BLUE ON BLUE: Apple’s Tim Cook rebukes Zuckerberg over Facebook’s business model.

“We could make a ton of money if we monetized our customers, if our customers were our product,” Cook said in an interview with Recode and MSNBC that will air on 6 April. “We’ve elected not to do that … We’re not going to traffic in your personal life. Privacy to us is a human right, a civil liberty.”

Cook also said that it is past time to regulate Facebook. “I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation,” he said. “However, I think we’re beyond that here.”

The comment echoed remarks Cook made in Beijing last week, when he said: “I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary.”

Cook, 57, did not have any suggestions for how Zuckerberg should address the fallout from the privacy scandal. Asked what he would do if he were Zuckerberg, Cook shot back: “I wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Ouch.

DEEP STATE: Minneapolis FBI agent charged with leaking classified information to reporter.

Terry James Albury, who was assigned as Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport liaison working on counterterrorism matters, was charged this week by the Justice Department’s National Security Division with one count of “knowingly and willfully” transmitting documents and information relating to national defense to a reporter for a national news organization. Albury was also charged with a second count of refusing to hand over documents to the government.

Albury is the second person charged for leaking secret documents to Intercept. In June 2017, an intelligence contractor was charged with leaking a classified report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, the first criminal leak under President Trump.

The Justice Department has vowed to crack down on leaks that it contends undermine national security.

A search warrant filed in Minneapolis federal court against Albury did not identify the news outlet, but a review by MPR News found the documents described in the search warrant that Albury leaked exactly match the trove of FBI documents posted by The Intercept.

More at the link.

DAVID HARSANYI: You Can Try To Repeal The Second Amendment, But You Can’t Repeal History.

Whether repeal of the Second Amendment is feasible or not, historical revisionism is meant to mangle its meaning into irrelevancy. [Former Justice John Paul] Stevens claims that his conception of gun rights is “uniformly understood,” yet offers no legal precedent to back the contention up. Stevens claims the Second Amendment’s explicit mention of “the right of the people” does not create an “individual right” despite the inconvenient fact that other times the term is mentioned — in the Fourth, Ninth, and 10th Amendments — they have been found to do exactly that.

Now, I’m not a legal scholar, but the idea, as the former justice argues, that the Founders wanted no limits on the ability of federal or state authorities to take weapons from law-abiding citizens conflicts with the historical record. Never once in the founding debate did a lawmaker rise to argue that gun ownership should be limited. Most state constitutions already featured language to protect that right. A number states demanded that the national constitution include such a provision, as well.

The debate over the Second Amendment centered on a dispute over who should control the militia, the federal or state governments. Everyone understood that a militia consisted of free individuals who would almost always grab their own firearms — the ones they used in their everyday existence — to engage in concerted efforts to protect themselves, their community, or their country (sometimes from their own government.)

This might surprise some, but the Minutemen did not return their muskets after Lexington.

Well, yeah — Lexington was fought over an attempted gun grab by the British, and the Minutemen were no dummies.

And former Justice Stevens is counting on the historical ignorance of his fellow Americans.

SOONER THAN LATER: South Africa may become the next big promoter of terrorism and piracy.

When the late anti-Apartheid activist Nelson Mandela emerged from prison and became South Africa’s first black president, he carefully steered the country away from the radicalism of the African National Congress’s Marxist past and toward a policy which embraced moderation and responsibility in international affairs. Rather than precipitate conflict, he sought to mediate and resolve. South Africa gained widespread respect as a country embracing peace and looking toward the future rather than catalyzing the radical causes which have sown conflict around the continent and wider world.

Alas, Mandela was unable to make his changes permanent. After his five-year presidential term ended in 1999, and especially after his 2013 death, the leaders who followed Mandela—Thabo Mbeki, and especially Jacob Zuma and now Cyril Ramaphosa—have spent South Africa’s moral capital shilling for increasingly radical regimes, terrorist groups, and causes.

You want more shithole countries? Because this is how you get more shithole countries.

BEN WEINGARTEN: Left and Right are Both Wrong to Wage War on Big Tech With Big Government. “Turning to the government to challenge private enterprises is not the answer.”

YOU’RE NO FUN ANYMORE: MLB heads off Yankees’ attempt to put players’ images on beer foam.

NICE: U.S. fourth-quarter growth revised up to 2.9 percent; consumer spending surges.

Flashback: If Trump thinks he can get more than 3% economic growth, he’s dreaming.

Stay tuned…

MICHAEL WALSH: The end of the “sexual revolution” has now officially arrived.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE SULTAN: Turkey’s last big independent media firm is snapped up by a regime ally.

For one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, the sale must have felt like a coup de grâce. Dogan outlets, including two of the country’s four biggest newspapers, Hurriyet and Posta; a leading television channel, CNN Turk; and a news agency, among many others, have been squirming under government pressure for years. The group’s ageing owner, Aydin Dogan, one of the symbols of Turkey’s deposed secular order, has been hounded by tax inspectors and prosecutors. People close to his group say Mr Dogan conducted the sale without consulting any associates. Some believe the mogul faced arrest unless he sold his empire to one of the president’s men. Had that happened to the 81-year-old, he would have joined over a hundred other Turkish journalists already in prison, most of them jailed since the failed coup of 2016.

The move leaves Mr Erdogan and his allies in control of almost all big media outlets ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections due next year.

The election suspense isn’t exactly killing anyone — but Erdogan might.

DAVID REABOI IS LIVE-TWEETING from the Egyptian election.

WELL, GOOD: Utah passes ‘free-range parenting’ law, allowing kids to do some things without parental supervision.

What a shame though that we’re so nanny-stated that there needs to be a law allowing kids to be kids — and parents to be parents.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Rick Gates Knew Campaign Contact was Russian Intelligence, Says Mueller Document.

CREEPING SHARIA: Far-right ‘activist’ who claimed ‘Allah is gay’ gets lifetime ban from coming to UK.

It seems like the UK has a new state religion.

THE STREISAND EFFECT: NRA’s political fund sees donations spike in February after Florida shooting.

DAN MCLAUGHLIN: The Supreme Court Proves It Didn’t Mean What It Said in King v. Burwell.

In June 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare provided subsidies to buyers of health insurance on the federally operated exchanges, not just exchanges established and operated by a state. Many legal observers at the time, myself included, argued that the decision in King v. Burwell was a politically driven outcome that disregarded longstanding rules for how the Court reads statutes, and that the Court in the future would have to either accept a dramatic sea change in those rules or admit (at least implicitly) that King v. Burwell was a political, not a legal, decision. Well, what do you know? The Court’s decision last month in Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers makes it crystal clear that the Court does not take King v. Burwell seriously as a legal precedent, and would have decided that case differently if it had not been so politically charged.

To recap, the Court in King v. Burwell upheld a rule passed by Obama’s IRS that extended subsidies to buyers on the federal exchanges. To reach that conclusion, however, the Court had to leapfrog the language of the statute, which made its meaning obvious in four ways.

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that for all the charges against Trump for incivility, it was Obama who all-but-threatened a political war with the Supreme Court to force decisions he wanted on his namesake health insurance law.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD: ‘We Need’ a Transgender, Undocumented ‘Disney Princess Who’s Had An Abortion.’

That’s… entertainment?

BREAKING: UNWORKABLE INSURANCE SCHEME STILL UNWORKABLE. States scrambling to avert Obamacare sticker shock after Dems balk at stabilization effort.

Politicians at all levels of government are fearing another round of sticker shock for consumers this fall as insurers jack up prices, blaming both the original 2010 health law and the moves Congress and the Trump administration have made to undercut it in the years since.

Capitol Hill had a chance to lower rates with a stabilization bill Republicans had hoped to attach to last week’s spending package. But Democrats balked, and Congress likely missed its last chance to act before the new rates are set.

Clearly, Democrats hate sick people.

HMM: Kim Jong-un was in Beijing, China and NK confirm. “The visit, confirmed by China and North Korea, was Mr Kim’s first known foreign trip since taking office in 2011.”

“Office” is an awfully nice word for the position Kim holds.

ON A LONG ENOUGH TIMELINE, THE SURVIVAL RATE FOR EVERYONE DROPS TO ZERO:

Faster, please.

NIKKI HALEY TO UN SECURITY COUNCIL: ‘We Should All be Ashamed’ for Russia, Assad Bombardment of Civilians During Ceasefire.

HEALTH: Those 2-Minute Walk Breaks? They Add Up.

Walk for two minutes. Repeat 15 times. Or walk for 10 minutes, thrice. The benefits for longevity appear to be almost exactly the same, according to an inspiring new study of physical activity patterns and life spans.

It finds that exercise does not have to be prolonged in order to be beneficial. It just has to be frequent.

Anecdotal, but I starting wearing a smartwatch about three years ago, and turned on the nag feature to get up out of my chair for at least one minute, once an hour. That one minute stand-and-stretch has become a three minute walk around the house, including going down and back up both staircases — and I do feel better.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Playboy Pulls Out, Deactivates Its Facebook Page.

In a statement on Wednesday, Playboy said: “The recent news about Facebook’s alleged mismanagement of users’ data has solidified our decision to suspend our activity on the platform at this time.”

“There are more than 25 million fans who engage with Playboy via our various Facebook pages, and we do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices. That is why we have announced that we will be leaving Facebook’s platform, deactivating the Playboy accounts that Playboy Enterprises manages directly.”

The firm said it has “always stood for personal freedom and the celebration of sex,” and that its move to deactivate platforms on Facebook was “another step in that ongoing fight.”

Related? Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower: Facebook Able to Listen to You at Home and Work.

FUNDING: Air Force Risks Losing Third of F-35s If Upkeep Costs Aren’t Cut. “The U.S. Air Force may have to cut its purchases of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 by a third if it can’t find ways to reduce operations and support costs by as much as 38 percent over a decade, according to an internal analysis. The shortfall would force the service to subtract 590 of the fighter jets from the 1,763 it plans to order.”

Simply put, that’s not enough airframes.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Census Madness, Tech Giants Head to the Hill and Much, Much More. “Trump really needs to get involved sooner in the budget process and tell these congressional jokers what he will and won’t sign before they toss some crappy shopping spree at him.”

HEH: A chef responds to vegan protesters by cutting up a deer leg in front of them.

Punch back twice as hard, the wise man once said.