KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: COVID Panic Merchants Might Want To Try Not Lying. “I’ve also heard anecdotal evidence from acquaintances in the medical profession who work in hospitals about rather expansive interpretations of what constitutes a COVID patient for the records. None of this is proof of complete systemic rot, of course, but it’s obvious that there are some flies in the truth ointment.”

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt.

The program, known as “cross check” or “XCheck,” was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists. Today, it shields millions of VIP users from the company’s normal enforcement process, the documents show. Some users are “whitelisted”—rendered immune from enforcement actions—while others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come.

At times, the documents show, XCheck has protected public figures whose posts contain harassment or incitement to violence, violations that would typically lead to sanctions for regular users. In 2019, it allowed international soccer star Neymar to show nude photos of a woman, who had accused him of rape, to tens of millions of his fans before the content was removed by Facebook. Whitelisted accounts shared inflammatory claims that Facebook’s fact checkers deemed false, including that vaccines are deadly, that Hillary Clinton had covered up “pedophile rings,” and that then-President Donald Trump had called all refugees seeking asylum “animals,” according to the documents.

A 2019 internal review of Facebook’s whitelisting practices, marked attorney-client privileged, found favoritism to those users to be both widespread and “not publicly defensible.”

“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” said the confidential review. It called the company’s actions “a breach of trust” and added: “Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences.”

It’s their platform. They can do whatever they like. Act accordingly.

GOOD WORK FROM F.I.R.E.: Jason Kilborn, UI-Chicago Law School Settle Controversy Over December 2020 Civ Pro Final Exam Question.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Biden Isn’t Even Pretending His Vaccine Mandate Is About COVID. “The White House doesn’t care about protecting immigrants in this country from COVID. Heck, they don’t even care about Americans getting COVID from immigrants. We’ve known for months now that COVID-positive immigrants have been coming in through the border and then brought into the interior of the country by the Biden administration.”

Stacey Lennox: This Finding About COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects in Teens Are Troubling. “Any society willing to place burdens on children to make adults feel better has lost its collective mind.”

Yours Truly: Here’s the Real Reason Ben Stein Was Suspended From YouTube. “Stein and his panelists may publically exude their bellyfeel for COVID vaccines or vaccine mandates, but to debate those issues could encourage dangerous wrongthink among the proles or Outer Party members.”

TAMARA KEEL: Lights Out.

INSANE CLOWN POSSE: FBI fires Whitmer kidnap case agent amid wife beating allegations.

It’s clowns all the way down.

COME THE REVOLUTION, SHE’LL BE FIRST AGAINST THE WALL:

I remember the old Soviet joke, where Leonid Brezhnev showed off his mansion, his country house, his limousine, and his helicopter to his mother. But instead of being impressed, she looked worried: “But Leonid, what if the communists come back?”

ANTHONY BLINKEN HAS TROUBLE TALKING ABOUT being interviewed by the FBI over Hunter Biden’s issues.

Related: ‘That’s A Failure On You!’: Mark Green Tears Into Blinken Over Afghanistan Evacuations.

Keep hearing rumors that Blinken will be the fall guy for this failure, but while he’s terrible, Milley and Austin need to go more.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: The Wound.

OPEN THREAD: I think it’s the best work you’ve ever done. You son of a bitch.

FILE UNDER “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR“: Facebook and Ray-Ban announced that they are rolling out “smart” Wayfarers that have a built in camera, with a tiny lens capable of recording, well, just about anywhere. Where have we seen this before?Oh yeah…Google tried it a while back, and it turned out to be a very very bad idea. “Lots of people are comparing it to the failed disaster that was Google Glass (which gave rise to the term “Glassholes”).”

I remember “glassholes” being punched in the face in more than a few bars, and as Techdirt pointed out, Facebook’s attempt at limiting their liability is, well, stupid:

“[T]hey seem to think that they can stop people from covering the LED light that goes on when you’re recording… by claiming that it’s a terms of service violation. That’s what a Facebook VP told Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopoulos, whose article on the whole Facebook glasses thing is absolutely worth reading. But this bit is just pure silliness and makes Facebook look ridiculous…”

But as always, the Law of Unintended Circumstances is going to bite more than a few Silicon Valley types right in the butt. Allow me to explain.

Many states (including California, Michigan and Florida) have “two-party consent” privacy laws that cover surreptitious recording, and usually the question will turn on “public interest” or “newsworthiness” (bye bye, Gawker) or whether instead the parties recorded without consent were in a place with a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Now here’s where it gets interesting.

For decades, the corporate media and their “say yes to anything” lawyers had convinced most courts that when sued on these laws, the location and circumstances of recording offered no such reasonable expectation. For example, in Desnick v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., media lawyers convinced Seventh Circuit Judge Gerald Posner, after undercover cameras were used to expose a crooked doctor that:

“The test patients [wearing hidden cameras contrary to Illinois law] entered offices that were open to anyone expressing a desire for ophthalmic services and videotaped physicians engaged in professional, not personal, communications with strangers (the testers themselves). The activities of the offices were not disrupted […] Nor was there any “invasion of a person’s private space.”

Ok, we get it. Let’s fast forward to 2019. The Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, was determined to prove that Planned Parenthood was violating federal law and “selling” baby parts. So, like ABC News in Desnick, they sent in some people wired for video and sound, posing as potential purchasers of the “baby parts” to have lunch in a public restaurant to get Planned Parenthood staff to talk about financial arrangements. And talk they did. The undercover video shows Dr. Mary Gatter, the Planned Parenthood senior executive who infamously laughed “I want a Lamborghini” about payments for aborted fetal parts, again haggling over per-specimen pricing for livers, lungs, and brains.

Planned Parenthood went ballistic, and sued CMP in federal court in San Francisco, where the judge did a fair amount of mental gymnastics (“the cases […] consider contextual facts in addition to the fact that the recorded conversation was in a public and open space”) to hold that whether a conversation in a public restaurant was made with a “reasonable expectation of privacy” was a matter for a jury to decide. So off to a jury it went, where, unsurprisingly, the San Francisco jury found the CMP liable for more than $2 million in damages.

So what does all this have to do with GoogleGlass 2.0 and Facebook? This is where the Law of Unintended Consequences comes in. The corporate media put aside their “right to know” arguments used previously to record people surreptitiously, and sotto voce, cheered the result of the CMP case and a parallel criminal case pushed by Planned Parenthood. That’s all well and good, and frankly, I don’t care whether you are for or against abortion-on-demand. That’s your business.

But my business is safeguarding the public’s right to know about matters of public concern and seeing all the facts, especially regarding a 501(c)3 that essentially does its thing at the expense of the public fisc. The corporate media were eerily silent on the CMP case. When salacious headlines (and profit) can be had, corporate media has no problem at all weighing in, waving the flag and demanding the “right to know.” I have personally been involved in such “intervenor” motions, and have no shame in having done so. But the major corporate media and their law firms stayed silent here.

So the $64 question is: When some dope uploads a video made in a restaurant or bar  embarrassing another person, and yet more dopes at Buzzfeed, CNN, or The Washington Post republish that video without asking the most fundamental of questions, how can they get around — let alone dispute — the CMP opinion’s holding that it has to go to trial? The corporate media editors and their lawyers — generally smart people — missed the boat, and it seems sadly clear to me that their alleged vow to protect and defend the First Amendment is only contingent upon where in the political spectrum their bill-paying clients fall.

SPACE: DoD looking for commercially available nuclear propulsion for small spacecraft.

PUPPET PRESIDENT: White House abruptly cuts feed of Biden mid-sentence as he asks question at wildfires briefing: Biden’s White House has history of preventing public from hearing him off the cuff.

FASTER, PLEASE: A Clever ‘Gene Silencing’ Injection Has Been Approved For Treating High Cholesterol.

RIGHT? ‘Peasantry getting uppity again’? Capitol fence going back up and people have (hilarious) thoughts.

SHUT DOWN GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, AND TWITTER — TO SAVE THE PLANET! Global computing’s carbon footprint is bigger than previously estimated.

HOPE AND CHANGE: I’m starting to see these around town.

UPDATE: I saw in the comments that these are sold out, here is another set of decals that looks promising. (Bumped)

FASTER, PLEASE: New hope for antibody to treat muscular dystrophy.

GOODER AND HARDER: House Progressives Unveil Massive Multi-Trillion-Dollar Tax Hike—Here’s How It’ll Impact You.

NOBODY TELL BIDEN ABOUT THIS: The Grill, Major Food Group’s $30 Million Ode to the Mad Men Era, Finally Reopens.

Midtown power dining spot the Grill — the crown jewel of Major Food Group’s dining empire, which it poured $30 million into building out — is shaking off the dust and reopening tonight for the first time in 18 months. The critically acclaimed restaurant, housed in Midtown’s storied Seagram Building, has remained closed for the duration of the pandemic as the office-heavy neighborhood emptied out and workers vanished. Predictably, the return has generated some excitement: Reservations are nearly sold out for the rest of September.

* * * * * * * *

The restaurants join a mixed bag of upscale Manhattan dining spots that are just now beginning to turn the lights back on. Union Square Hospitality Group’s two-Michelin-starred the Modern reopened in July, while Grand Central Oyster Bar is set to reopen on September 20.

More like this, please.

WELL, FOR THE NEXT TWO AND A HALF YEARS, AT LEAST: American Consumers Believe Inflation Is Here to Stay, NY Fed Survey Finds.

THE COMING COLLAPSE IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE: Someone has to foot the bill for empty office space. “Behind the posturing, a consensus is slowly emerging that white-collar desk-warriors should be allowed to stay at home more often post covid-19—and that many probably will. Office landlords, however, and those who bankroll them, continue to pretend that no storm is coming. With billions of dollars sunk in undesirable buildings, they face a reckoning.”

MICROBIOME NEWS: Human Gut Bacteria Could Be Accumulating Our Medications Without Us Realizing.

SCIENCE! Over 240,000 fully-vaccinated Ivy League students and staff will be masking indoors this semester.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Acts Like Crazy Person During 9/11 Ceremony.

There’s no question that Joe Biden is a bad president. The past eight months have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. And it’s not as if he’s going to get any better. The only question is whether Biden can be held legally responsible for his many, many failures. Is he just too mentally incapacitated to understand how mentally incapacitated he is?

Here’s the latest example of this confused old fossil’s strange and inappropriate behavior:

Read the whole thing.