From the right: Trump FBI Pick Will Be Decisive
Things “could get much better — or much worse” for President Trump, depending on whom he appoints to head the FBI, warns Marc Thiessen at The Washington Post. The firing of James Comey may not wind up as “the disaster it appears to be” provided Trump chooses “someone of unquestionable character, experience and, most importantly, independence” — the same criteria he used in selecting Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. But “the consequences of a bad choice . . . could be devastating. Democrats would have a field day with the confirmation hearings and would quickly turn them into a political circus.” So Trump “had better choose wisely”; if he does, the Comey controversy “will be remembered as nothing more than a brief kerfuffle.”
Advocates: Final Proof Charter Schools Are Better
At long last, declare Howard Fuller and Nina Rees at Newsweek, we have “the final pieces of evidence” to end the debate as to whether charters are better than traditional public schools. Last week, they note, “The Washington Post released its ranking of America’s Most Challenging High Schools,” at which “seniors took the highest percentage of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge tests.” Charters filled nine of the top 10 spots. And for the first time ever, the majority of the top 10 public high schools in the US News and World Report rankings are charters. “It’s time to recognize the validity of evidence like this so that we can get beyond the pro-con debate about charters,” they say. Charters “have shown that they can deliver.” And that’s “something we should celebrate.”
Tech reporter: Top Harvard Prof Is Conspiracy-Tweeting
Why, asks Joseph Bernstein at Buzzfeed, is a nationally renowned Harvard Law professor tweeting out anti-Trump conspiracy theories? “Some of the country’s leading liberal lights” are “sharing wild allegations about the Trump administration from unreliable sources,” he notes, and “no one embodies this trend so well as Laurence Tribe,” one of the country’s foremost constitutional lawyers. He’s been devoting “much of his activity on Twitter to outraged extrapolation about the Trump administration” in a series of “ ‘big if true’ tweets” from sources like the widely challenged Palmer Report, citing “unconfirmed reports” that “are essentially conjecture.” Tribe insists his tweets don’t contain “the implication that I’ve independently checked its accuracy or that I vouch for everything it asserts.” But he is “emblematic of an information echo chamber” that operates similarly to alt-right media.
Conservative take: No Easy Way To Fix Title IX Mess
Despite President Trump’s commitment to dismantle “Obama-era over-regulation,” the sad fact is that “no amount of subsequent policy can easily disentangle” the former president’s “re-interpretation of Title IX” from campus life, notes Alice Lloyd at The Weekly Standard. Obama’s Department of Education used the ’70s-era gender-parity statute “to enshrine an extrajudicial regime for sexual assault adjudication.” But schools have embraced the ideas behind the order, and whatever Secretary Betsy DeVos does “to restore due process protections to these unfair proceedings won’t change cultural attitudes.” Because “changing university culture is like trying to turn a cruise ship.” So “there’s little reason to hope rolling back the guidance will actually effect reform.”
Law prof: Trump Judicial Picks Uniting the Right
President Trump’s nomination this week of 10 federal district court judges “makes clear” he’s “the best president for judicial selection since at least Ronald Reagan,” argues John McGinniss at the LibertyLawsite blog. The reason: “His willingness to nominate conservative legal academics likely to have extraordinary influence.” And they’re receiving “almost universal approbation among conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians,” including “those who supported Trump and those who were Never-Trumpers.” That’s vindication for those who suggested that “precisely because of his other heterodox stances, Trump would follow through on his unifying judicial commitments.” Bottom line: Despite some philosophical differences, “appointing judges whose ideal is to enforce the Constitution as written unites almost all strands of the political right.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann