HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: ABA House rejects proposal to tighten bar pass standards for law schools.

SENATOR AL FRANKEN: DeVos ‘fundamentally incompetent’ to lead Education Dept.

“During her hearing, Ms. DeVos proved beyond a shadow of a doubt not only that her ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the mission of the Department of Education, but that she is fundamentally incompetent to be its leader,” Franken said Monday from the Senate floor.

“This is not a job for amateurs,” the former “Saturday Night Live” comedian added.

I’ll just leave that last line lying there as we segue to Kevin Williamson:

On the merits, the Democrats do not have much of a case against Betsy DeVos, Tom Price, or Steven Mnuchin. The Democrats are making a dishonest argument, most intensely against DeVos, that being “qualified” for an office means agreeing with the Democrats on substantive policy questions. DeVos has spent most of her adult life working on education-reform projects, and the fact that these projects are based on policy positions at odds with those of most Democrats is not a question of qualification — it is a question of whether the president is entitled to nominate to the agencies officials who reflect his views.

He is.

Elections, as the head of the previous Administration once gloated, have consequences.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Charlotte Law Students Skewer Administration; Terminated Faculty Lawyer Up.

NFL IMPLOSION UPDATE: Those Super Bowl ratings weren’t exactly. . . super.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour. Plus, Hourly-Fresh Deals on Best Selling Products.

Also, shop today’s Kindle Daily Deals.

Plus, today’s Digital Deals.

And don’t miss today’s deals in Grocery and Gourmet Food.

WHAT INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY LOOKS LIKE, DEM2020 EDITION:

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: ABA House rejects proposal to tighten bar pass standards for law schools.

IF HE’S GUILTY HE NEEDS TO BE SEVERELY PUNISHED: UC Berkeley probes staffer after post-protest Web campaign. Translation: “Ultra-conservative, fringe websites” looked at Twitter postings and decided this was the guy who was bragging about beating up pro-Trump people. Then they made such a stink that even “respectable” outlets had to pay attention. If it turns out to be him, he needs to be fired and prosecuted. It’s time to end the leftist culture of impunity on campus.

UPDATE: More here: UC Berkeley Rioter Identified As University Staff Member. “Sleuths on Twitter quickly pointed out that the person behind this @teen_archer account was likely a UC Berkeley staff member named Ian Dabney Miller. Further Daily Caller investigation has confirmed that Ian Miller, a UC Berkeley staffer, is indeed the person behind the @teen_archer account that was bragging about getting into fights with Milo attendees and participating in the riots.”

AL QAEDA GUIDE: ‘Large and Violent Demonstrations’ Can Distract from Terror Operations.

They might find more useful idiots than they know what to do with.

GENDER INEQUALITY: Hillary Clinton makes a rallying cry for women to rise up against the Trump administration as she speaks on video for the first time since the inauguration to say ‘the future is female’

As the father of two young boys, it’s heartening that I don’t have to explain to them why their President says they have no future.

AS IMMIGRATION GOES UP, SO WILL THAT PERCENTAGE: Half Of U.S. Adults Believe Women Should Be Required By Law To Change Their Last Names After Marriage & The Reason Why Isn’t Promising. “The most common reason participants gave for believing that a woman should change her last name is that she should prioritize her marriage and family ahead of herself.”

TICKLISH: Supreme Court fight over Gorsuch puts Schumer in a bind.

Within hours of President Trump’s announcement that he nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, a conservative group launched a $7 million ad campaign aimed at pressuring politically vulnerable red-state Senate Democrats to vote for for nominee.

At the same moment, thousands of protesters swarmed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s, D-N.Y., Brooklyn apartment, some of them waiving plastic spines, demanding that Schumer and the Democrats hold firm and block Gorsuch from the high court.

Schumer, who is in his first term as Senate Democratic leader, is in a difficult political position as the Senate considers the nomination of Gorsuch, a highly respected jurist currently serving on the bench of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

With five vulnerable Democrats and eight more seats on the verge of being competitive in 2018, Schumer must find a way to satisfy the Democratic base by fighting the nomination without jeopardizing the re-election prospects of a big portion of his caucus who have to run for re-election in states that Trump won.

I hope nobody makes things too easy on him.

DAVID HARSANYI: Public School Is Often The Most Destructive Institution In American Life.

Many liberals, for instance, tell us that racism is one of the most pressing problems in America. And yet few things have hurt African Americans more over the past 40 years than the inner-city public school system. If President Obama is correct, and educational attainment is the key to breaking out of a lower economic strata, then no institution is driving inequality quite as effectively as public schools.

Actually, teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, most typically black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.

The National Education Association spent $23 million last cycle alone working to elect politicians to keep low-income Americans right where they are. Public service unions use tax dollars to fund politicians who then turn around and vote for more funding. The worse the schools perform, the more money they demand. In the real world we call this racketeering.

Why are Democrat-run institutions such cesspits of racism and oppression? Because that’s where the money is.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Katherine Magbanua’s Murder Trial In Killing Of Dan Markel Is Delayed As Two Inmates Say Alleged Hit Man Sigfredo Garcia Implicated Harvey And Donna Adelson.

SO I COULDN’T HELP BUT NOTICE that Google News has devoted an entire section to Executive Orders, and the many news stories being written about them.

I don’t recall any reaction like this when President Pen and Phone threatened to circumvent congress with executive orders if that popularly elected body (and co-equal branch of government) didn’t bend to his will.

JOURNALISM: 2 Minutes of Mainstream Media Backtracking Really Put ‘Fake News’ Into Perspective.

HUFFPO’s GINA M. FLORIO: Linda Sarsour’s Intersectional Mantra Is One We Need To Live By.

Sarsour’s words couldn’t have been more relevant and more true, but unfortunately, a lot of people completely missed the point. Any feminist movement that isn’t being led by at least one WOC [Woman of Color] — if not several — is a movement that isn’t worth following. For as long as women have been fighting for their basic human rights, WOC have been ignored, neglected, and mistreated to a degree that white women have never endured, and will never have to. To this day, mainstream white feminism fails to recognize these discrepancies, and as a result, minority women are left with no platform to speak up and demand change.

That’s why Sarsour has made it her life’s work to make sure no WOC is left behind in any feminist march. She’s acutely aware of the systemic injustices WOC have to face, and she speaks out about them on a regular basis.

You might remember Sarsour as the sharia-espousing leader of the recent (and hypocritical) women’s march.

I’ll leave it to others to try and explain how sharia is compatible with legal equality for women, or how race-based leadership is compatible with a color-blind society.

JACK DUNPHY: Misleading ‘L.A. Times’ Article Quotes Cops Who Don’t Want to Enforce Trump’s Policies.

Yes, after an eight-year hiatus, dissent is once again fashionable, and it is all the rage in some circles to display one’s opposition to President Trump and his policies.

I’m sorry to report that this fashion has now infected some police officers, even to such an extent that they are willing to be quoted in a newspaper saying they will defy their duty and the law. On Monday, the Los Angeles Times ran a story under the headline:

“I’m Not Going To Do It.” Police Aren’t Eager To Help Trump Enforce Immigration Laws

Like so much that appears in the media, especially in the reporting on the Trump administration, the story is at once accurate and deceptive.

It is accurate in that the reporters (the byline lists three) quoted a handful of LAPD officers and detectives who expressed reservations about the president’s proposed expanded role for local police officers in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. But is deceptive because it conveys the impression that these opinions are widely shared among the rank and file on the department.

They are not.

Read the whole thing — and marvel at the propaganda effort being put forth in Los Angeles and across the nation.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Pelosi: No grounds for impeaching Trump. I mean, when Nancy Pelosi is the voice of common sense. . . .

GOOD LORD: Thousands of Syrians Killed in Mass Hangings, Amnesty International Claims.

Syrian authorities have killed as many as 13,000 people—possibly more—since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as “the slaughterhouse,” Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

In a new report covering the period from 2011 to 2015, Amnesty said 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Bashar al-Assad, and carried out by military police.

The report referred to the killings as a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution.”

Atrocities like these are why it may prove impossible to put Syria back together.

PAUL CASSELL EXPLODES THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Did Milo Yiannopoulos secretly send more than 100 thugs to Berkeley to break up his own speech? “The only thing that remains strange about the events last week is the fact that Berkeley police have proved so inept. While the police were praised for their ‘restraint’ during the riots (and perhaps that praise was justified — I venture no opinion on riot-control tactics), they have been unable to now identify even a single one of these criminals.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Starving the Beast Prompts Choleric Call to Fatten a Sacred Cow.

Starving the Beast is a dark and brooding documentary that paints public higher education as being in a death struggle with diabolical, shadowy right-wing figures who want to slash funding.

In North Carolina, however, more than $3.8 billion was allocated to the UNC system and community colleges combined in 2016—a 4.8 percent increase over the previous year, and a 1.6 percent increase over a five-year period, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Higher education appropriations for the UNC system alone total roughly $2.8 billion and account for 13 percent of the overall state budget. Also, a tuition freeze was recently put in place, and student fee increases were capped at 3 percent.

North Carolina is ranked fourth in the nation in various studies in terms of state higher education funding, and fifth in the lowest share of total costs for individuals or families.

And despite Nichol’s claim that there is a conscious effort to financially disenfranchise minority students, the state, among other things, has passed the “N.C. Promise” tuition plan to cut tuition costs by $500 per semester beginning in fall 2018 for in-state, undergraduate students at UNC Pembroke and Elizabeth City State University—two historically minority institutions—as well as Western Carolina University.

Across the country, higher education is accessible to more students than ever, regardless of their socioeconomic status or race. Over the years, as access has expanded, so has higher education funding. Writing for the Atlantic, Paul Campos found that overall state spending increased by an inflation-adjusted 48 percent over the past 35 years, and overall government spending per student is “greater than ever before.”

Nevertheless, Starving the Beast plays off the contention that there is a battle to disrupt and reform America’s public universities through budget cuts and a “very toxic ideology” of consumerism and the use of cost-cutting technology.

Well, no, but that would be nice. Higher education is ripe for reform.

MY FRIEND DAVE FREER MIGHT NOT BE THE WORLD’S MOST INTERESTING MAN, BUT IT’S NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING: Hymns to Breath.

INEQUALITY UNDER THE LAW: 10 Thoughts Under my Fedora Sanctuary Cities, Sanctuary Clubs, Sanctuary Statehouses et/all.

ABC NEWS DISCOVERS REALITY: Backfire alert! Dems given a clue what the ‘Resistance’ is REALLY doing.