THE GROWING DESPERATION OF OUR RULING CLASS: The Lost 110 Words of Our Constitution. A friend on Facebook comments:

Well, here’s a Georgetown Law professor and national-security eminence speculating openly upon mechanisms for stripping conservative states of self-governance. In brief, the Fourteenth Amendment provides for reduction in representation for states that unjustly restrict the franchise; the received wisdom on the left is that voter-ID laws and comparable measures qualify; therefore states with them should have their national representation in the Congress reduced.

Set aside the empirical weakness of the case: specifically that voter-ID laws and the like have not appeared to suppress voting by anyone in any meaningful way, as the turnout numbers of the past decade amply demonstrate. Focus instead on the intent, which is that Acela-Corridor types are growing increasingly creative — and overt — in their efforts to find means of retaining and extending their rule over the rest of us.

If that means casting themselves in the role of Parliament and Crown c.1775, so be it.

Want to start a legit civil war? Go down this path. A violent response to such an effort would be entirely justified. I doubt, however, that it will ever be tried, for exactly that reason.