WITH PRIMARY ALMOST HERE, HALEY TO ENDORSE RUBIO.

TAKING SNEAKERNET TO THE NEXT LEVEL: Energy harvesting from shoes could generate 10 watts per shoe.

SPYING: NYPD Has Deployed Stingrays Over 1,000 Times Without Warrants.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Donald Trump is running against pluralism. Bernie Sanders shows zero interest in entrepreneurship and says the Wall Street banks that provide capital to risk-takers are involved in “fraud,” and Ted Cruz speaks of our government in the same way as the anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, who says we should shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” (Am I a bad person if I hope that when Norquist slips in that bathtub and has to call 911, no one answers?)

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman today, in an article titled, “Who Are We?”

Well Tom, I’d say you’re a vile limousine leftist misanthrope, since your admission today is a par with your writing in 2000: “Yup, I gotta confess, that now-famous picture of a U.S. marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon toward Donato Dalrymple and ordering him in the name of the U.S. government to turn over Elian Gonzalez warmed my heart.”

Not at all surprising, particularly since in 2009, you added:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Since, as Friedman is asking today “Who Are We?”, Jonah Goldberg’s response to Friedman’s 2009 column also helps to answer his existential query: “Thomas Friedman is a Liberal Fascist:”

I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

But what happens when that one-party autocracy decides to just impose a law that no one should live in a house this big? That such an estate simply isn’t a part of “who we are?”

READER BOOK PLUG: From Roland Hess, Lincoln, Fox, and the Bad Dog.

SKYNET SMILES: DARPA robotic sub-hunting ship will set sail this spring.

WELL, GOGO DOES PRETTY MUCH SUCK: American Airlines Is Suing Gogo Over Subpar In-Flight Wi-Fi. I almost never use inflight wifi, instead taking the opportunity to spend a few hours blissfully offline. On the rare occasions when I do use it, I’m often disappointed.

AT LEAST FIVE KILLED IN ANKARA BLAST:

The explosion occurred during rush hour in an area close to where military headquarters and parliament are located. Governor Mehmet Kiliclar said the bomb appeared to have targeted a convoy of buses carrying military personnel.

“According to preliminary assessments, five people died and 10 people were injured,” Kiliclar told the state-run Anadolu Agency. “It is believed that a bomb-laden car caused the explosion.”

News reports said some cars caught fire and dozens of ambulances were sent to the scene. Dark smoke could be seen billowing from a distance.

Police told The Associated Press they are investigating the cause of the explosion.

It was not clear who was behind the bombing Wednesday. Kurdish rebels, the Islamic State group and a leftist extremist group have carried out attacks in the country recently.

HEY, WHEN YOU’RE WORTH TENS OF BILLIONS YOU CAN AFFORD OUTLANDISH FANTASIES. AND PLENTY OF PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO TAKE YOUR MONEY: Mike Bloomberg’s Outlandish Presidential Fantasy.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1014.

SUPREME COURT STALEMATE NOT UNPRECEDENTED:

Only twice in the post-Civil War era has a President presented with a Supreme Court vacancy failed to fill it before leaving office. The most recent instance was nearly half a century ago, in 1968, when Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren announced his intention to retire upon the confirmation of his successor. Outgoing President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime friend and confidante whom he had appointed to the court in 1965, to replace Warren as Chief Justice. The Democratic-controlled Senate refused to confirm him, though, and Johnson withdrew his nomination in October 1968, along with the nomination of Homer Thornberry, a Federal appellate judge Johnson had nominated to replace Fortas. Warren stayed on as Chief Justice, and it fell to Johnson’s successor, President Richard Nixon, to fill the seat. Nixon picked Warren Burger as Chief Justice.

Prior to that, one has to go back to 1881 to find a court vacancy that was filled not by the sitting President but by his successor. President Rutherford B. Hayes made the controversial nomination of Stanley Matthews in 1881. The nomination came near the end of Hayes’s term, so the Senate did not act. New President James A. Garfield renominated Matthews, and he passed through the Senate by a slim 24–23 vote. . . .

Ultimately, however, procedure and precedent—while important—are probably the wrong lenses through which to analyze the current situation. Due in part to Congressional polarization, in part to the weakening of the executive branch, and in part to the Supreme Court’s own increasing assertiveness, the nine Justices have more influence over American political life today than they have at almost any other time in our history. The stakes for replacing Justice Scalia could not be higher, and partisans on both sides understandably want to maneuver in a way that will increase their odds of achieving a favorable Supreme Court majority. Does anybody doubt that if Mitt Romney were president, Democrats held the Senate, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, Republicans and Democrats would be making very different arguments today?

Though the debate in the coming months may be dominated by arguments about historical precedent and Senate procedure, it is ultimately a debate about power, and who gets to wield it.

As the government — including the Court — becomes more powerful, people become more anxious to control that power themselves and, more significantly, more afraid of what will happen if their enemies control that power. This is not a formula for domestic tranquility, but shifting things in the other direction would reduce opportunities for political-class graft, and that’s more significant than the survival of the Republic.

ONLY NOW, AT THE END, DO THEY UNDERSTAND: Stephen Fry is just the latest victim in the authoritarian Left’s war on funny — Humour becomes all but impossible in an era when noisy mobs of self-styled holders of correct opinions are myopically policing what we say.

A half century ago, when the British left was waging war against the postwar “establishment,” it was the so-called “satire boom” that gave them a major foothold. Fry is simply asking his fellow revolutionaries to please devour him last.

WHAT SHOULD WE CALL NONPROFITS THAT GET 99 PERCENT OF THEIR FUNDING FROM GOVERNMENT? Government “tools?” How about government “extensions?” At the Environmental Protection Agency, they’re called “cheap labor sources.” Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has been digging into a massive database of more than 100,000 EPA grants compiled by Open The Books.

He found six non-profits that got 99 percent of their funding from federal grants to provide jobs for seniors doing EPA work, including retired engineers willing to work for the maximum starting pay of $12.27 per hour. Average salary for a full-time EPA engineer in the civil service is nearly $89,000 or $44 per hour.

Under EPA’s Senior Environmental Employment program, the agency gets experienced seniors at bargain-basement salaries instead of the far more costly civil service pay and benefits. The SEE program has cost at least $321 million since 2009.

Barton has been digging into that EPA grants database for quite a while. For examples, see here, here and here. Don’t be surprised if Barton finds even more.

BERNIE, I THINK YOU NEED TO GO ON A FACT-FINDING TOUR OF FALLUJAH: Sanders: if we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Flint.

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OBAMA DUMPS ON TRUMP: BEING PRESIDENT IS NOT HOSTING A REALITY SHOW.

But in a DNC-MSM media world that now largely resembles Idiocracy, hosting one is a proven path towards getting there. QED: “Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”

A REPUBLICAN GAME PLAN.

Well, at the presidential level at least, they certainly need one — preferably one that’s newer than just “win one for the Gipper.”

Related: Donald Trump has invented a new way to win.