SO YESTERDAY I MENTIONED THAT SALENA ZITO AND BRAD TODD HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS: The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Press analysis of the election returns and exit poll data highlighted Trump’s softness among college-educated voters, but it left out a critical exception to that trend. Trump did very well among the college-educated in counties further away from major cities — a vital component of the record margins he assembled in those non-metropolitan counties.

Part of this schism can be explained by social pressure that might be unique to the 2016 election. In counties with far more than the national average of 29.8 percent of adults with bachelor’s degrees, Trump fared poorly. Of America’s one hundred most educated counties, he carried only nineteen — Romney had carried twenty-six in defeat and outpolled Trump in almost all of them by significant margins. Simply put, Americans who live their lives among a group of friends and neighbors with varied educational backgrounds preferred Trump more than Clinton or Romney, while college-educated Americans who live exclusively among other degree holders were less likely to support Trump, even if they were otherwise Republican.

Trump’s performance among college-educated voters who live in counties below the national average in education levels was right on the republican par — particularly in midsize and smaller counties in the Great Lakes swing states that determined the outcome of the election.

These voters did not face the kind of social pressure to oppose the lewd and coarse Trump that their college-educated peers did in the suburbs.

I wrote about this phenomenon back before the election.

And GOP strategists might profitably look at ways to jam the Democrats’ self-herding mechanisms aimed at keeping voter populations on the plantation, whether for educated suburban whites or poor blacks. Allowing even modest amounts of defection there is disastrous for the Democrats’ narrow coalition.

TINO (TORIES IN NAME ONLY): Allister Heath writes in The Daily Telegraph (free registration required) about Britain’s very unconservative Conservative government:

True, the pound is recovering, unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975, and real pay is growing again, but the government cannot take much credit. It pays lip-service to entrepreneurship but appears never to have seen a company, transaction or contract it doesn’t want to regulate, tax or subsidise. It confuses book-keeping with conservatism, which is all about upsizing individuals, families and communities and shrinking officialdom’s sphere of influence. It has no interest in supply-side economics, or in the idea that cutting taxes is good for self-reliance, or that we must reform public services by learning from Singapore or Switzerland.

Part of the reason for this hopeless managerialism? A very British Deep State:

It feels as if the machinery of government is in fact controlled by an alliance of social-democrats, corporatists and bureaucrats. For every problem, there must be a state solution; in the absence of any kind of principled conservatism, the default “philosophy” is that the official in Whitehall knows best. The elites are in disarray over Brexit, but continue to hold sway over almost all else: those in charge are paid up members of the Left-wing consensus, guaranteeing that whatever nostrum is fashionable is soon translated into policy. There is thus little difference between decisions taken under the previous or current Prime Ministers.

Andrew Allison of the (excellent) Freedom Association has more thoughts here. It is  darned odd that the British polity was dominated by Thatcherism and Blairism from 1979 to 2010, and yet neither philosophy has a political home at present.

NEO-OTTOMANS: Erdogan’s shock election call brings cherished powers within reach.

Those two factors support his decision to go early. Economists don’t expect Turkey to sustain last year’s breakneck growth of 7.4 percent through to the scheduled Nov 2019 poll date, while Erdogan is enjoying nationalist acclaim for early military success across the border in Syria.

“Erdogan has all odds stacked in his favor. From … economic growth to the state of emergency which he has been using to crack down on opposition, to a near complete control of the media,” said Soner Cagaptay, a fellow at the Washington Institute.

The prize for the victor in June will be power almost unprecedented since the Turkish republic was created under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire nearly a century ago.

“The office of prime minister will cease to exist. Erdogan will become head of state, head of government, head of the police, head of the army and head of the ruling party,” said Cagaptay. “He will become the most powerful Turkish leader since Ataturk, and in some regards more powerful.”

Turkey’s economy is already showing signs of running out of other people’s money, which is why Erdogan needs to lock in his sultan-like powers now.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE WOULD HAVE TURNED 90 TODAY:  If you think of her only as a cute little child star, then you don’t know enough about Shirley Temple Black.  As ambassador to Czechoslovakia, she was a real star, unafraid to lend moral support to the Velvet Revolution (sometimes against the advice of the Foreign Service staffers).  My grandmother thought she was adorable.  But the people who adored her the most were the Czechs.

FEAR WILL KEEP THE LOCAL STUDENTS IN LINE: The Hidden Legacy of Columbine: Ignorance About School Violence. “On another National School Walkout day, 57 percent of teens are worried about dying in a school shooting. They shouldn’t be.”

Invoking Columbine is meant to remind people that such attacks have been happening for decades, and to imply that this is because national leaders have continually failed to implement solutions.

But Columbine should teach us a different lesson: The press, the public, and policymakers are often ignorant, and doing the wrong thing can be just as counterproductive as not doing anything. In the wake of Columbine, so-called experts completely misdiagnosed the causes of the crime, and they decided to implement “safety” policies that gravely undermined students’ rights without making schools any safer.

Read the whole thing.

WORST BUREAUCRAT EVER: Mick Mulvaney has asked for less power in his office at the CFPB. I say we give it to him.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT EDITION: Cal Poly shuts down Greek life after offensive online photos. Note that no other campus community is punished en masse for the actions of a few.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ON CHUCK SCHUMER’S PHONY FEDERALISM: Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren are all for state autonomy — when the GOP’s in charge. “If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has delivered a whopping tribute to the constitutional doctrine of federalism.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Waffle House Hero, Romney’s Fail and Much, Much More.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Liar, Liar, DOJ On Fire? Comey and McCabe Offer Sharply Conflicting Accounts.

HE SAYS FACEBOOK KNEW AND DIDN’T MIND UNTIL IT BECAME PUBLIC: Professor Apologizes for Helping Cambridge Analytica Harvest Facebook Data.

A SERIOUS FBI CLINTON FOUNDATION PROBE WILL GRILL THESE TWO WITNESSES: You have almost certainly never heard of these two individuals but Charles Ortel knows about them because he has closely tracked their public filings on behalf of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. He details today in LifeZette just a small part of what his investigation turned up.

FREE FALL EXERCISE OVER DJIBOUTI: USAF para-rescue training in the Horn of Africa.

PHIL HAMBURGER ON THE S.E.C.’S ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE SCANDAL:

When prosecuting its cases, the SEC can choose to avoid the courts of law and their due process by bringing its cases before its own in-house administrative law judges, or ALJs. This is bad enough on its own, but there is also reason to believe that the SEC’s indirect method of appointing its ALJs is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on that question April 23, in the case Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC appoints its ALJs through the decision of a subordinate. Some justices may be tempted to uphold this indirect method of appointment on the assumption that, by creating a buffer between the commission and its ALJs, it preserves their independence. But the New Civil Liberties Alliance’s amicus brief filed in Lucia reveals a further twist in the SEC’s appointment process — a wrinkle that results in ALJs who are neither independent nor particularly expert.

Several years ago, commentators noticed that the SEC enjoyed considerably higher success rates when it brought its suits before ALJs rather than federal district court judges. Now it turns out that the impartiality problem is even worse than imagined.

The SEC may choose its ALJs from a list of three top candidates provided by the Office of Personnel Management — which, in theory, leaves the agency little room to select ALJs who would favor it. But the SEC has circumvented this appointment process by taking the majority of its ALJs laterally from the vast pool of existing ALJs at other agencies.

By drawing ALJs from places like the Social Security Administration, the SEC finds ALJs who have no previous expertise in securities law and who have mostly adjudicated the distribution of benefits. They are therefore unaccustomed to protecting defendants in proceedings that can deprive them of their livelihood. For example, Cameron Elliot — the SEC ALJ who presided in Lucia — came from the Social Security Administration. Several years ago, he was reported to have claimed that “he had never ruled against the SEC’s enforcement division,” and that record has not improved much since.

Weird how people trust the government less than they used to.

CHANGE: Israeli Firms Scramble As Trump Administration Restricts Military Aid.

In the past, when the US provided Israeli with grants under the Foreign Military Funds program, Israel could convert 25 percent of the aid from dollars into shekels to buy Israeli products and support local R&D. But under the new 10-year FMF agreement signed in 2017, that percentage will gradually drop over time to zero.

Under the new agreement signed in September 2016, the US will pay Israel $34 billion over the decade from 2019 to 2028 — but eventually all FMF funds will have to be used for the purchase of US-made systems.

Retired Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, executive Vice President of land systems at Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), headed the special commission that was formed to prepare the needed changes. In an interview with Breaking Defense, he said that the Israeli defense forces will get approximately 5 billion Israeli shekels (about $1.4 billion) less each year when agreement is fully implemented.

“That may cause small companies to collapse or get into big problems,” Shamni said. “We will need to transfer some of the production to the U.S and that can be done with our American subsidiaries. But the real solution is in the hands of the Israeli government, which will have to increase the defense budget. Without that, I’m afraid , companies will get into problems but the greater risk is that less will be put into R&D. If that happens, in some years we will lose our technological edge.”

Israeli defense R&D is world class, and 25% of their FMF funds isn’t a rounding error in our budget — so I have to wonder if this is the right place to pinch pennies.

JACK GOLDSMITH ON THE DEEP STATE:

Jack Goldsmith, writing in the Guardian, tells us that the “deep state” is real and dangerous. His assertions carry weight for two reasons.

First, Goldsmith should know. He was a high ranking Justice Department official — head the Office of Legal Counsel — during part of the George W. Bush administration. This placed him in the middle of issues regarding national security, electronic surveillance, and the like. He also worked closely with James Comey, including during the famous incident at Attorney General Ashcroft’s hospital bed that made Comey famous (or at least a legend in his own mind).

Goldsmith is also author of Power and Constraint, a book I reviewed for the Federalist Society. Goldsmith’s research kept him very much in touch with the deep state and issues relating to its power.

Second, Goldsmith is a strong critic of President Trump. Thus I view his agreement with Trump about the “deep state” as more significant than the concurrence of Trump’s defenders, from whom we normally hear such assertions.

Says Goldsmith:

America doesn’t have coups or tanks in the street. But a deep state of sorts exists here and it includes national security bureaucrats who use secretly collected information to shape or curb the actions of elected officials. . . .

The deep state has been blamed for many things since Donald Trump became president, including by the president himself. Trump defenders have used the term promiscuously to include not just intelligence bureaucrats but a broader array of connected players in other administrative bureaucracies, in private industry, and in the media.

But even if we focus narrowly on the intelligence bureaucracies that conduct and use information collected secretly in the homeland, including the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), and National Security Council, there is significant evidence that the deep state has used secretly collected information opportunistically and illegally to sabotage the president and his senior officials – either as part of a concerted movement or via individuals acting more or less independently. . . .

Since Trump was elected, unusually sensitive leaks of intelligence information designed to discredit him and his senior leadership have poured forth from current and former intelligence officials in the deep state. . . .

These leaks probably mark the first time ever that the content of foreign intelligence intercepts aimed at foreign agents that swept up US-person information was leaked. They clearly aimed to damage US persons – ones who happen to also be senior US government officials.

They were unlawful and, beyond that, they violated two until-now strict taboos about leaks – first on revealing the content of foreign intelligence information collected through electronic surveillance, and second on revealing the content of incidentally collected information about American citizens.

Many people, including many who are not in the Trump camp, have interpreted these leaks to violate a third taboo by marking a return to the Hoover-era FBI’s use of secretly collected information to sabotage elected officials with adverse political interests. . . .

[W]hile Hoover did many awful things in quiet, neither during his reign nor at any other time in American history have we seen such a profusion of sensitive leaks from the deep state with such an overtly political aim to bring down senior leadership.

Yes, this appears to be a coordinated bureaucratic attempt to overturn a democratic election.

A SOCIALIST EDUCATION: Thousands of Venezuelan children in Cucuta are not going to school, spending their days alone, following their parents, selling items on the streets or begging.

Every day more arrive. About 40,000 Venezuelans were legally entering Colombia each month at the end of 2017, according to Colombian authorities, with thousands more thought to enter illegally.

All along the Venezuelan border, towns are struggling to cope. Last week, leaders of Brazil’s state of Roraima asked the Supreme Court for permission to close its border temporarily to halt the mass arrival.

While many Venezuelans with the means to migrate legally fled years ago, those leaving today are often seeking jobs to send money to families back home. Few seek political asylum.

Aid groups and authorities warn poverty plus lack of schooling or daily supervision will push children into the ranks of Colombia’s organized crime groups.

“If you don’t educate a child, you can’t correct that. You totally change the trajectory of their life,” said Yadira Galeano, Norwegian Refugee Council manager for Colombia’s border areas.

“Many kids end up being easy subjects for criminal or armed groups.”

And this being from Reuters:

FLASHBACK: Remember when the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether race-preferential affirmative action policies at colleges and universities were MANDATORY? The case was Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. The April 22, 2014 decision came out okay: Michigan voters were permitted to prohibit racial preferences.   But there were dissents by Sotomayor and Ginsburg.

If you are wondering about the respondent’s peculiar name, the answer is that, yes, they were very serious about the “By Any Means Necessary” part. “BAMN” (as it calls itself) is a violent offshoot of the Revolutionary Workers League. But even offshoots of the Revolutionary Workers League make it into the Supreme Court sometimes.

Pre-decision, I wrote a short essay about the case (and a bit about BAMN) in The Parade of Horribles Lives.

JOHN FUND WARNS:  Blind faith in one’s ideological “team” members can be dangerous, whether it’s faith in Andrew McCabe for the liberals or Steve Stockman for the conservatives.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “Conservatives made a terrible mistake when they mostly abandoned the web in favor of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. On the internet, of course, we are still somewhat subject to the whims of Google, but Facebook and Twitter have acquired a dangerous ability to suppress conservative speech. My impression is that their efforts in this regard have been stepped up recently, perhaps in anticipation of the midterm elections, perhaps because of a perception that the Left’s campaign to bring down President Trump is failing.”

BLUE WAVE? Hillary Clinton, not on ballot, is star of GOP midterm plan.

“I promise you that you’ll continue to see it — Hillary Clinton starring in our paid media. She’s a very powerful motivator,” said Corry Bliss, who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super political action committee ready to spend tens of millions of dollars to shape House races this fall. “It’s about what she represents. What she represents, just like what Nancy Pelosi represents, is out-of-touch far-left liberal positions.”

Critics suggest the strategy reeks of desperation, if not sexism. But with no Democrat to attack in the White House for the first time in nearly a decade, Republicans are betting big that the ghost of Clinton will serve them well in 2018. Saddled with Trump’s poor approval ratings, they may have little choice.

It’s helpful, some Republicans say, that Clinton refuses to disappear from national politics altogether.

I bet a lot of Democrats say the same thing, except for the “helpful” part.

“A REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE ADMINISTRATION”: Obama bureaucracy left our private data more vulnerable than ever.

The government isn’t sure who has your information. It only knows the Obama-era databases have been breached by outsider threats potentially 1,000-plus times. That’s according to a recent investigation of cyber-intrusions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the sensitive information is stored.

The number of confirmed breaches of consumers’ personally identifiable information is “just north of 200,” revealed Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget chief who took control of the CFPB late last year, in testimony to Congress. “We think there’s another 800 [incidents of hacked information] that we suspect might have been lost, but we haven’t been able to nail that down.”

In fact, the bureau has suffered 233 confirmed hack attacks and another 840 suspected hacks, putting at risk the financial information and other personal data — including Social Security numbers and birthdates — of potentially millions of Americans.

Plus:

Most people don’t know this, but after President Barack Obama created the CFPB, he had the powerful regulatory agency snoop into virtually every financial account held by Americans to assemble a massive and secret government database as part of the post-financial crisis overhaul of the banking industry.

Without asking if customers wanted to opt in, CFPB has collected and stockpiled from banks more than 600 million credit-card accounts and personal data from millions of home, auto, business and student loans.

The Orwellian-named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau needs to be shut down, and its servers destroyed.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: The Ugly Coded Critique of Chick-Fil-A’s Christianity: The fast-food chain’s “infiltration” of New York City ignores the truth about religion in America. It also reveals an ugly narrow-mindedness.

What the author really seems angry about is that the company’s CEO opposes same-sex marriage. But the framing of the piece made Christianity the villain, and the headline — “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City” — was sufficiently troubling that Nate Silver quickly tweeted “This is why Trump won.” Fair point. Religious bigotry is always dangerous. But there’s a deeper problem here, a difficulty endemic to today’s secular left: an all-too-frequent weird refusal to acknowledge the demographics of Christianity. When you mock Christians, you’re not mocking who you think you are.

A 2015 Pew Research Center study of race and ethnicity among U.S. religions provides some basic facts. In the first place, if you’re mocking Christians, you’re mostly mocking women, because women are more likely than men to be Christians. The greatest disproportion is found among black Christians, of whom only 41 percent are male. So you’re mocking black women in particular.

Overall, people of color are more likely than whites to be Christians — and pretty devout Christians at that. Some 83 percent of all black Americans are absolutely certain that God exists. No other group comes close to this figure. Black Christians are far more likely than white Christians (84 percent to 64 percent) to describe religion as very important in their lives. Of all ethnic groups, black Christians are the most likely to attend services, pray frequently and read the Bible regularly. They are also — here’s the kicker — most likely to believe that their faith is the place to look for answers to questions about right and wrong. And they are, by large margins, the most likely to believe that the Bible is the literally inerrant word of God. In short, if you find Christian traditionalism creepy, it’s black people you’re talking about.

To be fair, we expect unconscious racism from The New Yorker.