Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes his USA Today column about Texas Governor Greg Abbott's proposal for a Constitutional Convention to amend the Constitution:

Bloomberg News reports:

Amazon, which has been using outside companies to handle the two-hour deliveries, began hiring on-demand drivers directly through its Amazon Flex program in Seattle in September. Drivers with a car and a smartphone can make $18 to $25 an hour, according to ad notices, and register for shifts through an app. Amazon says it's coming soon to Chicago and New York, where it'll compete to hire drivers with another quick delivery service, UberRush.

Policymakers have been pressing to adapt 20th century labor laws as startups and established companies rely more and more on flexible work arrangements to cut payroll costs by as much as 40 percent while offering home delivery...

Lawyers say the employer-worker relationship will be redefined one case at a time over the next decade. By then, Amazon may be using drones for deliveries.

That's exactly it — by the time courts and Congress take a decade to reshape labor law, the companies will have moved on to the next thing.

The Supreme Court will hear Salman v. United States. Bloomberg News reports:

The justices will hear an appeal from Bassam Salman, an Illinois man convicted of using information leaked by a onetime Citigroup Inc. investment banker. Salman says the judges in his case set the bar too low for prosecutions stemming from information passed by a corporate insider to a friend, relative or business associate.

The main issue is whether prosecutors must show that the insider received a concrete benefit in exchange for passing on the information. A San Francisco-based federal appeals court ruled in Salman's case that wasn't required, splitting with a New York-based panel that reached the opposite conclusion seven months earlier.

From a New York Times profile of Heidi Cruz, wife of presidential candidate Ted:

When a young volunteer based in Boston told her that it was tough to be a Cruz supporter in such a liberal city, Mrs. Cruz suggested a potential pitch.

"Ted being a constitutionalist helps you a lot in places like Boston — 10th Amendment, back to the states," she said, as if confiding a secret.

"I'll definitely try that out," the girl said, looking relieved.

What a wonderful thought.

This is a bit afield from our usual topics, but some readers may be interested in my dispatch from the memorial event for Ahmad Chalabi that took place in Washington this week. It is available at the New York Sun here.

From a restaurant review in the New York Times: "In 2004, the year Per Se opened, the price for nine courses was $150 before tax and tip; last week, it went up to $325, with service included."

Blame Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke.

The decision by the owner of the New Republic to put the magazine up for sale is the topic of my column this week, which finds a political and ideological story behind the media business story. Please check the column out at the New York Sun (here) and Newsmax (here).

The law firm Goodwin Procter, which laid off nearly 40 lawyers and staff last year, is asking the taxpayers of Worcester and Lowell, Mass., to pay the firm more than $1.75 million in legal fees for "pro bono" work on behalf of aggressive beggars fighting city crackdowns. Boston.com reports:

The lawyers who fought to repeal unconstitutional panhandling restrictions in Worcester and Lowell are seeking to collect more than $1.5 million in fees and costs from the cities, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, along with Boston-based law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, have asked a judge to award them $1,026,223 from Worcester and $736,466 from Lowell. Worcester officials called the fees "outrageous," and Lowell officials said they estimated attorneys' fees should come to less than $100,000, the Telegram reported.

Charles Koch has lunch with a reporter of the Financial Times, who finds the businessman differs with Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and a lot of the Republican Party on foreign policy:

He then expounds on the war on terror. "We have been doing this for a dozen years. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Has that made us safer? Has that made the world safer? It seems like we're more worried about it now than we were then, so we need to examine these strategies."
It's a view that also contrasts with that of another Republican frontrunner; Ted Cruz's plan to carpet-bomb Isis strongholds is anathema to Koch.

Also, so much for the "oligarchy':

I ask again about politics. He says he is "disappointed" by the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, and resigned to having to support one with whom he agrees on only some issues. "It is hard for me to get a high level of enthusiasm because the things I'm passionate about and I think this country urgently needs aren't being addressed."

Senator McCain has released a report detailing what he calls more than "$27 billion in wasteful spending," including "$872,164 to study how children cross the street, $25,000 for garbage art in Maine, $13,495 for Army National Guard bubble soccer, $2.2 million to text high school students to enroll in college, and $2.3 million for jazz playing robots." The whole report is worth a careful look.

Paul Graham — who describes himself as a "manufacturer of economic inequality" — has a really nifty essay on the topic. Some highlights:

The most common mistake people make about economic inequality is to treat it as a single phenomenon. The most naive version of which is the one based on the pie fallacy: that the rich get rich by taking money from the poor.

Usually this is an assumption people start from rather than a conclusion they arrive at by examining the evidence....

From a front-page New York Times article about turmoil in the stock market in China and the rest of the world:

China's currency, the renminbi, continued to be a sore spot on Thursday, as the country's central bank moved to help stabilize the situation.

The Chinese government, which closely controls the renminbi, has been allowing the value of the currency to decline steadily. It is a difficult process to manage, especially as companies and individuals send money out of the country at a rapid rate...."People are worried about whether they are using currency depreciation to stimulate growth," said Steven Sun, head of China strategy and Hong Kong and China equity research at HSBC. "At the end of the day, the question is, do they have control? Everyone is asking that question."

The currency problems risk setting off a chain reaction.

The middle ground — support for both economic and personal freedom — seems to have suddenly gone missing from American politics. That's the topic of my column this week. Please check the column out at CapX (here), the New York Sun (here), Reason (here) and Newsmax (here).

The pro-immigrant advocacy group America's Voice has a remarkable statement about the Obama administration's immigration enforcement raids. It is worth asking where is the outrage on the left about this, and it is worth remembering the next time someone criticizes Donald Trump. Here is the statement in full:

Obama Administration Raids Homes to Deport Vulnerable Central American Families Back to Violence They Fled

The following is a statement by Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice.

It's official. The Obama Administration has begun home raids aimed at arresting, detaining and deporting young mothers and their children back to Central America and the violence they fled in the first place.

The Winter Issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas has an article about "telehealth" – video doctor visits — by two doctors, Bob Kocher and Pat Basu, who are "involved" with a company in that business. The article makes some interesting claims about the potential cost-savings and care improvements that the technology may enable.

Also interesting are the policy recommendations involved. Some of them are what you'd expect from the left-of-center Democracy journal — more government spending and price controls. The authors recommend that "The federal government must continue its efforts to build out broadband that is accessible to all Americans" and that "State and federal government regulators should also exercise antitrust enforcement to limit data monopolies that harm consumers and customers, such as the problem of electronic health-records companies charging doctors exorbitant fees to access their own data."

But others can be seen as more deregulatory. For example, they write: