PRIVACY: Facebook Reveals Apps, Others That Got Special Access to User Data. “Answers in a 747-page document to Congress contrasts with previous statements that it restricted access to outsiders in 2015.”
They were several hours late reporting to Congress, too.
HISSY FITS: Surreal Exchange Between Bill Maher and Michael Moore Shows a Disconnect from Reality. “If this judge goes through…it’s a right-wing court. That’s it. It’s over.”
If this judge, whose name we don’t know, goes through and is to the right of Anthony Kennedy, then the swing vote becomes Chief Justice Roberts — and he’s no Scalia or Thomas.
SMALL AMERICAN BREWERS: What’s killing Big American Beer?
UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Farting Unicorn Sparks Legal Battle Between Local Artist And Elon Musk.
There must be something in the air up in Denver.
BRUCE BAWER: What’s Wrong With Britain?
Spoiler: They’re scared.
THERE’S THAT WORD “UNHINGED” AGAIN: The left’s increasingly unhinged portrayal of Trump as a dictator.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden notoriously and unapologetically tweeted a photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau as a response to family separations at the border. Upon a report that parents at the border were being told that their children were being taken to get bathed and disappearing, Chris Hayes of MSNBC tweeted, “What does this remind you of?” Soledad O’Brien chimed in, “Welp, I guess we’ve put to rest the question: ‘Nazi Germany: Could it happen here in America?’ ”
Progressives imagine that they are protecting our system when making these and related charges, but they are really losing faith in it themselves and undermining its legitimacy.
Kumail Nanjiani, a comedian and actor with more than 2 million followers on Twitter, objected to President Trump’s contention that illegal immigration brings criminals into the United States. He said Hitler “focused on crimes by Jews,” and this is what brought on Nazi Germany over time.
Actually, Hitler was named chancellor in January 1933 and immediately acted to curtail press and individual rights and begin repressing the Jews. He used the Reichstag fire to mobilize against opponents, including through violence, and gained full dictatorial powers via the Enabling Act in March 1933.
By comparison, Trump in his first year and a half in office has tweeted, called the press names and — yes — highlighted crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Unpresidential? Yes. Disturbing? At times. Fascistic? No.
To today’s Left, “fascistic” means “anything standing in the way of my authoritarian impulses.”
HEALTH: Vaping Industry Rallies To Oppose Looming Flavor Crackdown From The FDA.
The advocacy campaign, dubbed #Fight4Flavor, comes in response to a proposed rule from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco and nicotine flavoring, something users and harm reduction experts fear is a veiled attempt to cripple the market for alternative products and technologies.
The Global Vaping Standards Association (GVSA) is leading the campaign, which encourages any users of alternative technologies and smokeless products to submit comments to the FDA on how flavors helped them make the switch from combustible cigarettes, which continue to be the number one cause of preventable death worldwide. (RELATED: Media Immediately Spins CDC Data Showing No Vaping Increases Among Teens)
The FDA is currently seeking comments on the implications of flavored products, particularly whether they are having a negative impact on youths.
“Flavor and choice of flavors had provided me the number one reason for not going back to cigarettes,” Christopher Boone, a 33-year-old vaper from New York, recently submitted to the FDA, according to a statement from the GVSA.
The road to hell is paved with bad legislation.
CHANGE: California Passes Groundbreaking Consumer Data Privacy Law With Fines for Violations.
California has passed a sweeping privacy law that gives consumers the right to demand that their data be deleted and to bar companies from selling their data without them losing access to services or being charged a higher price.
The bill, passed today by the state’s legislature and quickly signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, affects all companies that do business in the state and collect data. It requires those businesses to disclose information they store, what purpose it’s for, and with which third parties it’s shared.
For data breaches, consumers may be able to sue for up to $750 for each violation, while the state attorney general can sue for intentional violations of privacy at up to $7,500 each. For both consumer and state lawsuits, companies have to be given 30 days to fix the problem.
I’m just curious why an offense against the state is worth ten times more than an offense against the individual.
ALLAHPUNDIT ASKS, GENTLY: Will McCain Resign To Give McConnell An Extra Vote On Trump’s SCOTUS Nominee?
JUST DON’T ACCUSE THEM OF WANTING OPEN BORDERS: Hundreds of Women’s March Protesters Arrested in Senate Office Building. “They chanted ‘Abolish ICE’ and donned foil blankets like those given to child detainees in photos of Texas border processing facilities.”
SULTANS GOTTA SULTANATE: Jordan, Saudis and Palestinians Warn Israel: Erdogan Operating in East Jerusalem Under Your Nose.
Senior officials in Amman and Ramallah told Israel that Turkey was extending its influence in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Israeli defense officials told Haaretz they are aware of the situation and that the issue is now receiving more attention.
Turkey’s attempts to gain influence in East Jerusalem have been monitored by Israel’s security services for more than a year. Israeli sources pointed to a number of ways in which Turkey is increasing its presence in the city.
These include donations to Islamic organizations in Arab neighborhoods; organized tours arranged by Islamist groups in Turkey, some closely affiliated with Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which have brought thousands of Turkish citizens to Jerusalem over the past year; and the prominent presence of Turkish activists in demonstrations around the Temple Mount (known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif).
Jordanian officials have accused Israel of “sleeping at the wheel” with regard to the phenomenon. They have also claimed Israel was slow to react to Turkey’s growing presence in East Jerusalem because of the reconciliation agreement signed between the two countries in early 2016, which they say Israel didn’t want to endanger by acting more forcefully against Turkish activity in the city.
The Israelis aren’t exactly renowned for resting on the laurels when national security is at stake, but we’ll see what Jerusalem does next.
Related: It’s Time to Put Turkey’s Ally Status on Probation.
PUSHBACK: Iran reopens uranium plant in its latest gamble.
The mullahs are hoping to threaten us into another Obama-style cash infusion to buy themselves more time, but that’s not going to happen.
SPENGLER: The Prince, the President, and the Providence of the Temple.
The European states were not concocted in the laboratory of liberal political theory. Nor did they arise from mere agglomeration of tribes. Tribal society requires no state. Where it persists, for example in Papua New Guinea, nearly a thousand languages each are spoken by an average of a few thousand people. The European states arose out of the ruins of Rome with a sacred purpose, around monarchies founded in emulation of the biblical kings of Israel: the Merovingians under the guidance of St. Gregory of Tours, the Spanish Visigoths with St. Isidor of Seville, and the kingdom of St. Stephen in Hungary. After the fall of Rome, the Church turned the Germanic, Slavic and Magyar invaders into Christian European kingdoms, as the English historian Father Adrian Hastings showed in his 1996 book The Construction of Nationhood.
As an American I believe that republican government as provided by our Constitution is the best form of government–surely the best for us–but I recognize that the sense of the sacred can be embodied in different ways. Conservatives devote a great deal of thought to Constitutional theory, the plumbing of the American republic; we need to give more thought to what drives the steam through the pipes.
Read the whole thing.
Next up: Legislation equating Pi to 3, because California is sophisticated like that.
BLUE WAVE BLUES: Poll Highlights Democrats’ Major Disadvantage in 2020. “Three septuagenarians lead the pack of Democratic presidential candidates.”
While it’s far too early to make any predictions, from today’s vantage the 2020 Democratic field looks likely to be a collection of aged insiders and youthful “democratic” socialists.
GODSPEED: EFF Sues to Invalidate FOSTA, an Unconstitutional Internet Censorship Law.
We are asking a court to declare the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (“FOSTA”) unconstitutional and prevent it from being enforced. The law was written so poorly that it actually criminalizes a substantial amount of protected speech and, according to experts, actually hinders efforts to prosecute sex traffickers and aid victims.
In our lawsuit, two human rights organizations, an individual advocate for sex workers, a certified non-sexual massage therapist, and the Internet Archive, are challenging the law as an unconstitutional violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. Although the law was passed by Congress for the worthy purpose of fighting sex trafficking, its broad language makes criminal of those who advocate for and provide resources to adult, consensual sex workers and actually hinders efforts to prosecute sex traffickers and aid victims.
Despite good intentions, it’s a bad law most likely to harm those its sponsors sought to protect.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: ICE, ICE Baby and Much, Much More. “The sicko activist media and progressive agitators were sorely disappointed yesterday to learn that a shooter who attacked an Annapolis, Maryland newspaper did not turn out to be an unhinged MAGA moron.”
She’s too modest to say so herself, but you should take her words to heart because Salena is one of those small-town journalists who through hard work, a little luck, but mostly by listening made it to the bigs.
CREDENTIALED, NOT EDUCATED: Why Corporate Recruiters Shouldn’t Be So Obsessed With Prestigious College Degrees.
One reason that businesses struggle to find capable workers is because they have increased their hiring from top-level universities, said Byron Auguste, CEO of the workforce training nonprofit Opportunity@Work. The problem is that these schools haven’t increased the number of students enrolled to match the demand, he explained.
Additionally, an education from a prestigious university doesn’t necessarily correlate to being a good worker, said Garrett Moran, the president of another workforce training nonprofit, Year Up. Companies that automatically ignore prospective job candidates who lack higher education degrees are simply being lazy and are merely screening for keywords on a person’s resume, he explained.
Moran said that there’s “so many young people who just never had a shot” that are getting lost in the existing hiring system. These youth and young adults are just “dying for success, dying for mentorship,” he said.
There’s a huge competitive advantage to be gained by companies willing to hire based on aptitude over pedigree.
SELF-SERVE: California Gas Tax Repeal is on November Ballot.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: A minimum-wage worker in Venezuela could afford 5 cups of coffee each month — and nothing else.
Five million Venezuelan bolivars is the equivalent of $1.45. It’s also roughly a minimum-wage worker’s entire monthly salary in the South American country.
Thanks to stunning inflation, it now takes 1 million bolivars to buy a cup of coffee in a Venezuelan cafe, Bloomberg reports. That’s one-fifth of Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage, and a 10,000-bill stack of Venezuela’s most common bank note, the 100-bolivar bill.
If you have to ask what it costs to have a socialist-leaning hipster serve that cup of coffee, you can’t afford it.
PRIVACY: Facebook might not spy on you now, but it has a patent for the ability. “A future where TV commercials prompt our phones to record our reactions?”
It’s not uncommon for people to think that Facebook is spying on their conversations when online ads appear to advertise something they discussed offline. The reality is often simply coincidence or more often based on cookies when searching online for something related.
But that doesn’t mean Facebook doesn’t know how to spy on users — even if the company swears it won’t use the technology.
I didn’t trust them before this patent.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Little House on the Racist Prairie.
Call them cranks. Laugh all you want. Consider the ALSC kooks — but this latest effort to eradicate Laura Ingalls Wilder from our collective culture should scare you to death.
It means the modern Left isn’t afraid of anything in their effort to fundamentally transform America. No target is too beloved by Americans to slow these gangsters down. No hill is too high for them to climb. No matter how many millions and millions of Americans love the Little House books and the 1970s TV series, the Left will target it — and anything else that promotes core American values of self-reliance, independence, and endless possibilities.
The ALSC seeks to airbrush Wilder out of our American consciousness for two proffered justifications: the treatment of Indians in the books; and a minstrel show that appears in Little Town on the Prairie.
These are just pretexts, for reasons I’ll explain shortly.
Read the whole thing.
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