"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos'€™ nomination and approval certainly riled up teachers unions across the country, causing panic that their power over education policy may finally be challenged.

"DeVos has made clear that advocating for school choice will be a central part of how she approaches her job, something that evidently unnerves the education establishment. ...

"Perhaps what threatens teachers unions the most is the prospect of a renewed focus on accountability, competition and choice in education. Parents want the best education for their students. Whether education is made available via traditional public schools, charter schools or private schools, what ultimately matters is whether students actually receive the best education they can get."

"It's often said that bad facts make bad law. In the case of the Ninth Circuit's just-issued ruling continuing the nationwide injunction against Donald Trump's executive order pausing immigration from seven jihadist or jihad-torn countries, it's necessary to amend that saying. Bad facts combined with superheated politics can make terrible law."

"Democrats claim to stand for the poor, immigrants and nonwhites. Yet given a chance to actually support someone who is dedicated to improving education for all America's children, especially those trapped in failing urban schools, the Dems said no, hell no.

"Joined by two Republicans, they stood in the schoolhouse door to block vital change, casting their lot with teachers unions that fear reform the way a vampire fears garlic.

"Throw away all the subtexts and subterfuge, a defense of the rotten status quo is the only explanation for the bid to block DeVos. The teachers unions pulled the strings, and the political puppets danced to their masters' tune.

"DeVos survived because President Trump is determined to deliver a government that shatters the insiders' perks and privilege and opens the door to new ways of doing things. In education, that means giving more parents the power of school choice and taking power away from the union establishment."

"De-escalating Supreme Court picks is probably too much to wish for. But if Democrats want to create the same dynamic for every Cabinet appointment, from secretary of education to secretary of health and human services, they ought to consider what that will mean for the country and for the effectiveness of American government. And if they lack the prudence and patriotism to give that serious thought, they might consider what it means for the Democratic party, too: At the moment, Republicans control the presidency, the Senate, the House, the great majority of state legislative chambers, and more than twice as many governorships as Democrats. Senator Schumer believes that taking a more hard-line stance against Republicans, especially on economic issues, will bring him and his party back to power. But given a choice between the hard-line position of Senator Bernie Sanders and the more accommodating position of Mrs. Clinton, Democratic primary voters turned their noses up at the Vermont socialist. If Senator Schumer thinks the key to a Democratic comeback in Florida or Michigan is out-Sandersing Sanders, he probably is making a miscalculation. That he apparently intends to attempt this nifty trick while Democrat-aligned rioters are firebombing buildings at Berkeley and rioting in Washington suggests that he is bent on the kind of bold Democratic thinking that turned Richard Nixon from a 32-state winner in 1968 to a 49-state winner in 1972."

"If the law means anything, the Trump administration will succeed in overturning the so-called court ruling against its travel ban.

"The nationwide stay of the ban issued by Judge James Robart, a Washington state-based federal district judge, is tissue-thin. It doesn't bother to engage on the substance, presumably because facts, logic and the law don't support Robart's sweeping assertion of judicial authority in an area where judicial power is inherently quite limited. ...

"Judge Robart may not like the Trump policy, but that doesn't mean that it is illegal or unconstitutional. His ruling is worthy of the generally unhinged opposition to President Trump. If the judge doesn't deserve the abuse that Trump heaped on him on Twitter, he produced what should rightly be considered so-called jurisprudence."

"The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world's leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

"A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

"The report claimed that the 'pause' or 'slowdown' in global warming in the period since 1998 -- revealed by UN scientists in 2013 -- never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world's media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

"But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, 'unverified' data."

"Google, or rather its parent company Alphabet, got used to dominating Washington under President Barack Obama's rule. Perhaps, that's why they'd like to see President Donald Trump impeached.

"'Some of us may need to adopt Pence 2017 bumper stickers,' Google's cofounder Sergey Brin joked at a company sponsored anti-Trump protest -- the biggest demonstration from a Silicon Valley corporation this week -- in response to Mr. Trump's controversial immigration executive order.

"More than 2,000 Google employees attended the protest on Monday, with it becoming a trending topic on Twitter with the hashtag #GooglersUnite. The rally came 24 hours after Google donated $2 million to the ACLU and Immigrant Legal Resource Center, to help fight Mr. Trump's executive order, which was matched by $2 million in donations from Google employees. ...

"After investing millions ingraining itself within the Obama White House, Google is suddenly on the outside looking in with the Trump administration -- and it clearly has Google rattled -- protesting Mr. Trump in private, and then publicly trying to cozy up with him the next."

"The two Republicans who broke ranks with their party and announced they would vote against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos have received thousands of dollars from the nation's largest teachers union.

"Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have each benefited from contributions from the National Education Association. Collins received $2,000 from the union in 2002 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murkowski, meanwhile, has received $23,500.

"The NEA represents 3 million members, making it the wealthiest and most influential union in the country ...

"Teachers unions donate almost exclusively to Democrats."

"Last spring, trying to shore up his conservative credentials for Hugh Hewitt's radio audience, the insurgent candidate Donald Trump laid down a marker about his first Supreme Court nominee: 'The ideal,' he told the host, 'would be Scalia reincarnated.'

"In Judge Neil Gorsuch, he's not far from delivering on his promise. Of all the candidates Trump shortlisted for the Supreme Court, Gorsuch is the closest thing to the man whose death left the vacancy. Gorsuch may not have Antonin Scalia's colorful persona, but he shares any number of Scalia's other signature traits. He is highly intelligent, legally skilled, and a sharp writer. And he's deeply conservative. In a judiciary where few judges actually have developed theories of constitutional interpretation, Judge Gorsuch has one, and by and large it is the same originalist approach that Scalia generally took. Gorsuch also shares Scalia's basic views on any number of hot-button constitutional issues, including abortion, firearms, affirmative action, and capital punishment. All in all, you wouldn't be far off characterizing Gorsuch as Scalia 2.0."

"At least 20 alleged terrorists in the past three years were immigrants or refugees from the seven majority-Muslim nations President Trump temporarily banned migration from Friday. ...

"The Obama administration's Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security refused to make public the immigration status of individuals implicated in terrorism, so the exact number of immigrant terrorists is unknown.

"However, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest used publicly available information and identified at least 17 individuals from these seven nations that from March 2014 to June 2016 were implicated in terrorism. Eight of these are terrorists convicted for crimes mainly related to giving material support or attempting to give material support to ISIS."

Read entire article here