WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: U.S. Air Force Buying Special Drone-Snagging Shotgun Shells.

Ironically, they’re called “SkyNet” shells.

THIS IS NOT A 10CC VIDEO: Joy Behar Says Melania and Donald Trump Aren’t in Love.

VIDEO: A Dem Congressman Called Rachel Maddow ‘Sir.’

Officially, that’s not funny.

MY MY WHAT ELATION: Vibrator maker ordered to pay out C$4m for tracking users’ sexual activity.

IT’S THE ARTS: Rapper Threatens to Make a Sex Slave of Melania Trump.

TIS A PITY THRY CAN’T ALL LOSE: ISIS Infighting in West Mosul as Baghdadi Shows Favor to Foreign Fighters.

YES! THE KIDS LOVE IT, TOO — EVENTUALLY: Half The Fun Of Being A Parent Is Trolling Your Children.

Expert parent-trolls don’t get half the credit we deserve.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “It is time for the taxpayer to stop subsidizing programs that are really lefty charity cases masquerading as the public interest.”

HAVEN’T YOU HEARD? THIN IS IN: Trump’s Ridiculously Skinny Budget.

In order to offset a proposed $54 billion bump in defense spending, the administration wants to take a chunk out of most other federal agencies, often in the most cartoonishly villainous ways possible. Eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Check. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps people pay their heating bills? Gone. The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates chemical accidents at federal facilities? See ya.

But those sort of programs amount to rounding errors in the context of the federal budget. The big proposed hits are to the State Department (nearly 30 percent), Environmental Protection Agency (31 percent), Agriculture Department (21 percent) and Department of Labor (20 percent).

And again, this is all to fund a 10 percent increase for the Pentagon, not even to reduce the precious deficit that conservatives always pretend to be worried about.

Longterm, entitlement spending is going to break us, and it’s a pity that Trump hasn’t shown any more guts on entitlement reform than any of his predecessors. But as for the rest, “elections have consequences.”

OOPS: Marijuana-filled cooler worth $24G donated to Goodwill.

“(The) employees were surprised when they opened the lid,” the police said in a tweet.

The Monroe Police Department said the cooler contained 3.75 pounds of pot, with an estimated street value of $24,000.

Police said Goodwill was examining its surveillance video to see if it can find an image of the person who may have dropped off the cooler.

Recreational marijuana is legal in Washington state, but 3.75 pounds is a bit more than the possession limit of one ounce.

ROGER KIMBALL: Grandstanding Judicial Supremacy Must End.

LEGAL INSURRECTION: Hawaii TRO and 9th Circuit En Banc Denial effectively strip Trump of executive powers. “At this point, only the Supreme Court can restore presidential powers.”

Makes you wonder what Hawaii TRO and the 9th thought of President Obama’s “pen and phone.”

WHO IS MORE FOOLISH — THE FOOL OR THE FOOL WHO FOLLOWS HIM? U.S.-Style Homeland Security: Back on Australia’s Agenda?

Recycled in various forms for more than a decade, the idea of bringing together the national security responsibilities of various security agencies, units within different departments and law enforcement bodies under one superstructure is now on the desk of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Just why it is back is not clear.

Various suggestions have been put forward, from conspiracy theories about it being used as a vehicle for the ambitions of Peter Dutton, the Minister for Immigration, and his department head Michael Pezzullo, to the more prosaic idea that Prime Minister Turnbull is looking at it as part of a big shake up of administrative arrangements and a major Ministerial reshuffle after the May Federal budget.

The initial reaction to speculation that the idea of a major restructuring of the existing security machinery to create a US-style Department of Homeland Security is back on the agenda indicates that it is still an idea with only luke-warm support.

A who’s who of former senior officials with backgrounds in security policy has been publicly quotedas opposing the idea, or at least seeing no overwhelming case for it. Political interest in the idea outside those directly involved in its consideration seems non-existent.

Turnbull might want to talk to some actual Americans about DHS before he decides to sign that bill.

THERE GOES NYT AGAIN: Neil Gorsuch Helped Defend Disputed Bush-Era Terror Policies.

Goodness, do they mean a dispute has two sides?

VOTE BUYING: CA Lawmakers Want to Exempt Teachers from State Taxes.

Is Sacramento suddenly concerned the teachers’ union won’t stay bought?

BUT OF COURSE:

YES, THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE CHELSEA A THING: Chelsea Clinton announces new picture book, She Persisted.

“I wrote this book for everyone who’s ever wanted to speak up but has been told to quiet down, for everyone who’s ever been made to feel less than,” said Clinton, the author of It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going, in a statement. “The 13 women in She Persisted all overcame adversity to help shape our country—sometimes through speaking out, sometimes by staying seated, sometimes by captivating an audience. With this book, I want to send a message to young readers around the country—and the world—that persistence is power.”

That’s what should worry you.

THE RETURN OF THE TURK? Turkish minister claims ‘holy wars will soon begin in Europe’ after Geert Wilders beaten.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, did not welcome the victory for Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

“Now the election is over in the Netherlands…when you look at the many parties you see there is no difference between the social democrats and fascist Wilders,” he said according to a translation by Hurriyet.

“All have the same mentality. Where will you go? Where are you taking Europe? You have begun to collapse Europe. You are dragging Europe into the abyss. Holy wars will soon begin in Europe.”

If you had thought this little matter had been settled at the gates of Vienna in 1683, well, memories run deep in the Middle East.

THEIR TWITTER GUY DID: Did McDonald’s Just Insult Donald Trump While Praising Barack Obama?

No word yet on whether the presumed SJW responsible has been fired, but this must be a difficult day for elitists who sneer at McDonalds.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Rachel in Wonderland.

As every wag in the Twitterverse knows, the leftist MSNBC commentator tweeted with breathless excitement around 7:30 EST that evening that “we’ve got Trump’s tax returns. (seriously).” The breathlessness rose to levels rarely seen outside the bedroom when Maddow’s show began at 9:00. Fluttering her hands in front of her face, she told the audience, “There’s a little bit of a hullaballoo around here this evening. I apologize for being a little flustered.” She then proceeded to build to the story with meaningless conjecture for somewhere between twenty minutes and what felt like twelve days. Finally, she produced 2005 IRS documents that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the president made a ton of somolians seventeen years ago and paid a small dumpster load worth of taxes. As Maddow herself was forced to say to Trump: “Mazel tov.”

Now, I like a good laugh as much as the next person whose favored political party currently dominates every level of American government, but really the larger issue is serious. An insulated leftist media — the networks, CNN, the New York Times (a former newspaper), the Washington Post and the rest — have now pied pipered their entire movement into a kind of Fantasy Scandal Wonderland.

Read the whole thing.

SIMPLE SOLUTION? STOP WATCHING MADDOW:

OVERRULED: Judge Blocks Second Travel Order; Trump Slams ‘Judicial Overreach’

The ruling, granting a request for a temporary restraining order by the state of Hawaii and Ismail Elshikh, stalls the president’s second attempt to suspend admission of nearly all refugees for 120 days and to restrict visas for nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, who said the restraining order applies nationwide, said Trump’s travel order was religiously discriminatory.

In an appearance Wednesday night in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump denounced the ruling as “an unprecedented judicial overreach” and said his administration would pursue the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

“We’re talking about the safety of our nation, the safety and security of our people,” he said, adding: “This ruling makes us look weak.”

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, called Watson’s ruling “flawed both in reasoning and in scope,” saying Trump’s travel order “falls squarely within his lawful authority in seeking to protect our nation’s security.”

Mollie Hemingway has more:

Trump said the temporary travel restriction was needed for national security. In issuing his temporary restraining order, Watson said Trump’s order was a result of nothing more than religious animus against Muslims. The judge’s order is predicated on what he thinks Trump wants to do, not the order itself.

Throughout the ruling, Judge Watson concedes there’s nothing about the executive order that would be problematic if not for his interpretation of Trump’s statements made in the months and years prior to issuing it. He repeatedly states his feeling that Trump had a bad motive in issuing the order.

Judges using campaign rhetoric to infer intent instead of plainly evaluating the law as written is a dangerous development. Also because the public can witness the selective use of this trick, it undermines confidence in the judiciary at a time when the judiciary can’t afford too much erosion of trust.

“Feelings” isn’t even a good song, much less a sound basis for overturning a legal executive order.

IT’S ON: Queen gives Royal Assent to Article 50 bill.

MARK CUBAN ON TRUMP’S TAX RETURN: ‘For All We Know, He’s the One Who Leaked It’

He says that like it’s a bad thing?

MICHAEL BARONE: Perceptions are that Trump’s policies are working.

In contrast to the years of the Obama stimulus program, when the bulk of new jobs came in the public sector, it appears that the increase here is in the private sector. Moody’s Analytics says there were 298,000 new private sector jobs in February, far more than the 189,000 it expected.

Construction jobs were up 58,000, private educational services jobs up 29,000, manufacturing jobs up 28,000. This suggests that lots of employers, small as well as large, are taking the plunge and creating new jobs.

Can I prove that they’re doing so because of perceptions that regulations and taxes will be decreased by the Trump administration? No, and I’m not sure any economist’s statistical model could either. But that sure looks like what’s happening.

The owner of a small business doesn’t take lightly the decision to make new hires — those are real people you’re giving hope to, with the real expectation that you’ll make payroll week after week. The business climate matters a great deal, and maybe we’re finally seeing it turn around.