WELL, GOOD: 67 Nonprofit Leaders Urge Media to Drop ‘Anti-Christian and Morally Bankrupt’ SPLC.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Socialists now outnumber Republicans on Chicago’s city council.

As Glenn noted earlier today, newly elected Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is “one of Rahm Emanuel’s people.” So my guess is despite being the Chicago’s First-This/First-That mayor, her main concern will be not to rock the boat too much, and to make sure the right people get keeping getting all the — let’s put this delicately — city services they’re used to paying for.

All the new socialists on the city council might prove to be a problem, or at least an expensive distraction.

PRIVACY: Wrecked Cars Are Now a Treasure Trove of Personal Information.

It sounds conspiratorial, but there’s a series of events to hang the tinfoil hat on. In 2017, General Motors announced it had successfully monitored the listening habits of 90,000 motorists in a study aimed at improving marketing insights. It also rejiggered OnStar and introduced the Marketplace app for seamless in-car purchasing options. Our take was that it was as impressive as it was ominous — and GM is only leading the charge into a what analysts believe will eventually become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Naturally, this led to privacy concerns over how automakers will protect customer data on future models. But we might want to start worrying about the cars we have now. A couple of white-hat hackers (those are the good ones) recently probed the internal computer networks of wrecked and salvaged Teslas and found a mother lode of personal information waiting inside.

According to a report from CNBC, GreenTheOnly and fellow hacker Theo, a Tesla proponent who has repaired hundreds of wrecked Teslas, purchased a wrecked Model 3 for research purposes in 2018. During their time with the vehicle, the pair found it was owned by a Boston-area construction company and had held onto unencrypted data from at least 17 different devices.

FLASHBACK: New Research Shows Smart Light Can Be Used To Steal User’s Private Data Invisibly.

JUST AS I LIKE TO CHEER MY SOBRIETY: Liberal Comedy Central Cheers Its Diversity.

Christian Toto:

Diversity … isn’t it a wonderful thing? Actually, it can be. It’s great to open up the creative process, letting fresh voices share their funniest lines. Let the comedy cream rise to the top, no matter where it calls home.

Too bad that never applies to conservatives, their humor, perspective or cravings.

Quick, name a Comedy Central program that routinely shares a right of center view point. How about a comedian who regularly appears on the channel to share Red State musings?

That wouldn’t be real diversity because shut up.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. America’s Biggest Economic Challenge May Be Demographic Decline.

For many years, American economists have spoken of Japan and Western Europe as places where the slow grind of demographic change — masses of workers reaching retirement age, and smaller generations replacing them — has been a major drag on the economy.

But it is increasingly outdated to think of that as a problem for other countries. The deepest challenge for the United States economy may really be about demographics. And our understanding of the implications is only starting to catch up.

A new report from the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank funded in large part by tech investors and entrepreneurs, adds rich new detail, showing that parts of the United States are already grappling with Japanese-caliber demographic decline — 41 percent of American counties with a combined population of 38 million.

At the national level, slower growth in America’s working-age population is a major reason that mainstream forecasters now expect the economy to expand around 2 percent each year rather than the 3 percent common in the second half of the 20th century. As a matter of simple arithmetic, lower growth in the number of people working will almost certainly mean slower growth in economic output.

The debt and the interest on the debt keep growing, however.

PIERS MORGAN: If Joe ‘Hugger’ Biden, one of America’s most decent men, isn’t virtuous enough to be President – then who the hell is?

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: House Democrat speaks out: ‘I am offended by this whole conversation about socialism.’ “Rep. Stephanie Murphy declared herself a ‘proud capitalist’.”

JACOB SULLUM: Gravity Knives, Bump Stocks, and Lawless Law Enforcement. “New York cops and the president arbitrarily turn legal products into contraband.”

Last week Cracco, a Manhattan sous chef, won a federal lawsuit he filed after he was arrested for violating New York’s 1958 ban on “gravity knives.” That law makes it a misdemeanor to possess “any knife which has a blade which is released from the handle or sheath thereof by the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force which, when released, is locked in place by means of a button, spring, lever or other device.”

For years Cracco had been using his Spyderco Endura 4 folding knife, the sort of tool that is sold openly by retailers in New York City and throughout the state, for mundane tasks like opening boxes and bottles. On a Friday afternoon in October 2013, Cracco was standing on a subway platform, heading home to Connecticut, when a police officer spotted the knife clipped to his pants pocket and subjected it to the NYPD’s notorious “wrist flick test.”

According to Cracco and a co-worker who was with him, it took the cop four or five tries before he managed to swing the blade fully open with one hand—a feat that Cracco himself had never attempted. Cracco thus joined the thousands of New Yorkers who are arrested each year for carrying the tools of their trades or hobbies.

“Because the wrist flick test is a functional one, it is difficult if not impossible for a person who wishes to possess a folding knife to determine whether or not the knife is illegal,” U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty noted in a March 27 decision declaring the gravity knife ban “unconstitutionally vague” as applied to Cracco. “People should be able to tell whether their conduct is lawful or unlawful.”

Where’s the fun for lawmakers or police in that?

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: US Islamic Scholar Praises Brunei’s Death Penalty For Homosexuality.

“If you have had a rough week or are feeling down in the dumps, I have just the news to cheer you up. The Muslim country of Brunei is implementing hudud to crack down on sodomites and fornicators!” Haqiqatjou wrote on his website MuslimSkeptic, using the Arabic word meaning “punishments mandated by God.”

“The Sharia protects all of our rights, individually and communally. When rectum-sex enthusiasts are allowed to promote their gender-bending degeneracy openly, that deeply harms all of us,” he added.

Haqiqatjou also mocked politicians and celebrities proposing boycotts of Brunei-owned hotels and businesses, and suggested that Muslims should counteract boycotts by frequenting Brunei. He also suggested that Muslims from western nations go to Brunei to witness public canings so that they could learn what is, in his view, the proper way to implement Sharia.

Charming.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Has anybody asked Tim Cook about this? How many Apple Stores are there in Brunei?

HMM: Ecuador’s president says Assange breached terms of London embassy asylum.

KRUISER: LOL: Comey Laments Possible Role in Electing Trump.

I WISH HE WOULD, JUST FOR ALL THE EXPLODING HEADS: Trump Could Declare Himself ‘The First Female President’ Under the Equality Act, Rep. Gaetz Warns.

BATTLELINES: Valerie Jarrett defends Biden: ‘I have an enormous amount of respect for him.’

“I had the honor of working with Joe Biden every single day for eight years. And I have an enormous amount of respect for him,” Jarrett said in a interview with NPR. She maintained that she saw Biden “be extraordinarily demonstrative to both men and women alike — and never did I take it as a sexual advance in any way.”

Plus:

Former [Obama] national security adviser Susan Rice, in a series of tweets Monday evening, said she personally never found Biden‘s “actions inappropriate or uncomfortable,“ adding that she had “always appreciated his kindness and warmth.”

I wonder if these former Obama hands see Biden as their best bet back into power.

HOPE: Erdogan’s party suffer surprise defeats in Turkish mayoral elections in three biggest cities.

I wasn’t sure such a thing was possible, given Erdogan’s control of the media, and his purge of opponents real and imagined around the country.

THEN NOW IS THE TIME TO PRESS THEM HARD: China’s economy is hurting and a trade deal can’t come a moment too soon for Beijing.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Welcome to Subpoena City and Much, Much More. “Social media personality James Comey told ‘journalist’ Christine Amanpour that he ‘fears’ an investigation of the deep state coup, massive abuse of power and greatest political scandal in the history of America that took place on his watch.”

My only fear is that his fear might not be well-founded.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Hispanics Rally to Trump, Boosting His 2020 Chances.

THE MARINES, THE F-35B, AND THE RETURN OF THE LIGHT CARRIER: U.S. Amphibious Assault Ship In South China Sea With Unprecedentedly Large Load of F-35Bs.

JON GABRIEL: The Electoral College is undemocratic? Of course. That’s why it works.

The world’s first democracy was ancient Athens, which allowed around 30,000 free adult male citizens to choose their leaders. They made up less than 15 percent of the population, but it was the most egalitarian political innovation to date.

It didn’t take long for the system to implode amid rampant corruption, an economic downturn, immigration headaches and unpopular foreign wars. (Sound familiar?) The plan of “one man, one vote” devolved into a kind of mob rule, the populace veering with wild swings of opinion. Voters overthrew leaders, exiled the unpopular, and executed generals and politicians – even Socrates himself.

As the saying goes, democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. The Founders looked to Athens less as a political model than an object lesson in what not to do.

James Madison said that democracies are “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Therefore, America was set up as a republic, filled with countless checks and balances to avoid one group gaining power and using it to punish or exclude everyone they didn’t like.

That’s a bug, not a feature, to those seeking to abolish the Electoral College.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Journalist Describes An ‘Almost Unimaginable’ Crisis In Venezuela. “The U.N. estimates that it’s upwards of 3 million people who have left. Now remember, this is a country of 30 million people. So we’re talking about 10 percent of the population that has gone. And you see this when you walk around the streets of Caracas, which I have, or Maracaibo, which I did just a few weeks ago. There are areas which are completely empty. You walk down streets and you see that there’s two or three people in one house, and then another house is gone, or another house has got a family of what looked like squatters, because they’ve just moved into the place.”

More:

On one end, these countries are trying to pressure [President] Maduro now to step down, because they know that this migrant crisis is going to get even worse the more politically unstable the country gets. Countries like Colombia understand that Venezuela used to be a country that took their immigrants, especially during the darkest days of the paramilitaries and the guerrilla fighting, but at the same time, they understand they can’t take every Venezuelan that comes.

And not only that, because of this crisis that’s getting worse and worse, because of lack of medicine mainly, people are coming into these countries with diseases that should be controlled in Venezuela — diseases like diphtheria, malaria, tuberculosis have made a huge comeback in Venezuela. So if you’re a neighboring country like Brazil or Colombia, or a country like Ecuador or Peru, who are farther away but are also taking immigrants, this is a very scary situation that’s right on your doorstep.

So many lessons in those two brief paragraphs, which will remain ignored by those who most need to learn them.

HARD OUT: Brexit Rebel Leader Now “90% Sure We Will Drop Out With ‘No Deal’.”

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Failed Spanish Inquisition Offers an Important Lesson to Modern Anti-Semites. “Countries that built their futures on religious toleration, countries with substantial Jewish populations, are, we can hope, the future of mankind.”

OH THANK GOODNESS — ANOTHER TEN-YEAR EXTENSION. Beto O’Rourke Warns: Only 10 Years Left to Act on Climate Change.

I DO NOT TRUST THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Whopping 217.5% Increase in Cyber Attacks on ‘Smart Home’ Connected Devices in 2018. “Are your doorbell and baby monitor putting you at risk for a cyber attack?”

I’ve automated many of the lights and blinds in our home, but all on an inward-facing intranet. Anything mission critical — involving water, gas, or entry — is strictly analog.

GOOD LORD: Nxivm member admits to enslaving woman in a locked room for 2 years.

“I knowingly and intentionally harbored Jane Doe 4, a woman whose identity is known to me, in a room in the home in the Northern District of New York,” said Lauren Salzman to Brooklyn federal court Judge Nicholas Garaufis last week.

Salzman told the judge she held the woman hostage between March 2010 and April 2012 “and threatened to deport Jane Doe 4 back to Mexico if she did not complete labor requested by myself and others,” court transcripts said.

The 42-year-old defendant also admitted during the proceeding to being a member of Nxivm’s secret inner organization, DOS, which prosecutors have accused of starving and branding women.

At least one DOS member was also coerced into having sex with cult leader Keith Raniere, according to the government.

DOS was pitched as a women’s empowerment group but was actually grooming its members to have sex with Raniere, the feds claim.

“Smallville” actress Allison Mack and Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman have also been charged for their roles in Nxivm.

Plus: “Salzman’s guilty plea last Monday did not appear on any public calendar, and portions of the transcript are redacted — leading to speculation she may cooperate against her fellow cult members at trial.”