THERE GOES NYT AGAIN: Neil Gorsuch Helped Defend Disputed Bush-Era Terror Policies.

Goodness, do they mean a dispute has two sides?

DEFENDING MEN: Camille Paglia Discusses Her War on ‘Elitist Garbage’ and Contemporary Feminism.

VOTE BUYING: CA Lawmakers Want to Exempt Teachers from State Taxes.

Is Sacramento suddenly concerned the teachers’ union won’t stay bought?

DAVID FRENCH: Could Someone Please Inform the Federal Judiciary That Jihadists Are Muslim?

DEEP STATE FLASHBACK: NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog.

BUT OF COURSE:

DEEP STATE UPDATE: John Hinderaker: A Liberal Coup Is In Progress. “What we are seeing here is a coup: a coup by the New Class; by the Democratic Party; by far leftists embedded in the bureaucracy and the federal judiciary. Our duly elected president has issued an order that is plainly within his constitutional powers, and leftists have conspired to abuse legal processes to block it. They are doing so in order to serve the interests of the Democratic Party and the far-left movement. This is the most fundamental challenge to democracy in our lifetimes.”

If courts are going to apply judicial weight to campaign statements, then maybe I should file a petition for rehearing with the Supreme Court in the ObamaCare case, since “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” and “your premiums will go down by $2500” were integral parts of Obama’s sales pitch.

YOU HAD ME AT “MASSIVE CUTS:” Trump federal budget 2018: Massive cuts to the arts, science and the poor.

Funding the arts and the poor isn’t a federal responsibility. Science, maybe, but much of the “science” the federal government funds is of dubious quality, and quite a lot of it — see, e.g., the last 50 years of government nutritional “science” — isn’t science at all. Plus:

The cuts could represent the widest swath of reductions in federal programs since the drawdown after World War II, probably leading to a sizable cutback in the federal non-military workforce, something White House officials said was one of their goals.

“You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters.

Well put.

UPDATE: Seen on Facebook: “If Congress eliminates funding for NPR and PBS, I intent to donate more to them. After all, it is what well-off people who consume these outlets should do, given that public funding of these stations is a reverse subsidy for the rich.” Very mature.

YES, THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE CHELSEA A THING: Chelsea Clinton announces new picture book, She Persisted.

“I wrote this book for everyone who’s ever wanted to speak up but has been told to quiet down, for everyone who’s ever been made to feel less than,” said Clinton, the author of It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going, in a statement. “The 13 women in She Persisted all overcame adversity to help shape our country—sometimes through speaking out, sometimes by staying seated, sometimes by captivating an audience. With this book, I want to send a message to young readers around the country—and the world—that persistence is power.”

That’s what should worry you.

THE RETURN OF THE TURK? Turkish minister claims ‘holy wars will soon begin in Europe’ after Geert Wilders beaten.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, did not welcome the victory for Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

“Now the election is over in the Netherlands…when you look at the many parties you see there is no difference between the social democrats and fascist Wilders,” he said according to a translation by Hurriyet.

“All have the same mentality. Where will you go? Where are you taking Europe? You have begun to collapse Europe. You are dragging Europe into the abyss. Holy wars will soon begin in Europe.”

If you had thought this little matter had been settled at the gates of Vienna in 1683, well, memories run deep in the Middle East.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1407: NY Post Editorial, Fire The IRS Chief Already, Mr. President.

THEIR TWITTER GUY DID: Did McDonald’s Just Insult Donald Trump While Praising Barack Obama?

No word yet on whether the presumed SJW responsible has been fired, but this must be a difficult day for elitists who sneer at McDonalds.

THIS TWEETSTORM BY CHRIS ARNADE IS WORTH READING. Especially if you’re the insufferable Josh Barro.

Keep going, there are many more. And this seems about right:

ANDREW KLAVAN: Rachel in Wonderland.

As every wag in the Twitterverse knows, the leftist MSNBC commentator tweeted with breathless excitement around 7:30 EST that evening that “we’ve got Trump’s tax returns. (seriously).” The breathlessness rose to levels rarely seen outside the bedroom when Maddow’s show began at 9:00. Fluttering her hands in front of her face, she told the audience, “There’s a little bit of a hullaballoo around here this evening. I apologize for being a little flustered.” She then proceeded to build to the story with meaningless conjecture for somewhere between twenty minutes and what felt like twelve days. Finally, she produced 2005 IRS documents that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the president made a ton of somolians seventeen years ago and paid a small dumpster load worth of taxes. As Maddow herself was forced to say to Trump: “Mazel tov.”

Now, I like a good laugh as much as the next person whose favored political party currently dominates every level of American government, but really the larger issue is serious. An insulated leftist media — the networks, CNN, the New York Times (a former newspaper), the Washington Post and the rest — have now pied pipered their entire movement into a kind of Fantasy Scandal Wonderland.

Read the whole thing.

SIMPLE SOLUTION? STOP WATCHING MADDOW:

WHEN YOU HAVE THE WORST RULING CLASS IN YOUR HISTORY, NO INSTITUTION IS IMMUNE FOREVER: Elite Moral Decline Affecting Military.

As ethical standards slide across the American political system, the country has come to depend more and more on the integrity of its people in uniform. But the military cannot be immune to the cultural slide away from the higher moral standards of past generations.

The overwhelming majority of men and women in the U.S. military who hold themselves to the highest personal and professional standards. But over time those numbers will decrease—unless American society as a whole can recover the moral balance that was once a defining characteristic of this country.

We cannot walk away from the moral and spiritual foundations of American greatness without losing our freedom and power and wealth. It is clear enough today that from the White House down, too many people in public life are unwilling to make the sacrifices and enforce the standards that a free society demands.

Well, the “White House” in question here wasn’t the Trump White House, but rather one based in the the “rules are for the little people” environment that we’ve known for so long.

And note that the wrongdoers are members of the “intelligence community.”

OVERRULED: Judge Blocks Second Travel Order; Trump Slams ‘Judicial Overreach’

The ruling, granting a request for a temporary restraining order by the state of Hawaii and Ismail Elshikh, stalls the president’s second attempt to suspend admission of nearly all refugees for 120 days and to restrict visas for nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, who said the restraining order applies nationwide, said Trump’s travel order was religiously discriminatory.

In an appearance Wednesday night in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump denounced the ruling as “an unprecedented judicial overreach” and said his administration would pursue the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

“We’re talking about the safety of our nation, the safety and security of our people,” he said, adding: “This ruling makes us look weak.”

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, called Watson’s ruling “flawed both in reasoning and in scope,” saying Trump’s travel order “falls squarely within his lawful authority in seeking to protect our nation’s security.”

Mollie Hemingway has more:

Trump said the temporary travel restriction was needed for national security. In issuing his temporary restraining order, Watson said Trump’s order was a result of nothing more than religious animus against Muslims. The judge’s order is predicated on what he thinks Trump wants to do, not the order itself.

Throughout the ruling, Judge Watson concedes there’s nothing about the executive order that would be problematic if not for his interpretation of Trump’s statements made in the months and years prior to issuing it. He repeatedly states his feeling that Trump had a bad motive in issuing the order.

Judges using campaign rhetoric to infer intent instead of plainly evaluating the law as written is a dangerous development. Also because the public can witness the selective use of this trick, it undermines confidence in the judiciary at a time when the judiciary can’t afford too much erosion of trust.

“Feelings” isn’t even a good song, much less a sound basis for overturning a legal executive order.

MAKE THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME: Charles Murray sympathizes with the difficulty facing Middlebury in disciplining the students who disrupted his speech. The ones who physically assaulted him and a Middlebury professor should be expelled, of course, but what about all the ones whose chanting prevented him from speaking? “We’re talking about violations that involve a few hundred students,” Murray says, noting that a “serious tutelary response” would be more appropriate than expulsion.

Here’s my suggestion: Summer school. Require them to take (and pass) a special course this summer devoted to the history of censorship and free speech. The 20th-century portion can delve into the role of university students as the vanguard of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the fascist movements of the 1920s. (The reading list should definitely include Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.)

One potential problem: Who will teach the class? Who will want to this face this mob regularly in a lecture hall? But I’m sure the professors at Heterodox Academy could lend a hand.

IT’S ON: Queen gives Royal Assent to Article 50 bill.

COURT CASE DEMONSTRATES THE VALUE OF THE OXFORD COMMA:

The comma is an optional one that is used before an ‘and’ or ‘or’ at the end of a list. It’s surprisingly controversial online, with its uses or lack of them being vociferously debated, but a labor court case has now settled the argument…

BECAUSE IT’S A LEFTY ENCLAVE, AND LEFTY ENCLAVES ARE ALWAYS CESSPITS OF MISOGYNY. Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?

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MARK CUBAN ON TRUMP’S TAX RETURN: ‘For All We Know, He’s the One Who Leaked It’

He says that like it’s a bad thing?

MICHAEL BARONE: Perceptions are that Trump’s policies are working.

In contrast to the years of the Obama stimulus program, when the bulk of new jobs came in the public sector, it appears that the increase here is in the private sector. Moody’s Analytics says there were 298,000 new private sector jobs in February, far more than the 189,000 it expected.

Construction jobs were up 58,000, private educational services jobs up 29,000, manufacturing jobs up 28,000. This suggests that lots of employers, small as well as large, are taking the plunge and creating new jobs.

Can I prove that they’re doing so because of perceptions that regulations and taxes will be decreased by the Trump administration? No, and I’m not sure any economist’s statistical model could either. But that sure looks like what’s happening.

The owner of a small business doesn’t take lightly the decision to make new hires — those are real people you’re giving hope to, with the real expectation that you’ll make payroll week after week. The business climate matters a great deal, and maybe we’re finally seeing it turn around.