YEP: As Liberalism Sinks, Socialism Rises.

THE LEFT’S MESSAGING STRATEGY, IN A NUTSHELL:

IF YOU LIKED IBD’S EDITORIALS, YOU’LL LOVE ISSUES & INSIGHTS: The editorials that appeared for years in Investors Business Daily were rigorously researched and thoughtfully written.

Now, thanks to several members of the intrepid band that did much of that great work, they are back, doing the same high level of commentary, such as this one by John Merline on the MSM congratulating themselves for lying to America about Trump’s tax cuts. Let’s hope Issues & Insights is around a long time to come.

ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS NOT ACT CRAZY… YOU KNOW THE REST: Kamala Harris open to Bernie Sanders’ call of letting Boston Marathon bomber vote from prison.

NEW PLOT TWIST: Jussie Smollett case: Brothers accused of carrying out attack sue actor’s legal team for defamation.

TYLER O’NEIL: Supreme Court Considers Redefining ‘Sex’ to Prohibit Discrimination.

ROGER SIMON: New Zealand and Sri Lanka Were Not the Same.

OH: That Time Ilhan Omar Smeared U.S. Troops Involved in Black Hawk Down Battle.

SUPER HORNETS PASS BY: Two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln fly past the Spanish navy frigate ESPS Mendez Nñez.

RELATED: Sailors test an F/A-18 engine on the fantail of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

YOU SPELLED “EASTER WORSHIPERS” WRONG: CNN Town Halls: 0 Questions On Anti-Christian Attack, 8 On Impeachment.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

THAT’S THE YEAR BEFORE I TURN 67: Social Security shortfall: Trust fund to run dry in 2035, trustees predict.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law Schools Clamber To Raise Bar Pass Rates. “Law.com analyzed the bar pass rates reported by schools to the American Bar Association between 2013 and 2017—the 2018 results aren’t yet available—and found that 35 of the 203 ABA-accredited law schools had pass rates decreases of more than 20 percent in those four years. Further, 42 of the ABA-accredited law schools saw their pass rate fall anywhere from 10 to 20 percent. There is plenty of debate about why pass rates have fallen, but most experts agree that the 36-percent decline in law school applicants between 2010 and 2016 played a major role. Many schools dipped deeper into their applicant pool and enrolled students with lower LSAT scores and undergraduate grades. Other elements such changing law school pedagogy and the rise of online bar exam preparation are also at play, they say.”

ACADEMIA HAS A DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PROBLEM: UNC professor speaks out: Conservative students silenced, too many peers biased. “A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill professor said he’s found that conservative students are overwhelmingly afraid to speak up about and defend their beliefs in class for fear of bullying from peers and being marked down on grades by professors. And what’s more, Business Professor Michael Jacobs said too many of his peers are content to teach only one side of the issue, almost in an attempt to convince rather than educate.”

WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West.

Click warning: Washington Post.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Cory Booker tells supporter who wanted him to punch Trump,  ‘Black guys like us, we don’t get away with that.’

“I go to these meetings sometimes – I talk a lot about this one, the time where a guy comes up to me in the beginning before I spoke and he says to me, ‘I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face.’ And I looked at him and I go, ‘sir, that’s a felony,’” Booker said laughingly in audio of his remarks provided to The Hill, before adding, “and black guys like us we don’t get away with that. We don’t get away with that.”

I eagerly await Paul Krugman’s condemnation of Booker’s tolerance of eliminationist rhetoric.

DOES BEZOS READ HIS OWN NEWSPAPER? One wonders why, if he does, he lets stuff be published like the “News Analysis” piece on Monday that said the Sri Lanka Muslim terrorist bombings of Christian churches and costly hotels “fueled Far Right anger in the West.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Peter Hasson notes the response of multiple Post critics and points out that this isn’t the first tragedy the Bezos paper’s editors portrayed promarily in terms of something to do with the “Far Right.” Surely they don’t mean to suggest that only the “Far Right” is angered when “rivers of blood” from innocent people flows in the aftermath of Muslim terrorism.

ABOUT DAMN TIME: U.S. Offers $10 Million Bounty on Hezbollah Operatives.

CAPTAIN AMERICA WILL DIE IN ‘ENDGAME:’ If you are under 25 years of age, or you are a Boomer who recognizes the Marvel Comics-based series of 22 movies in the past 10 years, then you know instantly what this is about. And you are eagerly awaiting “Endgame.”

I’m neither under 25 nor a Boomer who read comics as a kid — I was instead reading boring stuff like Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative,” at least after giving up on ever becoming the Yankees’ shortstop — but today I pay close attention to what our culture is doing. And trust me, these movies are significant, culturally, socially and politically.

Dr. Sean McDowell, the Biola University professor of apologetics, has followed the Marvel series movies closely and he makes a highly persuasive case today that Captain America will be the sacrificial hero in “Endgame.” He doesn’t say it in this video but I have a sneaking suspicion McDowell will eventually also point out a spiritual element.

I BELIEVE IN SCIENCE, SCIENCE-DENIERS: Michigan State University to Natural Science students: ‘No science is needed to support transgender and non-binary identities’.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Bring on the Impeachment and Much, Much More. “The Democrats’ 2020 pageant continues with battle cries of impeachment. This may be a smooth move for the primary, where each one is trying to out ‘woke’ the other, but in the general election, it’s an anchor that the eventual nominee will drag around as they try and sell themselves to the voters.”

MICHAEL ANTON: An insider explains the president’s foreign policy.

The fact that Trump is not a neoconservative or a paleoconservative, neither a traditional realist nor a liberal internationalist, has caused endless confusion. The same goes for the fact that he has no inborn inclination to isolationism or interventionism, and he is not simply a dove or a hawk. His foreign policy doesn’t easily fit into any of these categories, though it draws from all of them.

Yet Trump does have a consistent foreign policy: a Trump Doctrine. The administration calls it “principled realism,” which isn’t bad—although the term hasn’t caught on. The problem is that the Trump Doctrine, like most presidential doctrines, cannot be summed up in two words. (To see for yourself, try describing the Monroe, Truman, or Reagan Doctrine with just a couple of words.) Yet Trump himself has explained it, on multiple occasions. In perhaps his most overlooked, understudied speech—delivered at the APEC CEO Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, in November 2017—he encapsulated his approach to foreign policy with a quote from The Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home.” Two months earlier, speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, he made the same point by referring to a “great reawakening of nations.”

This is a longer piece, but well worth your time.

“THIS IS WHY WE TEST.” A SpaceX Crew Dragon Safety Test Went Very Wrong. Here’s Why That Matters.