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Pretty much everyone on the right has praised President Trump’s appointments, and what we have seen of his spending proposals looks good, too. Here in Minnesota, we are seeing a good example of the difference between the Trump administration and the Hillary administration we avoided. The subject is light rail transit.

Briefly, the powers that be have been trying to jam light rail transit down our throats for years. The cost is in the billions, and the trains hardly carry any riders, operating at huge losses. The latest proposed line is called Southwest Light Rail Transit (SWLRT). If it comes into being, it will only be because of nearly a billion dollars in federal funding, without which the project would be a non-starter. Which would be a good thing, since fixed rail transit is an obsolete technology that does nothing to relieve the Twin Cities’ highway congestion problems.

Just about everyone had given up, and was resigned to the idea that the SWLRT project would go forward. My organization, however, has continued to fight it, and it looks now as though our efforts may be successful.

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re saving the taxpayers real money.

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Sanctuary city proponents often say their policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities don’t endanger public safety. As ICE’s latest weekly declined detainer report shows, however, many county and city law enforcement agencies regularly release criminal aliens who have been convicted of violent crimes, including domestic battery and sexual assault.

The report, which covers February 4-10, tallied 47 declined detainer requests from two dozen jurisdictions across the country.

New York City accounted for 12 of those rejections, far more than any other jurisdiction. Among those illegal aliens released by New York jails were several who had been charged or convicted of violent crimes.

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Ah, yes. Travis County, here we come.

Time to squeeze the blue pustules on the rosy red bottom of Texas.

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I’m not sure that Fozia Dualeh of the Twin Cities suburb Fridley is an immigrant or refugee, but I think it’s a pretty good bet. She has been charged with bilking taxpayers out of fraudulently procured welfare benefits in the amount of $118,000 over a one-and-one-half year period.

That is an impressive accomplishment, but Ms. Dualeh seems to have had the invaluable assistance of her husband, Abdikhadar Y. Ismail. For reasons that will become apparent, Ismail was found hiding under the covers in the course of a search of the family’s premises by law enforcement.

‘I want to come to America. I want to see a country where the poor people are fat.’

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Senate Democrats apparently could take some tips from Senate Republicans in hiring more racially diverse senior staff.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., noting that Republicans have an edge on Democrat colleagues in this department, said he wants to encourage his colleagues to find and bring on board qualified minority applicants.

“We have one of the most diverse staff[s] in the Senate, and that means you get more information with different perspectives than my other colleagues, which has been very helpful,” Scott told The Daily Signal in an interview.

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Another win.

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Everything is political these days.

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Yesterday California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced 15 felony charges against two anti-abortion activists, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, in connection with their hidden-camera recordings of conversations with Planned Parenthood employees they sought to implicate in the illegal sale of fetal tissue. “The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California’s Constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society,” Becerra declared. “We will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations.”

The right to freedom of the press, which Daleiden and Merritt claim they were exercising, is also foundational in a free democratic society, and it conflicts with California’s dubious definition of the right to privacy. That conflict is especially troubling when law enforcement officials use privacy as a pretext to attack political opponents, which is what seems to be happening in this case.

The situation can be clarified by supposing that the people involved were DemLegHump Media ‘investigative journalists’ — 60 Minutes, say — looking into some accusation of the Koch brothers. It is immediately obvious that it such a situation the politician(s) involved would hail it and castigate any such prosecution a direct threat to the Constitution.

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Democrat, of course. God forbid any of her voter fraud clients should be deported.

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A milestone. It’ll never fly with the spendaholics in Congress, of course, but just having a President make the effort is encouraging.

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Mariza Ruelas currently faces up to two years in jail in California for the crime of selling ceviche through a Facebook food group. Welcome to the mad world of American food regulation. In Biting the Hands That Feed Us, Baylen Linnekin looks closely at a system that can take pride in a historically safe food supply but that also imposes too many rules that defy common sense.

Linnekin traces the system’s origins to The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s exposé of the appalling conditions in Chicago’s slaughterhouses, and to the New Deal’s hyper-regulation of agriculture. Such intrusiveness culminated in the case of Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Americans don’t even have the right to consume food they grow themselves, on their own land. Food regulation has marched steadily onward ever since.

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Because we all know how having too many white people involved just ruins a school system.

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A government watchdog group filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not handing over records related to the “environmental justice” grants the agency hands out to activist groups across the country.

Judicial Watch filed suit Monday after the EPA failed to comply with a 2015 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records of environmental justice grants and their associated proposals during the Obama administration.

“The Obama EPA’s ‘environmental justice’ slush fund for its left-wing allies needs to be exposed,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “This is a simple records request and the fact that the Obama EPA ignored it for years tells you the agency has something to hide.”

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New research from Oregon State University, published on Friday in Behavioural Processes, concludes that cats enjoy human contact more than eating.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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The alleged rape of a 14-year-old Rockville High School student by two illegal immigrant classmates has thrown the issue into the national spotlight. Some local residents are laying blame for the assault at the feet of Montgomery County officials and state lawmakers, who they say have ignored law-abiding citizens while trying to score political points by resisting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement orders.

“Rockville High School was a tragedy waiting to happen and can happen again,” North Potomac resident Ed Amatetti told fellow protesters. “This is a public safety and school safety issue. It’s about schools with declining academic and discipline standards, in part to accommodate other ill-conceived policies we question here today.”

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The city is run by Democrats. Of course it’s corrupt.

Seth Lipsky (in the New York Post) doesn’t hold back.

What a charade. The Senate confirmation hearing for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is liable to drive Americans nuts. There ought to be a way to suspend the senators’ pay for every hour one of them talks.

Or wheezes. I mean, I’m pushing 71 and it takes me an hour to answer the phone. But I’ve got nothing on Sen. Patrick Leahy. In Vermont they’ve got a horse-drawn plow that talks faster than he does.

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Federal prosecutors have indicted Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, a Democrat first elected in 2009, on 23 counts related to allegations of official corruption and fraud. Williams is accused of accepting gifts and bribes in exchange for favors of a professional nature, as well as for stealing more than $20,000 from his mother, who was in a nursing home. According to The Inquirer, Williams rejected a plea deal earlier this week, and is scheduled to surrender to authorities today.

Oh, look … a corrupt Democrat politician who is also a Person of Color. What are the odds?

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President Donald Trump’s administration is walking out of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) — whose membership includes many states notorious for routinely violating human rights.

Long overdue. Cue hand-wringing and vapors from the Usual Suspects.

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The U.S. diplomatic press corps was deeply angered when the Department of State announced it did not intend on bringing any members of the press corps aboard the secretary’s aircraft. “The State Department Correspondents’ Association is disappointed that Secretary Tillerson chose to travel this week to North Asia without a full contingent of the diplomatic press corps or even a pool reporter,” the group said in a statement.

Tillerson defended his action, saying, “There’s this long tradition that the Secretary spends time on the plane with the press. I don’t know that I’ll do a lot of that. I’m just not … that’s not the way I tend to work. That’s not the way I tend to spend my time. I spend my time working on this airplane.”

The squealing sound you hear is the pigs being kicked away from the trough.

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Don’t you feel safer?

Don’t you wish these fine people could run your health care system, too?

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The University of Maryland (UMD) is so concerned about President Donald Trump’s resolve to enforce immigration laws that it is creating a special position to protect illegal immigrants from those laws, Campus Reform reports.

The same taxpayer-funded university that is currently at work on creating a Muslim prayer room in every major building will soon hire an “undocumented student coordinator.” The successful applicant will satisfy student demands last semester for “full-time Undocumented Student Coordinator to advocate for, advise, represent, and protect undocumented and DACAented students,” according to UMD’s Camus newspaper, The Diamondback.

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And a mouth-watering list it is, too.

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Until recently, bathrooms were one of the remaining places in society where men were not permitted to be with women and vice versa. Because of that clear barrier, even the sight of a man pushing open the door to a women’s restroom would raise eyebrows—and deter any would-be assailant with half a brain.

But all that is changing, as rules designed to protect privacy between the sexes are upended. Shortly after Target made its big announcement, a man recorded himself walking into his local Target and asserting his new right to use the women’s restroom. He did not state that he identifies as a woman; he simply said he wanted to make sure he had the right to use the women’s restroom. In the video, a manager assures him that he does, and when asked what the store will do if any women are upset, the manager says he will “take care of it.”

Apparently it was not long before Target’s lawyers got wind of the viral video; it was taken down almost immediately.

But the video was not an isolated incident. The following month, The New York Times ran the headline “Men Are Posting Videos of Themselves Testing Target’s New Bathroom Policy.” The piece reported, “Multiple videos have popped up on YouTube showing men confronting store managers about the policy and asking what would stop them from entering the women’s bathroom inside the store. In the videos, the managers can be seen (or heard, since some of the video is poorly shot) patiently saying that nothing would stop the men from using the women’s room.” Nothing.

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And you and I pay the bill. Aren’t you proud?

Sungevity was one of seven residential solar power companies, which Congress announced in September it would formally investigate for wrongfully receiving billions in tax credits from the government. The federal government likely handed out roughly $25 billion in cash grants and tax credits to these companies.

I guess that’s why they call it ‘green energy’.

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Well, electing Democrats will do that for you.

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For Disney, Mickey Mouse is not just a huge money maker, but the company’s most coveted piece of intellectual property. Mickey is Disney, and Disney is Mickey: the two are simply one and the same, and nothing is more important to Disney than his well-being. (“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known,” Walt Disney once famously said).

For this reason, Disney has done everything in its power to make sure it retains the copyright on Mickey — even if that means changing federal statutes. Every time Mickey’s copyright is about to expire, Disney spends millions lobbying Congress for extensions, and trading campaign contributions for legislative support. With crushing legal force, they’ve squelched anyone who attempts to disagree with them.

The only way to create a monopoly that lasts is through government.

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Taxpayers funded eight nonprofits that serve, protect or advocate for illegal immigrants with more than $291 million between 2012 to 2016, according to an analysis of federal spending data and tax documents by the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

The eight groups — including at least one that endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 — provide a variety of support to illegal aliens, ranging from legal and social services to political advocacy.

Ninety-four percent of the public funds — or, nearly $274 million — came from the federal government, according to data obtained from USAspending.gov and 990 tax forms.

The $291 million total in public funding, however, is almost certainly an underestimate, since the respective 990s of each implicated nonprofit for all five years were not always available. Additionally, those groups only represent a small sample of publicly-funded pro-illegal immigrant nonprofits.

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What everyone knew would happen as a result of Philadelphia’s 1.5 cents-per-ounce soda tax began materializing on Wednesday, as Pepsi announced that it would lay off roughly 20 percent of its workforce there over the next several months. Coverage at both Philly.com and Associated Press allowed the city to engage in fantasy by claiming without meaningful challenge, or even clarification, that Pepsi in particular, but clearly other beverage makers by implication, should be using profits earned elsewhere to subsidize their Philly operations.

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… and the horse you rode in on.

This seems a  bit much.

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As was — ahem — predicted once they started putting women on ships.

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And about time, too.

New Sheriff in Town, ayuh.

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Good news for Trump.

California Rep. Maxine Waters will boycott President Trump’s address to Congress because she does not believe that she can control herself during the Republican’s speech, she said Tuesday.

She never could.

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Woodrow Wilson started us on the road to Hell is SO many ways….

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Nowhere has the Orwellian maxim that “some [people] are more equal than others” been more evident recently than at the Federal Election Commission (FEC). At the end of Animal Farm (spoiler alert), the animals find that, having successfully thrown off their human oppressors, their new animal rulers are just as oppressive as the humans, but in the name of animal equality.

In the name of democracy and equal speech, campaign finance “reformers” demand broad power for the FEC to regulate the political speech of average citizens, organizations, and corporations, requiring disclosure, repeated filings, and compliance with complicated regulations (that not even the FEC understands), while asserting freedom and anonymity rights for their own political speech. This hypocrisy has been demonstrated numerous times in recent months.

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On February 23, 1927, Babe Ruth had still to hit 60 home runs in a season. Yet President Calvin Coolidge would that day sign a bill that would establish how radio spectrum—the “economic oxygen” of the emerging information age—would still be governed 90 years later. Markets would be pre-empted, no ownership of the “ether” would be permitted. Public administrators would dole out privileges to deploy wireless networks according to the “public interest.”

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Hey, you learn something new every day. Isn’t that what college is all about?

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At least seven of the 46 Senate Democrats who voted against Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump’s newly-minted education secretary, currently send or once sent their own children or grandchildren to expensive private schools.

Crap government schools for thee but not for me.

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Headed in the right direction. Government employee unions are Democrat bastions and breeding grounds for the administrative state.

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Of course it does.

Meredith Mcglone, a UWM spokesperson, stated that black students constitute 15% of the student body at the school. This figure is slightly higher than the 12.3% of black people in the U.S. Ms. Mcglone also noted that, in the last decade, the percentage of black students at UWM increased from 11% to 15%.

Explicit racism. They’re not even embarrassed about it any more.

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Because, you know, reasons.

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Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is on the hot seat. In January, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed that Director Cordray used a private device for government communications with CFPB employees, while failing to create appropriate records of messages with the agency—a clear violation of government policy.

If not the law.

According to Ronald Rubin, a former CFPB enforcement attorney, Republican applicants were regularly ruled out of agency jobs. “As screening techniques improved, Republicans were more easily identified and rejected,” Rubin says, culminating in a culture of “political discrimination.” He elaborates on the CFPB’s early plans: “The enlarged new agency would be staffed with Democrats, top to bottom. There would not be a Republican director nominee for at least five years, and if one was ever confirmed, entrenched left-wing managers could undermine ‘attempts to weaken consumer protection.’”

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Three resolutions disapproving of Obama-era regulations have been adopted by both the House and Senate since Trump’s inauguration and 24 more have been introduced in the House, according to James Gattuso, a senior research fellow who studies regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation.

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Despite the delay, Harward is expected to take the job sometime Wednesday, according to a report by Foreign Policy. He is also expected to bring in his own team, full of experienced national security professionals. Such a move would present a major shake-up in the beleaguered national security council, which continues to deal with the fallout from former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s resignation Monday.

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FOE gave kids a lunch menu designed to eliminate foods it says are “unsustainable for our planet.” The new menu features far less meat and more plant-based food. Any meat or cheese the school did use came from “pastured, organic dairy cows.” The student’s lunch menu went from beef hot dogs and pepperoni pizza to vegan stir fry tofu and vegan tostadas. The new FOE-approved menu served meat and cheese-less frequently and reduced the portion sizes.

Not that they asked the kids. God forbid.

The district and FOE claimed the lunch program was healthier than before, but only on the basis that food from plants is typically healthier than meat. The study justifies its health claims by stating average poultry consumption fell. FOE did not undertake an actual study into whether or not the lunches improved student health.

And if anyone tracks what food kinds dump in the trash, they’ll find that (like Michelle Obama’s food choices) they aren’t eating this crap but going out for McDonald’s.

The reason more and more people are homeschooling their kids is, among others, this tendency for government bureaucrats to use school kids as lab rats in pursuit of the proglodyte agenda.

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Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary Commission on Foreign Policy and National Security, claimed that any attempt by Trump to publish documents relating to Iran’s nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency would represent a violation.

“If Trump wants to publish confidential documents exchanged between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, it will in fact constitute a violation of the agency’s obligations, because the agency has been committed not to make Iran’s confidential nuclear information and documents available to any country, including the US,” said Boroujerdi, as reported by Iran’s Fars News Monday.

Yeah, that would be a violation … of something.

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The bill is two short sections, the first of which states the title of the legislation. The second and final section of the proposed bill says “The Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 … is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by that Act are restored or revised as if the Act had not been enacted.”

That’s really all it takes. ‘Obamacare [insert citation] is hereby repealed.’ ‘The Death Tax [insert citation] is hereby repealed.’ ‘The law establishing the Education Department [insert citation] is hereby repealed.’

Go, Ted. Cut to the chase.

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But if you like your plan, you can keep your plan! Oh, wait….

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The TSA — all the charm and efficiency of the Post Office without actually having to deliver anything.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.