I GOT NUTHIN’: D.C. lawmaker says recent snowfall caused by ‘Rothschilds controlling the climate’.

Jews again. Is there nothing we can’t do?

TASTELESS IDEA OF THE YEAR: Headline writers of America, please go with this: “From Twitter to the Sh*tter.” I mean this story changes so much, I expect the next rumor is that they fired him during a sex change operation.

THOMAS PAINE GOT IT RIGHT: My weekly column at the Daily Caller is up, and it explains why we need a Federal Anti-SLAPP law to protect citizens speaking out against government actors and powerful interests. Because when you think about it, free speech is a core conservative value.

No less a figure than George Washington proclaimed in 1783 that “The freedom of Speech may be taken away—and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”

As Glenn says: “Read the whole thing.”™

BEING SYMPATHETIC IS NOT ENOUGH: ABC reports that the family of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, who was killed in 2016, has filed a lawsuit against Fox News and others, citing in their complaint “Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress” (among other tort claims).

Now, you’d have to be a pretty cold-blooded monster to not feel sorry for any family who loses a son to violence. And playing amateur psychologist for a moment, it’s equally plausible that in an unsolved murder, the grieving parents would seek to hold someone responsible for something.

In light of the Supreme Court’s Snyder v. Phelps ruling, though, I don’t see how this case has much change to get out of the starting gate as a matter of law. In that case, a family who lost a son in combat were mortified at the Westboro Baptist Church holding odious and offensive protests at the funeral, including holding signs that read “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “Fag troops.” Pretty ugly stuff. I’d be offended too.

That said, the Supremes got it right:

“Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment. Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

As sympathetic and truly victimized as the family is, allowing this kind of tort claim to apply to news reports opens the floodgates for every snowflake on the left or puritanical prude on the right to sue media for merely “offensive” speech, even if it is incorrect.

*Disclosure: I was on the team of media lawyers who filed an amici brief in the Supreme Court urging the rejection of such claims.*

ETHICS GUIDELINES? THAT’S FOR LITTLE PEOPLE: The Washington Post, to its credit, established social media guidelines as long ago as 2011. (The New York Times only followed suit last year). Those guidelines seem to be founded on a self-image of honest and brave truth-seeking reporters able to separate their own biases from what they tweet, lest the sterling reputation of The Washington Post be sullied:

Social-media accounts maintained by Washington Post journalists — whether on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere — reflect upon the reputation and credibility of The Washington Post’s newsroom…we must be ever mindful of preserving the reputation of The Washington Post for journalistic excellence, fairness and independence. Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything — including photographs or video — that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism.

This morning Twitchy reports that Washington Post “congressional reporter” Erica Werner certainly has some strong feelings on Mike “Benghazi bomb-thrower” Pompeo as Secretary of State and Gina “torture overseer” Haspel as CIA director, and tweeted out the following:

“A Benghazi bomb-thrower will be SecState and a torture overseer will be CIA director — IF CONFIRMED BY THE SENATE”

Now, if she were a columnist, I’d have no beef with this, after all, opinions are what they are paid to write. But when a “congressional reporter” resorts to this kind of slimery, well, she just gives the public more reasons to distrust her reporting — and that of The Post in general.

It’s a good thing there’s an Ombudsman or Public Editor there to keep an eye on these things. Oh, wait…
**UPDATE: ORIGINAL TWEET FLUSHED DOWN MEMORY HOLE**

TRUTH EVENTUALLY WINS OUT: As far back as 2009, moral deity, overall supergenius and carbon footprint monster Paul Krugman told us lesser mortals that:

“In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”

Really? Says a victim of the NHS in one “scare story” from the Socialist-leaning Guardian:

“I was expecting to get the treatment, but they gave me a form requesting a British passport, so that was the end of that,” he said. Thompson has never had a British passport, and was not aware he needed one. The Jamaican passport he arrived with was lost many years ago…The lady wasn’t at all polite. She said you have to produce it or pay £54,000. I said: ‘Oh my god, I don’t have 54 pence, let alone £54,000.’”

Krugman uses the word “false.” I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

**Link fixed**

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY DON’T THEY MAKE PINK PUSSY HIJABS?:
This is one of those res ipsa loquitur thingies. Linda Sarsour could not be reached for comment.

NARRATIVE-MAKING, SELECTIVE FACTS AND BIAS: The Los Angeles Times has an overview about billionaire Vinod Khosla’s legal battle to prevent public access to the beach on his California property. The paper notes that “The California Coastal Act for decades has scaled back mega-hotels, protected wetlands and, above all, declared that access to the beach was a fundamental right guaranteed to everyone.”

The newspaper goes on to point out that:

He has defended a number of conservative positions, such as arguing against same-sex marriage and leading the legal challenge against President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

So, perpetuating a popular narrative, obviously this is yet another conservative fatcat being greedy, denying fundamental rights and just generally being a bad, bad man. What Rosanna Xia, who covers the environmental beat for the paper forgot/missed/hid from the public (take your pick) is something that took literally 2 minutes to find out: Khosla and his companies have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a wide range of Democratic PAC’s and candidates over the years, including Al Franken, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party of Virginia and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records.

It’s not uncommon for the wealthy to hedge their bets and throw money at both parties, but the Times does a disservice by not including this fact. Laziness, rush of the deadline, or purposeful avoidance: you be the judge. But it’s clear in whatever excuse is applied that what you leave out is often as important as what you say.

TRADING BLOOD FOR INK: My column this week at Daily Caller, about putting the acrimonious relationship between Trump and press in perspective. Here’s a taste:

“Rachel Maddow can smirk all she likes here in the safety of the US, but she would last for about 10 minutes in the UAE or Bahrain[…]To those who would worry about Maddow’s safety at a Trump rally here in the United States, I’d put her chances at surviving at about the same or better as Sean Hannity showing up at a Black Lives Matter or Antifa rally.”

DEEP-STATE LOGIC AT WORK: In one of the most insane arguments ever made by government lawyers, the CIA is claiming that even though they leaked complete documents to favored reporters, those documents are still not subject to disclosure to the public at large under FOIA. According to Techdirt:

“[T]he CIA would like to be able to selectively leak classified information while retaining the privilege of denying every other member of the public access to these leaks. If the selected journalists choose to publish classified info handed to them by the CIA, only then does it enter the public domain, according to the the CIA. Otherwise, the CIA will decide what’s classified and withholdable, not judges or logic or common sense.”

The intelligence community hates leakers, unless it’s the agencies themselves doing the leaking.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DEDUCTIONS: “In 2017, Amazon paid $0 In U.S. Taxes Despite Making $5.6 BN.”  Remember this, Jeff?

SOCIAL MEDIA FILTER FAIL (PART DEUX): Twitter, like Facebook, seem hellbent on destroying themselves by one dumb move after another. This time, they put a “sensitive material” roadblock in front of porn star Jenna Jameson’s tweet about Hollywood Hypocrisy.™ Here’s the image that they were concerned might “offend” you.

PARKLAND SCHOOL VIDEOS: No matter where you stand on gun-control or school shootings, everyone should support this. Michelle Malkin nails it in The Daily Signal:

“Release the videos. Let the public, especially competent security experts, see them. Without transparency, there can be no accountability. Without accountability, “Never Again” is yet another empty, expedient cable TV sound bite in an ocean of self-serving rhetoric.”

MY WEEKLY COLUMN IS UP AT DAILY CALLER: “Laughably Stupid Media Mistakes In Gun Reporting: How Much Do They Matter?“

SO THIS IS WHAT “AMAZING LEADERSHIP” LOOKS LIKE: Three media companies filed a lawsuit Monday to force authorities to release security camera video footage from the exterior of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to shed light on the actions — or inaction — of law enforcement during the mass shooting.

It’s bad enough there’s a school shooting, it’s bad enough there’s a plethora of evidence that the FBI, the school administrators and the Broward County Sheriff’s office stumbled through a cascade of failures resulting in this tragedy.

No, not bad enough. Now, you have to add Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel refusing to allow the press and public to see videotape from cameras outside the Parkland school on the day of the shooting. Where deputies were not only hiding, but according to later reports, prevented paramedics from entering the building.

THIRTY YEARS LATER: This month marks the 30th Anniversary of Hustler v. Falwell, one of SCOTUS’ most powerful free speech decisions. And yeah, as humor goes, the satire ad at center of the case still holds up pretty well.

WE’RE MSNBC, WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ FACTS: Poor Stephanie Ruhle really ought to check her basic facts before tweeting. She said that:

Also remember that Reagan was surrounded by the secret service in 1981…yet, he was shot. How will teachers with guns protect students? How does the best marksman in the world with a handgun take down a shooter with an AR-15 (bullets travel 3x faster)

Let’s leave the question of armed teachers aside for a moment, and let’s even leave aside the irrelevance of “bullet speed” (what genius made that a talking point?).

What she ought have asked is whether the Secret Service carry only handguns. Um, nope. She could learned in 5 seconds that the Presidential detail carries a FN P90 submachine gun, as well as the 9mm Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. So very facepalm.
** Disclosure: I used to work with her at Bloomberg, were friends (so I thought) but she was one of the folks who defriended me on Facebook for not being a Clinton cheerleader**

CURING A COLD WITH CYANIDE: My Op/Ed on government attempts to restrict/control political speech, at The Daily Caller.

WHY RELYING ON TWITTER IS JUST PLAIN STUPID: Chris Cuomo does it again, this time retweeting a totally bogus claim — without a lick of fact-checking — that some kid bought an AR-15 without valid ID. Twitter busts him on the fact that the same kid admitted he never bought the weapon, and Ben Shapiro adds that:

“When called on it, Cuomo tweeted, “Isn’t the point that the kid’s age and lack of ID wasn’t a deterrent? and this isn’t all gun shops. Place I bought my shotgun basically goes farther than the law requires and makes judgments about whom to sell to. Point is the system should be better.”

Again, we see an alleged journalist whose purported commitment to principles of accuracy are swept aside when there’s advocacy to be made. CNN’s own guidelines say:

“CNN does not try to appeal to a specific point of view or political constituency. To the contrary, the reporters, producers, editors and writers at CNN aim for comprehensive journalism.”

I wonder if he’s actually read this.

SIT IN ON MY CLASS: Professor Glenn pointed out the unfair criticism of President Trump’s visit to the hospital in Parkland, Florida in the wake of the school shooting here.

I thought some of you might be interested in how a story like this (not slugged “Opinion” or even “News Analysis”) is analyzed in my Media Ethics classes. (Apologies for the PDF link, but that’s the only way to share it.) The yellow highlighted sections are the statements I ask students to challenge, and the red type (I use a Socratic method) reflects the questions I ask my graduate students to discuss.

If “Democracy Dies in Darkness” then we have to admit that “Editorialization is Where Journalism Goes to Die.”

THINGS YOU RUN ACROSS DOING RESEARCH: I’m working on a few essays (more about that soon) and wanted to pull together a list of US efforts to influence or “meddle” (the non-legal legal word du jour) in foreign elections. Of course, anyone with a sense of 20th Century history ought to know this, but obviously our intellectual betters discussing the Mueller indictments seem to conveniently forget this episode of American history.

That said, I thought I would share this little nugget from 2016 — long before Trump allegedly “colluded” with anyone but a porn star: “In unearthed 2006 audio, Clinton appears to suggest rigging the Palestine election.” According to The Week, the Most Qualified Candidate Ever said, regarding Palestinian elections:

“And if we were going to push for an election,” Clinton went on, “then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”

I suppose it always depends on whose Gore is being oxed.

THEY MUST HAVE STUDIED LAW UNDER PROFESSOR CHRIS CUOMO: “CIA Argues The Public Can’t See Classified Information It Has Already Given To Favored Reporters.” The Daily Caller reports that:

In a motion filed in New York federal court, the CIA claimed that limited disclosures to reporters do not waive national security exemptions to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently deny records requests on the basis of protecting sensitive national security information, one of nine exemptions written into the federal FOIA law…“In this case, CIA voluntarily disclosed to outsiders information that it had a perfect right to keep private,” [the Judge] wrote. “There is absolutely no statutory provision that authorizes limited disclosure of otherwise classified information to anyone, including ‘trusted reporters,’ for any purpose, including the protection of CIA sources and methods that might otherwise be outed.”

Here’s Chris Cuomo’s “legal reasoning” via Prof. Volokh. (Cuomo: “remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us.”).
EXTRA IRONY BONUS: CNN — that same defender of transparency and the public’s “right to know” — forced YouTube to remove the video clip of Cuomo’s inanity.

SOMEONE DIDN’T GET THE MEMO: NYT’s Eric Lipton tweets an astonishingly insensitive — maybe stupid is a better word — observation. And of course, the apology after he deleted it isn’t much of an apology.

“Sorry it was read that way” is not an apology: it’s an insult.

AFTER ALL WE’VE DONE FOR YOU? BuzzFeed is being sued by a multimillionaire who says he was falsely connected to the alleged “hacking” in the now infamous “Steele Dossier” that BuzzFeed published wholesale, without any fact-checking.

Now, trying to prove the truth of what they published after the fact, BuzzFeed asked the DNC for records that would help them in their defense. “No dice” said the DNC:

Now, BuzzFeed is taking the Democratic National Committee to court in an attempt to compel it to turn over information it believes will bolster its defense against Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian business magnate who says he was libeled in the dossier when it tied him to the Russians’ alleged hacking of the D.N.C.’s e-mail servers. In a nutshell: BuzzFeed believes the D.N.C. has information that could show a link between Gubarev and the e-mail hacking, which would undercut his libel claim.

The DNC says that “In legal papers, the D.N.C. has argued that disclosing the digital signatures, supposedly left by the Russia-directed hacking organizations known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, would inevitably expose details of the D.N.C.’s information systems, possibly making them more vulnerable to another hack” according to Vanity Fair.

If the DNC hasn’t secured their IT systems at this point, I suppose they could use a server located in a bathroom closet in Chappaqua, NY that isn’t being used at the moment. What a clown show.

YOU GO, GIRL! The Washington Post announced today that the inestimable Megan McArdle will now be writing an OpEd column there. More like this, please. It’s about time they had a conservatarian columnist (my characterization) who, unlike Jennifer Rubin, is not a token conservative cum incoherent strawman.