NOTHING TO SEE HERE: After Firing Co-Founder, SPLC Hires Michelle Obama’s Chief of Staff to Review Workplace Culture.

I’M GETTING OLD: Rickie Lee Jones Turns 40.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Man uses nude mannequins to get revenge after neighbor’s fence dispute.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The partisan stink in J-schools is so prevalent that there is no reason to believe anything “reporters” report anymore.

GIRL CAN’T HELP IT: Ocasio-Cortez Cites SPLC to Blame Trump for Abetting White Supremacy.

OH: John Walker Lindh, American ex-Taliban fighter, to be released in May, hasn’t denounced Islamism.

WOW: Iconic news anchor Ted Koppel says President Trump is ‘not mistaken’ that the ‘liberal media’ is ‘out to get him.’

DISQUALIFIED! O’Rourke Rocked By Major Scandal: He Once Supported Basic Fiscal Responsibility.

KIRA DAVIS: 8 Alternatives to College Financially Strapped Families Should Consider.

WHOSE ROUTER IS IT, ANYWAY? Another Malware Threat to Your Home Network.

Plus, what you can do about it.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Will the Left Melt Down Over ‘Best of Enemies?’ “The fact-based drama shows the ultimate racial healing, a message some on the far Left don’t want to see.”

Meltdown dead ahead.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Research Shows Gun Control Laws Do Not Reduce Violent Crime or Suicides.

“California’s comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality” by Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, Garen Wintemute, MD, MPH, et al, in February’s Annals of Epidemiology.

We love this one, because it is one of the few from either the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (Webster) or UC-Davis (Wintemute) that is reasonably well designed, following changes in the same location over time (trend analysis) rather than comparing different locations at the same time (cross-sectional analysis).

They found that neither California’s comprehensive background checks (UBCs) nor it’s prohibition of misdemeanor violence conviction status for firearm purchases made any difference in the incidence of firearm homicides or suicides—i.e., in “gun violence”. They were left advocating for “permit to purchase”, naturally, an escalation of infringement rather than admitting that their “gun violence” solutions are not.

You don’t want to be a science denier, do you?

LIBERTY: Middle finger protected by the constitution.

A federal appeals court says a Michigan woman’s constitutional rights were violated when she was handed a speeding ticket after giving the finger to a suburban Detroit officer in 2017. The decision means a lawsuit by Debra Cruise-Gulyas can proceed.

In a 3-0 decision Wednesday, the court said Taylor Officer Matthew Minard “should have known better,” even if the driver was rude.

Minard stopped Cruise-Gulyas and wrote her a ticket for a lesser violation. But when that stop was over, Cruise-Gulyas raised her middle finger.

Minard pulled her over again and changed the ticket to a more serious speeding offense.

Cruise-Gulyas sued, saying her free-speech rights and her rights against unreasonable seizure were violated.

The court had it exactly right, saying that Minard “should have known better.” But it seems that many police aren’t often taught much more about civics than, well, anyone else is these days.

BREAKING: Rubio to introduce legislation to keep Supreme Court at 9 seats.

Get the Democrats on record as being against court-stacking.

And as Eugene Volokh notes, despite The Hill’s headline, this is a Constitutional amendment, not mere legislation.

OH: Clinton, Obama Attorney Greg Craig Snagged in Mueller Probe. “Is karma finally catching up to this nefarious Democrat?”

TYLER O’NEIL: Iraqi Navy SEAL Interpreter ‘Code Name Johnny Walker’ to Gain Citizenship, Reveal His Real Name. “He also supports Trump’s wall.”

What a country.

BOOM: Google Fined $1.7 Billion by E.U. for Unfair Advertising Rules.

The fine, worth about $1.7 billion, is the third against Google by the European Union since 2017, reinforcing the region’s position as the world’s most aggressive watchdog of an industry with an increasingly powerful role in society and the global economy. The regulators said Google had violated antitrust rules by imposing unfair terms on companies that used its search bar on their websites in Europe.

Europe’s regulatory approach was once criticized as unfairly targeting technology companies from the United States, but is now viewed as a potential global model as governments question the influence of Silicon Valley. Europe is at the forefront of a broad debate about the role of tech platforms like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, and whether their size and power hurts competition.

I’m still not convinced these EU fines are anything more, really, than enhanced tax collection, and I’m also not convinced that, as much money as Google makes, that even a fine this large is meaningful.

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Ocasio-Cortez Joins De Blasio In Call To Punish Asian Students.

FASTER? PLEASE! Air Force To Turn Navy Air Defense Busting Missile Into High-Speed Critical Strike Weapon.

The U.S. Air Force has revealed that it is working to turn the U.S. Navy’ s Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range, or AARGM-ER, into a fast-flying strike weapon that its F-35A Joint Strike Fighters will be able to use against a variety of time-sensitive targets. This is something that The War Zone had thought would be the case based on previous information about this program. The new missile would give those stealthy jets, as well as other aircraft in the future, an important tool for quickly knocking down anti-access and area denial threats, as well as destroying pop-up targets on short notice.

The F-35’s “short legs” matter less when armed with high-speed/long-range missiles.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Cohen documents unsealed and much, much more. “CNN has won a Walter Cronkite award for best ‘National Network News Program’ for broadcasting an infomercial promoting gun control.”

That’s all so fitting in so many ways. Yesterday, CNN’s Jake Tapper unfollowed Dana Loesch when she correctly called out him and CNN for their award-winning behavior at that town hall.

BUT OF COURSE: 2020 Dems Endorse Violating Due Process for US Citizens With ‘No Fly, No Buy’ for Guns.

FLASHBACK: Thanks to Joe Manchin’s Proposed Gun Ban, I Bought a New AR-15.

Full story at the link.

DRAIN THE SWAMP: Congress Unloads on Pro-Iran Deal Forces in Trump Administration.

Leading Republican senators are uniting against what they describe as a bid by some elements of the Trump administration to keep the Iran nuclear deal on life support via a package of waivers exempting Tehran and its allies from new sanctions spearheaded by President Donald Trump, according to multiple conversations with top congressional officials both on and off the record.

A debate has been raging inside the Trump administration for months over how far it will go to sanction the Iranian regime. While President Donald Trump has promised a “maximum pressure” campaign to choke off Tehran’s resources, the State and Treasury Departments have advocated in favor of waivers permitting Iran to continue sensitive nuclear work as well as its lucrative oil trade.

The debate has split certain elements of the Trump administration and will come to a head in the coming weeks as a series of sanctions waivers permitting eight countries to continue purchasing Iranian crude oil is set to expire in May.

Already, some elements of the administration are pushing to issue another round of sanctions waivers, prompting outrage on Capitol Hill where multiple officials stand ready to fight that potential decision.

If they can’t get on board with their boss’s policy, they need to be shown the door. It’s gotten so bad that when I remember that line in Star Wars about that “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” I picture the State Department building.

HMM: Guaido supporters in Venezuela ‘took control’ of diplomatic buildings, US says.

Spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters that Guaido’s supporters were in possession of two military attache installations in Washington D.C. and the Venezuelan consulate in New York. Palladino added that the Trump administration was “pleased to support these requests.”

Carlos Vecchio, Guaido’s ambassador to the United States, posted videos on Twitter of diplomats and military officers walking through the vacant buildings. At the consulate in Midtown Manhattan, staffers removed images of disputed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez from the walls.

“It is impossible not to feel emotion as we enter this homeland, the sovereign territory of our #Venezuela, liberated from the usurper regime Of Maduro,” tweeted Gustavo Marcano, another pro-Guaido official. “This is what will happen throughout our country when the usurpation ceases!”

If we have to send pallets of cash to anyone overseas, it ought to be to people like these.

A FEW YEARS AGO THIS WOULD HAVE SEEMED LIKE NOTHING MORE THAN THE PREMISE FOR A QUESTIONABLE SPY MOVIE: Someone in State Department likely involved in bid to take down Trump.

Fox News’ chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge believes a claim by Republican North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows of a coordinated effort to hurt President Trump — including “sitting ambassadors,” the FBI and the Department of Justice — also likely involves someone in the State Department.

“I think the congressman is referring to someone within the State Department based on my reporting,” Herridge said Tuesday on Fox News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show.” “Because we have a pretty good sense now from these transcripts that have been revealed and then also records that were unsealed at the end last week in the defamation suit with BuzzFeed that … the government network was being pulsed with the dossier in the final months of the campaign and then during the transition period. And that it was coming at the FBI and Justice Department through many different lanes or many different avenues, and the objective was to lend it credibility.”

Herridge added, “My recollection is there is a tie into the State Department, so we’ll see exactly who Congressman Meadows is referring to … but that is where I think it’s going.”

Read the whole thing.

FINE. AS SOON AS THEY TURN OVER THEIR NUKES AND MISSILES AND DESTROY THE FACILITIES UNDER U.S. SUPERVISION: North Korea seeks sanctions relief.