KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Fact-Checkers Are Not Going to Like This MIT Story About Origins of That Virus From You-Know-Where. “Some prominent scientists and researchers are calling into question both the wet market theory and the notion that the China virus transnational, post-racial, non-sectarian virus accidentally escaped from a lab in W&*%n, a city in no particular geographic region.”

MARS: NASA announces details of first controlled flight on another planet.

It has found the site for its take-off and landing, as well as confirming that the test will begin in early April, it said during a briefing on the Ingenuity mission. The first flight will happen “no earlier than 8 April”, though that could move forward or back a few days, said Nasa’s Bob Balaram.

Ingenuity will not conduct scientific work during its journey. Instead, it is seen as a test of the technology, in the hope that it can inform future missions and help anticipate scientists’ and engineers’ needs in the future.

Nasa said that it had been scouring the surface of Mars for an “airfield” ahead of the launch, using satellite imagery and pictures taken from Perseverance. Engineers needed to pick somewhere safe both for taking off and landing and flying over, with enough texture for the helicopters’ cameras to pick up.

From the first powered, fixed-wing flight to the first helicopter flight on an alien world in just 118 years — most impressive.

SAME OLD SONG: Like Clockwork, Biden Is Coming for Your Guns After Boulder Shooting.

MOVING AT WARP SPEED: How Trump Got It Right, and Europe Fell Far Behind. “If ever there were a scenario under which the federal government should mobilize on a massive scale, and not pinch pennies, this was it. And if ever there were a time to cut through bureaucratic entanglements in order to hasten the achievement of a desperately urgent goal, this was it. The Trump administration recognized this, and many American lives have undoubtedly been saved as a result of their decisions.”

MATT MARGOLIS: Boulder Shooter Revealed to Be Muslim; Woke Liberals Most Hardest Hit as ‘White Supremacist’ Narrative Is Destroyed.

OR MAYBE IT’S ALL FOR SHOW: Pelosi’s Attempt Overturn Election of a GOP Congresswoman Meets Resistance from Moderate Dems.

EXCLUSIVE: Cigna Responds to Claims That It Excludes White Men in the Hiring Process. “When PJ Media asked the spokesperson to clarify the statement with an explicit denial, the spokesperson did not respond.”

A BARGAIN AT TWICE THE PRICE: How CEOs Can Effectively Bounce Their Woke Staffers: If All Else Fails, Pay Them to Leave.

CHARLES LIPSON: Baghdad Bob at the Southern Border. “If the problem at press briefings is deceit, the problem at the southern border is far worse. The hard truth is that there isn’t just one crisis, there are three — all intertwined and mutually reinforcing. One is the humanitarian disaster on the border and in Mexico, where migrants pay criminal gangs to lead them north from Central America. En route, they are exploited, some horrendously: raped, robbed, starved, left to die in the desert, or drowned trying to swim across the Rio Grande. The carnage is horrific.”

It’s a crisis by design.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden Administration Caves, Releases Video Showing Deplorable Conditions for Immigrant Children.

PERVERSE INCENTIVES: Insurance Companies, Reaping Benefits from Protests, Get in Line with Black Lives Matter. “The country’s largest insurance companies stand to benefit from the chaos they’re praising.”

GOOD QUESTION: Can We Add States to the Union Without Starting a Civil War?

GRANNYGATE: Why Someone Hid Accurate Death Count for New York Nursing Homes.

When the attorney general’s report came out and we saw that even the attorney general couldn’t pry these data out of the Department of Health’s hand, we followed up with a letter to the judge that had been assigned to the case and said, “Come on. What is it going to take? Even the attorney general can’t get access to these data that the Department of Health is collecting on behalf of taxpayers. You need to rule. You need to rule right now.”

And then within a matter of days, the ruling came out, ruled totally in the Empire Center’s favor. In fact, had found that we had prevailed so significantly that we were awarded costs and fees from the Department of Health. That’s significant insomuch as it means that we prevailed in a way that was unimpeachable, right?

… The case was so strong in our favor that the Department of Health had acted so poorly in this case that they were required to pay us for our time and for our costs leading up to a lawsuit and all the way through it.

Plus: “There is a political culture in Albany and in New York state government that whether it’s the governor or whether it’s the administration or whether it’s some of these entities that we’ve been talking about, the culture is sort of to withdraw and protect.”

Much more at the link.

UGH: Hero Cop Killed in Boulder Massacre a ‘Devout Christian’ with 7 Kids: ‘He Loved His Kids and His Family More Than Anything.’

ONLY NOW? ONLY STARTING? Europe is starting to freak out about the launch dominance of SpaceX. “A little more than a week ago, the European Space Agency announced an initiative to study ‘future space transportation solutions.’ Basically, the agency provided about $600,000, each, to three companies—ArianeGroup, Avio, and Rocket Factory Augsburg—to study competitive launch systems from 2030 onward.”

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that if ESA is going to spend a paltry $600,000 looking into catching up no sooner than 2030 to where SpaceX was in 2015, then they’ve already lost.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Jim Bennett emails:

From the article Stephen Green linked about Europeans sponsoring launch competitiveness research:

“Germany, with no history of its own rockets during the European Union era,”

I love the carefully-written qualifier. Don’t mention the war!

Heh. I wondered what Basil Fawlty was doing these days. Writing EU press releases, I guess.

UPDATE (From Ed) Was it over when Germany’s rocket program bombed Pearl Harbor during what the EU retroconned into the “European Civil War?”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: The Trouble With Harry.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What do you do with a kinda-sorta former prince whose civilian skillset consists mostly of being himself for the cameras?

Answer: Hire him as a kinda-sorta former price to be himself for the cameras.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Antifa showed up at a truly peaceful protest… you know the rest
• Another Biden rube self-reveals
• Spring Break is canceled For The Children™

Bonus Sanity: Finding microbes of unknown origin on board the space station will have to pass for sanity today.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

MEGAN FOX: Missouri Family Court Corruption: The Fathers Tell All. “Most of the criticism the commenters here at PJ Media and some on the KMOV post have had is that the stories of those affected seem to only be women. That’s about to change. Many men have come forward but have been afraid to speak out. PJ Media has been receiving their emails since the story first broke and investigators have been putting together links between the cases. On Monday afternoon, several of the fathers who say they were bled dry by the Missouri family court system came forward on a live stream to tell me their side of the story.”

JOANNE JACOBS: Liberal arts colleges add career credentials. “Fighting for survival, liberal arts colleges are adding career credentials, reports Hechinger’s Jon Marcus. Debt-averse students want to know they’ll be able to earn a living. Colleges need to compete for students.”

NON-ESSENTIAL WORKERS: Teachers’ Unions Still Pushing Back on School Openings, Say 3-Foot Rule Is Not Proven.

At this point, the “workers” part is at best questionable.

“KIDS IN CAGES” IS ONLY A STORY WHEN A REPUBLICAN IS PRESIDENT: Nearly 1,000 Child Migrants Held More Than 10 Days In Border Detention Facilities.

THE BUCK STOPS BACK THERE: Biden Says Meeting Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline Will Be ‘Tough,’ Blames Trump.

PRIVACY: U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs Facebook appeal in user tracking lawsuit.

The case centers on Facebook’s use of features called “plug-ins” that third-parties often incorporate into their websites to track the browsing histories of users. Along with digital files called “cookies” that can help identify internet users, the plaintiffs accused Facebook of packaging this tracked data and selling it to advertisers for profit.

Facebook said it uses the data it receives to tailor the content it shows its users and to improve ads on its service.

A federal judge dismissed the case in 2017 but the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020 revived it, allowing the Wiretap Act and state privacy claims to go ahead.

“Facebook’s user profiles would allegedly reveal an individual’s likes, dislikes, interests and habits over a significant amount of time, without affording users a meaningful opportunity to control or prevent the unauthorized exploration of their private lives,” the 9th Circuit said in its ruling.

Hiding from users that they’re the product is the core of Facebook’s business strategy.

EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Democrats Introduce New Green New Deal Bill Calling Fossil Fuels ‘Racist.’

HMM: Democrats Plan to Come for Big Tech With Swarm of Small Antitrust Bills.

Both Democrats and Republicans have become wary of the sheer size of firms like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft in recent years. Democrats have focused more on what they see as anti-competitive tactics, abusive labor practices, and promotion of misinformation and violent extremism, while Republicans have mostly sought to prove said companies are run by members of a semi-secret socialist cabal. Either way, tech firms have found themselves in more hostile territory in DC, with a more limited array of allies. Some type of major legislation or regulatory response designed to limit the companies’ power now seems politically realistic (even if the U.S. government remains unwilling or unable to take dramatic actions like breaking tech firms up).

Representative David Cicilline, the chair of the judiciary committee, told Axios this weekend that he sees prepping numerous proposals on antitrust as a sort of drone swarm tactic that would overwhelm Big Tech’s political firewall by sheer numbers.

Cicilline told Axios that he believes the result of the committee’s work could be 10 or more small bills that he believes would increase the likelihood that individual components could pass—as individual propositions may have broader support from members of both parties—and that would be harder for lobbyists to unite against.

We’ll see, but I’m dubious.

It isn’t that we don’t have a problem with Big Tech, it’s that I don’t trust the Democrats to come up with a “fix” that doesn’t end up locking in advantages for their allies in Big Tech.

THE MORNING BRIEF: Joe Biden’s Humanitarian Border Crisis Becomes a Cover-Up While Kamala Harris Just Laughs. “The Biden administration is attempting to engage in a cover-up. Consider: It’s limiting reporter access to the border facilities; it’s refusing to offer any real numbers of those crossing illegally and those who’ve been apprehended; it’s failing to consult with Congress; it’s failing to work with the affected states; and it’s failing to work with local communities.”