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.

RANDY BARNETT ON SCALIA AND HELLER: Scalia Restored Right To Bear Arms: Supreme Court Justice’s ‘new originalism’ refinement led to landmark ‘Heller’ decision.

JOURNALISM AND OBAMA’S MIDEAST DEBACLES:

Fortunately for President Obama’s short-term peace of mind, but tragically from the standpoint of Middle East peace, the plight of the Syrians and the President’s historical standing, the press is sticking to its standard “don’t connect the dots” approach when it comes to reporting on President Obama’s failures in office. That is, the mainstream, instinctively pro-Democratic media is reporting on the unfolding disaster in Syria as it must, but it isn’t doing to Obama’s Middle East failures what it did to George W. Bush’s. That is, while a growing number of well-respected reporters are becoming increasingly concerned by the evidence of strategic collapse, the press as a whole isn’t building up and relentlessly hammering home a picture of comprehensive strategic and policy failure and aggressively blaming the White House for the consequences of its fumbles. The White House isn’t facing the kind of national uproar a GOP president would face in a comparable situation of strategic meltdown, and so the President and the small clique of ultra-loyal aides who have gathered around him in the twilight of the second term can continue to shield themselves from the full awareness of the trouble they are in.

That is too bad. If the White House faced the firestorm of criticism that its Syria policy deserves, there would be a better chance for the kind of reappraisal and regrouping that America’s Middle East policy so desperately needs.

This is why, if you value competent foreign policy, you should vote Republican. Even if you don’t thing that Republican presidents are any better at it, they get more scrutiny.

HISTORY: Justice Felix Frankfurter: Temporarily having an eight-justice Supreme Court is not ‘sacrificing a single interest of importance.’ In 1945-1946, the Supreme Court functioned for a year with only eight justices.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Purdue staffer resigns after allegedly threatening to rape pro-lifers.

A Purdue University employee has resigned following a deluge of social media comments in which he appeared to threaten to rape pro-life supporters.

Jamie Newman, who provides musical accompaniment to Purdue’s Division of Dance, allegedly posted a series of critical comments to an article from abortion opponent Live Action. Those comments were seen as rape threats toward anti-abortion activists.

Newman has denied that his comments were threats and called the accusations an attempt to “destroy” and defame him. The comments were sent to the Purdue University Police Department, which questioned Newman but cleared him of any criminal intent. . . .

On Monday, Purdue President Mitch Daniels defended the university’s decision to call for an apology from Newman without firing him, citing free speech. Daniels did, however, say that the comments from Newman were “the most explicit threat I’ve seen in my three years [as Purdue president].”

As we know, though, anything that makes anyone uncomfortable is a firing offense now.

IT’S AS IF THEY’RE JUST THERE TO ADVANCE DEMOCRATIC PARTY INTERESTS, NOT CIVIL LIBERTIES: ACLU Opposes “Mens Rea” Criminal Justice Reform. No really. And the main reason seems to be that “Republican lawmakers” support it.

Background here.

TRANSLATION: HE’LL CALL THEM RACIST IN BETWEEN ROUNDS OF GOLF. Roll Call: Obama Plans ‘Robust Engagement’ With Congress on Court Nominee.

White House officials plan to conduct “robust engagement” with Congress throughout the entire process of nominating a Supreme Court justice to fill the seat of Antonin Scalia, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz.

President Barack Obama wanted to take time after Scalia’s death and go through the nomination process in “a thoughtful and rigorous way,” Schultz told reporters at a news conference Monday in California. “So I expect that when the Senate returns within due time, the president will identify and announce a nominee.”

Schultz declined to further sharpen the timeline for announcing a pick or elaborate about potential nominees. Since the news Saturday of Scalia’s death, the White House has heard from lawmakers who reached out to the president, Schultz said.

“White House officials have been engaged with congressional offices, primarily on the Senate side, but both Democrat and Republican offices,” Schultz told reporters. “Those conversations have been preliminary in nature but are a signal that we plan on conducting robust engagement throughout this entire process.”

“And then we’re also proactively reaching out to key offices,” Schultz said. “I don’t have a list here to detail. But I think in the coming days, that engagement and that outreach will become more extensive.”

Although “engagement and outreach” probably means “pointing out what the NSA knows about you.”

THE UNITED STATES OF S.W.A.T.: U.S. Marshals Are Arresting People in Texas Who Have Outstanding Student Loans:

Texas congressman Gene Green explained to Fox 26 that the federal government has been contracting out student-loan collections to private debt collectors, who are allowed to deploy the U.S. marshals as their enforcement arm. “There’s bound to be a better way to collect on a student loan debt,” said the congressman. Around Houston, that “better way” involves 1,200 to 1,500 arrest warrants. Student debt is at an all time high in the U.S., where students hold an average of $35,000 in federal debt, according to an analysis of government data on Edvisors.

As John Fund noted in a 2014 column at NRO titled “The United States of SWAT?”, “Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions:”

It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces.

“Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” journalist Radley Balko writes in his 2013 book Rise of the Warrior Cop. “The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”

The proliferation of paramilitary federal SWAT teams inevitably brings abuses that have nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism. Many of the raids they conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.

Take the case of Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., who was “visited” by a SWAT team from the U.S. Department of Education in June 2011. Agents battered down the door of his home at 6 a.m., dragged him outside in his boxer shorts, and handcuffed him as they put his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a police car for two hours while they searched his home. The raid was allegedly intended to uncover information on Wright’s estranged wife, Michelle, who hadn’t been living with him and was suspected of college financial-aid fraud.

And now US Marshals are now swinging into action to arrest people who have defaulted on their student loans. Where does it end?