HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Container Store Sells Zen and Glamour in a Box.

TO BE FAIR, BANKING ON THAT HAS WORKED PRETTY WELL FOR THEM SO FAR: Investor’s Business Daily: ObamaCare’s Success Depends On The Young Being Stupid.

WHAT’S HIS CARBON FOOTPRINT? Obama’s 2013 Air Force One bill $24 million — $6.5 million for Africa alone.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” “The Obama administration is supporting Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in the current crisis of the regime. That is my reading of Elise Labott’s CNN story and Matthew Lee’s AP story on the administration’s position. The Obama administration has supported the Muslim Brotherhood right along. See, for example, the Daily Beast article by Josh Rogin and Eli Lake documenting the administration’s ‘revisionist history’ of Obama’s approach to Egypt.” One wonders why they are so enthused about the Muslim Brotherhood. It certainly doesn’t seem to be enhancing our popularity among Egyptians.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Spengler.

CITIZENS UNITED: The IRS’s Smoking Gun? “Like the IRS harassment campaign that replaced it, FEC suppression of political speech relied on uncertainty, intimidation, and delay to work the administration’s political will. This was not lost on the court.”

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Obama’s Crisis of Competence: The White House seems more comfortable stage-managing the news than dealing with the uncomfortable crises that inevitably crop up. Ya think?

ANDREW KLAVAN: Batman versus Government Mice.

J.D. TUCCILLE: Snowden Took a Job To Leak NSA Secrets? Cool. Let’s Have More Like Him at the DOJ, IRS …

In the age of Justice Department snooping on the Associated Press and Fox News’s James Rosen, wouldn’t we benefit from a whisteblower who deliberately took a position to find out just how many journalists the feds are spying on? I’ll bet there are just a few more lurking in the files.

How about Internal Revenue Service targeting of political organizations? This is a recurring problem dating back decades. Rather than wait for IRS officials to slip revelations out themselves in hopes of minimizing the impact, an infiltrator or two would be a welcome way to keep a close eye on a long-abusive agency.

And now that the federal government is centralizing control over health care, wouldn’t you like to keep a closer eye on how it wields its new power? Especially since we know that it will be sharing patient records without our consent? The government already considers our medical data to be a rich vein it can mine for its own purposes, and it does so with little respect for our privacy.

Bore from within, as part of a long libertarian march through the institutions.

EXPLOITED MASSES RISE UP: Unpaid interns sue Gawker.

IOWAHAWK: You know who really feels stupid right now? All those people who bribed the White House for Obamacare waivers. Suckers!

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: State Department bureau spent $630,000 on Facebook ‘likes.’ I wonder if they’re buying Twitter followers, too.

EGYPT: Morsi Defiant Under Pressure As Deadline Looms.

ERIC CANTOR: ‘Best delay for ObamaCare is a permanent one.’

YESHIVA PRESIDENT RESIGNS over handling of sex abuse of boys.

WELL, OKAY THEN: Intelligence Chief Clapper Apologizes For Lying To Senate By Lying About His Lie.

SCIENCE: Alien ‘Star Engine’ Detectable in Exoplanet Data?

WONDERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY: Feminist Summer Camp For High School Girls.

BUT OF COURSE: Rubio To Introduce Senate Bill To Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks.

As I’ve mentioned here repeatedly, the problem is that Congress doesn’t have the constitutional authority to regulate abortion. Though, post-Sebelius, they could tax it I suppose.

IS THE UNITED STATES “the brokest nation on Earth?”

GREEN DEATH: 14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in the USA.

CARING WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVIST: “I hope your daughter’s raped.”

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Bolivian leader’s plane rerouted on Snowden fear. “The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was rerouted to Austria after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, Bolivian officials said Tuesday. Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said that Snowden was not on the plane, which was taking Morales home from a summit in Russia, where he had suggested that his government would be willing to consider granting asylum to the American.”

A 30-DAY FREE TRIAL ON Amazon Instant Video.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Obamacare was so popular it had to be passed in the dead of night and delayed until after two elections.

BUT WE WERE PROMISED “SMART DIPLOMACY!” The Utter Chaos of the Obama Administration’s Egypt Policy.

SCIENCE: Cancer Is a Result of a Default Cellular ‘Safe Mode,’ Physicist Proposes.

HMM: Skeleton in scuba gear with Moroccan ID sparks mystery in Spain.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Note To Beginning Science Writers.

AFTER THE 2014 ELECTIONS, IN OTHER WORDS: White House delays employer mandate requirement until 2015.

GOING ALL-IN FOR 2014: Sebelius Highlights New Medicaid Grants as Treasury Rolls Back Obamacare Implementation.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Poll: Job Success Most Valued Factor in Picking Colleges.

A new Gallup Poll has found that the factor adult Americans are most likely to say is most important in selecting a college is the percentage of graduates who are able to find a good job. That factor was picked by 41 percent of those polled, followed by the price of the college (37 percent) and graduation rates (16 percent). The wealthier that respondents were, the more likely they were to say that the job success of graduates was the most important factor.

Like the rich guy in the old commercial — was it for Gulf? — said: “How do you think a man like me got to be a man like me?” Plus:

The same poll also asked questions about tuition.

Asked if higher tuition rates meant that the quality of the college was higher, 25 percent strongly disagreed and another 20 percent disagreed. Only 10 percent strongly agreed, with another 13 percent agreeing.

Price resistance is setting in.

THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION: “If you covet what rich people have, you should emulate their behaviors. If you want money, do with money what rich people do with money. If you want smart kids like the rich folk, you should raise your kids like the rich folk raise their kids.”

Kind of a variation on Reynolds’ Law.

EGYPT: Morsi rejects military ultimatum (Update: “I am prepared to sacrifice my blood”).

WHO IS JOHN GALT?

The conservative reaction to Dr. Helen’s Men On Strike is interesting because it is the opposite of their general stance on government creating the wrong incentives. When high income taxes discourage investment and production, conservatives point to the Laffer curve and advise lowering tax rates to rectify the problem. The liberal response to conservatives pointing out that high taxes are strangling the economy is to accuse those responding to the current incentives of being selfish or unpatriotic. We see the same pattern across a slew of issues, including stifling environmental regulations, capital gains taxes, minimum wage laws, and rent control. Liberals tend to want to shame actors into going against their own best interest in order to prop up bad public policy, where conservatives tend to point out the folly of using shame and moral coercion to overcome bad policy. The solution to bad policy, conservatives regularly point out, is to fix the policy, not to try to strong arm companies and individuals to go against their own best interest.

But all of this suddenly changes when the bad policy is regarding marriage. Then the same conservatives who stand ready to offer a detailed lecture on the need to match risk with reward, authority with responsibility, and to have consistent and fair enforcement of contracts suddenly switch to the tactics of a liberal defending a 90% marginal tax rate.

Though the phenomenon is not universal, it is certainly noticeable.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Testicles Have Taste Buds.

THE JOY OF Grilled Pizza.

NOW SEE, THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT: “Glenn Reynolds looks exactly the same in all three photos.”

Now to see how much I’ve changed over a longer period of time, check out this high school yearbook photo.

UPDATE: Related time-lapse photos here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Compare with this time-lapse series.

ABORTION-RIGHTS SLOGANS THAT NEED ANOTHER DRAFT: “Hoes Before Embryos” and “Republicans Cannot Defetus.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Watered Down’ MOOC Bill Becomes Law In Florida.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Survival Skills.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: A Law School’s Possible Purge Of Its Junior Faculty Ranks.

THE HILL: White House Chief of Staff McDonough should be fired over IRS scandal. “While Edward Snowden’s excellent adventures, Hillary’s State Department escort services and Obama’s $60 million to $100 million African vacation (er, state visits) have taken some of the spotlight off of the IRS, the pesky timeline of events make it unlikely to go away completely. If, as appears to be the case, the White House never told the IRS to stop its policy of political targeting, heads need to roll, starting with Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, who, if Jay Carney is to be believed, never even bothered to tell the president about it.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Beware The “Herbivore” Effect.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student debt flunking many first-time home buyers. “Where are these previously dependable first-time homebuyers in their late 20s and early 30s? A new national study released last week offers important clues: A lot of them are carrying such heavy debts from student loans that they’re postponing buying houses.”

52 WEEKS: Vegas, Baby!

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What He Really Thinks About Your B.O. & Hairy Legs During Sex.

SCIENCE: How Men And Women Cooperate.

Related: New Study Shows Being Hen-pecked Does Not Work. Well, no.

AT THE VERY LEAST THERE’S A GREAT HISTORICAL NOVEL IN THIS: White man’s skull has Australians scratching heads. “The centuries-old skull of a white man found in Australia is raising questions about whether Captain James Cook really was the first European to land on the country’s east coast. The skull was found in northern New South Wales in late 2011, and police initially prepared themselves for a gruesome murder investigation. But scientific testing revealed that not only was it much older than expected, but possibly belonged to a white man born around 1650, well before Englishman Cook reached the eastern seaboard on the Endeavour in 1770.”

ED DRISCOLL interviews George Gilder about his new book, Knowledge and Power.

LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGE ACQUISITION from studying songbirds.

SCIENCE: Living Near The Ocean Is Good For Your Health.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Even Salon is catching on.

IN THE MAIL: The Illusion of Net Neutrality: Political Alarmism, Regulatory Creep, and the Real Threat to Internet Freedom.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 54.

LAWS (AND TAXES) ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Hedge Fund Billionaire Who Gave $9.6 Million to Obama in 2012 Skirts Law to Pay 15% Tax Rate.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Snowden Fallout: Bad PR For Obama In Europe.

The report, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has gotten a number of politicians up in arms across the Atlantic. Françios Hollande described the allegations as unacceptable, and a spokesman from German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested the US was treating its European allies like Cold War enemies.

We’ll have to wait for the details to come out to see whether or not this is a tempest in a teapot. Espionage is a complicated game, and allies do sometimes keep an eye on each other in ways that aren’t exactly aboveboard. Indeed, the Times piece referred to a 2003 report alleging that the Justus Lipsius Building in Brussels, where many Eurocrats have their offices, was allegedly bugged by other Europeans.

Nevertheless, apart from the national security implications, the Snowden leaks have certainly caused a major PR headache for the administration. President Obama’s first-term ambition to restore America’s image in Europe after that rotten cowboy Bush had tarnished it appears to be in serious trouble.

And, frankly, it wasn’t doing all that well before.

TECHNICAL HURDLES CLEARED FOR FIRST HUMAN HEAD TRANSPLANT. Isn’t it really a body transplant?

AT AMAZON, coupons galore on Beverages & Coffee.

Also, today only: Sphero iOS and Android App-Controlled Robotic Ball, $84.99 (35% off).

DON’T FEAR THE LEAKER: My USA Today column, on leaks and legitimacy.

ED DRISCOLL ON OBAMA AND DEMOCRACY IN EGYPT: Promise Meets Expiration Date.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: George W. Bush renovates a women’s clinic in Zambia.

JAMES TARANTO: ‘Cracking’ the Case: A racial turnabout in the George Zimmerman trial.

“It’s not about racial profiling,” said lawyer Daryl Parks about the murder trial of George Zimmerman. “We never claimed this was about race.”

What makes these statements “head-scratching,” as New York’s Daily News describes them, is that Parks represents the family of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, whom Zimmerman fatally shot in February 2012. Zimmerman is pleading self-defense. The media narrative was that Martin was a victim of racial profiling–that Zimmerman, who is white and Hispanic, wrongfully saw the unarmed Martin as a threat because Martin was black.

“The whole point of the Trayvon Martin case,” according to Slate’s Justin Peters, was supposed to be to serve as “a referendum on how comfort and privilege deal with the unfamiliar.” By “comfort and privilege,” Peters means white people; by “the unfamiliar,” he means blacks. Martin’s killing even provoked an unusual appeal to racial solidarity from Barack Obama: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” the president said a few weeks after the shooting.

But last week the prosecutor’s star witness, Rachel Jeantel, turned the racial narrative on its head. She was on the phone with Martin in the moments before the deadly confrontation, and she testified that Martin described Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” that last word being an antiwhite slur. So that it seems Martin racially profiled Zimmerman. That does not exclude the possibility that the profiling was mutual, but it certainly complicates matters for the “referendum” crowd.

But that’s okay. The goal behind racializing the Zimmerman case — which, actually, involves no actual white people — was to incite racial outrage and gin up black turnout for the 2012 election. Mission accomplished!

Plus:

But whatever George Zimmerman’s culpability in Martin’s shooting, he is not to blame for the social order of pre-civil-rights America. He has every right to mount a vigorous defense, and the judge and jury have a duty, as in any criminal trial, to give the defendant the benefit of any reasonable doubt.

The rightful term to describe a criminal trial that serves as a “referendum” is “show trial.”

Indeed.

CASS SUNSTEIN: How Not To Misunderstand Scalia. “Those who disagree with Scalia are entitled to object to his votes and his tone. At the same time, they should understand that his broadest commitment is to the rule of law. They should honor that commitment, and they should respect his efforts to develop an approach to interpretation that is compatible with it.”

SHOCKER: The Hill: Poll: Clinton tops Bush, Rubio among Hispanic voters for 2016. “The survey, by Latino Decisions, also revealed Republican candidates continue to significantly trail among Hispanic voters, with even champions of immigration reform like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush significantly behind top Democrats.” It’s like amnesty isn’t a secret key to unlock hispanic votes or something.

ARE DEMOCRATS PLANNING to call in SWAT attacks against Republicans in Texas?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, EUROPEAN EDITION: Why Italian Unemployment Is So High:

Like people in other rich countries, Italians tend to look down on manual work, however skilled, and families prefer to push their children towards careers in the professions and the public sector. The education system, at all levels, generally provides a poor preparation for working life. Italian universities are full of youngsters studying subjects in which they are not interested but which their parents think are good, regardless of the job prospects.

The outcome is poor.

BYRON YORK: No, Immigration Reform Won’t Make Social Security Solvent.

MICKEY KAUS: You may not be interested in amnesty, but amnesty is interested in you. “What GOP House members hear from constituents this week while back in their districts will affect what they decide to do at their big upcoming July 10 meeting. So if you see your Congressperson at a local town hall meeting, be sure to tell him or her your mind.”

Related: The Atlantic: Are Liberals Turning On Immigration Reform?

IN RESPONSE TO MY “DO BOYS READ?” POST FROM THE OTHER DAY, reader Ed Bradley writes:

Yes they definitely do. I work in the Library Technical Department for the School District of Hillsborough County (eighth largest school district in the US). When I started here, the middle school director was very concerned about the reading gap. So I ran some queries of circulation for Library Books. Boys read just as much as girls, though they do read different things. Girls read more fiction, boys read more non-fiction and biographies (sports heroes).

Guess which kind of book tends to be assigned in class?

ROGER SIMON: Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th? “Ironically, if our society enters a revolutionary phase, liberals will find themselves in the role of the Islamists, defending a shopworn and reactionary ideology on religious grounds, because it is only their faith that holds their ideas together at this point. The facts of the American decline tell us otherwise.”

INDEED: Dianne Feinstein’s Support For NSA Defies Liberal Critics And Reputation.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Barack Obama seeks to limit EU fallout over US spying claims.

ZIMMERMAN UPDATE: How Much Injury Is Required Before Self-Defense is Justified?

Thoughout the week the State has sought to minimize the apparent seriousness of Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries. These efforts reached an almost ludicrous stage during Friday afternoon’s re-cross of Lindzee Folgate, the physician’s assistant who examined Zimmerman the day after the shooting. Apparently frustrated at Mr. O’Mara’s masterful performance on cross-examination (see Zimmerman Trial Day 5 – Analysis & Video – State’s own witnesses undercut theory of guilt for our analysis) Mr. de la Rionda asked, as if he meant it, whether all people have perfectly round heads or wasn’t it true that a person can have a bumpy or raised area of their head as a normal state of affairs, and not solely as the result of traumatic injury. . . .

The very idea that the State is seeking to establish–that self-defense is conditional upon actually suffering serious injury–is, of course, ridiculous on its face. The purpose of the law of self-defense, particularly in the context of the use deadly defensive force, is to be able to protect yourself from an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm before that harm occurs, not to require that you actually experience death or grave bodily harm before you may act to protect yourself.

Not very impressive.

WELL, DUH. HOW ELSE WOULD PRETTY WOMAN HAVE BEEN A HIT? French Director Francois Ozon Says Lots Of Women Fantasize About Being Prostitutes.

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Also, today only: 45% Off Puma BioWeb Elite Running Shoes ($54.95).

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: US government declares hacking an act of war, then hacks allies.

STOP THE PRESSES: Noam Chomsky is actually right about something. Hey, it had to happen eventually . . . .

THE INSTA-WIFE’S MEN ON STRIKE GETS A NICE REVIEW FROM KYLE (NO RELATION) SMITH: Man of kneel: Sick of being treated like the enemy, guys are dropping out of society. (Bumped).

SOMEHOW I HAD MISSED THIS: #REDTIEGUY UPSTAGES OBAMA.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: FYI, Happy Ending Massages Are Totally Legal In China.

DON’T FEAR THE LEAKER: My USA Today column for tomorrow, on leaks and legitimacy.

HE NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN PROSECUTED: Sidewalk Chalk “Vandal” Acquitted By Jury. The prosecutor should be fired for bringing this case. Or at least have something nasty and snarky chalked in front of his house.

CHANGE: Encryption Has Foiled Wiretaps for First Time Ever, Feds Say.

Encryption was reported for 15 wiretaps in 2012 and for 7 wiretaps conducted during previous years. In four of these wiretaps, officials were unable to decipher the plain text of the messages. This is the first time that jurisdictions have reported that encryption prevented officials from obtaining the plain text of the communications since the AO began collecting encryption data in 2001.

I suspect we’ll see more of that.

THE ROLLING STONES’ LIVE SHOW gets a great review. But don’t diss Paul McCartney — several people who saw him at Bonnaroo told me that his show was awesome.

UPDATE: Reader Robert McCarthy writes:

Glenn,

I took my 13-year-old son, a guitar aficionado and student of rock, to the Stones concert at the Garden in Boston a few weeks ago. I had seen them 2 or 3 times, all rather uneventful to be honest. I prepared for the worst…I mean, how could these men, nearly twice my age and bruised and battered with every imaginable drug in their system, actually do anything beyond stand and strum? In a word, they were ‘amazing’. My son left with a smile plastered on his face, a t-shirt on his back, and a gleam in his eye that said “I could be there some day”. And that was worth everything.

I can imagine.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ FOR YA? (CONT’D): Many will say that the president of the United States cannot of course control events in Egypt. That’s true. But he did everything possible to lead to this crisis. “The point is that Obama policy is so obviously bad—having circles run around it by Iran; the shameful Benghazi affair; the love affair with the Turkish regime; Kerry behaving as if he’ll have peace in the Middle East next Thursday and he cannot understand why no one ever thought of this before.”

DISASTER PREP: New algorithm quickly identifies most dangerous risks in a power grid amid millions or billions of possible failures.

CLASSY: Texas Democrat Tweets Repugnant Joke Involving Abortion and Dick Cheney.

Plus: “It’s a safe bet that Houston’s local TV media won’t cover Wu’s disgusting tweet. He’s married to local TV political reporter Miya Shay. That’s not in her official station bio but does appear on her Facebook page.”

JOHN FUND: Hollywood Once Bowed to Nazi Censors, Is it Now Kowtowing to Chinese Censors?

Repeal the Hollywood tax cuts!

AT AMAZON, it’s the Fourth Of July Sale.

SUPREME COURT UPDATE: Public Approval of Supreme Court Falls to All-Time Low. John Roberts seems to have operated with one eye on the media and it doesn’t seem to have made the Court more popular.

PAULA DEEN GOES DOWN, BUT ALEC BALDWIN GETS A PASS. WHY? Because he’s the very model of a modern media liberal.

NON-METAPHORIC IDIOT: Mainstream Media Scream: MSNBC guest calls Justice Thomas ‘a metaphoric Hitler.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Will You Replace Google Reader? The great RSS reader hunt of 2013 begins.

JOURNALISM: Cretins gloat, pass around George Zimmerman’s Social Security number after CNN airs it.

THE APP CRAZE branches into forestry. “A startup has developed software and smartphone tools for cataloguing the trees in forests.”

HUMANS BASICALLY EVOLVED TO THROW FASTBALLS: “No other primate throws with anything comparable to human force. Chimpanzees, who are much, much stronger, pound for pound, than human beings, can throw, as any zoo visitor knows. But the best an adult male can do is about 20 miles per hour. A 12-year-old human pitcher can easily throw three times that fast.” It’s all in the shoulder articulation.

CHANGE: Bringing Back The No-Stigma Extended Vacation. In my world, there’s never been a stigma. . ..

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Your link on the 2 week vacations shows exactly what we would normally expect when marginal tax rates are increased on ‘the wealthy.’ These people can afford to choose: work an extra 2 weeks a year or vacation an extra 2 weeks a year. When you get to keep 75-80% of what you earn, you might choose to work and earn a little extra. When you only keep 40 cents on the dollar, why bother? Take a vacation instead.”

THE RESILIENCE OF EGYPTIAN CIVIL SOCIETY HAS BEEN A GRATIFYING SURPRISE: J.J. Gould: Tahrir Square Redux: Could This Be the Tipping Point for Democracy in Egypt?

NINETEEN FIREFIGHTERS KILLED IN ARIZONA: “The men were killed about 85 miles northwest of Phoenix, near the town of Yarnell. It was the biggest loss of firefighter life since 340 died at the World Trade Center. It was the worst in a wildfire since 1933, when 29 were killed in Los Angeles.”