Read it.

President Obama is inflicting lingchi on the Constitution’s restraints on the executive branch. Here, however, he is acting consistent with a tradition that, while it doesn’t date back to 900, dates back to around 1900 and the onset of the Progressive Era in American politics.

He is also inflicting death by a thousand euphemisms. George Orwell wrote the book on it, so to speak, but here Obama is plowing new ground in American politics.

Read it.

Hint: Some scary shit.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Read it.

An Egyptian court sentenced former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to life imprisonment Saturday for allegedly passing state secrets to Qatar, a regional rival.

Two of Morsi’s aides also received 25-year sentences. Six defendants in the trial received death sentences, including two al-Jazeera journalists tried in absentia. (Al-Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government.)

Read it.

Hint: Yes.

A while back I posted about a few examples, but since then there have been some more, so I thought I’d note them. Naturally, such examples will be rare. Even in states which allow concealed carry, there often aren’t people near a shooting who have a gun on them at the time. Many mass shootings happen in supposedly “gun-free” zones (such as schools, universities, bars, or private property posted with a no-guns sign), in which gun carrying isn’t allowed in many states. And there is no central database of such examples, many of which don’t hit the national media, especially if a gunman is stopped before he shoots many victims. Moreover, at least some examples are ambiguous, because it might be unclear — as you’ll see below — whether the shooter had been planning to kill more people when he was stopped.

Read it.

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

The only way a young man can escape possible accusations of rape is to attend a university that doesn’t admit women, if he can find one.

Perhaps the Angelicum in Rome. I can’t think of any other.

Read it.

And fascism creeps in on little cat feet….

California state lawmakers are poised to advance legislation they say will promote greater equity at the state’s colleges and universities, but religious freedom advocates say it’s just another attempt to advance the LGBT agenda by removing the ability of schools to determine their own criteria for selecting students and personnel and establishing codes of conduct.

The legislation is known as SB 1146, which amends the California Equity in Higher Education Act, or EHEA. As it currently stands, the statute forbids discrimination based on religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. But it also contains a significant exemption for religious colleges and universities. SB 1146 would change that.

“That state of affairs is unsatisfactory to the LGBT lobby in California. They want to dramatically restrict the scope of that exemption so that a liberal arts religious institution can no longer maintain, enforce and apply faith-based conduct standards for their students and employees,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Gregory Baylor, who also directs the group’s Religious Schools Team.

…

“This bill is a solution in search of a problem. There is no problem, except in the eyes of these legislators that these schools hold ‘the wrong views’ on these controversial issues. So it doesn’t really accomplish anything but it does punish these schools for having these religious views,” said Baylor.

It is not enough to conform. It is not enough to surrender. You must come to love Big Brother.

Read it.

This article isn’t my attempt to justify anything to you?—?it’s not a defense of what’s in my gun safe or of the AR-15 itself. If, for you, my AR-15 ownership is prima facie evidence of my mental instability, sexual inadequacy, lack of a conscience, or what-have-you, then I honestly don’t care what you think about this issue. You can go back to broadcasting your own moral superiority on social media, and I can go back to tuning you out until your rage therapy session is over.

No, this article is for the genuinely curious?—?those who assume that 5 million of their fellow Americans are not inhuman or insane, and who want to understand what set of rationales, no matter how flawed and confused they may ultimately turn out to be, could make an otherwise normal person walk out of a gun store with an “assault weapon.”

Read it.

I’m glad somebody is.

Read it.

One of the largest and most interesting medieval cookbooks is the The Book of Dishes, written in 10th-century Baghdad by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. His work covers a wide number of topics, from good table manners to the health benefits of all types of foods and drinks. There are over 600 recipes in this text, ranging from honey beer to ribs. Here are ten medieval cooking tips from al-Warraq.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

This is why Trump is so successful.

Obama would not have said that even if you had threatened to deliver his wife and daughters to ISIS.

Read it.

Trump’s talk about percentages refers to Muslims who believe that suicide bombings or other terrorist killings are justified in the name of Islam. In recent days, Trump has referred to extensive studies done in the last five years by the Pew Research Center on Muslim attitudes worldwide and in the U.S.

Among the many, many questions asked by Pew was this: “Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?”

Pew found that 81 percent of the nearly 3 million Muslims in the United States said such violence is never justified. Five percent said it is rarely justified; 7 percent said it is sometimes justified, and 1 percent said it is often justified. Six percent said they didn’t know.

One can read those numbers reassuringly — 81 percent disavow jihadist violence — or one can read them alarmingly. Trump reads them alarmingly. If Pew’s numbers are correct, then 13 percent of the Muslims currently in the United States believe Islamist violence is justified in at least some cases. Given the current Muslim population of the U.S., that’s just under 400,000 people.

And that’s if all Muslims so polled where telling the truth, which I’ll bet you a paycheck they were not.

Read it.

It would not be remarkable to observe that politicians lie. Many people lie. What is remarkable is that politicians keep telling the same lies over and over again. Few people do this. (Donald Trump, who tells a new lie almost every time he opens his mouth, is not a counterexample to this observation because he is not really a politician.)

I am unable to recall a time when politicians were not promising to balance the budget by eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse,” or to help the poor by increasing the budget of a federal program, or to create energy self-sufficiency, or to stem the tide of illegal immigration by controlling the border, or to reduce gun violence by adopting stronger gun control measures, or…you get the idea.

Now, politicians are generally not stupid people. If there is one thing they know well, it is how to get people to vote for them. So if they are constantly repeating assertions that consistently turn out to be false, it must be because doing so has this effect. But why? Why does the public never seem to catch on? To answer this question, I want to describe something I call the “20 minutes game.”

Read it.

The Pulse night club massacre was the latest in a series of Islamic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, quite a few of which have succeeded, while others have been foiled. These attacks have used a variety of weapons: box cutters, knives, pistols, pressure cookers and rifles. There is a sharp partisan divide with respect to how such terrorist attacks should be viewed.

Republicans say that we should try harder to keep potential terrorists out of the country. Since we have no practical way to vet immigrants, and, in any event, Islamic extremists tend to be second generation Muslims like Omar Mateen, the only realistic way to do this is by reducing, or suspending altogether, immigration from Muslim-dominated countries. This is Donald Trump’s proposal.

That would be a radical departure from present practice. Senator Jeff Sessions’ Senate subcommittee has released this chart, which shows that the Obama administration will soon have issued one million green cards to immigrants from Islamic countries.

The Other McCaine continues his travels in the fever swamps of feminism.

Most conservatives suspect that the only reason guys get into progressive politics is because such movements attract a lot of slutty feminists who are fools for any dude who can talk a good line about “social justice.” And the reason feminists hate men so much, we suspect, is because so many feminists have had the experience of being used and discarded by the Jian Ghomeshi type of progressive dude. How many Canadian feminists did Ghomeshi have sex with? As many as he wanted, basically. The number’s probably more than 100, if not 200 or 300, because Jian Ghomeshi was a progressive celebrity in Canada, and feminists in Canada are certainly no less promiscuous than feminists anywhere else.

Because feminists are so often used by guys in “pump-and-dump” hookups — no romance, no callback, no respect — they tend to become embittered toward men quite generally, and this fuels a vindictive rage: Men must be punished to appease her wrath for the wrongs she has suffered. Therefore, whenever a rape case makes headlines anywhere, feminists everywhere demand a guilty verdict and a maximum penalty. There has never been an innocent man falsely accused, feminists expect us to believe, and doubt is impermissible. All skeptics are “rape truthers,” a term coined by Amanda Marcotte to describe the widespread reaction to the Rolling Stone gang-rape hoax at the University of Virginia.

Hammaka Trailer Hitch Stand.

Weed Killing Steamer. Actually, the most efficient way of getting rid of weeds is inviting a bunch of herbalists over to graze.

Spiky Massage Balls. No, it’s not what you think.

3M Sanding Sponge. One of the most useful tools ever invented.

Bellini Kitchen Master.

Duralex glassware.

Read it.

Black Lives Matter … except to black people in Chicago.

I’m waiting for Barack Obama to address the nation. I predict that he will say … nothing.

Read it.

Just another fine day in the Religion of Peace.

Read it.

Police in Islamabad are investigating a senator from Pakistan’s upper house of parliament, after he allegedly threatened a female rights activist with rape during a live TV debate about violence against women.

Hafiz Hamdullah, a member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, appeared alongside Marvi Sirmed, a prominent journalist and human rights activist, and also barrister Masroor Sahib, on a talk show panel.

The panel was discussing a wave of high-profile honour killings of women in Pakistan.

Yeah, I can see how that would have upset him.

In a Facebook post following the incident, Ms Sirmed wrote: “He started abusing me with worst possible expletives. Called me a whore and said ‘tumhaari shalwaar utaar dooN ga aur tumhaari maaN ki bhi’.”

This translates to: “I will strip off your clothes and will do the same to your mother too”.

Just another day in the Religion of Peace.

Read it.

An amazing story.

Barnaby is still kicking herself for not bringing her gun into the bush, calling it a “huge mistake.”

“Don’t do what I did. Don’t go without your gun,” she says. “Anything can happen.

“If I had had that gun, it would’ve been a very short situation.”

Don’t tell that to Obama.

John C Wright draws up a list so that you don’t have to.

Barack Obama took office as the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. This is a partial list of attacks on American citizens on American soil by Jihadists acting in the name of Jihad, or violent Islamicists justifying their act in the name of Islam, since that time. (Attacks on American citizens overseas are excluded for reasons of space).

I count 26. Not bad for a Magic Negro who got the Nobel Peace Prize before his first golf vacation.

Again, Barack Obama took office as the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. This is a full and compete list of attacks on Islamics, Pakistanis, Arabs, or anyone likely to be mistaken for a Muslim by American citizens either on American soil or abroad, in the name of America.

I count none.

That is, total Muslims killed by Americans for their religion: None. Total wounded: None. Total number of American conspiracies caught before perpetrating such an act by law enforcement: None.

The total of innocent Americans killed on American soul in the name of Islam is above 115 just during the seven years and a half of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The total number of victims aboard, American or otherwise, is immense, perhaps beyond calculation.

Will the Islamophobia never cease?

Wakey wakey.

Stickers and posters featuring a rainbow-colored version of the Gadsden flag and the hashtag #ShootBack were raising eyebrows in West Hollywood on Thursday morning in the wake of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida.

The signage was affixed to electric boxes, light poles, trash cans and other fixtures near West Hollywood City Hall, the Pacific Design Center and along Santa Monica Boulevard. Several were hung near the Abbey Food & Bar, a well-known gay lounge.

The posters featured a coiled, striking rattlesnake, similar to the yellow Gadsden flag that reads “Don’t Tread On Me” and often is used by the Tea Party movement. The West Hollywood signs were rainbow-colored, like the gay pride flag.

“We are disturbed by them,” West Hollywood Mayor Lauren Meister said of the posters. “We don’t believe in an eye for an eye, and we advocate against gun violence.”

Which is why there are 50 people dead in Florida and a similar number in the hospital.

Read it.

In my professional opinion, one shooter would have had a very hard time inflicting the amount of casualties we saw at Pulse Nightclub.

…

Yet there is no indication that the terrorist possessed that level of athleticism or ever even visited a shooting range. And he only purchased the guns used a short time before the shooting. He was not very familiar with them. In terms of accepted and recognized training doctrine, he was a step one beginner.

…

A Sig Sauer MCX, fires a 5.56mm NATO round, or its .223 caliber civilian variant. Magazines typically hold either 20 or 30 rounds depending on your preference. If ballistics determines this to be the primary weapon used in the attack, that would imply a minimum of four to five reloads without any patrons attempting to stop the shooter. But again, that would also imply a nearly 100 percent accuracy rate. Something unheard of even for those aforementioned world class shooters.

…

A Glock 17 has a magazine capacity of 17 rounds plus one chambered for an 18 round total. If this firearm is determined to be the primary weapon used, that would imply five reloads under stress and again, accuracy rates not achievable by the best CQB marksmen on the planet. It would also imply a consistent level of efficacy from the nine millimeter round never before recorded.

…

Now, assuming the terrorist’s marksmanship and tactical ability rivaled that of the typical NYC police officer shooting under stress, that would suggest that he would have been carrying at least 500 rounds of ammunition, or 20 to 25 magazines of minimum. This in addition to a rifle and handgun. And it would also assume that he was able to carry all of that gear dressed in a way that would not have raised suspicion on a hot June evening/early morning in Florida.

The current “lone wolf” narrative is asking me and others with related experience to suspend belief and plausibility to a level at which I am extremely uncomfortable. When you eliminate all plausible explanations in an investigation, you begin asking other questions.

Read it.

Indeed, to make the comparison to Adam Lanza of Newtown and James Holmes of Aurora all but explicit, Obama described Mateen not as a jihadist but as a “single deranged person.”

The president did so because he doesn’t want us to view Mateen as a volunteer in a war against the United States in which he served as a combatant against a cleverly chosen soft target. He wants us to view Mateen as another psychotic American with improper access to dangerous weaponry.

It’s all about the narrative, Larry.

‘Never let a crisis go to waste.’ — Rahm Emmanuel

Read it.

The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). In its escalating arms and ammo stockpiling, this federal arms race is unlike anything in history. Over the last 20 years, the number of these federal officers with arrest-and-firearm authority has nearly tripled to over 200,000 today, from 74,500 in 1996.

What exactly is the Obama administration up to?

Read it.

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, according to a former senior department official.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.

No wonder they aren’t catching the terrorists.

Read it.

Police in Regina, Saskatchewan, have come up with a nifty way to raise money. They pose an undercover officer as a homeless person next to an intersection holding a sign. When drivers stopped at the intersection try to give him money, they have to take off their seat belts to reach across the seat. A few minutes later, another officer pulls the drivers over and hands each a $175 ticket for a seat belt violation.

That’ll teach ’em.

Read it.

New York City politician Adriano Espaillat has proposed that the federal government create “anti-gentrification” zones “where vulnerable tenants could form cooperatives to purchase their apartment buildings away from predatory landlords [and a] ruthless market.” As a rule of thumb, any time a politician proposes a new government program to save people from the “ruthless market,” it is worth looking to see what other government programs are really causing the problem.

First of all, gentrification is a local problem, so why should the federal government get involved? Espaillat’s answer is “the federal level . . . is really where the money is.” The real answer is that Espaillat is running for Congress, so he has to propose a federal solution to get people to vote for him. Considering that the federal government is nearly $20 trillion in debt, the Antiplanner suggests that people should be skeptical of politicians who think the federal government is made of money.

Good lick with that.

Read it.

Misty Lee Wilke, who was charged with attempting to commit second-degree murder in the April 29 incident, slammed her red Mustang into the cyclist after finding out he was HIV-positive. Surveillance video shows Wilke hitting the man with such force that he flips over the car. After she hits the man, she continues to drive away.

Can’t say that I blame her.

The Atlantic is the first on its block to identify a new victim class.

Read it.

CBS thinks it amazing that an American citizen could — again, legally — purchase a semi-automatic rifle in the state of Virginia (not a machine gun, bazooka, or fully automatic Uzi) after . . . well, after doing everything you’re supposed to do in order to legally buy a semi-automatic rifle in the state of Virginia.

“Throughout most of America, you could go into a gun store and buy an AR-15, just like you’d go into a Starbucks and buy a cup of coffee,” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told CBS.

Actually, no. By CBS’s own account, the producer 1) provided two forms of identification to prove state residency, 2) a passport to prove U.S. citizenship, 3) filled out the required state and federal forms reporting her name, date of birth, social-security number, and past criminal convictions or restraining orders (if any), and finally 4) passed a federal background check.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had to do any of that when buying a cuppa joe at Starbucks.

Read it.

Harvey Silverglate, a renowned civil rights attorney and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, called investigations of global warming skeptics by state attorneys general “pure harassment.”

No shit.

Read it.

If you think that all members of Congress have to comply with all of the laws that we common citizens have to obey, think again. Over the years, Congress has passed thousands of bills and statutes that dictate how we should or shouldn’t live our lives, but its members often fail to comply with these rules. In many instances, they actually exempt themselves from those burdensome constraints.

Jason Richwine speaks truth to sleaze.

Do you have a political opinion that you wish would get more traction? Here’s some cynical advice: Call it a “public-health issue.” It’s the quickest way to seize the mantle of Science, which these days is the ultimate moral high ground. Remember, you’re not a political activist — you’re just a scientifically informed citizen with a concern about public health.

Yeah, right.

The American Medical Association (AMA) upped the ante on Tuesday by formally declaring gun violence a “public-health crisis” [my emphasis] and reiterating its support for various gun control measures. Unfortunately for the AMA, affixing the “public health” label on an issue adds no value to the debate. Most political issues have some relationship to people’s health, but that doesn’t mean that Science automatically comes down on one side or another. The AMA’s declaration is another exercise in science-gilding, which is the covering of one’s political beliefs with the veneer of scientific objectivity.

I looked for their calls for further research into cars, airplanes, and motorcycles, not to mention alligators in Florida, but (oddly enough) didn’t find any.

Supporting waiting periods and background checks, as the AMA does, is not a “medical” position. It’s a political one, and it remains a political position even when an organization with a fancy professional name adopts it.

I’ll say it: More junk science from the modern clerisy

If the AMA politicizes guns, on what issues can it be trusted at all?

Hint: Damned few; and only those that (surprise!) deal with actual medical matters.

Read it.

The enormity of that death toll at Pulse nightclub has something to do with the fact that Orlando police waited until 5 a.m. to send in their SWAT team to save hostages—a decision that was at odds with normal police procedures in active shooter situations and appears to have been an error that cost lives.

Your tax dollars at work.

In 21st-century America, we have created a perverse incentive structure where fear of accusations of Islamophobia and/or racism takes priority over anything else, even preventing violence. While nobody could have foreseen the exact attack that Omar Mateen perpetrated, it’s abundantly clear that he was on track to do something awful, including murder. Yet nothing was done, even though warnings were abundant. Simply put, any American today who is accused of Islamophobia faces a ruined life with loss of employment and social stigma. Whereas the cost of not preventing mass murder is merely hurt feelings and regret.

Whose turn is it to be the victim?

It’s hardly a big secret that President Obama from the moment he arrived at the White House put the kibosh on any discussion of radical Islam as a security problem, even in classified channels. In 2009, the administration banned politically loaded words like “jihad” even in classified Intelligence Community assessments discussing terrorism – a message that was received loud and clear in the counterterrorism community. Missing the next 9/11 could be survived, career-wise, while accusations of Islamophobia would not be with Barack Obama in the White House.

Read it.

There is the seductive belief that if only we go “over there” to destroy ISIS, that the threat of homegrown radicalism will be solved. It will not. If we make this attempt with renewed vigor as both candidates are calling for, the result will almost certainly be the increase in the threat of domestic terrorism, not its diminution. It’s not hard to understand why.

I have spent considerable time on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq over a 25-year period in both a military and civilian capacity. I can categorically state that short of a Nazi-like genocidal wiping out of entire populations, it is militarily impossible to go to these overseas locations and destroy the ideology of violent jihadism. Our attempts to do so since 2001 in Afghanistan, 2003 in Iraq, and the numerous places we’ve used special forces and drone strikes to kill Islamic radicals of various stripes since then has succeeded only in expanding the threat.

David Cole has had about enough.

LGBTs (at least those who lean left) seem incapable of coming to terms with the fact that dark-skinned non-Christians are the ones who want them dead. Rather than face the uncomfortable reality that the most oppressively anti-gay force on earth at the moment is Islam, LGBTs seek refuge in the safety of a past that no longer exists, if it ever did, a past in which it’s gays and “people of color” on one side, united against evil white Christians seeking their collective demise. Just as Trump supporters yearn to bring back an idyllic past in which America was great, LGBTs pine for the days in which America was oppressive. How much easier everything was when the villains were so easy for leftists to hate and oppose.

It’s all about the Narrative, Larry.

Frankly, it astounded me that a Canadian could react to the Orlando massacre by completely dismissing the beliefs of the gunman. Isn’t Canada all about combating beliefs? What’s the point of hate-speech laws and human rights tribunals that punish “bad” speech if not to root out “bad” beliefs? Hateful beliefs lead to hateful acts…I thought that was the whole bullshit rationalization behind why the Canucks have gone full Orwell.

Consistency has never been a virtue with the Left.

Read it.

After a year of strenuous and expensive effort the American military advisors and trainers sent to Iraq to retrain and reform the Iraqi Army have admitted that a similar Iranian effort has crippled the U.S. plan to expand the Iraqi army and improve the quality of officers and troops. The basic problem was that most men the army wanted to recruit referred to join one of the Shia militias organized and trained by Iranians. It was all a matter of trust. Potential Shia recruits (in a country where Shia are over 60 percent of the population) did not believe the Iraqi Army could be reformed and rebuilt and felt the paramilitary Shia militias would be better led and more effective even though the Iraqi Army had better weapons and was more likely to get American air support. American military leaders were disappointed, but not surprised. Unfortunately many of the Shia militias are led by men known to have been members of pro-Iran militias that, before 2008, attacked American troops as well as Sunni Islamic terrorists. These militias were disbanded by 2010 but after 2014 were allowed to reform again.

Read it.

The young people who have moved to Portlandia like to eat out a lot, and as a result the Portland has more restaurants per capita than all but five other metropolitan areas in the country. However, the cost of eating out is rising because inexpensive restaurants are getting pushed out by more expensive ones that can afford to pay the rising rents required to stay in Portland.

Cooking for yourself is just so last century.

This is just one more symptom of Portland’s growing affordability problem. In May, median home sale prices in the Portland area exceeded $350,000 for the first time. This is 4.8 times median family incomes, the worst Portland has yet seen. While sale prices might not perfectly reflect the entire housing market, they are probably pretty close, as Zillow estimates that the median value of Portland-area homes in April was facing eviction as the owner wants to sell the land to a developer who will no doubt build dense, but much-more expensive, housing on the site. The residents are trying to raise $2 million to buy the park themselves, but this seems unlikely. At least four other mobile-home parks are also facing sale and redevelopment.

Read it.

The following op-ed from a German news magazine discusses the banning of sexy advertising by London Mayor Sadiq Khan (as described here on Monday by Paul Weston) and the trend towards the same restrictions in Germany. The merger of feminism and Shariah is happening before our eyes: in order to avoid becoming “objects”, women are covering up.

You’ve come a long way, baby — all the way to purdah!

Read it.

Many Western analysts of terrorism, and of Middle Eastern politics, are bad at religion. They prefer empirical explanations for individual and group actions, and so they’d rather avoid wrestling with God. They’re also likely to see religion as infinitely adaptable, an “epiphenomenal” cover for political or economic grievance—or fertile ground for the mentally unhinged.

Many in the secular West cannot imagine that a religion can meaningfully differ from privatized, post-Enlightenment Protestantism, which usually serves as their template for all public religion. Since Islam and Islamism today behave differently from Christianity in the West, these Westerners assume God’s obstinate presence in Middle Eastern politics is the result of some other process. Whether this stems from a lack of imagination, or from a belief that examining Islam’s theological particulars constitutes bigotry, the consequence is a refusal to consider religion on its own terms whenever it bleeds into the news.

In other words, they fail to think like jihadis.

The Wall Street Journal nails it.

Since the President asked, allow us to answer. We’re unaware of any previous American war fought against an enemy it was considered indecorous or counterproductive to name. Dwight Eisenhower routinely spoke of “international Communism” as an enemy. FDR said “Japan” or “Japanese” 15 times in his 506-word declaration of war after Pearl Harbor. If the U.S. is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why. You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

…

Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” leads to other analytical failures, such as his description of the Orlando terrorist as “homegrown.” The Islamic State threat is less a matter of geography than of belief, which is why it doesn’t matter whether Islamic State directly ordered or coordinated Sunday’s attack so long as it inspired it. This, too, is a reminder of the centrality of religion to Islamic State’s effectiveness.

No wonder the Administration seemed surprised by the Islamic State’s initial success in taking Mosul in 2014—soldiers of faith tend to fight harder than soldiers of fortune—and by its durability despite the U.S.-led air campaign. Last November Mr. Obama boasted that Islamic State was “contained” a day before its agents slaughtered 130 people in Paris. Days later, White House factotum Ben Rhodes insisted “there’s no credible threat to the homeland at this time.” Then came San Bernardino.

Read it.

Trouble in Middle Earth.

Read it.

What is it about blue states that makes people so eager to leave them? That’s a question worth pondering after seeing the results of Gallup’s latest State of the State poll, which, for the first time in eight years, found that more states lean Republican than Democratic. Only 14 states, the survey determined, are either solidly Democratic or trending that way, while in 20 states, the majority of residents are either solidly Republican or leaning right. Gallup deemed the rest toss-ups, with no clear advantage for either party.

The poll revealed other trends. Blue-state residents were far more likely to report that they wished to relocate. Seven of the eight states that residents are keenest to flee are solidly blue—led by Connecticut, where 46 percent of people want to follow the state’s leading employer, GE, to the exits. Also near the top of the list: New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, and New York. The only state in the Top Eight not predominantly Democratic is Ohio, which Gallup considers “competitive” (neither Republican nor Democratic). Rounding out the Top Ten are Republican-leaning Indiana and Nevada.

The flip side of those results—that is, the list of states that people are least anxious to leave—is also suggestive. Of the 11 states leading in this category (two tied for tenth place), just three are Democratic, led by blue-leaning Oregon and Washington. Six are Republican, led by Montana and including Texas and North Dakota. The others are toss-up states.

Read it.

Of the approximately two million Chinese Koreans living in China, about half reside in Jilin Province, one of the country’s three northeastern provinces. Jilin comprises most of China’s border with North Korea and includes the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture — one of 30 administrative districts within the People’s Republic of China that are ruled, to some degree, independently of the central state. Given such a strong Korean influence on the region, it may seem logical that of Jilin’s ethnic Korean population many (if not most) would identify with one or both of the Koreas. Ethnic Koreans are, after all, described in Korean as tongpo; brethren abroad, compatriots borne of one ethnicity but living beyond the borders of their native land.

However, while this characterization generally holds true for older Chinese Koreans, in particular those who fled across the border to North Korea during the famine years of the Great Leap Forward and the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution, it is by no means applicable to the youngest generation. For them, the contemporary connection with South Korea is little more than functional, while that with North Korea barely exists at all.

Read it.

And who could blame them? The government, of course, wants them defenseless.

Read it. And watch the video.

Activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement at the University of Missouri spoke at a vigil for victims of the Orlando Pulse Shooting, refocusing the event onto their own personal grievances.

Many people, including a gay couple, were offended by student-activist Tiffany Melecio’s remarks, which explicitly condemned white people. Melecio also expressed frustration that more people would show up for a vigil for LGBT victims than a Black Lives Matter event. Video footage is available below, courtesy of The College Fix.

It is, after all, All About Them.

Millenial Narcissism + Racial Special Snowflake = Black Lives Matter

Melecio’s truly offensive comments—and I don’t say that lightly, but they were—provoked the ire of some members of the crowd. Carl and Daniel Brizendine later told The College Fix, “Right here on this stage, they are segregating us as a community. They are making it a racial issue.”

The police questioned the Brizendines for interrupting Melecio, but took no further action. The vigil happened on Monday.

Melecio was flanked by two other activists—one of whom is a Mizzou administrator and coordinator of the campus’s multicultural center.

God help you if you aren’t one of the Official Victim Groups.

Read it.

Junk Science + Political Posturing = Unintended Consequences