"A federal magistrate judge on Monday denied the United States government's request that Apple extract data from an iPhone in a drug case in New York, giving the company's pro-privacy stance a boost as it battles law enforcement officials over opening up the device in other cases.

"The ruling, from Judge James Orenstein in New York's Eastern District, is the first time that the government's legal argument for opening up devices like the iPhone has been put to the test. The denial could influence other cases where law enforcement officials are trying to compel Apple to help unlock iPhones, including the standoff between Apple and the F.B.I. over the iPhone used by one of the attackers in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., last year.

"Judge Orenstein, in his 50-page ruling on Monday, took particular aim at a 1789 statute called the All Writs Act that underlies many government requests for extracting data from tech companies. The All Writs Act broadly says that courts can require actions to comply with their orders when not covered by existing law. Judge Orenstein said the government was inflating its authority by using the All Writs Act to force Apple to extract data from an iPhone seized in connection with a drug case."

"According to a recent American Enterprise Institute report, the ideological make-up of the Republican Party hasn't changed much over the last 15 years. Looking at Gallup data, the researchers found that the share of Republicans who identify as 'conservative' increased from 62 percent in 2000 to 68 percent in 2015.

"But the percentage of Democrats who self-identify as liberal has risen in that time from 29 percent to 45 percent. The number of white Democrats who identify as liberal has nearly doubled, from 28 percent to 50 percent. The report also found that barely a third (37 percent) of Democrats describe Hillary Clinton as a liberal. About half call her a moderate.

"Michael Barone, the Washington Examiner's senior political analyst and an AEI resident scholar who contributed to the report, analyzed exit poll data from the early primaries. He found not only that the Democratic electorate is getting more liberal, but that it is shrinking. Exit polls and vote totals in the early Democratic primary states find that the Democratic electorate is 'much more liberal' than it was eight years ago."

"The Republicans ought to be comfortable in their catbird seat, surveying nothing but knee-high cotton, corn as high as an elephant's eye and blue skies for as far as anyone can see. They have the happy prospect of running against a Democratic foe awash in scandal and chicanery. Few voters like her, nobody trusts her and she seems as likely to land in prison as in the White House.

"But the Grand Old Party dare not break out the bubbly, not just yet. It's caught in a curious dilemma. The party elites, with their hands on the familiar levers of the party apparatus, are the helpless hosts of a party they can't control. They huff and they puff and then huff some more, but at the end of the day they're only exhausted, frustrated, and out of breath."

"Since at least 2009, the government's domestic spies have captured the metadata -- the time, place, telephone numbers and duration of all telephone calls -- as well as the content of telephone calls made in America under a perverse interpretation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act, which a federal appeals court has since invalidated.

"The department knows where this data on this killer's cellphone can be found, but if it subpoenas the National Security Agency, the NSA complies with that subpoena and all this becomes public, that will put the lie to the government's incredible denials that it spies upon all of us all the time. Surely, it was spying on the San Bernardino killers.

"There is more at stake here than the privacy of Apple's millions of customers, the security of power grids and all that the Internet serves. Personal liberty in a free society is at stake. A government that stays within the confines of the Constitution is at stake."

"On Tuesday morning, while the president was delivering a statement from the Roosevelt Room announcing his plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Spanish and Moroccan police were arresting four suspected members of an Islamic terrorist cell seeking to recruit fighters to the Islamic State, among whom is a former Guantanamo detainee. ...

"The release of Guantanamo detainees has proven calamitous. As The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes has reported, of 653 released detainees, 117 have returned to the fight against the U.S., and 79 more are suspected of doing so -- a recidivism rate of almost one-third. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is committed to releasing another 35 detainees already approved for transfer. The president has never addressed the high recidivism among terrorists, and his plan offers no way to mitigate the risk. ...

"It is currently illegal to transfer Guantanamo prisoners onto American soil. Congress would need to change the law to allow this. If lawmakers refuse to do this, Obama will no doubt attempt to unilaterally empty the facility by transferring the detainees abroad. There is little recourse available to the Congress to stop that. However, they can ensure that Guantanamo Bay remains available to the next president -- who, one hopes, will put American security above moral grandstanding."

"Republicans are delighted that a recently unearthed Joe Biden speech appears to be a strong endorsement of the GOP's current Supreme Court strategy.

"'Politics has played far too large a role in the Reagan-Bush nominations to date. One can only imagine that role becoming overarching if a choice were made this year, assuming that a justice was announced tomorrow that he or she was stepping down,' Biden said on the Senate floor in June 1992, not long after Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination to challenge then-President George H.W. Bush.

"'A process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all,' Biden continued. 'Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, the nominee or to the Senate itself.'"

"Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's charge that corporate CEOs earn 300 times more than their workers isn't just wrong. It hides another very real wage gap: She earns more in just one speech than the average American CEO in a year.

"Mark J. Perry, a University of Michigan professor and author of the American Enterprise Institute's popular Carpe Diem blog, did the fact-checking of Clinton's numbers and came up with that result.

"The average CEO, using Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, makes $216,100. Clinton's speaking agent, the Harry Walker Agency Inc., charged about $275,000 a speech and packaged three for Wall Street's Goldman Sachs at $675,000."

"In 2012, Scalia averred that he would not retire until there was a more ideologically congenial President in the White House. 'I would not like to be replaced,' he explained, 'by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything that I'€™ve tried to do for 25 years.'

"Scalia never got to choose the timing of his leaving office. Those who value the legacy of those now-30 years will determine whether his last wish will be vindicated. Let McConnell do his thing. Then in November it's for us to win one for Nino."

"In their wisdom, the Founders designed an elegantly simple and effective system of checks and balances so no single branch -- no single person -- could amass tyrannical control. Justice Scalia was a powerful check within a check. He was a bulwark for the Constitution, the rule of law and individual liberty. He was a bulwark against the likes of Mr. Obama.

"In blocking Mr. Obama'€™s choice for the court, Senate Republicans will honor Justice Scalia's fearless discharge of his constitutional duties and carry out their own. They have bent to Mr. Obama's (often unconstitutional) will enough.

"The future of the Supreme Court is the future of the country. This is precisely the hill on which to battle. Republicans must fight as if the Constitution depends on it, because it does."

"There's no doubt that if Democrats controlled the Senate during the last year of a Republican administration, they would run out the clock before confirming anyone to the Supreme Court. Sen. Chuck Schumer pledged to block any nominee in July of 2007 should a vacancy open up during the final 18 months of George W. Bush's second term.

"Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton tried to filibuster Samuel Alito's nomination in 2006.

"Obama has repeatedly ignored and circumvented Congress, abusing executive orders that have been repeatedly overturned by the Supreme Court. It would be fitting if the Senate reasserted its responsibility to hold a rampaging President in check by denying Obama the chance to put another liberal activist on the bench."