“HYBRID VIGOR” ISN’T JUST A GREAT WEBB WILDER ALBUM: Japan Wants Lockheed Martin to Make an F-22/F-35 Hybrid.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Four Killer Cult Comedies That Deserve Sequels (And Why).

LET’S HOPE IT KEEPS WAITING: The Yellowstone Supervolcano Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen. If I thought it was getting ready to go, I’d be looking at property in Tasmania.

TEXAS APPEALS COURT: “Revenge Porn” Law Violates First Amendment.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: A reader emails: “There’s a homeless guy just napping in the cushion chair in Starbucks right now. I’m not kidding. The world has gone crazy.” Expect more of this. A lot more.

AN OPED BY JOSH BLACKMAN IN THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: CUNY Law students heckled my talk on campus free speech.

I was invited to speak at the City University of New York School of Law about the importance of free speech on campus. Alas, I was not able to give that lecture as I had planned. For the first eight minutes of the hour-long lecture, a dozen students surrounded me — standing inches away — and shouted at me every time I opened my mouth. They charged that I was a white supremacist and a fascist. They even shamed an African-American student who came to hear me speak: “Why aren’t you with us?” The obstruction only ended after I began to engage the protesters. When I explained that — contrary to their slanders — I support the DREAM Act, one law student could only respond by screaming “F–k the Law!” With nothing of substance to say — one student actually mumbled, “I don’t want to hear this” — the protestors exited the room.

This event was at once a microcosm for the state of campus affairs. Students are enraged at federal and states laws that they view as unjust and discriminatory. When a right-of-center speaker arrives at their campus, they feel betrayed that the University failed to protect them from ideas they deem harmful. In response, they try to deny the visitor a platform, and shut down the lecture. Despite blatant misconduct, administration officials impose no disciplinary actions. Perhaps most tragically, the students who preach the loudest against intolerance are themselves the most closed-minded.

That’s because they’re not actually against intolerance.

Plus: “The CUNY protest was particularly disquieting because it was organized not merely by undergraduates, but by law students.” If law students at my school did this, I’d report them to the bar admissions committee.

NEW YORK TIMES CALLS THE TRUTH “FAR-RIGHT CONSPIRACY PROGRAMMING.” Leil Leibovitz in The Tablet:

On Saturday, Nellie Bowles, a technology reporter for The New York Times, wrote a piece about Campbell Brown, the former news anchor recently hired by Facebook to help the social media giant improve its relationship with the news media. One obvious problem is Facebook’s contribution to the dissemination of fake news, which Brown is now fighting. How? Let the Paper of Record tell you all about it.

“Ms. Brown,” wrote Bowles, “wants to use Facebook’s existing Watch product — a service introduced in 2017 as a premium product with more curation that has nonetheless been flooded with far-right conspiracy programming like ‘Palestinians Pay $400 million Pensions For Terrorist Families.’”

As those of us who are in the reality based community know, the Palestinian Authority’s financial support of terrorists and their families is very, very far from a conspiracy, far-right or otherwise. Reading Bowles’s report, for example, Lahav Harkov, the Knesset reporter for The Jerusalem Post, took to Twitter to share some of her meticulous reporting on the Palestinian pay-for-slay program with Bowles: Read the real news, and you’ll learn that, in 2017, the PA doled out more than $347 million to families of terrorists who had murdered Jews, increasing the amount to $403 million this year.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: At U. Delaware ‘hate crime’ protest, activists harass, threaten onlookers.

SALENA ZITO: Democrats try to win back labor in order to win back the House.

When Democrat Conor Lamb stood in a sea of United Mine Workers of America here in early March, it was clear that Democrats had found a way to bring the blue-collar worker back into their camp.

Lamb would go on to win the special election in this southwest Pennsylvania district that Donald Trump had carried by 18 points.

The two questions now:

First, will that union support materialize in other races, and thus elect Democrats in swing districts across the country?

Secondly, why had Democrats lost these blue-collar areas in the first place? What was missing from Democrats’ messages over the past 10 years that made them stay home or vote Republican?

The union voters I talked to said they didn’t feel that Democrats in Washington had their back; that they were too progressive, too strident, and way out of touch with their lives and needs.

Well, that seems right.

By the way, Salena Zito and Brad Todd (whom long term InstaPundit readers will remember as the author of the superb “109 Minutes” essay right after 9/11) have a book coming out: The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. Well worth a read.

REVISITING 2016 MEDIA BIAS: With the elite media increasingly suggesting that they were too harsh on Clinton and not hostile enough to Trump in 2016, it’s perhaps time to revisit just how biased elite media outlets were in 2016. Consider, for example, this NPR interview with the executive editor of the New York Times, Dean Baquet. Baquet explains why the newspaper decided to use the word “lie” when referring to what seems like ordinary campaign obfuscation: “I think the moment for me was the birther story, where he has repeated for years his belief that President Obama was not born in the United States.” This, for some reason, justifies using the word “lie” more generally with regard to Trump and his campaign, but not with regard to any false statements by Clinton: “I don’t think Hillary Clinton, to be honest, has crossed the line the way Donald Trump did with the birther issue.” Thus, in NewYorkTimesworld Clinton merely obfuscates and exaggerates, while Trump lies. You can’t make this stuff up.

My guess is that Clinton lost far more votes because they resented the elites were shoving Clinton down their throats than because of the “Russian interference” the elites now want to blame for Clinton’s defeat. The response, apparently, is for the elite media to double-down on its strategy of overtly favoring whomever runs against Trump, which, I suspect, is how we get more Trump in 2020.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: VIDEO: Students shocked that Obama also sent troops to border.

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FEELGOOD STORY OF THE DAY: Dave Grohl Invites Fan Onstage, Is Blown Away By His Performance.

I DID NOT REALIZE THAT KAMALA HARRIS GOT HER START IN POLITICS by dating Willie Brown.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Mike Pompeo has a lot in common with another Kansan soldier-statesman: Dwight Eisenhower.

JUSTICE: Trump considering pardon for boxing legend after call from Sylvester Stallone.

Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion of the world. An all-white jury convicted him in 1913 for transporting a woman across state lines for “immoral purposes,” which was illegal under the Mann Act.

Johnson served a year in prison and was released in 1921. He died in 1946.

The conviction was BS, but then so is the Mann Act.

A NICE COLUMN ON THE LITTLE PINK HOUSE MOVIE from George Will:

Coming soon to a cinema near you — you can make this happen; read on — is a bite-your-nails true-story thriller featuring heroes, villains and a history-making struggle over … the Constitution’s Takings Clause. Next Feb. 24, “Little Pink House” will win the Oscar for best picture if Hollywood’s political preening contains even a scintilla of sincerity about speaking truth to power.

So, probably not, then. Plus:

By getting the U.S. Supreme Court’s attention, and eliciting strong dissents that highlight the horribleness of the majority’s decision, Kelo and the Institute for Justice ignited national revulsion that has produced new state limitations on eminent domain, limitations that re-establish the Framers’ intentions.

The movie, representing the vanishingly small category of “Movies for Grown-ups,” has just debuted in New London, where government economic planning ended predictably badly: Pfizer came, exhausted its subsidies, then departed, leaving a vacant lot where the pink house once stood. To view the trailer and learn about showings elsewhere go to LittlePinkHouseMovie.com. Organizations or groups of about 70 persons can go to TUGG.com to book a theater and receive help promoting the showing. People who send their email addresses to LittlePinkArmy.com will be contacted and helped through this process. This bypasses Hollywood’s normal distribution procedures, but the movie industry might benefit from it.

Try to get a showing in your area, if one isn’t already scheduled.

I THINK IT’S SIGNIFICANT THAT THIS IS IN THE WEEKLY STANDARD: NeverTrumpers: What if Trump really is making America great again?

They are afflicted with a nagging suspicion. Trump might, how shall they whisper it, Make America Great Again.

The tax bill has given the economy a bit of a tailwind, most Americans have more money in their pockets, and corporations have greater incentives to step up spending and to bring some funds home. The NAFTA trade agreement with Mexico and Canada likely will be revised to America’s advantage. The president’s decision to punish Assad for crossing the red line that Obama refused to enforce is popular and his decision to defer to his military advisers and keep the response targeted so as not to induce a response from Russia has met with broad approval. His threats against North Korea—my nukes are bigger than your nukes—appalled the fastidious members of the establishment diplomatic community, but have Kim Jong-un claiming to be willing to negotiate a peace treaty with South Korea and détente with the United States.

Then there is China. Trump has done what previous administrations failed to do: forced China to make some concessions, opening at least a crack in the wall it has erected against imports. Majority-owned American financial firms will gain entry into several sectors, and tariffs on made-in-America automobiles will come down, while the United States tightens restrictions on intellectual property theft by the Chinese regime, in part by limiting China’s ability to buy tech-heavy U.S. firms. Even dyed-in-the-cotton-apparel free-traders are now conceding that the president’s negotiating tactic—threaten to bring down the international system, unless it gets fixed—is working. And should have been tried administrations ago. . . .

So here is BT and AT:

Before Trump, Assad could use chemical weapons with impunity; after Trump, he pays a steep price. BT, China could plunder American intellectual property and disregard the rules of the trading system that it has manipulated in its rise to power; AT, it fears Trump’s tariffs sufficiently to begin modifying its unfair trading practices. BT, Russia could wage cyberwar on the U.S. electoral system without fear of response from America; AT, Putin and his oligarch cronies find themselves being cut off from access to the world financial system. BT, the economy was mired in sub-trend growth; AT and his tax cut, growth is up. BT, in the post-war years most presidents projected a dignity of sorts; AT, presidential dignity is not even considered a virtue.

Seems like a fair deal.

AT AMAZON, lightning deals on DVD players. Both portable and standard.

SO I GUESS STEPHEN GREEN IS FIRST IN LINE TO BE THEIR NEXT POPE: New South African church celebrates drinking alcohol. “A pool table served as the altar, adorned with bottles of whiskey and beer. Six ministers at the altar solemnly blessed the chilled jumbo bottles of beer bought by most churchgoers. A few drank whiskey, brandy or other beverages, all of them similarly blessed. The congregation sang hymns praising the positive effects of drinking. Three new Gabola members were baptized with beer which covered their foreheads and dripped down their faces.”

OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s alright for commenting. Get a little action in.

WELL, IF LOWER ILLINOIS IS GOING TO SECEDE FROM CHICAGOLAND, THIS IS THE START: ‘Sanctuary county’ declared for Illinois gun owners; citizens ‘tired of being pushed around.’

Related: Splitsylvania: State Secession and What to Do About It.

THIS IS COOL: Massive BBC Sound Effect Library Available For Free Download.