NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Cheeses For Grilled Cheese, According To People Who Truly Know.

It’s National Grilled Cheese Day, and I’m pulling out the panini press just as soon as I break for lunch.

FASTER, PLEASE: Airlines Know You Hate the Airport, and Are Trying to Do Something About It.

American Airlines Group Inc. signed on last month to a $8.5 billion renovation at O’Hare International Airport after bristling for months at what it argued was preferential treatment for the Chicago gateway’s largest tenant, United Continental Holdings Inc.

American, United and other carriers at O’Hare agreed to new airport leases that will underpin funding plans for an expansion that is being mirrored at other big hubs across the country. From Los Angeles to New York to Atlanta and dozens of other airports, airlines and local officials are planning $100 billion in renovations over the next few years, according to the Airports Council International-North America trade group.

They hope to address what passenger surveys suggest is one of the most frustrating parts of air travel: navigating crowded, aging U.S. airports.

This could shape up to be a real-world example of why privatizing our airports would be a good idea.

PROHIBITION: Indonesia Alcohol Deaths Exceed 100 as Police Vow Crackdown.

It’s unclear how effective the crackdown will be. Curbs on sales of legal alcohol in Muslim-majority Indonesia, including a ban implemented in 2015 on sales at tens of thousands of convenience stores, have created a significant black market for bootleg liquor among the country’s poor.

“If what is needed is limited in the legal market because of (government) policies, then the need would be fulfilled by those who want to make a profit” from the black market, said Sugianto Tandra, a researcher at the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies.

“The current incidence of rampant bootleg alcohol is because there is a need to drink but the product is not available in the legal market,” he said.

Nannystaters never learn.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Road to Damascus.

It has long been possible to subvert the failed mullahcracy. Most Iranians detest the regime. Keen-eyed mullahs and ayatollahs know this, and know that they will cease to matter to the majority of Iranians the minute the Islamic Republic falls. They all know, because they have heard the words from Washington, that Trump has no sympathy with the regime. Unlike Obama, he does not want a strategic alliance with Tehran. He prefers Jerusalem and Jedda. As do most Iranians.

So we should be supporting the internal opposition. Perhaps we are, but our leaders and pundits, even now, keep talking as if we must choose between a bigger war and the survival of the regime. I find that unfortunate and deplorable. Why are our leaders not openly calling for democratic revolution in Iran?

Indeed.

SNOWFLAKES: Twitter Bails on the Cartoon Pistol Emoji.

With the release of Twemoji 2.6, Twitter is changing the way a handful of emojis look across the service. Those updates include a sharper-looking knife, a less Sputnik-esque alembic, and yes, a green squirt gun that will replace the cartoonish revolver in tweets. Twitter’s change could be read as a political statement, but the company’s delayed action makes it seem more like it’s just following with the general trend.

It’s a stupid trend.

ED MORRISSEY: Senate GOP Getting Ready For Another Big Rule Change?

It’s not the rule change Donald Trump wants, but it might be more effective. Having allowed Senate Democrats to slow and obstruct confirmation of presidential nominees for more than a year, Senate Republicans came out of a caucus meeting hinting that changes are afoot:

Senate Republicans, frustrated by delaying tactics imposed by Democrats on President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, are on the verge of altering the Senate rules in order to speed up the process.

GOP lawmakers told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that momentum is building for a change in the Senate rules that would shorten the time frame allowed for lawmakers to debate each nominee.

One proposal by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would reinstate a temporary rules change made by Democrats in 2013 that reduced debate time from 30 hours to eight hours for most executive branch nominations and from 30 hours to two hours for lower judicial branch nominations.

Republicans have talked about these rule changes for months. Mitch McConnell was reportedly ready to act last fall, only to back away after Chuck Schumer accused him of coming to the debate with “unclean hands.” That has to qualify as one of the least self-reflective statements ever, of course, and McConnell’s retreat did nothing to incentivize Democrats to end their stalling routines.

If there’s even a chance that the GOP Senate majority goes away in January, they ought to be doing everything they can to speed things up until then.

NICE: F-35 Ready For Missile Defense By 2025.

So F-35 fans have been talking up the plane’s missile defense potential. Congressman Duncan Hunter boasted last year that the stealth fighter could not only track ICBMs — whose fiery launch is “like an Act of God,” hard to miss — but also shoot them down with its current air-to-air missile. “You can shoot down missiles coming out of North Korea in the boost phase with CAPS (Combat Air Patrols) of F-35s and AMRAAMs, and I’ve got a map to show it,” he declared.

Maybe. The AMRAAM missile isn’t designed to chase an ICBM into space, so it would have a narrow window to kill one before it escaped the atmosphere. Greaves’s wording suggests using the F-35 to shoot ICBMs might require developing “a new fast missile,” which would take years to develop.

Then let’s get on that, pronto.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Senate GOP Hates Trump and Much, Much More. “The slow-walking swampers at the DOJ finally turned over the ‘Electronic Communication’ they were legally required to produce to Congress. I go to bed pretty early since I wake up early to polish off the Briefing, but I was fully prepared to stay up until 12:01am to watch Devin Nunes kick in the door to the DOJ with some mighty jackboots to get that document and frogmarch the subversives into the slammer. Alas, it did not come to pass.”

Heh.

EVERY TIME I THINK I’M OUT THEY PULL ME BACK IN: Why cities should just annex the suburbs. “Many cities have begun to experience some urban revival after the nadir of the 1970s. But many are still struggling under a heavy burden of services without the tax base they logically deserve.”

So I guess if city governments are too poorly run to earn loyal residents, they should be able to create them by legal fiat.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Marijuana Stocks Spike After Ex-House Speaker John Boehner Joins Cannabis Company Board.

THERE’S NO CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT FOR OFFICEHOLDERS NOT TO BE INTRUSIVE DUMBASSES: A Bunch of Senators Just Showed They Have No Idea How Facebook Works. They Want to Regulate It Anyway.

Sen. Roy Blunt, (R–Mo.), for instance, didn’t seem to understand that Facebook lacks a means of accessing information from other apps unless users specifically opt in. The same was true of Sen. Roger Wicker (R–Miss.), who needed a lot of clarification on how Facebook Messenger interacts with cellular service. Zuckerberg had to carefully explain to Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) that WhatsApp is encrypted, and Facebook can’t read, let alone monetize, the information people exchange using that service. Zuckerberg had to explain to multiple senators, including Dean Heller (R–Nev.), that Facebook doesn’t technically sell its data: The ad companies don’t get to see the raw information.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D–Vt.) brought along a poster on which his office had printed out images of various Facebook pages. Leahy asked whether these were Russian propaganda groups. “Senator, are you asking about those specifically?” Zuckerberg asked. He of course had no way of knowing what was going on with those specific pages, just from looking at pictures of them. “I’m not familiar with those pieces of content,” Zuckerberg finally conceded.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) offered this metaphor to explain Facebook’s recent troubles: “the way I explain it to my constituents is that if someone breaks into my apartment with a crowbar and takes my stuff, it’s just like if the manager gave them the keys.” But that metaphor doesn’t quite work—Facebook didn’t willfully assist in a crime. Meanwhile, Sen. Debbie Fischer (R–Neb.) didn’t understand, at a fundamental level, that if you’re using Facebook, you have agreed to let Facebook know a lot of information about you.

Like Congress, Facebook is creepy and overbearing, but unlike Congress it can be uninstalled with ease.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela inflation 454 percent in first quarter.

Annual inflation over the last 12 months, according to the National Assembly, is just shy of 8,900 percent. Monthly inflation in March was 67 percent, down from 80 percent the previous month. The country’s central bank has not published inflation data for more than two years.

However, it does publish money supply data, the sum of cash, with checking, savings, and other deposits. That has risen more than 2,900 percent in the last 12 months, which, without an increase in the supply of goods and services, is a textbook cause of inflation.

The only thing socialists never run out of is zeroes.

BEN DOMENECH: How Paul Ryan Went From Young Gun To Gone.

In the aftermath of the Democratic waves in 2008, Ryan, McCarthy, and Eric Cantor presented themselves to Republican voters as The Young Guns – a new generation of conservatives largely untainted by the poor decisions of the Bush Administration, ready to lead in a time when Republicans were downtrodden and Democrats ebullient about the possibilities of the Obama years. Of the three, only Ryan had something particularly interesting to say: he was a blue-eyed salesman for the cod liver oil of entitlement reform. And he achieved something truly amazing: he got Republicans, at least for a time, to grasp that third rail. They voted for his reform plans reluctantly at first, but once they discovered the “throw granny off a cliff” ads had little power, their cowardice gradually dissipated.

Ryan was the most important Republican in Washington from 2009 to 2016. He now seems like a throwback from a bygone era, when voters expected their politicians to be straight-laced, honest, and sincere. He was serious, and dedicated himself to trying to tell stories to the American people about the fiscal direction of the country – stories which voters mostly ignored because they always seemed to involve hard news and histograms. Wisconsin nice and a truly decent person, Ryan’s approach was doomed in an era that values none of those things. It values the ferocity, the abandon of confrontational politics, not grand bargains and compromise.

After Eric Cantor crashed into a pile of earmarks, there were a number of political movers and shakers who fixed themselves to Ryanism as a method of grasping at power, not an expression of ideological dedication. They were never really in it because of a belief in Ryan’s refined Citizens for a Sound Economy message (whatever will Henry Olsen write about now?), but because they saw Ryan as a handsome, smart young family man who donors love and see as made for leadership. But leading this herd of cats is a tiring and thankless task Ryan took on out of obligation, not ambition.

It showed — Ryan’s enthusiasm seemed to die as soon as he grabbed the Speaker’s gavel.

JUST DO IT: Nunes Threatens To Impeach FBI’s Wray and DOJ’s Rosenstein Over Key Document. “We’re not messing around here.”

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Tucker Carlson Tells the Ugly Truth About Pandas. “Everybody loves them, and as usual, everybody is wrong. Pandas stink, and not just literally.”

MAY’S GETTING SERIOUS: UK Moves Submarines Next To Syria, Strikes May Begin As Soon As Thursday.

ASHE SCHOW: Cornell Law Professors Join Strengthening Push For Due Process On Campus. “Cornell University is getting sued for denying male students accused of sexual assault due process, and a third of its law professors are backing the suit.”

Well, good — but even more would be even better.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s Exactly How to ‘Swedish Death Clean’ Your Closet.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: As Trump Reportedly Mulls Rosenstein Ouster, GOP Senators Warn Firing Would be ‘Suicide.’ “‘He knows most every Republican senator feels that way,’ says Foreign Relations Committee chairman as president fumes over Cohen raid.”

BLUE WAVE? Republican Congressman Dennis Ross is retiring.

Ross is only 58 and his district has a Cook PVI rating of R+6.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR: Senate Republicans Growing Anxious About Their Majority. “Mitch McConnell raised alarms about the grim political environment for Republicans last week. He had good reasons.”

This year’s Senate election playing field is more heavily tiled towards the GOP than perhaps at any time in 35 years I’ve been watching politics. If they’re afraid of losing their majority under these conditions, they have no one to blame but themselves and their own shoddy record.

FLASHBACK: Why Is It a Crime to Evade Government Scrutiny?

BLUE ON BLUE: Texas Students Call for ‘Revolutionary Violence’ Against Black Feminist Prof Accused of Rape.

WELL, THEY AREN’T LEGAL RESIDENTS: Dreamers in Arizona are no longer eligible for cheaper in-state tuition, court rules.

IT’S ALWAYS SOMETHING: Central Bank of Iran blames Telegram app for currency fluctuation.

The governor of the Central Bank of Iran Valiollah Seif has said that lack of trust, social media (including the Telegram messaging app) as well as the UAE and Saudi Arabia are the reasons behind the weakening national currency, rial.

“We are not in the ordinary situation and our enemies are continuing to plot,” Valiollah Seif told Iranian parliament on Tuesday.

Iranian rial hit an all-time low against the US dollar on Monday and fell to 6,460 by afternoon on the unregulated currency market.

“The country is in a balanced situation and these crises which are created by our enemies in the social media should not make us worry,” he added.

The governor further blamed the social media for publicizing the market news and prices.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that decades of economic mismanagement by the Mullahs’ regime might have a little something to do with the country’s woes.