BLUE ON BLUE: ‘No Better Than White Supremacists’: Students Lash Out at Biden for Using Charlottesville Banner.

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS: WaPo, Atlantic Rush To Change Stories After Labeling Louis Farrakhan ‘Far Right’ In Facebook Ban Story.

UH-HUH: California wants to help fight climate change by charging diners more.

Dining out isn’t the most eco-friendly activity, thanks to the carbon footprint of food brought in and the waste inherent in running a restaurant. Now, an effort by California restaurants wants diners to help fight climate change – by paying more.

Concerned eateries can join the Restore California Renewable Restaurant Program and add an optional 1% surcharge to diners’ checks. The money will go towards a public fund to help farmers reduce carbon in their food production practices.

How much of that would actually go towards reducing carbon is anyone’s guess, but my guess is “very little.”

FASTER? PLEASE! Two Different DARPA Hypersonic Vehicles ‘On Track’ to Fly in 2019.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Obama Admin Put Some Spies on Trump Campaign Aide. “She said the DNC wanted to collect evidence that Trump, his organization and Manafort were Russian assets, working to hurt the U.S. and working with Putin against the U.S. interests. She indicated if we could find the evidence they would introduce it in Congress in September and try to build a case that Trump should be removed from the ballot, from the election.”

YES: Facebook is trying to make the word “private” meaningless.

Zuckerberg described a number of new initiatives in this “future is private” push, including encrypted, and even ephemeral, Facebook messaging features, as well as an ephemeral “status” feature (similar to Instagram or Facebook Stories) for WhatsApp. WhatsApp messages have always been end-to-end encrypted, and Zuckerberg noted they would stay that way. He emphasized several times that Facebook will not be able to see the content of this material, saying it was private “even from us” several times about several features, and emphasizing the words “safety” and “secure.”

But what his presentation elided was the fact that Facebook does not need to see the content of what people are saying in order to advertise to them. The metadata — who, or what (as in a business), you’re talking to, and even where you are or what time the conversation is taking place as it comes together with other pieces of information — provides more than enough information to make a very educated guess about what you’re interested in, to the point that knowing specifically what you are saying adds almost nothing.

Facebook doesn’t give anything away.

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH: Skeptical scientist hijacks AOC Congressional climate hearing. “We are trying to save the people of the planet from the people ‘saving the planet’.”

CHANGE: Border Patrol Is About To Be Given The Authority It Needs To Handle The Border Crisis.

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY: How Media Narratives Became More Important Than Facts.

Sharyl Attkisson:

A case in point: the smear that was promulgated when I left CBS. It was often incorrectly reported that I told CBS management I was quitting due to liberal media bias. That false story turned out to be convenient for both political sides, and largely survives today. It simply wasn’t rooted in fact. And I don’t recall reporters even asking me whether it was true. Once a few articles reported that it was, others simply copied the claim and adopted it as if established fact, eventually without attribution. Now there would be no point in trying to clarify it. After all, Wikipedia says it’s true. No going back from that.

Powerful smear groups and certain interests—including some within CBS at the time—started the narrative that I was “conservative,” not because they necessarily believed it, but as a tool to “controversialize” the reporting I was doing that was contrary to powerful interests. The idea is that if I can be portrayed as a partisan, then my reporting can be more easily dismissed.

Read the whole thing.

GOOD: After Oil, Washington Weighs Sanctions on Iran’s Other Sources of U.S. Dollars.

The prospect of added pressure on Iran comes as Washington kicked off a fresh round of sanctions on Iranian oil exports on Thursday. The U.S. ban is aimed at coercing Iran into signing a new nuclear and security pact. In targeting the country’s crude—its main income source—the U.S. hopes to sever the financial and trade ties that are keeping Iran’s economy afloat.

Since the U.S. sanctions began in November, the Iranian government has missed out on more than $10 billion in oil revenue, Brian Hook, U.S. special representative for Iran at the State Department, said last week.

The U.S. Treasury Department is now weighing targeted sanctions that would curb the flow of less-visible sources of the U.S.-denominated currency that Iran needs to pay for imports of basic goods—and to shore up its own flagging currency, U.S. officials said.

The sanctions under consideration include the targeting of financial networks that transfer U.S. dollars to Iranian companies as payment for petrochemical exports—the country’s second-largest source of revenue after oil, a U.S. official said.

Hit ’em where it hurts.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Barr Hearing a Cheap Stunt to Revive Flagging Harris, Booker, and Klobuchar Campaigns.

Sure, he’s cynical — but is he cynical enough?

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: U.S. military stops tracking key metric on Afghan war as situation deteriorates. “The U.S. military has stopped tracking the amount of territory controlled or influenced by the Afghan government and militants, a U.S. watchdog said on Tuesday, one of the last remaining public metrics that tracked the worsening security situation in the war-torn country.”

“To what end?” is a question we need to be asking about a lot of things in Afghanistan.

Related (From Ed): Speaking of “To what end?”, Afghan pilot training ends after almost half went AWOL in America, the Air Force Times reports.

(Bumped.)

NEWS YOU CAN USE? 7-Eleven Now Delivers Beer in Select Major Cities Across America.

CNN POLL: Overwhelming Majority Want Investigation into Obama DOJ Spying of Trump.

CNN? Yes, CNN.

FREE SPEECH FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE: 38 Leftist Groups Urge Colleges, Universities to Blacklist Trump Admin. Officials.

MSNBC: “Not Clear” Which Side We’re On In Venezuela. (Narrator: It’s 100% Clear.)

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE TSAR: Putin signs Russian internet isolation bill into law. “The move will tighten government control over information.”

EXPLAINER: Why We Defend Free Seas. “There is more at stake in the South China Sea than most realize.”

Although the more I think about China’s island-building in the SCS, the more I think about Raymond Spruance’s Operation Hailstone, which effectively neutralized Japan’s Truk Island fortress for the rest of the war.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: A Time for Choosing: Will Dems Follow Their Brains or Their Hears? “Putting myself in the sandals of the Democratic Party’s increasingly far-out-there primary voter base, voting for the most radical candidate might be the smart move.”

Well, by one measure of “smart.”

MISS LIBERTY: Victims of Communism Day | Ten Films to Honor the Dead.

This one I just bought a copy of.

MEANWHILE, ON THE LEFT, IT’S STILL “RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!”: Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to Chinese Espionage Conspiracy.

BLAME AMERICA FIRST: Rep. Ilhan Omar says US ‘kind of helped lead the devastation’ in Venezuela.

NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES: Here Comes the Government, Protecting You from Cauliflower Rice.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Is Fox News Using Left-Wing Talking Points to Take Cheap Shots at Homeschoolers?

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Covington Kid Nick Sandmann Sues NBC/MSNBC for $275 Million.