SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

NOW WE KNOW THE TRUTH! – From Britain's hopelessly left-wing Independent:  "Climate change was a key driver of the Syrian uprising, according to research which warns that global warming is likely to unleash more wars in the coming decades, with Eastern Mediterranean countries such as Jordan and Lebanon particularly at risk.  Experts have long predicted that climate change will be a major source of conflict as drought and rising temperatures hurt agriculture, putting a further strain on resources in already unstable regimes."  Sounds like a plea for more government grants to "climate" researchers, and of course that's exactly what it is.

ANOTHER SCANDAL, ANOTHER SHOW – How will Hillary get out of this one?  From The New York Times:  "WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.  Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.  It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013.  Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach."  Do the Clintons ever follow the rules, or is that just for the little people?

GREAT MOMENTS IN EDUCATION – From London's Telegraph:  "Kanye West told a packed lecture theatre of Oxford University students on Monday afternoon that had he pursued a career in fine art, he would have liked to 'become Picasso or greater.'  The 350-strong crowd gave the American rapper a standing ovation as he entered the room at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.  West, who had been invited to speak by The Oxford Guild Society, told the students that he had 'the best reputation in the building.'  At the start of his address, the 37-year-old rapper told students to ask him questions so that he could just 'riff off.'  He then spoke for around half an hour about the themes of 'aesthetic' and 'progression' which he said he picked out from the first question."  I'm sure Oxford students were culturally uplifted.

APPROPRIATE – From AP:  "House Speaker John Boehner plans to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a bust of Winston Churchill when he speaks to a joint meeting of Congress about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran.  The gift was chosen because Netanyahu and the former prime minister of Britain are the only foreign leaders who have addressed Congress three separate times."  I'm supposin' there was another reason:  Do you recall that one of the first things Obama did as president was to send the bust of Churchill that sat in the Oval Office back to Britain?  It was considered an insult to Britain and to the memory of a man revered in America.  I suspect Speaker Boehner is needling the president, and good for Boehner!

March 2, 2015