WHY SHOULD TAXPAYERS ACROSS THE NATION SUPPORT BLOATED BLUE-STATE POLITICAL MACHINES? GOP Candidates Seek Repeal Of State & Local Tax Deduction That Benefits Blue States Most.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Dutch Police Are Teaching Eagles How to Capture Renegade Drones.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 999.

DOING JOBS AMERICANS WOULD BE HAPPY TO DO: “Outsourcing Visa” May Hurt Even More than Reported.

Just in time for a primary season that’s highly-charged over the issue of immigration, the H1-B visa is back in the news for facilitating layoffs of American workers. The visa allows companies to bring over tech workers on a visa that gives them no path to citizenship status and ties their presence in the U.S. to their job. This makes the H1-B workers cheaper and more pliable than U.S. workers; furthermore, H1-B workers in the U.S. are often used to pave the way to outright offshoring. We’ve covered H1-B layoffs before, especially before the saga of workers laid off at Disney. But it turns out that due to a legalism present in many contracts, there may be far more affected workers who are not speaking out. . . .

This issue has salience for the GOP primary. Sen. Marco Rubio is a leading proponent of the I-Squared Act. On the other hand, Grassley and Durbin’s reform effort comes alongside one by Sen. Jeff Sessions (who has been rumored to be on the verge of endorsing Donald Trump) and Sen. Ted Cruz, which would essentially create a whistleblower’s exception to non-disparagement provisions: you could speak out if you were complaining about H1-B layoffs.

There are many reasons to be supportive of legal U.S. immigration. But as we’ve written before, the H1-B is an ugly, crony-ist measure. It brings none of the benefits to the nation of legal immigration, while carrying many of the costs. Lawmakers may be tempted to look to it as a way to work-around a broken immigration system—but evidence suggests that it makes many problems worse: layoffs, lowered wages, and ultimately, offshoring (as well as unknown amount of visa-overstays.) Passing an expansion of it right now would be sure to exacerbate immigration tensions, to little gain—unless you own a business that uses H1-B workers.

We have an ugly, crony-ist ruling class, so ugly crony-ist measures fit in quite well.

BOB ZUBRIN: Will the EPA Cause a Zika Pandemic? Well, that would reduce the surplus population, which Obama science advisor John Holdren favors.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Want to know why voters are so mad? Mia Love has the answer, and a solution.

ROGER KIMBALL: What Iowa Means.

THE JEB BUSH HATCHET MAN WHO MIGHT ACCIDENTALLY ELECT DONALD TRUMP: “As one nameless Bush backer grumbled to Politico during the latest round of venting in the media, ‘You might as well light all this money on fire.’”

If only there were ways for deep-pocketed conservatives and libertarians to slowly nudge the culture rightward via long-term media strategies rather than quadrennial bankroll bonfires.

IOWA’S BIG STORY: CRUZ 1, ETHANOL LOBBY 0.

ONLY NOW, AT THE VERY END, DO THEY UNDERSTAND: Lifelong Lefty John Cleese Discovers That Lefties Have No Sense Of Humor:

John Cleese, one of the funniest people to ever walk the earth, is taking a stand against political correctness on college campuses.

The Monty Python co-founder, in a video for Internet forum Big Think, railed against the current wave of hypersensitivity on college campuses, saying he has been warned against performing on campuses.

“[Psychiatrist Robin Skynner] said: ‘If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior,'” Cleese said. “And when you’re around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what’s going to upset them next.”

Cleese said that it’s one thing to be “mean” to “people who are not able to look after themselves very well,” but it was another to take it to “the point where any kind of criticism of any individual or group could be labeled cruel.”

Cleese added that “comedy is critical,” and if society starts telling people “we mustn’t criticize or offend them,” then humor goes out the window.

“With humor goes a sense of proportion,” Cleese said. “And then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in 1984.”

For today’s lefties, 1984 wasn’t so much a cautionary tale, as a how-to manual.

HE’S A MORE SUBTLE GUY THAN HIS PUBLIC CARICATURE SUGGESTS: Donald Trump’s surprisingly un-Trump Iowa concession speech. “Trump, essentially did not behave like the candidate we have all come to know and expect.”

IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION: Hillary Donated $100K to New York Times Group the Same Year Paper Endorsed Her.

Related: CBS anchors chuckle when Hillary Clinton says she can’t be bought.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: More On The Discrimination Against Conservative/Libertarian Law Profs Even Though They Are More Productive Scholars Than Liberal Law Profs.

FISH GOTTA SWIM, BIRDS GOTTA FLY: The Left Is Forever ‘Timely’ In Warning of Corporate Fascist Doom:

A conservative critic can locate a fascinating ideological subtext in several articles in the Weekend Arts I section of Friday’s New York Times.

That subtext is that the Left’s warnings about impending corporate fascism are forever timely, even as they are wielded by dead Communist screenwriters, 75-year-old hippie folk singers still nostalgic for Vietnam, ’70s rock singers who had wrote anthems for the Sandinistas, and cool-tempered crackpots from MIT.

Let’s begin with the 75th birthday concert for Joan Baez, and Times music critic Stephen Holden praising over the peace-loving diva’s magnetism. Her all-star concert of duets will air on the PBS series Great Performances, a typical display on the taxpayer-funded sandbox for leftists:

Mr. [Jackson] Browne, playing the piano, sang his prophetic ‘70s anthem “Before the Deluge” with Ms. Baez, who glumly observed that “as we head into the abyss” this expression of apocalyptic foreboding is even more relevant today than when it was written. A weary sense of impending doom was a persistent undercurrent throughout a concert that tried and mostly failed to conjure up a ‘60s-style inspirational fervor.

My favorite “expression of apocalyptic foreboding” is still Naomi Wolf, after advising Al Gore to don earth toned togs in 2000 to bring out his inner alpha male and before becoming an ISIS truther in 2014, writing a marvelously paranoid screed for the Huffington Post in the fall of 2008 that, as NewsBusters paraphrased, “Sarah ‘Evita’ Palin to Usher in Rovian Police State.” But then, as German intellectual Günter Grass once said, “You American intellectuals — you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!”

Perhaps because, even though “Progressivism” has been the dominant political ideology in America since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, as the Z Blog noted last week, “an integral part of Progressive mythology is the struggle. Despite being in charge for close to a century, Progressives still think of themselves as an insurgent minority at war with their oppressive overlords. Elizabeth Warren is worth millions, yet she spends her time in the Senate ranting about the one percent. Her neighbors in the one percent cheer her on. It’s false consciousness.”

And the ideological version of Dr. Strangelove wrestling with his own out-of-control hand. Fight the power — even though you are the power!

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama faces pressure to change Afghan withdrawal plans — again. “Pressure is growing on the White House to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan after a series of negative developments in the country. A slew of setbacks has prompted concern about Obama’s current plan to withdraw all but 5,500 troops by the end of the year — and his presidency.”

Remember when he was bragging about having “ended two wars?” You can end a war by losing it, but Obama can lose a war without ending it.

THE HILL: Obama seeking $1 billion for ‘cancer moonshot.’

You know, Obama has done a lot for space development by mostly keeping out of it. Maybe he should try that approach in other places. . . .

Related: Is Cancer Task Force Another Placebo?

SO HOW ARE THINGS IN THE CITY RUN BY OBAMA’S FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF? Bloody start to year as Chicago homicides hit 50, worst January since at least 2000.

But then, everything Emanuel touches eventually turns to lead, but with plenty of opportunity for Democrat graft and loss of freedom for Americans along the way. Just to review, Emanuel recruited the “Blue Dog” Democrats in 2006 who posed as moderates and fiscal conservatives to take back Congress, only to vote en masse for Obamacare three years later while Rahm served as Obama’s chief of staff, before doing to Chicago what he attempted for the rest of the country. That’s change we can believe in.

The sad thing is that the Democrat’s one-party rule of Chicago could always be worse.

JUST NBC THE PARTISAN HACKWORK: ‘Today Show’ Sandbags Palin, Doesn’t Ask Hillary About Email Scandal.

Meanwhile at sister network MSNBC, “Brian Williams Interviews Hillary; Jokes About ‘How Much Sleep Have You Budgeted for Tonight?’”

I wonder if the two far left fantasists swapped tales of imaginary wartime bravery in the green room before the debate?

HOW BADLY IS BERNIE BURNED? “A clear win and a virtual tie in the first two races strike me as a good enough outcome to keep Sanders viable. But, her legal problems aside, Clinton remains the heavy favorite for the Democratic nomination, and a bit more so after tonight,” Paul Mirengoff writes at Power Line.

Obama’s bete noire Winston Churchill famously said that “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” But based on her “Angry, Death-Stare ‘Victory’ Speech in Iowa,” Hillary didn’t seem very thrilled to narrowly escape defeat by someone even further to the left than herself; she’s seen this horror movie before.

Related: “That moment when you’ve eeked out a tie, and your thunder gets stolen by Sticker Guy.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY: BREAKING: Hillary Clinton Put Spies’ Lives at Risk: It’s not the ‘nothing-burger’ Clinton allies have tried to portray — lives are literally at stake.

Discussions with Intelligence Community officials have revealed that Ms. Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included Holy Grail items of American espionage such as the true names of Central Intelligence Agency intelligence officers serving overseas under cover. Worse, some of those exposed are serving under non-official cover. NOCs (see this for an explanation of their important role in espionage) are the pointy end of the CIA spear and they are always at risk of exposure – which is what Ms. Clinton’s emails have done.

Not only have these spies had their lives put in serious risk by this, it’s a clear violation of Federal law. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, enacted due to the murder of the CIA’s station chief in Athens after his cover was blown by the left-wing media, makes it a Federal crime to divulge the true identity of any covert operative serving U.S. intelligence if that person has not previous been publicly acknowledged to be working for our spy agencies.

People really go to jail for breaking this law. John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, recently emerged from two years in prison for unauthorized disclosure of classified information, including exposing the identity of an Agency colleague who was serving under cover. . . .

Hillary’s emails also include the names of foreigners who are on the CIA payroll, according to Intelligence Community officials. Since it can be safely assumed that several foreign intelligence agencies intercepted Ms. Clinton’s unencrypted communications, this directly threatens the lives of the exposed individuals. “It’s a death sentence,” explained a senior Intelligence Community official: “if we’re lucky only agents, not our officers, will get killed because of this.” (Agents are foreigners working for U.S. intelligence while officers are American staffers.)

CIA and the entire Intelligence Community are in panic mode right now, trying to determine which of our intelligence officers and agents have been compromised by EmailGate. At a minimum, valuable covers have been blown, careers have been ruined, and lives have been put at serious risk. Our spies’ greatest concern now is what’s still in Hillary’s emails that investigators have yet to find.

She should be awaiting trial, not running for President.

BILL DE BLASIO: BUILDING A BRIDGE TO DAVID DINKINS ERA. The Guardian Angels are back! New York crime-fighting gang head back on subway patrols for the first time in 22 years after spree of slashing attacks.

New Yorkers can’t say they weren’t warned before de Blasio was elected. Or as Ed Koch was famously quoted as saying when asked if he would run again after losing to Dinkins in the 1989 Democrat primary, “No, the people have spoken, and they must be punished.”

OH, I’M SURE THEY’LL FIND A WAY TO: Don’t blame Republicans for #OscarsSoWhite.

KEVIN J. ANDERSON: 2113