NEWS YOU CAN USE: 4 Flexible Part-Time Gigs for Stay-at-Home Moms.

GREAT MOMENTS IN BAD TIMING: Inconvenient Truth: Shultz and Baker’s Disastrously Mistimed Carbon Tax, as explored by Roger L. Simon.

I wonder if the photo atop Roger’s post will alert PETA that George Shultz apparently skinned Tony the Tiger to make his sports jacket?

UPDATE (From Glenn): George Shultz likes tigers. In fact, he has a Princeton tiger tattooed on his butt. Do not ask me how I know this.

UPDATE (From Steve): The tattoo was “revealed” in Schultz’s mid-’80s Playboy interview. I was underage at the time, so do not ask me how I know this.

SO MUCH FOR OBAMA’S CLAIM ABOUT FOREIGN TERROR ATTACKS IN THE U.S.: Man who helped plan ISIS attack in Garland, Texas gets 30 years: Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, the Phoenix man who helped plan and supplied guns for the 2015 attack on a Muhammad-themed art contest in Garland, is going to federal prison for 30 years.

QUESTION ASKED: Is the Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ the New Tea Party?

It’s hard to say. Although I can say that the aftermath of the recent “Resistance” protest ended with violence and arson, and that the typical Tea Party protest ended with the grounds tidier than when the protestors arrived.

UPDATE: As an early and enthusiastic Tea Party supporter (and occasional speaker, too) I thought the mocking tone of my “hard to say” would have been obvious. Judging by the comments, it wasn’t — and for that I apologize.

Just to be clear then, the answer to The Atlantic’s cringeworthy question is a disdainful “No.”

IT DID SO WITH ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: The Campus Left Grew More Radical During the Obama Years.

In recent years, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the number of speech codes has declined, but new means of silencing provocative speech have emerged. Among them: “Disinvitation attempts,” or protests pressuring campus administrations to bar unpopular political figures from coming to campus after they had been invited to speak to a graduating class or student group (or drive them from campus once they have arrived).

Heterodox Academy, a non-partisan group of faculty dedicated to preserving viewpoint diversity in academia, has produced data about the frequency of such instances over the last 16 years. Their key findings: Efforts to bar speakers from campus appear to be on the upswing, and, since the beginning of the Obama years, it has been the campus Left that has been doing most of the disinviting.

Why the surge in left-wing activity since 2009? One possible factor is that the Obama administration’s Office for Civil Rights in Education has gone all-in for the activists, pursuing a hard-line interpretation of Title IX and rarely even playing lip service to freedom of speech. So the campus Left felt, correctly, that the federal government had its back.

Well, I think that’s changed. And I hope that Attorney General Sessions will prosecute conspiracies to deprive people of their constitutional rights to the full extent of the law.

CHANGE: Trump presidency heralds new era of closer ties with Egypt.

Friendly phone calls, an invite to the White House, a focus on Islamic militancy and what Donald Trump called “chemistry” have set the tone for a new era of warmer U.S.-Egyptian ties that could herald more military and political support for Cairo.

The mutual admiration dates back to a U.N. meeting in September, when then-presidential candidate Trump found common ground with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s hard line on extremism. Trump described the ex-general, who rights groups criticize as authoritarian and repressive, as a “fantastic guy”.

Sisi, the first foreign leader to congratulate Trump on his election victory, returned the favor last month after the newly inaugurated president barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Egypt, not on the list, refrained from speaking out against the ban on behalf of Muslim countries that often look to it for leadership. That silence spoke volumes about the changing tone of its relationship with the United States.

I keep reading that Trump is the bull in an international china shop, but it was Obama who blundered around Egypt, searching for a foreign policy there, annoying/disappointing/angering everyone in the process, before finally settling on the terrorist-loving and anti-American Muslim Brotherhood (since deposed) as his preferred Egyptian government.

FROM JIM TREACHER, A POLL: Give Elizabeth Warren A New Nickname.

PROCUREMENT: Top Marine Corps aviator wants F-35Bs faster than planned.

The Marine Corps’ top aviator is hungry for more F-35Bs, telling reporters on Wednesday that he would like to see the service’s buy rate increase to 37 jets per year.

That would almost double the planned rate of F-35B procurement over the next few years, which is projected to sit at 20 aircraft per year from fiscal years 2018 to 2021.

“We have the infrastructure in place,” said Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation. “Bottom line is we’ve had a very anemic ramp, so we’ve been holding onto the older airplanes longer. If asked by the American people to get the airplanes faster, I guarantee we’d put them into play very, very quickly.

“We’d transition squadrons faster is what we’d do,” he said, adding that if the service were allowed to purchase 37 B-variants a year, it would be able to retire its legacy F/A-18 Hornet and Harrier planes by 2026.

The more a jet ages, the more expensive and time-consuming it is to maintain. And the more a jet is subjected to the rigors of war, the faster it ages. The average age of our jet fighters is far above historical norms, and we’ve been at war for 15 years. That combination creates a maintenance nightmare, which hurts readiness — as evidenced by this week’s report that nearly two-thirds of the Navy’s F-18s are unavailable for flight duty, and over 70% of the Marine Corps’.

Faster procurement is the obvious fix, but the previous administration refused any substantive or genuine budget negotiations. The bill for years of neglect has come due.

ED MORRISSEY: Dems Call for Their Party’s Autopsy–But Won’t Admit the Patient Is Dead. To be fair, it’s only mostly dead. But who will be their Miracle Max?

WHEN INFLUENCE-PEDDLERS RUN OUT OF INFLUENCE: Report: Failed Clinton Son-In-Law Marc Mezvinsky Shuts Down Failed Hedge Fund.

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HA! I LOVE IT. Tennessee College Free Speech Bill To Be Named After MILO.

The bill, which has the full name of the “Tennessee Freedom of Speech on College Campus Bill,” but will be known more informally as The Milo Bill, is set to be officially filed after around two-years of development on Thursday. A press conference will follow.

According to a source involved with the press conference, the bill would stop events from being cancelled based on “harassment” if the “harassment” could simply be defined as an opposing point of view, and will boast a variety of other features that seek to protect students who have opposing beliefs to that of their college or its administrators.

“In view of recent events concerning Milo Yiannopolous at The University of California at Berkley and elsewhere on other college campuses, it’s important for us, as a state, to step up and protect basic First Amendment rights,” said Representative Martin Daniel, who will be holding the press conference on Thursday, in a press release. “We should encourage all forms of lawful speech and expression, even if controversial or disagreeable. This is what makes America great.”

“In Tennessee, the First Amendment does not stop at the campus gate,” he continued. “We can’t allow politically correct policies to smother free speech. Courtesy and civility, while encouraged, can never trump basic constitutional rights. Tennessee’s institutions of higher education should prepare our students for the real world, and encouraging expression of all sorts of viewpoints is essential to that objective.”

And I certainly agree with the protection of free speech on campus.

VIDEO: Coretta Scott King Thanks Sen. Jeff Sessions for Rosa Parks Library.

That’s racism, straight up.

THIS OUGHT TO MAKE THE CIVIL RIGHTS CONSPIRACY CHARGE PRETTY EASY TO BRING: Berkeley Riot Organizers Say Lawbreaking Was Justified to Shut Down Milo’s 1st Amendment Rights.

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS ALSO MY ENEMY: Battle to Retake Syrian City Turns Into a Geopolitical Test of the War.

The complication is that the advancing forces — the Syrian Army and pro-government militias backed by Russia, and Syrian rebels backed by Turkey — are sworn enemies.

Their simultaneous race to seize the city, Al Bab, has turned into a test of how a global realignment of powers supporting Syria’s antagonists could help reshape or end the nearly six-year-old conflict.

Al Bab, which had roughly 100,000 people when the war began in 2011, is the last urban area held by the Islamic State west of its proclaimed capital, Raqqa, where the group remains entrenched.

Russia and Turkey have swerved in recent months from outright hostility to working more closely in a diplomatic effort aimed at resolving the conflict, after fitful and repeated failures led by the United Nations and the United States.

But in the battle for Al Bab, Russia and Turkey must transform their newfound understanding into results on the ground, with the ambitious goal of pushing their Syrian partners into de facto military cooperation. Otherwise they risk creating a new flash point.

The coming days will show if the Syrian foes, who do not always obey their patrons, will work together for the first time against the Islamic State, or drive out the extremists and then try to kill one another.

The smart money should go on the latter rather than the former.

IN THE TENNESSEE LEGISLATURE, a bill limiting liability for drivers who run down protesters who block roads. We’re actually seeing bills like this — some going farther — in a number of states.

BYRON YORK: A fact-free debate on Trump’s executive order.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 9th Circuit oral argument over President Trump’s executive order was that lawyers for both sides seemed to know nothing about some of the most basic real-world issues surrounding the case. Two examples:

First, the question of terror-related crimes committed by people who come from the seven nations covered by the Trump order. Many of the president’s adversaries have claimed that no terror-related crimes have been committed by nationals of the affected countries — Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. “The various people who have, in fact, committed terrorist acts in this country, from 9/11 on, none of them came from any of the seven countries that are the subject of the president’s executive order,” New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said on CNN Jan. 28.

Even James Robart, the judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington State who temporarily stopped the Trump order, believed the talking point.

“How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?” Robart asked a Justice Department lawyer in court on Feb. 3. When the lawyer said she didn’t know, Robart said, “Let me tell you. The answer to that is none, as best I can tell.”

It turns out the judge, and Nadler, and everybody else repeating the talking point had it wrong. Last year the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest released information showing that at least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted — not just arrested, but convicted — of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. And that number did not include more recent cases like Abdul Artan, a Somali refugee who wounded 11 people during a machete attack on the campus of Ohio State University last November.

So the talking point wasn’t true. And yet at the 9th Circuit oral argument, the judges appeared to believe it was true, and Justice Department lawyer August Flentje didn’t know enough to correct them. . . .

The other example of the lawyers’ lack of knowledge comes from the other side — Washington State Solicitor General Noah Purcell. It concerns another basic question in the executive order debate — whether the order is somehow a “ban” on Muslims. That is not only at the heart of Washington State’s case but has also been a staple of discussion about the Trump order. Yet when Judge Clifton quizzed Purcell, he appeared to know nothing.

“Let me ask you about the, I’ll call this religious discrimination claim,” Clifton said to Purcell. “To reach both the equal protection and Establishment Clause claims, and I’m not entirely persuaded by the argument if only because, the seven countries encompass only, I think a relatively small percentage of Muslims. Do you have any information as to what percentage or what proportion of the adherence to Islam worldwide are citizens or residents of those countries? My quick penciling suggests it’s something less than fifteen percent.” [The actual figure is about 12 percent, according to Pew Research.]

“I have not done that math, your honor,” Purcell said.

“I have trouble understanding why we’re supposed to infer religious animus when in fact the vast majority of Muslims would not be affected as residents of those nations,” Clifton said. “And where the concern for terrorism with those connected with radical Islamic sects are sort of hard to deny.”

Purcell argued that, according to the law, Washington State does not need to prove that the Trump order would harm every Muslim. “We just need to prove that it was motivated in part by a desire to harm Muslims,” he said.

“How do you infer that desire if in fact the vast majority of Muslims are unaffected?” Clifton asked.

Because it’s Trump and everyone knows he’s super-eevvill. It says so right on NPR.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LOYALTY-OATH EDITION: Residential Advisor Loses Job Because She Didn’t ‘Demonstrate a Commitment to Social Justice.’

Justine Schwarz, a residential advisor at the University of Minnesota, lost her job because program administrators thought she was insufficiently committed to promoting social justice.

“[She] has not demonstrated a commitment to social justice growth and promotion to residents,” a director wrote in his review of Schwarz.

Furthermore, Schwarz liked to “play devil’s advocate” when talking with other people about “diversity and social justice.” Schwarz’s zeal for wide-ranging debate on these subjects called into question whether she could be trusted to behave like a good social justice advocate, according to the review.

In other respects, Schwarz was a model residential advisor.

“Justine’s residents love her,” her review noted. “She has been able to connect with many of her residents on a personal level.”

Over at Campus Reform, David Blondin and Maddison Dibble of The Minnesota Republic­—Minnesota’s conservative student newspaper—gathered impressive evidence that the training program for residential advisors leans heavily to the left: RAs must learn about oppression, power, and privilege. They even have to watch a Buzzfeed video about the reinforcement of traditional gender roles.

It’s one thing to teach RAs—the students who handle dorm disputes between other residents—something about privilege. It’s quite another to require them to preach these views to incoming students.

This kind of thing is why we need federal legislation protecting faculty and students against political viewpoint discrimination.

CONRAD BLACK: Trump Cannot Lose the Travel Ban Fight.

The President should not have referred to Judge Robart as a “so-called judge,” but the whole business is a frame-up. The Democrats must have had in the back of their minds the hope that Mr. Trump would impetuously ignore Judge Robart’s order, as President Jackson famously invited Chief Justice Marshall to try to enforce a decision of his Supreme Court.

This would have enabled them to start already on the line they are bursting with impatience to raise — that this was grounds for impeachment. This too would be nonsense, but it would help them to ratchet up the righteous obstruction and start agitating for the complete immobilization of this unconstitutional billionaire megalomaniac who was assaulting constitutional propriety.

Instead, Mr. Trump has been more compliant than necessary, and gone through the charade of appealing to the notoriously flaky and leftist Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, and will probably have to go on to the Supreme Court, which could entangle this issue with the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on that court.

Mr. Trump will get the political credit for trying to safeguard the country whether he is sustained or not, but can be almost a bystander between the raving Democrats and a serious Court when the issue arrives at one.

Whatever its actual utility proves to be (and leaving aside what even Black describes was a “botched” rollout), the travel moratorium is a popular and easy-to-understand issue, with the President at his most reasonable on one side of it, and a bunch of screeching and weeping Democrats on the other.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Caught on Tape: VA Teacher’s Political Rant.

NO: MLB considering starting extra innings with runner on second base.

WILL BAUDE: Quick reactions to the 9th Circuit’s decision in Washington v. Trump.

Related: Did the NYT talk about “the Quiet Grandeur of the Courts” when decisions went against President Obama? “And I do judge the district judge for his failure to provide a decent written explanation for his activism.”

SO LET’S ABOLISH IT: Why Do We Have a Department of Education? Jimmy Carter’s Debt to a Teachers Union. Public education existed well before 1980, but an unpopular President Carter wanted the nation’s largest union on his side before an election.

I say abolish it, but not until it’s had a year or two to ram through reforms on higher ed and K-12.