THE TRUTH ABOUT CARS: Buick Must Die.

“When The Donald calls aspiring apprentices into the boardroom to determine which one to fire, I’m always hoping for a miracle. I want him to can ALL of them.” Thus spake Robert Farago nearly thirteen years ago when he started the General Motors Death Watch. Just fifty-one months later, General Motors filed for Chapter 11. Our august founder got his wish. Or most of it, anyway. The weak-sister brands were sold off — although, looking at the stunning resale value of Hummer H2s on the West Coast, one wonders if perhaps that nameplate should have been retained; it would certainly play well in an era where $100,000 is the new normal for a loaded full-size SUV. (One also has to admire Farago’s Muad’Dib-style prescience regarding Donald Trump’s relevance in the future, but that’s slightly besides the point.)

Robert was wrong about one thing: while General Motors did die in the the legal sense, most of what normies consider “GM” is still very much present and accounted for. I recently sat down with a senior “New GM” person who told me, “We used the bankruptcy to keep the good people and make some much-needed changes,” by which he meant “cutting the dead wood.” I think that much of the current product line reflects that rejuvenation. The Corvette is the world’s finest sporting automobile, at least on the value-for-money scale. The Equinox has been a bright spot for more than half a decade now. The Denali line is a license to print money, and justifiably so. I’m no longer much of a skeptic when it comes to the General. Last year, I did something I’d never done before: I spent nearly 60,000 of my favorite dollars on a brand new GM product. While there are certainly criticisms to be made regarding America’s largest-by-a-whisker automaker, I believe it is now safe to say that the company is on solid footing everywhere from 755-horsepower supercars to electric-dreams city commuters.

Except, of course, for Buick. That’s got to go, and nobody’s going to miss it.

When I first started noticing cars a kid in the ’70s, Buick still held some small cachet, but that was a long time ago.

HMM: Tillerson Fired Over Rogue Bid to Save Iran Nuke Deal.

In the weeks leading up to Tillerson’s departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran’s ongoing ballistic missile program and continued nuclear research.

While Trump had prescribed a range of fixes that he viewed as tightening the deal’s flaws, Tillerson recently caved to European pressure to walk back these demands and appease Tehran while preserving the deal, according to these sources. The Free Beacon first disclosed this tension last week in a wide-ranging report.

White House allies warned Tillerson’s senior staff for weeks that efforts to save the nuclear deal and balk on Trump’s key demands regarding the deal could cost Tillerson his job, a warning that became reality Tuesday when Trump fired Tillerson by tweet.

Tillerson will be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a former member of Congress who established a record as being tough on Iran and echoing many of the policies called for by Trump. Insiders expect Pompeo to take a much harder line on the nuclear deal and pursue many of the fixes advocated by Trump, such as outlawing Iran’s ballistic missile program and instating fierce repercussions for any future breach.

Meanwhile, Laurence Tribe’s descent into madness continues:

Tillerson’s replacement, Mike Pompeo, was described in a New Yorker fright-piece as an “über-hawk” with “positions identical to — and in some instances tougher than — the President’s on four pivotal issues: Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Jerusalem.”

ADULT SUPERVISION: Michigan lawmakers fed up with inaction on campus free speech.

AT AMAZON, Save on Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

Also, Kindle Daily Deals, and today’s Digital Deals.

R.I.P. STEPHEN HAWKING, who died on Pi Day, fittingly enough.

MAXIMUM PRESSURE: How Team Trump got North Korea to the negotiating table. 1999 to 2018. Yes, 1999. My latest New York Observer essay.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: PA-18 Undecided, New Boss Lady at CIA and Much, Much More. “For the GOP, lots of freakouts or suggested freakouts by the smart set, but the Democrats aren’t running candidates like Conor Lamb in their races around America, they are running Chelsea Mannings so we will see how that plays out in November.”

SUBMARINE ICEBREAKER: The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) and the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Hartford (SSN 768) break through Arctic ice, March 10, 2018

SPECIAL ELECTIONS ARE GENERALLY MEANINGLESS, BUT THIS WAS A VERY TRUMPY DISTRICT: Democrat Conor Lamb clings to lead in too-close-to-call Pennsylvania House race. On the other hand, Conor Lamb is a conservative former Marine who ran, basically, as the kind of conservative Democrat Pennsylvania used to elect routinely. If this is Dems’ formula for taking back the House, it might work, but it will mean abandoning the party’s activist base.

But my takeaway is that sitting presidents usually lose seats in midterms, and Trump’s charisma wasn’t enough to overcome that here — just as Obama’s wasn’t enough in 2010. What Trump needs is a better economy and other accomplishments than Obama had. But remember that Reagan lost a lot of seats in 1982.

Is Russia’s Nerve Gas Attack in Great Britain An Act of War?

WINNING: Tax Revamp Drives Corporate CEOs’ Economic Outlook to 15-Year High.

The Business Roundtable survey is the first the group has conducted since the U.S. tax changes were adopted in December. The law included many provisions the Business Roundtable supported, such as a much lower corporate tax rate and lighter taxes on many U.S. companies’ foreign earnings.

James Dimon, chairman of the Business Roundtable and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said the survey results are likely to translate into more jobs for Americans.

“The historic tax-reform law is already prompting more investment, jobs, high wages and more benefits for workers all here in the United States of America,” Mr. Dimon said.

Executives also boosted their projection for growth this year in gross domestic product, predicting a 2.8% rate, above their earlier estimate of 2.5%.

I had been assured by some very smart people, right around the time Barack Obama was sworn into office, that business climate was a myth.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Audit: VA incorrectly recorded hundreds of patient waiting times.

MICHAEL DORAN: The Real Collusion Story.

While the establishment press was singing in harmony with the Clinton campaign, a cacophonous debate erupted inside government. At the end of July, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, said at a public forum that the intelligence community was not “ready yet to make a call on attribution” — not ready, that is, to attribute the DNC hack to Putin. Clapper was also unready to say that the intention of the hackers was to get Trump elected. The goal, he said, may simply have been “to stir up trouble.” When combined with similar comments by other intelligence officials, Clapper’s statements undercut Hillary Clinton’s efforts to brand Trump as Putin’s active accomplice.

Enter John Brennan. In early August, Brennan launched a personal campaign to force a consensus in support of Clinton’s propaganda. Before long, Clapper became his partner in this effort. They would succeed, however, only after the election — and then only by establishing an ad hoc and highly unorthodox intelligence-assessment team. To man the team, Brennan and Clapper handpicked a small number of analysts, tasking them with reaching a consensus before the inauguration of Donald Trump. The team, no surprise, did not disappoint. In January 2017, it produced the “consensus” that Brennan had been trying to orchestrate for the previous five months. By then, it was still useful as a propaganda tool against President Donald Trump, though it had arrived far too late to help Hillary Clinton win the election.

Of course, Brennan has never admitted his political motives. On the contrary, according to an in-depth Washington Post investigation (based on interviews with either Brennan himself or people very close to him), the CIA director claimed to be in possession of eye-popping intelligence reports about the DNC hack. These reports supposedly “captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.” Yet even if this intelligence trove actually did exist and truly did convince the CIA director, it obviously did not have the same persuasive impact on his colleagues, as evidenced by Brennan’s failure to deliver a consensus assessment of Putin’s motives.

This is a lengthy piece, and with a little effort I think Doran could (and should!) make it book-length.

But you should still read the whole thing.

BYRON YORK: House GOP delivers blow to Trump-Russia collusion story. Will others follow?

It has long been the key question of the Trump-Russia affair: Did Donald Trump’s presidential campaign collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election? Now, we have the first official, albeit partisan, answer.

“We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” said Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee Monday as they released findings from a 14-month Trump-Russia investigation.

GOP Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who formally oversaw the committee probe, said, “We found perhaps bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment in taking meetings.” But no collusion.

Committee investigators looked at the events often cited as evidence of collusion. They looked at the June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Donald Trump Jr. and other top campaign officials talked to a group of Russians who promised, but did not deliver, damaging information on Hillary Clinton. They looked at the activities of peripheral Trump advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. They looked at the allegations in the Trump dossier. They looked at all that, and they could not find a thread connecting events into a narrative of collusion.

“Only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take this series of inadvertent contacts with each other, or meetings, whatever, and weave that into a some sort of fictional page-turner spy thriller,” Conaway said. “But we’re not dealing with fiction, we’re dealing with facts. And we found no evidence of any collusion, of anything that people were actually doing, other than taking a meeting they shouldn’t have taken or inadvertently being in the same building.”

The collusion question is the most contentious of the Trump-Russia investigation. Some Democrats have long said we know enough now to prove collusion. Indeed, just last month, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “There is already, in my view, ample evidence in the public domain on the issue of collusion if you’re willing to see it.”

When Republicans released their findings, though, Schiff did not mention collusion. . . .

Would-be believers in collusion could suffer another disappointment later this year when the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee releases its report. Shortly after the House findings were made public, the chairman of that committee, Sen. Richard Burr, told CNN he has not seen evidence of collusion in the more than a year his committee has been looking for it.

It’s as if the whole thing was invented out of whole cloth, to keep the Democrats’ troops riled up after Hillary’s unexpected and humiliating defeat.

BUT IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR HILLARY: Breaking glass ceiling doesn’t give Gina Haspel a pass.

YOU REALLY MUST SEE THIS: A “global advocacy” group’s campaign for gun-control includes littering Capitol Hill with “shoes for the dead.” Once you see it, you won’t be surprised to then learn Chelsea Handler and Bette Midler are among the project’s most prominent supporters.

YES: The Right Needs To Learn From The Left’s Astroturfing Of The Parkland Survivors.

Ashe Schow:

In the wake of the Parkland school shooting, something amazing happened. Unlike other mass shootings, which cause a flurry of calls for gun control that usually fizzle out in a week or so, this one resulted in a sustained conversation and some sort-of tangible damage to the NRA.

The change came because many of the Stoneman Douglas High School students who survived the shooting became organized — attending rallies, tweeting, and appearing on major networks — to call for gun control. Or so we thought.

About two weeks after what was reported as a movement by the students, forensic science specialist David Hines discovered that the whole “movement” was actually a coordinated plan from the Left. Within two days of the shooting, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was helping the kids; teacher’s unions, groups associated with Michael Bloomberg, and people connected to the Women’s March were all assisting in securing funding and promotion. Planned Parenthood, George Clooney, and Oprah Winfrey all donated money to the effort.

There’s more. Tweets referring to the NRA’s Carry Guard insurance as “Murder Insurance” went from being largely ignored during prior pushes to getting certain Center for American Progress-related accounts hundreds of retweets. Those tweets were being pushed and circulated in a way they hadn’t been before.

Basically, the left had money and infrastructure ready to go for an all-out assault on guns and the NRA, they just needed the right moment — the right victims.

And the shamelessness to carry it out.

Anyway, do read the whole thing — the Right has aways tended to get lapped on this kind of stuff, while the Left is getting even better at it.

NOW OUT FROM JOHN KANG: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Fixations of Manliness. Holmes’ support for free speech, Kang argues, was based on Holmes’ views of physical courage.

WELL, GOOD: Study shows market-based strategies for ecosystem conservation are surging.

Malaysia provides one example of how payment for ecosystem services programs work, Salzman said. The state of Sabah worked with private parties to restore and maintain 131 square miles of rainforest, home to one of the world’s highest concentrations of orangutans. The program sells “biodiversity conservation certificates,” each representing 100 square meters of forest restoration and protection for at least 50 years.

Little more than an idea a few years ago, payments for ecosystem services has grown into a large and expanding market, according to the study, which found that more than 550 programs active worldwide, in both developed and developing countries, with more than $36 billion in annual transactions.

“There has been enormous interest around the globe in payments for ecosystem services, fueled by promising case studies and exciting transactions, but until now we’ve never had a firm grasp on just how large they have really become,” Salzman said. “Payments for ecosystem services is a market-based approach that places a value on the many benefits that nature provides to people—clean water, flood control and wildlife habitat. Done right, trees can be worth more standing than cut down.”

Incentivizing works better than bureaucratizing.

STAFFING: Trump ‘Looking at Larry Kudlow Very Strongly’ to be Top Economic Aide. “We don’t agree on everything, but in this case I think that’s good. I want to have a divergent opinion. We agree on most. He now has come around to believing in tariffs.”

COLLUSION: Obama’s Campaign Paid $972,000 To Law Firm That Secretly Paid Fusion GPS In 2016. “Former president Barack Obama’s official campaign organization has directed nearly a million dollars to the same law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous Steele dossier. Since April of 2016, Obama For America (OFA) has paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie, records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.”

Related: REVEALED: Obama Campaign Hired Fusion GPS To Investigate Romney.

STILL NOT QUITE SURE WHAT THIS ERUPTION DID:  Supervolcano eruption somehow spared Stone Age people.

IDIOT IS AS IDIOT DOES:  Former GOP Donor To Form Gun Control Group.

DEMONS ARE WAY SMARTER:  Please Welcome Demonized Maxine Waters,’ Says Waters at D.C. Event.