An English musician was kicked off a U.S. tour just hours after videos surfaced of her saying she supports Republicans.

Rapper M.I.A., whose real name Mathangi Arulpragasam, is of Sri Lankan descent but was born in London in 1975. Aside from having hit records, the artist has generated headlines in recent years for calling out the music industry as a bastion of Satanism that pushes degeneracy.

‘I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks.’

Now, the “Paper Planes” artist has found herself booted off the American tour of five-time platinum rapper Kid Cudi. M.I.A. was taken off the Rebel Ragers Tour this week — with more than two dozen stops remaining — after she was recorded making remarks that allegedly offended the headliner’s fans.

Cudi’s cowardice

“I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” she told one audience. The rapper also said she “can’t do ‘Illegal,'” referring to one of her songs, but added, “though some of you could be in the audience.”

Apparent backlash from the remarks was enough to garner a response from Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi.

Mescudi responded on his Instagram page on Monday, writing that he was kicking the 50-year-old Brit off his tour.

“TOUR UPDATE: M.I.A is no longer on this tour,” he wrote, per Variety. “I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started tour that I didn’t want anything offensive at my shows, cuz I already knew what time it was, and I was assured things were understood.”

RELATED: Fighting the darkness: M.I.A. on music, spirit, and breaking free from industry chains

– YouTube

The 42-year-old then claimed he had been “flooded with messages from fans” that were upset by M.I.A.’s on-stage remarks.

“This, to me, is very disappointing,” Cudi went on, “and I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase. Thank you for understanding. Rager.”

Devil music

M.I.A. did not mince words in her reply, saying that her commentary had been misconstrued and that Cudi was, in effect, doing Satan’s work.

“I wrote ‘illygal’ on the Maya LP a song from 2010. I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I’m illygal, and I said my team hasn’t gotten visas yet. Then played a song that had lyrics saying ‘Fu&% the law’, which I still believe, if the law is unjust f@%& it,” the rapper wrote on X.

She continued, “Do not gas light my words. That is the work of Satan.”

The Londoner added that she wrote her hit songs before Kid Cudi “thought immigrant rights were cool.”

“I’ve had [these] battles by myself without the help of millions of fans backing me. I don’t need this virtue signal era to all of a sudden erase an entire life I’ve led. Jesus was an immigrant and a rebel.”

RETURN: M.I.A. explains why artists like Cardi B are destroying the music industry: ‘What is cool is Satan’s playground’

Blushing bride

Cudi is no stranger to controversy, in part because of his close relationship with Kanye West. In 2020, he disavowed his friend’s association with Donald Trump.

“We just don’t talk about it. I totally disagree with it,” Cudi said.

In 2021, Cudi attempted to make a statement by wearing a wedding dress to a fashion awards show. The Cleveland native walked hand in hand on the red carpet with designer Eli Russell Linnetz, who told People he texted the artist ahead of the show, “Will you be my bride?”

Cudi has also been open about his battle with depression, even allegedly checking into rehab in 2016 over “suicidal urges.”

M.I.A. said on Monday that she believes Jesus has returned to “lead the world justly because there is injustice in this world.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Align, American, Christianity, Faith, Hip hop, Kanye west, Musician, Rap, Republicans, Satan, Entertainment 

Lights! Camera! OnlyFans!

“My Name Is Earl” alum Jaime Pressly is the latest starlet to embrace the provocative web portal. The 48-year-old star follows in the footsteps of Shannon Elizabeth and Drea de Matteo, who also found a home on a site known for very adult material.

We don’t need Columbo to figure out who killed late-night TV. It was a homicide committed in plain sight.

“I’ve always believed in evolving with the times. … This is another way for me to connect directly with my audience, on my own terms, with creativity and intention. I’ve loved meeting fans at various Comic Cons, and the excitement of having those real face-to-face moments made me want to seek options like OnlyFans.”

Not sure it’s your face they’ll be coming to see, Jaime.

To be fair, not all OnlyFans content is adult in nature, but aligning yourself with the porn-centric platform does generate certain expectations — and a lot of buzz.

And sometimes the buzz is enough. Elizabeth reportedly made $1 million in her first week — and if disgruntled Reddit users are to be believed, she did it without posting anything racier than bikini pics.

The bigger picture? Starlets often struggle in youth-obsessed Hollywood to find steady work, forcing more … creative options after the age of 40.

For de Matteo, her unwillingness to follow draconian pandemic protocols helped push her out of Hollywood Inc. Progressive Hollywood, with all its MeToo starlets, didn’t have her back.

Hamill’s dark side

The force is wrong with this one.

Actor Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill shared an image of a dead President Trump on, where else, Bluesky, with the phrase “If Only” attached. The “Star Wars” icon loathes the president, but this seemed an escalation that most — but not all — celebrities wouldn’t go near.

The post got plenty of attention, including some from major entertainment news sites. They usually hide stories that paint liberal stars in a bad light, but this was too ugly to ignore.

That spurred Hamill to backtrack, somewhat, but show little actual remorse.

“Accurate Edit for Clarity: ‘He should live long enough to… be held accountable for his… crimes.’ Actually, I was wishing him the opposite of dead, but apologize if you found the image inappropriate. 💙-mh”

Some “apologize” (sic). And sick …

No-kill Bill

Here’s betting Bill Maher isn’t eager to chat up Hamill.

The “Club Random” podcaster is liberal, like the erstwhile Skywalker, but he draws the line at wishing his political opponents dead.

He’s old-school like that.

In fact, Maher admonished some of his fellow Democrats for joining Team Hamill.

“If you’re one of these people — and there’s many in this country — who watched that and was disappointed the president wasn’t killed … you’re not a good person. Or a smart person.”

But, chances are, the ones who felt that way were watching Jimmy Kimmel that night …

RELATED: ‘Crawl’: Killer gators make for gruesome guests in overlooked creature feature

Paramount Pictures

Kombat pay

“Mortal Kombat II” is barely a movie. The sequel to the 2021 reboot hits theaters May 8, and it’s earning begrudgingly positive reviews — currently at about 69 percent “fresh” at Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s not shabby for a film with all the depth of a late spring puddle. Call it Extreme Guilty Pleasure Cinema.

Producer Todd Garner wasn’t satisfied, apparently, with that reasonably positive rating.

“Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat.”

He may be partially right. It is a film meant for gamers, first and foremost. And it’s still a movie-movie, and many producers would be tickled to get reviews above the 60% mark.

At least Garner didn’t single out a particular critic and cry, “Finish him!”

Murder, they wrote

Remember how Lieutenant Columbo would sniff out the killer, often by attempting to leave the room before returning with a final question?

“Just one more thing,” he’d croak, and the villain would get very nervous. Viewers knew the gooses were about to get cooked.

We don’t need Columbo to figure out who killed late-night TV. Endless one-note monologues and ostracizing half of the country proved the weapons of choice. It was a homicide committed in plain sight.

Even David Letterman, the old guard who put the funny first, thinks the format may go the way of the 8-track tape in a year.

The murder suspects are planning to gather later this month to honor the host set to depart first.

Stephen Colbert’s farewell tour as “The Late Show” host will bring Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Oliver on for one the CBS show’s final episodes. The quintet, comically dubbed the Strike Force Five for their brief pandemic podcast, will help wish Colbert a fond farewell.

And perhaps they’ll take turns telling Trump jokes for old times’ sake. Chances are, this will be a recurring featuring until it’s finally “and then there were none” time.

​Donald trump, Michael, Entertainment, Culture, Movies, Daily show, The view, Toto recall, Mark hamill, Star wars, Only fans 

As the divide between the right and the left continues to deepen, BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre explains that Americans are writing off what they don’t understand about each other as a “form of mental illness.”

“This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it’s hard for us to comprehend their actions, and there is certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor,” MacIntyre says. “But today people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.”

“Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people, the mutilation of children to turn boys into girls — these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain,” he continues. “Of course, that’s not the only explanation.”

“The other option is that some people have a very different set of values that drive them to pursue goals that we view as evil. The average American would like to avoid this truth, because it comes with an unnerving conclusion: Your political enemies aren’t crazy; they are sane people who hate you and want to hurt you,” he adds.

MacIntyre explains that believing that a radical leftist who wants to mutilate children is mentally ill “is far easier than addressing the alternative.”

“The idea that half of America is crazy because they don’t share your political views is obviously absurd,” he says. “The truth is much darker. We’re at least two societies, with mutually exclusive understandings of morality and purpose, trapped in one country.”

“The theoretical neutrality of the liberal system allowed this drift to occur under the surface, but the differences have become too extreme to ignore. Both sides have their own internally consistent understanding of the world, but they’re entirely incompatible with each other,” he explains.

“One side is going to win and one side is going to lose, and the winning side is going to impose its way of life on the other. There is no way to avoid this reality,” he continues. “And obscuring the truth with comforting fictions about mental illness only ensures that you’ll be on the side that loses.”

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abortion, Americans, Auron macintyre, Blazetv, Christians, Evil, Hatred, Mental illness, Neutrality, Political enemies, Radical leftist, Serial killer, The auron macintyre show, White people, Morality, Leftism, The blaze, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals 

Politicians are progressively pushing for harsher age verification legislation. Some lawmakers think certain apps should require an ID to sign in, while others want to limit the reach of AI chatbots under the guise of child protection.

Now, a new bill proposed by Democrat Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) would require operating system developers — including Apple, Google, and Microsoft — to verify the ages of their users when setting up a new device.

The bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection.

This is the Parents Decide Act

The new bill, unassumingly named the Parents Decide Act, includes several key requirements that all platform holders would have to recognize if the bill passes. These include:

Strict guidelines that state OS platform holders must verify the age of every user when they set up a new device. The bill is clear that it’s not enough to have users self-report their date of birth and age; hard-proof verification is required.Custom content controls that let parents set age-appropriate parameters on their children’s devices. This includes the ability to limit access to social media, apps, and even AI platforms.A pathway to ensure that all apps installed on a device are tuned to adhere to the custom controls in the previous point. No workarounds or exceptions will be allowed.A trusted multi-platform standard that bans children from accessing what the government labels “harmful” or “explicit” content on any device made by any OEM on any software platform. On the surface, this can include adult content and conversations with AI chatbots, although “harmful” or “hateful” speech has taken on different meanings to the left over the years, usually to describe speech that doesn’t align with their views.

To be clear, the Parents Decide Act would require these protections to be built directly into the software of every device — it would become a core feature within iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. There are questions as to how the government would enforce the bill on open-source Linux, but it will certainly try.

The quiet part of the bill

The piece that’s missing from the bill announcement is how platform holders will verify the ages of their users. At this time, a government-issued ID is the only valid method on the table. Essentially, the government is asking Big Tech platform holders to create a system that stores and verifies the digital IDs of their users — a database filled with users’ names, dates of birth, heights, weights, and, of course, a recent photo.

Glenn Beck has spoken enough about the dangers of digital IDs to know this is a very bad idea.

RELATED: Glenn Beck sounds the alarm on Apple’s digital ID: ‘Control of absolutely everything’

Blaze Media

The irony is palpable

This bill proposal couldn’t come at a better time as leftist politicians argue the faux injustice of the SAVE America Act, which would require American citizens to show a valid ID at the voting booth to participate in our elections.

Of course, there’s a reason Rep. Gottheimer doesn’t outright admit that a valid ID is necessary to make the Parents Decide Act work. That would expose the absolute hypocrisy of the left that wants to leave voting rights open to noncitizens but limit the access of digital technology and the internet to everyday Americans unwilling to give their ID to Big Tech or the government.

What’s in a name?

Democrats love to misname bills — like the Inflation Reduction Act, which weaponized the IRS against the American people.

Keeping the tradition alive, the “Parents Decide Act” is less about parental control and more about government control. It requires all users — namely adults (since children rarely have valid forms of identification) — to submit their photo IDs to verify their ages. Parents don’t get to opt their children out of this process, so that’s clearly not the decision parents get to make as part of the bill. Parents don’t get to protect their kids from government overreach, so that’s not a decision either.

In fact, if the bill did what its title suggests, it wouldn’t exist at all! Instead, parents would have the freedom to decide whether their children have access to an internet-connected device on their own terms. Right?

While the Parents Decide Act may be disguised as a benevolent way to protect children, the bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection, digital ID databases, and a power grab to control young users’ access to information. Why? I’m going out on a limb, but since Democrats are finally losing control over the education system, they have to find new ways to keep children from learning things they don’t want them to know, and restricting internet access is one of the best ways to do it.

Bad problem, worse ‘solution’

If there’s any grace worth throwing at the Parents Decide Act, it’s this: It’s true that many places online aren’t meant for children (they’re not meant for adults either, if we’re being honest). But legislation isn’t the answer. Parents should have complete control over their children’s access to devices and the internet from inside their home. Not the government. Adult users also shouldn’t be forced to provide an ID to use their devices and the internet.

This is complete, authoritarian-level control over device and internet access that affects all Americans.

Rep. Gottheimer isn’t the only Democrat fighting for age verification either. California is already initiating its own state-level bill titled Digital Age Assurance Act. However, we expect these kinds of restrictions in a left-wing hub. If passed, the federal Parents Decide Act would make age verification mandatory for the entire country, and once it’s signed into law, none of us are exempt. You will comply, or you will lose access to your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and the internet.

​Tech, Big tech, Parents decide act 

While many Americans claim that the founding fathers were not deeply shaped by Christianity but rather secular, president and CEO of the Museum of the Bible Dr. Carlos Campo and BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey beg to differ.

“Is that true what we hear — that all of the founders were just deists, that they didn’t really have any faith imbued in our founding documents?” Stuckey asks Campo, whose museum is currently showing an exhibit on the founding of America and the role of the Bible.

“Can we say that every founder was an orthodox Christian? No. And we wouldn’t say that. See, we have a mandate, unlike other places, that we have to tell the story fully and faithfully,” Campo tells Stuckey.

“But if we could only exhume the bodies of these men and talk to them again, I don’t think we can even fully understand how the Bible was truly part of the air that they breathed,” he explains.

“Even as we look at the different versions of the Declaration … this was a text they worked on together, and that they added the word ‘Creator’ with a capital ‘C’ — that in and of itself tells us, perhaps in many ways, all we need to know,” he adds.

“That’s such a good point that it was so ubiquitous in their culture … that they just didn’t realize how special and unique it was,” Stuckey responds.

The principles of the gospel, she explains, “filled them with this really radical and revolutionary idea that your rights don’t come from a monarch.”

“They come from you being a human being. … But of course, I think through the Holy Spirit they did put some of those principles into our founding, which is amazing,” she continues.

Stuckey even pulls out a quote from John Adams, who once said, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity, as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

“So I don’t think anyone who studies the founding of our country could say, ‘Well, yeah, they were just kind of agnostic. They had a relativistic moral worldview,’” she says. “That’s clearly not true.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Americas founding, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Christianity, Creator, Declaration, Founding fathers, Gospel, Holy spirit, John adams, Moral worldview, Museum of the bible, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relativistic, Secular, The blaze, Thomas jefferson 

Recently, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett revealed that the White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would regulate and evaluate AI models similar to how the Food and Drug Administration evaluates new food and drugs.

This is a good idea that deserves serious consideration. Here is why.

Frontier models are automating complex, multistep cyberattacks at ‘machine speed.’

There are several major concerns with AI cybersecurity that haven’t been fully addressed.

There is the use of AI to attack a cyber asset (adversarial), and there are attacks on AI tools like chatbots and voicebots that AI can accomplish with amazing speed and cleverness (AI security).

There is the use of AI in phishing attacks, and there are deepfakes. All of these pose grave threats to American businesses and the federal government, with the potential to affect financial information, privacy, personal data, trade secrets, and national security.

The CEO of CrowdStrike recently sounded the alarm on this issue.

We’re seeing an explosion of new threat actors that may not have all the superior skills to figure this out, but they can use generative AI to advance their attacks very quickly and to make them scalable. There’s going to be a greater proliferation of adversaries than we’ve ever seen. And that is just going to grow, probably exponentially.

A recent report by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center highlighted findings from the AI Security Institute showing that frontier models are automating complex, multistep cyberattacks at “machine speed.”

With some models already matching the pace of human experts at a fraction of the cost, and other models and systems completely outpacing humans, the threat is accelerating due to both the expanding expertise of humans and the expanding capabilities of the AI models, as recently announced by Anthropic about its latest models’ ability to find vulnerabilities in “well-tested” systems.

Another report by ReliaQuest described how a new malware strain called “DeepLoad” can use AI-enabled obfuscation to bypass traditional static defenses in enterprise environments.

These kinds of reports are useful, but it is difficult for us mere humans to keep up with the new daily threats. We need a machine-readable database, much like the computer virus databases that have existed for decades.

The great variety of threats that are invented on a daily basis is extremely concerning. While the Open Worldwide Application Security Project AI Top 10 list is a useful start, it is far from what today’s systems need to address emerging threats.

Our federal government must prioritize a framework solution immediately.

The technology industry has databases of cyber threats, but we also need to share information on how to mitigate them. This can be deeply technical and require specialized knowledge, not just of large language models but of other complicated technologies like audio signal processing.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory federal agency within the Department of Commerce, has been a leader in providing recommendations for responsible AI; however, it needs greater enforcement authority.

RELATED: The terrifying scale of the data center land-grab

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Governments are usually slow to update anything, as they should be. Legislative branches are even slower. Congress should not be writing detailed technical metrics and methodologies for cybersecurity.

A solution is that Congress should empower a regulatory agency to monitor and enforce AI safety standards. A somewhat similar example is the FDA, which protects public health by ensuring the safety and security of food, drugs, biological products, and medical devices. It regulates products by reviewing research and conducting inspections.

What Congress should do is address the need for an AI cybersecurity framework by statutorily tasking NIST with creating and managing a centralized AI cybersecurity threat database to which all software vendors can (and should) submit new threats.

While NIST would be a great place to centralize communications of the resources, it is the private sector that will provide most of the intelligence around what the threats are and how to mitigate them.

After all, NIST is already mandated to provide similar resources as part of the Secure Software Development Framework under federal cybersecurity policy and Executive Order 14028, and through the National Vulnerability Database.

We need a framework that not only keeps up with attacks, but is ahead of the antagonists in the AI war, no matter who they are or what their intentions may be. A NIST-led national framework would ensure that Americans, businesses, and the federal government can be protected from the lightning-fast, ever-advancing cybersecurity threats.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Ai models, Ai regulation, Ai security, Deepfakes, Executive order, Generative ai, National security, Large language models, Privacy, Opinion & analysis 

A 29-year-old Florida female and her children’s 15-year-old male babysitter are accused of shooting at a woman’s car after a Facebook dispute earlier this week.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday night’s shooting outside a Deltona home stemmed from a dispute between the female suspect — Ines Jonjic — and the victim, WESH-TV reported.

‘Are you guys sure he’s a babysitter?’

The station, citing the arrest report, said the victim became “highly upset” after Jonjic “took an image of [the victim’s] infant from her Facebook page, added malicious comments, and sent it to [the victim].”

Deputies said the victim then decided “she wanted to have a face-to-face conversation with Jonjic” and drove to Jonjic’s home on Hemingway Drive, WESH reported.

However, deputies said Jonjic and a 15-year-old boy — whom they later discovered was the babysitter for Jonjic’s children — pointed guns at the victim and fired several shots at her vehicle, the station said.

More from WESH:

The victim drove away and noticed she had a flat tire. However, according to the arrest report, “instead of immediately notifying law enforcement, she called roadside assistance, had her tire repaired, and drove home.” Deputies eventually met with the victim and discovered bullet holes in several of her car windows.

Investigators said it took about five hours for Jonjic and the teen to exit the home after deputies arrived. Once inside, deputies said they found marijuana and cocaine throughout the residence.

Detectives located .380-caliber and 9-millimeter shell casings in the garage. Jonjic admitted to shooting at the victim’s vehicle, according to the arrest report.

Jonjic was charged with shooting into an occupied vehicle, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a specified area, possession of a Schedule II controlled substance, possession of a Schedule IV controlled substance, two counts of possession of a new legend drug without a prescription, and possession of narcotics paraphernalia, the station said.

Jail records indicate that Jonjic was still behind bars as of Friday afternoon.

RELATED: Florida mom accused of kicking youth football player on field; during arrest she actually screams, ‘I’m the one who got hit!’

The 15-year-old babysitter denied firing a gun at the victim, WESH reported.

However, the station said he was charged with shooting into an occupied vehicle, possession of a firearm by a delinquent, trafficking in cocaine, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a specified area, and violation of probation.

WESH added that he already was on probation for an unrelated drug possession charge.

The Facebook post from the sheriff’s office about the incident has attracted more than 1,000 comments, and the commenters haven’t held back — particularly in regard to the teenage male’s stated job.

“Babysitter sure lol,” one commenter said.”That ain’t a ‘babysitter’…” another user declared.”Are you guys sure he’s a babysitter?” another commenter wondered.”Who has a 15-year-old male with priors babysitting at their house at 5:30 a.m.?” another user asked. “Sounds like she’s missing a few charges.””A 15-year-old babysitter @ 5 a.m. while she is home?” another commenter queried.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Florida, Volusia county sheriff’s office, Arrests, Deltona, Facebook, Shooting, Shooting into an occupied vehicle, Drug charges, Mother and children, Crime 

Adults who never want to grow up emotionally have created a generation of children who, like Cypher in the movie “The Matrix,” want to — or sometimes are even forced to — perpetually escape into technology as a means of finding their bliss.

According to a recent study, these kids are desperately overprotected from honestly engaging with the real world while simultaneously allowed to wander aimlessly in a technological fantasy land from a very early age.

They don’t mind if their kids are afraid and distant all the time, as long as they are afraid and distant just like them.

While 30% of 7-year-olds and 60% of 11-year-olds have a smartphone, the data also shows that about 60% of 17-year-olds aren’t allowed to leave their neighborhood without supervision.

This madness is born of modern adults’ addiction to being comfortable and distracted at all costs as they perpetually coddle the scared children living inside them, rather than accept their God-ordered duties to raise their actual children into future adults. Remember, self-medication doesn’t always have to come in drug form.

But this isn’t just somebody else’s problem. It is also present within many Christian families today, where the explicit narrow road of the rugged cross is always buried under the never-ending pursuit of flat-earth feel-goodisms. It doesn’t take much for children, after watching such obvious fraud and emptiness persist year after year, to gladly latch on to false gods of their own.

We are plagued by adults who, more than anything else, just want whatever they want whenever they want it. Instead of doing the hard work of preserving a world that can be passed down, they let their own social media and technology flags fly while other traditionally fundamental social structures and relationships die.

The cycle works like this: The schools fall apart because the adults are too selfish to be involved. Then the parents overprotect their children from the screwed-up society those broken schools helped create.

This, in turn, leaves the kids to desperately reach out for meaning and adventure using social media — even though it is every bit as dangerous as the real world. The parents, however, are too busy pleasuring themselves to prevent that pitfall because of the very emotional addictions, distractions, and comforts that caused this whole cycle in the first place.

No, you don’t just love your kids and want them to be safe from a scary world. You just love yourself too much to fight for them. Your emotions became your worldview, and your children an actual human sacrifice.

RELATED: College professors want your child’s soul. Here’s how you can stop them.

Angela Lewis/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Worse yet, we are likely going to be mired in this era of systematic epistemological obstruction for a long while. It is the sad but inevitable next step of what postmodernism and moral subjectivism look like if there are no absolute standards other than me, myself, and I.

Since the church decided it was going to take a generational coffee break from doing its job of discipleship and stewardship, the parents and families all thought they had the green light to let their electric boogaloo go to infinity and beyond.

Our smartphones are putting more questionable information in front of us than we’ve ever had in the history of our species, and most of it rhymes with ‘Did God really say?’ from the Garden of Eden. I mean, the original happy couple of the book of Genesis couldn’t even hold back the temptation of a single tree, but I’m sure the modern parent and child alike will find all the meaning and protection they need from the internet!

Imagine the parent who is too worried and distracted to encourage his kid to pursue goods like going on a date, getting a job, or reading the Bible but is just fine with him slurping infinite but obnoxious meaning from tech addictions because that feels just like looking in the mirror. These parents don’t mind if their kids are afraid and distant all the time, as long as they are afraid and distant just like them.

That millstone is heavy enough, though, to pull both parent and child into the abyss at the exact same time.

You weren’t designed by your Creator to be anonymous, alone, inside, and hooked to technology, yet many parents are feeding their kids that life as though they are proudly sending them off to earn a Ph.D. in divinity from Harvard. We must do better.

The way, the truth, and the life is not an iPhone app. It is an adventure that calls us to go forth to all the world, but how are we supposed to do that if parents not only keep their children’s spiritual training wheels on too long but never plan on taking their own off, either?

​Adults, Children, Garden of eden, Postmodernism, Social media, Discipleship, Growing up, American adults, Immature, Opinion & analysis 

The brutal and senseless attack on a 77-year-old man by two males in downtown Seattle in April was captured on surveillance video and released to the public as police sought one of the suspects.

The two men appear to be laughing as one rears back to punch the elderly victim with great force from behind.

The two left the man bleeding on the sidewalk.

The victim drops to the ground, and one of the assailants pretends to kick him before pulling back at the last second, according to an account by prosecuting attorney Ryan D. Turner.

The two left the man bleeding on the sidewalk. Police found him with a head injury, as well as a broken arm and knee.

Tips from eyewitnesses led police to identify one suspect as 29-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi Osman. Osman was released after being charged with second-degree assault but was later the subject of a $200,000 warrant from King County Superior Court.

A second suspect was identified as 27-year-old Jessean Tyrell Elion and arrested on Monday based on tips from the public after the video of the attack was released.

Elion was booked into the King County Jail before a judge set a bail of $100,000 for second-degree assault.

“The allegations of an attack on a stranger is very serious,” a judge said about the incident.

Police said they only learned of the second alleged assailant after reviewing surveillance video. Casey McNerthney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office told KING-TV the video was key to arresting the second suspect.

“It’s absolutely helpful, it’s so helpful when you have that because jurors now expect that, and even when you have great witnesses, there’s always the question if you don’t have video or why isn’t there video,” McNerthney said.

RELATED: Adult son beat his elderly father to death with ceramic bowl and then played video games, police say

“When you have cameras like that you see higher rates of referrals to prosecutors and often times higher conviction rates,” he added.

The KING report pointed out that Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist, has criticized the surveillance system that captured the video of the assault. Her office offered no new comments about the incident.

Redmond Police said their Real-Time Information Center aided police in identifying the suspects.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Brutal attack, Surveillance video, Elderly victim, Seattle attack, Crime 

There’s enforcing the law — and then there’s building a system that treats every driver like a suspect the moment they turn the key. Colorado isn’t flirting with that line anymore. It’s driving straight past it.

For years, speed cameras were a minor annoyance. You knew where they were, your navigation app warned you, and if you were paying attention, you adjusted. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it was transparent. Colorado has now scrapped that model in favor of something far more aggressive — and far less accountable.

Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

The state’s new Automated Vehicle Identification Systems don’t just clock your speed at a single point. They track your vehicle across multiple cameras, calculate your average speed over distance, and automatically issue a ticket if you’re 10 miles per hour or more over the limit. No warning. No discretion. No human judgment. Just a system quietly watching, calculating, and penalizing.

Let’s call this what it is: not smarter enforcement, but broader surveillance.

Highway robbery

The rollout followed a 2023 change in state law, and what started as warnings has quickly turned into active ticketing. One of the newest stretches under this system is Interstate 25 north of Denver, where drivers moving through construction zones are now monitored continuously. The state says it’s about safety. That’s the headline. But the fine print tells a different story.

The penalty is $75 and carries zero points on your license. That’s not an accident. If this were truly about cracking down on dangerous driving, there would be meaningful consequences tied to your driving record. Instead, this looks like a volume business model — low enough fines to keep people from fighting, high enough frequency to generate serious revenue.

And then there’s the part that should concern every driver in America: The ticket goes to the registered owner of the vehicle, not necessarily the person who was driving.

That’s where this stops being about traffic enforcement and starts colliding with the Constitution.

RELATED: Illinois wants to track every mile its drivers drive — is your state next?

Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images

Blank check

The burden of proof in this country is supposed to be on the state. That’s not optional. That’s foundational. Yet Colorado’s system leans on the assumption that if your name is on the registration, you’re responsible — unless you can prove otherwise. That flips due process on its head.

Colorado Revised Statute 42-4-110.5 does not give the state a blank check to assign liability to vehicle owners in every situation. In fact, it explicitly acknowledges that the owner may not have been the driver. And long-standing legal precedent — at both the federal and state level — makes it clear that the government must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Relying on a license plate and a database isn’t proof. It’s a shortcut.

And let’s be honest: The system counts on the fact that most people won’t push back. They’ll see the fine, weigh the hassle of fighting it, and just pay up. That’s not justice. That’s compliance by inconvenience.

Legal maze

If you do challenge it, you’re stepping into a legal maze that most drivers aren’t equipped to navigate. Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

This is what happens when enforcement becomes automated: Accountability disappears.

A police officer can assess a situation. A camera cannot. It doesn’t care if traffic flow made it safer to keep pace. It doesn’t account for conditions. It doesn’t apply discretion. It simply records, calculates, and penalizes. That might be efficient, but it’s not fair — and it’s certainly not nuanced.

Mile-high spies

Then there’s the bigger picture, the one few officials seem eager to talk about.

These systems don’t just measure speed. They track movement. They log where your vehicle enters a zone, where it exits, and how it behaves in between. Expand that across highways, cities, and eventually entire states, and you’re looking at a real-time network that monitors how Americans move.

And if you think it stops at speeding, you haven’t been paying attention to how quickly technology evolves.

Today, it’s average speed enforcement. Tomorrow, it could be automated citations for rolling stops, lane usage, or anything else that can be digitized. Add artificial intelligence into the mix, and the potential scope grows exponentially. This isn’t science fiction — it’s the natural progression of a system that’s already in place.

Colorado isn’t just testing a traffic tool. It’s piloting a framework.

Stealer’s wheel

Supporters will argue this is about protecting construction workers, and that’s a legitimate concern. No one is arguing against safety. But safety cannot become the catch-all justification for systems that erode fundamental legal protections. You don’t preserve public safety by undermining due process.

And let’s not ignore the tone coming from officials who promote these programs. There’s an almost casual acceptance — sometimes even pride — in the idea of constant monitoring. As if a 24/7 enforcement net is something drivers should simply accept as the cost of modern transportation.

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

Government answers to the people, not the other way around. Policies like this deserve scrutiny, debate, and — when necessary — pushback. Because once a system like this is normalized, it doesn’t get scaled back. It expands. Quietly. Incrementally. Permanently.

Colorado may frame this as innovation. But from behind the wheel, it looks a lot more like overreach.

And if other states decide to follow this blueprint — and they will — drivers across the country may soon find themselves in the same position: tracked, ticketed, and told to prove their innocence after the fact.

That’s not better enforcement.

That’s a fundamental shift in how the rules are applied — and who they’re really serving.

​Law enforcement system, Speed cameras, Surveillance state, Lifestyle, Colorado, State laws, Big tech, Align cars