LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Thou Shall Not Talk About 9/11 and Much, Much More. “Recently, a video was revealed of Jew-hater Rep. Ilhan Omar dismissively talking about the 9/11 attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists, describing the perpetrators as ‘some people’ who did ‘some things.’ The attack left almost 3,000 people dead, and many first responders sick and dying. But, you know, just ‘some things.’ Omar was properly admonished by a horrified public. But, wait. Not everyone was horrified by Omar’s remarks, they were horrified that people were horrified by Omar’s remarks. ”

They’re providing cover for a fellow Democrat, no matter how odious.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Pay attention to how tight the messaging is in defense of Ilhan Omar and how precise and consistent the wording is from media, politics, academia, etc.

HMM: California must invest in workforce to meet housing goals.

Even under the rosiest of regulatory scenarios, California’s residential construction industry needs at least 200,000 new workers to produce enough new housing to improve affordability.

But it is struggling to compete for them. Industry leaders often claim it’s because “Young people don’t want to get their hands dirty;” “Parents are pushing college instead of vocational training;” or because “Schools have abandoned shop classes.”

Actually, research shows that the seeds for today’s housing construction labor shortage were planted by the homebuilding industry itself — more than three decades ago.

The last time California produced housing on a scale that state leaders say is needed to boost affordability today was the 1970s. During those years, residential and non-residential construction wage rates were equal. Builders routinely employed apprentices and made binding commitments — often through collective bargaining — to fund skilled trade apprenticeship programs.

During the 1980s, homebuilders refused to renew collective bargaining agreements and began replacing higher skilled crews with lower skilled workers. As land and regulatory costs grew, contractors relied on a strong supply of young men without a college degree and a growing pool of immigrant laborers to offset these burdens by working for less.

Construction labor productivity began to shrink alongside these shifts, but it has taken decades for annual deficits in housing supply to reach a crisis point. Today, we need to double our housing production just to tread water. To boost affordability, we need to produce even more. Either scenario demands more workers.

In the meantime, where will they live?

WHY AREN’T THE REPUBLICANS DOING THIS 24/7? Small Business Owners Push Back Against Mischaracterization of Trump’s Tax Cuts.

FLASHBACK:

Congrats to Vox.com’s Matt Yglesias, who just admitted ‘in one tweet’ how progressives lie about Trump’s tax cuts:

OOPS: Facebook accidentally put hidden messages like ‘Big Brother is Watching’ and ‘The Masons Were Here’ in ‘tens of thousands’ of VR controllers.

UGH: Petting Zoos May Be Chock Full of Superbugs.

Researchers in Israel, including veterinarians, collected samples of poop, skin, fur, and feathers from over 200 animals across 42 species who lived in one of eight petting zoos in the country. They then tested the samples for bacteria resistant to more than one class of antibiotics.

The team was interested in spotting two groups of highly multidrug-resistant bacteria known as extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) Enterobacteriaceae and AmpC-producing Enterobacteriaceae (AmpC-E). These bacteria are some of the most feared superbugs around, largely because they carry mutations that make them resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics. Some of these mutations can also easily be passed to other species of bacteria, through mobile bits of DNA called plasmids.

Even scarier is that many resistant bacteria first evolve in animals and then go on to infect people. These sorts of outbreaks typically originate in livestock, but they’re occasionally caused by cuddlier animals, too. And it’s the infection risk posed by these animals that the researchers, led by Shiri Navon-Venezia, a microbiologist at Ariel University, were hoping to get a grasp on.

Years ago I had a friend who kept a couple of terrariums with scorpions and tarantulas, which we referred to as “R.J.’s No-Petting Zoo.” But apparently not even the goats are all that safe.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Colorado enacts ‘red flag’ law to seize guns from those deemed dangerous, prompting backlash.

Colorado’s law, approved by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, allows family, household members or law enforcement to petition a court to have guns seized or surrendered based on a showing that someone poses a danger under the “preponderance of the evidence,” a civil standard which means that the defendant is more likely than not to be a threat.

“In other words, there is just over a 50/50 chance of accuracy,” van Beek wrote, noting that someone’s guns could be seized even without a mental health professional making a determination of any kind. “Like the flip of a coin. Couldn’t that apply to just about anything a person does?”

A subsequent court hearing could extend a gun seizure up to 364 days, and gun owners can only retain their guns if they meet a burden of demonstrating by “clear and convincing evidence” — a much higher standard — that they are not in fact a threat. Gun owners, van Beek said, are “guilty until proven innocent” under this framework.

Well, yeah, if you ask most any Progressive Democrat.

WELL, AT LEAST HE ISN’T CAMPAIGNING LIKE IT’S 1988: Biden to Campaign Like it’s 2012 All Over Again.

RICK MORAN: New York Assembly Dems Show Where Their Real Priorities Lie. “Democrats block a bill expanding tuition assistance to the kids of dead soldiers but pass a budget that includes tuition assistance for illegal aliens.”

FINALLY: California may ban hotels from giving guests tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Hack Wars: MSNBC’s Todd and CNN’s Cuomo Engaged in Public Spat. “Ew…I had to defend Chuck Todd.”

Gross.

SHE’S NOT UNPATRIOTIC; SHE’S WORKING FOR THE OTHER SIDE: Photos Surface Revealing 2017 ‘Closed-Door’ Meeting Between Rep. Ilhan Omar and Turkish President Erdogan.

UGH: Again Amazon, Apple and Google could be infringing customers’ privacy with voice reviewers.

All three companies say voice recordings are occasionally reviewed to improve speech recognition. But the reaction to the Bloomberg article suggests many customers are unaware that humans may be listening.

The news site said it had spoken to seven people who reviewed audio from Amazon Echo smart speakers and the Alexa service.

Reviewers typically transcribed and annotated voice clips to help improve Amazon’s speech recognition systems. Amazon’s voice recordings are associated with an account number, the customer’s first name and the serial number of the Echo device used.

Some of the reviewers told Bloomberg that they shared amusing voice clips with one another in an internal chat room. They also described hearing distressing clips such as a potential sexual assault. However, they were told by colleagues that it was not Amazon’s job to intervene.

The terms and conditions for Amazon’s Alexa service state that voice recordings are used to “answer your questions, fulfill your requests, and improve your experience and our services”. Human reviewers are not explicitly mentioned.

Privacy is dead, killed by convenience.

SCHADENFREUDELICIOUS: Did Ilhan Omar Help Benjamin Netanyahu Win Reelection?

DANIEL JOHN SOBIESKI: Barr Will Find Spying On Trump Directed By Obama.

In any criminal investigation where the suspect is not immediately known, the first question usually asked is who would have the most to gain? As we follow the bread crumbs of the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and await release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo regarding the collusion between the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DOJ and FBI to interfere with the 2016, ensure the election of Hillary and the defeat or impeachment of Donald Trump, the answer to that question is clear, one Barack Hussein Obama.

Can it be believed that as key players in the Obama administration like Strzok and Page, as well as FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, number 4 at Justice Bruce Ohr, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and many others were linked in a vast criminal conspiracy to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison, and Donald Trump out of the White House, Barack Obama was blissfully unaware of all this? Rather, it can be plausibly argued that he was orchestrating it.

Perhaps not directly or by explicit orders but rather by discussing the threat to his legacy Trump represented with his progressive minions and then simply saying, as crime bosses throughout history have done, “You know what needs to be done. Do it.”

AKA, “Working toward the Führer,” which sounds even more sinister in the original German.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Fake News Freaks Out After Fox News ‘Misgenders’ Bradley Manning.

BREAKING: Trump “Giving Strong Considerations” to Proposal to Place Immigrants Who Enter U.S. Illegally “in Sanctuary Cities Only.”

Heh.

DAVID LIMBAUGH: Leftists Whipping Themselves Into a Jacobin Frenzy.

What concerns me as much as this pattern of ill will and abuse from leftists is that it is unchecked by their peers and often applauded. Instead of encouraging people to appeal to the better angels of their nature, they are beckoning them to summon their demons and become part of a mob mentality — as if we’re witnessing a replay of events that preceded the French Revolution.

It’s unsettling that they rationalize their misbehavior as justified, even warranted. They’ve convinced themselves that conservatives’ views are so noxious they’ve forfeited any expectation to be treated civilly and they deserve to be shunned, muzzled and boycotted — especially members of minority groups who have strayed from the reservation. They are “garbage people,” “deplorables” and subhumans who are not entitled to equal rights, let alone decent treatment.

They say these things because they believe them.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Rashida Tlaib Defends Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 Comments: This Is ‘Racist.’

Accurately reporting what someone said is obviously racist, and anyone who doesn’t understand that is even more racist still.

REGULATORY CAPTURE: Why the US still won’t require SS7 fixes that could secure your phone. “The regulatory back door big telecom uses to weaken security regulation.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Disney Announces Another Damn Subscription Streaming Service. “Do you really want to pay for yet another digital subscription?”

Instapundit: Still free!

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): And worth every single penny!

OH: Russian National Who Offered Dirt on Hillary Clinton Was an FBI informant.

Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo says “a Russian national FBI informant” offered to give him dirt on Hillary Clinton in May of 2016, but no one, including DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber, seems interested in hearing about it.

Caputo says that he forgot to mention a couple of suspicious episodes when the House and Senate Intelligence Committees first asked him if any Russians had offered him dirt on Clinton.

It wasn’t until the New York Times published a bombshell story in May of 2018, disclosing that the FBI had indeed used informants in its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation in 2016, that Caputo says a “light bulb” went off in his head.

He says he went back and shared the information with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as soon as he remembered.

Not long after that, Caputo was interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. He told PJ Media that he expected to be there until nightfall. As it turned out, he was done by 3 p.m.

Curious all around.

YOU CAN BE SURE HE’S “GROWN” SINCE THEN: Letters from Joe Biden reveal how he sought support of segregationists in fight against busing.

It was more than four decades ago as a battle raged across the country — and in Congress — over sending white students to majority-black schools and black students to majority-white schools often far away from their own neighborhoods. Biden forcefully opposed the government’s role in trying to integrate schools, saying he favored desegregation, but believed busing did not achieve equal opportunity.

In a series of never-before-published letters from Biden, which were reviewed by CNN, the strength of his opposition to busing comes into sharper focus, particularly how he followed the lead of — and sought support from — some of the Senate’s most fervent segregationists.

I wonder who brought these letters to CNN’s attention.

THE FIX IS IN: Google under fire for dubbing ‘Unplanned’ film ‘propaganda.’

The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Bolar noted Thursday that Google classifies “Unplanned” as a “drama/propaganda.”

“Who knew that ‘propaganda’ was a movie genre? Google once again exposing its gross political bias,” Bolar tweeted a screenshot of search results, which have been verified by Fox News.

Another Twitter user compared the search results of “Unplanned” with those of left-leaning films like the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” and the documentaries of Michael Moore. None of them were considered “propaganda” by Google.

This matters because how Google classifies something impacts how easy (or difficult) it is to find on Alphabet-owned platforms like Google and YouTube.

RELATED: YouTube Hides PragerU Video of Candace Owens’ Testimony in ‘Restricted Mode.’

BECAUSE THEY SUCK: Why the EU is Cracking Down on Speedy Supercars.

A MONTH AGO, as I was checking out of a hotel in Stuttgart bound for Geneva in a hot new Porsche 911, a man approached me in the lobby, like Elijah in “Moby-Dick,” warning me of danger ahead. “Are you driving the red car to Switzerland?” he asked in English. “You know, they just put somebody in jail for four years for speeding.”

How fast was he going? Two-hundred ten, came the answer—not miles, but kilometers per hour. That’s 130 mph. I went weak in the knees as I flashed back on all the times I’ve exceeded 130 mph in Switzerland. Every time, practically. Four years!

I drove to Geneva like I was leading my mother’s funeral, never exceeding 85 mph in a car with a top speed 100 mph faster, constantly surveilled by Switzerland’s robust speed camera network. Hey Nonny Nonny. This sucks.

It’s over. The era of European grand touring—the pursuit and enjoyment of elite speed across the face of the continent in powerful cars, the classic driving vacation — is finito.

Plus: “Not to be elitist: A Ford Fiesta you rent at Aéroport Charles de Gaulle outside Paris is fast enough to ruin the family vacation. France recently lowered the national speed limit on rural roads without a divider from 90 to 80 kph. That’s about 50 mph. It’s a slumber party.”

Statists ruin everything.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Comey Don’t Know Nothin’ About No Spyin’ and Much, Much More. “Not the best and the brightest. Fired FBI Director and social media #resistence influencer James Comey is confused about what Attorney General William Barr meant when he said the intelligence community was ‘spying’ on the Trump campaign.”