DURBIN ON TRUMP: ‘His Goal is the Deportation of DREAMers.’

WE ALREADY KNOW THERE’S NOTHING BEER CAN’T DO: Will beer waste remove snow?

Although when I read “beer waste” I’m less likely to think of removing snow than writing my name in it.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: The Schiff Memo Harms Democrats More Than It Helps Them.

LEGAL INSURRECTION: The Berniefication of the Democratic Party Is Almost Complete.

By some accounts, Bernie might have had a real shot at the nomination in 2016, had it not been for rampant cheating at the DNC. But now that even the party’s national committee has been co-opted by the hard left, there’s no telling what kind of “democratic” socialist they could nominate for 2020.

Or is there…?

DAVID SOLWAY: Oh No Canada! The real story of Justin Trudeau’s visit to India.

JUDICIAL EXCESS: Democrats Did Better Than on Hundreds of Simulated Pennsylvania Maps.

In the view of the majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, “perhaps the most compelling evidence” that Republicans sacrificed traditional redistricting criteria for partisan gain was a political scientist’s simulation of 500 possible congressional maps.

The Republican-drawn map was an extreme outlier compared with the simulations made by Jowei Chen of the University of Michigan, who has provided expert testimony in many redistricting cases. None of the simulations favored Republicans by anywhere near as much as the congressional map enacted in 2011, which gave the Republicans a 13-to-5 advantage. And partly on that basis, the court ruled that the map violated the state’s constitution.

But what about the remedial map recently adopted by the court? It is not an outlier to the same extent as the Republican-drawn map. But if you look at what 2016 statewide results would have been with the new map, the overall Democratic performance arguably would have been better than in all 500 of Mr. Chen’s simulations, according to an Upshot analysis.

When the elected Republican majority engages in gerrymandering, it’s evil. When judges dictate from the bench to do it, that’s just democracy in action.

HMM: A CDC researcher left work sick two weeks ago — then vanished.

Timothy J. Cunningham had been a rising official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Harvard-educated epidemiologist was promoted in July at the U.S. Public Health Service in Atlanta and contributed to responses following outbreaks of Zika, Ebola and health emergencies caused by Hurricane Sandy. He also was a prominent fixture in the Atlanta community, earning a spot in Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 40 Under 40 Awards last year.

But the researcher, who studies disease patterns, was not feeling well Feb. 12 and left work around midday.

Cunningham, 35, hasn’t been seen or heard from since, his family and police have said, sparking a $10,000 reward offered by the family in partnership with Crime Stoppers Greater Atlanta for information leading to an arrest and indictment in connection with the incident.

Given the nature of his work, you would hope the CDC is investigating Cunningham’s disappearance. Given the low level of competence often displayed by our government agencies, you wouldn’t give too much credence to your hope.

TRUMP, ISRAEL, AND PALESTINE: What a difference a year of real American leadership can make.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Naval Warfare Will Change Forever If Submarines Turn into Underwater Aircraft Carriers.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: Victimhood Culture Only Getting Worse, Professor Warns.

Of course it is — the infotainment industry happily turns victims into multimedia stars. Provided they spout the party line, that is.

NEW YORKER PROFILE: The New York Congressman Who Could Lead an Impeachment Charge Against Trump.

All Democrats — and their infotainment industry enablers — need to do is not act crazy, and they can’t even manage that.

TYLER O’NEIL: Responding to students well.

WAIT… WHAT? David Hogg: Gov. Rick Scott Should Be ‘Held Accountable’ For Sheriff’s Deputies That Didn’t Confront Shooter.

David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting, told Morning Joe on Monday that he thinks Gov. Rick Scott should be “held accountable” for the failure of three sheriff’s deputies to confront the gunman.

Law enforcement sources confirmed to news outlets that three deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office remained outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High as the shooter opened fire, eventually killing 17 people.

Hogg, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, said the news is “raising concern” in his community, before accusing elected officials of attempting the blame the shooting on “bureaucracy.”

“They’re in charge of them,” Hogg said of those elected officials. “This is their fault.”

This is not a well-informed child.

ONLY THE LONELY: One Teacher’s Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings—and It’s Not About Guns.

Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns.

Who is not getting requested by anyone else?

Who can’t think of anyone to request?

Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?

Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

Read the whole thing.

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY: How Newsweek Collapsed.

In fall 2017, a high-ranking editor at Newsweek was fired four days after filing a grievance to the magazine’s human resources department, complaining of gender discrimination and bullying, and proposing an agreement to leave the company. Her termination letter, which Slate viewed, did not mention the HR complaints. Instead, it laid out a laundry list of performance and conduct concerns.

Sources familiar with her dismissal differ on its legitimacy, but some of the language from her termination letter is striking in light of what has transpired at the magazine since. Her alleged sins included undermining the company’s attempt to enforce aggressive page-view quotas for reporters, insufficient commitment to search engine optimization, and rejecting story proposals for being “not Newsweek.” (At most publications, shooting down story ideas that don’t fit the editorial ethos is an essential part of editors’ jobs.) The letter also faulted her for making an “inflammatory allegation” in a conference call with other top editors. Her inflammatory allegation, according to the termination letter: that “the company had real problem(s) of morale and credibility.”

Just a few months later, that assessment reads as a dramatic understatement.

And:

Amid the turmoil, the magazine on Feb. 9 announced after an outside investigation that it was reinstating a top editor it had suspended just weeks earlier over sexual harassment allegations at his previous employer. That prompted a fresh exodus of female staffers.

Why are leftwing publications such cesspits of boys’-club misogyny?

ROD KACKLEY: Texas Dem Thinks Tide is Turning to Defeat Ted Cruz. “Rep. O’Rourke raised $2.4 million compared to $1.9 million for Cruz in the last quarter, but the GOP incumbent had $7.3 million in the bank.”

PUT NOT YOUR FAITH IN PRINCES: EMS first responder shares harrowing account of how botched Florida shooting response was.

“Everything I was trained on mass casualty events says they did the wrong thing,” he explained. “You don’t wait for the scene to be cleared. You go in immediately armed. Retrieve the victims. You can’t leave the victims laying there.”

“We were asking to go in. Asking the scene commander to go in. Why are we all standing around? Why are we not having patients to treat? Why are we not going into the building and retrieving these kids? The response every time was law enforcement did not clear the scene and would not allow medical personnel to go in,” he added.

The EMS worker believes that if he and other medical responders were allowed to enter the building as soon as they arrived, they could have saved more lives. He explained he was willing to risk his life to save the lives of others and was very frustrated over the situation.

The EMS worker stressed that he believes law enforcement made the decision they thought was best at the time, but emphasized that he believes it was the wrong one.

“They should have been more aggressive about getting the victims out,” he said.

Indeed. It’s difficult to understand how, seeing the results of their own inaction, there haven’t been mass resignations at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

JOSH ROGAN: An attack on North Korea would be massive – and massively stupid.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, whom Trump reportedly is considering to replace H.R. McMaster as national security adviser, supports preventive war through a massive strike, if sanctions fail. During an appearance last week at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security, he said the United States would have to simultaneously destroy all known North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile sites, submarine bases, and artillery, mortar and missile installments along the North’s border with South Korea.

The Kim regime would soon collapse, Bolton predicted, which would then require the deployment of American and South Korean troops inside North Korea to secure the nuclear sites. China could, in advance, be offered a chance to participate, to protect its interests and minimize the adverse effects, Bolton said.

“My argument to China would be, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Bolton said. “I would like to find a way to convince the Chinese to do this with us, to have a controlled collapse of the North Korean regime.”

Bolton acknowledged that we can’t be sure of where Kim is hiding all his weapons and that there would be massive humanitarian consequences. But he calculated that the risks of Kim threatening the world with nuclear weapons or selling them to others outweigh the potential costs.

But a true accounting of those costs would also include the likelihood that the U.S.-South Korea alliance would be shattered, along with the regional stability the United States spent 70 years trying to build. The global economy would be thrown into disarray; America would be on the hook for untold billions in reconstruction and refugee assistance. China would then move to replace the United States as the responsible regional leader.

The risks of a preventative war might prove too high, but China must be made to understand that the risks of North Korean proliferation might include nuclear weapons for Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NRA Public Enemy #1 and Much, Much More. “This clown needs to go.”

OH: Turkey says U.N. resolution on Syria ceasefire won’t impact Afrin offensive.

It’s better understood as an anti-Kurd offensive, so of course Erdogan won’t comply with the ceasefire.

THAT’S BECAUSE IN CALIFORNIA SHE’S A DANGEROUS RIGHT-WINGER: California Democratic Party won’t endorse Dianne Feinstein.

STOP ME IF YOU THINK YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE: Many lenders are loosening requirements for prospective home buyers.

Among the main changes to mortgage loans in the past year or two are the availability of low down-payment loans, a loosening of the debt-to-income ratio requirements and easing of rules about how student loan payments are calculated.

“Our challenge is always to increase access to sustainable credit,” said Jonathan Lawless, vice president of customer solutions for the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) in Washington.

Since mid-2016, there has been marginal easing in every aspect of mortgage loans, said Jonathan Corr, chief executive of Ellie Mae in Pleasanton, Calif.

“We’ve seen a very slight drop in the credit scores of approved loans, a slight increase in the debt-to-income ratios and an increase in loan-to-value, which means people are taking advantage of low down-payment loan programs,” Corr said.

The story claims that “today’s borrowers still need to prove they can handle the loan,” but ten years ago banks helped subprime borrowers skate past similar requirements with a wink and a nudge.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuelans recycle worthless bolivar bills into crafts.

Each collector item produced by Richard Segovia fetches between $10 and $15 — a huge markup from the pennies that bolivars retrieve on Venezuela’s black market.

Segovia, 24, arrived two months ago to the Colombian border city of Cucuta with his wife and a cousin fleeing a dead-end job at a warehouse in Venezuela, where he made the equivalent of just $2.50 a month. He came up with the idea to make artwork one night when he and his cousin were back in Caracas staring at a pile of cash.

“We had a lot of cash but nothing to buy, because in Venezuela your money is worth nothing,” he said.

So, he started folding and creasing Venezuela’s colorful bills into trinkets and then larger creations like purses and bags. Each item consists of around 800 to 1,000 mostly 50 and 100-bolivar notes — less than 50 U.S. cents.

Positive spin: Chaveznista Socialism provides artists with the means to pursue their craft!

HMM: Why Air Force Is Rushing To Fly A Sixth-Generation Fighter Jet.

The service is investing nearly $10 billion in the platform over the next five years, $2.7 billion more than previously planned, for the Next Generation Air Dominance system, which will likely include a fighter to replace current fifth generation platforms like the F-35 and Lockheed’s F-22.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters at a conference in Orlando Thursday that the system will have a “renewed emphasis” on electronic warfare, according to Aviation Week.

Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works division told IBD over the summer that a sixth-gen fighter would likely feature improved stealth as radar capabilities expand across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as more autonomy, hypersonic technology and defensive laser systems.

Last month’s National Defense Strategy from the Pentagon emphasized a shift toward focusing on global competitors. And while Russia continues to be a growing threat, Wilson said that China is the “pacing threat” for the Air Force regarding speed of innovations.

If we’re smart, the new jet will have longer legs than either the F-22 or F-35, which were designed to fight from nearby airbases rather than across the Pacific’s great distances.

STUPID LIKE A FOX! Democrats now are the stupid party.

Fred Barnes:

They’ve adopted several of the foolhardy habits of Republicans—for instance, the government shutdown. It’s an act of political masochism. History is consistent on this. Those who shut Washington down fail to achieve their goals.

Despite this losing streak, Democrats decided on a shutdown to force President Trump and congressional Republicans to let immigrant “dreamers” stay in this country. The shutdown featured hours of Democratic handwringing.

It flopped, as every Republican shutdown had. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, called it off after a single day, upon realizing its chances of succeeding were zilch. Pro-shutdown Democrats wanted to hang on and picketed Schumer’s residence.

Schumer was wise to cut his losses. He balked at doing the same in the fight against the Trump tax cut, just as Republicans had been foolish to prolong the agony of trying to kill Obama-care. In both cases, the outcome was clear.

But not to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who proved in an eight-hour speech to be a know-nothing on taxes.

Republicans can thank Trump for this. As 16 of Trump’s Republican competitors learned in 2016, he has a knack for driving his opponents into making dumb mistakes.