THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Merkel Allows Prosecution of German Comedian Over Erdogan Satire.

While Merkel left the legal fate of the comedian, Jan Boehmermann, in the hands of the country’s courts, she said her government will seek to scrap the law in Germany’s criminal code that penalizes insults against a foreign head of state. The decision wasn’t a prejudgment on the satirist’s culpability, she said.

“In a state of law, it’s not the domain of the government, but rather the prosecutors and the courts, to weigh individual rights,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Friday, reading from a prepared statement. While lauding Germany’s cooperation with Turkey, the chancellor said Turkey’s crackdown of media organizations was of “great concern.”

I wonder if this law has ever been used to prosecute German comics for insulting President Obama.

EDIT: Looks like I should have checked for Glenn’s post first…

I WON’T BACK DOWN: Mike Lee provokes leadership showdown.

Lee’s gambit also could disrupt the unity within the party fostered by its stance against the president’s Supreme Court nomination — and further the senator’s reputation as a conservative bomb-thrower.

But Lee is pressing his case, insisting that the position of Republican Policy Committee chairman is wide open for 2017.

“I have no interest running against John Barrasso for this or anything else. I am interested in running for the open-seat Republican Policy chair,” Lee said in an interview on Wednesday.

That Lee believes the seat is still open is a direct challenge to McConnell, who brought Republican Secretary Laura Dove into the Tuesday caucus lunch to explain that Barrasso is eligible for another two-year term. But if Lee wins the argument, he’d imperil three-fifths of the leadership team: Barrasso, Republican Conference Chairman John Thune of South Dakota and Conference Vice Chairman Roy Blunt of Missouri all took their jobs in late 2011.

Surely a little fresh blood near the top of the GOP Senate leadership couldn’t hurt.

CHANGE: How Brazil, the darling of the developing world, came undone.

The plunge that Rousseff and the country have taken has laid bare the frailty of Brazil’s commodity-driven growth. Big parts of the Brazil model, it turns out, were glued together with kickbacks, dirty money and lies.

Rousseff herself is not accused of illegal personal enrichment but of improperly using money from government banks to cover budget gaps. A separate inquiry is examining whether her Workers’ Party benefited from an illegal campaign-finance scheme, which could lead to an annulment of her victory and force new elections.

Call it “the Venezuela model,” in which high commodity prices are used to create a facade of growth over unsustainable social spending for the poor, cronyism for the rich, corruption, and bad management.

Then of course commodity prices eventually fall and expose the rotten structure behind the facade.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Eating chocolate regularly ‘improves brain function’ according to new study.

Researchers found that regularly eating chocolate was significantly associated with cognitive function “irrespective of other dietary habits”.

More frequent chocolate consumption was “significantly associated with better performance on [cognitive tests including] visual-spatial memory and organisation, working memory, scanning and tracking, abstract reasoning, and the mini-mental state examination”.

Cocoa flavanols, a subgroup of flavonoids, which are found in chocolate, are associated with the positive cognitive function.

If I’m reading this correctly, you don’t even have to give anything up — just adding chocolate to your diet might make you smarter.

So why take a chance by denying yourself a brain-enhancing treat?

IT’S THE END OF AN ERA: Saying goodbye to PJTV and hello to the next crazy experiment in making network TV news without a network.

PRIVACY: Microsoft Sues Justice Department Over Secret Customer Data Searches.

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, challenging as unconstitutional the government’s authority to bar tech companies from telling customers when their data has been examined by federal agents.

The suit, filed in the federal court here, raises a fundamental question about the cloud computing era: Can the government force technology companies to remain silent about when and how federal agents search their customers’ data? Individuals would know if their home or hard drive were searched by investigators, but investigators now have the ability—and are using it in thousands of cases—to keep secret their searches of data stored on the cloud.

I wonder what the Founders would have thought of secret search warrants, executed without a trace.

I CAN’T EVEN; I LITERALLY CAN’T EVEN: Ken Starr Thinks Mitch McConnell Should Fill Scalia’s Seat.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO PERISCOPE THEIR UNDERAGE FRIEND GETTING RAPED: Ohio woman accused of livestreaming alleged rape of teen friend.

Marina Lonina and Raymond Gates, 29, were charged Wednesday with rape, kidnapping, sexual battery and pandering sexually-oriented matter involving a minor. The indictment said the alleged rape involved intercourse by force and the charge was not related to the alleged victim’s age.

Lonina was also charged with illegal use of a minor in a nudity-oriented material or performance, related to the alleged use of the social media livestreaming app Periscope.

Periscope, an app for smartphones, uses a video function to allow users to stream events live.

O’Brien said Lonina and the victim were socializing with Gates at a home in Columbus on Feb. 27 when Gates raped the 17-year-old girl. Lonina used the Periscope app to livestream the assault, O’Brien said.

Good lord.

FIREWALL: Bill Whittle culturally appropriates the Social Justice Warriors.

MICHAEL BARONE: Donald Trump’s insincere process arguments.

“Today, winning votes doesn’t mean anything,” Trump complained. “It’s a corrupt deal going on in this country and it’s not fair to you people.”

Such complaints typically come from people who are not, in one of Trump’s favorite words, “winners.” Trump conspicuously refrains from complaining that, though he has won just 37 percent of votes cast in Republican primaries and caucuses, those votes have given him 46 percent of the delegates.

That happened because of the rules. Trump has benefited from winner-take-all rules in states like Florida and Arizona. He has benefited from split opposition: in only one state (Massachusetts) has he won more popular votes than the combined total for Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich.

The actual presidency is tougher and less forgiving than the primary race — and the Democrat nominee will be, too.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Taxing $1,000 per Gun Became a Reality in One U.S. Territory — and Some Worry It Could Spread.

Gov. Ralph Torres signed the gun tax and regulation bill into law Monday and stressed that his first priority is the safety of law enforcement and the community.

“It’s something that none of us want, and we want to make it as strict as possible,” Torres said in a statement.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, blasted these as examples of the left targeting guns and noted that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has backed taxes on guns in the past.

“The left is now seeking to tax guns out of existence,” Norquist said in a statement Monady. “The Second Amendment makes it difficult to legally ban guns, but Hillary has led the way to explaining you can achieve the same thing with high taxes.”

There must be a solid case to be made that a $1,000 tax on a $500 pistol is an unconstitutional infringement on a court-recognized individual right.

21ST CENTURY MEDICINE: The cheap, simple way to prevent blisters.

All it takes is some paper tape applied to the foot in blister-prone areas before running, the researchers said.

To test this blister-prevention method, the researchers recruited 128 runners who were participating in a 155-mile (250 kilometers) ultramarathon in 2014.

The researchers applied paper tape to just part of each runner’s foot, so that the untaped areas would serve as a control. At the end of the race, which took seven days, only 30 runners (24 percent) had any blisters in the taped areas, whereas 81 runners (63 percent) developed blisters in the untaped areas.

I’m not a runner, but I’ve found that a good pair of hiking boots is usually all it takes to avoid blisters on mountain camping trips. For longer hikes, try wearing a pair of thin dress socks under your athletic socks.

A TALE OF TWO REUTERS:

So which is it?

THE WORD “UNEXPECTEDLY” MAKES ITS EXPECTED APPEARANCE IN THIS STORY: Weak U.S. retail sales, inflation data reinforce Fed caution on rates.

U.S. retail sales unexpectedly fell in March as households cut back on purchases of automobiles and other items, further evidence that economic growth stumbled in the first quarter.

Other data on Wednesday showed a surprise drop in producer prices last month as rising energy prices were offset by a decline in the cost of services.

The two reports suggested the Federal Reserve will probably not raise interest rates until later this year.

“The data solidifies the well-entrenched narrative of a very weak first quarter for the U.S. economy. For the Federal Reserve … it argues for continued caution,” said Millan Mulraine, deputy chief economist at TD Securities in New York.

But maybe this is the year we finally get that Summer of Recovery.

RESET: Russian fighter jets in extremely close overflights with U.S. destroyer.

Navy officials are not commenting publicly, but inside the Pentagon there is an intense discussion about releasing video and still photos of the Russian encounter to demonstrate the danger the jets posed to the ship, a U.S. official told CNN.

The initial reports indicate the two concerning encounters occurred Tuesday night in international waters. A third overflight, at a more acceptable distance, happened Sunday, according to the source.

The ship, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, also had a Polish helicopter on board as part of routine training, according to the official, leading to some speculation in military circles that the Russians were also “sending a message to Poland,” the official said.

We, too, can send messages. One message be a reminder of some kind that the Arleigh Burke-class was designed to shoot down dangerous aircraft.

WASHINGTON POST: Cruz likely to block Trump on a second ballot at the GOP convention.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is close to ensuring that Donald Trump cannot win the GOP nomination on a second ballot at the party’s July convention in Cleveland, scooping up scores of delegates who have pledged to vote for him instead of the front-runner if given the chance.

The push by Cruz means that it is more essential than ever for Trump to clinch the nomination by winning a majority of delegates to avoid a contested and drawn-out convention fight, which Trump seems almost certain to lose.

The GOP race now rests on two cliffhangers: Can Trump lock up the nomination before Cleveland? And if not, can Cruz cobble together enough delegates to win a second convention vote if Trump fails in the first?

During my political lifetime, Republican conventions haven’t been much more than an opportunity to fill a stadium with people wearing outrageous hats while voting for the man everybody knows will win already.

2016 promises to be slightly more interesting.

UNBREAKABLE: Genetic ‘superheroes’ survive despite devastating mutations, Seattle-led study finds.

Of the more than a half-million people included in the analysis, just 13 were found who survived to adulthood despite having genetic alterations that typically cause eight serious childhood diseases.

No one knows why they remained healthy, Friend said. But DNA from such people could one day provide insight into ways to prevent or treat such catastrophic disorders.

“Instead of looking at people with disease, you need to look at people who should have gotten sick,” said Friend.

I’ll have what the gentleman who should have gotten cirrhosis of the liver is having.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Vote to repeal Colorado’s ban on large-capacity firearms magazines expected tomorrow.

JOHN SCHINDLER: Amid Shocking Chinese Spy Case, Our Navy Can No Longer Be Trusted.

The redacted indictment does not reveal how Mr. Lin came in contact with Chinese intelligence, though his being charged with cavorting with prostitutes offers tantalizing hints, while it makes clear that a good deal of intent was involved. He is accused of not revealing unauthorized foreign contacts to navy officials, as holders of high-level security clearances are required to do, while the mention of unreported foreign trips reveals that Mr. Lin was meeting with Chinese handlers outside the United States. Such clandestine meetings are standard for high-value spies who may be too risky to meet with on American soil.

We know nothing yet about what Mr. Lin told Beijing, but the unusual degree of secrecy surrounding this case, with the lieutenant commander stashed in the brig for months without press notification, indicates that the navy thinks the damage must be severe indeed. Worse, it is impossible to write the Lin debacle off as some sort of ugly aberration, as navy leadership will want to do. In truth, it’s been evident for several years that the U.S. Navy has lost control of its own security, a development with worrisome ramifications far beyond our navy.

Read the whole thing.

SPY GAME: Top North Korean intelligence officer defected to South

The colonel, whose name was withheld by the South Korean government, worked for the North Korean military’s General Reconnaissance Bureau. The agency is believed to be behind two deadly attacks blamed on Pyongyang that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.

The General Reconnassance Bureau also deals in cyberwarfare, and it is widely suspected of being behind the 2014 hack attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that the colonel is viewed as an elite member of North Korean society by other defectors from the Communist dictatorship.

“He is believed to have stated details about the bureau’s operations against South Korea to authorities here,” the agency quoted a source as saying.

That’s a rare coup for Seoul, and makes you wonder if Li’l Kim might be losing his grip.

SHOT: Cruz’s Methodical Delegate Strategy Narrows Trump’s Path To GOP Nomination.

Cruz picked up all 34 Republican National Convention delegates that Colorado Republicans awarded this week. Delegates backing Cruz won all three spots in each of the state’s seven congressional districts, as well as 13 statewide slots.

The Colorado win follows a similar outcome in North Dakota, where Republicans elected a mostly Cruz-approved slate of delegates at a state convention last week. Those two delegate hauls, along with more complex delegate maneuvering in states like Louisiana that had already held their primaries and caucuses, highlight a growing organizational gap between Cruz’s campaign and frontrunner Donald Trump’s.

CHASER:

8 years ago, there was a guy who understood his party's byzantine nom process better than his competitor.

Today, we call him Mr. President.

— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) April 3, 2016

We’ll see.

DEGRADED AND ULTIMATELY DESTROYED: Islamic State recaptures key border stronghold from Syrian rebels.

The jihadists seized the Syrian border town of Rai, roughly two miles from the Turkish border in Syria’s Aleppo province, in a counterassault against rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The rebels had previously taken the town from the Islamic State on Thursday in what was hailed as a boost for U.S. and Turkish efforts to rout the extremists from Syrian territory along Turkey’s frontier.

Where is President Ash Carter when we need him most?

HOW NOT TO BE SEEN: Will This Weapon Change Infantry Warfare Forever?

For now, not much will change on the battlefield for dismounted soldiers in combat. However, once the weapon is distributed more widely at the squad level throughout the U.S. military, the impact of the XM25 could be revolutionary and fundamentally change small infantry tactics. The XM25 will essentially destroy the value of cover and with it the necessity of long-drawn out firefights. It will also make the old infantry tactic of firing and maneuvering to eliminate an enemy hiding behind cover obsolete.

“The XM25 is a next-generation, semi-automatic weapon designed for effectiveness against enemies protected by walls, dug into foxholes or hidden in hard-to-reach places,” according to the website of Orbital ATK, the producer of the XM25.

If there’s ever a civilian model, the range where I shoot is going to have to start hiding the targets just to keep things interesting.

OCULUS RIFT PHONE HOME: The virtual reality headset reports your every move to Facebook and to advertisers.

When the headset’s software is installed on a computer, it adds a process that allows the PC to watch what the headset is doing and send that back to Oculus. That allows the headset to know when it is being used and turn itself on — but it also allows the company to collect information on people’s head movements and activity and send it back to advertisers.

The terms and conditions include a line saying that the headset will collect “Information about your physical movements and dimensions when you use a virtual reality headset”, along with a range of more usual information like data about users’ computers and location.

Given some of the sordid ways VR will be put to use, this “feature” should give people pause.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER: No ‘coincidence’ Romanian hacker Guccifer extradited amid Clinton probe.

One of the notches on Guccifer’s cyber-crime belt was allegedly accessing the email account of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, one of Clinton’s most prolific advice-givers when she was secretary of state. It was through that hack that Clinton’s use of a personal account — clintonemail.com — first came to light.

Former law enforcement and cyber security experts said the hacker, whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, could – now that he’s in the U.S. – help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server was compromised by a third party, one that did not have the formal backing and resources of a foreign intelligence service such as that of Russia, China or Iran.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014.

The FBI had no comment, of course, but it’s been obvious almost from the start that clintonemail.com was improperly secured. It seems impossible that the Secretary of State’s “private” emails weren’t in Russian hands nearly in real-time, which makes yesterday’s report on Clinton’s Kremlin connection even more curious.

Hillary may be the most deeply compromised person ever to hold high office in this country — and she has a good chance of attaining the very highest office.