EXPANSIVE RECESS APPOINTMENTS: “No Instrument Could Long Endure Such Experiments.”

RICH LOWRY: The Bad-Faith Presidency.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Should We Bail Out Insolvent Cities?

AT AMAZON, deals on clothing from Outdoor Research.

Plus, great Holiday Deals on Automotive Parts & Accessories.

And, today only: Up to 40% Off Select Networking & Digital Storage.

Also today only:Logitech Harmony Smart Control Remote, $89.99 (25% off).

UPDATE: Outdoor Research link isn’t working. Not sure why — it was working this morning. Sorry!

WILL BAUDE: Our Constitutional Law Scholars’ Amicus Brief on Recess Appointments.

WELL, SOMEBODY IN D.C. HAS TO DO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM: Head of scandal-plagued FMCS to resign following Washington Examiner series. “Among the problems were incidents in which FMCS employees paid $85,000 to an apparently non-existent company established by a just-retired FMCS colleague, Charles Burton, with no one able to say why it was chosen or what services were provided. In another incident, a former top employee, Dan W. Funkhouser, billed multiple personal expenses such as cellphone lines for family members, and continued having the agency pay for items such as a storage facility full of photo albums, an old bed, and a lawn mower after he had retired.”

Love this anonymous quote from a worker: “Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?”

JAMES TARANTO: Excuses, Excuses: The dog ate Obama’s health-care reform.

It was a fundraising pitch–not from OFA but from The Yes Men, an Alinskyite group of merry pranksters (or, in their self-description, a “raggedy group of anti-corporate weirdos”). The note from “Obama” was a satire from the left–and it was pitch-perfect up until the Cuba reference, which descended into self-parody. The Yes Men no doubt believe Cuba’s health-care system is better than America’s. Maybe the OFA guys do too, but if so, they’re savvy enough to keep it to themselves.

Not everyone on the left has turned against Obama in such a hilarious fashion. But among those who are defending ObamaCare–which is to say, making excuses for failure–some are equally hilarious, if unwittingly so.

Over the weekend Joe Nocera of the New York Times weighed in on the question of which of history’s political disasters ObamaCare most resembles. His answer: the 1961 effort by a CIA-trained paramilitary to topple Cuba’s superior health-care system.

Big difference: If the Bay of Pigs had succeeded, that would have been good for freedom. But it’s better for freedom that ObamaCare is failing.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Dana Milbank: Obama’s photo policy smacks of propaganda. Funny, a reference to Obama and Stalin used to mean you were a doubleplusungood racist bitterclinger.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: ‘Non-partisan’ group paid $1 million to produce positive Obamacare stories.

ROBERT SAMUELSON: Obama’s Broken Promise, Chapter Two:

President Obama’s broken promise about people being able to keep their existing health insurance is much larger than we’ve been led to believe. Until now, attention has focused on the individual insurance market: people buying coverage for themselves and their families from insurance companies. Policies have been canceled because they don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But the individual market is small, representing about 5 percent of the non-elderly population, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. What’s unappreciated is that cancellations, under today’s law, will ultimately spread to the largest insurance market: employer-provided coverage.

So Chapter Two of the broken promise looms. In 2012, 171 million Americans received health insurance from their employers, reports the Census Bureau. This dwarfs Medicaid (51 million) and Medicare (49 million), the next largest sources. Given the ACA’s complexity, it’s hard to know how many Americans with employer coverage might be hit by policy cancellations. But plausible assumptions suggest between 25 million and 50 million, mostly at small firms.

But people will still be able to afford these.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: Following up on Joe Biden’s promise that Fisker Auto would be a multibillion dollar return on investment for taxpayers.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER MAGNIFYING GLASS. Democrats eagerly seeking signs of success with health-care law. “The political blowback from the troubled launch of the federal Web site has been especially concerning to Senate Democrats, who have been divided on how to deal with the implementation missteps. In addition to the functionality troubles of HealthCare.gov, millions of Americans have been getting cancellation notices about current health plans that fail to meet new standards set by the law. Those notices are a direct contradiction of the promise Obama made as the law was being debated in Congress and the country; he repeatedly said that people who liked the health insurance they had could keep it. The cancellations have been a political boon to Republicans.” Ya think?

ED DRISCOLL: Interview: Kevin D. Williamson on What Doomed Detroit. “Detroit is a case of the parasite having outgrown the host.”

Williamson’s book is, er, What Doomed Detroit.

GIMME DAT OL’ TIME FASCISM: SF Protesters to Obama: Please be a Dictator! “There are two ways to interpret these bizarre theatrical skits involving Obama and his supporters.”

IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, YOU ALSO NEED DOCTORS: Who Will Treat Those New Medicaid Patients From the Obamacare Exchanges? “Health care providers are showing a certain lack of enthusiasm about the Affordable Care Act. Because of low reimbursement and bureaucratic headaches, both state and national surveys showing physicians unenthusiastic about seeing patients who get coverage through the Obamacare exchanges. And that’s for private insurance. But Healthcare.gov and the state exchanges have been more successful so far at signing people up for Medicaid than private plans—and many Medicaid patients are already having trouble finding doctors. So…Who is going to see these new Medicaid enrollees?”

I suppose the plan is just to conscript physicians. That’s how these people think.

HERE’S MY RECIPE FOR Thanksgiving Leg Of Lamb. I’m cooking three of them, plus a turkey, tomorrow. It’s the 20th year (dating back to before we were married, but after we began cohabiting) that Helen and I have done Thanksgiving for both of our families. The first time, one turkey was enough. But our tribe increaseth.

MILITARY ROBOTS AND TERMINATOR ETHICS. If you want ethical killing machines, I suggest a different science fictional reference.

CAUSE AND EFFECT: First Al Gore goes vegan, now this: Emissions of Methane in U.S. Exceed Estimates, Study Finds. Those bean burritos are killing the planet, Al.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WE’D SEE A RETURN TO J. EDGAR HOOVER-STYLE PRURIENCE. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit ‘Radicalizers.’

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN ON THE NUCLEAR OPTION: “The Senate’s use of the nuclear option pins any defects in the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) on the Democrats. Until the nuclear option was used, Democrats said that they had to pass an arguably defective bill because they could not get around a minority Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. In other words, although the Senate was able to invoke cloture and pass the ACA when it had Senate Ted Kennedy’s vote, once he died and was replaced by Senator Scott Brown, the Democratic majority in the Senate was unable to pass an alternative bill or substantively amend the ACA. But the use of the nuclear option undercuts that narrative. We now know that the Democratic majority always had the ability to change the rules and to end debate on any amendment or amendments to the ACA. The Senate Democratic majority always had the power to terminate debate—it is just that the Senate Democratic majority refused to exercise that power.”

ACTUALLY, GIVEN THEIR TRACK RECORD, I THINK IT’S TREASURY AND THE IRS WHO SHOULD COME UNDER STRICTER REGULATION: Treasury, IRS Propose New Nonprofit Rules. “Politically active tax-exempt groups, which spent tens of millions in the previous election without disclosing their donors, would face tighter restrictions under new guidelines proposed Tuesday by the Treasury Department and the IRS.” I’m sure that the “nonpartisan” Organizing For America will be targeted first.

THE HILL: White House faces tough court fight on ObamaCare mandate.

The Obama administration faces a tough task in convincing the Supreme Court to rule in favor of ObamaCare’s contraception mandate, according to legal experts.

They say Chief Justice John Roberts’s court, which upheld the health law in a landmark 2012 decision, has generally set a high bar for limiting religious rights.

In addition, Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the court’s swing vote, authored a 1993 decision that exempted a religious group from following laws it said were contradictory with its beliefs.

The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would consider the case, possibly in its spring term.

While Hobby Lobby and other businesses opposed to the mandate don’t have a slam dunk case, experts said it will be tough to convince the court that the federal government can order businesses to pay for contraception coverage that goes against their owners’ religious beliefs.

“I think there’s a strong argument that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, in this particular case, would allow Hobby Lobby to deny certain contraception coverage without having to pay the fine that would otherwise be imposed them under the Affordable Care Act,” said Kurt Lash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Illinois.

The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act prevents the government from “substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion” unless it “furthers a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

Ironically, if the Scalia view on religious freedom held, without the federal goverment’s self-imposed statutory restriction sunder RFRA (which was very popular with Dems when passed), this would be an easy win for the Administration.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Obamacare troubles wipe out Democrats’ lead in polls.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Demise of Dickinson Law School? “While the faculty was fighting over the wedding china and custody of the kids, enrollment and revenue were both collapsing.”

Related: Penn State offers grants for in-state law students to reverse drop in applications.

SHOCKER: ID Verification Lagging on Health Care Website. “Just days before the Obama administration’s self-imposed deadline to fix the troubled federal health insurance website, officials said Monday that they were aware of another problem that has prevented thousands of people who were unable to verify their identity from shopping for health plans. . . . Administration officials said the government had established strict procedures to verify that people applying for insurance were who they said they were, in order to prevent fraud and identity theft. But a breakdown in the process instead is causing concern among some consumers about the handling of their personal information.”