A person who took a recent viral video caught something suspicious about several barrels next to a highway: They were watching him.

When a citizen pulled off to the side of an Arizona highway, he saw yellow barrels that are seemingly inconspicuous, but upon closer inspection, he saw they had slots carved out for multiple camera lenses.

‘Often the same systems employed by state and local law enforcement nationwide.’

The cameras tucked in the barrel were pointed in both directions and had a power source plugged into them that the man in the video claimed “just goes off in the distance.”

What are they?

The video has been viewed more than 1.5 million times on X, and while it is unclear exactly where the barrels are located, they match the description of setups along U.S. Route 60, east of Apache Junction, Arizona. This remote stretch over 100 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border is where is where Border Patrol authorities are setting up automated license plate recognition cameras.

As reported by AZ Mirror, the disguised cameras look so much like traffic/construction markers — they indeed are construction markers, just with holes cut out — that the Arizona Department of Transportation asked Customs and Border Protection to stop using them because they could confuse drivers.

RELATED: Big Brother on the road: Backlash grows against license plate surveillance

Plate readers are often “disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels,” the Associated Press wrote in November 2025.

The AZ Mirror further noted that cameras have been spotted in orange traffic cones, yellow barrels, speed trap signs, and on the backs of overhead highway signs.

The same style of barrels in the viral video appears in CBP documents and permits dating back as far as 2019, with the documents providing a breakdown of the solar-powered cameras that go inside the barrels, complete with a battery and cellular unit.

“USBP monitoring equipment will be placed in the barrel and weighed down by sand. Barrel camera will have a power supply with solar panel placed thirty feet from the white line [at the road],” read a 2019 permit.

Another set of documents showed the same technology being used in cylindrical cones typically seen for road construction.

RELATED: License plate readers or surveillance? The number of AI cameras in the US is shocking

David L. Ryan/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Why are they there?

The AP reported last year that CBP has been tracking license plates to catch human smugglers as far back as 2017 in “an area of interest or smuggling route.”

“Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” a document stated.

The CBP’s mission is “complex and relies on a layered mix of personnel, technology, and infrastructure to detect illicit activity while supporting lawful trade and travel,” the federal agency said, per the AZ Mirror.

The statement explained that the CBP approach uses license plate readers that are “often the same systems employed by state and local law enforcement nationwide” to identify threats and disrupt criminal networks.

Border Patrol said it does not provide the operational applications of its license plate readers to the public, nor does it disclose the specific number or locations of its cameras, citing “national security reasons.”

Who is monitoring them?

KOLD 13 News in Arizona, like other outlets, reported that Flock Safety cameras have been operating in Arizona regions like Sierra Vista and South Tucson. However, while these two jurisdictions ended their contracts with the surveillance company in May, Flock has operated many of the cameras being used by CBP.

The AP reported that while Flock is one of several companies used by border agents, CBP had access to at least 1,600 of Flock’s license plate readers across 22 states at one time.

As previously reported by Blaze News, Flock is used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and has more than 100,000 ALPR cameras deployed in the United States.

Other camera companies being used by Border Patrol include Rekor and Vigilant Solutions. Rekor launched in 2019 with an announcement that it had recorded a whopping 30 million plate reads per week.

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​Border patrol, Human smuggling, Arizona, Surveillance state, Tech 

A Florida woman has been arrested after authorities said her two dogs fatally mauled a neighbor. There had reportedly been over a dozen complaints about the dogs before the fatal dog attack.

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced the arrest of 29-year-old Linda Cutler at a recent press conference. Cutler was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of 50-year-old Jodi Cowan, who reportedly was mauled to death by Cutler’s dogs.

‘We have a complete cultural meltdown where everybody’s got these big pit bulls, and nobody’s taking proper care of them.’

Judge David Koenig initially considered a $250,000 bond for Cutler but ultimately revoked it due to a prior arrest, ordering her to remain in jail, WKMG-TV reported.

Brevard County jail records show Cutler was previously charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle, possession of a controlled substance, and failure to appear.

In the early morning hours of May 19, Cowan was walking her own dog in her neighborhood in Cocoa.

Ivey said that’s when Cutler’s dogs climbed over a fence and “brutally” attacked Cowan.

“The dogs identified as Max and Mako climbed over the owner’s fence and began to brutally attack and maul Cowan, forcing her to the ground, viciously attacking her, and eventually dragging her across the ground for quite some distance,” Ivey said during the press conference.

Ivey stated that a neighbor’s surveillance camera caught the dogs charging toward Cowan before attacking her.

As Blaze News previously reported, Cowan’s partner of 25 years discovered her in a pool of blood as the dogs continued to try to drag her away.

Cowan’s partner, Donnell Smith, told WESH-TV he left his home to help a neighbor around 1 a.m., and Cowan and her dog were gone when he returned.

Smith said he heard a faint cry for help and then witnessed Cowan being dragged away by the animals.

“I saw the silhouette of the two dogs dragging my wife down the road, off into the grass in front of the truck down there,” a tearful Smith explained.

Smith recalled, “I pulled my knife out, you know, just swinging [it with] one hand and holding the blood with the other, trying to stop her from bleeding.”

“It was brutal. Seeing the same woman I’ve loved for the last 30 years, 25 years just ripped apart by two animals was just … I’ll never get that image out of my mind,” Smith noted.

Smith called 911, and Cowan was transported to the hospital but succumbed to her injuries about four hours later, according to Sheriff Ivey.

Smith believes his wife may have lost her life because she was attempting to rescue her own dog.

“They must have been chasing our little dog, and she went to save her little dog, to get him,” Smith said. “And then they switched their attention to her when she tried to get them off our little dog.”

Smith told WESH that he had previously alerted the sheriff’s office about Cutler’s dogs.

“I told them that she had those two pits that get out all the time and run the neighborhood and have been aggressive toward people, and they didn’t do anything about it,” Smith stated. “My wife lost her life because of it.”

RELATED: Beloved elderly fire department member mauled to death by pack of pit bull-mix dogs; owner charged with murder, animal abuse

WESH-TV reported that there were “more than a dozen calls made to animal control” regarding complaints about Cutler’s dogs dating back to 2024.

Cutler was issued four citations after two calls about dog bites in January and February 2024, according to WESH.

A complaint in 2025 claimed the dogs killed an outdoor cat.

WESH reported that one of the dogs bit someone on April 14, 2026, and the individual was taken to an emergency room.

Other calls focused on Cutler’s dogs running loose in the neighborhood.

WKMG-TV reported that the earlier incidents were not about the two dogs involved in the deadly mauling.

“It’s also important to note that during the early calls from 2024 through November of ’25, the calls at Cutler’s residence were related to other dogs, as the two dogs involved in this attack were puppies back then,” Ivey stated.

A neighbor told WESH, “We have a complete cultural meltdown where everybody’s got these big pit bulls, and nobody’s taking proper care of them.”

The neighbor added, “It is constant that dogs are running loose, and I understand that dogs are property, and the county is limited on what they can do, but a lady is dead.”

Ivey said, “Linda Cutler had specific and documented knowledge that her dogs repeatedly got out of her yard and additional knowledge that her dogs were attacking humans and had actually bitten someone.”

Ivey said Cutler “took minimal action to prevent her dogs from getting out of her yard.”

During the investigation, agents took a sworn statement from Cutler, who admitted that her dogs “routinely” escaped her yard and had to “repeatedly” return to her home, according to Ivey.

Sheriff Ivey said that Cutler confessed that she knew that one of her dogs previously had bitten another person, and her dogs were becoming “more and more aggressive, even toward her.”

Cutler claimed that she installed an additional fence, but knew there were holes through which her dogs escaped the yard, the sheriff said.

Ivey added that Cutler was staying at a beachfront hotel when officers with the Melbourne Police Department arrested her on the manslaughter warrant while responding to a separate “disturbance” involving her and others at the hotel.

Ivey said of Cutler, “Oh, and to make matters worse, when she was taken into custody, she feigned having a heart attack, and had to be, by policy, transported to a nearby hospital for evaluation.”

Sheriff Ivey is seen on video escorting Cutler into the Brevard County Jail, where he tells her, “Hope you enjoyed your time at the beach because you’re not going to be going back.”

Cutler replies, “What is the purpose of that?”

The sheriff fires back, “A woman is dead, and two dogs are about to be euthanized because of your uselessness.”

The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said the dogs are expected to be euthanized.

When asked if Smith would ever forgive Cutler, he said, “I’ll have to think about that one. I’m not vindictive towards her. I don’t want anything evil happening to her, but to forgive her is gonna take a little work.”

The Melbourne Police Department and the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ requests for comment.

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​Florida, Florida crime, Florida woman, Pit bulls, Pitbulls, Dog attacks, Dogs, Animals, When animals attack, Mauling, Crime 

As the results trickled in for candidate Spencer Pratt, he projected confidence that not only did he already beat out Nithya Raman to make the runoff against incumbent Karen Bass — but he’s also confident Bass will be an easy opponent.

“Spencer Pratt is kind of already assuming he’s into this runoff,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere says, before playing a clip of Pratt talking to reporters before the results were all in.

“Are you going to debate Karen Bass again?” a reporter asked Pratt. “And what do you want to tell her if she sees this?”

“You know, I loved debating her on NBC. I look forward to a couple more on NBC and Fox. We can do debates every Friday if she would like because this actually became my most favorite thing to do,” Pratt responded.

“I hope she’s ready, because I literally could not be more excited,” he added.

“It is usually a good thing for a politician, Dave, to debate the dumbest people around them. So I think Spencer Pratt is in a good position here,” Stu says.

“It has helped a lot of people in the past. So I think it’s a very good idea,” co-host Dave Landau agrees, though he adds, “unfortunately, in California, I’m not sure if it’s going to help.”

“Yeah, it’s still going to be tough in Los Angeles for Spencer Pratt to win because when you have a situation where it’s two Democrats and one Republican, their votes get kind of split up,” Stu says.

“When you go the opposite way, and you have one Republican versus one Democrat, it’s very difficult to win in a city like this, especially in an election time that’s probably going to be pretty difficult for Republicans generally,” he continues.

“Pratt though is looking at this positively, Dave. He’s trying to take a positive spin on what is to come here in the next few months,” he adds.

In an interview following the latest election results, Pratt exclaimed that “obviously God wanted five more months” of him “exposing all the failures of our mayor.”

“So it’s going to be a fun ride. I hope she’s ready,” he said, adding that he was “born for this.”

“As far as debates go and going up against her and just trying to show track record,” Dave comments, “he’s got it in the bag.”

“As far as the, you know, votes that come in the bag in the middle of the night, those are the ones that I’d have to worry about,” he adds.

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​Stu burguiere, Dave landau, Karen bass, Nithya raman, Spencer pratt, Los angeles, Mayoral race, Stu and dave do america 

Once you go black, you never go back.

But once you go blackface, you have to revisit it endlessly — at least if you’re Ted Danson.

Kimmel’s embrace of the tradition had been especially enthusiastic; the comic donned full-body makeup to play NBA star Karl Malone in a ‘Man Show’ sketch.

More than 30 years after donning minstrel makeup for a Friars Club roast of then-girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg, the “Cheers” actor’s face is still red.

“I need to and want to apologize for the rest of my life,” Danson said during a recent appearance on comedian W. Kamau Bell’s podcast. He went on to describe his tasteless gag as “so arrogant and stupid.”

Friars pan

The racially risque routine occurred in 1993 at New York’s Hilton Hotel, where Goldberg served as guest of honor and Danson appeared as roastmaster. According to contemporary reports, Danson’s routine included race-based jibes, references to his relationship with Goldberg, jokes about mixed-race children, and repeated use of racial slurs.

The act was hardly an unqualified success, offending both audience members and — once word spread — the wider public. Then-New York Mayor David Dinkins (D) reportedly left before the event ended, while television host Montel Williams publicly criticized the performance.

While Danson didn’t respond to the immediate backlash, Goldberg leaped to his defense, arguing that critics simply didn’t get typical roast humor. She added that the outre humor was in line with her own taboo-breaking career.

“We were not trying to be politically correct. We were trying to be funny for ourselves,” she said.

Goldberg also said she had contributed to the material and had even directed Danson to the makeup artist responsible for his Al Jolson-style look.

From ‘Cheers’ to jeers

“Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years,” the 78-year-old told Bell, adding that he now thinks her defense doesn’t lessen his guilt.

“Your intentions do not matter. The impact you have on people is what matters,” he said.

Unlike today’s popular celebrity roasts, which are filmed and broadcast for public consumption, the 1993 gathering was meant only for those in attendance. While photographs from the roast remain widely circulated, little footage from the event appears to be publicly available.

A 1999 documentary about the Friars Club includes an audio snippet of Danson’s entrance, followed by raucous laughter from the crowd.

RELATED: Druski ‘whiteface’ skit EXPOSES racist double standard

Blaze Media

Sitcom shuffle

Danson’s apology is itself a throwback to the headier days of 2020, when the country’s George Floyd-inspired racial reckoning had Hollywood scrambling to erase any incidents of blackface in popular TV shows.

Affected programs included “The Office,” “Community,” “Scrubs,” and “The Golden Girls,” as well as “30 Rock,” which had a total of four episodes featuring blackface.

Late-night hosts also got into the act, with both Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel apologizing for their antiquated antics. Kimmel’s embrace of the tradition had been especially enthusiastic. While his Oprah Winfrey impersonation required face paint only, the comic donned full-body makeup to play NBA star Karl Malone in a “Man Show” sketch.

Softened-up shock jock Howard Stern infamously donned blackface while impersonating Danson not long after the roast, adding an exaggerated “black” accent for good measure. Although he didn’t apologize directly, he did admit it made him “cringe.”

He added that he didn’t think he was a “bad guy” and that he had “evolved and changed” thanks to therapy.

​Blackface controversy, Celebrity roasts, Friars club roast, Whoopi goldberg, Lifestyle, Ted danson 

St. Paul City Attorney Irene Kao — a warrior against what she calls “structural racism” — announced this week that she won’t bother bringing state charges against those radicals who stormed into Cities Church in January.

Kao’s apparent tolerance for militant leftist agitation has left the church’s lead pastor, Rev. Jonathan Parnell, and others wondering whether the woke prosecutor’s purported “commitment to protect religious people includes evangelical Christians.”

A mostly peaceful church invasion?

Don Lemon — the former CNN talking head who suggested in October that “black people, brown people” should take up arms against Immigration and Customs Enforcement — apparently joined radicals from Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and BLM Twin Cities for a so-called “ICE Out Action” in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18.

‘The law will bend for those whose cause aligns with the politics of those in power.’

Rather than interfere with federal law enforcement operations, this motley crew of leftists stormed into Cities Church, doing their apparent best to drown out sounds of Sunday worship.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network and former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, claimed responsibility for the disruption and indicated that Cities Church was targeted because “David Easterwood is a Pastor at this church and the Acting Field Director for the ICE office in St. Paul.”

RELATED: Detroit priest administers righteous beatdown to suspected car thief: ‘Just another day’

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The radicals refused requests from church officials to leave the premises and instead hectored churchgoers and screamed in the aisles and pews.

The Trump Justice Department took the matter seriously, securing indictments against all 39 individuals suspected of disrupting the church service, including Lemon, Armstrong, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — a radical who previously worked for Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum; has served as the right-hand man for Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County’s Soros-backed prosecutor; and is married to St. Paul City Councilwoman Anika Bowie.

Whereas the DOJ appears keen on holding the suspected church invaders accountable for federal civil rights violations, Irene Kao is evidently of a different mind.

Decision, backlash

Kao, the leftist daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, announced this week that her office will not bring state-level criminal charges against Don Lemon and his comrades.

“Our office has a legal and ethical obligation to file charges only when the available evidence establishes probable cause and supports a reasonable likelihood of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” Kao said in a statement.

“Following a careful evaluation of the video footage, investigative reports, and other available materials, prosecutors determined that the current evidence is insufficient to meet that standard for criminal charges under Minnesota state statutes,” continued the woke prosecutor.

After noting that her decision should not be read as an endorsement of illegal behavior, Kao wrote, “The right to peacefully protest is protected, as is the right to exercise one’s religious beliefs.”

“Balancing these equally important rights is paramount to our decision today,” continued the leftist prosecutor.

Doug Wardlow, director of litigation for Truth North Legal and representative for Cities Church, said, “The St. Paul city attorney’s decision treats the church like it’s a public sidewalk — as if the sanctuary were an open forum that anyone may seize mid-service, rather than private property where a congregation has the right to worship undisturbed.”

“By wrongly characterizing the invasion and takeover of a worship service as First Amendment-protected conduct, the city attorney’s office sends an unmistakable signal: The law will bend for those whose cause aligns with the politics of those in power,” added Wardlow.

Rev. Jonathan Parnell said in a statement, “According to the St. Paul city attorney’s logic, it is perfectly fine for agitators to invade a mosque, a cathedral, or a temple, intimidate the families and children inside, and shut down their religious gathering. Just call it a ‘protest.'”

The Cities Church pastor noted further that “City Attorney Irene Kao’s decision not to charge the agitators who invaded our church on January 18, 2026, leaves us to question whether her commitment to protect religious people includes evangelical Christians.”

In addition to facing criticism for setting a dangerous precedent, Kao has been questioned over her possible self-interest in the case.

After all, Jamael Lydell Lundy, one of the radicals whom Kao let off the hook, is married to a member of city council — the very council that confirms the mayor’s city attorney appointments.

KSTP-TV has doggedly — but so far unsuccessfully — pressed the offices of Kao and Democratic Mayor Kaohly Her about whether the case should have been handled externally to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

David Schultz, professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University, told KSTP that Kao’s handling of Lundy’s case creates the “possible appearance of a conflict of interest.”

“Send it outside City Hall, not even move it to a different attorney in City Hall, but to basically hire an outside firm, review the file, and make their own independent decision regarding whether or not to prosecute or not,” said Schultz. “That way it would clearly have addressed any of the concerns about the appearance of conflict of interest, and again, assured the public that there was no favoritism going on here.”

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​Don lemon, Peaceful protest, Black lives matter, Ice, Christian, Church, Minnesota, St paul, Woke prosecutor, Politics 

Protesters have spent nearly two weeks outside a federal detention facility in Newark — forming human chains, blocking vehicle exits, and clashing with officers in riot gear. A U.S. senator got caught in a cloud of pepper spray, and New Jersey’s sitting governor, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, was turned away at the gate.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called those incidents “nothing more than a political stunt … for fundraising clips.”

Now the state has turned to the courts.

‘A better gym than the one I go to.”

New Jersey Democrat Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced Tuesday that she had filed suit against GEO Group Inc., the private company operating Delaney Hall under a $1 billion federal contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The suit seeks to compel GEO Group to grant state health inspectors full access to the facility.

The suit alleges that on Thursday, inspectors were permitted to examine only the food-service area and were blocked from the medical unit, sleeping quarters, and bathing and toileting facilities.

The broader allegations — worms in food, no toilet paper, inadequate medical care — are sourced to detainee accounts relayed through lawyers, family members, and advocacy groups. A University Hospital doctor also reported a confirmed tuberculosis case, the lawsuit claimed.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) separately announced that the city was filing its own suit to close the facility, citing an unverified report that a detainee suffered a miscarriage without proper care.

The DHS wasted no time dismissing the litigation as “frivolous.”

“This is a frivolous lawsuit,” the department posted on X. “ICE is committed to transparency, and Delaney Hall complies with all required state and local laws.”

“Just last week on May 28, four representatives of the New Jersey State Health Department arrived at approximately 11:00 AM. They entered the facility and inspected the foodservice department. The inspection of the kitchen was completed and they departed around 12:30 PM.”

The DHS has also flatly disputed the hunger strike claim: “FACT CHECK: there is NO HUNGER STRIKE at Delaney Hall.”

One Republican member of Congress, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), toured the facility and pushed back on the narrative, describing a library, an outdoor soccer field, and what he called “a better gym than the one I go to.”

RELATED: ‘Violent agitator’ savagely bit ICE agent during riots in New Jersey, says DHS

Selçuk Acar/Anadolu/Getty Images

Movimiento Cosecha’s New Jersey chapter, Cosecha New Jersey, has been present at the protests — a group that has called for an end to the entire immigration detention system — alongside ICE Out of New Jersey, Eyes on ICE New Jersey, and other radical groups.

The DHS said protesters arrived “carrying anti-ICE signs and Antifa flags” and physically blocked federal vehicles.

Security expert Lora Ries told NTD the protesters were “organized, funded, and trained” — a characterization that echoed New Jersey’s own attorney general, who noted that some demonstrators arrived “armed with helmets, shields, or gas masks” and deliberately refused to leave.

Critics have also pointed to the closure last month of the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, the primary federal watchdog for immigration detention. The DHS said, “Congress did” it, not the department.

Newark lifted its nightly curfew Tuesday evening, and family visitation was restored. The state and city lawsuits are pending.

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​Attorney general, Delaney hall, Dhs, Hunger strike, Ice, Markwayne mullin, New jersey, Newark, Politics 

Let us give thanks to America’s ultra-rich from a bygone era. Without them, our world would be poorer in beauty.

That sounds like I’m making a joke, doesn’t it? The received opinion in America today is that the ultra-wealthy are slavering predators bent on “capitalisming” poor Gen Z coffee shop employees into penury.

That’s one of the best parts about the Shelburne Museum — very little is behind velvet ropes.

Well, I’m not joking, and the received opinion is baloney.

Tour de force

Whereas the anti-wealth advocates generally make their points by taking to the streets and screaming like lunatics, I’m going to try a different approach. I trust you’ll find it more pleasant.

Allow me to take you on a short tour of one of the finest civic legacies bestowed upon my state of Vermont: the Shelburne Museum. I hope this product of one socialite’s generosity inspires you to see what treasures may have been bequeathed to your town by a philanthropist of old.

I thank God for the ultra-rich of the past who practiced the lost art of noblesse oblige. Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie built more than 1,600 public libraries in the U.S. alone. Your town may have one. You know them by their quality, their gracious architecture, their built-in hardwood book cases and grand stairs.

Compare a Carnegie library to a modern concrete, glass, and steel monstrosity such as the Seattle Public Library.

American Versailles

Vermonters have Electra Havemeyer Webb to thank for the idyllic paradise on the shores of Lake Champlain called the Shelburne Museum. The 45-acre property has 30 buildings, one of the last steamships to ply the lake, a preserved general store and apothecary, and more. The footpath through the property is about a mile, and it takes you through rolling hills dotted with original buildings from the colonial era through the 19th century.

I imagine that it’s a bit like the Queen’s Hamlet at Versailles. Marie Antoinette constructed a working toy village at a short distance from the main palace, an idealized country village with a mill, a dairy, and charming bridges over streams. She liked to retreat from the frenetic court, and she used the Hamlet as a sort of proto-Montessori school to teach her children.

The Shelburne Museum is like an American version. All the old buildings are actually old buildings, not replicas. Most were transported to the museum grounds from other parts of Vermont and New England.

As you walk by the original saltbox-style house from the 1700s, you see the town jail built in stone on the other side of the path. It’s just two cells with doors of iron bars, but at least they gave the prisoners (likely just the town drunks) a stove for winter heat.

Josh Slocum

Up the path a bit you’ll find a working printshop that still uses an old Heidelberg press. The docents will ink up plates and press flyers right in front of you to show how events were advertised and how news was printed for distribution before the digital age, all on working antique machines.

Josh Slocum

Full steam ahead

Heiress to a sugar refining fortune, Webb was raised among the upper crust of New York City and taught to appreciate high European culture. But at a young age it was American craft that caught her eye. She devoted her time and fortune to amassing a vast collection of early American antiques, art, and everyday objects. By founding the museum in 1947, she opened that collection to the people of Vermont.

What she left is a true gift in the best philanthropic spirit of America’s old money. Mrs. Webb saved one of the last steamships to traverse Lake Champlain and had it hauled by rail onto dry land to be preserved. If you’re ever in town, bring your kids. Imagine the sense of magical whimsy when you crest a hill and see a 19th-century steamship over the horizon.

Josh Slocum

Go aboard, and find yourself immersed in Edwardian splendor. This is what travel used to look like.

See those chairs? You can sit in them. That’s one of the best parts about the Shelburne Museum — very little is behind velvet ropes. You get to touch most things, and you get to watch old machines come to life and do the job for which they were built.

Josh Slocum

The place is a paradise for boys who love mechanical toys. Go downstairs below the waterline, and you’re next to the towering vertical beam steam engine that turned the red paddle wheels and propelled the Ticonderoga at a brisk-for-the-time 17 miles per hour.

Josh Slocum

Keeping the flame

RELATED: Kerosene lamps: Your escape from the sickly glare of LEDs

The Print Collector/Getty Images

Let’s walk on to the general store. Again, this is no twee recreation of Ye Olde Time Store.

It’s a real general store, and everything inside it is from the period. The enormous cast iron stove sits in the middle of the room. On either side are goods behind the counter: tobacco, canned vegetables, molasses from a barrel, hardtack for the sailors.

Josh Slocum

The docent, a gentleman in his 80s in natty tweed, conducted me to the back room where the barber shop is preserved. Beyond that is the small tavern room where men would come after work to drink ale and rum while playing cards.

Beyond that is what may be one of the most perfectly preserved and extensively stocked apothecary shops (a forerunner of the drugstore) in the United states. Look at these cabinets full of what must be almost the entire range of patent medicines sold in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

Josh Slocum

And that lamp is one of the best-preserved examples I have seen of the most sought-after and expensive kerosene lamp of its day (I’m a collector).

The Angle Lamp was so named because it placed the wick burner at an angle, rather than vertically. Combined with the specially shaped milk glass shades, the Angle Lamp was the first oil-burning lamp designed to throw light downward and outward. It became a mainstay of workshops, where good lighting was a necessity.

The docent told me the museum officials had no idea of the lamp’s history or its place in commercial lighting, and they were delighted to note down more detail about a part of their collection. That’s another charming aspect of the Shelburne Museum; the people who work and volunteer there love what they do and are happy to learn as much from visitors as they teach.

And wouldn’t you like to get your hands on some of the remedies that can no longer be legally sold?

Josh Slocum

A doll’s house

Do you have girls who love dolls and life in miniature? Be sure to take them to the third floor of one of the last buildings on the path. The exhibit of dollhouses and dioramas is magical.

Here’s the lobby in one dollhouse set up as a late 19th-century hotel.

Josh Slocum

Some of the others are so detailed you could fool yourself into believing you were looking at a full-size room.

Josh Slocum

No collection of doll-related ephemera would be complete without That One Cursed Doll, and the Shelburne does not disappoint.

Josh Slocum

Good luck sleeping.

De gustibus

Your correspondent finds it difficult to write a column without finding something to mock, and fortunately Mrs. Webb provided for this with her collection of Impressionist paintings. The main home on the property features at least two Monets, and I’m here to tell you they look worse in person than they do in museum catalogs.

I mean, look at this:

Josh Slocum

My friend is an artist who made a beeline for the Monets. We stood in front of this representation of some primitive huts, and she didn’t say anything. I did.

“Well, it’s s**t, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yeah. That’s really ugly,” she replied.

Not all fine art is actually fine. Sorry.

But noblesse oblige is very fine indeed. It is, in fact, noble. Without the Mr. Carnegies and Mrs. Webbs, our country would be impoverished in beauty and the ability of the public to experience it. It takes robber-baron levels of wealth to collect, to curate, and, eventually, to bequeath to the public examples of the finest uplifting, aspirational, and enchanting machines and objets d’art that show the best of what man and woman can create.

This is something only the rich can do for us. Let’s hear it for Mrs. Webb.

​General store, Kerosene lamps, Shelburne museum, Electra havemeyer webb, Lifestyle, Philanthropy, Culture, Early americana, American history, Steamships 

Big Tech companies helped censor Americans during COVID. Now many of the same interests pillaging rural America for surveillance data centers want to suppress debate over their next great project. This time, they are not merely trying to censor speech. They are helping create the pretext to criminalize it.

Federal and state law enforcement should have their hands full with real threats: jihadist networks, political assassinations, attacks against ICE, and the growing culture of left-wing violence that led to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Yet last week, Wired obtained documents showing a coordinated effort among the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and roughly 80 regional fusion centers to monitor supposed anti-tech and anti-data-center violence.

It is disgraceful to watch law enforcement silence Americans on behalf of Big Tech.

More than 1,000 pages of internal DHS, FBI, and fusion-center reports describe “anti-technology extremism” as an emerging domestic threat based largely on a handful of unverified threats against politicians. No one should excuse genuine threats or violence. But the idea that data-center opponents have created a domestic threat requiring this level of federal coordination is absurd. It is gaslighting dressed up as intelligence work.

This is the same logic behind the Trump administration’s decision to station marshals with surveyors for data-center transmission lines in Carroll County, Maryland. The point was not to respond to credible threats. The point was to frame opposition — especially in one of Maryland’s most conservative counties — as dangerous before the debate even began.

Which brings us to Dixon, Illinois.

Last week, resident Harley Delander organized a Facebook protest outside the home of former state Rep. Tom Demmer (R), who is now promoting a 387-acre data-center site through the Lee County Industrial Development Association. People can debate the prudence of protesting at an official’s residence, though such protests have become common in local disputes. But police produced no credible evidence that Delander or his friends planned violence.

Delander was arrested outside his home 12 hours later and charged with two felonies: intimidation and stalking. Police said his communications “knowingly and willfully” caused fear for Demmer and his family’s safety. Delander recorded the arrest.

This reflects a growing trend: criminalizing sharp public debate based on how a public official claims to feel rather than what a citizen actually did.

A Massachusetts resident was sentenced to prison and spent a full year behind bars before trial for writing angry emails to a local Michigan politician. The emails were ugly — the sort of language elected officials receive every day — but they contained no personal threats or even veiled threats. He was extradited to Oakland County, Michigan, in December 2023 and charged under Michigan’s law against intimidating public officials, which hinges on whether the “victim” felt “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.”

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We have reached the point where heated political debate — a tradition as old as Adams and Jefferson — can become grounds for abridging the First Amendment. What a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence!

The crackdown is not limited to nasty emails or home protests. Across the country, law-abiding rural residents, many of them seniors, are getting roughed up or arrested for speaking too long or objecting too loudly at data-center hearings.

On February 17, Oklahoma farmer Darren Blanchard exceeded his three-minute speaking limit by a few seconds at a Claremore City Council town hall on “Project Mustang,” a proposed AI data center backed by Beale Infrastructure. Once his time expired, he stopped speaking and walked to the rostrum to give the city manager a written copy of his remarks. For that, police handcuffed and removed him, transported him to Rogers County Jail, and booked him on criminal trespassing charges.

In April, Imperial County, California, resident Ismael Arvizu was arrested and charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and threatening a public official. Did he attack an official? No. After speaking during his allotted time at an Imperial County Board of Supervisors meeting, Arvizu applauded when another resident threatened to start a recall petition against the supervisors. The Los Angeles Times reported that an officer led him out and arrested him, and prosecutors charged him with threatening a public official.

In Midland, Texas, video shows a resident calmly calling for a point of order under meeting rules at a data-center meeting. He was immediately grabbed and removed from the room. He does not appear to have been arrested or charged, but the point remains: Police increasingly seem prepared to remove data-center opponents before their speech, outbursts, or objections would traditionally qualify as disrupting a meeting.

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This is happening in deep-red counties across America. It is disgraceful to watch law enforcement silence Americans on behalf of Big Tech.

Recently, the Intercept obtained a law-enforcement bulletin from a fusion center housed within the Philadelphia Police Department showing that federal authorities were monitoring anti-data-center social media posts for “domestic violent extremists.” The bulletin warned that “domestic violent extremists” were “likely interested in targeting artificial intelligence data centers,” posing physical and cyber threats to infrastructure in the Philadelphia region. Then it conceded that authorities lacked “specific information on plans to target AI data centers in the Philadelphia area.”

That is the whole game. Invent a vague threat, inflate it into a domestic extremism category, and use it to justify surveillance, intimidation, and arrests. Then pretend ordinary citizens are dangerous because they object to surrendering their land, power, and communities to Big Tech.

The irony is hard to miss. Governments at every level are deploying censorship, surveillance, and criminal enforcement to service an agenda built on surveillance, data extraction, and control.

Talk about paying for the rope to hang ourselves!

​Data centers, Ai, Big tech, Covid, Dhs, Fbi, Trump administration, Law enforcement, Ismael arvizu, Opinion & analysis, Artificial intelligence, Surveillance, First amendment, Protest, Domestic terrorism