ROGER SIMON: Democrats Are the New Palestinians on Immigration.

Read the whole thing.

HARDBALL: Senator Encourages Democrats to ‘Reveal and Shame’ Trump’s Judicial Nominees. “Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Democrats should ‘reveal and shame’ President Trump’s judicial nominees since they do not have the power to filibuster them.”

Judicial confirmations is one area where the GOP majority has been performing inarguably well, as Blumenthal’s apparent desperation shows.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies.

One ingredient for removing a president would entail a nonstop effort by the opposition to use the courts, the legislative branch, the investigatory agencies, and the administrative state to discredit, undermine, and remove an elected government. In modern terms, that might entail opponents suing to challenge the legitimacy of the election, perhaps by charging in court that according to “experts,” voting machines were dysfunctional and thus some state tallies were null and void.

The effort might embrace trying to subvert the Constitution by pressuring state electors not to honor their constitutionally defined responsibilities to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their respective states. It might also include an effort to introduce articles of impeachment in the House.

A resistance might sue under the 25th Amendment to find the president non compos mentis, accompanied by a popular campaign to clinically diagnose the president as mentally unfit or physically decrepit. Or a resistance might use the courts to seek the removal of an elected president on grounds he was a rank profiteer and had violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution—or to file suits with cherry-picked liberal judges to delay and stop the president’s executive orders. On the petty side, an organized effort to discredit a president would range from boycotting the Inauguration to deliberately holding up and delaying confirmation of his appointees.

In fact, in just Trump’s first year we have seen all these things and more.

They won’t like it when it’s their turn to live under the new rules they’ve established, as Kurt Schlichter likes to say.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The University of California, Berkeley student who was detained by immigration officials over New Year’s should never have been allowed to enroll in the first place, according to ICE. “In order for a non-citizen to legally attend a U.S. college, that person must have DACA status or posses a student visa. ICE confirmed that Mora does not have DACA status, which his lawyer previously made public. According to ICE, government records also indicate that Mora does not possess a student visa. When Mora overstayed his temporary visa in 2009, breaking federal law, he became ineligible to obtain a student visa.”

QUESTION ASKED: Is US bailing on Syrian Kurds?

Turkey’s local partners in the Afrin campaign include jihadis, Salafists and those looking to settle scores with the YPG. Tastekin explains, “It worries many people that even as Erdogan claims to be ridding Afrin of ‘terrorists,’ that’s how Syria describes some of the groups he wants to move into the area. Many have backgrounds, ideologies and attitudes that are unfavorable to Kurds. Those groups include former al-Qaeda members, Salafi jihadis, a variety of Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, mercenaries and some volunteers controlled by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

“Among the groups besieging Afrin and participating in the operations under [Turkish Armed Forces] and MIT guidance are Faylaq al-Sham, Jaish al-Nasr, Jabhat al-Shamiya, Ahrar al-Sham, Nureddin Zengi Brigades, Suqour al-Jaber, Sultan Murad Brigade, Samarkand Brigade, Muntasir Billah Brigade, Sultan Mourad Division, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Brigade, Hamza Company, Northern Storm, Turkistan Islamic Party and Salahaddin Brigade.”

Metin Gurcan writes, “It appears Turkey had Moscow’s go-ahead for the offensive, given that Russia controls all Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates River. Russia no doubt sees that the operation will drive a deeper wedge between the NATO allies Turkey and the United States in light of the latter’s support for the YPG. Moreover, Russia probably calculates that, faced with the threat of being overrun by Turkey and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies, the YPG will now be more open to Moscow’s earlier suggestion of handing Afrin back to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

Gurcan adds that Turkey “has gone back and forth on the issue of whether Assad should remain in power, [and] has been negotiating with Assad about possibly working together against the YPG and the Kurdish nationalist [PYD]. But the Syrian president knows Erdogan’s preference is an Assad-free Syria, so the Syrian army may end up assisting the Kurdish forces to an extent.

There’s actually little in the article related to the headline, but the story does a solid job of detailing a sticky situation.

XENNIALS: Micro-Generation Born Between 1977-1983 Given New Name. I feel the same way. I’m technically a Boomer, but I was in first grade for the Summer of Love, never had a Davy Crockett hat, never had to worry about the draft, etc. Mostly I followed along after the core Boomers, trying not to trip over the trash they left behind. I think some people call my generation Tweeners, since we came between the real Boomers and Gen X.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Guess what? Trump’s not a feminist. “No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning.

COMPETITIVE VICTIMHOOD: Julie Delpy says it’s easier to be black than to be a woman.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON HOW WE WERE LIED TO BY OUR BETTERS: Fake news: Preventive care will, in the long run, save money. “It is so irritating that this article blames us the believers — ‘Sorry, It’s Too Good to Be True,’ ‘many people believed….’ This is the same newspaper that will turn and blame us for doubting what it tells us, as though we’re a bunch of yokels when we don’t adopt the beliefs it serves up as true.”

LEAN FORWARD: Grammys president: Women need to ‘step up’ after men sweep this year’s awards. Raise your game, ladies!

SO FAR, HE’S DOING PRETTY WELL: Inside the mind of Leonard Leo, Trump’s Supreme Court right-hand man.

He’s been called the “judicial puppet master,” “Trump’s Supreme Court whisperer,” and the “conservative pipeline to the Supreme Court.” He has played roles big and small in the confirmations of four of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices, including the most recent, Justice Neil Gorsuch. . . .

“There are lots of countries around the world that have very long enumerations of rights, social and economic rights, political rights, civil rights. The Soviet Union had a Bill of Rights that was multiples longer than ours. Most of these countries around the world sign on to lots of [United Nations] charters that contain fundamental rights and other freedoms,” Leo said. “But at the end of the day, those are parchment barriers without serious limitations on government powers that can be enforced. And that’s what I came to realize, that the structural Constitution was the genius of the American founding and was ultimately going to protect our freedom and our dignity as people.

“That’s why I wanted to get involved,” he said of his decision to work at the Federalist Society. “I felt that was an important enterprise, and that this was the institution that was really promoting that idea in a way that no other institution had or was going to.”

Leo accepted the job offer 26 years ago, and today, serves as the organization’s executive vice president.

“This is someone who has fallen in love with the Constitution, with the American principles, and has spent his life trying to advance those,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, told the Washington Examiner. “He had so many opportunities. He could have gone down a route of a high-paying firm. But he was crazy about the Federalist Society, and he ended up trying to follow his heart and his patriotic impulse there, and how amazingly successful that has become.”

I hope he reads this piece.

AXIOS: Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network.

We’ve got our hands on a PowerPoint deck and a memo — both produced by a senior National Security Council official — which were presented recently to senior officials at other agencies in the Trump administration.

The main points: The documents say America needs a centralized nationwide 5G network within three years. There’ll be a fierce debate inside the Trump administration — and an outcry from the industry — over the next 6-8 months over how such a network is built and paid for.

Two options laid out by the documents:

1. The U.S. government pays for and builds the single network — which would be an unprecedented nationalization of a historically private infrastructure.

2. An alternative plan where wireless providers build their own 5G networks that compete with one another — though the document says the downside is it could take longer and cost more. It argues that one of the “pros” of that plan is that it would cause “less commercial disruption” to the wireless industry than the government building a network.

Between the lines: A source familiar with the documents’ drafting says Option 2 is really no option at all: a single centralized network is what’s required to protect America against China and other bad actors.

A single, centralized network also means a single, centralized point of failure.

SECURITY IS HARD: U.S. Soldiers are Accidentally Revealing Sensitive Locations by Mapping Their Exercise Routes.

BYRON YORK: House Intel meets Monday and could vote on memo release — is Jeff Sessions softening his stance?

CHANGE: Wage increases reported by highest number of companies in 18 years, survey finds.