ENGAGE: SpaceX Set to Debut Newest Falcon 9 Rocket.

The two-stage Block 5 Falcon 9 is designed to take reusability to new heights. SpaceX has landed and re-flown numerous Falcon 9 first stages over the past few years, but none of these individual boosters has launched more than twice. Block 5 first stages, however, are designed to fly 10 times with just inspections between landing and liftoff, and 100 times with some refurbishment involved, SpaceX representatives have said.

“Block 5 basically summarizes all that we learned on reusability,” Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX vice president of build and flight reliability, said last month during a news conference before the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which lifted off atop a Falcon 9 Block 4. “It’s a reliability upgrade that combines reliability and reusability.”

This is the 21st Century I’ve been hoping for.

ABOVE AND BEYOND: Donald Trump to award Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL for gallant rescue in Afghanistan.

Slabinski, a Master Chief Special Warfare Operator (Sea, Air, and Land), led a reconnaissance team on a mission to a snow-covered, 10,000-foot mountaintop on March 4, 2002.

After an al Qeada attack upon landing, the White House said, “Slabinski boldly rallied his remaining team and organized supporting assets for a daring assault back to the mountain peak in an attempt to rescue” a stranded teammate.

In a battle that lasted more than 14 hours, Slabinksi requested reinforcements, “stabilized casualties on his team and continued the fight against the enemy until the mountaintop was secured by the quick reaction force and his team was extracted,” the White House statement said.

Wow.

KEVIN BOYD: More Proof The Left Really Does Want To Abolish Legal Gun Ownership.

One of the left’s big talking points is “guns should be licensed and insured like cars.” They have proposed making liability insurance mandatory for gun owners. But what happens when gun owners cannot legally get gun liability insurance? New York State just shut down NRA Carry Guard, a liability insurance program for gun owners. Gun control advocates have also been targeting Carry Guard’s underwriters with boycotts.

The next front of the anti-gun movement’s attack on gun ownership is ammunition. Every gun fires it so it makes sense for gun banners to heavily restrict it. Democrats are pushing for background checks on all ammunition purchases. The problem with them is that the costs of background checks, anywhere from $20 to $40, can make a trip to the range a costly venture. It would price working class gun owners out of exercising a constitutional right.

But the anti-gun movement is not stopping there. They want to zone gun stores out of existence. Alameda County, California, has an ordinance banning gun stores within 500 feet of areas that include a residentially zoned district. There’s one catch to that ordinance, not a single lot in the county meets that rule.

Gun rights groups have sued the county, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with county. They have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court sides with Alameda County, local and county governments could virtually outlaw the sale of firearms.

If I were thinking of opening a gun store, I’d do it somewhere on I-80 just east of the California-Nevada border.

REVIEW: David Horowitz’s Ruling Ideas.

CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER APRIL RYAN: Melania Trump Is ‘Not Culturally American.’

The Left’s anti-immigrant hysteria has got to stop.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS SAYS THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING: Stormy Daniels Is Crowding Out Dems’ 2018 Message.

Flashback: The Media Is Killing the Democratic Party.

TRADE: Give President Trump the Power to Negotiate Sugar Subsidies Away.

HEH: McConnell Now Answering His Phone As “Cocaine Mitch.”

PRIORITIES: ABC Covers ‘Star Wars Day’ More Than 3.9 Percent Unemployment.

Obligatory:

ROBERT SPENCER: Why Hasn’t John Kerry Been Arrested? He Has Leftist Privilege. Logan Act? Pshaw! That’s for conservatives.

DAN HANNAN: Scottish Nationalists are making their countrymen less independent by the day.

American friends are often surprised by how hectoring and statist the Scottish government is. Scotland, in their minds, is a hardy, rugged place — hardier, certainly, than its effete southern neighbor. It can come as quite a shock to learn Scottish separatists now define their national character as being all about big government — or, as they prefer to put it, “fairness.”

Forget the image of a woad-painted Mel Gibson screaming “freeeeedom!” If you want a more apt cinematic picture, think of Ewan MacGregor’s lament in Trainspotting, as he sits in the Highlands swigging a bottle of vodka: “It’s shite being Scottish!”

Now it’s true that many people of Scottish descent — including, I’m afraid, this columnist — drink more than is good for them. No other country would have invented the “hauf an’ a hauf”, a mixture of beer and whiskey, guaranteed to set the room spinning within minutes. But whiskey won’t be affected by this law. It is aimed, rather, at the booze that people on low incomes drink — notably high-strength ciders and lagers.

There’s a curious streak of snobbery in the Scottish National Party (SNP) that pushed through this levy. I say “curious” because the party likes to think of itself as the voice of working-class Scots: miners and steelworkers and crofters standing up against anglicized landlords. But although it idolizes these groups in the abstract, it disapproves of their lifestyles in practice.

When SNP lawmakers talk about “junk food”, they don’t mean duck à l’orange or a decent bottle of Meursault. They mean KFC and Doritos and other poor people’s grub. Scotland’s indigenous rival to Coca-Cola, a bright orange concoction called Irn-Bru, has reduced its sugar content to avoid a tax that had been levied not on sugar in general, but on sodas in particular. Poor people’s drinks, you see.

Well, somebody’s got to pay for the nannystaters’ expensive virtue signaling.

IT’S DEAD, JIM: Trump will withdraw from Iran Deal.

SCIENCE: Two spaces after period are better than one, except maybe they aren’t, study finds.

I’m glad we’ve settled that.

WHAT’S NEW? John Kerry’s arrogance — Negotiating with our enemies to undermine Trump and feed his own ego.

Robert Charles:

Truth is, the antiquated Logan Act – which bars exactly that sort of extra-legal, unofficial and patently officious and offensive behavior – has never been enforced, although referenced as late as 1991 by the Supreme Court.

That does not make Kerry’s behavior acceptable, patriotic or defensible. In fact, at a time when everyone from President Trump to America’s national security team are working overtime to warn Iran against counting on that faux nuclear deal, Kerry’s actions – not for the first time – are quite unforgivable.

Irony on irony, Kerry’s “stealthy” anti-Trump diplomacy comes on the heels of the Democratic Party’s aggressive 2017 attempts to call a single conversation between incoming Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador a Logan Act violation.

Well, that’s different because shut up.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: HS Athletic Director Lets Everyone Make Cheer Team After 1 Parent Complains.

SULTANS GOTTA SULTANATE: Erdoğan vows fresh military action against Kurdish militants.

“In the new term, Turkey will add new operations to the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations,” Erdoğan said, in reference to a 2016 cross-border offensive in Syria and to the Afrin assault. “The operations will continue until not one terrorist is left.”

The elections are hugely important as they will transform Turkey’s governing system into an executive presidency, a constitutional change that was narrowly approved in a referendum last year. As part of the changes, the office of the prime minister will be abolished and its powers transferred largely to the president.

An alliance of opposition parties argue that the new system will lead to one-man rule and have vowed to return Turkey to a parliamentary system with strong checks and balances.

Wish them, and the Kurds, all the luck in the world.

I NEVER DOUBTED IT: Yes, Pluto is a planet.

The process for redefining planet was deeply flawed and widely criticized even by those who accepted the outcome. At the 2006 IAU conference, which was held in Prague, the few scientists remaining at the very end of the week-long meeting (less than 4 percent of the world’s astronomers and even a smaller percentage of the world’s planetary scientists) ratified a hastily drawn definition that contains obvious flaws. For one thing, it defines a planet as an object orbiting around our sun — thereby disqualifying the planets around other stars, ignoring the exoplanet revolution, and decreeing that essentially all the planets in the universe are not, in fact, planets.

Even within our solar system, the IAU scientists defined “planet” in a strange way, declaring that if an orbiting world has “cleared its zone,” or thrown its weight around enough to eject all other nearby objects, it is a planet. Otherwise it is not. This criterion is imprecise and leaves many borderline cases, but what’s worse is that they chose a definition that discounts the actual physical properties of a potential planet, electing instead to define “planet” in terms of the other objects that are — or are not — orbiting nearby. This leads to many bizarre and absurd conclusions. For example, it would mean that Earth was not a planet for its first 500 million years of history, because it orbited among a swarm of debris until that time, and also that if you took Earth today and moved it somewhere else, say out to the asteroid belt, it would cease being a planet.

To add insult to injury, they amended their convoluted definition with the vindictive and linguistically paradoxical statement that “a dwarf planet is not a planet.” This seemingly served no purpose but to satisfy those motivated by a desire — for whatever reason — to ensure that Pluto was “demoted” by the new definition.

The science is at last settled.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Will Trump Tap Out of the Iran Deal and Much, Much More. “‘If the President decides to leave the deal, it’s hardly the end of the world — or even bad,’ said Jim Phillips, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. ‘Instead, it should be seen as a necessary step to confront one of the deadliest threats Americans, Israelis, and Gulf Arabs face’.”

PEOPLE GOT TO BE FREE: Deregulation Causing Debate Among Some Virginia Hair Stylists.

A new law that goes into effect at July 1st clarifies hair braiding is not cosmetology, and therefore does not require a license.

Virginia deregulated hair braiding licenses in 2012 saying it was limiting job opportunities in an already struggling market. The results have been positive – increasing salon growth by 7 percent – but, teaching professionals don’t necessarily agree with the law.

Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation found in 2012 that hair braiding showed “no evidence of public harm.” So the state got rid of the nearly 200 hours of training and licensing fees. That deregulation is seen as a victory in the African-American community.

“This is a cultural thing, this is passed down. This is something that we need for our hair so, it’s totally unfair to be charging people to do something like this,” said Destinee Wright with Luxie Hair Services LLC.

But CATEC Cosmetology Instructor Karen Brown says this was the wrong move: “Yes, it is a custom, but most importantly, it truly is a craft.”

She says braiders need formal training.

Paid instructor claims people ought to be required to pay for instruction — how is this worthy of attention?

Rent-seekers need to be mocked, mercilessly.

EVERYDAY HEROES: Would-be robber dead in St. Louis shootout after victim, 74, pulls own gun.

Update: Just saw this in the comments. “Retaliation gunfire hits home of elderly man who killed robber in North City.”

A neighbor who didn’t wanted to be identified because of fear for his safety, spoke to News 4.

“Two o’clock in the morning, roughly two something in the morning there was some gunfire in the house, whether it was retaliation or whatever it was,” said the neighbor.

Police gave this account of events at the home on Sunday, which may have sparked the drive-by gunfire.

Let’s hope the neighbors pass around the hat for this man.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: AIDS Runs Rampant in Venezuela, Putting an Ancient Culture at Risk. “The disease threatens an entire indigenous population, the Warao people of the Orinoco Delta, as government programs collapse.”

And, this being the New York Times:

Walter Duranty lives.

FASTER, PLEASE: Navy’s R&D Wing is Building a Lean, Mean Innovation Machine.

The article is pretty dry stuff, but most anything to untangle the mess of Navy R&D (procurement, too) is probably a good thing.

ED MORRISSEY: Dems Getting Pretty Dismayed Over Trump’s Success In Judiciary, Or Something.

Mitch McConnell has set up another half-dozen confirmations this week, and says he will keep the Senate in session long enough to fill as many slots as he can by the end of the year. They will have lots and lots of opportunities to vent their dismay, but little chance of doing anything about it.

Why? Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley doesn’t quite get around to explaining that:

A long-standing Senate tradition that gave senators clout over judicial nominees from their home states has been fraying for years, meaning Democrats have less of a chance of blocking appointees they oppose, as they did with some success during Republican former President George W. Bush’s administration. …

For Trump and his party, setting aside a long-standing Senate tradition may be a worthwhile price to pay to achieve what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called a top goal: shifting the ideological composition of the federal judiciary to the right.

Ahem. Exactly who was it that set aside long-standing Senate tradition in order to force presidential nominees to the bench through to confirmation? That would be Harry Reid, who changed the rules and ended precedent unilaterally to thwart the Republican obstruction of nominees that had followed the Democratic obstruction during the Bush administration to which Hurley refers.

Kurt Schlichter warned them they wouldn’t like playing under the rules they made up, but did they listen?

DON’T BE EVIL: Every Google Search Results in CO2 Emissions, Researcher Quantifies How Much. “Data is very polluting.”

There’s hardly an environmentalist in the world who could survive a serious application of Alinsky’s Fourth Rule.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: What Are We Allowed to Joke About? “All jokes are equal, but some jokes are more equal than others.”

That’s not funny.