THIS SHOULDN’T SURPRISE ANYONE BUT…: Thousands of government contractors may have been hired illegally. A new paper from my think tank finds that many of the consultants who have replaced full-time government employees may have been hired contrary to the dictates of the Anti-Deficiency Act (ADA):

“In trying to reduce bureaucracy, the president and Congress focus on things like hiring freezes at agencies, but agencies simply turn to contractors instead, growing the bureaucracy with neither approval nor oversight from Congress,” said Robert Hanrahan, author of Bureaucratic Dark Energy. “Without specific authorization from Congress, hiring contractors for their specific skills to fill ongoing federal jobs is a felony. But many agencies do it nonetheless, as these laws are nearly never enforced. The bureaucracy grows ever larger thanks to this bureaucratic ‘dark energy’—an invisible force that allows government to expand at the discretion of the bureaucracy alone.”

Bureaucratic Dark Energy suggests two solutions for the lack of accountability that has lead federal agencies to misinterpret the “personal services” language in the Anti-Deficiency Act (ADA), a series of laws prohibiting agencies from hiring contractors except as appropriated and authorized by Congress. First, Congress must insist on enforcement of the Anti-Deficiency Act and punish civil servants who outsource their own jobs. Secondly, Congress should establish a private civil cause of action for ADA violations. There may be hundreds of cases at dozens of agencies amounting to billions of dollars in misappropriation. A small fraction of these sums awarded to successful plaintiffs should be a powerful incentive for agencies to rein in their spending on contractors.

If the President is looking for a way to drain the swamp, enforcing the ADA may be a good start.

WHEN EVERYTHING IS RACIST… Even Hobby Lobby Cotton Is Racist These Days.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: 25% Of Law Schools Plan To Accept The GRE. I’m pretty sure this is just about getting more warm bodies while finagling the U.S. News rankings.

HOW THE JUSTICE SYSTEM KILLED KALIEF BROWDER:

Imagine being young, vulnerable, and facing criminal charges for a crime you didn’t commit. The justice system sees you as nothing more than a statistic. Your case is not worth their time and resources. The question of your innocence is actually of little interest to the DA’s office. You are just another file on top of an endless stack of others. Their only goal is to move your paperwork from their stack to someone else’s.

Before you are even given the chance to adequately defend yourself in court, you are given two options: continue to maintain your innocence and face the full consequences of the legal system or agree to a reduced sentence by accepting a plea deal and admitting guilt.

This was the choice given to sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder. But unlike so many others in the same position, he had the courage to say no to the plea deal. And so the system destroyed him.

I think I’d support a ban on plea bargains. I have some related thoughts in my Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime.

FREE KURDISTAN: Kurdish Independence Referendum on September 25th Raises Threats from Turkey, Iraq. “The White House also wants the Kurds to cancel the vote.”

Citing concerns about continued efforts against ISIS, President Trump’s administration—like Obama’s before him—does not support an independent Kurdish state. The Trump administration has demanded that the Kurds cancel their independence referendum in favor of further negotiations.

With few exceptions, a lack of imagination has been hindering US policy in the Middle East since Nixon and Kissinger completed Egypt’s realignment more than 40 years ago.

MEGAN MCARDLE: We Didn’t Normalize Trump. We Normalized the Left’s Violence. Once upon a time, conservatives spoke at universities without $600,000 in police protection.

Last week, conservative Ben Shapiro gave a speech. At Berkeley. And all across America, people watched their screens to see what sort of violence would erupt.

Reality was anticlimactic. Law enforcement was out in force, at an estimated price tag of $600,000. Concrete barriers were erected to hold back the liberal “antifa,” and police obtained permission in advance to use pepper spray. Much of campus was locked down and cleared out. Nine people were arrested. And so, Shapiro arrived, gave his speech, and departed without the mayhem we’ve become accustomed to seeing at such appearances. And collective relief was sighed.

But how relieved should we be that this is what it takes to maintain order in the face of … a speech? On the one hand it shows that even in the heart of antifa territory, police and authorities that are actually determined to control them can do so. That’s good to know (and gives the lie to chicken authorities who would give antifa a heckler’s veto). And yet, those authorities could be forgiven for feeling daunted, even aggrieved, when they realize that every speaker antifa doesn’t like means vast sums, and considerable effort, expended on turning your public spaces into a demilitarized zone.

Arrest the protesters, and charge them and their financial backers with a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights, and this problem will go away. But university administrators, for the most part, would rather have an excuse to shun conservative speakers. Then they wonder why the public doesn’t support higher education the way it did when a different ethic prevailed.

TOM SHATTUCK: Brace for Impact, Swamp!

All righty then. Looks like we may have a big problem. Remember in March when President Trump tweeted this shocking item? “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

And, “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!.”

Heads exploded.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey scowled, “Donald Trump should just do the right thing and apologize to Barack Obama, there is no evidence … it is absolutely not true.”

Sen. Liz Warren was right there to shout down the president, saying, “I just think it’s becoming clearer every day that President Trump is failing and he knows it, and that’s what these wild allegations are about.”

Not surprisingly, President Obama’s grenadiers in the media enthusiastically joined the charge.

While ABC’s Martha Raddatz excoriated Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mika Brzezinski griped, “What the hell … This White House is a joke.”

More recently Jake Tapper called Trump’s allegation “fiction,” snorting, “There is no evidence that Donald Trump was wiretapped by Barack Obama, it was and continues to be a lie.”

Not so fast, Jake.

Last night, Tapper’s colleagues at CNN broke blockbuster news: “US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election.”

Manafort has a residence in Trump Tower.

According to CNN, “The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.”

It’s funny how many statements that got the It’s monstrous to even suggest that! treatment not long ago are now turning out to be true. . . .

WELL I NEVER: Global warming may be occurring more slowly than previously thought, study suggests. In other words, they’re admitting that their models of a decade ago didn’t reflect reality, which is exactly what we skeptics were saying then and vilified for. As Pat Michaels puts it, data is the modeler’s burden.

WASTE PAPER: Someone Keeps Flushing €500 Bank Notes Down The Toilet.

In recent weeks, Swiss prosecutors have been gripped by a mystery, trying to figure out why someone tried to flush tens of thousands of euros down the toilet at a Geneva branch of UBS.

And not just once.

The first €500 bills were discovered several months ago in a bathroom close to a bank vault containing hundreds of safe deposit boxes, according to a report in Tribune de Geneve confirmed by the city prosecutor’s office. A few days later, Bloomberg adds that more banknotes turned up in toilets at three nearby restaurants, requiring thousands of francs in plumbing repairs to unclog the pipes. Indeed, AP adds that at one pizzeria, police were informed after the clogged toilet had overflowed.

In all, police have extracted tens of thousands of euros in soiled bills, many of which appear to have been cut with scissors.

While destroying banknotes isn’t a crime in Switzerland, “there must be something behind this story,” said Henri Della Casa, a spokesman for the Geneva Prosecutor’s Office. “That’s why we started an investigation.” He declined to discuss the case further.

If the money had been stolen and been marked by police or had the serial numbers recorded, then there wouldn’t be any mystery for the police to solve — but apart from that, I can’t imagine any reason for flushing away perfectly good money.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM EDITION: UNC: Masculinity contributes to ‘perpetration of violence.’ UNC sounds like a hostile educational environment for male students.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Cassini was great, but we could do better if America wasn’t the fussy superpower: We could have been to Saturn by 1970.

EMBRACE THE SUCK ALERT: Second Edition pre-order page at Amazon. The new cover is fabulous.

TRUMP AT UN: Mideast Peace Deal ‘Will be a Fantastic Achievement… I Say It Can Happen.’

Not until certain parts of the Arab world give up on ethnic cleansing and/or genocide, it can’t.

A PHOTO TAKEN TODAY, SEPTEMBER 18, OVER THE KOREAN PENINSULA: A USAF B-1B strategic bomber in formation with South Korean fighter-bombers and USMC F-35Bs.

RELATED: Escalation is a two-way street.

Senior North Korean officials who have gotten out in the last few years all agree that Kim Jong Un is considered a failure by more and more North Koreans and that his days are numbered, even if China does not step in and take over beforehand. Yet these senior officials report that Kim Jong Un could keep his police state going into the late 2020s. But time is not on his side and the signs backing that up are increasingly obvious. Kim Jong Un has triggered a trend that will destroy him and nothing he does seems to fix the problem. He believes having workable nukes and a reliable delivery system (ballistic missiles) will enable him to extort the neighbors for enough goodies to bail him out. That is a high-risk strategy.

Read the whole thing.

HURRICANE NEWS: Hurricane Maria: What we know, where it’s going next. Looks bad for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, MBA EDITION: M.B.A. Applications Decline for Third Year in a Row: Business schools across the U.S. are struggling to lure young professionals out of a strengthening job market.

THE ABACOS ISLANDS, NOT JURASSIC PARK: The plan to clone an extinct horse. (Here’s some background on the Abacos.)

(INTER)NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE: Britain is offering US physician assistants cash and long vacations in Europe if they relocate to fill desperate staff shortage.

The National Health Service (NHS) is offering £1,000 ($1,350) to cover their relocation, 41 days paid vacation a year, and free flights home during holidays.

Ultimately, officials say the plan is to recruit up to 3,200 PAs to perform minor operations and monitor wards.

The move has sparked outrage, with senior medics and patient groups warning it could trigger a slippery slope towards relying on under-qualified transplants to perform essential duties.

British health officials insist the PAs would not be replacing doctors, though they would be allowed to perform the same tasks.

Who will we poach medical staff from if BernieCare is passed into law?

ACTUALLY, I THINK THAT’S THE PLAN BEHIND HIS TWEETS: Robert Ehrlich: Trump is making tons of progress while the media ignore it.

UGH: ‘Extremely dangerous’ Maria moves toward V.I., Puerto Rico as Cat 4 storm.

SNOWFLAKE NATION: Feds Spend $587,441 to Make Engineering a ‘Safe Zone’ for LGBTQ Students.

The engineers I’ve known didn’t seem to care much about other engineers except whether they were competent.

PROF. JOHN BANZHAF: SUE THE ST. LOUIS RIOTERS.

Because the threat of arrest and small fines obviously isn’t discouraging a growing number who engage in criminal activities as a way of protesting, Banzhaf suggests that all those adversely affected should sue for civil damages under a variety of legal theories, some of which have already been successful.

As he said in the National Law Journal, unless we finally confront the growing problem of very disruptive, expensive, and harmful riots by those who disagree with verdicts, things will only get worse. . . .

There are many reasons why the criminal law has often actually encouraged – rather than discouraged – criminal rioters, says Banzhaf.

Rioters who violate criminal laws know that their chances of actually being arrested are small, as more police forces yield the streets to their blockades, “die ins,” chaining themselves to things, and other similar tactics – with police often afraid to make arrests, or recognizing a new “right” to have them “let off steam,” or simply because of sympathy with their cause.

Even the few rioters who may be arrested usually face only a token fine; a small price to pay, they often think, for getting even more publicity for their cause.

Indeed, if they refuse to pay the fine and are prosecuted in court, they can often turn the trial into a major media event to focus even more public attention on their grievances.

The arrests themselves can also be publicized, with cell-phone stills or videos posted on the Internet to gain sympathy, and to increase their status and street cred.

Potential rioters who may be willing to risk small criminal fines may be deterred by the likelihood of much larger civil judgments, potentially also including punitive damages since the torts are “intentional,” and especially those which might result from class actions.

This is true even for rioters with few assets, since the possibility of a large civil judgment – with potential garnishments and other collection techniques – is something many young people would be concerned about.

Civil damages actions are also much easier to win than criminal prosecutions, notes Banzhaf, since there are fewer elements to establish, and a much lower standard of proof to be met.

Civil actions would also open the door to pre-trial legal discovery, including those aimed at verifying concerns expressed in various media that those with even deeper pockets are involved in the planning, funding, and/or execution of these criminal disruptions.

That last is the real point, I think. And this analysis is also applicable to campus rioters.

CHANGE: GOP state lawmakers meet to plan possible constitutional convention.

A group of GOP state legislators reportedly spent four days last week in Phoenix outlining how to run a constitutional convention that would pave the way for new amendments mandating a balanced budget and possibly congressional term limits.

Nineteen states including Arizona, Iowa and New Hampshire had representation at the meeting, according to The Associate Press, though no Democrats were present. Thirty-four states would need to sign on to the movement to call a new constitutional convention, which would be the first since the one that drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

All 27 amendments since adopted have been proposed by Congress.

The idea of amending the Constitution has been popular in some conservative circles. In January, GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Mike Lee (Utah) introduced a balanced budget amendment, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) called for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress.

President Trump called for congressional term limits during his campaign last year, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has more than once thrown cold water on that idea.

Such plans have also received backing from Republicans including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

A slew of conservative activists, such as mega-donors Charles and David Koch and the American Legislative Exchange Council are pushing for a constitutional convention to limit the size of the government.

I should note that the Tennessee Law Review published a special symposium issue on constitutional conventions a few years ago. I wrote the Foreword, Sandy Levinson wrote the Afterword, and an all-star cast including Randy Barnett, Brannon Denning, Richard Epstein, Tim Lynch, Rob Natelson, and too many other luminaries to mention contributed the stuff in between. Here’s my contribution, which focuses specifically on spending. And here’s video of me talking about it at the Harvard Law School conference on constitutional conventions.

Plus, note this from Robert Natelson: How the procedures for a modern Amendments Convention may unfold.