YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Top 7 Media Lies About The Gaza Violence.

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: Green Berets Brace for Islamic State Offensive in Afghanistan.

The militants have been probing American and Afghan positions and hiding weapons caches in the ridges overlooking Mohmand Valley, which was controlled by ISIS fighters until allied troops chased them into the Spingar mountains at the end of last year.

That operation allowed civilians who had fled Islamic State to return to their stone-terraced farms. Now many families are reversing course in anticipation of an attempt by insurgents to retake the ground.

“The civilians are leaving the valley,” a U.S. Green Beret told troops who arrived this month to help defend an American outpost in the valley. “So those guys are going to be coming out of the mountains anytime now.”

Godspeed and God bless the Green Berets.

BLUE ON BLUE: Rep. Al Green Peeved at Pelosi for ‘Trivializing’ Democrats’ Impeachment Pleas. Impeachment is a dangerous reset button for democracy. It wasn’t meant to be an outlet for peevishness over a lost election.

CYBERSECURITY: Navy Cyber War Breakthrough – AI Finds Malware in Encrypted Traffic.

“Every day, the Defense Department thwarts an estimated 36 million e-mails containing malware, viruses and phishing schemes from hackers, terrorists and foreign adversaries trying to gain unauthorized access to military systems,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb told Warrior Maven.

One particular technique, now being developed by CISCO systems for the Navy, seeks to address a particular irony or cybersecurity paradox; namely, while much DoD network traffic is encrypted for additional safety, encryption can also make it more difficult for cyber defenders to see hidden malware in the traffic.

CISCO is now prototyping new detection methods with the Navy.

“We have the ability to read and detect malware in encrypted web traffic. Even though the data is encrypted there is still a pattern to malware,” Kelly Jones, Systems Engineer for CISCO Navy programs, told Warrior Maven.

Faster, please — but keep training with sextants, too.

WHAT’S NEW? John Kerry: Reporting for Duty… From Vietnam to Iran.

Pointing to “peace” organizations that the KGB saturated with dubious anti-American propaganda, Pacepa stated: “The quote from Senator Kerry is unmistakable Soviet-style sloganeering from this period. I believe it is very likely a direct quote from one of these organizations’ propaganda sheets.”

Andropov would proudly tell Pacepa that the KGB’s Vietnam campaign had been “our most significant success.” Thanks to the manipulation of the American peace movement.

One can debate where and when John Kerry got his information. What is undeniable, however, was its value to America’s enemy: the Viet Cong.

In Unfit for Command, John O’Neill recalls the experience of one his band of brothers, Bill Lupetti, a Navy corpsman who had treated injured Swift Boat soldiers. Lupetti was stationed at An Thoi, where both O’Neill and Kerry had served. For Memorial Day 2004, Lupetti returned to Vietnam, painfully visiting Ho Chi Minh City, wandering through the streets earnestly looking to find out whether certain Vietnamese friends had survived the merciless communist takeover enabled by the American withdrawal.

Lupetti happened upon the War Remnants Museum. Inside, he came to an exhibit dedicated to “heroes” who had helped the communists win the war. A wall plaque at the head of the exhibit stated: “We would like to thank the communist parties and working class countries of the world.” This included the “wholehearted support” of various “progressive human beings.”

Among those progressives represented in pictures, Lupetti glimpsed American campus radicals from the 1960s. (In fact, Jane Fonda’s smiling face was captured in a photo in a separate Women’s Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, standing aside Madame Binh.) And there, Lupetti was staggered by the sight of a photo of John Kerry — the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee that year. There he was, John Kerry, in a special exhibit honoring those whose “heroic” contributions had helped the Viet Cong defeat the United States.

The communist Vietnamese never forgot John Kerry’s testimony in 1971. It had been a great help. And perhaps today, in Iran, Kerry’s words are again being heralded, this time by the world’s worst theocratic terror state.

Read the whole thing. And remember: The scorpion stings the frog, every time.

BECKET ADAMS: Trump is going to win in 2020 because the media can’t quit him.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore.

It’s a cruel irony that a college degree is worth less to people who most need a boost: those born poor. This revelation was made by the economists Tim Bartik and Brad Hershbein. Using a body of data, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which includes 50 years of interviews with 18,000 Americans, they were able to follow the lives of children born into poor, middle-class and wealthy families.

They found that for Americans born into middle-class families, a college degree does appear to be a wise investment. Those in this group who received one earned 162 percent more over their careers than those who didn’t.

But for those born into poverty, the results were far less impressive. College graduates born poor earned on average only slightly more than did high school graduates born middle class. And over time, even this small “degree bonus” ebbed away, at least for men: By middle age, male college graduates raised in poverty were earning less than nondegree holders born into the middle class. The scholars conclude, “Individuals from poorer backgrounds may be encountering a glass ceiling that even a bachelor’s degree does not break.”

The authors don’t speculate as to why this is the case, but it seems that students from poor backgrounds have less access to very high-income jobs in technology, finance and other fields. Class and race surely play a role.

I wrote about these problems a while back. And I wonder, if you take out the institutions that are primarily signaling devices for the overclass, whether most of the gains attributed to higher education in general would vanish. This suggests that the answer is yes.

CHANGE: Bridge linking Crimea with Russia opened by Vladimir Putin.

The 11.8-mile bridge, which took two years to build and cost $3.6 billion, is Putin’s project to show that Crimea has joined Russia for good. Transportation links to Crimea deteriorated after both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries set up checkpoints into the peninsula and trains crossing the Ukrainian mainland were canceled.

The Ukrainian government reacted to the opening with anger. President Petro Poroshenko lambasted the bridge as “yet another piece of evidence of the Kremlin ignoring international law” and “an attempt to legitimize the temporary occupation of the Crimean peninsula.”

Give Putin some credit on this one. Building a bridge to connect Crimea to Russia proper is both less expensive and less murderous than conquering the rest of eastern Ukraine, which seems to have been his original plan.

WELL, THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY: Nikki Haley Crushes UN With Facts; Celebrity Left-winger Compares Her to Hitler.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CRAZY YEARS EDITION: Professor notes men are taller than women on average, SJWs storm out angrily.

The speaker you’ll see here is biology professor Heather Heying, wife of professor Bret Weinstein. Both Heying and Weinstein left Evergreen State College as part of a settlement deal last year. Heying was making a point about physiological differences between men and women. “Are men taller than women on average?” Heying asked rhetorically. She added, “Does anyone take offense at that fact?”

It seems someone in the audience did because Dr. Peter Boghossian (seated on the right) turned toward the back of the room and Professor Heying chuckled.

“So I would say you could be irritated by it,” Heying said. She continued, “You could be irritated by the fact that women have to be the ones that gestate and lactate. You could be irritated by a lot of truths but taking offense is a response that is a rejection of reality.”

But before she had even finished her statement, a group of students got up and walked out of the room. As Heying continued to talk about physiological differences between men and women, there was a loud commotion in the back of the room. One of the protesters apparently damaged the sound system on the way out.

At this point, a camera out in the lobby area shows a small group of protesters, one of whom (the girl with purple hair) is led to a seat by a police officer. There are some cuts in the video but she is clearly agitated and says at one point, “Even the women in there have been brainwashed.” She shouts “F**k the police” as she exits a few moments later.

Another protester in the lobby says, “You should not listen to fascism. It should not be tolerated in civil society. Nazis are not welcome in civil society.” I guess that explains the urge to wreck the sound system.

I predict that it will be harder and harder to argue that higher education adds value, either for individuals or for society.

IN THE EMAIL FROM PETER GRANT: The Stones of Silence: Cochrane’s Company: Book One.

The secret is out – the Mycenae system is the hottest new mineral find in the spiral arm. Now it’s about to become ground zero in a gold rush by every crooked company and asteroid thief in the galaxy.

Andrew Cochrane, with his crew of the finest veterans and cunning rogues, have an even better scheme. They’ve conned the owner into hiring them as a mercenary security company to defend the system. With no oversight but their own, Cochrane’s Company plans to seize the richest pickings for themselves.

But nothing ever comes easy. If they want to keep their loot, they’re going to have to outwit and outfight every smuggler, bandit and renegade after the same prize – and their boss, too!

IF YOU CANNOT SEE WHY THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA, G AHEAD AND IMPROVE THE GENE POOL:  People are taking hot lava selfies with Hawaii’s erupting volcano.

SHE WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, AFTER ALL:  Hidden pages uncovered in Anne Frank’s diary contain dirty jokes.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO ABUSE THEIR HUSBANDS:  PGA star allegedly attacked by wife after terrible round.

YEAH, RIGHT:  John Brennan, lying nutter.

ABOUT TIME:  Gina Haspel will be confirmed.

AND SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE CARRYING WEAPONS RUSHING A FENCE AREN’T “PROTESTERS”, THEY’RE ARMED COMBATANTS OUT OF UNIFORM.  OIOW, TERRORISTS:  Nikki Haley Drops Reality Check About The “Peaceful” Thugs At Gaza.

AND FROM VICTORY GIRLS THIS:   It is time to fight back.

AND THIS:   The Lies of John Ward (UPDATE to Origins Post).

VOLOKH CONSPIRACY TEMPORARILY BLOCKED BY NORDSTROM’S WIRELESS AS A “HATE AND RACISM” WEB SITE:  Eugene Volokh says, “The culprit was apparently the blacklist run by a company called Brightcloud; I asked [the Nordstrom media relations people] to review their categorization of our site, and within a few hours we were unblocked.”

This nevertheless gives me the willies.  Conservative and libertarian bloggers could, of course, wait until things get worse before they start to get really upset.  But by then, of course, it will be too late, since we won’t be able to communicate with anyone anymore.

WELL PAST TIME:  It is time to fight back.

THIS APPLIES TO MANY OTHER FIELDS:  On tribes, divisions and markets.

A SANE SUGGESTION FOR CONVENTIONS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE WHINERS:   When You Should Ban Someone From Your Convention.

TYLER O’NEIL IS LIVEBLOGGING TONIGHT’S PRIMARIES.

Click early and often to see the results.

BOYCOTT NOT, LEST YE BE BOYCOTTED: Did Columbia Law Dean Gillian Lester Troll Professor Katherine Franke? Me at Volokh: “Dean Lester’s critique of trying to constrain the ‘global exchange of ideas’ applies to Franke herself and her support of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)…as much as it does to Israel’s refusal to admit her.”