KREMLIN STOOGE: Dem Super-Lobbyist Podesta Got $170K to End US Sanctions On Russian Bank.

FLYING BOMB TRUCKS: Pentagon Arsenal Plane to Fly With F-35, F-22.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Google’s artificial intelligence can diagnose cancer faster than human doctors.

AVIK ROY: House GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Will Make Coverage Unaffordable For Millions — Otherwise, It’s Great.

Unfortunately, the AHCA’s efforts at replacing Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges are problematic. A key limitation is that Republicans have decided to repeal and replace Obamacare on a party-line vote using the Senate’s reconciliation process. But reconciliation can only repeal Obamacare’s taxes and spending; it can’t replace most of the law’s premium-hiking insurance regulations.

The AHCA does make an effort to repeal Obamacare’s two costliest regulations: its requirement that plans charge similar premiums to the young and the old (age-based community rating); and its requirement that plans contain generous financial payouts (high actuarial value). So far, so good.

But the plan, due to the reconciliation process, appears to leave the vast majority of Obamacare’s regulations in place. The February 10 leaked draft contained language that would have returned control of essential health benefits to the states. That language appears to have been deleted.

Worse still, the bill contains an arbitrary “continuous coverage” provision, in which those who sign up for coverage outside of the normal open enrollment period would pay a 30 percent surcharge to the normal insurance premium. This surcharge is an arbitrary price control. While 30 percent represents an approximate average of the additional health risk of late enrollees, the 30 percent provision incentivizes those who face much higher costs to sign up, forcing insurers to cover them at a loss. This seems like a recipe for adverse selection death spirals.

The critical mistake of the AHCA is its insistence on flat, non-means-tested tax credits. The flat credit will price many poor and vulnerable people out of the health insurance market.

As I wrote last month, the AHCA creates a steep benefit cliff between those on Medicaid (subsidizing approximately $6,000 per patient per year), and those just above the poverty line who will get tax credits of about $3,000. People just below poverty will be strongly disincentivized to make more money, effectively trapping them in poverty.

You want to lose your majority? Because this is how you lose your majority.

But here’s what Trump said this morning:

This is more cause for hope than Philip Klein’s take earlier today, but remain wary of Congress ever getting to Phase Two after they can safely claim to have “done something” about ObamaCare.

GEORGE KORDA: UT’s microaggressions laboratory: Where free speech is a priority?

On university campuses, not all microaggressions are equal.

THE HIGH EXPLOSIVE GUIDED MORTAR ROUND: It appears the military will finally field the long-anticipated “pinpoint accurate” 120 mm mortar round.

The U.S. Army plans to issue contracts this year for development of a next-generation laser-guided 120mm mortar system.

The new precision high explosive guided mortar, which will replace the current system, eliminates the need to typically fire several rounds to adjust fire for accurate strikes and also incorporate threat counter-measures and enhanced mobility.

In the mid-1990s I attended an informal briefing at an Army weapons lab that addressed “smart 120 mm mortar rounds.” The update was on background. One thing that wasn’t classified was that the lab was trying to increase 120 mm mortar accuracy and there were tweaks that improved accuracy. “Improving precision” was the way the briefer put it. I mentioned this in a couple of speeches I gave in the late 1990s that addressed military modernization issues. I’ve fired mortars, 81 mm and 4.2”. The Four-Deuce dates me. Both mortars are fine weapons. They are usually classified as infantry heavy weapons (though tank battalions had a 4.2″ platoon). These mortars are also area weapons, not pinpoint. Area for a Four Deuce meant you were kinda sorta firing into a four to eight-acre target. (OK, critics, 20 acres. I’m trying to communicate a general idea here to good folks who haven’t done it.)

The lab wanted to achieve pinpoint accuracy for 120 mm mortars. Put a round at range into a meter-wide hole.

The Pentagon is soliciting contract bids for laser guided munitions. A laser guided munition was mentioned in the briefing. A 120 mm round is big enough to carry explosives and sophisticated sensors. Yes, 24 years ago. It’s no secret a laser-guided round was being developed. But getting this “stuff” to work when soldiers and marines need it is hard to do if you want to do it right.

Here’s a photo of a USMC 81 mm mortar crew firing a round. It isn’t a 120 mm but it serves to illustrate the basic procedure. Good photo, too.

UPDATE: Looks like it is a 60 mm mortar. A commenter says that DOD will correct the error. Is there anything Instapundit can’t do?

FTC COMMISSIONER: U.S. Must ‘Stand Up’ to China Over Intellectual Property Theft.

WHILE YOU WERE WATCHING NORTH KOREA: Iran Launches Two Ballistic Missiles, Sinking an Offshore Barge 150 Miles Away.

MEGAN MCARDLE OFFERS ADVICE TO STUDENT PROTESTERS: Use Your Words.

The fact that two different speeches triggered violence at two different campuses within the space of a month suggests that we may be entering into a new and more dangerous phase of the anti-free-speech movement. Free-speech advocates, particularly the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, have done a great job pushing back against overweening college administrations that try to curtail the speech of students and professors. But these are actions coming from the students. Who do you sue to keep a mob of students from resorting to the heckler’s veto, or their fists, to combat ideas they don’t like?

I reached out to Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE, to ask him that question. Greg agrees that while it’s early to call this a trend, there are definitely some warning signs. Hitting people with sticks and starting fires “does seem to us to be a new and scary thing,” he says.

Why is it happening? He points to one possible contributing factor. “One thing we really noticed that things had changed was the progression of ‘safety’ into meaning ‘perfectly comfortable,'” he said. Once you’ve defined words as being equivalent to assault, then you’re plausibly justified in using violence to repel the threat.

That’s basically the logic of the editorials that the Berkeley student newspaper published in defense of the rioters.

Well, people who have never learned to think or argue can’t use their words. So, like a toddler, they scream. Funny, you never see these freakouts at trade schools.

I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HIM, BUT HIS COMPANY’S A MAJOR LOCAL PRESENCE: Randy Boyd enters governor’s race: ‘I could not be more excited.’ He joins fellow Republican Mark Green and Nashville Democrat Karl Dean as declared candidates.

HOLIDAYS IN HELL: North Korea bars Malaysians from leaving, in ‘diplomatic meltdown’

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a covert CIA hacker base.

Does Wikileaks expect us to be outraged that we have a forward intelligence base, using the time-honored tradition of diplomatic cover, located in the heart of troubled a Europe?

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE (CONT’D): Judge: Male student expelled for sexual assault may have been victim himself. “In one of the most absurd cases of campus sexual assault to date, a male student was expelled after he ‘blacked out’ and had oral sex performed on him. The woman who performed the act would, nearly two years later, accuse him of sexual assault, even though the evidence heavily suggested it was the male student who was the victim. Now a U.S. district court judge in Massachusetts has vindicated this expelled student, an Asian-American student known only as John Doe in court documents.”

This absurdly hostile environment against male/Asian students is found at Amherst College. Cost of attending Amherst College: $69,586 per year.

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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

If the progressive media and intelligence agencies were hand-in-glove leaking damaging rumors about Trump, and if none were yet substantiated, then the issue reversed and turned instead on a new question: How were they trafficking in confidential intelligence information if not from skullduggery of some sort? No wonder that some smarter observers backtracked from the Russian-Trump collusion charges of the past six months, given that the leaks were less likely to be credible than they were criminal. The accusers have become the accused. And who would police the police?

The media and the anti-Trump Republicans decried Trump’s reckless and juvenile antics as unbefitting a president. Perhaps, but they may have forgotten Trump’s animal cunning and instincts: Each time Trump impulsively raises controversial issues in sloppy fashion — some illegal aliens harm American citizens as they enjoy sanctuary-city status, NATO European partners welch on their promised defense contributions, Sweden is a powder-keg of unvetted and unassimilated immigrants from the war-torn Middle East — the news cycle follows and confirms the essence of Trump’s otherwise rash warnings. We are learning that Trump is inexact and clumsy but often prescient; his opponents, usually deliberate and precise but disingenuous.

Read the whole thing. Plus: “Obama officials have written contorted denials that by their very Byzantine wording suggest there is some truth to the thrust of Trump’s accusations. . . . At best, the public is learning that intelligence agencies and the Obama Justice Department deliberately monitored Trump’s campaign effort (and leaked its findings), acts that fit a larger pattern of seeking to oppose his 2016 campaign.”

IT’S A MORATORIUM, NOT A BAN: Unsatisfied Critics of Trump Immigration Order: This is ‘Muslim Ban 2.0’

PHILIP KLEIN: Republican Obamacare plan signals that liberalism has already won.

I’ve already shared my skepticism that the bill, which doesn’t actually start repealing the major spending provisions of Obamacare until the 2020 presidential election, would actually end up repealing much in practice. But for the sake of argument, let’s just assume the plan gets implemented exactly as written.

Supporters of the bill could argue that it does make changes to Obamacare – repealing taxes, reducing spending, and scaling back some mandates and regulations. There are even a few areas in which one could argue the bill moves health policy in a more conservative direction relative to the pre-Obamacare status quo. It provides for expanded health savings accounts and, though it would spend more money than otherwise would have been the case before Obamacare, it would overhaul Medicaid into a program in which states are given a per capita grant and provided the flexibility to run their own programs.

But at the same time, the GOP bill preserves much of the regulatory structure of Obamacare; leaves the bias in favor of employer healthcare largely intact; replaces Obamacare’s subsidies with a different subsidy scheme; and still supports higher spending for Medicaid relative to what was the case before Obamacare.

What we have here is the GOP negotiating with itself over the terms of its surrender.

R.I.P., DOUG HENRY. The last time I saw him was at Bob Simms’ funeral, where to my surprise he recognized me. When I was an intern for the State Senate in college, my office was right across the hall from his. I remember I was in working on a Saturday and hardly anyone else was around, but he was in his office. He had a broken leg and he had his cast propped up on a chair while he read through reports. We chatted a bit, somehow it came up that I was reading Omar Khayyam, and we wound up having a long and interesting conversation on the subject. Although I think a lot of the other college-aged interns (and me too, at first) discounted him because he seemed like such an Old South figure, he was enormously smart and always treated everyone with respect, if sometimes of an absent-minded variety.

Henry was, with Ned Ray McWherter and John Jay Hooker, one of the very last of the old-fashioned Southern Democrats. Unlike the more modern Bob Forehead generation, these old-style pols didn’t display contempt for voters, or political opponents. As everyone does, they had their flaws, but we’re worse off without them. And, of course, if Al Gore had listened to Ned Ray McWherter in the summer of 2000, he’d have been President.

UPDATE: Stewart Baker emails: “A towering presence and a humble man. My Doug Henry story has to do with NY v. US, which I believe put constitutional federalism on a far more secure footing than National League of Cities, a precedent Justice Blackmun was slowly eating away. I was working with the State and Local Legal Center, and Sen. Henry wanted to make a strong federalism argument in NY v. US but couldn’t get the political support to file. So instead he hired me for $10 thousand of his own money to file amicus in the case. On that budget, I couldn’t do any legal research to speak of, so I wrote an op-ed and sprinkled it with cites. The result was a strong brief — and eventually a strong Court opinion — arguing that it was a violation of federalism for Congress to order states to engage in rulemaking or other governmental tasks. All due to Sen. Henry’s commitment to the cause (and his limited budget).”

IN HONOR OF NATIONAL CEREAL DAY, THIS CLASSIC ESSAY FROM ACE: No Matter How Hard We Run, We Can Never Escape Our Childhood Breakfast Cereals. “I wanted to be an Apple Jacks kid. Apple Jacks kids had so much fun in the commercials. Fresh-faced, healthy, and free, and hopeful for the future. Singing and dancing and just loving on their Apple Jacks. And the cereal was awesome too. I had it once in a Snack-Pack that fell off a truck. But there were no commercials for Kaboom. It was just a dirty little secret, like massage parlors and the back room at a pawnbroker’s.”

SO NOW WE KNOW WHO CARES MORE ABOUT VIRTUE-SIGNALLING THAN CHILDREN: DC-area school district will close for ‘day without a woman’ protest against Trump.

A Washington D.C. suburb has canceled school this Wednesday, citing mass absenteeism among teachers on what activists have declared will be “a day without a woman.”

Alexandria City Public Schools announced on its website Monday afternoon that more than 300 school staff members have announced they will not report to work on March 8, and because of the mass absenteeism, schools will not open.

Activists have called on women to “strike” on Wednesday to demonstrate opposition to President Trump.

School officials, in a note to parents, said, “this is not a decision that was made lightly.”

Well, the kids won’t mind. And feminism nowadays is mostly about elevating virtue-signalling over the interests of children. And the interests of working-class women, many of whom will have to take an unpaid day off from work to look after their kids, since the schools will be closed. I’m sure the teachers are taking paid leave, though.

CHANGE! Senate Democrat Who Claimed Hard Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion: Uh, Never Mind.

SOME RARE GOOD NEWS FOR LEGAL EDUCATION: Paul Caron Named Dean of Pepperdine Law School.

DEMOCRAT PROFESSOR INTIMIDATED BY LEFTWING MOB, BLAMES TRUMP. By Roger Kimball’s telling of the Middlebury Meltdown, Middlebury Professor Allison Stanger acted with all the courage one could possibly hope for during the violent protest. And this from Stanger’s Facebook account of what happened:

I want you to know what it feels like to look out at a sea of students yelling obscenities at other members of my beloved community. There were students and faculty who wanted to hear the exchange, but were unable to do so, either because of the screaming and chanting and chair-pounding in the room, or because their seats were occupied by those who refused to listen, and they were stranded outside the doors. I saw some of my faculty colleagues who had publicly acknowledged that they had not read anything Dr. Murray had written join the effort to shut down the lecture. All of this was deeply unsettling to me. What alarmed me most, however, was what I saw in student eyes from up on that stage. Those who wanted the event to take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so. It was clear to me that they had effectively dehumanized me. They couldn’t look me in the eye, because if they had, they would have seen another human being. There is a lot to be angry about in America today, but nothing good ever comes from demonizing our brothers and sisters.

Things deteriorated from there as we went to another location in an attempt to salvage the event via live-stream for those who were still interested in engaging. I want you to know how hard it was for us to continue with fire alarms going off and enraged students and outside agitators banging on the windows. I thought they were going to break through, and I then wondered what would happen next. It is hard to think and listen in such an environment. I am proud that we somehow continued the conversation. Listen to the video and judge for yourself whether this was an event that should take place on a college campus.

When the event ended, and it was time to leave the building, I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it. I was ready for dinner and conversation with faculty and students in a tranquil setting. What transpired instead felt like a scene from Homeland rather than an evening at an institution of higher learning. We confronted an angry mob as we tried to exit the building. Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm both to shield him from attack and to make sure we stayed together so I could reach the car too, that’s when the hatred turned on me. One thug grabbed me by the hair and another shoved me in a different direction. I noticed signs with expletives and my name on them. There was also an angry human on crutches, and I remember thinking to myself, “What are you doing? That’s so dangerous!” For those of you who marched in Washington the day after the inauguration, imagine being in a crowd like that, only being surrounded by hatred rather than love. I feared for my life.

The attack eventually sent Stanger to the E.R., where she ended up on painkillers and wearing a neck brace. She paid for her defense of free speech in a way few of us ever have to.

But then this, from the end of her report:

To people who wish to spin this story as one about what’s wrong with elite colleges and universities, you are mistaken. Please instead consider this as a metaphor for what is wrong with our country, and on that, Charles Murray and I would agree. This was the saddest day of my life. We have got to do better by those who feel and are marginalized. Our 230-year constitutional democracy depends on it, especially when our current President is blind to the evils he has unleashed.

The left attacks its own… because Trump.

CHECK YOUR WHITE-GIRL PRIVILEGE, CHELSEA: Chelsea Clinton: Carson’s remark on slaves and immigration ‘can’t be real.’ As we know, multimillionaires of pallor aren’t allowed to have opinions on such things.