TOM BLUMER: Washington’s Pack of Pretenders: Preserving and expanding the government’s (and their) power.

FELONS AND VOTING: So Attorney General Eric Holder, perhaps reflecting that most felons tend to vote Democratic, thinks that felons should be allowed to vote. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey thinks that felons shouldn’t vote.

Let me suggest that the real problem is that we have too many felons, because too many crimes have been designated as felonies. Traditionally, felonies were very serious crimes, for which the death penalty was common. The justification for loss of civil rights, like voting, was that though you were being allowed to live, your crime — rape, murder, etc. — was sufficiently serious that it separated you from civil society. That can’t be maintained where today’s rather promiscuous designation of felonies is concerned. Personally, I think there should be — and, in fact, are, though not presently recognized by the courts — limitations on what can be designated a felony under the Due Process Clause. I may write something on this someday, but in the meantime I would refer readers to the discussion of malum in se vs. malum prohibitum in my Ham Sandwich Nation piece as a starting point.

AT AMAZON, Deals On Denim, for men and women.

Plus, 25% or more off at The Dockers Store.

Also, today only: Best of Warner Bros 50 Film Collection on Blu-ray, $178.99 (70% off). From Gone With The Wind to The Matrix to The Dark Knight.

FIGHT THE POWER: ‘Subpar:’ Anti-Obama Street Art Covers Santa Monica. “The artwork, which features images of Obama golfing with the message, can be found on trashcans, in Porta-potties, and on street benches.” Love the pic.

CHINA: A reader in China emails: “Access to international websites (including gmail, Twitter, etc.) from China tonight has slowed to a crawl. It doesn’t matter whether you are using a VPN or not. I can’t get on any of those sites and I assume it has something to do with the pending revolutions in Venezuela, Ukraine, and Thailand.” Sounds plausible.

WHEN GOVERNMENTS FAIL TO DO THEIR MOST BASIC TASKS: Britain as Bangladesh: Climate change is now an excuse for lack of basic flood control. It’s an all-purpose tool for the governing class to gather power and avoid responsibility.

THESE ARE NEVER HAPPY SURPRISES, ARE THEY? Obamacare’s Latest Surprise for Taxpayers?

Industry sources tell the Washington Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio that the Barack Obama administration is thinking of extending the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors,” the federal reimbursement program for health-insurance companies that lose money by participating in the newly created health-care exchanges. This is not the first time we’ve seen this idea floated, and frankly, believing that the administration is considering it is all too easy.

If you’re not familiar with the risk-corridor program, read what I’ve written in the past. Basically, there are three temporary risk-adjustment programs to help insurers transition into the new marketplaces. One of them — a sort of reinsurance program, called the risk corridors, that offsets losses when claims are greater than 103 percent of projections and collects money from insurers whose claims are less than 97 percent of what they expected — is not designed to be revenue-neutral. That means that if the insurance pool is a lot sicker than initially expected, the federal government could end up transferring a bunch of money to the insurance industry.

Because a lot of insurers seem to be saying that they’re going to lose money on their exchange policies this year, that’s a little worrying for the U.S. taxpayer.

But not that worrying, because the corridors are supposed to expire in three years. If it’s true that the administration is seriously considering extending them, that raises some disturbing possibilities.

Hey, Democrats don’t represent the taxpayers, they represent the tax-consumers, so it’s all fine.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: House of Cards Shows How Calculated The “War On Women” Really Is. Note that there are spoilers if, like me, you haven’t started watching season 2 yet.

WAR ON WOMEN: The Hill: Democrat Joe Baca Apologizes For Calling Woman “Bimbo.” “Former Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.) is apologizing for calling Rep. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Calif.) ‘some bimbo’ after the woman who defeated him last year announced her retirement. In an interview earlier Tuesday with The Hill, Baca slammed his longtime foe after she announced on Tuesday she was leaving Congress after just one term to run for the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.”

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Democrats in Denial Over Obamacare: Supporters of the health care law are convinced they can defend themselves on the issue. Don’t bet on it.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Chicago Tribune: The IRS targets political speech again: Discouraging debate and curbing information. “The agency does not get, or deserve, the benefit of the doubt in this realm — if only because it got caught targeting certain conservative organizations.”

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: For Interns, All Work and No Payoff: Millennials Feel Trapped in a Cycle of Internships With Little Pay and No Job Offers.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Flagler College VP resigns after investigation; College president: Exaggerated test score, grade data reported to U.S. News & World Report. “Hard copies of student records from the registrar’s office confirmed that some SAT and ACT scores, GPAs and class rankings had been changed for some students. In all cases, they were changed for the better, he said.”

ARNOLD KLING: The Macro Wars: Inside-out vs. Outside-in. “What has happened to me since I left MIT is that I no longer think that macroeconometric models provide a valid lens into observing the real world, and I no longer think that Keynesianism is the One True Way. The real world is still out there, and I still think it should be our starting point for digging the mineshaft.”

IN UKRAINE “scorched earth” tactics. “The violence, which will resonate for weeks, months or even years around this fragile and bitterly divided former Soviet republic of 46 million, exposed the impotence, in this dispute, of the United States and the European Union, which had engaged in a week of fruitless efforts to mediate a peaceful settlement. It also shredded doubts about the influential reach of Russia, which had portrayed the protesters as American-backed ‘terrorists’ and, in thinly coded messages from the Kremlin, urged Mr. Yanukovych to crack down.” More of that “Smart Diplomacy” paying off, I guess.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Number of Military Families on Food Stamps Has Nearly Doubled Since Obama Took Office.

VENEZUELA: Opposition Leader Leopoldo Lopez Arrested.

UKRAINE: Kiev In Chaos.

LIFE UNDER THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY: Whistle-blower fired from Hanford nuclear site.

TURNED ON THE CLOAKING DEVICE: The mammoth asteroid set to fly by Earth last night just disappeared. “Last night, a giant asteroid was supposed to streak by the Earth, close enough for us to catch a glimpse as it zipped by. Except it never showed, and now astronomers say they have no idea just where the 900-foot asteroid has gone.”

I mean, “asteroid.” Right. Wake up, sheeple!

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Inspector General: 39% of IRS Employee Long-Term Travel May Not Comply With Tax Rules. But given IRS misbehavior, I think Congress should bear down hard on the travel, as it seems very important to the people who run things.

ROGER SIMON: Bill O’Reilly Does Not Look Out For Me Anymore. “Our country, at a turning point, needs help. I am the last one to give Ailes advice, but I will anyway. He should keep a bit of a short leash on his hosts to make sure they keep those issues front and center, not themselves.”

OBAMA APOLOGIZES FOR THE ART-HISTORY SLUR. Maybe he read my column. Or, more likely, Virginia Postrel’s.

THE HILL: CBO Says Raising Minimum Wage Would Cost 500,000 Jobs.

I BLAME BARACK OBAMA: In 2013, for the first time in the 55-year-history of the Billboard Hot 100, not one black artist lodged a number-one single.