80s action movie taglines notwithstanding, crime is not a disease. So why is there a push by prohibitionists to have the CDC researching it and to treat violent crime as a "public health crisis"? (And never mind the fact that the homicide rate is about one-half what it was 20 years ago, which makes for an interesting notion of "crisis".)

It's because criminologists keep getting the "wrong" answer about gun control, while in the 1970s the American public health community explicitly adopted a gun control objective, and has been spinning the science ever sense. It's denialism at its finest: the relevant science hasn't given you the findings you want so you apply the methods of an irrelevant science that give you the answer you want.

This 1994 piece from the Tennessee Law Review lays it out well. Two decades later it's the same old song all over again.

GUNS AND PUBLIC HEALTH: EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE OR PANDEMIC OF PROPAGANDA? (www.guncite.com)

Since the 1960s, health advocate sages have written a vast and ever-increasing amount of anti-gun advocacy literature. But the view thus promulgated is strikingly different from the view concurrently emerging from criminological research and scholarship. The divergence was not as clear twenty-five to thirty years ago as it is today. In the 1960s, criminological opinion was dominated by writers who felt more or less as the anti-gun health advocacy writers do today. As two of the most influential of those 1960s writers subsequently admitted: "In the 1960s, there was literally no scholarship on the relationship between guns and violence and the incidence or consequences of interpersonal violence, and no work in progress."

Serious criminological research began in the 1970s and has been pursued more intensively and extensively ever since. The results of that research may surprise lay persons, given the exposure which the popular press has accorded the anti-gun health advocacy literature....

So 1) These e-mails were by no means about inconsequential matters, and 2) Clinton was heavily involved in the Obama administration's war crimes. Jill Stein is right: the things we fear Trump might do, Clinton has already done.

FBI criminal investigation emails: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says (Salon)

An explosive new report reveals just what it is that the FBI is looking to: emails in which then-Secretary of State Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations in Pakistan with her cellphone.

This is from two years back, but it turns out the next great hope of America's progressive Democrats, the one people are hoping could moderate Clinton as a VP or could be the candidate next time around, is yet another hawkish dingbat. Time to dump the Dems once and for all.

Elizabeth Warren Finally Speaks on Israel/Gaza, Sounds Like Netanyahu (The Intercept)

But when Warren has spoken on national security, she has invariably spouted warmed-over, banal Democratic hawk tripe of the kind that she just recited about Israel and Gaza. During her Senate campaign, for instance, she issued wildly militaristic – and in some cases clearly false – statements about Iran and its nuclear program that would have been comfortable on the pages of The Weekly Standard.

I think I need this.

A Tiny Spock Leaning on a 1964 Buick Riviera Is the Best Hot Wheels Car Ever (io9)

[San Diego sciComic-Con] hasn’t even started yet, but Hot Wheels might have already won the whole thing with this exclusive 1964 Buick Riviera featuring a badass-looking Spock leaning on the hood.

And this is why so many people feel that the stench of the Clintons must be hosed off the Democratic Party -- perhaps even if the cost is four years of (ugh) President Trump.

Hillary Clinton wore a $12,495 Armani jacket during a speech about inequality (CNBC)

Hillary Clinton took a lot of flak on Monday after a report surfaced that the presidential candidate wore a Giorgio Armani jacket worth more than $12,000 during a speech in April about inequality.

And this is why the only things we should connect to the net are things running software that's under our control -- free software, in other words. (Free as in freedom, not (necessarily) as in price.) Otherwise your TV, your phone, your tablet, your PC, are all enemy agents, bent on spying on and brainwashing you. Root your phone and tablets, put Linux on your PCs, adblockers everywhere, and everything else off the network, to hell with "the Internet of Things". It's as necessary to information hygiene as washing your hands is to biological hygiene.

Even older Samsung TVs are going to get baked ads (The Stack)

An insider has stated that Samsung, the largest manufacturer of televisions in the world, is not only seeking to expand the use of hardware-baked advertising tiles in its newer models, but also to use software updates to make the functionality possible for older TVs which did not originally include it.

The South Korean company includes advertisements in its range of internet-connected televisions, and according to a post at WSJ, Executive Vice President Lee Won-jin (recently poached from Google) is at the helm of the initiative to add extra value to the razor-thin percentages thAn insider has stated that Samsung, the largest manufacturer of televisions in the world, is not only seeking to expand the use of hardware-baked advertising tiles in its newer models, but also to use software updates to make the functionality possible for older TVs which did not originally include it.

The South Korean company includes advertisements in its range of internet-connected televisions, and according to a post at WSJ, Executive Vice President Lee Won-jin (recently poached from Google) is at the helm of the initiative to add extra value to the razor-thin percentages that Samsung is currently able to garner in competition with cheap Chinese exports.

Big Pharma delenda est.

(static.latimes.com)

But OxyContin’s stunning success masked a fundamental problem: The drug wears off hours early in many people, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. OxyContin is a chemical cousin of heroin, and when it doesn’t last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.

The problem offers new insight into why so many people have become addicted to OxyContin, one of the most abused pharmaceuticals in U.S. history.

There are three separate but related issues about the Clinton e-mail server:

1) Via her poor practices she put operational security at risk, demonstrating that she does not have the judgment to hold any position of responsibility or trust. (Though you might think that would be well-established after Iraq, Libya, and Honduras, a lot of people still don't seem to get it.)

2) She violated the spirit, and quite possibly the letter, of federal records retention laws, demonstrating that she has little regard for transparency or oversight.

3) She may have violated laws regarding the handling of classified information.

Clinton faulted on emails by State Department audit (www.yahoo.com)

Hillary Clinton disregarded State Department cybersecurity guidelines by using a private email account and server, an internal audit found Wednesday. Her staff twice brushed aside specific concerns that she wasn't following federal rules.

Every time this happens, it strengthens the "we need to 'take our country back' from 'those people'" narrative. It plays right into an Agnew/Nixonesque appeal to the "silent majority". Young Elijah Martinez is absolutely right: this is giving Trump what he wants.

Anti-Trump protesters at Trump rally throw rocks, bottles at Albuquerque police (Washington Post)

ALBUQUERQUE — What began as an assembly of about 1,000 peaceful protesters outside a Donald Trump rally at the Albuquerque Convention Center morphed into madness Tuesday evening when mostly young, raucous rioters joined the ranks, hurling burning T-shirts, rocks and bottles toward the police and police horses trying to contain them.

Several Albuquerque police officers were injured by the projectile rocks, and at least one rioter had been arrested by the end of the night, the department tweeted....