ERIK SOFGE: Tom Clancy’s Legacy: The Military-Entertainment Complex.

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Toys & Games.

Also, stock up before winter storms hit at the Amazon Emergency Essentials Store.

ANALYSIS: Why the Range Rover-Chasing New York Bikers Look Like Idiots. Someone who tried that sort of thing in, say, Knox County would have a good chance of being shot. Which is good, because that makes it much less likely.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Weapons You Won’t Believe Are Legal.

SCIENCE: New Questions Raised About Italian Cardiological Research.

WELL, YES: The Tea Party Movement Was Born Under George W. Bush. Glad to see the reference to PorkBusters, too.

VIDEO: Why Doesn’t “Heartless Harry” Reid Care About Kids With Cancer?

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “I’ve Made Some Bad Choices With Men.”

HMM: IRS Waives Individual Mandate For Americans Living Abroad. Where does the power for all these waivers and exemptions come from?

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Lawyer who criticized federal judges loses license for 5 years, calls state’s top court ‘corrupt.’

SHUTDOWN PRIORITIES: Grocery stores on Army bases in the U.S. are closed. The golf course at Andrews Air Force base is open. Well, of course. That’s Barack’s golf course.

UPDATE: Is it really necessary to shut down all the monuments in Washington? Some say President Obama is messing with vets out of cold political calculation.

Related: White House Ordering Hundreds of Privately Run, Privately Funded Parks to Close. “We are like prisoners of war who have to pay for our prison.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 147.

JONATHAN ADLER: Why the 14th Amendment Option Is Not on the Table. “The argument that the President could unilaterally breach the debt ceiling is one of those constitutional arguments that may seem superficially appealing, but that falls apart under scrutiny. As Laurence Tribe has pointed out, such a move would entail the usurpation of a power expressly delegated to the legislature and cause the very evil — calling the nation’s debts into question — that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment was drafted to prevent.”

It would, I believe, be grounds for declaring the President a usurper and illegitimate, fit not only for impeachment, but for having all of his actions disregarded from that point on; it could be the trigger for something like a civil war. I think the White House agrees, which is why they aren’t buying this argument put forth by law professors with more ingenuity than political sense.

AUSTIN BAY: The National Security Threat of Big Debt.

TRYING TO FIGURE OUT why ObamaCare websites suck.

The White House has released the most recent numbers on visitors to healthcare.gov — 4.7 million unique visitors, reported Jake Tapper on Twitter (presumably, he means since the Oct. 1 launch). Other accounts put the number of visitors on the first day at 2.8 million. According to Tapper, the White House claims not to know how many people have enrolled. The cynic in me wonders if that number isn’t in the single digits.

No one I know has managed to create an account on the federal exchanges, as opposed to those operated by the states. Either they’re stopped at a “please wait” page that never does move them onto enrollment, or they get to the enrollment page and are presented with drop-down list of security questions — an empty drop-down list. I tried putting random words in the boxes and hit “enter;” that brought me to a screen announcing that an account couldn’t be created at this time. Most people, though, got stopped at the security questions. Apparently some folks got through, only to be routed back out to the beginning of the account-creation process.

4.7 million uniques in a bit over 24 hours isn’t that much — it’s in the neighborhood of what I get in a month, and sometimes I get significantly more — and InstaPundit runs pretty reliably. Sure, it’s just a blog — but it’s also, you know, just a blog, not a major IT project backed by 3 years of effort and the resources of the federal government. So if I can handle something over one-thirtieth of the traffic of the nationwide ObamaCare exchange network without a hiccup, why do they suck so badly? If the proffered explanations at the link are correct, it’s because nobody involved knew how to design a website. Maybe they should’ve hired Stacy Tabb. . . .

Meanwhile, the traffic in Connecticut doesn’t look exactly overwhelming: “Today, the CT health exchange @AccessHealthCT received 28k visitors, and took 167 applications for health insurance. Day 1.”

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN: “Listen, we’re all *possibly* Frank Sinatra’s son.”

“THEY WERE TREATING ME LIKE A CRIMINAL:” California High School Student Ordered To Remove Her NRA T-Shirt. More evidence that sending your kids to public school borders on child abuse. . . .

It’s Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills. The principal’s name is Kimberly Fricker. Even more disgraceful, she attributes the ban to “school police.”

HOW INTERNET CENSORSHIP ACTUALLY WORKS IN CHINA: Studies show that the government permits some dissent online—but strikes down hard on calls for collective action. So, kinda like the IRS and the Tea Party, then?

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Fall Outlet Event.

Also, save up to 20% on select water bottles.

And, today only: Waste King Legend Series Continuous-Feed Garbage Disposal, $87.97 (74% off). And if you’re thinking garbage disposals — and hey, who isn’t? — you can also take an extra 15% off select Insinkerator Evolution disposals.

SHOSHANA BRYEN: ATF: Lost Guns, Cigarettes, and Credibility. “We learn ATF employed the same crime-facilitating strategy behind Fast and Furious with illegal smokes.”

YEAH, I’M SUPER COMFORTED WITH THESE TWO ON THE JOB: Kerry, Hagel: U.S. won’t be fooled by Iran. If only Joe Biden were involved, too. . . .

JAMES TARANTO: Brendan Mahoney Saves ObamaCare: Great news! They got a 30-year-old dude to sign up!

He tried logging in to the exchange’s website at 8:45 a.m. yesterday, which is impressive in itself. Most young people don’t get up that early. “He said the system could not verify his identity.” So he called the toll-free help line, whose operator also encountered computer trouble. “But then he logged on a second time, he said, and the system worked.”

“Once it got running, it was fast,” Mahoney tells the Courant. “It really made my day. It’s a lot like TurboTax.” He obtained insurance through ObamaCare. Now, he says, “if I get sick, I’ll definitely go to the doctor.” Even better, if he stays healthy, he won’t need to go to a doctor, and his premiums will support chronically ill policyholders on the wrong side of 40.

So, how much of a premium is strapping young Brendan Mahoney paying to help make ObamaCare work? Oops. The Courant reports that Mahoney “said that by filling out the application online, he discovered he was eligible for Medicaid. So, beginning next year, he won’t pay any premium at all.”

So the great success story of ObamaCare’s first day is the transformation of a future lawyer who was already paying for insurance into a welfare case.

Sadly, I think they probably do regard that as a success. They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

RADLEY BALKO: The last two weeks are a mighty powerful argument for giving politicians as little control over our lives as we possibly can.

Hell, it’s just over three weeks ago they were still telling us that it was absolutely essential we bomb Syria right away.

AN EERIE SNAPSHOT of Obama’s America.