MARK HEMINGWAY: Who Will Clean Up America’s Voter Rolls?
Archive for 2019
July 11, 2019
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: California Teacher Praises Western Civilization, Her School Fires Her.
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
BATTLES IN THE INFORMATION AGE: Communist China confronts Hong Kong’s protests.
Tiananmen’s “tiger” continues to stalk the regime.
WASHINGTON IS PRETTY MUCH JUST A GIANT SLUSH FUND: FCC Dings Left-Wing Nonprofits For Using Federal Program To Finance Pet Projects.
JOE BIDEN: Higher Education Millionaire. “In 2018, Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden together earned more than $1 million from American colleges and universities.”
One of the functions that colleges and universities perform in the lefty ecosystem is to launder money to the connected: Speaking fees, book purchases, and fellowships for politicians, lefty documentary makers, activists, authors, etc.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Trump, the UK, and Ambassador Kim Darroch. “Martin Kettle quotes British diplomatic officials as stating that there is no precedent for what Trump has done—in seeking to have Kim Darroch removed from his post as the UK’s ambassador to the United States. Kettle and the diplomatic officials he quotes are simply mistaken. It is common practice for countries to deny granting consent and also to withdraw consent once granted in regard to the presence of foreign diplomatic officials who are not—or who are no longer—wanted. It is so common that it has been codified as established practice by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961).”
IT’S NOT JUST POLITICS, JOURNALISM BEING SUFFOCATED BY THE PC POLICE: The same repressive forces Glenn spotlights at CNN are at work in the scientific community, too. Just ask the Discovery Institute about the response to its “Scientific Uprising” video series.
OF COURSE HE DID: Jeffrey Epstein Moved Freely in Hollywood Circles Even After 2008 Conviction.
On March 20, 2016, guests at Warner Bros.’ Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice premiere in New York began whispering about one man mingling among the A-list crowd. No, it wasn’t the film’s Ben Affleck or Henry Cavill, or Affleck’s hulking bodyguard, who almost knocked over the studio’s former marketing head Sue Kroll as the VIP area became too crowded.
The surprised looks were aimed at Jeffrey Epstein, who was being introduced to guests by New York society doyenne Peggy Siegal. When a Warners executive was asked at the time how a highly recognizable level-three registered sex offender landed the hottest ticket in town, the executive offered no comment.
As Epstein’s July 6 arrest for sex trafficking of minors in New York and Florida dominates headlines, news outlets have focused on the billionaire’s ties to powerful government officials, including Presidents Clinton and Trump. Equally troubling are Epstein’s long-cultivated relationships within Hollywood and New York media circles, where he moved with ease well after his high-profile 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14.
Nice reporting from Hollywood Reporter, but I’d take their apparent umbrage more seriously had they covered the story with this much energy any time from, say, 2009 to last Friday.
SOME OF Y’ALL WERE TRYING TO GET ME TO RUN FOR LAMAR ALEXANDER’S SEAT, BUT EVEN BILL HASLAM DOESN’T WANT THE JOB: BREAKING: Former Governor Bill Haslam Will Not Run for U.S. Senate. “Vanderbilt surgeon Manni Sethi has already announced his candidacy, but he is an inexperienced candidate with little public record and uncertain funding. Two heavy hitters have been mentioned as possible candidates for the Republican nomination: Bill Hagerty, currently the U.S. Ambassador to Japan and Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07), who succeeded Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in the Congressional seat that stretches from Clarksville to Franklin.”
IT’S REALLY INTERESTING HOW VOTERS DIFFER FROM ELITES ON IMMIGRATION: Voters, 2-1, say Mexico not doing enough to stop surge of illegal immigrants.
ED MORRISSEY: Who Should Really Be Worried About the Epstein Case? Bill Clinton.
Actually, what Giuffre said in 2015 (under her maiden name of Virginia Roberts) was that she’d seen Clinton around on the island, directly contradicting Clinton’s claims now. That’s a point that Fox skips in this parenthetical. Giuffre also said in the Enquirer interview that she didn’t witness him having sex with anyone, but that doesn’t mean it never happened, either. At any rate, his presence on the island with Epstein raises a lot of questions about what it was that Clinton saw — and why Clinton never spoke out about it.
And if Giuffre is correct about Clinton being on the island, it might turn out that Epstein has some pictures in his possession that would corroborate Giuffre. Or rather, Epstein might have had them in his possession, until Saturday night’s raid. Given that circumstance and the corroborated version of the conversation between Pecker, Nunberg, and Trump, one would think that Clinton’s potential risk here would be a bigger story than Trump’s single briefing about Epstein from Pecker.
I wondered out loud on a Right Angle segment (due out later this week) if maybe Hillary should be worried, too. If the DOJ is suddenly willing to press serious charges against someone with Epstein’s wealth and influence…
Still a longshot, but I can hope.
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THINK OF THEM AS ELIMINATIONISTS WITH BYLINES: CNN Analyst: ‘Train’ Young Journalists to ‘Do Away’ with Conservative Media.
HISTORY: Billionaire sex offender Epstein once claimed he co-founded Clinton Foundation. “Attorneys for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein touted his close friendship with Bill Clinton and even claimed the billionaire helped start Clinton’s controversial family foundation in a 2007 letter aimed at boosting his image during plea negotiations, FoxNews.com has learned. . . . Mr. Epstein was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative, which is described as a project ‘bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges,’ read the July 2007 letter to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida.”
JOURNALISTS ARE SELDOM HEROES, EXCEPT IN THEIR OWN STORIES: Maybe Journalists Aren’t the Real Heroes of the Epstein Case: 11 years later, firefighters arrive at the scene.
As you might have noticed, there is a common thread among the examples of investigative journalism’s resurgence: The election of Donald Trump. The Epstein case is no different. More than a decade after his conviction, the presumably newsworthy story of a wealthy, well-connected financier credibly accused of serially abusing underage girls as part of an international sex-trafficking operation was given new life around the same time that an angle involving the Trump presidency emerged. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta approved Epstein’s plea deal while serving as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
This is not to diminish the effort Brown and the Herald put in to bringing this story to light. It’s great journalism. More accurately, it’s great local journalism, conducted by serious reporters who don’t attend White House Correspondents’ Dinners or appear on TV every night. But the Epstein story, and other investigations into powerful creeps such as Harvey Weinstein, contains as many if not more examples of journalistic failures as it does of journalistic successes.
Some of these failures we know about. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter axed credible accusations regarding Epstein’s relationship with underage girls from a 2002 profile piece after Epstein objected. Journalist Michael Wolff tried to write a puff piece designed to “rehabilitate” Epstein’s image (bad journalism) that was ultimately scrapped due to “fact-checking” issues (better journalism). Other examples may eventually come to light.
The Harvey Weinstein saga is similarly marred by instances of journalists and media executives declining to investigate or publish credible accusations of criminal behavior. Equally perverse is the fact that Weinstein and Epstein were able to avoid scrutiny for years after their sexual deviancy was acknowledged as an “open secret” among their peers.
“This guy’s awful, and we’re heroes for reporting it. Also, everybody knew for years but we kept quiet because, you know.”
WUSS NATION: 14-Year-Old Suspended for Being Seen with an Airsoft Gun on Snapchat. “An eighth-grader was suspended from his Silver Spring, Md., private school for three weeks — and not allowed to graduate with his class.”
That’s obscene.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Tuition freeze: Pa. state-owned universities avoid hike for first time in 21 years.