MICHAEL BARONE: Perceptions are that Trump’s policies are working.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Republicans Keep Repeating The Same Tax Mistake.

I wonder what a Laffer Curve for regulations, as opposed to taxes, would look like.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: THE DUTCH DELUSION: “No, Dutch voters have not tamed ‘the Brexit spirit’.”

DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY: Irish-Americans Still Do Irish-American Jobs. “The great wave of Irish immigration to the U.S. subsided more than a century ago. The days of rampant anti-Irish prejudice are long behind us. Irish-Americans (of whom I am one, or at least 50 percent of one) are now seen as about as American as Americans can get. But Irish-Americans do still have a unique job market profile.”

This suggests that immigrants may change much less over generations than many thought.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Charles Murray’s Attackers:

What happened to Charles Murray at Middlebury was an affront to academic freedom, democratic norms, freedom of speech, and basic manners. The mob action was, in a word, fascistic—extrajudicial, intolerant, irrational, violent, rooted in a politics of identity. Such incidents on university campuses have become a microcosm of disturbing trends in American society at large. All the vectors of our culture are fissiparous. “In the mid-1990s,” Murray wrote, “I could count on students who had wanted to listen to start yelling at the protesters after a certain point, ‘Sit down and shut up, we want to hear what he has to say.’” Now the intellectually curious are afraid to speak up. Unwelcome guests are run out of town.

And the coverage of all this has been terrible.

Murray’s hometown paper, the Washington Post, ran stories of the episode that accepted the radical worldview of the mob. The night of the attack, the Post carried an AP story with a headline that read “College students protest speaker branded white nationalist.” The unidentified correspondent wrote that “hundreds of Vermont college students have protested a lecture by a speaker they call a white nationalist.” Not until the second paragraph did the reader learn that this “white nationalist” was Murray, who has occupied a prestigious chair at the American Enterprise Institute for decades, written not one but three hugely influential books (Losing Ground, The Bell Curve, and Coming Apart), and has long argued for a classically liberal society in which every individual is subject to the impartial administration of justice. To equate Murray with the neo-Nazis of Stormfront or the ethnocentrism of Richard Spencer is not only baseless. It’s defamatory.

On March 4, the Post carried a subsequent AP story. The picture accompanying this article was captioned, “Hundreds of college students on Thursday protested a lecture by a speaker they call a white nationalist.” The lead ran as follows: “A libertarian author who has been called a white nationalist said college students who protested his lecture this week were ‘scary.’”

So much is wrong with that sentence. Notice the evasion implicit in the use of the passive voice. It’s not AP calling Murray a white nationalist. No, AP is just reporting that he has been called that. Notice how the reporter defines deviancy down by referring to “college students who protested.” What happened at Middlebury wasn’t a protest. It was an assault. And notice how the reporter, from the safe space of anonymity, uses scare quotes to trivialize Murray’s characterization of the mob as frightening. Maybe the reporter would be scared too if he or she were an invited guest of a student group who had to escape from an Orwellian orgy of hate under threat of physical attack by masked men. Just a thought.

The left will miss civility when it’s gone. They’re happy now while its disappearance is one-sided. That won’t last.

Related: Middlebury Agonistes:

Nice to know the APSA draws the line against violence. I am sure this was a tough call for them. Probably had to have a lot of meetings to think it through. Notice what is conspicuously missing from this statement: any reference to the downshouting or disinviting of conservative speakers that has run rampant on campus. It would seem the APSA tacitly accepts this practice. It’s only the violence they object to. How bold of them.

Well, people on the right will have to deploy these ‘accepted’ approaches before anything is done, I guess. It’s the hair-pulling lesson.

DAVID HARSANYI: Chuck Schumer’s Indecent Attacks on Neil Gorsuch. “Make no mistake, though: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) now opposes a potential SCOTUS justice because he promises to be impartial when upholding the Constitution. Since Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing starts Monday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and opponents have found ‘little to latch onto,’ according to Politico (which means they’ve found nothing to spin into accusations of misogyny or racism), Schumer and his allies have launched a ham-fisted effort to paint Gorsuch as a corporate stooge.”

Schumer’s a putz.

SCOTT ADAMS: Photos Don’t Lie? “I knew right away that it was fake because I don’t own a suit.”

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Donna Brazile Finally Admits She Passed Debate Questions to Hillary Clinton Campaign.

LEGAL IMMIGRANTS HAVE NO REASON TO FEAR DEPORTATION: Washington Post Reports Immigrants Are ‘Going Hungry’ Because of Trump.

MADNESS!  IMAGINE BASKETBALL TEAMS CHOSE PLAYERS THAT… OH, WAIT: Research Shows Firing Teachers Based on Performance Can Actually Work.

YEAH, CAUS’ READING BOOKS IS SO 20TH CENTURY:How virtual reality gaming may reshape classic literature.

BUT THEY DON’T WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE; THEY WANT TO VIRTUE SIGNAL: 6 Ways Liberal Celebrities Could Make A Difference.

WELL, NOW, THEY DIDN’T SPECIFY DESERVING OF WHAT: Dear Taste-Makers: You Are Not a “Deserving Elite”.

MY PARENTS AUDITED NUMEROUS “ADULTING” CLASSES — THEY WERE CALLED “THE DEPRESSION,” “WORLD WAR II” AND “THE COLD WAR:” ‘Adulting’ classes prove millennials’ nitwit parents are to blame.

THE EMPIRE PROTECTS ITSELF: Facebook Sued In Israel For Blocking All Links To Site Critical Of Facebook & Suggesting Site Was ‘Unsafe’.

CRICKETS:Bow Wow slurs Melania Trump in the nastiest way possible. Three guesses how reporters responded to the message.

FOR THE TIMES THEY ARE ACHANGING: Childish Dreams.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Chelsea Clinton joins Expedia’s board of directors.

Will Republicans now boycott Expedia in retaliation for anti-Ivanka efforts on the left?

OUCH:

UNEXPECTEDLY. Colin Kaepernick update: some teams ‘genuinely hate him:’ 

“He can still play at a high level,” an anonymous AFC general manager told Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman. “The problem is three things are happening with him.

“First, some teams genuinely believe that he can’t play. They think he’s shot. I’d put that number around 20 percent.

“Second, some teams fear the backlash from fans after getting him. They think there might be protests or (President) Trump will tweet about the team. I’d say that number is around 10 percent. Then there’s another 10 percent that has a mix of those feelings.

“Third, the rest genuinely hate him and can’t stand what he did [kneeling for the national anthem]. They want nothing to do with him. They won’t move on. They think showing no interest is a form of punishment. I think some teams also want to use Kaepernick as a cautionary tale to stop other players in the future from doing what he did.”

If only the NFL had a commissioner who hadn’t tacitly approved of that clown show, he could have saved Kaepernick from himself.

AS ALWAYS, THE BLUER THE STATE, THE WORSE THE CONDITION OF THE ROADS: Portland Anarchist Road Care, Skilled Workers Who Voluntarily Fix Roads When Local Government Won’t.

California, whose highways are among the nation’s worst could really use these guys — at least before Jerry Brown’s “road diet” reaches full anorexia.

AT AMAZON, deals on Bestsellers in Jewelry.

Plus, save on bestselling Office Products.

FLASHBACK VIDEO: A Lot of People, Including Hillary Clinton, Said Trump Didn’t Pay His Taxes. They’ll get a pass from the Legacy Media though.

AND HOSPITALS STILL AREN’T CLEAN ENOUGH: The Idea of Surgeons Washing Their Hands is Only 150 Years Old.

THAT INCLUDES ARIANNA AS WELL, RIGHT? HuffPo Writer Warns: All White People are on the “Racism Spectrum Until Further Notice.”

But then, overt racism is nothing new for the HuffPo.