March 22, 2025

ED MORRISSEY: Elon to ‘Fire Pull’ Bowman: Get Ready for a 4-Alarm Lawsuit.

Is stupidity a defense against defamation? Perhaps, and although [Jamaal] Bowman is a former public-school principal, his attorneys can point to a number of Bowman’s statement and actions to depict him as a pure-D moron, including and especially the fire-pull incident. A better defense, especially in light of Musk’s clear status as a ‘public person’ under the Sullivan standard, is that “Nazi” is a hyperbolic statement of disapproval that was not meant to be taken literally.

Unfortunately, both defenses would tend to get defeated by a statement Bowman made at the time of the fire-pull incident. At the time, Bowman attempted to get his fellow Democrats to adopt a set of talking points to defend him for faking a fire alarm, with Politico reporting at the time that one suggested response would be to call Republicans Nazis:

One suggested response from Bowman’s office to questions about the incident: “I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.”

Bowman then claimed that his staffers had created the bullet points and hadn’t asked him for approval before sending it out. He then released a statement explaining why it was inappropriate:

So Bowman is on record stating that he only intends to use “Nazi” in its “precise definition,” and explicitly condemned it as a term for a broad political attack. That certainly would lead one to believe that Bowman intentionally and fraudulently applied it to Musk for the express purpose of defamation.

That certainly seems … actionable. As well as incompetent.

Anyway, Musk will still have a tough time getting around Sullivan and the court’s normal tolerance of hyperbole in political criticism. Normally, one might wonder whether a plaintiff in this situation would want to waste the resources on such a fight, but Musk has an awful lot of resources.

Related: “I’m not suggesting Elon Musk took my advice when I said he should consider suing Jamaal Bowman, but I’m not denying it either.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

OBVIOUSLY IT’S THOSE DUMB RED-STATE REDNECK ANTI-VAXXERS: Number of Texas measles cases surpass last year’s national total.

Oh, wait: Europe grapples with highest number of measles cases in more than 25 years. “A total of 127,350 cases were reported in the region in 2024, double the number of cases reported for 2023 and the highest number since 1997, according to analysis by WHO and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).”

Also: Ontario sees another sharp increase in measles cases, outbreaks growing in Quebec and Alberta.

I wonder where all these cases are coming from?

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DON SURBER: Highlights of the Week.

ITEM 1: Having rescued two astronauts this week, Elon Musk set his sights on bringing Major West, Dr. Smith and the Robinson family home.

NASA launched them on October 16, 1997, and were headed to Alpha Centauri, but somehow they became lost in space.

ITEM 2: Eric Daugherty tweeted, “Trump says he will pay the astronauts who were stranded in outer space overtime out of his own pocket.

“DOOCY: They didn’t get any overtime. $5 per day per diem, that’s $1,430 in extra pay. Can the administration fix this?

“TRUMP: No one mentioned this. If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket, OK? I’ll get it for them. I like that.”

And he won’t tax the OT.

ITEM 3: World Net Daily reported, “An American freed from the Taliban in Afghanistan after being held hostage for two years is thanking President Trump for his freedom.”

Trump is bringing everyone home.

ITEM 4: Chris Queen reported, “One Georgia County Is Making Bank Off Speed Cameras. It’s Time to Stop the Scam.”

Georgia needs you, Lester Maddox. Lester, won’t you please come home?

ITEM 5: CBS tweeted, “President Trump’s dismantling of Voice of America will pave the way for U.S. adversaries to tell an anti-America narrative, VOA Director Michael Abramowitz told Nancy Cordes in his first interview since VOA’s full-time staff and contractors were placed on administrative leave.”

Mollie Hemingway beat me to the punch, tweeting, “Don’t worry, CBS, no one can push an anti-America narrative as well as you do.”

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS WILL BE AN EARLY TEST FOR RFK, JR.:

Related:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ONCE AGAIN, DEMOCRATS ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF AN 80/20 ISSUE:

Posted at 10:55 am by Glenn Reynolds

THIS IS A TEENAGER’S DEFINITION OF INDEPENDENCE. “I’M INDEPENDENT, NOW WHERE’S MY ALLOWANCE?”

Related:

Eh, if they’re going to call us awful with our money or without it, let them do it without our money.

Posted at 8:48 am by Glenn Reynolds

GASSY LASSIE: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says We Need a ‘Democratic Party That Farts’ Harder.

Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York ripped Republican Gabe Evans for not doing a town hall in Colorado. While speaking at a political rally in his state she said the Democrat Party needs to start ripping, too – ripping farts and doing so as hard as possible. No, really. She just let it slip out.

Hear it for yourself. (WATCH)

Sandy’s War has long been bogged down in its quagmire phase, but the above gaffe certainly makes for the perfect bookend with her classic banning “Farting Cows and Airplanes” Green Nude Eel introduction to DC.

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll

REASON MAGAZINE’S PETER SUDERMAN: Forget Woke Snow White. Disney’s Remake Is More Like Socialist Snow White.

[Snow White] is indeed a trainwreck. The problem isn’t that it’s woke. It’s that it’s awful—and lamely, bluntly socialist.

The remake’s big idea was to twist the idea of the word “fair.” See, in earlier versions of Snow White, an evil queen asks a magic mirror, “Who is the fairest of them all?” It’s always the queen, until one day the mirror responds that it’s actually her stepdaughter, the Princess Snow White. The question, “who is the fairest,” in other words, has always been a question about beauty. But in the remake, there’s something else going on. The movie goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the queen isn’t fair because she’s not a socialist. I am not kidding.

The film doesn’t quite use that word. But early in the film, Snow White encounters a handsome thief named Jonathan in the castle. Jonathan is the leader of a group of bandits who live in the woods and survive by stealing food. He feels justified in stealing because he and other ordinary people have very little while the queen has a lot and she won’t share.

This isn’t just a generic lesson in being kind. Later, after Snow White takes up with seven computer-animated dwarfs in the forest, one of the dwarfs explains that the bandits in the woods are “only there because of the queen’s greedy economic policies, which forced them there into a liminal space where ethics are harder to define.” This might not be a precise word-for-word quote—the line gets spat out so fast I am not certain I transcribed it exactly right—but it’s pretty close. This is a movie about how stealing is justified because of the evil queen’s economic policies. She’s not fair, you see, because her privilege and selfishness have impoverished ordinary people. It’s Snow White by way of Occupy Wall Street.

And now we know why Disney cast arguably Hollywood’s most prominent Jewish actress in the role of the Evil Queen. Or as Jim Treacher tweeted:

Though to be fair, between Zegler’s hatred of Israel, and the casting of Gadot as the capitalist Evil Queen its all pretty on-brand for Disney:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

I’M SORRY, BUT ALL THE TASTEMAKERS IN THE MEDIA ARE TELLING ME HE’S THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD:

But don’t worry, hard-working Tesla people. There are Democrats trying to wreck the value of your stock.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

RUY TEIXEIRA: How Deep Is the Hole Democrats Are In? Pretty deep. “On the plus side, voters in a February Navigator Research poll across the battleground Congressional districts thought Democrats in Congress “fight for what they believe.” However, they also thought Democrats don’t respect work, don’t share my values, don’t look out for working people, don’t value work, don’t care about people like me, don’t have the right priorities and, by a massive 47 points, don’t get things done. Double ouch.”

Oh, yeah, they fight for what they believe all right. The problem is what they believe.

UPDATE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

March 21, 2025