FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Hey Beyonce: How about this next year at the Super Bowl?

•   There was a GOP debate last night and, as you would expect, the whole National Review chicken coop is clucking its disapproval of Trump, though they've at least learned their complaints don't mean anything; Rich Lowry ends his Cruz blowjob, "This was Trump at his worst, although past debates have established that outrageousness doesn’t hurt him because for his supporters it’s part of his appeal." I would enjoy the betrayal of Lowry by his conservative "base" more if I thought it was actually hurting his feelings. But Lowry's a pro, and I suspect he's already drafting Strange New Respect stories about Il Douche for the coming war with Hitlery. Eventually he'll turn up at Mar-a-Lago, dancing and singing "the best campaign dinners are no campaign dinners" like Ed Begley Sr. in Wild in the Streets.

•   The real howler at this morning's National Review is Jim Geraghty, who has the tough job of explaining to his readers that while war crimes like torture are supported by his colleague Andrew McCarthy and are therefore no big deal, the war crimes Trump was proposing -- killing terrorists' families and so forth -- are Beyond the Pale. Give him credit: Geraghty came up with what, outside of a seance with Reagan, would seem the gambit most likely to sway a National Review reader:

If this argument feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this before. It was on 24, season two...

The sudden reveal that Jack Bauer wasn’t willing to kill an 11-year-old in order to extract information, was one of the most important moments of the show; to have the protagonist, who we’re supposed to root for, kill a child would be passing the moral event horizon. Jack Bauer might be the most relentless and ruthless fictional federal agent in history, a man willing to behead a murderous child pornographer who’s a federal witness – “I’m gonna need a hacksaw” – but he always has enough moral clarity to recognize that certain acts can never be morally justified. That’s not what the heroes do, that’s not what the good guys do. And, the show’s creators were telling us, that’s not what Americans do.

Sorry, Jim: They've already seen 24: The (CIA) Director's Cut, and if the sequel doesn't deliver even more blood and guts they'll be disappointed.

•   Well, with the Republicans melting down, surely it's time for yet another Libertarian Moment, eh? Doing his part: Daniel Payne at The Federalist:

Girl Scout Cookies Prove We Need To End Child Labor Laws

I could and probably should stop there, but I will add that Payne wishes to do away with Big Gummint's "baffling and ridiculous slate of prohibitions" on child labor. For instance, did you know the statists won't let your kid do "outside window washing" -- even though Francois Truffaut showed us in Small Change that babies can survive steep falls? Plus think how much the Makers would save if their roof-rigs and descent chairs only had to hold a child-size payload.

The end result of these laws is ultimately not child protection but prohibiting children from using their innate potential to earn their own money.

If it weren't for these cursed laws, Daniel Payne would have been able to start his career as a propagandist much earlier, and maybe gotten that Times column before Douthat. Now look at him! Life is unfair, especially to Galtian supermen.