THIRD BATTLE OF FALLUJAH: Shiite militias allied with the government seize two districts on the city’s outskirts, commander says.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led international coalition pounded Fallujah from the ground and the air Monday, marking the start of a bid to retake one of Islamic State’s last major urban strongholds in the country.

Iraq’s army and counterterrorism forces, police, tribal fighters and the Popular Mobilization Forces joined in the assault, the military’s Joint Operations Command said.

Fallujah, about 40 miles west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, has been held by Islamic State since the Sunni Muslim extremist group captured it in early 2014.

The tragedy is that this city — hard won by Coalition forces led by US Marines in 2004 — was largely at peace before President Obama abandoned Iraq in 2011. Three years later, Obama dismissed ISIS as the “jayvee” days after the group had taken Fallujah. The people there have suffered under ISIS rule since, and now find themselves once again in the middle of a war zone.

This morning, the Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt wrote that “it does not require hindsight to appreciate the recklessness of his decision” to leave Iraq.

Hindsight is preferable to remaining blind, I suppose.

SO #CROOKEDHILLARY IS AHEAD IN THE POLL, and I guess stuff like this is why: How corporate America bought Hillary Clinton for $21M.

WELCOME TO THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA, where a hamburger is officially $170.

I believe this is officially “bad luck.”

HIGHER ED’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM, COMMENCEMENT-SPEAKER EDITION: Dare to Live Your (Liberal) Dream.

You Are The Future…as long as you’re liberal!

America’s leading universities are skewing left when it comes to selecting speakers to deliver commencement addresses. The Young America’s Foundation’s (YAF) 24th annual Commencement Speakers Survey analyzed graduation speakers at the country’s top 100 universities and found that 45 speakers have a track record in supporting liberal stances while only 12 conservatives have been invited to speak.

A statement from the YAF, which promotes individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise and traditional values, said: “Of our country’s top 10 schools, nine speakers were liberal. As usual our nation’s brightest students will reveal one final dose of liberalism from their progressive professors and administrators before heading out into the real world.”

The YAF added that of the 12 conservative speakers, most were moderate conservatives, including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Michigan), Oracle Founder Larry Ellison (USC) and financier Joseph Perella (Lehigh). “There were no real conservatives in the list,” said a YAF spokeswoman.

The speakers also included a large number of present and former Obama Administration cabinet members including Secretary of State John Kerry (Northeastern), Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (Yale), Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz (BC), Secretary of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell (University of Washington), former Attorney General Eric Holder (Stony Brook University) and President Obama himself.

It’s been this way for years.

MONSTERS FROM THE ID! Michael Walsh writes:

Sanders-for-real vs. Sanders-the-makebelieve-candidate would be handily destroyed by the GOP, even with the entire press corps rooting for him. Pictures of life in Venezuela right now would be all that it takes. Still, in my heart, I’m rooting for Sanders, one of the most implausible American presidential candidates of all time. Having Sanders on the ballot would finally force the Democrats out from behind their masks and reveal them for what they truly are: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party, and one dedicated to feasting off the corpse of the American experiment while professing fealty to it. The reasons they’ve rigged the game for Hillary is that they don’t want Sanders blowing their cover.

Despicable is too nice a word for them.

Which brings us to the other most implausible American presidential candidate of all time: Donald J. Trump.

Read the whole thing.

REACTION: Far-right presidential candidate ahead as Austria counts final votes.

The ministry said Freedom Party candidate Hofer had 51.9% of the votes cast in person Sunday, while former Green Party chief Alexander Van der Bellen had 48.1%. About 750,000 ballots cast by mail were still being tallied. They represent about 12% of the 6.4 million voters, the BBC reported.

A Hofer victory would mark the first time a European nation elected a far-right president since World War II.

In Austria, the presidency is a figurehead position with the real executive power residing in the office of the Chancellor — “safely” inhabited by Social Democrat Heinz Fischer.

The real test of strength for the Freedom Party won’t come until the next parliamentary election in 2018. The party currently holds 38 seats in 183-seat National Council, and 13 of the 61 positions in the Federal Council.

UPDATE: Independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen has won Austria’s presidential election.

Van der Bellen ran as a pro-EU independent with support from Austria’s Green Party.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Former US Official Reveals Risks Faced by Internal Critics.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Small Bar Prep Company Files $50 Million Antitrust Action Again BARBRI, 11 Law Schools.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When leaders cheat, followers … follow: The trust that underlies a law-abiding society is rotting away thanks to double-dealing in Washington.

TO BE FAIR, THERE’S A LOT TO HATE IN YEAR 8 OF THE LIGHTWORKER: Salena Zito: ‘The haters’ will pick our next president.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Rat Pack vs. the hippie: Trump and Hillary are from opposite ends of same decade.

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION raised by Scott Adams.

WELCOME TO THE ONE TRUE CHURCH OF VICTIMOLOGY: Kyle Smith notes that the gay pastor who claimed that he was sold a cake with the words “LOVE WINS FAG” by the Whole Foods in Austin — insert Spock eyebrow lift here — is “the latest in a line of hate-crime hucksters seeking to profit from imaginary victimization. This is fraud:”

Last June in Baltimore, resident Julie Baker said a neighbor had sent an anonymous note calling her yard decorations “relentlessly gay” and asking her to “tone it down” because “this is a Christian area.”

An outraged Baker quickly went to the GoFundMe site to monetize her feelings and asked donors to pitch in to make her yard decorations even more “relentlessly gay.” She quickly raised $43,000. As accusations that she was a hoaxer piled up she announced she was returning all donations in a vaguely worded semi-apology (“the truth is that this project went from an artistic snowball tossed in the face of hate to an avalanche”).

Last summer 21-year-old Rick Jones of Delta, Utah, claimed some thugs beat him up and carved “Die fag” into his arms while he was working at the family pizza shop. Jones’ family started a GoFundMe campaign to capitalize on the result and had already earned $12,000 when police announced that they believed Jones had fabricated the incident. Jones’ lawyer admitted as much but called the claims a “cry for help” instead of the cry for money and attention it looked like to everyone else.

Serious question: Why are none of these people in jail?

Read the whole thing.

STAIRWAY TO NINETY-SEVEN.

RUST NEVER SLEEPS:

The novelty of Brady’s new book on Hiss is that it looks like it takes the “evil Richard Nixon” bullshit narrative and combines it with the “anti-communism is delusional” bullshit narrative, mixes them together and the resulting brew is even more intoxicating, like whiskey to a thirsty Irishman. I predict that when this book is released, the reviews from left-wing media such as the Guardian, Salon, and the HuffPo will be snake-handling levels of ecstatic. The right has pretty much fought the left to a standstill on the Hiss case for a number of years now, since the publication of Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, written by left-wing author Allen Weinstein, who investigated the Hiss case with the intent of finding the reasons why Hiss was innocent, reasons he knew had to be there, but instead discovering that he was guilty as charged. With that, conservatives have pretty much moved on, but the left never does, never moves on, never sleeps, and is corrosive as rust. Brady’s new book will be potent balm to salve their wounded souls. With the combining of the two bullshit narratives, I can hear the Guardian reviewer cry out with joy, “Hallelujah! Finally, after all these years, it now all makes sense.”

Nixon did it! Yeah!

And with that, their ignorance will be nigh impregnable.

Hugh Hewitt has to have the author on his show for what will be the Greatest. Interview. Ever.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT AS SELF-LICKING POPSICLE: Feds Divert MILLIONS To ‘Slush Fund’ That Fuels These Liberal Activist Groups.

JOEL KOTKIN’S THE HUMAN CITY gets a nice review in the Wall Street Journal: In Praise Of Urban Sprawl. Excerpt:

In essence, Mr. Kotkin argues, being anti-suburb is being anti-family. With this book he wants to shift the emphasis back to people, the derided suburban masses that he refers to as “the rest of us,” people who have become almost invisible to anti-sprawl adherents, especially those who raise an alarm about the destruction of natural habitats by expanding cities. In a way, Mr. Kotkin echoes Bruce Chatwin’s comment on Darwin: “He lapsed into the common failure of naturalists: to marvel at the intricate perfection of other creatures, and recoil from the squalor of man.”

Mr. Kotkin, in his unabashed defense of the essential role that suburbs play in cities the world over, is clearly on the offensive. He does not pretend to present himself as an even-handed expert; he presents his arguments and leaves the opposition to argue its own case. All the same, and much to my delight, the book does not read as a diatribe or an anti-urban manifesto. Mr. Kotkin comes across as a relaxed, confident and experienced litigator standing in front of a jury of readers and making his case; and “The Human City” does provide a vision for a legitimate and pragmatic urbanism that could and should become mainstream.

I had some related thoughts here in response to Robert Bruegmann’s excellent book, Sprawl: A Compact History.

Also related: Obama’s War On The Suburbs.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL PREDATION? Elijah Wood claims Hollywood paedophile ring is similar to Jimmy Savile abuse.

APOCALYPSE NOW:

● Shot: Panic Rooms Take Off as Buyers Prep for Trump, Hillary.

—Heat Street, Friday.

● Double-shot:

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy.

* * * * * * * *

Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Fuhrer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who singlehandedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.

To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today.

—“This is how fascism comes to America,” Robert Kagan, the left-leaning Brookings Institute, yesterday.

● Chaser:

To listen to the manner in which our friends on the left now talk about Donald Trump is to suspect that it is not. Time and time again, Trump has been compared to Hitler, to Mussolini, to George Wallace, and to Bull Connor. Time and time again, self-described “liberals” have recoiled at the man’s praise for internment, at his disrespect for minorities and dissenters, and at his enthusiasm for torture and for war crimes. Time and time again, it has been predicted — not without merit — that, while Trump would almost certainly lose a general election, an ill-timed recession or devastating terrorist attack could throw all bets to the curb. If one were to take literally the chatter that one hears on MSNBC and the fear that one smells in the pages of the New York Times and of the Washington Post, one would have no choice but to conclude that the progressives have joined the conservatives in worrying aloud about the wholesale abuse of power.

Hence my initial question: Have they? And, if they have, what knock-on effects has that worrying had? Having watched the rise of Trumpism — and, now, having seen the beginning of violence in its name — who out there is having second thoughts as to the wisdom of imbuing our central state with massive power?

That’s a serious, not a rhetorical, question. I would genuinely love to know how many “liberals” have begun to suspect that there are some pretty meaningful downsides to the consolidation of state authority.

— “Is Trump’s Rise Giving Progressives Second Thoughts?”, Charles C. W. Cooke, NRO, March 16th.

CHANGE: In historic move, U.S. lifts arms sales embargo to Vietnam.

Smart move.

It isn’t often mentioned that Vietnam and China fought a war against each other more recently than the Vietnam and the United States did.

ISN’T EVERYTHING, THESE DAYS? Libertarian VP Candidate Likens Trump’s Immigration Policy to Kristallnacht.

I thought Al Gore and the New York Times had the lock on that codicil of Godwin’s Law, at least for radical environmental purposes, before Al tacitly declared Mission Accomplished on environmentalism by selling out to oil-rich Qatar.

Besides, as Kathy Shaidle quipped in March, once in office, Trump is far more likely to govern along the lines of a very different Austrian socialist than Hitler.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Justice rots from the top.

It is rare for a federal judge to lay into government attorneys this way. Or, rather, it was before President Obama took office. Now it is a lot more common.

Only a month ago, an appellate court judge in the Sixth Circuit similarly excoriated Justice Department attorneys for unethically dragging out the discovery process in another lawsuit, in which they were defending the Internal Revenue Service. In that case, the judge criticized the lawyers’ “studied obstruction,” and repeated use of transparently bogus arguments to drag their feet in the lower courts.

Judge Raymond Ketheledge wrote pointedly that “lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws … in a manner worthy of the Department’s name. The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition.”

There is a pattern here. This incidents are characteristic of an administration willing to make any casuistical arguments to push ideological change that benefits their donors but for which they have secured no public approval or democratic legitimacy.

Well, yes. Also, as my next USA Today column notes, of an administration that is setting a terrible example.

Plus: “Maybe it isn’t so surprising that Justice Department attorneys keep getting caught misbehaving when their boss, the president himself, puts undemocratic change ahead of everything else, including apparently ethical behavior in the practice of law.”

ISIS TESTING CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ: “One more consequence of President Obama’s premature abandonment of Iraq. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he wanted Iraq to be unsuccessful.”

Or as Glenn wrote in 2013, “Ideology required that the Iraq War be a failure, even if it needed a nunc pro tunc effort to make it so.”

DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY: The Gathering Storm In Philadelphia.