PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Wrongfully Expelled Student Hauls Elite College Into Court.

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H.R. MCMASTER URGES RUSSIA TO RETHINK SYRIA:

In his first televised interview, H.R. McMaster pointed to dual U.S. goals of defeating the Islamic State group and removing Assad from power. As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was making the Trump administration’s first official trip this week to Russia, McMaster said Russia will have to decide whether it wanted to continue backing a “murderous regime.” Trump is weighing next steps after ordering airstrikes last week.

“It’s very difficult to understand how a political solution could result from the continuation of the Assad regime,” McMaster said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Stay tuned.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Understanding the Health Care Mess.

I was about to add, “You’re gonna need a longer column,” but then I saw it’s the first in a multipart series. There’s a lot of ground to cover, most of it broken by Washington.

STRATEGYPAGE’S WW2 BOMBER SERIES: A flight of B-17s — in living color.

FROM MAURICE STUCKE AND ARIEL EZRACHI: The E-Scraper and E-Monopsony.

WHY ARE LEFTIST COMPANIES SUCH CESSPITS OF MISOGYNY AND DISCRIMINATION? Google Under Investigation for Gender Pay Disparity. “Labor Department regional director Janette Wipper testified in San Francisco court Friday that the pay disparities against women appear to be found ‘pretty much across the entire workforce’ at the tech company.”

KEVIN GLASS: If Trump breaks up the White House press cabal, it may be the most important thing he ever does.

Just last month, there were members of the press questioning why The Daily Signal, a news publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, was participating in pool reports. Fred Lucas, The Daily Signal’s White House correspondent, has covered the White House for more than 10 years for CNS News, The Blaze, and now The Daily Signal. He’s an award-winning journalist with impeccable credentials.The mainstream media, however, guards every inch of its status, such as writing pool reports, with shocking ferocity. And it should be noted that nobody took issue with the content of any pool reports, merely that someone they perceive to be an outsider from their club was allowed to write them.This isn’t the first time that the media has thrown a hissy fit, and it’s not exclusively about Trump, or even the conservative media. At the dawn of the Obama White House in 2009, the White House press welcomed Politico, The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Salon and more, to the shock and outrage of some of the journalist insiders. Politico was an upstart web-focused publication, and The Huffington Post was famous for being a blog platform for Hollywood celebrities.

Mandarins are always opposed to fresh blood, new faces, and different ways of thinking.

ILYA SHAPIRO: The Left Brought On The Nuclear Option By Making Judges Political. I think that courts have been sufficiently politicized that we should probably just go ahead and elect judges. Then it’s at least straightforward.

LARRY SOLUM: Originalism In Constitutional Time:

And so, we arrive at a critical moment in constitutional time. Only a few months ago, many were trumpeting a decisive end to originalism. Originalism was about to be “off the wall” not “on the table.” Instead, originalism is once again the focus of public and academic attention–the theory to beat. But this moment in constitutional time is not a moment of triumph for originalism. Instead, it is a moment of open constitutional possibilities–the future shimmers, with glimpses of alternative constitutional futures coming in and out of focus. In some constitutional futures, the constitutional gestalt shifts and originalism becomes the dominant mode of constitutional discourse, fundamentally altering our conception of the relationship of constitutional law and politics. In others, living constitutionalism regains the ascendency and the downward spiral of politicization that has infected the judicial selection process and even the Supreme Court itself continues apace. Where that spiral bottoms out, I do not wish to speculate. There is enough dread in the world.

Our constitutional future can only be seen through an hourglass darkly, and even our constitutional present seems uncertain, as the sands of constitutional time flow through. But this much seems certain: originalism lives.

Indeed.

BIPARTISAN DEALS ARE GENERALLY OVERRATED ANYWAY: Democrats’ Conditions for Tax Overhaul Make Bipartisan Deal Unlikely.

Democrats say they oppose net tax cuts and will resist proposals that mostly benefit high-income households. Those priorities diverge from President Donald Trump’s repeated promise to “cut the hell out of taxes” and congressional Republicans’ plans to lower marginal tax rates and repeal the estate tax.

“Tax reform’s got to be responsible and it’s got to be progressive,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.).

Republicans made overtures across the aisle in recent weeks and, in theory, Democratic participation on tax policy could ease legislative challenges for Republicans vexed by slim House and Senate majorities and internal disagreements. By attracting Democratic votes, Republicans could overcome procedural hurdles without uniting fractious wings of their own party.

There is, at some level, rhetorical room for agreement. Mr. Trump says middle-class tax cuts are a top priority. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) says he’s aiming for his plan to be revenue neutral—collecting as much money over the next decade as the current system does. Mix Mr. Trump’s class rhetoric, Mr. Ryan’s budgetary promise and the prospect of spending on infrastructure and there is a recipe for bipartisanship.

Even WaPo’s Wonkblog admits that “America’s taxes are the most progressive in the world,” but maybe Capitol Hill could agree to a “conspicuous consumption” levy on immodest third homes.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Does the unconstitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws tell us whether federal law bans anti-gay discrimination in employment? I read the Ivy Tech opinion and I found the analogy between Title VII and the Equal Protection clause strained.

TRUMP’S CONUNDRUM: What Policy Will He Adopt After the Bombing?

Ron Radosh, so read the whole thing.

LIZ SHELD: Her new morning brief has everything you need to start off the day smart, sharp, and well-informed.

Well, except for coffee.

JOEL KOTKIN: Bantustans and Apartheid in California.

California may never secede, or divide into different states, but it has effectively split into entities that could not be more different. On one side is the much-celebrated, post-industrial, coastal California, beneficiary of both the Tech Boom 2.0 and a relentlessly inflating property market. The other California, located in the state’s interior, is still tied to basic industries like homebuilding, manufacturing, energy and agriculture. It is populated largely by working- and middle-class people who, overall, earn roughly half that of those on the coast.

Over the past decade or two, interior California has lost virtually all influence, as Silicon Valley and Bay Area progressives have come to dominate both state politics and state policy. “We don’t have seats at the table,” laments Richard Chapman, president and CEO of the Kern Economic Development Corporation. “We are a flyover state within a state.”

Virtually all the polices now embraced by Sacramento — from water and energy regulations to the embrace of sanctuary status and a $15-an-hour minimum wage — come right out of San Francisco central casting. Little consideration is given to the needs of the interior, and little respect is given to their economies.

States that are dominated by small, densely populated urban enclaves are evidence of why Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims should be revisited. It’s a Living Constitution, after all.

THE FAILURE OF HASHTAG DIPLOMACY: Three years later, #bringbackourgirls has not brought the girls back.

HMM: Russian computer programmer arrested in Spain.

A Russian computer programmer, Pyotr Levashov, has been arrested in the Spanish city of Barcelona, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Madrid said on Sunday.

Russian television station RT reported that Levashov was suspected of being involved in hacking attacks linked to alleged interference in last year’s U.S. election.

He was arrested under a U.S. international arrest warrant, RT reported on its website, citing Spanish police.

The embassy spokesman declined to give details on the reasons for Levashov’s arrest. The Spanish police and interior ministry were not available for comment.

What will he be charged with and in whose jurisdiction?

FRED BARNES: How Mitch McConnell Won the Battle to Confirm Gorsuch.

When I interviewed McConnell shortly after Gorsuch was confirmed, he wanted to talk before I asked a question. He had plenty to say. It’s rare there are things “you can say you did on your own.” One was his snap decision to bar the Senate from taking up a Supreme Court nomination until a new president took office. Only the majority leader could do this. “It is the most consequential decision I ever made,” McConnell said.

And it turned out the open seat was an “electoral asset” for Trump. Voters didn’t like him or Hillary Clinton. But once filling the seat became the “principal issue,” Trump had the advantage. Everyone knew she would dump Garland, a moderate, for someone further to the left.

“We didn’t know if the president would be a conservative or not,” McConnell said. However, he had promised to pick a nominee from a list of 20 conservative jurists. (McConnell had advocated such a list.) “This reassured conservatives.” The result: he got 90 percent of the Republican vote and won.

McConnell gave Trump credit for nominating “the single best circuit court judge in the country. It made my job easier.” He described the job as “getting all my frogs in the wheelbarrow.” On cloture, the nuclear option, and confirmation, he got all 52 frogs.

Paul Ryan could learn a thing or two.

DAVID HARSANYI: These Are The Questions That Susan Rice Needs To Answer Under Oath. “For instance: Why did you lie to PBS about having no knowledge of the unmasking of Trump officials or family?”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Cooley Law School Enrollments (68%), Revenues (49%) Fall While Tuition Rises 48% (To $50,790); 60% Of Faculty Terminated, Dean’s Pay Cut 20% (To $537,000). “It didn’t help that, in 2012, the American Bar Association began requiring schools to report employment figures for their recent graduates with greater precision. Those figures made clear, for instance, that just 38% of the students who graduated from Cooley in 2011 found full-time, long-term work within nine months of graduation. The numbers for 2015 graduates were worse, only 27%.”

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF PREDATION AND VIOLENCE?Seattle mayor accused of sexual abuse by several men.

AH! FRANCE: French Elections – Poster Wars.

WELL, ALLRIGHTY THEN:Turns out these cheerleaders were ‘sugar babies,’ not prostitutes.

DEFINITELY, WHAT GIRLS NEED IS MORE HAND HOLDING AND CODDLING: There might still be a dozen women under 30 in the US who AREN’T medicated to the gills to mitigate real-world shock. California high school replaces girls’ bathroom mirrors with ‘notes of affirmation’

UM…. SLOWER, PLEASE:US military developing tech to make soldiers smarter and faster.