A 24-HOUR “HUNGER STRIKE”? The bravery, the virtue, the sacrifice, the selflessness…it’s all too much to bear. Rachel Evan Wood is truly the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi. This is the most Hollywood thing I’ve seen all year.

I THINK SOMEONE GOT PUNKED, AND IT’S NOT O’KEEFE: According to The Daily Beast:

“One alleged Project Veritas associate, for example, has an “affinity for wearing kilts” in his stings. The site also warns to be on the lookout for people wearing unusual clothing, specifically citing lederhosen as an example.”

Lederhosen? Is that a “he’s a Nazi” dogwhistle or just barking mad?

THINGS AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE: The Wall Street Journal reports what some have known for a long time, namely that the ACLU long ago abandoned their Constitutionalism in favor of becoming just another wing of the DNC.

The American Civil Liberties Union has explicitly endorsed the view that free speech can harm “marginalized” groups by undermining their civil rights. “Speech that denigrates such groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality,” the ACLU declares in new guidelines governing case selection and “Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities.”

The WSJ is behind a paywall, but Reason has a pretty good summary here. A lot of us in the Free Speech practice space saw this coming a long time ago, when they stayed silent during the suppression of speech many consider “odious” but constitutionally protected. I have no doubt in my mind that Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and others would not have their support today, and couldn’t work. For that matter, I suspect that if his writing did not support a particular multi-culti agenda creating a hierarchy of victimhood, Thomas Paine wouldn’t get their support either.

SPYING ON REPORTERS: Nothing new, but this week’s Daily Caller column takes a look at how the groundwork was laid by Obama — and others — going as far back as 1917. Dissent must always be observed in order to crush it.

COME LET US REASON TOGETHER: Hope springs eternal (for me, anyway) that people on all sides of issues can talk and debate without hyperventilating. A new initiative supporting rational look at Carbon Taxes, Americans For Carbon Dividends has a remarkably broad base of leadership, including Republicans Trent Lott, Mark McKinnon, Karen Hughes. Of course, The New York Times has a snarky take on it, and couldn’t help but throw in gratuitous insults about those who are skeptical of the extent, degree, timing of Global Warming theories. Even if you believe it’s a hoax or scam (and there’s a little bit of truth in both) bi-partisan approaches in a calm, intelligent non-partisan setting are always good.

SLANDER A VETERAN, LET YOUR PUBLISHER APOLOGIZE FOR YOU, THEN HIDE: As pointed out here and and here, The New Yorker’s smarter-than-you Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) has now protected her tweets. What that says to me is the bubble hardens, and those smug elitists just retreat into an ever-smaller echo chamber.

Having legally vetted thousands of stories in my career as a media lawyer, I am always surprised (and disappointed) by reporters who attack someone and justify it by saying “hey, they’re fair game, they stepped up to the plate, they need to learn to take the high inside fastball.” I heard this time and time again when I questioned stories about Sarah Palin, John McCain, Ted Cruz and others. What I can’t understand is why simpering babies hide or whine when the shoe is on their foot. Yes, I’m talking to you, Jim Acosta. Grow a pair or get out of the game.

NEW YORK’S SMARTEST LIBELS NEW YORK’S BRAVEST: A Harvard-educated fact-checker for the New Yorker is being excoriated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for “baselessly slandering” a Marine veteran — by falsely accusing him of having a Nazi tattoo, according to reports.

Just an accident. Never mind. Nothing to see here. Doesn’t indicate any confirmation bias. Nope.

THE SOLUTION IS SO OBVIOUS: Make warm weather illegal.

BILLIONAIRE, PUBLISHER, LIBERAL, OPPRESSOR: Hey, you know what’s cool  about this country? Not just monster trucks, the Blue Angels and the fact that one can say “fuck you” to the Nation’s leader on national television without being hauled away by secret police in the middle of the night. (Try *that* in Saudi Arabia or Turkey, kids).

No, those are all cool, but we live in a country where you can be one of the three richest men in the world, own a newspaper that touts income equality and wealth distribution, but according to your own employees, underpays them. At least, according to the 400 staffers at the Washington Post who penned an open letter to Bezos:

#DearJeffBezos, we workers of The Washington Post have been bargaining for a year and have little to show for it because The Post won’t meet us halfway on much of anything. We love The Post. We know you do too. Our work has earned us more than what The Post is offering.

Democracy Dies in Darkness, you know. Resist and all that good stuff.

CRACKS IN TWITTER’S LEGAL WALL? Like Facebook, Twitter has been able to avoid any First Amendment claims of those banned (or shadow banned), but a California judge has kept alive claims from a guy named Jared Taylor (his account was disabled), noting that allegations that Twitter’s policy of suspending accounts, in the judge’s words:

“[A]t any time, for any reason or for no reason” may be unconscionable and that the company calling itself a platform devoted to free speech may be misleading and therefore fraudulent.”

Taylor describes himself as a “racialist” who believes in “racial realism.” The media rely on the questionable SPLC to refer to him simply as the founder of the New Century Foundation, an organization that “purports to show the inferiority of blacks to whites.”

This is going to be interesting. Not being the government, they are not restricted by a “content-neutral” requirement, but they may have to rewrite their Terms of Service and sales pitch.

WORST. LEGAL ARGUMENT. EVER. “‘Provocative’ pictures of Meghan Markle show payout over topless Kate Middleton photos was wrong, magazine to argue.”

“[The magazine’s] lawyers will argue that it is “hypocritical” to award such a large sum to the Duke and Duchess when other members of the Royal family “are happy with sexy photos”, according to sources close to the case.”

Translation: Well, they didn’t mind having their private parts published, so what’s your problem?

A LITTLE HONESTY GOES A LONG WAY: The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan doesn’t let Obama off the hook, and reminds the paper’s #ResistClub members that the scooping up of reporters’ data had some precedent from “The Most Transparent Administration Ever”:

“But Trump’s anti-press bluster aside, there’s a clear blueprint to follow — courtesy of Barack Obama, who once claimed that he would be the most transparent president ever but proved to be no friend to press rights.”

To be fair, this shouldn’t be a case of “whattaboutism.” Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it. I’ll be publishing a column on this, and adding some personal reportorial perspective, as well as a little history. This practice goes back to at least Ike and JFK, and it is Trump’s open declaration of dislike for the press (as opposed to the secret dislike held by previous administrations) that has people particularly freaked out.

WELL, WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A FLAMETHROWER?  Science reporter and old pal Elizabeth Lopatto asks the question and more. She looks like she’s having fun.

Not like that wuss from the New York Daily News who claimed to get PTSD after firing an AR-15. Once.

OFF WITH HER SHOW! My Daily Caller column bumped up from this morning, about the irrational demands that people be fired for talking smack:

The demand that people lose their jobs because of something they said (as opposed to something they did) perpetuates a chilling effect that will only drive genuine bigots underground. Even worse, it is punishing people for what Orwell called “wrong-think.” […] it won’t change what or how the “bad” people think: it will only force them to be more circumspect and selective about where such views may be aired. I for one, would rather see such views held up for public scrutiny and debate rather than whispered in the dark back rooms of an obscure beer hall.

FUN FACT: The comments to original morning posting are enlightening. They are the exact same comments I’ve been getting from proggie SJW’s: “She deserves it”…”fight fire with fire”…”speech has consequences”…”the [other side] has rigged the game and we can’t take the high moral ground.” The only difference is the IP posters call me a Hillarybot, and the snowflakes call me a Nazi Trumpster.

PINHEADS WITH PITCHFORKS: YOU’RE A VENGEFUL COWARD IF YOU WANT ROSEANNE BARR OR SAMANTHA BEE FIRED — My latest column at The Daily Caller looks at the bipartisan disease of censorship and mob mentality.

“Fire him!” scream the keyboard warriors. “Boycott her sponsors and threaten them!” demand the social justice warriors on both sides of the aisle. What’s missing here is a sense of proportion, a rational relationship between the speaker, their comments, and their role in society. And it’s happening on all sides of the political and social spectrum.

** Nod to Pat Buchanan on the headline.

FAKE NEWS: THE EUROPEAN EDITION. Cardiff University professor Richard Sambrook dissects three recent fake stories. The first one is of particular interest, because it alleged the London Evening Standard has been selling favorable news coverage to companies including Uber, and Google for £3m. The allegation is made by a fake news outfit calling themselves “www.opendemocracy.net.”

And who are the major sponsors behind this fake news outfit? George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Fund. Hold on…we keep getting told that Fake News is a Russian scheme to keep Trump in power. What gives?

THE PRISON-HOUSE OF POLITICAL LANGUAGE: A must read article in Quilette, about the various ways in which the political left uses the techniques of Newspeak in the real world, in Britain and in the USA, while projecting their own totalitarian motives onto their opponents. Nail on the head stuff right here:

“The US media, stocked with coastal elites who all seem to be on the same page politically (including on the issue of blacklisting those with dissenting opinion), has more or less devoted itself to daily preaching against Donald Trump for the past two years. Criticising or morally condemning Trump is hardly edgy or even a courageous act of sticking one’s head above the parapet; it is expected. Yet these people still call him a totalitarian. How can we account for this lack of self-awareness on their part?”

How dare they allow this to be published! Why, the country is just loaded with “deplorables”!

THE MERKEL LEGACY: A Israeli teen and two of his friends were attacked at a Berlin railway station by a group of Arab men who became enraged when they heard a Hebrew song playing on the Israeli’s cellphone.

“Hebrew music? For 70 years you are murdering children. Berlin is our city now and here we don’t listen to fucking Jewish music.”

“Our city now.” Let that sink in.

IT’S NOT YOU: THEY HAVE BECOME UNHINGED. “Democrat compares budget process to rape, NC to North Korea.” It’s a few days old, but worth noting.

Democratic state Rep. Mickey Michaux of Durham is declining to apologize for comments he made during a press conference on Tuesday, when he expressed his anger over how the state budget is being crafted…”Today we have seen a rape of this budget,” Michaux said Tuesday. “And I’m having problems right now trying to reconcile whether I’m in North Carolina or North Korea.”

I’m surprised he didn’t work the Holocaust in there. The best part…wait for it, wait for it…Michaux, the third African-American elected to the N.C. General Assembly, is serving his 43rd year in office.

WHEN MILLENNIALS DRAW MAPS: The kids running graphics at USA Today must have skipped that day in high school…**pssst: Don’t tell Wyoming**

DEMOCRATS SELL OUT COMMITMENT TO CONSTITUTION: As if you needed more proof of the craven Stalinistic turn of the DNC, the party has pretty much given up on the First Amendment. Of course, their stenographers in the MSM won’t change a thing, and if this trend continues, boy are they going to be sorry.

“The notion that journalistic activity such as cultivating sources and receiving illegally obtained documents could be construed as part of a criminal conspiracy is, according to [Jim] Goodale, the “greatest threat to press freedom today.”

And they think Trump is the greatest enemy to press freedom. Dopes.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE:  When you think that “hands up, don’t shoot” is for real, and you never talk about the Infield Fly Rule, well, this is what happens.

Linda Cohn, one of ESPN’s most prominent female anchors, in April 2017 gave a radio interview opining that ESPN’s politics were pushing away viewers and the network had overpaid for NBA rights. Mr. Skipper called to berate her on both counts, people familiar with the call said.

Hell, I’m still trying to come to terms with the Designated Hitter.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! My weekly column is up at The Daily Caller. This week we take a look into the reporting out of Gaza, and find it’s much more complicated than you might think:

Many of the scenes propagated by mainstream media range from selective editing to outright falsity. It seems to me that the real question is whether such deception is a function of inherent bias, a conspiracy of sorts, or instead, the attention-grabbing motive best described as “if it bleeds, it leads.”

*Bumped from this morning* (NB: Some thoughtful commentators suggested I use the word “and” instead of “or” in the above graf. Point well taken

REPEAT AFTER ME: “We do not have a right to not be offended.” An Oregon high school student is suing his school, saying it violated his First Amendment rights when it suspended him for wearing a Trump T-shirt. The very terrible and horrifically offensive T-shirt can be seen here. I warn you, sit down before viewing because you might faint.

This is why they need to start teaching civics in elementary schools again.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! My weekly column is up at The Daily Caller. This week we take a look into the reporting out of Gaza, and find it’s much more complicated than you might think:

Many of the scenes propagated by mainstream media range from selective editing to outright falsity. It seems to me that the real question is whether such deception is a function of inherent bias, a conspiracy of sorts, or instead, the attention-grabbing motive best described as “if it bleeds, it leads.”