REPORT: RNC ASKED CNBC FOR QUESTIONS FOR JEB DURING DEBATE: We’ve all seen the reports today that the RNC has cancelled the next NBC-hosted debate. But this is a fascinating detail buried deep in the Politico’s take on the story:

In the middle of the CNBC-hosted GOP debate on Wednesday, RNC chief strategist and spokesman Sean Spicer and chief of staff Katie Walsh approached CNBC officials. According to a source familiar with the encounter, the two had a complaint: Jeb Bush wasn’t getting enough questions.

The same complaint had come from Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz, though Bush spokesperson Tim Miller said he was not aware of the encounter between the RNC officials and CNBC. The source familiar with the encounter said Spicer and Walsh did not bring up any other candidates.

So in other words, if they could have had Regis Philbin offering a lifeline to Jeb in the middle of the debate, they would have. GOPe takes care of its own, apparently.

Update: Politico now backing off on report?

More: Airbrush alert — the above quoted passage now reads:

In the middle of the CNBC-hosted GOP debate on Wednesday, RNC chief strategist and spokesman Sean Spicer and chief of staff Katie Walsh approached CNBC officials about the amount of speaking time candidates were getting.

“Several campaigns had a concern about time allotments, we approached CNBC on multiple occasions to give us a read out of times as they promised and they refused,” Spicer said in a statement.

The same complaint had come from Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz, who confronted CNBC producers during the debate about Bush’s speaking time.

As Allahpundit asks, “The only outfit that can confirm what happened is CNBC. Did the RNC intervene on behalf of multiple candidates, Jeb included? Why did Politico seem to think it was just Jeb?”

WELL, IT’S ONLY SURPRISING IF YOU HAVEN’T PAID ATTENTION: Undersea Internet Cables Are Surprisingly Vulnerable.

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER LEAVES JEB BUSH CAMPAIGN: The highest-ranking official known to lose her job in Jeb Bush’s flagging campaign is Christine Ciccone, the campaign’s chief operating officer, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this afternoon:

News of Ms. Ciccone’s departure comes a week after the Bush campaign announced a re-organization that it said would reduce payroll by 40%. Ms. Ciccone served as Mr. Bush’s chief operating officer, effectively an office administrator responsible for logistics.

“We are grateful to have had Christine on the team, we respect her immensely,” Bush spokesman Tim Miller said.

Ms. Ciccone was paid roughly $12,000 a month, the equivalent of a $144,000 annual salary, according to the campaign’s most recent Federal Election Commission filling. Reached by phone Friday, Ms. Ciccone said “I’ve got no comment. I’ve just got to go.”

Yesterday, Richocet’s Jon Gabriel rewrote the benchmark Monty Python sketch and quipped, “Look, matey, I know a dead campaign when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now:”

Super PAC manager: No, no, he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable candidate, the Establishment Blue, idn’it, ay? Beautiful pedigree!

Donor: The pedigree don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

Super PAC manager: Nononono, no, no! He’s restin’!

Donor: All right then, if he’s restin’, I’ll wake him up! (shouting at the debate lectern) Hello, Mister Florida Governor! I’ve got a lovely fresh check for you if you show…

(Super PAC manager kicks the lectern)

Super PAC manager: There, he moved!

Donor: No, he didn’t, that was you hitting the lectern!

Super PAC manager: I never!

Donor: Yes, you did!

Super PAC manager: I never, never did anything…

Donor: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) Hello Jebby! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your three a.m. phone call!

(Takes candidate and thumps head on the lectern. Pushes him toward Marco Rubio and watches him fall face-first on the floor.)

Donor: Now that’s what I call a dead campaign.

Super PAC manager: No, no … No, he’s stunned!

Donor: Stunned?!

Super PAC manager: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin’ up! Establishment Blues stun easily, major.

Donor: Um … now look, mate, I’ve definitely had enough of this. That campaign is definitely deceased, and when I funded it not three months ago, you assured me that his total lack of grassroots support was due to him being tired and shagged out following a prolonged policy conference.

Super PAC manager: Well, he’s … he’s, ah … probably pining for the Everglades.

(Serious) Exit question via Mark Krikorian: “Is it better for Jeb to bow out gracefully now, or spend millions weakening Rubio so Cruz has a better shot at winning in the end?”

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PEGGY NOONAN ON THE NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME BUSH:

He’s not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party. He seemed to understand the challenge of his name in the abstract but not have a plan to deal with it. It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family.

He was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there’s no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state—which he was—but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated.

I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible.

In his latest G-File, Jonah Goldberg adds, “While not my first choice by any measure, I think [Jeb] could be a fine president, and it would be a no-brainer to vote for him over Hillary Clinton. That said, I’ve always thought he’d be a deeply, deeply, flawed nominee. As I’ve written before, in a contest of familiar brands, the more popular one does better — and the Clinton brand is more popular than the Bush brand. In a change election, when the other side has an old and tired brand, the last thing in the world you should do is respond with an older and even more tired brand.”

But leave it to Steve Green to really stick the vermouth in: “When somebody like Jeb Bush has lost somebody like Peggy Noonan, it’s over.”

AUTOMATED LICENSE PLATE READERS can be hacked via the Web. “Earlier this year, EFF learned that more than a hundred ALPR cameras were exposed online, often with totally open Web pages accessible by anyone with a browser. In five cases, we were able to track the cameras to their sources: St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the Kenner Police in Louisiana; Hialeah Police Department in Florida; and the University of Southern California’s public safety department. These cases are very similar, but unrelated to, major vulnerabilities in Boston’s ALPR network uncovered in September by DigBoston and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.”

Plus: “The systems the EFF accessed are sold and maintained by PIPS Technology. The EFF was able to access several stationary ALPR cameras and view live captures of plate data.”

MULTICULTURAL WINDFALL: Judge Awards $240,000 to Muslim Truckers Who Refused to Deliver Beer.

As Robert Spencer writes, file this one under the Constitution’s “cake for a gay wedding trumps Muslim beer delivery” clause.

Related: And for those not of the Islamic faith, “Lawless Judges Have Created an America Where Praying Gets a Man Suspended from His Job.”

Update: Eugene Volokh emails, “I’m pretty sure the $240,000 Muslim trucker award came from a jury, not a judge (I’ve seen the verdict form).”

THE COST OF A LIBERAL WAR ON POLICE: at Commentary, Jonathan S. Tobin writes:

Of course, liberals dismiss the notion that there is a war on police that is hurting the poor. But you don’t have to believe me or any other conservative who has repeatedly pointed this out since the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore last year. Last Friday, the man appointed by Barack Obama to be the head of the FBI made these same points. Here’s what FBI Director James Comey said in a speech at the University of Chicago excerpted by the Wall Street Journal:

I have spoken of 2014 in this speech because something has changed in 2015. Far more people are being killed in America’s cities this year than in many years. And let’s be clear: far more people of color are being killed in America’s cities this year. And it’s not the cops doing the killing.

He went on to diagnose the problem in stark language that cuts through the politically correct mush we have been served by the administration he serves and the mainstream media that serves as cheerleaders for the man who appointed him:

Read the whole thing. As Tobin adds:

This is something that a lot of people have been saying in the last year as President Obama, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the entire roster of MSNBC race baiters have done their best to delegitimize police as armed racists. Crime rates have gone up in New York and Baltimore and in other places. But now that Comey has stated the plain truth about why this is happening, it’s no longer possible to pretend that such complaints are merely the ravings of right-wing radio talkers. It’s the truth, and it’s high time somebody acknowledged it.

Even if the GOP retakes the White House in 2016, it will likely be many years before all of the damage inflicted upon the nation by the current administration and its most rabid supporters has been repaired.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Alphabet’s Stratospheric Loon Balloons to Start Serving Internet to Indonesia.

ASHE SCHOW: In next debates, GOP must ignore petty squabbles. I think ganging up on the moderators is good, too.

RNC ‘SUSPENDS’ PARTNERSHIP WITH NBC AFTER DEBATE ‘CONDUCTED IN BAD FAITH:’

Priebus told the NBC chief that “the CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith.”

“We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance,” he continued. “CNBC billed the debate as one that would focus on ‘the key issues that matter to all voters—job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy.’ That was not the case.”

“Before the debate, the candidates were promised an opening question on economic or financial matters. That was not the case. Candidates were promised that speaking time would be carefully monitored to ensure fairness. That was not the case.  Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive. The first question directed to one of our candidates asked if he was running a comic book version of a presidential campaign, hardly in the spirit of how the debate was billed.”

Ed Morrissey adds, “it may be time for the RNC (and the DNC, although the need is far less) to do their own broadcasting of debates:”

C-SPAN would be a potential partner and probably willing to do it, but even if not, they could simply broadcast it as a streaming show over the Internet. Netflix has its own original programming using the same technology, and broadband access is commonly available across the US. Moreover, the media would still cover the debates no matter what. Media filing rooms fill up with correspondents from all outlets, not just the one broadcasting the debate, and that won’t change in a presidential cycle. The RNC could invite mainstream-media journalists with demonstrated fairness to participate, or could focus more on New Media outlets with whom Priebus has already started pairing — such as NRO, or Salem Media Group (which owns Hot Air, of course).

Or perhaps booting NBC from further debates will get the point across with less expense. Priebus just fired a shot across the bow of all media outlets, not just NBC. And it was long overdue.

As Michael Walsh wrote even before news of Priebus’ decision, “The Media’s Potemkin Village Starts to Topple” — hopefully today’s announcement will only hasten its demise.

Related: John Harwood reflects.

SMART MOVE: SXSW decides not to cave to anonymous threats after all.

HOW SPACE TELESCOPES will find Earth 2.0.

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: 8 Real Suggested Uses for Nukes In Peacetime.

Sadly, this list doesn’t include my favorite — and pretty clearly the best such idea — Project Orion.

JUSTICE: Waco Biker Massacre Footage Aired by CNN; Big Questions About Responsibility for Shooting Remain Unanswered.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Media’s Potemkin Village Starts to Topple. But whining about liberal bias means nothing if you don’t back it up with some action of your own. “Wednesday night’s CNBC Republican debate turned out to be a tussle between the three left-leaning ‘moderators’ and the candidates on the main stage, most of whom can safely be described as center-right. And finally — thanks largely to the huge ratings bonanza that is Donald Trump — the American people got a chance to see the true, ugly, partisan, smug, self-righteous face of what we used to call journalism, but now is simply political advocacy employing computers and television cameras under the shield of the First Amendment. . . . What the candidates did the other night to the MSM should not be underestimated. At last, it was not just a lone Newt Gingrich bashing the ideological inanity of his interlocutors, but a number of them, including Cruz and Rubio. By presenting a relatively united front against the clear animosity emanating from the three CNBC hosts, the candidates were able to keep the focus off the stupid questions (‘are you a comic book version of a campaign?’) and onto the biases of the moderators themselves.”

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. to send Special Operations forces to Syria.

Flashback: Obama in 2013: ‘I Will Not Put American Boots on the Ground in Syria.’

Related:

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Give Bankers Skin In The Game: Gambling billions in a single trade might vanish if losses hit traders’ personal wallets.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 904.

RACIAL INEQUALITY IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Poor white boys get ‘a worse start in life’ says equality report.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Rubio Talks Up Vocational Education.

With college debt rising to unsustainable levels, and with a growing number of graduates of expensive colleges unable to find well-paying jobs, it’s critical that policymakers start experimenting with new ways to equip students with the skills and knowledge they need at a lower cost. An increased focus on vocational education should clearly be part of the mix—the four year-long liberal arts education isn’t for everyone, and data show that countries whose education systems emphasize practicable skills have lower unemployment rates.

That said, the United States probably can’t adopt a full-fledged German-style apprenticeship program. America has a high degree of labor mobility, and our educational system should give students a breadth of skills so that they have the flexibility to move from one company to another. And for all the failings of unaffordable four-year universities with bloated bureaucracies, it’s important that we don’t give up on liberal arts programs, which can go a long way toward fostering critical thinking and creativity in students with specific goals and aptitudes.

Rubio isn’t the only politician emphasizing vocational education; Hillary Clinton also said last year that the country should “get back to really respecting vocational and technical work.” It’s encouraging to see leading politicians start to rethink a failing educational system. Let’s hope that some of this rhetoric can be translated into intelligent policy changes that maximize students’ leeway to choose the path that is right for them.

Mike Rowe, call your office.

CROWDING-OUT: Growth in State Medicaid Spending Crowding Out Spending on Other Major State Programs. It’s funny, but state universities are being pinched by other spending priorities. A half-century ago, most states spent money on roads, law enforcement, public health, and education. Now they spend money on lots of other things, each with its own constituency. Most of those constituencies are more influential than university faculty. This was entirely predictable, and yet. . . .

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Give Bankers Skin In The Game: Gambling billions in a single trade might vanish if losses hit traders’ personal wallets.