THIS MAY BE THE FUNNIEST VIDEO YOU SEE THIS MONTH: Pint-sized Picasso Making Waves in the Art World. It would be hilarious if came from The Onion. It’s even funnier because it’s not meant to be satire.

NO RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR PUBLIC OFFICE: My colleague and friend Neomi Rao’s nomination is to the D.C. Circuit is pending. Nothing she has written conflicts with standard conservative judicial views, and the D.C. Circuit handles primarily administrative law cases, with no choice but to obey Supreme Court precedent on abortion if that issue ever comes before it. Yet Sen. Josh Hawley has suddenly been raising questions about Rao’s views on abortion and Roe v. Wade. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and the only thing I’ve come up with is that she is not a Christian by either background or practice, and therefore she is deemed potentially untrustworthy. I hope I’m wrong, though I just noticed that the Wall Street Journal just published an editorial implying the same thing. Conservatives have been rightly appalled at pointed questions aimed at nominees’ Christianity, and they should be equally appalled if someone’s judicial bona fides are being questioned because she is not a Christian.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I haven’t followed this closely, but I can’t think of any reason whatsoever not to confirm Neomi Rao posthaste.

I’M SO OLD I REMEMBER WHEN GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ACTUALLY SUPPORTED GAY RIGHTS: Trump’s Plan to Decriminalize Homosexuality Is an Old Racist Tactic.

Related: a group of  [LGBT] activists holding Palestinian flags took the stage and led a 13-minute protest for Palestinian liberation and against Zionism.  The Palestinian territories are among the most hostile places for gay people on earth.

“ARE CORPORATIONS PEOPLE?” IS NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION: At SSRN, my review of Adam Winkler’s We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.

As the review details, the book has its pluses and minuses, but establishes a fact that many readers, especially on the left, will find surprising and counter-intuitive: when courts hold that corporations are “people” for constitutional purposes, they generally do so to limit corporate rights. In Citizens United and other cases in which corporations’ constitutional rights have been established, the Court is protecting the rights of the corporations’ human owners, not the corporation itself.

Bonus factoid: The supposedly “reactionary” pre-New Deal “Lochner Court” tried to limit corporations’ ability to assert constitutional rights, but the “liberal” New Deal Court, keen to broaden first amendment protections for corporate-owned newspapers, expanded them.

[Bumped because the link mysteriously disappeared from the original posting]

OVER AT VOLOKH, Everything you wanted to know about anti-BDS laws, part I.

Key point: State laws that require state contractors to certify that they don’t boycott Israel-related companies and individuals are not unconstitutional infringements of freedom of speech under existing Supreme Court precedent, and it’s not a close call. Rightly or wrongly, a string of Supreme Court precedents hold that refusals to deal, even for ideological reasons, are not considered speech.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the ACLU’s jihad against anti-BDS laws is that it’s willing to risk undermining antidiscrimination laws if that’s necessary to take down the anti-BDS laws. The national ACLU has become a far left organization, and the far left’s pathological hatred of Israel overrides other considerations.

OVER AT VOLOKH, I discuss the dangers of government by executive. Lots of people who vociferously defended Obama’s abuses of executive power have suddenly gotten religion.

OVER AT VOLOKH, a brief defense of D.C. Circuit nominee of Neomi Rao against tendentious criticisms of her student writings.

“ZIONISTS” SUPPRESSING FREE SPEECH AGAIN? Elder of Ziyon: Detroit imam says Jews prostitute their women to gain power. Don’t worry, no antisemitism to see here, I’m sure if you gave the imam a chance to apologize, he’d say he meant “Zionists paid by AIPAC,” not “Jews.” Claims of antisemitism are just the Zionists trying to suppress free speech on behalf of Israel.

HOW TRUMP GETS REELECTED: Trump won in 2016 because a large chunk of those who strongly disapproved of him disliked his opponent even more. Progressive activists seem determined to provoke a repeat.

THIS PETER BEINART COLUMN HASN’T AGED WELL:

But instead of admitting his mistake, Beinart engages in a rather peculiar form of whataboutism. Apparently, Americans have no business criticizing a congresswoman for anti-Semitic statements unless they are equally critical of Republicans who defend Israel regarding policies that Beinart disagrees with.

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER’S ACLU: The ACLU has never been the paragon of civil libertarian virtue that it’s pretended to be, and, as I documented in my book You Can’t Say That!, in the 1970s began its descent from a liberal civil libertarian organization to mass membership left-leaning organization with a particular interest in civil liberties.

Nevertheless, if you had told me twenty years ago that the ACLU would go so hard-left that the director of the ACLU’s Human Rights program would be publicly defending anti-Semitism, I wouldn’t have believed you. Then again, ACLU founder Roger Baldwin went through a Stalinist phase for a decade or so, so perhaps the ACLU is returning to it roots.

UPDATE: RELATED: ACLU RIP

THE WHOLE AIPAC THING IS  A DEFLECTION: Why Rep. Omar was accused of indulging in anti-Semitic rhetoric: “So the anti-Semitic implications of Omar’s initial tweet are rather clear: ‘[House Minority Leader] McCarthy isn’t criticizing me because it’s an obvious political move for a Republican to criticize anti-Semitism among Democrats, but because he’s been bought off by Jewish money.'”

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: NY Times: Tech is Splitting the Workplace in Two.

The article focuses on Phoenix, Arizona, as an example of a city in which high-tech is prominent, but the percentage of workers in low-skilled, low-wage jobs hasn’t move for forty years. The implied solution, of course, is government intervention.

You might think it would be impossible to write a lengthy article of this sort *without even mentioning* the huge influx of low-skilled labor from Mexico to Arizona in that timeframe, well over 50% of whom have been undocumented since 1990. You might think so, but you’d be wrong.

Putting aside what one thinks of immigration, legal or otherwise, it seems rather obvious that if a city is consistently importing poorly-educated workers who don’t speak English, most of whom have no legal residency status and cannot work legally, the percentage of workers in low-skilled, low-wage jobs is going to stay high.

AN EVENING IN THE LIFE OF AMERICAN POLITICS:

Rep. Omar: Regarding Israel, Congress has been bought off by “Benjamins”

Sensible Twitter: Suggesting that Congress’s policy on Israel is based primarily on campaign donations, especially when public opinion is staunchly pro-Israel, sounds kinds anti-Semitic, especially coming from someone who has made anti-Semitic comments in the past

Counter-twitter reaction from the left: Everyone knows that she was referring to how Israel uses AIPAC to buy off Congress

Sensible twitter: AIPAC doesn’t give money to candidates, and as an American organization all its donations come from Americans, not Israel or Israelis

Counter-twitter: Whatever, money from pro-Israel groups, then

Sensible twitter: You mean she’s saying that the 0.2% of campaign money that pro-Israel groups give, $10+ million out of $5+ billion, is enough to buy off the entire Congress?

Counter-twitter (covering ears): La La La, I can’t hear you.

NARRATOR: NORTHAM IS STILL GOVERNOR, AND STILL HAS A 2-1 APPROVAL RATING AMONG VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS:

THE ISLAND FORMERLY KNOWN AS “SCHLEPROCK”:  The Tiny Island with its own Personal Cloud.

THE NEED OF SOME TO FIT EVERY CONTROVERSY INTO A “RACIAL” BOX APPROACHES A PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER: “Palestine” is a not a racial justice issue.

LIZ’S LIES: Senator Warren claimed that she listed herself in the minority section of the law school professor directory because she wanted to meet other professors with Native American heritage. That was a lie, because the directory didn’t specify that she is Native American, just a member of an unspecified “minority” group.

She also claimed that she never tried to use Native American heritage for career advantage. Another lie; Harvard boasted when it hired her that it hired a “woman of color,” and who else could have been the source of that information?  Plus, she mysteriously stopped listing herself as a “minority” law professor just after Harvard hired her.

Finally, she asserted that she had never claimed to be an American Indian. Strike three, as we know thanks to the the Washington Post today.

UPDATE: In fairness to Warren, I’ve seen many secondary sources stating that she never claimed to be an American Indian/Native American, but I nevertheless am not 100% sure she ever said that she’s never claimed to be an American Indian, as opposed to never claimed to be citizen of a tribe, or never claimed to be an Indian to help herself get a job. But you, like me, are probably having a hard time believing that she would put herself in the law school directory as a minority, and list herself as an American Indian on her bar registration card, but not let it be known to potential law school suitors that she was “woman of color” eligible for affirmative action.

FURTHER UPDATE: Warren claimed she never used her Native American heritage “for anything.” 

MORE SIGNS WE ARE DESCENDING INTO IDIOCRACY: Mary Poppins branded racist by US academic – for ‘blacking up’ in iconic sweeps’ rooftop scene.

SPEAKING OF OFFENSIVE PHOTOS OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS INDULGING RACISM:

I assume Northam’s photo was meant to be a joke, though in very poor taste. Obama is smiling, but I don’t think it’s a joke.

Meanwhile, the standards on past indiscretions confuse me. If we had had a picture of Ted Kennedy driving a car off a bridge and leaving his passenger to die while he planned a cover up, would he have had to resign?

SINCERE QUESTION: Sincere question: Did any of the experts who are now saying the “polar vortex” increasingly coming south is a result of climate change (in particular, polar ice melting due to warming) *predict* this would be a result of climate change before it happened? If so, it would give me much greater faith in their understanding of climate change. If not…

THE COMEY EFFECT HAS BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED: It seems to have become an article of faith among Democrats and progressives, even statistically-oriented ones like Nate Silver, that the Comey letter on Clinton’s emails, released on October 29, 2016, swung the election to Trump. Given how close the election was, almost any minor event could have swung the election. But the evidence that the letter had a significant effect, e.g., swinging the popular vote by 3 or 4 points isn’t there. Consider my Facebook post from Monday, October 30, 2016:

BUT IT WON’T STOP THE USUAL SUSPECTS FROM CLAIMING THAT ISRAEL IS USING “EXCESSIVE FORCE AGAINST CIVILIAN DEMONSTRATORS”: Examination of the list of fatalities in the “return marches” reveals that most of them are operatives of terrorist organizations, about half of whom affiliated with Hamas

WHO WOULD HAVE PREDICTED IN 1945 THAT THE UK’S LABOUR PARTY WOULD BE THE CLOSEST IDEOLOGICAL DESCENDANT OF THE NAZIS IN THE WEST? British t.v. presenter Rachel Riley describes the anti-Semitic abuse she’s encountered since publicly criticizing rampant Jew-hatred in Labour. Transcript here.

BECAUSE THEY NEED THERAPY: Conor Friedersdorf: This is How the Left Destroys Itself. Conor asks why so many on the left get caught up in politically counter-productive overreaction to the Covington kid. A lot of it is revenge fantasy against some obnoxious jerk from middle or high school. The “smirking” Covington kid (or Brett Kavanaugh before him) becomes a stand-in for the hated adolescent alpha, who probably was as bad as they remember. They couldn’t retaliate properly then, so they publicly join a twitter mob that fantasizes about committing violence, while engaging in doxxing designed to effectuate it. Of course, Nick Sandmann was not actually one’s high school tormentor, and getting caught up in this sort of psychological drama is a good way to alienate those who notice the gap between the vitriol and the evidence purportedly justifying it.