EUROPE: Lithuania fears Russian propaganda is prelude to eventual invasion.

“Russia is a threat,” the defence minister, Raimundas Karoblis, said. “They are saying our capital Vilnius should not belong to Lithuania because between the first and second world wars it was occupied by Poland. It’s history of course, but Russia is using this pretext.

“Sometimes [the disinformation] is through [the government-run news agency] Sputnik, sometimes through their TV, but usually from politicians in the Duma.

“There are now reports that Klaipėda [Lithuania’s third largest city] never belonged to Lithuania; that it was the gift of Stalin after the second world war. There are real parallels with Crimea’s annexation [from Ukraine] … We are speaking of a danger to the territorial integrity of Lithuania.”

Sgt Tomas Ceponis, from the Lithuanian military’s department of strategic communication, said his team was monitoring disinformation, much of which bears similarities to the propaganda campaigns reported by Ukrainian specialists.

Lithuania fears the campaign to rewrite history could be an effort to prepare the ground for a possible attack with conventional weapons – what the military calls “kinetic operations”.

“Some of my colleagues from Ukraine told me there was a 12-year period of latent information operations, non-kinetic,” Ceponis said. “Then after, when conditions were set, they turned to kinetic operation.

“What is really a threat for us, is that we see they are working on a similar narrative for Lithuania, and they have been working on it for many years.”

Putin is certainly more brazen than the old Soviet leadership he trained under.

UPDATE ON RUSSIAN SUBWAY ATTACK: Two nail bombs on St Petersburg metro rip through carriages, killing at least 10 as Putin visits city for meeting.

Putin came to power on a Moscow apartment bombing which he blamed on Chechens, but is widely believed to have been a false-flag operation.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly Bring New Gun Control Campaign to Arizona.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL: Trump makes little headway filling out Pentagon jobs.

Trump so far has only seen one Pentagon nominee — Defense Secretary James Mattis — make it through the confirmation process and has 52 additional positions to fill. Many in the defense world are bothered by the holdup.

One defense consultant told The Hill there are rumblings that the slow pace of the process is causing the Pentagon “to kind of grind.”

“It seems like at some point around March 1 it became more of a problem, the slow, tedious process in filling the posts,” the consultant said.

The sluggish pace is also not missed by lawmakers.

The top lawmakers on the House Armed Services oversight subcommittee this week sent a letter to Trump urging him to fill the existing vacancies at the DOD Office of the Inspector General and Office of Special Counsel.

“We strongly encourage you to expeditiously put forth new nominees and move them through the confirmation process so that these offices can fully exercise their statutory duty to be effective and independent watchdogs,” Reps. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), the chairwoman and ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the letter.

Personnel is policy. The absence of personnel is…?

THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: Obamacare Choices Could Go From One to Zero in Some Areas.

Many counties already have just one insurer offering health plans in the Obamacare marketplaces, and some of those solo insurers are showing signs that they are eyeing the exits.

Humana announced this year that they’d be leaving the markets altogether next year. That means there are parts of Tennessee that will have no insurance options unless another insurer decides to enter.

And Anthem, which operates in 14 states, is getting nervous, an industry analyst told Bloomberg News this week. Its departure would be a much bigger problem. According to an analysis of government data by Katherine Hempstead at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Anthem is currently the only insurance carrier in nearly 300 counties, serving about a quarter of a million people.

As you can see on our map of those counties, an Anthem departure could leave coverage gaps in substantial parts of Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio and Colorado, as well as smaller holes in other states. In places where no insurance company offers plans, there will be no way for Obamacare customers to use subsidies to buy health plans.

Without an option for affordable coverage, they would become exempt from the health law’s mandate to obtain coverage. A result could be large increases in the number of Americans without health insurance.

It’s the first self-repealing law.

BREAKING: Explosion In St.Petersburg Subway Leaves Many Injured.

ANDRWEW MALCOLM: GOP infighting turns ominous for Trump and the GOP agenda.

Trump will get his Supreme Court nominee confirmed shortly, a major win. But the repeal retreat was a vivid lesson in how little control any GOP leaders maintain in 2017 over the energies and directions of the party rank-and-file. Trump benefited from that lack of cohesion last year to snatch the nomination, but now it works against him.

Within minutes of the pullback, Trump was talking up his next agenda item, tax reform. But hours later the rejected party leader resorted to Twitter to slam the 30 or so Freedom Caucus members who stood against the bill’s passage, professing allegiance to conservative principles.

Principled or petty, their stance left the Democrat ex-president’s namesake health-care measure fully in place after years of promised repeal.

“​Democrats are smiling in D.C.,” Trump tweeted, “that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!”

He added: “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!”

A new president, even a Republican who conveniently adopted that party, barely two months in, threatening his own party members. That makes for fighting words. And emboldened caucus members responded in kind

The smart move might be to table ObamaCare repeal for now — it’s undoing itself all on its own — and let the GOP caucus and the White House work on an issue like tax reform with a greater chance of success, and give everyone a chance to rebuild (or just build) relationships.

PATRICK POOLE: Turkish Government Opened $100m Mosque in D.C. as Turkish Intel Spied From Mosques Across Europe.

On the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Diyanet Center of America, questions about its true purpose are being raised. There are ongoing investigations by European officials into widespread spying allegations implicating Turkish government-funded Diyanet mosques across the continent — just like the one opened outside of Washington, D.C. The investigations center on whether the mosques are spying on behalf of the the Turkish intelligence service, the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati (MIT).

Yesterday I reported here at PJ Media on the investigations in Germany, where authorities have conducted raids targeting Diyanet imams and high-ranking officers of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), the official arm of the Diyanet in Germany.

Read the whole thing.

NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY? Veg-O-Matic Maker Files to Go Public.

Act now, by buying more than $1,000 in shares, and you’ll get a one-time discount of 20% on Ronco.com purchases, the company says on its website. Pony up more than $5,000, and Ronco will kick in one of the countertop rotisserie ovens that account for more than half its revenue.

“We have millions of satisfied customers out there,” said William Moore, Ronco’s president since 2011. “We are asking them to join us with another vote of confidence in the future of Ronco Brands.”

It could turn out to be an expensive way to roast a chicken. While Ronco says it has sold more than $2 billion of housewares and gadgets since the early 1960s, it is now a small and unprofitable business. Ronco generated revenue of $9 million in 2015, according to securities filings, and just $3.6 million in the first half of 2016, when Ronco had a net loss of $2.7 million.

Ronco has an accumulated deficit of $32.2 million, according to the filings, and roughly $17 million in debt, with interest rates as high as 20%. Auditors have “raised substantial doubt” about whether Ronco can keep operating, according to the filings, which also highlighted concerns about the 22-person company’s financial reporting.

For nostalgia’s sake, it might be fun to buy a share — after the IPO fever cools down and with the expectation that it won’t be worth anything.

RAMPING UP: Tesla Delivers a Record 25,000 Vehicles in First Quarter.

The U.S. luxury electric car maker, said on Sunday first-quarter vehicle deliveries jumped 69% from a year ago to a quarterly record of 25,000 vehicles, bouncing back from delays in the previous quarter.

The company said of the total vehicles delivered, about 13,450 were Model S sedan and about 11,550 were Model X sports utility vehicle.

Tesla has said it expects to deliver 47,000 to 50,000 Model S and Model X vehicles combined in the first half of 2017.

That’s ambitious. Tesla will have to nearly double this month’s record quarter in the next 13 weeks to meet their first-half goal.

FORMER CONGRESSMAN TOM PERRIELLO: I lost my seat in Congress because I voted for Obamacare. I don’t regret that decision at all.

House Republicans have yet to show similar commitment to their oft-stated principles.

TED CRUZ: 2017 Could Be ‘Heartbreaking Missed Opportunity’ for Republican Congress.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Flynn’s Reported Immunity Request.

The object of the Left’s game is to nullify Trump’s presidency, whether by impeachment or withering rebuke. The best way to get there is to demonize his associates, such that they are criminals and their crimes are his crimes. On that list, it doesn’t get higher than Mike Flynn.

Long before riding the front of the Trump Train, Flynn made himself the bête noire of the intelligence community, accusing it of politicizing intelligence analyses and concealing the ineffectiveness of Obama’s approach to jihadist terror – claims which, to the great embarrassment of Obama’s spy chiefs, have been corroborated by intelligence agency operatives. Like Trump, moreover, Flynn – brash, unpolished, and erratic – has a knack for making enemies on all sides, such that Washington is now full of two kinds of people: those out to get Flynn and those who whisper that he has it coming.

Read the whole thing.

BUT OF COURSE: Germany rejects US pressure for Nato spending rise.

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it was “quite unrealistic” to believe Germany would spend 2% of its economic output on the military.

Other spending such as development aid, he said, should be taken into account.

However, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg echoed US calls for member states to pay an equal proportion.
“Diplomacy, development aid, economic co-operation can be important to help stabilise a region,” Mr Stoltenberg told a news conference after Nato talks in Brussels.

“We have international targets, guidelines, for development aid, 0.7% of GDP [gross domestic product], and then we have a Nato agreement on moving towards 2%. But those are two different things… It is not either development or security, it is development and security.”

Soft power is the kind word. Hard power is the gun. Even Al Capone knew you need both.

THE LAW IS THE LAW (VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY WHIM): Dems Move to Ban ICE from Arresting Illegal Immigrants in ‘Sensitive Locations’

Nicholas Ballasy has the full story.

THIS IS CNN: Trump moves agenda forward even as Russia controversy swirls.

If Trump weren’t still pursing his agenda, CNN would have gone with something like “Trump agenda mired in Russian swamp.”

SPENGLER: The ‘Racism’ Libel Against the Trump Administration.

The debate over America’s attitude towards the Islamic world has been bitter, even vitriolic. But no-one to my knowledge in the Republican camp ever alleged that racism motivated the opponents of the Bush Freedom Agenda — not until the odious Max Boot denounced Trump’s GOP as “the party of white nationalism” in a March 14 screed at the Foreign Policy website:

This is how the Bannons and [Rep. Steve] Kings view the modern world: The West is threatened by hordes of swarthy outsiders, especially Mexicans and Muslims, and they are lonely defenders of the white Christian race against this insidious threat. There is no evidence that Trump has given this matter as much thought as they have, but, based on his public pronouncements, he has reached similar conclusions. That helps to explain why the administration is building a border wall, expanding deportations, and trying to keep out citizens of as many Muslim countries as possible. This isn’t about fighting terrorism or crime; it’s about fighting changing demographics. And it’s premised on an unspoken assumption that only white Christians are true Americans; all others are “somebody else.”

That is the sort of race-baiting one expects to hear from the extreme left; it is a new and disgusting development to hear it from a supposed conservative (in this case a neo-conservative).

Read the whole thing.

The ongoing right-on-right warfare is a sign that either the right is incapable of governing, or that a major segment of it simply doesn’t want to — or both, depending on who you’re reading.

BE SURE THAT YOUR UMBRELLA IS UPSIDE-DOWN: Mexico makes it RAIN tequila in a bid to attract more tourists.

REALPOLITIK: Haley, Tillerson Say Removing Assad Not Priority; McCain Fears ‘Faustian Bargain’ in Works.

The Faustian Bargain has been our least-worst option since former President Obama erased his own red line four years ago. The rest, until perhaps now, has been nothing but posturing and can-kicking.

HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS? Liberal voters push Democrats to a new nuclear age.

Buoyed by its initial victory on health care, Democrats are interested in using the improved bargaining position that the party’s House and Senate members suddenly find themselves in.

Instead, progressives are continuing to demand total opposition to Trump.

With the confirmation fight over Gorsuch and a deadline to fund the government both looming, Democratic lawmakers are under intense pressure not to give an inch, even if that means forcing what could be a losing battle over the filibuster in the Senate.

The real nuclear power of course resides in the Reid Option.

HEALTH: No Proof of Benefit from Contralateral Mastectomy, But Rates Rise Anyway.

The proportion of women with early breast cancer opting for contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) almost tripled from 2004 to 2012, despite no changes in the indications for the procedure, data from cancer registries showed.

Overall, the rate of CPM increased from less than 5% of women with early breast cancer in 2004 to 13% to 14% in 2012. Similar increases emerged from analyses of women ≥45 (3.6% to 10.4%) and those who were 20 to 44 at diagnosis (10.5% to 33.3%).

Encompassing 45 states and the District of Columbia, the analysis showed increases in CPM in all states, but the magnitude of increases varied substantially across the states, including one contiguous five-state region that had a combined CPM rate exceeding 42% in younger women during 2010 to 2012, as reported online in JAMA Surgery.

It seems early CPM is becoming the new normal, despite what the story says is a “lack of evidence that CPM improves survival in patients.”

VIDEO UPDATE: Evelyn Farkas Walks Back MSNBC Comments, Blames Russian ‘Fake News’ for Spreading Story.

It’s always the Russians with these people.

RECOVERY: Tiny fish with a funny name could help with opioid crisis.

The fang blenny, a fish found in the Great Barrier Reef, has potent venom that acts the same way as opioid drugs for killing pain. It could represent a new way to look at our most effective — and problematic — pain drugs.

Why do we need new opioid drugs?

Mostly because the ones currently on the market aren’t that good. We have potent opiods that are incredibly addictive and have lots of other side effects, including constipation, dizziness, nausea and altered mental condition. Or we have weak ones that simply aren’t that helpful for deep and chronic pain.

As things stand, we can go into the lab and tinker with existing drugs, and hope we can decrease addictiveness while maintaining potency. But so far, that hasn’t exactly been very successful.

Another approach is to look to nature. Nature has had millions of years to tinker with biologically active chemicals. We don’t necessarily know where to look for these, nor have the tools to begin a search. But chemicals that have evolved to kill pain without killing you are out there somewhere — in the fang blenny fish, for example.

Faster, please.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY UBER? Nevada Kills Plan To Force Ridesharing Apps To Stall for 15 Minutes.

In what can best be described as a rare moment of clarity for a government, the state of Nevada has ditched a plan to require ridesharing apps to delay pickup times by 15 minutes.

This effort was pushed by the taxi lobby in an effort to compete with companies like Uber and Lyft and their growing market share.

Rent-seeking… denied!

Read the whole thing. Apart from the happy ending it’s about as sickening and corrupt as you’d imagine.

PARTY OF YOUTH: President Jerry Brown? ‘Don’t rule it out’