"Sometimes, for those of us who are constantly reading statistics and poll results, something stands out that you didn't expect to see -- a number that makes you think the future will not be what you have been expecting.

"My latest sighting of such a number was in a March 12 New York Times report of a poll of college students sponsored by the American Council on Education, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the Stanton Foundation. It asked students about free speech on campus, whether it is allowed and whether it should be. ...

"Majorities of students polled said they supported both free speech and 'inclusion and diversity.' When asked which was more important, 53 percent said inclusion and diversity and only 46 percent said free speech.

"What I found most striking -- the numbers that stood out for me -- was the difference between men and women. Among men, 61 percent favored free speech. But only 35 percent of women did so. That's a result I certainly hadn't expected.

"That number is of particular concern, because women are now a majority of college and university students. They appear to be a preponderance of the campus administrators who enforce schools' speech and sexual assault codes, at a time when administrators outnumber teachers in higher education."

Read entire article here.

"Former Cambridge Analytica contractor and now-professional whistleblower Christopher Wylie told CNN that while at the company he helped build a 'psychological warfare weapon' to 'exploit mental vulnerabilities that our algorithms showed that [Facebook users] had.'

"So, in other words, he worked in the advertising business.

"Those who have covered politics for more than a single Trump-cycle should know better than to use this kind of unnerving rhetoric for what amounts to average microtargeting, which has been used by hundreds, if not thousands, of firms. Yet, now, when it serves to bolster convoluted theories about an election being overthrown, terms like 'psychographics' and 'breach' are being thrown around to make it sound like someone hacked into voting rolls after boring into the deepest recesses of our souls.

"Moreover, the idea that Facebook can know your 'mental vulnerabilities' is only true if you share your nightmares with them. If you're uncomfortable with data mining and your information being shared, don't take surveys. Because, breaking news: You don't have to be on Facebook. You don't have to use Twitter. You don't have a constitutional right to play FarmVille without answering some questions. You don't get free stuff. The very existence of these tech companies is predicated on mining data so that they, or third parties, can sell you things."

"The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to consider whether Arizona's death penalty law is so broad that it's unconstitutional.

"The court also passed up an invitation to examine whether capital punishment should be banned nationwide. ...

"Two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer, have recently said the court should re-examine the death penalty, but the other seven members of the court have shown no similar concerns."

"At the height of the presidential election, the administration of the outgoing president of the United States -- Mr. Trump's most powerful political enemy -- handed over the controls of America's spy apparatus to begin moving against Mr. Trump and his campaign.

"They exposed people, spied on people and began setting the trap just in case the stupid people of America picked Mr. Trump to be their president. They lied, conspired and held secret meetings.

"So special counsel Robert Mueller's endless investigation in search of a crime should have been no surprise. It was cooked up long before Mr. Trump even won the election. Of course, these people were going to do this.

"It is the new standard for 'self-governance' in America. The people can elect any president they want. But then these people will do everything including assassinate their character to hound them from office.

"Truly, these people cannot fathom how much innocent taxpayers despise them."

"The economy has responded well to the tax cuts that became law in January. Growth is up, as is take-home pay. But there was a glaring omission in the tax bill that President Trump signed into law: there was no cut in the capital gains tax rates that act as a brake on more jobs and investment.

"President Trump's appointment Wednesday of supply-side economist Larry Kudlow as head of the National Economic Council could change that. There is no more passionate advocate of having the president issue an executive order to index capital gains for inflation. Unlocking frozen assets and stimulating investment, such a move would further turbocharge the U.S. economy. ...

"Kudlow laid out an example of what he meant in a CNBC column last August: 'You invest $1,000 and, after ten years, you sell that investment for $1,200. But if inflation averaged 2.5 percent in that period, the $1,200 you receive will be worth less in real terms than the $1,000 you invested. And yet, under current law, you will pay a tax on your $200 capital gain.'

"In other words, the capital gains tax paid on such investments can easily exceed 100 percent once inflation is factored in."

"WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing a recommendation to fire the former F.B.I. deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, just days before he is scheduled to retire on Sunday, people briefed on the matter said. Mr. McCabe was a frequent target of attack from President Trump, who taunted him both publicly and privately.

"Mr. McCabe is ensnared in an internal review that includes an examination of his decision in 2016 to allow F.B.I. officials to speak with reporters about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that Mr. McCabe was not forthcoming during the review, according to the people briefed on the matter. That yet-to-be-released report triggered an F.B.I. disciplinary process that recommended his termination -- leaving Mr. Sessions to either accept or reverse that decision.

"Lack of candor is a fireable offense, but like so much at the F.B.I., Mr. McCabe's fate is also entangled in presidential politics and the special counsel investigation. He was involved from the beginning in the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. He is also a potential witness in the inquiry into whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice. ...

"Now, Mr. Sessions is the final arbiter of Mr. McCabe's dismissal, shortly before his retirement takes effect Sunday. Though no decision has been made, people inside the Justice Department expect him to be fired before Friday, a decision that would jeopardize his pension as a 21-year F.B.I. veteran."

"Six years ago, my good friend Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, coined the perfect phrase to describe the state of free speech in American education: 'unlearning liberty.' Our educational system is at cross-purposes with the Bill of Rights, teaching students to believe that unalienable rights such as free speech and due process are a problem, especially when they conflict with the demands of social justice or political expediency.

"It's not that students are taught to despise free speech -- after all, students love their own right to speak. It's that students believe free speech should be subordinate to other, higher values. With depressing regularity now, surveys of college students reveal a pattern: There's immense support for free speech in the abstract, but that support erodes significantly when the questions get specific. ...

"The true tension in the First Amendment isn't between freedom and diversity or freedom and inclusion. History teaches us that the tension is between freedom and power. Free speech, by its very nature, leads to questioning, debate, and -- eventually -- accountability.

"In reality, speech is the engine that powers American diversity. Individual liberty is indispensable to true inclusivity. Thus, it's incompatible with the false diversity of the college campus, which celebrates differences in sexuality and ethnicity but increasingly expects its faculty and students to think alike. And it's incompatible with the false inclusivity of the modern university, which all too often excludes even the most credible and serious voices if those voices challenge the orthodoxies of identity politics.

"Our students 'unlearn liberty' in part because they've been presented with a false choice. The true conflict isn't between speech and diversity, it's between speech and the unaccountable power that political and cultural leaders so consistently crave."

Read entire article here.

"The House Intelligence Committee has released findings from its upcoming report on the Trump-Russia affair -- and its main conclusion is that it has discovered no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

"'We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,' the committee said in a one-page summary of its findings released Monday afternoon.

"In addition, the committee took issue with the intelligence community assessment of Russian motivations in the 2016 election. The committee agrees with the assessment that the Russians did, in fact, try to interfere -- the findings cite 'Russian cyberattacks on U.S. political institutions in 2015-2016 and their use of social media to sow discord.' But the committee disagrees with the intelligence community judgment that Russian President Vladimir Putin specifically tried to help President Trump win the election.

"The committee's findings say investigators came to 'concurrence with the Intelligence Community Assessment's judgments, except with respect to Putin's supposed preference for candidate Trump.'

"On the question of collusion, Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who has formally run the committee's probe, told reporters Monday that, 'We found no evidence of collusion. We found perhaps bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment in taking meetings.'

"'But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take this series of inadvertent contacts with each other, or meetings, whatever, and weave that into a some sort of fictional page-turner spy thriller,' Conaway continued. 'But we're not dealing with fiction, we're dealing with facts. And we found no evidence of any collusion, of anything that people were actually doing, other than taking a meeting they shouldn't have taken or inadvertently being in the same building.'"

"President Trump thinks arming school staff and teachers deter threats. Surprise, media fact checkers from The New York Times to FactCheck.org accuse him of 'false and misleading claims' to 'inaccurate facts.'

"The FactCheck.org analysis has been carried on hundreds of news site. Yet, any serious look at the data shows that Mr. Trump's arguments are more clearly grounded in facts and a deeper understanding of these attacks than the fact checkers would dare let their readers know.

"This isn't a theoretical debate, as 25 states to varying degrees, allow concealed handgun permit holders, including staff and teachers, to carry guns on K-12 school grounds. Some such as Alabama, New Hampshire, Utah and much of Oregon allow anyone with a regular concealed handgun permit to carry. ...

"There hasn't been a mass public shooting at any school that allows teachers and staff to carry. Despite decades of experience, there have been no problems."

Read entire article here.

"There's only one credible reason North Korea's murderous dictator Kim Jong-un would mean what he says about wanting to talk with President Trump about denuclearizing North Korea.

"Pyongyang must be so desperately close to bankruptcy that it soon won't be able to keep the lights on.

"The thanks go to Mr. Trump for getting the United Nations, including China and Russia in an extraordinary move, to approve economic sanctions and China itself for putting the squeeze on Mr. Kim.

"If the communist North is about to go belly up, the Kim offer could be real.

"But he and his father and grandfather have proven to be consummate liars in the past, winning concessions from us then thumbing their noses."