THEN YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO COME UP WITH A BETTER WORD FOR IT THAN “BLUSTER”: What If Trump’s North Korea Bluster Actually Worked?

BLUE WAVE?

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: DOJ Sues CA, Another Special Counsel and Much, Much More. “The lawsuit targets three California laws that specifically interfere with the federal responsibility to deal with immigration. The laws prevent corporations and prisons from cooperating with federal authorities. Another law allows the state to monitor federal DHS facilities. California is protecting criminals, some violent, at the expense of public safety. How can any resident of the state support this?”

Forget it, Liz — it’s Calitown.

ISIS COMES TO UTAH: Teen attempted to detonate explosive device at Pine View, researched ISIS.

Police said a homemade explosive device was the item discovered in a backpack at Pine View High School Monday, that forced the evacuation of the school. Police said if the device had detonated, it would have caused significant injury or death. Police have a suspect in custody.

A warrant served at the home of a male juvenile, found materials consistent with the materials used to build the device. Police also said the suspect had been researching information and expressing interest in ISIS and promoting the organization.
The boy has not been identified but police said he was attending a class at Pine View.

During the interview with investigators, the suspect admitted to taking the American flag down and replacing it with an ISIS flag at Hurricane High School.
The suspect also admitted to spray painting “ISIS IS COMI” on the school that same morning, police say.

Plus:

Damning, but true.

ELIZABETH BRUENIG: It’s time to give socialism a try.

Not to be confused for a totalitarian nostalgist, I would support a kind of socialism that would be democratic and aimed primarily at decommodifying labor, reducing the vast inequality brought about by capitalism, and breaking capital’s stranglehold over politics and culture.

I don’t think that every problem can be traced back to capitalism: There were calamities and injustices long before capital, and I’ll venture to say there will be after. But it seems to me that it’s time for those who expected to enjoy the end of history to accept that, though they’re linked in certain respects, capitalism seems to be at odds with the harmonious, peaceful, stable liberalism of midcentury dreams.

This ahistorical pablum is what passes for deep thought on today’s WaPo op-ed page.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Plattsburgh mulls bitcoin moratorium.

The City of Plattsburgh is moving toward installing a moratorium on energy-sucking commercial cryptocurrency mining operations.

Such a moratorium may be the first of its kind in the nation, Mayor Colin Read said.
“This would give us some time and allow us to explore this more,” he said.

“This has increased our power usage and put us over our threshold, and it is affecting our ratepayers.”

The problem is that mining for cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, absorbs a tremendous amount of energy in generating the virtual currency, explained Municipal Lighting Department Manager Bill Treacy.

The miners identify cryptocurrency using computer banks that run complex algorythims [sic] for hours on end.

The computer banks use so much energy that they throw off massive amounts of heat.
Treacy says there are two mining farms in the city that they know of — one in the former Imperial Mill and one in Skyway Plaza.

There may be some smaller private mining operations in households in the city, he said.

Super-escalating utility rates would solve the problem — either on the demand side or on the supply side — without having to snoop on anyone’s computers.

IF STEALTH WERE EASY, EVERYONE WOULD BE DOING IT: Stealth features responsible for half of F-35 defects, Lockheed program head states.

AGE DISCRIMINATION: Oregon 20-year-old sues Dick’s, Wal Mart over new gun age restrictions.

Tyler Watson alleges in one of the lawsuits that he attempted to purchase a .22-caliber rifle from Field and Stream, which is owned by Dick’s Sporting Goods, on Feb. 24, but was turned away because of his age.

Dick’s publicly announced four days later that it would stop selling guns to people under the age of 21, and would also end the sale of assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines. The company made the announcement in response to the shooting at a Florida high school last month.

In the second lawsuit, Watson accuses Walmart, which announced its new gun-sale policy on the same day as Dick’s, of age discrimination, saying that he tried to purchase a rifle at a Walmart store on March 3.

A Walmart spokesman told The Oregonian in a statement that the company would stand by its new policy, but that he has not seen Watson’s complaint.

Flashback:

Kurt also likes to remind the Left that they won’t like it when we apply their rules to them.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Lawyer Hammers Twitter For Unauthorized Tampering with Security Settings to Damage Traffic of Conservative News Site True Pundit.

In a damning cease and desist letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and the company’s general counsel, True Pundit’s legal counsel Harmeet Dhillon confirms Twitter tampered with and changed the security settings of journalist Thomas Paine’s account on the evening of the recent “Twitter purge” without the journalist’s permission or knowledge.

Twitter hides all content from followers and the public once it deems a user as having “sensitive content” — normally reserved for pornography and terrorist accounts on Twitter — which in turn decimates a user’s impressions, traffic and profile visits. Twitter’s latest scheme will prohibit approximately 50 million people from reaching Thomas Paine and True Pundit’s content this month alone, according to the letter.

Such clandestine behavior is a new wrinkle from the social media giant who has openly waged its own war on conservative voices and Twitter personalities. And while upstart news publisher True Pundit has been engaged in a legal tug of war with Twitter spanning several months, the conservative news site released its recent cease and desist letter today publicly for the first time.

“We have been dealing in good faith and professional in all of our legal negotiations with Twitter and that includes discreet legal correspondences,” said True Pundit Publisher Thomas Paine. “But now after Twitter’s latest attack, we can no longer stay silent. It is time to shine a light on how Twitter has targeted our Conservative content.”

As Stacy McCain said at CPAC last month, tech companies are “deplatforming” conservatives every day.

BRUCE BAWER: The Gray Lady’s Baby Steps. “The New York Times inches closer to the truth about you-know-what.”

Can they do that?

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Now There’s a Play Called ‘Kill Climate Deniers,’ Because Why Not.

SUSAN L.M. GOLDBERG: Stressed Out ‘Liberated’ Moms Increasingly Turn to Booze, Therapists to Cope.

GANGSTER STATE (UPDATE): Sergei Skripal collapsed alongside daughter.

The woman found slumped on a shopping centre bench alongside a former Russian agent convicted of spying for Britain is his daughter, it has emerged.

Yulia Skripal, in her 30s, and father Sergei, 66, are critically ill in hospital after being found unconscious in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Sunday.

UK police are trying to find out what “unknown substance” harmed the pair.

A number of emergency services workers were assessed immediately after the incident – and one remains in hospital.

Good lord.

BUT THE NARRATIVE: How the U.S. Squandered Its Steel Superiority. “Spoiler alert: Unfair trade practices of foreign nations had nothing to do with it.”

I was raised in the steel industry, and every detail in this column rings true. What it leaves out is the innovation-killing and anticompetitive union contracts which the steel giants succumbed to in the 1950s.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL FLYING: The Airlines with the Best Craft Beer, Ranked.

ROGER KIMBALL: Robert Mueller and His ‘Vacuum-Activities.’

SABER-RATTLING: The Flawed Logic of Russia’s New Weapon Systems.

The four strategic weapons announced by Putin are well placed to counter this perceived threat, as emphasised in the videos accompanying his speech showing the systems targeting the U.S.. The first two are the Sarmat super-heavy ICBM, and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, basically a super-manoeuvrable ICBM warhead, many of which would fit on the enormous Sarmat missile. Also there is the Kanyon long-ranged unmanned submarine, which clearly cannot be targeted by BMD interceptors, although it can attack U.S. coastal areas, including where Aegis-equipped ships would patrol. Finally there is an as-yet unnamed nuclear-powered cruise missile that would fly at too low a level to be affected by U.S. defences.

Yet in reality the new weapons represent complex and expensive solutions to a problem that largely doesn’t exist. The U.S. has not shown the least interest in degrading Russian defences wholesale since the long-abandoned “Star Wars” program of the 1980s. This is reinforced by the limited numbers of interceptors so far deployed: the U.S. could afford to install more, but it simply chooses not to.

Moscow tried once before to outspend their way to victory against the West, but the results were not to their liking.

BEGUN, THE TRADE WARS HAVE: Seoul all out to counter US 25% tariff on steel imports.

INTERVIEW: Mario Vargas Llosa: “Political correctness is the enemy of freedom.”

XI JINPING, ANIMAL FARM, STEVE MARTIN, AND HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS: All Chinese are equal, but some are more equal than others.

VIDEO: Seven House Democrats Have Direct Ties To Notorious Anti-Semite.

If they were Republicans this would be front-page news, all week long.

SURVEILLANCE STATE: The FBI’s secret warrant to surveil Carter Page should scare all Americans and spur reform. “A secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement.”

When a physical search occurs in accordance with American criminal law, law enforcement must show probable cause and obtain permission from a judge, and then present a given suspect with a warrant, and a receipt for the items removed. When law enforcement wants to obtain a criminal wiretap, they similarly have to show probable cause to obtain a warrant, carefully collect information related to potential crimes, and then disclose that information if charges are wrought. The key difference, is that with the latter, the suspect will only discover they’ve had their privacy violated after they’ve been indicted. With a FISC warrant, it’s possible a suspect will never find out, even if charges are eventually filed.

In the case of Carter Page, his private life was monitored, for almost a year, without his knowledge, and then placed on display for strangers at the FBI to peruse, all based on a suspicion that he was colluding with Russia. On the basis of hearsay, business associations, and possibly Page’s political opinions, the FBI received a classified surveillance warrant and then renewed it three times. And yet, Page was never officially charged — suggesting that, even given the ability to surveil him in ways that might make the general public cringe, the FBI was never able to find enough evidence for a single crime.

Read the whole thing.

SOUTHCOM COMMANDER: Terror Networks ‘Reach Deep Into Our Hemisphere’ in ‘New and Surprising Ways.’

BUT OF COURSE: Australian diplomat whose tip prompted FBI’s Russia-probe has tie to Clintons.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Over half of young Venezuelans want to flee as economy Collapses, poll find.

Once Latin America’s richest country, Venezuela’s economy is now collapsing and it is battling hyperinflation at levels unmatched anywhere else in the world. The IMF projects inflation will reach 13,000% this year and the economy will shrink 15%.

For Venezuelans between 15 and 29, the crisis has escalated to a point where they have lost confidence in their home, according to a poll carried out by the US firm Gallup and shared exclusively with the Guardian. Some 53% would like to move abroad permanently.

One of the most painful effects of the current crisis has been widespread hunger. In 2015, when inflation and food shortages were well below current levels, nearly 45% of Venezuelans said there were times when they were unable to afford food; in the latest study, that figure had risen to 79% – one of the highest rates in the world.

The irony of this “teachable moment” is that young people tend to be more susceptible to socialism’s alleged charms.

And the obligatory COMMAND-F search result:

Just bad luck then, I suppose.