"The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world's leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

"A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

"The report claimed that the 'pause' or 'slowdown' in global warming in the period since 1998 -- revealed by UN scientists in 2013 -- never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world's media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

"But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, 'unverified' data."

"Google, or rather its parent company Alphabet, got used to dominating Washington under President Barack Obama's rule. Perhaps, that's why they'd like to see President Donald Trump impeached.

"'Some of us may need to adopt Pence 2017 bumper stickers,' Google's cofounder Sergey Brin joked at a company sponsored anti-Trump protest -- the biggest demonstration from a Silicon Valley corporation this week -- in response to Mr. Trump's controversial immigration executive order.

"More than 2,000 Google employees attended the protest on Monday, with it becoming a trending topic on Twitter with the hashtag #GooglersUnite. The rally came 24 hours after Google donated $2 million to the ACLU and Immigrant Legal Resource Center, to help fight Mr. Trump's executive order, which was matched by $2 million in donations from Google employees. ...

"After investing millions ingraining itself within the Obama White House, Google is suddenly on the outside looking in with the Trump administration -- and it clearly has Google rattled -- protesting Mr. Trump in private, and then publicly trying to cozy up with him the next."

"The two Republicans who broke ranks with their party and announced they would vote against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos have received thousands of dollars from the nation's largest teachers union.

"Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have each benefited from contributions from the National Education Association. Collins received $2,000 from the union in 2002 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murkowski, meanwhile, has received $23,500.

"The NEA represents 3 million members, making it the wealthiest and most influential union in the country ...

"Teachers unions donate almost exclusively to Democrats."

"Last spring, trying to shore up his conservative credentials for Hugh Hewitt's radio audience, the insurgent candidate Donald Trump laid down a marker about his first Supreme Court nominee: 'The ideal,' he told the host, 'would be Scalia reincarnated.'

"In Judge Neil Gorsuch, he's not far from delivering on his promise. Of all the candidates Trump shortlisted for the Supreme Court, Gorsuch is the closest thing to the man whose death left the vacancy. Gorsuch may not have Antonin Scalia's colorful persona, but he shares any number of Scalia's other signature traits. He is highly intelligent, legally skilled, and a sharp writer. And he's deeply conservative. In a judiciary where few judges actually have developed theories of constitutional interpretation, Judge Gorsuch has one, and by and large it is the same originalist approach that Scalia generally took. Gorsuch also shares Scalia's basic views on any number of hot-button constitutional issues, including abortion, firearms, affirmative action, and capital punishment. All in all, you wouldn't be far off characterizing Gorsuch as Scalia 2.0."

"At least 20 alleged terrorists in the past three years were immigrants or refugees from the seven majority-Muslim nations President Trump temporarily banned migration from Friday. ...

"The Obama administration's Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security refused to make public the immigration status of individuals implicated in terrorism, so the exact number of immigrant terrorists is unknown.

"However, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest used publicly available information and identified at least 17 individuals from these seven nations that from March 2014 to June 2016 were implicated in terrorism. Eight of these are terrorists convicted for crimes mainly related to giving material support or attempting to give material support to ISIS."

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"Federal immigration law ... includes Section 1182(f), which states: 'Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate'.

"Section 1182(f) plainly and sweepingly authorizes the president to issue temporary bans on the entry of classes of aliens for national-security purposes. This is precisely what President Trump has done. In fact, in doing so, he expressly cites Section 1182(f), and his executive order tracks the language of the statute (finding the entry of aliens from these countries at this time 'would be detrimental to the interests of the United States'). ...

"Yet, all that can be debated as we go forward. For now, there is no doubt that the executive order temporarily banning entry from specified Muslim-majority countries is both well within President Trump's constitutional authority and consistent with statutory law."

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"Hillary Clinton garnered more than 800,000 votes from noncitizens on Nov. 8, an approximation far short of President Trump's estimate of up to 5 million illegal voters but supportive of his charges of fraud.

"Political scientist Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has worked with colleagues to produce groundbreaking research on noncitizen voting, and this week he posted a blog in response to Mr. Trump's assertion.

"Based on national polling by a consortium of universities, a report by Mr. Richman said 6.4 percent of the estimated 20 million adult noncitizens in the U.S. voted in November. He extrapolated that that percentage would have added 834,381 net votes for Mrs. Clinton, who received about 2.8 million more votes than Mr. Trump. ...

"'Is it plausible that non-citizen votes added to Clinton'€™s margin? Yes,' Mr. Richman wrote. 'Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire nation-wide popular vote margin held by Clinton? Not at all.'"

"LONDON -€” He was a skilled communicator and a celebrity. She was strong-willed and shared his disdain for big government.

"They were the power political couple of the 1980s: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Now a similar pairing is emerging three decades later in President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who meet at the White House on Friday.

"May arrives in Washington as the first foreign leader to meet Trump as president. Before their sitdown, she will have the rare privilege of addressing congressional Republicans in Philadelphia on Thursday.

"The two leaders are expected to discuss terrorism, ending Syria's civil war, relations with Russia, NATO cooperation and a bilateral trade deal once the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, probably by 2019. Trade between the two countries is worth about $187 billion, and the United States is the largest single investor in the U.K."

"President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry just couldn't resist taking one final, sneak parting shot at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The administration sent the Palestinian Authority $221 million in funding that members of Congress had blocked over the PA's rogue diplomatic moves. ...

"But the real intention here was less to aid the Palestinians and more to stick it to Netanyahu. What a tawdry final move."

"In truth, we are on the cusp of a great experiment. For decades, conservatives, both traditional and pro-growth supply-siders, have preached that deregulation, reasonable and predictable Federal Reserve interest rates, reduced government, a radically simplified and pruned-back tax code, new incentives for investment, an open energy market, and a can-do psychological landscape that encourages entrepreneurship will make the economy soar at rates of 4 percent GDP and more.

"We shall soon see. If Trump unleashes American know-how and strengthens the economy, then his cultural and domestic agendas, as well as his personal demeanor and language, however radical and jarring, will probably be accepted. In contrast, if he blows up the deficit and sees interest rates spike at Carter levels and the cost of debt service soar, if he allows unemployment to grow -- while never exceeding Obama's dismal economic growth rates -- then the Trump agenda will stall and the media will be liberated to obsess over the tweets, gaffes, and bombast of every nanosecond of his presidency.

"Economic growth cuts through political orthodoxy; economic stagnation intensifies it. Regrettably or not, prosperity, not character per se, determines a president's political fate."