SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: UK Court Rejects Parents’ Appeal To Save Their Terminally Ill Child. “The hospital in Liverpool has given up on him. They want to pull the plug, but his parents are begging to save him. In fact, they found a way out. Alfie was granted Italian citizenship on Monday, meaning he could be transferred to a hospital in Rome and receive new treatment. The doctors there are more than willing to do so.”

However:

The hospital wasted no time to take him off life support.

“He is needing oxygen but the hospital won’t give him any,” Alfie’s father said. “I don’t know what to do. He’s not suffering. He is losing his color and his fingers are going slowly blue but he is able to sustain his life.”

“He needs to be oxygenated and they won’t oxygenate him,” he added. “All he needs is some oxygen. He is starting to need oxygen and the hospital are refusing to give him that.”

Damn.

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN: Facebook’s 20,000 Content Reviewers Bring ‘Bias to Work.’

Yes, but they’ll make it look like Facebook is “doing something” to fix the problem while in fact further institutionalizing the problem.

NEWS FROM AIRSTRIP ONE: Driver jailed for EIGHT MONTHS after giving three speed cameras the finger.

(Classical reference in the headline, as Ed likes to say.)

CLAIM: 71 percent of FBI’s foreign counterintelligence budget diverted to Russia probe.

Flashback (all the way back to Sunday): Devin Nunes On Russia Probe Origin: “Major Irregularities” At State Dept, Sidney Blumenthal Involved.

“It took a long time to actually get this… the original intelligence, the original reasons that the counterintelligence investigation was started.

“This is really important to us because a counterintelligence investigation uses the tools of our intelligence services, that are not supposed to be used on American citizens. So we’ve wanted to know what intelligence they had that actually led to this investigation.

“So what we found now, after investigators have reviewed it is that, in fact, there was no intelligence.”

Meanwhile, the “most uncovered scandal of the year”: The Deepening House IT Scandal.

AMERICAN HERO: Man who wrestled gun from Waffle House shooter raises more than $45K for victims’ families.

OUCH: Colorado High Court Rules Veteran Congressman Can’t Appear On Ballot. “Ruling says Doug Lamborn used nonstate resident to gather some signatures needed to get on ballot, which isn’t permitted under state law.”

In its decision, the state’s high court ruled that Mr. Lamborn used a non-Colorado resident to gather some of 1,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot, which isn’t permitted under state statute. That left Mr. Lamborn short of the required threshold to get on the Colorado ballot, the court ruled.

Mr. Lamborn’s campaign vowed to appeal the ruling.

“We are disappointed by the outcome and believe it was wrongly decided,” said Dan Bayens, a spokesman for the Lamborn campaign. “We are immediately bringing an action in federal court to overturn the part of Colorado law that deprives voters who have petitioned to have Congressman Lamborn on the ballot of their constitutional rights.”

I’m reminded of former Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, who lost his safe seat from Michigan after “grossly incompetent staff work” left him without enough signatures to get on the primary ballot in 2012.

THE TOP THREE RECIPIENTS WERE ALL DEMOCRATS: Members of Congress Who Questioned Mark Zuckerberg Had Received $641,685 From Facebook.

THAT’S NOT FUNNY: Humorless Left Turns Fun Prom Photo Into National Outrage. “They’ll hijack anything to advance a cause.”

WRECKERS AND HOARDERS: Arrested Chevron workers could face treason charge in Venezuela.

The arrests, by national intelligence agents, marked the first at a Western oil firm in Venezuela and represent a dramatic escalation of growing tensions between PDVSA and foreign companies over control of supply contracts, the sources told Reuters.

The widening dispute could worsen operational chaos that has caused the OPEC nation’s oil output to plunge by 23 percent, or 450,000 barrels per day, since October.

“These detentions are going to accelerate the operational crisis,” another source with knowledge of Chevron’s operations told Reuters. “Procurement could end up in paralysis if nobody wants to take the risk of signing or authorizing anything.”

What’s a signature worth, anyway, in a country ruled by official lawlessness and Maduro’s whim?

VIDEO: Maxine Waters Rebukes Democratic Leadership’s Opposition to Impeachment, Claims ’70 Percent of Women’ Want Trump Impeached.

To be fair, Waters’ relationship with the truth ended years ago and badly.

BLUE WAVE? Senate Dems Continue to Lead Republicans in Fundraising.

Democrats are defending 25 seats total – including 10 in states President Trump won in 2016 — to just nine for Republicans. In all 10 of those Trump-state races, the incumbent outraised every Republican challenger. (Three Republicans surpassed Democrats after making sizable loans to their campaigns.) Still, every Democratic incumbent ended March with more cash on hand than their GOP challengers.

And even in the states where Republicans are defending seats, Democrats put up strong fundraising quarters that either matched or led their GOP counterparts. Nevada Rep. Jacky Rosen doubled Sen. Dean Heller’s first-quarter fundraising, taking in $2.6 million compared to just $1.1 million for the incumbent, though Heller still had more money in the bank.

“We can look across the map and see that Republican donors are not as engaged as Democratic donors are,” said Brad Todd, a GOP consultant advising several candidates. “It’s going to take more work to get the money we need to win the election because their donors are red hot and ours are waiting and seeing.”

As Glenn has written here on occasion: If you want to make a difference, spend less time online and more time volunteering for a local campaign.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: H.W., Scott Adams, Mike Pompeo, and Much, Much More. “After a day of speculation that current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, whom Trump nominated to become secretary of State, would not make it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) put that speculation to rest.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz today.

SMALL WARS JOURNAL: China’s Territorial Stratagem – Extending Military Range & Influence through Reclamation & Occupation of the Spratly Waters, South China Sea.

The South China Seas are strategically important, 30% of the worlds shipping trade filter through the region and there are 5 other countries (Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines & Brunei) that have claims to the area. (Vox, 2017)

The South China Sea is rich in natural resources. There are an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil, 109 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 10% of the world’s fisheries. (Vox, 2017)

Establishing territorial claims in the South China Sea will allow China to project political, economic and military power, influence freedom of navigation and harvest rich natural resources.

Taiwan first occupied an island in the Spratlys after World War II, and the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia followed suit, and all have built outposts and airstrips on their claimed territory. (CNN, 2016)

China has denied it would militarize the islands it has built, claiming use is for; navigational aids and weather stations. China has since turned the islands into navel and air force bases with hardened infrastructure.

China has looked at the farthest ranges of aircraft and communications equipment. From a strategic standpoint this allows China to reach beyond those limits and extend the range of their power and influence. In 2012, China claimed Scarborough shoal, located in the north of the South China Sea. If China manages to turn Scarborough shoal into a militarized island, it will assert influence over the entire South China Sea. (newsweek.com, 2017)

According to assistant professor, Richard Haydarian of De La Salle University in Manila; China is aiming to expand its military footprint which creates irreversible facts on the ground placing China in a position to use military force to defend its new territorial claims. Essentially China is telling everybody it is here to stay and not leaving.

China seems to have won this round without firing a shot.

CREEPING SHARIA: Maine Democrats vote to allow female genital mutilation. “By a final vote of 77-70, the House killed the FGM ban in a mostly party-line vote…Last week House Democrats passed a toothless bill that wouldn’t actually ban FGM.”

“EVEN”: Why even removing Trump from office won’t save American democracy.

It’s Vox, so it’s the usual laundry list of complaints which I highly recommend not reading. But I would add that American democracy works about as well as democracy works anywhere — it’s our republican features which are on life support.

A DEEP WELL: Aliens on ‘Super-Earth’ Planets May Be Trapped by Gravity.

To launch the equivalent of an Apollo moon mission, a rocket on a super-Earth would need to have a mass of about 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons), due to fuel requirements, the study said. That’s on the order of the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

“On more-massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive,” said study author Michael Hippke, an independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany. “Such civilizations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission or a Hubble Space Telescope.” [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

As researchers have discovered alien worlds around other stars, one class of exoplanets that popped up was the super-Earths, planets that can reach up to 10 times the mass of our own. A number of super-Earths apparently lie in the habitable zones of their stars, where temperatures can theoretically support liquid water on the planetary surface and thus, potentially, life as it is known on Earth.

To balance things out a bit, shouldn’t evolution on high-gravity planets result in smaller life-forms? And wouldn’t high-mass planets by definition have more resources to exploit for this kind of thing?

J.T. YOUNG: Trump’s Below the Surface Strength.

Generally seen as underwater, below the surface things are very different for Trump. President Trump elicits strong reactions from two-thirds of America’s electorate. Yet among the one-third in neither camp, the president is quietly doing quite well.

Rasmussen’s 4/16 daily tracking poll, the same polling closest to 2016’s popular vote, gave interesting insight into President Trump’s support. Overall, Trump’s job approval rating was 51 percent (48 percent disapproval). Among the hardcore, his strong support was 35 percent; his strong disapproval: 39 percent.

On the surface, these results are unexciting… until compared to 2016’s actual results. In 2016, Trump received just 46.1 percent of the popular vote. Rasmussen’s 4/16 results put him five percent ahead of what won him the presidency.

Also, Rasmussen’s 4/16 hardcore results closely mimic 2016 exit polling.

That’s an interesting comparison, and one you don’t get from the screaming “DOOM!” headlines. The question for the next few months however is whether that increased support from the middle third is enough to hold the House without Trump on the ballot.

Stay tuned…

PRIVACY: Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google. “Google gathers more personal data than Facebook does, by almost every measure—so why aren’t we talking about it?”

Who is this “we,” Kemosabe?

More:

If the concern is that companies might be collecting some personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, Alphabet’s Google is a far bigger threat by many measures: the volume of information it gathers, the reach of its tracking and the time people spend on its sites and apps.

New regulations, particularly in Europe, are driving Google and others to disclose more and seek more permissions from users. And given the choice, many people might even be fine with the trade-off of personal data for services. Still, to date few of us realize the extent to which our data is being collected and used.

“There is a systemic problem and it’s not limited to Facebook,” says Arvind Narayanan, a computer scientist and assistant professor at Princeton University. The larger problem, he argues, is that the very business model of these companies is geared to privacy violation. We need to understand Google’s role in this.

Good stuff, but it’s behind the WSJ paywall. You might find a way around it here however.

BLUE ON BLUE: Cynthia Nixon Gains Ground on Andrew Cuomo in N.Y. Governor’s Race. “I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with celebrity in politics. It gives you a platform. But it’s what you do with that platform.”

DEBRA HEINE: Kanye West, Scott Adams, Candace Owens, Tom Arnold and breaking out of mental prisons.

AUTOMATIC, SYSTEMATIC, HYDROMATIC, PROBLEMATIC: Grease at 40: Problematic (And Why That’s a Good Thing).

DON’T BE EVIL: Christian Publisher Says Google Banned It Over ‘Faith We Express.’

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Wave of Campus Race Hysteria Hits DePauw University.

OR MAYBE YOU DID, YOU SAUCY MINX: 12 Crazy Sex Facts You Didn’t Know.

FORCED MORATORIUM? North Korea’s Nuclear Test Ban: Practical As Much As Political.

North Korea’s nuclear test site at Punggye-Ri has hosted six nuclear tests since 2006. The latest test in 2017 was of a thermonuclear device. Although it is difficult for outsiders to get a detailed assessment of conditions at the site, there are strong reasons to believe that Punggye-Ri is unusable for future nuclear tests.

The local geology has possibly been altered by this sequence of underground explosions, making the area unstable. The ability to stage further tests and keeping the radioactive material sealed is now compromised. North Korea has no other established testing zones in its own territory, and finding a suitable site for a future one would be difficult. North Korea’s geography limits these options.

If the nuclear testing ban holds, one major fear for the near-term will be defused. North Korea had earlier floated the idea of an atmospheric nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean, probably using a missile-delivered warhead.

Last year, I wrote on The Interpreter that a Pacific test would be one way to get around the aforementioned limitations of North Korea’s underground test site. But the environmental and security implications of such a test would be catastrophic.

To say the least.