MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TODAY IS ON THE CIA AND THE IRS: Public Servants Acting As Public Masters. People seem to like my characterization of Eric Holder as Obama’s “scandal-goalie.”

ANOTHER INNOCENT OUT-OF-STATER VICTIMIZED BY NEW JERSEY’S ANTI-GUN HYSTERIA. Will Chris Christie intervene on behalf of this single mother who did nothing wrong?

And this case is yet another argument for federal civil rights legislation protecting people who travel with firearms.

YA THINK? Adriana Cohen: Romney Looks Better As Obama Falters.

JOHN FUND: Don’t Impeach Obama, Censure Him.

The Congressional Research Service has identified a number of historical precedents in which the Senate or the House has adopted a resolution of censure or disapproval of a president or other executive or judicial officers. Indeed, in 1998, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein and 37 co-sponsors introduced a joint resolution in the Senate that enumerated President Clinton’s various misdeeds, and “condemn[ed] his wrongful conduct in the strongest terms.” Likewise, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic members of the House proposed similar resolutions, declaring that President Clinton’s actions “fully deserve the censure and condemnation of the American people and the Congress.”

It is important for our overall political health that we focus our criticism on President Obama’s unconstitutional acts and omissions rather than on the president himself. Lawmakers can word a censure resolution carefully to do this. Impeachment, on the other hand, would inevitably be viewed by many as a personal attack on President Obama.

Which is, of course, what he wants.

CARL CANNON: Democrats’ Impeachment Amnesia: Talk of Impeaching Obama Comes From The Fringe: Talk Of Impeaching Bush Did Not.

The actual officeholders and party professionals stoking impeachment talk are all Democrats. This is disquieting for several reasons. For starters, having White House officials and leading congressional Democrats claim with straight faces that impeachment is a serious threat is cynical and dishonest. Its purpose is to frighten liberals into donating money to Democrats, a tactic that is working. But it suggests a political party that is out of gas and out of ideas. . . .

One excuse for Obama’s troubles is new, however. He himself has implied what Attorney General Eric Holder and many others have claimed aloud: that much of the opposition to this president is attributable to his race. This is not an easy narrative to disprove, but the eight-year dose of vitriol directed at Bush and Cheney—and the craven claims that it never happened—certainly undermine it.

Sheila Jackson Lee’s brain freeze was almost comical, but the serious side to this is that if you’re going to impugn others’ motives—if you’re going to talk about “hating,” as the president did—the biblical admonition about noticing the speck in your neighbor’s eye is apropos.

“I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for” wasn’t a sentenced uttered by a leftist talk radio pundit. It was said in 2005 by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean.

And it wasn’t some unhinged MSNBC host who said that George W. Bush deliberately fabricated the rationale for invading Iraq to help Republican electoral chances. That was Sen. Ted Kennedy, the icon of American liberalism. This didn’t start with Iraq, either. During the Florida recount, Rep. Jerold Nadler New York mentioned “the whiff of fascism in the air.”

The whiff I detected, as I do now, was the scent of demagoguery.

It’s more than a whiff.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Democrats can use Export-Import Bank for fundraising, says former banking chairman Barney Frank.

THE PRO-IRS SPIN, FROM JOSH HICKS AT THE WAPO: Sure, Lois Lerner was a registered Democrat who hated Republicans and hoped for a job at an Obama campaign organization, but that doesn’t prove she was political. And with all those emails gone missing, we may never know the true story, but whaddyagonnado?

STEVEN L. HAYES: No, the IRS cannot be fixed — it must be abolished and replaced with the Fair Tax.

FROM ROGER KIMBALL, thoughts on the Gods of the Copybook Headings.

MAYBE THEY SHOULDN’T BE GETTING INTERNATIONAL “AID.” Bill Clinton: Hamas Deliberately Causes Civilian Deaths For International PR Points.

“How could the people in Gaza, who started rocketing Israel, think that it was OK to use international aid money to dig tunnels to increase their ability to destabilize the region and kill people?” Clinton told about 150 Trib Total Media employees at the memorial service at Scaife’s boyhood home in Ligonier.

Israeli officials list the destruction of the tunnels, which Hamas has used for a series of incursions into Israel, as a chief objective of the 26-day-old war in Gaza. . . .

Clinton blamed the rising civilian death toll on Hamas as well, saying they deliberately placed munitions where civilians seek shelter, then use their deaths to foment international anti-Israeli sentiment.

“How could they put rockets in a school to follow a deliberate strategy to force the deaths of their own civilians so as to make Israel look bad in the world?” Clinton said.

They do it because much of the world press, and much of the world, happily plays along. But here’s a thought: If Hamas got its way in Gaza, it would look a lot like the Islamic State in Iraq. If Israel got its way, Gaza would look a lot like Santa Monica. Just sayin’ . . .

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Impeachment Won’t Stop the Debasement of Our Government.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Obama’s Impeachment Game.

Over the last month, the Obama political apparatus — a close aide to the president, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the “independent” voices at MSNBC — has been talking nonstop about an alleged Republican plan to impeach the president. John Boehner’s symbolic lawsuit against the White House has been dubbed “impeachment lite,” Sarah Palin’s pleas for attention have been creatively reinterpreted as G.O.P. marching orders, and an entire apocalyptic fund-raising campaign has been built around the specter of a House impeachment vote.

Anyone paying attention knows that no such impeachment plan is currently afoot. So taken on its own, the impeachment chatter would simply be an unseemly, un-presidential attempt to raise money and get out the 2014 vote.

But it isn’t happening in a vacuum, because even as his team plays the impeachment card with gusto, the president is contemplating — indeed, all but promising — an extraordinary abuse of office: the granting of temporary legal status, by executive fiat, to up to half the country’s population of illegal immigrants. . . .

This simply does not happen in our politics. Presidents are granted broad powers over foreign policy, and they tend to push the envelope substantially in wartime. But domestic power grabs are usually modest in scope, and executive orders usually work around the margins of hotly contested issues. . . .

This is the tone of the media coverage right now: The president may get the occasional rebuke for impeachment-baiting, but what the White House wants to do on immigration is assumed to be reasonable, legitimate, within normal political bounds.

It is not: It would be lawless, reckless, a leap into the antidemocratic dark.

And an American political class that lets this Rubicon be crossed without demurral will deserve to live with the consequences for the republic, in what remains of this presidency and in presidencies yet to come.

Yep. But Obama doesn’t care. And neither do his enablers. But I think it’s worth stressing that any sort of unilateral executive action on amnesty would constitute nothing less than an extraconstitutional coup.

KURT SCHLICHTER: The Key To A Lasting Middle East Peace Is Total Victory.