Senator grills acting education secretary over agency overreach

The Washington Post reports:

Did the Education Department overstep its authority when it threatened to withhold funding from schools by changing the law regarding campus sexual assault?

This was the question Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., attempted to get to the bottom of during an Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. During the hearing, Alexander grilled the department's acting secretary, Dr. John B. King, about a non-legally binding document issued by the department that has actually carried the force of law.

Alexander kept asking King if the department's "Dear Colleague" letters carried the force of law, to which King kept replying that they did not, and that the documents were merely his department's "interpretation of the law and regulations, which are binding."

When words lose their meaning.....