NOTHING TO HIDE, I’M SURE: Durham: Five Witnesses Connected to the Clinton Campaign’s False Russian Claims Have Refused to Cooperate.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launched 2 rockets back-to-back just ahead of astronauts’ landing.

BOB MCMANUS: Adams must reverse golden parachute for crooked Queens principal. “What should happen to a high school principal who can’t educate kids but cheats to pretend that he can? In New York City, he gets a happy handshake and a $1.8 million payday. That’s the latest from the compost heap masquerading as the city Department of Education — which took two years to boot former Maspeth High School principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir for egregiously inflating graduation rates. Then it turned around and awarded him a seven-year sinecure worth almost $260,000 annually, not counting step raises, a pension and lifetime health insurance.”

Plus: “With sharply declining enrollment — it’s down to 940,000 from 1.1 million three years ago — and a chronic truancy rate pushing 40% after eight years in the hands of Mayor Bill de Blasio and his hack pseudo-administrators, the system may well have entered terminal decline. Certainly its central focus isn’t on educating children — student performance standards, unserious in recent years, are evaporating — but rather on boosting pay, pensions and perks for the DOE’s 100,000-plus employees and its uncounted, parasitical, not-for-profit affiliates.”

Abolish it and replace it with vouchers.

GOOD: Tumors partially destroyed with sound don’t come back.

IT’S UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN, NOT LIKE DRAG QUEEN STORY HOURS: Anti-Gunners Hopping Mad After Donald Trump, Jr Ruins Easter With a Pic of Armed Easter Bunnies.

DEBASING THE CURRENCY IS AN OLD TRICK OF BAD GOVERNMENT: An Ancient Financial Crisis Has Been Discovered… in Roman Coins.

WELL, AT LEAST FOR THE ONES STILL CAPABLE OF RATIONAL THOUGHT: A Simple Cure for Maskaholics. Over and over,  journalists and public officials have made fools of them proclaiming the success of mask mandates in some state or nation — whereupon Covid would promptly surge to unprecedented levels among the masked population. Some of these maskaholics will never learn, but they should at least be required to look at a graph prepared for City Journal by Ian Miller. It compares the  trajectory of  Covid throughout the pandemic in states with mask mandates versus the states without mandates — and shows that the masks made no difference. He also compares Germany, where almost everyone wore high-quality masks, with Sweden, where few citizens bothered to wear anything on their faces. Again, no difference in the Covid toll.

If you know someone still suffering from maskaholism, do them a favor and show them the graphs.

LEGAL EDUCATION: The Law Review Scam—Humanely Ending Law School Exceptionalism. “You heard correctly. It’s law students, not Harvard law professors, who decide what gets published in Harvard Law Review (and in all of the other 654 student-edited law journals in the US).[1] It’s time to consider change.”

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HAS MUCH MORE SERIOUS MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS THAN THIS: Flirty emails got Mark Schlissel fired. A deeper history weighs on Michigan’s flagship. “Schlissel’s case raises complex questions about the private lives of college leaders, including whether they can really have private lives at all. There are questions, too, about the power dynamic that exists between any college leader and a subordinate, and what effect a boss’s affair may have on the workplace. But there is a simpler reason people couldn’t stop talking about Schlissel’s demise: The president made a fool of himself; it’s an easy story that an undergrad could render in full with a piece of sidewalk chalk. Less simple, and more consequential, is how the university responded to some of the earliest known allegations of sexual harassment made against a future provost.”

Meanwhile, here’s more background on (ex) President Schlissel. More here.

Also: U-M Refuses to Disclose Its President’s Politicking. “The University of Michigan is withholding some emails its president sent regarding President Donald Trump, claiming their content is protected under the Freedom of Information Act. The university, which took 106 days to respond to the open records request, claimed the content in those emails were ‘preliminary and advisory in nature.'”

He should’ve been fired for that.

HAVE FUN: Lets Go Brandon Mug featuring Cat in the Hat. #CommissionEarned

I’M THINKING OF STARTING TO OPEN CARRY IN KNOXVILLE JUST TO DISCOURAGE MORE YANKEES FROM MOVING HERE: Rep. David Smith: Open Carry in Florida Would Spook the Foreign Tourists.

GOOD: Federal judge strikes down CDC mask mandate for travel. From the court: “It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of Covid-19. In pursuit of that end, the CDC issued the mask mandate. But the mandate exceeded the CDC statutory authority, improperly invoked the good clause exemption to notice and comment rulemaking and failed to adequately explain its decisions. Because our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in the pursuit of desirable ends, the court declares unlawful and vacates the mask mandate.”

Given the limited-to-nonexistent evidence for mask effectiveness on airplanes, I think it would be arbitrary and capricious even if the procedures had been properly followed.

Plus: “Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said Monday, minutes before the ruling was announced, that he wants to see mask mandates ended immediately.”

NOW THEY’RE PUTTING HIS MINDERS IN COSTUME:

Joe Biden quickly interrupted by the Easter Bunny after he starts to comment on #Afghanistan and #Pakistan at the White House #EasterEggRoll 🐰 pic.twitter.com/xLkuyyudDj

— Thomas C. Dillon (@craigtdillon) April 18, 2022

YES: The Only Way To Fight Disinformation Is To Fight Political Censorship.

DRUG INTERACTIONS: What to consider when taking Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill Paxlovid: The drug can interact with many other medications but is still extremely effective in preventing severe COVID-19.

THE EAST IS RED-FACED: China Censors Its Own National Anthem amid Growing Unrest with Coronavirus Lockdowns.

Sina Weibo, the heavily censored Chinese alternative to banned Twitter, appears to have banned a hashtag that quotes the Chinese national anthem to criticize coronavirus lockdowns. It also appears to have blocked searches for the lyrics to the anthem.

The banned hashtag is based on the first line of the anthem: “Stand up! Those who refuse to be slaves!” The line is rendered with several variations in English such as, “Arise, you who refuse to be slaves!”

Slavery is the goal, now, and you don’t want to encourage resistance from the children of troubled times.

MEGAN FOX: Let the Lawsuits Begin: Groomer School in Massachusetts Sued for Hiding ‘Gender Identity’ From Parents.

NA NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA, HEY HEY HEY, GOODBYE. “A federal judge has struck down the CDC’s mask mandate for airports, train stations and other transport hubs.” (At least until the proverbial Hawaiian judge strikes down the strikedown, I assume…)

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Researchers help develop rapid, reliable vitamin D test.

Studies show vitamin D is an important pro-hormone with a powerful impact on immune function and metabolic health. “Vitamin D deficiency is quite prevalent in Canada over the winter months due to the lack of sunlight exposure, which also coincides with respiratory illness season,” says Philip Britz-McKibbin, a McMaster professor of chemistry and chemical biology. “Beyond its importance in bone health, vitamin D also plays a key role in stimulating immune responses to foreign pathogens while modulating inflammation.”

You don’t say.

FALLOUT: Russia’s Artificial Intelligence Boom May Not Survive the War. “The last year was a busy one for Russia’s military and civilian artificial intelligence efforts. Moscow poured money into research and development, and Russia’s civil society debated the country’s place in the larger AI ecosystem. But Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February and the resulting sanctions have brought several of those efforts to a halt — and thrown into question just how many of its AI advancements Russia will be able to salvage and continue. “

HMM: My First Flight in an Electric Plane. A long way to go with these, but it’s a start, I guess.

INDEED:

GONE? Has Donna Brazile Gone Cuckoo? “According to Brazile, the GOP is ‘essentially running on fumes’ from allegations of voter fraud in 2020, while Democrats ‘are running on the economy that’s roaring back’ and ‘fighting inflation.'”

To be fair, life remains comfy for the inside-the-Beltway crowd.

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY: Study: Older adults worried about memory loss have structural changes in brains.

READER FAVORITE: ComfiLife Gel Enhanced Seat Cushion. #CommissionEarned