AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: As Trump weighs more troops in Afghanistan, some in Congress seek to freeze his funding.

On the eve of NATO’s highly anticipated summit in Brussels, Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Democrat John Garamendi of California will greet the media in Washington on Wednesday to explain their proposed legislation seeking to halt, with few exceptions, any further financing for U.S. activities in Afghanistan. After 16 years, victory there is no longer attainable, they say, nor is the effort worth continued investment in American blood and treasure.

“Tell me your definition of victory. What is it? Street cars going down the roads that the Taliban blew up?” Jones, who introduced the bill, asked rhetorically during a recent interview with Military Times in his Capitol Hill office. “Hell, we’ve been training the damn Afghans for 16 years. You can train a monkey to ride a bicycle in three.”

It’s impossible to train soldiers to fight for a country which isn’t really a country.

RAND PAUL: $110B Saudi arms deal ‘a travesty.’ Well, yes. The Saudis are not our friends.

On the other hand, Trump seems to have put together an anti-Iran, anti-Russia alliance in the Middle East that has brought the Saudis together with the Israelis, Egypt, etc. That’s because the Saudis are scared — and, now that we’re the #1 oil producer, we have the whip hand in the relationship, not them. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a decline in funding for terror from the Saudis and the Gulf States as part of this deal.

Like our relationship with the Saudis going back decades, it’s still a travesty. But it may be the best travesty we can get.

Exit question: What if we’d let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and eventually annex Saudi Arabia? Would that have worked out better? Doubtful, but for those who want to write alt-history I’d like to see the plotlines. Contribute some in the comments if you like.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: President Trump Has Been ‘Fluffing’ the Russians.

You stay classy, Chris.

I THOUGHT IT WAS IMPLICIT: “Another alternative, not discussed in the linked essay, is to back off on diversity instruction and let the free-speech market do its work.”

PEAK OIL: Be warned: $25 oil is coming, and along with it, a new world order.

“Oil demand will peak 2021-2020 and will go down 100 million barrels, to 70 million barrels within 10 years. And what that means, the new equilibrium price is going to be $25, and if you produce oil and you can’t compete at $25, essentially you are holding stranded assets,” Seba said.

“At $25 a barrel, that means deep-water, sands, shell oil, fields, most are going to be stranded, and also all the refineries and pipelines associated with these expensive oils are also going to be stranded. And that is going to reshape worldwide oil, geopolitics and so on.”

It’s a big call, right? But if you look at what’s behind Seba’s premise, surprise, surprise, it comes down to money.

He says we are not going to stop driving altogether, just switch to self-drive electric vehicles, which will become a much larger part of the sharing economy. And these electric vehicles are going to cost less to both buy and run.

“The day that autonomous vehicles are approved, the combination of ride hailing, electric and autonomous means that it’s going to be ten times cheaper, up to ten times cheaper, to use a robot taxi, transport as a service car, than it is to own a car. Ten times.”

His cost-savings projections seem optimistic, but I certainly wouldn’t complain about $25 oil.

HARVARD LAW BLOG ON PLAGIARISM: Professor Tribe vs. Sheriff Clarke: Who’s the more careful scholar? “Sheriff Clarke, a part-time scholar, is vastly more careful (not to mention honest) than Professor Tribe. In this post we boil down the factual comparison, concisely, in one place.”

GOOD: Top Education official resigned over dispute with DeVos: report.

A top official at the Department of Education resigned Tuesday over an apparent dispute with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Politico reported.

James Runcie, the head of the Education Department’s student aid office, resigned abruptly Tuesday night after DeVos asked him to testify before the House Oversight Committee about his department’s rising levels of improper payment rate for federal student aid programs.

Runcie apparently believed he was the wrong person to testify on the matter and resigned after multiple requests from agency officials. He had previously refused requests from the House committee to testify, as well as requests from other officials at the Education Department.

An unnamed Education Department official told Politico that Runcie’s resignation was baffling, with other Education employees confused about his reason.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” the official said. “We don’t know.”

An email obtained by Politico said that Runcie “felt it was time to give an opportunity to someone else to provide leadership under a new Secretary of Education.”

My guess is that something’s been going on in, oh, the past 8 years or so that he didn’t want to have to defend.

PRESSING THE FLESH: Greg Gianforte, Montana House GOP candidate, cited for misdemeanor assault after incident.

The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that there was probable cause to issue a citation, but the nature of the injuries “did not meet the statutory elements of a felony assault.”

Still, the incident sent shockwaves across the country and resulted in two key Montana newspapers taking back their earlier endorsement.

The incident occurred Wednesday evening when a Fox News team was scheduled to interview Gianforte at his campaign headquarters. The team said Ben Jacobs, the reporter from The Guardian, pressed Gianforte about the newly released Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act.

Gianforte told Jacobs to talk to his press officer. At some point, Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground, according to witnesses.

See the violence inherent in the system?

GOOD MORNING: And here’s Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

SMART DIPLOMACY! Trump has done what Obama didn’t: Scare NATO into closer tracking of defense spending. “He wasn’t the first to raise concerns: President Barack Obama had frequently lamented NATO members’ failure to spend enough on defense. But it was Trump’s undiplomatic rhetoric that got the issue to the top of the group’s agenda this week, when NATO’s members are expected to accept the idea of public report cards to make sure everyone’s meeting the requirements of the alliance.”

Maybe effective diplomacy sometimes calls for undiplomatic rhetoric.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Overcapacity In Legal Education. “Between 1971 and 2010, the average entering 1L class at an ABA-accredited law school was 246 students with a very narrow band of fluctuation. The high-water mark was 262 in 2010. Every year since 2012 has set a new historical low. As the chart above shows, the average has tumbled by a staggering 31%.”

WHY REX TILLERSON WAS A GOOD PICK: “Well, I hadn’t been practicing, Chris, but it was not my first sword dance.”

IT’S NOT HOLY WRIT: Washington rallies around the Outer Space Treaty. It has some valuable parts, but it’s first and foremost a relic of the Cold War, created in response to Cold War considerations that no longer obtain.

LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY IN PORTLAND: White women’s burrito shop is forced to close after being hounded with accusations it was ‘culturally appropriating Mexican food and jobs.’ I’d like to see a civil suit for conspiracy to deprive them of civil rights by driving them out of business because of their race.

Of course, this is yet another reason to cram SJW types into crowded blue cities where their only targets are other leftists.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “Sneaky negativity about men is a huge reason why men are turned off by women who they would otherwise find really attractive.”

21ST CENTURY MEDICINE: More Data on Balloon-in-a-Pill Show Almost 15% Weight Loss.

FROM THE FOLKS AT LIBERTY ISLAND: Apply Now to the 2017 Calliope Authors Workshop.

The application is here.

THE FALSE REHABILITATION OF BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Pre-election, the left-leaning MSNBC had been planning to pivot to hard news. Post-Trump, they’ve doubled down on punditry, to their great advantage. It’s hard to believe that not one executive is mulling their greatest contradiction: How can they employ an anchor known for pomposity, grandiosity and lies while decrying these very traits in the American president?”

See also Williams’ fellow NBC employees, Al Sharpton and Andrea Mitchell.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Question: Why is there never a warning about Backlash before the suspect is named?

Answer: Because if the suspect turns out to be one of the few the media can claim are “right wing” (Nazis, etc.), then the media does not warn against backlash, but actively crusades in favor of it.

Read the whole thing.

WHY ARE THE DEMS SO EAGER TO COVER THIS UP? Wasserman Schultz Threatened Police Chief For Gathering Evidence On Her IT Staffer’s Alleged Crimes. Most under-noticed story of the day?

SHOCKING: “Instagram is the most detrimental social media platform to young people’s mental health, according to new research out of the U.K.”

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Plus, deals on Bestsellers in Jewelry.

SECURITY: Behavior of Man Who Tried to Break Into American Airlines Cockpit Should’ve Raised ‘Red Flags.’

JOURNALISM IN THE ERA OF FAKE NEWS: “MSM is just traipsing along after social media, thinking that’s what we must want. It will do that, then suddenly reel around and yell at us for not wanting to receive our news as curated by professional journalists.”