FEDERALISM: Justin Amash Co-Sponsors Bill to End Federal Prohibition on Marijuana.

HMM: At Tesla, Departures Mount at a Critical Time.

Chief Financial Officer Jason Wheeler’s impending departure, announced just 15 months after he joined Tesla from Google, will be the latest in a raft of largely under-the-radar exits. Former executives, who spoke on the condition they not be identified, cited a range of reasons for their exits over the past year, including long hours in the rush to high-volume production, mission creep, and a tense culture that reflects their visionary but indefatigable chief executive officer, Elon Musk.

“Tesla looks like a company that is getting stretched to the limit,” said Dave Sullivan, an analyst at industry researcher AutoPacific Inc. “The pressure of getting out the Model 3 is getting to everybody, from the people on the factory floor to the people at the top.”

It isn’t appreciated enough just how difficult it is to design, manufacture, and successfully market automobiles.

THE IEEE ON H1B VISA SCAMS: “This is the real story of the H-1B visa. It is a tool used by companies to avoid hiring American workers, and avoid paying American wages. For every visa used by Google to hire a talented non-American for $126,000, ten Americans are replaced by outsourcing companies paying their H-1B workers $65,000.”

D.C. MCCALLISTER: ‘A Day Without a Women’ Participants Should be Ashamed, Especially With Schools Closing.

Virtue-signaling should never be confused with genuine virtue.

BUT WOULD THEY DARE? North Korea Could Soon Launch Attack on Hawaii.

The United States today relies on ground-based ballistic missile interceptors deployed in California and Alaska to protect Hawaii, but these defenses would do little to guard U.S. territory in the Pacific against a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which officials believe is nearing completion.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency in February test fired a new SM-3 Block IIA missile from Hawaii that successfully intercepted an incoming ballistic missile, but the Pentagon does not maintain a permanent missile defense installation or detection capabilities on the Hawaiian Islands.

The Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii hosts an experimental, land-based ballistic missile defense system called Aegis Ashore. The facility served as a prototype for the U.S. missile defense facility in Romania, which was declared operational last year, and another in Poland that will be completed in 2018.

Ariel Cohen, director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources, and Geopolitics at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, told the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday that the Defense Department needs to immediately upgrade the Aegis Ashore facility in Hawaii from experimental to operational to guard against North Korean aggression.

“Senior national security leaders have stated that the U.S. needs to work off the assumption that North Korea will have ICBM capabilities soon, and in this business ‘soon’ could mean five to 10 years, or earlier,” Cohen said.

I have friends and family working missile defense out of Hawaii, and they seem confident that Aegis Ashore would work as advertised.

ISLAMIC STATE COMMANDER ABANDONS FIGHTERS, GOES INTO HIDING: Hey, they’re rats and blustering cowards.

US and Iraqi officials believe the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has left operational commanders behind with diehard followers to fight the battle of Mosul, and is now hiding out in the desert, focusing mainly on his own survival.

AMAZON LAUNCHPAD: Gadgets From The Future.

KIM JONG UN’S PARANOID SPRING: My latest Creators Syndicate column (bumped).

RELATED: China weighs in.

The government openly asked North Korea to stop its nuclear and ballistic missile tests and implied that if North Korea complied China would persuade the United States and South Korea to halt their military preparations to deal with a North Korean attack. North Korea was apparently not impressed.

PROGRESS: 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2017.

Including “practical” quantum computers, predicted at 4-5 years out:

One of the labs at QuTech, a Dutch research institute, is responsible for some of the world’s most advanced work on quantum computing, but it looks like an HVAC testing facility. Tucked away in a quiet corner of the applied sciences building at Delft University of Technology, the space is devoid of people. Buzzing with resonant waves as if occupied by a swarm of electric katydids, it is cluttered by tangles of insulated tubes, wires, and control hardware erupting from big blue cylinders on three and four legs.

Inside the blue cylinders—essentially supercharged refrigerators—spooky quantum-mechanical things are happening where nanowires, semiconductors, and superconductors meet at just a hair above absolute zero. It’s here, down at the limits of physics, that solid materials give rise to so-called quasiparticles, whose unusual behavior gives them the potential to serve as the key components of quantum computers. And this lab in particular has taken big steps toward finally bringing those computers to fruition. In a few years they could rewrite encryption, materials science, pharmaceutical research, and artificial intelligence.

The Singularity is coming.

HEY, THEY WERE JUST FOLLOWING THE LEAD OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT: Vizio Fails To Dodge Class Action Over Its Spying ‘Smart’ Televisions.

Meanwhile, a friend on Facebook was just observing that a few years ago, saying “the CIA is spying on me through my TV!” meant you were crazy. Now the response is just “well, of course.”

THE STATUE OF THE GIRL STARING DOWN THE WALL STREET BULL just means that feminism wants to bring the global economy to a halt, right? I mean, what else could it stand for?

And look at the source: “As it turns out, the statue of the little girl symbolically defying Wall Street was installed by… Wall Street itself. And not just any financial company, but State Street Global Advisors, the worlds third-largest asset manager, with $2.4 trillion under management.”

The patriarchy strikes back!

UPDATE: From the comments: “It’s really a metaphor for the entire blue political establishment – transparently hollow virtue signalling paid for by the left’s financial backers, under the guise of being an organic movement to shame a non-existent foe.”

GRAVEYARDS ARE FILLED WITH IRREPLACEABLE (WO)MEN:

Welcome to the real world.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I had lunch at Shoney’s today. All the waitresses seemed to have shown up. Related: ‘A Day Without a Woman’ is a strike for privileged protesters. “Make no mistake, March 8 will mostly be a day without women who can afford to skip work, shuffle childcare and household duties to someone else, and shop at stores that are likely to open at 10 and close at 5.” Lots of public employees taking a day of “personal leave” by all appearances.

OUR “INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY” HASN’T EXACTLY COVERED ITSELF WITH GLORY LATELY: After NSA hacking exposé, CIA staffers asked where Equation Group went wrong: CIA hackers wasted no time analyzing the blunders made by their NSA counterparts.

FACE, MEET PALM: Statue of Liberty Mysteriously Goes Dark, ‘Women’s March’ Claims to Know Why.

Do they really want to tug at that thread?

GOOD LORD: Navy veteran commits suicide in VA parking garage.

The body of a 63-year-old Navy veteran was discovered in the parking garage of a North Carolina VA facility six days after he took his own life.

On Feb. 15, Paul Shuping used a .22-caliber rifle to kill himself inside a parked car at the Durham Veteran Affairs Medical Center after the VA’s recent decision to deny him full disability benefits, NBC affiliate WRAL reported Monday.

James Alston of the Triangle Veterans Outreach Center said he helped Shuping through a two-year process to obtain partial disability benefits, but the VA’s decision to deny him full benefits was the last straw.

“I really think he was trying to send a message for all veterans who are crying out for help,” Mr. Alston said.

We’re failing our vets.

STEPHEN EIDE: The Blue-State Model Collapses in Connecticut.

Many Connecticut conservatives cite the adoption of an income tax in 1991 as the beginning of the state’s woes. Up to that point, the Land of Steady Habits had an inspired run, poaching businesses and residents from overtaxed New York. Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker, a former Republican who served as an independent, worked out a deal with lawmakers: Government would impose a spending cap in exchange for the tax hike. But the state never fully implemented the former.

After having been raised four times, the top marginal income-tax rate now stands at 6.99 percent, almost two points higher than the 5.1 percent in neighboring Massachusetts. The income tax has generated a flood of new revenues — $126 billion over 25 years, according to the Hartford-based Yankee Institute for Public Policy — but somehow state lawmakers neglected to direct adequate funds to the pension system. As a consequence, Connecticut’s state employees’ retirement system is funded at only 35.5 percent, one of lowest rates in the nation. Despite a slew of recent tax increases, state government now faces deficits of $1.5 and $1.6 billion in the next two fiscal years.

Anything that can’t continue indefinitely will stop, and debt that can’t be paid won’t be.

THE COASTAL ELITE: Lawmaker shocked by ‘insane’ boozing at Rhode Island State House.

New Rhode Island State Rep. Moira Walsh told WPRO talk show host Matt Allen that she’s surprised by the “insane amount of drinking” that goes on in the State House.

“You cannot operate a motor vehicle when you’ve had two beers, but you can make laws that affect people’s lives forever when you’re half in the bag,” Walsh said to Allen on Tuesday. “That’s outrageous.

Walsh referenced ceremonial toasts, including a recent Dominican celebration when lawmakers were handed alcoholic drinks.

She also made other claims about lawmakers and alcohol.

“People have file cabinets full of booze,” Walsh said.

Why are Democrat-run governments such cesspits of frat-house behavior?

AYAAN HIRSI ALI WEIGHS IN ON “DAY WITHOUT A WOMAN” PROTESTS:

The problems being protested against Wednesday—inequality, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity—are all too real for many disadvantaged women, but the legal protections for them are in place here in the United States. Women who are unfairly treated at work or discriminated against can stand up, speak out, protest in the streets, and take legal action. Not so for many women in other parts of the world for whom the hashtag #daywithoutawoman is all too apt.

Around the world women are subjected to “honor violence” and lack legal protections and access to health and social services. According to Amnesty International’s recent annual report, throughout the Middle East and North Africa, women and girls are denied equal status with men in law and are subject to gender-based violence, including sexual violence and killings perpetrated in the name of “honor.”

I highlighted the phrase “honor violence.” As Stephen Green noted earlier, Trump’s new immigration order creates a data base of honor killings. An “honor killing” isn’t honorable, it’s just murder, and the victims are women.

ADP: US private sector created 298K jobs in Feb. vs. 190K est. “Companies added jobs at a blistering pace in February, with a notable shift away from the service-sector positions that have dominated hiring for years, according to a report Wednesday.”

“February proved to be an incredibly strong month for employment with increases we have not seen in years,” Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement.

In addition to the construction and manufacturing positions, mining and natural resources also contributed 8,000 to the total. Trump has promised to restore mining jobs as well.

The year is off to a sizzling start for job creation, according to the ADP counts. January added 261,000 positions, a number that was revised upward from the originally reported 246,000.

“Confidence is playing a large role,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told CNBC. “Businesses are anticipating a lot of good stuff — tax cuts, less regulation. They are hiring more aggressively.”

I remember reading assurances at the start of the Obama Administration that the “business climate” was meaningless.

A PARANOID-SCHIZOPHRENIC IS A GUY WHO JUST FOUND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON: Wikileaks’ CIA Download Confirms Everybody’s Tapped, Including Trump, Roger Simon writes.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Should Cops in Prostitution Stings Be Able to Go All the Way?

THOUGHTS ON ENDING CAMPUS VIOLENCE. I think that President Trump, and Education Secretary DeVos, need to make ending campus violence a top priority.

Otherwise people on the right are going to have to start their own Guardian Angels groups.

LIKE FATHER… Sen. Kaine’s son arrested at Trump rally in Minnesota.

Linwood Michael Kaine, 24, and four others were arrested on suspicion of second-degree riot at the “March 4 Trump” rally in St. Paul. Another person was cited for disorderly conduct, the Duluth News Tribune reported.

Kaine, who lives in Minneapolis, was released from the Ramsey County Jail Tuesday pending a further investigation, authorities said. No charges were filed against him or the four others. The city attorney is reviewing the incident.

Kaine was involved in a skirmish between Trump supporters and counter-protesters, St. Paul police spokesman Steve Linders said.

Linders said Kaine was seen with four people who lit fireworks in the capitol and fled. Police were investigating whether Kaine lit a firework, the newspaper reported.

Linders said Kaine and the group were arrested a block from the capitol. He said police tracked Kaine and the group down and arresting officers had to use “some force” to take him into custody.

Charming.

MAYBE THE TRUMP DOJ SHOULD REVERSE THIS DUMB DECISION. ATTENTION: JEFF SESSIONS. How the Obama DOJ Killed an Open Education Effort at Berkeley.

The University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts in response to a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities.

Today, the content is available to the public on YouTube, iTunes U and the university’s webcast.berkeley site. On March 15, the university will begin removing the more than 20,000 audio and video files from those platforms — a process that will take three to five months — and require users sign in with University of California credentials to view or listen to them.

The university’s calculation was simple: Revising its vast store of free online materials to the DOJ’s satisfaction would be expensive and time-consuming for the cash-strapped public institution. If leaving the lectures online as they are could make the university vulnerable to a federal lawsuit, well, then why not just take them down! In other words, in an effort to expand access to Berkeley’s educational resources, the DOJ has ended up eliminating access for non-students.

On the upside, this protected the higher education industry in general — a major source of money and footsoldiers for the Democrats — from low-cost competition.