Immigration Advocates Frightened by 99-Pound Blonde

From Ann Coulter.

And buy her book, Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.

Pamela Geller Targeted in Foiled Boston Beheading Plot

At Atlas Shrugs, "CNN: Jihadi shot in Boston was planning to behead Pamela Geller," and "CNN VIDEO: Erin Burnett Attacks Pamela Geller in Wake of Boston Beheading Plot."

Pam Key of Breitbart writes:

Wednesday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront,” American Freedom Defense Initiative president Pamela Geller reacted to reports that the Boston terror suspect plotted to behead her and said, “This is a war.”

“This is a showdown for American freedom,” she said. “Will we stand against the savagery or bow down to them and silence ourselves?”

Geller said, “Well, they targeted me for violating Sharia blasphemy laws. They mean to kill everyone who doesn’t do their bidding and abide by their law voluntarily. This is a showdown for American freedom. Will we stand against this savagery or bow down to them and silence ourselves? It won’t end with me, no matter what happens to me or the cops. This is just the beginning. The one thing that’s being ignored that came out of Garland, Texas, is that ISIS is here. Islamic terrorism is here. now. Will the media realize what’s at stake and that their heads are next? Or will they continue to target me because they hate my message of freedom? That’s the question.”

When Brown quizzed Geller on the controversial ad she runs to counter Islamic extremists Geller said, “Of course I’m not surprised they would target me. This is a war and they seek to impose the Sharia. The ads that I’ve done across the country were in response to vicious anti-Israel, anti-Semitic ads already running. And my question to you is, do we not want to defeat jihad? i mean, what is wrong with those ads? there is nothing wrong with the cartoon. there is nothing about the cartoon that incites violence. It is within established American tradition of satire. And if America surrenders on this point, the freedom of speech is a relic of history.”

When Brown asked if Geller relished being the target she shot back, “Relish being the target? Who self-promotes to get killed?”

Also at Jihad Watch, "Boston jihadis originally planned to behead Pamela Geller."

Dana Loesch Criticizes Bruce Jenner's Sexual Appropriation

At Dana's blog, "No To Sexual Appropriation":

I'm not welcoming Bruce Jenner into the sisterhood. We frown upon appropriating culture, so, too, do I frown upon appropriating sexuality (more on this later). It's not that I care what someone does on their own time -- and if that's what this was, people minding their own business and living their lives, it wouldn't be an issue -- but it's no longer on someone's own time. People used to say "what goes on behind closed doors ..." but things are no longer behind closed doors and it's not simply that the doors are open, either; it's that some are forcefully ushering everyone else into the room and told to legitimize with their approval the lifestyle choices of the individual in question. I and other females are told that we are no different from someone who buys a tube of Mac lipstick and the best plastic surgery in town. We are told that our sex, our gender, is a nothing more than a new product at retail. You can identify, but I will not.

More, as well as audio, at the link.

EARLIER: "The Rise of Authoritarian Transgender Politics."

Teresa Palmer Sextastic!

At Egotastic!, "Teresa Palmer Busty Cleavy Swimsuit MILFtastic in Maui."

Secret Memo Shows Leftist Contributors Souring on Hillary Clinton Campaign (VIDEO)

I love it!

This is not only major, it's no surprise.

Hillary's crashing on multiple fronts. And it's still early!

At Politico, "Secret effort to sell Hillary Clinton to rich liberals: Campaign targets unenthusiastic donors on the party’s left":

Hillary Clinton’s allies are working to win over unenthusiastic rich liberals by pitting her against the Koch brothers and prospective GOP rivals rather than more progressive Democrats, according to a draft of a secret memo obtained by POLITICO.

The memo was prepared for Clinton enforcer David Brock ahead of a major donor meeting in April in San Francisco. But the concerns it reveals about liberal donors’ coolness toward her presidential candidacy — with some even holding out hope for a robust primary challenge from the left — are just as acute today, Clinton allies say.

Winning over such donors is seen as critical to Clinton’s White House prospects.

The Clinton forces are counting on a constellation of allied outside groups to raise as much as $500 million to take on a Republican big-money machine that has been raking in cash from dozens of super-rich and highly engaged partisans. By contrast, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has struggled to collect million-dollar checks.

Part of the donors’ reluctance stems from liberal queasiness about the expanding role of big money in politics since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. But there’s also some discomfort with Clinton, the former New York senator and secretary of state, who is seen as too hawkish on foreign policy and insufficiently progressive on key issues like fighting climate change, income inequality and the role of big money in politics. Additionally, Democratic finance operatives say, efforts to rustle up seven-figure checks are suffering from a lack of a single, unifying enemy on the right.

All those concerns are addressed in the Brock memo, which appears to have been drafted in preparation for his appearance at the annual spring meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a major liberal donor club — in April in San Francisco. The memo is written as a question-and-answer exchange between Brock and Democracy Alliance donors.

The memo suggests that Brock, who has built a fleet of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Clinton, is taking a conciliatory approach to assuage donors’ concerns — conceding she’s not as liberal as some donors wish but emphasizing her progressiveness in public service and minimizing the prospects of a vigorous Democratic primary.

“You say the Kochs represent all that is bad in this broken system, yet our presumptive nominee is in the pocket of big Wall Street banks,” begins one of the memo’s hypothetical donor questions. “Aren’t we going to have a hard time going after the Kochs’ big money when some could argue that Sec. Clinton is bank rolled by Wall Street and therefore there is a pox on both our houses?”

The answer Brock should give, according to the memo: “It is no secret that Sec. Clinton is fair-left and not far-left. I think it is safe to say that there will be a dramatic difference between Sec. Clinton and whoever is the Republican opponent. She has spent a lifetime advocating for women and children and fighting for the middle class and there is not one GOP candidate who has that record.”

Brock did not dispute the authenticity of the memo, which leaves a pair of questions about the internal politics of the Clinton big-money effort unanswered. But he declined to comment on the memo, or whether it reflected his fundraising approach or his presentation at the Democracy Alliance gathering, which was closed to the news media.

The three-day meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a group that includes more than 100 individual and institutional donors and various unions — took place at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel just as Clinton officially launched her campaign.

Heh, when leftist big-money hypocrites are worried about forking over big money to Hillary, you know something's not right in leftist la-la land.

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion."

The Rise of Authoritarian Transgender Politics

Everything's escalating to DEFCON levels.

"Call me Caitlyn, or else."

From Brendan O'Neill, at the Spectator UK, "The Cult of Caitlyn confirms that there is nothing progressive in transgender politics":

The Vanity Fair photo of Bruce Jenner in a boob-enhancing swimsuit is being described as iconic. Bruce, one-time American athlete, now wants to be known as Caitlyn, having recently undergone some gender transitioning. And he’s using the cover of the latest Vanity Fair to make his ‘debut as a woman’. Next to the headline ‘Call me Caitlyn’, he’s all photoshopped svelteness, pampered hair and look-at-me breasts, in what many experts are already describing as ‘an iconic image in magazine history’.

The photo is indeed iconic. And not just in the shallow celeb meaning of that word. It’s iconic in the traditional sense, too, in that it’s being venerated as an actual icon, a devotional image of an apparently holy human. It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society. Yesterday’s Jennermania confirms how weirdly authoritarian, even idolatrous, trans politics has become.

There is a palpable religiosity to the wild hailing of Bruce/Caitlyn as a modern-day saint, a Virgin Mary with testicles. Within four hours, more than a million people were following Bruce/Caitlyn’s new Twitter account, hanging on her words like the expectant horde waiting for Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. Her every utterance, all banal celeb-speak, was retweeted tens of thousands of times. Celebs and commentators greeted her as a kind of messiah. ‘We’ve been waiting for you with open arms’, said an overexcited editor at Buzzfeed. Across the Twittersphere Caitlyn was worshipped as a ‘goddess’, a ‘goddess in human form’, a ‘goddess made manifest on Earth’. ‘Caitlyn Jenner could fucking stab me right now and leave me for dead and I’d die fucking overjoyed we are not WORTHY OF THIS GODDESS’, said one trans tweeter, and she wasn’t joking.

In the media, the talk is of how Caitlyn and her iconic likeness might give an adrenalin shot to humanity itself. A writer for the Guardian describes Caitlyn as a ‘queen’ and instructs us to ‘bow down, bitches’, telling us her icon on the front of Vanity Fair is ‘life-affirming’. Treating Caitlyn as a kind of Christ figure, only in a push-up bra rather than smock, Ellen DeGeneres says this goddess brings ‘hope for the world’, and we should all try to be ‘as brave as Caitlyn’. Susan Sarandon celebrated Bruce/Caitlyn’s mysterious ‘rebirth’ while Demi Moore thanked him/her for sharing with humanity ‘the gift of your beautiful authentic self’. A writer for the Huff Post says the name Caitlyn means ‘pure’ – ‘what a perfect meaning, right?’ Truly, yes, for St Caitlyn, reborn to educate us all, is most pure.

With its millions of agog followers, its worship of an iconic image, its insistence we all ‘bow down’, the Cult of Caitlyn gives Catholic mariolatry a run for its money in the blind-devotion stakes. And of course, as with all venerated icons, anyone who refuses to recognise the truth of Caitlyn’s Vanity Fair cover has faced mob punishment or finger-wagging corrections of their goddess-defying blasphemy.

So when Drake Bell, a former American child star, tweeted ‘Sorry… still calling you Bruce’, he became the subject of global fury. The Cult of Caitlyn went insane. Even after Bell deleted his blasphemous comment, tweeters mauled him, suggesting he deactivate his Twitter account, or better still, ‘deactivate his life’. Meanwhile, a Twitter robot called @she_not_he has been set up to correct any ‘misgendering’ of Caitlyn. Winning high praise from much of the media, this bot is ‘scrubbing Twitter, looking for anyone who uses the “he” pronoun in conjunction with Caitlyn Jenner’s name’. The bot’s inventor says he is delighted that these misgendering miscreants have been ‘apologetic in their replies to the bot’, and ‘some have even deleted their original tweet’.

In short, they’ve repented...

Well, payback's a bitch.

Folks can only estimate how long it'll be before "Caitlyn" flames out in divine glory. If the Kardashians are any guide, we'll be having many more cycles of soap opera madness before the crash and burn of "Caitlyn." Who knows what's going to happen? Either way, society's pretty fucked up.

More.

question for the male media types/extremist activists (but I repeat myself) insisting that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman: Would you fuck her?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

this question isn't as crude as it sounds. It's merely direct. If you are insisting that "Caitlyn" is in all ways a woman, then naturally...

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

..."she" would be on your list of possible sexual partners. Y'all keep saying how hot she is. So is she on your list of possible partners?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

if "she" is not on a straight progressive man's list of possible romantic dalliances, are you saying "she" is not entirely a woman?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

what is the truth here? The actual truth? Not the progressive falsehood we pressure people into agreeing to?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

I have no problem or interest in Caitlyn Jenner' decisions, except when it becomes formally demanded of me that I repeat a falsehood.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

Should she be credited as holding all Decathalon records for a female athlete?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

This is of a piece with the left's constant demand that we accept the crudest, most extremist restatements of their political desiderata.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

And these are "Political truths," by which I mean, Not Truths: absurdly crude falsehoods urged as true by a faction of the Prog caucus.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

the media, as always, swoops in as the angel-winged, spear-carrying Valkerie for segments of the Democrat political coalition.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

Flight Attendant Who Denied Islamist Tahera Ahmad Diet Coke Won't Be Serving Customers

Islamists escalate jihad on all fronts.

At ABC News, "United Apologizes After Muslim Chaplain's Soda Complaint."

And at LAT, "Flight attendant who denied soda can to Muslim will no longer serve customers":

Tahera Ahmad, diet coke lady, Muslim 'activist' Muslim Brotherhood links, met Obama. #Islam http://t.co/XJn2XbufAu

— Jihadi Kermit ☮ (@islamlie2) June 3, 2015

United Airlines says a flight attendant involved in a dispute with a customer over a can of Diet Coke, leading to accusations of discrimination, won’t be serving customers on the airline any longer.

The dispute arose after Tahera Ahmad, a Muslim American chaplain at Northwestern University, claimed she was told she couldn’t have the unopened can of Diet Coke she requested because passengers “may use it as a weapon” on the plane.

When the man sitting next to Ahmad received an unopened can of beer, Ahmad said she protested. A fellow passenger then allegedly yelled, “You Muslim, you need to shut the … up,” and that “You know you would use it as a weapon.”

Ahmad wears a hijab in a photo on the university's website, but it's unclear what identified her as Muslim on the plane.

Both United Airlines and the company that was operating the flight characterized it as a “misunderstanding regarding a can of diet soda,” a statement Ahmad and others pilloried on social media as trivializing. United says it has apologized to Ahmad, and will also be sending her a written apology.

According to a United statement released Wednesday, the flight attendant “will no longer serve” United customers.

“United does not tolerate behavior that is discriminatory – or that appears to be discriminatory – against our customers or employees,” the company said in the statement. Employees at United and Shuttle America, the company that employed the flight attendant and was operating the flight, will undergo cultural sensitivity training, the airline said.


It’s not clear whether the flight attendant has been fired; officials at Republic Airways Holdings, which owns Shuttle America, declined to discuss the employee’s status, citing personnel issues.

There is no policy barring flight attendants from providing full, unopened beverage cans to customers upon request, Republic Airways Holdings said, and no policy regarding speculation as to how passengers may use the can.

In a statement, the company said Wednesday that it “deeply regrets the poor judgment and lack of sensitivity” the flight attendant demonstrated toward Ahmad. Both companies say they have opened investigations into the incident, and Republic Airways Holdings says it is “confident that this is an isolated incident.” Officials there are reviewing company training policies, Republic Airways said, and are “in the process” of reaching out to Ahmad to apologize.

Also at Bare Naked Islam, "MUSLIM BITCH who accused United Airlines of “racism” (What ‘race’ is Islam?) for refusing to give her an unopened can of Diet Coke has ties to Islamic terror-linked groups and individuals."

And at Jihad Watch, "Diet Coke Muslima has ties to Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood groups."

Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion

Her ratings are tanking.

At CNN, via Memeorandum, "Poll: New speed bumps for Clinton."

'Standing Athwart History Shouting: 'Fuck Me Up the Ass!'

Kathy Shaidle pisses off the beta males of National Review.

Denounced by @KevinNR, my 'Standing Athwart History Shouting: 'F Me Up the Ass' column now has 350+ comments! http://t.co/CGKNt8pNpZ #tcot

— Kathy Shaidle (@kshaidle) June 3, 2015

Arianna Vissarionovich Stalin

Heh.

I did read the Gawker piece, and it's good. I just don't care to post links to any of Nick Denton's properties, but I'll embed tweets and folks can click through.

The Huffington Post? Or a Stalinist state? http://t.co/Bv1BXrdvid

— R.M. Schneiderman (@RMSchneiderman) June 2, 2015

Drive Safely!

And don't wait until the last second to make that lane change!

Found on Facebook, heh.

Caitlyn Jenner is Cliché

From Christopher Knight, at the Los Angeles Times, "Caitlyn Jenner's courage is bold, Annie Leibovitz's portrait cliched":

Everybody is required to play along in the game of Celebrity Fantasy Dress Up With "Caitlyn" or else you're a HATER!

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 2, 2015

I'm happy to call Bruce Caitlyn because people can switch names. I will not call him a woman because he isn't one.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 2, 2015

In recent years, the LGBT civil rights movement has been making huge strides. It has taken decades, but transgender men and women are now an essential part of the necessary equality mix. Jenner, by effectively stage-managing her transition, has largely avoided what could have been a cruel and ugly scenario.

Yet the Vanity Fair photograph seems a missed opportunity — a picture from the past rather than the present. Maybe that's because all its conventional, glamour-girl signals weigh down the lively fluidity swirling at the center of gender identity.

Leibovitz and Jenner, photographer and subject, are both 65. They were raised in an era when gender ideas were more stable, fixed and binary than they are today.

In 1991, Los Angeles photographer Catherine Opie blew up those inflexible conventions in a now famous suite of 13 color photographs titled "Being and Having." The artist shot tight, close-up portraits of lesbian friends against screaming yellow backgrounds. Each suddenly ambiguous face sports an exaggerated mustache, beard, sideburns or other masculine props — tattoos, piercings, a do-rag or shades.

Fakery and play mingle with authenticity and solemnity. In these iconic images, identity is a question, not an answer. Homosexuality unfolds as something marvelously heterogeneous.

By coincidence, the series followed the 1990 publication of "Gender Trouble," the landmark book by UC Berkeley philosopher Judith Butler pointedly subtitled "Feminism and the Subversion of Identity." In it, she persuasively argued that gender is not rooted in biological fact but in culturally determined symbols, signs and images.

Butler's trailblazing notion is that gender isn't natural — it's a performance. But Jenner's performance on the cover of Vanity Fair is predictable.

During her celebrated career, Leibovitz has made many photographs that skillfully represent popular symbols. She has pictured dozens of celebrity subjects as visual puns.

The New York artist Christo stands in Central Park wrapped up like one of his sculptures, mummified in his art. Paralyzed Marine Corps veteran and antiwar activist Ron Kovic is seated in his wheelchair at the shallow edge of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica — a man of peace "walking" on water.

Lauren Hutton is sprawled naked in the Mississippi mud, an all-American Earth mother. Bette Midler, publicizing her Oscar-nominated role as a doomed pop star in 1979's "The Rose," lies sprawled beneath a dense tangle of crimson buds — life is a bed of roses, albeit hiding thorns.

Leibovitz's Caitlyn Jenner is a newfangled Vargas girl, one of those airbrushed cuties from the old pages of Playboy. Is that all there is?

RTWT.

Terror Suspect Usaama Rahim Killed by FBI in Boston

At Jihad Watch, "Boston: Jihad terror suspect shot after threatening cops with military knife," and "Slain Boston jihadi “radicalized by ISIS,” part of terror network."

Usaama Rahim allegedly wielded large, military knife before he was shot, killed in Roslindale http://t.co/Bjm5RLXBYE pic.twitter.com/nPLvfsbRTC

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 3, 2015

'He was someone we were watching for quite a time,' police said of man who was shot and killed in Roslindale http://t.co/zs9AQOj78I

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 3, 2015

Man shot and killed by police in Roslindale was under 24-hour surveillance http://t.co/nGhwCKnVju pic.twitter.com/nm5DFMNxAS

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 2, 2015

Darla Renee Jackson, Suspect in San Diego Road Rage Death, Pleads Not Guilty

This case is freakin' hardcore.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "DA: Road-rage death was 'intentional act': Woman accused of running over a motorcyclist on I-5 in Chula Vista":

CHULA VISTA — A 25-year-old Imperial Beach woman deliberately ran over over a motorcyclist on a South County freeway "in a purposeful and intentional act”, a prosecutor told a judge Tuesday.

Darla Renee Jackson pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder in the hearing.

Jackson was in her Nissan Altima Thursday when she and motorcyclist Zacharias Buob, a 39-year-old chief petty officer in the Navy, got into a dispute on north Interstate 5 near E Street about 5:30 p.m. Thursday, California Highway Patrol officers said.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Evans described it in court as “some sort of back-and-forth altercation” between the two.

The dispute continued as the two vehicles transitioned from I-5 to state Route 54, where Jackson chased the victim, crossing into all lanes of traffic, and then hit the back of his Ducati, Evans said. Jackson is accused of pushing the bike some 300 feet until both Buob and the motorcycle went down. Her car then ran Buob over, the prosecutor said. He died at the hospital.

Evans told the judge witness accounts indicated “this was a purposeful and intentional act.”

“She endangered the life of herself, other motorists and ultimately killed the victim in this case,” Evans said.

The prosecutor argued for $3 million bail, citing the danger Jackson poses to the community, but Chula Vista Superior Court Judge Patricia Garcia said $1 million bail was sufficient.

Defense attorney Stephen Cline said Jackson’s version of events differed from that of authorities, saying after the hearing that she told him Buob kicked her car and they later collided.

Jackson, her hands shackled at her waist, trembled and rocked in her chair as she cried during the short hearing.

“She’s very sorry, she’s very upset and she’s very traumatized,” Cline said outside the courthouse.

More.

Shop for Father's Day

At Amazon:

New #ObamaCare Rate Hikes On the Way — Insurers Seek Massive Increases!

Hey, it's working just as critics said it would!

At WSJ, "More Health-Care Insurers Seek Big Premium Increases":

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration published more information Monday about hefty premium increases for 2016 sought by large insurers selling plans under the health law.

Major carriers from around the country are proposing big increases in the premium rates paid by consumers who buy insurance policies on their own.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois is looking to raise rates by averages of 29% or more. In Pennsylvania, Highmark Health Insurance Co. is asking for 30%, according to proposals submitted by insurers for the year ahead. Around the country, some of the main market leaders are looking for double digit increases.

The new requests for premiums come at a time when the political and legal future of the law hangs in the balance. The Supreme Court is set to issue a decision later this month on the validity of the law’s tax credits to offset the cost of premiums for lower-income consumers in most states in the country.

Republicans opposed to the health law still plan to make it part of their 2016 election campaign, and for the law’s Democratic supporters, the proposed rate increases mean a tough conversation about how the law is working.

Some of the significant increases being sought were first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

As part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, insurers must justify increases of 10% or more to the Obama administration, which published those explanations online Monday. The administration cannot force insurers to reduce rates, but many state regulators can negotiate with health plans, and the rates could come down.

The Obama administration sought to emphasize that point on Monday.

“The rate review process kicks off an important set of steps designed to provide consumers and others the opportunity to weigh in on proposed rate increases of 10% or more,” said Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health law’s implementation. “These specific rates will be subject to vigorous rate review and revision.”

Some of the insurers couldn’t immediately be reached for comment following the Department of Health and Human Services’ publication of the data Monday.

But Greg Thompson, a spokesman for the Illinois insurer, said rate proposals reflected the health plan’s medical claims, and noted provisions in the health law that require insurers to spend the vast majority of premium income on claims or refund the difference to consumers.

Other insurers also have said their rates for the year ahead reflect the impact of the law’s sweeping changes to the way health insurance is sold and priced.

Under the health law, plans have to sell coverage to everyone, regardless of their medical history, and can’t charge people who are more seriously ill higher rates. Health-plan officials say that means they are bearing bigger medical claims than they had expected.

Moreover, insurers have said they face substantial pent-up demand for health-care services from the newly enrolled, including for expensive drugs.

Consumer groups contend they want state and federal regulators to be as tough as they can on insurers’ requests to raise rates...

More.

Dick Cheney Ramping Up New Policy Push

I mentioned the new book coming out previously, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

I'm looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Journal, "Former vice president to release book and mount lobbying campaign that is likely to play into 2016 presidential election":

CASPER, Wyo.—Few people noticed the 74-year-old in the tan Stetson at a high-school rodeo here. Dick Cheney was happy to blend in.

That is about to change. The former vice president is looking to make a splash on the national stage with a new book to be published in September and a group he and his daughter Liz launched to advance their views.

The effort is sure to play directly into the 2016 presidential debate, in which national-security policy is already a point of difference between the Republican candidates, many of whom are looking to turn the page on George W. Bush’s administration.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, Mr. Cheney previewed some of his likely positions:

• He characterized one leading GOP contender, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, as an isolationist. “He knows I think of him as an isolationist, and it offends him deeply,” Mr. Cheney said. “But it’s true.”

• An early critic of nuclear talks with Iran, he thinks the U.S. should be prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also favors additional arms shipments to U.S. allies in Eastern Europe and further military exercises in Poland to send a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• And he scoffed at the debate that tripped up Mr. Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, over whether or not he would have invaded Iraq with the virtue of hindsight. (Mr. Bush, after some back and forth, eventually said he wouldn’t). Mr. Cheney instead said Republicans should scrutinize the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq under President Barack Obama.

Mr. Cheney’s overarching message, and the theme of the book he is co-authoring with his daughter Liz Cheney, is that the U.S. needs to assert itself more on the world stage. “We thought, looking forward to 2016, it was very important to make sure those issues were front and center in the campaign,” he said.

By weighing in, Mr. Cheney is bound to make himself a flash point in the 2016 debate, stoking further questions about which policies of the George W. Bush administration Republicans embrace and which they reject, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the bulk collection of phone records and interrogation policy. That could prove particularly uncomfortable for Jeb Bush, who has struggled to define himself apart from his brother.

Mr. Cheney already exerts quiet influence over his party, making semiregular trips to the Capitol to address House Republicans and advising some GOP White House hopefuls. He wouldn’t discuss those conversations. Two of his top foreign-policy aides have signed on with Jeb Bush. And he is headlining donor events all over the country for the Republican National Committee.

“The party is very fortunate to have an active and engaged Dick Cheney for this upcoming political cycle,” said Reince Priebus, the party’s chairman, noting the number of candidates and elected officials who turn to the former vice president for advice. “He’s a top fundraising draw, in high demand.”

Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said “there’s no one happier about Dick Cheney becoming a foreign policy surrogate than we are…If he needs any assistance getting out his message, our team would be happy to help book him for interviews.”

Keep reading.

Blacks 75 Percent More Likely to Get Pulled Over in Missouri

Blah, blah, blah.

After everything else in Ferguson has turned sour for the race-baiting left, here's the ho-hum racial "disparity" statistics on Missouri traffic stops.

At the New York Times, "Missouri Reports Wide Racial Disparity in Traffic Stops."

And at 41 Action News Kansas City, "Report: Major racial disparity in Missouri traffic stops."

RELATED: For common sense perspective, see Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Ferguson’s Unasked Questions: In the Missouri city and elsewhere, the media clings to predetermined conclusions."

Albert Pujols Homers Twice, Mike Trout and David Freese Also Go Yard, in #Angels 7-3 Victory Over Tampa Bay

The boys are on fire, finally.

At the O.C. Register, "Final: Trout and Pujols homer to lead Angels over Rays, 7-3."

#HaloRecap: #Angels keep their bats hot with home runs from @PujolsFive, @MikeTrout & @Freeser6 in tonight's victory! pic.twitter.com/BrIQeyHrh0

— Angels (@Angels) June 2, 2015

Introducing Caitlyn Jenner

The obligatory Caitlyn Jenner transgender debut post.

See the reactions at Memeorandum.

I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

Another Jenner world record, and at 65? Who'da thought! Humbled & honored to have reached 1M followers in 4 hrs. Thank you for your support.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

I'll call you Caitlyn but you're still just a dude who tucks his dick between his legs😂😂😂 #CaitlynJenner pic.twitter.com/z1QzmUjQaT

— The Anti-Feminist (@FemsHaveBallz) June 1, 2015

What is it with trannies that they feel they have to dress like sluts? For God’s sake, you’re 65 years old. Decency! https://t.co/lerU80YnoC

— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 1, 2015