"Nike creates shoe featuring early American flag. Colin Kaepernick is offended. Tells Nike not to sell shoe. Nike recalls shoe."

"Former Vice President Adlai Stevenson once said, 'A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.' It's hard to imagine a better analogy than that for the way the current Democratic Party pontificates on the border crisis.

"For 40 years the Democrats have done everything in their power to encourage and facilitate illegal immigration. They have relentlessly blocked any attempts to address and prevent the current rise of illegal immigration at our southern border. They have incentivized illegal immigration in every conceivable manner. Those who watched the recent Democratic debates, as painful as that must have been, have now witnessed their campaign to decimate our national sovereignty at a new level.

"The debates, in all their lackluster glory, were nothing more than 20 progressives shouting in one voice their intention to make our illegal immigration crisis even worse. ...

"The hypocrisy of the left is unfathomable, and they have forfeited any right to criticize the solution to the problem they created."

"On the second night of the Democratic presidential debate in Miami, NBC moderators asked candidates whether they would support decriminalizing the act of illegally crossing the border into the United States -- that is, reducing the seriousness and consequences of illegal entry to the level of a parking ticket.

"'Raise your hand if you think it should be a civil offense, rather than a crime, to cross the border without documentation,' said NBC's Jose Diaz-Balart.

"All 10 candidates -- Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, Gillibrand, Bennet, Swalwell, Hickenlooper, Yang, Williamson -- raised their hands in approval. That moment was perhaps the Democratic Party's most significant step yet toward embracing a policy of open borders. ...

"Democrats did not stop with opening the border. On Thursday night, they also unanimously supported a policy of offering health care to everyone in the country illegally -- thought to be about 11 million people. 'Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants,' said NBC's Savannah Guthrie. All hands went up."

"MIAMI -- President Donald Trump was the big winner of the first 2020 Democratic debate.

"The Republican commander in chief, who was on his way to an economic summit in Osaka, Japan, emerged from the scrap largely unscathed -- barely mentioned at all -- even though he is a uniquely antagonizing and energizing force for Democratic voters.

"At the same time, the 10 candidates who were in the room here at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts often competed against one another to appeal to narrow subsets of the primary season electorate. Their jockeying, punctuated by efforts to outflank each other to the political left and conduct a middebate Spanish-speaking contest, could alienate swing voters important to the party's chances against Trump in November 2020.

"For long stretches, it seemed, they completely forgot about the man who has been at the center of pretty much every discussion among Democrats for the last two-plus years -- the man they're competing to take on next year. The obvious reason: The motivation to beat each other was, on this night, more urgent than defeating Trump -- a life-or-death moment for some of their campaigns.

"Trump was the chief beneficiary of that dynamic."

"In a weird twist on socialism, Bernie Sanders on Monday rolled out a plan to hand a $1.6 trillion gift to college-loan borrowers -- who tend to be better off than the average taxpayer.

"He'd cancel all student debt, public and private -- even for grad students and no matter the borrower's income. Another $600 billion would go to make public universities and community colleges free.

"Sanders claims a tax on Wall Street transactions can raise $2.4 trillion to pay for it. But critics say the tax would lead to fewer trades -- and generate far less revenue. Plus, many of those transactions are made on behalf of middle- and working-class people's retirement savings. ...

"This is what socialism really produces: no 'equity' or fairness -- only unintended consequences, with all but the favored few winding up worse off."

Read the entire column here.

"This week's debates will be the first time millions of Americans meet the cast of Democrats trying to take out President Donald Trump.

"That's precisely what has party brass terrified.

"Interviews with nearly 20 Democratic elected officials, party chiefs, labor leaders and operatives the past week revealed an air of foreboding verging on alarm that the debates will degenerate into a two-night, bare-knuckle brawl. With the divisive 2016 Democratic primary fresh in their minds and the current presidential candidates starting to take swipes at one another, the fear is that voters will be left with the impression of a bickering, small-minded opposition party. ...

"The first debates of the primary also come as a number of candidates are barely registering in the polls and desperate for a splashy moment. ...

"The 2016 campaign still weighs on many Democrats anxious about a slugfest in 2020. They're apprehensive of a primary that leaves its nominee too damaged and its party too divided -- and fear this week's debates could kick off that kind of race."

"The House and Senate are set to take up competing bills this week that would provide President Trump more than $4.5 billion in new funding tied to the U.S.-Mexico border.

"The looming clash comes as Congress is expected to leave town at the end of the week for the July 4th recess, making it unlikely they'll resolve the standoff over the bills before the break absent an 11th hour agreement.

"The House and Senate bills both provide the administration with more than $4.5 billion, including new money to help shore up a Health and Human Services (HHS) unaccompanied children program set to run out of money. But they split over the details, including money for the Pentagon, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

"Lawmakers had hoped to get a bill to Trump's desk before leaving for the break, after the funding was yanked out of the disaster aid package because of a disagreement over immigration-related provisions."

"President Trump is within his rights to invoke executive privilege, including when it comes to former White House communications director Hope Hicks, according to Alan Dershowitz.

"Congressional lawmakers often claim presidents are not 'above the law' in many of these cases, but Congress itself is also not 'above the law,' Dershowitz told host Laura Ingraham on Fox News' 'The Ingraham Angle.'

"'Each branch of the government has a form of executive privilege,' Dershowitz said Wednesday night. 'The president is perfectly entitled to invoke executive privilege. If they think it goes too far ... let the courts decide.

"'As far as the current issue is concerned, all three branches of government have privilege,' he continued. 'You can't call a law clerk at the Supreme Court and ask the law clerk, "What did you discuss with the justice?" Imagine if they tried to call legislative assistants of senators or congressmen, the same congressmen who are demanding that [Hicks] speak would be up in arms.'"

"Last month, 144,000 people were arrested at our southern border. Many of these people were not trying to escape the Border Patrol, but were turning themselves in. Why?

"Because our asylum process is laughably easy to take advantage of.

"One must be deliberately ignoring reality to pretend that our asylum process is not being abused. As it stands now, the incentives are aligned to permit illegal immigrants to cross the border with a child, knowing full well that they will be caught and released into society without the chance of deportation. We cannot pretend that this a system based on rule of law and respect for our sovereignty.

"Even worse, we cannot pretend that this is a system that rewards law-abiding legal immigration over illegal immigration. It isn't fair to our citizens, and it isn't fair to immigrants around the world who are trying to come to our country legally."

"Privacy expectations should not be lost just because digital and electronic information is transferred through wires or enters a remote server (the Cloud). If the government searched an individual's mail or home, it would need a warrant first. This same standard should apply to all property, including electronic data. But 48 of 50 states are failing to protect private data from government intrusion.

"It's no secret that technology develops faster than legal doctrines, statutes, and regulations. States have failed to keep up with necessary legal changes to protect citizens' rights under the Fourth Amendment. This has left other forms of electronic data, notably stored communications such as what a user might save in the Cloud or on their laptop, unprotected from government searches.

"Due to the 'third party doctrine,' state and federal governments can access electronic data without a search warrant by utilizing online platforms. The 'third party doctrine' holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties, such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers, and email servers have 'no reasonable expectation of privacy.'

"California was the first state to protect third-party information from unwarranted government searches. Now, Utah has become the second state to pass legislation closing the third-party loophole and protecting Americans' Fourth Amendment rights.

"The Fourth Amendment ensures the right of the people to be secure in their persons, and property against unreasonable searches and seizures. This means a warrant based on probable cause must be issued before a place can be searched, or persons and things can be seized."

Read entire article here.