EDITING YOUR GENES: Five Ways to Get CRISPR into the Body.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? ‘Sunday Night Football’ Ratings Down Again On Day Of Player Protests. “Viewershipwise, last night’s game is currently taking a 21% hit from the fast affiliates of the September 17 game, which was down 14% from the Season opener of September 10.”

TA-NEHISI COATES: Trump Won Because Whites Can’t Stand Obama’s ‘Good Negro Government.’

Coates used to represent the far left of progressive thought, but now he’s the mainstream.

FAUSTA WERTZ: Puerto Rico: The centennial of my grandfather’s house.

HE CHOSE WISELY: Trump v. Tattooed Millionaires. Steve Malanga in City Journal:

Once upon a time, professional athletes not only came out of working-class, scrappy neighborhoods, but they also pretty much stayed working class their entire lives. Until as recently as the late 1960s, NFL linemen worked construction or loaded trucks in the offseason to pay their bills. Players with a college degree traded on their celebrity status to sell stocks or insurance. (The policy my mother cashed in when my father died was sold to him in the early 1960s by a retired New York Giants player). Many of today’s players, by contrast, live in a world of ostentatious homes, fast cars, and red-carpet celebrity appearances, far from the struggles of those whose support pays their salaries. These players have deemed themselves important enough to impose their political views on ordinary fans watching sports as a respite from life’s daily grind. . . .

If players and officials think Trump will retreat on this issue, they haven’t been paying attention. And if they believe that their world is impervious, they’ve forgotten that America has had, over the last 75 years, several different favorite sports—from boxing to baseball—that eventually gave way.

Players, sportswriters, and maybe even the owners seem to think that fans will find it impossible to give up football on Sundays in the fall. It’s not.

But hey, didn’t Hillary Clinton prove you don’t need those blue-collar plebes anyway?

DON SURBER: It’s official: NYT couldn’t cover a Dumpster fire in its newsroom. “Things are so bad at the Times that it cannot give one of its own writers a puff review without screwing it up. Grandpa Surber told me the final days in the buggy whip factory were not pleasant after the automobile came along. So it is at the newspaper factory.”

HE SAYS THAT LIKE IT’S A GOOD THING: The NFL Won’t Forget September 24, 2017 Anytime Soon.

Someday soon they’ll wish they could forget it.

SO FAR, THE ONLY ONE JAILED IN THE HILLARY EMAIL SCANDAL: Anthony Weiner gets hard time. “The disgraced ex-congressman broke down crying as he was sentenced to 21 months in prison Monday for convincing a high school student to undress and touch herself via Skype in 2016. . . . His father and brother also joined him in the courtroom — but the serial sexter’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Huma Abedin, was nowhere to be seen.”

Flashback: Comey Tells Congressional Panel: Classified Emails from Hillary’s Server Were Forwarded to Anthony Weiner.

BLUE ON BLUE: A rude awakening for tech giants.

The European Union has assessed a major fine against Google.

In addition, the leaders of the European Union want to assess a large tax on the revenues of Amazon, Facebook and Google.
…
When liberal politicians — who are motivated by the need to gather funds through taxes in order to support their constituencies — see an untapped source of revenue, they want to attack it.

This is especially true when the source is both vulnerable and naïve, politically speaking.

And now comes Washington.

Since Facebook, Amazon and Google have such total dominance of their markets, it is likely they will soon be in the crosshairs of Washington.
…
They have not deigned to be involved in politics, except to lecture at politicians from a stance of superiority. One of the effects of this isolation is that followers of FAANG have a special disdain for conservatives.

Now, they are being unceremoniously thrust into the messy world of real politics. It is not going well for them.

The left, which FAANG embraces so earnestly, is about to teach those companies a lesson on the politics of Europe.

Microsoft learned two decades ago that being a progressive corporation was no protection from progressive politicians.

For all the recent talk on the Right about siccing the DOJ’s antitrust division on Google and Facebook, for now at least the right approach might be just to sit back and watch as another Lefty civil war breaks out.

JED BABBIN: Unmasking: Yet Another Abuse of Powers.

ALTERNATIVE PARTIES WIN BIG IN GERMANY: The German election results are yet another example of voters around the world deserting legacy parties. Angela Merkel’s party got the most votes again, but lost 8% support, while her “grand coalition” social democrat allies lost about 5%. Two parties that weren’t in the last Parliament gained close to 25% of the vote – the Alternative for Deutschland, the economic nationalist party, won 13.3%, and the classical liberal Free Democrats won 11.3%. The regional maps (free registration required) are extremely interesting, with The Left (the neo-communists) losing big to AfD in the old East Germany.

As the Telegraph notes, with the social democrats nixing the idea of another grand coalition, “A three-way “Jamaica” coalition, whereby the CDU is propped up by the the FDP and the Greens – is therefore the only possible majority government for Merkel.” That should be entertaining.

BILL KILLER: Rand Paul’s do-or-die health care demands.

Cut the Affordable Care Act spending way back. He says that “only a significant reassessment of this trillion-dollar spending regime would get my support.” The problem with this demand is that if you have deep cuts in health care spending you will push away other moderate Republicans, and not just Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

Scrap way more Affordable Care Act regulations. He says that states should “have to opt into ACA regulations,” rather than having to opt out. The problem with this demand is that it only appeals to conservatives. You’d get Ted Cruz on board but still lose other moderate Republicans.

Expand association health plans, which would let small businesses and individuals band together to buy health insurance. The problem with this demand is that Republican leaders have already determined they can’t do this through the budget reconciliation rules.

Baby steps, Senator.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: How a change in the bar exam cut score could alter California legal education. With projected pass-rate improvements for each school.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The North Koreans couldn’t have developed their nuclear weapons all by themselves.

It’s now two weeks since we learned that British intelligence has concluded that the North Koreans couldn’t have developed their nuclear weapons all by themselves. According to the Telegraph, “North Korean scientists are people of some ability, but clearly they’re not doing it entirely in a vacuum,” said one government minister. The two main suspects, according to the Brits, are the Iranians and the Russians.

This is not exactly breaking news. For years, I have written about the Nork/Iranian joint nuclear venture, and a long version of the story written by Gordon Chang appeared in 2015, suggesting that Iran had outsourced part of its nuclear program to Pyongyang.

Read the whole thing.

THE NEW YORK TIMES ON SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Lonely Scholar With Unusual Ideas’ Defends Trump, Igniting Legal Storm.

Several lawsuits have accused Mr. Trump of violating the clause by doing business with entities controlled by foreign governments. If Mr. Tillman is right, those lawsuits should be dismissed.

In June, Mr. Tillman filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that some framers of the Constitution did not think the emoluments clause applied to the president. One of his key pieces of evidence was a document signed by Alexander Hamilton.

The reaction was swift and brutal. Legal historians and a lawyer for members of Congress suing Mr. Trump said Mr. Tillman had misunderstood, misrepresented or suppressed crucial contrary evidence.

Jed Shugerman, a law professor at Fordham, wrote a blog post urging Mr. Tillman to issue a correction. “One might expect,” Professor Shugerman wrote, “that when a brief before a court contains significant factual errors or misleading interpretations of evidence, the authors of that brief will offer to correct their briefs or retract the sections if they are no longer supported by the evidence.”

In another blog post, Brianne J. Gorod, a lawyer with the Constitutional Accountability Center, which represents lawmakers suing Mr. Trump, said Mr. Tillman’s account was “not accurate, not even remotely so.”

Five legal historians, including Professor Shugerman, filed their own friend-of-the-court brief. They said Mr. Tillman’s had “incorrectly described” the evidence in a footnote in his brief.

Mr. Tillman took none of this lightly. In a sworn statement last week, he repeated his original position. “I stand entirely behind the above footnote: behind every sentence, every phrase, every word and every syllable,” he wrote. “I made no mistake, intentional or inadvertent. I retract nothing, and I do not intend to retract anything.”

Mr. Tillman, who is represented by Josh Blackman, an energetic law professor and litigator, rounded up declarations from experts in founding-era documents and on Hamilton. They agreed that the document said to contradict Mr. Tillman’s account was not signed by Hamilton and was prepared after his death.

I asked Mr. Tillman’s critics for their reactions. Professor Shugerman responded with “a public and personal apology.”

The last time so many legal historians embarrassed themselves was when they defended fraudulent legal historian Michael Bellesiles.

HMM: Kushner used private email to conduct White House business.

JOEL KOTKIN: The Changing Face Of Anti-Semitism.

When Donald Trump was elected president, much of American Jewish leadership reacted with something close to hysteria. To some, Trump’s presidency reflected the traditional face of the anti-Semitic right — xenophobic, nationalist and culturally conservative.

Trump’s handling of certain events, notably the Charlottesville white nationalist rally, have revived earlier charges that the president winks at right-wing racist supporters, even considering them part of his base.

The disdain toward Trump in the rabbinical community — often more liberal than congregants — was reflected in its cancellation of the annual New Year (Rosh Hashanah) call with the president. Yet, for all of the justifiable worries about the extreme right, the more consequential threat may well come from the left side of the spectrum.

The European model

I first became aware of this shift almost 15 years ago, when my wife, Mandy, and I visited the famous Nazi hunters, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, at their offices in Paris. One would expect Serge, whose father died in the concentration camps, to focus his concern on aspiring brown shirts, but, instead, he suggested that the biggest long-term threats would come increasingly from the left and parts of Europe’s expanding Muslim immigrant communities.

Some Jewish groups seem slow to realize how much things have changed since 1940. To be sure, the rise of right-wing nationalism across Europe is frightening, but, increasingly, the primary locus of European anti-Semitism can be found in heavily Muslim communities around cities such as Paris, as well as in Europe’s universities, where anti-Israel sentiments are increasingly de rigueur.

Who could have seen that coming?

YOU STAY CLASSY, NFL: Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin Didn’t Want Army Vet To Stand For Anthem [VIDEO].

Related: “Missed in all of the attention surrounding millionaire athletes kneeling for the National Anthem, [Sunday] was also Gold Star Mother’s and Family’s Day to honor those who’ve sacrificed so much for all of us.”

Flashback: Obama Names Steelers’ Owner Ambassador to Ireland.

HARDBALL: Iran Shuts Kurdistan Border, Erdogan Threatens to Invade: ‘Troops Could Arrive One Night.’

Iraq’s Kurds will go ahead with a referendum on independence on Monday because their partnership with Baghdad has failed, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani said on Sunday, shrugging off international opposition to the vote.

In response, the Iraqi government asked the autonomous Kurdish region to hand over control of its international border posts, its international airports and called on foreign countries to stop importing Kurdish crude oil.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it did not recognize the referendum and would view its outcome regarding a future Kurdistan as null and void, adding that the Iraqi Kurdish government was threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and the whole region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening a military intervention in Iraq in response to the Iraqi Kurdish region’s referendum on independence from Baghdad.

This is going to be much more difficult than it would have been if President Bush had gotten behind an independent Iraqi Kurdistan back in 2003.

I GUESS PEOPLE ARE STARTING TO GET WORRIED THAT IT WILL ACTUALLY HAPPEN: Hillary Clinton attacks Convention of States, Mark Meckler responds.

At the risk of repeating myself, 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, where you can see Mark Meckler introducing me.

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

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I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Mount Agung eruption potentially imminent as 50,000 flee Bali.

I’M SURPRISED THIS DISASTER ISN’T GETTING MORE COVERAGE: Warnings extended for Puerto Rico’s Guajataca Dam, in danger of collapse.

WHITE KNIGHTS WANTED: Men must confront men who disrespect women. That’s the fight we really need.