NEW VIDEO FROM ZOMBIE: Violent Berkeley Riot Causes Cancellation of Milo Yiannopolous Speech.

PETER BEINART: Everyone Has a Right to Free Speech, Even Milo.

Good for Beinart for making the case.

YES HE DOES: Trump Deserves Praise for Vow to Lift Johnson Amendment.

You don’t have to be religious — I’m not — to see that banning churches from partaking in politics is historically unAmerican.

ROBERT REICH IS HAVING REICHSTAG FIRE FLASHBACKS: Robert Reich: “Rumors” that Berkeley riots were a right-wing false flag, or something:

Old and busted: Mainstream media’s war on “fake news.” New hotness: Airing baseless rumors on air in order to feed the narrative. Mediate’s Alex Griswold highlights this bizarre exchange between former Clinton Cabinet member Robert Reich and CNN’s Don Lemon, in which Reich explains away the riots in Berkeley that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech at the university as a false flag by … Breitbart?

This isn’t the first time that Robert Reich has rejected your reality and substituted his own. Exit quote: “I claim no higher truth than my own perceptions. This is how I lived it.”

POLL: Majority of Americans approve of Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination.

Rasmussen reports that “Voters See Gorsuch in the Judicial Mainstream.”

I guess this means Senate Democrats who try to block his nomination are way out of the American mainstream.

THE HILL: The Left’s Organized Jihad Against Trump And His Supporters:

On Wednesday night, an Afghan-American software engineer and self-described “global geek girl” videotaped her friend Kiara Robles as a local TV reporter interviewed Robles about the raucous protests at University of California Berkeley that canceled a speech by controversial Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Robles wore the trademark red hat of the Trump presidential campaign, only with the message, “Make BitCoin Great Again,” her straight, long blond hair sweeping out from under the cap.

Suddenly, a masked attacker in a leather jacket lunged at Robles and doused her face in stinging pepper spray. “My friend was giving an interview when some coward peppersprayed her,” Robles’s friend wrote on Twitter, posting the video. She was maced, too. (She said the attacker was a woman.)

Alas, her friend’s attacker wasn’t just “some coward.” The attacker was emblematic of a new toxic movement that is acting like an insurgency in America: the new alt-left.

For all of the important, albeit hyperbolic, conversations about “white supremacists” and the “alt-right,” we would be well served to confront the very real reality of a dangerous dynamic of liberals in an “honor brigade” who lash out aggressively at others with the false claim they are defending the “honor” of American values of tolerance, diversity and pluralism. For the self-confessed crime of my vote for Donald Trump, a liberal Georgetown University professor told me, “I’ve written you off as a human being,” and hurled insult after insult at me, including “F–k off. Go to hell,” and “Gloves off.”

For many, the protests at UC Berekely came out of the blue. The Socialist Alternative Bay Area, an organization of left-wing activists in the San Francisco Bay area, and the Berkeley Socialist Students had posted an innocuous Facebook “event,” inviting protesters to the campus Student Union to “unite against oppression” and “racists, Islamophobes and misogynists” who are “emboldened” by the “election of Donald Trump.”

“We have to shut them down,” the invitation read, ominously.

A Facebook user then shared the details with the hashtag #ShutDownMilo.

But, underscoring how social media is used not only by terrorists but by “social justice warriors” as well, the violent protests were long ago predicted.

Conspiring to engage in political violence aimed at depriving others of their civil rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly, is a federal crime. I hope that the administration will investigate it as thoroughly as the Obama Administration would have investigated a similar violent campaign conducted by the right — had such a campaign ever existed.

MY BULGE PHOTO SELECTIONS: I said I’d pick two from StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge commemorative series (which ended January 25). I selected three photos. In the comments section of this post commenters so inclined are invited to pick one photo they liked and say why. You may also include the photo link in the comment. (To review the series, use the Instapundit search tool and type in “Battle of the Bulge.” You should get the entire series as it appeared on Instapundit.)

My selections:

Most moving: Every Band Member a Rifleman. (The caption explains why. Small U.S. units delayed the initial German offensive.)

Best captures the effort and suffering of the individual U.S. soldier: Holding Germans Off All Night (The soldier’s face is a study in fatigue.)

Best photo history: Panzer Out of the Fight. (The photo captures the terrain and weather. The battle was a mobile battle. The photo has a German and a U.S. vehicle. The panzer is out of the battle. The American tank destroyer is still rolling.)

RELATED: The photo an Instapundit reader helped identify. There’s a thank you in the caption!

THE NEW CIVILITY: Trump-Supporting Berkeley Student Attacked by Left-Wing Thugs in the Middle of the Day.

At least arrests were made this once.

250,000 MORE PEOPLE COULD FLEE MOSUL: That’s the AFP headline, quoting UN sources. But the report adds the refugees would be “escaping” combat in the city. So this is good news, as long as Iraq and its allies have prepared for the refugee surge. Limiting civilian casualties has been one of the Iraqi government’s major political objectives since it began retaking cities held by the Islamic State. The goal was liberating Iraqi citizens, not killing them. That’s why ISIS places “human shields” (hostages) around key defensive positions. It’s a war crime but the Islamic State is a criminal organization.

ISIS fighters could hide in a civilian refugee surge. Fewer civilians in western Mosul should make it a bit easier to use the coalition’s firepower advantage — artillery and air strikes. However, the Islamic State will still have hostages. How many ISIS fighters remain in western Mosul? 3,000 to 5,000 seems to be the common estimate.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The open war between the establishment and President Trump.

The message this establishment is sending to Trump? Conform or be destroyed. The outrage at the president’s executive order on refugees and travel was a sample of what is coming. Trump is used to fighting the media and campaign opponents, but he has little experience with the professional and supposedly nonpartisan bureaucracy. That is why his firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates was so important. She ordered her department not to defend an executive order that had been cleared by the White House counsel and her own Office of Legal Counsel. For Trump to have delayed or done nothing would have been an invitation to further subversion. He let Yates go within hours.

The blasé manner in which the media describes opposition to Trump from within the bureaucracy is stunning. “Federal workers turn to encryption to thwart Trump,” read one Politico headline. “An anti-Trump resistance movement is growing within the U.S. government,” says Vanity Fair. “Federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives,” reports the Washington Post. No one who professes support for democracy and the rule of law can read these words without feeling alarmed. The civil service exists to support the chief executive—not the other way around. And yet, when White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that career officials who disagree with White House policy are free to resign, the collective response in Washington was outrage—at Spicer!

Not only are there two Americas. There are two governments: one elected and one not, one that alternates between Republicans and Democrats and one that remains, decade after decade, stubbornly liberal, contemptuous of Congress, and resistant to change. It is this second government and its allies in the media and the Democratic Party that are after President Trump, that want him driven from office before his term is complete.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Could Trump Cut Off Funding from UC Berkeley?

The violent protests at UC Berkeley that ran Milo Yiannopoulos off campus were probably the best public relations gift the young administration has received to date. They also gave the President an opportunity to do what he does best: Exploit a political disconnect between elites and the median voter (i.e., on special snowflake ideology on college campuses) and then make an outrageous suggestion via a spontaneous tweet designed to send his opponents into fits of hysteria that would discredit them further. In this case, Trump raised hackles by suggesting that the federal government might cut off funding to California’s flagship public university.

Trump’s tweets rarely reflect well-considered policy proposals, but they often provide clues as to his underlying impulses—which, as we have seen in the past few days, he is often quite serious about carrying out. So while it’s obviously not the case that Trump can unilaterally revoke hundreds of millions of dollars of research grants and financial aid from one institution because of a single violent protest, there are ways that he could follow up on his proposal to sanction public colleges that do “not allow free speech.”

In fact, during the last wave of debates over free expression on college campuses in the early 1990s, some legislators tried to do just that. In 1991, Representative Henry Hyde introduced the Collegiate Speech Protection Act, which would have barred federally subsidized colleges from punishing students for First Amendment protected speech (the bill initially won bipartisan support, including from the ACLU, but later floundered after colleges argued it would infringe on their autonomy).

To be clear, the events that took place at UC Berkeley yesterday would not have qualified the university for de-funding under the 1991 bill. However, it’s possible to imagine different statutory language that would require colleges receiving federal funding to make a good-faith effort to protect student speech rights, so that patterns of violence shutting down speakers would raise eyebrows at the Department of Education.

And even without any new legislation, enterprising bureaucrats at the Department of Education have various tools at their disposal to put pressure on universities for political reasons. As Walter Olson points out: “The power that the Department of Education and allied agencies have gathered to themselves over university life has steadily mounted, often against feeble resistance from the universities themselves, as in the Title IX instance.” If a feminist speaker had encountered violent protests that forced her to leave campus, it’s possible to imagine a Title IX “hostile environment” investigation. What if right-wing Department of Education lawyers argued that the resistance to Yiannopoulos was due to his sexual orientation (he is openly gay) or even his gender?

Well, that would be easy, since it was. But I think we need new legislation to defend students, faculty, and speakers from political discrimination on campuses. And many of the efforts to silence people via threats and violence are already prosecutable under the existing federal crime of conspiracy to deprive individuals of constituational rights.

AND EVEN MORE FAKE NEWS: Yet Another Media Meltdown Turns Out To Be Totally Wrong.

News that President Donald Trump was easing sanctions against Russia was refuted almost immediately, like so many other stories.

The Department of the Treasury said Thursday that it would allow U.S. companies to make limited transactions with the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s intelligence agency. Possibly eager to establish a connection between the new U.S. president and Russia, numerous media outlets and journalists were quick to claim that Trump was easing, and even lifting, sanctions against Russia.

“I haven’t eased anything,” Trump told reporters at the White House Thursday.

“We’re not easing sanctions,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed, saying that, “It is a regular course of action.”

As it turns out, the move was a “technical fix” planned by the Obama administration.

These accidental mistakes always seem to break in the same direction.

MORE FAKE NEWS FROM CNN: Trump adviser cites non-existent ‘massacre’ defending ban.

But:

Maybe the problem is that there are just too many Islamist massacres to keep them all straight in your head all the time.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Knife Rights Action Alert: Georgia length-limit up for a vote. Please call or write today!

THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE PRESIDENT, FASCIST STORMTROOPERS WOULD ASSAULT GAYS WHO DARED TO SPEAK OUT. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! The Left Celebrates Anti-Milo Yiannopoulos Violence at Berkeley.

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WE ARE OVERDUE FOR SERIOUS CIVIL SERVICE REFORM: Is Our Federal Bureaucracy Unconstitutional?

A PRACTICAL EDUCATION: Innovative Ohio Charter Schools Train Students for Oil and Gas Industry Jobs.

JOHN LEO: Berkeley Must Bring Back Milo And Let Him Finish His Speech.

WELL, YES: Push for Maryland Fracking Ban Is Based on Bad Science.

Opponents of fracking claim it will contaminate water supplies, but a six-year, $29 million report studying the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing by the Environmental Protection Agency failed to produce any evidence suggesting fracking has caused widespread or systemic impacts on water supplies.

EPA estimates more than 110,000 wells throughout the nation have used hydraulic fracturing to produce oil or natural gas since 2011. Agency officials stated there have been specific instances where oil and natural gas production have led to contaminated water, but the number of cases in which fracking has negatively impacted water supplies is relatively low compared to the number of wells that have been drilled.

There have been instances of chemical or wastewater spills at Earth’s surface, and there have been some reports of leaking steel and cement well casings, but the low frequency of these events proves fracking can and has been done correctly. There simply is no reason to ban this highly lucrative practice because of fears of environmental harm or damage to water supplies.

If Blue States want to ban highly lucrative practices, that’s their business — or lack thereof.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Students At 51 Law Schools Are At Extreme Or Very High Risk Of Failing Bar Exam.

Related: Deans Of 20 Of California’s 21 ABA-Accredited Law Schools Ask State Supreme Court To Lower Bar Exam Pass Score.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Protesters storm NYU over conservative speaker’s seminar. “Anti-fascists.” You’re doing it wrong. More here.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Americans Should Not Have To Subsidize Campus Lawlessness. “UC Berkeley is a public institution that receives federal dollars, yet it appears to allow violence, censorship, and holds contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Related: In Photos, the Latest Example of Liberal ‘Tolerance.’

TOO BIG TO… WHAT? Donald Trump Plans to Undo Dodd-Frank Law, Fiduciary Rule.

Mr. Trump will use a memorandum to ask the labor secretary to consider rescinding a rule set to go into effect in April that orders retirement advisers, overseeing about $3 trillion in assets, to act in the best interest of their clients, Mr. Cohn said in the White House interview. He said the rule limits consumer choice.

Mr. Trump also will sign an executive order that directs the Treasury secretary and financial regulators to come up with a plan to revise rules the Dodd-Frank law put in place.

Mr. Cohn said the actions are intended to pave the way for additional orders that would affect the postcrisis Financial Stability Oversight Council, the mechanism for winding down a giant faltering financial company, and the way the government supervises big financial firms that aren’t traditional banks, often referred to as systemically important financial institutions.

“This is a table setter for a bunch of stuff that is coming,” he said.

The changes Mr. Cohn described are sure to face a fight from consumer groups and Democrats, who say postcrisis regulations are protecting average borrowers and investors from abusive practices, while making the financial system more resilient and bailouts less likely.

I’ve often said that Dodd-Frank officiated the shotgun marriage between Washington and Wall Street. The divorce, if there’s to be one, promises to be bitter, messy, and perhaps very expensive.