JEFF JACOBY THINKS WE USE THE F-WORD TOO MUCH IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE:  Ordinarily, I would agree with him wholeheartedly.  But he leads with the example of Red Sox Designated Hitter David “Big Papi” Ortiz just after the Boston Marathon massacre.  At the first home game after the incident, just hours after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been apprehended, there was a ceremony honoring the victims and first responders.  Big Papi took the microphone: “We want to thank you, Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick, the whole police department for the great job they did this past week,” he said.  “This is our f**king city.  And nobody’s going to dictate our freedom.  Stay strong,” he said.

If the f-word has any place in public discourse, that has to be it.   Among other things, Big Papi can lay claim to the baseball exception to all otherwise-applicable rules of etiquette.  (I kind of remember reading in Emily Post that such an exception exists, didn’t I?)  Moreover, the far more egregious obscenity had occurred earlier in the week.

JOHN HAWKINS: 7 Forces Driving America Toward Civil War.

MICHAEL WALSH POKES FUN AT THE POLITICO: And the New ‘Leader of the Free World’ Is…

OPEN THREAD: As usual.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Can You Miss the Signs of Heart Disease or a Heart Attack?

WAR ON WOMEN UPDATE: Shania Twain is Trending on Twitter because liberals are pissed she said she would have voted for Trump.

As William F. Buckley wrote nearly 60 years ago, “Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.”

Although to be fair, today’s “liberals” spend far less time paying lip service about hearing other points of view than their predecessors – and much more time diving into their safe space woobies when accidentally exposed to them.

CANDACE OWENS’ MOMENT: “Owens uses a theme from the movie The Matrix to urge young people to ‘take the red pill’ and become conservatives like her. She has even had the courage to take on the Black Lives Matter movement. Yesterday morning, Kanye West tweeted his approval of Candace… That caused the Left to go insane.”

Read the whole thing.

THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Astronomers Discovered another Earth. “While it has been projected that there are at least 40 billion Earth-sized planets circling in our Milky Way Galaxy, this specific finding is labelled the first Earth-sized planet to be discovered in the habitable zone of another star.”

AT AMAZON, save in Grocery and Gourmet Food.

Plus, spring deals in Home and Garden.

ROGER SIMON WILL BE ON C-SPAN2 TONIGHT, 7 ET, 4 PT, from the LA Festival of Books. Watch and call in!

APPARENTLY, HACKING JOHN PODESTA’S OPERATION DIDN’T EXACTLY CALL FOR SUPERHUMAN ABILITIES:

New York Times writer Amy Chozick reveals something she claims to have never told anybody before while covering the Clinton campaign.

“I never told anyone this, but one time when I’d been visiting the Brooklyn campaign headquarters I found an iPhone in the women’s room,” Chozick wrote in the piece adapted from her forthcoming book, “Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling.” “I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to belong to Mr. Podesta’s assistant because when I picked it up, a flood of calendar alerts for him popped up.”

She was referring to John Podesta, who served as chairman of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

After inspecting the device, Chozick claims she left it in the restroom and didn’t share her finding for fear of retribution.

“I placed it on the sink counter, went into the stall, came out and washed my hands. I left the phone sitting there, worried that if I turned it in, even touched it again, aides would think I had snooped. This seemed a violation that would at best get my invitation to the headquarters rescinded and at worst get me booted off the beat for unethical behavior,” she wrote.

Podesta’s Gmail account was hacked in March 2016, and his emails were later leaked by WikiLeaks during the campaign. An assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concluded there were no “evident forgeries” in the stolen emails, which were also taken from the Democratic National Committee.

Information security doesn’t seem to be their thing.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND EARTH DAY: Penn State’s 98-Year-Old Outing Club Is No Longer Allowed to Go Outside. “Student safety in any activity is our primary focus.”

As Reason’s Robby Soave tweets, “Rare to have all the pernicious ed trends—safe space culture, cell phone addiction, risk intolerance, en loco parentis—combined into one fun-killing monster.”

NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: The 10 dumbest Earth Day tweets for your entertainment.

Including:

I’d reply “You go first,” but to be fair, Newsweek’s assorted owners have done a tremendous job from 2009 until the present reducing its carbon footprint — by systematically reducing any obligation to actually read the legacy brand.

SHOCKER: Some male sexual assault victims feel left behind by #MeToo.

GOOD: Vanadium for batteries can be extracted from Canada’s oilsands and potentially double world production.
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THE ULTIMATE #METOO: Remembering Girlfriend Murdered by Earth Day Founder.

Why are Democrat monopoly institutions such cesspits of violence?

WELL SAID:

FIRM BUT FAIR:

PARIS — An Algerian woman’s refusal to shake hands with male officials at a French naturalization ceremony is sufficient grounds for denying her citizenship, France’s top administrative court has ruled.

In its decision — issued on April 11 but reported only this week — the court, known as the Council of State, said that the woman’s refusal “in a place and at a moment that are symbolic, reveals a lack of assimilation.”

That sounds rather accurate.