BECAUSE TO A CLINTON, A “LIE” IS JUST SOMETHING SOMEONE ELSE MISUNDERSTOOD:  Hillary Clinton campaign completely changes story on “wiped” email server.  Clinton’s campaign is political schizophrenia and gaslighting all the way down.

REAL HOPE AND CHANGE, OR IS IT?: House Speaker John Boehner’s long overdue resignation is prompting the usual succession battle. The most “likely” candidate being discussed? House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Yawn.

Boehner’s resignation is most likely the product of political pressure from a GOP establishment that hopes to dampen grassroots’ interest in “outsider” candidates such as Trump, Carson and Fiorina. Replacing him with McCarthy won’t do the trick. The GOP base is angry at the establishment–precisely because of what that establishment has and has not done–and McCarthy is a part of it. Now is the time for real, not cosmetic, change.

The House GOP would be well advised to stop fighting its own base, listen to them, and select someone from the House Freedom Caucus–which has been fighting Boehner tooth and nail–who would unify the party with its own voters. Someone like Raul Labrador, Mark Meadows, or Jim Jordan.

Now, if we could only get Mitch McConnell to resign . . . . Stay tuned.

ANOTHER REASON WHY THE FILIBUSTER MUST GO: Senate Democrats Block Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood.

Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked legislation to keep the government funded through Dec. 11 because it would have also stripped out funding for Planned Parenthood.

The measure was all but guaranteed to fail because the Senate Republican majority does not control the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation.

There are now six days left before the end of the fiscal year, and the government could be in for a partial shutdown if no spending bill is approved by Sept. 30. Republican leaders, eager to avoid politically dangerous shutdown, are now likely to introduce a new temporary funding measure that leaves Planned Parenthood funding intact and can win enough Democratic votes to pass.

Senate Democrats, led by Harry Reid, dispensed with the filibuster to ensure confirmation of Obama’s radical leftist judicial and cabinet nominees, and of course bypassed it via the reconciliation process to pass Obamacare without a single Republican supporter.

Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to retain the filibuster rule is another example of the GOP leadership’s unwillngness to robustly assert Congress’s constitutional role in checking presidential power and ensuring political accountability. As David Rivkin and Lee Casey observed back in March:

By striking at Congress’s constitutional powers, particularly the power of the purse, Mr. Obama seeks an unprecedented aggrandizement of presidential power. One way to prevent that happening is by reforming the filibuster rule.

Spending battles and government shutdowns have taken place in the past. Yet the Obama administration’s strategy, denying the very legitimacy of Congress’s use of its appropriations power, is historically unprecedented. It has been abetted by Democratic senators who deploy the filibuster to keep spending legislation that the president opposes from an up-or-down Senate vote. Their goal is to spare the president any potential political damage from casting a veto, and to allow him to shift responsibility for government shutdowns from himself to Congress—undermining the paramount constitutional virtue of accountability. This situation has particularly vitiated the authority of the House of Representatives, which originates all of the spending bills.

The constitutional balance of power between the two political branches must be restored. In this connection, it is important to understand that the Senate filibuster rule has no constitutional basis. . . .

Tradition is important, and eliminating the filibuster, despite its diminished policy utility, would be a momentous step. Yet it is one Senate Republicans should consider taking, given the constitutional imperatives at stake. . . .

If legislation commanding the support of majorities in both the House and Senate can no longer be permanently delayed by filibustering, a recalcitrant president would still be able to shut down a government agency or department by vetoing appropriations. But the American people would know whom to hold responsible.

Exactly.

I’M NOT SURPRISED: Ian Tuttle over at NRO explains, “Ahmed Mohamed Didn’t Build a Clock.”

[A]s Ahmed enjoys his newfound celebrity — on Monday he was a VIP at a Google science fair, and on Wednesday the family is flying to New York City, where Ahmed will be feted by United Nations dignitaries — the details of the story become, well, curiouser and curiouser. Over the weekend, a blogger at Artvoice “reverse engineered” Ahmed’s clock from media photographs. His conclusion: Somewhere in all of this – there has indeed been a hoax. Ahmed Mohamed didn’t invent his own alarm clock. He didn’t even build a clock. . . . He took apart an existing clock, and transplanted the guts into a pencil box, and claimed it was his own creation. (emphasis original) According to the blogger, Ahmed took apart this 1986 Micronta digital alarm clock, and reassembled it in this Vaultz Locking Pencil Box. . . .

And add to all this that Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan, is something of a self-appointed Islamic activist. . . .

Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, is a two-time presidential candidate (in 2010 and 2015) in his native Sudan who has an apparent penchant for publicity.

Ahmed’s actions resulted in his being invited by President Obama to the White House, to the Google Science Fair as a VIP guest, and even to him being called a “ideal student” by an MIT astrophysicist, who surprised Ahmed with a live invitation on MSNBC to tour the university.

All of this because Ahmed brought a device to school that would have easily gotten my blond-haired, non-Muslim daughter summarily expelled. The dangerousness of the progressive/liberal overreaction to “support” Ahmed’s behavior is staggering.

I LIKE THEIR SPUNK: Standing up to John Boehner.

As Congress begins to negotiate several must-pass bills with President Obama, there is a sense of rebellion afoot in the House Republican conference.

Mark Meadows — a soft-spoken, well-liked Republican congressman from North Carolina — foresees in this exclusive video interview for The Daily Caller that “there’s a real battle coming” this fall witin the Republican House conference.

With regard to the government spending bill, the debt limit increase and transportation bill President Obama wants Congress to pass, Meadows says Republican leaders “need to read ‘The Art of the Deal’ by Donald Trump” as Republicans have routinely come up short in similar negotiations thus far — admitting they will not shut down the government over anything. .  . .

Since January, poor leadership strategy and messaging have left President Obama virtually unopposed. Meadows sees Congress as becoming impotent and irrelevant — a sign of eroding self-government.

He blames this primarily on a culture of enforced “timidity.”

“You are not rewarded for fighting in Washington, D.C.,” Meadows says. Republicans have various means by which to enforce their non-confrontational culture that helps liberals and the mainstream media. In this interview, the congressman provides examples of the phrases Republicans often hear. They include: “are you part of the team?” “we need to show we can govern,” and “don’t make waves.”

However, partisan Democrats seem not to have gotten this memo.

When Meadows voted his conscience against a rule vote to consider the Obama trade legislation, Meadows was punished by getting stripping of his sub-chairmanship, starting him on a path of being a public and likable rebel against Speaker Boehner. When a national backlash against Boehner started, Meadows was allowed to return. Now a growing number of dissenters are finding momentum this fall in challenging the House Speaker again. . . .

For more on Rep. Meadows, see his website here, his Facebook page here or follow him on Twitter @RepMarkMeadows.

I like Meadows and his compatriots in the House Freedom Caucus, such as Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Justin Amash (R-MI) and Raul Labrador (R-ID). They fight, and they haven’t forgotten why they were elected. They aren’t afraid to vote on controversial issues even when they lack a veto-proof supermajority. They understand that forcing President Obama to veto bills enables the American people to properly assign political accountability.

Boehner & Co. prefer to hide under a rock, quaking and soiling their undergarments while Obamasaurus ravages the land.

OUR SUPREME LEADER RELEASED 5 TOP TALIBAN FOR A DESERTER: Platoon leader describes grueling 2009 search for Bergdahl. The military prosecutor introduced evidence that Bergdahl snuck away “under cover of darkness” and “mailed home items such as his Kindle and laptop and tried to have his pay diverted to his godmother before he left his post.”

But the Army General who has led the investigation into Bergdahl’s flight thinks jail time for Bergdahl would be “inappropriate”:

Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl said he interviewed Bowe for a day and a half and “did not find any evidence to corroborate the reporting that Bergdahl was … sympathetic to the Taliban.”

Instead, Dahl said, Bergdahl wanted to call attention to what he considered poor leadership of his unit. Bergdal believed that by leaving his observation post and running 23 kilometers (about 14 miles) to a nearby base he could cause a stir and gain access to a high-ranking officer to complain, Dahl said. . . .

Dahl testified that he thought Bergdahl was “very bright and well-read.”

When asked what in Bergdahl’s background might have caused his behavior in the military, Dahl said that the combination of growing up in rural Idaho on the “edge of the grid … being home-schooled” and the fact that he “internalized a lot of what he read” resulted in him having “idealistic and unrealistic expectations of people.”

Yet Dahl isn’t contesting the fact that Bergdahl is a deserter.  So let’s get this straight: There’s an Army Major General who thinks that being home-schooled and well-read–culminating in being “idealistic”–means that one should not be punished for deserting your fellow soldiers? Intelligent, home-schooled individuals thus cannot be reasonably expected to be patriotic, follow orders and serve honorably in the military? Huh?  Talk about liberal/progressive victimology.

Sounds like this Major General Dahl is trying mighty hard to impress Great Leader Obama and is gunning for a promotion. I guess in Dahl’s world, the military–to be effective–needs to recruit only poorly read, public-schooled individuals of low IQ.  After all, under Dahl’s (il)logic, only these types of individuals can reasonably be expected to do their jobs.

Bergdahl is a man the Obama Administration said “served with honor and distinction” and honored with a special White House ceremony. The Taliban 5 for whom Bergdahl was traded were among the most dangerous at Gitmo.

It’s almost like the Commander in Chief hates the military or something.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: How Putin Outflanks Obama in Syria.

Once again, President Obama and his foreign policy team are stumped. Why is Vladimir Putin pouring troops and weaponry into Syria?. . .

Kerry and Obama are serially surprised because they cannot fathom the hard men in the Kremlin. . . .

Putin will offer Russia as a core member of a new anti-Islamic State coalition. Obama’s Potemkin war — with its phantom local troops (our $500 million training program has yielded five fighters so far) and flaccid air campaign — is flailing badly. What Putin is proposing is that Russia, Iran and Hezbollah spearhead the anti-jihadist fight.

Putin’s offer is clear: Stop fighting Assad, accept Russia as a major player, and acquiesce to a Russia-Iran-Hezbollah regional hegemony — and we will lead the drive against the Islamic State from in front.

And there is a bonus. The cleverest part of the Putin gambit is its unstated cure for Europe’s refugee crisis.

Wracked by guilt and fear, the Europeans have no idea what to do. Putin offers a way out: No war, no refugees. Stop the Syrian civil war and not only do they stop flooding into Europe, those already there go back home to Syria.

When America fails to lead, others will step in to fill the global vacuum.

RELATED: Russia moves fighter jets to Syria.

IT’S PARTISAN WITCH HUNTS ALL THE WAY DOWN IN WISCONSIN: More Wisconsin emails reveal John Doe investigators targeted conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices.

Our liberal friends in Wisconsin are unhappy. They think someone is leaking emails that make the state’s partisan campaign regulators look bad. We’ll plead guilty to having sources, but the emails are news and they sure are revealing.

Today’s installment from court documents concerns how a special prosecutor and regulators at the Government Accountability Board (GAB) targeted the state’s conservative Supreme Court justices. The partisan goal was to force some justices to recuse themselves from hearing a constitutional challenge to their probe of GovernorScott Walker and his political allies. . . .

The GAB and prosecutors tried to rig [Wisconsin] Supreme Court review of a constitutional challenge to their probe. They used information they had collected through kitchen-sink subpoenas to search for information well outside their already voluminous writ. Then they targeted conservative justices while giving liberals a pass. The good news is that in July Wisconsin’s Supreme Court shut down their investigation as unconstitutional.

Kevin Kennedy, who runs the GAB, responded to our last editorial by saying his staff merely “feel passionately about ensuring that all parties comply with campaign finance laws” and partisan emails can be explained because “staff of the G.A.B. are human.” Human enough to abuse their power to punish their political opponents.

Drip, drip, drip. There’s much more partisan nastiness going on in Wisconsin than has thus far been revealed. Mr. Kennedy, his accomplices on the GAB staff, and the prosecutors involved in this cabal should lose their jobs for their blatant, partisan abuse of government power.

Tar. Feathers. Sicilian Bull.

MICHAEL MUKASEY: “Cleaning Up After the Obama Team’s Iran Deal.”

The Iran deal is not a treaty and has no constitutional status. Congress should declare, and try to get a court to declare, that President Obama has no authority to lift sanctions in Iran because he failed to comply with the Iran Nuclear Review Act he signed earlier this year—specifically, the legal requirement that he show to Congress the entire agreement including “side agreements” like the one between Iran and the IAEA.

There are other steps to take. Gen. Michael Hayden, a former CIA director, has suggested an immediate congressional authorization for the use of force if Iran violates the deal; beefing up U.S. defenses in a meaningful way; and perhaps providing Israel with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This “bunker buster” could penetrate even the underground Iranian enrichment facility at Fordow, which is suitable principally for creating an atomic weapon.

. . .

However, before Iran can respond to a credible threat of force there must be a U.S. administration with enough steel to do more than talk about whether a vague military option is on or off a metaphoric table. That is assuredly not the current “we.”

True that.

PREDICTABLE: Obamacare Enrollment Tumbles as Huge Price Hike Looms.

In its latest enrollment report, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says 9.9 million were still enrolled in ObamaCare exchange plans.

That’s almost 2 million fewer than the administration claimed in the spring, when it bragged that 11.7 million had signed up, and way below the Congressional Budget Office’s earlier forecast of 13 million.

And if this year is anything like last year, that 9.9 million will dwindle further as the year goes on. . . .

Earlier this year, insurers started putting in rate requests for 2016, and in many cases they were gut-wrenchingly high — with some above 50%. Obama told the public not to worry, that state insurance regulators would knock them down to size.

But like every other promise he’s made about his namesake law, this one was phony.

In state after state, insurance commissioners are approving huge rate hikes, based on the fact that the people who’ve signed up for ObamaCare are older and sicker than insurers hoped.

By one estimate, the average rate hike in Oregon — a state that eagerly embraced ObamaCare — is above 24%. Average approved rates are 20% or higher in Alaska, Idaho, Iowa and Kansas.

An analysis by Agile Health Insurance found almost a third of all plans being sold through the federal Healthcare.gov exchange — which covers 36 states — had double-digit rate hikes.

This is why we passed a partisan law and divided the country– a mere increase in 9.9 million new private insurance enrollees, who are forced–at the pain of a mandatory tax–to buy increasingly expensive insurance? It’s not even close to the “universal” coverage the Democrats touted.

If this is President Obama’s “legacy”–combined with the so-called Iran “deal”–this is pitiful.

A WIN FOR CONGRESS AND A SETBACK FOR OBAMACARE: My latest oped, with David Rivkin, on the significance of the House of Representative’s initial, trial court victory in its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of two key aspects of Obamacare implementation.

RELATED: “Standing Up for the Constitution“: The Wall Street Journal editorial board explains the larger, potentially historic impact of this early stage legal victory in a lawsuit some pundits labeled “frivolous.”

SOME THOUGHTS ON JUDGE COLLYER’S OPINION ON THE HOUSE LAWSUIT: As I reported yesterday, federal district judge Rosemary Collyer defied the predictions of numerous pundits by ruling that the House of Representatives’ lawsuit against the Obama Administration–challenging various rules implementing Obamacare–may move forward to the merits. Now that I’ve had some time to digest Judge Collyer’s opinion, I will offer a few observations.

First, as someone who has been deeply involved in this issue, I do believe Judge Collyer’s opinion is good news. While it has always been the case that this lawsuit will take years to fully resolve–possibly even until after President Obama leaves office–those who criticize the lawsuit for this ineluctable reality misunderstand what the lawsuit is about. It is not about President Obama, as an individual, but about the constitutional obligation of the President to “faithfully execute” the laws, and his related obligation not to spend money that Congress has not appropriated. Pursuing litigation to clarify the importance of these constitutional obligations is important, regardless of when such clarification comes.

A judicial determination that a President lacks power to unilaterally rewrite unambiguous laws or appropriate money is important as a matter of constitutional principle, and will prevent future presidents from behaving in similarly unconstitutional ways.

Second, while Judge Collyer fully embraces the notion that Congress, as an institution, has standing to vindicate an injury to its constitutional prerogatives, she oddly (and in my opinion, inconsistently) concludes that the House’s claims relating to President Obama’s abuse of Congress’s appropriations power may move forward, but not its claims relating to his abuse of Congress’s legislative power. This is an artificial and unsustainable bifurcation.

Specifically, Judge Collyer concludes that “[d]espite its formulation as a constitutional claim, the Employer-Mandate Theory is fundamentally a statutory argument” that is no more than a complaint that the “Executive Branch is misinterpreting a statute . . . .” Because the employer-mandate claim is “merely” a claim that the President has “misinterpreted” a statute, Collyer asserts that “other litigants” are “free to sue” over such mere misinterpretation.

But this overlooks the fact that all federal courts–including the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits– that have considered such private-party lawsuits challenging the Administrations “mere” misinterpretation of the Obamacare employer mandate have been unable to pursue such claims, due to their own lack of standing. More importantly, if the House’s appropriations claim is sufficient to establish standing because, in Judge Collyer’s words, of Congress’s “unique role in the appropriations process prescribed by the Constitution,” then its employer-mandate claim should also be sufficient because of Congress’s “unique role” in the legislative process, and the President’s unique constitutional duty to take care that the laws passed by Congress are “faithfully” executed.

While I dispute Judge Collyer’s artificial bifurcation of the House’s appropriations-related claim as “constitutional” and its employer mandate-related claim as “statutory,” I give her much credit for recognizing that the legislative branch is not an institutional orphan, incapable of vindicating its constitutional prerogatives. To hold otherwise would be to allow the President to eviscerate the separation of powers.

Third, I also give Judge Collyer credit for rejecting the specious argument that the House lawsuit was a “political question” that is not justiciable by courts. The political question doctrine is invoked only in those rare situations when there are no ascertainable standards by which the judiciary can resolve an issue, which appears to have been textually committed by the Constitution’s text to the sole discretion of one of the two political branches (Congress or the Executive).

The PQD doctrine is not invoked merely because a constitutional question has important political ramifications–most constitutional questions do (think gay marriage, abortion, or any lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of any presidential act).  As Judge Collyer noted, the House’s constitutional claims against the President present “pure questions of constitutional interpretation” for which there are ample, “familiar judicial techniques [] available to construe the meaning . . . .” She correctly noted that, since Marbury v. Madison (1803), the federal courts have been both willing and able to “say what the law is,” even in separation of powers’ disputes among Congress and President.

BOEHNER CAVES TO CONSERVATIVES ON IRAN VOTE: Looks like pressure from the House conservative Freedom Caucus membership has forced House Speaker John Boehner to agree the House will not pass a resolution disapproving of President Obama’s Iran deal. Instead, the House will apparently vote Friday on the resolution introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), which will state that Obama has not complied with the Corker-Cardin law because he has not submitted the full Iranian nuclear “agreement,” which that law explicitly defines to include all “side deals,” between third parties (including the Iran-IAEA side deals).

The House is also anticipated to now vote on a second resolution, which would state that because the President has failed to submit the “agreement” defined by Corker-Cardin, the President has no corresponding authority to lift any existing Iranian sanctions.

The move by Boehner came after Freedom Caucus members threatened to vote down a planned resolution disapproving of the Iran deal, leaving the House on record as approving the deal. This threat was designed to leverage Boehner via potential political embarrassment, and encourage GOP leadership to consider the Roskam alternative, which will both delay congressional action on the Iran deal, as well as provide a stronger legal basis upon which to challenge any presidential action lifting sanctions.

This alternative approach was first put forth in a Washington Post oped over the weekend by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) and constitutional lawyer David Rivkin.

BREAKING: Judge Rosemary Collyer of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia has just ruled that the House of Representatives has standing to sue President Obama, challenging the constitutionality of the executive branch’s decision to spend billions of unappropriated dollars to support Obamacare. Judge Collyer denied legislative standing to pursue the House’s claim that President Obama has disregarded the 2014 effective date of Obamacare’s employer mandate. More updates will follow once I’ve had a chance to digest Judge Collyer’s opinion.

SORRY FOR WHAT, HILLARY? Ron Fournier’s National Journal piece excoriates Hillary Clinton for her non-apologetic “apology”:

Six years after seiz­ing con­trol of gov­ern­ment email and after six months of deny­ing wrong­do­ing. Just this week, it took three dif­fer­ent in­ter­views in four days for her to beg the puni­est of par­dons: “I do think I could have and should have done a bet­ter job an­swer­ing ques­tions earli­er.”

You think? By any ob­ject­ive meas­ure, the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial front-run­ner has re­spon­ded to her email scan­dal with de­flec­tion and de­cep­tion, shred­ding her cred­ibiliity while giv­ing a skep­tic­al pub­lic an­oth­er reas­on not to trust the in­sti­tu­tions of polit­ics and gov­ern­ment.

An apo­logy doesn’t fix that. An apo­logy also doesn’t an­swer the scan­dal’s most im­port­ant ques­tions.

1. While apo­lo­giz­ing in an ABC in­ter­view on Tues­day, you said, “What I had done was al­lowed; it was above­board.” You must know by now that while the State De­part­ment al­lowed the use of home com­puters in 2009, agency rules re­quired that email be se­cured. Yours was not. . . .

2. If what you did was “above­board,” then you wouldn’t ob­ject to all ex­ec­ut­ive-branch of­fi­cials at every level of gov­ern­ment and from bothparties stor­ing their email on private serv­ers—out of the pub­lic’s reach. Tell me how that wouldn’t sub­vert the fed­er­al Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act and “sun­shine laws” in every state?

3. If what you did was “al­lowed,” then you wouldn’t ob­ject to all ex­ec­ut­ive-branch of­fi­cials at every level of gov­ern­ment and from both parties us­ing secret serv­ers to shield them­selves from le­gis­lat­ive over­sight. Wouldn’t that un­der­mine the le­gis­lat­ive branch’s con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­ity? Wouldn’t it lead to more polit­ic­al cor­rup­tion? . . .

9. Ever hear of Thomas Drake? He’s the former seni­or Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency of­fi­cial in­dicted un­der the Es­pi­on­age Act for keep­ing an agency email prin­tout at his home that was not marked as clas­si­fied. He pleaded guilty to a mis­de­mean­or. Why do you and your aides keep sug­gest­ing that it mat­ters wheth­er or not your emails were marked clas­si­fied? . . .

IRAN SIDE AGREEMENTS VOID CORKER-CARDIN LAW: David Rivkin and Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) have a spot-on piece in the Washington Post, explaining how the “side deals” between Iran and the IAEA mean that under the terms of the Corker-Cardin law, President Obama has never submitted any “agreement” for Congress to review:

The act defines “agreement,” with exceptional precision, to include not only the agreement between Iran and six Western powers but also “any additional materials related thereto, including . . . side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.” But the president has not given Congress a key side agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This document describes how key questions about the past military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program will be resolved, as well as the precise operational parameters of the verification regime to which Tehran will be subject.

This omission has important legal consequences. At the heart of the act is a provision, negotiated between Congress and the White House, freezing the president’s ability to “waive, suspend, reduce, provide relief from, or otherwise limit the application of statutory sanctions with respect to Iran” while Congress is reviewing the agreement.

That review period was supposed to take 60 days and is triggered the day the president submits the agreement to Congress. However, because the president failed to submit the agreement in full, as the law requires, the 60-day clock has not started, and the president remains unable lawfully to waive or lift statutory Iran-related sanctions. Indeed, since the act also provides for the transmittal of the agreement to Congress between July 10 and Sept. 7, the president’s ability to waive statutory sanctions will remain frozen in perpetuity if Congress does not receive the full agreement Monday.

Since the time period specified in Corker-Cardin for transmittal of the agreement (and all side deals) has now expired, Congress is no longer bound by the law, and President Obama has accordingly not been authorized to suspend, waive, reduce, or otherwise limit existing statutory sanctions against Iran.

If the President ignores this legal reality and waives Iranian sanctions anyway (he is rather fond of ignoring laws and taking unilateral executive action), Congress or the States should sue to stop him.

RELATED: Trump storms D.C. to oppose Iran deal. A rally is slated for tomorrow (Wednesday) at the Capitol with Senator Ted Cruz, former Gov. Sarah Palin, and talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

UPDATE:  Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) has introduced a resolution that says that President Obama has not submitted the “agreement” (which was defined to explicitly include side deals) as required by law. He will seek to present the resolution as a “privileged” matter, which would allow an immediate floor vote, bypassing committee consideration. Speaker Boehner would need to recognize the resolution as privileged, however, and there are indicators that he is not willing to do this (surprise, surprise).

NOT YET, BUT OBAMA IS TRYING: Victor Davis Hanson, “Is the West Dead Yet?”

Immigration is a one-way Western street. Those who, in the abstract, damn the West — as much as elite Westerners themselves do — want very much to live inside it. The loudest anti-Western voices in the Middle East are usually housed in Western universities, not in Gaza. Jorge Ramos is a fierce critic of supposed American cruelty to illegal immigrants — so much so that he fled Mexico for America, became a citizen (how is that possible, given American bias against immigrants?), landed a multimillion-dollar salary working for the non-Latino-owned Spanish-language network Univision, and then put his kids in private school to shield them from hoi polloi of the sort he champions each evening. Now that’s the power of the West. . . .

But as in mid-fifth-century Athens and late-republican Rome, there are signs that the West is eroding — and fast. The common Western malady is age-old and cyclical. . . . In the case of modern America, Britain, and Europe, the sheer material bounty spawned by free-market capitalism and legally protected private property, combined with the freedom of the individual, creates a sort of ennui. Boredom is the logical result of that lethal mix of affluence and leisure. .  . .

Take the ongoing mass exoduses from the Third World into Europe and the United States. . . .But note that no elite Westerner wants to face the cause of the malady: namely, that the failure in the Third World to adopt Western ideas of consensual government, equality between the sexes, free-market capitalism, individual liberty, and transparent meritocracy logically leads to mayhem and poverty. . . .

But it is worse than that: Western elites deny their own exceptionalism, and deny any reason for their own privilege other than the easy private guilt of citing the Holy Trinity of “race/class/gender.” . . .

The first casualty in a bored and would-be-revolutionary society is legality. And certainly in the West the law — whose sanctity built Western civilization — has become a joke. New Confederate-style nullificationists in San Francisco demand that federal immigration statutes not apply to their sanctuary city, even as they insist that a minor clerk in Kentucky be jailed for nullifying a Supreme Court edict allowing gay marriage. Kim Davis should indeed be jailed for obstructing a federal mandate, but only after the neo-Confederate nullificationist mayor, Board of Supervisors, and sheriff of San Francisco. . . .

What the West worries about is not poverty, but disparity: No one argues that the rioters at Ferguson did not have smartphones, expensive sneakers, hot water in their homes, air conditioning, and plenty to eat — it’s just that they did not have as many or as sophisticated appurtenances as someone else. Michael Brown was not undernourished or in need of the cigars he lifted. . . .

Virtually every American must palpably sense the country’s rapid decline since President Obama assumed office. It’s not just economic stagnation; it’s a moral, religious, cultural and legal free fall that turns the stomach. That’s why the 2016 presidential election isn’t so much about needing an “experienced” politician (i.e., someone who cares more about being a member of the D.C. club than listening to Americans living outside D.C.), or even the candidates’ positions on particular issues.

It’s about a desperate, visceral longing for someone who believes that America is the greatest force for good on earth, that it occupies a special position of power that in large part determines the stability and prosperity of the globe, and that its own goodness and quest for fairness should not be used against it by those who plot to destroy it from within.

As we free fall from the Obama era of weakness and indecision, Americans’ top priority seems to be avoiding career politicians whose well-rehearsed, mellifluous, politically correct words instinctively smack of arrogance, weakness, guilt, insincerity or paternalism. D.C. has turned into the Capitol city portrayed in the Hunger Games–corrupt, privileged, arrogant, condescending, manipulative, shallow, materialistic, weak, and utterly ignorant of the needs of those who live beyond its borders.

The political class has forgotten who is actually “boss” in our constitutional republic– We the People outside of D.C.  The boss is now interviewing presidential candidates to ascertain who understands this basic principle, and accepts that the job description entails being the leader of ordinary (not merely elite) Americans, and a staunch defender of American interests.

The political elites in this country are apoplectic that their “insider” candidates are doing so poorly. The rest of the country is enjoying the fact that they have choices other than candidates who espouse the same old interchangeable, predictable, politically correct B.S.

BECAUSE IT’S BEING REGULATED TO DEATH: “America’s Once Magical–Now Mundane–Love Affair With Cars.” This Washington Post piece is a classic lamestream media outcome-oriented approach to an issue. The writer, Marc Fisher, starts with his thesis–that Americans aren’t passionate about cars anymore–and then proceeds to prove his thesis with some data showing driver’s license decline, professors with silly theories, and anecdotal stories. He gives only passing consideration to the possibility that “it’s the regulation, stupid.”

CLINTON AIDE WILL TAKE 5TH AMENDMENT OVER PRIVATE SERVER: The former Clinton presidential campaign and State Department aide, Bryan Pagliano, has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Benghazi Committee but has already indicated he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Pagliano set up Clinton’s private email server in her New York home in 2009.

“While we understand that Mr. Pagliano’s response to this subpoena may be controversial in the current political environment, we hope that the members of the Select Committee will respect our client’s right to invoke the protections of the Constitution,” his attorney, Mark MacDougall, wrote.

Two other Senate committees have contacted Pagliano in the past week, according to a copy of the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. The requests came from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, according to people familiar with the requests.

The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Wednesday that it sought to ask Pagliano about his work for Clinton.

“In response to questions . . . Mr. Pagliano’s legal counsel told the committee yesterday that he would plead the Fifth to any and all questions if he were compelled to testify,” a spokesperson for committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Benghazi committee, had subpoenaed the computer staffer Aug. 11 and ordered that he appear for questioning before the committee Sept. 10. Gowdy also demanded that Pagliano provide documents related to the servers or systems controlled or owned by Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Pagliano, who worked in the State Department’s information-technology department from May 2009 until February 2013, left the agency when Clinton departed as secretary. He now works for a technology contractor that provides some services to the State Department.

But hey, there’s nothing criminal here–move along–because according to Media Matters, there is no evidence that Clinton “knew” that she was mishandling classified information. This shows utter ignorance of what the “knowing” scienter standard means in criminal law. According to the Model Penal Code, “knowingly” means:

(b) Knowingly.

A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when:

(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist; and

(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.

So Clinton (and/or her aides) had to be “aware that [her] conduct [of using a private server to send and receive classified information] is of a “nature” that such mishandling could exist, or alternatively had to be “aware that it [was] practically certain that [her] conduct” would cause such a mishandling of classified information.  Under either approach, the use of a private server while Secretary of State, alone, indicates such culpable awareness.

Nice try.

RELATED: Another 57 Clinton email threads contain foreign government’s (and thus likely classified) information.

BECAUSE HE’S JUST A CROSSDRESSER: More than 150 Hillsboro High School students in Missouri walked out to protest a male student being allowed to use the female locker room because he self-identifies as “transgender.” Good for them for resisting the siren of political correctness.

The 17 year-old student, who goes by “Lila” Perry, has not had any surgery or medical procedures to alter his male body. He wears a wig and wears girl’s clothing. So in my book, that makes him a crossdresser, and merely because he “thinks” he is a female cannot make it so. And of course, in true “victim” mentality, Perry is accusing all of the (actual) young ladies who are protesting his presence in their locker room as bigots:

“There’s a lot of ignorance, they are claiming that they’re uncomfortable. I don’t believe for a second that they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry,” Perry told local news station KMOV.

This is typical far-left hyperbole, branding those who disagree with you as “bigots.” Transgender should be a label confined to those who undergo surgical alteration of their physical genitalia–you know, those who actually change their gender. It should not be so broad as to encompass those who subjectively “think” they are another sex, whilst still objectively possessing the genitalia associated with their genetic makeup. If it is a term that has any meaning at all, it must be judged by objective, not subjective, standards.

And I’m sorry, but “Lila” is clearly just a dude with a wig, and I wouldn’t want my teenage daughter to share a locker room with him/her/it:

BLUMENTHAL URGES CLINTON TO SUPPORT IMPEACHMENT OF JUSTICE THOMAS: According to the Daily Caller, the latest batch of released Hillary Clinton emails reveals a telling one: Clinton’s top confidant, Sid Blumenthal, urged Clinton to support the impeachment of Justice Clarence Thomas, forwarding to her a 7-page “memorandum” penned by David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, and a self-proclaimed defender of Hillary Clinton.

The political left’s hatred of Justice Thomas is legendary, with the only black Supreme Court Justice routinely being called an “Uncle Tom” for holding conservative/libertarian views. But Blumenthal’s email to Clinton in October 2010 shows that the left was still actively scheming to ruin Thomas, trying to build a case for impeachment.

The utter ridiculousness of the effort is patent. Thomas’s impeachable “high crime and misdemeanor” offenses? According to New York Times and Washington Post hit pieces relied upon by Brock, women (including a former girlfriend) who were interviewed indicated that Thomas had an apparent interest–prior to being confirmed as a Justice–in pornography, and a healthy sexual interest in the opposite gender.

Um, so basically the left wanted to impeach Thomas because he was a red-blooded American male? Well, I guess that’s in keeping with the left’s utter hostility to all things male. But please, this is all you’ve got on Thomas? Yawn.

BECAUSE TO LEFTISTS, RACISM IS A SIN COMMITTED ONLY BY WHITES: Dennis Prager, “The Left Only Sees White Evil.”

In the past week, two television reporters in Roanoke, Va. — Alison Parker and Adam Ward — were murdered by a black man who hated whites, and a white police officer in Houston — Darren Goforth — was murdered by a black man. Neither crime has been labeled a hate crime. And no mainstream media reporting of the murders attributes either to race-based hate.

For the mainstream media, the Roanoke murders were committed by “a disgruntled former employee,” and regarding the Houston policeman, the media report that, in the words of The New York Times, “a motive for the shooting remained unclear.”

The disregard of anti-white hatred as the motive for blacks who murder whites even when the murder is obviously racially motivated comes from the same people who denied that the Islamist Nidal Hasan’s murder of 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood was religiously motivated. These people — all on the left — have an agenda: to deny black racism and Islamist-based violence whenever possible. Only white police and other white violence against non-whites is clearly racist — even when not. . . .

So, too, the mainstream media depicted the black murderer of eight white people at a Connecticut beer warehouse in 2010 as a man who had been angered by white racism, not as the white-hater he was. Under the headline “Troubles Preceded Connecticut Workplace Killing,” a New York Times article reported: “He might also have had cause to be angry: He had complained to his girlfriend of being racially harassed at work, the woman’s mother said, and lamented that his grievances had gone unaddressed.”

And a Washington Post headline read: “Beer warehouse shooter long complained of racism.”

The fact was that the man was fired for stealing beer from his workplace, and there was a video of him doing so.

The left denies black racism in another way. When a white racist murdered nine blacks in a Charleston, S.C., church this past June, the left and the media correctly stressed the murderer’s racism. Indeed, whenever blacks are killed by whites — which, it is worth noting, is many times less likely than a white being murdered by a black — and especially by white police officers, the left attributes the killings to racism. But when blacks kill whites, the left attributes the killings to guns. This is all reinforced by the left’s position that only whites can be racist, because only the powerful can be racist, and whites have all the power. . . .

The left has been supplying both victimhood and lies to black America. The lies are that America is a racist society — as the president of the United States himself has said, racism is “still part of (America’s) DNA” — that the greatest problem facing young blacks is racism, and that white (and even black) police routinely kill blacks for no reason other than racism. . . .

Those lies in turn produce the anger-inducing victimhood that pervades too much of black life. Just this past weekend at the Minneapolis State Fair, a “Black Lives Matter” group chanted, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”

Some blacks — as in Houston this past weekend and in Louisiana two weeks earlier when a black man murdered another white policeman — are taking this message literally and randomly murdering police officers. And some other blacks just want to kill whites, whether or not they are police. Such is the power of victimhood and lies.

There is a lot of blood on the left’s hands. And there will be more.

The far left notion that only whites can be racist has been part of Critical Race Theory (of which Obama has long been a proponent), which is a key component of Critical Legal Theory. CRT/CLT’s core philosophy is that whites have all the “power,” and design laws to keep minorities from getting any “power,” thus perpetually victimizing those minorities.  The far left needs hatred of whites and victimhood like fire needs oxygen; without them, its distorted view of law and society withers and dies.

The inherent evil of this far left philosophy should be obvious, as one of the founding fathers of the movement, Saul Alinsky–whose devotees include both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—included in the beginning of his book, Rules for Radicals, the following statement of admiration for the community organizing talents of the devil:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

The devil works in obvious ways sometimes. Hating other individuals simply because of the color of their skin–even if you think that brings them “power” or “privilege”–is racism. But at least two generations of Americans have been taught the opposite, thanks to the far left dominance of the academy. Prager is sadly correct when he ascribes growing black-on-white racial hate crimes to the far left’s “victimhood” narrative, as well as his conclusion that more bloodshed is likely to come.

GOP OUTSIDERS SURGE IN LATEST IOWA POLL: The Monmouth University poll, conducted Aug. 27-30, now has Trump and Carson tied in Iowa at 23%, with Carly Fiorina third at 10%. Jeb Bush is far behind, at 5% support (pretty horrific for someone with such broad name recognition), and his unfavorables are higher than any other candidate, at an astonishing 51%.

It’s definitely the year of the anti-establishment candidate.

THEY OUGHT TO BE FIRED: It’s back to school time, and progressive professors at Washington State University are gearing up to suppress speech they personally find “offensive,” such as saying “illegal alien,” using the terms “male” or “female,” or failing to “defer” to the “experiences of people of color”:

In his “Introduction to Multicultural Literature,” for example, professor John Streamas informs students in his syllabus that he expects white students who want “to do well in this class” to “reflect” their “grasp of history and social relations” by “deferring to the experiences of people of color.”

The taxpayer-funded critical studies professor also writes in his syllabus that Glenn Beck is a member of a group of “insensitive whites.”

Streamas, who obtained his Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University, is most notable because he told a student who supports limits on illegal immigration: “You are just a white shitbag.” . . .

A second Washington State faculty member, Selena Lester Breikss, warns students in her “Women & Popular Culture” course this semester that they risk “failure for the semester” if they use the terms “male” or “female.” . . .

“Students will come to recognize how white privilege functions in everyday social structures and institutions,” Breikss adds.

Finally, not to be outdone, Washington State American studies professor Rebecca Fowler similarly warns students that she will lower their grades if they utter the phrase “illegal alien” at any time in her “Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies” course.

The taxpayer-funded Fowler proclaims that she bans students from using the phrase “illegal alien” because the Associated Press stylebook “no longer sanctions the term.”

The Associated Press stylebook is purely an advisory publication for professional journalists. It has no force of law whatsoever. . . . Public university students who dare to use the phrase “illegal alien” “will suffer a deduction of one point per incident,” Fowler warns.

Apparently these sensitive little snowflake professors cannot tolerate any disagreement. For their failure to tolerate a diversity of views and engage in actual teaching (rather than proselytizing), they should be terminated for “cause.” Parents and students should avoid this university at all costs, unless/until the University’s administration takes appropriate disciplinary action to ensure that all viewpoints are welcomed, even those that are “offensive.” It’s called “free speech,” and yes, it protects offensive speech, too.

EUROPE’S BORDER CRISIS: Hundreds of thousands of “refugees” from the Middle East and Africa are crossing the Mediterranean, seeking a better life in Europe. 

They have to satisfy the authorities that they are fleeing persecution and would face harm or even death if sent back to their country of origin.

Under EU rules, an asylum seeker has the right to food, first aid and shelter in a reception centre. They should get an individual assessment of their needs. They may be granted asylum by the authorities at “first instance”. If unsuccessful they can appeal against the decision in court, and may win.

Asylum seekers are supposed to be granted the right to work within nine months of arrival.

Basically, this is the same experience of the United States, with mass, virtually unchecked migration across the southern border from individuals–including large numbers of unaccompanied minors–fleeing horrific political and economic conditions in Central and South America. The scale of such migration taxes the resources of the host country (schools; government benefits; jobs) and increases risks to national security. Indeed, such problems are now causing Europe to re-think its open borders policy:

“We face a diffuse terrorist threat trying to attack our values,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other European nations, who met in Paris to deal with terrorism and improve security in the wake of the attack by gunman Ayoub El-Khazzani on the Amsterdam-Paris Thalys train last week.

At the heart of the discussion was whether or not the European Union border policy of free travel, known as “Schengen,” can survive the waves of growing attacks against civilians in Europe.

The “perfect storm,” as a European diplomat called it, has hit Europe: terrorism, a migration crisis, and crime. Although they are not directly connected, the perception among many seasoned Europe observers is that the free movement of people across borders is making it easier for waves of people who intend to commit acts of violence to prey on victims – and to escape prosecution.

Yep. Any country (or federation of countries, as with the EU) that wishes to protect its sovereignty and citizens (which is the very purpose of government) must control its borders. It’s really that simple. While one cannot help but have empathy for those individuals fleeing economically or politically volatile countries, the solution is to help stabilize those countries, not tolerate ongoing massive, disruptive shifts in population, which only leads to destabilization of stable democracies (republics), which in turn, holds the potential to destabilize the world.