First things first: Thank you, Mitch McConnell.

For whatever the Senate minority leader’s perceived flaws, he stood like a stone wall back in 2016 when, as majority leader, he singlehandedly denied Barack Obama the opportunity to fill the late, great Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat with Merrick Garland, a guy whose temperament seems to grow more hostile and more leftward by the day.

Yesterday, Attorney General Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee and gave us yet another penetrating look at the Supreme Court bullet we dodged. The AG spent much of his time trying to defend his decision to weaponize the FBI, ostensibly to protect local school boards and teachers from parents concerned about the leftist indoctrination of their children. Garland issued his FBI order shortly after the Nervous Nellies at the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Joe Biden, asking him “for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”

“Critical race theory,” the NSBA letter lies, “is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class.”

Oh yes it is taught in public schools. White children all around the country are still being made to feel guilty about the color of their skin. Just because leftist educators don’t call it by the hot-button term “Critical Race Theory” doesn’t mean they’re not teaching its racist tenets.

As for “the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation,” it’s true that one is a number, even if that one incident involves an outraged father in Loudoun County, Virginia, whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a school bathroom by a transgender male — a crime that was covered up by the local school board and that was later repeated by the same offender at a different school.

In its letter, the NSBA says the “heinous actions” of an angry father “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Clearly, the leftists who set the educational agenda at our nation’s public schools don’t think such incidents are cause for concern, and they don’t think parents should have a say in how their children are being taught indoctrinated. (Just ask Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.) And Garland’s collusion with the Biden administration casts serious doubt on whether the administration believes in the fundamental right of parents to speak out about topics such as mandatory masking and the teaching of racist CRT in all its deceptive disguises.

As for yesterday’s hearings, Ohio Republican and ranking member Jim Jordan called Garland’s efforts an FBI “snitch line” on parents who voice their concerns too loudly for the sissies at the NSBA, and he said the Justice Department was treating parents like “domestic terrorists.”

Jordan’s opening statement, which outlines the DOJ’s misplaced priorities and the FBI’s recent history of malfeasance, is well worth watching:

Garland responded: “The Justice Department supports and defends the First Amendment right of parents to complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children and about the curriculum taught in most schools.”

Of course, those words should go without saying. That Garland felt he had to say them is damning in and of itself. Said another Ohioan, Steve Chabot, “We don’t need you, your Justice Department, or the FBI trampling on the rights of American parents who just want the best possible education for their children.”

The fallout from the Garland hearing bears watching, and so does a governor’s race in reliably blue Virginia, which pits the aforementioned former Democrat governor and Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe against Republican underdog Glenn Youngkin. There, the Democrat has sided with Merrick Garland and the Big Ed Mafia, and the Republican has sided with concerned parents.

On Tuesday, November 2, we’ll find out just how angry Virginia’s parents have become.