTER. New antibody drugs show promise in slowing the advance of Alzheimer’s disease.

SHOCKINGLY, IT DIDN’T START AS A FAST-FOOD PLACE: Church Is Chicken: Abandoned Indonesian Temple Looks Like Poultry.

LIFE IN A POLITICIZED PROSECUTORIAL-ABUSE POLICE STATE: “The Wisconsin Targets Tell Their Story/After victory in court, conservative activists talk on the record for the first time about their 21-month ordeal.” “The targets have been vindicated, but a reckoning for prosecutors and the abusive John Doe machinery is still in order.” Yep.

I HAD MISSED THIS, BUT I LOVE THE TERM “GUNTRY CLUB.” Guntry clubs target a new breed of shooter: younger, more affluent and female.

PLANNING TO CARRY MORE OFTEN? Amazon has holsters.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? There’s a Sweeping Changeover Happening Among the US Military’s Top Brass.

WELL, THERE’S NO POINT LOOKING FOR INTELLIGENCE IN WASHINGTON, DC: $100 Million Hunt for Aliens Aims to Survey One Million Stars.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama’s Dangerous Rhetoric. “President Obama has a habit of asserting strategic nonsense with such certainty that it is at times embarrassing and frightening. Nowhere is that more evident than in his rhetoric about the Middle East.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Indiana Tech Law School Gives 100% Scholarships To Every Student In Effort To Retain 57 2Ls/3Ls, Recruit 20 1Ls In Wake Of Accreditation Denial.

IN THE MAIL: From David Hogberg, Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 55% off Select Certified Refurbished Ninja Kitchen Systems.

And, also today only: Up to 50% Off Puma Athletic Shoes.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 805.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: GAO: ‘Americans Still Vulnerable to IRS Audits Over Personal Beliefs.’

Reminder: In 2009, President Barack Obama “Joked” About Auditing His Enemies.

HBO IS OKAY WITH MURDER AND MAYHEM. But an ammo company’s logo? There have to be some standards of decency.

STANDING UP FOR SCIENCE: America’s Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly.

I’ve worked with Germans. And Brits. And Swedes. And Dutch people. And French people. All of whom professed themselves absolutely baffled by our insistence on wasting so much energy cooling our offices and homes, when we could just build buildings that cool themselves naturally if we open the windows occasionally.

For Europeans reading this, I may actually be able to clear up this baffling issue: Americans use air conditioning more because America is a lot hotter than Europe is. For example, in Washington, where the weather is apparently “pretty similar” to Berlin, it is expected to be 87 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius) tomorrow. In Berlin, Weather.com informs me that temperatures are expected to be a torrid, sultry … 75 Fahrenheit (23 Celsius).

Of course, on any two random days, the weather might be unseasonably cold or unseasonably hot. You really need to look at monthly averages. And lo and behold, when we look, we discover that Washington has an average temperature of 88 degrees in July, while Berlin has an average temperature of … 73 (yes, that is indeed 31 and 23 Celsius).

And we’re not talking about a place that’s really hot, like Dallas (average July temperature is 96, or 36 Celsius) or Phoenix (106, or 41 Celsius). We’re just talking about a rather ordinary American city in roughly the middle of the country’s north-to-south span.

We do have some cities with more European temperatures, including San Francisco and Seattle, but they are not our largest population centers. The rest of the country, even places that are frozen wastelands in the winter, experiences summertime average highs above 80 degrees. That’s not a rogue heat wave, the kind that Northern Europeans complain about endlessly while futilely fiddling with their fans. That’s just what we Americans call “summer.” A heat wave is when it’s 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and your dog won’t go outside because the pavement burns his feet. . . .

You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you’d be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That’s actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York — the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from — you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.

On average, the move from cold areas to warm ones has actually saved energy, not caused us to use more. So why are we so down on air conditioning, while accepting flagrant heat use as normal? In part, it’s because air conditioning still seems optional. Unlike a cold winter with no heat, a hot summer with no cooling won’t definitely kill you.

Also, snobs, busybodies and puritans seem to occupy colder climates for some reason.

THE CORRECT ANSWER IS THAT IT’S BECAUSE EVEN THEY AREN’T CYNICAL ENOUGH: Why Hillary Clinton and her rivals are struggling to grasp Black Lives Matter. “Black Lives Matter” is an unabashedly racist movement led by unabashed racists.

APPARENTLY, MEDIEVAL-THEMED VIDEO GAMES ‘LEGITIMIZE’ ‘WHITE SUPREMACY:’ “The Middle Ages is a space where white supremacy is legitimized,” [Victoria Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leeds in England] said, according to an article on Medievalists.net. “The maintenance of white privilege. The gamer community use ‘historical facts’ to legitimize this kind of literacy.”

Wow, wait ‘til she discovers Monty Python and the Holy Grail…

THIS WHOLE THING STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN: Waco Is Suppressing Evidence That Could Clear Innocent Bikers. “The city is fighting to keep videos of the May shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant out of the press, and still hasn’t confirmed how many victims were shot by police.”

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

CNN’S SALLY KOHN BLAMES ABORTION VIDEOS ON ‘WHITE SUPREMACY.’

Planned Parenthood founder and Hillary Clinton muse Margaret Sanger could not be reached for comment.

KASICH REVEALS HILLARY CAME TO HIS ENGAGEMENT PARTY:

Sean Hannity, who interviewed Kasich after his announcement on Tuesday, asked the Ohio governor about comments he’s made downplaying the IRS and Benghazi scandals.

“You said, ‘I’m more worried about how we’re going to fix America than Hillary’s email server and you said, ‘I don’t believe you beat her by talking about Benghazi or her emails–”

“No, you don’t,” Kasich interrupted Hannity.

While he said these issues would likely come up in a campaign, Kasich said, “My opinion, the Republican that can best articulate a big  message…”

Kasich trailed off, but then added, “Look, I’ve known Hillary a long time. When I got engaged to be married she came to the party, OK? ”

Hannity asked if Kasich agrees with the fifty-seven percent of Americans who find Hillary to be dishonest and untrustworthy.

“I’m not going to start questioning people’s honesty or — I just don’t do that, Sean. I mean, where does that get us?” Kasich said. “I want the county to be unified.”

“Let’s put the country first and the personal attacks second,” he added. “We can all have opinions, but I don’t want to be a voice of negativity in America.  I want to be a voice of positivity in America.”

And establishment GOP types wonder why Trump and his pugilistic tone is sucking the oxygen out of the big tent.

ASHE SCHOW: Ever had drunk sex? That’s rape, according to this university.

Have you ever had sex after consuming alcohol (any amount)? If so, then you’re a rapist – or rape victim, depending on your sex.

Coastal Carolina University, in South Carolina, is continuing its apparent quest to become the biggest panderer to the extreme wing of the campus sexual assault crusaders with a new poster claiming that only sober people can consent to sex.

Nearly a decade ago, the same university hung up posters around campus claiming that women could not consent if they had been drinking, heavily implying that men could. That poster was discovered after an old coworker of mine sent me a photo of it on Twitter.

The poster claims that while Jake and Josie were both drunk, only Josie was unable to consent, making Jake an automatic rapist. “A woman who is intoxicated cannot give her legal consent for sex, so proceeding under these circumstances is a crime,” the poster read.

Forget the fact that an “intoxicated” man should also be unable to consent, this poster implies that women are weak, unable to handle themselves when drinking and therefore need additional protections. By this same logic, a woman who is caught driving while drunk should be innocent because hey, she’s a woman, she shouldn’t be responsible for the things she does after drinking alcohol.

Women are obviously too weak for college. They should be kept at home under parental supervision, until they’re old enough to be married off and placed under a husband’s control.

AUSTIN BAY: To Counter Domestic Terror Attacks, Selectively Arm Military Personnel. “Most recruiting stations are in civilian facilities, and they are soft targets. However, uniformed service members staff these soft targets, and they are unarmed. Our terrorist enemies know it. Official Pentagon weapons policy is public knowledge. That policy is scandalous. Troops on Army posts remain unarmed, despite Maj. Nidal Hasan’s November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas. The Obama administration still cannot call that attack what it clearly was: a terror attack by an Islamist terrorist.”

HOUSTON-AREA MOM ARRESTED FOR ‘ABANDONMENT’ OF KIDS 30 FEET AWAY:

Browder sat her children down inside the food court near a McDonald’s and went to her interview, she said. The interview wasn’t for a job at the mall, but the food court was a meeting ground for each party.Browder said she wasn’t more than 30 feet away from her children at any point and they were always in her line of sight. After Browder returned to her children, a police officer was on scene and arrested her.

The charge was “child abandonment.” How can you abandon your children when they remain in sight?

Unless there’s some other element to this story that isn’t initially being reported, as Glenn likes to say: Tar. Feathers.

ROLL CALL: Freedom Caucus Forms ‘Fight Club’ in House.

Six months after the House Freedom Caucus was founded, it’s still unclear what exactly it is — or will be — beyond two key characteristics: its commitment to secrecy and to being a thorn in the side of House Speaker John A. Boehner.

There is no official roster. Leaders of the hard-line conservative group won’t say exactly how many members are in the caucus, which has already made its mark. The last count, based on conversations with members who are trying to keep track, was 42, but members are being added almost every week; CQ Roll Call has observed 38 attend at least one caucus meeting.

“It’s like ‘Fight Club,’” says Rep. Jim Bridenstine, an Oklahoma Republican and caucus member, referring to a film dialogue in which the first rule is that you don’t talk about it, and the second rule is that you don’t talk about it. . . .

The caucus has taken three official positions to date — and has notched a solid record.

The group opposed reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, and watched its charter expire last month. It called for a disapproval resolution of a Washington, D.C., abortion law, and the House adopted one (HJ Res 43). And it endorsed a bill (HR 2802) to protect the tax-exempt status of churches that refuse to perform same-sex weddings. Idaho Republican Raúl R. Labrador, the sponsor of the bill and a caucus co-founder, is optimistic it will get a vote.

They haven’t been without losses. The caucus was at the forefront of the failed effort to block President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration earlier this year.

It’s nice when people fight.