PREFERENCES: 1 in 5 Bought Ford Because It Didn’t Take A Bailout.

CHANGING THE CONSTITUTION: My Sunday Washington Examiner column is up.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

We often hear lamentations about declining educational quality, but the focus is usually misplaced on SAT scores and graduation rates. Missing from the conversation is the quality of what’s being taught. Meanwhile, we are mistakenly wed to the notion that more people going to college means more people will find jobs.

Obviously the weak economy is a factor in the highest unemployment rate for those ages 16 to 29 since World War II. But there’s more to the story. Fundamentally, students aren’t learning what they need to compete for the jobs that do exist.

Do tell.

SHOCKER: Bill Clinton, seemingly preening about himself, takes a devious shot at Obama.

PAUL RYAN: Jeffrey Sachs is only the latest in a long line of thinkers to reject the values of our commercial republic.

Sachs is ready to do for America’s economy what he did for Russia’s in the 1990s. Is that too mean? Nah.

MIKE RIGGS: Update on Wrong-House Raid in Alameda: “I remember the guns pointing at my face when I look at my front door. Every. Single. Time.” There should be no official immunity for no-knock raids. Get the wrong house, and you’re naked.

UPDATE: Reader Ron Shrewsbury corrects me, noting that this was a wrong-house raid, but that they did pound on the door according to the report, adding: “It’s not clear if he answered the door or if they then broke in. The real question in this story is whether or not it’s proper to have firearms drawn and ready to use when conducting an arrest of someone who ‘…made bail after being arrested in August in connection with an indoor marijuana-growing operation….'” And who wasn’t there, which they could have discovered with a little basic pre-raid research.

AT AMAZON, it’s a coupon-a-rama.

WELL, WE’LL KNOW TUESDAY: Even The Experts Can’t Call West Virginia’s Gubernatorial Race. “This unsettled race matches acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, 59, against Republican Bill Maloney, 52, of Morgantown. Tomblin is a teacher and businessman from Chapmanville who spent 36 years in the legislature. Maloney, an industrial engineer and drilling company owner, is making his first run for political office. . . . Analysts consider Tomblin and Maloney, conservatives with similar campaign platforms, to be likeable candidates. Yet this election, they say, might not be about just the candidates. It could be colored by anti-incumbency filtering down from an increasing dislike of Washington’s economic and domestic policies.”

The key question: “People have been voting for Democrats in this area for generations, and where’s it gotten them?” Well, a whole bunch of buildings named after Robert Byrd, for one thing.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): House Is Gone but Debt Lives On. “Some close observers of the housing scene are convinced this is just the beginning of a surge in deficiency judgments. Sharon Bock, clerk and comptroller of Palm Beach County, Fla., expects ‘a massive wave of these cases as banks start selling the judgments to debt collectors.’ In a paradox of the battered housing industry, trying to squeeze more money out of distressed borrowers contrasts with other initiatives that aim instead to help struggling homeowners, including by reducing what they owe.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD DEFENDS OBAMA against charges that the President is an “assassin.” But Mead also observes:

The President has created some of the confusion in our debate. Frequently during the campaign, sometimes even in office, he has spoken as if he is the head of a criminal investigation team. When it comes to actual decisions, however, he acts like a military leader at war. Greenwald and Paul appear to believe that he is a policeman and needs to start acting more like one; I believe he is a war leader and needs to start talking more like one.

An odd omission for such a famous communicator.

UPDATE: Brian Dunn on responsibility to protect.

DRONE KILLS: More on the legality of the Al-Awlaki killing. “The US position is that the standard for addressing non-state actor terrorists taking safe haven somewhere depends on whether the sovereign where the terrorist is hiding is ‘unwilling or unable’ to address the threat. No, there won’t be Predators Over Paris; Yemen or Somalia is another matter, as President Obama has repeatedly and without cavil said in speeches over the last few years. And indeed, as the President said in his statement yesterday on the raid – no safe havens anywhere. . . . The reality, of course, is that this is not like any other armed conflict. Though the US government had firm grounds domestically and internationally to target Al-Aulaqi simply as an operational participant in a group engaged in armed conflict against the United States, as a matter of forward-looking legal policy, the US should elaborate more extensive and explicit oversight procedures in the case of targeting of US citizens, in part to ensure the domestic legitimacy of the process and in order to ensure the buy-in of the political branches.”

In the comments, I note some discussion about whether “incitement” to terrorism could constitute a sufficiently direct participation in hostilities. I express no opinion on that subject, but I’ll note that the International Tribunal For Rwanda convicted government officials for incitement to genocide and sent them to jail for 30 years. If incitement is sufficiently direct to support such a conviction by an international human-rights tribunal, then why wouldn’t it be sufficiently direct to justify a killing in self-defense? There may be a good argument in favor of this distinction, but — at least while still on my first cup of coffee — I can’t think of one offhand.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 5 Weird Things People Are Stealing While the Economy’s in Bad Shape.

INFOGRAPHIC: The Obama Presidency, By The Numbers.

ICC PROSECUTOR: We need a Palestinian state so we can prosecute Israelis for war crimes.

FROM THE GO-LONG-ON-TAR-AND-FEATHER-STOCKS DEPARTMENT: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School. “An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her ability to earn the teacher’s license she had been working on. . . . Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.”

Related: Scottsdale man could face jail time over tree that violates city code. Even threatening jail time over offenses such as these should be punished by tar and feathers, or some other suitable public humiliation.

UPDATE: Reader John Steakley writes:

So let me get this straight: Elizabeth Warren says the kids at the better school should pay higher taxes (as adults) because everyone contributed to funding their school, but when one of the contributors wants to send her own kids there, it’s “stealing?”

Ms. Bolar-Williams either funded that school or she didn’t. If she did, it isn’t “stealing” to send her children there. If she didn’t, then those kids at the better school wont “owe” her their taxes as adults.

It can’t be both, if you ask me.

Which is why, John, you’ll never rise high in government . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mark Davis emails: “Two responses: 1) Does that mean all those illegal aliens sending kids to public school should be prosecuted for theft since they don’t legally reside in the district? 2) I thought an essential element to the crime of theft is the taking of some thing of value. Doesn’t that exclude public education?” Heh.

MARK STEYN: Finally, The Cognoscenti Ask: What Could We Be Thinking? “Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state legislature: That’s what America’s elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of ‘accomplishment.'”

IS A NEW RECESSION UNAVOIDABLE? I’m not sure we ever got rid of the old one.

REPORT: Herman Cain at TeaCon.

Not everyone was as well-received.

UPDATE: More on Herman Cain from John Steele Gordon.