[guest post by Dana]

Here we go again. Another debate, and another opportunity to watch Donald Trump boast, brag, bully, punch, and pulverize his opponents. Oh. And make up crap, which will go unchallenged.

This is the night Trump must be cut down to size. Unfortunately, Rubio and Cruz have wasted a lot of time stupidly bitch-slapping each other for second place. But since there is no chance of a Rubio/Cruz team double-punching Trump, and Rubio said he won’t go after him, it’s up to the authentic Conservative to do the job. Ted Cruz needs to take off the gloves and come at Trump with everything he’s got. Him him on his dishonesty, hypocrisy, double-talk, flip-flops, empty rhetoric, liberal beliefs, and even his New York values. Throw the kitchen sink at him, Ted, because God knows he’s given you plenty of material to work with. TIME TO GET LOUD!! This single debate will essentially determine the presumptive nominee of the GOP, so what you waiting for??!!

Anyway, the debate begins at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time and you can watch it on on CNN.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

Details here. It would have been hard to envision any other outcome, much as my cynical side wanted to believe that the university would string this out long enough to have it fade from memory and then give her a slap on the wrist. There was no way in the aftermath of this that they could grant her tenure, and keeping her around as a lecturer or a permanent assistant professor weren’t viable options.

From the linked article:

In interviews with The Missourian, Faculty Council Chair and law professor Ben Trachtenberg called the decision to fire Click “terrible” and Faculty Council member Angela Speck said it was “ridiculous that she should be fired without due process.”

The law professor is entitled to his opinion, but notice how he makes no attempt to ground it in any sort of statutory requirement that the faculty has to protect a crybully who attempts to enforce her rancid ideology on others. As for Angela Speck, Professor of Astrophysics, she is apparently named for Angela Davis, so we should appreciate that she started life with the odds stacked against her. Further proof that ability in a STEM fields is no guarantee of logical insight into other academic disciplines.

I thought that Mizzou would wait until the start of their spring break (March 26) in order mitigate the chances of disruptive demonstrations by the Concerned Students 1950 crowd, but I guess they wanted to give Click the opportunity to ply her wares at some other institution of higher learning. Or perhaps they need this much time to find somebody to carry on her urgent research into Fifty Shades of Grey and other pop culture banalities.

UPDATE: Earlier stories on Melissa Click located here.

– JVW

Ed Whelan quotes Senator Dick “Dick” Durbin lying about the text of the Constitution:

Sen. Durbin (9:35): There is no constitutional precedent for what the Republicans announced today. Not only did they say we won’t consider the President’s nominee, we won’t have a hearing, we won’t have a vote, Senator McConnell the Republican leader said “I won’t even meet with this nominee.” That has never happened before in history. The Constitution which we’ve sworn to uphold is very clear when it comes to Article two, section two. The President shall appoint a nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court and the Senate shall by advice and consent vote on that nominee. Those are not, uh, vague words. Those are words that impose a responsibility on the Senate which the republican leader is ignoring.

Those are not vague words — and also, as Whelan notes, those are not the words of the Constitution:

No, Senator Durbin, Article II, section 2 of the Constitution does not say what you claim it says. It says, rather, that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the Supreme Court” (and other federal judges). It nowhere imposes on the Senate a requirement to vote on any nominee.

Whelan takes apart Durbin in other ways; click the link for the rest.

Democrat Senators are unintentionally engaged in high comedy on this issue:

.@maziehirono floating prospect of impeaching Senators who back #NoHearingsNoVotes

— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) February 24, 2016

More details on that insane idea here. Just one leetle problem:

Among the many problems with @maziehirono's brilliant proposal: Senators aren't subject to impeachment. https://t.co/BDjUhSachp

— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) February 24, 2016

Removal by impeachment/conviction applies only to "civil officers of the United States"–exec-branch and judges https://t.co/QgmvNwou3w

— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) February 24, 2016

Meanwhile we learned a couple of days ago that all the worries about the GOP caving appear to be for naught:

Key Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee emerged from a closed door meeting in Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office Tuesday united in their determination not to consider any nominee to replace Antonin Scalia until the next president takes office.

Tuesday was the first full day the Senate was back in session since Scalia’s death Feb. 13.

“We believe the American people need to decide who is going to make this appointment rather than a lame duck president,” said Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TN).

When asked if they would start the process after the new president took office or if they would consider doing it in the lame duck session, Cornyn replied “No, after the next president is selected. That way the American people have a voice in the process.”

I told you. You people are so cynical!

“I don’t think Ivanka would do that [pose for nude photographs] inside the magazine,” Trump says, speaking for his daughter. “Although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”

I don’t believe in abortion except in cases of rape, or Donald Trump.

Avi Woolf: Goodbye for Now; Eat at Arby’s

[T]he easy betrayal of all principles for a transparent con-man who flashes money, gold, and women draped in a flag like the crassest of rap singers demonstrated just how shallow support for anything above the level of bread and circuses is in 2016. Maybe it was always like this.

Spare me the specific complaints on policy — whether it comes to immigration, foreign policy, or political correctness. It’s emotional bullshit rationalization and we both know it. Trump was repeatedly exposed as a fraud and an inconsistent one at that on everything you hold dear, yet you still protect him as though he were your sister.

. . . .

The GOP in Congress will have no choice but to agree to Trump’s actions or launch a civil war that will gut the already gutted party. They will become just as corrupt as their master. Good people like Paul Ryan, Mike Lee, and even Mitch McConnell, who were slowly learning to become more attentive to voters’ interests, will be forced to revert to the crude stereotype of the “establishment” talk radio always told you they were. The GOP will be dead in the water, a mere appendage to the Democrats.

. . . .

Mass tariffs and protectionism will only harm you. Many businesses will simply not expand to hire, shut down, or invest in automation. The transition to a world where robots do more work, which could have taken place slowly without so many labor regulations and laws which make you too expensive to hire, will take place at warp speed. Instead of being able to gradually adapt and change to the new situation, you will be hit with a freight train of change. Your “protected” job will last a few years, if that, after which you will simply be unemployable. Trump, and the donor and elite classes you so despise, will suffer not at all.

This is a good transition into the next piece, which articulates something I have thought for a while, and have said in comments and tweets . . . but may not have posted about: namely, in many ways, Trump would actually be worse than Hillary or Bernie.

Me, I’m going to save the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and ripping out large tufts or hair until at least next Tuesday, and possibly until March 15. But if things continue this way, I agree with Tom Nichols: I’ll Take Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump.

Star-struck, low-information celebrity cultists will vote for Trump under any circumstances because they do not know any better and do not care. For them, Trump is whatever they want him to be, and they will never change their minds. The rest of us, however, have a much more difficult choice to make. Will we really oppose Trump to the point of accepting any alternative, including Hillary Clinton?

The answer, at least for me, is: Yes. If forced into a choice between Clinton and Trump, I will prefer Hillary Clinton.

. . . .

My hands almost could not type those words, because I think Hillary Clinton is one of the worst human beings in American politics. She has few principles that I can discern, other than her firm conviction that she deserves the Oval Office for enabling and then defending her sexually neurotic husband. She lies as easily as the rest of us breathe. She has compromised national security through sheer laziness at best, and corrupt intent at worst. If elected, she will enrich Wall Street and raid the public coffers while preaching hateful doctrines of identity politics to distract America’s poor and working classes.

But Trump will be worse. Morally unmoored, emotionally unstable, a crony capitalist of the worst kind, Trump will be every bit as liberal as Hillary—perhaps more so, given his statements over the years. He is by reflex and instinct a New York Democrat whose formal party affiliation is negotiable, as is everything about him. He has little commitment to anything but himself and his “deals,” none of which will work in favor of conservatives or their priorities.

I agree with Nichols’s contempt for most Trump voters and for Trump himself. I don’t agree with everything in his article. I think we would have a chance at good judges with Trump, and none with Hillary or Bernie. (We’d have great nominees with Cruz; of that I have no doubt.). I don’t consider it an imperative that Hillary win; if I did, I would consider voting for her, and I will never vote for her. But I will support any conservative third party alternative, even if it assures Hillary’s victory, and I will otherwise wash my hands of the whole thing.

My reason for preferring Hillary is that a GOP Congress will oppose Hillary’s leftist policies. It will enact Trump’s leftist policies. I’d rather have the former.