IT MUST BE FISKING DAY AT INSTAPUNDIT! Here’s a great one looking at The New Yorker (have I reminded you how much more erudite and sophisticated than you they are? I will) and their incredible expose of the connection between a simple but tasty chicken sandwich, the knuckle-dragging cro-magnons who visit Chik-fil-A in between Klan rallies and how they are simply not welcome in New York? Have I reminded you how much more erudite and sophisticated than you The New Yorker is?

If you are reading this, you are nothing but a deplorable carbon-blob, clinging to your guns and bibles. And, apparently your chicken sandwiches, too.

GUESS WHAT’S TRENDING?

FISKING A MEME: Teachers unions using viral media to make demands the average taxpayer wouldn’t have the nerve to ask for. So I fisked it.

Remember, it’s all for the children.

AS MEL ALLEN WOULD SAY: “How about that”?

Ronan Farrow wins a Pulitzer Prize.

WELL, THAT’S CREEPY: This went unnoticed, but if you want something about which to develop a new conspiracy theory, this is a doozie.

Sources have reported that infamous billionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private island located in the Caribbean has recently caught on fire […] Notable public figures, such as former President Bill Clinton, have been reported to travel with Epstein on his ‘Lolita Express’ to various places, including this private island.

That’s one hell of a way to destroy evidence!

BUYING MEDIA FORGIVENESS: The Hypocrisy Of Limousine Liberals And Hollywood Celebs. My weekly Daily Caller Op/Ed.

Vanity Fair reported that Damon was paid $26,000,000 for one film despite having only 25 lines of dialogue. (His gun had more lines than he did.) Ironically, Damon used a 2016 press conference in Australia promoting that movie to express his desire for a massive confiscation of U.S. guns: “You guys did it here in one fell swoop [in 1996] and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly.” The next time someone says, “Nobody is saying take away all guns” remember Matt Damon and Sylvester Stallone: hardly “nobodies.”

(Bumped from early morning.)

HOLLYWOOD HYPOCRISY AND BUYING INDULGENCES: My weekly column is up at The Daily Caller.

It’s utterly dishonest to argue that Matt Damon’s bullet-fueled bloodbaths have no “normalizing” effect, but Donald Trump’s screeds, Milo Yiannopolis’s trolling or Christina Hoff Sommers’s quiet and scholarly academic speeches are “normalizing” and must be denied a platform or covered in a fair and objective manner.

ANOTHER TWO CENTS ON ZUCKERBERG IN FRONT OF SEN. CRUZ: To me, the most stunning statement was when Zuckerberg says he “is not familiar with Section 230″ (the law that protects ISPs from liability for third-party content.) That would be like the CEO of SmithKline saying he doesn’t know anything about pharmaceutical testing rules.

If his lawyers — after all this time — never briefed him on Section 230, he is either lying, willfully ignorant, or being poorly served by his legal team.

MEET RALPH WIGGUM: “I’M SPECIAL!” The Boston Globe interviews a man who claims to be behind fake news…wait for it…wait for it…

He doesn’t deny that he intentionally fools people. But Blair says he does so for an unusual reason — because he’s a hard-core Democrat, a “liberal troll” with a mission of undercutting the far right. His work, he says, is satire, meant to expose what he views as the bigotry and hypocrisy of those willing to accept his inflammatory fictions as truth. And he claims that it is working, that he — with the aid of an army of about 100 other liberal trolls — has actually helped stanch the tide of fake news online.

How’s that workin’ out, fella?

SCRATCH A LIBERAL, FIND A FASCIST: “The bill will “require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Web site. The goal of Senate Bill 1424 is “to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories, the utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories, providing outreach to social media users, and placing a warning on a news story containing false information.”

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THOSE PRINCIPLES, WE HAVE OTHERS: Here’s the hilarious part: the law firm who defended Backpage’s right to assist in sex trafficking of underage women is also the law firm for The New York Times, HBO, The Daily Beast, Forbes and many other media entities. And very close contributors to Hillary “I’m With Her” Clinton.

I KNOW IT SOUNDS NUTSO: But I rather like this sentiment she expressed:

“She added that gun issues need to be addressed, but the “real thing that needs to be addressed are issues of the heart.”

Talk about burying the lede.

PRE-DEMONIZATION OF CENTER-RIGHT MEDIA: Much has been written about the MSM freakout regarding Sinclair here, and here. What’s happening is this is nothing more than a campaign from the left to demonize Sinclair so that readers avoid it, and more importantly, relegate it to their list of “must ignore” platforms, like InfoWars or GatewayPundit. It’s a pre-emptive move to further control the narrative and censor by repudiation what you see and hear.

Two important facts (known in the media business but pointedly ignored) are first, CNN sells a service called CNN Newservice to stations around the country, and customers repeat CNN’s scripts verbatim. Conan O’Brien discovered this as a source of humor as long ago as 2013.

The second fact is that even on more “serious” matters, like editorials, The Fair Media Counsel reports an anecdote from a former Tribune (now “Tronc”) journalist:

Sinclair isn’t the only organization to do such a thing, but it is perhaps the most visible and unapologetic in its approach. In the not-so-obvious file was this personal experience: When the FCC was considering raising the ownership cap, all Tribune-owned newspapers were told to run an editorial in support of the action. (The same editorial, by the way.) I had written a letter to the editor in opposition of that point of view. My letter was rejected, with a brief explanation: Tribune was not allowing letters with opposing points of view on that particular subject.

Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas? It’s been abandoned in the culture wars. In the new media marketplace, if you use center-right currency, your money — and your ideas — are no good here.

HOW COPYRIGHT LAW GOT WEAPONIZED: My Daily Caller Op/Ed from today.  You can’t criticize what you can’t hear.
**Bumped from early morning**

COPYRIGHT LAW AS A POLITICAL WEAPON: My Daily Caller Op/Ed this week, explaining how the DMCA is used to silence political speech.

GUESS THAT PARTY, PART DEUX: “Judge accused of breaking into home, swiping ‘soiled’ women’s panties.” Hint.

Gotta be fair…

LET’S PLAY “GUESS THAT PARTY”! Today’s contestant, The Boston Globe: “Senator Rosenberg’s husband, Bryon Hefner, indicted on assault, lewdness charges.”

STEAMING BOWL OF WRONG REJECTED: “Judge Denies Mueller Request for Protective Order.” Referenced earlier here,  Judge T.S. Ellis III said that Mueller’s request was insufficiently specific in describing the information to be subject to the requested protective order, which is, in the circumstances, excessively broad:

“Dismissing Mueller’s request as “anemic,” Ellis went on to say the “current proposed protective order throws an unnecessarily broad cloak of secrecy over documents and information to be disclosed in discovery. And this is so especially given that the indictment in this case charges defendant with engaging in conspiracies that begin as long ago as 2005 and ended in 2014.”

We the people, own the courts and its contents, not Manafort, and certainly not the Department of Justice or Special Counsels.

TODAY’S BIG STEAMING BOWL OF WRONG: Courthouse News reporting that “Mueller Seeks Protective Order of Discovery in Manafort’s Va. Case.” Despite the headline, it’s not just Mueller:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort can agree on one thing – any evidence unearthed in discovery should be privy to a protective order.

Of course, it’s not uncommon for litigants to request that discovery materials be sealed, and to speed things along, judges too often rubber-stamp these requests. It gets tricky because raw discovery is in most states not a “judicial document” enjoying the presumption of public access. But when one of the parties relies on that document for a substantive motion, they often try to use the “confidential” designation to hide that part of the pleading and redact public copies. This in turn, requires citizen groups or reporters to hire lawyers, intervene in the case, and file substantive motions arguing that the public interest requires disclosure. I’ve done it many times and it can delay the public’s right to know by months.

Raw discovery is not filed with the court, but pleadings and motions are. We the people, own the courts and its contents, not Manafort, and certainly not the Department of Justice or Special Counsels.

***UPDATED AND BUMPED UP***

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Reuters reporting that “The government defined fake news as “news, information, data and reports which is or are wholly or partly false” and included features, visuals and audio recordings. The law, which covers digital publications and social media, would apply to offenders outside Malaysia, including foreigners, if Malaysia or a Malaysian citizen were affected.”

Gee, someone should write about the danger of this kind of legislation.

BURIED IN 12th GRAF: “…praised by fellow Democrats.”
It’s all about the children, you know.

DAILY CALLER OP/ED: “Collusion, Corrections And ZOMBIE FACTS That Refuse To Die” How corrections are handled — and mishandled — in online news and how it creates Zombie Facts.
*Bumped up from morning*

MY WEEKLY DAILY CALLER COLUMN IS UP: “Collusion, Corrections And ZOMBIE FACTS That Refuse To Die.” A look into how corrections are handled — or mishandled — and the effect it has on readers and our collective knowledge.

FOX, HENHOUSE, ETC: Last month, holier-than thou Oxfam was embroiled in a scandal with staff accused of using charitable funds to buy prostitutes. Now the head of another British charity admitted five indecent and serious sexual assaults on a child under 16 and was sentenced to six years and eight months.

Beware the pious.

YOUR CHEAP SHOT OF THE WEEK: Huffington Post encourages mocking the encouragement of women in science. Oh, it’s Ivanka. SUSPEND YOUR PRINCIPLES! The column is slugged “Humor” but I think *this* is actually funnier.