THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE. JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO, SMART DIPLOMACY^TM ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED THAT HE BE OVERTHROWN. With Latest Victory, Assad Has Won the War in Syria.

SO’S EVERYTHING ELSE HE’S DOING: Obama’s New Budget Is All About the Midterm Elections. He needs to (1) Keep legislation bottled up in the House; (2) Ensure a filibuster-proof path for appointees, especially judges and possible Supreme Court appointees; and (3) Avoid investigations that might (would) uncover extensive and embarrassing wrongdoing. Even weak GOP control of the Senate denies him those.

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SNITCHES GET STITCHES: Lois Lerner fears for her life if she testifies at Wednesday’s oversight hearing.

LOOKING FOR MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

REPORT: CIA spied on Congressional staff members. I wonder what other domestic spying has gone on with CIA and NSA, and how the information was used.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More problems with the proliferation of student loans.

OBAMA’S CORE FOREIGN POLICY PROBLEM: “The man’s sense of himself has been over-indulged to a reckless point.”

CUOMO, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, YOU READ MY BOOK! Er, or something like that: Cuomo Vows to Defend Charter Schools, Setting Up Another Battle With de Blasio. “Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, standing shoulder to shoulder in Albany with thousands of parents and students who rallied in support of charter schools, vowed on Tuesday to defend the movement and offered a sharply different vision for their place in the educational system than Mayor Bill de Blasio.”

Well, de Blasio is the unions’ creature. But other politicians are noticing that there are more parents than teachers’ union members.

#WARONBOYS: Ohio boy suspended for pointing finger like a gun. ‘Zero tolerance’ run amok? These people are too stupid to be allowed around children, much less entrusted with any sort of authority over them.

JAMES TARANTO: A Reprieve, but for Whom? The latest ObamaCare delay is self-serving.

The idea, as described by the Hill, is to minimize the number of consumers victimized before Election Day by President Obama’s you-can-keep-your-plan fraud. Although perhaps it would be more precisely accurate to say the idea is to minimize the number of consumers who know before Election Day that they’re victims of the fraud.

You’ll recall that last year, late in the summer and through September, insurance companies sent out a wave of letters informing policyholders that their plans would be canceled for failing to comply with ObamaCare’s many mandates. At first Obama and his defenders insisted these were all “substandard” policies and the government was doing people a favor by forcing their cancellation.

When that claim proved indefensible, Obama announced a partial reprieve: He “called on states and the insurance industry to allow people to keep their existing plans for an additional year.” The first batch of policies renewed under that moratorium expire Dec. 31, and insurers must give policyholders 90 days notice of cancellation.

Thus if the one-year reprieve expires, cancellation letters will go out at the same time they did last year–in the weeks leading up to Oct. 1, less than five weeks before the election. “I don’t see how they could have a bunch of these announcements going out in September,” a health-industry consultant tells the Hill. “Not when they’re trying to defend the Senate and keep their losses at a minimum in the House. This is not something to have out there right before the election.”

And so, according to the report, “as early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements”–presumably at least through 2015, though the story vaguely suggests the delay could be “several years.”

The political imperative is clear. If Republicans take a Senate majority–a strong possibility, given that Democrats are defending many seats on unfriendly terrain–then the Senate GOP, for the first time in Obama’s presidency, have the ability to force votes on legislation, and even to push some Republican bills through Congress.

True, the president has his veto pen (or is it a phone?), but he hasn’t used it since the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has seen to it that bills Obama opposes never make it to the floor of the Senate, which frees the president from the political cost of vetoing anything popular.

What’s more, vetoes can be overridden with two-thirds majorities in both congressional chambers. That raises the possibility of bipartisan legislation the president opposes–especially, though not only, changes in ObamaCare–becoming law over Obama’s objections.

Well, to be fair, everything they do is self-serving.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN DISSENT WAS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM: Sally Kohn: These Republicans are “undermining” Obama by criticizing him on Russia.

Plus: “What will the consensus lefty line on Cold War II be? The Kohn-ian ‘support your president’ take or Eugene Robinson’s ‘who are we to judge someone else’s invasion?’ line? Dilemmas, dilemmas.”

HMM: The Washington Post on Obama’s Fantasy Foreign Policy: The Progressive Civil War Begins?

TAKE YOUR TREATIES AND SHOVE ‘EM: Is Marijuana Legalization Illegal Under International Law? U.N. drug warriors falsely claim that treaties compel U.S. states to ban pot.

SO WHAT’S REID TRYING TO DISTRACT PEOPLE FROM WITH THESE CHARGES: Reid escalates feud with Koch brothers.

And did he ever respond to those nasty pederasty charges?

#WARONWOMEN: Democrat Alan Grayson Under Investigation After Domestic Violence Complaint.

Flashback: The Time Alan Grayson Railed Against The ‘Republican War On Women.’

The more the Dems go on about stuff, the more it seems they’re doing it themselves.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: House GOP leaders want probe of Veterans Affairs’ purging of medical test orders.

Two key House members have called for an investigation into reports published by the Washington Examiner that the Department of Veterans Affairs purged thousands of medical appointments to hide backlogs of tests and consultations dating back 10 years.

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Mich., said in a joint letter sent last week to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki that they want the findings probed by the VA’s Office of Medical Inspector, a unit within the agency that monitors health care issues.

It’s easier to shred ’em than to treat ’em.

ROLL CALL: McCain Raises Prospect of Russian Incursion Into Poland. If I were President, I’d be sending NATO troops to Poland and the Baltics for reassurance.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s $4 Trillion Budget: Liberalism’s Last Hurrah?

JOHN MCWHORTER: Spike Lee’s Racism Isn’t Cute: ‘Motherf-cking Hipster’ Is the New ‘Honkey.’ What’s really bothering Lee is that he doesn’t like seeing his old neighborhood full of white people, which makes him historical detritus.

FINALLY, A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE I CAN GET BEHIND:

Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

The Supreme Court has never held that the president has such powers. As president, I will follow existing law, and when it comes to U.S. citizens and residents, I will only authorize surveillance for national security purposes consistent with FISA and other federal statutes.

Too bad President Obama doesn’t think this way. You know, the way Senator Obama did, in 2007.

WHITEWASHING HISTORY.

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DOUG FEITH: The Temptation Of Vladimir Putin: If Russia’s Ukraine incursion goes unpunished, Moscow may turn to ‘rescuing’ ethnic Russians in NATO countries.

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