FROM ROGER KIMBALL, thoughts on world order and Islamism.

AT AMAZON, Coupons Galore in Industrial & Scientific Gear. Which includes things like toilet paper and duct tape, but I guess scientists need those too. . . .

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. ENJOY YOUR DAY. WHO convenes emergency talks on MERS virus. “The first recorded MERS death was in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia. The number of infections has ticked up steadily, with a flurry this April, May and June taking it to 79. Forty-three MERS patients have died to date, an extremely high rate of 54 percent, compared to nine percent of the 8,273 recorded patients with SARS, which was centred on Asia.”

Bill Quick observes: “This is kind of bubbling along underneath the event horizon of the general public. I hope it stays there. But, you know, in the real world bugs eat us when they can.”

ANDREW BRANCA: Why Zimmerman’s Motion for Acquittal Should Have Been Granted.

“WHY DID YOU SHOOT ME? I was reading a book!”

CLAUDIA ROSETT: The Airbrushing of Egypt’s Mohamed ElBaradei. He’s got a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course he needs airbrushing. . . .

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP EARLY: Upholding The Third Amendment.

NOT FEELING THE HOPENCHANGE at The Diplomad. Well, the Obama Administration’s foreign policy record isn’t exactly brilliant. And the domestic side is worse.

E.HOWARD HUNT WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Cameras Catch Mystery Break-In at Whistleblower’s Law Firm.

The offices of a Dallas law firm representing a high-profile State Department whistleblower were broken into last weekend. Burglars stole three computers and broke into the firm’s file cabinets. But silver bars, video equipment and other valuables were left untouched, according to local Fox affiliate KDFW, which aired security camera footage of the suspected burglars entering and leaving the offices around the time of the incident.

The firm Schulman & Mathias represents Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. In recent weeks, she raised a slew of explosive allegations against the department and its contractors ranging from illicit drug use, soliciting sexual favors from minors and prostitutes and sexual harassment. . . . Last month, her lawyers told The Cable that the department tried to intimidate her into silence. “They had law enforcement officers camp out in front of her house, harass her children and attempt to incriminate herself,” claimed Schulman.

I hope the law firm salted its hard drives with phony files designed to give State Department officials heartburn.

UPDATE: Sorry, wrong headline there for a minute. Had two edit windows open at once, pasted into the wrong one. Too many scandals!

SCIENCE: “Men who eat more saturated fat have sex more frequently!”

AT AMAZON, Men’s Tank Tops & Board Shorts.

Also, remember that Amazon carries shooting supplies.

RADLEY BALKO: Ten Historic Police Raids Gone Wrong.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 514 Colleges Have Higher Default Rates Than Graduation Rates.

Related: The Argument For Putting College On Hold.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Police Called To Investigate Farting Dispute.

AMPUTEE BUILDS A PROSTHETIC LEG entirely out of LEGOs. Okay, but I’d be even more impressed if she did it with Lincoln Logs.

THE UNIVERSE: Still not very well understood.

THE GRILL WARS CONTINUE: Grilling Over Charcoal Is Objectively, Scientifically Better Than Grilling Over Gas.

ZAP! A solar-flare-disaster miniseries called The Carrington Event. Sounds a bit like William Forstchen’s One Second After.

Meanwhile, in response to my earlier post on Where Are The Bicycles In Apocalyptic Fiction? I should note that the Montague Paratrooper Pro Folding Bike seems to fill the bill nicely.

And, of course, for the immediate aftermath of an apocalyptic event, you’ll want one of these.

OR YOU COULD JUST ASK THE NSA FOR THE DATA: Using a Smartphone’s Eyes and Ears to Log Your Every Move.

THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW about Airstream trailers. I liked this one: “William Hawley Bowlus, a former airplane manufacturer, designed the first riveted aluminum Airstream. He was part of the design team that built the Spirit of St. Louis, the pioneering aircraft that Charles Lindbergh flew on the first nonstop single-engine plane trip from New York to Paris.”

IN THE MAIL: From Robert P. George, Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism.

SARAH HOYT: If you don’t work, you die.

SHOCKER: Old And Sick Swamp ObamaCare Rolls.

One result of the Obamacare employer mandate delay is increased pressure on the exchanges: if employers drop coverage of their employees, or even simply don’t offer coverage to currently uninsured employees, more people will have to migrate to the exchanges to fulfill the individual mandate. But the delay isn’t the only unexpected new influx into the Obamacare exchanges. Both Detroit and Chicago are hoping to save money and reduce pension obligations by moving retirees off city health care plans and onto the exchanges. . . .

It’s not clear yet what the outcome of this will be, or whether other states or cities will adopt this tactic. But one thing is true: Obamacare’s success depends in large part on enough healthy young Americans signing up for insurance to balance a risk pool that will now include the previously uninsured sick. If, in addition to them, tons of currently insured older Americans are going to lose their insurance and be kicked onto the exchanges, the number of younger people signing up for coverage has to be that much higher to counteract those new people entertaining the exchanges.

The ACA, to put it gently, is already on shaky ground.

Kill it off before it kills us.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Snowden has a “well founded fear of persecution” by Obama.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.

THE ATLANTIC: Please Don’t Be Satisfied With This Jobs Report: The labor market continues to be consistently, maddeningly mediocre. Whatever could have happened to cause our economy to add jobs more slowly than in the past?

AT AMAZON, coupons galore on Kitchen Gadgets & Supplies.

Also, today only: 15 Kindle Mysteries, Each $1.99 or Less.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 59.

EGYPT: “Rape Squads” Organized By Morsi Supporters. Need to make examples of a few of these guys.

ANNA FRANCO: Green Appeasement: Oil, Gas Industry Wasting Billions on ‘Alternatives:’ New renewable divisions are about PR, not innovation.

HEH: George Bush’s Birthday Present: A Higher Approval Rating Than President Obama. What’s more impressive is that — unlike the rehabilitation of Bill Clinton — this happened without water-carrying by the media.

SO IT’S BASICALLY LIKE PIGFORD, ONLY FOR HEALTHCARE: Health insurance marketplaces will not be required to verify consumer claims. “The Obama administration announced Friday that it would significantly scale back the health law’s requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status. Instead, the federal government will rely more heavily on consumers’ self-reported information until 2015, when it plans to have stronger verification systems in place.”

Does the law actually give them the power to “scale back the health law’s requirements?” I’d like to see some pro-freedom monkeywrenchers tie them up in court on this stuff. You know it’s what the lefties would be doing if positions were reversed. . . .

Related: George Will: Obama’s Never-Mind Presidency.

Although the Constitution has no Article VIII, the administration acts as though there is one that reads: “Notwithstanding all that stuff in other articles about how laws are made, if a president finds a law politically inconvenient, he can simply post on the White House Web site a notice saying: Never mind.”

Never mind that the law stipulates 2014 as the year when employers with 50 full-time workers are mandated to offer them health-care coverage or pay fines. Instead, 2015 will be the year. Unless Democrats see a presidential election coming.

This lesson in the Obama administration’s approach to the rule of law is pertinent to the immigration bill, which at last count had 222 instances of a discretionary “may” and 153 of “waive.” Such language means that were the Senate bill to become law, the executive branch would be able to do pretty much as it pleases, even to the point of saying about almost anything: Never mind.

So much for Rule of Law.

UPDATE: “An Invitation To Fraud.” For the Obama administration, that’s not a bug, but a feature.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Want To Lose 8 Pounds In Five Days?

It’s funny reading Charlie’s stuff because by contrast my weight is really stable. I neither gain nor lose very easily, and tend to vary within a range of between 205 and 210. When we were in NYC I relaxed my low-carb diet — too much good pasta there — and exercised less (though I was walking several miles a day). Came back and I was at 212 (up from 209 when we left), but I think it was all carb-bloat because in a couple of days I was back at 209. My low-carb diet isn’t as rigorous as Charlie’s — basically, I just try to avoid carbs, especially breads and pastas. And I lift weights 3-4 times a week (sometimes 5) with some interval training mixed in. The result? A fitness level that’s “pretty good, for a law professor.” That’s good enough for me. Hey, if I’d weighed 100 pounds more and then lost it to be at this weight, I’d be ecstatic. With weight-loss, like quitting smoking, the best solution is to never need to do it, though that’s easier advice to propound than to put to use.

THE HILL: Obama channels his inner Al Gore in climate change messaging shift. Just don’t expect me to release your chakra, buddy.

IT’S AFFECTING FLIGHTS: Mexico volcano spits 2 mile-high ash cloud.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Anti-Americanism flares in Egypt as protests rage over Morsi’s ouster: Both pro-Morsi Islamists and the anti-Morsi Rebel group accuse the U.S. of supporting the other and allege elaborate conspiracies against Egypt.

Good thing we got rid of that dumb cowboy Bush. People in the mideast didn’t like him.

Related: Walter Russell Mead on Obama: Still Wrong About Egypt—and Wrong About the World. “Less study of the fine print of the Egyptian constitution, more concern about a strategically important country headed over Niagara Falls in a bucket, please.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS NO DOUBT LISTENING IN: Former NSA whistleblower calls for new American Revolution against surveillance state.

Related: Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables’ data for surveillance. “In months of private talks, the team of lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security demanded that the company maintain what amounted to an internal corporate cell of American citizens with government clearances. Among their jobs, documents show, was ensuring that surveillance requests got fulfilled quickly and confidentially. This ‘Network Security Agreement,’ signed in September 2003 by Global Crossing, became a model for other deals over the past decade as foreign investors increasingly acquired pieces of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure.”

Global Crossing, of course, went bankrupt, but not before enriching Democrat insiders like Terry McAuliffe. But it wasn’t the only company involved in this deal.

UPDATE: More on McAuliffe: “McAuliffe turned a $100K stock buy into $18M thanks to his relationship with the CEO of Internet firm Global Crossing. Shortly thereafter the company went bankrupt, the stock price collapsed and 10,000 employees lost their jobs.”

A REMINDER FROM MATT RIDLEY: Science Is About Evidence, Not Consensus.

Last week a friend chided me for not agreeing with the scientific consensus that climate change is likely to be dangerous. I responded that, according to polls, the “consensus” about climate change only extends to the propositions that it has been happening and is partly man-made, both of which I readily agree with. Forecasts show huge uncertainty.

Besides, science does not respect consensus. There was once widespread agreement about phlogiston (a nonexistent element said to be a crucial part of combustion), eugenics, the impossibility of continental drift, the idea that genes were made of protein (not DNA) and stomach ulcers were caused by stress, and so forth—all of which proved false. Science, Richard Feyman once said, is “the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

My friend objected that I seemed to follow the herd on matters like the reality of evolution and the safety of genetically modified crops, so why not on climate change? Ah, said I, but I don’t. I agree with the majority view on evolution, not because it is a majority view but because I have looked at evidence. It’s the data that convince me, not the existence of a consensus.

As it should be. After all, within my lifetime it was the “scientific consensus” that homosexuality is a mental disease.

OOPS: James Gandolfini’s Will Is A “Tax Disaster.”

UPDATE: Jay Brinker says the will’s bad, but the reporting on it is worse.

FIVE MYTHS about the killing of Trayvon Martin. Though given Zimmerman’s ancestry, when Trayvon said “[N-word] still following me” is literally correct, since Zimmerman is blacker than Homer Plessy. Which makes it even odder that the press has consistently treated this as a black-white affair when, in fact, nobody involved was white. On the other hand, that coverage let them gin up black turnout for 2012, helping Obama.

SECTARIAN VIOLENCE: Egypt: Coptic Christian priest shot dead. By Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers.

PEOPLE DO RESPOND TO INCENTIVES, YOU KNOW: Did Taxes Help Drive Dwight Howard to Sign With the Houston Rockets Rather Than the L.A. Lakers? However much people who don’t want to be constrained by those responses wish otherwise.

AT AMAZON, hot new releases in Blu-Ray.

ANN ALTHOUSE RESPONDS LESS DISMISSIVELY. But kind of social-connishly:

That’s true, and that is something that makes the proposal in my post not neatly about equality.

But there really can never be equality about pregnancy and childbirth. It is the woman’s special burden, and the policies have to be arranged to make sense around that basic inequity. I’m not trying to punish men by imposing a corresponding inequity, I’m just not impressed by the whinings of males who were profligate with their sperm. They are not the backbone of society.

The backbone of society is the married, committed couple who channel their sexuality into making and growing the next generation. Those who do other things are free to make choices, but we as a society have no reason to facilitate their choices, especially their destructive choices.

I know people like their free sex, but the expectation that the rest of us will save them from consequences is pathetic. I heartlessly laugh in their face.

What I think about that advice is immaterial, though on a prudential level “don’t sleep with people you don’t trust” or even “don’t sleep with people you wouldn’t want to be the father/mother of your children” is probably pretty good advice.

It’s also, of course, advice one dare not give to women in today’s society without facing a huge backlash. When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control, he was savaged. But to suggest that a man should pay child support for 18 years because a woman lied about birth control is fine. You can’t say “she should keep her legs closed,” but you can say, “he should keep it in his pants.” That’s fine.

Over the past several decades, women have asserted a right to make all the judgments in matters of gender and sexuality. And, in fact, we do “facilitate” destructive choices, when they’re by women. We subsidize unwed mothers, we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males, we give them all sorts of “choice” that men don’t have and then absolve them, culturally and legally, from judgment over the way they exercise those choices. No similar dispensation is given to men.

A society that ran according to Ann Althouse’s views on marriage and commitment might, in fact, be a better one than the one we live in now, but it is most definitely not the one we live in now. Observing that, and noting the unfairnesses involved, is not “victimology” — though given how successful women have been in obtaining power via victimology, no one should be surprised if men start to give it a try.

But I do not believe that women deserve a monopoly in determining what views on gender and sexuality and parenting are acceptable. Why would they?

What’s funny is that so many women seem genuinely perplexed that men would even dispute that monopoly. Ann is a thoughtful and open-minded and smart woman, but at some level I feel like she doesn’t really get it. But then, that’s what women have been saying to men on gender issues for decades: “You just don’t get it!” Maybe the not-getting goes both ways. The problem is, if society is to accomplish the goals that Ann sets out above, it needs to be a reasonably attractive proposition for both men and women. How are we doing with that? At the risk of stepping on my wife’s turf, I’d say not so well.

Meanwhile, before dismissing the fatherhood-by-fraud stories as urban legends, I do recommend my colleague Michael Higdon’s Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support. How often do they happen? I’d say they’re probably at least as common as abortions that are needed to save the life of the mother. So if you don’t want rare cases to drive the law . . . .

FINALLY: If things have gotten so bad that you have to shut down comments, I think I’ll end the volley.

I WAS ALWAYS TAUGHT TO THANK THE HOST OR HOSTESS, BUT APPARENTLY THAT’S ANOTHER OBSOLETE CUSTOM. Don’t say goodbye when leaving a party — just ghost.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Lessons From Egypt: Elections Are Not Democracy. Elections are necessary but not sufficient for a democratic republic. You also need limits on state power, and civil society. Frankly, what’s most impressive to me is how resilient and robust Egyptian civil society has been in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood’s clear effort to establish an Iran-style theocracy.

DISEASE WITHOUT A CURE: Valley Fever.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on riding mowers.

THOMAS LIFSON ON THE IRS SCANDALS:

The Treasury Department on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inspector general report investigating whether or not former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee illegally accessed tax information on the Koch brothers.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington Free Beacon, declined to acknowledge the existence of the report.

“With regard to your request for documents pertaining to a third party, TIGTA can neither admit nor deny the existence of responsive records,” said in its response. “Your request seeks access to the types of documents for which there is no public interest that outweighs the privacy interests established and protected by the FOIA (5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(7)(C) and (b)(6)).”

Former White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman Austan Goolsbee sparked a mini-scandal in 2010 when he told reporters during a background press briefing that Koch Industries-the company of libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch-paid no income taxes.

The American public deserves answers on this potentially serious scandal.

Maybe someone should ask Austan.

WAITING TO HEAR FROM SPACE ALIENS? “Maybe we just did.”

INTERVIEW: Meet Park Sang Hak, North Korea’s ‘Enemy Zero:’ Sending balloons aloft with leaflets and memory sticks, a dissident enrages Pyongyang. South Korea isn’t too happy with him either.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP ON THAT SAN FRANCISCO PLANE CRASH. According to reports on Twitter, everybody made it out a live, though some people were hurt.

TRYING TO TEACH in an underclass culture. “What happened to large numbers of American blacks between the beginning of WW2 and 1970? Before WW2, blacks, mainly in the South at the time, led aspiring, family-oriented, church-going, bourgeois lives (despite social segregation). How and why did this subcultural transformation happen?”

Well, it’s happened to a lot of people over that era, not just blacks — we live, after all, in an era where open espousal of bourgeois values is transgressive. But the more marginal the community’s socioeconomic status, the more valuable bourgeois virtues are, and the more damaging their loss. If you want particular outcomes, you should emulate the behavior of those who achieve them. But all too often, people reject it instead. That rejection may be ego-soothing, but it’s damaging nonetheless.

VIDEO: The Sara Jordan Project, with my brother Jonathan on guitar, at the Amsterdam Cafe in 1996. I shot this video. Not bad, despite the substandard lighting, which forced me to go with a profile shot mostly. Single camera, with an old Sony VHS-C camcorder that was state-of-the-art in 1996.

THIS IS GOOD: More and more Americans are becoming concealed-carry permit holders. “We’re only halfway through 2013, and it already looks like plenty of states are on track for their biggest permitting years on record.”

HAVE ENOUGH SEX AND YOU’LL LOOK 36: 43-year-old Heather Havrilesky asks: How did I end up growing old?

But if you look at her picture you’ll see that she looks kinda like Kristin Davis. Related thoughts on aging here.

UPDATE: A response.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Regular sex can make you look 7 years younger, researcher says.

FURTHER SUPPORT FOR MY THEORY THAT JOHN KERRY WAS NAMED SECRETARY OF STATE TO MAKE HILLARY’S UNINSPIRED TENURE LOOK BETTER IN RETROSPECT: State Department: Yeah, despite our denial, Kerry was on his yacht during Egypt upheaval.

IN THE MAIL: From Dave Freer, Dog and Dragon.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 58.

FAST AND FURIOUS: Police Chief Killed With Gun “Lost” In ATF Tracking Program. “A high-powered rifle lost in the ATF’s Fast and Furious controversy was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco earlier this year, according to internal Department of Justice records, suggesting that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico.” I don’t think it was a “failed gun-tracking operation” at all.

WELL, I DUNNO, IT’S ALREADY EXPLORING THE MARIANAS TRENCH: Experts: John Kerry’s credibility could sink with boat flap.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Shale Gas Is Fracking Green.

Ask a green what he or she thinks about fracking, and you’re likely to get an earful of criticism about methane leaks, poisoned groundwater, and climate change disaster. But a new report from the ecologically minded Breakthrough Institute (BI) makes the case that shale gas actually has a net environmental benefit. Nevermind the boosts to our energy security, and economy that fracking provides; the controversial drilling process is worth embracing on green merits alone.

Natural gas’s biggest green qualification is the extent to which it displaces coal as an energy source. Burning coal emits roughly twice as much greenhouse gas into the air as natural gas. Thanks to the shale boom, we’re getting less of our electricity from coal-fired power plants and more from natural gas. The BI notes, “From 2008 to 2012, annual coal consumption for US electric power declined, on average, by 50 million tons.” That’s something greens should be cheering, and it’s mostly thanks to fracking.

But natural gas doesn’t just beat coal on carbon emissions. The BI explains why, at the local level, shale gas does less harm than coal.

Read the whole thing.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: A Jobs Report Only A Central Banker Could Love.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in Kitchen & Dining.

Also, today only: Magellan RoadMate 1700LM 7-Inch Portable GPS with Lifetime Maps.

THE STATE DEPT. LIES ABOUT JOHN KERRY’S YACHTING: Thurston, We Have A Problem.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Only 47% of Adults Have Full-Time Job. “If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would by almost nine million more people working. Just in the last year, almost two million Americans have left the labor force. With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn’t surprising that economic growth has been so weak.”

Romney’s 47% number keeps coming up. They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. . . .

Related: 54 Months: Record Stretch of 7.5%+ Unemployment Continues. “Since January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.”

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD NOT GOING PEACEFULLY: Post-Coup Violence Spreads In Egypt. “Two days after Egypt’s military replaced the country’s president, it sent soldiers into the streets to quell demonstrations, as a week of tensions between Islamists and the military transformed into deadly confrontations that heightened some Egyptians’ fears of civil war. . . . At least 30 people died in violence across the country, with another 1,076 injured, officials said.”

THE ANSWER, ALAS, IS PROBABLY because they’re fatter.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Part-Time Jobs Up, Full-Time Jobs Down. “This is the ObamaCare effect. Obama’s health care law incentivizes employers to drop workers to below 30 hours per week in order to avoid incurring liabilities or fines. Or, if the employer is near the 50 employee mark, to trim down to below 50 to escape ObamaCare altogether.”

We heard a lot about “McJobs” during the George H.W. Bush recovery. Nobody seems to be using that term much under Obama.

AS I KEEP SAYING, THE GOP NEEDS TO CAMPAIGN TO MAKE AMERICAN ABORTION LAWS “MORE EUROPEAN.” BBC: European Abortion Rules. Imagine, for example, what people would say if Texas tried to impose this rule:

Between 12 and 18 weeks of gestation, the women must discuss the procedure with a social worker. After 18 weeks, permission must be obtained from the National Board of Health and Welfare.

Abortions must be performed by a licensed medical practitioner and, except in cases of emergency, in a general hospital or other approved healthcare establishment.

That’s what it would take to make Texas’s laws as restrictive as Sweden’s.

JAMES TARANTO: Who’s the Most ‘Racist’? What a new poll does and doesn’t tell us.

Blacks are more likely (by 7 percentage points) to think most blacks are racist than to think most whites are. Moreover, they are 11 points likelier than liberals (regardless of race) to think most blacks are racist, and 9 points likelier than Democrats. And blacks are 3 points less likely than liberals to think most whites are racist.

All of which suggests that the people likeliest to believe most whites are racist and most blacks are not are those who are both liberal and white. Which reinforces a point we’ve made often in this column: that a lot of what drives the futile debate over race in America is white liberals’ psychological need to feel morally superior to other whites.

And to silence them.

ANN ALTHOUSE HAS A SUGGESTION ON PATERNITY:

Now, here’s a proposal, based on all the attention Obamacare has given to women’s health. Let’s require health insurance to cover vasectomies. Then there will be some surgery that men have a right to choose. How’s that for a pro-equality policy? Men can freeze their sperm beforehand and thereafter have perfect control over when women get hold of their reproductive powers.

Interestingly, though, doctors often ask married men for their wife’s permission before they’ll perform a vasectomy. When people talk about “reproductive freedom,” they generally mean women’s reproductive freedom.

UPDATE: A somewhat dismissive response. From the comments: “When it comes to sex, women have rights; men just have responsibilities.”

PHOTOGRAPHS OF Revolutionary War Veterans.

AUTHENTIC FRONTIER GIBBERISH.

WAGES OF CIVIL WAR: Syrian crop risks threaten to worsen food shortages.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Household Supplies. From toilet paper to AAA batteries.

WELCOME TO THE GENITAL WARS: “Should there be gender equity in genital cutting? In Germany (and much of Europe), the native inhabitants tend to argue there is moral equivalence between customary male circumcision and customary female circumcision and both should be proscribed. In Sierra Leone (and several other countries in Africa), the native inhabitants tend to argue there is moral equivalence between customary male circumcision and customary female circumcision and both should be permitted. In the United States, the native inhabitants tend to argue against moral equivalence, permitting customary circumcisions for boys while proscribing them for girls. Who has the better of the argument?”

I’M SURE THIS WILL NOT INSPIRE ANY ARGUMENTS: Grilling Over Gas Is Objectively, Scientifically Better Than Grilling Over Charcoal.

Look, I like cooking on charcoal too — it has one indisputable advantage over gas: It gets much hotter. Glowing coals are at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit; while gas burns at around 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, there’s very little radiant heat from the flames.

And radiant heat is what’s really cooking your food on a grill. That’s why gas grills use some sort of surface to create radiation, whether it’s lava rocks or ceramic plates or the “Flavorizer Bars” on my Weber. These surfaces are heated by the gas flame, creating the radiant heat generated naturally by charcoal.

Charcoal purists will try and tell you that their preferred fuel leads to better flavor. This is, well, nonsense.

Your food doesn’t know what’s creating the heat below it, and once charcoal is hot, there aren’t any aromatic compounds left in the coals. According to the food science bible Modernist Cuisine, “Carbon is carbon; as it burns, it imparts no flavor of its own to the food being grilled.”

The characteristic flavor of grilled food comes from the drippings, not the fuel. When those drippings hit the heat source below, the oils, sugars, and proteins burst into smoke and flame. That heat creates new complex molecules that rise in the smoke and warm air to coat the food you’re grilling. Nothing in that process relies on charcoal.

Read the whole thing. The main reason I grill over gas is that it’s a lot more convenient.

SLOW-MOTION VIDEO of hummingbirds hovering.

MYSTERY RADIO WAVES from another galaxy.

SCIENCE: How Aspirin Might Stem Cancer. “The use of aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs significantly reduces the risk for cancer, but no one has been able to explain why. Now researchers have found that these drugs slow the accumulation of a type of DNA change called somatic genome abnormalities, or S.G.A.’s, that lead to uncontrolled cell growth.”

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off in TV & Video.

SCIENCE: How Strong Is The Female Sex Drive? “Monogamy is not meant to satisfy the female libido. It would be far-fetched for anyone to argue that, especially when the evidence runs in the opposite direction: Monogamy kills eros. But monogamy is a cultural constraint aimed at protecting the natural result of sex–namely, children.”

Monogamy doesn’t always kill eros. In fact, it’s interesting how quite a few of my long-married friends report how much better their sex life has become over time.

WHITE HOUSE WRECKING CREW: Richard Fernandez: Who Lost The Middle East? “The shambles littering North Africa to the Levant suggest that Ted Cruz’s description of the administration’s regional policy as ‘one of the most stunning diplomatic failures in recent memory’ may be an understatement.”

READER BOOK PLUG: From Markham Pyle, Benevolent Designs: The Countess and the General: George Washington, Selina Countess of Huntingdon, their correspondence, & the evangelizing of America.

DECEPTIVE CONCEPTION: When I got pregnant, my boyfriend thought it was an accident. It wasn’t.

Tracy Quan explored this phenomenon over a decade ago. “In some circles, the fashionable view is that males are responsible for unwanted pregnancies. A public service ad aimed at young women features a manipulative teenage boy pressuring his girlfriend to prove her love by having risky sex, but there are no Planned Parenthood posters warning young males about girls who say they’re on the Pill when they’re not.”

If men did this to women, it would be considered a species of rape. But, of course, the women could still get an abortion. As Tracy Quan notes:

Suppose Bill was in charge of birth control, and he informed his girlfriend that he had stopped using contraception some time ago, was coy about the exact date and chose to break the news to her in bed after a successful frolic. Lucy would feel violated; most women would regard him as a man so predatory as to be unfit for fatherhood. Bill’s pushy bid for a commitment would look downright pathological.

The fact is that despite our egalitarian efforts to turn reproduction into a rational process, men and women don’t always hold each other to the same standards. Women, at times, can get away with behavior that we wouldn’t tolerate from men — and many of us exploit the inequalities that are said to work against us. As the anti-suffragette feminist Emma Goldman said in a discussion about “woman’s inhumanity to man,” “woman is naturally perverse.” Women can be presumptuous about deciding how and when to breed, and some women would argue that what we do with our wombs is nobody’s business but our own. A woman I know was told by her mother that “men are never ready for babies,” and that consulting the prospective father of her child was therefore pointless.

Rationalization. And if what you do with your wombs is no business but your own, then the notion of “child support” should be equally one-sided.

Related: Psychology Today: Some accidental pregnancies aren’t so accidental—especially if the guy could be a good provider.

Spohn surveyed nearly 400 women at two community colleges. More than a third of women said they had risked pregnancy in the past with men who had attractive qualities—such as commitment to the relationship, good financial prospects or the desire for a family—but hadn’t discussed the possibility of pregnancy with their partner. . . . Spohn contends that women have a built-in biological desire to reproduce with men who are good providers. She presented her pregnancy survey at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society’s annual meeting. Her advice to men: “Beware!”

Some may be taking heed. And maybe we need mandatory DNA testing at birth. It’s for the children. (Via Ann Althouse.)

UPDATE: Via Paul Hsieh, this response.

Plus, a related item here. “Smart NBA players—well, okay, even dumb NBA players—know to use their own: There have been too many love children born of a condom that, oops, had a hole poked in it to make that ‘mistake.’ ‘You’d be amazed,’ says a former Fly Girl I met in Houston, ‘how many women I know who actually do that. Because let’s face it, if you get pregnant, your life is made.’”

And note this scholarly article on the subject from my colleague Michael Higdon: Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support.

TAMARA TABO IN ABOVE THE LAW: Wendy’s Wasted Voice: Why Fighting the Texas Abortion Bill Was Not ‘Pro-Woman.’ “Wendy Davis opposed a bill that gives women seeking abortions the same level of safety as women seeking LASIK on a Friday afternoon. Should I have feel empowered as a Texas woman that I can currently get a D&E for an unplanned pregnancy at a place with lower standards than where I could get a endoscopy for an acid reflux diagnosis? What is so ‘pro-woman’ about lower health and safety standards for abortions?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Exercise reorganizes the brain to be more resilient to stress.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: What Patriotism Is Not.

IOWAHAWK: “Unemployment report in a nutshell: the Taco Bell that had 30 40 hour workers now has 40 30 hour workers.”

SHOCKING, THAT: Violence Policy Center’s Concealed Carry Killers: Less than it Appears.

A RARE NON-DELEGATION DECISION.

DISAPPEARED: CBS NEWS: Republicans want to talk to Col. George Bristol about Benghazi.

SCIENCE: Retraction of 19-year-old Nature paper reveals hidden cameras, lab break-in, evidence tampering.

SARAH HOYT: When Writing Clicks Together: Your Novel in 13 Weeks. Week Ten.

MORE ON THAT VIRGINIA SCANDAL: 911 calls released in ABC bust of UVa student.

Agents suspected one of the women was underage and carrying a case of beer, ABC said. Instead, it was LaCroix sparkling water. The women said they didn’t know the agents were officers. Six agents closed in at the height of the incident. One drew a gun.

Frightened, University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, drove her and her roommates out of the lot, grazing two agents with her SUV, according to court records.

None was hurt, but that netted Daly a night in jail on charges that were withdrawn more than two months later. The case has cast ABC into a storm of scrutiny since word of it broke in The Daily Progress a week ago.

ABC officials said last week they are reviewing the incident for a second time. The frantic call, placed from the SUV as the women drove off planning to find a police station, helped spur prosecutors to drop the case. . . . ABC has declined to identify the agent who drew his weapon.

These agents should be fired, and probably prosecuted. And if Virginia wants to move into the 21st late 20th century, it could abolish its Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

UPDATE: Reader Karl Bock writes: “Besides getting us pretty riled up here in Charlottesville, this is another example of the continued nationwide trend towards the militarization of bureaucracies at the federal, state and local level. Armed ABC agents running a parking lot sting operation aimed at underaged drinkers is just calling down a potential tragedy. There is simply no reason for those guys to be armed under those circumstances. It’s not like they were raiding stills up in the hollers of Nelson County.” Indeed.

IN THE MAIL: From Poul Anderson, Young Flandry.

ICELANDIC MPS support asylum for Snowden.

REMINDER: Obama “Joked” About Auditing Enemies in 2009.