THE SEINFELD EFFECT: How to make a story out of nothing. Axios and Politico breathlessly report that “Judge orders White House to preserve records of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders.” Well, my, oh my, that must mean something serious is happening! We’ve got him now!

Not so much. In the initial stages of ANY lawsuit (even the fender-bender down the street) once an action has commenced parties are REQUIRED to preserve records. Here, the “whistleblower” had asked for an injunction ordering preservation and the Trump team agreed before the judge even “ruled.” The judge’s minute order said:

“In accordance with Defendants’ representations to the Court which obviated consideration of the motion for temporary injunctive relief since there was no issue in dispute, defendants are hereby ORDERED to preserve…”

This is an example of the hype-fest circus going on. If there are any courtroom hearings, I fully expect Axios to report that “An armed court security officer was present in the courtroom.”

“You ruined my childhood.”

GIBSON’S BAKERY V. OBERLIN REVIEWED: Law geeks and people concerned with the “inmates running the asylums” theme at today’s college campuses might find this of interest.

It’s a “point/counterpoint” sort of piece where I was squared up against a University of Michigan Law Professor (a genuinely nice guy, but drowning in the Kool-Aid). He insisted — against the facts — that Oberlin was being “punished for the students’ speech.” That’s the narrative of the MSM, anyway.

I took issue with that:

The narrative that this case “holds a college responsible for the improper speech of its students” is not correct. While the plaintiffs’ painted such a picture in their Complaint, when you read the depos and trial transcript, you’ll see that it is undeniable that school officials did in fact print and distribute the defamatory flyer. The judge called this “indisputable” in the summary judgment opinion. At least 3 credible witnesses testified in depositions and at trial that Dean Raimondo and another school employee carried stacks of the flyers to the protest and handed them out, which satisfied the “publication” element in Ohio libel law. At trial, Raimondo said one of the witnesses (a local journalist) “was lying.” Additionally, the jury heard Leslie Lubinski, an administrative assistant in the Dean’s office, admit that school staff made additional photocopies of the flyer for the protesters. (Trial Tr. 5/30/19, pg. 62).

The refusal of media lawyers to admit reality (remember Gawker’s lawyers insisting that sex tapes of Hulk Hogan “served the public interest”?) and just baldly pretending the facts are not there is just as responsible for the public’s ever-dwindling lack of trust in what is supposed to be one of our most trusted institutions.

Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?

DIVERSITY? They keep using that word. I don’t think it means what Poynter thinks it means…

Jessi Combs Killed in Land-Speed Record Crash: Sad news in the motorsport world today. Supercool Jessi Combs, who held the title of “fastest woman on four wheels” after setting a record of 398 mph in her jet-powered North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger in 2013 was killed yesterday in a testing crash.

TEACH PROGRESSIVES NOT TO BE SO RAPEY: Or something. On the one hand, this guy might be the victim of a #MeToo railroading, on the other hand, he might think, like many men, that his liberal credentials get him a free pass to grope. (As opposed to mere fame and money, which seems to cross party lines).

I don’t know…read it and make up your own mind.

BIGOTRY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Who knew about Tom Wright-Piersanti, and when did they know it?As Glenn pointed out here, Breitbart News discovered that Senior Editor Wright-Piersanti has been polluting social media with racist filth since at least 2009, possibly as early as 2007.

He apologized. And locked down his Twitter account. And as of this writing he inexplicably still works at the ̶T̶e̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶R̶i̶g̶h̶t̶e̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶S̶a̶n̶c̶t̶i̶m̶o̶n̶y̶  The New York Times. He has been posting racist garbage for at least nine years. And it is only logical to assume that some, if not many of his workmates and even superior-ranking editors follow him on Twitter. Is it even remotely plausible that nobody at The Times followed Wright on Twitter and never saw his screeds? I don’t think so.

Which leaves us with the question that must be asked of each and every “Timesman” that worked there between 2007 and now: Did you know? Why didn’t you say anything?  Margaret Sullivan was their Public Editor from 2012 to 2016. How could she have not known? Bill Keller was the paper’s Executive Editor from 2003 to 2011. Did he follow Wright-Piersanti? Did anyone complain to Keller about him? Did Jill Abramson, now under fire for alleged plagiarism by the paper at which she served as Executive Editor from 2011 to 2014 follow Wright-Piersanti?

Look, this isn’t a partisan issue, it’s an honesty issue. This episode is so parallel to the #MeToo movement it’s scary. Being Harvey Weinstein wasn’t bad enough. People were (rightfully, IMHO) being held accountable for looking the other way, for enabling, and even encouraging behavior that can’t be described as anything other than despicable.

So too, bigotry is despicable, and The New York Times has embarked on a campaign to remind us of this self-evident truth. Not only The New York Times, but its cadre, its core leaders and rank-and-file past and present have to be asked these questions. Heaven knows the “media watchers” from the same club won’t ask.

So I’m encouraging you and your friends to ask. Be polite, be direct, don’t use foul language or rabid hyperbole. The emails addresses for some of these people are (margaret.sullivan@washpost.com); (bkeller@themarshallproject.org) and (abramson@fas.harvard.edu). This is not a call for harassment or doxxing. These people have made a living communicating with the public and have assumed the very genuine mantle of the public trust in so doing. Thus, asking them politely “what did you know and when did you know it?” is not just fair, but important, and like the #MeToo movement it  starts with ordinary people speaking truth to power.

(Bumped up from late last night.)

BIGOTRY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:Who knew about Tom Wright-Piersanti, and when did they know it?As Glenn pointed out here, Breitbart News discovered that Senior Editor Wright-Piersanti has been polluting social media with racist filth since at least 2009, possibly as early as 2007.

He apologized. And locked down his Twitter account. And as of this writing he inexplicably still works at the ̶T̶e̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶R̶i̶g̶h̶t̶e̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶S̶a̶n̶c̶t̶i̶m̶o̶n̶y̶  The New York Times. He has been posting racist garbage for at least nine years. And it is only logical to assume that some, if not many of his workmates and even superior-ranking editors follow him on Twitter. Is it even remotely plausible that nobody at The Times followed Wright on Twitter and never saw his screeds? I don’t think so.

Which leaves us with the question that must be asked of each and every “Timesman” that worked there between 2007 and now: Did you know? Why didn’t you say anything?  Margaret Sullivan was their Public Editor from 2012 to 2016. How could she have not known? Bill Keller was the paper’s Executive Editor from 2003 to 2011. Did he follow Wright-Piersanti? Did anyone complain to Keller about him? Did Jill Abramson, now under fire for alleged plagiarism by the paper at which she served as Executive Editor from 2011 to 2014 follow Wright-Piersanti?

Look, this isn’t a partisan issue, it’s an honesty issue. This episode is so parallel to the #MeToo movement it’s scary. Being Harvey Weinstein wasn’t bad enough. People were (rightfully, IMHO) being held accountable for looking the other way, for enabling, and even encouraging behavior that can’t be described as anything other than despicable.

So too, bigotry is despicable, and The New York Times has embarked on a campaign to remind us of this self-evident truth. Not only The New York Times, but its cadre, its core leaders and rank-and-file past and present have to be asked these questions. Heaven knows the “media watchers” from the same club won’t ask.

So I’m encouraging you and your friends to ask. Be polite, be direct, don’t use foul language or rabid hyperbole. The emails addresses for some of these people are (margaret.sullivan@washpost.com); (bkeller@themarshallproject.org) and (abramson@fas.harvard.edu). This is not a call for harassment or doxxing. These people have made a living communicating with the public and have assumed the very genuine mantle of the public trust in so doing. Thus, asking them politely “what did you know and when did you know it?” is not just fair, but important, and like the #MeToo movement it  starts with ordinary people speaking truth to power.

MORE QUESTIONS FOR REP. TLAIB: When will you speak out against this obvious human rights violation being committed by the Palestinian Authority? Not that any MSM reporters have the guts to ask: she hates Trump, they hate Trump, and well, you know, priorities…

PLACE YOUR BETS: “Did he make an honest mistake, or did he, because of his animus against Palin and Republicans generally, repeat the smear even though he knew or suspected it was false?”

Of course, there’s an in-between that is more likely: What if he didn’t know or suspect it was false, but repeated the smear because of his animus and bias? As the Constitutional Law stands, if that’s the case, I think he gets off scot-free. (That’s common-law malice, not “Actual Malice.”)

One could argue that this is the transaction cost of living in a society that protects mistakes made for the right reason, but on the other hand, there’s something perverse in the fact that one can legitimately tell a judge in many circumstances that “my client was under no obligation to do any research” and have a libel case dismissed.

THEY CAN’T HELP THEMSELVES: A councilman in Seattle is reportedly opposed to hosing sidewalks that reek of excrement near a local courthouse because he fears that it might be racially insensitive.

“The area surrounding King County Superior Court includes a homeless shelter and other social-services organizations and has become an “unsanitary and potentially frightening” scene — one “that reeks of urine and excrement” — according to an article in the Seattle Times. Desperate for help with the disgusting environment, two of the court’s judges have asked the city to please power-wash the poop-covered sidewalks. That seems like a pretty reasonable request, but apparently, one councilman is worried that doing so might be a form of microaggression. A councilman in Seattle is reportedly opposed to hosing sidewalks that reek of excrement near a local courthouse because he fears that it might be racially insensitive.”

I got nothin’.

WHO KNOWS MORE ABOUT DECEPTIVE EDITING THAN THE POLITICAL REPORTERS AT THE WASHINGTON POST? Glenn Kessler had to correct a story today using the “deceptively edited” line to defend Ilhan Omar (D-Jihadistan). In so doing, he not only got the source wrong and blamed the wrong publisher (The Daily Caller) but credited it to a person who doesn’t even work for The Daily Caller.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the deceptive video to the Daily Caller and said it was tweeted by a Daily Caller reporter. Neither statement is correct.

Speaking of “deceptive editing”, the Post among most others have quoted President Trump telling the Jihad Squad to “Go back to where you came from.” You want deceptively edited? Here’s deceptive editing (snipped out part in italics):

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.“

If it weren’t for double standards, some of these people would have no standards at all.

SELF-DESTRUCTION, PART DEUX: “‘My job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt,’ [Sally Boynton Brown, the executive director of Idaho’s Democratic Party] said.”

To paraphrase The Good Professor, in order to win, the Democrats simply have to not be crazy. They’re failing at not being crazy.

THE PENNY DROPS FOR MAUREEN DOWD? Ed Driscoll summarized earlier the NYT Op-Ed piece from Maureen Dowd, titled “Scaling Wokeback Mountain.” I couldn’t help but notice this rather telling paragraph:

“The progressives act as though anyone who dares disagree with them is bad. Not wrong, but bad, guilty of some human failing, some impurity that is a moral evil that justifies their venom.”

Conservatives and Libertarians and even a few still-sensible Democrats have been saying this for years, that substituting reason and logic with a self-appointed high moral ground is a form of “shut-upism” a way of avoiding solutions (other than your own) by demonizing (and subsequently deplatforming) the opposition.  A few, a very few, have begun to realize that Podesta and Hillary’s polarization game (“Deplorables!”) has contaminated — and possibly rendered toothless — Democratic politics for years to come. It was only a matter of time until they began to use this tactic on each other.

Maybe Maureen Dowd has looked around and asked what happened to the Mensheviks. And perhaps she’s inching closer to being red-pilled.

“FASTER, PLEASE”: “Johnson & Johnson is preparing to test an experimental HIV vaccine in the U.S. and Europe in a move toward developing the first immunization against the deadly disease after decades of frustration.”

As the Good Professor says: “Faster, please.”

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HAVING IT BOTH WAYS: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, along with The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and others, have filed a brief in the Fourth Circuit asking the appellate court to affirm that Maryland’s Online Electioneering Transparency and Accountability Act is unconstitutional. (A federal district court held it unconstitutional in January, and the State of Maryland is taking an appeal to defend the law).

What’s that law about? You might remember certain newspapers (*ahem*) have been pounding the drums for two years now about dark and secretive influences online responsible for “hacking our democracy” and putting The Bad Orange Man in the White House. Thousands of column inches (not to mention hours of cable TV time) have been dedicated to demanding that government step in and make sure the “correct” political voices are heard and the “fake” ones be filtered out.

So what’s the problem here? Oh, buried in the RCFP’s press release is this telling nugget:

“The brief also notes the significant and adverse financial impact that the law will have on news organizations if they must comply with the disclosure requirements, noting that Google stopped accepting political advertisements in Maryland when the law went into effect. “The Act would be especially devastating to local and regional newspapers,” the brief states, emphasizing the financial burden smaller news outlets would incur in order to simply comply with the advertising reporting requirements.

Allocating staff time and financial resources to reporting advertisements could directly take away from the amount of journalism that the news organization can produce, Reporters Committee Staff Attorney Caitlin Vogus said. If news outlets were required to disclose publication-specific advertising information, it could also potentially compromise their competitive edge in the local news market.”

So the core of the matter is that our Gatekeepers of Democracy want accountability in political advertising, but are not willing to share the burden. They want the glorious ad revenue (and believe me, political season is Christmastime for publishers) but want someone else to carry the expenses associated with that revenue. As my ConLaw Professor Burt Neuborne once said: “The First Amendment is not a license to print money.”

BANNING THE “WRONG” VIEW: IT’S ALL THE RAGE! Is it possible that YouTube and Twitter “set the table” for banning or demonetizing any viewpoint but the “approved” one? It appears that banning statements of support for President Trump is forbidden now…on a bulletin board about knitting. Say those with newly-found power:

“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”

On the one hand, how people could drag politics into a knitting forum is just plain weird. But other forums are picking up the pace as well. RPG.Net, a forum for video gamers has also signaled their virtue thus:

“We are banning support of Donald Trump or his administration on the RPGnet forums. This is because his public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both.”

[Insert joke about living in parents’ basement here].

Now, to be honest, there’s a part of me that says “yeah, I get it, I came here to participate in a [whatever hobby] forum.” But of course, it’s rather revealing because these moderators are almost certain to see everything in black-and-white. If you do not express utter contempt for the Administration at all times and in all ways, then You Are Evil.

You know, someone should write a book about this.

IF YOUR HATRED FOR TRUMP EXCEEDS YOUR HATRED OF POINTLESS WARS: You have some serious problems. It’s about a week behind, but here’s a “must watch” clip of Tucker Carlson calmly, rationally, and factually praising Trump for not starting a war with Iran.

Look, I can’t bear the idea of an Islamic theocracy anymore than the next person (and a Jew at that) but this would not be like swooping in on Grenada. Anyone with a lick of military experience would tell you this would evolve into a debacle we’ve seen before, with horrific loss of blood and treasure.

Of course, the deepest sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome egging us into war are never the ones who pay with their lives on the line. To them, our soldiers are (to paraphrase John Kerry) expendable idiots who are not smart enough to marry rich condiment heiresses.

THERE’S “WOKE” THEN THERE’S “FAKE WOKE.” The mark of the crybully is when a corporation’s CEO postures and preens, but it’s all a PR front. Take Apple, the “wokest” of the “woke”, whose CEO is the openly gay Tim Cook. Spent millions of shareholder money on LGBTQWTF marketing and virtue signalling this month, yet there are still plenty of Apple stores in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where this is a not uncommon occurrence:

Photo: Amnesty International

What I want to know is, where are the shareholder activists?

TWITTER AMPLIFIES ALL THE GARBAGE: Seattle Progressives explode when they heard conservatives on radio, TV.  An excellent lesson on how SJW’s abuse Twitter to “deplatform” voices with which they disagree:

“It’s such a frequent occurrence, you can script out exactly how it will unfold: 1. media outlet will feature a conservative voice; 2. one or two fringe Twitter activists will get mad and call out the media outlet; 3. their followers will retweet and send out similar messages, all within a short time span, making it seem like they’re louder in voice then they are. It’s exactly what they will do to me on Twitter today for writing this.

You know, some guy named Glenn Reynolds just published a book about this very same thing.

BUT HIS TWEETS!!! I’ve written before about the political pundit class and their absurd fear of the President’s 50 cal. Twitter gun, but sooner or later some of these dopes will realize we have it pretty f**king good here in the US. In countries where the press is under real attack, this is par for the course:

Judge Mohammad Moghiseh of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Branch 28 court found [journalist] Kazemi guilty on national security charges of spreading misinformation and insulting the supreme leader and other Iranian officials, and sentenced him to four and a half years in prison followed by a two-year ban from working as a journalist.

He’s lucky his head is still attached to his body.

ON THE MCCAIN FAUXMENT: The irony is amazing. The same John McCain who political media ass-raped in 2008. “He can’t lift his arms to use a computer!” they mocked. (His P.O.W. injuries were never mentioned in that story.) “He had an affair with Vicky Iseman!” they bellowed. (They later “clarified” the story claiming when they said he had an affair they “didn’t really mean to imply” an affair. (The Times has since vaporized the internet archive) When on the campaign trail a woman referred to nominee Barack Obama as “an Arab,” to which John McCain responded, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, a citizen.” This press slurred him “by suggesting that being Arab is at odds with being a “decent family man,” McCain made a comment that was patently Islamophobic.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m waiting to see a huge Twitter war between Trump and David Duke, just so I can read The Times tell us what a great guy David Duke is.

HOW DUMB IS THIS WASHINGTON POST REPORTER? This dumb: She repeats the canard that Trump was the “motivation” behind the tragic murders at the Capital Gazette, yet the very article she cites says expressly:

“Ramos held a long-standing grudge against the The Capital. It began with an article in the newspaper in 2011 that detailed a criminal harassment charge that a woman filed against Ramos, a former high school classmate of hers.”

Of course, this video game is objectionable, but no more so than the wildly popular “Grand Theft Auto” series, which allows players to murder sex workers and homeless people.

LEFT WING FASCISM NEVER DISAPPOINTS: “Mass. teacher accused of planting live ammo at school, then calling police.” If the facts don’t fit your narrative, then invent the facts. Remember, it’s “for the children”:

“Southbridge police said high school biology teacher Alfred Purcell III, 57, of Woodstock, Connecticut, reported to staff that he had just found one live round of 9 mm ammunition in the rear stairwell. The school was placed on lock down. During the lockdown, police and Southbridge High School staff reviewed video footage and saw Purcell removing the live round of ammunition from his pocket, dropping it on the floor and quickly leaving the area, police said.

About 10 minutes later, the video shows Purcell standing over the ammunition and taking a picture of it with a cellphone, police said.”

Like Stalin said: “If you want to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs.”

Or as one of his current admirers put it: “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? “Brazil to allow crime reporters to carry guns for protection” reports the UK Press Gazette. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Second Amendment says what it says and though I haven’t owned a weapon in decades, the people who want to stop you from owning one are for the most part wrong. That said, step back and think about journalists carrying sidearms. I know literally hundreds of journalists, and can count less than 10 of them who know anything about firearms. The idea of an armed Jim Acosta ought to scare anyone. And remember this guy?

The point is that I’m not really sure that arming people who think ear plugs are some sort of riot round, or that “an AR-15 “shotgun” was used in the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shooting is a really great idea.

To be sure, journalists in places like Mexico and Brazil are truly at risk, and if open carry makes them safer, I’m all for it. I just hope that the periodistas are more informed than their American counterparts. I’ve written about this at The Daily Caller.