JIM BOVARD: After pointlessly groping countless Americans, the TSA is keeping a secret watchlist of those who fight back.

Naturally, the TSA’s official definition of troublemaking goes well beyond punching its officers. According to a confidential memo, any behavior that is “offensive and without legal justification” can land a traveler on the list, as can any “challenges to the safe and effective completion of screening.” Anyone who has ever “loitered” near a checkpoint could also make the list. So could any woman who pushes a screener’s hands away from her breasts.

The memo would be more accurate if it stated that anyone who fails to unquestioningly submit to all the TSA’s demands would be found guilty of insubordination. As an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, Hugh Handeyside, told the Washington Post, the policy gives the agency wide latitude to “blacklist people arbitrarily and essentially punish them for asserting their rights.” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey) expressed similar worry. “I am concerned about the civil-liberty implications of such a list,” she said.

The watchlist would seem less perilous if the TSA were not one of most incompetent agencies on Earth.

It isn’t like Jim to be so generous in his evaluation of government agencies.

Related (From Ed): Reason TV’s Remy performs “The Longest Time (TSA Version):”

THIS IS CNN: Trump whips up immigration storm over children.

Meanwhile: New York Times asks, “Did the Trump Administration Separate Immigrant Children From Parents and Lose Them?”

And: Republicans’ inhumanity at the border reveals their grand scam.

However: Trump Falsely Slammed for Obama-Era ‘Baby Deportation Bus’ and Photos of Children in Cages.

And Rich Lowry explains: “As usual, the outrage obscures more than it illuminates, so it’s worth walking through what’s happening here.”

For the longest time, illegal immigration was driven by single males from Mexico. Over the last decade, the flow has shifted to women, children, and family units from Central America. This poses challenges we haven’t confronted before and has made what once were relatively minor wrinkles in the law loom very large.

The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.

Who’s whipping up what?

SPENGLER: The Safest Country for European Jews? Try Hungary.

Ironic, given how much grief the Hungarian government gets from its “betters” in Berlin and Paris.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): You really have to read the opening paragraph:

Last Friday evening I put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue maintained by the Budapest Chabad. After violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public. The French community issued such warnings years ago. Belgian TV could not find a single Jew in Brussels willing to wear a kippah in public. I walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at my kippah twice. At services I met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and shtreimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants.

Ouch.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Former ACLU President: Obama Was ‘Terrible President’ On Free Speech Issues.

Former ACLU president and author Nadine Strossen made the remark during a phone interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation about the ACLU’s efforts with regard to free speech on college campuses going back to the 1990s.

“I still think a lot of liberals aren’t aware [of] what a terrible president [Obama] was,” Strossen told TheDCNF, alluding to the fact that the former president used the Espionage Act to pursue whistleblowers more times than all previous presidents had combined. But she also praised Obama for encouraging students to engage in discussion.

“I would say many people are more deeply engaged about politics and more concerned about their civil liberties,” the former ACLU president said, when asked to compare the state of free speech on campus under Obama to that under President Donald Trump.

People should be concerned about their civil liberties under any Administration, but the media only gets them whipped up about abuses – real or imaginary — by one side.

ALLIES: French magazine harassed for asking if Erdogan is a new Hitler. “Le Point says it has been subject to ‘insults, intimidation and anti-Semitic slurs’ over cover labeling Turkish leader ‘the dictator’.”

Police were deployed in the Pontet suburb of the southern city of Avignon over the weekend after a group of pro-Erdogan activists attempted to remove, then cover up advertisements for the magazine at newsstands.

Another poster of the front cover — a portrait of Erdogan above the headline “The Dictator. How far will Erdogan go?” — was targeted at a newspaper kiosk in the town of Valence on Sunday, Le Point said.

Donald Trump gets that or worse almost weekly, but I can’t seem to recall any police being deployed over it.

TERROR: Gunman Kills Female Police Officers, Bystander in Belgium, Allegedly Shouts ‘Allahu Akbar’ (VIDEO).

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Babies in Cage-Prisons and Much, Much More. “Ivanka mocked for ‘tone deaf’ tweet The tweet was a picture with her and her son. It’s tone-deaf because Trump is putting children in cage-prisons, according to CNN.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How to hear (and delete) every conversation your Amazon Alexa has recorded.

First, open the Alexa app on your smart device. Tap the hamburger icon on the top left side of the screen to open the menu options. Click on the Settings menu, then find History.

Here, you’ll be able to browse all the commands you’ve ever asked of Alexa, from timers to music requests to general internet queries. You can also sort the results by date. Sometimes you may even see just a line item that says “Alexa,” for those times you may have mentioned the assistant’s name but didn’t mean to actually use it.

You may notice a few instances where the Alexa app notes a “text not available.” Click on this and you can listen to a recording of what you or someone in your household said that prompted the Echo to listen to your current conversation. In the case of our Weekend Editor, Andrew Liptak, his Echo device recorded a snippet of his mother-in-law teasing his son, saying “Alexa is going to take over your house.” In the app, Alexa concluded that the audio was not intended for the assistant, and the speaker did not return a response.

If you are uncomfortable having any particular recording in your Alexa history, you can delete it on an individual basis, or go to the Amazon’s Manage Your Content and Devices page to wipe it entirely. The company, of course, cautions that doing so “may degrade your Alexa experience.”

If I’m reading this correctly: Amazon has made it Easy for Alexa to record you, and a hassle for you to delete; and threatens reduced functionality if you do.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela warns businesses not to halt payments amid currency overhaul.

Socialist President Nicolas Maduro said in March the bolivar currency would be redenominated on June 4, and the central bank has been tweeting pictures of the new banknotes emblazoned with Venezuelan historical figures.

But the banks have not received the new bills and have not had a chance to adjust cash machines for them, according to two finance industry sources.

Opposition critics say Maduro is at risk of repeating the chaos of late 2016, when the government withdrew the largest bill from circulation, sparking long lines, looting and protests that led to at least three deaths.

Maduro is knocking three zeroes off the bolivar in an effort to hide the country’s estimated 14,000% inflation rate. Of course, playing games with the currency only adds to the economic uncertainty which helps cause… inflation.

Meanwhile: EU to ‘swiftly’ hit Venezuela with sanctions over election.

Why bother? And why give Maduro another scapegoat?

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MASSES: Italy’s Establishment Vetoes the Populists.

BLUE WAVE? Dem money floods Calif. primaries to avert electoral disaster.

The total outside spending in those June 5 primary races had eclipsed more than $8 million as of Friday, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by The Hill. The high-dollar spending is in the three GOP-held seats represented by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and retiring Reps. Darrell Issa and Ed Royce, all of which are viewed as potential pickup opportunities for Democrats.

California’s “jungle” primary system pits all candidates, regardless of party, against one another in a single primary, with the top two vote-getters moving on to the general election. Democrats fear that crowded Democratic fields will split their party’s vote in some races, allowing Republicans to take both election slots.

Now outside groups are spending heavily in the races in an attempt to avert Democratic shutouts.

Given that California Democrats created the jungle primary system in order to further marginalize Republicans, the irony is schadenfreudelicious.

CHAOS: Brazil Trucker Strike Worsens As Petrobras Workers Plan Walkout.

The protests, triggered by a 50% spike in fuel prices over the last year, resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency across most major cities as shelves run bare and vital supplies dwindle. Airports have reported running out of fuel, hospitals are running out of supplies, and public transport and trash collection have been reduced or halted across the country. Some food prices have also spiked as supplies dwindle. As we noted on Friday, a lack of livestock feed threatens a billion chickens and 20 million pigs who may starve to death.

Now, after deploying the military to physically unblock roads and several last-ditch measures to seek a resolution Sunday night, President Michel Temer has a new problem on his hands; Petrobras workers are about to go on strike starting May 30 – demanding that the company fire CEO Pedro Parente and permanently lower fuel prices. The company said on Friday that they have no plans to remove Parente.

Although oil prices remain on the upswing, the publicly traded shares of Petrobras (which is majority-owned by the Brazilian government) have lost 35% of their value in the last two weeks.

RED ON RED: Blankenship Could Capsize GOP Plan to Sink Manchin. “Spurned in the GOP primary, ‘Dark Lord of Coal’ has vowed to run for Senate as a candidate of the Constitution Party this November.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Mark Zuckerberg Envisions a Facebook ‘Supreme Court.’

NO. The most unexpected (and welcome) guest at your next cookout: Carrot dogs.

THAT’S NOT FUNNY: Why comedians say college audiences can’t take a joke.

IT ALWAYS SEEMED TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: ‘Impossible’ EM drive may actually be impossible after all.

The idea, championed by inventor Roger Shawyer, uses trapped microwaves in a conical cavity. Previous tests by NASA showed that the microwaves bouncing off the walls of the cavity appeared to produce enough force to push the cavity in one direction. However, a group from TU Dresden in Germany has been unable to replicate these results, or at least they have, but not for the reasons NASA originally thought.

The German team copied the NASA experiment exactly, piping microwaves into the cavity, using lasers to monitor movement and a spring to measure thrust. The setup did indeed produce thrust, as indicated by the spring. But when the researchers positioned the microwaves so they definitely could ­not produce thrust in the direction of the spring, the drive pushed just as hard. Furthermore, the same degree of thrust remained even after power was cut in half. So clearly, there are other factors at play.

The team suggests that the thrust may actually be produced by an interaction between the cables that power the microwave amplifier and Earth’s magnetic field. If this is the case, it won’t work in space

Oh, well.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): You know how to find out it it’ll work in space? Test it in space.

MITCH MCCONNELL: ‘Nothing Particularly Surprising’ About Info Revealed in Contentious FBI Briefing.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? Chuck Todd’s Daily TDS. “To watch an episode of Chuck Todd’s show is to see a cavalcade of liberal journalists work through Trump Derangement Syndrome on-air.”

WOW: Watch Safehaven Marine’s Stealthy Barracuda Patrol Boat Undergo Intense Boarding Trials.

JOY ANN REID AND A hilariously self-serving explanation for why Obama didn’t pardon Jack Johnson.

OH: Soros spends big in California’s DA races in bid to reshape criminal justice system.

WE ALWAYS KNEW SHE WAS A FRAUD: Rachel Dolezal Charged With Welfare Fraud. “Investigators say she failed to report $84K.”

NO PROBLEM, PROVIDED THEY ASK THIS OF EVERYONE: Facebook Demands Driver’s License, Social Security Number to Run Ad for Obama Expose Book.

STEVEN WILLS: Why Peacetime Naval Buildups Are Difficult.

There has been much gnashing of teeth and complaint in response to the U.S. Navy’s slow build toward a goal of 355 ships. Peacetime naval buildups by free societies have never been simple undertakings. Such governments usually retire large numbers of warships in search of “peace dividends,” from which recovery is often a challenge. If ill-timed, they can result in large numbers of warships that are out of date before they complete even a decade of service, or need to be retired before the end of the service lives to cut costs. Getting to the right numbers of ships, especially in a period of tight finance may mean holding onto old ships well past their expected service life. Past examples of peacetime buildups by the British Royal Navy and U.S. Navy suggest that while getting to larger numbers of ships is possible, the costs can be prohibitive; especially in an environment of rapid, technological advancement.

In desperate times, armies can be trained and thrown into battle in a hurry. The cost, in terms of blood lost, is high — but it can be done.

The same is not true for navies and, in these days of fifth generation jets and bombers, air forces. We cut both to the bone — and beyond — following victory in the Cold War, and never built back up (or even sped up procurement) despite constant low-level warfare since 9/11/2001. Now that China and Russia are getting frisky again, we have naval and air forces which are too few, too old, and stretched too thin.

So it may turn out that there’s nothing more expensive than a peace dividend.