TEST-DRIVE: 2014 Porsche Panamera Turbo S Executive. “A wise man would take his quarter-of-a-million bucks and spend it on a 911 and a Mercedes S550.”

RISE OF THE MACHINES: IBM is betting that research on more human-like artificial intelligence will help it turn things around.

THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW your microwave could do.

FROM THE ALWAYS-INTERESTING PHIL HAMBURGER, The Second Commerce Clause.

ASHE SCHOW: GOP, Don’t You Dare Fall Into The Dems’ Social-Issues Trap: Focus on jobs, economy for the next two years.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 546.

BIG DORMANT COMMERCE CLAUSE HAPPENINGS! In the Vanderbilt Law Review’s En Banc Roundtable, Brannon Denning, Dan Coenen, Norman Williams, Ed Zelinsky, Mike Greve, and Adam Themmesch talk about Comptroller v. Wynne.

OBAMA’S LAST TWO YEARS: WATCH THE COURTS.

Only twice in the post-Civil War era has a President presented with a Supreme Court vacancy failed to fill it before leaving office.2 The most recent instance was nearly half a century ago, in 1968, when Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren announced his intention to retire upon the confirmation of his successor. Outgoing President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime friend and confidante whom he had appointed to the court in 1965, to replace Warren as Chief Justice. The Democratic-controlled Senate refused to confirm him, though, and Johnson withdrew his nomination in October 1968, along with the nomination of Homer Thornberry, a Federal appellate judge Johnson had nominated to replace Fortas. Warren stayed on as Chief Justice, and it fell to Johnson’s successor, President Richard Nixon, to fill the seat. Nixon picked Warren Burger as Chief Justice.

Prior to that, one has to go back to 1881 to find a court vacancy that was filled not by the sitting President but by his successor. President Rutherford B. Hayes made the controversial nomination of Stanley Matthews in 1881. The nomination came near the end of Hayes’s term, so the Senate did not act. New President James A. Garfield renominated Matthews, and he passed through the Senate by a slim 24–23 vote.

Despite the lack of any recent precedent for such a power play, nothing but public pressure and historical norms would stop the GOP from running out the clock until the end of Obama’s term on a Supreme Court nomination, potentially preserving the court opening for a Republican President, should one be elected in 2016.

The more partisan Obama’s behavior in other respects, the easier it will be for the GOP to do this without paying a significant political price.

THIN-SKINNED, IGNORANT, AND HEAVY-HANDED — SO, READY TO JOIN OUR POLITICAL CLASS! U. of Oregon Student Senator Adopts Administration’s Misguided Views on Speech. “What Oregon students should be most concerned about is the fact that their elected leaders are trying to censor criticism of student senators rather than simply responding to the opinions expressed on the blogs or inviting students to discuss their remarks further. Sisk seems unable to distinguish between statements that might hurt someone’s feelings and harassment or other punishable conduct.” Well, they mostly just view criticism or mockery as lese majeste.

They’re publicly funded. People should be asking the Oregon legislature why this kind of unconstitutional behavior is permitted.

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Also, check out the Men’s Denim store.

DO TELL: James Elephant: Face It, Obama Is A Lousy Politician.

That’s true, but the rest of the article is mostly crap. Obama’s problem isn’t that he’s a “realist,” or that he sees the world in gray instead of black and white. It’s that he only cares about domestic political advantage — and sees that world very much in black and white — and he’s thin-skinned, egotistical, aloof, and maladroit when it comes to dealing with both political allies and political enemies.

That’s why he’s a lousy politician. So forget this conclusion:

That may be Obama’s ultimate legacy—more technician than tactician, and a man who, perhaps, had more faith in the American public’s ability to discern substance from style than was warranted. But another legacy was assured Tuesday night: The man who promised to fix politics was instead buried by them.

That’s still in the we’ve-failed-Obama press-excuse-making vein. Obama’s a lousy politician all right, but not because he has too much faith in the public. Rather, he has had contempt for the public all along, and the public finally caught on.

YAWN. THE ‘WAR ON WOMEN’ STUFF IS OLD HAT NOW ANYWAY. The Case Against Male Suffrage.

ROBERT MERRY: Nobody Can Govern America from the Left: The Real Midterm-Elections Lesson. “While the elites of the media, academia and the managerial class can’t seem to absorb this fundamental reality, the American people know it.”

ROSS DOUTHAT: The Evaporating Democrat Majority. “These results are an implicit rebuke to an entire “past is prologue” school of political analysis and strategy, which looks at existing trends and assumes that they can only continue, watches winning strategies and assumes they can be perpetually repeated, projects demographic patterns forward and then passes judgment on today’s politicians from the vantage point of a still-hypothetical 2035.” Just the usual “wrong side of history” lefty propaganda, exploded as usual.

Related: Why the GOP Blowout Is So Scary for Democrats. But what kind of putz thinks that Sarah Palin is an “agent of intolerance” comparable to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson? Oh, right, this kind of putz.

HEY, LOOK WHAT TURNED UP IN THE NEWS POST-ELECTION: Number of People Under “Active Monitoring” for Ebola in NYC Triples, City Officials Say.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Give Me A Few Born-Again Democratic Hawks. “Everybody around here–and in punditworld generally–is giving advice to the Republicans. But the electoral results suggest that the Dems are the ones who badly need guidance. I don’t read the numbers as a general rejection of the ruling class, and frankly I don’t believe that any serious Democrat can read them that way. The voters rejected THEM.”

ED DRISCOLL: Mope And Change.

JIM TREACHER EXPLAINS: In The Long Run, This Election Is Actually Bad News For The Republicans.

STILL NOT REALLY UNDERSTANDING THIS WHOLE INTERNET THING: Lena Dunham Once Again Threatens Lawsuit Over An Interpretation Of Her Book That She Doesn’t Like.

LISTENING IS NOT HIS STRONG SUIT: Ron Fournier: Obama Isn’t Listening to Voters He Claims to Hear: “I hear you,” the president says. But he doesn’t.

THAT’S HOW IT ALWAYS IS, WITH THE ENVIROS: Green Party rises, at the expense of Working Families.

IF UNC WANTS TO TALK ABOUT “PROFESSIONALISM,” MAYBE IT SHOULD QUIT OFFERING FAKE COURSES TO FAVORED STUDENTS: UNC, Halloween, and the ‘Professionalism’ Threat to the First Amendment. University administrators can’t stand being satirized. But if that bothers them, they should try to be less ridiculous.

Seriously, UNC, you have no standing here. None at all.

ASHE SCHOW: The 8 biggest losers of the war on women.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Central Wash. school librarian avoids jail in sex case. “Under the deal approved Friday in court, 37-year-old Elizabeth Kinkade will serve nine months on electronic home monitoring.” I’m sure a male teacher would get the same deal.