EDUCATION // Vice President Pence breaks tie as Senate confirms Betsy DeVos for Education post 51-50. http://cvote.it/2kjAd4P
ATTORNEY GENERAL // Senators voted along party lines to block firebrand liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren from speaking for the rest of the debate on the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Sessions is a Senator from Alabama, and Senate rules forbid Senators from impugning the character of another Senator. Warren had read a 1986 quote from the late Ted Kennedy that referred to Sessions as a ‘disgrace.’ http://cvote.it/2kkt5Fo
IMMIGRATION // Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., want to cut legal immigration into the United States by 50%. Roughly 1 million foreigners are granted green cards annually, which the two senators want to take down to 500,000 to align better with what they call historic norms. http://cvote.it/2kjxJDF
IMMIGRATION // Fr. James Martin, editor of the liberal Jesuit magazine America, claimed you can’t be pro-life unless you support open borders. Pro-life activist Jason Jones took him to task: “It’s easy for Fr. Martin and others like him to call for utopian policies, wave Jesus around to silence our reality-based objections, and refuse to examine their real-world impact on the poor and the vulnerable.” http://cvote.it/2kjBRn4
MEDIA // The mainstream imagines a conspiracy between Steve Bannon (now in Trump’s White House) and Cardinal Burke. Phil Lawler calls this conspiracy ‘nonsense.’ http://cvote.it/2kjxZlT
CONGRESS // President Trump and the Republican Congress are pursuing the most ambitious legislative agenda since the 1960s. http://cvote.it/2kjtece
ABORTION // Did a Planned Parenthood throw pizza parties if abortion quotas were met? http://cvote.it/2kjwrbQ
POLL // This discovery from Rasmussen polling is depressing: “Most voters agree that Christians living in Muslim-majority countries are mistreated for their religion. But Democrats are more likely to think Muslims are mistreated in America than to think Christians are persecuted in the Islamic world.” http://cvote.it/2kjzBMD
ENERGY // The Army said it will approve the $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline to cross under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota, clearing the way for completion of the four-state project. http://cvote.it/2kjyDjh
EDUCATION // Thomas Aquinas College to open East Coast campus. http://cvote.it/2kjAXqM
CATHOLIC // “Confessions of a Catholic convert to capitalism,” by Arthur Brooks. http://cvote.it/2kjIwgZ
WORD OF THE DAY // Standing rules of the Senate – Procedures established by the Senate to govern the subject of debate on the Senate floor.
SAINT // Saint Josephine Bakhita – http://cvote.it/dailysaint
DAILY MASS // “O bless the Lord, my soul!” (Ps 104:1) – http://cvote.it/Daily-Readings
HEROES // A look at six holy Catholics for Black History Month. http://cvote.it/2jVhroe