"Before Scott Pruitt was confirmed as the Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, the New York Times reported agency staff fighting against his nomination. This is highly unusual and inappropriate. It shows not only how difficult his new job will be but also how necessary it is that he succeed. And it shows, too, how great a threat rogue bureaucracy can become to constitutional order.

"EPA scientists, lawyers and experts participated in an influence campaign aimed at senators, urging them to vote against Pruitt as their new boss. Their union's leader, John O'Grady, promised a continuous campaign against President Trump's environmental policies that their tactics would include 'reaching out to NGOs and having alliances with them' and 'working with P.R. firms.'

"It is widely known and understandable that government employees are not Trump's best constituency. But this sort of activism by federal employees, even outside election season, gets into dangerous territory. ...

"The choice of a government career under civil service protections in a democracy includes an implied, and in some cases written, willingness to work for whoever wins the next election. EPA employees may not want to do that, but if so, they should quit or be fired. If they want to make policy they should leave their desk job and run for Congress."

"... [T]he only sure and lasting way to keep ahead of the lynch mob is by producing results. Success will be Trump's savior.

"And nothing says success like jobs, jobs, jobs. Getting the economy to reach lift-off speed is essential so it can deliver the good-paying jobs and prosperity that he promised and the nation needs.

"While Republican honchos in congress say they're getting ready to move on tax cuts and replacing ObamaCare, nothing will happen without presidential leadership. That means Trump's fate is in his own hands and he must keep himself and his White House team focused on delivering an economic revival.

"If he does that, the lynch mob will be left holding an empty rope."

"Call it the 'whatever' approach to peacemaking.

"At a White House press conference Wednesday designed to display renewed warmth in the US-Israel relationship, President Trump was asked about his approach to Mideast peace. For two decades, the two-state solution has been the preferred approach to dissolving Arab-Israeli enmity. Would Trump stick to it?

"'I'm looking at two states and one state, and I like the one that both parties like. I can live with either one,' Trump said.

"At first glance, a glib, shallow answer. But the self-styled artist of deals has long championed noncommitment and unpredictability as a bargaining tactic. Why stake out a firm position when a nonchalant 'whatever' would do?

"Especially if in doing so, Trump is able to thaw the icy treatment his guest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, got from President Barack Obama and, earlier, Bill Clinton."

"The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

"The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes -- the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber -- included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn's credibility, multiple sources revealed.

"The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration's efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration."

Read entire article here

"Trump's decision on what to do with Flynn was not easy, according to several people who spoke with him about it. The president values loyalty perhaps more than anything, and Flynn had been one of his most staunch surrogates on the campaign trail. The president saw Flynn as a fellow outsider who had a good sense of the national security challenges. 'Trump liked the way he talked to him,' one adviser said. 'He thought Flynn knew what he was doing.'

"But Trump became increasingly convinced that the question of Flynn's contact with Russia wasn't going away. His top aides and advisers distrusted Flynn, according to senior White House officials and others who spoke with Trump, and Trump was concerned that the intelligence and national security community would always oppose Flynn, sources said. ...

"One person who frequently speaks to Trump said the president was reluctant to ditch Flynn because he doesn't 'like to fire people who are loyal.' Even Monday evening, Trump was still pondering the decision, the person said.

"'He has this reputation of being a "you're fired" kind of guy, but he really didn't want to have that conversation,' the person said."

"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos'€™ nomination and approval certainly riled up teachers unions across the country, causing panic that their power over education policy may finally be challenged.

"DeVos has made clear that advocating for school choice will be a central part of how she approaches her job, something that evidently unnerves the education establishment. ...

"Perhaps what threatens teachers unions the most is the prospect of a renewed focus on accountability, competition and choice in education. Parents want the best education for their students. Whether education is made available via traditional public schools, charter schools or private schools, what ultimately matters is whether students actually receive the best education they can get."

"It's often said that bad facts make bad law. In the case of the Ninth Circuit's just-issued ruling continuing the nationwide injunction against Donald Trump's executive order pausing immigration from seven jihadist or jihad-torn countries, it's necessary to amend that saying. Bad facts combined with superheated politics can make terrible law."

"Democrats claim to stand for the poor, immigrants and nonwhites. Yet given a chance to actually support someone who is dedicated to improving education for all America's children, especially those trapped in failing urban schools, the Dems said no, hell no.

"Joined by two Republicans, they stood in the schoolhouse door to block vital change, casting their lot with teachers unions that fear reform the way a vampire fears garlic.

"Throw away all the subtexts and subterfuge, a defense of the rotten status quo is the only explanation for the bid to block DeVos. The teachers unions pulled the strings, and the political puppets danced to their masters' tune.

"DeVos survived because President Trump is determined to deliver a government that shatters the insiders' perks and privilege and opens the door to new ways of doing things. In education, that means giving more parents the power of school choice and taking power away from the union establishment."

"De-escalating Supreme Court picks is probably too much to wish for. But if Democrats want to create the same dynamic for every Cabinet appointment, from secretary of education to secretary of health and human services, they ought to consider what that will mean for the country and for the effectiveness of American government. And if they lack the prudence and patriotism to give that serious thought, they might consider what it means for the Democratic party, too: At the moment, Republicans control the presidency, the Senate, the House, the great majority of state legislative chambers, and more than twice as many governorships as Democrats. Senator Schumer believes that taking a more hard-line stance against Republicans, especially on economic issues, will bring him and his party back to power. But given a choice between the hard-line position of Senator Bernie Sanders and the more accommodating position of Mrs. Clinton, Democratic primary voters turned their noses up at the Vermont socialist. If Senator Schumer thinks the key to a Democratic comeback in Florida or Michigan is out-Sandersing Sanders, he probably is making a miscalculation. That he apparently intends to attempt this nifty trick while Democrat-aligned rioters are firebombing buildings at Berkeley and rioting in Washington suggests that he is bent on the kind of bold Democratic thinking that turned Richard Nixon from a 32-state winner in 1968 to a 49-state winner in 1972."

"If the law means anything, the Trump administration will succeed in overturning the so-called court ruling against its travel ban.

"The nationwide stay of the ban issued by Judge James Robart, a Washington state-based federal district judge, is tissue-thin. It doesn't bother to engage on the substance, presumably because facts, logic and the law don't support Robart's sweeping assertion of judicial authority in an area where judicial power is inherently quite limited. ...

"Judge Robart may not like the Trump policy, but that doesn't mean that it is illegal or unconstitutional. His ruling is worthy of the generally unhinged opposition to President Trump. If the judge doesn't deserve the abuse that Trump heaped on him on Twitter, he produced what should rightly be considered so-called jurisprudence."