THERE MUST BE A LEGAL PHRASE FOR 100% BULLSHIT: As Ed Driscoll first raised here, Democratic Mayor of Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot actually directed her personally-appointed city lawyers to block CBS’ Chicago TV station from airing police body cam footage of them arresting and cuffing the wrong woman.

FFS, how can this woman say she believes “Black Lives Matter” when she tries to suppress footage showing potential police misconduct or incompetence? How can any Democrat say they support her and the idea of BLM? She was rightly laughed out of court. Worth noting:

“This isn’t the first time CPD attempted to shield body camera video from public view. Last year, police denied CBS 2’s FOIA request for video that would show how officers handcuffed 8-year-old Royal Wilson during a bad raid. The department said it would be “unduly burdensome” for police to collect, review and redact 16 hours of video.”

Next time some simpleton tells you all Democrats are good and all conservatives are evil, show them this and ask them to explain it. Then ask them if there should be a federal law denying federal funding to any department who does not release body cam footage to the public within, say 3 or 5 hours.

WILL NPR AND CNN FOLLOW THE FACTS? Don’t hold your breath. That said, JustTheNews.com’s John Solomon has been following and breaking news about Hunter Biden since at least October. And what the lapdogs insisted was “Russian disinformation” turns out to be pretty well-supported. Solomon details an email from Biden’s lawyer and partner at the time warning him that:

“The January 2017 email suggests Hunter Biden made anywhere from $833,614 to more than $2.5 million a year in the second term of the Obama-Biden administration as he and his partners pursued global business deals in Ukraine, Russia, China and other foreign countries. But it also raised questions about his finances and accounting beyond the alleged Burisma tax payment that was overdue. Schwerin’s email suggested Hunter Biden borrowed money from his company, and also had claimed as income monies he did not receive. “You didn’t receive this in cash and it is in reality ‘phantom income,'” Schwerin wrote Hunter Biden in explaining some transactions.”

Like the Good Professor says: “Read the Whole Thing.”™

IS THE U.S. CHINA’S BITCH? Well, adding to the “China owns us” news, The Daily Caller is reporting that:

“A Chinese academic with links to the communist party, Di Dongsheng, asserted that Beijing will re-establish its power through that group of ‘old friends’ under the Biden Administration.”

Let me show you my shocked face!

OUT OF SIGHT, BUT NOT OUT OF MIND: There’s an old sawhorse in media about the “Streisand Effect,” namely, that when someone tries to suppress a story it backfires and gets more attention than it might have without the suppression. There’s a lot about the Hunter Biden story and its suppression that proves this true.

The news that Glenn Greenwald had resigned from The Intercept because management there have joined the open conspiracy among so-called news providers to pretend that there is no substance or legitimacy behind allegations – or even asking questions – about Joe Biden’s involvement and financial interest in his son’s business dealings in Ukraine, Russia or China was stunning. NPR was surprisingly honest about their dishonesty when they “explained” that they would not cover the story because:

“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions […] And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was a politically driven event, and we decided to treat it that way.”

As has been said repeatedly, they and other legacy media operations’ newfound devotion to media ethics is both amusing and depressing at the same time. These are the same people who had no problem alleging that Justice Kavanaugh was a gang rapist on the say-so of a somewhat mentally frail woman who could produce no documents or corroborating witnesses, could not recount any details and yet, these same publications applied “woke logic” by insisting we “believe all women.”

Every insane allegation and false witness propounded by Michael Avenatti was breathlessly reported and touted as the truth by CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and Washington Post. Avenatti was convicted last year of extortion in a $20 billion scheme against Nike, and still faces trial for defrauding his client Stormy Daniels. Up until this week, these kinds of witnesses and “sources” were more than credible enough to publish defamatory and salacious stories.

If you need a reminder, this is the same media who promised you “pee tapes” of President Trump cavorting with Russian hookers based on evidence that never existed. In one of his magnificent histories of LBJ, Robert Caro retold the story of then-congressional candidate Johnson asking his aide to help spread a rumor that his opponent engaged in sex with barnyard animals:

“We can’t prove that Mr. Johnson,” the aide said.

“But we can make the son of a bitch deny it!” Johnson purportedly replied.

For a story that the Biden surrogates and stenographers insist has no factual foundation, they have been rather vocal, splashing a tremendous array of defensive claims. Despite the fact that neither Biden nor his son Hunter have yet to deny the authenticity of any of the documents and emails being reported on by smaller news organizations dismissed as “conservative” those committed to dragging Biden across the finish line no matter what, have said (like NPR) that the story doesn’t pass their standards of integrity; that the timing of the story being advantageous to Trump somehow nullifies its factual underpinning (welcome to political journalism); and perhaps most laughably, social media surrogates insist that “nobody cares.”

This last chimera is perhaps the most revealing. It reveals the arrogant elitism that led the mainstream off the rails in 2016 and shows us how this small group has a genuine disdain for most Americans. Moreover, it underscores the denial they suffer about the inevitable extinction of their long-held and highly profitable grip on public opinion.

The data show how remarkably wrong our moral and intellectual betters are. In the last ten days – and before Tucker Carlson’s bombshell interview – The Daily Caller’s Hunter Biden stories drew 554,566 unique internet visitors. That’s more than half a million “nobodies.”

One of their initial stories, about the laptop left behind by a crack-addled Hunter Biden drew 16,474 unique readers; another story, about Hunter Biden’s setting up a meeting with his father (then Vice-President) and Chinese businessmen was read by at least 89,649 people. Oh, I mean “nobodies.” As JustTheNews’ Editor in Chief John Solomon pointed out:

“[C]riminality isn’t the only standard by which Americans evaluate their leaders. Judgment, ethics and transparency are also essential attributes.”

JustTheNews.com has been doggedly breaking news on Hunter and Joe Biden’s “pay to meet me” scheme. Rough estimates show that JTN’s coverage of this issue has been read by as many as 7.5 million people. Moreover, Tucker Carlson’s interview with whistleblower and ex-Biden partner Tony Bobulinski broke cable news records: as many as 7.6 million viewers tuned in. That’s a lot of nobodies. I’ll bet NPR’s Public Editor Kelly McBride wishes she got a third as many “nobodies” to pay attention to her.

It’s little wonder the mainstream media is going broke. They don’t serve you: They insult you. When they say “nobody cares” what they really mean to say is that the only people who count, who deserve any say in our political process are those who agree with them. Everyone else is a nobody. (Bumped, by Glenn, because this is important).

AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN’: Breaking in JustTheNews.com today are more emails — not “purloined”, Mr. Zuckerberg — where Hunter Biden adds further acknowledgement of his father’s knowledge of Hunter Biden’s Happy Goodtime “Meet and Greet for Money” Service.  (Of course, his father also knows that the President’s first name is George; and that the right-wing louts out there are called “the Poor Boys.“) He knows lots of stuff. And then he doesn’t.

And as for the people who are still stuck on the “Russian disinformation” loop, Biden’s emails were independently verified by Just the News with one of the recipients.

JEFFREY TOOBIN INSPIRES THE POETS OF SOCIAL MEDIA: Here, for no good reason other than schadenfreude, is a sampling of some of the Bards of Facebook reacting to the monkey business of CNN and The New Yorker’s superstar :

Toobin and Louis CK
Played pocket pool all the long day
When his neighbor they seen her
And they pulled out their wiener
Now both of them wished they were gay.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that...

CNN had a lame legal hack,
Who chose an odd time to jack,
Whipped out and seen by all,
Who said “my that’s awfully small”
Now both dicks won’t likely be back.

I dunno, I’m betting he’s back inside 6 months…

Toobin was working on Zoom,
And he booked a nice sex cam room,
He was spanking his monkey
And the cameras got funky
And now his job just went boom.

That’s on the theory he was sex-camming and mixed his cameras up. Here, I think is the best of the bunch:

A horny old journo named Toobin

Was giving his willie some lubin’

While beating his meat

His joy was complete

Until he recalled he was Zoomin’

Use Burma Shave.

MEMO TO NEW YORK TIMES: 1984 WAS NOT A HOW-TO BOOK. It’s almost as if re-writing history and secretly purging material when they go off the rails is something embedded in The New York Times’ culture.

As you’ve seen elsewhere, The Old Gray Lady has been called out for revisionism and flawed research inherent in its controversial “1619 Project.” The Times, true to form, circled the wagons and “stood by” the work. Except they didn’t. In fact, historians and journalists pointed out that The Times used undisclosed “stealth” corrections to significantly alter the original piece:

“The announced intention of reframing the country’s origin date struck many readers across the political spectrum as an implicit repudiation of the American revolution and its underlying principles […] Rather than address this controversy directly, The Times—it now appears—decided to send it down the memory hole—the euphemized term for selectively editing inconvenient passages out of old newspaper reports in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.”

You’d think that is bad enough. Nope. It gets worse. Bret Stephens, the house “conservative” so hated by his fellow Times editorialists was raked over the coals by the News Guild unit representing those journalists. As Glenn Greenwald explained:

“THE NEW YORK TIMES GUILD, the union of employees of the paper of record, tweeted a condemnation on Sunday of one of their own colleagues, op-ed columnist Bret Stephens. Their denunciation was marred by humiliating typos and even more so by creepy and authoritarian censorship demands and petulant appeals to management for enforcement of company “rules” against other journalists. To say that this is bizarre behavior from a union of journalists, of all people, is to woefully understate the case[…] They are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored. What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer?  (Emphasis added).

Now, the big reveal: the union has deleted the tweet Greenwald refers to. It never happened:

This is to me, as a journalist, media ethicist and lawyer, indicative of a culture that is more Orwell than Murrow. It’s in their DNA. Allow my colleage to explain. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

**DISCLOSURE: I was for many years a member of the then-called Newspaper Guild, now the “News Guild.”**

UPDATE (From Ed): This is the since-deleted tweet from the Times’ union that Smith is referring to:

(Updated and bumped.)

WELL, IF YOUR FIRST NAME IS “MURDER”: I suppose you should expect to be apprehended. He is a mean looking fella, I’ll give him that.

LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT-CHECKERS, PART 758: It’s not often that the left-biased Daily Beast tells readers about bad journalism produced by other left wing organizations, but Maxwell Tani did just that here.

“Since at least 2015, the Times has heard—and, in several cases, dismissed—warnings that Callimachi got stories wrong, questions about the legitimacy of her sourcing, and concerns about her treatment of sensitive source material. Now, revelations that one of Callimachi’s biggest stories may have been based on a hoax has resurfaced old warnings and questions that colleagues, experts, and sources previously raised about her reporting.”

Instapundit readers ought to be familiar with the problem of a “superstar” being seriously questioned, only to have The Times circle the wagons (s.o.p.) and “stand by her reporting.”

“If she told me it was sunny outside, I’d double check,” one senior Times journalist told The Daily Beast[…] A spokesperson for the Times defended Callimachi’s work on Wednesday evening, saying, “Rukmini is a brave and talented reporter whose body of work has shed new light on how ISIS functioned, attracted recruits, and stayed in power…”

Interestingly, Callamachi has published several stories damaging to the “conventional wisdom” of the left-wing media, so perhaps this is something of another editorial purge against reporters who (gasp!) seek out facts and editors who “platform” un-woke ideas. It will be interesting to see what The Times does here.

OH, FER CHRISSAKES: You’d think a Harvard Law Professor would know how to style a complaint and name the appropriate parties from whom he seeks libel damages…but this is the Ivy League, where skill and understanding take a back seat to political litmus tests and identity politics.

Which reminds me: Which Yale Law School graduate and failed Presidential candidate and her surrogates convenienttly forgot how the Constitution works? Here’s a clue: “She got more votes!”

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: (Yeah, I put it there. Come at me…)

CATS KEEP CHASING THE LASER POINTER: I was asked to join the Legal Talk Network’s “Lawyer2Lawyer” podcast and talk about Trump’s spokesperson claiming to be building a dossier on Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold. My view?
Meh. Trump is very good at poking the media in the eye and they can’t help themselves  from freaking out. Moreover, they conveniently forget that previous administrations spied on James Rosen, The Associated Press and Sharyl Attkisson. In fact, bullying, badgering and bribing is nothing new with politicians and the press. So the breathless reporting and use of words like “astonishing revelation” are just silly.

FUN FACT: According to the Truman Library, in 1950 Truman — on White House letterhead — threatened to beat a music critic who gave his daughter a bad review:

“Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”

Now that’s intimidation!

IS TEAM TRUMP LISTENING? I’ve posted this elsewhere, but cannot stress enough how powerful and resonant this ad was in 1968.
Ben Rhodes was right: The young reporters in the MSM don’t know anything, and I’d add neither do their readers. This ad could run today and still be effective. If you support Trump, you should be demanding that they start producing ads like this.

“What’s ‘gaslighting’, Mommy?“:
“It’s when a politician relies on your blind loyalty to forget history and facts, dear.”

IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION: In an exclusive story, JustTheNews is reporting that the very same RUSSIAN (!) who was identified as an “intelligence risk” in contacting the Trump team was himself a verified asset during the Obama Administration documents show:

“[T]he State Department and its Kiev embassy were routinely trading information with a man the Senate report now portrays as an asset of a hostile foreign power during a time when Biden, now the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, oversaw Ukrainian policy for the Obama administration.”

I wish I could say that I’m surprised…but I’m not.

SO WHICH IS IT? I’ve asked this question of media law friends, and nobody wants to give a straight answer: “Is being called ‘racist’ defamatory“?

CNN tried (and failed) to convince the court that calling the Covington kid racist was “mere opinion.” (They ended up settling). At the same time, “RACIST!” is yelled often enough and with such vitriol, it must be defamatory. (It’s like cancer: There’s no “good” form of it).

Now a Cincinnati police officer is suing in libel for people who claimed his making an “OK” gesture was proof he is a racist because “That hand symbol has been associated with white power movements because it resembles the letters “W” and “P.”

FUN FACT: Once upon a time being called a “communist sympathizer” was defamatory under the law. Now it’ll get you elected to a mayor’s position. Or higher.

THIS JUST IN: Crazy huge explosion in Beirut, the size of a MOAB, but doesn’t look like an airburst. Here’s the video…watch the secondary explosion. Military folks might have some ideas. Internet to Lebanon down or cut off. Developing.

THEY’RE DOING IT WRONG: Mainstream media, and their vigilant stenographers keep using that phrase “secret police.” Nonetheless, I would like to send out congrats to New York Magazine for exposing the use of “unidentified” secret police. Except for the fact that they are not “unidentified”:

Either that or the Border Patrol are doing it wrong.
Another option is that New York Magazine has started hiring visually impaired people to be photo editors, in which case, extra wokeness points!

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE? ME, OR YOUR LYING EYES? As most anticipated, the RUSSIA! hoax continues to come apart. Sharyl Attkisson at JustTheNews.com moved a detailed read of The New York Times pushing the RUSSIA! hoax, and Peter Strzok’s now-public notes giving the lie to NYT reporting nine times:

“The document reveals that the primary “source” of Steele’s election reporting was not some well-connected current or former Russian official, but a non-Russian-based contract employee of Christopher Steele’s firm. Moreover, it demonstrates that the information that Steele’s primary source provided him was second and third hand information and rumor at best… Critically, the document shows that Steele’s “primary sub-source” disagreed with and was surprised by how information he gave Steele was then conveyed by Steele in the Steele dossier.”

Two questions for The New York Times:
1) Will the NYT correct/retract or even perform an autopsy on what appear to be outright falsehoods; and
2) Only NINE times?

THIS JUST IN: British court rules against Christopher Steele, orders damages paid to businessmen named in dossier. JustTheNews.com reporting that:

A British judge ruled Wednesday that Christopher Steele violated a data privacy law by failing to check the accuracy of information in his infamous dossier, ordering the former spy’s firm to pay damages to two businessmen he wrongly accused of making illicit payments in Russia.

The interesting part?

“The ruling involves a long-discredited claim in Steele’s dossier – repeatedly used by U.S. news media – that Russia’s Alfa Bank, connected to Aven and Fridman, was transmitting secret messages between Moscow and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. The FBI concluded the computer pings were not nefarious messages but rather routine behavior most likely connected to email spam. Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Congress last year he did not believe the allegations.”

And there are still people who believe the whole Russia hoax.

AH, GOOD TIMES, GOOD TIMES: Remember when brandishing a weapon on your property was perfectly acceptable?

An afterthought: I’m certainly no expert in Close Quarters Combat, but if you have a double-barreled shotgun and blast two shells into the sky, aren’t you pretty much screwed after that?

“Citizen’s United” suddenly wasn’t such a bad decision after all, eh? “Russia! Russia! Russia!” didn’t work, impeachment didn’t work, so now these clowns who think the Goldwater Rule doesn’t mean anything are at it again with the 25th Amendment schtick. #UNFIT is a film featuring a bunch of therapists who have never interviewed or diagnosed Trump:

“Medical doctors and mental health professionals go on camera, on the record, for the record – it’s an eye-opening discussion, analysis, and science-based examination of the behavior, psyche, condition, and stability of President Donald Trump.”

Of course, the left’s hypocritical fondness for dark money may not hide the corporate sponsorships that can he had for the low low price of $10,000. FWIW, since boycotting is a constitutionally protected right, I would say anyone bothered by this ought to boycott any “corporate sponsors” products.
Make them live by their own rules.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It seems to me that if these people can assess Trump’s mental health without examining him, it would be just as fair for people who aren’t their patients to file complaints with the medical or psychological ethics boards for this malpractice. After all, what they’re doing is politicizing and diminishing the reputation of their professions, which means they’ll be less trusted, which means some people who need help won’t seek it out and people will die!!! as a result.

ARE DEMS’ DIRTY TRICKS ACTIONABLE? By now everyone knows that the left coordinated a phony registration scam to suppress the turnout at POTUS’ Tulsa rally. It makes me wonder if the campaign has a cognizable cause of action — and maybe even grounds for a TRO — based on the tort of “intentional interference with prospective economic advantage.” The elements vary from state to state, but courts generally hold that the elements of the civil wrong are:

“(1) an economic relationship between the plaintiff and some third party, with the probability of future economic benefit to the plaintiff; (2) the defendant’s knowledge of the relationship; (3) intentional acts on the part of the defendant designed to disrupt the relationship; (4) actual disruption of the relationship; and (5) economic harm to the plaintiff proximately caused by the acts of the defendant.”

Sounds to me like the campaign has a reasonable case. I find it ironic that the bunch who complain about “suppression” are bragging about doing just that.

Projection. It’s always projection.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I think such legal actions might also be a response to organized efforts to get people fired; often there are folks with substantial assets involved. Meanwhile, a friend from Facebook writes: “Fraudulent ticket reservations? I think we just learned exactly what will happen with mail in voting. We should thank AOC for demonstrating this.”

THEY WERE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: Pal Judith Miller knows the workings of The New York Times as well as anyone, and this piece doesn’t use the word “craven”…but it ought to. Money graf:

“While Bennet and A.G. Sulzberger, the paper’s publisher, initially defended the decision in the name of exposing readers to “counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy,” both soon caved to the fury of the paper’s own staff and readers.”

THE OTHER COST OF THE LOCKDOWN: Tragedy only 3 blocks from my house. According to my neighbors, the mother of a “special needs” child could no longer take the lockdown and being denied the respite provided to her by daycare. Day before yesterday, she shot the child and then turned the gun on herself.
The little girl was six years old.