BECAUSE ENGLISH IS THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: Japan’s Keio University plans all-English courses. One wonders if this is a result of their own failed business policies, or just a reflection that they expect an international business “elite” to form and wish to be part of it.  Or a combination.

ANOTHER PROVISION OF THE “LOST CONSTITUTION”: Video of the Cato Institute panel on the Origination Clause challenge to the Obamacare individual mandate. The speakers provide an excellent exposition of the issues raised by this challenge to Obamacare, which is based on the fact that Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 provides:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

And yet, we all know that it was the Senate who wrote and first passed the Affordable Care Act. The government claims the ACA to have been a Senate “amendment” to a House tax measure that struck every single word of the House bill, including the title, retaining only the House bill number. Is this an “amendment”? If so, then the Clause has lost all constitutional function and, like other clauses, is now “lost.”

Nevertheless, while the Origination Clause argument has the virtue of being valid — which is where all constitutional analysis should start — the composition of the panel in the DC Circuit makes this litigation an uphill fight. Reportedly, Tim Sandefur‘s excellent oral argument last week was met with skepticism by the judges.

GOOD THING WE’RE IN THE HANDS OF FOREIGN POLICY GENIUSES: China blames U.S. for stoking tensions in South China Sea.  And if the Philippines put a lot of stock in our promise, I’d like to sell them some swamp land in Florida.

ANDREW MCCARTHY:  Why Lois Lerner Should Be Granted Immunity:

When officials prove unfit for government power, taking that power away is the highest public interest. Even if you’ve deluded yourself into thinking the Obama Justice Department would lift a finger to prosecute Lois Lerner, who cares if she ever sees the inside of a jail cell? What matters is laying bare the entirety of the scheme and finding out how high it goes: Who and what induced her to orchestrate the harassment of conservative groups? Why was the government’s fearsome tax agency placed in the service of the Democratic party’s political needs?

To get the answers to those questions, you need Ms. Lerner to testify. Instead, the House has wasted a full year chewing over a tough legal issue that, even if it were ultimately resolved in the Oversight Committee’s favor, would not get her any closer to answering questions — at least not for a long time….

If the House really wants to get to the bottom of the IRS abuses, it is long past time to immunize Lerner. Let’s find out what she knows and advance the public’s knowledge of the facts. It will then be possible to determine which, if any, higher-ranking officials in the Obama administration were involved: Were they active participants? Nod-and-a-wink approvers? Unknowing, incidental beneficiaries of the inability of conservative groups to organize effectively?

As things stand right now, the congressional investigation is going nowhere. There is also good reason to doubt that it will ever go anywhere unless it is assigned to a select committee. This week’s contempt drama does not hide these stubborn facts.

Beats appointing a special prosecutor.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Study shows nagging kills.

WAR ON WOMEN: Looking back on how Maureen Dowd painted Monica Lewinsky as a crazy bimbo—and won a Pulitzer for it.

Meanwhile, Matt Drudge, the Blogosphere, Fox News? Thank Monica for it all, according to a snarlingly acid-toned Tina Brown, who explores “How Monica Lewinsky Changed the Media,” transforming numerous Clinton administration victims into The Other along the way:

The Monica Lewinsky confessional in Vanity Fair brings back a torrent of unfond memories of the appalling cast of tabloid gargoyles who drove the scandal. Remember them? Treacherous thatched-roof-haired drag-queen Linda Tripp, with those dress-for-success shoulder pads? Cackling, fact-lacking hack Lucianne Goldberg, mealy-mouthed Pharisee Kenneth Starr—the whole buzzing swarm of legal, congressional and gossip industry flesh flies, feasting on the entrails. And, of course, hitting “send” on each new revelation that no one else would publish, the solitary, perfectly named Matt Drudge, operating in pallid obsession out of his sock-like apartment in Miami.

A once-in-a-lifetime cast! Or so we all thought. But what we didn’t know at the time is that they were not some passing cultural excrescence. They were the face of the future. The things that shocked us then—the illicitly taped conversations, the wholesale violations of elementary privacy, the globally broadcast sexual embarrassments, all the low-life disseminated malice—is now the communications industry as it operates every minute of every day.

Astonishingly, she does so without dropping the N-word: Newsweek, which spiked Michael Isikoff’s story on Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, only to see its details leaked by Matt Drudge. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end for the magazine, whose exhausted corpse would be offloaded 12 years later would by the Washington Post for a dollar, and handed over to — well, you know the rest.

THE RELUCTANT PATRIOT: How George Orwell reconciled himself with England.

What would Orwell think about 21st century British government and academia? The former group seems to have read 1984 as a how-to guide to building the high-tech Panopticon surveillance state, the latter as an instruction manual for creating a stifling sense of political correctness.

US DO OPPOSITE OF ALL EARTHLY THINGS! US HATE BEAUTY! US LOVE UGLINESS! The European Union as Bizarro World America.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HARRY: The editors of National Review “would like to extend our condolences to Senator Harry Reid and his family as they go through this difficult time. While we can only guess at the exact nature of the psychiatric or neurological trauma the Senate majority leader has suffered, we assume that it is severe, judging by his symptoms, the most prominent of which is his new habit of taking to the Senate floor to deliver speeches that sound like they ought to be coming from a man wearing a bathrobe in front of a liquor store in Cleveland.”

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing, preferably before your next monthly check from the Koch Brothers arrives in the mail.

The 2014 DURANTY AWARDS’ Second Runner-Up, John B. Judis is memorialized by Ron Radosh.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What does President Obama begin every day thinking about, the moment he wakes up?

RUN-CCP: The secret Dr. Dre and Vladimir Putin connection, revealed by David P. Goldman, a.k.a. Spengler.

BIG TENT: My interview with Mallory Factor, professor at the Citadel military college in South Carolina, Fox New contributor and editor of the new history of conservatism with chapters written by Michael Barone, Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul, Donald Rumsfeld, Yaron Brook, and a dozen other leading conservatives and libertarians, is now online at Ed Driscoll.com.

I’M NOT SURE I BUY THIS: How your ancestors’ farms shaped your thinking. I’d need to see a lot more studies done before I thought it was even a major influence.  Also, culture is not genetic.  Yes, certain propensities might be genetic, but the human individual can still shape himself to a great degree.

THE FRIDAY BOOKPLUG: You Have a Right to Speak with an Attorney.

OH, THE HORROR: The total number of federal jobs lost to sequestration? That would be… one.

I LOVE AMERICA: Illinois museum has Santa Anna’s leg, and Texas site wants it. Sorry, I can’t imagine this fight anywhere else.