MEGAN MCARDLE: Attention, Media People: Peter Thiel Changes Nothing.

To read the Internet as a journalist over the past 48 hours is to conclude that the media is on the verge of a holocaust. Not the boring old holocaust of falling ad revenues and clickbait-oriented business models, but a brand new holocaust, in which rogue billionaires are going to sue us all out of existence.

The proximate cause of the sky falling is the revelation that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has been funding lawsuits against Gawker, apparently with the intention of destroying the company. These included the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit, an invasion-of-privacy case which appears to have been strategically designed to cost Gawker as much money as possible. (A Florida jury awarded the former wrestler $140 million after it published the video, which he says happened without his consent. Gawker plans to appeal.)

Felix Salmon lays out why he thinks this is a profound threat to freedom of speech. “Thiel’s tactics in going after Gawker are very, very frightening for anybody who believes in freedom of speech” he writes; they’re also “extremely effective, in an evil-genius kind of way.” . . .

I find myself in agreement with the basic sentiment — powerful folks using their power to shut down speech they don’t like is deeply worrisome. That’s true whether those folks are Silicon Valley billionaires going after low gossip, or state attorneys general trying to shut down climate change advocacy they don’t like, or politicians using the power of the Federal Elections Commission to keep critical movies about them from airing during election season.

However, I don’t think this is an existential threat to journalism. I don’t think there’s an easy way to stop this sort of thing without stopping a lot of other stuff we’re rather fond of. And I think that journalists who have suddenly, belatedly discovered that harassing lawsuits funded by deep pockets might be a bit of a problem should ask themselves if it’s also a problem when they’re aimed at people other than them.

Let me start by laying out my position on the Hulk Hogan sex tape on the table: It’s vile and prurient, it has no news value, and its publication should have been stopped — not by fear of lawsuits, but by common human decency. Yeah, I’m a buzzkill. But I’m far more sympathetic to Gawker’s victims than to Gawker on this point, as I so often am when they self-righteously cloak repulsive clickbait in the proud trappings of First Amendment principle.

But my more considered reaction is that it’s actually pretty hard to establish a principle which protects important speech, but not the publication of the Hulk Hogan tape. Not impossible (obviously), but not all that easy. Journalists invade folks’ privacy all the time — that’s sort of our job — and drawing lines about whose privacy may be invaded, and when, is not easy for people with a strong commitment to free speech norms. Slippery slopes are real, and when they’re well-greased, you’d be amazed at the kind of acceleration you can get. . . .

The press seems to have suddenly discovered the troubling power of deep-pocketed third parties to make “the process the punishment.” This is particularly surprising in the case of Felix Salmon, who must surely be familiar with some of Eliot Spitzer’s antics against the financial industry. Those occasionally had a similar “Who cares if I’m right; you’ll go out of business long before I run out of filings” flavor to them.

Nor did people show quite this much outrage when states’ attorneys general started organizing a massive campaign against energy companies for having the temerity to oppose their public policy ideas about global warming. That campaign has included subpoenaing advocacy groups, a move that seems quite clearly designed to chill speech the government doesn’t like.

It’s fine when people fund lawsuits against Christian bakers.

Related: Billionaire-Owned Paper Worried About Billionaire’s Influence On Media. “Curiously unmentioned in the piece is Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, one of the richest men on earth, with a net worth of more than $51 billion. That’s odd, considering that Slim is the largest shareholder of one of the most prominent media firms in the world: The New York Times Company.”

WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT? ‘The French Have Been Silent For Too Long’: Identitarians March Through Paris. “Hundreds of people from the Génération Identitaire movement have marched in Paris, protesting against Islamisation, mass migration, and Islamist terror.”

BOLSHEVIK TURNS ON MENSHEVIK: Sanders moves to boot Barney Frank from DNC committee.

Insert Kissinger Iran-Iraq War quote here.

Related: Bernie Sanders was “Unbelievably Abusive” to Employees.

Huh – you don’t see that sort of labor abuse all that often with unabashed communists.

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ROGER SIMON COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET:

Inside the Beltway and along the Washington-to-Boston corridor, #NeverTrump has won the hearts and minds of conservative intellectuals and the high-toned media. The dissenters—yes, there are some—make a lot less noise.

But move away from the East Coast and it’s a different story. Out there, the conservative intelligentsia isn’t aligned against Donald Trump—quite the contrary. Roger L. Simon, the screenwriter, novelist, and former CEO of PJ Media, predicted last August that Trump would win the presidency. Nine months later, in May, he wrote that “it still holds true.”

“Like others, I want things to change .  .  . and Donald seems like the man with the courage and will to do it,” Simon writes. “He’s unafraid. He’s upbeat. He’s funny. He despises political correctness (as anybody with a brain does). .  .  . I can think of no greater antidote to Obama than a Trump presidency.”

Simon is only the most enthusiastic of the conservative highbrows not mired in the East who have grappled with the Trump phenomenon. Their views cover a wide range: from mere opposition to #NeverTrump to mildly pro-Trump to recognition of Trump’s strengths to disclosing they intend to vote for him.

Read the whole thing.

FUNNY HOW LIBERAL GUILT IS RARELY RECIPROCATED: Japanese PM Has No Plans to Visit Pearl Harbor.

OH, THAT EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Making The Grades — How one California university faked students’ scores, skated by immigration authorities — and made a fortune in the process.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, POLITICAL AUTOPHAGY EDITION: More professors subjected to Title IX investigations.

This week brought news of two more college professors who faced Title IX investigations for allegedly sexually harassing a student and an executive assistant. Both learned the hard way that due process is no longer allowed on college campuses, even for professors and administrators.

First we learned of Oberlin theatre and dance professor Roger Copeland, who was subjected to a brief Title IX investigation (which was dropped) because he spoke sharply to a female student. That’s it. That’s all he did, but because Copeland is a male and the student was a female (and no man can ever criticize a woman these days) Oberlin considered, however briefly, that the situation might have been caused by sexism.

Even though the Title IX investigation was dropped, Copeland was still investigated for hurting the student’s feelings. He was allegedly told by an administrator that it didn’t matter if witnesses could say the alleged verbal abuse didn’t happen the way the accusing student described, because “what matters is that the student felt unsafe.”

This opens the door for a whole new set of accusations against professors and other administrators, as any student who gets verbally reprimanded can claim abuse, thanks to the federal government’s dumbing down of what constitutes a “hostile environment.” Conduct need no longer be “pervasive” or even ongoing, a single incident, involving a particularly sensitive student, is enough to ensnare a professor in a due process-free investigation.

Copeland hired a lawyer (a right most students across the country are denied or can’t afford) and was told by the university that if he didn’t meet with them without his attorney present, they would bring him before the Professional Conduct Review Committee. Copeland and his attorney told them to go for it (I’d like to imagine they were laughing), and they never heard back from the administration.

We also learned this week about University of California Berkeley law professor Sujit Choudhry, who essentially faced double jeopardy for his alleged offense because UC President Janet Napolitano was facing criticism. Choudhry was accused of hugging his female executive assistant and kissing her on the cheek. The assistant, Tyann Sorrell, told administrators that Choudhry hugged and kissed her in this manner “five to six times a day.”

She apparently never told Choudhry she was uncomfortable by his actions, which he said he only did once or twice a week to show support. When Sorrell finally did mention the conduct to Choudry — after she complained to the school and had an investigation launched — she told him in an email: “I know you do not mean anything by [your actions] other than, perhaps a warm and friendly greeting.”

She gave the school the names of two witnesses, who backed up Choudhry’s version of events that the hugging and kissing was rare.

No matter, the school sanctioned Choudry by cutting his pay 10 percent for the year, forcing him to pay out of pocket for workplace coaching, writing an apology to Sorrell and constantly having those who investigated him looking over his shoulder.

Lesson: Lawyer up, and punch back twice as hard.

THE INMATE POLICES THE ASYLUM:

Hillary Clinton has Loretta Lynch overseeing the e-mail investigation; Mark Zuckerberg is doing a vigorous “internal investigation” of bias against conservatives; and now, to complete the virtuous circle, the New York Times has appointed an Upper West Side apparatchik as its new ombudswoman.

Elizabeth Spayd, editor of Columbia Journalism Review and a former longtime editor at the Washington Post, is the Times’ new “public editor” (they long ago eschewed the title “ombudsman”, likely due to the –man participle).

Columbia Journalism Review is, of course, the dowager enforcer of the old guard – now largely toothless but still peering down at the dying newspaper world through her spectacles, drooling into a spittoon. It’s not possible to be less connected to the realities of 2016 media than this retread to 1972.

Read the whole thing.

Flashback: Hugh Hewitt on Columbia Journalism School, “The Media’s Ancien Régime,” Matthew Continetti on the New York Times as an extended Saved By the Bell episode.

GRAY LADY DOWN: The New York Times Is Very Concerned About Billionaire Media Investors—But Not Their Billionaire Investor.

UNEXPECTEDLY: The Battle Against ‘Hate Speech’ on College Campuses Gives Rise to a Generation That Hates Speech:

During his 18 years as president of Lebanon Valley College during the middle of the past century, Clyde Lynch led the tiny Pennsylvania liberal arts institution through the tribulations of the Great Depression and World War II, then raised $550,000 to build a new gymnasium before he died in 1950. In gratitude, college trustees named that new building after him.

Neither Lynch nor those trustees could have predicted* there would come a day when students would demand that his name be stripped from the Lynch Memorial Hall because the word lynch has “racial overtones.” But that day did come.

* * * * * * * * * *

Graduates of the Class of 2016 are leaving behind campuses that have become petri dishes of extreme political correctness and heading out into a world without trigger warnings, safe spaces and free speech zones, with no rules forbidding offensive verbal conduct or microaggressions, and where the names of cruel, rapacious capitalists are embossed in brass and granite on buildings across the land. Baby seals during the Canadian hunting season may have a better chance of survival.

Their degrees look the same as ever, but in recent years the programs of study behind them have been altered to reflect the new sensitivities. Books now come with trigger warnings—a concept that originated on the internet to warn people with post-traumatic stress disorder (veterans, child abuse survivors) of content that might “trigger” a past trauma. Columbia’s English majors were opting out of reading Ovid (trigger: sexual assault), and some of their counterparts at Rutgers declined an assignment to study Virginia Woolf (trigger: suicidal ideation). Political science graduates from Modesto Junior College might have shied away from touching a copy of the U.S. Constitution in public, since a security guard stopped one of them from handing it out because he was not inside a 25-square-foot piece of concrete 30 yards away from the nearest walkway designated as the “free speech zone”—a space that needed to be booked 30 days in advance. Graduates of California public universities found it hard to discuss affirmative action policies, as administrators recently added such talk to a list of “microaggressions”—subtle but offensive comments or actions directed at a minority or other nondominant group that unintentionally reinforce a stereotype.

* * * * * * * * * *

American college campuses are starting to resemble George Orwell’s Oceania with its Thought Police, or East Germany under the Stasi. College newspapers have been muzzled and trashed, and students are disciplined or suspended for “hate speech,” while exponentially more are being shamed and silenced on social media by their peers. Professors quake at the possibility of accidentally offending any student and are rethinking syllabi and restricting class discussions to only the most anodyne topics. A Brandeis professor endured a secret administrative investigation for racial harassment after using the word wetback in class while explaining its use as a pejorative.

Yes, the degrees may look the same, but as Iowahawk has tweeted, that’s par for the course once the left has thoroughly captured an institution.

And note that the author of this piece is Democrat operative with a byline Nina Burleigh, who famously said in 1998, “I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a blow job just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”

This time around, the theocracy is entirely on your side of the aisle, Nina. But all revolutions eventually devour their own eventually.

* Really? George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Allan Bloom and Peter Hitchens all would have predicted it.

UNLESS SOMEONE SHOOTS HIM, TRUMP WILL BE THE NOMINEE, SO YEAH: In House GOP, Ryan endorsement of Trump seen as inevitable.

For Paul Ryan, it’s not a matter of if he’ll endorse Donald Trump. It’s a matter of when.

GOP lawmakers, strategists and aides are convinced the House Speaker will endorse Trump before he’s officially nominated at the GOP convention in Cleveland in mid-July.

But they say it will be on his own timeline, and his own terms.

By holding out, Ryan is buying time for House Republicans to roll out their election-year agenda in hopes it will help shape the GOP presidential nominee’s own general-election platform.

He’s also signaling he will not bow to pressure from the candidate, his surrogates or the media.

GOP colleagues say the Speaker wants concessions from Trump. He wants the presumptive GOP nominee to tone down the rhetoric, moderate some controversial positions and commit himself to core conservative values.

A lot of people would like to see more of that last from Ryan himself.

PORTLAND POLICE CHIEF IN HOT WATER AMID CLAIMS HE LIED ABOUT SHOOTING HIS FRIEND:

Police bureau chief Larry O’Dea shot a close friend in the back while hunting last month in Harney County, 350 miles east from Portland, according to officials investigating the case. He initially told local police that the injured man had accidentally shot himself.

The disclosure of the shooting one month after it happened and the revelation that O’Dea may have misled law enforcement in the aftermath have sparked widespread criticisms of the chief and Portland’s mayor, making the liberal west coast city the latest US municipality to be caught up in a major police misconduct controversy.

The San Francisco police chief resigned last week in the wake of numerous scandals, Oakland police are battling multiple officer misconduct allegations, and chiefs across the country have lost their jobs in the face of controversial cases over the last year.

* * * * * * * *

[Sheriff Dave Ward of Harney County] and other critics have questioned why both the chief and Portland mayor, who serves as the city’s police commissioner, did not immediately disclose to Harney County investigators that O’Dea was the shooter.

Why are Democrat-controlled cities such cesspits of violence and duplicity?

THE HILL: Clinton email headache is about to get worse.

A scathing inspector general’s report this week was just the first in what is likely to be a series of official actions related to her private server stemming from the FBI, a federal courthouse and Capitol Hill.

Clinton’s presidential campaign has failed to quiet the furor over the issue, which has dogged her for more than a year.

In the next few weeks — just as the likely Democratic presidential nominee hopes to pivot towards a general election — it will face its toughest scrutiny yet.

“All of that feeds into this overarching problem of public distrust of her,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University.

“To put it in slang terms, she’s got a pretty deeply held street rep at this point. This fits the street rep,” he added.

The State Department’s watchdog report was especially damaging, given the official nature of its source. The report claimed that Clinton never sought approval for her “homebrew” email setup, that her use of the system violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she brought it up to department officials.

Clinton’s allies attempted to paint the office as partisan in the weeks ahead of the report’s release, but the effort failed to leave a lasting impact.

For months, Clinton and her team have failed to offer a convincing explanation for the use of the private server, and she has steadfastly refused to apologize.

She wanted to maintain FOIA immunity by ensuring that her emails were never in the custody of the State Department. She did that by breaking the law on handling classified information, and by making high-level secrets readily available to our enemies.

ANALYSIS: TRUE, DEPENDING ON WHAT THE MEANING OF ‘IS’ IS. Why Both Clintons Are Such Unapologetic Liars.

Related: Hillary Clinton: I Am Goldman Sachs’ ‘Partner in Government.’

No doubt, the investment firm is hoping for a smooth transition of power, from one President Goldman Sachs to another.

WELL, THERE’S AN ENGINEERED DROUGHT: “Donald Trump tells Californians there is no drought,” USA Today misleadingly claims in their headline:

California suffered one of its driest years in 2015. And last year the state hit its driest four-year period on record.

But Donald Trump isn’t sold. The presumptive GOP nominee told supporters in Fresno, Calif., on Friday night that no such dry spell exists.

Trump said state officials were simply denying water to Central Valley farmers to prioritize the Delta smelt, a native California fish nearing extinction — or as Trump called it, “a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

“We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea,” Trump told thousands of supporters at the campaign event.

Analysis: True. Or as Victor Davis Hanson noted at City Journal last year in a piece titled “An Engineered Drought:”

[Jerry] Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent allowance of massive water diversions for fish and river enhancement, left no margin for error in a state now home to 40 million people. Second, the mandated restrictions will bring home another truth as lawns die, pools empty, and boutique gardens shrivel in the coastal corridor from La Jolla to Berkeley: the very idea of a 20-million-person corridor along the narrow, scenic Pacific Ocean and adjoining foothills is just as unnatural as “big” agriculture’s Westside farming. The weather, climate, lifestyle, views, and culture of coastal living may all be spectacular, but the arid Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay-area megalopolises must rely on massive water transfers from the Sierra Nevada, Northern California, or out-of-state sources to support their unnatural ecosystems.

And note this in the USA Today piece:

Most people just call him Jerry, but to each his own, I guess. More from USA Today:

Meanwhile, the powerful farm lobby is trying to secure federal and state approval for billions of dollars to create new water tunnels, dams and other projects.

At least we know where Trump stands on the issue: “If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive.”

Note how USA Today’s 20-something Steph Solis makes that sound like it’s a bad thing in her mind.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA EDITION: UA hires two diversity officials instead of one.

The University of Arizona has doubled down on diversity by hiring two top people instead of one and paying each of them more than the previous person earned.

Faced with choosing between two finalists for the recently advertised post of chief diversity officer, UA officials decided to hire both, creating a new, unadvertised position in the process.

Jesús Treviño will be paid $214,000 a year as the UA’s new senior diversity officer, and Rebecca Tsosie will be paid $215,000 as a law professor and special adviser to the provost on diversity.

Previously, the UA paid $118,000 to an assistant vice president in charge of diversity. But that person’s duties were more limited in scope than those of the two new hires, UA officials said.

The median salary for a chief diversity officer at a U.S. research university is less than $165,000, according to a March salary survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, the national association for human-resource professionals in higher education.

The hirings come on the heels of a publicly announced ramp-up of UA’s efforts to combat racism and other forms of discrimination on campus. It was driven in part by recent feedback from minority students who recounted racial epithets and other problems they faced while pursuing a UA education.

If I were an Arizona taxpayer, I would not be amused.

THE FIRST HIT IS FREE (OR STEEPLY DISCOUNTED): Start of Summer Indie Author Sale.

AND AT THE BOTTOM THEY FOUND AN EXAMPLE OF THE UP TILL NOW THOUGHT EXTINCT “HONEST POLITICIAN”:  No, I’m kidding.  They found nothing that weird. Romanian cave sealed for 5.5 million years is full of strange creatures.

THE DAME OR THE TIGER? AND WHICH IS WHICH? GOP politicians: no good choices this time around.

I don’t harshly judge anyone who supports Trump at this point, now that Trump the nominee is virtually a fait accompli. Nor do I harshly judge anyone who doesn’t support him. Both groups have my sympathy—and my understanding, because of my own struggles. And I’m tired of people expecting a rectitude (and degree of martyrdom) from politicians that is completely unrealistic.

THE RIGHT ANGLE IS RIGHT: In which Whittle, Ott, and Green all Feel the Bern.

BECAUSE THEY HATE HUMANITY: How Environmentalists Opened The Door For Zika.

FASCINATING: Study Suggests That Dark Energy Is The Reason Time Moves Forward. If true, this could unlock a whole new level in science and tech.

NEXT UP, THE LEDBETTER EFFECT: Physicists think they might have just detected a fifth force of nature.

REALLY END STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela Drifts Into New Territory: Hunger, Blackouts and Government Shutdown.  It might be new for Venezuela but it happens EVERY TIME socialism is tried.  Every time.