21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Lightning Struck Her Home. Then Her Brain Implant Stopped Working.

KERRY’S ENGAGING IN “SHADOW DIPLOMACY.”

John Kerry’s bid to save one of his most significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official.

He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings.

With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms.

Kerry also met last month with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and he’s been on the phone with top European Union official Federica Mogherini, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal the private meetings. Kerry has also met with French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, conversing over the details of sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English.

Remember that the Logan Act was the original excuse for putting Trump under surveillance? It’s quite extraordinary to have a former Secretary of State meeting with foreign leaders in an effort to frustrate the diplomatic policies of an elected president. I’m in favor of repealing the Logan Act, but as long as it’s on the books, it’s hard to imagine a more suitable case . . .

THIS DOESN’T SURPRISE ME: Study: Exercise, cold exposure boost metabolism hormone.

KANYE IMAGINE THAT?: If you didn’t watch the Bill Whittle video posted by Stephen Green this morning, here’s the part you shouldn’t miss: Kanye West isn’t just a guy who has a few nice things to say about Donald Trump. He listens to Jordan Peterson AND HE QUOTES THE GREAT THOMAS SOWELL.

I tend to be pretty skeptical of celebrity endorsements in politics. And to be honest, I remain skeptical of this one. But I have to admit, learning that Kanye West quotes Thomas Sowell made me smile. Maybe there’s hope for the world after all.

AT AMAZON, spring savings in Storage and Organization.

Plus, deals in Cutlery and Knife Accessories.

THE #METOO MOVEMENT, WHICH WAS DESIGNED TO DESTROY TRUMP, SEEMS TO BE LEAVING A TRAIL OF WRECKAGE THROUGH LEFTY INSTITUTIONS: Sex assault scandal postpones Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018.

HERE’S A NICE REVIEW of Salena Zito & Brad Todd’s new book, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

I’m reading it now, and it’s fascinating and very well reported.

THE LITTLE VARMINTS ARE AFTER GEORGE WASHINGTON NOW: Students at GWU don’t like the university’s “Colonial” mascot, which has honored the school’s namesake, George Washington, since 1926.

ENDORSED: Drinking Tequila? Ditch the Lime and Salt.

According to our guide, the whole lime and salt thing was invented back when people were drinking some pretty rough tequilas where you needed that lime/salt combo to make the drink remotely palatable.

Today, tequila has gotten a lot more refined, so that salt and lime combo isn’t really necessary. That said, if you’re going for an aged tequila like a Reposado or Añejo, then the perfect fruit to pair with it isn’t a lime, but a grapefruit. And instead of salt, sprinkle a little cinnamon on the fruit.

I’m not sold on the cinnamon, but I’ll try grapefruit with almost anything.

AT AMAZON, save on bestsellers in Military History.

HEALTH: 132-pound ovarian tumor removed from Connecticut woman.

JUST NBC THE CREDIBILITY MELTDOWN: Past Weeks Reveal Deep Issues At NBC.

REP. KEITH ELLISON TO SECDEF JAMES MATTIS: Investigate White Supremacists in the Military.

THE JOKE IS, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS KNEW ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS AND KEPT QUIET FOR JOBS AND EXPORT EARNINGS: Volkswagen’s Former CEO Finally Charged Over Diesel Cheating Scandal.

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OVER AT HOT MIC: The Sad Decline of Jennifer Rubin.

THE EEOC SUES ALBERTSONS GROCERY CHAIN FOR REQUIRING ITS BILINGUAL EMPLOYEES TO SPEAK ENGLISH WHEN AROUND ENGLISH-SPEAKING CUSTOMERS: Seems like  an extreme interpretation of liability under Title VII to me (and indeed several federal courts have agreed).

A few years ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights asked employers why they chose to require their bilingual employees to speak English while at work, and their responses seemed sensible: First, it’s human nature that when some people hear others speaking a language that they don’t understand, they worry whether the others are talking about them. So it’s rude speak in a language that others don’t understand. When customers (or even fellow employees) are the one’s who feel uncomfortable, it’s bad for business. Second, sexual harassment law makes an employer liable for “hostile environment.” But if the employer or the employer’s managers speak only English, it is much more difficult to supervise and to ensure employees are not being abusive to each other. And there were other reasons. I wrote about the topic in my Commissioner Statement in the Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on English-Only Policies in the Workplace.

I can’t help but wonder if Americans would have a more favorable attitude toward immigration if the federal government hadn’t been zealously pursuing anti-assimilationist policies for so many decades. Attempts to impose bilingual education and affirmative action are two of the biggest ones. (Why identify with the majority if your one of your grandparents will get you diversity points?) But in a small way these “Speak English, please” rules are another example. (By the way, the EEOC seems to be going out of its way to “interpret” the Albertsons rule to be more demanding than it really is. It is not the intent of the rule to prevent Spanish-speaking employees from assisting Spanish-speaking customers in Spanish if they happen to be within earshot of an English-speaking customer.)

While all this is happening, Trump’s appointees to the EEOC are still awaiting Senate confirmation. And it’s 2018. Tick, tick, tick.

REUEL MARC GERECHT: The Iran Deal Is Strategically and Morally Absurd. “It is less an arms-control agreement than cover for American inaction.”

With Iran, Obama certainly appeared to have a cause, something beyond just avoiding a fight. The Islamic Republic for Obama, and Secretary of State John Kerry, too, appeared to be a left-wing “realist” dream, offering a progressive version of Richard Nixon’s opening to Communist China. The many debilitating weaknesses of the JCPOA—for one thing, the strategic and moral absurdity of paying, via sanctions relief, for Iranian imperialism in the Middle East so we can have a short surcease to the mullahs’ quest for the bomb—stem directly from Obama’s paralyzing fear of war, as well as his aspiration for a Middle Eastern détente.

The suggestion that going to war with the clerical regime is too high a price to pay to stop the mullahs from acquiring nuclear weapons (which is what’s implied by defending the limited, temporary utility of the JCPOA) is downright odd. Obama was, in theory, willing to do just that in the nuclear negotiations. In theory, when he uttered the mantra that “all options are on the table,” Obama was—to borrow from La Rochefoucauld—giving the homage that hypocrisy pays to virtue. The nuclear deal wasn’t just “far from ideal”: It is the hinge of America’s downsizing in the region, the guarantor of a decent interval before nuclear proliferation comes to the Middle East.

It was always about downsizing American power, prestige, and influence.

Plus:

Obama’s “wishful thinking” about the region was never more fully on display than when he speculated that his nuclear agreement with Tehran ought to allow the Iranians and the Saudis time to learn “to share” the region.

Heckuva job, Barry.

FASTER, PLEASE: NASA considering flight test of space nuclear reactor technology. “After a successful campaign of ground tests, NASA is considering performing a flight test of a small nuclear reactor, possibly on a lunar lander mission in the mid-2020s. At a May 2 press conference at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, representatives of NASA and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said a series of tests of the Kilopower nuclear reactor at the Nevada Test Site demonstrated its ability to safely generate 1 kilowatt, and ultimately as much as 10 kilowatts, of electrical power.”

The mid-2020s timetable, however compares unfavorably to the faster timetables at places like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

FIRST IN FLIGHT FROM FISCAL SANITY: North Carolina Medicaid Scandal Broadens on Dem. Gov. Cooper’s Watch.

The political backstory to this tale begins with Cooper surprising the pollsters and his opponent — incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory — in November 2016 by winning a narrow victory. Through deft sleight-of-hand, and taking advantage of a quirk in state law, Cooper arranged an early swearing-in for himself just minutes after midnight on January 1, 2017. That legerdemain allowed Cooper just 12 days laterto appoint Cohen, at the time Obama’s Chief Operating Officer of Medicaid, to head the North Carolina DHHS before Barack Obama left office.

Thus was set the stage for the Cooper Administration to bring to a screeching halt what had been one of his predecessor’s top priorities — rolling back years of reckless spending by North Carolina Democrats. One of McCrory’s main targets had been Medicaid spending in the state; which had come to swallow nearly $15 billion of North Carolina’s $23 billion annual budget.

The runaway Medicaid spending had placed North Carolina in a financial bind, with little cash for anything else. Thus, in 2015 McCrory and the Republican state legislature passed a law that would limit Medicaid spending, remove management of the program from the state Health Secretary and contract it out to private companies, and prohibit further expansion of the program; all steps permitted under federal law.

As soon as Cooper had himself sworn in early, he immediately submitted a request to the Obama Administration to illegally expand Medicaid and maintain government control of the program.

Read the whole thing.

FAKE NEWS: NRA to host company with ties to sanctioned Russians at annual convention.

But as David Harsanyi noted on Twitter, “By this standard, every big company in America has ties to Russia — including every tech giant and every car company. They admit there’s nothing illegal about it in the fourth graph.”

But, hey, anything to flesh out the RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA narrative.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Your Culture is My Underpants.

It’s always in the last place you look.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Sauna use may lower stroke risk by 60 percent.

DOES THIS MEAN HEALTH INSURANCE HAS TO COVER IT? Could fast food make it harder for you to get pregnant?