YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 3 Democrat Policies that Must Die for America to Survive.

OF COURSE THEY DO: Microsoft Wants To Pick The News You Read.

A familiar player is getting into the censorship game: Microsoft just announced that the tech giant’s Edge web browser will feature a “NewsGuard” plugin that will display a big red exclamation mark and a scolding warning when users view news outlets its censors dislike. Media outlets hand-selected by NewsGuard and Microsoft, on the other hand, will get a big friendly green check mark and flattering praise of their journalistic merit.

Who are the approved “green check mark” news sources? The left-leaning, establishment media outlets you would expect: CNN, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and so on. These are the same sites that rushed to publish dozens of demonstrably false stories about Catholic high schoolers harassing a Vietnam veteran — and wound up putting those teenagers and their families in the crosshairs of a vicious internet hate mob — and then, largely refused to apologize for getting the story completely wrong.

Other members of the “good news” club include Rolling Stone, responsible for making a cover story out of the most destructive rape hoax since the Scottsboro Boys, and BuzzFeed News, responsible for the report accusing President Trump of committing a felony by allegedly telling Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. The story was so outrageously false that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office issued a rare public statement to disavow it.

Which media sources are arrayed on the other side of this equation, the “bad news” bears designated on NewsGuard with red exclamation points? Exactly who you’d expect: Breitbart News; Drudge Report; the Daily Mail, Britain’s third-largest newspaper; and other outlets popular outside the Acela corridor.

When you need the latest, trustworthy news and you need it fast, stick with the high-speed bloggers you’ve known for over 15 years.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Will there ever be a mile-high skyscraper?

Mile high skyscrapers would be nice, but the really ambitious are hoping for a series of massive, inhabitable space elevators/towers connected by an orbital ring around the Earth.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Bad Guys and the Internet.

Reading around the Net today, I am awed by the dramatic reversal of attitude. Compared to those happy early days, most of what I read is fearful and/or angry. As a Russian commentator observed back when, the Internet did indeed threaten tyrants, because it provided internal challengers with information that both exposed the malefactions of the regime and also enabled the opposition to plan their actions. If you talk to Iranian anti-regime activists and ask them what they most need, they will usually reply that they need secure communications with one another, along with access to detailed, reliable reporting on their own country.

However, as that smart Russian commentator observed, the same Internet that threatened the tyrants could also be used to suppress the promised wide-open exchange of facts and ideas. And so it has. The world’s most effective oppressors, those in places like Iran, Russia, North Korea, China and Cuba, have all developed technology to isolate their citizens from the Net, and to inundate their cyberspace with the regime’s own disinformation. No doubt they have helped each other, as free and open communication threatens them all.

The latest example comes from Putin.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

LARRY O’CONNOR: A revealing two weeks for the Democrats.

By the end of the week, a second woman emerged with yet another detailed, credible allegation of sexual assault against Mr. Fairfax dating back to his college days. This allegation included contemporary, corroborating witnesses. Mr. Fairfax lost half his staff but stays in office demanding “due process,” a luxury Democrats refused to afford Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when faced with sketchy, uncorroborated, contradictory accusations at his confirmation hearings.

Democrats: The party of unequal justice when politicians are accused of sexual assault.

Next came the Green New Deal ballyhooed by the young socialists in the congressional freshman class. It was immediately embraced by more senior Democrats wanting to appear woke with the kids. A fact sheet on the sweeping plan revealed modest 10-year goals like basically eliminating air travel, fossil fuels and the internal-combustion engines, plus a lament that ending cow farts might take longer.

Democrats: The party of light rail, tofu and the economic dark ages.

They’ll remake us all into the New Soyviet Man.

WORST. WARMONGER. EVER. Soon to be revealed Trump peace plan for the Middle East and the thaw in Israeli – Arab relations on the Arabian Peninsula may force Iran’s hand.

An all-out war on the Arabian Peninsula, even if won by the Sunnis, which is far from being a foregone conclusion, is unthinkable in terms of the damage it would cause to the oil production and other infrastructure, infrastructure that took many decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build. No, Iran must be contained, it must be put in a place where military adventurism is simply unthinkable. And who can accomplish this goal? The only Middle Eastern country with a fully functional nuclear arsenal equipped with second strike capability via its fleet of nuclear armed submarines (all according to various foreign sources). So what the Saudis and their smaller neighbors on the peninsula want from Israel is not just the hoisting of their technological base into the 21st century, but also the extension of its nuclear deterrence umbrella over the holiest of hollies of the Islamic faith.

A deal that would fully and openly ally Israel and the guardians of the Islamic holy places in Mecca an Medina would be an event that would change word history. It would be an event that leads to stability and prosperity not only in the Middle East, but around the Globe and most importantly, it would inevitably spell the end of the Mullah rule in Iran, finally allowing that large and important country to rejoin the family of civilized nations.

It’s never smart to pin too many hopes on peace in the Middle East, but if anyone is “crazy” enough to pull off an official Arab-Israeli entente cordiale, it’s Trump.

CNN: Republicans pay the price for Trump’s wall crusade.

Shouldn’t we wait until, I don’t know, something actually happens before making big pronouncements?

HMM: Did AOC put her boyfriend on the public payroll?

Plus more details here from Paula Bolyard.

Developing, as they say.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): You’re not allowed to question AOC’s ethics, because she’s one of Twitter’s Protected People.

Have I mentioned that Twitter — and the people who run it — are garbage?

OUR CREDENTIALED ELITES: Sex Therapist Claims Trump Supporters Have a ‘Homoerotic Attraction’ to the President. “‘Hopefully, they’re not literally going after their daughters in bed,’ says ‘Dr.’ Susan Block.”

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Feminist Attacks Pro-Trans Twitter as a ‘Boys Club.’ “Men threatened her, and a biological man got her banned.”

I DO: US forces have 1,000 ISIS detainees — and don’t know what to do with them.

While some of the ISIS detainees are front-lines troops and untrained cannon fodder, a significant cohort of them are also more capable militants trained as external operation planners and master bomb makers who pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies.

“It’s closer to a thousand than it is hundreds already in detention, with more to potentially come,” Army Gen. Raymond Thomas, III, who helms U.S. Special Operations Command, said at a Senate hearing Thursday. “[It’s] a huge area of concern for us, especially because they’re being detained by the non-nation state that’s otherwise known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.”

Captured terrorists enjoy zero Geneva Convention protections, and ought to be dealt with something like pirates of old.

REAL MONEY: US, Facebook negotiating record multibillion-dollar fine after privacy lapses. “The fine would be the largest the agency has ever imposed on a technology company, but the two sides have not yet agreed on an exact amount. Facebook has expressed initial concern with the FTC’s demands, one of the people said. If talks break down, the FTC could take the matter to court in what would likely be a bruising legal fight.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Derp State Coup, Race Hoax? and Much, Much More. “So ‘Andy’s office’ told Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” that he and some of his derp staters want to nullify the duly elected President Trump via the 25th amendment and claim Trump was unable to fulfill his duties as president because RUSSIA. Of course, this amendment is for a president who is IN A COMA or literally incapacitated, but this is the logic coming from the agenda-driven dummies now populating the FBI and DOJ.”

Once you’ve convinced yourself that your job is to protect the proles from themselves, any foul action you take becomes excusable, or even noble. That’s progressivism in a nutshell.

THAT SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF EFFORT TO ACHIEVE THE SAME RESULT: Computers could write full – and wrong – news stories.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Americans continue their march to low-tax states.

Once again, Texas and Florida were the big winners in overall population gains, with the Lone Star State gaining more than 379,000 residents from 2017-18 and the Sunshine State posting a gain of more than 322,000.

The big net losers from the report were New York, which lost a total of 48,510 residents, and Illinois, which lost 45,116.

These state-by-state population numbers will alter the makeup of seats in the United States House of Representative during the once-a-decade reapportionment and redistricting process that will commence after the 2020 census.

The redistricting battle is gonna be as lit as ever, making this an excellent time for another pitch for Glenn’s welcome wagon idea.

MOLON LABE: Pelosi threat: Democrats could declare national emergency to enact gun control.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I guess the problem with this is that we know they’ll do this anyway if they think they can get away with it, and the press would support them regardless of what the GOP has done in the past.

HISTORY: Famed WW2 Aircraft Carrier Torpedoed in 1942 Found Miles Deep in Pacific Ocean.

The Hornet was the last US fleet carrier lost to enemy action.

Vulcan Inc., an exploration team financed by the Paul Allen estate, discovered the sunken American aircraft carrier near the Solomon Islands in late January, CBS reports. Crewmembers aboard the RV Petrel used a deep-sea sonar drone to detect the ship 17,500 feet (5,330 meters) below the surface.

A remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) was then sent down to investigate further, confirming the wreckage as belonging to the Hornet, which it did by spotting its naval designation, CV-8. The Hornet went down during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in 1942 after a fierce fight with ships and planes from the Japanese Imperial Navy.

Impressive find by Paul Allen’s foundation, which has been on a roll lately.

JIM GERAGHTY: Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Kirsten Gillibrand. “Defending Big Tobacco, keeping rifles under her bed, studying with Jeanine Pirro, and having Edie Falco play her grandmother.”

MARK ELLIS: The Russia Collusion Thud Heard ‘Round the World. “There was never any collusion. The entire debacle has been a Deep State plot to depose a president.”

A FITTING TRIBUTE TO THE MAN WHO ROBBED CALIFORNIA BLIND: Call them “Jerrys.”

MABA: Make Alexandria Bartender Again.

That’s a hat just ready to get banned at all your finer dining establishments.

CHRIS QUEEN: The 10 Most Overrated Musical Artists of All Time.

I’m no longer on speaking terms with Chris, due to his inclusion of The Rolling Stones.

TYLER O’NEIL: McCabe Revelation Confirms the Deep State Yet Again. “DOJ staff plotting to remove President Trump confirms conservatives’ worst fears.“

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Libertarian Date Night: Eight Romantic Films.

I haven’t seen Don Juan DeMarco in a decade or two, which is just a silly-yet-lovely little movie. It’s going on the V-Day short list for sure.

FROM THE NEW END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT TO PLAY “CIVILIZATION VI”: “The information we collect may include personal information such as your first and/or last name, e-mail address, phone number, photo, mailing address, geolocation, or payment information. In addition, we may collect your age, gender, date of birth, zip code, hardware configuration, console ID, software products played, survey data, purchases, IP address and the systems you have played on. We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use.”

The reviews on Steam are coming in fast and furious, with many users saying they have or will uninstall the game. I just did.

It’s a shame, too — the Civ series is one of the few computer games I’ve really enjoyed over the years.