Just when it seemed like the government incompetence surrounding the events leading up to the the Parkland, Florida high school massacre couldn’t get any worse, new information reveals that political motivations and bad policy in the leadership at the sheriff’s office had a pivotal role in failing to prevent the shooting.

First, it was the FBI. A tip that outlined the shooter’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,” was given to the FBI only six weeks before the deadly massacre occurred, NBC reported. The FBI failed to follow up.

Then, it was local law enforcement. Multiple agents within the Broward County Sheriff’s department cowered in the face of danger, and waited outside the Stoneman Douglas high school as innocent students were killed inside.

And there’s more: According to CNN, “Records obtained from the sheriff’s office by CNN show the law enforcement agency received at least 45 calls for service relating to Cruz or his brother from 2008 to 2017, before the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14.”

So was it pure incompetence, or was something more sinister at play?

It may have been both.

According to report from RedState, a deeply embedded system of public corruption at the sheriff’s department may be to blame for the murderous shooter slipping right through the sheriff department’s fingers.

As reported by CNN, dozens of calls were made to local law enforcement about Nickolas Cruz with descriptions such as “mentally ill person,” “child/elderly abuse,” “domestic disturbance,” “missing person,” and more. Most of those warning calls resulted in “no written report.”

What in the world would have motivated an “oversight” like that?

According to RedState, it all comes back to Sheriff Israel.

First elected as sheriff in 2012, Israel’s run for re-election in 2016 was highly criticized and controversial, according to an August 2016 report from Sun Sentinel.

“Sheriff Scott Israel has hired from the ranks of his political supporters, building a community outreach wing his critics say doubles as a re-election team,” the Sentinel explained. “Israel’s opponents say he’s built a publicly funded political machine, paying back supporters with jobs and using them to keep him in office. They say the money could be better spent, particularly after the sheriff complained about not having enough funding to secure the county courthouse, where a murder suspect recently escaped.”

In other words, Israel rewarded his political supporters with high-paying cushy jobs within the sheriff’s office. The outreach manager position, for example, earned a $78,489 salary. That position was held by the husband of Israel’s campaign manager, the Sentinel reported.

RELATED: Trump Doubles Down on Sheriff’s Cowardice: “I’d Run in There Even If I Didn’t Have a Weapon”

So, a group of unqualified people filled the positions at the sheriff’s office. And we wonder why they failed to stop Nickolas Cruz?

It gets worse. An ominous foreshadowing of the deadly shooting was revealed in the form of a 2016 sheriff re-election campaign questionnaire.

“Why are you running and what gives you an edge over your opponents?” the questionnaire asked Israel.

See Israel’s answer below:

I am the incumbent Sheriff for the past four years, and a career law enforcement officer with over three decades in the profession.  The results speak for themselves. As our sheriff, I successfully implemented new policies and approaches to public safety that sharply reduced violent crime and burglary rates – the sharpest declines in the entire State of Florida. My innovative initiatives also helped keep children in school and out of jail, greatly expanding the juvenile civil citation program and making issuance of civil citations mandatory for BSO deputies. I worked to combat gun violence by openly lobbying legislators to curtail Stand Your Ground, block open carry legislation, and block legislation allowing concealed guns on school campuses.

(Emphasis added.)

You read that right. Policies put into place within the sheriff’s department by Israel Scott discouraged arresting or expelling juveniles, apparently even if their behavior was violent or threatening.

Cruz had a history of violence at school and was never officially expelled. He had a history of violent behavior at home but was never arrested.

And one day, he stormed into a school building and murdered 17 innocent people — but it was too late.

When pressed for answers on allegations about his alleged public corruption, Israel deflected. “Lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep,” he reportedly said at the time.

And lions apparently care more about their own interests than the lives of those they swore to protect.

Share this story on Facebook if you’re disgusted by the actions of Broward County Sheriff Israel Scott.

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Google has removed search results for any product that contains the word “gun” in it, including water guns, toy guns, the band “Guns and Roses,” and even “burgundy” from its shopping section.

Google has removed results in its shopping tool for a wide range of terms related to firearms, unwittingly censoring completely unrelated items such as music groups and movies whose titles matched filtered terms.

Google Shopping allows users to search for products from a wide range of online shopping sites to compare prices and offerings. The Internet giant has removed search results for a wide variety of terms, which was discovered by social media users this week.

Searches for “gun,” “guns,” “pistol,” “pistols,” “AR-15,” “rifle,” and “revolver,” in the shopping section of Google’s search engine will now fail to return any results, while other searches which have nothing to do with firearms but include the keywords similarly provide no results, including “toy guns,” “water guns,” “glue gun,” “Guns and Roses,” “Gundam,” “Top Gun,” “Naked Gun,” the Man With the Golden Gun,” “Shogun,” “Sex Pistols,” and even “burgundy.”

The fact that words including “gun” as part of the title have led many to suspect Google is running a filter specifically to remove any search result including those letters, as opposed to filtering by product category or vendor.

Google shopping now blocks all search queries with the English word “gun” in it, which can be something of an issue as you can imagine. pic.twitter.com/NL4V00y079

— Best Mom Eva (@mombot) February 27, 2018

Example 3:
If you’re a music lover and wanted to buy merchandise related to the musical band “Guns and Roses,” too bad. Google’s shopping tab will tell you nothing is available. pic.twitter.com/pPelmGUbFQ

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

How long has Google been censoring shopping results for the search term, “gun?” https://t.co/WZflX3wmmh

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) February 27, 2018

Searches for “flamethrower,” “knives,” “machete,” “arsenic,” “bombs,” “ammo,” and various gun parts are still returned, however.

So yeah. Google is fine with all sorts of things that’ll likely get you on a federal watch list, but video games with the word “gun” in them are a no-no. pic.twitter.com/qP2rSUK62l

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) February 27, 2018

Search engine Bing has also removed search results for “pistol” and “rifle,” but does not censor other products with the word “gun” in them.

Google Shopping was the focus of an EU antitrust case against Google that resulted in a record $2.7 billion fine against the company.

Breitbart Tech reached out to Google for comment, but has not received a response.

Actress and singer Barbra Streisand took her criticism of President Donald Trump to a new level in an interview with Variety, in which she says Trump shares the blame for the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“I think even that shooter was affected because Trump brings out the violence in people,” Streisand says, of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, earlier this month that saw Nikalos Cruz kill 17 people with a legally purchased AR-15 rifle.

“He says, ‘It’s OK — rally, lock her up,’” Streisand told Variety of then-candidate Trump and a refrain he chanted about then-candidate Hillary Clinton at campaign rallies.

The two-time Academy Award-winner also praised the students campaigning for more gun control laws in the wake of the Florida shooting.

“I’m so proud of the children who are coming out and talking about sensible gun control,” she said. “That to me, the children, are our future. The children are going to make this happen. I believe that.”

Indeed, Barbra Streisand has long-criticized President Trump. She wrote a Huffington Post article last July, entitled “The Fake President,” in which she writes, “There’s a narcissistic fraud in the White House.”

The 74-year-old, who was a vocal supporter of Clinton, has also blamed President Trump for her weight gain.

“Donald Trump is making me gain weight,” Streisand wrote on Twitter. “I start the day with liquids, but after the morning news, I eat pancakes smothered in maple syrup!”

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

More than 100,000 non-U.S. citizens are registered voters in Pennsylvania, according to testimony contained in a lawsuit demanding that the state admit its problems when it comes to non-citizen voting.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation argued that non-citizens have been voting in Pennsylvania for decades, and that problem has been evident in other states the organization has worked with—including New Jersey and Virginia.

But the state has not granted PILF’s open records requests to access the data at the root of the problem, the organization said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Harrisburg.

“For months, Pennsylvania bureaucrats have concealed facts about non-citizens registering and voting — that ends today,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said.

Adams said the state already admitted that it allowed non-citizens renewing their driver’s licenses to have the opportunity to register to vote.

Pennsylvania officials, however, declined to comment on the lawsuit or the more than 100,000 non-citizen voters.

“We’re not going to comment on anything related to litigation,” said Wanda Murren, director of communications and press at the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Of the more than 100,000 non-citizen voters in Pennsylvania, one city commissioner found in September that at least 90 of those non-citizens registered to vote cast ballots in Philadelphia. Hundreds more non-citizens who did not vote were also on the voter rolls.

The PILF also went after a county in Texas for failing to release non-citizen voting records back in December.

Former President Barack Obama denied that his administration had any scandals that embarrassed him or his team.

It is unclear why Obama clarified that there were no scandals “that embarrassed us.”

“There were mistakes,” he admitted. “We’d screw up, but there wasn’t anything venal during eight years. I know that seems like a low bar, but you look at the presidency; that’s no small thing.”

Conservatives remember the Obama years differently, citing the Fast and Furious scandal, the IRS scandal, wiretapping journalists, the terror attacks in Benghazi, delivering pallets of cash to Iran, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a private email server for government emails.

Obama’s speech at MIT was strictly off the record, but Reason acquired the audio.

The former president also insisted there was not much drama either, thanks to his leadership and organization skills.

“Typically speaking, you didn’t hear about a whole lot of drama inside our White House, and that was also rare,” he said.

But Obama failed to mention reports of his press secretary Robert Gibbs’s cursing at Valerie Jarrett and first lady Michelle Obama. Gibbs left the administration soon after.

Obama admitted there were arguments among his “team of rivals” in the White House but said it was more about people trying to solve tough issues.

“I did have a strong bias towards people who just wanted to get things right, get things done, as opposed to people who were obsessed with ‘I want to be right. I want to prominent. I want to have my name in the headlines,’” he said. “And if you can create that culture, then you are more likely to be successful.”