HOPE AND CHANGE: Roll Call on Obama’s Desperation To Save The Patriot Act. “President Barack Obama reupped his push Tuesday for the Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act by 12 a.m. Monday to avoid the Patriot Act’s surveillance authorities from going dark. There’s just one problem with that. Doing so will almost certainly require the unanimous consent of all 100 senators.”

Huh. I’m old enough to remember when the Patriot Act was a nefarious scheme foisted on the nation by Evil Republicans, that we needed a Democratic President to overturn.

BECAUSE THEY’RE SMART:  Naomi Schaeffer Riley on “Why Powerful Men Now Hide Behind Open Doors.”

But this idea that it doesn’t look right for a male boss to be alone with a female employee sounds like it comes straight out of Victorian England. And it’s probably just an excuse.

More likely the congressmen, like the professors I’ve spoken to, don’t want to leave themselves open to claims of sexual harassment and the lawsuits that might result.

Feminists have managed to create an employment atmosphere where men walk around on pins and needles wondering when something they say might be taken out of context or when a woman might decide to ruin a man’s career with a false accusation.

Surely there are plenty of male bosses guilty of boorish behavior. But there are also plenty of women who believe that a sexist joke or even a compliment on one’s outfit is enough to create a “hostile work environment.”

And so rather than engaging in a “he-said, she-said” deposition, many bosses would rather make sure they have witnesses to every interaction.

She’s absolutely right.  When I worked on the Hill back in the late 80s/early 90s, I would spend hours alone, doors closed, with the male Congressmen for whom I worked, sometimes on weekends. I learned a tremendous amount during those hours, and I hate to think that young women these days cannot get the same one-on-one interaction with male bosses/professors because of concerns over sexual harassment claims. But I certainly understand the concern and if I were male, I would probably avoid one-on-one, closed door interaction with all female colleagues except for my most senior and trusted aides.  #waronwomen

THE HILL: Washington is ready to spend.

Washington wants to spend more.

Just four years ago, the nation’s rapidly expanding debt was seen as Washington’s No. 1 crisis.

When House Republicans took the majority in 2011, they made it their overarching mission to rein in spending. Together with the White House, they agreed to limit spending for the next decade by the use of budget caps.

Now those spending ceilings are unpopular with members of both parties.

Pressure to break them is coming from all sides, and building.

“We’re living with just really low numbers without any wiggle room, any flexibility,” Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), one appropriations subcommittee chairwoman, told The Hill.

You know, I’m unpersuaded.

JEFF JACOBY: Let millionaire ex-presidents pay for themselves. “For all their poor-mouthing about being ‘dead broke’ and needing to ‘pay our bills,’ the Clintons’ income puts them well within the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans. So why, pray, should taxpayers be giving Bill Clinton an allowance that amounts to another million dollars a year? Indeed, considering that every living past president is a multimillionaire, why should taxpayers have to fund an allowance for any of them?”

WELL, YES: The reclassification of ‘poverty’ was a con-trick by the Left: Of course some people are in genuine need, but it is nothing compared to previous generations – who would kill to be poor in today’s society.

The word “poverty” is bandied about as never before. Labour politicians, columnists for The Guardian and The Independent, representatives of charities such as Oxfam, use the term repeatedly, suggesting that poverty in Britain is a major and even a growing problem. Very rarely does anyone on radio or television dare challenge this idea. But what do we mean by the word “poverty” today? And how does our idea of poverty compare with that of the past?

Not at all, is the answer.

ROGER KIMBALL: Kierkegaard and Trigger Warnings.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED I TELL YOU:  IRS hit by cyberattack, stealing more than $50 million and stealing more than 100,000 taxpayers’ information.  I’m sure the IRS will learn from this mistake, though, and it won’t happen again.  But of course they’ll need more money, to beef up security and all.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Adultery, adulteration, and the historical ‘married woman’ limitation.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: What was it like to watch Saigon fall?

WHITE HOUSE SUPPORTS MORATORIUM ON GERMLINE CELL EDITING:  The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement supporting the voluntary industry moratorium on research involving gene-editing of germline cells (i.e., sperm and egg cells).  The fear is that such research could alter the genetic composition of humans for generations to come, whereas genetic modification of somatic cells (fully differentiated cells, such as heart cells, blood cells, etc.) only treats the individual affected, but does not alter that individual’s germline, and thus his/her propensity to pass along genetic conditions to future generations.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Ed Morrissey on the Democrats and Hillary: “The irony is that Dems are looking for a white knight to rescue them *from* the damsel in distress.”

ARKANSAS AND INCEST GO HAND IN HAND THEY SAY: Clinton Foundation Donor Penguin Random House Announces Book Deal with Chelsea Clinton.

BECAUSE THEY’RE TOO DAMNED COLD? Why Aren’t People Moving to America’s ‘Best’ Cities? Let the federal government tell you where to live. “I mention those other lists because there’s a better list out today, the Census Bureau’s most recent city-level population estimates, based on a very straightforward methodology: These are the places where people are actually moving. That doesn’t mean you should move to these places, too. But if they’re good enough for others, you might want to give them a look.”

Why pay attention to what people actually want, when we have experts to tell us what they should want?

I LIKE THIS APPROACH TO THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES:  Stuart Rothenberg has a modest proposal, “How to Fix an Unfair Presidential Debate System.”  The Fox News and CNN approach to handling the large field of candidates is to limit debate participation to the “top 10” candidates, as evidenced by various polls.  But this does block out many good candidates out, particularly those without wide name recognition.

Rothenberg’s proposal?  “The obvious answer is to divide the field in half, randomly assigning individual hopefuls to one of the two debates. Of course, not everyone will like the group he or she is in, and the makeup of each group would determine the particular dynamic of that debate.”

Sounds fair to me.

THE LAW PROFESSSOR HAS BEEN SCHOOLED:  WSJ’s editorial about the Fifth Circuit’s refusal to reverse the preliminary injunction halting the President’s unilateral immigration legislation executive action:

America’s most powerful former law professor is getting a re-education in the Constitution, and on present course President Obama might flunk out. Witness Tuesday’s federal appeals-court rebuke of his 2014 immigration order, including language that suggests the Administration will also lose on the legal and policy merits. . . .

The Administration claims it is merely allowing immigration officers to apply routine “prosecutorial discretion” on a case by case basis not to deport illegals. But the court noted that if this were true “we would expect to find an explicit delegation of authority” to implement the Obama rule—“a program that makes 4.3 million otherwise removable aliens eligible for lawful presence, work authorization, and associated benefits—but no such provision exists.” (Our emphasis.)

In summary, said the court, “the United States has not made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits.” . . .

Mr. Obama could have avoided this mess if he had recalled his law classes on the separation of powers. That’s where he should have learned that the federal government can’t run roughshod over states and that the courts are an independent branch of government that can call out a President for breaking the law.

Yep–he would have failed my constitutional law class if he had tried to justify such sweeping authority to categorically rewrite existing law and confer benefits Congress never provided as “prosecutorial discretion.”  It’s almost as though the Fifth Circuit has been reading my House Judiciary testimony on the topic.

NEWS YOU CAN USE:  Caterpillars contort their bodies to look like bird poop. Apparently, it wards off hungry birds.

THE RISE OF EXECUTIVE FEDERALISM:  Michael Greve has an excellent piece at Real Clear Policy on what he terms the rise of “executive federalism“:

“Cooperative” federalism is supposed to come from Congress and federal statutes. However, practically nothing comes from Congress these days. The legislature is notoriously divided. It lacks the financial resources to rope recalcitrant states in new federalism bargains (witness the ACA), and it cannot even revisit the bargains embedded in old statutes (such as education programs or the Clean Air Act). Thus, to make federal programs “work” under current conditions, agencies rewrite statutes, issue expansive waivers, and negotiate deals with individual states on a one-off basis. That is how the ACA is being “administered.” That is how Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell is trying to expand Medicaid. That is how No Child Left Behind is run. And that is how Environmental Protection Agency is trying to impose its Clean Power Plan: “stakeholder meetings” and assurances of regulatory forbearance for cooperating states; unveiled threats against holdout states. This brand of federalism knows neither statutory compliance nor even administrative regularity. It is executive federalism.

. . . .  Further along that path lies the fate of Argentina, which practices an advanced form of executive federalism: corrupt, ruinous, unstable.

Exactly.  “Cooperative” federalism is just a ruse–often little more than federal bribery for States to relinquish their reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment.  And while Congress could, in theory, “fix” many of the problems by writing clearer statutes, there are multiple reasons why this may not always be politically possible, and courts are left to reign in the most egregious ultra vires executive overreach.  There is much to be developed here, both politically and via litigation, to stop the erosion of federalism.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, GRADUATE SCHOOL EDITION: Are Black Males the Only Smart Ones When it Comes to PhD Psychology programs? “So the salary of psychologists is sinking, it takes 11 years of training to get the job, and students are saddled with up to $120,000 worth of debt and now they want more black males to take on this risk? The article calls this alarmist and disappointing. I call it a smart move. There are other professions that are less risky, more lucrative and just as rewarding without 11 years of one’s life gone and possibly one’s health after dealing with the field for decades.”

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CORPORATE CRONYISM PERSONIFIED:  Hillary Clinton’s support of the Ex-Im Bank is more evidence of her inextricable involvement with corporate welfare sleaze.

JAMES BOVARD: How Baltimore Became Pottersville. “President Obama has said that the Baltimore riots showed the need for new ‘massive investments in urban communities.’ But HUD’s record proves that the best-intentioned federal intervention is far more likely to sow chaos than to spur the stable neighborhoods that are perhaps the best insurance policy against violence. Trusting federal housing subsidies to create domestic tranquility is the ultimate triumph of hope over experience.”

THOMAS SOWELL:  How to open the mind of a college graduate.  Good practical advice for trying to help young people move out of the liberal/progressive cocoon and into the real world.

TYPICAL SOCIALIST GRAFT:  A story over at the Daily Caller asks, Did Bernie Sanders’ wife commit fraud?

HEY, THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T KEEP ITS OWN SECRETS. WHY SHOULD IT BE ANY GOOD AT KEEPING YOURS? IRS Says Thieves Stole Tax Info From 100,000.