VODKAPUNDIT, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Amazon Prime Now Offers One-Hour Alcohol Delivery Service In Manhattan.

(Link and headline via Will Collier.)

ROBERT NATELSON HAS BEEN BLOGGING CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS AT THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY. HERE’S HIS LATEST: How the procedures for a modern Amendments Convention may unfold.

Related: The 2015 election tightened the Republican stranglehold on state government.

Perhaps I should reread Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments.

I should also note that the Tennessee Law Review published a special symposium issue on constitutional conventions a few years ago. I wrote the Foreword, Sandy Levinson wrote the Afterword, and an all-star cast including Randy Barnett, Brannon Denning, Richard Epstein, Tim Lynch, Rob Natelson, and too many other luminaries to mention contributed the stuff in between. Here’s my contribution, which focuses specifically on spending. And here’s video of me talking about it at the Harvard Law School conference on constitutional conventions.

VIDEO: DINESH D’SOUZA DISPATCHES YOUNG AMHERST SJW. “D’Souza handles a young man as he should be handled: With a big fat bat-of-truth and mocking and, I hope, in doing so, sent the young man off to do a bit of introspective thinking.”

Watch the whole thing.

FIORINA DESTROYS CNN’S CUOMO FOR PUSHING PLANNED PARENTHOOD PROPAGANDA:

In a hostile interview with Carly Fiorina on CNN’s New Day on Friday, anchor Chris Cuomo accused the Republican presidential candidate of inciting violence with her criticism of abortion provider Planned Parenthood: “Do you feel any sense of regret about how you characterized what was going on at Planned Parenthood after the attack in Colorado? Because of what the man said, which seems as though he was influenced by some of the rhetoric that was coming out of you and others that painted a very ugly picture, an unfair one, about Planned Parenthood?”

Fiorina eviscerated Cuomo for his nasty slander: “Oh, please, really, Chris? Look, nine videotapes have come out about Planned Parenthood. It is very clear what they have been doing….this is a typical left-wing tactic, to try and shut down the truth by silencing people. This has happened over and over and over again.”

Related: “All three Planned Parenthood facilities in Ohio disposed of aborted fetuses in landfills, thereby violating state code, the [state] attorney general announced Friday.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Ultrasensitive microRNA assay with nanosensor to detect cancer.

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WHO SAID IT: HILLARY CLINTON OR DONALD TRUMP? Take the test! Trigger Warning, though: The Photoshop atop this Washington Free Beacon article merging Hillary’s face (and her glassy Tyrell Corporation-designed eyes) and Trump’s multistory pompadour is titled “Sweet Dreams!” for a reason…

COLORADO ACLU CHAIRMAN RESIGNS AFTER WRITING ABOUT SHOOTING TRUMP SUPPORTERS:

[Loring] Wirbel’s Facebook post read: “The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force, as Laurie would say.”

In a statement to TheDC, a police spokesman in Colorado Springs, Colorado, called the post “distasteful and a little alarming, given the source and content within current political environment.” But the spokesman said the department would not launch an investigation.

“There is not an investigation underway as the contents of the threat do not address a specific individual who could be considered a victim,” Lt. Mark Comte of the Colorado Springs Police Department said in an email.

Wirbel initially denied posting the comment. But on Friday, in an interview with the Colorado Springs Gazette, Wirbel admitted to writing the post, but said he wasn’t being serious: “It was intended totally as a joke.”

One of the few times the botched joke excuse fails as a leftwing get out of jail free card.

EVERYBODY NEEDS ONE: Homebuilt LEGO Flamethrower Spews Actual Flames.

HILLARY’S WALL STREET TRUST GAP, as explored in New York magazine:

This is a candidate who has racked up millions of dollars in speaking fees from financial firms, along with millions more in campaign contributions. That is to say nothing of the money raked in by her husband. (Or the culpability-by-osmosis many progressives assign to her for the regulatory policy decisions made by Bill’s administration.) All those dollars have left her open to skepticism from progressives and to repeated broadsides from Bernie Sanders, among others. “The truth is, you can’t change a corrupt system by taking its money,” Sanders says in one advertisement, even if he refrains from saying Clinton’s name.

Clinton has thus far not always responded elegantly or convincingly to the charge that she’s on Wall Street’s side. During the Democratic debate in Iowa, Sanders lambasted her over her Wall Street cash: “Let’s not be naive about it,” he said. “Over her political career, why has Wall Street been a major, the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? Now, maybe they’re dumb and they don’t know what they’re going to get, but I don’t think so.”

Curiously, CTRL-F “Goldman” brings up zero returns in the article, as Goldman Sachs looks to keep its lock on the White House in 2017

NO, BUT IT MIGHT INSPIRE SOME GULLIBLE VOTERS: Paying Everyone $70,000? It Won’t Start a Revolution.

RICH LOWRY ON WIDESPREAD IGNORANCE AND HYPOCRISY ABOUT IMMIGRATION:

Still, the braying about the First Amendment from the Left is rich. The implicit position of Trump’s progressive critics is that the First Amendment doesn’t protect all political speech, or cover people with religious objections to gay marriage, or prevent the Obama administration from forcing nuns to sign up for contraception coverage, but it extends to foreigners hoping to gain entry into the United States.

The embedded assumption is that migrating here is some sort of global civil right.

It’s not.

HOW CONVENIENT: State Department can’t find emails of top Clinton IT staffer.

The State Department has told Senate investigators it cannot find backup copies of emails sent by Bryan Pagliano, the top Hillary Clinton IT staffer who maintained her email server but has asserted his Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions on the matter.
State officials told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a recent closed-door meeting that they could not locate what’s known as a “.pst file” for Pagliano’s work during Clinton’s tenure, which would have included copies of the tech expert’s emails, according to a letter Chairman Chuck Grassley sent to Secretary of State John Kerry that was obtained by POLITICO.

The department also told the committee the FBI has taken possession of Pagliano’s government computer system, where traces of the messages are most likely to be found, according to the letter.

Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has been considering whether to grant Pagliano immunity in exchange for testimony on who approved Clinton’s private email setup and whether anyone raised any objections to the system. The controversy over her decision to bypass a government email address, which would have made her messages easier for reporters and the public to obtain, has dogged the presidential hopeful for much of the year, though it has subsided in recent weeks.

Pagliano — who worked for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, then followed her to the State Department — has refused to discuss Clinton’s email arrangement or his role in it, invoking his right against self-incrimination before the House Benghazi Committee earlier this fall.

So the takeaway is, he thinks he was involved in a criminal conspiracy.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 947.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Support for Assault Weapons Ban Reaches 20-Year Low.

The New York Times report on its latest public opinion poll buried one of its most interesting findings: Support for one gun control measure has plummeted in the wake of the San Bernardino attacks. As Patrick Egan pointed out, just 44 percent of Americans now support an assault weapons ban, the lowest number in the 20 years that the NYT poll has asked the question. In 2011, 63 percent of Americans supported such a ban.

This isn’t the only trend that should give pause to politicians and commentators (like those who write the New York Times editorial page) who hoped that San Bernardino would finally prompt Americans to give up their gun obsession. Gun sales have reportedly soared in the wake of the tragedy, in part because of the outpouring of liberal demands for draconian gun restrictions. . . .

Since the founding, the right to bear arms has been understood by American Jacksonians not primarily as a practical tool for hunting and self-defense, but as a political safeguard against authoritarian movements that threaten American liberty. Almost two-thirds of Americans see gun rights as a protection against tyranny. The ISIS-inspired attacks in San Bernardino, therefore, cut to the core of what many Americans, rightly or wrongly, see as the overriding purpose of the Second Amendment. If gun control boosters were more in tune with the nation’s character, they would recognize that attacks by Islamic extremists are unlikely to win over many Americans to their cause.

Oft evil will shall evil mar.

UPDATE: White House mystified.

HOPE AND CHANGE: The Gambia now an Islamic republic, says President Yahya Jammeh.

THE MORAL FAILURES OF computer scientists. I have to say, before Google and Facebook, I had more hopes for the tech elite.

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MEH, IT’S PROBABLY NOTHING. FBI on Alert: Dozens of Propane Tanks Stolen and 150 Pre-Paid Cell Phones Bought.

THERE’S NO IQ TEST TO BE A UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATOR: University administrator says federal statute trumps the Constitution.

Things may be as bad on college campuses as they are because some administrators don’t understand how the U.S. Constitution works.

At Michigan Tech, Vice President for Student Affairs Les Cook claimed that the anti-gender discrimination statute known as Title IX trumps the Constitution.

“[The Constitution] doesn’t supersede it,” Cook said. “Title IX is a federal compliance policy. Those policies supersede anything else.”

Actually, maybe there is an IQ test — just one that sets a maximum, rather than a minimum. . . .

JULIA HARTLEY-BREWER: Today’s feminists are so out of touch with how most women live, they might as well be on another planet.

I had to break some terrible news to my young daughter this morning.

At the tender age of nine, I knew that what I was going to tell her would shake her world to the core and affect her life forever.

We live, I gently explained, in a patriarchal society that limits women’s choices and that she will never be truly free to be all that she can be simply because she was born a girl.

My daughter shook her head in bemused disbelief and, with a disdainful roll of her eyes, went off to clean her teeth as she pondered whether to be a doctor, a stable girl or Prime Minister when she grows up.

I guess she must have missed the memo.

So what had prompted this grand revelation from mother to daughter? Well, last night I attended a Guardian newspaper-sponsored event at the National Theatre to discuss whether feminism is “the new F-word”. Everyone else there had definitely got the memo. The whole place positively oozed with patriarchal oppression.

Here we were, a bunch of highly educated, well paid, successful women sitting in a theatre moaning about how women are being held back by sexism. Cue the irony klaxon.

Women have to be oppressed. Because if you’re not oppressed, you’re not special.

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: No Political Guardrails: President Obama broke all the boundaries—and now Clinton and Trump are following suit.

Mr. Obama doesn’t need anyone to justify his actions, because he’s realized no one can stop him. He gets criticized, but at the same time his approach has seeped into the national conscience. It has set new norms. You see this in the ever-more-outrageous proposals from the presidential field, in particular front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Mrs. Clinton routinely vows to govern by diktat. On Wednesday she unveiled a raft of proposals to punish companies that flee the punitive U.S. tax system. Mrs. Clinton will ask Congress to implement her plan, but no matter if it doesn’t. “If Congress won’t act,” she promises, “then I will ask the Treasury Department, when I’m there, to use its regulatory authority.”

Mrs. Clinton and fellow liberals don’t like guns and are frustrated that the duly elected members of Congress (including those from their own party) won’t strengthen background checks. So she has promised to write regulations that will unilaterally impose such a system.

On immigration, Mr. Obama ignored statute with executive actions to shield illegals from deportation. Mrs. Clinton brags that she will go much, much further with sweeping exemptions to immigration law.

For his part, Mr. Trump sent the nation into an uproar this week with his call to outright ban Muslims from entering the country. Is this legally or morally sound? Who cares! Mr. Trump specializes in disdain for the law, the Constitution, and any code of civilized conduct. Guardrails are for losers. He’d set up a database to track Muslims or force them to carry special IDs. He’d close mosques. He’d deport kids born on American soil. He’d seize Iraq’s oil fields. He’d seize remittance payments sent back to Mexico. He’d grab personal property for government use.

Mr. Obama’s dismantling of boundaries isn’t restrained to questions of law; he blew up certain political ethics, too.

The press and political class let him burn it all down because they agreed with him, and besides he was black so to complain would be racist or something. Now they can’t figure out how to survive the wind that will blow, now that everything that can stop it has been removed.

OVERTON WINDOW MOVED: Larry Kudlow: I’ve Changed My Mind. Seal the Borders. Stop Giving Out Visas Until We Sort This Out.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Donald Trump May Be a Dangerous Buffoon, But He’s No Hitler; Americans worried about a future Hitler should oppose abusive executive power no matter who is president.

“Is this what Germany looked like in 1933?” Joe Scarborough asked on Morning Joe this week.

No. Not at all.

Though many in my family were exterminated during the Holocaust—including one of my grandfathers, who died trying to make his way home from Mauthausen after years of forced labor—I’m not completely offended by an occasional gratuitous Nazi analogy. But as much as I hate to intrude on our week of national indignation, Donald Trump’s idiotic, undoable and probably unconstitutional immigration proposal (if we can call it that) is not comparable to the genocide of 6 million Jews. Trump is not comparable to Adolf Hitler. The Art of the Deal is not Mein Kampf. You can save your histrionic riffs of Martin Niemoller, for now. Trump’s statist suggestions and nativist populism, though often reprehensible in their own special way, are not nearly so morally corrupt as the policies of National Socialism or Stalinism or even the theocracies that litter the Middle East right now.

Unless political demonstrations have been banned and something comparable to the Reichstag fire is about to go down, Trump is not going to be Führer. Marinus van der Lubbe may not have burned down the German Parliament, but Islamic terrorists actually did gun down a bunch of Americans last week. Yet storm troopers didn’t smash Muslim businesses in a fury of collective punishment; a concentration camp for political opponents of Trump was not established this year; there’s been no decree banning Muslims from practicing law and civil service jobs; and there have been no prohibitions on Islamic dietary laws. Not even Trump has claimed to want to institute any of these things—and other than a few fringy Nazi types on Twitter, I’ve never seen anyone claim to want to institute these things. All of them, of course, would be unconstitutional.

I realize that many liberals like to portray Muslims as an oppressed class, much like the Jews of prewar Germany. But this historical fearmongering is not backed by evidence. Rarely are religious hate crimes directed at Muslims. (Over 60 percent of them are still aimed at Jews, according to government statistics.) As of now, Muslims have not lost a single right as Americans (other than the ones we all lose). Calling for an end to Muslim immigration is more comparable to the Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts (though this has nothing to do with economic protectionism) than it is to the Nuremberg Laws. Muslim Americans enjoy more individual liberty in the United States than they would in any Islamic nation.

Yep.