"Donald Trump had barely finished announcing his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency before the left started listing its million reasons why Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was the worst nomination in the history of the planet: He's an untrained anti-environmentalist. He's a polluter. He's a fossil-fuel fanatic, a lobbyist-lover, a climate crazy.

"Mr. Pruitt is not any of those things. Here's what he in fact is, and the real reason the left is frustrated: He's a constitutional scholar, a federalist (and a lawyer). And for those reasons he is a sublime choice to knock down the biggest conceit of the Obama era -- arrogant, overweening (and illegal) Washington rule. ...

"If Mr. Pruitt does this successfully, and on the way crushes the current president's legacy, Mr. Obama will have only himself to blame. His abuse of federal power helped elect a new generation of state attorneys general and Washington Republicans passionately devoted to a states' rights agenda. They'll be advising Mr. Trump not just on environmental policy, but on health care, labor policy, entitlement reform. Say hello to the federalist revival."

"[W]hat really makes Reid stand apart is his nihilistic pursuit of victory at all costs, with no regard for anyone else's good name, and certainly none for his own.

"The Senate and political Washington are worse for Reid's service. We'll be ready to regret his departure from Capitol Hill when the nation no longer has reason to regret that he ever arrived there."

"What is astounding, post-election, is the total lack of contrition Democrats have displayed for ignoring the workingman and -woman bloc that has been the party's horn of plenty. The only regret they display is that they lost the election, not the voters.

"What Democrats, academics and pundits keep refusing to see is that the loss was never about Trump's candidacy; it was all about how Democrats have increasingly lost touch with their voters outside of coastal America -- until those voters finally hit their breaking point.

"'The Democratic Party has become a coastal elitist club and if there is any decision or discussion made to broaden that within the ranks it is squashed,' said Dane Strother, a legendary Washington, DC-based Democratic strategist."

"In 1987, American diplomats in West Germany warned President Reagan not to mention the Berlin Wall when he visited the city. The State Department and the National Security Council repeatedly deleted 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall' from the speech that the president was to deliver. He ignored them, to very good effect.

"Their freakout was similar when Reagan called the Soviet Union 'evil.' But the Soviet Union was evil, and speaking the truth helped bring about good. ...

"Trump's Taiwan phone call was no clueless fumble. Taiwan specialists on Trump's team planned the call for weeks. ...

"Trump's brusque dismissal of the niceties is refreshing, and have elicited a measured and somewhat hesitant response from Beijing. This is good, they have already stopped assuming that America will kowtow."

"Will President Obama betray our military one last time by pardoning Bowe Bergdahl? ...

"Bergdahl abandoned his comrades in a combat zone and bobbed up with the terrorists.

"Desertion in the face of the enemy is the second-gravest military crime, just behind willful fratricide. Although Pentagon sycophants continue to deny it, Bergdahl's former platoon mates and others who served in Afghanistan when Bergdahl fled his post believe that good men died as a consequence of the massive search for the runaway (which paralyzed other military actions).

"Within days of Bergdahl's disappearance, a senior general in Afghanistan admitted to me that we knew Bergdahl had deserted. He claimed that a decision had been made not to go public with the charge to avoid adding to his parents' pain.

"What about the pain of the parents whose sons never came home?"

"Rep. Nancy Pelosi won re-election as House Minority Leader last week, warding off an effort to change the party's direction. This is an odd choice for a party that has just suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of voters and has no foothold on much of the country.

"Pelosi comes from San Francisco, where wealthy liberals use big-government rules to exclude new entrants. So maybe it's fitting that she appears set on turning the House Democratic Caucus into a bubble of the like-minded.

"Maybe she's less interested in building a majority than in having a safe space."

"Life is not fair to losers, or the critics of Donald Trump, and the way he won the presidency. He just won't stand still and give the rotten eggs a chance to hit their mark.

"The Donald is conducting his transition to the White House in his own way, taking his time, choosing his Cabinet carefully, and rationing misery to his detractors. His critics, particularly in the know-it-all media, are having trouble with a transition of their own. Almost a month has passed since the election, and the critics, who are supposed to be working their way through the five stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance -- are stuck in denial. They should be angry by now, and learning how to bargain with their emotions."

"The chief of the U.S. Border Patrol on Wednesday endorsed expanding the wall between the United States and Mexico, as called for by President-elect Donald Trump.

"'Do we need more fencing? Yes,' said Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan.

"'Does it work? Yes,' he added.

"In two hours of testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chief repeatedly endorsed the wall but added that it is only part of an integrated system to stop illegals, drugs and terrorists from crossing into the United States."

"After Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to become education secretary, teachers union honcho Randi Weingarten tweeted: 'Trump has chosen the most ideological, anti-public ed nominee since the creation of the Dept of Education.' Since what's good for the unions is often bad for the schools, and vice versa, Ms. Weingarten's apoplexy is reason to cheer.

"Ms. DeVos is chairwoman of the American Federation for Children, an organization dedicated to helping parents choose the best school for their kids. Ms. Weingarten leads the American Federation of Teachers, which is focused on what's best for the adults. ...

"Michael Petrilli, a veteran of George W. Bush's Education Department who now runs the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, wrote last week that the DeVos pick shows Mr. Trump's seriousness. 'She was one of the first people in ed-reform to understand that we weren't going to beat the teachers unions with op-eds and policy papers,' he wrote. 'She pushed the private school choice movement to invest in serious political giving much earlier than the mainstream reform groups did, and, so far, with far greater success.' In the 2016 election, the American Federation for Children invested in 121 races in 12 states and won 89% of them. ...

"Mr. Trump has proposed a $20 billion federal voucher program that students could use to attend public or private schools. But this idea presents similar hazards. Federal dollars will bring federal regulations, and reform-minded individuals like Betsy DeVos won't forever be in charge of implementing them. Better to let the states lead on school choice. Now that Republicans control 33 governorships and both legislative chambers in 32 states, what'€™s stopping them?"

"After the Democratic equality-of-opportunity agenda was largely realized (Social Security, Medicare, overtime, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, civil rights, etc.), the next-generation equality-of-result effort has largely failed.

"What is left of Democratic ideology is identity politics and assorted dead-end green movements as conservation has become radical environmentalism and fairness under the law is now unapologetic redistributionism. The 2016 campaign and the frenzied reaction to the result are reminders that the Left is no longer serious about formulating and advancing a practical agenda. In sum, for now it is reduced to a party of teeth-gnashers. ...

"The Democratic party for now is reduced to a loud racist/sexist/homophobe broken record that fewer and fewer are listening to -- including many of the Democratic elites who continue to play it."