Instagram blocks Larry Elder

Image credit: www.mic.com

Another conservative is blocked. This time it’s Larry Elder on Instagram’s blacklist. Elder reported on PJ Media:

After averaging 450 new followers a day since March, when I became active on Instagram, my number of new followers suddenly stopped growing. Dead stop. The count read 68.9K. It remained 68.9K for over two weeks. Then, the number dropped by 100. Meanwhile, over the same two-week period, on Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, I continued gaining hundreds of new followers per day.

. . .

After following Instagram's complaint procedure to no avail, after writing a column about my frozen follower number, after consulting with several people who made contact or tried to make contact with the company, I received a polite letter from a Facebook representative identified as working for its "U.S. Politics & Government Outreach" team. 

. . .

After following Instagram's complaint procedure to no avail, after writing a column about my frozen follower number, after consulting with several people who made contact or tried to make contact with the company, I received a polite letter from a Facebook representative identified as working for its "U.S. Politics & Government Outreach" team. [Rep. made several "innocent" lame excuses.]

. . .

Elder then references Robert Epstein’s testimony before Congress; Cleveland Tea Party reported on that recently (go here and here).

. . .

[Rick] Chapman, the hi-tech expert, does not buy the Facebook rep's innocent explanation. Chapman said: "The answer is because they can. And they're not stopping. This attack on you is an example of how bold they're becoming." The challenge is for conservatives to invent and use alternative platforms not subject to liberal bias. For instance, in its June 2019 press release, a startup called Safe Space said it established its social media site for "conservatives frustrated over the censorship taking place on mainstream platforms." Safe Space's CEO said: "Instead of begging Twitter and Facebook to change, or pretending Reddit isn't a puppet for the Chinese, (we decided to) find a solution through capitalism. We've decided to offer a competing platform where no voices will be unfairly targeted."

Full article is here. I’ll ask our household's web expert to have a look at the Safe Space option.

# # #

You Are Being Tracked

image credit: digitalmarketingnetwork

Via Instapundit, a reporter at The New York Times did some searches to determine the extent of digital tracking. Farhad Manjoo’s article, “I Visited 47 Sites. Hundreds of Trackers Followed Me,” starts off:

Earlier this year, an editor working on The Times’s Privacy Project asked me whether I’d be interested in having all my digital activity tracked, examined in meticulous detail and then published — you know, for journalism. “Hahaha,” I said, and then I think I made an “at least buy me dinner first” joke, but it turned out he was serious. What could I say? I’m new here, I like to help, and, conveniently, I have nothing whatsoever at all to hide.

Like a colonoscopy, the project involved some special prep. I had to install a version of the Firefox web browser that was created by privacy researchers to monitor how websites track users’ data. For several days this spring, I lived my life through this Invasive Firefox, which logged every site I visited, all the advertising tracking servers that were watching my surfing and all the data they obtained. 

Then I uploaded the data to my colleagues at The Times, who reconstructed my web sessions into the gloriously invasive picture of my digital life you see here. (The project brought us all very close; among other things, they could see my physical location and my passwords, which I’ve since changed.)

What did we find? The big story is as you’d expect: that everything you do online is logged in obscene detail, that you have no privacy. And yet, even expecting this, I was bowled over by the scale and detail of the tracking; even for short stints on the web, when I logged into Invasive Firefox just to check facts and catch up on the news, the amount of information collected about my endeavors was staggering.

. . .

The full article is here. (I had no trouble accessing it, although I understand articles in the NY Times can sometimes disappear behind a paywall if you’ve accessed a quota of pages.) The takeaway: we have no privacy. 

# # #

David Harsanyi on The Tea Party

David Harsanyi takes a look at the inception of the Tea Party and its activities today (“The Left Can’t Stop Lying About The Tea Party”). He concludes:

. . .

The Tea Party, whether some of their champions later turned out to be hypocrites or not, didn’t want to change the Republican Party as much as they wanted to force conservative politicians to keep their promises. The movement initially backed a number of terrible candidates, but it learned.

In the end, the Tea Party successfully re-energized Republicans, who went on to win two wave elections and stifle Obama’s presidency for six years.  Whether the movement was a long-term failure, as the Times argues, is a debatable contention.

One things is true, though: the majority of Tea Partiers were white. You know what that means, right? And, as those of us who covered the Obama administration remember, no matter how historically detailed or ideologically anchored your position might be, the very act of opposing a black president was going to be depicted as act of bigotry.

This cheap and destructive rhetoric now dominates virtually every contemporary debate, most of which have absolutely nothing, even tangentially, to do with race. It’s a kind of rhetoric, in fact, that now retroactively dominates our debates, as well.

Full article at The Federalist is here.

# # #

Air Show here over Labor Day weekend

image credit: pat dooley photography

Labor Day weekend is coming up, and that means the 2019 Cleveland Air Show. Expect to hear and watch the Thunderbirds rehearsing later this week.

# # #

Socialism in a nutshell

Mark Levin’s guests on Sunday evening were talking about socialism in general, and free "Medicare for All" in particular. Prof. Robert Lawson explained the fallacy:

If you want to find out how expensive something is, make it free.

# # #

Neverland

photo credit: pinterest 

(it's Sandy Duncan as Peter Pan in the 1979 Broadway revival) 

As a kid, I saw the television and the stage versions of the musical Peter Pan. One of the memorable songs is “Never Never Land.” The opening lyric is

I have a place where dreams are born,

And time is never planned.

It's not on any chart,

You must find it with your heart.

Never Never Land.

And then:

You'll have a treasure if you stay there,

More precious far than gold.

For once you have found your way there,

You can never, never grow old.

An essay at American Thinker by Deana Chadwell was featured on the Lucianne aggregator yesterday. It is indeed a must-read, and its title is “The Left's Neverland.” It is a perceptive, if scary take on the emotional ideology of today’s liberal, especially young liberals. The essay begins:

I hear more and more frequently concerns about an impending civil war. It is certain that something momentous is taking place; the signs are all around us, but I’m not at all sure that the something will turn out to be two sides of the same country warring over principles, like the Civil War, which was mainly about slavery and states’ rights. Now, we’re up to our nose-piercings in politically polarizing problems and the leftist contingent of the country doesn’t even like America anymore.  If we come to open warfare, it will be as two separate nations battling it out. Over what? Not over policies, not over territory, not even over moral issues. We will be fighting over reality.

The left, which I used to see as misguided but mostly benign, has built for itself -- because it knows it can’t convince Americans to throw away freedom -- a make-believe utopian country. It has constructed, ex nihilo, a nation that has no borders, no laws, no specific language, and no recognizable morality. When Barrack Obama said he wanted to “fundamentally change” America, he wasn’t bluffing. When he’d stick out his chin and say, ”That’s not who we are,” he wasn’t talking about us; he was talking about the citizens of his make-believe land which I’ll name “Neverland.”

The name is suitable in many ways. In the first place, it isn’t real and never will be.

The full article is here. Highly recommended.

# # #

:Michelle Malkin is on Google’s Blacklist

Michelle Malkin reports on her own experiences with Big Tech censorship. Her report is at The Daily Signal. Here are a few extracts:

I learned last week from a Silicon Valley whistleblower, who spoke with the intrepid investigative team at Project Veritas, that my namesake news and opinion website is on a Google blacklist.

Thank goodness the Big Tech giant hasn’t taken over the newspaper syndication business yet. Twenty years of column writing have allowed me to break news and disseminate my opinions without the tyranny of social justice algorithms downgrading or whitewashing my words.

But given the toxic metastasis of social media in every aspect of our lives, especially for those who make their living exercising the First Amendment, it may only be a matter of time before this column somehow falls prey to the Google Ministry of Truth, too.

. . .

My apparent sin: Independently growing a large organic following of readers on the internet who share my mainstream conservative views on immigration, jihad, education, social issues, economic policy, faith, and more.

. . .

Indeed, my first substantiated censorship by Google/YouTube, which was covered by The New York Times, occurred 13 years ago in 2006. Around that time, it also became clear to me that humans, not algorithms, were manipulating Google Images to prioritize unspeakably crude photoshopped images of me disseminated by left-wing misogynists. And not long after, my heavily trafficked blog posts started dropping off the search engine radar altogether.

Read the full report here.

# # #

Land of Hope: book review

Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story 

by Wilfred M. McClay

Philip Tervian’s review at Commentary concludes:

. . . [McClay] begins at the beginning—the archaeological evidence of our aboriginal inhabitants—and like most American histories, McClay’s tends to pass a little quickly over the first century-and-a-half of European settlement. But this is a minor complaint. His description of America on the eve of revolution is perceptive and succinct, and capacious as well. The reader never doubts the author’s perspective on the colonists’ revolt, or British government in America, but he tells the story with illuminating clarity and, above all, fair-mindedness. The answer to ignorance is not indoctrination but knowledge.

This virtue in the writing of history is not necessarily self-evident. The American Revolution, like any such episode, was a complicated matter, reaching back in history and forward in effect; and both sides—one is tempted to say all sides—were benighted and heroic, generous and arbitrary, products of their various places and time. George Washington was not without his flaws, and the Loyalists were not without their reasons. McClay sets all this out in crisp detail, balancing his judgment in conjunction with the evidence, flattering his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Which is what distinguishes this from other history texts. The present sits not in judgment but inquiry. And to the extent that we can understand people and events in circumstances far removed from our own experience, the past is revealed in Land of Hope to the present, without prejudice. The dramas and their actors—the drafting of the Constitution, Andrew Jackson, westward expansion, John C. Calhoun, the Mexican War, Samuel Gompers, women’s suffrage, Woodrow Wilson, the Great Crash, Ronald Reagan—are given the chance to speak for themselves in explaining themselves to modern sensibilities.

This is especially useful in contending with subjects—slavery and its relative significance in national life, the Civil War and its aftermath, the condition of African Americans in their own country—that routinely disrupt the historical profession, and are just as routinely distorted by ideology. This is no small matter, and no small achievement. McClay’s skill in furnishing context to emotion, in introducing modern presumption to past evidence, puts the history of the American republic in a new light by revealing its inward and outward complexity. This makes Land of Hope important, compelling, essential reading.

“Nothing about America better defines its distinctive character than the ubiquity of hope,” he writes, “a sense that the way things are initially given to us cannot be the final word about them, that we can never settle for that.” I hope he’s right.

Land of Hope sounds like a must-read. Full review is here. Amazon listing is here.

# # #

Reducing voter fraud

Hans von Spakovsky is The Heritage Foundation’s manager of its Election Law Reform Initiative. He has some proposals to reduce voter fraud:

. . .

Fraudsters can steal votes and change election outcomes in several ways, including: voting in someone else’s name, registering in multiple locations to vote multiple times in the same election, voting even though they’re not eligible because they’re felons or noncitizens, or paying or intimidating people to vote for certain candidates.

Unfortunately, many on the left are attempting to make election fraud easier by fighting laws that require an ID to vote. They’ve pushed to get noncitizens and jailed inmates to vote. And they’ve sued states that have tried to purge their voter rolls of people registered in multiple states.

How can we fix the problem?

Since states control much of the electoral process, they must pass laws requiring government-issued IDs to vote. That ensures people aren’t stealing others’ identities and their right to vote.

States should join voter registration cross-check programs to identify voters registered in multiple places. One cross-check program has identified hundreds of thousands of potential duplicate registrations across 30 states as well as evidence of illegal double voting.

States should also compare voter rolls with government records to identify convicted felons and noncitizens who should be removed from the rolls. And the federal government should cooperate with these efforts and make Department of Homeland Security and other databases available to state officials.

. . .

His article is here.  Note: In June 2018, the Supreme Court Upheld a controversial Ohio voter purge law. 

# # #

A point of definition: Antifa

photo credit: www.dw.com

Dan Bongino has defined the otherwise misnamed Antifa (via Whatfinger.com):

Antifa is Anti-First Amendment NOT anti-Fascist.

# # #

Inspiring Cartoon of the Day

 Ben Garrison cartoon at grrrgraphics.com via Conservative Treehouse

From the grrrgraphics website (a sort of an extended caption):

Citizen journalists are patriots who fight for TRUTH every day, whether as journalists like Thomas Paine or meme creators like Betsy Ross. It was Betsy’s meme that the colonists rallied around as the symbol of American independence. Those first American patriots put it all on the line for truth and freedom, just like modern citizen journalists who are proudly raising the flag.

The_Donald on Redditt has given a good foothold to plant the flagpole as Rush Limbaugh and Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse are raising the original Flag to its upright position, reinstating the intentions of the first American rebels and displaying the political union of the Original 13 Colonies.

Thomas Paine and Betsy Ross (American Intelligence Media) honor the flag and are ready for the war of independence from British tyranny. They have invited patriots around the world to join them in the pursuit of global peace and prosperity, freedom and liberty.

The “fake news” media is in ashes and shambles on the ground due to their continuous lies, propaganda, and deceit spewed on moral and decent people everywhere who reject their falsehoods and evil.

The opposition party’s fake news machines are spent, broken, and crumbled into a trash-heap of garbage.

. . .

More here. 

RELATED: This cartoon is Conservative Treehouse’s illustration for his post titled “The Restoration Alliance.” See here.

# # #

Re-writing History

 image credit: onenewsnow.com

Whether it’s Confederate monuments being torn down, or our language being corrupted into Orwellian terms, or educational institutions from K-12 to advanced learning becoming re-education centers of indoctrination, or jaw-dropping corruptions in the media and government at all levels, these are all interlocking pieces in a master plan. Thaddeus G. McCotter at American Greatness connects all the dots. He starts off: 

Some time ago, I noted the irreconcilable difference between the Left and the rest of America: the majority of our fellow citizens believe America is an inherently good nation that continues its pursuit of a more perfect union; the Left believes America is an inherently evil nation that must be transformed fundamentally into an oppressive socialist state—at best.

For the Left to win this existential argument, it must distort and revile America’s history to destroy the truth of American Exceptionalism. If the past is evil, the present has no choice but to reject America’s history and its defenders; and to embrace the dishonest leftist ideology and the agenda of those who loathe America.

This is a dangerous devolution of the classical American political paradigm, in which both antagonists, conservatives and liberals, agreed America was an exceptional, fundamentally decent nation but differed about how to effectuate a more perfect union. This devolution has several causes, but notable is the incestuous relationship between the leftist media and left-wing academics. 

. . .

What one can expect is this: the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.”

According to Mara Gay of the New York Times’ editorial board, the 1619 Project “[i]n the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”

. . .

Now one understands why the Left rejects the Betsy Ross flag as a symbol of hate. Yet the hate is theirs, not ours. Ergo, why would anyone who rejects the hateful Left subsidize it with their hard-earned money, be it in subsidizing the Left’s brainwashing emporiums or subscribing to its propagandizing fanzines? As the esteemed Thomas Sowell instructs: “We are among the biggest fools in history if we keep on paying people to make us hate each other.”

The entire article is here.

Related: Lest the reader despair, a Millenial named David Grasso gets it, and there’s hope for everyone. From Mr. Grassos’s New York Post article:

. . . The new crop of self-proclaimed socialist candidates is promising a smorgasbord of programs that are intended to get us out of our “struggle-bus” reality.

Given such a journey, it is easy to see why socialism seduces young Americans. We desperately need change if we are ever going to progress as a generation. The problem is, what the socialists are proposing — more government — is exactly the opposite of what we need. In fact, many of the most prominent obstacles we have faced are the result, at least in part, of heavy-handed government interference.

. . .

I understand why millennials are seduced by populist politicians who promise a better life, but they shouldn’t fall for it.

Growing government is expensive and inefficient, and the government machinery already in place is frequently dysfunctional and prone to be hijacked by special interests.

In the end, our generation will be liable for the staggering bill for these programs. Nothing is free, and working millennials will stand to lose trillions of dollars of wealth if we sleepwalk our way into socialism.

Truth is, young people need exactly the opposite of socialism — pro-growth policies and restrained, common-sense regulation. This will create more economic opportunities and more avenues into the middle class. Socialist policies will only choke economic opportunity and make our tough existence far worse.

Sometimes it’s helpful to read somebody else’s perspectives to prepare for your next conversation with a liberal.

# # #

Ohio energy legislation: northern Ohio impact

image credit: 123rf

Energy consumers in Northern Ohio will probably see lower monthly bills, but environmentalists insisting on renewables will not be happy. The Institute for Energy Research reports at the Canada Free Press:

Ohio’s New Energy Bill

Lawmakers in Ohio have chosen to rescue two existing nuclear plants and two existing coal plants in lieu of mandates on renewable energy and energy efficiency, and as a result, lower electricity prices are expected for electricity consumers. Renewable energy will have to enter the market on its own merits once renewable energy reaches 8.5 percent of electricity generated in the state—up from about 3 percent today—and once federal subsidies expire. Residential charges will be lowered by over $2.00 per month by the legislative change and grid reliability is expected to be enhanced. The Ohio bill is contrary to what most states are doing and it will be an interesting exercise to contrast future electricity prices here and in surrounding states that are continuing their renewable mandates and forcing new capital expenditures because of mandates and subsidies.

The new law in Ohio subsidizes two nuclear power plants. Residential customers will pay an 85-cent charge on their monthly bills and large industrial customers will pay up to $2,400. The surcharge will produce about $170 million a year; $150 million of that will be used to subsidize the two nuclear power plants‚Äî908 megawatt Davis-Besse, outside of Toledo, and 1,268 megawatt Perry, northeast of Cleveland, which will close within two years without the subsidy. The remaining $20 million will be divided between six existing solar projects in rural areas of the state. The subsidies are approved through 2026 and would total about $1 billion. The charge will start January 2021. Nuclear power accounts for 15 percent of the state’s energy generation and generates 85 percent of its carbon-free energy.

Read the rest here.

# # #

Google and the Whistleblower

American Thinker contributor Peter Barry Chowka has the update (“Whistleblower: American Thinkerwas on Google’s blacklist of news sites”):

Buried deep in the extensive trove of internal documents documenting Google’s onerous censorship policies is this gem: American Thinker was on the dominant tech giant’s list of “blacklisted” news websites.

The source of the leak is identified as “Google Insider Zachary Vorhies.” On August 14, Vorhies outed himself as the leaker in a video posted at Project Veritas, which published the documents. Among the hundreds of documents is one identified as a news “blacklist” -- titled “Manual list of sites excluded from appearing as Google Now stories.” Sure enough, among the list of 400 or so sites (mostly from the conservative right but some on the left) -- under the subhead “sites with high user block rate” -- is americanthinker.com.

. . .

Vorhies had been providing Project Veritas with documents he downloaded as a Google engineer for more than a year. He decided to go public this week “after he says Google allegedly called the police to perform a ‘wellness check’ on him.” The story, including a 20-minute long video of Vorhies, is a compelling one and is documented in the August 14 release from Project Veritas.

According to Vorhies:

I gave the documents to Project Veritas, I had been collecting the documents for over a year. And the reason why I collected these documents was because I saw something dark and nefarious going on with the company and I realized that there were going to not only tamper with the elections, but use that tampering with the elections to essentially overthrow the United States.

Hyperbole? I don’t think so. More at American Thinker here. The list of blacklisted blogs is here. Many of my favorite bookmarked blogs are on the list. The report with video at Project Veritas is here. Google’s attempts to intimidate the whistleblower are chilling.

# # #

74 years ago today

USS Missouri (pat dooley photography)

On this day 74 years ago, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending World War II. A few weeks later, a formal surrender ceremony took place on the USS Missouri battleship, in Tokyo Bay. From our visit to the USS Missouri, now a museum at Pearl Harbor:

# # #

Leaving The Democrats

cartoon credit:  granitegrok.com

Anthony Keith contributed a piece entitled “Leaving The Democrats” at American Thinker. He concludes:

I never went to college, I am totally self-taught.  I am a doer of many trades and master of none.  I have had a great life in the greatest country on earth.  All along the way, the Democrats have stepped on me, taxed me more, lied to me, called me names, and demanded I give up my rights.  Democrats were the ones pushing environmental causes at the expense of humans and government takeover of healthcare.  They have mismanaged everything they get their hands on, and then blame others for their own deeds.  I watch them lie and cheat and twist words.  

Democrats have alienated their own base to the point they have to argue for foreigners to come into this country illegally in order to vote for Democrats, mainly by calling those of us opposed to this "racist."

In all fairness, the weak Republicans in our government have hardly stood in their way.  But that is another day, another rant.

I am now called racist, homophobic, misogynist, and Islamaphobic.  A gun-toting, Bible-believing bitter clinger.  A deplorable.  A white nationalist.  Nazi. I can’t remember all of my Democrat party subtitles.

But I am middle class. I have been given nothing by our government and have given too much to it.  And it always wants more, telling me I have to pay my fair share.  It is a sad state when you get to a point in life of maximum dollars earned that it is taken away by higher tax brackets and the loss of deductions.

I will never vote for anyone advocating for more government control.  Or for anyone who is trying to denigrate me by name-calling or label-making.  The reason is my life.

The entire column is here, and it is particularly useful since it traces his family’s background as “Roosevelt Democrats” and their underlying values.

# # #

Bernie's idea of a Grand Slam

How socialism works (via Power Line)

# # #

Medicare is going broke

image credit: nextavenue.org

Betsy McCaughey has been one of the most informed critics of healthcare policy ever since Obamacare reared its ugly head. Her latest column at American Spectator sounds the alarm over Medicare Part A and the Democrat candidates’ promises of Medicare For All (titled "Democrats To Seniors: Drop Dead”):

Medicare is going broke,
and the Dems’ presidential candidates couldn’t care less

Baby boomers beware. If you’re in your 50s or 60s and you’re counting on Medicare to pay your future hospital bills, you’re in for a shock. Medicare Part A — the fund that pays hospitals and nursing homes — is running out of money. A mere seven years from now, it will no longer have enough to pay your providers’ bills in full. 

The Medicare Trustees sounded the alarm in June, urging Congress to act “as soon as possible” to protect people “already dependent” on the program.

Good advice, but don’t expect most politicians to take it. The Democrats running for president are in fantasy land, proposing to expand Medicare to millions of younger people or even to the entire population through “Medicare for All.” Never mind Medicare’s insolvency. That’s like a family that can’t pay its mortgage out shopping for a mega-mansion.

. . .

Currently, Trump is using his only option. He’s reducing benefit costs. Any other remedy would require Congress’ cooperation, which is unlikely.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other backers of Medicare for All are making big promises with no way to pay. 

Read the rest here.

# # #

Protect your rights against those claiming a crisis

Our First Amendment rights are at risk because of corruption in Big Tech, and our Second Amendment rights are at risk because progressives are using crises and tragedy to go for the guns. Prof. William Jacobson puts both risks in perspective at Legal Insurrection:

Every time I think the media-Democrat frenzy could not get any more frenzied, it gets more frenzied.

How seamlessly they have transitioned from almost three years of Russia-collusion-mania to the current frenzy claiming that anyone and everyone who supports Donald Trump is a white supremacist.

Trump supporters now, according the narrative, are both Putin-puppet traitors AND Hitler-wannabees. It’s all so dishonest by design; the leaders of this charge don’t actually believe it, they cynically manipulate their media and social media power to drive their supporters, many of whom do believe it, into hating political opponents as an ideology. MSNBC is ground zero for this manipulative denigration of half the population.

If it only were dishonest, it would be bad enough. But it’s worse because it now has become a hunt to find heretics for public shaming. This is not new, but now it is legitimized as an anti-Trump strategy by the Resistance. Congressman Joaquin Castro naming names in his community, including retirees and homemakers, is a symptom of a culture of total political war on the left. Other symptoms include the attempt to deplatform non-liberal voices from the internet and airwaves, led by well-funded groups like Media Matters.

More here. And the Action Alert from my previous blog on proposed red flag legislation is here.

# # #

Action Alert: red flag legislation

Image credit: medium.com

Cleveland Tea Party rarely comments on issues such as abortion or gun control. But in the wake of the two shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Sen. Lindsay Graham has proposed legislation that begins the march toward gun control and confiscation.  However, yesterday's report in The Hill references his proposed legislation that “would create a federal grant program” – a bill that expands, rather than shrinks the federal government; a core Tea Party value is constitutionally limited government.

The bill introduces subjective “criteria” concerning the so-called “red flags.” Radius at Sparta Report has the definition:

A red flag law-also known as a gun violence restraining order-essentially allows a judge to order police to confiscate an individual’s weapons if that person is deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Sparta Report goes onto to explain why he thinks red flag laws are a bad idea and don't work. 

So here’s part of The Hill’s report:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Monday that he will introduce bipartisan legislation encouraging states to create "red flag" laws and that President Trump is "very supportive" of the idea. 

Graham, in a statement, said he has reached a deal with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on a bill that would start a federal grant program to help and encourage states to create " 'red flag' protection order" laws, which are meant to make it easier for law enforcement to identify mentally ill people who should be banned from purchasing guns.

“These grants will be given to law enforcement so they can hire and consult with mental health professionals to better determine which cases need to be acted upon. This grant program also requires robust due process and judicial review. It does allow for quick action," Graham said in the statement. 

The full report is here. 

So the bill is a "’red flag' protection order” to facilitate “law enforcement so they can hire and consult with mental health professionals.” What could go wrong?  How about the mental health professionals who published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. None has examined President Trump in person, and any one of them could “identify mentally ill people who should be banned from purchasing guns.” People such as President Trump or members of his family? Or anyone else with whom they disagree.

According to Katie Pavlich at Townhall, Sen. Graham stated that President Trump "seemed supportive." Any wiggle room there?

The Action Alert: call or email any of these offices if you have concerns about the red flag legislation or any other bill leading to expanding the federal government in general, and gun control in particular.

Sen. Lindsay Graham’s phone DC Office: (202) 224-5972

Sen. Lindsay Graham’s email page is here 

White House switchboard Comments #: 202-456-1111

White House email page is here

UPDATE: Add Gov. Mike DeWine and Sen. Rob Portman to the list.

Gov. Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357 or by email here

Sen. Rob Portman:  202-224-3353 or by email here

# # #

Mark Steyn is back on Tucker Carlson

photo credit: SteynOnline

Fox News has been moving slowly left, and the shift is more in evidence on the weekend programming (see, e.g., here). But the last time I commented on this subject, I noted with dismay the sudden disappearance of Mark Steyn as a twice-weekly guest on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show. I am pleased to say that in this instance, my concern was misplaced. Mr. Steyn was on an unannounced summer break and he returns to his Monday/Thursday appearances with Tucker this week, starting this evening. Good news.

# # #

Twitter: a virus of the mind?

Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Mr. Instapundit, has a think-piece on the Spectator; his subject is about one of the Big Tech giants, in this case Twitter. Here’s a sample:

Twitter . . . is tightly coupled. The ‘retweet’, ‘comment’, and ‘like’ buttons are immediate. A retweet sends a posting, no matter how angry or misinformed, to all the retweeter’s followers, who can then do the same to their followers, and so on, in a runaway chain reaction. Unlike blogs, little to no thought is required, and in practice very few people even follow the link (if there is one) to ‘read the whole thing’. According to a study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of people who share a link on social media don’t read the underlying story. . . .

. . .

You can reject Twitter’s toxicity by leaving the platform, as I did in the fall of 2018. But . . . this doesn’t really solve the problem: ‘Absent large-scale collective action by the political/media class to reject the platform, simply logging off Twitter is merely a personal defensive mechanism — a sometimes necessary mental-health break that all too often correlates with diminished influence in the national political debate.’ With Twitter, you can participate and be driven crazy – or you can stay sane, and lose influence. That’s a bad trade-off.

. . .

Rather than focusing on the content of what individuals post on social media, regulators might better focus on breaking up these behemoths, policing anticompetitive collusion among them, and in general ensuring that their powers are not abused. This approach, rooted in antitrust law, would raise no First Amendment or free speech problems, and would address many of the most significant complaints about social media.

As Mr. Instapundit is wont to say, read the whole thing – here.

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