WHEN EXPECTATIONS OF IMPUNITY ARE DASHED: VIDEO: Abortion advocate cries, begs, pleads when college cop arrests her for stealing pro-life sign.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: If Globalization Meant China Could Turn off Your Fridge, Would You Still Like It?

Much of the public debate surrounding the Uranium One deal has centered around whether the Clintons committed any wrongdoing in the role they played in a sale to Rosatom (and no evidence of such wrongdoing has been found) but less attention has been paid to whether it is good public policy for the U.S. to import such a large percentage of its uranium or sell control of such assets to Putin, yet that is perhaps the more important issue.

As outsourcing expands to the lowest-cost countries of the world, the chain extends into what are the most unstable regions on the planet.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: A New Growth Vision For Legal Education, Part I: Sustainable Growth Or Dead Cat Bounce?

THIS IS TRUE FOR ALL LEFTIES: ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ is Bill de Blasio rule for governing.

JUSTICE: Conrad Black Explains His Full Presidential Pardon and the Call He Received Today from President Trump.

YES, THEY’RE AWFUL AND SHOULD NEVER VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: Linda Sarsour livid at ‘white women,’ says they ‘uphold the patriarchy.’

Flashback: ‘Before wearing a hijab, I was just an ordinary white girl.’

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Plus, deals on Pools, Hot Tubs, and Supplies.

THE REAL RUSSIAN COLLUSION: Out today, Vladimir Bukovsky’s Judgment In Moscow uses Soviet-era documents to explore Western complicity with Soviet crimes. I blurbed it, as you can see at the link.

The Kindle edition is here. (Bumped).

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Cruz warns ‘Space Force’ needed to prevent space pirates. He’s not wrong, you know.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said this week that it was important to fund President Trump’s proposed “Space Force” in order to prevent possible space pirates.

“Since the ancient Greeks first put to sea, nations have recognized the necessity of naval forces and maintaining a superior capability to protect waterborne travel and commerce from bad actors,” Cruz, the chairman of the subcommittee on aviation and space, said at a hearing Tuesday.

“Pirates threaten the open seas, and the same is possible in space. In this same way, I believe we too must now recognize the necessity of a Space Force to defend the nation and to protect space commerce and civil space exploration,” Cruz said.

The Trump administration’s current plan to create Space Force would cost more than $2 billion to get off the ground, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

The report found that a Space Force military branch would need 5,400 to 7,800 in new personnel for overhead and management, adding more than $1 billion to the Pentagon’s annual costs.

Trump proposed creating Space Force within the Air Force, similar to how the Marine Corps operates with the Navy. The Pentagon, however, has said Space Force should exist as its own branch of the military, arguing its necessity is inevitable as China and Russia sharpen their focus on space.

With a new bureaucracy, you get roughly a decade of increased energy and creativity before things ossify. Is this the crucial decade? Quite possibly.

OPEN THREAD: Did anything happen today?

WELL BLESS HER HEART: Alyssa Milano So Frustrated by Failed #SexStrike She Shatters Her Phone. “The campaign has been widely derided on both the left and right. Conservatives have mockingly applauded Milano for promoting the pro-life teaching of ‘abstinence first,’ even as some have expressed pity for her husband. Meanwhile, feminists – including a woman who suggested she’d divorced her husband for being a supporter of President Donald Trump – criticized the #SexStrike as a setback to women’s sexual liberation. LGBT activists complained that they had been excluded.”

The last line is the funniest.

WITHOUT AN INCOME TAX: Tennessee Ranked #1 for Fiscal Stability.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Fertilize the ocean, cool the planet? Given how chilly it’s been this spring, cooling is not a priority with me.

Related: Big U-turn: Key melting Greenland glacier is growing again. “A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience . Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.”

Temporary, eh? Well, so was the shrinkage before, as it turned out.

And, inevitably: Fallen Angels is just a science fiction novel, right guys? Right? Guys?

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Report: Long Island University-Brooklyn to Drop “Blackbirds” Nickname Because … Racism.

Enjoy the Beatles song of the same name while you can.

PALOMINO! “Today at a law enforcement ceremony at Capitol: AG Barr approached Pelosi, shook her hand: ‘Madam Speaker, did you bring your handcuffs?’”

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: What the Irish Times will print about white Americans.

THIS WOULD PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEE TRUMP’S RE-ELECTION, WOULDN’T IT? U.S. Poised to Let Phone Companies Block Robocalls. “Responding to widespread consumer complaints, the Federal Communications Commission says it will take steps to give phone companies permission to block unwanted robocalls. Americans get billions of unwanted phone calls annually, making it the No. 1 complaint received by the FCC. But carriers have long been wary of blocking robocalls for fear of breaking the regulator’s call-completion rules that require phone companies to make sure calls reach their intended recipient. . . . Mr. Pai said the commission has scheduled a June 6 vote on a measure that would assure phone companies that blocking unwanted calls won’t run afoul of federal rules. The agency said it would enable phone companies to analyze their network traffic to spot and block robocalls. They could let customers create so-called white lists of approved callers and block all other incoming calls.”

I have a proposal of my own:

Under my proposal, any incoming calls from people not on my contact list wouldn’t go through unless the caller paid me something. Twenty-five cents would probably be enough to discourage phone spammers, who make huge numbers of (mostly futile) calls. (Though I’d be willing to go higher. Maybe I could charge phone-sex rates: I’d be willing to listen to most anything from anyone for $3.99 plus $1.99 a minute.)

Of course, hardly anyone would be willing to pay me that much, or even 25 cents, to receive a call. Which is the point. If it’s not worth a quarter for them to call me, why is it worth my time to pick up?

Give the phone companies a cut, and they’d get serious about addressing number-spoofing and other robocall tricks: There would be money on the line, and they’re nothing if not serious about revenue. (Plus, I’ll bet a cellular carrier who added this option to a plan would get a lot of subscribers.)

Let’s do this.

WAIT, WHY WOULD A PUTIN PUPPET LIKE TRUMP SEND TROOPS TO THE UKRAINE? Knoxville-based Army National Guard regiment returns from Ukraine.

SO I GUESS IT’S OKAY TO CALL THEM COMMUNISTS: AFL-CIO’s Twitter account appears to endorse a workers’ revolution: Tweet From Country’s Largest Labor Org Encourages Workers to ‘Seize the Means of Production.’

BUT WHAT IF THE ROBOTS DEMAND REPRESENTATION? Taxing The Robots.

WEIRD, I WAS TOLD IT WAS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING. AND TRUMP. PG&E Caused Fire That Killed 85, California Concludes. Investigators find company’s equipment sparked deadliest fire in state history, after PG&E said it was probably the cause.

California investigators on Wednesday said they found that PG&E Corp.’s equipment sparked the deadliest wildfire in state history, putting additional pressure on a company already facing billions of dollars in potential liability costs.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection determined that a PG&E transmission line near the town of Pulga sparked the fire, which spread quickly across dry vegetation in the forested foothills of the Sierra Nevada. They also determined a second point of ignition where vegetation blew into the company’s electric distribution lines, starting another fire that was consumed by the first one.

The agency’s conclusion ends months of speculation about PG&E’s role in the massive blaze, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise last November.

Go figure.

THIS IS FUNNY, BUT TO BE HONEST I COULD DO WITHOUT THE IMAGERY IT CALLS UP: Barr Trolls Pelosi at the Capitol: ‘Madam Speaker, Did You Bring Your Handcuffs?’

LONGEVITY: Zombie cells’ buildup in your body may play role in aging.

Zombie cells are actually called senescent cells. They start out normal but then encounter a stress, like damage to their DNA or viral infection. At that point, a cell can choose to die or become a zombie, basically entering a state of suspended animation.

The problem is that zombie cells release chemicals that can harm nearby normal cells. That’s where the trouble starts.

What kind of trouble? In mouse studies, drugs that eliminate zombie cells — so-called senolytics — have been shown to improve an impressive list of conditions, such as cataracts, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, enlargement of the heart, kidney problems, clogged arteries and age-related loss of muscle.

Mouse studies have also shown a more direct tie between zombie cells and aging. When drugs targeting those cells were given to aged mice, the animals showed better walking speed, grip strength and endurance on a treadmill. Even when the treatment was applied to very old mice, the equivalent of people ages 75 to 90, it extended lifespan by an average of 36 percent.

Researchers have also shown that transplanting zombie cells into young mice basically made them act older: their maximum walking speed slowed down, and their muscle strength and endurance decreased. Tests showed the implanted cells converted other cells to zombie status.

I take quercetin to help knock those out, but I expect more potent treatments to arrive.

CAPITALISTS INVADE THE DRUG STORE: Disrupting the Pharmacy. While Democrats (and sometimes President Trump) threaten to impose price controls on prescription drugs, the entrepreneurs at Blink Health have a better idea: let customers shop for the best price. My piece in City Journal describes their challenge to the  the middlemen who are suppressing competition and reaping oligopoly profits at the expense of patients, drug manufacturers and local drugstores. This oligopoly, called Big Pharmacy, has far more market power than Big Pharma. Democrats argue that government control is necessary because the free-market system has failed patients. But the real problem with prescription drugs, as with the rest of the health-care system, is that the free market hasn’t been tried.