READER BOOK PLUG: From “Valerie Plum,” Seven Days in September: From the Memoirs of America’s Top Spy.

YOU KNOW, MORE AND MORE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO WANT TO BE ILLEGALS: It’s Not Just Measles; DUI’s Ok If You’re An Illegal Too. “Obtained by Judicial Watch this week, the notice is titled ‘Enforcement Options With Alcohol-Impaired Drivers’ and directs the 4,000-plus U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Tucson, Arizona sector to ‘release’ individuals under the influence and ‘allow them to go on their way.'”

THEY’RE GETTING CHEAPER, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME: Steep Fees and First-Class Prices, but Private Jets Are Available to More. If I lived close to a major destination, I’d look hard at one of those empty-leg services, but I doubt there are many going in and out of Knoxville. . . .

IT’S COME TO THIS: New SecDef Sworn in; Biden Gets Creepy with Carter’s Wife.

Even at Talking Points Memo they’re asking: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

WELL, TO BE FAIR, THE RULING CLASS DOESN’T MUCH LIKE RURAL PEOPLE: EPA’s Wood-Burning Stove Ban Has Chilling Consequences For Many Rural People.

AMERICA IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Vandals set fire at Florida church, write ‘Allahu Akbar.’

DOING THE JOBS AMERICAN PRESIDENTS WON’T DO: Indian Prime Minister vows to protect Christians.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 649.

OUCH:

So here I am at 4:48 in the morning, driven by a weird sense of obligation to pay attention to that foolish Gail Collins column The New York Times published on Friday the 13th: “Scott Walker Needs an Eraser.”

You’d think columnists who want to wield influence would be more careful about letting their murderous intentions glare. But Collins stupidly overreached.

They do that a lot, probably a consequence of living in a social and intellectual bubble.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Cops: Denied Sex, Woman Pulled Gun On Boyfriend.

After having her “sexual advances” rejected by her live-in boyfriend, a South Carolina woman allegedly threatened to shoot her beau, cops allege.

Ryan Rucker, 33, was sleeping early yesterday when Michelle Smart, by her own admission, “attempted to make some sexual advances toward” him, according to a police report detailing the 2 AM incident.

It’s the culture of female privilege today that produces such sexual entitlement.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: ‘Retard, animals!’ New York principal caught on tape screaming abuse at special needs students.

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HUGH HEWITT: Should Republicans Kill The Filibuster?

To invoke, or not to invoke, the “Reid Rule?” That is the singe most important question facing Senate Republicans.

Simply put, if destroying what is left of the Senate’s tradition of the filibuster would save the country from terrible crises and hardship, almost every senator of both parties would vote to abolish it.

Indeed, all but one of the currently serving Senate Democrats who also served in 2013 voted with their leader to break the filibuster rule by simple majority, thus creating “the Reid Rule” that the rules of the Senate can be modified by a simple majority of the senators present. (West Virginia’s Joe Manchin voted against breaking the filibuster then, along with Carl Levin and Mark Pryor — the former retired, the latter was defeated in November.)

It was the Republicans who first threatened to use the “nuclear option” in the summer of 2005, an action avoided by the compromise cobbled together by the “Gang of 14.” Had the GOP not fallen for the Democrats’ promise of comity, the “Reid Rule” would have been born as the “Frist Rule,” named instead for the majority leader of the Senate in ’05, Bill Frist.

But Frist didn’t pull the trigger and fracture the filibuster. Reid did. Thus Reid will live on in infamy, at least in the eyes of Senate traditionalists.

The filibuster is not part of the Constitution, however, and all that ever preserved it was a bipartisan sense of the necessity of maintaining a tradition that honored the role of the minority in a long-enduring Republic. Now with the president embarked on an unconstitutional abdication of his oath to faithfully execute the laws, along with his adventures with Cuba and Iran that have many in his own party alarmed, the question is squarely presented: Does the near term of the Republic’s future outweigh the long term interests of the Senate?

I seem to remember a lot of columns on how unAmerican the filibuster was just a year or two ago. . . .

CHRIS CHRISTIE’S NEW JERSEY, Where A Flintlock Pistol Can Get You A 10-Year Jail Sentence. “VanGilder is a retired teacher whose career spanned 34 years. He’s an admirer of 18th century artifacts and historical memorabilia and bought the pistol to go with his collection. The pistol featured in Simone’s report is approaching its 300-year anniversary.”

As I suggest in my Second Amendment Penumbras piece, such draconian laws — enacted to chill and denormalize gun ownership via in terrorem effects — should be regarded as in violation of the right to bear arms. I also suggest that Congress pass civil rights laws to protect citizens. I suggest setting the maximum penalty any state can assess for firearms carriage or possession by a person legally entitled to possess firearms under federal law at fifty bucks.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Report: Denver Police Ordered to Stand Down While Protesters Vandalize Police Memorial.

WELL, THE MEDIA DECLARED WAR ON THEM A LONG TIME AGO: John Steele Gordon: Republicans Should Declare War on the Mainstream Media.

Why is it up to Boehner to bend instead of the Democrats doing so? The answer is simple. As Jonah Goldberg tweeted, “So when GOP holds up things in Dem-run Senate, GOP is to blame. When Dems hold things up in GOP-run Senate, GOP is to blame. I see a trend.” Even Chris Wallace—the fairest and best of the Sunday morning talk show hosts—thinks that when push comes to shove on Capitol Hill, it is the Republicans who must yield, even when they hold majorities in both houses as they do now. Why? Because that is the way the mainstream media will always play the story.

What should Boehner do? I think he, and every Republican, should do what George H.W. Bush did to Dan Rather as the 1988 presidential race was heating up: eat the mainstream media alive. They are the enemies of the Republican Party and should be treated as such. Stop trying to curry favor because you won’t get it. Bush laid a trap for Rather, insisting on the interview being live so it couldn’t end up on the cutting room floor. It totally flustered Rather, greatly energized Bush’s campaign, put the kibosh on his too-much-a-nice-guy image, and helped mightily to propel him to the White House. Make mainstream media bias the issue. Throw loaded questions and those premised on liberal assumptions back in their faces. Accuse them of bias when they are biased. Don’t be Mr. Nice Guy.

You’ll never win them over. Make them irrelevant, or make them afraid. And punish individual reporters, producers, and editors who cause you problems. You know, like the lefties do.

HILLARY’S FAILED WAR IN LIBYA: “There is no overstating the chaos of post-Qaddafi Libya. Two competing governments claim legitimacy. Armed militias roam the streets. The electricity is frequently out of service, and most business is at a standstill; revenues from oil, the country’s greatest asset, have dwindled by more than ninety per cent. Some three thousand people have been killed by fighting in the past year, and nearly a third of the country’s population has fled across the border to Tunisia. What has followed the downfall of a tyrant—a downfall encouraged by NATO air strikes—is the tyranny of a dangerous and pervasive instability.”

It was a war of choice, against a dictator who was cooperating with the US and who, in fact, had been promised safety by the US. But, then, so was Ukraine. . . .

JOEL KOTKIN: The Jewish World is Contracting Toward U.S., Israel. “Recent anti-Semitic events – from France and Belgium to Argentina – are accelerating the relentless shrinking of the Jewish Diaspora. Once spread virtually throughout the world, the Diaspora – the scattering of Jews after the fall of ancient Israel – is retreating from many of its global redoubts as Jews increasingly cluster in two places: Israel and the United States. Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Jewish communities throughout Europe are again on the decline. This time, the pressure mainly comes not from the traditional anti-Semitic Right but from Islamic fundamentalists, which include many European citizens.”

JOHN FUND: Kitzhaber and the Greedy Greens: Energy isn’t the only thing that’s green when you’re pushing the clean-energy agenda.

Oregon governor John Kitzhaber may have announced that he will resign, but a sweeping FBI investigation of him and his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, is only getting started. While the story involves personal failings, the green-energy lobbying scandal that brought them down has national lessons and implications. If oil companies and pharmaceutical concerns shouldn’t exercise undue influence in government, the same is true for green energy — which can’t yet survive in the marketplace without giant subsidies or special tax favors.

While Hayes was living in the governor’s mansion with the self-bestowed title of “Oregon’s First Lady,” she collected a series of consulting contracts and “fellowship” money from people with an interest in shaping state energy and environmental policy. She then ordered state employees to help run her private business and take actions in accord with the wishes of the green-energy groups that were paying her.

Will Tom Steyer be pulled into this expanding scandal?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: ISIS Is ‘Genocidal Movement Akin to Nazism.’ Give them the Dresden treatment. It will also serve as a useful example to the others.

DUMBASSES: Union Protest Mob Targets Scott Walker’s House, Goes To His Parents’ House By Mistake.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: R40: Six Best Rush Albums. I’ve always been lukewarm on Rush. I loved Spirit Of The Radio, which came out back when, well, I was doing radio. And my old band in college (with Doug Weinstein, Todd Steed, Larry DeWitte and Scott Scheinbaum) did an excellent version of Fly By Night. But I was never a true fan.

CAN’T WE JUST TEACH WOMEN NOT TO BE VIOLENT? Ray J’s girlfriend, Princess Love, arrested after allegedly beating him: report. “Someone reportedly heard his girlfriend scream ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ as she attacked the singer, leaving him with broken ribs and a torn ACL.”

I blame today’s current climate of female privilege, which leads to a sense of entitlement and impunity. Also, note that despite hearing her say she was going to kill him, hotel security didn’t intervene until they saw him bleeding. Hey, guys, #ItsOnUs to stop female violence.

POLITICO: In hindsight, perhaps the headline “Scott Walker Needs An Eraser” wasn’t the best idea. “In a recent column about the Wisconsin governor, a conservative Republican, New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote that Walker had cut state aid to education, causing teacher layoffs in 2010. But Walker didn’t take office until 2011.”

More here.