PRIVACY: Under Armour Admits 150 Million Users Affected By Data Security Breach.

In what appears to be the first major data breach involving a health-and-fitness-tracking app, Under Armour disclosed to its customers just a half hour after markets closed Thursday for a long weekend that MyFitnessPal, a fitness app owned by Under Armour, had experienced a breach that potentially exposed the user data of 150 million people.

The breach reportedly occurred in Feb 2018, and Under Armor became aware of it on March 25 and has been informing users.

The affected information includes usernames, email addresses, and hashed password, but did not include social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, or any payment card data.

If you use MyFitenesPal, you might want to change your password.

SAM HARRIS: Ezra Klein: A Dishonest Editor-in-Chief.

I knew that having a friendly conversation with [Charles] Murray might draw some fire my way. But that was, in part, the point. Given the viciousness with which he continues to be scapegoated—and, indeed, my own careful avoidance of him up to that moment—I felt a moral imperative to provide him some cover.

In the aftermath of our conversation, many people have sought to paint me as a racist—but few have tried quite so hard as Ezra Klein, editor in chief of Vox. In response to my podcast, Klein published a disingenuous hit piece that pretended to represent the scientific consensus on human intelligence while vilifying me as, at best, Murray’s dupe. More likely, readers unfamiliar with my work came away believing that I’m a racist pseudoscientist in my own right.

After Klein published that article, and amplified its effects on social media, I reached out to him in the hope of appealing to his editorial conscience. I found none. The ethic that governs Klein’s brand of journalism appears to be: Accuse a person with a large platform of something terrible, and then monetize the resulting controversy. If he complains, invite him to respond in your magazine so that he will drive his audience your way and you can further profit from his doomed effort to undo the damage you’ve done to his reputation.

Since then, Klein has kept at it, and he delivered another volley today. I told him that if he continued in this way, I would publish our private email correspondence so that our readers could judge him for themselves. His latest effort has convinced me that I should make good on that promise.

Harris made good on his promise, which you can read in its entirety at the link.

ROBERT SPENCER: Why It’s Good News That McMaster Is Out and Bolton Is In.

JOHN HAWKINS: Confessions of a Clickbait Guru: 5 Ways Social Media is Destroying Journalism and Politics.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: David Hogg Is Quickly Learning How to Be a Bully.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Five ’80s Staples We Never Want to See Again.

I, too, could do without the shoulder pads and mullets, but do we really need to swear off the low-budget slasher movies?

IT WILL SNEAK IN AT NIGHT: This spacecraft will get closer to the Sun than any before it—without melting.

Kidding aside, if everything works we’re going to learn a lot from this probe:

This summer, NASA will launch the Parker Solar Probe, an impressively heat-resistant spacecraft destined to glide closer to the surface of the Sun than any spacecraft before it. It will fly within about 6 million kilometers of the searing surface, more than seven times closer than earlier craft. If all goes to plan, the craft will be hurtling at 724,205 km per hour and have its one-of-a-kind heat shield perfectly facing the surface as it makes those closest approaches. In about seven years, it will complete 24 orbits around the Sun and pass by Venus seven times.

All the while, the Parker probe will collect a constellation of data to help answer scientists’ burning questions—and solve some sizzling mysteries—about the orb of hot plasma that lights up our Solar System. Namely, it will try to help us finally understand why the Sun’s atmosphere is 300 times hotter than its surface, which itself is a balmy 5,727°C. This fact defies basic physics and to this day is unexplained. One of the leading hypotheses to account for the heat shift comes from famed physicist Eugene Parker, after whom the probe is named. In the mid-1950s, Parker theorized that the Sun’s super-heated corona could be explained by a complex system of plasma, magnetic fields, and energetic particles that spark solar explosions called “nanoflares.”

Scientists are thirsty for close-up data on those potential explosions as well as the cascade of energy called solar wind. With that data, they can put their hypotheses to the test. And in addition to helping us understand coronal heat, data on these sunny phenomena could help clear up poorly understood space weather, which can wreak havoc on satellites and power lines here on Earth.

Lots of great photos at the link, too.

JEAN-LOUIS GASSÉE: Mark Zuckerberg Thinks We’re Idiots.

With the Guardian’s new exposé, things are different for Facebook: They’re much worse. The company is in a new kind of defensive stance as it tries to explain how the data of as many as 57 million users was aspirated by a researcher named Aleksandr Kogan and handed over to Cambridge Analytica, a political influence peddler.

After a few days of silence, Zuckerberg talked to the New York Times, to CNN, to Wired and Recode to explain what happened and, more important, to tell us what his company intends to do to put things right.

Carefully reading and re-reading Zuckerberg’s words puts me ill at ease. Of course, simply complaining that Facebook’s CEO sounds well-rehearsed won’t do. He’s a pro at managing a major crisis. Persphinctery statements are part of the fare (from the NYT interview):

“Privacy issues have always been incredibly important to people. One of our biggest responsibilities is to protect data.”

But we quickly get to the misrepresentations.

Read the whole thing.

ANDREW MALCOLM: Holy Moly! Look What You Pay In State And Local Taxes.

I’m afraid to look:

According to the Census Bureau, last year alone state and local governments collected a record $573 billion just in property taxes. That’s about $1,759 for each one of the estimated 326 million Americans.

Add to that another record — $386.2 billion — in sales and gross receipts taxes.

And another $405 billion in income taxes.

That’s almost $1.4 TRILLION. Quite a haul for governments. And yet, as the Wall Street Journal reports (subscription), state and local governments are hiking taxes and fees even more, claiming budget crunches.

Now go look at the condition of your local infrastructure or the test scores at your local high school, and ask what you’re getting for all that money.

As I keep saying: We have much more government than we need, and far less than we pay for.

TYLER O’NEIL: David Hogg’s Sister Complains to First Lady Melania Trump About ‘Cyberbullying’ From Laura Ingraham.

Flashback: David Hoggs Says ‘Our Parents Don’t Know How To Use a F**king Democracy So We Have To.’

“It’s like when your old-a** parents are like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the f**king phone’ and you take it and you’re like, ‘OK, let me handle it,’ and you get it done in one second,” Hogg said. “Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government because our parents don’t know how to use a f**king democracy, so we have to.”

“They’re pathetic f**kers that want to keep killing our children,” Hogg said of the NRA. “They could have blood from children splattered all over their faces and they wouldn’t take action, because they all still see those dollar signs.”

Charming lad.

RASMUSSEN: Most Voters Aren’t Swayed by Stormy Daniels’ Claims.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters closely followed news reports about the Daniels interview, with 21% who followed those reports Very Closely. Forty-five percent (45%) didn’t pay close attention to the “60 Minutes” interview, including another 21% who didn’t follow news reports about it at all. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

But only 39% attach any importance to the Daniels interview when it comes to their perceptions of the president and the job he is doing. Fifty-six percent (56%) don’t. This includes 17% who say the interview is Very Important to their perceptions of Trump and 34% who say it’s Not At All Important.

Perhaps in part that’s because a new high of 52% believe when most reporters write or talk about Trump, they are trying to block him from passing his agenda.

That seems low.

“IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?” MAY NO LONGER BE A RHETORICAL QUESTION: Pope Francis: ‘There Is No Hell.’

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Put Zuckerberg Under Subpoena, Argues Judiciary Committee Senator.

HEADS UP: China is reportedly taking the first steps to pay for oil in yuan instead of US dollars this year.

Shifting just part of global oil trade into the yuan is potentially huge. Oil is the world’s most traded commodity, with an annual trade value of around $14 trillion, roughly equivalent to China’s gross domestic product last year.

A pilot program for yuan payment could be launched as early as the second half of this year, two of the people said.

Regulators have informally asked a handful of financial institutions to prepare for pricing China’s crude imports in the yuan, said the three sources at some of the financial firms.

“Being the biggest buyer of oil, it’s only natural for China to push for the usage of yuan for payment settlement. This will also improve the yuan liquidity in the global market,” said one of the people briefed on the matter by Chinese authorities.

I’m curious to see how much faith international markets are willing to place in the yuan, now that China is moving away from Communism-by-consensus and back to one-man rule.

WAPO: Trump taps his doctor to replace Shulkin at VA, choosing personal chemistry over traditional qualifications.

Flashback, NYT: The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru — How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age.

It’s almost as though there’s one set of standards for inexperienced Republican appointees, and a completely different set for Democrats.

HERE WE GO AGAIN? GOP seeks to avoid Dem upset in Arizona.

PRIVACY: Security flaws in gay dating app Grindr expose users’ location data. “The availability of users’ location data, experts say, could lead to increased harassment — especially in places where homosexuality is criminalized.”

JEB! Classy, dignified, substantive Jeb Bush attacks 12-year-old Barron Trump.

Speaking at Yale University, the former Florida Governor first claimed he would not get into a re-hash of the 2016 election (what would he have to say about it, anyway? He got 3 delegates after spending $150 million of other people’s money) But, according to Yale News, he eventually exorcised some demons by looking at the sunny side of his crushing defeat.

At one point, Bush described the current president as “Republican in basically name only.” And earlier in his speech, Bush said that after the 2016 Republican primary in South Carolina, he returned home to children who “actually love me.” His comment was met with raucous laughter from the crowd, and several audience members interviewed after the event said they interpreted Bush’s comment as a jab at Trump.

Raucous laughter from elitist, Ivy League students! Well… that should translate into a renewed run for the White House, right? Good on you, Jeb!

But… what, exactly, are these snobs laughing at? Donald Trump’s children not loving him. That’s funny, right? I mean, is anything funnier than Donald Trump coming home to his 12-year-old son’s loathing? And surely Jeb Bush’s secret torment over not getting his turn in the White House after his father and brother got their turn justifies an attack on a pre-teen boy.

I did a spit-take on Jeb’s use of “Republican in basically name only.”

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: People are threatening to cancel their Netflix subscriptions after former UN Ambassador Susan Rice was named to its board.

CREEPING SHARIA: Italian Police Arrest Islamic Teacher Who Supported ISIS, Taught Jihad to Children as Young as 4. “You must break the skulls of the unbelievers and drink their blood.”

A PREVIEW OF WHAT A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY WOULD LOOK LIKE: Dem vows to press ban on Pentagon paying for border wall.

“We can’t allow Donald Trump to steal already-limited resources from our troops to fund a pointless border wall that will serve little other purpose than to satisfy his own fragile ego,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in a statement Wednesday. “This money is meant to help our men and women in uniform — not to fulfill ill-advised campaign promises.”

“Last year, I introduced an amendment that would have prevented Trump from irresponsibly siphoning our defense funds to pay for a useless wall that will do nothing to keep our nation safe. I plan to reintroduce that amendment this spring when the House Armed Services Committee marks up this year’s defense spending bill.”

We’ll see what happens in committee — or beyond.

NOAH ROTHMAN: No One Is Saying That.

Did you hear? They’re talking about repealing the Second Amendment. It started with former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley. And it sure does seem like those calls prompted skeptics of American gun culture to echo their remarks. Turley and Stevens were joined this week by op-ed writers in the pages of Esquire and the Seattle Times. Democratic candidates for federal office have even enlisted in the ranks of those calling for an amendment to curtail the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. Of course, this is just the most mainstream invocation of anti-Second Amendment themes that have been expressed unashamedly for years, from liberal activists like Michael Moore to conservative opinion writers at the New York Times. Those calling for the repeal of the right to bear arms today are only echoing similar calls made years ago in venues ranging from Rolling Stone, MSNBC, and Vanity Fair to the Jesuit publication America Magazine.

Are you sitting down? You might be surprised to learn that none of this occurred.

Who you gonna believe — Chris Cuomo or yer own lyin’ eyes?

GREAT. NOW LET’S DO TAIWAN: First F-35 for South Korea rolled out.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: New Texts from Strzok & Page, Shulkin Down and Much, Much More. “New evidence was released yesterday that shows how close the FBI, CIA and Democrats were during the ‘early stage’ of the Trump-RUSSIA investigation. By ‘early stage’ I mean during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

IT’S THE SPENDING, STUPID: Why Are States So Strapped for Cash? There Are Two Big Reasons. “The proportion of state and local tax revenues dedicated to Medicaid and public pensions is the highest since the 1960s.”

And of course there wasn’t even any Medicaid until the 1960s.

More:

The only speaker standing between state budget officers and the opening cocktail hour at a Washington conference was the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. What he said left no one in a celebratory mood.

Medicaid costs, said then-Secretary Michael Leavitt, were projected to grow so fast that within 10 years they would “crowd out virtually every other category of spending.” State spending on higher education, infrastructure and safety, he predicted, would all get squeezed.

Nearly 10 years after that October 2008 speech, Mr. Leavitt’s prediction—part of HHS’s first-ever annual projection of Medicaid’s costs—is looking prescient.

As state and local officials prepare their next budgets, many are finding that spending decisions have already been made for them by two must-fund line items that barely mattered when baby boomers such as Mr. Leavitt were growing up: Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled, and public-employee health and retirement costs.

Some of us have been sounding this warning since long before 2008, but lawmakers have kicked the entitlement reform can about as far as it can go, leaving us with nothing but the cold comfort of Stein’s Law.