TEST DRIVE: 2019 Porsche Cayenne.

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WE’RE WAY TOO COMPLACENT: China’s nuclear aircraft carrier technology will catch up to the US around 2025.

APPARENTLY, WE’RE IRRESISTIBLY SEXY. OR MAYBE DENISOVANS WERE. Modern Humans Interbred With Denisovans Repeatedly.

HISTORY: Watch These Cool GIFs Restore Ancient Ruins to Their Former Glory.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How your saliva can help you find the perfect roommate.

THE INSTAWIFE: Penis Facial: Boys’ Pain, Vain Women’s Gain.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Mueller’s Investigation Flouts Justice Department Standards.

These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.

Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of known crimes.

That deviation, it turns out, is not the half of it. With Rosenstein’s passive approval, Mueller is shredding Justice Department charging policy by alleging earth-shattering crimes, then cutting a sweetheart deal that shields the defendant from liability for those crimes and from the penalties prescribed by Congress. The special counsel, moreover, has become a legislature unto himself, promulgating the new, grandiose crime of “conspiracy against the United States” by distorting the concept of “fraud.”

Why does the special counsel need to invent an offense to get a guilty plea? Why doesn’t he demand a plea to one of the several truly egregious statutory crimes he claims have been committed?

Good questions.

Indeed.

HOW TO LOSE A MAJORITY, EXHIBIT #1,000,006: The Next Big Republican Spending Bill Is Packed With Liberal Priorities.

SARAH HOYT: Russians Don’t Understand Us Enough to Hack Us.

Okay.  Before you read this, check under your bed for Russians.  Once you’re done, check under your desk for Russians.  Then check your computer for Russian robots.

You won’t find any, of course, but you’ll have assured the left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) that you aren’t being manipulated by Russians.

The backstory of this is kind of funny since we on the right were accused for years of believing there were Russians (Soviets, actually) under our beds.  We didn’t, of course.  We believed there was Soviet propaganda in our heads, which was rather more to the point.

It’s hilarious and more than a little bizarre to watch the left pivot on a dime* from over a half century of anti-McCarthy and blacklist movies to seeing more Russians under the bed (to borrow Sarah’s analogy) than McCarthy himself. Hollywood’s due for another anti-blacklist movie (their mythology seemingly requires them to churn out a new one every five or ten years); I wonder if they’ll even bother trying to square the circle.

* The original pivot being Stalin-approved, of course.

ROGER SIMON: The Reckoning of the FBI Has Begun.

From the FBI and across the intelligence agencies an astonishing number of people are going to find themselves accused, one can safely predict at this point, of some atrocious behavior in a free republic. And it will not just be the small change of Peter Strzok (the dimwitted director of counter-intelligence) and his gal pal Lisa Page. It will include—on one level or another—James Comey, Loretta Lynch, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice and, almost inevitably, Barack Obama, not to mention others known and unknown.

All these people’s reputations will be damaged forever for the pathetic purpose of getting Hillary Clinton elected president and later for their determination to manipulate the FBI and intelligence agencies to wound as severely as possible Trump’s presidency. That they didn’t stop to think that they might be wounding America at the same time is extraordinarily selfish and nauseating.

Further, that a Russia collusion investigation was employed by these people for their nefarious purposes is darkly ironic because their technique itself reeks of Stalin’s NKVD.

Read the whole thing.

HONOR ROLL: Clintons, Kissinger, Mattis Among Rich and Powerful Fooled by Silicon Valley Whiz Kid’s $700M Fraud.

ALASKA ARTILLERY DELIVERY: A CH-47 Chinook helicopter delivers a 155 mm howitzer and its gun crew to the Yukon Training Area, Alaska, March 7, 2018. Note the helo’s “skis.”

UPDATE: Link fixed.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Our campus display explained why we’re conservative. Our peers tore it down. “If anyone tries to tell you conservative ideas are allowed on college campuses, show them the before and after pictures in this feed. In under a week we had our modest and uncontroversial display vandalized with hostile responses, and eventually torn down almost completely.”

Cost of attending St. Olaf College: $58,870 per year.

DEMOCRATS BRACE FOR potential California disaster.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Fistfights, nude masturbation and dead pets: What’s going on with airline travel?

Ayn Rand didn’t write The Return of the Primitive as a how-to guide.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HUH: I think Google has stopped in­dex­ing the old­er parts of the We­b. I think I can prove it. Google’s com­pe­ti­tion is do­ing bet­ter.

So switch to the competition — I did.

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS IS THAT THEY’RE AFRAID OF MUSLIMS: ‘Crusaders’ mascot succumbs to ‘Islamophobia’ concerns.

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BRIDGET JOHNSON: Scalise Predicts Pelosi will be One of Dems’ ‘Biggest Impediments’ in Midterms.

TIT FOR TAT: Russia retaliates against Britain by expelling diplomats over ex-spy’s poisoning.

Related: History:

After the RB-47 incident in which the USSR shot down an unarmed US reconnaissance airplane over international waters, President Eisenhower is said to have ordered the assassination of an equivalent number of Soviet military troops of similar rank to those killed in the RB-47. By “is said to” I mean that this authorization is widely rumored, and I have a number of reasons (none of them official and none of my reasons subject to the official secrets laws) to believe this is true. It was neither officially admitted or denied by Eisenhower, who refused to discuss the matter. He neither asserted nor denied a right to to take this action.

In last night’s open thread, a commenter wonders if Theresa May will do something similar.

AUSTIN BAY: ‘Maximum Pressure’ Strategy Got North Korea to the Table.

LEARN: Security Token Academy to Explore How Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) Will Evolve to Security Token Offerings (STOs).