FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS YEAR: D.C. Elementary School With a History of Rodents and Bed Bugs Closes for Disinfecting.

When did public eduction become such a cesspit of… well, such a cesspit?

MATTIS SAYS NORTH KOREA’S RECKLESS ACTIONS MUST BE STOPPED: The SecDef is talking about nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

“This is a threat of both rhetoric and growing capability, and we will be working with the international community to address this,” he said. “We are working through the United Nations, we are working our allies, and we are working diplomatically including with those who we might be able to enlist in this effort to get North Korea under control.”

My last Observer column assessed the North’s escalating rhetoric and improving capabilities. It’s got the background.

UPDATE: I see Stephen posted on North Korea while I was typing up this post. Same story. But it’s a big one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, I read all the posts. I just hadn’t looked at the page in about 20 minutes and was going through about four articles on Korea. This report struck me as the best of the lot.

SECDEF MATTIS: North Korea ‘Threat of Both Rhetoric and Growing Capability,’ Must be ‘Stopped’

WINNING: Cramer says ConocoPhillips just proved low oil prices are here to stay.

Jim Cramer saw ConocoPhillips’ sale of a portion of its oil sands to Canadian producer Cenovus as a sign that the oil glut will keep prices low for a while.

“In one fell swoop ConocoPhillips confirmed a lot of what’s become the conventional wisdom in the oil patch: the price of crude’s not going to roar higher any time soon, even as it rallied nicely again today, climbing back over $50,” the “Mad Money” host said.

The purchase, which left ConocoPhillips with $10.6 billion in cash and $2.7 billion in stock, sent its shares soaring. Cramer said the company sold the sands because at today’s prices, extracting oil from tar sands is simply not worth the cost.

“It’s much better to take money from Cenovus, pay down debt, buy back stock and potentially increase the dividend than to keep pouring money into the dirtiest and most nasty form of oil around, the tar sands,” Cramer said.

Tar sands will remain uneconomical — right up until they stop.

STEPHEN HAWKING: We’re in the midst of a global revolt against the experts.

Well, to be fair, the experts’ track record hasn’t been that good lately.

DIPLOMACY: US gives NATO allies 2 months for defense spending plans.

CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR RANKS U.S. BEHIND BURUNDI, SERBIA, AND IRAQ: Ashley Judd Embarrasses Herself Over Women’s Rights.

It’s a good thing the Democrats have Chelsea now because I don’t think this Ashley Judd thing is working out for them.

IF I HAD RUSSIA’S CLIMATE, I’D GO TO WAR TOO: Air Strikes Against Winter: Russia’s Air Force Bombed A River To Break the Ice.

HMM: Poor U.S.-Mexico Relationship Could Put a ‘Hugo Chavez-Type’ in Power, Rubio Warns.

VENEZUELA COUP: Alarm grows as court takes power.

There have been demonstrations in Venezuela after the Supreme Court took over legislative powers from the National Assembly.

Critics say the development takes the country closer to one-man rule under President Nicolas Maduro.
The Organisation of American States (OAS) described the move as the “final blow to democracy in the country”.

The ruling effectively dissolves the elected legislature which has been dominated by the president’s opponents.

The secretary general of the OAS, Luis Almagro, described the move as a “self-inflicted coup” by Mr Maduro’s government.

It comes after months of consolidation of power by the country’s president, who is locked in a political struggle with the centre-right opposition.

On Thursday the Venezuelan Supreme Court seized power from the opposition-led legislature, a move that could essentially allow it to write laws itself.

Ever notice how a “dictatorship of the proletariat” always ends up looking an awful lot like a regular old dictatorship?

ONE DOWN…

It’s a safe bet that Chuck Schumer’s whip count is high enough to give Heitkamp the cover she needs.

UPDATE: Make that two down — Manchin (no surprise) is also a Yes.

MORE MACHINE NOW THAN MAN: 10 Human Body Modifications You Can Expect in the next Decade.

HMM: Michael Flynn’s Immunity Request Rejected By Senate Intelligence Committee.

A senior congressional official with direct knowledge said Flynn’s lawyer was told it was “wildly preliminary” and that immunity was “not on the table” at the moment. A second source said the committee communicated that it is “not receptive” to Flynn’s request “at this time.”

The senior congressional official also said that Flynn’s lawyer had conveyed the offer of testimony in exchange for immunity from prosecution to the Justice Department.

As NBC News reported Thursday, Flynn told the Intelligence Committee he was willing to be interviewed about the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia in return for a no-prosecution guarantee.

Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, confirmed in a statement that discussions had taken place with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and said “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it.”

Developing…

FAKE NEWS: AP reporter says sensational WaPo claim on Tillerson “not true.” “When challenged on this story, Lee explained that the same claim got shopped to him ‘weeks ago,’ and that his research proved it untrue. Lee also insinuated that these tidbits of fake news are coming from people hired by the Obama administration who have axes to grind. . . . While anonymous sourcing is necessary in some instances, it gets seriously abused and eventually produces nonsense like this attempt to paint Tillerson as adopting the airs of an 18th-century French monarch within the walls of Foggy Bottom. This kind of extraordinary and bizarre report should either have named sources attached to it, or not printed at all. Matt Lee’s debunking should prompt the Washington Post to either name its sources now, or retract the story.”

True. But so is this: “This raises another concern about the State Department, and more broadly about the Trump administration. Their transition team failed to produce timely appointments to key positions in the bureaucracy, which means that Obama appointees have remained in place. This allows for the kind of mischief that we’re seeing in this story, as those with axes to grind against the current president have carte blanche and standing to spin all sorts of fantasies about dysfunction. The solution to that is to have the White House start performing more effectively on nominations.”

BARRY, VALERIE, AND BEN RHODES SMILE: The Real Winner in the Russia Investigations Is Iran, Roger Simon writes.

“THAT’S INCREDIBLE.” Priebus Reacts to Evelyn Farkus’ MSNBC Comments on Trump Spying.

ALLIES: Tillerson and Turks fail to agree on next moves in fight against Islamic State in Syria.

Washington and Ankara disagree sharply over how to wage war against Islamic State militants in Syria, with the U.S. backing Kurdish militias whom the Turks disdain as terrorists.

Although Tillerson sought to put the best face possible after the day’s drawn-out talks, it was clear no agreement was reached. He acknowledged that “difficult choices have to be made.”

“Let there be no mistake,” Tillerson told reporters after more than two hours behind closed doors with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “There is no space between Turkey and the United States in our commitment to defeat [Islamic State]. …

“There is more discussion yet to be had regarding the way forward,” Tillerson added. “They are difficult options, let me be very frank. These are not easy decisions.”

Tillerson is saying the things a SecState needs to say in a situation like this one, but really there is a great deal of space between Turkey and the United States — filled with Kurds whom Ankara would like to kill and whom we see as our strongest MidEast allies outside of Israel.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Meaning of Middlebury: Why the cultivation of the mind is at odds with “passion” and “engagement.”

Though the authors and signatories of the statement do not say so explicitly, attending to the purpose mentioned in the first principle will go a long way toward securing the intellectual modesty emphasized in the second principle. That is to say, a “good education” is one whose primary purpose is the cultivation of the mind. This might seem like a truism—universally acknowledged and undisputed. Yet the authors of the document know otherwise, and they are correct to emphasize it. They understand that, however uncontroversial the sentiment, the people who matter most in this context (college administrators especially) tend not to allow that sentiment to inform their behavior. There are too many other competing interests vying for their support.

The cultivation of the mind has an increasing number of competitors for the purpose of higher education. Frank Bruni of the New York Times and the Jonathan Haidt of New York University produced a very illuminating discussion of the Middlebury incident on Charlie Rose. Haidt explained that students today do not really learn to argue; rather, they are “trained” to discredit their interlocutors. What happened to Charles Murray, Haidt suggested, was a “modern auto-da-fé: the celebration of a religious rite by burning the blasphemer.” The word “training” is particularly apt. Campuses now serve as training centers for the production of “correct opinions” on subjects like race and gender. The “long march through the institutions” having long since been completed and reified, the benighted and unenlightened must have their consciousness raised, and then must adopt the ideology that will set aright the wrongs of the world. And a heretic like Charles Murray, someone whom one cannot hope to “train,” must be publicly shamed and cast out.

The best lack all conviction; the worst are full of passionate engagement. The problem for the academy is that it runs on Other People’s Money, and the Other People are getting tired of this.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Reaction Time. “The instinctive reaction of politicians when visibility is poor is to repeat the actions which stabilized things in the past.”

Perhaps one reason for the current revolt against giant institutions like the EU, the UN and the Federal government is a subconscious realization among Western voters that technological and social change has gotten inside the loop of bureaucratic response; that whatever is pounding on the door will prove too fast for the sclerotic central planning bureaucracies to handle. There is no longer much confidence in the capacity of legacy institutions to identify problems at long range and to intercept them before it’s too late. Perhaps the most frightening thing about the Obama years was how he laughed at “Governor Romney” for warning Russia might be a problem.

They couldn’t see it coming. They couldn’t seem to see anything coming. Consequently the voters have decided to downsize, not necessarily in the interests of quality leadership but to optimize for reaction time; to appoint someone who will actually act — even in error — before it is too late.

Read the whole thing.

NO FOOLIN’: Very real April Fools’ Day Comet will zoom by Earth.

Comet 41p makes its way around the sun every 5.5 years, but this visit marks its closest point to us for over a century.

It will pass at a distance of just under 14 million miles (22.5 million kilometers). That’s plenty far away for us not to worry about it, but close enough for some potentially fun telescope observations.

You can watch it live on Slooh.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Giving Up a Seat for a Soldier Makes Drexel Professor Want to ‘Vomit.’ “A radical Drexel University professor who once wished for ‘White Genocide’ for Christmas and hoped to ‘Abolish the White Race’ is under fire again. This time, he said he wants to ‘vomit or yell about Mosul’ after someone gave their seat to a uniformed soldier.”

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GOP CONGRESSMAN: ‘Trump Agenda Is Dead’ Without Senate Rule Change.

Well, then let’s witness the firepower of a fully armed and operational Reid Option.

FEMINISTS WAGE WAR ON MEN, THEN BLAME MEN FOR RESULTS: Olga Khazan: The vice president—and other powerful men—regularly avoid one-on-one meetings with women in the name of protecting their families. In the end, what suffers is women’s progress.

So you drastically expand the definition of “sexual harassment,” and then promote an ethic that says that all accusations must be believed, and then you’re shocked that workplace men don’t want to hang out with women? How stupid are you?

Stupid enough to listen to the likes of Catharine Mackinnon, I guess.