REMITTANCE INCOME AND THE MEXICO-U.S. TUSSLE OVER ILLEGAL MIGRANTS: Jim Dunnigan weighs in with facts:

The Mexican central bank tracks how much money Mexicans abroad send home and in 2016 it was $25 billion, almost all of it from Mexicans in the United States and much of it from Mexicans in the United States illegally. That remittance cash accounts for more foreign exchange than Mexican oil exports…Mexico has for decades tolerated illegal migration to the United States because the corruption and bad government in Mexico did little to provide jobs for the growing number of unemployed Mexicans and created a lot of potentially troublesome young men and women. Tolerating and, for many Mexican politicians, openly supporting the illegal migrants, was a popular policy and the government came to regard it as a right. But it was also about money and the remittances created a huge source of foreign currency flowing back to Mexico.

His analysis includes a look at the impact of Operation Sur on Mexico’s southern border which was designed “to curb illegal Central American migrants from entering Mexico.” He argues it had an impact on American politicians who “found themselves under increasing pressure to enforce American migration laws as vigorously as Mexico (and Canada) did.”

Read the whole thing.

QUEBEC SHOOTER UPDATE: Alexandre Bissonnette charged with 6 counts of 1st-degree murder.

Bissonnette made a brief court appearance around 6 p.m. ET Monday. He will remain in custody until his next court appearance on Feb. 21.

Provincial police are treating the attack as a terrorist act.

RCMP spokeswoman Camille Habel said Bissonnette could later face terrorism-related charges, depending on the outcome of the ongoing investigation.

Six men were killed and five people remain in hospital with injuries.

And that second suspect, reportedly from Morocco? Wrong man:

Another man, Mohamed Belkhadir, was arrested outside the mosque within minutes of the shooting. He was released after police confirmed he was a witness and not involved in the shooting.

He said he had been shovelling snow when he heard gunshots — when they stopped he entered the mosque to call 911.

“I saw the image of someone with a firearm, I didn’t know it was police. I thought it was a shooter who’d returned,” Belkhadir told Radio-Canada.

The man fled and police arrested him. He was released Monday.

Shortly after noon Monday, provincial police said that man was no longer a suspect, but rather a witness to the attack.

Glad that’s cleared up.

BRENDAN O’NEILL ON FACEBOOK: “This is the surreal and painful truth: if Hillary had won there’s a very good chance she’d be bombing Syrians and Yemenis, rather than simply denying them visas, and no one would have protested.”

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SCOTT JOHNSON: What’s Next? “You have to wonder what comes next after the hysteria manifested by the Democrat/Media Axis in the first 10 days of the Trump administration. They have turned up the ‘resistance’ to 11, Spinal Tap style.” The more they try to “de-normalize” Trump, the less normal they seem.

STAY CALM AND CARRY ON: Leftists March in Britain, Want PM May to Cancel Trump Visit.

OBAMA’S LEGACY: Secret Rules Make It Pretty Easy for the FBI to Spy on Journalists.

IN BRITAIN, a petition to invite President Trump for a state visit has over 100,000 signatures.

WELL, GOOD: Mattis Review Of F-35 Fighter Likely To Yield Lower Price, Faster Production.

This is going to be easier than many observers expect. The joint program office was already working with prime contractor Lockheed Martin and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney to implement a “blueprint for affordability” aimed at accomplishing precisely what the president wants. And the cost of the fighters is falling with each successive production lot — it declined 4.2% in Lot 7 and then another 3.6% in Lot 8. Lots 9 and 10 will exhibit similar progress.

Lockheed Martin has welcomed the review, issuing a statement that “smart buying strategies” could yield significant savings. That’s an under-statement. Lockheed contributes to my think tank and is a consulting client, so I’ve been listening to company engineers grouse for years about how excessive testing and regulatory requirements have driven up the cost of each plane. The company’s internal estimate is that at least 20% of program costs are driven by redundancy, oversight and the like.

It may not be feasible to eliminate all of these overhead factors — many are required by law — but it is easy to imagine getting the cost of each plane down significantly from current projections.

Faster, please.

(Link was broken, fixed now — sorry!)

ASHE SCHOW: Campus sexual assault panel offered good, bad and ugly for due process.

This past Wednesday, college presidents and Title IX coordinators met on Capitol Hill to discuss the issue of campus sexual assault and what to do under the new Trump administration.

Under the Obama administration, colleges were required to adjudicate accusations of sexual assault in a way that denied due process and the presumption of innocence. While President Donald Trump hasn’t spoken on the issue, the media has stoked fears that his administration will roll back protections for accusers, who are always labeled as “victims.”

The media has seized upon a comment made by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for U.S. secretary of education, to create a culture of fear. DeVos, when asked during her confirmation hearing about Obama-era guidance documents from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, said she couldn’t commit to upholding the guidance because of “a lot of conflicting ideas and opinions” that she needed to review.

This was a good answer, as the original 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter requiring colleges and universities to use a lower “preponderance of evidence” standard when adjudicating accusations of sexual assault didn’t go through the notice-and-comment period that almost certainly would have reined in the document’s overreach.

During the first of two panels put on by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, four college presidents said they would continue their post-2011 process for sexual assault claims even if the “Dear Colleague” guidance was overturned.

The panel, which featured Diane Harrison of California State University-Northridge, Alisa White of Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, Barbara Gitenstein of the College of New Jersey, and John Jasinski of Northwest Missouri State University, wasn’t all bad. Still, some statements should be concerning to anyone who values due process and the rule of law.

I’m beginning to doubt whether higher education institutions are capable respecting due process and the rule of law.

HOW CAN WE MISS HIM IF HE WON’T GO AWAY? Obama weighs in as travel ban fury mounts.

After a weekend of chaos at airports, mass protests and diplomatic outcries, criticism of Trump’s proposal even came from Barack Obama, who broke his silence for the first time since leaving office.

“President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said.

“Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”

To his credit, Obama did make it a week and a half before deciding we couldn’t go on without him.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION, ANYTHING-TO-STOP-THE-BLEEDING ISSUE: California’s New Bar Exam Format And ABA’s Proposed 75% Bar Passage Requirement Will Adversely Impact Diversity, Women, And Access To The Legal Profession. Alternative headline: Law Schools Face Accountability, Women And Minorities Hardest Hit.

“WHY NOT?” France’s far-right party says it could replicate Trump’s ban if Le Pen is elected.

YOU’RE (NOT) FIRED!

This ought to ease some panic — but it won’t.

MASSACHUSETTS ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY SET UP A “HATE CRIME HOTLINE” AFTER TRUMP WAS ELECTED, but it turns out an awful lot of the victims of hate were Trump supporters. “State Rep. Geoff Diehl, co-chairman of Trump’s Massachusetts campaign, said the data only represents a fraction of local Trump supporters who felt harassed, marginalized or muffled throughout the election.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON FAKE NEWS: “It is not merely a public figure’s spinning of half-truths. It is largely a media-driven, and deliberate attempt to spread a false narrative to advance a political agenda that otherwise would be rejected by a common-sense public. The methodology is to manufacture a narrative attractive to a herd-like progressive media that will then devour and brand it as fact—and even lobby for government redress.”

HMM: Hill staffers secretly worked on Trump’s immigration order.

The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Trump was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Trump’s transition operation forced its staff to sign these agreements, but it would be unusual to extend that requirement to congressional employees. Rexrode declined to comment on the nondisclosure pacts.

It’s extremely rare for administration officials to circumvent Republican leadership and work directly with congressional committee aides. But the House Judiciary Committee has some of the most experienced staffers when it comes to immigration policy.

And:

Since the staffers did not inform Republican leaders about their work, Hill leaders and the House Homeland Security panels were never given the chance to vet the order for potential problems — such as the issue with green card holders that caused authorized U.S. immigrants to be threatened with deportation at airports.

Even supporters of the administration believe the administration erred in its lack of communication. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, speculated that the administration could have given “people a heads up a week or so out and get them on the same page.” But he cautioned that the administration is “understaffed and Trump is impatient,” and the White House has a natural learning curve.

Newt Gingrich, who is close with Trump, said, “They could have waited a couple days, and they would have done better. I think some of this stuff is they’re learning how to roller skate. They can’t understand in advance, they have to do it for the first time.”

It appears for now that Trump was in a rush to fulfill a signature campaign promise, and maybe was also worried about leaks from the Hill and from his own high-level appointees — even SecState Rex Tillerson, Homeland Security Chief John Kelly, and SecDef James Mattis were reportedly cut out of the loop, too.

Whether this instance was just growing pains or an early sign of an Administration at war with Congress and with itself remains to be seen.

THE DEEP STATE STRIKES BACK: US Diplomats Consider Filing Dissent Over Immigration Ban.

In recent days, drafts of a dissent memo have been circulating among diplomats and associates abroad expressing concern that the new restrictions — which Trump said would help “keep America safe” — are un-American and will actually paralyze efforts to stop terrorist attacks in the U.S.

“This ban … will not achieve its stated aim to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States,” warned an early draft reviewed by ABC News.

Instead, the executive order will expand anti-American sentiment and “immediately sour relations” with key allies in the fight against terrorism, particularly many of the countries whose citizens are now blocked from traveling to the United States, according to the draft.

Now that’s just a draft memo, which somehow… mysteriously… accidentally… got leaked to ABC News.

But then there’s this, possibly only tangentially related headline from the WSJ: White House Fires Acting Attorney General Sally Yates After Defying Immigration Ban.

Details:

Ms. Yates learned of her firing Monday evening, in a letter from the White House hand-delivered to her office, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a statement, the White House said Ms. Yates “has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.”

Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, will be acting attorney general until Mr. Trump’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which could happen next week.

We’ll see if this draft memo ever becomes finalized.

SO, IT’S LIKE LEFTY POLITICS IN GENERAL, THEN: “There is a subset of people here, mostly from the privileged classes, who feel sullied by their political affiliation with Red America. Secession would boost their sense of personal virtue. The Calexit movement is trying to exploit that.”

FLASHBACK: Schumer: Refugee pause may be necessary. “Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, on Tuesday said it may be necessary to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States. Republicans immediately seized on Schumer’s comment, which breaks with other Democrats who have argued against halting the program.”

FLASHBACK: Calif. bans state travel to Kansas over LGBT discrimination concerns.

I’m old enough to remember when travel bans were all the rage.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Anonymous Calls for BDS vs. U.S. to Take Down Trump.

BDS stands for “boycott, divest and sanctions.” Given that the U.S. dollar is the world’s major reserve currency, U.S. equities markets are the world’s largest, freest, and most dynamic, and that U.S. consumers are the world’s richest and most desired — Anonymous’ call barely even registers as virtue signaling.

EVEN TED RALL THINKS THE WOMEN’S MARCH WAS STUPID:

A good indication that the Women’s March got coopted into a Democratic boo-hoo Hillary/Cory Booker-in-2020 pep rally was that the speakers were limited to celebrity millionaire liberal Democrats like Michael Moore, Ashley Judd and Gloria. Had this been a militant action (i.e., one that might frighten Trump and the GOP), or a coalition of liberals who welcomed and respected their leftist allies rather than merely wanting to vampirize their righteous anger and energy into midterm votes, the roster of speakers would have included people calling for revolutionary change and action outside of the existing system. There would also have been some radical activists you’d never [heard] of who do important work.

Celebrity liberalism and pleas to vote Democratic are where the Left goes to die….

Well, they managed to make it too obnoxious to appeal to the mainstream, and too vapid to appeal to the hard-left. Nice work!

UPDATE: From the comments: “When you’ve lost Ted Rall, you’ve lost anti-America.”

Plus: “Video of the march is probably a much greater recruitment tool for ISIS than any travel ban.” True.

TRUMP DESTROYED, DESTROYED, DESTROYED AND DESTROYED AGAIN: “Forget living in a post-truth world. We’re living in a post-life world. All hail Trump, the first ghost president.”

OOPS: The left, who viewed the weaponized executive branch like Boromir did the One Ring, now face the horror of it turning on them.