THERE’S NO CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT FOR OFFICEHOLDERS NOT TO BE INTRUSIVE DUMBASSES: A Bunch of Senators Just Showed They Have No Idea How Facebook Works. They Want to Regulate It Anyway.

Sen. Roy Blunt, (R–Mo.), for instance, didn’t seem to understand that Facebook lacks a means of accessing information from other apps unless users specifically opt in. The same was true of Sen. Roger Wicker (R–Miss.), who needed a lot of clarification on how Facebook Messenger interacts with cellular service. Zuckerberg had to carefully explain to Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) that WhatsApp is encrypted, and Facebook can’t read, let alone monetize, the information people exchange using that service. Zuckerberg had to explain to multiple senators, including Dean Heller (R–Nev.), that Facebook doesn’t technically sell its data: The ad companies don’t get to see the raw information.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D–Vt.) brought along a poster on which his office had printed out images of various Facebook pages. Leahy asked whether these were Russian propaganda groups. “Senator, are you asking about those specifically?” Zuckerberg asked. He of course had no way of knowing what was going on with those specific pages, just from looking at pictures of them. “I’m not familiar with those pieces of content,” Zuckerberg finally conceded.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) offered this metaphor to explain Facebook’s recent troubles: “the way I explain it to my constituents is that if someone breaks into my apartment with a crowbar and takes my stuff, it’s just like if the manager gave them the keys.” But that metaphor doesn’t quite work—Facebook didn’t willfully assist in a crime. Meanwhile, Sen. Debbie Fischer (R–Neb.) didn’t understand, at a fundamental level, that if you’re using Facebook, you have agreed to let Facebook know a lot of information about you.

Like Congress, Facebook is creepy and overbearing, but unlike Congress it can be uninstalled with ease.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela inflation 454 percent in first quarter.

Annual inflation over the last 12 months, according to the National Assembly, is just shy of 8,900 percent. Monthly inflation in March was 67 percent, down from 80 percent the previous month. The country’s central bank has not published inflation data for more than two years.

However, it does publish money supply data, the sum of cash, with checking, savings, and other deposits. That has risen more than 2,900 percent in the last 12 months, which, without an increase in the supply of goods and services, is a textbook cause of inflation.

The only thing socialists never run out of is zeroes.

HOLLYWOOD HYPOCRISY AND BUYING INDULGENCES: My weekly column is up at The Daily Caller.

It’s utterly dishonest to argue that Matt Damon’s bullet-fueled bloodbaths have no “normalizing” effect, but Donald Trump’s screeds, Milo Yiannopolis’s trolling or Christina Hoff Sommers’s quiet and scholarly academic speeches are “normalizing” and must be denied a platform or covered in a fair and objective manner.

QUINNIPIAC POLL: Majority of voters (52-42) support National Guard on Mexico border. 71% say illegal aliens are a significant problem.

BEN DOMENECH: How Paul Ryan Went From Young Gun To Gone.

In the aftermath of the Democratic waves in 2008, Ryan, McCarthy, and Eric Cantor presented themselves to Republican voters as The Young Guns – a new generation of conservatives largely untainted by the poor decisions of the Bush Administration, ready to lead in a time when Republicans were downtrodden and Democrats ebullient about the possibilities of the Obama years. Of the three, only Ryan had something particularly interesting to say: he was a blue-eyed salesman for the cod liver oil of entitlement reform. And he achieved something truly amazing: he got Republicans, at least for a time, to grasp that third rail. They voted for his reform plans reluctantly at first, but once they discovered the “throw granny off a cliff” ads had little power, their cowardice gradually dissipated.

Ryan was the most important Republican in Washington from 2009 to 2016. He now seems like a throwback from a bygone era, when voters expected their politicians to be straight-laced, honest, and sincere. He was serious, and dedicated himself to trying to tell stories to the American people about the fiscal direction of the country – stories which voters mostly ignored because they always seemed to involve hard news and histograms. Wisconsin nice and a truly decent person, Ryan’s approach was doomed in an era that values none of those things. It values the ferocity, the abandon of confrontational politics, not grand bargains and compromise.

After Eric Cantor crashed into a pile of earmarks, there were a number of political movers and shakers who fixed themselves to Ryanism as a method of grasping at power, not an expression of ideological dedication. They were never really in it because of a belief in Ryan’s refined Citizens for a Sound Economy message (whatever will Henry Olsen write about now?), but because they saw Ryan as a handsome, smart young family man who donors love and see as made for leadership. But leading this herd of cats is a tiring and thankless task Ryan took on out of obligation, not ambition.

It showed — Ryan’s enthusiasm seemed to die as soon as he grabbed the Speaker’s gavel.

JUST DO IT: Nunes Threatens To Impeach FBI’s Wray and DOJ’s Rosenstein Over Key Document. “We’re not messing around here.”

IF YOU APPLY THIS PRINCIPLE GENERALLY, WE’D LIVE IN THE LIBERTARIAN PARADISE OF MY DREAMS: Members of Congress can’t possibly regulate Facebook. They don’t understand it.

The thing is, they don’t understand much of anything well enough to regulate it. Firearms, the economy, education — you name it. But the press that is enjoying mocking Senators as old and out-of-touch because they don’t understand Facebook’s business model — which the press doesn’t either, really — won’t extend that understand-it-before-you-regulate-it principle in general, because in general it supports big government.

ATTENTION CONSERVATIVE/LIBERTARIAN ATTORNEYS WHO WOULD LIKE TO HELP REIN IN THE VORACIOUS FEDERAL LEVIATHAN: Please pay attention to Roger Clegg’s WSJ Letter to the Editor. He speaketh the truth:

Regarding “Judges Can Check the Administrative State” by Peter J. Wallison (April 6): The best candidates for the kind of judicial action Mr. Wallison calls for are the disparate-impact regulations that federal agencies have adopted, supposedly pursuant to the enforcement of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in federally funded programs and activities.

That’s because the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that this statute bans only “disparate treatment” and doesn’t ban practices that have only a “disparate impact.” …

Here’s something to help you present the legal point. Happy lawsuit!

MEDIUM RARE IS RARE:  Restaurants are cooking your steak wrong on purpose.

REMEMBER POE’S LAW. LET’S GIVE IT 48 HOURS, PEOPLE:  Zuckerberg Loses Contact Lens During Senate Hearing Revealing Horrifying Lizard Eye.  (For the congenitally humor-impaired, note this is the Babylon Bee)

EVERYONE AND ANYONE CONNECTED WITH THE CLINTON CRIME MACHINE?   Guess Whose House Wasn’t Raided by the FBI.

UM:  Zuckerberg, Facebook and Skynet.

WILL THERE ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND?  Dept. Of Righteous Killings.

OF COURSE SHE DOES – RELYING ON TALENT IS SO 20TH CENTURY: Janelle Monae wears vagina pants in new music video.  “No one takes me seriously,” lamented the feminist while dressed as a sexual organ.  (And for the love of heaven, will someone — anyone — teach these chicks* anatomy?  They’re embarrassing. What they’re wearing is the semblance of a vulva, not a vagina!  Are they so seriously stupid they define themselves for an organ  they misidentify?  It’s like going around saying you’re so important because you’re a painter while displaying a pen and pencil drawing as proof of your skill.)
*Chick in this case is a gender neutral term of derision.  I know several liberal males who are chickies.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS WELL AND GOOD BUT DELICIOUS CRISPY FRIED CHICKEN IS SOMETHIING ELSE ENTIRELY:  Teens are dumping McDonald’s for Chick-fil-A.

MIGHT THEY BE COOPERATING WITNESSES FOR THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL?  FBI lovebirds might be getting busy in other ways, too

THE LEFT’S HYSTERICAL MALEVOLENCE:  Washington Lies In a Parallel Universe.

LAWLESS:  Rosenstein Finally Gives House Committee the Unredacted Electronic Document That Spurred the Russia Investigation — But Only After Threats That the House Might Impeach Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray If They Continued Hiding It.

THOSE WORDS DON’T MEAN WHAT THE LEFT THINKS THEY MEAN:  Actual fascism vs. the pretend kind.

JOURNALISM:

KATIE COURIC TRASHES ‘INSANE’ TRUMP ERA, THEN PLEADS FOR ‘CIVIL DISCOURSE:’ “I’m trying to help people rediscover their empathy muscle, because we’re so polarized and there’s so much anger and hate towards each side, against each side, that I think we’ve forgotten that and we need to step into each other’s shoes and understand each other’s perspectives.”

Katie Couric: Uniting a divided America — one jump cut at a time.

HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL CULT FILM: “I had an idea for a movie about aliens from outer space, and Nina had an idea for a movie about the female orgasm. We put them together.”

I remember seeing this in the York Square theater in New Haven in 1982. Here’s the trailer. At the time I thought the female lead looked like an ex-girlfriend. Now I don’t see it as much, but hey, time’s passed. Maybe it was more her manner.

DEFENDING JOHN HUGHES FROM MOLLY RINGWALD’S WOKE ATTACK: “I honestly cannot believe I have to explain The Breakfast Club to the star of The Breakfast Club, but here goes…”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Washington Lies In A Parallel Universe.

In the real world, the Trump administration is humming along. Its domestic policies are sensible and have been remarkably successful in a short time. Abroad, the administration has pursued American interests, again with considerable success. It has also made progress, at least, at cleaning up the appalling messes left behind by Barack Obama in Iran, Syria, Russia and North Korea. By any objective standard, the Trump administration is, so far, a major improvement on its predecessor.

But our “news” organizations have little interest in any of those topics. They are obsessed with tweets, with ten-year-old liaisons, with non-existent collusion and with investigations of nothing that apparently will never end. In their parallel world, Trump is such a failure that he might as well quit and save the Democrats the trouble of impeaching him. (For what? is a question that rarely seems to be asked.)

Take yesterday’s press briefing by Sarah Sanders. As always, she began by describing the substantive work going on in the White House that day. As always, the press corps ignored such mundane topics and went straight to la-la land.

Well, yes.