POLITICO: Why Democrats Are Dropping More F-Bombs Than Ever.

The last few months have seen expletives ringing from large sections of the Democratic bench. In a New York Magazine profile this month, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) included one “fuck,” two “fucking”s, one “bullshit,” one “pissed off,” one “they suck,” and a “what the hell is going on?” DNC Chairman Tom Perez has awkwardly but assuredly brought profanity into his stump speeches, saying at a January DNC Future Forum, “if you don’t have the trust of the community, then you ain’t got shit,” and telling a New Jersey Working Families Alliance event in March that Republicans “don’t give a shit about people.” Kicking off an eight-state “Come Together and Fight Back” speaking tour alongside Senator Bernie Sanders in Portland, Maine last week, Perez turned to the president’s spending proposals—“They call it a ‘skinny budget.’ I call it a shitty budget.” By Thursday, the shop at Democrats.org was selling “Democrats give a sh*t about people” shirts.

Profanity’s caught on among the more junior ranks too. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy began a healthcare-related tweetstorm in February by saying “Let me count thy ways that the leaked GOP ACA repeal plan will totally, completely, monumentally screw you.” Virginia Governor candidate Tom Perriello’s healthcare take started similarly: “Republicans, this is not a damn game.” And California Congressman Ted Lieu maxed out his character limit in March to tweet, “Mr. President: If there was a wiretap at Trump Tower, that means a fed judge found probable cause of crime which means you are in deep shit.”

It’s enough to make you wonder what the hell is going on.

A laser-guided f-bomb can be a thing of beauty, but Gillibrand, Perez, et al., just seem to be lazily reflecting the frustrations of their constituents.

WELL, GOOD: Genital Mutilation Charges Spark Bill to Keep Foreign Laws Out of Michigan Courts.

BREAKING: ESPN to lay off about 100 employees today, including on-air talent.

It’s a safe bet that plenty of blameless people are losing their jobs today, which is a real shame. But this news is probably no surprise to anyone outside of ESPN’s SJW management.

“Q” COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Defense Intelligence Agency’s ‘Shark Tank’ Helps Startups Pitch Spy Apps.

Roy stands in front of a digital projection of a map of Syria. Green and red areas show where his proprietary neural network has determined that unrest or violence is likely imminent. Analysts at DIA can use the tool to look at “precursors to instability,” he explains to a small audience.

The analysts can refine the results by adding or subtracting variables — local economic factors, ethnic and religious makeup, even fresh water availability or food price inflation. This, he explains, is a huge improvement over previous models that relied on just four variables computed by humans. Rhombus’s cloud-based neural net can draw in much more information to help analysts make better predictions.

“It doesn’t give directions. It suggests to help override cognitive bias,” he says.

Fine, but users need to remember that data-driven decisionmaking doesn’t have a perfect track record, either.

QUESTION ASKED: Why does CBS News hate peace, love, and understanding?

21ST CENTURY INVESTIGATIONS: Cops use murdered woman’s Fitbit to charge her husband.

BEN DOMENECH: Bill Nye and the Politics of Grievance.

When I was much younger, my siblings and I would routinely tune in to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy on PBS. He was a fascinating instructor bent on helping kids achieve a basic understanding of science. When he engaged in politics, it was only very briefly if at all. He has recently returned to Netflix to, as so many of their products attempt, play on the nostalgia of older Millennials. Sadly, he spends most of his new Netflix show yelling at the audience. He also collaborated with Rachel Bloom on this bizarre video on transgenderism which has nothing to do with science, and is as cringeworthy a thing as you will see all year. The whole thing manages to be unfunny, tone-deaf, and hectoring – it mangles the real issues involved and disrespects the audience at the same time.

This isn’t about persecution – it’s disrespect. And the fundamental basis of healthy politics is respect. Real persecution is only a small part of what conservatives object to about the current state of the campus or the public square – the occasional group that is shut down, the florist or cake baker whose livelihood is threatened, the religious group that is berated into breaking their faith – these are the exceptions. The overall issue is a disrespect that now views words as weapons, fueled by an academic culture which has transferred the language of PTSD to simple day-to-day existence.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): On Twitter:

HMM: Full Senate heads to rare classified meeting at the White House on North Korea.

Congressional aides told Reuters that the meeting was originally scheduled to take place at a secured room at the Capitol, but President Trump asked to move the meeting to the White House.

Salon reported that the meeting will occur in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building auditorium. It will reportedly be made into a “sensitive compartmented information facility”—which means top secret information can be shared. The briefing will take place at 3 p.m. ET.

Some aides on the Hill have expressed confusion about the circumstances of the meeting. Salon wrote, “this could be a preparation for war—or just a forced attempt at a pre-100 days photo op.”

The meeting will be attended by some of Trump’s top cabinet members, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—who will chair the meeting– and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

The fact of the meeting itself should send a message overseas, but that still leaves the question of which Senator will be the first to leak.

BIRTHPLACE OF THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT: Riots Expected to Greet Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley Thursday.

LONG TIME COMING: EU Ankara Negotiator Calls for Suspension of Turkey Accession Talks.

The European Union should formally suspend Turkey’s long-stalled talks on membership if it adopts constitutional changes backed at a referendum last week, a leading member of the EU parliament responsible for dealings with Ankara said on Wednesday.

Kati Piri said ahead of a plenary debate on the matter that if President Tayyip Erdogan implemented his new charter, giving him even more powers, Turkey would close the door on membership.

Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey would not wait forever to join the bloc, just a day after the EU executive’s top official for membership talks asked Europe’s foreign ministers to consider other types of ties with Turkey when they meet on Friday.

Ataturk’s westward-aspiring Turkey is gone.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld has your Morning Brief with everything you need to get you started.

Everything but coffee, that is.

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO: China Launches First Home-Built Aircraft Carrier, Boosting Naval Power.

The new carrier, festooned in red flags and ribbons and with a bottle of champagne smashed over its bow, slid from a dry dock into the water in a shipyard ceremony in the northeastern port city of Dalian on Wednesday, state media reported. About two years of sea trials are expected before the still-unnamed ship becomes fully operational, Chinese and Western military experts say.

“We aim to safeguard our sovereignty and state interests and world peace by developing our military forces including maritime forces,” said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman at a regular news briefing on Tuesday.

China has been rapidly modernizing and expanding its naval operations over the last two decades, partly to ensure military superiority over Asian neighbors, some of which contest Chinese territorial claims, and to prevent the U.S. from intervening in regional conflicts.

There’s more to it than just a flight deck, however:

He said that other evidence of China’s long-term plans included constructing a new class of supply vessels modeled on leading U.S. counterparts, a new class of cruisers designed in part to protect carriers, and its first overseas naval facility, in the east African nation of Djibouti.

China “appears to be priming other ports to support its growing seaward presence,” Mr. Erickson said.

China is getting serious about power projection for the first time since Zheng He’s fleet was called home 600 years ago.

CHANGE? Trump administration to defend contraception mandate required under Affordable Care Act.

President Donald Trump promised religious groups he would reverse the Obama administration’s requirement that employers provide birth control to their employees under the Affordable Care Act.

But his Justice Department indicated Monday that it’s continuing to fight religious groups who are suing over the contraception mandate.

The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for an additional 60 days to negotiate with East Texas Baptist University and several other religious schools and nonprofit groups objecting to a requirement to which they are morally opposed.

Bureaucratic inertia or a genuine flip-flop?

SOCIAL JUSTICE: State Champion Football Coach May Be Fired for Being White.

When you stop judging men by the content of their character, eventually you’ll run out of men of good character.

PRIVACY: Of Course Unroll.Me Sold Your Data to Uber.

It didn’t surprise me one bit that the company was selling my data. Unroll.Me is a “free” service, and people should be savvy enough by now to know that there is no such thing as free. The engineers, marketers, executives and other employees of Slice Intelligence need their paychecks, and I need a less cluttered inbox. I’d expect a service I grant permission to go through my emails to get something in return. In fact, it says as much in Unroll.Me’s privacy policy, if users take a minute to look through it.

For a few bucks a month you can buy your own domain with its own email addresses, and set up dummy accounts for anything requiring email registration.

I’ve found that cuts down on spam significantly.

SONNY BUNCH: Five Suggestions to Help Democrats Connect With ‘Most People’

You’ll like Sonny when he’s helpful.

VIDEO: Obama: ‘If You Had Pictures of Everything I Had Done When I Was in High School, I Probably Would Not Have Been President’

The long-suppressed Khalidi tape from when he was all grown up might have done the trick.

GOOD LORD: Thai man kills baby on Facebook Live then takes own life.

ALLIES: Turkish jets bomb US-backed forces in Iraq, Syria, US officials say.

Those killed didn’t just include Syrian “moderate” rebels, but some of our Kurdish allies.

DIFFERENT SINGER BUT THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME: Mattis Slams Taliban as Being ‘Not Devout Anything’ After Massive Base Attack.

NICK GILLESPIE: Comedy and Moralizing Still Go Together, Sadly.

You can serve sauerkraut and scotch together, but that doesn’t mean they go together.

EUROCIDE: Kill the EU.

Nationalism is a persistent feature in the political landscape, but it usually lies dormant. Nationalist political movements come to life in the presence of an irritant or an achievable ambition. The European Union acts as a major irritant to nationalism in two ways.

Number one: A multinational governing project is bound to override the wishes of individual nations, especially less powerful ones. The post-financial-crisis governance of the European Union revealed that the government in Brussels had not dissolved realpolitik. If the choice was between the interests of German bondholders and Greek or Irish debtors, the dispute would always be resolved in favor of Germany. Elect a recalcitrant and rebellious government in Athens if you like; it doesn’t matter. The real bosses are in Brussels.

The European Union’s structure, in which most decisions are made by the European Commission, is undemocratic. The commission is not elected, and sometimes the leaders selected to it, like England’s Neil Kinnock, are politicians who have just lost an election. Similarly, Poland’s Donald Tusk ascended to be president of the European Council just before Poland tossed his Civic Platform party out of government at home.

I wasn’t kidding earlier today when I wrote that the “backlash to the backlash to the backlash is when things will turn truly ugly.”

DEAR TWITTER: Please stop trying to make Chelsea Clinton happen.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘WE,’ KEMOSABE? Obama’s Iran Deal Was Much Worse Than We Suspected.

This is from David Harsanyi who suspected quite a lot all along:

What if Donald Trump had unilaterally shut down every investigation into Russian espionage, released over 20 suspected Russian spies, struck a deal to get rid of sanctions against Russia—in return for honoring deals that had been signed years before—and then lied to the American people about the entire episode?

That’s the Obama Administration’s Iran deal. It might have been the first time the United States has offered extensive concessions to a nation that has continued to destabilize its interests, for nothing in return. But Barack Obama didn’t just support Iran’s position over our allies like Israel (no surprise there, considering his antagonism) or Sunni nations—he supported it ahead of his own Justice Department’s 30-year counterproliferation efforts.

It wouldn’t be fair to ask whose side Obama was on, because even Politico has made that perfectly clear.

YOUR SCIENTISTS WERE SO PREOCCUPIED WITH WHETHER OR NOT THEY COULD THAT THEY DIDN’T STOP TO THINK IF THEY SHOULD: Eerie tech promises to copy anyone’s voice from just 1 minute of audio.