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NEW FRONTIERS IN “IRISH DEMOCRACY:” My USA Today column is on how passive resistance is killing ObamaCare and the Drug War.

And reader Jeff Orwick sends another example of passive resistance: Connecticut scrambles for amnesty plan after realizing that citizens are refusing to register their “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines.

REMINDER: In 2009, Barack Obama “joked” about auditing his enemies.

SEXISM IN ADVERTISING: Why Does Procter & Gamble’s Olympic Ad Thank Only Moms?

RICH GALEN ON WENDY DAVIS: Why Fudging Your Resume Is Such A Problem In Politics.

STEPHEN GREEN: “Do Nothing Congress?” That’s A Compliment! Given most of the things that Congress does, that has to be true.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Eating Our Young. “It is popular now to talk of race, class, and gender oppression. But left out of this focus on supposed victim groups is the one truly targeted cohort — the young. Despite the Obama-era hype, we are not suffering new outbreaks of racism. Wendy Davis is not the poster girl for a resurgent misogyny. There is no epidemic of homophobia. Instead, if this administration’s policies are any guide, we are witnessing a pandemic of ephebiphobia — an utter disregard for young people. . . . In truth, no administration in recent memory has done more to harm young people.”

JOSH MARSHALL WONDERS WHY RICH PEOPLE FEEL PERSECUTED. Josh has a lot of psychological interpretations, but perhaps we should revisit something that Ed Driscoll guestblogged here a while back:

But hey, what could go wrong with such a speech? Other than America’s class warrior-in-chief might use soothing, diplomatic language that suggests getting opponents’ faces and punching back twice as hard? Or these earlier examples of the president’s pro-business rhetoric:

Here’s Barack Obama on the campaign trail, in February of 2008:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

There’s this quote from an attorney who deposed Chrysler’s president in May of 2009:

“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers… It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President’s automotive task force.”

“My administration,” the president told bank CEOs in April of 2009, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Obama as quoted by the New York Times in March of 2009 on AIG bonuses:

“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry,” Mr. Obama said, his voice reaching a peak seven days after learning of the bonuses given to employees of the American International Group. “What I want to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.”

Obama during the BP oil spill:

“I was down there a month ago, before most of these talkin’ heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago…I was meeting with fishermen down there, standin’ in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. and I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminare, we talk to these folks because they potentially…have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Obama in April of 2010, in the middle of a speech on Wall Street “reform” blurted out, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

In June of 2008, Jim Geraghty spotted this telling passage in a book by David Mendell titled Obama: From Promise to Power:

“[Obama] always talked about the New Rochelle train, the trains that took commuters to and from New York City, and he didn’t want to be on one of those trains every day,” said Jerry Kellman, the community organizer who enticed Obama to Chicago from his Manhattan office job. “The image of a life, not a dynamic life, of going through the motions… that was scary to him.”

That’s the pro-business president you want giving a “healing speech about class and inequality,” and urging “an end to attacks on the rich.”

Today at the Washington Post, former GWB speechwriter Michael Gerson notes that “The brand of the Obama reelection campaign, so far, is ruthlessness:”

Obama’s agenda, strategy and rhetoric are now solidly blue — perhaps for sound political reasons. But Obama’s talent for inspiration was the single most interesting thing about him as a politician. Without that aspiration, what is left of his appeal? This is the reason his Ohio speech seemed so boring, particularly in comparison to his speeches four years ago. There was little that couldn’t be said by any liberal politician, at any time. Obama has lost more than a campaign talking point; he has lost one of the main reasons for his rise.

What principle or purpose unites Obama’s initial campaign with his current reelection effort? There is little obvious continuity — apart from one, unchanging commitment. The cause that has outlasted hope and change is Obama himself.

There have always been two parts of Obama’s political persona, both of which were essential to his rapid advancement. There is the Hyde Park Obama, lecturing on constitutional law, quoting Reinhold Niebuhr and transcending old political divisions. There is also the South Side Obama, who rose in Chicago politics by doing what it takes.

This is not unusual. All politicians believe that their tenacity and competitiveness are servants to their idealism. But as the Hyde Park Obama fades, the South Side Obama becomes less appealing.

All of the atmospheric elements of politics — unity, bipartisanship and common purpose — are significantly worse than four years ago. This is not all Obama’s fault. But he is choosing — in a campaign so nasty, so early — to make it worse. At some point, ruthlessness just leaves ruins.

To paraphrase Peter Arnett, Obama apparently believes it’s necessary to destroy the country in order to save it.

So, you know, that kinda stuff might have something to do with it. Then, of course, there’s the IRS targeting, the Standard & Poor’s retaliation, and the like. You know, the basic political thuggishness for which Chicago politicians are known, and which Obama — despite the flavor of his 2008 campaign, now largely forgotten — now embodies. “When the President says something, it becomes policy.”

Anyway, that might explain things, for those having trouble grasping what’s going on. What’s interesting, though, is that a lot of lefties act genuinely puzzled that anyone could respond to this kind of behavior by feeling threatened or upset. But when a Republican Administration talks about keeping a boot on the neck of its enemies, perhaps they’ll understand. They’ve certainly gone crazy over far less.

But the real irony, of course, is that the very rich have been disproportionately supporters of Obama and other left-wing causes — I’m talking to you, Google folks — and if every billionaire in the country was hanged tomorrow, the toll would lean heavily toward Obama donors. So I guess Lenin got it wrong: The capitalists don’t sell the rope they’re hanged with. They donate it. Seems like a bad deal to me, but what do I know? I’m not a billionaire. But perhaps the people who are suffer from false consciousness. And maybe that’s breaking down now, which would explain why the lefties are so upset. . . .

UPDATE: Related thoughts here: “It starts at the top. The President of the United States has used his bully pulpit to openly criticize and try and create class division. He has used the emotions of envy, jealousy, and fear to get the movement started. . . . The income divide in the US is more a result of Federal Reserve and government policy than any technological change.”

NICK GILLESPIE: Will Rand Paul Mainstream Libertarianism on the Way to White House?

Here’s the NYT profile that Gillespie calls “required reading for anybody interested in knowing more about Paul and, arguably as important, how the mainstream views him and will likely view him over the next couple of years.”

If the Times wants to tie Rand Paul to his dad’s wackier views, is it unfair to connect Barack Obama to his dad’s wackier views? Because they were, you know, wackier.

But my advice to Rand Paul is to look to your staff, and shed those who might cause you trouble in a Presidential race. Because, as with your father, you won’t get the pass that, say, Obama got with Van Jones.

And if the Times profile gets more people to look into Lysander Spooner, so much the better, notwithstanding the NYT’s misrepresentation of Spooner’s character. They make him sound like a Confederate sympathizer, when he was in fact a radical abolitionist.

TAX ANALYSTS: Trying To Investigate The IRS Scandal, And Meeting “Fortress Secrecy.”

The latest chapter in Tax Analysts’ ongoing efforts to investigate what did and didn’t happen in the IRS’s self-admitted abuse of power in reviewing the tax-exempt applications of mostly conservative groups was written last week. If you didn’t know, that’s not surprising, because while it got some coverage, it didn’t get a lot and in some ways that makes sense. Other than the fact that the IRS released more documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, there wasn’t much news in those documents.

The IRS released the documents in response to a court order that Tax Analysts managed to obtain after the IRS had exhausted every excuse it could think of to delay – I was waiting for “the dog ate my homework” – and continued its whining over how mean we were being in asking it to be transparent to the American people. This is the third installment of documents – documents that are training materials – that the IRS has released and, generally, they haven’t been awfully helpful. And we believe that the odds are good that the IRS’s response to a document request that the agency itself agreed was important enough to get “expedited” treatment is not really a response at all. . . .

Anyone familiar with my writing knows that I have bent over backwards to give the IRS the benefit of the doubt in this black eye some call the “exemption scandal.” I must admit I’m getting a little tired of bending.

Back in the day, as the saying goes, I often referred to the IRS as Fortress Secrecy, a term meant to describe the agency’s obsession with hiding as much of its operations as it can get away with. I am not a casual observer, and I have never seen things this bad. Everything the IRS has done in addressing the exemption scandal leads to just one conclusion: that this agency now believes it is accountable to no one other than itself. Who is responsible for that?

Commissioner Koskinen, you have a problem. President Obama, you have a problem. America, we have a problem. An agency with this much power cannot be unaccountable to the citizens it was designed to serve.

I don’t know, they’ve gotten away with it so far.

ED DRISCOLL: 25 Years After the Fact, MSM Finally Condemns Al Gore’s Kristallnacht NY Times Op-Ed.

Well, not in so many words. But if you’re going to have a meltdown over Tom Perkins, the co-founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers asking if a “Progressive Kristallnacht [is] Coming?”, then by implication, you’re also condemning the Godwin-violating headline of Al Gore’s 1989 New York Times op-ed, titled “An Ecological Kristallnacht.” Gore’s column posited that such a catastrophe was “an immediate and grave danger” that could only be thwarted if we all “quickly and profoundly change the course of our civilization.” His then-recent history as a pro-life centrist Democrat in the 1980s was immediately forgotten, and his reputation as an environmentalist genius — the Goracle! — was immediately born. Three years later, he would be Bill Clinton’s vice-president. More recently, he signaled that this phase of his career had been concluded and that radical environmentalism itself was now passé, by selling out to big oil.

Read the whole thing, and note the Journolist calls for violence.

THIS IS JUST THE CONTINUATION OF A DECADES-LONG TREND: Robots to Replace Troops on the Battlefield.

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: Twentysomethings are disappointed with Obama, but they’re not too happy with the GOP, either.

IF YOU BELIEVE IN OMENS, YOU WANT TO BE PREPARING FOR SOME BAD SHIT: Birds attack peace doves freed from pope’s window. “Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture have been attacked by other birds. As tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace.”

IRAN: Hey Stupid! It’s Not About Nukes, It’s About Life and Death. “There are none so blind as those who will not see, and hardly anyone wants to see Iran for what it is: an evil regime bound and determined to dominate and destroy us, our friends and our allies. The evidence is luminously clear, but most all of our attention has focused, as usual, on the nuclear issue. . . . Anyone with minimal understanding of human nature knows where all this is headed: to ever more violence, and eventually to a war with Iran that everyone says they don’t want. The hell of it is that the regime has never been so riven with internal conflict as it is today, as the various factions maneuver for position in the succession struggle that has intensified over the past couple of years. The wave of executions is a sign of weakness and fear, not evidence of a regime that is firmly in control.”

THE HILL: Cruz: Obama should apologize for ObamaCare during State of the Union.

Well, Obama did get “Lie Of The Year” for his promise that people could keep their plans.