WELL, HE’S BEEN SUPER-TRUSTWORTHY ON EVERYTHING ELSE, SO THAT’S FAIR: Obama Asks Germany to Stop ‘Assuming the Worst’ About NSA Spying.

President Obama on Monday admitted that revelations about the National Security Agency’s international spying operations had hurt the U.S.’s reputation in Germany—but he asked for more patience from the close diplomatic ally as he works to bolster privacy safeguards on the handling of foreign data.

“There’s no doubt that the Snowden revelations damaged impressions of Germans with respect to the U.S. government and our intelligence cooperation,” Obama said during a press conference held jointly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But the president quickly defended the importance of the NSA’s intelligence-gathering practices, showing impatience with the international community for its growing skepticism of his administration’s concern for the civil liberties of foreigners.

“Occasionally I would like the German people to give us the benefit of the doubt, given our history, as opposed to assuming the worst, assuming that we have been consistently your strong partners and that we share a common set of values,” he said.

These days, even Americans aren’t sure Obama shares a common set of values.

WHEN “PROBLEMS WITH HIGHER EDUCATION” IS JUST A SYNONYM FOR “EVIL REPUBLICANS AREN’T GIVING US ENOUGH MONEY, AND ARE DEMANDING RESULTS,” well, you’re not really talking about higher education reform. As for students’ increasing levels of anxiety and depression, I suspect a lot of that has to do with a K12 system that discourages independence.

YEAH, BUT, TO BE FAIR, DOESN’T EVERYONE? The Air Force wants a futuristic swarm of exploding autonomous warbirds. I mean, I know I do.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Last Week’s Little-Noticed Space Triumph.

ON PJTV, the Insta-Wife talks about marriage, video games, and porn with Bill Whittle, Andrew Klavan, and Matt Orr.

DAVID AXELROD: Obama Misled On Gay Marriage For Political Reasons. “Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons.”

It’s liars all the way down in this administration.

MICKEY KAUS: Paranoid Immigration Thoughts For Today.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Obama’s ‘Crusade’ Video Bolsters ISIS Propaganda Campaign.

THE ATLANTIC: Stripping a Professor of Tenure Over a Blog Post: Marquette University’s attack on academic freedom. “Academics all over the United States ought to denounce the firing of the 69-year-old, a Harvard Ph.D. who taught courses on American politics and public policy. If tenure can be taken away based upon one controversial blog post, what protection does it offer?”

LIKE MOST THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED UNDER OBAMA: New study finds that Dodd-Frank has promoted industry consolidation and killed community banks.

ROLL CALL: Republicans Want to Send Message to SCOTUS on Obamacare.

Senate Republicans want to send a message to the Supreme Court that it’s OK to undermine Obamacare.

They keep asking the Obama administration what it plans to do if the Supreme Court upends health insurance subsidies in the King v. Burwell case. It’s a hypothetical question the administration has been reluctant to entertain, leading the GOP to undertake an effort to craft a resolution.

Part of the reason is that Republicans want to try to signal to potentially wavering justices that there would be a path to minimal disruption should the court invalidate tax credits for millions of people in states that didn’t create their own health insurance exchanges.

South Dakota Republican John Thune, who is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said there is a lot of discussion along those lines.

“If the court thought that there was a viable alternative, that doesn’t create disruption out there, it might” make the court more inclined to rule against the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law, he said. “So we are trying to be prepared.”

Well, it’s less heavy-handed than the Democrats’ bullying op-ed campaign before Sebelius. On the other hand, that campaign worked.

NO, HE LIED. YOU’RE JUST COVERING FOR HIM. NEXT QUESTION? Was Brian Williams a Victim of False Memory?

PROVOCATION IS HIS SUBSTITUTE FOR LEADERSHIP: David Axelrod: Obama knew Prayer Breakfast remarks would provoke.

“I think he knew what he was saying and he knew it was provocative,” Axelrod said. “His point is we have a quarter of the world’s population Islamic and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with extremism and his point is let us not define that entire quarter of the planet by the actions of extremists, let’s isolate the extremists.”

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said last week Obama was trying to talk about moments “over the course of human history there are times where extremists pervert their own religion to justify violence.”

Obama also believes it is important for the U.S. “to be honest with ourselves and look inward, and hold ourselves accountable” when it falls short of its values and standards, Schultz said.

Uh huh.

THE MARCH OF ANTISEMITISM: Dem boycott of Netanyahu address to Congress grows.

MICHAEL BARONE: The Democratic majority that emerged — and disappeared.

John Judis, co-author of the book The Emerging Democratic Majority, now says in an article in National Journal that that majority has disappeared. His title: “The Emerging Republican Advantage.”

The original book, published in the Republican year of 2002, forecast accurately the groups that would make up the Democratic majority coalition that emerged in the 2006 and 2008 elections: blacks, Hispanics, gentry liberals, single women, young voters.

But as Judis writes now, that coalition has come apart. That’s partly because of diminished support from Millennials and Hispanics, but mostly because of additional white working-class defections and erosion among suburbanites unhappy with higher government spending and taxes.

In fact, he now says that the majority he predicted endured for only two elections. President Obama was re-elected with a reduced 51 percent of the vote, but Republicans won the House in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and the Senate in 2014. Democratic strength in governors’ mansions and state legislatures is at its lowest level since the 1920s. . . .

Even if they haven’t achieved permanent majorities, American parties have had enduring public policy successes. Social Security (passed 1935) and the Taft-Hartley labor law (passed 1947) are examples.

But it’s not clear the Obama Democrats accomplished that. The 2009 stimulus package’s steep increases in spending were cut back by the 2013 sequester. Tax increases may be pulled back. The administration has had to make dozens of revisions to the still-unpopular Obamacare and may have to accept serious rollbacks if it loses King v. Burwell in the Supreme Court in June.

Republicans looking to 2016 should be aiming not at creating a permanent partisan majority but at developing public policies that could, unlike Obama’s, be successful and enduring.

Well, I have a few ideas.

FROM CATHY YOUNG, more on Columbia’s mattress-girl and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s witch hunt. “The story is also a reminder that rape cases should be handled by police and courts, not universities — and not only because law enforcement and the justice system are better suited to the task. Police and court records are publicly accessible; university records are sealed by law, which means key aspects of this nationally publicized story are nearly impossible to verify. In the name of justice for both accusers and accused, it’s time to fix this broken system.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: ‘No Relief’ for Law School Enrollment Slump.

First-year enrollments have plunged almost 28 percent since 2010 and stand at their lowest level since 1973, according to the American Bar Association. Making matters worse, there are 53 more law schools now than there were then.

“This continued decrease in student demand is consistent with our belief that the legal industry is experiencing a fundamental shift rather than a cyclical trend,” Susan Fitzgerald, a higher education analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said in a January report titled “No Relief in Sight.”

Not everyone agrees the enrollment declines are permanent. But even if they aren’t, the change in status for law schools is stunning.

What used to be one of the surest routes to the upper middle class is now one of the best routes to a life of debt.

Well, it certainly can be, if you’re not careful.

LEADERSHIP: Obama: That Kosher Deli Massacre In Paris Was Purely Random.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Ralph Brill: My Frank Look At A University President’s Frank Look At Law Schools.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: “Nearly three and a half years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi, the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist.”

NEW FRONTIERS IN “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Obama and Merkel Meet the Press, Unhappily.

INEVITABLY: Fifty Shades of Grey – the Lego Trailer.

BARACK OBAMA SITS DOWN FOR AN INTERVIEW WITH VOX, and Politico’s Jack Shafer comments: “I’ve seen subtler Scientology recruitment films.” Ouch.

Plus: “Explainer journalism, as practiced by Klein, purports to break down complex policy issues into laymen-friendly packages that are issued from the realm of pure reason. But as Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry succinctly put it last summer in The Week, ‘Vox is really partisan commentary in question-and-answer disguise’ that ‘often looks more like a right-wing caricature of what a partisan media outlet dressed up as an explainer site would look like.'”

ANN ALTHOUSE: “By the way, we are all descendants of rapists, aren’t we? In the genetic line that led to each of us, there must be ancestors who were the product of a rape. How could it be otherwise?”