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Earlier this week, Iran performed a ballistic missile test in defiance of a UN resolution. President Donald Trump's White House officially put Iran on notice for more consequences if the regime has more tests. The regime has laughed at the threats:
"This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran," [President Adviser Ali Akbar] Velayati said. "Iran is the strongest power in the region and has a lot of political, economic and military power ... America should be careful about making empty threats to Iran."

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To listen to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards on today's Morning Joe, you'd think her organization was mainly about "health care" for women—not about being the nation's largest abortion provider. As you'll see in the video clip, Richards manages to mention "health care" seven times in her interview with Mika Brzezinski. The word "abortion" only passes Richards' lips twice. The first time, to insist that the federal government doesn't pay for abortions [as if the federal funds PP receives aren't fungible], and the second to claim that to reduce the abortion rate, more access to PP should be promoted.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali appeared on FOX News Wednesday night and was asked by host Martha MacCallum for her response to Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour. Sarsour posted a positively vile message against Hirsi Ali on Twitter last week in which she suggested Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel, another outspoken critic of Sharia Law, don't deserve to be women: "I wish I could take their vaginas away." Considering that Ali was a child victim of force female genital mutilation, this was a particularly cruel attack.

I can forgive Legal Insurrection fans who think that Californians have lost their collective minds. 1) We have a group openly promoting secession and a state government that approved a #CalExit petition effort. 2) A senior politician seriously suggested the state withhold transfer of funds to the federal government. 3) Our representatives are mulling over a third gender option for identity documentation. Furthermore, in response to President Trump’s move to end sanctuary cities, our government officials are working to declare California a “Sanctuary State”.

Conservative activist and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at University of California - Berkeley on Wednesday evening. However, his event was cancelled and massive protests and violent demonstrations broke out on campus instead.
The Breitbart News editor [Milo Yiannopoulos] was set to deliver a speech inside a UC Berkeley campus building but hundreds of protesters began throwing fireworks and pulling down the metal barricades police set up to keep people from rushing into the building. Windows were smashed and fires were set outside the building as masked protesters stormed it.

In my memory, there are certain place markers in the history of terrorism that led to where we are today. The 1972 Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes (1972); the bombing of the Beirut Marine Barracks (1983), the World Trade Center attacks (1993 and 2001); the Jerusalem Sbarro Pizza bombing (2001) and the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl, February 1, 2002. I don't diminish the significance and horror of other attacks, it's just that these are memory reference points for me.

Trump made an unscheduled trip to Delaware to honor William "Ryan" Owens, a Navy SEAL and the first casualty during Trump's administration. Fox News reports:
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is making an unannounced trip to honor the returning remains of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed during a weekend raid on an Al Qaeda base in Yemen. Trump was to arrive Wednesday afternoon at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base.

Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump's pick for Education Secretary, may have escaped her Senate committee hearing, but she just lost two Republicans on the Senate floor. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine told the Senate that neither one can vote to confirm DeVos:
"I come to the floor to announce a very difficult decision that I have made, and that is to vote against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos to be our nation's next secretary of Education," Collins said from the Senate floor. Collins specifically pointed to DeVos's "lack of familiarly" with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, saying she was "troubled and surprised."

After intense blowback and promises of confirmation obstruction for Trump's SCOTUS nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Trump suggested the Senate employ the "Nuclear Option" to move Judge Gorsuch to Justice Gorsuch. The Nuclear Option would allow the Senate to confirm Gorsuch with a simple majority as opposed to 60 votes. "Mitch, go nuclear," Trump said in a press conference Wednesday:

Senate Republicans found a way to end the Democrat boycott of approval votes for President Donald Trump's Cabinet. The Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee changed the rule stating at least one member from each party must attend a meeting for the committee to do its work. The Democrats boycotted the hearing yesterday to approve Human and Health Services Secretary nominee Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin. They boycotted Wednesday's meeting, which forced Republicans to take action:
“It’s just another way of roughing up the president’s nominees,” said committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). “They have been treated fairly. We have not been treated fairly.”

This week, India and Israel celebrate 25 years of bilateral diplomatic ties. On January 29, 1992, foreign ministers from Israel and India signed an agreement establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit Jerusalem in June or July to highlight the significance of this growing bilateral relationship, India's envoy to Israel Ambassador Pavan Kapoor confirmed. "The time is ripe for our two countries to explore the full potential of commonality and the complementary nature of our respective economies and work in tandem for the mutual benefit of our peoples," Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv said in a statement marking this occasion. Israel's embassy in New Delhi also issued a statement marking 25 years of diplomatic relations:
Twenty-five years ago today, on 29 January 1992, the foreign ministers of Israel and India signed the agreement to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Did Joe Manchin just open the door for Republicans to invoke the nuclear option if necessary to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? In appearances on CNN and MSNBC this morning, Dem Senator Manchin blasted his fellow Dems for having invoked the nuclear option in the first place. Said Manchin on Morning Joe: "I've been opposed to the nuclear option. I thought Harry Reid was dead wrong when he did it. I voted against that. My dear beloved senator, prior to my coming here, was Robert C. Byrd and he would be rolling over in his grave knowing what we have done." That could be understood to mean: Dems, if the Republicans now use the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch, you've got no one to blame but yourselves for having opened Pandora's Box.

In his pre-presidential life, Trump was famous for saying, "You're fired!" to people on his TV reality show. But Trump's firing of acting AG Sally Yates was no reality show. In real life, an AG advises a president on the law, but if that AG refuses to enforce an order that has been "approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel," then a likely consequence would be that the AG could be fired. The NY Times reports Yates' motivation this way:
Ms. Yates, like other senior government officials, was caught by surprise by the executive order and agonized over the weekend about how to respond, two Justice Department officials involved in the weekend deliberations said. Ms. Yates considered resigning but she told colleagues she did not want to leave it to her successor to face the same dilemma.
But I would imagine that Ms. Yates understood that her successor would almost certainly face the same dilemma, whether Yates resigned or was fired. And although I grant that Yates and other government officials may indeed have been surprised by the speed of Trump's executive order, if they were surprised by the content of the order then they hadn't been paying much attention to Trump's campaign.