Obama ex-aide: Why Liberals Should Back Gorsuch

Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal says the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, “an extraordinary judge and man,” to the Supreme Court is the first thing President Trump’s done right. Writing in The New York Times, the former Obama official says that if the Senate confirms anyone for the seat, Gorsuch “should be at the top of the list.” Though they’re on opposite political sides, Katyal says Gorsuch “brings a sense of fairness and decency to the job, and a temperament that suits the nation’s highest court.” Moreover, “Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law” and “not compromise principle to favor the president who appointed him.”

Foreign desk: Don’t Ignore New Fighting in Ukraine

The “frozen conflict” in East Ukraine is growing hot again, notes Noah Rothman at Commentary. “Since Sunday, eight Ukrainian soldiers have been killed with another 26 wounded,” plus unspecified civilian casualties, in fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russia-supported forces. Yet this has “been met with stony silence from a distracted political class” in the United States, which he calls “a grave mistake” because the fighting “may be a prelude to something with more immediate repercussions for global peace and stability.” Donald Trump’s campaign statements may have given Vladimir Putin “the idea that a Trump administration will provide him with new latitude” and “renewed freedom of action.” So we ignore what’s happening in Ukraine “at our own peril.”

Security expert: Spare Us Iran’s Pieties on Immigration

Even as America launches into a robust debate on immigration policy, the last thing we need “is the voice of Tehran’s terror-sponsoring regime insinuating itself,” says Claudia Rosett at PJ Media. But that’s “exactly what Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, [is] trying to do” by calling Trump’s executive order “a great gift to extremists.” Says Rosett: “Let’s be clear on what’s really going on here. Zarif, while presenting himself as an enemy of ‘extremists,’ is a prominent official voice of an Iranian regime that has ranked for years as the Middle East’s biggest Old Boys’ Club of ‘extremism.’ ” Indeed, Iran’s Islamic Republic, “from the year of its inception right up to the present, has made a practice of seizing and holding Americans as de facto hostages,” for which the Obama administration paid $1.7 billion ransom.

From the right: Trump’s Wrong, But Libs Are Hypocrites

President Trump’s executive order on immigration is “both ham-handed and under-inclusive,” not to mention “terrible public relations” for America, says Dan McLaughlin at National Review, “but it is also not the dangerous and radical departure from US policy that his liberal critics make it out to be.” Fact is, the United States “in general, and the Obama administration in particular, never had an open-borders policy for all refugees from everywhere, so overwrought rhetoric about Trump ripping down Lady Liberty’s promise means comparing him to an ideal state that never existed.” Moreover, liberals were silent when then-President Obama “effectively discriminated against persecuted religious-minority Christians from Syria (even while explicitly admitting that ISIS was pursuing a policy of genocide against Syrian Christians).”

Sports watch: Longer NFL Season Would Be Safer

The National Football League has announced a $100 million initiative to study and combat Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. That’s commendable, but “the sad reality is that it is not nearly enough to combat a player safety problem that threatens the very existence of the league,” contend Ike Brannon and Travis Reuther at The Weekly Standard. They suggest lengthening the NFL season without more games “by simply adding three additional bye weeks.” That “would improve player health to some extent, since the downtime would give players a chance to better recover” between games. Another upside: Increased TV rights would bring in an added $1.3 billion in revenue.

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann