WHY ARE LEFTIST UNIVERSITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE? Duke Reports a Sexual Assault Rate 5 X as High as Our Most Dangerous City.

I think President Trump’s Department of Education should cut off federal funding for this menace. But there is a solution!

Reynolds Online University, Where Nobody Gets Raped!

DEEP STATE: Five 9th Circuit Judges Eviscerate the ‘Fundamental Errors’ in Ruling Against Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’

THE PRICE IS CERTAINLY GOOD: Fayachi Riflescope 3-9X40EG Illuminated Tactical Rifle Scope with Red Laser & Holographic Dot Sight, $69.95 (65% off).

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: These recently declassified nuclear test videos are utterly mesmerizing, terrifying.

FEAR AND LOATHING FOR FUN AND PROFIT: The Hate Group That Incited the Middlebury Melee.

Morris Dees is a born salesman who was a committed capitalist before he entered elementary school. “When I was 5, I bought a pig for a dollar. I fattened it up and sold it for $12,” he once told People magazine. “I always had a feel for making money.”

When his mother sent him a fruitcake his freshman year in Tuscaloosa, Morris and classmate Millard Fuller wrote other students’ parents offering to deliver freshly baked birthday cakes. Soon they were selling 350 cakes per month. By the time they left law school, they were making $50,000 a year—$400,000 in today’s dollars.

After graduation, Dees and Fuller hung out a shingle and practiced law. But the real money came from their mail order business, peddling everything from cookbooks to tractor cushions. In 1969, Dees sold the direct-mail firm to the Times Mirror Co. for $6 million. By then, Fuller had cashed out, given away his money, and with his wife gone to live a Christian life building homes for the poor—efforts culminating in the creation of Habitat for Humanity.

Dees also started a nonprofit, which he named the Southern Poverty Law Center. But he gave up neither the high life nor the direct-mail business. He lives in luxury with his fifth wife and still runs the SPLC, which has used the mail-order model to amass a fortune. Its product line is an unusual one: For the past 47 years, Morris Dees has been selling fear and hate.

Read the whole thing.

LEGENDARY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST JIMMY BRESLIN DEAD AT 88. In his introduction to his mid-‘70s anthology on the New Journalism, Tom Wolfe credited Breslin as being a key player in that form’s early days, when Breslin stumbled upon the opinion columnists’ equivalent of the discovery of fire:

The Herald Tribune hired Breslin to do a “bright” local column to help offset some of the heavy lumber on the editorial page, paralyzing snoremongers like Walter Lippmann and Joseph Alsop. Newspaper columns had become a classic illustration of the theory that organizations tend to promote people up to their levels of incompetence. The usual practice was to give a man a column as a reward for outstanding service as a reporter. That way they could lose a good reporter and gain a bad writer. The archetypical newspaper columnist was Lippmann. For 35 years Lippmann seemed to do nothing more than ingest the Times every morning, turn it over in his ponderous cud for a few days, and then methodically egest it in the form of a drop of mush on the foreheads of several hundred thousand readers of other newspapers in the days thereafter. The only form of reporting that I remember Lippmann going for was the occasional red-carpet visit to a head of state, during which he had the opportunity of sitting on braided chairs in wainscotted offices and swallowing the exalted one’s official lies in person instead of reading them in the Times. I don’t mean to single out Lippmann, however. He was only doing what was expected of him . . . [ellipses in original — Ed.]

In any case, Breslin made a revolutionary discovery. He made the discovery that it was feasible for a columnist to leave the building, go outside and do reporting on his own, actual legwork. Breslin would go up to the city editor and ask what stories and assignments were coming up, choose one, go out, leave the building, cover the story as a reporter, and write about it in his column. If the story were big enough, his column would start on page one instead of inside. As obvious as this system may sound, it was unheard of among newspaper columnists, whether local or national. If possible, local columnists are even more pathetic. They usually start out full of juice, sounding like terrific boulevardiers and raconteurs, retailing in print all the marvelous mots and anecdotes they have been dribbling away over lunch for the past few years. After eight or ten weeks, however, they start to dry up. You can see the poor bastards floundering and gasping. They’re dying of thirst. They’re out of material. They start writing about funny things that happened around the house the other day, homey one-liners that the Better Half or the Avon lady got off, or some fascinating book or article that started them thinking, or else something they saw on the TV. Thank God for the TV! Without television shows to cannibalize, half of these people would be lost, utterly catatonic. Pretty soon you can almost see it, the tubercular blue of the 23-inch screen, radiating from their prose. Anytime you see a columnist trying to squeeze material out of his house, articles, books, or the television set, you’ve got a starving soul on your hands . . . You should send him a basket . . .

And as with the DNC-MSM still trying to understand flyover country after a half century of anthropologic study, those last sentences are a reminder that very little changes in the world of old media.

AND YOU CAN SEE WHY HE KEPT HIS PRIVATE SECURITY: Why is the security around Trump so bad?

So we (rightly) feared the impact on the polity if Obama were assassinated. But I think the effect would be just as destructive if someone killed Trump. And while we might not see urban riots, exactly, I suspect we’d see violence of some sort. The only good news is that the Secret Service’s serial ineptitude suggests that not that many potential assassins are lurking out there, or someone would have succeeded by now. . . .

SPENGLER: I denounce the shameful slanders against Sebastian Gorka, Friend of Israel.

THE KIM JONG NAM ASSASSINATION INVESTIGATION: Malaysia says to expect more arrests.

Malaysian police have previously identified eight North Koreans wanted for questioning in connection with the killing of Kim Jong Nam, some of them hiding in the North Korean embassy. A Vietnamese woman and an Indonesian woman have already been charged in the case…On Thursday, police said Interpol issued a “red notice”, the closest to an international arrest warrant, for four North Koreans wanted in connection with the murder.

Stay tuned.

A FORESEEABLE RESULT OF ALL THE HITLER TALK: Car bomb threat late Saturday night puts White House on alert; man arrested. “Secret Service officials arrested an unidentified man late Saturday night after he drove up to a White House entrance and told security officers there was a bomb in his vehicle.”

Flashback: Ann Althouse on the media, and priming unbalanced people to assassinate Donald Trump.

LITERALLY HITLER: Anti-Trump Billboard In Arizona Goes Heavy On The Nazi Imagery.

PEOPLE WHO ESPOUSE DIVERSITY AND TOLERANCE TO MULTICULTURAL WORLDVIEWS “UNEXPECTEDLY” TRIGGERED BY INANIMATE OBJECT: I survived wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat in NYC.

SWEDEN RECONSIDERS CONSCRIPTION: The background.

…the Russian threat returned in 2014 and Sweden was reminded that two decades of defense budget cuts and a lack of volunteers for military service had left Sweden unable to defend itself.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1410: Judicial Watch Forces Disclosure Of New Documents.

Related: ‘After School Satan Club’ Granted Tax-Exempt Status In 10 Days While Conservative Groups Waited Years. Well, I guess we know whose side the IRS is on. . . .

THE MASTERS OF THEIR DOMAIN: 5 Most Politically Incorrect ‘Seinfeld’ Moments.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Trump’s Budget Asks The Right Questions For Conservatives.

Conservatives are often accused of “hating government”, and some do. Still, there is a coherent and compelling center-right analysis that doesn’t simply blindly oppose federal spending, but asks of it a few questions:

Can the government actually make this problem better?
If so, must this problem be solved at the Federal level, or could it be done as easily or better by the states?
Even if the government might help solve this problem, would the associated costs in terms of loss of freedom, deadweight losses from regulation or taxation, and the declining accountability and manageability of government as it grows, actually be worth the benefit?

Many government programs currently in existence pass this test. Many on the list of programs and agencies scheduled for cuts do not. I mean, I like the arts. I adore NPR and PBS. But why should some carpenter in Akron who prefers “Duck Dynasty” to “Downton Abbey” be paying taxes so I can enjoy these things? In other cases, I would be willing to bet that the net long-term effect on the welfare of anyone other than those receiving government-funded paychecks was probably close to zero. Then there are the programs which might make sense in some form, but are indefensible as they currently exist. You can make an argument for community development block grants, in terms of developing poor parts of the country that need extra help. But it cannot possibly make sense to offer these grants in every state, even those that are net contributors to the federal budget. Yes, I understand the political arguments for such things — easier to get New York and California legislators to vote for it. As a policy matter, this is nonsensical.

While America’s libertarian streak is often wildly exaggerated, this much is not: most people don’t like the idea of a government that runs a zillion programs they have never heard of, to help some special interest they’ll never meet, and which have little accountability for actually generating results. This structure is a recipe for a lot of such programs.

And by cutting so broadly, the Trump administration may, ironically, have more hope than most of actually getting rid of the things that federal government should not be doing.

Indeed.

RADIO FREE EUROPE EXPLAINS TIME ZONES: Still having trouble adapting to Daylight Saving Time? The video is short, informative and witty. (“Saving” corrected!)

INTOLERANT LEFTISTS TRYING TO CHANGE THE RULES IN ORDER TO PUSH IDEOLOGY: But of course they are.

Judge Jeanine Pirro:

“The left is changing black letter law and journalistic standards and the Constitution in order to satisfy their agenda.”

THIS IS CNN? CNN host Fareed Zakaria gets profane in uncensored Trump discussion.

Appearing beside host Don Lemon on CNN Tonight in a discussion about the president’s unsubstantiated claims that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the election, a frustrated Zakaria said Trump is “indifferent” to the truth before launching into a profanity-laced comment about the commander-in-chief.

“He’s spent his whole life bulls———. He’s succeeded by bulls———. He has gotten the presidency by bulls———,” Zakaria said, uncensored. “It’s very hard to tell somebody at that point that bulls— doesn’t work, because look at the results, right?”

This is the same Fareed Zakaria who was once suspended from CNN for plagiarism. Given that his suspension only lasted a couple of weeks, it seems that CNN has a pretty high tolerance level for bullshit.

DATA FROM SMART DEVICES SHOW UP IN COURT:

Vast amounts of data collected from our connected devices — fitness bands, smart refrigerators, thermostats and automobiles, among others — are increasingly being used in US legal proceedings to prove or disprove claims by people involved.

ROGER SIMON: Left’s Use of Term ‘Resistance’ to Oppose Trump Is Appalling and Anti-Semitic. “Not only is this the most self-aggrandizing form of ‘cultural appropriation’ imaginable, it is also — not even by inference, but directly and insultingly — anti-Semitic. It trivializes the unspeakable horror Jews and millions of others went through then.”

THE BIGGER AN AGENCY BECOMES, THE LESS ATTENTION ITS BASIC MISSION GETS: EPA has been neglecting clean air to freelance on climate change.

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GROVER NORQUIST: This Week Guaranteed Trump’s Re-election, GOP Gains in 2018 and 2020.

Remember the date of March 13, 2017. It was the day President Trump was guaranteed his re-election and Republican congressional gains in 2018 and 2020.

It’s not complicated. Follow along.

The Congressional Budget Office released its study of Trump and Paul Ryan’s plan to repeal Obamacare and begin to reform our healthcare system. It had many numbers. Only two mattered: taxes and spending.

CBO announced that the repeal bill reduces taxes by almost $900 billion and reduces federal spending by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. This reduces deficit spending by $300 billion over the next 10 years. Thus the CBO, as official umpire, announced that the GOP Obamacare repeal plan may be enacted through “reconciliation,” the process that requires a simple majority in the House and only 51 votes in the Senate. No filibuster allowed.

Perhaps equally important, the $300 billion in deficit reduction gives Republicans a great deal of wiggle room to amend their basic plan to win votes in the House and Senate to win those 218 congressmen and 51 senators. Tax cuts can be added into the mix. Thanks to the CBO score and the underlying power of the legislation, Obamacare repeal will now pass. The path is clear.

Yes, Democrats tried to focus on the CBO’s guestimate as to how many Americans would choose to buy Obamacare insurance without the threat of fines and taxes. Answer: very few. This speaks to how unattractive Obamacare insurance products were and are.

True, but there are no guarantees in politics. Don’t get cocky, kid.