RANDOM THOUGHTS from the PowerLine crew.

JAILS FOR ELITES: “Yale is becoming a kind of jail which hands out professional credentials to those hardy enough to serve out their term.”

And rich enough.

SCOTT ADAMS (DILBERT) on a fake news interview with him.

AN OLD DAVE BARRY COLUMN on how to fix Social Security. Entitlements (Medicare and Social Security) are the big cliff we're soon to be going over, so we might as well start thinking about it again.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES has posted, and this weeks theme is 'liberalism for children'. Herewith my favorite:

Such special snowflakes.

JEFF JACOBY: Immigrant heroes save American lives.

While I like Jeff Jacoby, I fall out with him on this one. He's guilty of the very conflating criminal aliens, which the Trump administration is arresting and deporting, with all aliens. The Trump administration (as yet) declared no policy regarding the law-abiding aliens beyond building a 'wall' and not allowing any more to enter.

Of which I wholeheartedly approve. Our immigration system is badly in need of repair such that aliens can only enter the United States through a through a lawful, well-regulated process.

At that point, we can deal with the resident aliens who are lawful, but entered illegally. And I suspect the solution will be to allow them to stay, just not as citizens.

A TWEET you need to read.

POWERLINE: A pro-environment judge is a bad judge. The post isn't really about the environment; it's about whether a Supreme Court Justice should show deference to government experts bureaucrats or to the Constitution.

Today, we are governed mostly by a fourth branch, nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, the permanent federal bureaucracy. These office-holders persist from one administration to another, and in many cases resist any effort to bring them into line with a new administration’s policies. They are unelected, unaccountable, frequently incompetent, and almost always Democrats.

I vote for the Constitution; damn the bureaucrats.

JEEZ, IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS since my last spring leaf watch post. I'm getting forgetful in my old age. Here's this week's picture:

There hasn't been as much change as I expected. The greens are a bit darker, but the biggest change is that the new buds, which are beginning to be visible, have pushed off the last remaining dead leaves from 2016.

I expect the new leaves will begin to show next week (if I can remember to take the photo).

PREET BHARARA was rightfully fired.

Bharara’s refusal to resign wasn’t about principle. It was about putting himself publicly on the side of anti-Trump Democrats, no doubt in the expectation of future rewards, political or professional. It was not a brave act. It was, in fact, a species of corruption.

And while he's (theoretically) now a law professor, he's widely seen to be running for office in New York. Mayor of NYC. Or Governor.

Perfect jobs for a corruptocrat.

FASHIONWEAR FOR NORTH KOREA: from the (Ivanka) Trump collection.

ACADEMIA IS OUR ENEMY. We should help it commit suicide.

JEFF JACOBY: Ditch ObamaCare, and don't stop there.

Get out of my health care. Stay out. And don't even think about trying to come back.

THE TRUTH about Hillary. But will the Dimocrats Democrats ever admit to it?

Note that I don't ask if Hillary ever will; it can be taken for granted that she won't.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on the Trump message and its messenger.

JOY BEHAR: Trump’s cutting education ‘so we can all be as dumb as he is'.

She has both a BA (Queen's College) and a MA (Stony Brook) and as dumb as she is, maybe defenestrating the Department of Education is indeed a good thing.

HEH: Redistribution can work both ways.

AMMO GRRRLL on progressives' poetry for desperate times:

Violets are nice,
but Roses are best.
Could you play with your Play Doh?
And give it a rest?

Violets are blue,
Roses are red.
The Left has gone bonkers.
And satire is dead.

And safe spaces. Don't forget safe spaces.

IVANKA TRUMP’S car seat “scandal”.

As a general rule, it's safe to assume that health and safety nannies are idiots.

JEFF JACOBY: Why do climate models fail?

Because the science isn't settled?