NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES: Howard Fineman:

In 2008, the Democratic Party in the U.S. nominated one of its youngest candidates ever, and its first African-American. Everyone assumed that the choice of Barack Obama, 47, meant a new day and a new era.

But seven years later, the party’s 2016 contest is shaping up as a battle of aging white Baby Boomers for control of an ancient organization desperately in need of a fresh identity and a new wave of ideas, leaders and voters (though Hillary would be the first woman to win the nomination).

Democrats like to brag that they have been in continuous operation for two centuries, longer than any other major political party in the free world.

It certainly feels like it. . . .

If Biden is to have a chance, he’ll have to somehow reach out to minority voters, who so far seem cool to or even estranged from Sanders and Clinton.

He’d also have to somehow reach out to a new version of the party that is out there waiting to be born. It is a yet-to-be-defined mashup of Black Lives Matter; pro-immigration activism; non-European cultural consciousness; tolerance of all religions, lifestyles and genders; genuine urgency about the fate of the planet; confidence in technology, social media and the sharing economy; and skepticism about America’s right, power and duty to lead the world.

Forging and leading that new coalition is not going to be easy, no matter what your age. It seems unlikely that the Three Musketeers of the Baby Boom can do it.

To paraphrase the Rolling Stones from 1964, time isn’t on their side.

As Richard Fernandez comments:

In the wake of worldwide trends it may be reasonable to ask whether Fineman hasn’t got his compass exactly upside down. Suppose his poles are reversed and his vision of the Democratic Party hoping to be born is actually the one waiting to die. How would that change the calculus?

The actual world of 2015 is the image negative of Fineman’s dream.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

WAS IT OVER WHEN THE POLISH ARMY DEFENDED PEARL HARBOR?! ‘Cringe-worthy’: DNC’s ‘support the troops’ website featured photo of foreign veterans.

This wouldn’t happen under President Trump — oh wait.

WHAT THIS NYT PIECE IS REALLY ABOUT, is an effort to expand “campus” definitions of rape to apply everywhere else.

This is chilling and retrograde. And it shows the gap between the definition of rape in many states and the “culture of consent” at universities, Tuerkheimer argues. As she puts it, “On campus, this is rape; off campus, it often is not.” The discrepancy, she argues, diminishes the violation of victims outside universities, even though studies show they are actually more vulnerable to sexual assault than college students.

Tuerkheimer and others are pushing to reform state rape laws and the Model Penal Code. As the American Law Institute re-examines the code’s sexual-assault provision for the first time since 1962, a heated debate is taking place over how to replace the old language. Should the code follow states like New Hampshire, or go further and adopt the standard of affirmative consent?

You knew this was coming, right?

JOHN HINDERAKER: Dylann Roof and Vester Flanagan: Compare and Contrast.

We now know that Vester Flanagan was a sort of mirror image of Dylann Roof: black instead of white, gay instead of straight, but like Roof a nut with a cause. Like Roof, Flanagan’s cause was race. Flanagan was race-obsessed and, like Roof, wanted to incite a race war.

I agree with Hugh Hewitt that it is a mistake to pay attention to “manifestos” left behind by insane killers. It only encourages them. But if we are going to take seriously the ideology of lunatics, it must be a two-way street. Dylann Roof’s racist ideology was taken very seriously, to the point where Confederate flags came down across the South. In Flanagan’s case, the focus is on gun control rather than his equally racist ideology.

Flanagan was consumed with race hatred, and was disciplined by the television station for which he worked at the time for, among other things, wearing a Barack Obama button while he stood in line to vote. So why do we not retroactively conclude that images of Barack Obama are hateful, like the Confederate flag, and must be banned? Glenn Reynolds asks, “Will Obama apologize for the behavior of one of his followers?” Of course not. But imagine if a racist white killer who worked for a television station had been similarly disciplined for wearing, say, a Ted Cruz button. Do you not think that fact would be deemed highly relevant, and highly embarrassing to Senator Cruz?

Well, sure, but that’s because Cruz is a Republican.

WHY DOES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HATE GAYS AND SEX? Anger Rising over Federal Rentboy.com Bust; Manhattan’s district attorney distances office from raid.

TROLL LEVEL: GRANDMASTER. Report: LGBT Rainbow Hate-Flag Found In WDBJ Killer’s Virginia Apartment.

THE HILL: Survey: Most disapprove of moving forward on Iran without Congress.

IF YOU’RE ANYWHERE NEAR THE COAST IN THE SOUTHEAST YOU SHOULD BE STARTING TO PREPARE, JUST IN CASE: Course of Deadly Tropical Storm Erika Puzzles Forecasters.

CATO: The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: Europe. “Thirty-five states offer a package more generous than the mean benefit package offered in the European countries analyzed. Many European countries have recognized the problem and have begun to reform their welfare systems to create a better transition from welfare to work. In fact, the United States is falling behind some European countries with regard to welfare reform.”

LOVE THE PHOTO OF OBAMA THAT THE HILL CHOSE: Federal judge blocks Obama’s water rule. “The decision is a major roadblock for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers, who were planning Friday to begin enforcing the Waters of the United States rule, expanding federal jurisdiction over small waterways like streams and wetlands. But the Obama administration says it will largely enforce the regulation as planned, arguing that the Thursday decision only applies to the 13 states that requested the injunction.”

SOMEBODY TELL OBAMA THAT THE NUMBER OF “CRAZIES” IS GROWING: Maloney becomes sixth NY Dem to oppose Iran deal.

DOES HE EVEN WANT TO WIN? Jeb Bush Sides With Jorge Ramos Over Donald Trump: Deserved ‘A Little More Respect.’

CATALYSTS IN THE NEWS: Carbon Fiber Cloth Can Generate Hydrogen. “Hydrogen-generating catalysts often require acidic solutions to release protons. However, this new catalyst can generate hydrogen while in water. It also requires only 200 millivolts to produce the gas, and can even operate in seawater.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Final Fall 2015 Law School Applicant Data: Down 1.8%. At Tennessee we were up 79%, but we were one of just a few schools with that experience.

Related: Average Private Law School Tuition Discount Approaches 50%. If you’re paying sticker price, you’re a sucker.

And yes, well, I told you so.

A SMALL VICTORY: “Hey, Conservatives, You Won/The College Board’s about-face on U.S. history is a significant political event.”

Last year, the College Board, the nonprofit corporation that controls all the high-school Advanced Placement courses and exams, published new guidelines for the AP U.S. history test. They read like a left-wing dream. Obsession with identity, gender, class, crimes against the American Indian and the sins of capitalism suffused the proposed guidelines for teachers of AP American history….

The earlier guidelines characterized the discovery of America as mostly the story of Europeans bringing pestilence, destructive plants and cultural obliteration to American Indians. The new guidelines put it this way: “Mutual misunderstandings between Europeans and Native Americans often defined the early years of interaction and trade as each group sought to make sense of the other. Over time, Europeans and Native Americans adopted some useful aspects of each other’s culture.”…

The previous, neo-Marxist guidelines said, “Students should be able to explain how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities.” That has been removed. The revised guidelines have plenty about “identity” but nothing worth mounting a Super PAC to battle.

Also new: “The effort for American independence was energized by colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, as well as by popular movements that included the political activism of laborers, artisans, and women.” The earlier version never suggested the existence of Franklin—or Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison or anyone resembling a Founding Father. Now they’re back. Even the Federalist Papers were fished out of the memory hole.

Most incredible of all, the private enterprise system is, as they say, reimagined as a force for good: “As the price of many goods decreased, workers’ real wages increased, providing new access to a variety of goods and services.”

A lot of conservatives and libertarians think there’s no point engaging in these fights because you can’t win. But you can.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: A daily dose of aspirin appears to cut the risk of a common type of cancer. “A new study finds that people who took 75 to 150 milligrams of aspirin every day for at least five years were 27% less likely to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer than people who didn’t. (A tablet of regular Bayer aspirin, for instance, contains 325 mg of aspirin. The low-dose version designed to reduce the risk of a recurrent heart attack of stroke contain 81 mg of aspirin.) Other types of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, appeared to reduce the risk even more. People who took non-aspirin NSAIDs for at least five years were 30% to 45% less likely to have colorectal cancer than those who didn’t take the painkillers. Ibuprofen (the active ingredient in Advil and Motrin, among others) and naproxen (the active ingredient in Aleve) are two examples.”

ACTUALLY, IT’S JUST SINCE 2008: “The long, slow death of the rule of law in America.”

The most disturbing aspect of the scandal around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state is not the former first lady’s penchant for secrecy. . . .What’s truly unsettling is that it has been widely taken as read among both the media and the general public that Mrs. Clinton will likely avoid serious legal consequences for her behavior because the Justice Department is ultimately answerable to President Obama – and Democrats will not use the instruments of government to destroy one of their own. Whether that eventually proves true, the sentiment itself reveals a troubling trend in American politics. . . .

While this trend has been at work for decades – you can thank both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton for hastening the decline – it has reached escape velocity during the Obama years. The Justice Department, for example, already took a pass on prosecuting Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the scandal in which conservative groups were singled out for special scrutiny by the federal government on the basis of their political beliefs. If there’s anything that ought to be a matter of consensus in American politics, it’s that holding the reins of power doesn’t give you carte blanche to turn the power of the state against your partisan rivals. Yet Ms. Lerner, having done that very thing, doesn’t seem to be much worse for the wear.

This hands-off trend isn’t limited by any means to the DOJ. Consider the current debate over the nuclear deal with Iran. By any reasonable reading, the agreement should have been presented to Congress as a treaty, requiring a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate to take effect. The White House, however, has refused to classify it as such, leaving Congress to haggle its way into an arrangement whereby the president can have his way with the support of just one-third of either house of Congress. . . .

That’s the organizing precept of this era in American politics: The rules apply until they put those in power at a disadvantage. Because we’ve arrived at this point incrementally, perhaps we’re not conscious of how sweeping the transformation is. So let’s be clear about what’s at stake: This is a wholesale abandonment of the foundational American principle of the rule of law.

Yep. The rule of law has been D.O.A. since 2008. It has suffered some injuries and insults prior to the Obama Administration, of course, but somehow it survived because both political parties seemed to care about it. That’s just no longer the case for the majority of Democrats today, who repeatedly vote for party interests over the  rule of law.

The only real question is whether, assuming a Republican wins the White House in 2016, can the rule of law be revived through some prolonged CPR? Or are we past the point of no return? Time will tell.

GUITAR LEGEND STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN DIED 25 YEARS AGO TODAY: Read The Dallas Morning News coverage from that day.

I was never a full-fledged SRV worshipper back in my ‘80s band days, but I was well-aware that he had monster chops as a guitarist. I was about type “RIP,” but hopefully he’s busy having monster jam sessions somewhere above with Freddie, B.B., and his idols Albert King and Jimi.

THOUGHTS FROM JANE THE ACTUARY: “First Responders” or “Second Responders”? “Heroes” or “Role Models”? Reflecting on the train attack.

IMAGES: Amazing ‘red lightning’ photographed from space. You know, pilots reported seeing all sorts of high-altitude phenomena for years and weren’t believed. Now there are pictures.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Bringing back blogging at The Atlantic.

LIBERTY-HATING FASCISTS ARREST AMERICAN HERO FOR DISABLING RED LIGHT CAMERAS: “‘In order to do this successfully, you only need a pair of balls and a painter’s extension rod,’ [Stephen Ruth] says in a how-to video he published on YouTube.”

Back in 2012, Glenn put a quote from author James Scott on “Irish Democracy” into wide Insta-circulation:

One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy,” the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.

Do Ruth’s actions (not the least of which, his how-to video) qualify as yet another example of Irish Democracy?

WHEN “OVERSIGHT” IS A TERM TO TAKE LITERALLY: The workers building a lavish new downtown stadium for the Sacramento Kings in California are being monitored by drones and software that can automatically flag slow progress.