OUTSOURCING: Busy Month for Obama Campaign with Fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, Paris and Communist China.

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Also, markdowns on sandals for men and for women.

THE DEATH PENALTY for Penn State football?

WHY IT’S HARDER TO MAKE FRIENDS WHEN YOU’RE OLDER. Meh. Join a Tea Party group and you’ll get all three conditions met.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Egyptians pelt Clinton motorcade with tomatoes.

Protesters threw tomatoes and shoes at U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade on Sunday during her first visit to Egypt since the election of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

A tomato struck an Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle landed near the armoured cars carrying Clinton’s delegation in the port city of Alexandria.

A senior state department official said that neither Clinton nor her vehicle, which were around the corner from the incident, were struck by any of the projectiles.

Protesters chanted: “Monica, Monica”, a reference to Former President Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affair. Some chanted: “leave, Clinton”, Egyptian security officials said.

It was not clear who the protesters were or what political affiliations they had. Protesters outside Clinton’s hotel on Saturday night chanted anti-Islamist slogans, accusing the United States of backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power.

Not so great, it seems. But remember how hilarious it was when one guy threw a shoe at Bush? This must be a lot funnier, since it’s a bunch of guys throwing shoes and stuff.

CHANGE: Suburban Illinois Jews Embracing GOP. “And it’s the horrendous economy and the liberty, not Israel.” Funny, I was at a birthday party last year with a friend from the northern Chicago suburbs who had been a big Obama backer in 2008 and who had turned completely against him.

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WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW CPR: “…sudden cardiac arrest often picks the least likely victims.”

It’s an even better reason for the growing ubiquity of automated defibrillators, which work much more reliably than CPR.

JIM TREACHER: Obama To Americans: You Don’t Deserve What You’ve Earned! “Here’s The Smartest President Ever, speaking in Roanoke on Friday and writing Romney’s next ad for him. Sure sounds like he’s channelling Elizabeth Warren. . . . Barack Obama openly stokes bitter resentment against Americans who work hard, take risks, and create jobs. But at least he’s ‘likable’!”

He’s likable enough. Plus, from the comments:

“Obama to Americans: You don’t deserve what you’ve earned”

Americans to Obama: “Funny, we were thinking the exact same thing about you…”

Heh.

OUTSOURCING: Next American woman heads for space — on this Russian rocket.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Arab Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year.

The headline says it all: “Egyptian TV Airs Slow Beheading of Tunisian Muslim Who Converted to Christianity.”

Meanwhile, in other news, Hilary Clinton has been yucking it up with Egypt’s new President, Mohamed Morsi. The United States, quoth Clinton, “supports the full transition to civilian rule with all that entails.”

Isn’t that nice? Judging by his grin, Mr. Morsi seemed top like it.
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Query: What do you suppose “with all that entails,” um, entails?

Maybe we just don’t really care, now that the U.S. is headed for energy independence.

FROM SAILORS TO SITZPINKLERS? Navy’s New Gender-Neutral Carriers Won’t Have Urinals.

ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS ROGER KIMBALL on his new book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia.

REPORTING FROM the Office Olympics. “And of course we had to do a little drinking.”

THE MANY THINGS THAT CAN CRASH A DATA CENTER: “Data centers go down all the time. It’s a fact of life. But while we’ve all seen the internet error messages, we don’t always hear what actually brought down the massive computing facilities responsible for serving up the web services we use everyday. Two weeks ago, Netflix went down on a Friday night. The problem? A massive storm on the east coast and some Amazon backup generators that didn’t power up in time to help. Here are few more root causes behind data center outages over the past few years. They include everything from lightning to squirrels to boredom.”

Yes, squirrels. “Squirrels may be the data center’s enemy number one. Level 3 Communications say that they accounted for an astounding 17 percent of all of their cable damage last year.”

A SMARTPHONE APP that can rescue you from a bad date. “The Bad Date Rescue app, which was launched by the dating website eHarmony.com this week, lets users arrange for a call to appear on their iPhone to graciously allow them to bow out if a date isn’t going well. . . . The free app includes several ways to set up a rescue. Users can pick a number from their address book for the call, for example from their mother or a friend. It the person’s picture is stored on the app it will appear on the screen when the call comes through. . . . The free app can be pre-set before the date to call at a specific time and there is a quick rescue that can be triggered on the spot to ring in a few seconds or minutes.”

BOOK PLUG: Reader Ron Ballew writes: “A long time reader here with a book I am plugging for my niece who is a High School English teacher. It’s title is The Unintended on kindle here. No zombies but there are vampires!” As long as they’re not sparkly.

WHY MATH TEACHERS feel poorly prepared. “There is perhaps a simple answer for the elementary and middle school teachers: They felt ill prepared because if we examine the coursework they studied during their teacher preparation, they were ill prepared. The new TEDS study results suggested this to be the case more generally, which clearly does not bode well for equality of learning experiences for students in these districts.”

REPORT FROM COMIC-CON: Why We Love Superheroes.

CHANGE: Obama to Clinton welfare reform: Drop dead. “The outrage is bipartisan.”

IN THE MAIL: From Vincent Bugliosi, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: “Green” Energy Bias Killing California. “Destroying the economic hopes of low income people in order to stoke the self esteem of entitled Boomers is not Via Meadia’s idea of progressive politics, but that just goes to show how backwards we are by the exalted moral standards of the California elites. The destruction of California isn’t a victimless crime. Millions of low income California residents are trapped in decaying cities where, thanks in large part to narcissistic green unicorn chasers, the manufacturing base has withered away. And anything that blights California, blights us all. America and the world need California back on line; the Golden State has too much to offer for anyone to remain indifferent to its fate.”

IT’S NOT JUST HERE THAT THE DRUG WAR IS A JOKE: Dramatic drug raid at Stockholm school ‘failed.’

THIS DOESN’T SOUND GOOD: Chicken Vaccines Combine to Produce Deadly Virus. “Vaccines aren’t supposed to cause disease. But that appears to be what’s happening on Australian farms. Scientists have found that two virus strains used to vaccinate chickens there may have recombined to form a virus that is sickening and killing the animals. ‘This shows that recombination of such strains can happen and people need to think about it,’ says Glenn Browning, a veterinary microbiologist at the University of Melbourne, Parkville, in Australia and one of the co-authors on the paper.”

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WASHINGTON POST: Where Obama failed on forging peace in the Middle East. “The way Obama managed the Israeli-Palestinian issue exhibited many of the hallmarks that have defined his first term. It began with a bid for historic change. But it foundered ultimately on his political and tactical misjudgments, on a lack of trusted relationships and on an outdated view of a conflict that many of his closest advisers imparted to him. And those advisers — veterans of the Middle East peace issue — clashed among themselves over tactics and turf.”

YOU’VE GOT TO FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO GO PALEO:

In May the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina on behalf of blogger Steve Cooksey. The suit claims the state violated Cooksey’s First Amendment right to free speech when it informed him that his anti-diabetes blog runs afoul of North Carolina laws requiring a license to dispense anything the state considers dietary advice.

This week Forbes is reporting that the main driver of the state crackdown on Cooksey is the national Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association). Forbes reports this group, based on internal documents the magazine says it obtained, pushes states to establish powerful dietetics and nutrition boards—like the board in North Carolina that has targeted Cooksey—“for the express purpose of limiting market competition for its Registered Dietitian members.” (Emphasis in original.)

If true, this is both illegal and troubling. But surprising? Hardly.

Punch back twice as hard.

A CULTURE OF COVERUPS? Rand Simberg: After the Sandusky coverup, can we trust Penn State’s internal ClimateGate “exoneration” of Michael Mann? “We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?”

UPDATE: Reader Aaron Chmielewski writes: “It should be noted, Mann was a major revenue source for the university.”

SCIENCE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: In Vast Effort, F.D.A. Spied on E-Mails of Its Own Scientists. “A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show. What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort. Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.’s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and ‘defamatory’ information about the agency.”

They told me if I voted for John McCain we’d have a paranoid administration full of surveillance efforts and enemies lists. And they were right!

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Texas Tech Law Student Crowned Miss Texas 2012.

NOT IF OBAMA AND THE GREENS CAN HELP IT: Shale will free US from oil imports, says ex-BP boss.

SOME BLUENOSE IS ALWAYS COMPLAINING: Sexual Liberation In Fish Is Nothing To Celebrate.

24TH CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Levar Burton Discusses His “Star Trek” Sexuality. “Yeah, one [romance] was with an entity that was actually a monster. And the other was with a holographic representation of the woman who designed the Enterprise engines. Neither of which I would necessarily call a healthy relationship.”

ED DRISCOLL: Apocalyptic Daze for the Secular Elites.

HMM: DARPA spent $34 million investigating cold fusion, and excess heat was found.

SEXUAL SIDE EFFECTS of the hair-loss drug Propecia.

AT AMAZON, summer essentials in Kitchen & Dining.

STACY MCCAIN REPORTS FROM anti-Obama protests in Fairfax County.

Meanwhile, reader James Wink emails: “I live about a mile away from where President Obama is speaking right now in Centreville. He is speaking at my daughter’s future High School….think about it. The President of the United states could have spoken 5 miles away at George Mason University….but decided to on a high school in must win Northern Virginia. The president’s most valuable commodity is time and instead of speaking to 1000s he decided on a smaller scale. Was he worried about filling an audience?”

UPDATE: Reader Larry Bronstein writes: “The Obama supporters who came to the rally at Centreville High School in Clifton, VA (Fairfax County) came from outside the voting precinct. Many drove cars with Maryland license plates and none of them were recognized by the 100′s of neighbors who turned out to protest Obama’s tax increases. The Obama rally was a terrible inconvenience as streets were closed and traffic stacked up, preventing residents from leaving or returning to their homes. And it appeared there weren’t even enough Obama folks to fill the high school gymnasium.”

SO THIS WEEK’S SUZE ORMAN SHOW WAS ALL ABOUT STUDENT LOANS: THE MOST DANGEROUS DEBT! It’s like she’s been reading up on the higher education bubble or something.

The stories were pretty bad: A guy with $160,000 in loans that his parents cosigned, but he never finished college and the parents are bankrupt. And a girl who Suze talked out of going to Vet school at a cost of over $240,000 in student loans. But mostly, the change from a few years ago — when financial-advice shows usually called student loans “good debt” because they were an “investment” in your future — to today is really noticeable and suggests to me that popular consciousness is likely to shift pretty fast.

SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ORIGINAL NATIVES? Native Americans arrived to find natives already there, fossil poo shows. “The scientists say that their results demonstrate conclusively their somewhat controversial thesis: that the ‘Clovis’ culture dating from around 13,000 years ago – which has long been thought to be the earliest human society in the Americas – was actually preceded by human habitation at the Paisley caves in Oregon.”

REMEMBERING WHEN MATT TAIBBI CALLED A BLACK MAN A “CORPULENT OREO.” More here.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

THE LUNAR X-PRIZE: A Preview Of The Next Space Age?

Never mind the fact that the Google Lunar X Prize teams won’t launch their crafts until 2015. Those teams are already meeting extremely high demand for their still-hypothetical moon missions as different organizations lobby for space onboard.

“Our first mission payload is oversubscribed and our second is fully subscribed,” said Alan Stern, director of the Florida Space Institute and chief scientist for the Google Moon Express team. “There are a number of market segments for commercial lunar travel.”

Stern and his fellow X Prize teammates are hoping that the demand for access to their experimental lunar lander is a hint at things to come. At the recent SETIcon II conference, the entrepreneurs and scientists on hand say that the only way humanity is going to stay in space, especially with governments continuing to tighten the belt around their space agencies, is for commercial space companies to make a sustained profit. And the signs of change are already showing.

Faster, please.

CANCER BEATS NEW THERAPIES with evolution.

REPORT: iPhone5 Will Be Announced August 7.

INKJET PRINTING as Extreme Art.

THOUGHTS ON BEING HEARD: Sarah Hoyt stands up to Oikophobia.

OH, GOODY: The Airport Security Scanner That Knows What You Ate For Breakfast.

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INTERVIEW: George Shultz: Memo to Romney — Expand the Pie.

WANT A HEALTHIER BABY? Get A Dog Or Cat. “Infants who repeatedly come into contact with dogs and cats during the first year of their life are less likely to suffer from respiratory tract symptoms or infections, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics on July 9. The research suggests pet owners are more likely to have healthy children than non-pet owners, because the children of pet owners are exposed to communities of useful bacteria which pets carry and which help children develop their own important microbiologic cultures.”

ACE: AEI’s Carbon-Tax Flirtations.

READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Michael Lonie writes: “Prof. Reynolds, You are frequently plugging books which the authors ask you to plug. Would you please plug a book by a friend of mine? It’s a sort of fantasy/crime thriller novel called Kassandra’s Song by Bruce Bretthauer. Thanks.”

Done!

WOMEN AND MOTORCYCLES: RIDERSHIP IS ON THE RISE.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: “Why do moms in my generation regress, whether by drugging, cheating, or going out too late and too often? Because everything our children thrive on—stability, routine, lack of flux, love, well-paired parents—feels like death to those entrusted with their care. . . . These women are the men their mothers divorced.”

Related: “Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else.”

SO I MET JACK MCCALL FOR DRINKS YESTERDAY, and we talked about his new book, Pacific Time on Target: Memoirs of a Marine Artillery Officer, 1943-1945. But he pointed out that he just edited the book, which was written by Christopher Donner — who he calls “the thinking man’s James Bond” — as soon as he returned from the war. Donner, a trained historian, kept detailed notes of his experiences during the battle for Okinawa and elsewhere. He was also a very early adopter of scuba diving and trained Underwater Demolition Team operators after the war.

COMPARE WITH THEIR NEIGHBORS: Heavily armed and bikini-clad female Israeli soldiers ‘mingle’ with beachgoers. “Women make up almost one-third of the IDF and 50% of its officers.”

PLEASE LET THIS BE TRUE: A reboot of Firefly? But I’ll believe it when I see it.

#NARRATIVEFAIL: McClatchy poll shows majority favor extending all Bush tax rates.

ANN ALTHOUSE busts Matt Taibbi for racial dishonesty.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Taibbi has a two-page play book. Page 1 is “It’s Racism ” and Page 2is “It’s corporate greed & corruption”.

Someone please tell him we have a black president who got a boatload of support from Wall Street.

Heh. Indeed we do.

IN THE MAIL: Afghanistan’s Troubled Transition: Politics, Peacekeeping and the 2004 Presidential Election.

ADVICE to young women, from a happy wife.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD:

At first glance, today’s Wall Street Journal piece on teachers donating vast sums of money to outside political groups hardly comes as a surprise. Unions in both the public and private sectors are well known for organizing and donating money to favored candidates and political groups.

Yet some of these donations appear to go beyond what would be expected from a union’s lobbying arm. In addition to the expected donations to Democratic politicians and labor groups in which the unions have a clear interest, union money is also going to groups with more of a social agenda, including gay rights activists and other civil-rights organizations.

It’s like it’s all just one big political machine or something. “The Walker reforms in Wisconsin are a direct threat to this powerful machine. That is why they were so strongly resisted. . . . The fight over the future of public sector unions may be the most important political battle in the United States today.”

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES THE PLACE TO DEBATE THIS QUESTION? Are modern men manly enough?

UPDATE: Reader Trevor Dahl writes: “It’s amusing to see all the hand-wringing in pop culture today over what constitutes manliness. I’ve lived in urban areas so I’m aware and even have friends who fit the profile of the effete, borderline-metrosexual male. Currently, I’m working for a land company in the Bakken oil field of eastern Montana and I can tell you that most men here wouldn’t even be aware that men in Manhattan sit around contemplate what it means to be manly. The unemployment rate is basically zero due to oil activity and related services. Men are so busy producing goods and services here they don’t even have to time to reflect on what it means to be a ‘man’, I’d say that’s the definition of manliness.”

HYPOCRITE: Over 30% of President Obama’s 2009-2011 Gross Income Came From Foreign Sources.

And that’s not counting all those unverified credit-card donations to his campaign.

LIVING THE CRUNCHY-CON LIFESTYLE.

JOEL KOTKIN: How Fossil-Fuel Democrats Became An Endangered Species. “President Obama’s heavy-handed regulation of the booming old-energy economy—the moratorium on offshore drilling following the BP spoil, the decision to block the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the prospect of a fracking ban—and his embrace of green-energy policies has played well in the solidly Democratic post-industrial coastal economies that he also depends on for fund-raising. But it’s left him with few friends in the energy belt that spans the Great Plains, the Gulf Coast, Appalachia and now some parts of the old rustbelt, despite his election-year claims of an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy policy. It’s a far cry from Bill Clinton, whose close ties with Great Plains and Gulf Coast Democrats and energy producers there helped him twice carry Louisiana, Kentucky and West Virginia—all states that appear to be solidly behind Romney this year. . . . Nowhere is the element of choice inherent in energy policy more evident than in California, home to five of the nation’s twelve largest oil fields and energy reserves equal to those of Nigeria, the world’s tenth-largest producer. As high-paying energy jobs swell payrolls in the Great Plains, the Intermountain West and parts of the Gulf, the Golden State has double-digit unemployment, a collapsed inland economy and a series of bankrupt municipalities. Amidst a great national energy boom, California’s energy production has remained stunted even as the state’s draconian “renewable” energy mandates are slated to drive up its already high electricity rates. The state’s high cost of energy has impacted industry: despite its vast human and natural resources, the Golden State, with 12 percent of the nation’s population received barely 2 percent of the country’s manufacturing expansions last year.”

Key bit: “As economic forecaster Bill Watkins recently told an audience in hard-hit Santa Maria: ‘If you were in Texas, you’d be rich.’”

AT AMAZON, Recommended Beach Reading. I suspect most InstaPundit readers will want to scroll past the first few entries on the list. But hey, I could be wrong!

Also, today only: Stamina InMotion Elliptical Trainer, $64.99. For your chair or desk. Is sitting really the new smoking?

NOW ON YOUTUBE: My interview with Roger Kimball, where we discuss his new book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGE STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): More Homes Entered Foreclosure Process in June. “Banks are increasingly placing homes with unpaid mortgages on a countdown that could deliver a swell of new foreclosed properties onto the market by early next year, potentially weighing further on home values. June provided the latest evidence of this trend, as the number of U.S. homes entering the foreclosure process for the first time increased on an annual basis for the second month in a row, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. California in particular saw a big spike in foreclosure starts, or homes placed on the foreclosure path for the first time. They increased 18 percent versus June last year, the firm said.”

Related: Rob Portman: “We’re Going Broke” Under Obama.

“I SUPPORT FAKES AND I VOTE.” At first, I thought it was about boobs. And then I realized, it was.

SOUNDING RETREAT: Closing nine border patrol stations.

DAVID BROOKS: Why Our Elites Stink.

Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Protestant Establishment sat atop the American power structure. A relatively small network of white Protestant men dominated the universities, the world of finance, the local country clubs and even high government service.

Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance.

Yet, as this meritocratic elite has taken over institutions, trust in them has plummeted. It’s not even clear that the brainy elite is doing a better job of running them than the old boys’ network. Would we say that Wall Street is working better now than it did 60 years ago? Or government? The system is more just, but the outcomes are mixed. The meritocracy has not fulfilled its promise.

Is it really a Bratocracy?

Related: “I guess my ego was too big to admit failure.”

HOLY TAXATION, BATMAN! H&R Block Messes Up Bruce Wayne’s Taxes.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Troy teen calls acquittal in gun case ‘the right verdict.’

A recent Troy High School graduate was acquitted Thursday of all charges in his arrest for carrying a rifle through downtown Birmingham.

A jury in 48th District Court found Sean M. Combs, 18, not guilty of brandishing a firearm and disturbing the peace. Wednesday, Judge Marc Barron issued a directed verdict dismissing a charge of resisting and obstructing a police officer after Combs’ attorney, James Makowski, argued that city attorney Mary Kucharek had not proven that offense.

“I think they came up with the right verdict,” Combs said after his acquittal. “It took them a while, but at the end of the day, I think it was the right decision.” . . .

Combs, the son of a retired Ferndale police officer, said he and a girlfriend had gone to Birmingham to see a movie and had some spare time, so he decided to walk around the business district with the rifle to exercise his open carry rights under Michigan law.

He said he was walking to a parking lot to return the rifle to his car when he was confronted by officers Rebekah Springer and Gina Potts, who demanded to see his identification.

He drew a crowd of teenagers when he refused, prompting the officers to call in another officer, who subsequently arrested Combs.

“It was about freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” Combs said as to why he was carrying the rifle around. “It’s my way of saying what I believe in.”

I hope he’ll follow it up with a lawsuit, and demand proper training on gun rights for the police officers.

MATT CONTINETTI: Honey, I Shrunk Obama: Four years have miniaturized Obama’s appeal, plans, and rhetoric.

I think he shrank himself.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: More Nonsense on the Home Mortgage Front: Don’t Let Municipal Governments Condemn Mortgages at Bargain Rates.

ARE “BAINERS” the new “birthers?”

A BIG ROUNDUP OF REACTIONS to Yale’s PhD in Law.

THIS IS LOOKING MORE AND MORE LIKE A LYNCHING: Detective in Zimmerman case said he was pressured to file charges.

Telling the FBI that he was concerned that people inside the police department were leaking information, Serino cited Sgt. Arthur Barnes, officers Rebecca Villalona and Trekelle Perkins “as all pressuring him to file charges against Zimmerman after the incident,” an FBI report said. “Serino did not believe he had enough evidence at the time to file charges.”

The summary of Serino’s statement does not mention the race of the officers who allegedly pressured him, but sources told The Miami Herald that Barnes and Perkins are black, and Villalona is married to an African-American man. All three, the source said, had been called in by their supervisor and questioned about leaking information in the case.

A request Thursday evening to the Sanford Police Department for comment about Serino’s statement went unanswered. . . . Records released Thursday show that Sgt. Barnes, a 25-year veteran of the department, told the FBI that he believed the black community would be “in an uproar” if Zimmerman was not charged. “The community will be satisfied if an arrest takes place,” the FBI quoted him saying.

Related: Zimmerman seeks new judge in murder trial.

The Florida man charged with second-degree murder in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin asked for a new judge in his case on Friday, accusing the current judge of bias.

Lawyers for George Zimmerman filed a motion requesting that Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester withdraw from the trial.

Zimmerman alleged in the filing that Lester made “gratuitous” and “disparaging remarks” about him during a July 5 bond hearing and offered “a personal opinion” in the case.

“In doing so, the Court has created a reasonable fear in Mr. Zimmerman that this Court is biased against him and because of this prejudice he cannot receive a fair and impartial trial or hearing by this Court,” the motion said.

I think that Zimmerman’s lawyers feel the tide is turning.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste emails: “It’s reminding me of the Duke LaCrosse case. That one ended with the prosecutor getting disbarred for gross misconduct.” Yes, and he did a small amount of jail time, though not nearly enough. Then he went bankrupt.

ERIN BIBA: Kepler Will Make Us All Planet Hunters.

BEWARE THOSE nasty bicyclists.

SHOCKER: A lot of what you’ve heard about the dangers of spanking might not be true.

UPDATE: Reader James Driscoll writes: “Prior to about 1970, we everyone in this country spanked or got spanked. In a related note, we built a Transcontinental Railroad, won a couple of World Wars and went to the moon. Since then? We’ve elected Obama. Spare the rod, spoil the child…”

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SUPPORTING THE TROOPS: Reader Rob Hampson writes:

I wonder if you would give us a mention on Instapundit?

The “Baen Barflies” (i.e. fans of Baen Books and participants in the Baen’s Bar webboards) launched a fundraiser today to fulfill some oddball requests of a unit deployed to Afghanistan. We’re raising money to send electrolyte drink powder, protein powder, flashlights, batteries, beef jerky, sweet and salty snacks, … oh, and books! We’ve been doing this for three years already and help our deployed troops with supplies, convenience and comfort items as well as special requests. We support a unit at a time rather individual soldiers.

Here’s our website with link to a video which tells what we’re about.

For donations at the $25 level we have some window decals – for donations at the $100 and $250 level we have commitments from 4 Baen authors for “redshirting” in upcoming novels. There’s also one copy of the upcoming Schlock Mercenary board game (with Kickstarter extras) available for the first ambitious donor to claim it at the $250 level. Folks can check the link and video for more details.

Done!

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My husband has been monitoring me through my laptop. How can I get him to stop?

WHY YUPPIES feel so busy.

Meh. I explained this in the Yale Law Report over 20 years ago. With an economic model and everything.

UPDATE: Reader Michelle Tellock writes:

Your Yale Law Report article explained so eloquently exactly what my fellow YLS grads and I (class of 2011) felt at the time we were selecting jobs–and continue to feel acutely now, one year out, at the end of clerkships or fully ingratiated into biglaw life, thinking about “what’s next,” etc. I’ve shared the link to your YLR article with friends and classmates to say, “See, we’re not the only ones!”

My response: “Just be glad YLS grads still have this problem.” Not many other law grads do any more. Yale may weather the storm, or they may just be the top deck on the Titanic. We’ll see. . . .

WILL AMAZON’S PUSH FOR SAME-DAY DELIVERY destroy local retail? “Physical retailers have long argued that once Amazon plays fairly on taxes, the company wouldn’t look like such a great deal to most consumers. If prices were equal, you’d always go with the ‘instant gratification’ of shopping in the real world. The trouble with that argument is that shopping offline isn’t really ‘instant’—it takes time to get in the car, go to the store, find what you want, stand in line, and drive back home. Getting something shipped to your house offers gratification that’s even more instant: Order something in the morning and get it later in the day, without doing anything else. Why would you ever shop anywhere else?”

Avoiding stores is mostly a plus, not a minus. Maybe if physical retailers had better staff. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Hunt Brown writes:

Hypocrite.

I like your page, and I enjoy your perspective, but when you start slamming bricks and mortar retailers about the time involved… without mentioning that absent the cost of gas looking on line for an item can be as infuriating as Burdines on December 24… well, that’s not entirely transparent, especially when you are taking a percentage of all online sales that slip through your site. You rail about Obama’s double standards and duplicity, perhaps it’s time you considered your own.

Tough love sucks.

Hey, Farhad Manjoo wrote that passage, not me. (And my Amazon Affiliate status is hardly any secret). But I’ve seldom had to spend much time finding things online — and nothing like the experience of looking in a crowded brick and mortar store. (And I just bought a new skillet at Williams-Sonoma, ending my boycott over their maltreatment of the Insta-Daughter.)

There are some things (shoes, nicer clothing) that I prefer to buy at brick-and-mortar stores; for everything else, I’d personally rather shop online. I do feel, though, that brick-and-mortar stores ought to be trying harder to make the shopping experience pleasant. Instead, I often get the feeling that the staff views me as a disturbance to their texting-their-friends time. I wrote a column nearly eight years ago about how brick and mortar stores could compete with online selling, but most of them seem not to have listened. Oddly, places that compete most directly with online — like Best Buy — seem to try the least.

Meanwhile, reader Grace Kittie has another complaint:

You have touched on a subject near and dear to my heart! I agree that dealing with what passes for “staff” these days is a fine reason all on its own for avoiding local shops, however the feature that has driven me to my laptop and comfy chair is the music that assaults the shopper the instant one steps through the door. It is not uncommon to have two or three different “tunes” floating through the air at once if the shop is large enough. Whatever happened to the concept of quiet contemplation? My first push to the online approach was a few years ago when a locally owned book store, where for many years I had enjoyed wonderfully peaceful browsing, started sponsoring live music events. I complained but was clearly in the minority. I was gone shortly thereafter. (So was the bookstore, come to think of it.)

On the other hand, when you shop online sometimes music starts up in another browser tab and it’s hard to find it and shut it down. At least when you have as many tabs open as I do.

And reader Marc Bacon writes to tell me where I should be shopping: “At Publix. Where shopping really is a pleasure…really.”

Well, we’re getting a couple of new Publix stores later this month. Happy to have someone challenge Kroger’s near-monopoly anyway, but on that recommendation I’ll definitely check them out.

And reader Clay Register gets the last word:

Funny this came up today. Last night I ordered a new $30 weather station from Amazon at about 8 P.M. (tree ants got my remote for the old one). It arrived this afternoon from Kentucky (I’m in FL). I told the UPS guy that, even if I had to pay taxes, this kind of service would be better than driving to the store and possibly not finding what I wanted

You know, I’ve never really considered moving to Florida, but if you’ve got ants that can carry away a remote, I’m pretty sure I never will. But yeah, that’s pretty good. Meanwhile, some related thoughts from Megan McArdle.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Tina Parker emails: “My son, an Economics doctoral student, just came in from the local games & graphic novel store. He browsed, bought a card game, and a couple of books. He said he realized he could have bought the game for less at Amazon but decided he wanted to reward the store for their customer service and game selection. Service will be the only way brick and mortar stores will survive online buying.” That’s what I keep trying to tell them.

MORE: Reader Mike Reynolds (no relation) writes:

First, Thank you for the site, love it, I will keep visiting. Second, in response to your reader Hunt Brown who called you a hypocrite, I must call foul. Having visited your page on a regular basis over the years I know you are affiliated with Amazon. You have told us so and have indicated our patronage of the Amazon link puts a little money in your pocket. I get that. It’s called capitalism. I actually appreciate your recommendations. I shop Amazon weekly and will continue to do so because I get what I need at a great price and with Prime, I get it quick.

If you want to use my name, you may. It’s Reynolds, and even though we are not related, I will continue to visit your site throughout the day.and click through to Amazon. Then I might hit The Corner, or Wired.

And reader Michelle Dulak Thomson emails:

Unless I’m listening to music for work (I’m a classical CD reviewer) at my computer, or watching online video/podcasts/whatever, I just turn the speakers off. There is too much loud and obnoxious music tied into websites these days (or, more often than not, to the pop-up ads associated with them, which Firefox isn’t catching as often as it used to).

Re: Amazon, the sales tax business doesn’t affect me at all, as I’m in Oregon. But if they can leverage their capitulation on the tax thing into even quicker shipping, good on them. I’ve noticed, as Manjoo did, that my Amazon orders are frequently coming ahead of schedule.

Indeed.

HIDE AND SEEK: The Evolution of Camouflage.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals on Electronics.

OUTSOURCING: Lawmakers are angry that the US Olympic Team uniforms are made in China, but to me the real issue is that they’re terrible. They look like something from an SNL skit about America becoming a gay military dictatorship.

TIMOTHY DALRYMPLE: Paterno and Sandusky: Why Do We Care Less About the Rape of Boys and Men?

ONLY 3? WaPo Fact Checker gives the Obama campaign 3 “Pinocchios” for using Bain’s SEC documents to portray Romney as a criminal. Well, somebody should give Mother Jones, the Boston Globe, and TPM a Pinocchio for not knowing where the story came from. . . .

UPDATE: Ed Rendell — Team Obama went “a little bit too far with the felony business.”

It doesn’t seem to me that Obama’s doing especially well, but judging by the flailing and desperation we’re seeing from his campaign, it must seem to them that he’s doing worse than I think.

TODAY’S KINDLE DAILY DEAL IS KURT VONNEGUT’S Welcome To The Monkey House. It includes the story “Harrison Bergeron,” which was one of the main sources of the Obama Administration’s domestic policy platform. . . .

THE ATLANTIC: Stop Dissing Legal Tax Shelters.

THAT JANE AUSTEN RING I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK sold for $236,000, not the $40,000 pre-sale estimate.

HMM: Will the Duke Energy scandal hurt the Democrats in November? “The scandal surrounding Duke Energy in the wake of the abrupt departure of incoming CEO Bill Johnson shows no signs of going away any time soon — and that could spell trouble for Democrats, who have tied their political fortunes to once-and-again Duke CEO Jim Rogers in advance of the party’s upcoming national convention in the utility’s home city of Charlotte, N.C.”

MICKEY KAUS, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Romney hits Obama move gutting welfare reform.

MIKE BLOOMBERG’S EMPLOYEE INVOLVED IN ILLEGAL GUN SALES: NYPD Officer Accused of Stealing Guns from Precinct, Selling Them on Street.

BIOFUELS INDUSTRY LIKELY TO LOSE FEDERAL SUBSIDY. Well, now that we’ve identified enormous new domestic supplies of oil and natural gas, there’s not much reason to pursue this expensive alternative.