LAWFARE DONE RIGHT: THIS COULD BE A MAJOR CRACK IN THE DAM. As the Good Professor noted earlier today,  shareholders in Google and YouTube are pressing the tech giants to disclose any requests they have received from the Biden administration to scrub politically “problematic” information from the platforms, according to a copy of a shareholder proposal obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The article mentions in passing that Supreme Court rulings have held that private entities may not engage in suppression of speech at the behest of government, as it has the same effect as direct government censorship. Although I don’t think the shareholders have standing to sue on anything but the thinnest of corporate governance rules, let me explain how this may open the floodgates and create accountability for BigTech’s censorship.

We know that as “private actors” (a debatable proposition, but let’s accept it for the moment) BigTech cannot be held liable for violating First Amendment rights. But there have been notable cases where the media worked so hand-in-hand with government in violating constitutional rights, they were considered “government agents” for the purposes of 42 U.S. Code § 1983, which allows a private right of action for the violation of established constitutional rights when the “private” entity is “acting under color of law.”

The case that came most quickly to my mind was called Hanlon v. Berger, where CNN did a ride-along in coordination with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and an assistant United States attorney who raided a Montana ranch. The rancher had allegedly violated Federal wildlife protection laws by poisoning endangered wildlife, including eagles, in an effort to protect their livestock. Citing earlier case law, Justice Stevens noted that:

“There we [held] that police violate the Fourth Amendment rights of homeowners when they allow members of the media to accompany them during the execution of a warrant in their home.” (Emphasis added).

While the feds were excused in Hanlon on qualified immunity grounds based on unrelated facts, CNN was not dismissed from the case, because the rancher had stated enough factual basis to assert that CNN was acting “under color of law.” But private actors cannot assert qualified immunity like law enforcement can.

As is usually the case when corporate media are caught out and face likely loss in court, CNN settled out. (As a result, news organizations have since then severely restricted what we used to call “ride-alongs” with law enforcement).

The rancher suffered a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, which implicate privacy rights by way of unreasonable search and seizure. This is where it gets interesting: 42 U.S. Code § 1983 allows citizens to sue for the violation of any enumerated constitutional right, and it’s unquestionable that the First Amendment is such an enumerated right.

If, in the matter Glenn referred to, The National Legal and Policy Center can produce evidence showing that the content by specific speakers was scrubbed by BigTech at the behest of the Biden Administration, then it’s “game over” because those censored speakers have the same argument against Google and FB as did the Montana rancher and can use Section 1983 to file suit.

Moreover, even if The National Legal and Policy Center does not produce such evidence of media-government collaboration, conservative and civil libertarian groups can on their own, file FOIA cases to seek that evidence, and the censored groups (*Paging Mr. Prager*) have a legitimate way around the “we’re private entities, so go f*ck yourself” defense.

All they need is the means and the will.

HOW AGITPROP AND MEMETICS WORK IN REAL TIME: The DNC memo went out yesterday that “insurrection” was the only theme that tested well to the base and — unlike inflation, crime, COVID and economic conditions — could not be debunked by pure data.

The faithful posted meme after meme, and the Talking Heads repeated absurdities with no provable meaning, such as “worse than Pearl Harbor” and “like 9/11.”

Then the DNC fundraisers send out a message:

Note the highlighted phrases and how nicely they are clustered: they are not designed to point you to reason. They appeal only to your emotion. Nixon did it, Kennedy and LBJ did it, hell, even Hitler did it.

But the speed and reach of digital communications changes everything. Not enough time to stop and think about what you’re being told: Just “be one of us” and move on to the next shiny object. No accountability for statements of puffery. In this way, digital media, which has the potential of bringing knowledge to every person on the planet, is manipulated to make each and every one of us dumber than yesterday.

Someone ought to write a book about it…

LAYERS AND LAYERS OF…OH, NEVERMIND: Remind me again why people at corporate media giants are smarter than everyone else and ought to be the arbiters of what is and isn’t “dangerous information”? This is still online:

IS IT HYPOCRISY, GASLIGHTING OR JUST INSANITY? I suppose one might embrace the power of “and.” You remember George Zimmerman, the “White Hispanic” accused and acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin?

Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg certainly do, and they each utilized the February 2020 anniversary of that tragedy to play the race card on Twitter. Here’s Saint Peter’s tweet:

And here’s Elizabeth Warren’s:

That’s seemingly innocuous and makes me want to sing “Kumbaya” or “Climb Every Mountain.” Unfortunately for Warren and Buttigieg, George Zimmerman doesn’t see it that way, and filed suit against the two, claiming that because of the natural association in readers’ minds between him and Martin he was defamed. A federal court dismissed Zimmerman’s case a few weeks ago with leave to replead because of certain procedural errors in his Complaint.

Here’s the interesting part: While several infirmities in Zimmerman’s case may see him lose — this time with prejudice — buried in the judicial opinion is a discussion about how Warren and Buttigieg claimed …wait for it, wait for it… that calling someone a “racist” is not defamatory. Let that sink in.

In today’s political and media environment, no statement will expose a person to “shame, ridicule, scorn or opprobrium” as much as being called a “racist.” People lose their careers over it, and businesses are ruined when that allegation is splattered on them. You stand a better chance of maintaining the left’s respect if you rape a child (See, e.g., Polanski, Roman) than if you are caught making a bigoted remark.

That may be right, that may be wrong, but in CrazyWorld, Warren and Buttigieg filed arguments to the court claiming that “an allegation of racism or white supremacy is a matter of opinion and therefore not even actionable.” Say what?  On the one hand it’s the worst thing you can call a person, but when it come to accountability, no, it doesn’t count.

It gets worse. The Court rejected Warren and Buttegiegs’ argument, holding that their assertion that “the implication that someone has racist or white supremacist attributes is not defamatory at all, let alone defamatory per se is without merit.”

As I said, there are many reasons Zimmerman could or should ultimately lose his case. But at the same time, I don’t ever want to hear either of these two craven liars take anyone to task for being a bigot, because, according to them, it’s apparently “just” opinion and can’t possibly — as a matter of law — be a bad thing.

WHAT’S ACCURACY GOT TO DO WITH IT? Nothing, if you’re Twitter. The giant censorship machine disguised as a “mere platform” suspended acclaimed journalist John Solomon’s account for sharing an article about the legal distinctions between Pfizer’s fully approved and emergency use authorization (EUA) COVID-19 vaccines. Even Pfizer did not dispute the accuracy of the article, headlined “Pfizer to continue distributing version of COVID-19 vaccine not fully approved by FDA.”

“There is nothing in the story that is not well reported or misleading,” Stanford School of Medicine professor Jay Bhattacharya, whose research focuses on the “health and well-being of vulnerable populations,” wrote in an email to Just the News. “Twitter’s censorship of COVID information has contributed greatly to the collapse in trust in public health.”

Twitter provided no meaningful information about their arbitrary and capricious decision, saying only that “because the tweet violates its policy on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information” related to COVID.”

Our Silicon Valley superiors seem to think that “1984” and Farenheit 451″ were instruction manuals.

**Update: Twitter’s Head of News Partnerships sent a note late this afternoon simply saying that the blocking of Solomon’s account was “an error.” No apology. No promise to do better.**

A CORROLLARY TO REYNOLD’S MAXIM: Teach women not to lie about rape, too:
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County will pay three former baseball players a combined $450,000 to settle a defamation case they brought against the college after they said they were wrongly accused of rape and had the false allegations printed in the college’s newspaper.

Truth be told, I don’t think $450,000 has quite enough “sting.”

BEHOLD, THE TRUTH BOMB: As many of you know, I teach a class in the History of Journalism at NYU. This will be referred to in my final exam. From today’s New York Post:

“Yesteryear’s ragtag muckrakers, who tirelessly championed the little guy against powerful insiders, have become insiders themselves,” wrote three social scientists surveying America’s journalists back in 1980. “Newsmen had long cherished the vantage point of the outsiders who keep the insiders straight. But now, leading journalists are courted by politicians, studied by scholars, and known to millions through their bylines and televised images.”

CHINA IS ASSHOLE.

SO IS DISNEY.

SOME PEOPLE DID SOME THINGS: Apparently CNN has appointed Ilhan Omar to Editor-in-Chief of CNN. Because “a car” just happened to do something. Just like those planes just happened to crash into the WTC on 9/11.

Shame on you, CNN.

ARE WE SKIPPING SOMETHING?: The last COVID strain was called “Nu.” Going down the Greek alphabet, today’s new variant is called “Omicron.”

The W.H.O. wouldn’t want to offend China, now, would they?

UPDATE: It occurs to me that if they had any guts they’d have named it “Winnie.” But China is asshole.

FAKE IT TIL’ YOU MAKE IT: Perhaps Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has been taking legal lessons from the same crew who ginned up the “Steele Dossier” to get FISA warrants used against Carter Page, et. als. JustTheNews has a blockbuster report out this morning, where the journalists used cellphone and toll booth records to prove that Rep. Thompson’s signed subpoena was based in part on a wholly fabricated source.

The Jan. 6 commission in Congress made headlines when it issued a subpoena citing “credible evidence” that on the day before the Capitol riot, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik attended a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington where Trump advisers discussed how to overturn the November 2020 election. The subpoena was supported by a citation to Bob Woodward’s book “Peril.”

Except for one eensie weensie minor detail:

Kerik was 300 miles away in the New York City area on Jan. 5, 2021, according to his own car’s toll booth records reviewed by Just the News. He left Washington the night of Jan. 4 and did not return until the morning of the riots, according to Kerik’s own account at a speech this weekend in Chicago. And that book by Woodward? It makes no claim about Kerik attending a meeting at the Willard on Jan. 5. In fact, the book doesn’t even mention the former NYPD commission once in its 482 pages.

Reporter John Solomon went as far as fact-checking with Woodward himself. Maybe Thompson had a different edition? Maybe Solomon was missing something? Nope:

Woodward and his coauthor, fellow Washington Post journalist Robert Costa, confirmed to Just the News in a statement Monday night that they did not allege Kerik attended a Jan. 5 meeting at the Willard. “The subpoena for Mr. Kerik references page 234 of our book, ‘Peril,'” the Post journalists said. “That page, however, does not mention Mr. Kerik in any way. In fact, he is not mentioned anywhere in our book.”

Making up facts to obtain a subpoena? There oughta be a law!

SUICIDE BY SILENCE?  It’s no secret by now that corporate media has no problem demonizing or delegitimizing what they perceive as “right-wing” media. Tucker Carlson, once America’s favorite conservative, is now depicted as pure evil, somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. In fact, the phrase “right-wing” itself is attached to the name of some outlets as a sign by left-leaning media to signal to readers that their readers should immediately ignore whatever factual information that the outlet might be presenting, much the same way hoboes in the 1930’s would leave chalk marks on the street in front of houses to warn others of a dangerous approach, say, a jealous husband with a shotgun or a mean dog.

The Biden government has this week presented that same corporate media with a moral dilemma that, if ignored by corporate media, may be a form of suicide. The Associated Press reported this morning that in opposing James O’Keefe and Project Veritas’ motion to designate a Special Master to review the documents seized by the FBI in an early November raid, federal prosecutors told the court that the motion should be denied, in part because:

“Project Veritas is not engaged in journalism within any traditional or accepted definition of that word. Its ‘reporting’ consists almost entirely of publicizing non-consensual, surreptitious recordings made though unlawful, unethical, and or/dishonest means.”

Of course, we ought to be free to dislike — or even disparage — any outlet or voice with which we disagree. That goes for Alex Jones and Rachael Maddow alike. But the mainstream media has a dog in this fight, whether they like it or not: the use of hidden cameras or surreptitiously obtained audio has become not just a staple of investigative reporting, but a moneymaker for outlets who normally express a disdain for any platform that publishes material they deem “non-woke” or “right-wing” or otherwise offensive to their sensibilities.

There are two streams of thought that ought to encourage corporate media to take an aggressive stand in O’Keefe’s defense. One is the stream that flows from no lesser an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court, in a line of cases from Bartnicki v. Vopper, where a third-party had published allegedly illegally obtained material with no hand in the illegal acquisition of the material. Professor Jane Kirtley of the University of Minnesota and former director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is far from being a conservative, but in an opinion piece published today expressed the all-too-rare quality of an honest liberal putting principle before preferences. Her dislike of Project Veritas is made clear right up front:

“Many journalists repudiate Project Veritas and its methods, contending that the organization is ideologically driven and routinely violates established norms of media ethics. As a professor of media ethics and law, I’ve been grappling with how to think about Project Veritas and its escapades for years. Like many media lawyers, I wish it would just go away.”

But Kirtley knows — and most laudably — expresses her respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. She continues to say, quoting Bartnicki, that :

“A stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. If Project Veritas was not involved in the theft of the diary, it could also be covered by the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which bars both federal and state law enforcement from seizing journalists’ work product and documentary materials except in very limited circumstances.

In fact, the Justice Department has been prohibited from even subpoenaing journalists by Attorney General guidelines that date back to 1974 – although investigations into leaks of classified information led to notable exceptions to this rule during the Obama and Trump administrations […] If Project Veritas is found guilty of a crime, any journalist who transports leaked or “stolen” information across state lines could be charged with violation of the law. It’s unclear what that means today when so many documents are transmitted electronically. Or, if the government narrowly defines “the press” based on its political outlook or ethics, then no news organization is safe from attacks by future administrations.”

Kirtley is correct, of course, in that allowing O’Keefe to be defined as a journalist simply because of his political agenda or outlook creates an unsafe (I’d say soviet) future for journalism. But another stream runs down the same mountain that ought to encourage outrage from the press and cause a serious re-think from the Biden administration, to whom the Justice Department ultimately answers.

Corporate media has made millions of dollars and spent untold lucre defending the exact same reporting techniques that Biden’s prosecutors would have “disqualify” O’Keefe from First Amendment protection.

If the use of hidden cameras, undercover stings and “illegally obtained” information is now a judicial litmus test as to who is and isn’t deserving of First Amendment protections, then NBC better close up shop today. In Wilkins v. NBC, the network used hidden cameras to produce the “Hardcore Hustle” report, which exposed the then-growing practice of charging for so-called “toll-free” 800 lines which provided callers with access to 900-number type adult entertainment lines. (This was before the Internet, back when one had to put some effort into getting their smut). In that case, ultimately, the public interest in the story surmounted the private interests of the parties who were surreptitiously filmed.

Similarly, if the Biden Justice Department is able to re-define journalism as they wish here, ABC needs to sell their equipment and find new work for their investigative team. In Desnick v. ABC fake patients were sent into an ophthalmologist’s’ office to record evidence that Sam Donaldson breathlessly told viewers “[I]n our undercover investigation of the big cutter you’ll meet tonight, we turned up evidence that he may also be a big charger, doing unnecessary cataract surgery for the money.” It would be wise of the Justice Department to heed well Judge Posner’s stern holding in that case:

“Today’s “tabloid” style investigative television reportage, conducted by networks desperate for viewers in an increasingly competitive television market constitutes-although it is often shrill, one-sided, and offensive, and sometimes defamatory-an important part of that market. It is entitled to all the safeguards with which the Supreme Court has surrounded liability for defamation.”

The list of cases where major networks used hidden cameras or surreptitiously obtained material is lengthy, and often praised by those who traffic in that style of reporting. Who can forget the glee with which every media outlet rebroadcast the secretly made videotape of Mitt Romney telling donors “that 47% of Americans are dependent on the government” and “believe they are victims.” Of course, no context challenging the meaning of Romney’s words was provided, but no matter: The secretly taped video was posted online by Mother Jones magazine in the fall, several months after the fundraiser in May in Boca Raton where Romney spoke. The video created a national uproar as President Obama and his Democratic allies used Romney’s words to illustrate how the Republican was out of touch. But to the best of my knowledge, no FBI raids were conducted upon Mother Jones or any of the hundreds of outlets who republished the video. Nor should there have been.

There are a few signs that smarter and perhaps more honest journalists and their lawyers are, like Kirtley, seeing the dark clouds that the Justice Department’s actions portend. Asking if O’Keefe is a journalist in the eyes of the law, Politico’s Josh Gerstein also interviewed Kirtley and others, and noted that:

While many of O’Keefe’s tactics are unsavory, they are far from unknown in the mainstream press. Hidden-camera stings and undercover reporting have fallen out of fashion at most traditional news organizations, but they were once a staple of network television news magazines. In the 1970s, the Chicago Sun-Times bought a rundown bar and rigged it out with hidden cameras, successfully capturing city inspectors demanding bribes. NBC’s popular and controversial series, “To Catch a Predator,” revolves around hidden-camera stings.

If corporate media wants to survive into the next administration — and the ones after that — they will have to step up to the plate and pressure the Biden Administration to rethink this new effort at “disqualifying” outlets because of either their views, or their investigative techniques when properly executed. American government simply does not have the right to “license” or “define” journalism. In Turkey, CNN famously avoided broadcasting images of ongoing anti-Erdogan demonstrations and instead broadcast a documentary about penguins. Penguins.

Perhaps major media, who have already cut their investigative reporting to the bone, are planning as we speak on making exclusive deals with the San Diego Zoo. Because footage of penguins may be all that news outlets are allowed to publish.

SORRY, BUT THIS NEVER GETS OLD:

COMIC BOOKS LATEST PART OF ADMINISTRATIONS “COVID PLAN”: JustTheNews is reporting that Homeland Security is creating comic books to push COVID masks, fight disinformation on 5G and elections. According to the the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA):

“Disinformation is an existential threat to the United States, our democratic way of life, and the critical infrastructure and functions on which it relies. CISA’s Resilience Series (of which Real Fake is its first graphic novel) communicates the dangers and risks associated with dis- and misinformation through fictional stories that are inspired by real-world events.”

The artwork is kind of generic, IMHO:

If you like this sort of thing you can download them directly from the Feds. I find the use of the word “resilience” a bit odd…because to me it seems we ought to be “resilient” against any use of propaganda, but hey, that’s just me.

PORTRAIT OF A DOMESTIC TERRORIST, 2021.

**UPDATE** About 30 mins after I posted the above on Bookface…this:

SMELLS LIKE PANIC: It’s one thing to lose ground in polling, but walking out during a TV interview is a no-win situation.

“C’mon, man. You should have asked better questions early on,” the Democrat admonished his interviewer, whose bio lists interviews with a who’s who of political leaders.

Not unrelated, The Hill’s Joe Concha reported last week that:

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) scolded the press on Tuesday, insisting that journalists do a better job of selling President Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill to the public.”

It’s nice to see that reporters are starting to tire of being stenographers.

YOU COULDN’T MAKE THIS UP IF YOU TRIED: A slight denouement on Ed Driscoll’s post about how President Biden might have more to answer for. Have a look-see at The Daily Mail’s story and the hellaciously ironic note on the video graphics…

Heh, “corrupted file.” 

I GOT TOOK, SORT OF: My apologies to InstaReaders who pointed out that the photo of Steven Colbert’s house in Montclair, NJ I posted yesterday is not accurate, and was instead a picture of the house in Caldwell, NJ used to film “The Sopranos.” My bad.
Drenched in shame, I researched it more fully, and here’s a pic of Colbert’s house: still pretty swank, a massive carbon footprint, and guess what? No solar panels.
So I’m still calling bullsh*t on this nonsense.

FILE UNDER SHOW-BIZ HYPOCRISY: The networks are virtue signaling as hard as they can, by creating this pablum. Meanwhile:

GET WOKE, GO BROKE– PART DEUX: I never blame someone for having a really stupid idea. I do blame a room full of executives who say “Yeah! Let’s do it!”

Without further ado, I present to you the latest and greatest attempt to monetize “social justice” and its invariable meltdown: “CBS Backtracks On ‘The Activist’ After A Backlash, Including From One Of Its Hosts.” My favorite part:

“Besides the fact that there will be millions of dollars spent on hair, makeup, travel, celebrity hosts and judges, production, distribution that could have gone to the activists and organizations that will be featured, this is deeply dangerous,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an anti-police-violence activist whose organization, Campaign Zero, has helped shape police-reform efforts around the U.S., speaking on MSNBC.”

My second favorite part:

“This extends a societal belief about what a good activist looks like: someone who is ready for prime time, someone who fits a particular archetype and is great on social media and is perfectly marketable,” Cunningham said.”

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.

MORE FAKE BUT TRUE (Update Edition): Ed Driscoll highlighted the Zero Hedge post showing that Rolling Stone f*cked up again, never bothering to check with the hospital if the doctor making these claims even worked there. (He doesn’t). But why let the facts get in the way with a hot take that aligns with your readers’ narratives?

RS did not correct or retract. Instead they ran an “update” that shows the central premise of the story is wrong. This should have been spiked. You’d think after they committed journalistic suicide falling for the UVA rape hoax, they’d have learned their lesson.

HAS THE PENNY DROPPED FOR THE BBC? I’m not surprised by the sad facts of this matter, but I am surprised it got past the Political Correctness Team at the BBC:

“The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police. He has now been identified as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a 32-year-old Tamil, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and sought refugee status […] Samsudeen had been arrested a number of times before Friday’s incident. But [Prime Minister] Ardern said that every legal avenue to keep him out of the community had been exhausted.”

Of course, the sway that the Pallywood Crowd holds over the UK press and elite is legendary. It was only a few years ago that the English village of Rotherham was exposed as a hotbed of misogyny of the worst kind, when Pakistani-born gangs of men abducted and raped more than 1,200 girls. Local government and much of the media were in full-blown politically correct denial that the gangs were almost all Pakistani Muslims. Criminologist Graham Hill wrote in 2020 that:

“The South Yorkshire police were scared to take action against a group of Asian men who were sexually abusing a young girl for fear of triggering unrest in the Asian community and being branded racist.”

Most of the UK press used the euphemism “asian” to describe them. And as we would later see here in the States this same dynamic works to the perpetrators’ advantage. Hill pointed out that:

“In 2011 Jack Straw, the former home secretary, suggested there was a cultural element to the then new phenomenon of “grooming gangs” and suggesting some men of Pakistani origin see white girls as “easy meat”. The former Blackburn Labour MP spoke out after two Asian men who abused girls in Derby were given indeterminate jail terms. At the time, he was quickly shouted down and labelled a racist.” (Emphasis added).

This is highly relevant today, as we watch the Taliban drag Afghanistan back into the 11th Century. The “Squad” continues to use this political correctness as a shield and sword when confronted on issues large and small. The question is whether House Democrats will finally start to distance themselves from knee-jerk bleating about “racism” and “islamophobia.” Every time the Taliban continue to further subjugate women, people ought to demand that the Democrats — including AOC, Tlaib, Omar and if he is coherent that day, the President– address the issue.
I’m not betting on much of a response.

JUST GAMING IT OUT: PJ Media and others reporting that Harris is suffering from “Havana Syndrome.” Here’s the exercise:

Not hoping it happens of course, but I’m gaming out a scenario where Harris has to step down before Biden for this mystery illness, Biden and Dems appoint a cogent and plausible Veep, giving Biden the room to step down at a later date and avoid the National Nightmare that a Harris Presidency would be.

This would be a great time to re-read Fletcher Knebel.