THE ANSWER IS “YES”, SHERLOCK: Did anti-Trump bias blind science to evidence for COVID lab-leak theory?

BREAKING: Feds subpoenaed Hunter Biden during 2016 election, raising worry over unpaid taxes on Ukraine work. JustTheNews is reporting that a newly discovered trove of emails shows that long before Trump was even elected, Hunter Biden and his associates were being investigated for Ukrainian monkey business:

“Emails written five years ago by Eric Schwerin, an executive inside the Rosemont Seneca business empire where Hunter Biden worked, shows there was about $1 million in personal income – about $400,000 in 2014 and $600,000 in 2015 — that the younger Biden had earned as a board member and consultant for Burisma that had not been fully covered by U.S. tax payments.”

The most important part (for me, anyway):

“Nothing was unethical,” Joe Biden declared during the last presidential debate of the 2020 campaign, referring to his son’s overseas business dealings. In fact, the email exchanges between Schwerin and the lawyers make clear Hunter Biden had failed to pay taxes on the Burisma money, something Ukraine’s chief prosecutor tried to bring to light to U.S. authorities starting in fall 2018.”

But of course, back then it was all about Trump being a Putin employee. And many brain-damaged people still believe this.

Another over-sold narrative bites the dust.

COOKIEPUSS! It’s weird, pointless, childish and maybe a little mean spirited. But it’s funny as all get-out…

FILE UNDER “HALF A LOAF IS BETTER THAN NONE”: California’s state constitution requires that the California Supreme Court review clemency requests by the Governor that involve twice-convicted felons. (“The Governor may not grant a pardon or commutation to a person twice convicted of a felony except on recommendation of the Supreme Court, 4 judges concurring.). You’d think in a state where it takes a lot to be arrested, tried, and convicted of a crime that’s a good thing.

But if you were Jerry Brown or Gavin Newsom, you’d think otherwise. Protecting criminals seems as important to them as protecting citizens and victims, so when the First Amendment Coalition filed requests to see the clemency requests, the former and current governor pretended each time, in the words of one pro bono lawyer on the case, that “rather than abide by the Court’s rulings against complete secrecy, the Governor/Attorney General repeated the same arguments, every time, as if the Supreme Court had never addressed the issue.”

Not anymore. Last week, the California Supreme Court, en banc, announced a rule change – rejecting the Governor’s automatic confidentiality stance – stating that the contents of records filed by the Governor will be evaluated for their confidentiality on a case-by-case basis:

“Regardless of whether the Governor properly may refuse requests for access to clemency files when they are in his possession, an issue upon which we express no views, we conclude that the documents that are forwarded to the court pursuant to Penal Code section 4851 and supply the basis for a recommendation decision should be available for public inspection. Accordingly, henceforth upon the receipt of a motion to unseal a clemency record before the court pursuant to article V, section 8 and Penal Code section 4851, the Clerk and Executive Officer shall return the record for resubmission in conformity with this order and the Rules of Court pertaining to filings under seal. (Cal. Rules of Court, rules 2.550(d), 8.45, 8.46.)” (Emphasis added).

So what this means is that while citizens — and even potential twice-convicted applicants for clemency — still have to file a motion to unseal the records, and transparency is not guaranteed, the California Supreme Court has pretty much laid down the marker that clemency requests from the Governor, by dint of being transmitted to the Supreme Court, are presumed to be public records. Given the monkey business that has surrounded presidential pardons and commutations for decades (Trump commuted the sentence of corrruptocrat Rod Blagojevich (D-IL.) and Clinton pardoned financial crook Marc Rich (Major Clinton donor) it’s good to know that California will allow reporters, citizens, and yes, even twice-convicted felons to see how that sausage was made.

When the Founding Fathers instilled the concept of separation of powers, they knew what they were doing.
**Update: fixes reference to Blogojevich commutation. Thanks, IP readers!

FOR THIS I GET PUT IN FACEBOOK JAIL? Pornstar Mia Khalifa (NSFW link here) posts an inane pro-Palestinian tweet to which I respond that generally speaking, women who (for a living) show their genitals, perform random sex acts with strangers on film, not to mention run around without a headscarf are generally murdered in Islamic countries. That’s not even close to being in dispute. Here’s the post that “violated community standards”:

UPDATE: They admit they got it wrong:

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related:

A TIMELY REPRISE: I wrote this article for The Daily Caller a few years ago. It seems sadly appropriate. And the outrage about the IDF bombing the building where the AP resides doesn’t cut it. The Committee to Project Journalists’ indignant press release never once mentions that the building was home to Hamas operations.

The AP, caught up behind the facts, later issued this statement:

I have to say I find this a bit hard to believe. As one commenter noted on my FB page:

“If AP did not know that Hamas was in the building, then they are incompetent reporters. If AP knew that Hamas was in the building but kept silent, then they are complicit. If AP comprehended that it would be used as a human shield, then it is a Hamas collaborator.”

I might add as a denouement that using US journalists as hostages and shields is nothing new to Islamic militants.

THE ONLY COLOR THAT REALLY MATTERS IS GREEN: Social scientists (at Yale, of all places) have produced a preliminary study showing that Americans are less responsive to race-based appeals than they are to class-based appeals. JustTheNews reports that:

“Appeals to class interests are best at increasing support for progressive policies across racial and political groups “despite leftward shifts in public attitudes towards issues of racial equality,” according to Josh Kalla, assistant professor of political science and data science, and doctoral student Micah English.”

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes reading Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, and yes, even Marx understand that our human instincts — and political choices — are more geared towards satisfaction of personal basic needs rather than “political identification.” For most, the latter is merely a means to acquire the former. In shorthand, regardless of race, most people inherently want security and sustenance, and political choices are merely means to obtain those things. But apparently the approach of most policy-makers is to override the peoples’ preferences with their own, allegedly superior, understanding:

“It questions the wisdom of “Democratic elites,” including President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, racializing ostensibly race-neutral issues such as infrastructure, climate change and minimum wage increases.”

There is a certain amount of bravery in these scholars publishing this work, given Yale’s (and the rest of the so-called “progressives”) propensity for cancel culture. It if does not fit their world-view or narrative, it is doomed be pounced upon by keyboard warriors:

“The duo could become a target of race-focused progressive activists, given the repercussions faced by data scientist David Shor for tweeting research that found peaceful protest was historically more successful than violent protest […] Shared during the riots stemming from George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the tweet drew widespread criticism in progressive circles, and Shor’s employer fired him soon after.”

I’m still waiting for self-righteous and “woke” Yale students and alumni to demand that the school be renamed “Harriet Tubman University” instead of honoring a slave trader, but I’m not holding my breath.

The value of having a Yale degree is money in the bank, and as if to prove the researchers’ point, these elite will act — like everyone else — in their own self-interest.

MORE STATES SHOULD DO THIS: Joshua Silverstein, Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is an old pal from my law school class of NYU ’96, and might be the best example of a truly “classical” liberal, at the heart of which shares many values with genuine conservatism and thoughtful libertarianism. At the heart of his opinion piece in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is simply that government is not a supreme power answerable to no-one. The foundation for ending sovereign immunity begins with this simple proposition:

“Sovereign immunity is a holdover from the era when most countries were monarchies. The legal basis for sovereign immunity was as follows: Because the monarch created the courts, the monarch is superior to the courts. And thus the monarch is not subject to the jurisdiction of the courts.”

This makes complete sense to me as a person who believes in smaller and less intrusive government. Silverstein continues:

“There is a fundamental principle of American law that provides that no person should be a judge in his or her own case. But that is exactly what happens when a person sues the state of Arkansas for money under current law: The Legislature itself ultimately decides if the injured person is entitled to monetary relief from the state.

That is inconsistent with the notion of due process that underlies our justice system. Sovereign immunity thus makes it far harder for citizens to enforce their fundamental legal rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.”

This is pretty hard to argue against.

A LIE TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD BEFORE THE TRUTH IS OUT OF BED. There are *still* people who think W. Bush served a “plastic turkey” to troops in the Middle East. And who could forget Harry Ried out and out lying about Mitt Romney “not paying taxes”? A rare few called him out on it. His response? “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

And so to today. Matt Taibbi (on Substack, the platform that is terrifying the media elite) published a “Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus.” Among the gems (still believed by many):

• The “Back Channel to Russians” story, Yahoo! September 23, 2016. Yahoo! published a story by Michael Isikoff called, “U.S. Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin.” The piece identified Trump advisor Carter Page as a “possible back channel to the Russians,” and claimed he passed information from the Kremlin to figures higher up in the Trump food chain, like former campaign chair Paul Manafort […] This proved incorrect on all fronts, with no evidence of any Page meetings with either man. In fact, the irregularities involved with the Isikoff story – particularly the use of information from British ex-spy Christopher Steele, identified as a “well-placed Western intelligence source” – became a bigger story than the alleged improper relationship between Page and Russians.
• “US investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier,” CNN, February 10, 2017. Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez of CNN reported that “multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials” have “corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent,” i.e. the “Steele Dossier.” […] This was a significant and apparently deliberate piece of misinformation. We know, from the report of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, that the CIA months before had already dismissed the Steele reports as “Internet rumor,” while the FBI had already done several rounds of attempts to corroborate its independent reporting, coming up with negative results each time.

And now “disinformation” like a new toy, a bow-and-arrow play set for media mavens. But the arrows all seem to fly in the same — and often wrong — direction.

ALL ABOARD UNCLE JOE’S GRAVY TRAIN! You knew there would be some waste and corruption — ok, a lot of it — in this Administration. But JustTheNews reports this mindboggling example:

“Princeton, a school with a $26.6 billion endowment, is receiving $12 million, while Yale will add $17.3 million to its $31.2 billion stockpile, and Penn has been awarded $26.3 million on top of its nearly $15 billion fund. Columbia and Cornell will each receive just about $33 million to add to their respective billions. Rounding out the list, Harvard — a school that has been called “A Hedge Fund That Has a University” — is receiving more than $25 million to add to its $41.9 billion endowment.”

Hey, those Chief Diversity Officers and Bias Response Teams don’t come cheap. And besides, it’s for the children.

THE DYING BREED WILL NOT GO QUIETLY: Yes, some Instapundit readers will have a stroke, but others understand that there are a few honest liberals out there (Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi) who will call balls and strikes in a fair way. Add Ken Silverstein to the list. This guy was one of the first to expose the race-hustle racket that is the SPLC:

“Today, the SPLC spends most of its time–and money–on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. “He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement,” renowned anti-death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer says of Dees, his former associate, “though I don’t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.”

The guy can write like a house afire:

“President Joe Biden’s signed a $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill and while the usual pigs slopped up most of that at the national feeding trough, some money did go to us plebes. Sure, mega-rich dickhead Tom Brady got a government loan (under Trump) of just south of $1 million for his fraudulent “health and wellness” company. But why be bitter towards Brady — or the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or various Trump associates and family members who cashed in on Covid aid.”

And you have to love the honesty of a publication whose motto is “Shocking True Stories and Political Sleaze.” We should be so lucky if The New York Times were so self-aware. Many of the stories in Washington Babylon will anger you. I say “good.”

DO YOU SEE THE SUBLIMINAL BIAS? In what is generally a good article about the impact of the Fox/Dominion libel suits, WaPo’s Margaret Sullivan makes some sensible points, mostly “be careful what you ask for.” After all, a deeply anti-media ruling may be precedential against all media outfits. But here’s the dirty little secret. She says:

“In some ways, it’s a relief to see someone hold Fox to account, especially since nothing else seems able to restrain right-wing media outlets from spreading disinformation.”

The not-so-subtle implication is that “disinformation” is a “right-wing” problem. It’s as if Daily Koz and Occupy Democrats (two notorious purveyors of false info) don’t exist. Russian hooker pee tapes, anyone?

Sullivan (like super-genius Paul Krugman) has elsewhere approved of the Wikipedia mob’s attack on fairness in journalism, decrying it as “bothsidesism.” Perhaps the deletion of fairness as an essential element of good journalism is responsible here.

I think it’s just as likely a byproduct of editing from within a bubble. These folks will go to their graves denying any left-leaning bias exists in their pages. Professor Reynolds ran headlong into this in a recent roundtable with First Amendment pater familas Floyd Abrams, who sniffed dismissively at the notion that the press is by and large, as Judge Silberman put it, a collection of “Democratic broadsheets.”

I’MMA JUST LEAVE THIS HERE: A Facebook pal sent me this. I have no idea who is behind it, but it’s just…brilliant:

The red pill at the end is a nice touch.
*Update* Some folks have clued me in that the fellow is named Mark Dice.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY PRINCIPLES, DON’T WORRY, I HAVE OTHER ONES: Look, I don’t care what side of “climate change” action you are on. My confusion is about the inconsistency of the Democrats position on “dark money.” They want to require groups to disclose their membership, but use the same tactics.

The Washington Free Beacon points out that:

“Rewiring America, one of many environmental groups that has endorsed the BUILD GREEN Act, is part of a massive dark money network run by the D.C.-based Arabella Advisors. The nation’s wealthiest liberal donors use Arabella’s $731 million activist network to secretly fund a host of liberal causes.”

I suppose one could say they are just “fighting fire with fire” but what tips the balance towards absurdity is that the genuine left won a great decision in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson. In that case, the Attorney General of Alabama (remember, this is 1958) demanded that the NAACP disclose membership lists. The Supreme Court noted that:

“It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as the forms of governmental action in the cases above were thought likely to produce upon the particular constitutional rights there involved. This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations.”

Even NPR has noted the absurdity of this “having it both ways” behavior. Don’t Democrats realize what’s at stake?

THINK THE TIMES WILL LET HIM PUBLISH ANOTHER OP/ED? From a few days ago, but worth noting: JustTheNews reporting that Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation to ban critical race theory training in the military and remove what he calls “divisive” and “anti-American” ideas from military training.

Money graf:

“Our military’s strength depends on the unity of our troops and the knowledge that America is a noble nation worth fighting for,” Cotton said. “Critical Race Theory teaches that race is a person’s most important characteristic, and that America is an evil, oppressive place. That idea may be fashionable in left-wing circles and college classrooms, but it has no place in our military.”

Imagine that! “America is a noble nation worth fighting for.” How f**ked are we that this is a controversial statement?

BONUS LINE: “With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, Cotton’s bill faces an uphill battle.”

BEER BOTTLES ARE CHEAPER THAN SHOTGUN SHELLS:

AT THIS POINT WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? We aren’t supposed to care anymore about how the FBI ginned up the conspiracy theory about Donald Trump and “Russian collusion.” The damage is done, and there are thousands of people who unthinkingly take as a given that Trump was a Putin puppet. They’re impossible to talk to. I’m reminded of the old saying about never trying to teach a pig to sing. (It wastes your time and annoys the pig).

That said, exclusive reporting by John Solomon shows more than a few troubling dynamics that Congress, the mainstream media, and the FBI have yet to fix. (I suppose it’s not in their interest to do so).

The report by JustTheNews is a well-reported story of how the FBI tried to play reporters, how reporters tried to play the FBI, and how the result was inaccurate stories that helped create an incorrect narrative:

“The bureau had recently terminated its primary informant in the Russia probe Christopher Steele for leaking, and several of its leads about Russia-Trump collusion were falling apart. And inaccurate stories about the two biggest scandals in Washington were cropping up everywhere, even when FBI officials tried to work with reporters.

“Yes, the headline is REALLY misleading,” then-FBI deputy counsel Lisa Page wrote a colleague in a text message concerning a New York Times article that day. The text message didn’t further identify the article but made clear the article was the result of a bureau overture to reporters that backfired.”

Why does any of this matter now? For several reasons: erroneous reporting is now branded “disinformation” and has become a newsroom commodity, with some papers even assigning reporters to a “disinformation” beat. And “disinformation” has become a buzzword that Big Tech uses to squash speech they don’t like.

Moreover and most importantly, is that the current administration (as do most prospective “nanny states”) seems to be using whatever crisis, event, accident or political incident to increase its power. Glenn Greenwald has written recently about how government uses incorrect or just false intelligence (dare I say “disinformation”?) to expand its grip:

Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.

So what difference does it make at this point? Because it’s about the unethical dynamics of a leak-happy FBI choosing to spill information not in the public interest (I’m all for genuine whistleblowers) but instead leaking in the interest of their own political agenda. I’m not particularly offended by reporters “cozying up” to sources: it’s what they do. Where it goes wrong is when those reporters help propel a narrative based on false statements provided by the self-interested leakers.

So at this point it matters because the word “disinformation” is a tool used to suppress civil liberties. IMHO, they violated Carter Page‘s rights, and probably Roger Stone’s and others as well. Even the far-left Brennan Center for Justice has issued papers about how problematic the use (or abuse) of the FISA Court can be. The result?

“Under today’s foreign intelligence surveillance system, the government’s ability to collect information about ordinary Americans’ lives has increased exponentially while judicial oversight has been reduced to near-nothingness. Nothing less than a fundamental overhaul of the type proposed here is needed to restore the system to its constitutional moorings.”

So, at this point, what difference does it make? The difference is you’re next.

AMAZON’S WHOPPER OF A MORAL FAILURE: Instapundit (and others) have been keeping an eye on the increasing appetite for censorship, of course, with “censorship” classically defined as State action. But an exclusive report by JustTheNews.com underscores the fact that the people behind these state actors are doubling down to silence dissent any way they can. The report says:

“Sometime before this week, when it removed from its digital shelves a book critical of transgender ideology, Amazon altered its content policy to explicitly forbid books that promote “hate speech,” a major rule change that could be used to rationalize action against a broader range of books sold by the digital retail giant.”

This is problematic on so many levels.  With no notice, Amazon this week yanked “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement” by Ryan Anderson, a well-respected philosopher and writer. When JustTheNews contacted Amazon, they merely referred to their “hate speech policy.” JustTheNews uncovered that Amazon has stealthily modified their alleged “policy”:

“Internet archives show that as recently as August of last year, Amazon’s book content policy did not include any mention of “hate speech.” At that time, the company stated only that “we reserve the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content.”

We have long heard “hate speech” defined downward and diluted to a meaningless standard that basically says “I find this offensive” or “this challenges my enforced orthodoxy.” There are at least two problems with this.

First, the goalposts are moved by political interest groups who have influence over companies like Amazon. Here, Anderson’s book was labelled “hate speech” by the LGBTQ community because — based on research — the book calmly criticized the notion of “gender fluidity” that has become the accepted wisdom by the elite editorial class. The book did not call for stripping people of rights or respect: it was merely scientific inquiry. Calling scientific inquiry “hate speech” is problematic, and has a chilling effect on future efforts to question the status quo.

Secondly, the hypocrisy proven by the moving goalposts ought to trouble any classical liberal. Legally, Amazon has the right to choose what books it will or won’t sell. But it’s a whopper of a moral failure. Especially given that Amazon still sells “Who Do They Say I Am: The Vindication of Minister Louis Farrakhan“, the thesis of which is “a blistering attack of malicious propaganda coming from the American media, Jewish groups, and the U.S. government.” There go the Jews, again. I thought we had moved on to space lasers, but I never got the memo.

Levity aside, the second problem is compounded by the people behind — or at least accountable — for these decisions. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos proudly proclaims that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the banner of his Washington Post. It has less meaning than ever when the same ownership shuts writers up or demonitizes their work. An intelligent, influential man and political contributor like Bezos ought to know better.

Does anyone at either Amazon or The Washington Post have the guts to tell him?

STILL DON’T THINK DEMOCRATS ARE IN LOVE WITH CENSORSHIP?  Lenin knew that part of establishing a one-party state was to control the media. One of the first things he did in 1917 was pushing a Decree on the Press in November 1917 that gave the government the emergency power “to close down any newspapers which supported counter revolution.”

Today, the word “disinformation” has replaced “counter revolutionary” but it’s really the same thing: a set of statements that the State (and its ideologues) deem “false” and “dangerous.” You’d think the media, which unabashedly leans left (which is their right) would be wary of such power. After all, today’s “lie” might be tomorrow’s “history.” Moreover, if the First Amendment — which they claim to love — means anything, it is the notion that there must be room for error in public discourse, or as Justice Brennan put it:

“That erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and that it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the “breathing space” that they need to survive.”

Post-Trump, we are witnessing a New McCarthyism, where lists are made, and commentators call for “detoxifying” or “cleansing” the public discourse and psyche of any remnants of the motive force behind the previous administration. Self-described “progressive” columnist Jason Sattler said in USA Today that:

“I want to believe that Biden will be able to achieve far more than just detoxing our body politic from Trump while minimizing the unpardonable harm that this wannabe dictator and his GOP co-conspirators did to this country.”

This sounds more like something from the Cheka than it does from genuine “progressivism.” The frightening part — and we should be frightened — is that lawmakers, supported by media outlets, are encouraging the purge. It’s a multi-pronged attack. Cancel culture is encouraged by the media every day, because at the end of the day the by-product of manufactured outrage is more readership. One of the other prongs is to use the power of the State to silence dissent, which can always so easily be labeled “disinformation.”

Mediaite reports that the movement of State control has begun. Democratic representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney demanded that television providers including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Apple, and Amazon say whether they planned to continue providing Fox News on their platforms, in addition to Newsmax and One America News.

You’d think that any “progressive” publisher would recognize the dynamic here. But you’d be wrong. Vice News, one of the wokiest outlets on the web is ironically owned in part by The Walt Disney Company (16%); A&E Networks (20%); TPG Capital (44%); and (surprise, surprise!) Soros Fund Management (10%). And Vice is cheering on the Democratic lawmakers. In their story, the sub-head sets the tone and the narrative:

Lawmakers are demanding answers from Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, and other cable companies who have ‘done nothing’ to stop disinformation on OANN, Newsmax, and Fox News.

In what ought to labeled an Op/Ed, Vice goes on to “report” that:

“While “big tech” has received the lion’s share of criticism for doing too little to combat disinformation in recent years, less talked about has been the role traditional cable TV giants play in circulating dangerous, bad faith nonsense.” [Eshoo and McNerney wrote that] “Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm.” Eshoo and McNerney also noted that carrying conspiratorial channels not only helps foster radicalization among the “alternative facts” set, it poses a direct threat to public health.”

Even worse, Vice, cheerleading for State control of media, plants a meme we’re sure to see repeated elsewhere. The article gives a passing nod to (OMG!) free speech by saying that:

“Largely because any new laws or restrictions intended to prevent news networks from carrying dodgy purveyors of disinformation would likely run afoul of the First Amendment. As such most wouldn’t survive a legal challenge, especially given the Supreme Court’s rightward lurch in recent years.” (Emphasis added).

You get that? Those “dodgy purveyors of disinformation” are sadly, protected by the First Amendment, and wouldn’t you just know, the First Amendment is now a right-wing thing. It can be laughed off, but I don’t think it’s funny. Much like those with experience in the Second Amendment sphere, genuine defenders of the First Amendment are more and more going to be understood by the public as “right-wing nuts”, “insurrectionists” and “purveyors of disinformation.” Be advised that failure to condemn them will brand you a “fellow traveler.”

Disinformation, indeed. The ghosts of Peter Zenger, Eugene Debs, Lenny Bruce, Mario Savio and William Brennan are surely weeping, and the ghosts of Lenin, Mao and McCarthy are grinning. (Bumped, by Glenn).

THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING: I believe Trump got much wrong about the First Amendment. As yes, he would often (not without reason) unleash his Master Troll skills on the White House Press corps, who I’ve likened to cats chasing a laser pointer.

That said, for four years we heard a drumbeat from media critics, news organizations and inside-the-bubble DC types about how Trump — and conservatives in general — are a threat to the physical safety of reporters. Remember when heads rolled at The New York Times after they (gasp!) published an Op/Ed written by conservative Senator Tom Cotton that according to Times reporters, “puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger”? Oh yes:

Nikole Hannah-Jones, who recently won a Pulitzer prize for the 1619 Project, which examines the legacy of slavery in America, tweeted: “I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but to not say something would be immoral. As a black woman, as a journalist, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this.”

Both Sulzberger and Bennet first defended the decision to run the column. Bennet wrote in an essay that “debating influential ideas openly, rather than letting them go unchallenged, is far more likely to help society reach the right answers.”

But on Thursday evening, the Times reversed itself and said the column had not met editorial standards.

Allow me to do a “whattabout” here. Allegedly sincere and intelligent adults flipped out over “allowing” their readers to see an opinion that — in only the most concatenated and gymnastic logic — could lead to a reporter being harmed.

Yet, when a genuine — not imaginary — physical assault on a journalist happens, there is no hue and cry, not a word from the Committee to Protect Journalists nor their empty-vessel mouthpiece Christiane Amanpour. Not a peep from Jim Acosta or Margaret Sullivan or Brian Stelter. Of course, the reporter (a woman, no less) identifies as a conservative:

Two men were busted for rubbing a dirty diaper on an independent, conservative reporter’s face and attacking her during a Black Lives Matter rally in Madison Square Park last month, according to authorities and police sources.

The New York Post adds that a video clip shows her being hit with an umbrella, spat on, hit with a skateboard, while the crowd says, ‘Don’t protect [her], she’s for Trump.”

Glad the NYPD caught the assailants, but the hypocrisy of the people who claim to care about protecting reporters is disappointing at best. You can bet your bottom dollar that were she a freelancer for NPR or The Daily Koz (same thing, I know, I know) we’d have heard more outrage.

Seems to me that the silence of journalism’s would-be “defenders” is pretty much saying “She deserved it for being a conservative.”

THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE YOU MAY EVER READ ABOUT HOW MAINSTREAM MEDIA GOT SCREWED UP:  Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi continue to be the last few remaining honest (read “classical”) liberals left. Taibbi’s piece today, titled “The Echo Chamber Era” outlines what conservative and libertarian First Amendment lawyers have said for years, only to be ignored, ridiculed, and (in my case) occasionally blacklisted.

“Media critics who work in the corporate press, like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, seem determined to look everywhere but inward for solutions. The dominant legend in our business is that if Republicans believe in fairy tales like Q and “Stop the Steal,” the traditional press can do nothing but stand its ground. Sullivan’s reaction to at-times “embarrassing” Inauguration Day coverage was an injunction to reporters to resist the temptation to try to appear more balanced by showing “toughness” with regard to the incoming Biden regime. If anything, Sullivan said, the press should stand even taller in its opposition to red-state lie merchants like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, “without fearing that they’d be called partisan.”

The coverage of Biden’s inauguration was […] a monument to groveling sycophancy. John Heileman at MSNBC compared Biden’s speech to Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural, and suggested that the sight of “the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas” gathered for the event was like “the Marvel superheroes all back in one place” (this was not the first post-election Avengers comparison to be heard on cable). Rachel Maddow talked about going through “half a box of Kleenex” as she watched the proceedings. Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s lumbering speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,” John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech included. The joyful tone was set the night before by CNN’s David Challen, who said lights along the Washington Mall were like “extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.”

As the Good Professor says: “Read the whole thing.”™

Twitter, Facebook, Parler, Trump…I said stuff:

**Note: This link is to video clip on Facebook. The new Instapundit server/host does not seem to want to take the uploaded original file. **

BANG BANG: I have never owned anything but revolvers, so I defer to those with more firearms experience. This woman, the first female Green Beret, as reported by JustThenews.com, was apparently “practicing dry fire training” and said “she had made a mistake and did not think the firearm had a chambered round when she conducted this training drill.” Wrong. It went off and sent a round through her neighbors wall.

The sidearm was a Smith & Wesson Military & Police Shield 9 mm handgun. Does this make sense? I’ve heard that this weapon will not “dry fire” without the magazine. Your thoughts?

HUNTER BIDEN: THE DEFINITIVE “TIK-TOK.” In journalism we use the word “tik-tok” for a story that recaps what is known for certain, what’s been alleged and what’s been proven. (It long predates the social media app). It’s not clear to me whether Joe Biden will get the four year tongue bath from media that President Obama was treated to. I’m not betting against it.

That said, if journalism is indeed history’s rough first draft, John Solomon’s justthenews.com has provided a treasure trove of verified information today about Hunter Biden and the ‘big guy’. Key events and emails obtained directly from the infamous laptop (not via Rudy Guiliani or another third party) are included and linked.

Current and future political scientists, journalists and observers will have this work to draw upon, and it’s a pity that in the blind zeal to drag Joe Biden across the finish line, outfits like NPR pretended the story was not newsworthy:

History will judge them harshly.