SCENES FROM RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: 29 people shot in less than 18 hours in Chicago.

THAT ABOUT SUMS IT UP: RIP Turkey, 1921 – 2017.

More than any other reform, the Law on Fundamental Organization represented a path from dynastic rule to the modern era. And it was this change that was at stake in Turkey’s referendum over the weekend. Much of the attention on Sunday’s vote was focused on the fact that it was a referendum on the power of the Turkish presidency and the polarizing politician who occupies that office, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yet it was actually much more.

Whether they understood it or not, when Turks voted “Yes”, they were registering their opposition to the Teşkilât-ı Esasîye Kanunu and the version of modernity that Ataturk imagined and represented. Though the opposition is still disputing the final vote tallies, the Turkish public seems to have given Erdogan and the AKP license to reorganize the Turkish state and in the process raze the values on which it was built. Even if they are demoralized in their defeat, Erdogan’s project will arouse significant resistance among the various “No” camps. The predictable result will be the continuation of the purge that has been going on since even before last July’s failed coup including more arrests and the additional delegitimization of Erdogan’s parliamentary opposition. All of this will further destabilize Turkish politics.

And:

Erdogan is an authoritarian, like those found throughout the world. But he is also inspired by Ottoman history, and there are aspects of his rule that echo that era. As the Turkish president has come to rely on a smaller and smaller group of advisors, including members of his family, his “White Palace” — the presidential palace in Ankara he built on land once owned by Ataturk — has come to resemble, not merely in grandeur, the palaces of the Ottoman sultans. Yet his effort to secure the executive presidency goes much deeper than that. Erdogan wants to tear down the republic because both he and the people he represents have suffered at the hands of those who have led and defended it. It would be impractical and impossible to re-create the governing structures of the Ottoman state, but in the Turkish-Islamist imagination, the age of the Ottomans was not only the apotheosis of Turkish culture and power, but a tolerant and progressive era. For Erdogan’s core constituency, in particular, the AKP era has been a golden era, a modern day analogue to this manufactured past. These predominantly pious and middle class Turks enjoy personal and political freedoms that they were once denied. They have also enjoyed upward economic and social mobility. By granting Erdogan the executive presidency he has so coveted, they are looking forward to even greater achievements.

We’ll see.

CHANGE: On North Korean border, Pence tells CNN US will drop ‘failed policy’

To achieve this new strategy, the administration is relying heavily on China, a country President Donald Trump spent his entire campaign railing against, but has since stopped as it became clear North Korea would be a top priority requiring China’s help.

“I know the President was heartened by his discussions with President Xi (Jinping). We’ve seen China begin to take some actions to bring pressure on North Korea but there needs to be more,” Pence said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a daily briefing Monday that the onus was on all parties — including the US and China — to reach a peaceful solution.

“Resolving this issue requires all relevant parties, especially parties that bear major responsibility and play a key role in this issue, to work in the same direction and make a joint effort,” he said.

The message isn’t that the U.S. is changing policy. The message is that the U.S. Vice President can go to the DMZ and announce that China is starting to come along with the new policy.

JAMES TARANTO: How Trump Is Like Early Giuliani.

That worked out all right for New York City, as I recall.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld has your A.M. brief at Hot Mic.

HEH: The U.S. Dropped a MOAB in Afghanistan and You’ll Never Believe What Happened Next!

WHITE HOUSE TO KEEP VISITOR LOGS SECRET: What happens in the White House stays in the White House.

Not revealing the logs is more honest than scrubbing them, which was the Obama Administration’s practice, but it still doesn’t appear very swamp-drainy.

THIS IS CNN: US military defends dropping ‘mother of all bombs’ on ISIS in Afghanistan.

CNN has been running with that headline all day.

But a bunch of terrorists are dead, a weapons cache destroyed, a cave tunnel hideout made useless, no civilians killed, no American or allied casualties.

What’s there to defend? This was a textbook perfect case of Mission Accomplished.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Supreme Court Was “Politicized” Long Ago.

However unusual the sequence of events leading up to Gorsuch’s confirmation may seem, the reality remains that the Constitution requires presidents to obtain Senate consent before appointing a nominee—a concept dating back at least as far as Marbury v. Madison, which stated that presidential appointments “can only be performed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” (emphasis added).

Barack Obama was not “entitled” to fill the vacancy: he was entitled to nominate someone whom the Senate was then free to confirm or reject out of hand. Should the people who put the Senate in Republican hands after the 2014 midterms—partly, I suspect, out of concern for the ideological makeup of the Court—not have been able to enjoy the benefits of their electoral victories? Greenhouse seems to think so.

The Senate’s role is to advise and consent. Their advice to Obama on the Garland nomination was “take a flying leap, Mr. President,” which was completely within their prerogative.

CHANGE: How the Syria Strike Flipped the U.S.-Russia Power Dynamic.

By the time Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed here on Tuesday night, it was Moscow that was trying to find the right response to an American president who, in 63 hours, completely inverted an isolationist message he had stuck to for nearly two years, a message his administration had been trumpeting just days prior. And by the time Tillerson wrapped up his meetings in Moscow, Trump was singing hosannas to Xi Jinping, leader of a country he had previously vowed to label a currency manipulator, while taking the stage with NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and declaring that, suddenly, NATO was “no longer obsolete,” as Trump had maintained during the campaign.

“We have to figure out what this country’s strategy is,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on a political talk show on TVRain, an independent Russian channel, just hours after Tillerson touched down in Moscow, and hours before meetings were set to begin. “No one understands it right now. If you do, share your appraisal with us,” she said, flustered, to us journalists interviewing her.

Turnabout, and all that.

TRANSLATION? NOBODY’S BUYING: Fiat Chrysler CEO rows back on merger search, says focused on plan.

Fiat Chrysler does well enough in trucks (Ram) and SUV/crossovers (Jeep), but their car divisions are barely also-rans these days.

CARTER PAGE: ‘All the Lies … Are Finally Coming Out’

DRIVE DIFFERENT: Apple has an official permit to test self-driving cars in California, DMV confirms.

Apple’s car program (“Project Titan”) was reportedly scaled back significantly a while ago, complete with numerous engineers being let go, but apparently their autonomous driving program still has plenty of gas.

YOUR MOVE, CHIEF: China says North Korea tension has to be stopped from reaching ‘irreversible’ stage.

WELL, GOOD: Veterans Group Targets 15 Senate Dems in Ads Pushing VA Reform Bill.

VIDEO: The Moment The ‘Mother Of All Bombs’ Killed 36 ISIS Members.

Heartwarming.

UPDATE: Priceless, too.

BRUISING: Sen. Jeff Flake weathers brutal, 2 1/2-hour Mesa town hall.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake endured a brutal face-to-face confrontation with angry constituents Thursday as liberal voters dominated a standing-room-only audience at a town-hall meeting in downtown Mesa.

Even before he took the stage, the audience chanted “health care for all,” showing their support for former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the health-care-reform law that Flake, R-Ariz., has opposed.

A quick reminder to Sen. Flake and the other 289 or so GOP members of both houses: It isn’t just liberal voters who are disappointed in you.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Republican Congress AWOL on Syria.

Where is the Republican-controlled Congress on Syria? By all accounts, it is busy cheerleading the president’s firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a foreign sovereign – an offensive attack that was unprovoked and unauthorized by Congress, rendering it unconstitutional. With a Republican in the White House, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill are all for executive overreach, despite having spent the last eight years chiding a Democratic president’s excesses and Middle Eastern misadventures.

Of course, the bottom line is the same: Congress does nothing. But at least during the Obama years, legislative spinelessness was swaddled in righteous constitutional rhetoric. Now, lawmakers outright encourage presidential imperiousness and their own consequent irrelevance.

A one-time strike is one thing, given that it could probably be justified on the grounds of a sarin threat to U.S. forces in the area — even if that justification were (ahem) somewhat specious.

But if President Trump wants to enforce some sort of no-chem-zone policy over Syria, which he does seem to want, then that ought to require an authorization from Congress.

OCCAM’S RAZOR SLICES THAT WAY, TOO: Analysts identify #SyriaHoax as Russian-fueled propaganda.

That hoax story was promoted by a network of Russian social media accounts and ultimately picked up by popular alt-right personalities in the United States, including Mike Cernovich, one of the leading voices in the debunked ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory. Cernovich popularized its new hashtag — #SyriaHoax — and sent it soaring through cyberspace. According to Trends24, within hours of the retaliatory missile strike President Donald Trump launched on Thursday night, #SyriaHoax was the No. 1 trending Twitter topic in the United States.

J.M. Berger of The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague, who studies propaganda and social media analytical techniques, said #SyriaHoax is “a clear example of a Russian influence campaign” designed to undermine the credibility of the U.S. government.

“The point of an influence campaign is to get people involved who wouldn’t otherwise be involved,” Berger said. “A lot of people in the alt-right would not necessarily characterize themselves as being pro-Russian, but they’re receiving influence from this campaign.”

Berger cannot say whether Al-Masdar News is backed by either the Syrian government or the Russian government, only that the outlet “is being promoted at an extraordinary level by this [Russian] network” and the Kremlin has a history of weaponizing disinformation.

Yes they do.

SLOWER, PLEASE: China Takes Wraps Off National Hypersonic Plan.

The conference, which gave many Chinese researchers their first opportunity to display many years’ worth of research to a wider Western audience, underlined the nation’s impressive overall advances in all areas of high-speed flight research for defense, transport and space access. While progress in some specific defense areas—most notably the recent flight tests of the DF-ZF/WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicles—was not discussed, the progress indicated by the underlying research makes it readily apparent that China is making strides in hypersonic capability much faster than previously thought.

The scope of high-speed technology activity, added to evidence shown at the conference of large-scale government investment in comprehensive test facilities, appears to support recent assertions made in the U.S. that China is on track to quickly overtake America’s hard-won leadership in the field. The claim, made in 2016 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and by think tanks such as the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, comes as both China and Russia conduct demonstration flights of air-breathing and boost-glide hypersonic weapon systems. Both nations are believed to be targeting 2020 for deployment of the first operational units.

This is extremely difficult stuff to do, and if China isn’t just blowing smoke, then we’re going to have to reassess their entire military aviation effort.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Tax deadline pushed to Tuesday.

The 15th is a Saturday which usually pushes it to Monday but Monday is a holiday in DC.

‘Til Tuesday then.

QUESTION ASKED: If Trump Fired Bannon, Would He Seek Revenge?

LI’L KIM: North Korea Says Nuclear War Could Break Out ‘At Any Moment’

That kind of talk can’t be playing well in Beijing.

IT USUALLY IS: A passenger was violently dragged off a flight, but it’s even worse than you thought.

Even The New Yorker, which understood that passengers were bumped for crew members, referred to the problem as an “overbooked” flight, clearly not understanding what overbooked actually means. (The only way the flight could have been overbooked would be if flights always have empty seats for unanticipated crew members to fly for free, which would defeat the purpose of overselling in the first place.)

The fact that the flight was not overbooked may seem trivial, or pedantic, but there is very important legal distinction to be made. There may not be a difference in how an airline (typically) responds when it needs additional seats, such as asking for volunteers who wish to give up their seat for a voucher or cash. But there is a legal difference between bumping a passenger in the instance of overselling a flight versus bumping a passenger to give priority to another passenger. Any thoughtful person can see the problem that arises if an airline were allowed to legally remove one fare-paying passenger to allow for another passenger it prefers.

Since the flight was not actually overbooked, but instead only fully booked, with the exact number of passengers as seats available, United Airlines had no legal right to force any passengers to give up their seats to prioritize others. What United did was give preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a. Since Dr. Dao was already seated, it was clear that his seat had already been “reserved” and “confirmed” to accommodate him specifically.

This doesn’t look good for United.

THIS IS CNN: CNN Publishes Locations of Town Halls, Aiding Democrat Activists.

Democrat operatives with bylines.