TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: Just the News is reporting that Holden Thorp, who oversees news, research and opinion for the Science family of journals, repeatedly told the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that he and his peers fell short by failing to better explain to the public that science is a “work in progress” and that scientists are “opinionated” but should change their minds “when we see new data.”

“Rather than journals being a wealth of information and opinions about the novel virus, of which we knew so little, they helped establish a party line that literally put a chilling effect on scientific research” on COVID origins and scientific communication, Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio said.”

It’s a small walk-back, but really the “trust the science” people (who are also the same people who use the pejorative “science-denier”) ought to be ashamed of themselves.

But they won’t. It’s all Lysenko, all the time.

THE LONG-AWAITED TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE/TOTAL COELO MIXTAPE FINALLY DROPS: Joe Biden suggests his uncle was eaten by ‘CANNIBALS’ after his plane was shot down over Papua New Guinea during World War Two.

Joe Biden suggested his war hero uncle may have met a grisly end among flesh-eating savages after his plane went down over Papua New Guinea in World War II.

The president said there were ‘a lot of cannibals at the time’ in the area where his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan’s plane crashed in the 1940s – and his remains were never located.

However, Biden’s account was inconsistent with Pentagon records which showed the plane was not ‘shot down’ as he said.

According to his own Defense Department it was a ‘courier’ flight that suffered engine failure and ditched in the ocean off Papua New Guinea on May 14, 1944. His uncle was a passenger rather than the pilot.

Biden made the ‘cannibal’ comments on a trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania where he visited a war memorial bearing the name of his relative, who was known by the family as ‘Uncle Bosie’.

The president said: ‘(He) got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body.

‘But the government went back when I was down there and they checked and found parts of the plane and the like.’

Biden went on to tell how ‘Uncle Bosie’ – who he called a ‘hell of a guy’ – had ended up in a jungle populated by cannibalistic tribes.

He said: ‘When D-Day occurred, the next day, all four of my mother’s brothers volunteered to join the military. Three of them made it, one of them couldn’t go.

‘Ambrose Finnegan – we called him Uncle Bosie – he was shot down. He was in the Army Air Corps, before there was an Air Force, flew those single engine airplanes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea.

At Power Line, John Hinderaker asks, “What’s Eating Joe?” “You can see in these videos how feeble Biden is. He doesn’t make sense on even the most basic points. For example, he says that his uncles all went down to the recruiting station and volunteered the day after D-Day. Which would have been a little late. In fact, Joe’s uncle’s plane crashed a month before D-Day. No doubt Biden meant to refer to Pearl Harbor. But he can hardly get through a sentence without descending into incoherence.”

As Jon Gabriel notes:

He's at the stage of dementia where childhood memories merge with Looney Tunes shorts from the 1930s. https://t.co/wHzNNK4tPf

— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) April 17, 2024

Classical reference in headline:

PROGRESS: Oklahoma State U. to shut down bias response team to settle free speech lawsuit.

MICHAEL WALSH, FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY IN THE NEW YORK POST: How the Obamas could easily win eight more years in the White House.

Biden’s already on record as saying he’ll choose a woman. But none of the defeated female candidates for the nomination, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, excited much interest from the Democratic base during the primaries, and while there’s a small Stacey Abrams boomlet currently going on, her record as the defeated candidate for Georgia governor doesn’t inspire much confidence — even if, in her own mind, she still thinks she won.

So the choice is clear: Michelle Obama. Never mind that she has even less political experience than Hillary Clinton did when she ran for the White House, and has long said she disdains public office.

Currently, Michelle is in talks to possibly endorse Biden via a video and is said to be lending her name to a campaign fundraiser as early as next week, according to The Hill. “If she engages, God help Donald Trump, because she’s tough as nails and enormously popular,” former Democratic Party chairman of South Carolina Dick Harpootlian told the outlet. With her husband finally having endorsed Biden last week, the stage is now set.

Well, close enough, considering her husband is behind the scenes in the (P)resident’s administration, pulling the strings, “serving as a third-term president in all but name.”

LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE: Four-Year Study on Gender Affirming Care in the UK Warns of the Dangers of ‘Gender Transition’ for Kids.

WELL, THAT’S UNIVERSITIES’ RESPONSE TO EVERYTHING NOWADAYS, USUALLY CLOAKED — AS HERE — IN UNPERSUASIVE TALK OF “SAFETY.” “USC Canceling Valedictorian’s Commencement Speech Looks Like Calculated Censorship.” “To elaborate on the heckler’s veto point, behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated: If all it takes to cancel an event is that ‘discussion relating to [the event] has taken on an alarming tenor,’ that just encourages people with all sorts of views on all sorts of issues to try to shut down speakers simply by producing more ‘alarming’ chatter. And if there really were such serious threats that USC felt it had to shut down the event despite this risk, then USC should have at least expressly said that there were such serious threats, and stressed that it had called in law enforcement so that the threateners could be caught and punished.”

HE’S RIGHT, OF COURSE: Auburn Men’s Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl: ‘It blows my mind’ that LGBTQ people support Hamas, who would have them ‘killed’: EXCLUSIVE.

LOW ENERGY JOE:

Trump at an NYC bodega: Pandemonium.
Biden at a Sheetz gas station: Crickets. pic.twitter.com/iFRV6g22rd

— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@niceblackdude) April 18, 2024

Compare Trump at the Bodega:

President Trump will put New York in play this November!

It is only Day 2 of this show trial, and President Trump is already breaking the internet by visiting Jose Alba's bodega.

Alba was shipped to Rikers Island by Bragg after acting in self-defense.

pic.twitter.com/60wIKUpMWT

— Lee Zeldin (@LeeMZeldin) April 16, 2024

NOBODY CAN AFFORD TO BUY, NOBODY CAN AFFORD TO SELL: New-home construction posts biggest drop in four years, despite America facing a housing shortage. “With mortgage rates beginning their ascent in February, home buyers may have pulled back from purchasing homes, which would explain the big drop in housing starts in March.”

Re-ascent, actually, as lenders took notice of January’s end of disinflation.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Crest 3D Whitestrips, Professional Effects Plus. #CommissionEarned

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Sydney Sweeney Should Win an Award for Triggering Miserable Lib Women. “Show me on the Gloria Steinem doll where Sydney Sweeney touched you.”

TRUMP DOESN’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. HE’S A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION JUST BY EXISTING AND THREATENING THEIR SELF-IMPORTANCE.

"Donald Trump is enjoying the same guarantees of fairness and due process before the law that he sought to deny to others during his term." [blurb] @NYTopinion gives zero (0) examples of Trump denying due process to others during his term. https://t.co/epZzR0FhK5

— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) April 18, 2024

Ann Althouse: “I don’t like how the Board is conflating the prosecution and the court and the rule of law. The rule of law is an abstraction. Rights exist within the abstraction, but rights can be violated. The abstraction doesn’t guarantee the rights. People exercising power must ensure that those rights are protected, and they may deviously hide behind the abstraction… perhaps with the help of elite onlookers who make abstract pronouncements in print. Trump’s assertion that the prosecution is “unfair and politically motivated” is may be true even if the court carries out its duties perfectly. Trump may be “fortunate to live in a country” that has some dedication to the rule of law, but that doesn’t deprive him of the reason to complain that the prosecution seems politically motivated. Again, even if the court perfectly carries out its obligation to the rule of law, Trump is motivated to cry out about the onerous prosecutions, which are undercutting his ability to campaign for the presidency.”

Which is the point.

COME SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Why the Media Ignore Anti-Semitism.

When the New York Times did get around to reporting on some of these incidents, the article’s focus was not on the thuggish rhetoric and behavior of Palestinian activists toward Jews, but rather on how such behavior was affecting Democratic politicians’ holiday parties and fundraisers. “Protests over the Biden administration’s handling of the war are disrupting the activities of Democratic officials from city halls to Congress to the White House, complicating their ability to campaign—and, at times, govern—during a pivotal election year,” the story noted.

What the paper of record failed to mention, but is easily visible across social media on a regular basis, is that these protests are promoting and normalizing anti-Semitism, not taking a principled stand on behalf of the Palestinians (a majority of whom approved of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, according to polling data). In New York in late March, for example, outside a fundraiser for President Biden, a male protester was captured on video following a young woman who was trying to get into the building. He screamed at her, “F—ing murderous kike. F—ing die. Keep it moving, bitch.”

Why aren’t these anti-Semitic attacks front-page stories? Why aren’t they given the kind of relentless scrutiny that anti-Semitism on the right has properly received in these same outlets? The Times has published countless stories about the rhetoric of participants in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Where are the big-think pieces and deeply reported stories about the organizations and funders behind the anti-Jewish groups staging protests outside synagogues and other Jewish institutions?

Read the whole thing.

STUDENT SUSPENDED FOR USING LEGAL TERM: Ever wonder where the term “illegal alien” originates? I don’t know if federal law was the originator, but, as Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader points out this morning, the term appears in both federal and state law codes.

So why is North Carolinian Leah McGhee’s high-school student son being penalized for using the term? Bader explains:

“Leah McGhee’s son has a teacher who assigned vocabulary words during class last Tuesday, including the word ‘alien.’ McGhee says her son made an effort to understand the assignment and responded to his teacher, asking, ‘Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?’

“According to an email describing the incident, sent to local officials and shared with Carolina Journal, a young man in class took offense to his question and reportedly threatened to fight him, prompting the teacher to call in the assistant principal. Ultimately, his words were deemed by administrative staff to be offensive and disrespectful to classmates who are Hispanic.

“’I didn’t make a statement directed towards anyone; I asked a question,’ said the student in response to his suspension. ‘I wasn’t speaking of Hispanics because everyone from other countries needs green cards, and the term illegal alien is an actual term that I hear on the news and can find in the dictionary.'”

Prediction: Leah McGhee is raising one sharp young man who just might end up in law school someday and advance to a position where he can help restore common sense and justice to American public education.

HEADLINES FROM FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY: Canadian “Social distancing” police fine Christian Pastor $1,200 for feeding homeless people.

LOL: She’s the loony left establishment in a nutshell.

While she is a small scale donor, her second biggest donation was to Stacey Abrams PAC — you remember her? She's the election-denying failed gubernatorial candidate from Georgia.

— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) April 17, 2024

Related: Quotations from Chairman Maher: NPR’s new CEO exemplifies the ideological capture of America’s institutions.

KEEP THE BUREAUCRATS OUT: Why the White House and Congress can’t see eye-to-eye on regulating commercial space. And this is at best a stretch: “The FAA, Department of Transportation, has been doing human spaceflight safety for many years.” The FAA has done a great job with human spaceflight by not regulating it. The “learning period” law has prevented anyone from doing so. And that’s how it should stay for the foreseable future.

JOHN LUCAS: Biden’s Disconnection from Reality Has Become Unacceptable. The Country cannot afford to ignore the Commander-ion-Chief’s lack of mental capacity for the job.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

ATHENA THORNE: Trump’s Brilliant Prosecution Juxtaposition Campaign. “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan conspire to keep the presidential frontrunner locked up in a dingy courtroom during the day, but he is free to roam after court hours. An irrepressible and brilliant marketer, Trump seizes on those hours to communicate. And he is off to a pitch-perfect start.”

YOU COULD MAKE A MUCH BETTER CIVIL WAR MOVIE OUT OF HIS BOOKS: That Civil War Movie Is a Symptom of Hollywood’s Problems.

The problem with “Civil War” isn’t its point of view, to the extent it has one. Now, you can tell that, beneath the surface, it has a generic left-wing orientation. The bad guy president is vaguely Trumpy. He’s a straight white male, of course. In fact, every single villain is a straight, white male. None of the major heroes is a straight, white male. You can make movies where the villains are straight, white males, and where none of the heroes are straight, white males, but it’s now a woke Hollywood cliche to make all the villains straight, white males, and none of the heroes straight, white males. You can’t unsee it. Rural white guy? Definitely a villain. Black woman? Hero!

But the mandatory pseudo-diversity of Hollywood is not the main problem with “Civil War.”

Plus: “This was a missed opportunity. We’re at a very dangerous time in our country.” Read on.

THE INFLATION CAFE: 2% Inflation, My Ass!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Over 40% Of Full-Time Faculty Depart West Virginia Law School.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Impeachment ‘Whistleblower’ Was in the Loop of Biden-Ukraine Affairs That Trump Wanted Probed.

HE’S FINE: Biden suggests uncle eaten by ‘cannibals’ in New Guinea — but military says his WWII plane lost at sea.

“He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time,” Biden initially told reporters after visiting a war memorial that bears his uncle’s name in Scranton, Pa.

“They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there and they checked and found some parts of the plane.”

“He got shot down in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden told United Steelworkers union members.

The cannibals wore onions on their belts, which was the style at the time.

More seriously, Biden also repeated the long-disproved “Suckers and losers” smear against Trump.

If we had an honest press… alas.

YEP: “Maher is right. The media pundits should not be aiming disrespect and contempt at the millions of Americans who support Trump. They are voters, and they are human beings. The self-important experts ought at least to pretend to care about understanding and reaching them.”

But here’s the thing. They don’t hate Trump voters because of Trump. They hate Trump because they hate his voters. Contempt for middle- and working-class Americans is the glue binding our ruling class together.