POWER, UNLIMITED POWER! Lithium-Ion Pioneer Introduces New Battery That’s Three Times Better.

94 year-old John Goodenough, one of the co-inventors of the lithium-ion battery that now powers everything from phones to Teslas, has developed a new solid-state battery formula that promises to hold three times more energy than li-on. Goodenough and his team also say the new battery, which replaces a liquid electrolyte with glass, would charge quickly, never explode, and perform well at low temperatures that cripple today’s batteries.

The battery is still in the early stages of development, with a recent paper describing it published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science. That stage of battery research would normally merit caution, since most ‘revolutionary’ new battery ideas in recent years have turned out to be impractical to produce or unfit for the real world.

But Goodenough, even at 94, demands attention. In 1980, he pioneered the cobalt-oxide cathode that forms the heart of lithium-ion batteries. The li-on became the backbone of the mobile electronics revolution, with some calling its impact as big as the transistor’s.

A battery that convenient would be a real boon, but more important is having enough sources of cheap energy to keep them charged at rates anyone can afford.

WELL, I DUNNO, THEY’RE REALLY PRETTY GOOD AT IT: Obama Minions Shouldn’t Act High and Mighty When It Comes to Abuse of Power.

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IS THERE A BACKGROUND CHECK FOR GLUTEN-FREE AMMO? Liberal Preppers Continue to Ready for Trump Apocalypse.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF MISOGYNY AND HATE: Cedric Richmond Sort Of Apologizes For Sexist Attack On Kellyanne Conway.

MATTHEW VADUM: Obama’s Wiretaps? Details of a Watergate-style conspiracy against Trump emerge. With Obama’s record of promiscuous spying and politicized bureaucracy, it’s entirely believable that he was spying on Trump. But just because it’s believable doesn’t prove that it happened. To determine that, we probably need a special prosecutor — whose brief, honestly, should be expanded to cover all political spying in the Obama Administration, not just spying on Trump.

PAULINA NEUDING: The Truth About Sweden.

This peculiarity of Swedish public discourse has often allowed politicians and public authorities to deny the problems caused by the country’s migration and integration policies, without being seriously challenged. The Swedish foreign ministry, for instance, launched a PR campaign in response to the debate following Donald Trump’s remarks about the country. It tweeted last week, as part of the campaign:

Does Sweden actually have ‘No-Go Zones’? No, we don’t.

You think that Swedish police have lost control? The ‘no-go zones’ are in fact ‘go-go zones’. #FactCheck

But no-go zones cannot simply be dismissed as a myth. Gordon Grattidge, chairman of a Swedish ambulance trade union, explained to me that no-go zones are a reality for paramedics in Sweden. There are areas where first responders can’t enter without police escort. Grattidge’s assessment is that ambulances are forced to retreat from such areas on a weekly basis.

Yet the government’s use of taxpayer money to deny the existence of no-go zones has not been met with protests from Swedish journalists.

How, then, should we understand the connection between crime and immigration in Sweden? Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt had the facts right when he tweeted in response to Trump: “Last year there were app 50% more murders only in Orlando/Orange in Florida, where Trump spoke the other day, than in all of Sweden. Bad.” That comparison, while correct, misses the point. Of course Sweden has not turned into Orlando or, for that matter, Chicago. But in a short time—maybe as short as two decades—Sweden has gone from a nation rightly considered a model of social cohesion, equality, low crime, and political stability to a society with growing enclaves of social unrest.

Read the whole thing.

CHANGE: Democratic Sen. Chris Coons backtracks on Trump campaign-Russia claim.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on Sunday said he was not aware of any collusion between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials to rig the election despite saying days earlier that there were “transcripts” of such activity.

“I have no hard evidence of collusion,” Coons told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “To the extent those comments that you just replayed might in some way be misinterpreted as leading to a hyperventilating attitude here in the Senate about this, I apologize for that.”

Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction. Now it’s being rowed back because the talk of “transcripts” supports the spying-on-Trump storyline.

Will we ever know? Maybe, if there’s a proper investigation into Obama Administration political spying.

Meanwhile, the rumors being floated about Trump are being retracted, and once everyone from Comey to Clapper has denied that he was ever under investigation, future “leaks” will come pre-discredited.

CHANGE: Drug overdose fatality rate higher than suicides, cars, guns.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Breitbart’s blogger brigade pays tribute, remembers fallen conservative general.

FROM THE INSTA-WIFE: A Man’s Guide to ‘A Day Without Women’.

TOM SHATTUCK: For Obama, spying is nothing new.

In what has already been a historically bad year for Democrats, it just may be that they’re about to lose again to Donald Trump, this time in a high-stakes game of Russian roulette.

The Dems’ Putin smear was supposed to paint President Trump as a friend of the tyrant and beneficiary of Russian meddling in the election. Instead, it is the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party, former President Barack Obama, who may take the fall.

Snooping on a presidential candidate is serious business.

The Democrats want you to think this is a crazy conspiracy theory for an unhinged tweeting president.

But Obama has a rich legacy of using the federal government as a political weapon and it would be foolish to think he suddenly started restraining himself, when he was never held to account by either the media or Democrats in power.

Remember, Obama’s Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the private phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters. It was pure spying.

Yeah, it’s not like the charges are out of character for Obama.

UPDATE: Stephen Hayes:

Even if Trump’s tweets were irresponsible—based only on media reports— Democrats and many journalists have treated the substance of the claims themselves as utterly inconceivable. Is it?

It’s the Obama Rorschach test. When Valerie Jarrett claimed shortly before the end of the Obama presidency that he’d had a “scandal free” eight years, most Democrats and journalists nodded their heads and most conservatives howled with a combination of laughter and frustration. To the extent that they paid attention to them at all, for journalists, the Obama scandals were minor footnotes to a much happier story of the Obama presidency. But for conservatives they were not just part of the story but key drivers of the narrative.

The Obama Department of Justice targeted James Rosen of Fox News as a possible “criminal co-conspirator” in a leak investigation and seized phone records of AP reporters and editors in 2013. The IRS under Barack Obama systematically targeted the president’s political opponents.

And there are numerous examples of the Obama administration and the intelligence leaders loyal to the president politicizing intelligence. In collaboration with the Obama White House, CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper worked for more than five years to keep the documents captured in the Osama bin Laden raid from public view. (See here and here for the exhaustive details). During the heated debate over the Iran Deal, Clapper’s office rewrote the threat assessment on Iran to downplay Iran’s involvement in transnational terror.

Beyond that, we know that several high-ranking Obama administration officials were caught lying about the details of the Benghazi attacks in the weeks before the 2012 presidential election—and for several years after. . . .

Both sides are citing Clapper as the final word on the parts of the interview that support their case. He should not be considered the final word on anything. In addition to his involvement in the bin Laden documents cover-up and his office’s rewriting of the Iran threat assessment, Clapper was caught misleading Congress.

We won’t know the full truth about all of this anytime soon. And even as we see bits of the truth revealed will we—will the country—recognize it? Or will Democrats believe their Democrat truth and Republicans believe their Republican truth? There is reason for concern.

Well, yes. Yes there is.

NOT ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL: Schumer’s plan to stop the wall.

• Schumer’s thinking: There’s nothing the Republicans would be willing to offer that could get Trump the eight Democratic Senators he needs to fund the wall. Mitch McConnell’s only other option would be to invoke the nuclear option and bypass the filibuster. But Democratic appropriators are betting the Republican leader won’t be willing to undermine such a fundamental Senate tradition just to pay for Trump’s wall.

• The evolving plan, being discussed by Schumer’s office and Senate appropriators: If Republicans put money for the wall into a bill, Democrats block it. It doesn’t matter what else is in the bill — Schumer will make it about the wall. The way Democrats see it, if they can block the wall, they’d crush a central feature of Trump’s political identity. And as the face of the strategy, Schumer would thrill the Democratic base (though less so the red-state Democratic senators up in 2018).

Whatever Schumer or others might think about the justness or efficacy of a border wall, the concept remains a popular one. If that’s the place where he and his Senate caucus want to make a stand, then help them make sure it’s a very public stand.

THEY VIEW A POLITICIZED PARTISAN BUREAUCRACY AS ONE OF THEIR CHIEF ASSETS, AND THEY’RE RIGHT TO DO SO: The NYTimes is cheering on the weaponization of the IRS against people they don’t like.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Middlebury Mob.

Tension on campus spiked the Monday before the event, when Middlebury Resistance, a group that seeks to “restore our sense of hope and justice” after the election victory of Donald Trump, held “resistance meetings” with students and faculty.

Attendees were divided on how to respond to Murray’s appearance, but a chunk of students settled on a tactic known as “simultaneous dialogue,” or shouting down the speaker, multiple sources told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Some professors in attendance gave “tacit and explicit support” to the strategy, one source reported, and admitted that they had not read Murray’s work.

“When asked by students and other faculty members whether they had ever read Charles Murray’s work, the organizers bristled at the notion that they should be asked to read a work before condemning it,” a source close to the meetings told TWS. “‘You mean you want me to read The Bell Curve?‘”

Cost of attending Middlebury College: $66,332 per year.

ROGER SIMON: #ObamaGate Is a Lot More than a Hashtag.

Related: Levin delivers DEVASTATING case against Obama admin’s wire scandal with proof the press won’t show.

Conservative radio host Mark Levin made the case that former President Obama and his operatives have actively worked to spy on, and undermine, President Donald Trump and his administration.

Levin spoke to “Fox & Friends” on Sunday and used liberal news sources to essentially prove that the Obama administration was behind spying on President Trump and others in his campaign during the election season.

Six agencies, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, were involved in investigating the Trump campaign.

“Are you telling me Barack Obama didn’t know what was going on in six agencies?” Levin asked.

And with the case Levin made, all with publicly available information, it’s tough to believe.

Much more at the link.

RUSSIAGATE: Clapper Denies His Agencies Monitored Trump; Panetta Alleges White House Obfuscation.

NYET: Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim.

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

What did the former president know, and when did he know it?

OUCH:

CHANGE: Amid Kim Jong Nam Furor, South Korea Hikes Reward For North Korean Defectors.

As NPR’s Elise Hu notes, the boost to reward pay is intended to alleviate the financial burdens of defection. “Defecting from North Korea is not only dangerous,” Elise tells our Newscast unit, “it’s expensive, as many defectors rely on networks of human smugglers and brokers who demand large payments.”

“One of the biggest reasons why North Koreans are hesitant about defecting is because they are fearful of making a living after they come to South Korea,” an official with South Korea’s Ministry of Unification explained, according to Yonhap. “The planned changes can alleviate such worries to a certain extent.”

And South Korea is interested in obtaining North Korean military equipment, too. The country is offering payouts to North Korean soldiers who turn in weapons such as armored vehicles and artillery.

The reward is rising “from roughly $217,000 up to $860,000,” which is a significant increase.

NO, BECAUSE THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Would journalists support congressional investigation of Obama surveillance of … journalists?

THIS IS A CONSPIRACY TO DEPRIVE PEOPLE OF THEIR FEDERALLY-PROTECTED RIGHTS, AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION SHOULD GET INVOLVED: Berkeley College Republicans Face Violence, Harassment Following Milo Yiannopoulos Riots.

KURDISH PRESIDENT: Independent Kurdistan is loyal response to Peshmerga sacrifices.

The fall of Mosul is likely to mark the beginning of the breakup of Iraq, as has been the case with countries who have come out of ethnic and religious conflicts, such as Czechoslovakia, Kurdish President Masoud Barzani says, adding that an independent Kurdistan would bring more stability to the Middle East, a region that otherwise has been troubled with massacres and conflict since the two world wars.

Barzani went on to say “independence and complete liberation” will be the loyal reward for the past and present sacrifices of the Kurdish nation.

President Barzani made these remarks to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, published on March 5, coinciding with the anniversary of the Kurdish uprising against the former Iraqi regime in 1991 which eventually gave birth to the present autonomous Kurdistan Region with its own parliament, government and armed forces.

“The desire to keep the united Iraq is there, but the reality is that today Iraq is already divided by unsolvable problems,” Barzani said when asked whether Iraq will come out of the war against ISIS as a united state, “Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting for 1400 years and we Kurds are the victims of this war. We have to find a new formula of coexistence.”

Joe Biden was ahead of his time.

WHEN WE SAID DIVERSITY IS VITAL, WE DIDN’T MEAN WE WOULD HIRE PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT! AALS Refuses To Address Political Imbalance Of Law School Faculties.

AALS isn’t just refusing to address the problem. They’re also refusing to allow research that would show the extent of the problem.

THAT’S ABOUT IT:Feminism: The Demonization of Males. The rules of the crab bucket say if you can’t pull yourself up, pull someone else down, and most women live and die by the crab bucket.