Newsbusters.

On Easter Sunday, CBS’s Face the Nationturned to two prominent Washington religious leaders: Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Catholic archbishop of Washington and Rev. Mariann Budde, Bishop of Washington for the Episcopal Church, which is politically a better fit for Biden.

White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe was the substitute host, and he seemed most interested in underlining how Biden faithfully attends Catholic services, and not so much whether he’s in complete contradiction with Catholic teaching on the hot-button social and sexual issues. He kept pressing the Cardinal on if Biden “resonates” with Catholic voters:

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A Russian intelligence unit that specializes in assassinations may be behind “Havana syndrome,” a mysterious condition that afflicted U.S. diplomats, according to a report.

A joint investigation by CBS’s 60 Minutes, along with Der Spiegel and The Insider, revealed links between Russia’s GRU Unit 29155 and suspected attacks on U.S. government officials both in the United States and abroad.

Symptoms of Havana syndrome—which the U.S. government terms “anomalous health incidents,” or AHI— include sudden headaches, vertigo, ringing in the ears, nausea, and in some cases blindness or hearing loss. The syndrome was named after U.S. officials in the Cuban capital first reported experiencing these symptoms in late 2016.

The American Mind.

In 2001, the United States embarked on the War on Terror, rallying the world not just to fight terrorists but to replace autocratic and tribal societies with liberal democratic regimes, despite the lack of local interest. That approach now looks hopelessly wrongheaded.

Though Islamist terror groups still threaten the civilized world, geopolitical power players continue to use terrorist puppet regimes for strategic advantage, despite occasional “blowback.” Russia has been fighting ISIS in Syria since 2015 and, in 2017, prior to the recent ISIS-K raid on the Crocus Music Hall on the outskirts of Moscow, withstood a deadly attack by that group on the St. Petersburg Metro. Yet it’s been friendly with Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists and received a Hamas delegation following the October 7 attack on Israel. Its leadership appears to view NATO, not political Islam, as an existential threat.

Russia’s double standards when it comes to their proxies might be hypocritical, but they are also pragmatic and amoral. We can’t rationally expect that the people in charge can be shamed with accusations of hypocrisy into amending their ways. No one holds Russia to a high standard. If Russia is accused of damaging a church here or a hospital there, it rarely trends on social media or is covered in the news. Russian security forces must step up their game to make anyone pay attention.

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A Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty member who last month went on an anti-Semitic tirade—in which he called House Education and the Workforce Committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) a “treasonous Zionist tool” and referred to Israelis as “parasites”—is now urging his followers to shut down an Israeli company in Cambridge, saying, “No stoping [sic] until liberation.”

Afif Aqrabawi, a postdoctoral associate working in MIT’s Tonegawa neuroscience lab, encouraged his Twitter followers to shut down an Israeli company located in Cambridge, Mass. The MIT faculty member was responding to a Twitter follower’s suggestion to shut down a Raytheon facility in Bedford, Mass., to which he responded, “Elbit in Cambridge as well. No stoping [sic] until liberation.”

The call to action followed pictures Aqrabawi posted of a pro-Palestinian protest in Boston that blocked traffic Saturday evening.

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Author JK Rowling could be prosecuted for “misgendering” trans people under Scotland’s odious new hate crime law that comes into force today, an SNP minister has admitted.

Senior police officers are expecting a deluge of complaints over online posts after the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 created a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.

A person could now be imprisoned for up to seven years if they engage in “insulting” behaviour towards ‘protected’ groups, and the prosecution only needs to prove that the hatred was “likely” rather than “intended”.

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Woke progressives have spent a considerable amount of time and energy over the past several years trying to hide and deny the existence of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda.  The reasons are obvious – The philosophy removes all merit from society and replaces it with a cult of perceived oppression.  Academic prowess, mental drive, personal success, inherent intelligence or toughness; none of these things matter anymore when it comes to college admissions, corporate employment, municipal job access or political promotion.

All that has mattered for almost a decade is skin color, gender, sexual orientation and how much a person’s minority status raises the ESG score of a particular institution.   

DEI goes far beyond the notion of Affirmative Action.  While the value of AA alone is questionable in western societies today, it is simply a legal affirmation that companies should hire minorities that have the correct qualifications and not ignore them based merely on their ethnicity.  Does AA still lead to unqualified hires?  Yes.  But DEI takes the problem to a whole new level by incentivizing the erasure of merit as a “social construct.”

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Police arrested 27-year-old Xavier Israel, who has three prior arrests all from January 2022, without incident at the Russian Consulate, we’re told.

‘Stop worrying about what’s happening in the White House and start worrying about what’s happening in your house.’ — Adam Sosnik

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When unemployment and inflation cause skyrocketing incentives for thieves to steal industrial metals like copper, criminals rush for some of the biggest sources: critical infrastructure. That includes cell towers, water pipes, street lights, and rail lines. These copper heists threaten transportation, communication, municipal services, urban safety, and other essentials of modern life.

The chaos they can cause can cost lives, too — for example, copper heists from railways can cause warning lights, intersection gates, and turnouts that divert trains to other tracks to go offline.

Naval News.

American submarines will further extend their advantage in the undersea domain. In the first of a kind, the U.S. Navy has fitted a new form of propulsion, magnetohydrodynamic drive (MHD), to a Virginia class submarine. This promises to make the submarine virtually undetectable, the holy grail of naval warfare.

The Magnetohydrodynamic drive is being developed under the PUMP program by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), first reported in 2023. Water passing through it is accelerated by means of a magnetic field using superconducting magnets. This is often likened to the way a caterpillar crawls leading to the colloquial term ‘caterpillar drive’.

The first boat to be fitted with the new propulsion will be the USS Montana (SSN 794). This Virginia Class attack submarine was commissioned into the U.S. Navy in June 2022. Although still a new boat, she has been brought in to Groton, Connecticut, for the modifications.

The Antiplanner.

In what could be considered an April Fool’s joke, the Montana state legislature passed several laws mandating densification of cities. Apparently, the legislature believed the nation’s fourth-largest state, with the third-lowest population density, was running out of land and could only accommodate growth by building high-density apartment buildings in all major cities.

These laws were passed in response to a “housing crisis” that resulted when Bozeman (Gallatin County), Kalispell (Flathead County), and Missoula (Missoula County) passed the functional equivalent of urban-growth boundaries, making housing in those counties unaffordable (value-to-income ratios greater than 5 in 2022). Billings (Yellowstone County), Great Falls (Cascade County), and Helena (Lewis & Clark County) have not, and housing in those counties remains affordable (value-to-income ratios below 5 and mostly below 4).

In response to the “crisis” of unaffordable housing in three out of 56 counties, the legislature passed several laws requiring cities in the state, unaffordable or not, to allow accessory dwelling units in single-family zones, high-density housing projects, and other imagined remedies. This led to the formation of Montanans Against Irresponsible Densification, which filed a lawsuit to overturn those laws.

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A group of migrants involved in a riot at the southern US border have been ordered to be released by an El Paso magistrate judge.

The swarm of migrants overwhelmed Texas National Guard soldiers who were trying to organize them into groups to be taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). At one point, a migrant attempted to grab a soldier’s firearm, one National Guard source told the NY Post.

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The following video examines the Muslim scene in the Italian city of Milan. It visits several illegal mosques, and then looks at the career of an Italo-Moroccan thug rapper named “Baby Gang”.

What is notable about the Moroccans featured in this report is that none of them, not even the ones born in Italy, are “integrated” into Italian society. And, significantly, they’re not interested in integrating — they’d rather remain Moroccan.

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A top Denver official was caught on tape in a local migrant shelter begging illegals to go to other cities, as Denver – a so-called ‘sanctuary city,’ can’t support them.

“The opportunities are over,” said Mayor Mike Johnson’s political director Andres Carrera, who also serves as the city’s Newcomer Communications Liaison, in an exchange with newly arrived migrants.

“New York gives you more. Chicago gives you more. So I suggest you go there where there is longer-term shelter. There are also more job opportunities there,” Carrera continues in the video obtained by 9News.

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One person was killed and four others were wounded when a gunman opened fire inside a Nashville restaurant during Easter Sunday brunch service, authorities said.

Gunfire rang out inside Roasted, a popular brunch spot at 614 Garlfied St. in the Salemtown section of the city, just before 3 p.m., Metro Nashville police said.

Betcha a large amount of money that the perp ‘identifies’ as black.