SPRING DEALS GALORE at the Amazon Dress Shop.

Plus, save in Hunting and Fishing.

WHEN POLITICIANS TAKE SIDES: Videos show Berkeley cops doing nothing as violence erupts between protesters in street. “When he asked a pair of cops by a patrol car why they’re standing back, one told him they were ordered to stand down by their chief.”

THE BBC ASSESSES THE NORTH KOREAN CRISIS: “Unpredictability” is at play. Play? Hey Beeb, unpredictability has been a ploy.

North Korea has long been seen to use provocation and brinkmanship to raise tension for its own strategic advantage.

It is then able to win diplomatic and economic concessions through negotiations to defuse the crisis, only later to go on to renege on its disarmament commitments.

As the cycle begins again, at each stage, it moves a step closer to its goal of becoming a fully-fledged nuclear power.

But while the current state of technological advancement of North Korea’s weapons programme matters deeply to the outside world, in particular its near neighbours, the hostile rhetoric is rarely something to take at face value…

“If the US goes on with their reckless option of using military means then that would mean from that very day, an all out war,” Mr Han told me.

(His) interview does though give a hint of the new worrying unpredictability at play.

MORE:

The Kim regime’s

…message is clear.

Militarised and isolated, North Korea has the right to follow its own path and, Mr Han apparently believes, no one will be able to stop it.

So far, he has been proven right.

So far. But it appears South Korea, Japan and the US are tired of North Korea’s threat theater
and now see Pyongyang’s improving missile and nuclear weapons capabilities as a genuine threat.

OH, THAT RADICAL CHIC: New York Times opens its opinion pages to an honest-to-God terrorist:

The New York Times opened up valuable space in its opinion section this weekend for the accused terrorist Marwan Barghouti.

Born in the Palestinian village of Kobar, Barghouti, 57, is currently serving five consecutive life sentences.

* * * * * * *

None of the reasons for why Barghouti is currently in an Israeli prison are mentioned by the Times.

Rather, at the end of his rather lengthy op-ed, the U.S. paper describes the convicted murderer thusly: “Marwan Barghouti is a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.”

That’s one way to put it.

Of course, this is far from the first time that the Gray Lady has had one of her dalliances with radical chic. Perhaps the most infamous occurring, in a macabre bit of synchronicity, in the September 11th, 2001 edition of the paper.

(Classical reference in headline.)

DEMOCRATS AND POLITICS: Are you a White man? Is it funny when you die? Democrats in a public, political meeting cheer and laugh at the mention of the increased number of white men committing suicide. “About which other ethno-cultural community is it permitted to laugh and clap when they die by their own hands in larger numbers?”

OUT: TRUMP’S A BIG DUMBHEAD. In: Has Trump Stolen Philosophy’s Critical Tools? “Trump’s playbook should be familiar to any student of critical theory and philosophy. It often feels like Trump has stolen our ideas and weaponized them.”

Well, they were already weaponized. But a knife can cut both ways. “There were insights that were not kept secret, because it was thought that they’d help only one political side, and it didn’t work out that way. . . . He’s just expressing annoyance that ideas that came from the left didn’t restrict themselves to serving only the interests of the left. That’s not how ideas work. They get out and about and wreak havoc.”

POSTMODERNISM, THEN AND NOW:

Shot:

Pilate’s dilemma is captured in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a brilliant and bizarre film that is at once a genuine work of piety and one degree shy of being a genuine work of pornography. Hristo Shopov’s beleaguered Pilate invokes that most 21st-century of phrases: “my truth.” He explains to his wife that he is in an impossible position: The Jewish authorities will cause trouble if he does not condemn Jesus, while Jesus’s followers may revolt if he does. Either way there will be bloodshed, and the emperor has warned him that if Judea isn’t kept pacified, the blood shed will be Pilate’s own. “Ecce est mea veritas!” he says. “That is my truth!”

The Pilate of the Gospels maintains a higher degree of equanimity. When Jesus speaks to him of truth, he famously asks, “What is truth?”

—“Easter, Jesus & Pontius Pilate: Humbling Truth,” Kevin D. Williamson, NRO, yesterday.

Chaser:

● “Pomona College Students Say There’s No Such Thing as Truth, ‘Truth’ Is a Tool of White Supremacy.”

—Robby Soave, Reason.com, today.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Stunning College Dorms, Preposterous Luxury. I was talking to my mom not long ago about this, and she commented that back in her day, people sent kids off to colleges with spartan dorm rooms, communal baths, and bad food as a way of toughening them up and building character. Of course, that was before college was $60K a year.

AT AMAZON, save on Car Care products and equipment.

Plus, deals on Herbs, Spices, and Seasonings.

SORRY, TEAM OBAMA DOESN’T GET TO REWRITE HISTORY TO COVER PRESIDENT OBAMA’S LOUSY FOREIGN POLICY RECORD: Glenn’s posted on the Fareed Zakaria CNN Obama CYA. Truth wills out on Instapundit. In an election year Obama drew a tough guy’s red line forbidding the use of chemical weapons. A year later? Obamanoid fecklessness. The bottom line: Obama lied, Syrians continue to die.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT CALLS ON FRENCH WOMEN TO VOTE FOR MARINE LE PEN: Albright: ‘Special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.’

Well, there you have it. . . . (Joke stolen from Kate Litvak on Facebook).

FROM THE CENTER FOR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY: Economics 101: Small Government Is the Recipe for Creating Rich Nations. Yes, but it offers insufficient opportunities for graft.

Plus, some related thoughts from Daniel Mitchell.

ZOMBIE ON THE BATTLE FOR BERKELEY: “Antifa got their asses kicked, and were literally driven from the park and fled. Ooooooh, dearest me, right-wingers threw punches! Let us clutch our pearls! But that’s the point. People’s patience was used up. Saturday’s punches were in response to YEARS of being punched and not being allowed to fight back.”

Read the whole thing.

As David French writes at NRO in “The Battle of Berkley:”

We are now teetering on the edge of a truly terrifying incident, one trigger-pull away from a slaughter. Campus and urban progressives have a choice to make. Is this a nation of laws? If it is, then it’s time to grow a backbone, protect free speech, punish rioters, and expel those who disrupt the educational environment regardless of ideology. There should be no more sympathy or leniency for the lawless social-justice warrior than there is for the lawless neo-Nazi.

Every single time the progressive establishment ignores, minimizes, or whitewashes leftist violence, it sows the wind. Americans have watched mobs attack police and burn buildings in Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte, and Minneapolis. They have watched mobs riot over politics and free speech in Middlebury, Berkeley, Portland, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Is anyone at all shocked that when the police hang back, others will step into the void? Leftists are fond of saying “violence begets violence.” If we don’t restore the rule of law, we’ll all find out just how right they are.

The Tea Party was a peaceful protest made up of plenty of middle-aged men and women who saw themselves called Nazis and racists by the Cathedral for their efforts at reforming Big Government. Trump’s core supporters are made of tougher stock – and they know the DNC-MSM’s narrative is pre-written, no matter what happens. No one can say they’re surprised at this past weekend’s news. (OK, maybe the wedgies, though.)

Earlier: “Funny, you never see these freakouts at trade schools.”

WELL, THAT SOUNDS BAD: No Evidence Haslam Administration Requires Reporting of Female Genital Mutilation to Tennessee Department of Health, Despite High Potential Risk in Nashville.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS A SOLUTION TO ROBOCALLS: If You Want My Attention, Pay Me.

I’M STILL ENJOYING MY YOUTH: Middle age begins at 60, say researchers.

GEORGE KORDA ON Tennessee’s Gas Tax Increase.

WELL, THAT’S A GOOD DATE: Woman Saves Man’s Life on Their First Date.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: No, Russia isn’t sending a Terminator robot to the space station.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here are the perfect male and female bodies, according to men and women. Shocker: “It seems like the ideal female body for women was thinner than the ideal female body for men.”

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Student Punished by Title IX After Being Exonerated Attempted Suicide.

20+ YEARS OF FECKLESS NORTH KOREA POLICY, AND NOW: North Korea tensions have Hawaii pols revisiting emergency attack plans. “The plans were last revisited in the 1980s. But the Hawaii House Public Safety Committee on Thursday formally called for the state’s defense agency to repair their hundreds of Cold War-era fallout shelters and restock them with medical supplies, food and water.”

Coming soon to LA and SF. And then to everywhere else!

Related: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.

JAZZ SHAW: What’s the end game in Venezuela?

That leaves us with three equally horrible options to my way of thinking. The first would be to simply leave the status quo in place and see if Maduro can right the ship on his own and at least begin regularly feeding his people again. This sounds dubious at best and those who have been leading any protests or pushing for more legislative power from the opposition side will likely soon wind up in dungeons. The second, even more far fetched possibility is foreign military intervention to overthrow the government and set up some sort of transitional administration. Anybody want to sign up for that duty? I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting.

And that leaves perhaps the ugliest option. A revolution coming from the streets where the citizens somehow manage to overcome the well armed government forces and essentially hang Maduro from a meat hook on the streets of Caracas like a modern day il Duce. The death toll to the rebels would be horrendous and even if they succeeded… what then? There are multiple opposition groups representing very different factions and ideologies out there. Would internal warfare immediately follow until some sort of 21st century Robespierre arose from the blood soaked ashes and instituted a new Reign of Terror? If history teaches us anything, that possibility can’t be discounted and is likely more of a probability at this point.

This would normally be the portion of the essay where I raise my hand, point out how all of these proposals have shortcomings and offer a better solution of my own. No such luck here, sports fans.

Venezuela, post Maduro? Maybe at best a test case for the feasibility of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

HAVE FLIGHT DECK, WILL PROJECT POWER: U.S. Marines Want to Pack 20 Stealth Fighters on One Assault Ship.

The plan, which the Corps laid out in the 2017 edition of its annual aviation strategy document, has been under consideration for at least five years, according to the document.

Increasing demands on the U.S. Navy’s 10 supercarriers, the entry into service of the aviation-optimized America-class assault ships and the fast-growing numbers of vertical-landing F-35Bs in the Marines’ inventory finally makes the light-carrier scheme feasible … and necessary.

“While the amphibious assault ship will never replace the aircraft carrier, it can be complementary, if employed in imaginative ways,” the strategy document notes.

Indeed. A light carrier doesn’t pack the punch — or enjoy the staying power — of a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. But providing the Marines with that much mobile air cover would free up the Navy to concentrate on its own missions.