JOEL KOTKIN: The New Mandarins Of The Deep State.

America’s authoritarian shift did not start with Trump’s election, but has been brewing for years. In the Obama years, we lived under “pen and phone” rule by decree that largely disempowered both Congress and local control. The former president’s legacy to the progressive coalition — paused briefly when power unexpectedly went to the GOP — means continued Democratic support for agglomeration of power in the executive.

This form of executive dictatorship is now more likely to return to the White House in 2020. The notion of enlightened rule from above may have even been further justified by the very fact that what Time’s Joe Klein has called “a nation of dodos” voted for Trump in the first place. The hoi polloi can be appealed to and cajoled, it appears, but not really trusted.

Unlike Trump, whose political methods are both offensive and self-defeating, the mandarins can count on support from most of the media, the non-profit world and the ascendant techie wing of the tech/media oligarchy, what Daniel Bell called “the priests of the machine.” Unlike the factionalized Republicans, the new mandarinate — entertainment, news media, law, software — share a strong commitment to a common progressive ideology.

More important still, the mandarins control most of the means of communication, particularly those that attract younger people. This will assist, as our secular pontiff, Jerry Brown, put it, efforts to successfully “brainwash” the masses. China’s recently anointed emperor, Xi Jinping, admired by Brown and many other American mandarins, may emerge as the new role model. That is, after Xi has shown how control of education and media can work on getting the masses to embrace “right thinking.”

I’m not sure the peasants will be as easy to put down as all that. And the loss of legitimacy by the “Establishment” far exceeds anything that happened in the 1960s.

THEY NEED WIDER POWERS! Prosecutors Treat Opioid Overdoses as Homicides, Snagging Friends, Relatives.

Police ​are increasingly investigating opioid overdoses as homicides and prosecuting addicts who procure drugs for others. Heroin user Fred Rebmann was recently sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Video: Jake Nicol/WSJ; Photo Illustration: Heather Seidel/WSJ

Fueled by a flood of heroin laced with fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids, the overdose death rate in Hamilton County more than tripled between 2006 and 2016 to 50 per 100,000 people, or four times as many as those killed in traffic accidents. Nationally, some 64,000 Americans died from overdoses last year, up 86% from 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A newly created heroin task force in Hamilton County has investigated hundreds of deaths in the past two years, resulting in a dozen involuntary manslaughter indictments in state court and 13 federal indictments for distribution of controlled substances resulting in death.

But in courtrooms around the country, prosecutors are also sweeping up low-level dealers who are addicts trying to support their habit, as well as friends and family members of overdose victims who bought or shared drugs with the deceased. Some critics of the prosecution tactic say these users need treatment, not harsh prison sentences.

That doesn’t look very much like justice.

THANKS, OBAMA: The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook. “An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.”

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

Read the whole thing.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON FOREIGN POLICY: Is the world developing a new adaptive order?

Adaptive order is not simply an ivory tower concept. It describes the process through which the Internet actually emerged and continues to be governed. As a report by Vinton Cerf explains, “we conclude it is folly to try and regulate all these areas through an international treaty, and encourage further development of mechanisms for global debate like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).”

If the future world order resembles the Internet, it will be built and rebuilt in the background, through a nonstop process of deals and arrangements much more than by traditional diplomatic agreement. If the Trump administration is deliberately (or accidentally under evolutionary pressure) laying the foundations for an adaptive world order the next decades may see an increase, rather a diminution of American influence in the world.

The key conceptual innovation is that prestige is replaced by capability as a unit of negotiating power. . . .

The success of American foreign policy may depend not on how many diplomats it has in overseas stations but how much innovation the US fosters. American power may increasingly be a function of technological space rather than diplomatic maps. In such a world tax codes, regulatory environments, privacy regimes and human capital may count as foreign policy acts.

In that new world American prestige and influence will not depend on the dubious virtue of any individual human institution nor on the soaring eloquence of the media but upon the industry, inventiveness and moral compass of the United States.

Read the whole thing.

THERE IS NO WAY TO GET THE LEFT TO LEAVE YOU ALONE:  The Right To Be Apolitical.

INSANELY PURSUING RUSSIANS:  At the Washington Post, if it misleads, it leads

SO? LET THEM.  THEY TAKE TO THE STREETS FOR EVERYTHING, INCLUDING BECAUSE IT’S MONDAY:  ‘Resistance’ Members, Including Former Obama Officials, Threaten to ‘Take to the Streets’ if Trump Fires Mueller.

INSANELY PURSUING OFFENSE:  CNN Is Crazy, Bacon Edition [with comment by Paul].

LOOK, GUYS, CUT HIM SOME SLACK. MAYBE HE KNOWS HIS “FRIENDS” FROM HIS HOMEWORLD ARE LOOKING FOR HIM AND HE’S A LITTLE SCARED.  WOULDN’T YOU BE?  Harry Reid Started Pentagon Program to Look for Aliens.

BECAUSE ALLOWING PEOPLE TO KEEP MORE OF THEIR OWN MONEY IS TOTALLY THE EQUIVALENT OF ENSLAVING PEOPLE:  The GOP tax bill is as bad as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850? Really?   In that it’s not the same at all…

PERHAPS IT’S MORE THAN A PAUSE IN WARMING?  The sun is blank, NASA data shows it to be dimming.

NEWS YOU MOST DEFINITELY CAN USE: The 5 Worst Movies of 2017 (No.1 May be the Worst EVER.)

APPARENTLY THE PENTAGON PAPERS WERE NOT DANIEL ELLSBERG’S ONLY ACT OF TREASON:  Man behind nuclear plans says we’re close to Armageddon.

NBC INVESTIGATION FOUND HIM NOT GUILTY OF HARASSMENT, MERELY A CASE OF HIM BEING “CHRIS MATTHEWS, IN THE FIRST DEGREE”:  NBC paid severance to producer who accused Chris Matthews of sexual harassment: report.

TELL ME AGAIN ABOUT HOW WOMEN NEVER LIE AND YOU CAN TRUST PROSECUTORS:  Rape trial falls apart after accuser’s 40,000 texts are revealed.