HOUSE DEMOCRATS treat 2016 autopsy as top secret. Yes, can't have the proles finding out that they're at fault for Hillary's loss.

OBVIOUSLY RACIST: Company offers beauty products for 'white' hair.

Can't have a company offering primarily black-oriented products trying to extend its product line to non-blacks....

COMMON SENSE: flowers that don't grow in progressive gardens.

MOSSAD TO THE RESCUE: Can the liberal arts be saved?

#NOTFONDOFTRUMP AFTER 100 DAYS: "[I]t's way too early to declare Trump a success. But it seems to me he's off to a good start."

SHOWBOATING: federal judge suspends Trump’s unenforced ban on funding for sanctuary cities.

The ruling distorts the Executive Order beyond recognition, accusing the president of usurping legislative authority despite the order’s express adherence to “existing law.” Moreover, undeterred by the inconvenience that the order has not been enforced, the activist court — better to say, the fantasist court — dreams up harms that might befall San Francisco and Santa Clara, the sanctuary jurisdictions behind the suit, if it were enforced. The court thus flouts the standing doctrine, which limits judicial authority to actual controversies involving concrete, non-speculative harms.

Isn't it time to start impeaching activist judges?

SOUTH DAKOTA: Democrats are being crushed.

Good.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: "[those] who don't understand history are doomed to believe whatever the experts tell them."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Never meddle in the affairs of dragons. You are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

TRUMP: let's give Obama's land back to the states.

It wasn't your land to take, Mr. ex-President.

KURT SCHLICHTER: I am a victim of progressive hate crimes.

As a person of absolutely no color who embodies an intersectional reality that includes my utter lack of genderfluidity and my unemployment-questioning, differently-veteraned, and non-pagan experiences, I am totally oppressed by progressivism’s hegemonic power structure.

My phallocentric feline friends are not amused, however.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Will 2020 be another 1972 for Democrats?

DEMOCRATS THROW ANOTHER CHILDISH TANTRUM: threaten to oppose bill to prevent shutdown if health care vote happens before Saturday.

It what they (and progressives, but I repeat myself) do.

CALIFORNIA’S LATEST MOVE to “fight the wall” [build it and be banned] is truly something out of La La Land.

Minority contractors won't be affected? 'Undocumented' construction workers won't be affected? Aren't these people part of California's protected class?

BREAKING NEWS FROM THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT: Living in a tiny house is 'poverty appropriation'.

SEN. STENY HOYER [D(UMB)-MD] blames $10 trillion debt increase under Obama on ‘big tax cuts’ and recession recovery.

Was I sleeping when Obama cut taxes during his 8-year administration?

HAH: Californians upset that they can’t sell their green energy homes. They should have thought of that before they signed up for the subsidies.

'CELEBRITY' CHEF ON MSNBC: "There’s no legal way for immigrants to actually enter this country." That will certainly surprise the legal immigrants my wife taught English as a second language....

GOOD GUY GAL WITH A GUN: Ohio woman shoots intruder after he tackles her in her elderly parents’ home.

SUCKERS! The progressive Left actually thought Obama meant all that anti-Wall Street retoric. And then there's progressive hero Bernie Sanders....

Anyone ever notice that the progressive (socialist) leadership always needs a little extra dispensation for their hard work of telling everyone else what to do?

PROGRESSIVES: petty, bankrupt, and vindictive.

ANN COULTER drops out of Berkeley speech.

Roger L. Simon explains that “this is because the conservative group Young America’s Foundation backed away, citing safety issues. The irony in all this is nothing looks worse for the left than a bunch of masked goons breaking university windows."

Actually what would be worse (for them) would be to be seen running in fear from patriots intent on pulping them....

ANOTHER REASON TO MOVE THE U.N. TO, SAY, RAQQA, SYRIA: U.N. warns that repealing ObamaCare may be illegal.

DON'T YOU KNOW IT: Environmentalists are dead wrong.

NEWSFLASH: "Democrats and leftists have weak egos, and weak arguments. Thus, they have to ban criticism."

WHY DOES CBS NEWS hate peace, love, and understanding?

PLEASE, LIBERALS, TAKE HIS ADVICE: Five suggestions to help Democrats connect with ‘most people’.

BILL NYE THE 'SCIENCE' GUY is a constitutional idiot.

THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD accuses Supreme Court Associate Justice Gorsuch of murder.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

Linked from here.

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: "First, politicians promise to pay [for you]. Then [when you accept their offer], they propose to control you."

You'd think that people would learn from experience. But no, hope stupidity springs eternal....

CARTOON OF THE DAY: the reason for 'Never Trump' anger....

LIVE FREE OR DIE: liberals want to kill free speech, so we patriots must fight back.

The First and Second Amendments to our Constitution are too important to surrender without a fight.

A DJ WRITES on the sins of the Social Justice Warriors.

It's long, but worthy.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS interviews President Trump and PowerLine's John Hinderaker takes note:

[T]he more I have listened to Trump and, especially, read transcripts of his speeches and interviews, the more I am impressed by the fact that if you look past his gee-whiz real estate developer style and his generally-overlooked implicit self-deprecation, what Trump is telling us is usually very smart.

Read the whole interview (first link).

WHY HE WON: Trump asked. I remember noting that, both in the primaries and in the general election. The other candidates, especially Hillary Clinton, didn't ask, they assumed (or demanded) my vote.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY HAS BECOME SNOWFLAKE U: Students who avoid making eye contact could be guilty of racism.

Linked from this Instapundit post.

BUT ONLY IF you run as a Republican.

SHARYL ATTKISSON’S 'Obama-era surveillance timeline':

[T]he kinds of intelligence abuses we’re hearing about now did not begin when Team Obama became concerned about Donald Trump. Attkisson says that in April 2009, just a few months into the Obama presidency, “someone leak[ed] the unmasked name of Congresswoman Jane Harman to the press” According to news reports, the Bush administration NSA had incidentally recorded and saved Harmon’s phone conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage. But it was during the Obama presidency that the information was leaked to the press.

Harman is a liberal Democrat. However, she was more hard line than most Democrats on national security. Perhaps more significantly, she was a political enemy of Nancy Pelosi.

There was also the case of Fox News’ James Rosen. In May 2010, the government secretly applied for a warrant to obtain Google email information regarding Rosen. Three years later, Fox News learned that the Justice Department secretly labeled reporter Rosen a possible “criminal co-conspirator” and “flight-risk” in obtaining warrants to monitor his movements, phone records, and emails in a leak investigation starting in 2011.

Moreover, although Attkisson doesn’t mention it, when James Rosen visited his parents he used their telephone to talk to one of his contacts. This led to the lead investigation being extended to Rosen’s parents. Creepy.

Attkisson herself apparently was the victim of surveillance after she broke, and persistently reported on, the Holder Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” scandal. In February 2013, remote intruders secretly download new spy software proprietary to a federal agency onto her work computer.

I think it's clear that the Obama administration 'weaponized' the federal government against its own citizens. What's not clear is whether the Trump administration can - or will wnat to - 'de-weaponize' it.

DIRTY JEANS: pre-soiled diapers for snowflakes.

BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump wants to get a man to Mars by the end of his administration.

Heh.

IT'S TIME TO REOPEN INSANE ASYLUMS: Activist says having ‘genital preferences’ in dating is transphobic (whatever that means).

SCOTT ADAMS on the Trump resistance movement: Trump isn't Hitler; Trump is incompetent.

The Dumbocrats Democrats are having trouble keeping their memes straight.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A LIBERAL:

It may take a while, but the identification is definitive.

FORMER GOV. HOWARD DEAN is a constitutional idiot illiterate.

PROOF that Democrats are full of it.

NERD PROM to get 'trumped'. Heh.

OH, SHIT: He's back....

PALESTINIAN PRISONERS HOLD HUNGER STRIKE; Israelis have barbeque outside.

Heh.

THIS is where snowflakes come from.

FROM ELECTION 2016: the Democrats should be scared.

Very scared. And that makes me very happy.

CARTOON OF THE DAY:

DEMOCRATS: Remember your mantra.

I’m special.
I’m uniquely blessed with moral insights from somewhere – definitely not God.
I’m right.
And everyone else is wrong.

And please. Please! Don't change.

M*A*S*H progressive role model Maj. Frank Burns: "Individuality is fine, as long as we all do it together."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:



There used to be a whole genre of science fiction about the equivalent of 'sanctuary cities' where those who could not, or would not, be subject to civil laws and norms were sent to live sans any government intervention. Heinlein's "Coventry" is one such example.

In seeking to deny any federal funding to sanctuary cities and states (e.g., California) it appears President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have read Heinlein.

THE RAW STORY reported "5 psychiatrists this week gathered at a conference at Yale to sound the alarm on what they believe is President Donald Trump’s 'dangerous mental illness'."

I'm reminded of something I learned in college many years ago: people go into psychiatry in order to understand their own neuroses. Most fail.

ON THE MESSAGE BOARD at the local church: "This too shall pass - maybe a little like a kidney stone - but it shall pass."

HERE'S ANOTHER in my spring leaf watch posts:

We're on our 3rd inch of rain today, so it's a rather gray, but green, day. The leaves have finally begun to arrive in force. Here's last week's photo for comparison, and though there's no blue sky today the greens are dramatic. The ferns along the retaining wall and ground cover over the slope of the hill have literally burst out of the ground and the trees have begun to throttle up leaf production.

By next week it should be almost summer. About time, too.

A FINAL THOUGHT on Earth Day dopery.

PUNCH: UC Berkeley cancels Ann Coulter speech.

COUNTERPUNCH: UC Berkeley students threaten to sue to restore Coulter's visit.

EARTH DAY HORROR: Bill Nye upset CNN's panel included somebody who disagrees with him.

How does that old lawyer witticism go? Something akin to "When the facts support you, argue the facts; when they don't, pound the table."

THE NEW YORKER has Trump Derangement Syndrome.

We owe it to our country and to our sanity to go on a case-by-case basis, empirically evaluating each action as it takes place, and refusing to succumb to the urge to turn politics into a series of set responses—exactly the habit, after all, that we so often deplore in Trump and the people around him.

Which is exactly what Adam Gopnik does in the linked article.

NEW YORK TIMES: [FBI Director James] Comey went public about Emailgate partly because he didn’t trust Loretta Lynch to be impartial. Read it all and make up your own mind, but I think Comey was left hanging in the wind by the Obama administration and he did the best he could: lay out the facts and let the American voters decide.

They did.

AND SUBSTITUTING FOR EARTH DAY, we have scenes from the 'science' march. Which has about as much to do with science as fish with bicycles.

AFTER 48 YEARS OF CONSECUTIVE FAILED PREDICTIONS, Earth Day has lost its cachet. Finally.

YES. Too clean for our children's good?

BARNEY & CLYDE on the 80% rule. Unfortunately most of the 80-percenters I've come across have demanded 110% of their salary for their 80% contribution....

THE TRUMP WIRETAPS:

“It has become increasingly clear to me that there was widespread wiretapping of President Trump and his associates and that the underlying justification was pretextual — it was actually intended to spy on a political opponent.

The prior administration was so confident Hillary would win that they left their tracks uncovered....”

Read the whole thing.

CAGE MATCH: Mama Grizzly versus Fauxcahontas.

My bet is on Mama Grizzly....

PROGRESSIVES: Is this really the kind of world that you want?

TROLLED: The Huffington Post removes an article on banning white men from voting after discovering the author doesn't exist.

Progressives can be suckered into anything that meets their fantasy-world desires....

MIKE ROWE: "A plane is not a democracy." United Airlines passenger David Dao should have been dragged off the aircraft, cuffed, arrested, and spent a few nights in jail.

It makes me sick that he's in line for a lawsuit with a big payout.

OLD NEWS FOR LIBERALS: water flows uphill.

THANK GOODNESS: Georgia 6th District defeats Jon Ossoff.

SHOE on the hazards of ageing.

DISPLAYING YOUR “DON’T TREAD ON ME” FLAG may now be a punishable offense. Not where I live, and any snowflake daring to complain would be laughed out of town. Or sent to (his/her/its) room.

DEMOCRATS’ POST-ELECTION PLAYBOOK: forget middle America. Democrats think of themselves as the urban party, destined to lead those 20% (do the research) of non-urban middle-American boobs to their shining city on the hill.

In reality, the Democrats are the inner-city urban party, and their 'shining city' is a slum.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama is America's version of Stanley Baldwin.

Last year, President Obama assured the world that "we are living in the most peaceful, prosperous and progressive era in human history," and that "the world has never been less violent."

Translated, those statements meant that active foreign-policy volcanoes in China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the Middle East would probably not blow up on what little was left of Obama's watch.

Obama is the U.S. version of Stanley Baldwin, the suave, three-time British prime minister of the 1920s and 1930s. Baldwin's last tenure (1935-1937) coincided with the rapid rise of aggressive German, Italian and Japanese fascism.

Read it all.

DEMOCRAT NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN TOM PEREZ: Trump didn't win the election. Has he been to Mar-a-Lago lately? Or the White House?

HMM: The border wall is problematic because birds and bats might not be able to fly over. They forgot about coyotes, deer, bobcats, snakes, Gila monsters, cats, dogs, armadillos, porcupines, skunks, turtles, ....

AT THE CORNER OF PERCEPTION AND REALITY: PowerLine on ObamaCare repeal's first failure.

It now appears that the Republicans will try again. My preference would be for the House to pass a complete repeal (all three phases of the initial proposal lumped together in one bill) and force the Senate Democrats to attempt a filibuster.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the PowerLine crew.

JAILS FOR ELITES: “Yale is becoming a kind of jail which hands out professional credentials to those hardy enough to serve out their term.”

And rich enough.

SCOTT ADAMS (DILBERT) on a fake news interview with him.

AN OLD DAVE BARRY COLUMN on how to fix Social Security. Entitlements (Medicare and Social Security) are the big cliff we're soon to be going over, so we might as well start thinking about it again.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES has posted, and this weeks theme is 'liberalism for children'. Herewith my favorite:

Such special snowflakes.

JEFF JACOBY: Immigrant heroes save American lives.

While I like Jeff Jacoby, I fall out with him on this one. He's guilty of the very conflating criminal aliens, which the Trump administration is arresting and deporting, with all aliens. The Trump administration (as yet) declared no policy regarding the law-abiding aliens beyond building a 'wall' and not allowing any more to enter.

Of which I wholeheartedly approve. Our immigration system is badly in need of repair such that aliens can only enter the United States through a through a lawful, well-regulated process.

At that point, we can deal with the resident aliens who are lawful, but entered illegally. And I suspect the solution will be to allow them to stay, just not as citizens.

A TWEET you need to read.

POWERLINE: A pro-environment judge is a bad judge. The post isn't really about the environment; it's about whether a Supreme Court Justice should show deference to government experts bureaucrats or to the Constitution.

Today, we are governed mostly by a fourth branch, nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, the permanent federal bureaucracy. These office-holders persist from one administration to another, and in many cases resist any effort to bring them into line with a new administration’s policies. They are unelected, unaccountable, frequently incompetent, and almost always Democrats.

I vote for the Constitution; damn the bureaucrats.

JEEZ, IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS since my last spring leaf watch post. I'm getting forgetful in my old age. Here's this week's picture:

There hasn't been as much change as I expected. The greens are a bit darker, but the biggest change is that the new buds, which are beginning to be visible, have pushed off the last remaining dead leaves from 2016.

I expect the new leaves will begin to show next week (if I can remember to take the photo).

PREET BHARARA was rightfully fired.

Bharara’s refusal to resign wasn’t about principle. It was about putting himself publicly on the side of anti-Trump Democrats, no doubt in the expectation of future rewards, political or professional. It was not a brave act. It was, in fact, a species of corruption.

And while he's (theoretically) now a law professor, he's widely seen to be running for office in New York. Mayor of NYC. Or Governor.

Perfect jobs for a corruptocrat.

FASHIONWEAR FOR NORTH KOREA: from the (Ivanka) Trump collection.

ACADEMIA IS OUR ENEMY. We should help it commit suicide.

JEFF JACOBY: Ditch ObamaCare, and don't stop there.

Get out of my health care. Stay out. And don't even think about trying to come back.

THE TRUTH about Hillary. But will the Dimocrats Democrats ever admit to it?

Note that I don't ask if Hillary ever will; it can be taken for granted that she won't.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on the Trump message and its messenger.

JOY BEHAR: Trump’s cutting education ‘so we can all be as dumb as he is'.

She has both a BA (Queen's College) and a MA (Stony Brook) and as dumb as she is, maybe defenestrating the Department of Education is indeed a good thing.

HEH: Redistribution can work both ways.

AMMO GRRRLL on progressives' poetry for desperate times:

Violets are nice,
but Roses are best.
Could you play with your Play Doh?
And give it a rest?

Violets are blue,
Roses are red.
The Left has gone bonkers.
And satire is dead.

And safe spaces. Don't forget safe spaces.

IVANKA TRUMP’S car seat “scandal”.

As a general rule, it's safe to assume that health and safety nannies are idiots.

JEFF JACOBY: Why do climate models fail?

Because the science isn't settled?

I MUST HAVE MISSED this PowerLine Week in Pictures. Here's my favorite:

There's more: go and see how a feminist views the world.

ANOTHER LIBERAL IDIOT SELF-IDENTIFIES: Designer Zac Posen (whoever he is) refusing to dress Ivanka and Melania Trump.

I suspect the truth is that he's pissed because they didn't ask him.

A COLOSSAL GOP FAILURE AND NOT JUST ON HEALTH: Why aren’t bills on infrastructure, tax reform and free speech lined up like planes on a runway?

The GOP has had at least the last 4 years to prepare - why didn't they?

ARE YOU A SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR called up for a last-minute protest? Or jailed after one? There's a babysitting service for you.

AN EXAMPLE of liberal expertise.

HOT NEW IDEA FROM CALIFORNIA: Maybe teachers shouldn’t have to pay state income taxes.

Since Californians are leaving the state in record numbers, perhaps it would be a good idea to grant 'tax freedom' to any resident who manages to remain employed in the state for a period of, say, 10 years....

ANOTHER VICTORY: Second Amendment may be restored on Army Corps of Engineers land.

When Trump won the presidency, the Army Corps of Engineers saw the handwriting on the wall.

ANOTHER OBAMA POLICY revoked.

FAILURE UPON FAILURE: Democrats seek to escape their whirlpool of failure and fail at that too.

Heh.

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY:

School shootings are proof that when God leaves the classroom evil moves in.

Live your life so the preacher won't have to lie at your funeral.

Bumper stickers seen locally.

YES, PLEASE: nothing could be better.

NRA v. NYT: I'm betting on the National Rifle Association.

HEH: "When you find yourself mumbling “Nice doggy” and edging toward the door, you know you are in the presence of a true blue Democrat."

COMMENT OF THE DAY: "Democrats can't survive as a party without an endless supply of other people's money to spend."

Truer words and all that. From this PowerLine post.

DUMB? DEVIOUS? DIRTY? DERANGED? What does the Democrat party stand for?

And crooked.

SHOE has a perfect name for a Mexican bar & grill.

HEH: Name the two houses of Congress.

THOMAS SOWELL on the moral rot infecting our colleges.

ISN'T THAT SEXIST? "70% off or more on Men's Accessories."

MY DOG'S A DEMOCRAT:



Luckily I have cats.

A SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON GLOBAL WARMING? I don't think so.

MEMO TO JEFF SESSIONS: It's time to clean house in the Department of Justice.

A NOTE TO OBAMACARE DEFENDERS: Health insurance is not health care, and ObamaCare is neither.

Let's go back to the insurance model - it, at least, worked.

YOU'RE NOT: I can’t be the only one who doesn’t give a damn.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES explains why 'repeal and replace' failed.

Go see the rest; it was a good week.

IT'S BEEN A MONTH since I started my annual spring leaf watch, and hardly anything has happened. Here's today's picture from outside on the terrace deck:

There's a bit more green as finally some buds are beginning to show, but the 4-week March cold snap pretty well halted any further growth. For comparison, the March 5 picture is here.

IN TODAY’S DEMOCRATIC PARTY, insanity isn’t optional; it's mandatory.