CHRIS LOESCH CALLS TWITTER OUT FOR ‘PURGING’ CONSERVATIVES WHO TOLD #TIDEPOD JOKES:

As another day passed by where his wife’s timeline was filled with threats and some of the most revolting and vile trolling we have ever seen (all while Twitter did nothing), Chris Loesch called our attention to another issue only Conservatives seem to be having with the social media giant’s Terms of Service:

Earlier: The Censorship of Conservatives on the Internet Is Approaching Critical Levels of Bad.

IT DRASTICALLY INCREASES YOUR AWESOMENESS INDEX: Coffee affects metabolism in greater ways than previously thought.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Why shouldn’t the best foreign airlines be able to carry passengers between American cities? If it saves just one dog’s life, it’s worth it!

AND AGAIN: United plane heading to St. Louis diverted after pet mistakenly loaded onboard.

SCIENCE: A male contraceptive pill that boosts libido may soon be a reality.

HILARITY ENSUES: Woman posts public complaint to postal service when sex toy is lost in the mail.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The Reductio Ad Absurdum of Diversity.

Last fall, St. Catherine University invited 30 businesswomen and inspirational speakers to lead the breakout sessions at a popular annual leadership conference.

But the conference, which was billed as a networking and career-building event, never took place. The university canceled it because of what it called a lack of diversity among the invited speakers.

The decision, which caught many of the speakers by surprise, has cast the Catholic university in St. Paul in an uncomfortable national spotlight. Last week, the conservative website Campus Reform reported that St. Catherine had pulled the plug on the event because “most, if not all the scheduled speakers ended up being white.”

Read the whole thing. St. Catherine University’s tuition and fees are $38,349. Parents and students, choose where to spend your money wisely.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Chef Knife For The Money.

I have a Henckels Twin. I like it fine. But this is the winner.

LET THE BOYS FIGHT: Why Anti-Bullying Policies Fail and Why Fighting May Be the Answer.

ZUG-ZUG: Modern Humans Had Sex With Denisovan Cousins Too, Not Just Neanderthals.

(Classical reference in the headline, as Ed might remind you.)

HMM: Hacker Adrian Lamo dies at 37.

The Colombian-American hacker, who resided in Wichita, Kansas, first rose to notoriety in the early-2000s by hacking into systems at The New York Times, Microsoft, and Yahoo, which he was subsequently convicted for.

Lamo was more recently widely known for his involvement in passing information on whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a former US Army soldier who befriended Lamo. In an internet chat, Manning told Lamo that she had downloaded and burned classified files to a disk.

Lamo, with help from two friends in military intelligence, informed the US military of the breach.

Cause of death has not been released.

HE WAS A GREAT LEGAL SCHOLAR, AND AN INSTAPUNDIT READER. R.I.P., Ron Rotunda.

OVERLOAD: WILL ANY SHOWS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF TV ENDURE?

So is there any point to determining a TV canon at all? There certainly are excellent TV shows, especially relative to other TV shows. There are TV shows that are produced with artistic genius and beauty and that shed light on timeless truths about the human condition. But given the nature of the medium, will these achievements last? So many great shows will slip into oblivion unloved and unmourned. For instance, I would love to share my appreciation of The Shield with more people. But I’m a realist. I am fully aware that asking most people to sit down and watch 88 episodes of a cop drama, albeit a very good cop drama with one of the few great endings of this era of narrative television, is pointless. There’s not enough time.

Even if we had a surfeit of seconds—even “if we were literally immortal,” as Bloom wrote—it’s worth considering whether any television from today will be watched for entertainment by future generations. Just because TV is a going concern now doesn’t mean it always will be. Without dipping too far into the realm of science-fiction, one doesn’t have to be too imaginative to conjure up a future in which television, as an artistic medium, withers and fades, replaced by YouTube vloggers and competitive gamers and eventually by increasingly immersive virtual reality. “Most commercial music disappears when the generation that made it dies,” music historian Ted Gioia explains to Chuck Klosterman in his book But What If We’re Wrong? “After each generation dies, only a few songs and artists enjoy a lingering fame.” That low level of recognition is held by only a few folks here and there. One wonders if prestige TV is, like any popular genre, little more than a fad that will fade as its fans die off.

Long but well worth your time to binge-read.

PHIL GRAMM: How to Complete the Escape From ObamaCare. “Congress eliminated the individual mandate. There’s a way around the other onerous regulations.”

Democratic leaders in Congress were quick to recognize that Idaho’s plan to grant health-care freedom to its citizens posed a mortal threat to ObamaCare. Sens. Patty Murray and Ron Wyden were joined by Reps. Frank Pallone and Richard Neal in sending an intimidating letter to the director of Idaho’s Department of Insurance, threatening massive fines and demanding emails and phone records. Since Idaho has shown no sign of backing down, this battle is certain to escalate. Democrats clearly understand that if Idaho is able to market its “Freedom” insurance, as many as 30 Republican-led states will quickly follow its lead. Health-care freedom in Idaho could lead to the de facto end of ObamaCare throughout America.

The Trump administration and Congress are also working to expand health-care freedom nationwide. When the current administration reversed President Obama’s policy of making cost-sharing payments to keep insurance companies in the exchanges, insurers responded by raising the price of their federally subsidized benchmark insurance options. This premium increase on the benchmark policies triggered an automatic increase in the subsidies, all funded by federal taxpayers. State insurance regulators conveniently looked the other way in 2017, but ObamaCare specifically granted the federal government rate-review powers to prevent insurance companies from gaming the system. The benchmark ruse is unlikely to pass HHS scrutiny in 2018.

Before the repeal of the tax penalty, Democrats couldn’t bear the political cost of being seen as dismantling ObamaCare, but they will be forced to act as the program contracts. As healthier families flee the exchanges and premiums spiral, Democrats will be desperate to boost the subsidies. Politically, it will be very difficult for Democrats to deny people who have voluntarily left the exchanges the freedom to buy their own health insurance independent of ObamaCare regulations. Their stubborn reluctance to permit more-flexible plans will provide cover for Republicans to oppose increasing subsidies to the exchanges.

Since actually repealing ObamaCare proved too much for hundreds of Republicans who ran for years on just such a promise, this might be the next best thing.

IN-DEPTH REVIEW: 2018 Subaru Crosstrek.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Why shouldn’t the best foreign airlines be able to carry passengers between American cities? If it saves just one dog’s life, it’s worth it!

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Affordable Spring Break Destinations for Families.

SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Capitol Police Arrested Male Dem Operative For Assaulting Female Trump Admin Official.

THIS IS HOW CLINTONS THANK CALIFORNIA? Deadlines for disclosing charitable donations from governments are for the little people. More from master Clinton Foundation sleuth Charles Ortel. And he’s just getting warmed up. Things are about to get very hot on this front.

I HOPE I’LL GET TO TOUR KNOXVILLE’S NEW CATHEDRAL SOON. It looks very nice.

BRANDON MORSE: The Censorship Of Conservatives On The Internet Is Approaching Critical Levels Of Bad.

Instapundit is never censored, never shadowbanned, and never de-platformed.

IF YOU HAVE TO ASK…: Teacher on Leave After Questioning Whether School Would Let Pro-Life Students Walk Out, Too. “Would that be allowed by the administration?”

Julianne Benzel told CBS13 that she suspects she got in trouble for suggesting that schools administrators who condoned the student walkout might be practicing a double standard.

“And so I just kind of used the example which I know it’s really controversial, but I know it was the best example I thought of at the time,” said Benzel. “[If] a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided ‘I want to walk out of school for 17 minutes’ and go in the quad area and protest abortion, would that be allowed by our administration?”

Her students saw her point, and the discussion—which took place last week—was fruitful, according to Benzel. But on Wednesday, the teacher received a call that she had been placed on leave.

It is unwise to ask difficult questions, comrade.