THE FUTURE IS KIND OF SCARY…: “Lawsuit: Man introduced his wife to ChatGPT. She used it to plan his murder.”

AAAAND THE HITS KEEP COMING! I know, poor Sarah’s “shocked face” is getting burned out, but Just the News just published a story about El-Sayed’s appearances and campaigning in Islamic centers, where they had said lovely things. Things like this:

“O our Lord, the Zionists have spread corruption in the land. Your forbearance has deceived them, so show them Your power, O Compeller. They killed our brothers and sisters, so take the worst revenge upon them,” the leader sang, according to the video…

***

“O Allah, take revenge on Israel and those who help it. O Allah, send down upon them Your wrath and punishment this very hour.”

Makes you all warm and fuzzy, don’t it?

A NEWSROOM LAWYER’S PET PEEVE: The word “allegedly” is not only not the fig leaf people think it is, but it is often used incorrectly. There is no such charge as “Alleged Murder.”

The murder (apparently) happened, and this person was charged. The correct way to understand this is to remember that in the story’s recitation of facts, that is where “allegedly” goes.

For example, “Jones was charged with bank robbery […] he allegedly told the bank teller ‘give me the money.'”

DEEP STATE? WHAT DEEP STATE?: Just the News breaking story that two ex-FBI officials have been charged with making false statements about Hunter Biden’s laptop:

“Two former FBI intelligence officials appeared in federal court Friday on charges of making false statements to Congress about their roles in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election cycle.”

WARNING! RANT AHEAD! I am consistently amused by this.

“Bloomberg Gives $80 Million to Democrats as Money Floods in for Final Sprint“

The Elizabeth Warrens and Bernie Sanders types (and their devotees) love to scream about “big money” influencing politics, and the sheep who bleat back MessNow narratives never acknowledge this hard, cold fact. (Don’t get me started on Singham and Soros). You must understand that this is not a pearl-clutching cry about hypocrisy: if you say that, it’s your projection, not my sentiment.

My amusement derives from the fact that is simply indicative of weak or no critical thinking skills, a lack of information balance and frankly, intellectual laziness.

Frankly, I’d have more respect for those who come right out and admit that it’s somehow “different when we do it….on ne saurait faire d’omelette sans casser des œufs”

Sure kids, keep reposting those silly “Resistance” themed memes without any analysis of your own. If someone you admire allegedly said it, you’re going to repost it. What’s the cost of a few keystrokes to you? Nothing. (Except the integrity of the electoral process and conversation you profess to be so worried about).
#KeyboardWarriors

/”rant warning light” now off/

BIDEN, BURISMA AND POSSIBLE OBSTRUCTION (AGAIN): Just the News is first with more docs and emails showing the charade of the Bidencrats testifying* before Congress…and the truth is always different:

“Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, one of the Democrats’ star witnesses in their first impeachment of Donald Trump, received repeated briefings, emails and memos related to the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, according to declassified documents that directly conflict with her and other witnesses’ testimony in the failed bid seven years ago to remove the president from office.”

*(I remember some NYPD patrolmen using the phrase “testilying.” I always laughed at that).

SELECTIVE OUTRAGE? Of course, IMHO the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is absolutely right about this, but I can’t help but remember that they were conspicuously silent when the Obama/Biden admin actually hired that nutjob Nina Jankowitz to become the Disinformation Czar.

It’s too easy to attribute political fear or agendas to organizations (which is 96% of social media) but it bears noting nonetheless.

“Disinformation” you’ll remember was the reason that Biden pressured FB and others to censor the Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story, which turned out to be completely true, despite the best efforts of Blinken, Brennan and Gen. Michael Hayden of “NewsGuard” fame.

Censorship of any kind is pretty much political authoritarianism, no matter who does it.

YOU WANT WEAPONIZATION? WE’LL SHOW YOU WEAPONIZATION. Just the News is reporting that the DOJ confirmed an investigation against legacy media for antitrust violations.

“The investigation follows a move last month by the five broadcasters in the White House television pool to stop pool coverage of Trump after the administration restricted CNN, MS NOW and Politico’s access to the White House.”

You wait here, I’ll go make popcorn.

SORRY/NOT SORRY: Truth be told, I never want to hear another Brit lecture me about the U.S. threats to free speech.

“John Cleese is not a terrorist: The former Monty Python star’s criticism of Islam is a free-speech matter, not one for government intrusion.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/07/comedian-john-cleese-is-free-speech-furor-over-islam-comments

BTW:  Matthew 7:3-5 

Jim Woolsey’s obit from last week marks not just the death of a fascinating man, but perhaps also the passing of bipartisanship. From Richard Miniter in the WSJ:

“Woolsey went on to work at the Navy Department under Jimmy Carter and as an arms-control negotiator under Ronald Reagan. He became Bill Clinton’s first CIA director in 1993. Today the parties don’t mix much in Washington, and yes men are favored.”

Sad that nowadays being “reasonable” means doing things my way.

SHOULD ANYONE BE SURPRISED? JustTheNews details the weaponization of the SEC in the Biden era to go after Trump and his supporters, particularly Elon Musk:

“Republicans pointed to former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s hiring of former Democratic operatives to staff the agency, and his former work as CFO for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, where, according to congressional testimony, he had final approval authority for the campaign’s payments for the discredited Steele Dossier, as evidence the agency was biased against Republicans. Gensler is a former investment banker who served as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2021 to 2025”
***

“You seem to have a very troubling pattern of hiring, at an impartial regulatory agency, a lot of people who seem to have a vendetta against the former president, and I fear, and I worry that that has implicated itself and affected the policy of the SEC,” then-Sen. J.D. Vance told Gensler at a Senate hearing in 2023.”

Although many saw it happening in real time and called it out (thanks, VP Vance) it never got mainstream media traction. I wonder why that is? 

NOT REALLY SHOCKING, but there’s some weirdness going on here…Politico looks at US “journalist” (yes, those are my scare quotes) pleading guilty at being an unregistered foreign agent, for China.

BREAKING: John Bolton to plead guilty to retaining classified information: Report. Just The News reporting that: “Former national security advisor John Bolton will plead guilty to retaining classified information, Fox News reported, citing “two sources.”

**DEVELOPING

AT LEAST SHE’S NOT IN TOTAL DENIAL: And thank goodness, the execrable phrase “mostly peaceful” won’t fly with common-sense people. Just the News reports that Gov. Mikey Sherrill:

“Shortly after midnight Sunday, Sherrill put out a statement acknowledging the severity of the violence and saying it had “put peaceful protesters and law enforcement in danger.” She blamed agitators outside New Jersey for the escalation.”

Newark’s mayor added that: “Mayor Ros J. Baraka admitted some were arrested in possession of weapons, necessitating a curfew.”

This can go one of three ways:

(1) it’s funded by Soros or Singham-linked people but only after the detective work is done by investigative reporters;

(2) there are too many stupid people (Prof Glenn says “embrace the power of ‘and‘.); or

(3) this gets ignored by major media. It just never happened*

*Many lefists, especially of the reporter variety play dumb. Case in point, one young lady, very nice, but suffered what we call in First Amendment law “reckless disregard for the truth.” I asked her her views on “Fast and Furious” and she said (I believe her) that she’d “never heard of it.” If you live in a  particular media bubble, the odds are good there’s a lot of stuff you’ve never heard of.

You can trash talk it as “conspiracy theory” but normal Americans just can’t ignore it anymore. And this underscores the power of Justice Brennan’s Times v. Sullivan‘s emotive authority to paraphrase:

“‘The free marketplace of ideas'” necessarily broadens the discourse of public understanding.

And now you know why I’m such a fervent supporter of non-legacy (or “new”) media: I want you to be heard.

As if we didn’t know this…you can call it gaslighting, denial, or just manipulation: it stinks, no matter what you call it.

Just The News reports:

“Former President Barack Obama ripped a page from the Pravda playbook with his recent appearance on Steven Colbert’s show on CBS, suggesting the Trump Justice Department’s crackdown on intelligence politicization and law enforcement abuses was somehow a “retribution campaign […] But the 44th president’s rhetoric can’t mask the growing body of evidence chronicling the direct role he played in shielding Hillary Clinton and concocting a false Russia collusion narrative that was designed to fool American voters during the 2016 election and hamper the start of Trump’s first presidential term.”

A SURPRISINGLY CLEAR-EYED ANALYSIS, FROM AL-JAZEERA, NO LESS: “The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why.”

“When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades.”

FILE THIS UNDER “NO SH*T, SHERLOCK”: The shift towards socialism similarly mirrors the Democratic party’s leftward shift, but a deeper look reveals that those favoring “socialism” have no understanding of what it actually means. Just The News reported that:

“The shifting sentiment towards socialism may not necessarily reflect fuzzy feelings for its ideals, but rather a lack of understanding of what those ideals are, according to professor of political science, Nicholas Giordano. “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best explanation. People are gravitating toward socialism because they’ve never really been taught what socialism is,” Giordano told Just The News.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: I wrote this about reporting from the Middle East back in 2018, and in trying damndest to be fair to CNN, I revisit it here because once you step out of the “us vs. them” bubble, the reality is (and I can say this as a former combat correspondent) getting “clean” coverage out of hotspots is harder that most folks realize, and it is still invariably true.

“To be sure, as an aggrieved people the Palestinians have been abused en masse by many entities and governments, most particularly by especially their own Palestinian Authority. As in all conflicts, there are legitimate issues that ought to be raised. But as the old saying goes, “truth is the first casualty of war” and intelligent (not to mention peaceful) dialogue and resolution seems impossible. This is so because first, the manufactured and romanticized image of the Palestinians as “brave freedom fighters” does not wholly stand up to scrutiny. Second, the attention-grabbing images overpower an undeniable political fact: as New York Post columnist Frank Fleming wrote: “I think you’re always going to have tension in the Middle East when there’s people who want to kill the Jews and Jews who don’t want to be killed and neither side is willing to compromise.”

Does that excuse the constant anti-American gullibility of CNN in the current situation?

Of course not. 

INCOMPETENCE OR CORRUPTION? JustTheNews is reporting that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration was made aware of fraud in benefits programs early in his tenure, but failed to take action to stop it, an interim report based on testimony from nine state officials concluded.

“Testimony obtained by the Committee reveals that Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud in social service programs, lied about their knowledge of the fraud, and retaliated against employees who dared to raise concerns,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said in a statement.

“Instead of protecting vulnerable Americans, they handed over billions in taxpayer dollars to fraudsters and threw their own state employees under the bus,” Comer added.

The competence question is a given. The question is when a public official looks the other way at fraud to maintain his or her voter base, is that corruption?
As the Good Professor has said: “embrace the power of and.”

AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW: Richard Miniter chats about the history of “journalism” and the unsurprisingly ancient history of media manipulation. From the comments:

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell

SAY ANYTHING: I thought lawyers were the only ones to operate on the principle of “for enough money, I’ll say anything.” Apparently, Jack Smith and Christopher Wray seem to think this is appropriate. Just The News is reporting that:

“The Biden-era FBI made more than $100,000 in payments to informants who were members of an anonymous group of tech sleuths known as the “Sedition Hunters” to gather and analyze video evidence in the January 6 Capitol riot — echoing the bureau’s reliance on paid FBI informant and British ex-spy Christopher Steele in 2016.”

Did the FBI disclose that their “informants” were often foreign based and paid? That’s one of those “rhetorical” questions I keep hearing about.

BREAKING: Just the News is reporting that “Iran security forces have killed at least 490 people as opposition protests continue.”

“A crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed at least 538 people and even more are feared dead, activists said Sunday, while Tehran warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.”

Sadly, I fear this will get worse before it gets better.

“UH-OH, THAT’S NOT GOOD”: As a reasonably experienced litigator, I can tell you I’ve researched enough cases where an “informant” or “source” was paid. That tends to be a credibility bomb.

In McCoy v. Hearst Corp., for example, Lowell Bergman (of “60 Minutes” and “The Insider” fame) was sued in libel for relying on a convict-source to whom he allegedly promised free legal help on his own appeal in return for telling him bad things about a local prosecutor.

The lower court was somewhat incredulous, asking what wouldn’t a convicted prisoner say to a reporter to get something. (Duh).

The judgment against Bergman was overturned on other grounds.

So, that brings us to Jack Smith. Just the News published a bombshell this morning: “Jack Smith team approved $20k payment to informant to snitch on Trump team during Arctic Frost probe.”

I can just imagine in my fevered, crazy, right-wing lunatic brain that believes in the rule of law, Biden’s people saying: “So? We paid him. That doesn’t mean he was lying.”

BACKING BARI: Ooops, I said stuff on Jeff Norman’s podcast. Honestly, the whole thing stinks. As I said in the clip:

• Editors’-in-Chief have the final word (that was ignored with the reporter’s public and heavily promoted temper tantrum). Newsrooms are not democracies;
• The critics and reporter are too cute by half to swap “requests for comment” and “requests for interview.” They are not the same thing;
• There is some lying going on here with regard to efforts to seek comment, getting more that 300 words from the government, yet ending the story with “they refused to be interviewed.”

That’s some cheap-jack sh*t, right there.