FISHBOWL DC: The Weinerization of Booker’s Campaign: Stripper Friend Prefers ‘Real Meat.’

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 141.

TO THE EXTENT IT CAN, OF COURSE: Is Progressivism Derailing School Reform?

Over the past decade, a massive, bipartisan education reform movement has been gaining momentum, bringing together governors, teachers, school counselors, multiple presidential administrations, and idealistic young college students. It is the force behind programs like No Child Left Behind and the Common Core Curriculum, as well as a number of charter school and voucher programs at the state level.

While the reformers have poured their energy into scoring these policy victories, they haven’t built a group of leaders who can successfully implement them in schools around the country. At least, that’s the criticism levied by Frederick M. Hess in National Affairs. He notes that many ambitious reforms have been stymied by an education bureaucracy that has become nearly impervious to change. Yet rather than confront this problem, many reformers are content to celebrate and move on as soon as legislation is passed. . . .

This is why we have always been wary of reforms that attempt to impose from on high a uniform standard for the nation’s thousands of school districts. While we, too, share many of the convictions of the education reformers, we believe that America is simply too large and heterogenous a country for any Washington education bureaucracy to understand, much less manage. Instead, we would prefer a system that devolves as much power as possible to parents, allowing those with the greatest knowledge and the highest stake in the school systems to decide what is best for their districts. Vouchers remain the most promising way of accomplishing this.

Indeed.

OF COURSE: The Hill: Business Groups Woo Michelle Obama. “Companies that work with the first lady get the benefit of rubbing shoulders with the most popular person in the Obama White House.”

HEY, SALON, GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT: Despite your claim, I never called for Prof. Erik Loomis to be fired. Here’s what I said: “Not a firing offense, but certainly worthy of widespread mockery.” Kind of like Salon’s record for accurate reporting, I guess.

UPDATE: They’ve removed the “ringleader” claim in a stealth correction, with no acknowledgment of the original error. But I suppose that’s the most one can hope for with Salon.

YALE STUDENT ARGUES FOR lowered drinking age. I strongly recommend that the GOP get behind defederalizing the drinking age. Not only is it the right thing to do — the federal 21-year-old drinking age was a dumb idea of Liddy Dole’s and never should have been enacted into law — but it would help them with the youth vote. Seems like a natural issue for, say, Rand Paul, but any of the new Tea Party crowd in the Senate could run with this.

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IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: The Hill: Camp presses IRS over donor lists.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is pressing the IRS over whether conservative donors have been singled out for extra scrutiny.

The IRS acknowledged months ago that it had inappropriately asked for donor lists from some of the conservative organizations that it targeted.

But Steven Miller, the former acting IRS commissioner, also said those lists had been destroyed, and that the agency hadn’t used them to scrutinize Tea Party groups.

Camp said Wednesday that the IRS had handed over donor lists as part of the congressional investigation into the agency’s targeting, including as recently as last week.

“The agency testified that donor lists were destroyed, when in fact those lists are still being retained in IRS files,” Camp said. “I am concerned that donors may have been targeted for further scrutiny. I expect the IRS to get to the bottom of this issue and provide us with credible information that lay these concerns to rest.”

That’s not quite what I expect.

PATHETIC: Issa feared targeted by terrorists after Democrats revealed secret Libya trip. “A leaked State Department email indicates that officials were worried about the safety of House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa after Democrats revealed his plans for a secret trip to Libya this week. . . . Before Issa’s trip, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued a press release asking Issa to postpone his trip until he allows Democrats to join him.” Typical. Though in Cummings’ defense, who would have expected anyone to read one of his press releases?

THE GUN THAT DIDN’T SHOOT: How did the MSM get the D.C. Navy Yard shooting wrong? Let us count the ways.

ARE THE DEFECTIONS STARTING? Democratic Senator Supports Compromise to Delay Obamacare’s Individual Mandate.

DANIEL HENNINGER: Let ObamaCare Collapse.

As its Oct. 1 implementation date arrives, ObamaCare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its foundational beliefs. This thing called “ObamaCare” carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state. The chance is at hand to let its political underpinnings collapse, perhaps permanently.

If ObamaCare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people. It will finally be vulnerable to challenge and fundamental change. But no mere congressional vote can achieve that. Only the American people can kill ObamaCare.

No matter what Sen. Ted Cruz and his allies do, ObamaCare won’t die. It would return another day in some other incarnation. The Democrats would argue, rightly, that the ideas inside ObamaCare weren’t defeated. What the Democrats would lose is a vote in Congress, nothing more. . . .

An established political idea is like a vampire. Facts, opinions, votes, garlic: Nothing can make it die.

But there is one thing that can kill an established political idea. It will die if the public that embraced it abandons it.

Six months ago, that didn’t seem likely. Now it does.

The public’s dislike of ObamaCare isn’t growing with every new poll for reasons of philosophical attachment to notions of liberty and choice. Fear of ObamaCare is growing because a cascade of news suggests that ObamaCare is an impending catastrophe.

Big labor unions and smaller franchise restaurant owners want out. UPS dropped coverage for employed spouses. Corporations such as Walgreens and IBM IBM +0.40% are transferring employees or retirees into private insurance exchanges. Because of ObamaCare, the Cleveland Clinic has announced early retirements for staff and possible layoffs. The federal government this week made public its estimate of premium costs for the federal health-care exchanges. It is a morass, revealing the law’s underappreciated operational complexity.

But ObamaCare’s Achilles’ heel is technology. The software glitches are going to drive people insane.

The public never embraced ObamaCare. It was always unpopular.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I was at an event at the White House recently and found myself seated next to a prominent surgeon. We chatted through the meal and then I had to ask: “What do you think about Obamacare?” He looked around briefly and leaned in close. “I really shouldn’t say this here,” he said. “But I think they’ve already destroyed health care in this country.” And then he listed a host of ways he believes the law will make medical practice less efficient, less effective, and, something he says is too easily overlooked, less confidential. He was particularly upset that physicians will be required to record–and pass along to health officials–intimate details about patients’ sexual preferences and habits.

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: On To The Debt Ceiling. “With the nation headed toward fiscal disaster, Republicans can only regain some fiscal credibility if they show they are serious about cutting spending, and the next opportunity is the debt-limit debate. . . . A good principled debate is never a waste.”

BYRON YORK: Why should Congress get special exemption under Obamacare?

Back in 2009, when Democrats were writing the massive new national health care scheme, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley offered an amendment. Obamacare created exchanges through which millions of Americans would purchase “affordable” health coverage. Grassley’s amendment simply required lawmakers, staff, and some in the executive branch to get their insurance through the exchanges, too.

To every Republican’s amazement, Democrats accepted the amendment. It’s never been fully clear why; the best theory is they intended to take the provision out in conference committee, but couldn’t do so because they lost their filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. In any event, Obamacare — the law of the land, as supporters like to say — now requires Congress to buy its health care coverage through the exchanges.

That has caused Democratic panic as the formal arrival of Obamacare nears. Right now, all lawmakers and staff are entitled to enjoy generously-subsidized coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan. Why give up that subsidy and go on the exchanges like any average American?

But that’s the law. It could be amended, but Democrats, who voted unanimously for Obamacare, couldn’t very well expect much help from Republicans, who voted unanimously against it. So over the summer Democrats asked President Obama to simply create an Obamacare exception for Capitol Hill.

Read the whole thing.

THE ECONOMIST: The Missing Millions: Where Are The Jobs?

It is true that unemployment has slowly dropped from a peak of 10% in late 2009, to 7.3% at present. But this decline overstates the health of the jobs market.

The labour-force participation rate, the share of the working-age population either working or looking for work, has plunged from 66% in 2007 to 63.2% in August, a 35-year low. If those people who have simply dropped out of the labour force were classified as unemployed, the headline jobless rate would be much higher. This drop in the participation rate is striking by international standards, too. Among 34 (mainly rich-country) OECD countries, only in Ireland and Iceland did participation rates fall farther between 2007 and 2012. In Italy and Britain, where unemployment rates have risen by a roughly similar amount as in America, labour-force participation rose (see left-hand chart).

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

TRAINWRECK: SEIU unionists strike over Obamacare-related cuts. “Members of the Columbus, Ohio-based Service Employees International Union Local 1 have gone on strike over recent job cuts by a janitorial company called Professional Maintenance. The reason for the cuts? The employer says it is because of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. This is ironic since SEIU is a major supporter of the law.”

THE HILL: House Republicans lack votes to move plan to raise debt ceiling.

Also: Boehner: House unlikely to accept clean funding bill from Senate.

Plus: White House Adviser Compares Republicans To Terrorists.

Related: “Where’s the President in all this?”

And: Obama ‘absolutely’ rejects CR deal repealing medical device tax.

Finally: Harry Reid: Obamacare medical device tax is ‘stupid,’ Democrats oppose it, and I’ll fight to save it.

THOUGHTS ON LIFESPAN from Rand Simberg.

AT AMAZON, fall picks in Men’s Clothing. Hey, summer’s over.

Also, savings on tire gauges, tools, and inflators.

Plus, save 25% or more on select motor oil.

TODAY IN SELF-CONGRATULATORY SEXIST TWADDLE: Patty Murray: Congress Wouldn’t Be Such A Mess If Women Were In Charge.

OR YOU COULD JUST, YOU KNOW, GET A LIFE OR SOMETHING: 5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism.

FROM 1939, the first recorded version of The Lion Sleeps At Night.

21ST CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHS: High Altitude Skydiver Silhouetted Against Launching Rocket. That’s like something from the cover of the science fiction books I was reading as a teenager.

PRESSURED PARENTS PHENOMENON: “Why aren’t my kids playing sports or learning the cello?” I spent a lot of my teenage years lying on the sofa reading science fiction and drinking root beer. My mom says she just figured I was resting up for the remainder of my life. She was right. . . .