IT’S AS IF THE LEFT OPPOSES ALL FORMS OF EARNED EXCELLENCE: MSNBC Op-ed: If You Exercise, You’re a Neo-Nazi.

SOME PARTS OF THIS MAY SOUND FAMILIAR: Origins of the Spanish Civil War.

Just do your best to sidestep the little bits of history repeating.

MY DOC HAD ME TAKE LOW-DOSE ASPIRIN WHEN I HAD COVID, AND FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS AFTER: Aspirin linked to lower risk for death in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Also HCQ, doxycycline, zinc, and quercetin.

BE PREPARED: Carhartt Men’s Billfold and Passcase Wallets. #CommissionEarned

REALLY? YOU FIND THIS BAFFLING? Many baffled by Taliban reneging pledge on girls’ education. “The United Nations children’s agency told The Associated Press on Thursday they were blindsided by the announcement.”

Yeah, who could have seen this coming?

THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING TO THEMSELVES FOR SURE: Anti-Gun, Anti-Hunting Academics Should Educate Themselves.

GOOD LUCK, This birth control pill for men could begin human trials later this year.

INCENTIVES MATTER. SO DO DISINCENTIVES: Child Porn Offender Who Got Lenient Sentence From Ketanji Jackson Continued to Seek Images of Children.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Artificial sweeteners may not be safe sugar alternatives: study.

FRAGGING? Russian soldier reportedly runs over commander with tank in protest.

A Russian soldier reportedly drove over his colonel with a tank — while two other service members were caught venting about strongman Vladimir Putin’s “bulls—” invasion of Ukraine amid reports of heavy losses.

The Russian soldier who was behind the wheel of the tank “blamed the commander of the group, Col. Yury Medvedev, for the deaths of his friends,” Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsimbalyuk said on Facebook.

“Having waited for the right moment, during battle, he ran over the commander with a tank as he stood next to him, injuring both his legs.

Take all battlefield reports with a grain of salt, of course, but this is far from the first of these stories to show up in my feed.

GOOD NAME: Space X’s Crew-4 Dragon capsule named ‘Freedom.’

I DON’T KNOW PERFORMANCE ART BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE: Epic Troll Makes Boring Board Meetings Great Again in Denton, Texas.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Daily coffee may boost heart health, lower mortality.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Democrats Promise Free Gas Money for Everybody! “Never to be outdone in spending other people’s money, California Governor Gavin “Let Them Eat French Laundry” Newsom has an even bigger, bolder, stupider plan for the shrinking zombie hordes still populating his state.”

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Socialist students blame Campus Reform for Karl Marx’s name being removed from library room. “Following a Campus Reform report, a University of Florida spokesperson informed this publication that the name and accompanying plaque would be taken down due to the current situation in Ukraine.”

Marx was German.

BREAKING: Joe Manchin Announces His Decision on Ketanji Jackson’s Confirmation.

MAKE AMERICA FLORIDA: DeSantis Poised to Sign Further Protections for Free and Fair Elections.

HMM: China Sees ‘Unprecedented’ Capital Outflow Since War, IIF Says.

STILL POPULAR: Levi’s Men’s 505 Regular Fit Jeans. #CommissionEarned

COLLUSION, STRAIGHT UP: How Russia got stronger as Bidens and Clintons got richer.

In the years before Moscow twice invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from such oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals that still haunt America today.

Our best-selling book “Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties” chronicled how a failed “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations led by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton relied on an appeasement strategy that ultimately backfired with Russia.

Putin’s spoils were measured in billions of dollars in uranium contracts with U.S. utilities, expanded oil imports and transfers of sensitive technologies.

The American dynasties counted their victories in millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, speech fees to Bill Clinton, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals for Hunter Biden.

The appeasement policy began in February 2009. Russia had invaded its neighbor and former client state, Georgia, six months earlier. The lame-duck George W. Bush administration planned to put missile defense structures in Eastern Europe to deter Russian aggression against its neighbors.

But one of the Obama-Biden administration’s first foreign policy maneuvers was to cancel that plan via a “secret letter” to Putin’s placeholder, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Why? U.S. leaders apparently wanted to make deals with Russia, and giant missile silos in Putin’s backyard were a nonstarter for Moscow.

Read the whole thing.

ROGER SIMON: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Big Lie to Sen. Blackburn Exposes Progressivism.

When Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word “woman,” during Jackson’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she got the response “I can’t.”

When Blackburn responded with an incredulous “You can’t?” Jackson replied: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”

It takes a biologist to define “woman”? Does Jackson think we’re morons?

In a way, yes. Or she doesn’t care.

She’s a progressive, and progressives have been redefining language—English and many others—to fit their purposes dating back to the Spanish Civil War and undoubtedly earlier. (See Davis Hunt III at The Pamphleteer.)

Jackson very well knows what a woman is. The nominee has known this all her life, as we all have. But these days, in her part of the political world, she’s not supposed to.

So she lied.

She simply parsed her words in order not to offend a constituency that has become imbued with “transgenderitis.” By that I mean a group taking what we all know—that a small percentage of people suffer from gender dysphoria to a degree that they seek to change sexes—and extending it into absurd public policy for reasons of power and control and, ultimately, money, not to mention a completely distorted and harmful view of gender itself. (In this case, see swimmer Lia Thomas.)

Those with that form of dysphoria, as do all with serious problems, deserve our sympathy and support, but no more so than everyone else with difficulties.

Nevertheless, they’ve been singled out for now and are being manipulated and exploited by the left, just as many minorities before them have been.

The transgendered are the favored class du jour. Tomorrow—I’m sorry to tell them—it will be someone else.

In the meantime though, Blackburn’s query is “The Freeport Question of Our Time,” Steve Hayward writes at Power Line:

The “Freeport Question” refers to Abraham Lincoln’s devastating question posed to Stephen Douglas in his second debate against Douglas on August 27, 1858, held in Freeport, Illinois. The question was seemingly simple: “Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?”

Douglas’s answer split the Democratic Party in half, and helped to assure Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election. Douglas’s answer was Yes, a territory could exclude slavery prior to applying for statehood if the residents of the territory so chose. But the Democratic Party’s southern slave interest was demanding a federal “slave code” that would permit them to take slaves to any territory as a matter of federal legal right (a prospect made more possible by the lamentable Dred Scott decision), no matter what a majority of the residents thought. As such, Douglas’s answer was unacceptable, and so was his candidacy in 1860, which is why the Democratic Party split in half in the summer of 1860 and ran two tickets in the November election.

Today’s Freeport Question—the question that has the potential to split the Democratic Party off from a majority of voters—is: what is a woman?

Related: Matt Walsh Talks New Doc, Reveals ‘Shocking’ Answers He Received To Simple Question, ‘What Is A Woman?’

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: The Masked Generation: Young adults struggle with isolation, loneliness.

TIM BLAIR: Today’s noticeboard is brought to you the enduring mystery of woke sports reporters.

Theory: sports reporters feel ashamed because they’re wasting their lives writing about inconsequential games, so turn political to compensate.

If so, they are mistaken. Sports reporting is an honourable calling. Politics, not so much.

American journalists frequently refer to the sports department as the equivalent of working in a candy or toy store, compared with the hard news sections (or what passes for such things these days). When the late Mike Wallace interviewed Bill Parcells for 60 Minutes in 2004, he even used that metaphor on Parcells. After describing the 14 hour days Parcells put in as a head coach, Parcells told Wallace, “If you want to stay competitive, this is one of the most competitive businesses there is.” Wallace replied with an incredulous tone, “This is the toy department!”, confusing his own profession’s view of sports journalists, with the people they cover. It’s an insulting metaphor to say to a man who had spent nearly his entire adult life coaching college and professional football.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fauci’s Folly Has a Disturbing Non-COVID Body Count. “The reason I singled out Fauci in the headline today is because the leftists elevated him to god-like status and it’s been obvious from Day One that he’s an attention whore who relishes being the face of the government’s faux battle against COVID. So tag, he’s it.”