By Cortney O'Brien
A whole night of speeches couldn't stop Betsy DeVos from
becoming our next secretary of education. Democrats hoped to derail the nominee
and her "radical views" with a 24-hour talkathon.
When it came time to vote, the Democrats got an assist
from two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME), who
voted against DeVos.
It came down to a 50-50 tie, but for the first time in
history, our vice president cast the deciding vote for the cabinet nominee.
When Pence arrived on the Senate floor, he took the
podium and voted in the affirmative.
"The ayes have it," he said.
With DeVos, we have an education secretary that will
prioritize school choice. That fact terrifies liberals because, as The
Federalist put it, "if they lose education they lose everything."
________________________
Analysis: DeVos Confirmation Represents Victory for
Reformers, Blow to Teachers Unions
By Guy Benson
Despite furious lockstep opposition from Senate Democrats
and two Republicans who are among the few in their party who receive campaign
contributions from teachers' unions, Betsy DeVos was confirmed to be the next
Secretary of Education.
Critics' objections to her nomination questioned her
qualifications and suggested that she was hostile to public education, while
others cited her family's wealth, and sought to assassinate her character. Instances of hypocrisy and eye-widening (answer is
"C," in a 2003 writing) double standards were commonplace.
In spite of this pitched partisan battle -- which
required Vice President Pence to break a 50-50 Senate deadlock; the first time
in our nation's history this step was needed to conclude a cabinet confirmation
fight.
DeVos' ultimate ideological crime is her consistent
commitment to siding with students over powerful teachers' unions -- whose
leaders have occasionally let slip where their priorities lie.
A critique of unions, by the way, is not tantamount to a
criticism of teachers.
As a product of excellent public schools, I am forever
grateful to the dedicated and talented professionals who provided me with a
strong education.
But what DeVos recognizes is that millions of students
are denied the opportunity to attend great, or even competent, public schools.
This is deeply unfair, and forcing low-income students to
remain locked in chronically failing schools, due only to their zip codes, is
immoral.
As such, DeVos has been a leading advocate for school
choice, which empowers parents and students to break the cycle of
underperformance. This compassionate and genuinely progressive idea enjoys
bipartisan support, even if that reality was not reflected in today's vote.
Some of DeVos' harshest detractors warn that she'll
"destroy" public education and that school choice rips crucial
funding away from public schools.
On the latter point, throwing more taxpayer dollars at
systemic problems is a predictable and tired non-solution. Per-pupil funding
per student is not necessarily correlated with educational outcomes, as the
California vs. Texas case study illustrates.
And if we are concerned about the allocation of
resources, perhaps we'd be better served to focus on lessons from these
breathtaking wastes of tax dollars on empirically failed federal experiments.
As for the melodramatic and vastly-overstated premise
that an Education Secretary could singlehandedly crush the institution of
public schools in America, aside from that not being true, this overblown fear
at least underscores an important lesson on limiting the power of centralized
government.
Too often, teachers' unions prioritize the desires of
adults (including protecting disgraced or hopelessly lazy dues-paying members)
over the needs of children.
The elevation of a woman who cares more about
opportunities for children than bending to the political demands of powerful,
deep-pocketed government-sector unions is a welcome development on its face.
Whether DeVos up for the job remains to be seen; but now
she'll have her opportunity. I'll leave you with a salutary statement from
former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has been a tireless advocate for
education reform, as well as a 2013 tweet from the man who made this all
possible:
“I
congratulate Betsy DeVos on her confirmation as our nation’s next Secretary of
Education. The President made an excellent choice to lead the Department of
Education. Millions of families share Secretary DeVos’s vision for disrupting a
failed status quo that has denied too many children access to a quality education.
It’s time to upend the entrenched special interests that put adults above
genuine reforms that will raise student achievement. I hope the senators who
opposed Secretary DeVos’s nomination will now put aside the tired arguments of
the unions and come together to prioritize the needs of students. Under
Secretary DeVos’s leadership, I am confident the federal government will loosen
its grip on our education system and return power to the states and parents
where it rightfully belongs.”
________________________
Shut Down: Senate GOP Muzzles Elizabeth Warren After She
Made Disparaging Remarks About Jeff Sessions
By Matt Vespa
With the final confirmation vote of Sen. Jeff Sessions
(R-AL) to become our next attorney general imminent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren took
to the floor to deliver her remarks. It was another tirade of course. MSNBC’s
Mika Brzezinski, who says she’s a fan of her, says that the angry liberal act
is getting tiresome.
“I’ve got to tell ya — I love her, but I’m getting tired
of this act. I mean, she’s just got to stop,” said Brzezinski on the November
29, 2016 broadcast of Morning Joe.
The vote of Sessions attorney general nomination is
coming later this evening.
Warren took to the floor last night, but wasn’t able to
finish her speech, which included a letter from Coretta Scott King, because
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell felt the Massachusetts liberal had
violated Rule 19 of the Senate. A rule that states how senators are not
permitted to “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another
Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a
Senator.”
In her speech, Warren read past statements about
Sessions’ failed 1986 federal judgeship nomination that was derailed over
allegations of racist remarks while he served as a U.S. Attorney in Alabama.
At the time, Sessions, who liberals view as the spawn of
Satan, worked to desegregate schools, took on his state’s Ku Klux Klan chapter,
and even, prosecuted a Klan leader for the murder of a black teenager, Michael
McDonald. He pushed for the death penalty as well.
It paved way for a $7 million civil judgment against the
KKK in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by McDonald’s family, breaking the white
supremacist group’s Alabama chapter.
The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway wrote
about this when President Trump formally nominated Sessions.
Yet, that fell on deaf ears with Warren, as did the late
Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-PA) regret about voting to reject Sessions’ 1986
nomination (via Politico c.2009):
Sen.
Arlen Specter said Tuesday he regrets his vote against Sen. Jeff Sessions
(R-Ala.) two decades ago that helped kill his nomination to the federal bench.
[…]
Now
Sessions and Specter both serve on the Judiciary Committee and have never
spoken about the vote that prevented Sessions from winning a lifetime seat in
the federal judiciary.
Following
his first lunch meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, Specter told
reporters that out of the 10,000 votes he has cast, he can now recall one that he
regrets.
“I
don’t expect everybody to agree with all my votes, and I don’t agree with all
my votes, either, at this point ... and I was asked the other day what vote I
regretted, and I couldn’t’ think of one that I wanted to publicly state, but
I’m prepared to do that now in response to your question,” Specter said. “My
vote against candidate Sessions for the federal court was a mistake.”
Asked
why, Specter said, "because I have since found that Sen. Sessions is
egalitarian."
Warren decided to quote the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s
(D-MA) 1986 statement of opposition to Sessions, “He is, I believe, a disgrace
to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his
position.”
That remark earned Warren her first warning by presiding
officer Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT).
When Warren accused Sessions of using his power as U.S.
Attorney to disenfranchise blacks from voting, McConnell shut her down.
And in
a party line vote, effectively stopped her from speaking further on the Senate
floor for the remaining hours (30 in total) that are left concerning the
Sessions nomination (via WaPo) [emphasis mine]:
Senate
Republicans passed a party-line rebuke Tuesday night of Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) for a speech opposing attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions,
striking down her words for impugning the Alabama senator’s character.
[…]
In
setting up the votes to rebuke Warren, McConnell specifically cited portions of
a letter that King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King
Jr., wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Sessions’s 1986
nomination to be a federal judge.
[…]
“Mr.
Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of
the vote by black citizens,” King wrote, referencing controversial prosecutions
at the time that Sessions served as the U.S. attorney for Alabama. Earlier,
Warren read from the 1986 statement of Kennedy, a senior member of the
Judiciary Committee who led the opposition then against Sessions, including the
Massachusetts Democrat’s concluding line: “He is, I believe, a disgrace to the
Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his
position.”
The
Senate voted, 49 to 43, strictly on party lines, to uphold the ruling that
Warren violated Rule 19 of the Senate that says senators are not allowed to
“directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to
other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”
Pursuant to that rule, Warren was ordered to sit down and forbidden from
speaking during the remainder of the debate on the nomination of Sessions.
“I
am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate
in the United States Senate,” Warren said after McConnell’s motion.
Sen.
Steve Daines (R-Mont.), a freshman who was presiding over the Senate at the
time, issued a warning to Warren at that point, singling out Kennedy’s
“disgrace” comment, and 25 minutes later McConnell came to the floor and set in
motion the battle, citing the comments in the King letter as crossing the line.
Warren’s
speech ended with a simple admonition from Daines: “The senator will take her
seat.”
Of course, that didn’t stop her. Warren took to Twitter
to voice her outrage and read the King letter outside of the Senate.
CNN reported that McConnell and the Senate GOP’s move to
muzzle Warren backfired. Not really.
Sessions will be confirmed as our next attorney general
later tonight. The haranguing Warren did will certainly get some liberals in
their respective bubbles fired up, but that’s it.
It won’t resonate beyond the typical urban-based and
insufferably condescending progressive voter, which means it will do nothing to
help Democratic efforts to rebuild and retake Congress.
In a recent poll, just 44 percent of voters in
Massachusetts think Warren should be re-elected, 46 percent think someone else
should be given a chance.
That’s not the best foundation for a re-elect bid. One
could hope that by 2019, Warren will not be re-elected to a second term.
________________________
Trump Slams Courts By Reading Federal Law on Illegal
Aliens
By Katie Pavlich
Speaking to a conference crowd of local law enforcement
officers and leaders in Washington Wednesday, President Trump slammed the
courts for what he perceives as lawyering of straight forward immigration law
the White House is using to justify his recent travel ban.
Standing at the lectern, Trump read aloud title eight,
chapter 12 of U.S. Code 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 non-immigrants,
or impose on entry of aliens any restrictions may deem to be appropriate."
"This isn't just me, this is for Obama, for Ronald
Reagan, for the president," Trump said. "It was done for the security
of our nation, the security of our citizens."
The President said he listened to oral arguments
surrounding legal challenges to his executive order Tuesday evening in the 9th
District Court of Appeals.
A ruling from three federal judges who listened to
arguments and heavily challenged attorneys on both side of the case is expected
Wednesday or Thursday.
"When you read something so perfectly written, it's
so clear to anybody," Trump said. "Courts seem to be so political and
it would be so great for our court system to read a statement and do what's
right."
"Right now, we are at risk because of what
happened," Trump continued. "We're doing our job."
