NEWS YOU CAN USE: What’s that tiny hole in airplane windows? Good to know–was always curious about that thing.

ACTUALLY, IT STUNK PRETTY BADLY FROM THE GET-GO:  The New York Post editorial today, “As Five Taliban Officials Walk Free, Bergdahl Deal Stink Grows.”

[R]etired Gen. Stanley McChrystal revealed last week for the first time that he’d been informed almost immediately after Bergdahl’s 2009 capture that the soldier “walked off [his base] intentionally.”

Yet years later, in the runup to Obama’s trade, National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed Berghdal had been “captured on the battlefield” after serving “with honor and distinction.” The State Department dismissed claims he’d deserted as “rumors.”

Under the terms of the deal, the five were shipped to Qatar, where they were banned from travel and subjected to monitoring. That arrangement expires today. . . .

The danger can’t be overemphasized: These were all senior commanders — one a deputy defense minister, another head of intelligence. At least one has been in touch with the Taliban and two others have met with the al Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani network in the past year.

Now these five terrorists, let go to bring an accused deserter home, may be free to once again target American soldiers. Some bargain, Mr. President.

Treasonous, frankly.  And as I’ve written about before, illegal.

I’LL TAKE “SHAKEDOWN MONEY” FOR $100, ALEX:  National Review has an intriguing report on the shady activities of a non-profit headed by Al Sharpton’s daughter, Dominque Sharpton, called Education for a Better America.

Even as Ms. Sharpton runs an organization focused largely on college preparedness and college education, it’s not clear that she herself is a college graduate. National Review confirmed that she has completed three semesters at Temple University but could find no indication that she obtained a degree. . . .

According to non-public tax records released by EBA to National Review, the bulk of the nonprofit’s $195,500 in 2014 revenue derived from corporate donors, many of which have also made hefty contributions to National Action Network.

It sounds like a boondoggle to me. The EBA’s website suggests it participates in a bunch of semi-useless career planning workshops and events that are co-sponsored with her father’s organization, National Action Network— you know, the one that gets “contributions” from big companies desirous of avoiding Sharpton’s ire.

SENATE HAS VOTES TO EXTEND NSA “METADATA” COLLECTION:  The Senate is back in session today, trying to reach compromise on the controversial provision of the Patriot Act–section 215, which has been used to collect cell phone “metadata” (phone numbers called; time/duration of calls). This provision of the Patriot Act will expire automatically at midnight (June 1) if the Senate fails to do something.

Senator Rand Paul is still withholding consent to move forward on the measure, and this may mean the provision will expire, at least temporarily, though there is a majority of Senators who now appear willing to approve the House version of the reauthorization, which would allow such metadata to be collected and stored by private phone companies rather than the NSA.

UPDATE:  More on Paul’s procedural maneuvering here.

BECAUSE THEY’RE SO SPECIAL: California lawmakers have a special staff of two employees whose job is to drive drunk state senators home. The special drivers are paid over $2,500 per month, at taxpayers’ expense.  Can’t they just call a cab like everyone else?

MOVE US EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM?: Jeb Bush told reporters on Saturday that the U.S. should move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as he agrees that it is the capital of Israel.  The issue is controversial because, although there is a federal law that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the past three presidents, including Obama, have waived the law under their constitutional authority to receive foreign governments under Article II, section 3.  The disagreement between the legislative and executive branches on the status of Jerusalem has caused the issue to reach the Supreme Court, which is presently considering the case of Zivotofsky v. Kerry, involving a plaintiff’s desire to have his U.S. passport list his place of birth as “Jerusalem, Israel.”

THAT’S SOME DIET COKE: A muslim chaplain wearing a hijab was allegedly denied an unopened can of Diet Coke on a United flight from Chicago to Washington. The reason? “We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane,” she recalled the flight attendant telling her. A United spokesperson says the incident was a misunderstanding. The flight attendant and the pilot later apologized to her.

My opinion? She is making a mountain out of a molehill.  She sounds like a rabble-rouser looking like her 15 minutes of fame.

WELL, THEY WERE SOCIALISTS: Former Nazis received $20.2 million in Social Security benefits. 

A report from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general revealed that more than 130 suspected Nazi war criminals, SS guards and others who may have participated in the Third Reich’s atrocities collected $20.2 million in retirement benefits. . . .

The watchdog report comes seven months after The Associated Press revealed benefits were paid to former Nazis after they were forced out of the U.S. The AP found that the Justice Department used a legal loophole to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. in exchange for Social Security benefits. IF they agreed to go voluntarily or fled the country before their deportation, they could keep their benefits.

Congress passed legislation to close the loophole and bar Nazi suspects from receiving benefits. President Obama signed the measure into law last year.

But hey, as Socialists, the Nazis appreciated all this cradle-to-grave government support.  They only got cut off because of the political pressure put on Congress.  Now, if only they could somehow make statutory entitlements a constitutional right.  Oh, wait. . .

THE NEW DEMOCRATS: MATTRESS GIRL AND PAJAMA BOY: Peter Alberice at Breitbart has an oped lamenting the loss of the old Democrats, concluding:

Under Obama, divisiveness and the politics of envy overrode the unity and a sense of purpose under JFK that the party once stood for. “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” has been replaced by “You didn’t build that.”

“My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man” has become “leading from behind.”

The Democratic Party will continue to champion divisiveness through single-issue political infighting, a failed progressive economic agenda, and an almost nonexistent foreign policy. The party that once stood with our allies abroad and supported robust economic growth has been replaced by whiny radical feminism and an overwrought sense of entitlement.

Mattress Girl and Pajama Boy are the new Democratic Party; Truman and Kennedy would be embarrassed.

Indeed.

MORE EXECUTIVE LAWMAKING: According to The Hill, the Obama Administration is readying more than a dozen new gun laws regulations, ranging from restrictions on high-powered pistols to gun storage requirements. “Congressional efforts to expand background checks and keep guns away from dangerous people have failed in recent years, but the legislative defeats won’t stop the Justice Department from regulating.”

No, no it won’t. Nothing stops this President from getting his way, least of all a legislative branch or a Constitution that assigns to it “all legislative powers.“

9th CIRCUIT INVALIDATES IDAHO’S 20-WEEK ABORTION BAN:  The court determined, in McCormack v. Herzog, that banning abortions at 20 weeks violates the viability line drawn by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The Ninth Circuit panel concluded:

The Supreme Court reaffirmed in Casey that an undue burden exists if the purpose or effect of a provision of law places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus obtains viability. Casey, 505 U.S. at 846. In Planned Parenthood of Cent. Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 64 (1976), the Court further explained that “it is not the proper function of the legislature or the courts to place viability, which essentially is a medical concept, at a specific point in the gestation period.” Because § 18-505 places an arbitrary time limit on when women can obtain abortions, the statute is unconstitutional.

As I noted in an earlier post, the Ninth Circuit similarly ruled Arizona’s 20-week abortion law unconstitutional in Horne v. Isaacson, so this decision isn’t all that surprising.  What is interesting, however, is that the House of Representatives recently passed a similar 20-week ban, which has its own unique constitutional problems, since it is questionable whether Congress has the power, through the Commerce Clause, to regulate abortions.

To avoid the Casey viability issue, States should simply ban abortions after 24 weeks instead. Congress should stay out of it.

NOT ME:  Who voted to bring 33 million immigrants from Mexico?

Americans pride ourselves on being people who have a government. But these days, it more often seems as if we’ve got a government that has people.

And that government is even selecting who its people will be, having–within a generation–essentially imported a state’s worth of new people through immigration.

Since 1970, the number of “Hispanics of Mexican origin” in the U.S. has jumped from fewer than 1 million to more than 33 million. If all these Mexicans were a state, it would be the second largest in population in the country, trailing only California.

Did you vote to approve that immigration policy? Did anyone? In fact, the federal government allowed it to happen without any voter input. That’s by design.

It’s no accident. And Americans overwhelmingly believe (77%)  illegal immigration is a serious issue, and 63% still agree that the U.S. military should be used along the Mexican border to prevent illegal immigration.  And while 60% think illegal immigrants should not be allowed to vote if they can prove they live in this country and pay taxes, a shocking 53% of Democrats disagree, and think tax-paying illegal immigrants should have the right to vote.  Yep, you read that right: a majority of Democrats think illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote.  So much for the rule of law. But then again, it’s not about law; it’s about growing the ranks of voting Democrats.

SMELLS LIKE POLITICS: Alan Dershowitz says Hastert indictment “smells.”  The federal structuring statutes that Hastert is accused of violating are aimed at sniffing out drug money, tax evasion and other illegal activities. But paying “hush money,” as Hastert was allegedly doing, isn’t illegal.

IT’S HARD TO PICK A “FAVORITE,” SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY: Jonah Goldberg on “The Clintons’ favorite way to lie.”

There are no “new” Hillarys. There are, on occasion, new strategies to dupe people into thinking there is a new Hillary. But these Potemkin do-overs are usually as pale, thin, and see-through as the skin of an agoraphobic Goth computer programmer. The simple fact is: This is her. There is no other her. There is no other Bill, either, by the way. They are Clintons and they are eternal, Aesopian, unchanging. The tackiness and the lying, the parsing and corner-cutting, the entitlement and fakery: This is what they do. Scandals swirl around the Clintons like the cloud of dirt surrounding Pigpen not because the Clintons are the victims of their enemies, but because the Clintons are their own worst enemies. They do this to themselves. They create these problems. They are the authors of their own torment because this is who they are.

Yep–the Clintons are Potemkin villages all the way down.  Hard to believe anyone falls for their populist facades.

KEEP YOUR GUNS HANDY: ISIS fighter who trained several times in counter-terrorism programs sponsored by the State Department makes a video declaring, “God willing, we will find your towns, we will come to your homes, and we will kill you.”  I suspect our “training” programs for counterterrorism are teeming with ISIS wannabes.

WE’RE GOING TO SEE MORE OF THIS: Passenger jet approaching LaGuardia has close call with drone.

CONNECTICUT SENATE PASSES “SAY YES” SEXUAL CONSENT BILL: The Connecticut legislature this week approved a bill that would require all colleges and universities in the State to a “yes means yes” policy for sexual consent by students.  Shockingly, the bill passed with only one vote against it, by Senator Joe Markley (R-Southington). What happened to the other 14 Republican Senators?  The bill now must obtain House approval. An oped in the Hartford Courant by a retired University of Connecticut social worker, Cynara Stites, points out the perversity of the bill:

According to Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, who spearheaded this bill, college students would be required to “say yes” or indicate nonverbally through “physical cues” that they are willing to have sex with another college student.

YOUNG PEOPLE WITH SKILLS AND DECENT-PAYING JOBS?:  This is the answer to the question posed by Rolling Stone’s Mike Konczal, who asks, “What’s left after higher education is dismantled?”  This answer is inconceivable to Konczal, who argues instead for more public funding of dysfunctional higher education:

[T]hese stories tell us what is likely to happen as the public university system weakens: nothing. No one will step in to fill this crucial role of providing quality, mass higher education. In the first case, resources will go to bidding wars over whose name will go on a fancy building – vanity projects perfect for this age of inequality that will do nothing to provide education. In the second case, resources are extracted out to shareholders and executives in imploding Ponzi schemes, leaving behind nothing but students with poor educations saddled up to their eyeballs in debt.

Mass higher education – starting with the land-grant schools in the Nineteenth Century, and continuing through the GI Bill and the mid-century expansion – has always been a public project. And we need to embrace it.

This is why the recent proposals to expand and solidify public free higher education are essential.

Exactly wrong. There’s nothing of particular “quality” at public universities–they are as full of progressive, dollar-driven non-education as anyplace else.  The fundamental problem is that there are far too many young people going to college in the first place. If they obtained skills that society actually needs–plumbing, electrician, HVAC, carpentry, mechanics–they would get good, decent-paying jobs very quickly, and they wouldn’t be saddled with debt and forced to work in unskilled jobs. Throwing more money at higher education is akin to giving heroin to an addict: it just enables their destructive behavior, and they’ll greedily take it.

IF YOU CAN’T BAN IT, REGULATE THE HECK OUT OF IT:  Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has introduced the Firearm Risk Protection Act, which would require mandatory liability insurance for all gun owners; non-compliance would trigger a $10,000 fine.  It won’t go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress, but it is a reminder of what the Democrats would do if they could (and they would do much more).

VA WHISTLEBLOWER CALLS FOR SECRETARY’S RESIGNATION: The VA scandal continues.  A whistleblower at the Phoenix VA, Jared Kinnaman, has written a letters to the interim director of the Phoenix facility and the VA Secretary, Robert McDonald, asking for their resignation:

According to Kinnaman, one of the most egregious examples of dangerous behavior at Phoenix is understaffing in the emergency room. The leadership has long known of the problem, having been informed numerous times that this long-standing scenario is like a ticking time bomb that threatens the safety of veterans and their family members.

The Phoenix VA has maintained from the very start that the ER is staffed 24/7 by a licensed social worker. However, The Washington Times recently obtained an email chain indicating the VA is scrambling to fill all the scheduling gaps, essentially driving their employees to the breaking point. Even officials appeared shocked. According to the emails, the problem was copied to Grippen, the current dir