Fake News misreports Salute to America

The headline: FAKE NEWS Caught AGAIN As They Attempt To Spin Yesterday’s D.C. Celebration As “Small”. DCWhispers reports -- and has photographic proof of Fake News (read: outright lies):

Despite a bit of damp and humid weather, tens of thousands cheered the President Trump-led Fourth of July celebration in Washington D.C. yesterday. It was a patriotic event enjoyed by young and old alike but clearly out of favor with the Trump-hating/America-hating, far-left media which is now once again spreading their own altered version of reality:

Many networks refused to cover the live event. Clearly, that makes lying about it to the American people even easier.

More here. Related: As Trump Salutes Air Force Flyover, CNN Cuts to Commercial.

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Salute to America : networks boycott

image credit: talkingpointsmemo.com

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has posted the Livestream links to today's Salute to America parade and festivities in DC -- and guess what? No mainstream television coverage. And I just checked C-SPAN, which lists coverage of President Trump's speech at 6pm, re-broadcast at 9pm, but not showing all the other events. So, here's Sundance:

ABC, CBS, NBC and MSNBC have all announced their refusal -and broadcast boycott- of any July 4th celebrations.  Yes, the U.S. media have fallen so far, they are now openly proclaiming their alignment with the anti-American political resistance. 

However, RSBN [already broadcasting as of 2pm], Fox10 Phoenix and OANN will all broadcast the patriotic events from Washington DC to celebrate Independence Day, including President Trump’s participation in the 2019 Salute to America.  Schedule of Events Here  – for Livestream Links click here and scroll down to one of the livestream screens.

Happy Independence Day!

Salute To America

photo credit: breitbart.com

Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection reports on tomorrow's "Salute To America":

President Donald Trump is certainly shaking things up in Washington, DC, on all levels, including its annual Independence Day celebration.

Before Trump, the festivities consisted mainly of music and fireworks. After Trump, the “Salute to America” will include tanks, fighter jets…and an extravaganza of fireworks.

“Big 4th of July in D.C. ‘Salute to America.’ The Pentagon & our great Military Leaders are thrilled to be doing this & showing to the American people, among other things, the strongest and most advanced Military anywhere in the World. Incredible Flyovers & biggest ever Fireworks!” the president tweeted Tuesday morning.

Mr. Trump confirmed to reporters Monday there will be tanks “stationed outside,” too.

“You’ve got to be pretty careful with the tanks because the roads have a tendency not to like to carry heavy tanks,” he told reporters Monday.

. . .

The event will also feature marching bands, fife and drum corps, floats, military units, giant balloons, and equestrian drill teams. The Blue Angels will be doing the flyover, and the fireworks (donated by Phantom Fireworks” and “Fireworks by Grucci”) will be one of the most spectacular sets the nation’s capital has seen.

Full report is here. The Independence Day parade and celebrations in DC will be broadcast on C-Span, and I will update with live stream links as soon as they are available. (The Hill reports that “MSNBC will not air the entirety of President Trump's planned "Salute to America" on July Fourth, instead opting to carry on with regularly scheduled news programming that may include clips of the event.”)

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Big Tech: alternatives to Google

image credit: https://www.naijaloaded.com.ng

Techspot (h/t Instapundit) has a “Complete List of Alternatives to all Google products.” Here’s the principal search engine section

With growing concerns over online privacy and securing personal data, more people than ever are considering alternatives to Google products. After all, Google’s business model essentially revolves around data collection and advertisements, both of which infringe on your privacy. More data means better (targeted) ads and more revenue. The company pulled in over $116 billion in ad revenue last year alone – and that number continues to grow.

But the word is getting out. A growing number of people are seeking alternatives to Google products that respect their privacy and data. This guide aims to be the most exhaustive resource available for documenting alternatives to Google product. So let’s get started (in no particular order or preference)...

Google search alternatives

When it comes to privacy, using Google search is not a good idea. When you use their search engine, Google is recording your IP address, search terms, user agent, and often a unique identifier, which is stored in cookies.

Here are ten alternatives to Google search:

StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).

Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.

MetaGer – An open source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.

SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.

Qwant – A private search engine based in France.

DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.

Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).

YaCy – A decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer search engine.

Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.

Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.

Note: With the exception of Mojeek, all of the private search engines above are technically metasearch engines, since they source their results from other search engines, such as Bing and Google.

Our household is trying out Mojeek; we’ve already started using StartPage and occasionally DuckDuckGo with good results. Techspot’s entire list of alternatives is here.

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Independence Day: on strike against Big Tech

image credit; economist.com

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, was on Tucker Carlson this evening to propose something all Big Tech users can do to start to chip away at the out-of-control companies.

On July 4 and 5, Sanger's designated days to make your statement, you can refrain from using your Facebook or Twitter or What’s App, etc. EXCEPT to share your displeasure with Big Tech on your social media.

You can also sign the Declaration of Digital Independence here (I had to try several times to access; traffic was heavy, so just wait a few minutes and try again). Since President Trump indicated to Tucker that his administration may be looking at potential action to rein in Big Tech, perhaps a strong showing on this Declaration will give President Trump additional leverage.

I’ll have more on this topic later this week.

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The Democrat debate: fun photo

A picture is worth a thousand words. Photo via Conservative Treehouse.

From the reader comments: "Perfectly shows the clowns best selling points!"

Click to embiggen or go the link, above.

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Andrew Sullivan on the Democrats’ Immigration Bubble

 photo credit: washingtontimes.com

I run hot and cold on Andrew Sullivan, but his analysis of U.S. immigration, refugee status, and asylum is worth the read. The full article is here. This extract is via Instapundit:

Take the tragic tale of Oscar Ramirez and his young daughter Valeria, the father and daughter captured in death in that heartbreaking photograph. Ramirez’s widow explained to the Washington Post why her husband wanted to move to America: He wanted “a better future for their girl.” This is an admirable goal, but it is classic economic immigration, and it would appear, based on what we know, that it has absolutely nothing to do with asylum. Here again is the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services definition: “Refugee status or asylum may be granted to people who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

But somehow the courts have decided that you qualify for asylum if there is simply widespread crime or violence where you live, and Ramirez was also going to use that argument as well. A government need not persecute you; you just have to experience an unsafe environment that your government is failing to suppress. This so expands the idea of asylum, in my view, as to render it meaningless.

Courts have also expanded asylum to include domestic violence, determining that women in abusive relationships are a “particular social group” and thereby qualify. In other words, every woman on the planet who has experienced domestic abuse can now come to America and claim asylum. Also everyone on the planet who doesn’t live in a stable, orderly, low-crime society. Literally billions of human beings now have the right to asylum in America. . . .

This is in a new century when the U.S. is trying to absorb the largest wave of new immigrants in our entire history, and when the percentage of the population that is foreign-born is also near a historic peak. It is also a time when mass immigration from the developing world has destabilized liberal democracies across the West, is bringing illiberal, anti-immigration regimes to power across Europe, and was the single biggest reason why Donald Trump is president.

I’m told that, as a legal immigrant, I’m shutting the door behind me now that I’ve finally made it to citizenship. I’m not. I favor solid continuing legal immigration, but also a reduction in numbers and a new focus on skills in an economy where unskilled labor is increasingly a path to nowhere. It is not strange that legal immigrants — who have often spent years and thousands of dollars to play by the rules — might be opposed to others’ jumping the line. It is not strange that a hefty proportion of Latino legal immigrants oppose illegal immigration — they are often the most directly affected by new, illegal competition, which drives down their wages. . . .

When I’m told only white racists favor restrictionism, I note how the Mexican people are more opposed to illegal immigration than Americans: In a new poll, 61.5 percent of Mexicans oppose the entry of undocumented migrants, period; 44 percent believe that Mexico should remove any undocumented alien immediately. Are Mexicans now white supremacists too? That hostility to illegal immigration may even explain why Trump’s threat to put tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t crack down may well have worked. Since Trump’s bluster, the numbers have measurably declined — and the crackdown is popular in Mexico. I can also note that most countries outside Western Europe have strict immigration control and feel no need to apologize for it. Are the Japanese and Chinese “white supremacists”? Please. Do they want to sustain their own culture and national identity? Sure. Is that now the equivalent of the KKK?

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Project Veritas is fighting back

Ben Garrison cartoon via Project Veritas

Project Veritas Sends Google Letters to Congress:

Project Veritas sent a letter to several Members of Congress informing them about Project Veritas’ investigation of Google that raises some concerns regarding Google’s possible improper intervention in Federal elections which may violate laws like the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).

The letter is a follow up to Project Veritas’ latest investigative report which includes undercover video of Google officials, leaked internal Google documents and emails, and statements provided by a Google insider.

We sent versions of the letter to several members of Congress.

The full report with text of the letter is here.

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Unwatchable debates : Part 2

photo credit: inquirer.com

Stephen Green, a/k/a Mr. Vodkapundit, will be live drunk-blogging Round Two of the debates this evening. He watches so you don’t have to. Here’s the link.

He activated his live drunk-blog about 8:50 pm last night, so he’ll probably be going live at about the same time this evening.

For Powerline blogger Paul Mirengoff’s wrap-up of last night’s extravaganza, click here.

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Unwatchable debates

Everyone knows that the two debates between Democrat presidential candidates are this evening and tomorrow evening, both at 9pm. There are some voters who expect the proceedings to be pretty amusing and plan to tune in. But the idea of turning on the television to actually watch these two events does not sound like much fun to me.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative. Stephen Green, a/k/a Mr. Vodkapundit, will be live drunk-blogging at PJ Media. Here’s the link https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/.

UPDATE 8:50 pm: A better direct link is here.  It automatically refreshes, so stay at the top of the blog.

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Google: it keeps getting worse

art credit: tyranny.news

Yesterday, this blog linked to a report on Breitbart concerning the left-wing bias Google is employing by manipulating the search engines. Today we read more details reported by Lucas Nolan, again at Breitbart:

Google documents leaked to Project Veritas show the company referring to popular conservative personalities such as Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager as “Nazis.”

A recent report from investigative journalism group Project Veritas claims that leaked internal Google documents shows a Google employee and a member of a Google “transparency-and-ethics” group calling conservative and libertarian commentators such as Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson, “Nazis.” The email was sent as part of internal communications between the Google “transparency-and-ethics” group and suggests that content published by PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro should be removed from the “suggestion feature.”

A Google employee named Liam Hopkins can be seen stating: “…if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles…” The employee further suggests following through with the suggestion of another employee named Meredith: “I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith’s suggestion of disabling the suggestion feature?”

Following the publication of an undercover video of Google executive Jen Gennai stating that the company was working to prevent another “Trump situation” after the 2016 election; the executive stated in a Medium blog post: “Google has repeatedly been clear that it works to be a trustworthy source of information, without regard to political viewpoint. In fact, Google has no notion of political ideology in its rankings.” Yet here we see Google employees discussing doing exactly that.

The rest of the report is here.

Related: Ned Ryun at American Greatness:

unless the tech companies are forcefully confronted, now, in the immediate, our self-governing republic will be over in less than a generation and we will be ruled by a tech oligarchy.

Or are we already there?

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Google vs President Trump

Not to beat a dead horse, but here’s most of the Breitbart report by Allum Bokhari that’s getting linked all over the place:

A Google insider who spoke anonymously to Project Veritas claims the company is devoted to preventing anything like the 2016 election of Donald Trump from happening again.

The insider who spoke to Project Veritas also drew attention to the covert suppression of non-progressive voices on YouTube, a Google-owned platform, said that stopping President Donald Trump and other politicians like Trump has become a priority for the tech giant.

The insider claimed that the company did a “complete 180 in what they thought was important,” abandoning earlier ideals of self-expression and “giving everyone a voice” in favor of crackdowns on “hate.”

Previous leaks from Google support the insider’s account of a dramatic shift in thinking following the election of Trump. An internal company document titled “The Good Censor”leaked to Breitbart News last year admits that the company has undergone a “shift towards censorship,” in part as a response to the events of 2016.

Earlier in the year, recently-fired Google software engineer Mike Wacker spoke of a colleague who informed him that a manager at the company said the tech giant “need[s] to stop hate [speech] and fake news because that’s how Trump won.” 

Via Project Veritas’ interview with the insider:

There’s this façade about what they’re doing, but what they’re actually doing, what the employees are actually seeing inside the company is different. And, people need to know what’s going on with Google, and that they are not an objective piece – they’re not an objective source of information. They are a highly biased political machine that is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.

Right after Donald Trump won the election, in 2016, the company did a complete 180 in what they thought was important, before they thought self-expression, and giving everyone a voice was important, but now they’re like, “Hey, there’s a lot of hate.” And because there’s a lot of hate and misogyny, and racism, that’s the reason why Donald Trump got elected.

They started talking about the need to combat hate and racism online, and also at YouTube. They had the same talks by the CEO, Susan, and they talked about combating that and getting rid of unfairness.

In our household, we have switched from Google over to Start Page. All we need to do now is wean ourselves from YouTube videos. 

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Big Tech and social media vs free speech

In keeping with recent Tea Party blog themes:

 Mike Lester cartoon via Flopping Aces

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Big Brother and facial recognition

 image credit: metro.co.uk

Oddly enough, the state of Massachusetts is considering some legislation that could begin to challenge the Big Tech’s threats to Free Speech. From WND (linked to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, which has a paywall, so I cannot vet this report):  

Facial recognition programs are becoming more common. From cameras on street corners to airports and stores, images are being captured continuously, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

But one privacy organization says there’s an opportunity right now for people to encourage one state to become a leader in fighting “invasive government surveillance.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a report by Hayley Tsukayama that Massachusetts “has a long history of standing up for liberty.”

But lawmakers “need to hear from the people of Massachusetts to say they oppose government use of face surveillance.”

Polling shows 91 percent of likely voters in the state support government regulation of face recognition surveillance, and 79 percent support a statewide moratorium.

For background, the report explains the threat to privacy posed by face surveillance. And the surveillance “chills protest in public places and gives law enforcement unregulated power to undermine due process.”

The report at WND is here. Eyes on Massachusetts…

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Rep. Marcia Fudge is on the wrong side. Again.

photo credit: www.essence.com

NumbersUSA is urging Cleveland area voters to call Rep. Marcia Fudge at 202-225-3121 to DEMAND a vote on H.R. 3056 to end the border crisis. Speaker Pelosi has thus far refused to bring the Act to the floor. The talking point:

H.R. 3056 is the Border Crisis Supplemental Appropriations Act, to deal with the ongoing border crisis. I urge you to demand an immediate floor vote on this badly needed spending package! This crisis has gone on long enough, and it's time for Congress to act.

I have to wonder whether Rep. Fudge and her staff pay any attention to Tea Party people, but it’s probably worth the couple of minutes on the phone.

Here's more. In an op-ed piece at American Greatness, Candace Owens warns Trump voters to not become complacent – and she provides a few examples (out of zillions) of rage, hatred, and hysteria from the Progressive Left:

Just last week Congresswoman Marcia Fudge described Trump voters as “either racist, steeped in religious beliefs, ignorant, or, as my mother used to say, just plain dumb.”

These people are not trying to retake control of the White House merely to advance their agenda. They want to punish the Americans who made them look like fools in 2016.

This new breed of Democrats cheer as the social media giants silence and eliminate any voice that opposes them or threatens the monopoly liberal journalists have over the flow of information. They’re prepared to pack the courts, let 16-year-olds vote, and even eliminate the Electoral College in order to help them win. They’re already talking about the prospect of the election being “stolen” by “racism,” which gives a pretty good indication of the strategy they plan to fall back on if they lose again.

In short, they will do anything they can to destroy our coalition and make sure the humiliation of 2016 can never happen again.

(Full article is here.) Spot the racist and the dummy. And maybe give her a call.

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Healthcare update – and it’s good

image credit: powerlineblog.com

Headline: Trump Just Revolutionized Health Care — And Nobody Noticed

The editorial at Issues and Insights reports:

Under the plan, employers will be able to fund tax-free Health Reimbursement Accounts for their workers, who can then use the money to buy an individual insurance plan — thereby taking another step toward fixing the 77-year-old tax distortion. The rule also lets employers fund a different account to buy cheaper “short-term” plans.

“This subtle, technical tweak has the potential to revolutionize the private health insurance market,” wrote Avik Roy, one of the smartest health care experts around, in the Washington Post.

The administration figures that 800,000 employers will eventually move to HRA plans, and 11 million workers will get their benefits this way.

At the same time, Trump also loosened the federal rules that had needlessly impeded “association health plans.” These are plans that let members of various groups band together to buy insurance. The result will be more competition, and more affordable choices for millions of people.

The Democrats’ response? Attack these changes as another attempt by Trump to “sabotage” Obamacare. What they really fear, however, is that the two new rules will destroy their case for socialized medicine.

The full report is here. Even as Congress continues to drag its feet, and the RINO’s who campaigned on repealing Obamacare reneged on their promises, the Trump administration is finding ways to improve healthcare for Americans.

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Deporting illegal immigrants: some good news

Meme credit: Bookworm Room

From Quin Hillyer at the Washington Examiner: 

President Trump’s renewed pledge to deport huge numbers of illegal immigrants is inspiring anger, but it's hardly righteous. If, as a Homeland Security adviser has explained, the targets of Trump’s deportation plans will be those illegal immigrants who have failed to show for their assigned court hearings, then Trump is morally, ethically, and legally justified in deporting them. The tut-tutting chorus might as well spare us their faux moral histrionics.

The immigrants Trump is targeting are people who have broken American law not once but twice. First, they entered the country illegally, without papers. Second, when given a court hearing (where they could, for example, make bids for asylum or otherwise make a case for being allowed to stay), they again thumbed their noses at the legitimate authority of their generous hosts. Such poor guests deserve no sympathy, no matter what circumstances they came from.

Full report is here.

P.S. For livestream links to President Trump’s campaign launch this evening at 8 pm, try here.

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The new "normal"? -- Victor Davis Hanson

Over the weekend, the historian Victor Davis Hanson posted an essay at American Greatness. With the progressive-liberal community constantly projecting their own fantasies and corruptions on conservatives, it is a relief to read VDH’s perspective. Here's a brief extract from his closing comments:

The current normal correctives were denounced as abnormal—as if living in a sovereign state with secure borders, assuming that the law was enforced equally among all Americans, demanding that citizenship was something more than mere residence, and remembering that successful Americans, not their government, built their own businesses and lives is now somehow aberrant or perverse.

Trump’s political problem, then, may be that the accelerating aberration of 2009-2016 was of such magnitude that normalcy is now seen as sacrilege.

Weaponizing the IRS, unleashing the FBI to spy on political enemies and to plot the removal of an elected president, politicizing the CIA to help to warp U.S. politics, allying the Justice Department with the Democratic National Committee, and reducing FISA courts to rubber stamps for pursuing administration enemies became the new normal. Calling all that a near coup was abnormal.

Let us hope that most Americans still prefer the abnormal remedy to the normal pathology.

Full article is here.

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Are you a “Hate Agent?”

Allum Bokhari at Breitbart has this scary report:

Facebook monitors the offline behavior of its users to determine if they should be categorized as a “Hate Agent,” according to a document provided exclusively to Breitbart News by a source within the social media giant.

The document, titled “Hate Agent Policy Review” outlines a series of “signals” that Facebook uses to determine if someone ought to be categorized as a “hate agent” and banned from the platform.

Those signals include a wide range of on- and off-platform behavior. If you praise the wrong individual, interview them, or appear at events alongside them, Facebook may categorize you as a “hate agent.”

Facebook may also categorize you as a hate agent if you self-identify with or advocate for a “Designated Hateful Ideology,” if you associate with a “Designated Hate Entity” (one of the examples cited by Facebook as a “hate entity” includes Islam critic Tommy Robinson), or if you have “tattoos of hate symbols or hate slogans.” (The document cites no examples of these, but the media and “anti-racism” advocacy groups increasingly label innocuous items as “hate symbols,” including a cartoon frog and the “OK” hand sign.)

Facebook will also categorize you as a hate agent for possession of “hate paraphernalia,” although the document provides no examples of what falls into this category.

The document also says Facebook will categorize you as a hate agent for “statements made in private but later made public.” Of course, Facebook holds vast amounts of information on what you say in public and in private — and as we saw with the Daily Beast doxing story, the platform will publicize private information on their users to assist the media in hitjobs on regular American citizens.

Full article is here.

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Congress going rogue: Action Alert

NumbersUSA has the legislative update for next week:

House Democrats are poised to vote on an enormous appropriations bill that will fund a great deal of federal spending next year. It covers the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, State, and others.

This funding bill contains language that UNDERMINES AND EVEN REVERSES efforts already being made to tighten enforcement and end the border crisis. NumbersUSA has already urged House Members to oppose the bill. We warned them that we will score against this action in our Immigration Gradecards. These grade cards are read by hundreds of thousands of our activists. They sort out those that merely pay lip service to enforcement from those who actually vote to reduce immigration.

The NumbersUSA scoring notice sent to Congress states, "House Democrats, however, aren't content with the utter collapse of our entire immigration infrastructure, and instead are using this bill to actively obstruct the Administration's efforts to deal with the crisis on the southern border."

The bill, H.R. 2740, contains these outrageous provisions:

Blocks any federal funds from any source whatever from being used to construct "border security infrastructure." This includes blocking the wall/fencing money appropriated by Congress even earlier this year! But H.R. 2740 provides funding to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia to protect their borders.

Rewards illegal immigration by making DACA recipients eligible to take federal jobs.

Protects and rewards the illegal alien sponsors of unaccompanied alien children by blocking ICE from working with HHS to deport the illegal alien sponsors. Many of these sponsors are directly involved in human trafficking.

By obstructing efforts to control the border and enforce immigration laws, his bill could help strengthen Mexican drug cartels, which control the entire Mexican side of the Southern border.

The House is pursuing this ruinous course despite border apprehensions exploding, up by another third in May compared to April. Over 144,000 were apprehended in May. Reuters reports the makeup of the arrests: "While the vast majority of undocumented migrants arriving in the United States are from Central America, significant numbers have been arriving in recent months from Cuban and Haiti, via Panama, and from African countries, often via Brazil."

The Capitol switchboard number is:

(202) 224-3121

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Google's thumb is on the scale

Brent Scher at the Washington Free Beacon reports on continuing censorship on Google:

News that Chicago police charged Jussie Smollett with staging a brutal attack on himself was covered on every network and in every major newspaper, but Google is hiding searches of it from its platform due to concerns of "potentially disparaging" the liberal actor.

A review of Google's autocomplete function on searches of Smollett found no references to anything regarding the hate crime, even though the company's own data show it is the only reason his name was ever searched.

The top suggested searches for Smollett included Empire (a show he no longer has a role in), Mighty Ducks (a nearly three-decade old movie he had a small role in as a child), and his wife (who doesn't exist), the Free Beacon found.

Even with a nudge—adding the letter "H" to indicate an interest in the Smollett "hate crime" or "hoax"—the top suggestions were inquiries into his height and ties to Hawaii.

Full report including potential bias in searches re: Hillary's campaign, the Trump presidency, Harvey Weinstein, and the Covington students is here ; the report includes screen shots of the writer’s search results. H/T Don Surber.

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