MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR THIS WEEK IS ABOUT THIS VERY QUESTION: Do Social Media Nightmares Really Mean the Airlines Are Out of Control?

SHOCKER: In the ‘tolerant’ Netherlands, solidarity is for white women.

THIS COULD BE THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME THAT THE WORDS CHARLES SCHUMER AND “FAIR” ARE USED IN THE SAME SENTENCE. Roger Simon: Schumer’s Special Prosecutor Proposal for Russia Lacks “Fairness.”

IT’S A MYSTERY: Somali Refugee Flow to Minnesota Slows Dramatically.

FLY THE OVERLY FRIENDLY SKIES: United Airlines’ Cockpit Door Access Info May Have Been Made Public.

United Airlines has learned that some cockpit door access information may have been made public, the airline said in a statement. However, the airline says it has a protocol in place that ensures the cockpits on its flights remain secure.

“The safety of our customers and crew is our top priority and United utilizes a number of measures to keep our flight decks secure beyond door access information,” United spokeswoman Maddie King said in an emailed statement.

“In the interim this protocol ensures our cockpits remain secure.”

A bulletin obtained by CNN sent to the airline’s pilots warns them that “flight deck access procedures may have been compromised.”

United has already had a bad year, and it’s only May.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR OPEC: Argentina’s Shale Hoping for Cash Windfall.

The shale boom has thus far remained a uniquely American phenomenon (for a long list of reasons), but the issue of other countries replicating that success has always been a question of when, not if. Argentina’s Vaca Muerte formation contains the second-largest reserves of shale gas in the world behind China, and as the WSJ reports, those multitudes of hydrocarbons are attracting the keen interest (and capital) of oil and gas companies. . . .

If and when this cash does start flowing, it will be because Argentina identified its need for market reforms, and followed through on making those necessary changes. We’ve been tracking this story for many years now, and each time we’ve checked in on the Vaca Muerta it’s looked a little bit closer to fulfilling its potential. And progress has been made—labor unions have agreed to up drilling productivity and lower costs, a necessary step for Argentina’s shale ambitions to be fully realized.

But the country’s energy minister is still talking in terms of action two or three years from now, and that means that, for the time being, the United States is going to remain the only real player in the shale game.

I can live with that, too.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK! $697,177 for a ‘Climate-Change Musical’: You Call That Science?

The [National Science Foundation], whose mission is to ensure U.S. leadership in areas of science and technology that are essential to economic growth and national security, frequently funds politically correct but low-value research projects. A few doozies include the veiling-fashion industry in Turkey, Viking textiles in Iceland, the “social impacts” of tourism in the northern tip of Norway, and whether hunger causes couples to fight (using the number of pins stuck in voodoo dolls as a measure of aggressive feelings). Research funding in the geosciences, including climate change, is certainly legitimate, but not when it goes to ludicrous boondoggles such as a climate-change musical that cost $697,177 to produce.

The primary culprit is the NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, known as SBE. Underlying its ability to dispense grants is the wrongheaded notion that social-science projects such as a study of animal depictions in National Geographic and a climate change musical are as important as research to identify early markers for Alzheimer’s disease or pancreatic cancer.

In January President Obama signed the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, which accomplished little with respect to setting funding priorities other than endorsing the only two criteria NSF had previously used to evaluate grant applications—the “intellectual merit” of the proposal and its “broader impacts” on society. The bill’s lead proponent, House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, had wanted to include a “national interest” criterion defined by several factors including improving economic competitiveness, health, national security, the STEM workforce and scientific literacy.

In the end the national interest standard was retained, but only to provide examples of how grant applicants can satisfy NSF’s “broader impacts” requirement. In other words, SBE will continue funding marginal research by social scientists—what a former NSF official characterized as “the inmates running the asylum.”

It’s an intellectually pretentious New Deal-type make-work program for progressives.

Zero out its budget and shut it down.

EDUCATION: Students Design Ways to Mine the Moon for Rocket Fuel.

Depending on where the best ice reserves are, we might need to build several small robotic moon bases. Each one would mine ice, manufacture liquid propellant and transfer it to passing spacecraft. Our team developed plans to accomplish those tasks with three different types of rovers. Our plans also require a few small robotic shuttles to meet up with nearby deep-space mission vehicles in lunar orbit.

One rover, which we call the Prospector, would explore the moon and find ice-bearing locations. A second rover, the Constructor, would follow along behind, building a launch pad and packing down roadways to ease movements for the third rover type, the Miners, which actually collect the ice and deliver it to nearby storage tanks and an electrolysis processing plant that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The Constructor would also build a landing pad where the small near-moon transport spacecraft we call Lunar Resupply Shuttles would arrive to collect fuel for delivery as newly launched spacecraft pass by the moon. The shuttles would burn moon-made fuel and would have advanced guidance and navigation systems to travel between lunar bases and their target spacecraft.

When enough fuel is being produced, and the shuttle delivery system is tested and reliable, our plan calls for building a gas station in space.

Fill ‘er up.

WELL, GIVEN THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF ANY EVIDENCE OF CRIMES, YES: David Frum: A Special Prosecutor Is Not the Answer. Well, except for Hillary’s emails. There’s plenty of evidence to support a special prosecutor — or just an ordinary DOJ criminal prosecution — there.

Related: Andrew McCarthy: What Crime Would A Special Prosecutor Prosecute? “Notice that although Senator Schumer casually asserts that ‘a serious offense’ has been committed, he does not tell us what that offense is. That’s because there isn’t one.”

The real crime was beating Hillary, of course.

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ED MEESE: Trump’s Travel Ban ‘Clearly’ Legal, Should Be Upheld.

It’s a moratorium, not a ban.

TO BE FAIR, NORTH KOREA MAKES A LOT OF B.S. CLAIMS: North Korea Says New Missile Can Carry ‘Large’ Nuclear Warhead.

AT LEAST EVEN ODDS THAT DEMOCRATS WILL NOW SWITCH TO OPPOSING THESE: Trump calls for paid family leave, expanded women’s healthcare.

BECAUSE IT WILL CATCH THEM CHEATING. NEXT QUESTION? Why Are Democrats Afraid of the Election Integrity Commission? “Indeed, smart liberals are already moving away from the mantra that ‘there is no voter fraud’ to a more nuanced position. They know that it’s likely that if Kobach and his fellow commissioners allow states to examine federal databases of permanent legal aliens, holders of temporary visas, or alien filers of tax returns, they will probably find people who are illegally registered to vote — and voting. Kobach told me in an interview that states have tried to run those databases against their own voter-registration lists for years, but the Obama administration turned down all their requests.” And it’s pretty obvious why.

THIS WOULD MATTER IF IT WEREN’T FOR “THE REID OPTION:” Democrats stack up ways to torpedo Trump’s nominations.

Undeterred by its failed effort to stonewall Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, the Democratic leadership is going on a full-court press to resist President Trump’s nominations for judgeships and FBI director in the Senate. However, if they commit, the party risks losing the moral high ground it hung over the Republican Party’s head when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to schedule confirmation hearings for former President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland.

In the clearest symbol yet of the Democrats’ coming intransigence was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he “would support” fellow Democratic Sen. Mark Warner’s push to hold the not-yet-announced FBI director nominee hostage if the Trump administration doesn’t agree to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

There are currently 54 Republicans in the Senate, 44 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. If Republicans unite behind a Trump pick to head the FBI, Democrats will have no way to block consideration of the nominee because in 2013 the then-Democratic-led Senate went through with the “nuclear option” on executive branch nominees. This altered the rules to require only a simple majority of 51 senators, instead of 60, to overcome a filibuster.

Acknowledging that his party doesn’t have the votes to actually block the FBI nomination, Schumer pressed Republicans to choose country over party.

Hint to the Senate GOP: You never “choose country” by going along with a Schumer scheme.

KURT SCHLICHTER IS HAPPY WITH THE ZEITGEIST: Liberals Are An Inferno Of Flaming Crazy And We Should Pour Gasoline On The Fire.

This is great!

All this insanity is going to help us normals retain power, from your gyno-hat marches to the fake hate crimes to your insistence that the Russians are responsible for everything from Hillary losing the election to the rarely-discussed but well-known liberal epidemic of ED.

Here’s a little test. It’s been about six months since Trump treated The Smartest Most Accomplished Woman In The World like a NordicTrack treats Harry Reid, and does anyone know even one person who has said, “You know, I voted for Trump, but now after Neil Gorsuch, General Mattis and H.R. McMaster, I really wish I had checked the box for Felonia von Pantsuit?”

Except maybe for the disappointed white-nationalist crowd, nope.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? By year’s end, the Pentagon wants computers to be leading the hunt for Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The Pentagon has raced to buy and deploy drones that carry high-resolution cameras over the past decade and a half of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But on the back end, stateside analysts are overwhelmed. Pentagon leaders hope technology can ease the burden on the workforce while producing better results on the battlefield.

“How do we actually begin to automate that in a way that gives time back to analysts who otherwise spend 80 percent of their time doing…mundane, administrative tasks associated with staring at full-motion video,” Shanahan said.

If an analyst sees something now, he or she typically types the data manually into a spreadsheet. Pentagon leaders do not believe that’s a good use of these analysts’ time.

So last month, Work — perhaps the Pentagon’s lead champion for marrying people and technology — established a special cell called the Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team. The group will look to integrate big data and machine learning across the military.

Joking headline aside, this project looks like the perfect way to streamline endless data into something overworked analysts can handle, and that the military can then make good use of.

Or maybe that’s just what Skynet wants you to believe…

MISS USA WINNER angers liberals with healthcare answer.

ONCE AGAIN, THE PUBLIC ISN’T BUYING WHAT THEY’RE SELLING: Marvel Cancels Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther & The Crew Comic After Two Issues. “Ta-Nehisi Coates, the celebrated public intellectual, faced a setback in his attempt to introduce racial diversity to the world of comic books when Marvel announced that Black Panther & The Crew, which Coates had been writing with Yona Harvey, would be canceled after six issues. Only two issues have been published thus far; The Verge, which first reported the news, said Coates cited ‘poor sales’ as the reason for the cancellation.”

Oil surges on output cut extension but analysts caution upside is capped.

Oil is going to range trade between $40 and $55 per barrel while the marginal cost of production in the U.S. remains in the middle of that spectrum at around $50 per barrel, according to James Butterfill, Head of Research and Investment Strategy at ETF Securities.

“Every time oil tests that level…you see clients trading around it,” Butterfill observed, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday.

“Every time it goes below that $50 a barrel level, it’s a buying opportunity and roughly when it hits about $50, we see a lot of selling at that point,” he added.

The past week has seen a pick-up in flows with Butterfill noting that clients had bought around $130 million of crude oil in the past week with his firm, as part of year-to-date inflows to the asset class for his firm of around $340 million.

Analyst consensus now sees a cap on prices at around $60 according to Dean Turner, economist at UBS Wealth Management, also speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday.

The real cap is on how much money the OPEC cartel can squeeze out of the rest of the world, thanks to American frackers.

WHY SHOULDN’T HE? THEY ALL DO. White House Won’t Deny Trump is Taping Oval Office Conversations.

The press has tried to conflate “taping” with “Nixon.” But Nixon kept his tapes secret, and tried not to release them because they might contain incriminating information. Trump has threatened to release tapes, if other people lie. Not the same thing at all.

Exit question: If Comey lied to Trump, telling him that he wasn’t under investigation when he actually was, is that a felony under 18 U.S.C 1001? I think the answer is yes.

21ST CENTURY PARENTING: Turning Your 8-Year-Old Son Into a Drag Queen.

These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.

OF COURSE NOT; HE’S TRYING TO GET INTO BED WITH ERDOGAN: Putin says Russia sees no need to arm Syrian Kurds.

“Unlike other countries we are not announcing any arms deliveries to Kurdish formations,” said Putin, who was speaking in Beijing. “We don’t believe we need to start such work.”

Putin said the fact that the Kurds were engaged in the fight against Islamic State militants meant it made sense to maintain working contacts with them however “even if it’s only to avoid (accidental) clashes.”

The Kurds are the most powerful anti-ISIS force on the ground, but Turkey considers them terrorists.