Hopefully this isn't offensive to the people I'm trying to laugh with from one of those "shithole countries".

By Anh Do @ LATimes.com, April 1

One by one, the buses pulled up to the Orange County Hall of Administration last week carrying posters with messages such as "No Tent City" and "No Homeless in Irvine." Many of the hundreds on board were immigrants, and this would be their first experience joining a political protest.

A week earlier, county officials announced that they were considering placing emergency homeless shelters in Irvine as well as in Laguna Niguel and in Huntington Beach. All three cities immediately fought the plan, but the opposition was most fierce in Irvine.

Many of the loudest voices in the movement to block the shelter plan were Chinese Americans who came together through social media apps and various community groups. They were joined by immigrants from South Korea, India, Mexico and the Middle East, along with some whites [....]

"We do have reason to believe ... that the crash was intentional. This is all based on preliminary information," said Greg Baarts, Acting Assistant Chief for CHP, Northern Division.

@ KGW8 News, March 31

[....] The crash killed married couple Jennifer and Sara Hart, as well as three of their adopted children; 19-year-old Markis Hart, 14-year-old Jeremiah Hart and 14-year-old Abigail Hart. The other three children; 12-year-old Sierra Hart, 16-year-old Hannah Hart and 15-year-old Devonte Hart, are considered missing. However, Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said they have "every indication to believe" all six children were inside the vehicle at the time of the crash.

A search warrant was conducted at the family's home in Woodland, Wash., on Thursday, March 29. Baarts said on the front of the search warrant, a box was checked that asked if a felony was committed. In order to apply for a search warrant in California, certain criteria has to be met, one of which is whether a felony may have been committed.

"It is safe to report that a felony may have been committed in this case," Baarts said [....]

Op-ed by Thomas B. Edsall @ NYTimes.com, March 31

[....] “The short answer is that the exit polls are wrong,” Matthew DeBell, a senior scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, emailed me. He continued:

In November 2016, 31.9 percent of adult US citizens had college degrees, according to the Current Population Survey. There were 138.8 million votes. To reach 50 percent of all voters, the turnout rate among college grads would have to have been 97 percent. This doesn’t pass the laugh test; no credible study has ever found turnout rates that high.

The Pew Research Center and the Center for American Progress have produced methodologically sophisticated surveys of the electorate that sharply contradict 2016 exit polls.

Perhaps most significant, a March 20 Pew Research Center public opinion survey found that 33 percent of Democratic voters and Democratic leaners are whites without college degrees. That’s substantially larger than the 26 percent of Democrats who are whites with college degrees — the group that many analysts had come to believe was the dominant constituency in the party.

According to Pew, this noncollege white 33 percent makes up a larger bloc of the party’s voters than the 28 percent made up of racial and ethnic minorities without degrees. It is also larger than the 12 percent of Democratic voters made up of racial and ethnic minorities with college degrees.

In sum, Pew’s more precise survey methods reveal that when Democrats are broken down by education, race and ethnicity, the white working class is the largest bloc of Democratic voters and substantially larger than the bloc of white college-educated Democratic voters [....]

A US government effort to fight online sex trafficking has cleansed many sites of personal ads and consensual eroticism, in a shift advocates say amounts to dangerous censorship. (Already having a major effect, article gets into examples.)

By Erin McCormick in San Francisco for TheGuardian.com, March 30

Craigslist has shut down its renowned “personals” section, which once featured ads titled “Hot days” and “Looking to fool around tonight”. Porn performers are complaining that Google Drive is no longer allowing them to share erotic videos with private clients. Microsoft has announced new rules banning “offensive language” from conversations on Skype and Xbox. And Reddit has closed sex industry discussion groups entitled “Escorts”, “Hookers”, and “SugarDaddy”.

All of this has happened in recent days and weeks; a particular genre of online sex, it seems, is vanishing from the internet.

The timing of all these internet sex crackdowns corresponds with the US Congress’s passage last week of a bill known as the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (Fosta).

While intended to protect victims of sex trafficking, critics say the bill will force internet platforms to censor their users in order to avoid being prosecuted for newly created sex trafficking offenses. Some sex workers argue the bill will hurt those who voluntarily work in the sex industry by pushing them off the internet and back on to the streets. Internet advocates say the bill may the beginning of a crackdown on free speech online.

“US Congress just passed HR 1865, ‘Fosta’, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully,” wrote Craiglist in a statement posted on Friday [....]

By the Washington Post Editorial Board

Vanity Fair back to doing the kind of coverage it used to do best. A little fun reading for Easter weekend.

A dispute between two South Florida men over a charity-auction piece remains unresolved.

By Kenzie Bryant @ VanityFair.com, March 29

All is not sunny in Palm Beach. There’s an unsettled dispute that involves Mar-a-Lago, a six-foot-tall portrait of President Donald Trump, the Palm Beach Police Department, and a Michael Jackson impersonator crashing a pro-Israel gala. Let us unpack with the help of the Palm Beach Daily News, as vital a read as there is in Trump’s America [....]

By Marc Santora and Hana de Goeij @ NYTimes.com, March 30

PRAGUE — A Russian man accused of hacking the systems of three American technology companies in 2012, possibly compromising the personal information of more than 100 million users, was extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic on Friday.

The man, Yevgeniy A. Nikulin, appeared in Federal District Court in San Francisco after arriving in the city around 6 a.m. He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley scheduled his next court appearance for next week.

“This is deeply troubling behavior once again emanating from Russia,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “We will not tolerate criminal cyberattacks and will make it a priority to investigate and prosecute these crimes, regardless of the country where they originate.” [....]