The Obama administration’s priorities:

The Department of Justice is investigating the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Muslim boy whom police took into custody when he brought a homemade clock to his school in Texas, the U.S. Attorney General said Thursday.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed the investigation at the annual Muslim Advocates dinner in Arlington, Va., the Dallas Morning News reports. “We have, as you may know, opened an investigation into the case of the young man in Irving, Texas,” Lynch told Farhana Kher, Muslim Advocates President and Executive Director, during an interview. “So we will see where that investigation goes.”

Unbelievable. As you will remember, I said when it happened that Ahmed the Clock Boy was treated badly and unfairly by the authorities in Irving. I lost sympathy for him when more information came out making him seem less victim than troll, and, even though his travail made him a national celebrity who was invited to the White House, he filed a $15 million lawsuit. 

But now the federal government is getting involved. Of all the things the Justice Department could be investigating, an alleged civil rights violation involving this brat strikes me as not remotely significant. I say that even as I concede that it’s possible, and perhaps even likely, that the local authorities overreacted. But if that same event went down today, after San Bernardino, I think more Americans would cut the Texas local authorities slack. I know I would.

Another case of the federal government alienating itself from ordinary people. Again, it is possible to believe even still that Ahmed was mistreated, but does this really rise to the level of a federal civil rights investigation? Then again, this is an administration whose Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights pressured an Illinois public school district to let transgenders change openly, without barriers, in opposite-sex locker rooms. Now the school district is considering reneging on its agreement with the feds:

Just one day after a suburban school board approved a historic agreement to settle a transgender student’s claims of discrimination, the district is now threatening to retract the settlement with the federal government amid accusations that the agency acted in “bad faith.”

The Township High School District 211 board voted after 12:30 a.m. Thursday to allow the student, who was born male, to use the girls’ locker room — an issue that prompted passionate debate on both sides.

But now district officials have angrily accused the federal Office for Civil Rights of “blatant disregard for the facts” of the settlement. The student had filed a complaint with the office, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education.

“We are outraged by the mischaracterizations” about the agreement, Palatine-based District 211 said in a news release Friday afternoon. “It is wrong, it is an act of bad faith and our school district will not let it stand. … Citizens have a right to expect more from a federal agency than smoke and mirrors.”

Priorities, people. Those are the administration’s priorities. If Ahmed were a transgender clock boy, he would be a secular Democratic Party saint.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post featured text copied from what was purported to be a Bill O’Reilly Talking Points Memo about ISIS and Islam. It showed up in the in-box of a conservative friend, who forwarded it to me. A couple of you eagle-eyed readers pointed out that it is likely a forgery. I did some checking, and I think you’re right: O’Reilly has sent out a Talking Points Memo since Friday. I apologize to Bill O’Reilly for falling for that (extremely well done) spam, and to you readers. I have updated this post to reflect that. Thank you, readers, for catching my mistake and offering the correction.

UPDATE: From Steve Sailer’s analysis of Obama’s Oval Office speech:

So, a few observations on the implicit ideology:

– “American exceptionalism” mandates American national self-dissolution.

– Civil rights require that we not discriminate against any foreigner in the world who wishes to move to America.

– The ongoing massacres and expulsions of Christians in the Middle East can elicit our help, by, say, giving Christians the bulk of refugee spots, except in directly equal measure to our assisting the Muslim perpetrators with admission to America. The Christians of the Middle East have Christian Privilege.