TIM COOK THE MORAL BEACON: SJW bullies always seem to pick soft targets in their moralistic preening. Apple’s Tim Cook never met a progressive movement he didn’t like — check his Twitter feed — but when it comes down to hard choices that might actually cost him money, well, that’s another story…

China appears to have received help on Saturday from an unlikely source in its fight against tools that help users evade its Great Firewall of internet censorship: Apple. Software made by foreign companies to help users skirt the country’s system of internet filters has vanished from Apple’s app store on the mainland. One company, ExpressVPN, posted a letter it had received from Apple saying that its app had been taken down “because it includes content that is illegal in China.”

It costs nothing to demand that bakeries make gay-themed wedding cakes or that the military pay for gender reassignment surgery. But helping the world’s most repressive regime keep their citizens away from free speech and democracy? Inconceivable!

ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING: VOA News reports on an immigrant who personifies the American success story — building a thriving business — and instead of virtue signalling on social media, puts his money where is mouth (or falafel) is.

NY TIMES DISCOVERS SOVIET COMMUNISM NOT SO GOOD:

Earl Browder concluded that the American-Soviet alliance of World War II would continue after the defeat of Nazi Germany. For this reason, in 1944, he boldly engineered the transformation of the C.P.U.S.A. into a pressure group designed to work within the Democratic Party.

What’s oddly missing in this all-too-late discovery? You can start with any mention of Walter Duranty,  the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times from 1922 to 1936. The New York Times would not admit to his being a pawn of the U.S.S.R. and publishing Stalinist propaganda in The Times until 1990.

BUT IT WAS HER TURN! “WAS THE ELECTION RIGGED AGAINST BERNIE SANDERS? DNC LAWSUIT DEMANDS REPAYMENT FOR CAMPAIGN DONORS”.

Jared Beck, a Harvard Law graduate and one of the several attorneys who filed the suit against the DNC and its former chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz, wants retribution for donations made by supporters to the Vermont senator’s campaign, citing six legal claims of the DNC’s deceptive conduct, negligent misrepresentation and fraud. The DNC violated Article 5, Section 4 of its own charter by working with a single campaign to effectively choose who would win the Democratic ballot, the attorneys stated in the suit.

Oh dear Lord, we beseech thee, let this case survive a motion to dismiss and go to discovery.

OLD MACDONALD GETTING EVEN OLDER: “Nearly two thirds of the nation’s farmers are 55 or beyond. Part is the lure of the larger cities. Part is the consolidation of the family farm into larger, corporate groups, which has changed the face of the rural landscape.”

VOA reporters spent part of February and March along the upper Mississippi River in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. They spoke to Americans in counties that turned from supporting the Democratic Party candidate in previous elections to the Republican Donald Trump in 2016. Our team spoke with many along the way who felt they are among the “forgotten men and women” that Trump promised to champion.

The legacy media could learn a thing or two by leaving Georgetown or the Upper East Side.

SERIOUS BADASS: “Special Forces Hero Killed an ISIS Fighter With His Bare Hands by Drowning Him in a Puddle.” If King George had an SAS, we’d all be driving on the wrong side of the street today.

WHAT IS IT PROFESSOR GLENN SAYS?: Oh, yeah…”heh.”

THANK GOD NO TWEETS WERE INVOLVED: “Pat, 41, told CPJ that municipal police in Playa del Carmen, in the southern state of Quintana Roo, signaled for him to pull his motorcycle over as he left a meeting with other journalists at around 1:30 a.m. on June 25. When the journalist complied, police handcuffed him and violently pushed him into the patrol car, he said.”

“They pulled a T-shirt over my head and started kicking me while driving around,” Pat told CPJ. “At least one of them repeatedly punched me in the face.”

Can you imagine if the police had tweeted about him? That would be all out war on journalists! (The Captain has now turned off the Sarcasm Light).

BREAKING: “ABC: Settlement reached in ‘pink slime’ defamation lawsuit.” These are indeed tough times for legacy media. Between CNN’s multiple woes, The New York Times’ having to correct an Op/Ed and other events, media entities are more fearful than ever of facing a jury. That’s what happens when you lose public trust.

UPDATE: Late last night I posted a short item about a CNN producer admitting on hidden camera that the Trump/Russia story was “bullshit” designed to “increase ratings”. It turns out that John Bonifield (the same producer caught on tape) is knee-deep in an ongoing libel lawsuit brought against CNN by a Florida pediatric surgeon who accuses the network of libel and wait for it…wait for it…also airing an ambush video. The court denied CNN’s motion to dismiss the case (the ambush video was not part of the claim) and the parties are apparently waging war about discovery.

SUPER IRONY BONUS: “The Most Trusted Name in News” sought and obtained a protective order preventing any of the parties from talking to the public about discovery. Because, you know, champions of transparency and the right to know.

CAUGHT ON TAPE: “CNN Producer Says Russia Narrative “bullsh*t”. If secretly made tapes of Trump’s “grab them by the p*ssy” gaffe are fair game, why is this not? Hint: Ratings.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Every now and then, a small news item will restore your faith in the decency of people. This is one of those. “Video shows a teen falling off a Six Flags ride — and a crowd gathering to catch her.” Spare yourself the navel gazing about amusement parks, and watch the embedded video.

YES, IT’S STILL NEWSWORTHY: Members of both parties, including Republican Trey Gowdy, said they still don’t think they have all the answers as to what was really behind ‘Fast and Furious.’

That was so many allegedly “phony” scandals ago, it’s hard to keep track.

WELL PLAYED, HUSTLER, WELL PLAYED: “Model Wearing American Flag as Hijab on Magazine Cover Shows Underboob.”

IT’S REALLY NOT THAT UNCOMMON: The New York Post is reporting that a Washington research firm of former journalists were behind the salacious Russian/Trump dossier:

Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources says it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda. “These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”

The fact is that that firms creating opposition research are often staffed with former journalists, who use their connections in the editorial world to redistribute this sort of thing. (Naturally, there are “right-leaning” as well as “left-leaning” firms of this sort.) Work in a newsroom long enough and you’ll begin to recognize “oppo” when you see it.  Sadly, a number of journalists who were laid off by big news outfits and can’t find work elsewhere have resorted to doing this kind of work. As news organizations cut back on reporting, it’s easier than ever to get “oppo” published as news without sufficient fact-checking. What’s the opposite of a virtuous circle?

**Update: Austin Bay answers the question.

IN THE MAIL: Sharyl Attkisson’s “The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.” And remember, clicking through here to Amazon ensures that Prof. Glenn maintains his lush, opulent lifestyle.

CNN SCRUBS TRUMP STORY: On Thursday, CNN published a damning report alleging ties between the President’s associates and a Russian investment fund. Last night, CNN pulled the story altogether with a complete retraction, not a correction. The original story said the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating a “$10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team four days before Trump’s inauguration.”

“That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” CNN said in an editors note posted in place of the story. “Links to the story have been disabled.”

I’ve given many lectures about the difference between “fake news” and “wrong news.” Not everyone agrees with me, but I insist that one of the distinctions is accountability. Fake news sites never correct a falsehood, while news sites that get it wrong (as CNN did here) will correct or retract.

That’s not to downplay “wrong” news. A lie travels around the world before the truth is even out of bed, and often businesses and reputations are at stake, not to mention the notion of an informed electorate. People still think President Bush served a plastic turkey as a photo-op to troops in Baghdad, despite the New York Times correcting that canard albeit a week later.

BREAKING: Washington Times reporting that “Senate announces probe of Loretta Lynch behavior in 2016 election.”

“In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks her to detail the depths of her involvement in the FBI’s investigation, including whether she ever assured Clinton confidantes that the probe wouldn’t “push too deeply into the matter.”
Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape the way he talked about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and he also hinted at other behavior “which I cannot talk about yet” that made him worried about Ms. Lynch’s ability to make impartial decisions.”

USA Today goes further, saying that:

The committee, in a statement released Friday by Grassley and Graham, cited an April story by The New York Times reporting that the FBI came into possession of a batch of hacked documents, including one authored by a “Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far.” After reading that story, Grassley requested a copy of the document from the Justice Department, which he said never responded. A month later, The Washington Post reported that the email had been sent by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., in her former role as the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundation, an international grantmaking network founded by Democratic mega-donor and businessman George Soros.

Soros, Lynch and Wasserman caught up in the probe? Who didn’t see that coming?

IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS: “Gawker Documentary Fails to Make Case for Publishing Sex Tape“. Reason’s Glenn Garvin asks why they didn’t interview me for a take on the ethics of webcasting an illegally-made sex tape. Hell, it seems they never they bothered to contact Dan Abrams, the son of First Amendment legend Floyd Abrams; Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor of First Amendment Law at the UC Irvine School of Law; or CNN legal analyst Paul Callan, all of whom did not see the threat to free speech that Gawker and its well-paid publicist touted:

“That there isn’t (or at least, shouldn’t be) any such thing as a legally enforceable right to privacy may be an arguable position—but then it should be argued, openly and plainly, not cloaked in a silly claim that in being punished for publishing an illicitly obtained picture of Hogan’s junk, Gawker is being thwarted in the pursuit of “real journalism, journalism that exposes things that powerful people don’t want known,” as one of the Gawkerites grandiosely claims in Nobody Speak.”

To his credit, at least Garvin cited my legal analysis on the matter appearing at Talking Biz News, a journalism website run by the Business Journalism Department at UNC Chapel Hill.  The video-hagiographers of Gawker couldn’t be bothered. Of course, they had no legal obligation to do so. They also ignored the fact that while blaming billionaire Peter Thiel and his money for their downfall, they — like their cohort cheerleaders in the media mafia — hid the fact that Gawker had their own sugar daddy (a shady Russian, no less) to sponsor their litigation.

SOCIALIST UTOPIANISM EXPLAINED: Trudy Schuett’s “Iron Ladies” blog takes an interesting look at the history of Socialist Utopianism:

“As the first of the socialists, Robert Owen made some obvious mistakes that would continue to be made until the present day. The first of those was his failure to recognize people as individuals. He saw people as a homogeneous mass, with identical needs, without taking into account the differences that abound in character, ability, intelligence and other aspects that make us all uniquely human. He never recognized that his fellow socialists had free will, and most of them wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Neither did he recognize that his solution for economic slavery and oppression was equally oppressive and enslaving, only in a different form.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

REGULATORY COSTS, PART DEUX: Axios’ Kim Hart reporting that payphones (remember them?) are so few and far between that the cost of regulation outweighs revenue:

“Cincinnati Bell asked the FCC last month for a waiver to exempt it from filing the annual audits tracking pay phone transactions. According to FCC filings, the cost of Cincinnati Bell’s audit is now about five times the amount of revenue it makes from its pay phones. Sprint also asked for a waiver.”

Most bureaucracies (particularly the FCC) are loathe to waive jurisdiction or oversight, but let’s see what happens.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: The Daily Signal breaks down revealing numbers on legislators advocating for a $15/hr minimum wage:

Almost all of the lawmakers who co-sponsored a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour also hired unpaid interns to supplement their staffs, a survey shows. A report from the Employment Policies Institute reveals that 174 of the bill’s 184 co-sponsors, or 95 percent, hire interns who are paid nothing.

Well, color me shocked!

FLORIDA MAN: If you like bizarre “Florida Man” stories (and who doesn’t) you need to read Will Greenlee in the TCPalm: “Flap involving deflated bounce house in Port St. Lucie sends man to jail.” He owns this beat.

NEW FORMULA: Want instant clicks or buzz around your article or stage production? Play to the groundlings and cast Trump as the villain: “George Orwell Saw Donald Trump Coming: Review of ‘1984’. I don’t know how old this Daily Beast writer is, but I suspect he was still in high school when this was happening:

In 2011, Obama signed a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act, specifically, provisions allowing roaming wiretaps and government searches of business records. Obama argued that the renewal was needed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. However, the renewal was criticized by several members of Congress who argued that the provisions did not do enough to curtail excessive searches.

I know, research is hard, and it would have been too much work to find out that mass-spying was commonplace under the previous administration. At least, not when there’s a click-bait narrative to promulgate. Democratic operatives with bylines, indeed.
**UPDATE: I should have linked to this Obama ad using 1984 as a metaphor for Hillary.

TO QUOTE JUDGE KOZINSKI: “ROBOTS AGAIN”. VOA News has an interesting video report about a World Bank study saying that “automation could put 70 percent of India’s jobs at risk.”

I, for one, welcome our new new robot overlords.