ANDREW KLAVAN: Dean Baquet’s Invisible Corruption.

When you work in a corrupt system, your own corruption becomes invisible to you. You know yourself to be an essentially good person. Your friends like you. You’re nice to your wife. You have professional accomplishments. And if you take a bribe now and then or lie or otherwise abuse the public trust, well, you’re a cop in 1960s New York, you’re a Soviet bureaucrat, you’re a Chicago Democrat – everyone around you is doing the same thing, and the only people who complain about it are the others, the non-cops, the counter-revolutionaries, the Republicans, the bad guys. You don’t have to listen to them. They’re beyond the pale.

Occasionally, this leads to moments of mordant humor, when the corrupt person is brought outside of his system and the corruption he can’t see suddenly becomes starkly visible to everyone else. This happened when the dirty Tammany Hall political boss George Plunkitt tried to publicly explain the difference between honest graft and dishonest graft. What was the problem? “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em,” Plunkitt famously said.

It also happened this week when New York Times Editor Dean Baquet tried to publicly explain why Times coverage of sex charges against Joe Biden has been so different from their coverage of those against Brett Kavanaugh.

Indeed.

HOSTILE NATION WAGES WAR: Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “Just think how many lives have been saved by two things leftists hate most: suburbs and the car culture. And just think how many lives have been lost by things the left love most: mass transit and high-density urban living.”

RIPE FOR GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER: Ilhan Omar Wants to Cancel Rent for Coronavirus — and Upend the Entire Housing Market in the Process.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Not to Celebrate Earth Day.

REMINDER:

I THINK THAT STATES LIKE ILLINOIS, NEW YORK, OR CALIFORNIA SHOULD GET FEDERAL AID ONLY IF THEY AGREE TO SPLIT THE RED PARTS OFF INTO NEW STATES: McConnell says he favors state bankruptcy over more federal aid. Technically, states can’t go bankrupt. But they can stiff their creditors. Problem is, then there’s no more credit.

TRUMP CHALKS UP A WIN: Harvard blinks, university won’t accept $9M in coronavirus relief: Decision comes after President Trump points out $40B endowment; Stanford, Princeton also reject bailout money.

WELL, THAT’S NOT GOOD: Lexus’s hybrid flagship sedan costs nearly $5K more than the standard model yet delivers less performance and only marginally better fuel economy.

Related: 2020 Bentley Bentayga Hybrid Has Lower Highway MPG Than Nonhybrid Bentayga. “You’d think the plug-in hybrid would be the fuel-economy champ, but you’d be wrong in this case.”

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

NEW REPORT: PUBLIC COLLEGES CENSOR EXPRESSION ON FACEBOOK PAGES. 77% of the nearly 200 public colleges (every one of them a government agency) FOIAed by FIRE use a secret list of banned words to remove posts on their pages, often engaging in prohibited viewpoint discrimination. They also collectively block posts containing nearly 1800 unique words and phrases that they added themselves, many of which are hilarious. To see the list, scroll to the bottom of the report.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: ‘The Evil Called Barack Obama’ and the Genocidal Slaughter of Nigerian Christians.

GOT SOME GROCERIES, SOME PEANUT BUTTER, TO LAST A COUPLE OF DAYS: One of my high-school friends lives in Italy, and was happy that she managed to go grocery shopping and score a small jar of Skippy.

GARY NUMAN’S “CARS:” On the cutting edge of the war against Coronavirus:

Related: It Took Gary Numan 30 Minutes To Write “Cars.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Crenshaw Destroys Maher: Why Late Night Avoids Conservative Guests.

The Texas Republican appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday. The two had a sober conversation about a number of topics, including election tampering and the current pandemic.

Maher bombarded Crenshaw with a series of tough, targeted queries. Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye during a tour of duty, didn’t flinch.

Did anyone expect otherwise?

Click over for the whole thing.

THIS WILL COME IN HANDY FOR THE SPACE FORCE, TOO: Scientists Explore Underwater Quantum Links for Submarines.

AIRFLOW AND INFECTION: “The implications of this event reveal staggering problems for the commercial airline industry.”

Also, from the comments: “Those high-flow hand dryers in restrooms are great at mixing the air and if you’re the next occupant I have a feeling the previous occupant’s ‘off gassing’ is still floating around. Paper towels are the way to go, as are disposable grocery bags.”

But, just in time for the pandemic, the University of Tennessee’s office of sustainability stuck us with those poop-fan hand dryers, even though science says paper towels are safer.

GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: Morning Joe’s Mika: Joe Biden Saw Coronavirus ‘Coming Like a Steamroller.’ 

Flashbacks:

● Biden slams Trump response to coronavirus epidemic: This is no time for “fearmongering.”

—The Hill, February 1st.

● Joe Biden Attracts All-Comers (Including Trumpers) at St. Louis Rally: “As the hours passed this morning, [Kiener Plaza Park] filled with hundreds of supporters. There was every stage of life in the park, every race, and there were dogs.”

—St. Louis Riverfront Times, March 7th.

● Coronavirus Concerns Doesn’t Stop Joe Biden For Philly Rally Tonight.

—Deadline Hollywood, March 10th.

AND WASHINGTON DOESN’T KNOW HOW IT WORKS: The Economy Is Not a Machine. The government definitely has the power to stifle the economy,  but Keynesian theories of reviving it through government spending make less sense than ever in recovering from this slowdown. It will take more than government pump-priming; the market process itself, in all its complexity, must revive.

#WALKAWAY: Georgia Dem Who Endorsed Trump Quits Office Because Of Party Harassment.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: In light of people’s plans being upended by the Coronavirus, some law schools are extending the application deadline for this Fall’s entering class.

LIVE ON TAPE FROM HOLLYWOOD: Exclusive VIP Gold Live Chat with VodkaPundit and Stephen Kruiser—Wednesday

The show started at 3:30pm Eastern, but Kruiser and I usually go for about two hours.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

STOP TURNING FOOD INTO ETHANOL: UN says covid-19 pandemic will double number of people facing hunger.

ENTERTAINMENT IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS: Netflix just added more than 15 million subscribers.