TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Covered California removes glitchy online directory of doctors. “The insurance exchange’s online search tool for doctors and hospitals has been offline since Oct. 9 while fixes are being made. That’s making it hard for consumers to pick insurance plans.”

HOPEY-CHANGEY: VIDEO — Obama Includes Attack on Bloggers, Talk Radio and the First Amendment in His Shutdown Touchdown Dance.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 161.

AND NOW, WORD FROM THE ACTUAL VOTERS: Dem ‘Referendum’ on Tea Party Fizzles: Booker Margin in N.J. Barely Half of Obama’s in 2012. “Democrats did everything they could to portray yesterday’s special election for a Senate seat in New Jersey as a referendum on Republicans and the Tea Party. They clearly fell short of their expectations as Democrat Cory Booker underperformed his showing in almost all the polls, and wound up winning by only 10.3 points. By contrast, President Obama won New Jersey by 18 points just last November. At the same time, Democratic senator Robert Menendez cruised to a 19-point victory over a veteran moderate Republican state senator. . . . Since the campaign culminated with the government shutdown in Washington, it can’t be said that voters rose up to protest Republicans as Obama and Booker urged. In defeat, Lonegan won a higher percentage of the vote for U.S. Senate than any Republican in the Garden State has gotten in a dozen years.”

So while it’s hard for a Republican to win in New Jersey, it’s even harder for a “veteran moderate” than for a Tea Party candidate.

JAMES TARANTO: The Pro-Discrimination Left: Not everyone thinks white people have constitutional rights.

The Declaration of Independence declared that “all men are created equal,” but the U.S. Constitution as originally ratified did not live up to that principle. By political necessity it permitted the continued enslavement of blacks and the attendant oppressive system of racial discrimination. Only after the Civil War, with the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, was this defect remedied, and the last two of those amendments were not meaningfully enforced until the culmination of the civil rights movement nearly a century thereafter.

That, at least, is the common understanding. A different view was expressed at the Supreme Court yesterday by Shanta Driver, lawyer for the unwieldily named Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary, or BAMN. In Schuette v. BAMN, the organization is challenging a provision of Amendment 2, a Michigan ballot initiative, that bans racial discrimination at the University of Michigan and other public institutions of higher education. . . .

Driver’s view of the 14th Amendment is a highly eccentric one–one that, as she acknowledges at the end, is without support in the court’s precedents. Even if the justices were to rule in BAMN’s favor–an outcome we think unlikely, for reasons we explained in a July 2011 column–they would not need to adopt Driver’s view that “equal protection of the laws” applies only to members of certain favored races.

Yet while Driver’s position is far outside the legal mainstream, it is well accepted within academia.

That’s true. The Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter went to a panel at one of my law conferences a few years ago and were surprised to hear someone say that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t protect white people, and in fact to go on to say that the entire Bill of Rights shouldn’t apply to white people because they were already privileged. I was unsurprised.

THE FIGHT OVER DEFAULT IS A FIGHT OVER THE “NEW NORMAL.” “Notwithstanding huge changes over time in economic, social, and political conditions, growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has fluctuated fairly closely around an average annual rate of approximately 2 percent. Looking ahead, however, there are strong reasons for doubting that this historic norm can be maintained. . . . The Republican Party may be frustrated by its inability to halt the growth of the welfare state. But congressional Democrats will probably soon find themselves equally frustrated by their inability to get voters to pay for it.”

DECOLONIZATION CAME TOO SOON:

Facing sectarian violence and a collapsing state, the Central African Republic (CAR) is soliciting intervention from its former colonial master. In March, a coup led by the Muslim Seleka rebel group removed President François Bozizé from office. Since then, the predominately Christian country has seen intense, armed conflict between Muslim rebels and Christian militias. With more than 440,000 displaced, the people of CAR are calling on France to step in and calm the situation down. . . .

The situation in CAR is one example of a storyline that is repeating itself in nations across Africa. The Christian-Muslim divide is generating economic and security breakdown, leading to calls for French intervention in a region where they were once reviled.

The US and France are sometimes unlikely partners, and here they share common concerns for the security situation across Africa. Though many of the issues tormenting the region aren’t religious in origin, local Muslim groups can easily be infiltrated by internationally connected and well-funded jihadis. This can quickly turn a local spat into a headache for everyone concerned about the phenomenon we are resolutely not calling the global war on terror.

And even without the Islamic angle, you’ve got things like Zimbabweans nostalgic for Rhodesia and Ian Smith, when at least they had jobs, food, and a reasonable degree of safety.

SOME THOUGHTS ON enjoying the decline.

AT AMAZON, deals on new sewing machines from Brother.

Also, deals on time-saving kitchen gear. Slow cookers, griddles, and more.

Plus, save on automotive cargo carriers.

INSTAVISION: Golf, Writing and the Bhagavad Gita: The Legend of Steven Pressfield. We talk about his new book, The Authentic Swing: Notes From The Writing Of A First Novel.

SPYING: DOJ Argues No One Has Standing To Challenge Metadata Collection Even As It Says Govt Can Legally Collect Everyone’s.

POINTS AND FIGURES: The Opportunity Is Now. “Yesterday I had a lot of fun talking to students at the University of Illinois in Champaign. In the afternoon, I spoke with an entrepreneurial class of business students. In the evening, engineers. I think more alums need to go back to their alma maters and interact with kids. It opens their eyes. I wish more alums would have done it when I went to college. Would have helped me learn.”

IT’S BECOME A RACKET: Richard Kahlenberg: The Terrible Fall of the Civil Rights Movement.

THE HILL: Lindsey Graham: Polls factored into GOP folding. The GOP has to deal with the problem posed by a hostile media. It’s like trying to mount an invasion when the enemy has air superiority.

SPYING: Secret court argues (again) that it’s not a rubber stamp for surveillance. “This week, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) defended his court as an adequate bureaucratic check on government surveillance, denying that the court is merely a ‘rubber stamp,’ as critics have argued.”

MICKEY KAUS: FORGET THE SHUTDOWN THEATER. Obamacare is in Crisis Now. Right Now. “It’s time to panic. Now. Why? Because the exchanges are the way to sign up young, healthy people and prevent the fabled “death spiral,” in which only older, sicker people sign up for insurance, causing rates to rise and healthier people to drop out, causing rates to rise even more, etc. Young people won’t make the effort to look up insurance companies on their own when they don’t really care that much about getting insurance anyway. They won’t try 50 times to use a balky web site.”

Plus, the whole enterprise just seems lame.

LIZ PEEK: How Obamacare Taught Millennials to Distrust Big Government.

Young people have grown up listening to parents and politicians who promise that the federal government will solve our problems. But, as they have suffered widespread unemployment, watched college costs soar and seen our legislators wrangling ineffectually, they have begun to doubt the wisdom of their elders. They have, it appears, lost faith in government.

According to an April survey by the Harvard Institute of Politics, only 39 percent of young voters count on President Obama to “do the right thing,” and only 22 percent trust the federal government. Those are shocking numbers for a group that turned out en masse to support Obama’s reelection.

This increasing wariness could become a life-long habit, just as faith in Washington was a hallmark of the millions who came of age during FDR’s reign or skepticism of Uncle Sam colored those who grew up listening to Ronald Reagan. With government programs spreading like an algae bloom and threatening our solvency, some pushback from the next generation could head off fiscal Armageddon. Today’s young people just need a little more convincing that the feds don’t have all the answers.

Well, that should be coming.

IT’S UNSAVORY ALL THE WAY DOWN: Obamacare’s unsavory navigators.

LEGAL PROFESSION UPDATE: 5 Threats Contract Attorneys Pose For Biglaw Associates.

HOW CONVENIENT: ObamaCare Exchange Website Also Offers Voter Registration For Some Reason.

SMART POLITICS: Sen. Rand Paul On NH Store Clerk: “If Someone Gives Him An Award, I Want To Fly Up And Present It.”

CONGRESS: House Stenographer Hauled From Floor.

As the bill sailed toward final passage, the presiding lawmaker suddenly began pounding the gavel. Witnesses on the floor said the woman, identified as Dianne Reidy, seized a microphone and began yelling during the vote.

She was then removed from the chamber by floor staff and taken into an adjacent elevator. She continued yelling as she was taken away, saying phrases such as “you cannot serve two masters” and “he will not be mocked.”

Sounds like an Obama supporter. . . .

ED DRISCOLL: Mystery Seventies Theater 3000.

SCIENCE: Russian Meteor Finally Recovered from the Bottom of a Lake.