ANDREW MCCARTHY: The Number of Trump’s Executive Orders Is Irrelevant.

EOs are patently necessary and theoretically unremarkable. The president is the head of the vast executive branch. He must give directions to his subordinates in order for the executive branch to carry out its work. A proper executive order is simply that: the president ordering subordinate executive officials to carry out lawful policies and actions – lawful because they are consistent with the Constitution and statutory law.

Let’s take the president out of the equation for a moment. In the military, a commanding officer may give a hundred orders a day to his subordinates. These are “executive orders” in the sense that the armed forces are part of the executive branch. But as long as they are within the bounds of the law, the fact that there are thousands of such orders causes us no concern. Similarly, when the attorney general gives instructions to Justice Department lawyers, or the secretary of state directs our diplomats, these are “executive orders” and standard fare.

The problem occurs when, as during the Obama administration, EOs are used by the president as the vehicle for ordering that which he has no legal authority to order and which usurps the powers and rights of other branches of the federal government, the states, or the people.

Read the whole thing.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Dallas high school art teacher Payal Modi “has been placed on administrative leave after video surfaced showing her ‘shooting’ President Donald Trump inside a classroom while screaming, ‘Die!’…I wonder which offense the school district finds worst: a faux assassination or a teacher using a squirt gun on school property.”

Modi appears to be a woman of the left; at PJ Media, Megan Fox writes that “Adding irony to injury, Modi’s Instagram account featured this on her page recently, urging ‘kindness’ and ‘respect.’ Also littering Modi’s Instagram account are references to the Women’s March and the marchers’ pus*y fixation.”

I’m old enough to remember when the media believed that Sarah Palin’s clip art could magically kill, and that gun-related language should be treated as the equivalent of the N-word. Flash-forward to 2017 and the news segment that the Dallas CBS affiliate ran of the incident is a fascinating example of bias by omission. Apparently the reporters could find no one who objected to the incident or an angered Trump-voting parent to appear on camera; one giggling student they interviewed wants Modi back teaching ASAP because hey, botched joke, ya know?

I doubt that defense would have flown until very recently; just imagine the 50-point bold typeface JFK-flashback headlines that would have run, right up until last week: CLIMATE OF HATE: DALLAS TEACHER THREATENS TO ASSASSINATE OBAMA IN FRONT OF CLASS!

(Via SDA.)

WHY ARE AMERICA’S UNIVERSITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM AND MISOGYNY? A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor has apologized after showing a picture in class on Monday that showed a black woman above the word ‘animals.’

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Anti-‘Suicidality’ Bigots At Stanford.

Read the whole thing. As Rod Dreher writes, “This is one of those documents historians of the future will look back on as they try to understand what happened to us, and why.”

SPRINGTIME FOR SEGWAYS: Nazi Segway driver dressed as a druid arrested in Germany on suspicion of having plotted attacks on Jews and Muslims.

You went full 2016, 2017. Never go full 2016.

SHE’S WITH HIM: 7 Women Describe Why They Voted For Trump. Well, he got a majority of white women, despite the rhetoric of the “women’s march.”

HMM: “Reynolds is disciplined, amiable, and in many ways the opposite of Donald Trump’s public persona.”

MAD DUCK: Obama Issued A Massive Ammunition Ban Just One Day Before He Left Office.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, an Obama appointee, ordered a new ammunition ban for certain federal lands on Thursday–his last full day in office.

The ban, which took effect immediately, eliminates the use of lead-based ammunition on federal lands like national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as any other land administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service.The ban is expected to have a major impact on much of the hunting that takes place on federal lands across the United States as lead-based ammunition is widely legal and used throughout the country.

Ashe said the order was necessary to protect wildlife from exposure to lead.

President Trump can and should reverse this order.

FAST GETAWAY: Cameras catch crooks stealing $75,000 Dodge Charger Hellcat.

It will presumably be chopped up, and had been purchased by a presumably very sad customer just the day before.

SPENGLER: Why Not Just Slap on Tariffs?

THESE WORRIES WILL TURN OUT TO BE MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, UNTIL ONE DAY THEY COME TRUE: W.H.O. Warns of Worrisome Bird Flu in China.

PRINTED IN LARGE, FRIENDLY LETTERS: Don’t Panic Over the CBO Repeal Report.

The CBO starts the report cautioning that its estimates “are uncertain” and concludes that “If the Congress considers legislation similar to H.R. 3762 in the coming weeks, the estimated effects could differ from those described here.” Truer words were never written.

The CBO estimates that in the first year after full repeal, but before Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies are eliminated, 18 million people would become uninsured — 10 million fewer in the nongroup market, 5 million fewer with Medicaid coverage, and 3 million fewer with employment-based coverage — and premiums in the nongroup market would rise 20-25 percent higher than under current law. These effects “would stem primarily from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate.”

In other words, most of the people who would “lose” their insurance are people who are buying it only because they’re forced to.

SAMUEL HAMMOND: The Future of Liberalism and the Politicization of Everything. “The personal is political” ranks among the most destructive of political doctrines.

SO TRIGGERED: Jessica Valenti melts down over #MarchForLife, goes on bizarre kidney rant.

REMEMBER GRISSOM, WHITE, AND CHAFFEE, who died in the Apollo fire 50 years ago today. And inspired a song by the Rainmakers.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Scientists Create Metallic Hydrogen. “Metallic hydrogen could potentially enable rockets to get into orbit in a single stage, even allowing humans to explore the outer planets. Metallic hydrogen is predicted to be ‘metastable’ — meaning if you make it at a very high pressure then release it, it’ll stay at that pressure. A diamond, for example, is a metastable form of graphite. If you take graphite, pressurize it, then heat it, it becomes a diamond; if you take the pressure off, it’s still a diamond. But if you heat it again, it will revert back to graphite.”

THE MINIATURE SURVEILLANCE STATE: Scientists are making genetically modified cyborg dragonflies.

A biomedical solutions company called Draper is developing a technology that can turn a dragonfly into a living drone. They call it the DragonflEye project, and the technology’s main component is a tiny backpack equipped with solar panels to harvest energy. It also has integrated guidance and navigation system composed of optogenetic tools that Draper made with the help of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Janelia Farm. The idea is to use those tools to send commands from the backpack to the “steering” neurons that control the insect’s flight inside the dragonfly’s nerve cord. It’s a totally different approach to hijacking an insect’s muscles.

To be able to control those steering neurons, the HHMI researchers found a way to make them sensitive to light by incorporating genes naturally found in eyes. With those genes in place, the tools or the “optrodes” in the backpack will be able to guide the insects using pulses of light. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, the program’s lead researcher, Jesse J. Wheeler, said his team already created the first-generation version of the system, though it sounds like they haven’t been able to test it yet.

Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

NOT ENOUGH ACTUAL MERIT, IT TURNS OUT: The Rise And Fall of European Meritocracy. But that’s not even the most important part: “People trust their leaders not only because of their competence but also because of their courage and commitment, and because they believe that their leaders will remain with their own in times of crisis rather than being helicoptered to the emergency exit. Paradoxically, it is the convertible competencies of the present elites, the fact that they are equally fit to run a bank in Bulgaria or in Bangladesh or to teach in Athens or Tokyo, that make people so suspicious of them. People fear that in times of trouble, the meritocrats will opt to leave instead of sharing the cost of staying. Unsurprisingly then, it is loyalty — namely the unconditional loyalty to ethnic, religious or social groups — that is at the heart of the appeal of Europe’s new populism.”

ONE DOWN: Miami-Dade Mayor Reverses County’s Status as Sanctuary City.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Amputee Cats Get Bionic Paws in Groundbreaking Surgery.

FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS: Alexa, Stop Making Life Miserable for Anyone With a Similar Name!

“Alexa, stop!” Joanne Sussman screamed in her living room.

Immediately, the computer living inside her Amazon Echo speaker stopped playing her favorite music station. Simultaneously, Mrs. Sussman’s 24-year-old daughter, Alexa, froze on the stairs.

“What, mom? I’m taking the laundry down,” human Alexa shouted back. “What do you need?”

“I always liked my name, until Amazon gave it to a robot,” says Alexa Sussman, a recent New York University graduate who works in marketing.

Everyone I know (I don’t know anyone named “Alexa”) who has one loves their Alexa, but “Hey, Siri” and “OK, Google” are much smarter key phrases.

THAT’S THE WAY THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK: Protesters, Breitbart editor have their say as UCCS plays host to free speech.

Protesters and alt-right British provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos had their say Thursday at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

“No Trump, no KKK, no fascist U.S.A.,” protesters chanted.

“Build That Wall,” Yiannopoulos’ audience chanted back.

Yiannopoulos was in town to speak on “Why the Left Lost the Working Class,” as part of a college campus tour.

More than an hour before the event started, dozens of protesters from Colorado Springs Anti-fascists, Showing Up for Racial Justice and other groups faced off against a long line of ticket holders queuing up for the sold-out event at the Upper Lodge on the campus of the state university.

Good on the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak for letting everything go forward, and for hosting a non-violent event with zero arrests.

I guess the still-red parts of Colorado are just better at that kind of thing.

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: British Alignment With Trump Threatens European Order.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Diamond vise turns hydrogen into a metal, potentially ending 80-year quest.

That excitement swirled because by squeezing hydrogen to pressures well beyond those in the center of Earth, Silvera and his postdoc Ranga Dias had seen a hint that it had morphed into a solid metal, capable of conducting electricity. “If it’s true it would be fantastic,” says Reinhard Boehler, a physicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. “This is something we as a community have been pushing to see for decades.”

The feat, reported online this week in Science, is more than an oddity. Solid metallic hydrogen is thought to be a superconductor, able to conduct electricity without resistance. It may even be metastable, meaning that like diamond, also formed at high pressures, the metallic hydrogen would maintain its state—and even its superconductivity—once brought back to room temperatures and pressures.

Faster, please.