SCENES FROM A DISARMED NATION: 16-year-old boy stabbed to death with machete on London doorstep.

FAKE NEWS: Trump Official Did Not Say Statue of Liberty Poem Was Only for Europeans.

UM… Ohio Lawmaker Proposes Using Fentanyl Seized in Drug Raids to Execute Death Row Inmates.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is it Too Late for Beto O’Rourke to Get Back in the Race?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Note to 2020 Dems: It’s Not Racist to Ask Immigrants to be Self-Sufficient.

OH: CNN’s April Ryan after bodyguard ejects local journalist: ‘When I speak, I don’t have news covering my speech.’

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT, FIRST-PERSON, EYEWITNESS HISTORY of the sinking of the Yorktown at the Battle of Midway.

FLASHBACK: After murder rate passes NYC, London Mayor Sadiq Khan calls for sharper knife control.

BLUE ON BLUE: NYT Editor Demoted After Tweets Attacking ‘The Squad’ and Justice Democrats.

“PAUSED?” Facebook is the latest tech giant to admit contractors are snooping on your conversations. “Following the example of Apple and Google, Facebook has also ‘paused’ the program, for now.”

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents.

Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s largest telecommunications company, dominates African markets, where it has sold security tools that governments use for digital surveillance and censorship.

But Huawei employees have provided other services, not disclosed publicly. Technicians from the Chinese powerhouse have, in at least two cases, personally helped African governments spy on their political opponents, including intercepting their encrypted communications and social media, and using cell data to track their whereabouts, according to senior security officials working directly with the Huawei employees in these countries.

In Kampala, Uganda, last year, a group of six intelligence officers struggled to contain a threat to the 33-year regime of President Yoweri Museveni, according to Ugandan senior security officials. A pop star turned political sensation, Bobi Wine, had returned from Washington with U.S. backing for his opposition movement, and Uganda’s cyber-surveillance unit had strict orders to intercept his encrypted communications, using the broad powers of a 2010 law that gives the government the ability “to secure its multidimensional interests.”

Think of Huawei as the electronic wing of China’s imperial “New Silk Road” project to dominate Central Asia and Africa.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Olive Garden is a Bad Prepping Strategy.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Choppy Seas in the US/China Naval Arms Race.

Everybody’s having trouble with their new aircraft carriers.

THE EVITABLE NOMINEE: The Democrats’ Amazing Gaffetastic Frontrunner: A Disappearing Act?

BECAUSE THEY CARE, UNLIKE THE REST OF YOU HATERS: D.C. Mayor Bowser and others are raising alarms at the federal government’s plans for a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in Northwest Washington.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Ripley in ‘Aliens’ Is the Ultimate Anti-Mary Sue. “Today’s woke screenwriters wouldn’t dare create the Ripley character we’ve loved for decades.”

What’s fascinating about watching James Cameron’s sequel today is spotting what isn’t on the screen. Thirty-three years ago, Cameron didn’t stuff the narrative with empowering speeches. He didn’t need to virtue signal to his fellow filmmakers.

The screenplay doesn’t emasculate male characters to make Ripley look more bad ass. Bill Paxton’s glorious Hudson is blissful comic relief.

In short, Cameron wrote Ripley as a full-bodied character sans agenda. And she’s glorious.

I really enjoyed reading this piece.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Epstein’s Death Just Got Weirder Shocked Face Edition. “At this point one might run the risk of actually spraining something while trying to avoid a conspiracy theory. Another few days of coincidences piling up the way they have been since Saturday and investigators are going to have to wear hazmat suits to wade through the toxic b.s.”

RELATED? Seen on Facebook: “While the medical examiner was on lunch break today, Epstein cremated himself.”

FROM THE CITY THAT BROUGHT YOU MAYOR BERNIE SANDERS: Burlington City Council opposes F-35 fighter jets at airport.

ANGELO CODEVILLA: The White Supremacy Hoax. “In practice, a ‘white supremacist’ is anyone whom anyone in power dislikes enough to so label him. Who would accept being outlawed at will? Our ruling class plays with matches in a house drenched in gasoline.”

More:

The Wall Street Journal on Saturday featured an essay by one Clint Watts, formerly of the FBI and West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center. Watts makes those proposals using the word “white” 16 times in 18 paragraphs. The sociopolitical ideas rife among white people are the main matrix of terrorism in America, Watts contends. Racial profiling, anyone?

Bemoaning the fact that U.S. law now restricts surveillance of, never mind restrictions on, U.S. persons to those who have committed or may be about to commit crimes, Watts proposes legislation that would permit designating persons associated with what the government may identify as “white supremacist ideology” as subject to surveillance to “preemptively assess whether these white supremacists are taking a radical turn toward violence.”

Watts also proposes “red flag” laws, that would allow the government to take away weapons from someone so designated. Loss of weapons would be the least of burdens imposed on anyone so “red-flagged.” Career, reputation, possibly family, would be gone because someone in the notoriously impartial FBI so decided, perhaps with the agreement of the highly scrupulous FISA court, subsequent to ex parte, secret proceedings.

This has become ruling-class conventional wisdom. Desire to wage war on ordinary Americans—to disadvantage them and even to kill them—had long been bubbling in the ruling class’s basements. The countless, nearly identical pronouncements from on high in recent days can be taken as an announcement that the ruling class has raised them into its forceful mainstream.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

SWAMP TO TRUMP: “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.” Trump rips emolument lawsuits: Being president ‘costing me a fortune.’

EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF “AND”: Elizabeth Warren’s gun control plan either is terrifically stupid or terribly cynical.

In any case, it’s certainly unserious. Warren, as Scott Ott pointed out while we were recording Right Angle yesterday, is a legislator. If she were serious, she’d propose actual legislation.

TROLL LEVEL: GRAND MASTER. Trump Campaign Store Now Selling ‘Fredo Unhinged’ T-Shirts.

BLUE ON BLUE: Protesters target Amazon for working with ICE.

BUT OTHER THAN THAT, IT’S A SMASHING SUCCESS: In Germany, free education leads to irrelevant courses, hopelessly overcrowded public universities, and a drop-out rate of about 30%.

The point isn’t to educate, but to divert tax dollars to all the new make-work administrators.

HOUSING: A New Start-Up Wants to Build a Tiny House in Your Backyard For Free. “Bay Area start-up Rent the Backyard is making new room in dense cities by collaborating with homeowners who’ve got a little extra acreage. The company will install a prefab studio apartment on unused land behind your home, handle all the permitting required to do so, find a worthy tenant to rent the unit, and pay you 50% of the profits for providing the space—all for zero up-front costs.”