HOMELAND SECURITY: Feds charge Maryland man accused of plotting ISIS-inspired attack at National Harbor.

INSTANT KARMA’S GONNA GET YOU: Rhino poacher stomped by elephant and eaten by lions in South African park.

BREAKING: Felicity Huffman and 12 wealthy parents plead guilty in college admissions scam. “Prosecutors will be asking for jail time for all defendants, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation.”

ACTUALLY, DICTATORS LOCK UP JOURNALISTS WITHOUT CAUSE. OR JUST HAVE THEM SHOT. Journalism Prof Says ‘Dictators’ Like Trump Win by Driving Fact-Checkers ‘to Exhaustion.’

STEPHEN KRUISER, FATHER OF A FEMALE ATHLETE: How Testosterone-Fueled Trans Athletes Are Erasing Women in Sports.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR: Reality Check for 2020 Democrats. “This week offered more evidence that moderation is the key for the party to win back the blue-wall states that Trump carried in 2016.”

The main lesson of the 2018 midterms was that Democrats won back the House by nominating pragmatic candidates reflective of the centrist districts that they represent. Less publicized is the fact that many progressive candidates struggled to win swing states and districts despite the favorable environment.

This week offered even more empirical evidence of the importance of moderation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets it, but her party’s leading presidential voices are playing right into Trump’s political playbook.

The Progressives can’t help themselves — because it isn’t Trump’s playbook; it’s their own.

BREXIT: May will fly to Paris for No Deal Brexit showdown with Macron: PM will confront the French President tomorrow over his threats to force Britain out of the EU on FRIDAY after her talks with Labour stall.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for April 8, 2019.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Baltimore City Council Demands Mayor Pugh Resign Amidst Corruption Scandal, Bout With Pneumonia. “She filed pro-hospital bills after hospital network paid her for self-published books.”

OH: Columbia Prof Compares Israel to ISIS.

In a now-deleted Facebook post Saturday, a Columbia University professor likened Israel to ISIS, but with more mainstream media support.

Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia, shared the post in reaction to the United States recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

According to Fox News, Dabashi went on a bizarrely capitalized rant before removing the post. “What’s the difference between ISIS and ISRAEL?” he asked. Neither, he said, has a claim to the Golan Heights. “All of Syria belong to all Syrian people, not an inch it either to ISIS or to ISRAEL.” Proof of the post remains available on his Twitter account.

Dabashi claimed Israel enjoys American support only because of its embeds in the media. “ISIS does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis.”

Charming.

AUGMENTED REALITY GOES TO WAR: How the Army plans to use Microsoft’s high-tech HoloLens goggles on the battlefield.

Tech marvels aside, here’s the important bit:

The headset is impressive — better than any augmented reality experience I’ve ever seen, including Magic Leap, which also tried to win the Army contract. The project is also a showcase for the Army’s plans to work more closely with America’s tech companies to speed innovation in military.

For decades, anyone who wanted to win a military contract had to jump through hoops in a process that could take five to seven years just for the military to decide what it wanted. It would sometimes take 20 years for a product to hit the field, according to the Army. And the process rarely involved the troops who actually ended up using that technology.

A lot has changed.

There’s a new Futures Command based in Austin, Texas. It allows tech companies, from small start-ups all the way up to America’s biggest firms, to work directly with the military’s leadership and soldiers to bring new technology to the battlefield.

FLASHBACK: The US Navy’s newest submarine comes with an Xbox controller.

The Navy said in September that the new submarines would come equipped with a pair of photonics masts, which replace the previously-used periscope. The masts feature high-resolution cameras that can rotate 360 degrees and feeds their imagery to monitors in the ship’s control room. Initially, the masts were controlled with a “helicopter-style stick,” but those were described as heavy and clunky, and were swapped out with an Xbox 360 controller.

According to the Colorado’s commanding officer, Commander Reed Koepp, using off-the-shelf technology saves the Navy money, while the controller is already intuitive for the submarine’s sailors.

More stories like these, please.

WE’LL LEAVE THE HIDDEN CAM ON FOR YA: Motel 6 will pay $12 million to settle lawsuit after sharing guest info with ICE.

DEEP STATE: Ukrainian to US prosecutors: Why don’t you want our evidence on Democrats?

DE BLASIO: What We Need Is A System Of “Actual Redistribution Of Wealth.”

DAVID SOLWAY: How Professional Merit and Scientific Objectivity Became Casualties of Social Justice Insanity. “No culture or nation can long survive collectively enforced mediocrity.”

Pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug.

COLD WAR II: Russian Group Offered Paramilitary Training to U.S. Neo-Nazis.

SHOT: After 2016 loss, Democrats know they need white male voters.

CHASER: Bernie Sanders says he WOULD sign a bill to study reparations after claiming previously there were ‘better ways to help black communities than just writing out a check.’

HANGOVER: Ocasio-Cortez Pushes ‘Agenda of Reparations’ at Sharpton Conference.

HAIR OF THE DOG: Democratic 2020 candidates, speaking to black voters in NYC, pledge unanimous support for slavery reparations study bill.

TWELVE O’CLOCKTAILS: Reparations bill wins new momentum in Congress.

IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE: Kamala Harris says she will sign legislation studying reparations ‘when’ she becomes president.

KEG STANDS: O’Rourke, Castro talk reparations with Al Sharpton.

Looks a lot more like a full-blown reparations bender than an attempt to win back white male voters.

WORST. COLLUDER. EVER. Watch For More Russia Sanctions If Putin Helps Maduro Stay In Control Of Venezuela.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Nielsen down and much, much more. “Nielsen was set to meet with Trump at the WH yesterday to talk about the border crisis at 5pm but the conversation turned into a chat about her future. A ‘source’ said that Trump held Nielsen responsible for many of the troubles at the border which ‘led to intense clashes, angry phone calls, and frustration between her and the president’.”

I don’t trust these single, anonymous source reports — but the border is a mess.

RASMUSSEN: Voters Are More Suspicious Now of Clinton Collusion. “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 47% of Likely U.S. Voters think Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is more likely than President Trump’s to have illegally colluded with foreign operatives.”

FORMER PRESIDENT ME-ME-ME: Obama shatters previous record, mentions himself 467 times in one speech in Berlin.

Here’s the breakdown of his personal pronoun use (based on a rush transcript of the event):

“I” — 312

“Me” — 33

“My” — 43

“I’d” — 9

“I’m” — 61

“Myself” — 9

The former president’s comments began on his favorite topic: himself.

“It’s been over ten years since I spoke to a slightly larger crowd in front of the Victory Column when I was running for president,” Obama said to a notably quiet crowd. “I had a little less gray hair then. And since then I’ve been back to Germany I think at least ten times. I’ve been to Europe countless times. But I’m as excited to be here with you as I have been ever when I’ve come to Europe.”

At the link there’s a video fast-cut of all 467 instances, and while fast, it still runs for over four-and-a-half minutes.

SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Labour’s hate files expose Jeremy Corbyn’s anti‑semite army. “A hard drive of emails and a confidential database last updated on March 8 reveal how the party’s system for dealing with such complaints is bedevilled by delays, inaction and interference from the leader’s office. They reveal members investigated for posting such online comments as ‘Heil Hitler’, ‘F*** the Jews’ and ‘Jews are the problem’ have not been expelled, even though the party received the complaints a year ago.”

Video at the link.

OUR ELITES: Man Who Bribed Son Into Penn Found Guilty in $1.3 Billion Health Fraud.

COUNT EVERY VOTE, THE GOOD ONES TWICE: Turkey’s ruling party seeks vote recount after setback for Erdogan.

In the March 31 local elections, the opposition not only prevailed in a tight race in Istanbul, a city of 15 million residents that is Turkey’s financial and cultural center, but took control of Ankara, the capital. Erdogan’s party, which had held both cities for decades, contested the results, claiming the elections were “tainted.”

The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, won the right for a recount of votes that were previously deemed invalid. But on Sunday, Ali Ihsan Yavuz, a deputy chairman, said the party would appeal to the country’s top election authority for a total recount of votes in 38 districts in Istanbul, not just of ballots that were canceled.

The party made the move after the opposition candidate’s lead narrowed to 16,380 votes after some 80% of the invalidated ballots were reassessed in the partial recount.

The opposition Republican People’s Party maintains that it looks increasingly unlikely that the invalidated ballots will swing the result in Istanbul in favor of the ruling party.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition party candidate, urged the AKP to concede.

Erdogan would be wise to tread carefully on the election results from Turkey’s two most important cities, but do you really expect him to be?

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Ted Cruz Threatens Lawsuit After Yale Law School Blacklists Christian Firms.