HE’S SAYING WHAT WE KNEW ALL ALONG: The media elite and left-wing colleges desperately wanted to make the Gibson’s Brothers Inc. v. Oberlin Oberlin College case about “academic freedom.”  Anybody who actually read the facts (brought to many of us through the incomparable work of Legal Insurrection‘s William Jacobson) knew that was utter horseshit.

Oberlin’s defenders tried — through the pages of The New York Times and other usual suspects — that the college was unfairly being punished for students’ speech. But those weren’t the facts: A jury learned that Oberlin administrators helped the defamatory fliers to be made with Oberlin-owned equipment; Oberlin staff participated in handing out the flyers; and worse yet, Oberlin officials attempted to prevent a local news photographer from recording the scene. The speech at issue was Oberlin’s as much as the students’.

Frederick Hess, American Enterprise Institute’s director of education policy studies revisited the case in Forbes a few days ago, and the headline really says it all: “Oberlin Defamed A Bakery Rather Than Hold A Shoplifter Accountable. It’s Now $36 Million Poorer.”

Hess paints the background first:

“When the incident first occurred, because the shoplifters were black, the Oberlin community quickly accused Gibson’s of racism and discrimination in a series of high-profile attacks. Gibson’s and the college had a longstanding relationship, students regularly frequented the bakery, and there had been no prior suggestion that the owners or employees were racist. All of that context was conveniently ignored.”

And why did Oberlin avoid using common sense? Hess explains quite simply:

“Why did Oberlin defame a longtime partner rather than simply confront three students who’d engaged in misconduct? One former administrator wondered if Oberlin was simply fearful of angering students, musing, “A freshman from an East Coast big city might come to Oberlin and find there is little for a social justice warrior to do in a small town like this, so they get frustrated and make issues like this shoplifting thing bigger than it should be, and the school follows along.”

Truly, the inmates are running the asylum. Having followed the case closely, one legal sidenote of interest continues to bug me.  Laughably, in motion practice, Oberlin’s defense lawyers tried to argue that being called a racist was not defamatory. This ought to blow any wokist’s mind. The president of the college even admitted under oath that “being called a racist was possibly the worst thing you can say about someone.” Odder yet, I can’t find any use by the defense of Ohio’s “innocent construction” rule. Ohio is one of the few states with a rule in civil law that if a statement can be interpreted in an innocuous way, then that is the meaning which must be ascribed to it. (I litigated the same issue with success in the First Circuit where a libel plaintiff insisted that calling his store “trashy” meant it was literally strewn with garbage. The court did not buy it).

Hess ends his Op/Ed with a cautionary note every educator ought to read:

“Oberlin’s grown-ups had an obligation to teach students there are consequences for misconduct and to help ensure that justice was done. Instead, they found it more expedient to defame a community business and ravage the owners’ lives. Well, Oberlin is finally paying for that mistake. Campus officials, there and elsewhere, should take note.”

SOMEONE had to do it.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF “DON’T PUSH YOUR LUCK”: After the infamous “Slants“ case, where the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny protection to potentially “disparaging” words or phrases, luggage and jewelry designer Erik Brunetti succeeded — after the Supremes decided in June of 2019 in his favor — that he had the right to register “FUCT” as a trademark.

Yesterday, the USPTO denied his application to use the word “FUCK” in the same manner:

“Erik Brunetti can’t register “FUCK” for various goods including cell phone cases, jewelry, and luggage because it does not function as a trademark, the TTAB said in a precedential decision Monday. The decision in part hinged on the fact that the word is so ubiquitous, noting “it now appears without fuss in an impressive range of cultural domains.”

Curious little monkey that I am, I went poking through the USPTO database, and found that there are more than 31 applications pending for variations on “LET’S GO BRANDON”, including my personal favorite, “LET’S GO BRANDON YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH”; “LET’S GEAUX BRANDON”; and the sure-fire hit at the Mexican border, “VAMOS BRANDON.”

Interestingly, it appears that the USPTO is denying these applications en masse, based on the theory that:

“By October 6, 2021, a clip of the expression’s origin uploaded to Twitter had been viewed over 3.8 million times and retweeted by over 10,000 separate accounts. In other words, consumers rapidly became accustomed to seeing the phrase used by a wide range of people, companies, and/or other entities […] Because consumers are accustomed to seeing the wording “LET’S GO BRANDON” commonly used by many different sources, they would not perceive it as a mark identifying the source of goods and services, including applicant’s goods. Instead, consumers would perceive the wording “LET’S GO BRANDON” as a reference to the common expression that began on October 2, 2021.”

It’s good to know that bureaucrats in agencies other than the DOJ will Do What It Takes to protect The Big Guy.

NO COMMENT IS OFTEN A BIG COMMENT:  According to NPR, Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator. Of course, few of the MSM papers dare to offend Linda Sarsour and other Islamic militants, though the LA Times deserves kudos for doing a story on what is likely at the heart of this:

“That death sentence — a fatwa — had immediate effects on Rushdie’s life, spurring him into hiding for the better part of 10 years and dogging him and others around him who were related to the publication of the book. But what exactly is a fatwa? And how might it be a factor in Friday’s stabbing, which took place in front of a 2,500-person audience?”

Most telling of all is that CAIR (sort of the ADL for Muslims but without self-restraint) has not uttered a word of condemnation. They’ll condemn flyers at collage campuses, politicians and pundits who raise legitimate questions about terrorism financing and so on, but a man under a ten-year old death sentence issued by their religion’s highest leader? Not a peep. And our media is stuffed with incurious, unenterprising reporters who fail to ask or even explore this most important of questions.

I suppose that’s what happens when you fire the experienced journalists and replace them with uninformed wokist garbage babies. Ben Rhodes was correct:

“Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

WOKE IS A JOKE: I’m always shocked (well, not shocked but p**sed off) when giant mega-corps spend money conning people how “woke” they are instead of treating people equally and fairly. Today’s sh*t list includes Goldman Sachs (the “Giant Vampire Squid”) who talks the talk but can’t walk the walk.

Old pal and investigative reporter Susan Antilla shows how Goldman Sachs uses the arbitration system to keep heinous treatment away from public scrutiny:

Last spring, Goldman was pushed by shareholders to investigate its arbitration policy and determine how its use of a private justice system impacted employees. In December, Goldman reported that while there had been concerns that arbitration may “allow harassment and discrimination to go unseen and unaddressed,” its review found that those concerns simply didn’t apply to Goldman. The law firm that represented Jeffrey Epstein and Roman Polanski in their sexual assault cases conducted the investigation, assisted by a scholar who is on the panels of two arbitration providers.

Nice company you keep there, Goldman.

THE GREATEST LIE EVER TOLD: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.”

Ring doorbells, in particular, raise privacy concerns because of their popularity, Amazon’s agreements with police, and Amazon’s growing technological capabilities. In 2020, Ring responded to a letter from five senators and revealed that four employees improperly accessed Ring video data. Politico also reports that “Amazon handed Ring video doorbell footage to police without owners’ permission at least 11 times so far this year.”

You know how to stop this? Convince Planned Parenthood that the Ring videos are used to determine who is getting mail from them about abortion. Granny Winebox and pals would shut that down in a second.

THIS JUST IN: “Left Wing Rag Misses Big Picture.” The Hollywood Reporter is a slavishly left-wing rag written by the wokest of the woke, (FFS, it’s even got “Hollywood” in its name, a dead giveaway) but there’s an interesting unasked question here.

At Bloomberg we required reporters look for something called “The Future Word.” It’s not enough to say what happened and who said what. We need to ask what’s at stake, what might the future bring? It’s painfully clear that the only thing on The Hollywood Reporter‘s radar is protecting women (I know, I’m not a biologist either) from having their clinical visits tracked. I get it. The less the government follows me, what I read, buy, consume or visit, the better. The point (missed by major media) is that goes for a lot more than abortion.

There’s going to come a time — I promise — when Google will be faced with a viable class action suit from people who had their visits to gun shops tracked, and handed over to someone. And The Hollywood Reporter (along with the Limousine Liberals of Malibu) will be silent.

THE MARK OF A TRUE CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERTARIAN: The willingness to listen to other views. Here’s a link to a blog post from a law professor friend of mine (Josh Silverstein) at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He’s pro-choice and yes, almost always votes Democrat, but he’s living proof that not all Democrats are bat-shit crazy people interested in “geometric equity” or “racial disparities in chlorophyll synthesis of house plants.” Here’s his not-unhinged take on the Dobbs decision:

“I will add that neither pro-lifers nor pro-choicers are hypocritical when it comes to abortion vis-à-vis their other moral views.  For example, pro-lifers are often accused of hypocrisy because they oppose abortion rights but support the death penalty.  But that position is easy to justify: guilty criminals have forfeited their right of life; innocent unborn children have not.  Likewise, pro-choicers are often accused of hypocrisy because they favor abortion rights but oppose the death penalty.  But that position is easy to justify as well: the fetus is inside a woman, thus implicating bodily autonomy; criminals are not inside another person.”

Of course, recent history tells us that rational voices are most likely ignored. They don’t provide enough outrage.

MAKES SENSE, RIGHT? I’ve been working on a vegetable garden, and seeing how those signs near schools that say “Gun Free Zone” worked out so well, I’d give it a try:

THE SIGN IN THE WINDOW IS NOT PHOTOSHOPPED: Seen in East Hanover, NJ.

BEFORE I ACCUSE THE PRESIDENT OF LYING (OR JUST ANOTHER “GAFFE”): I regularly read the DNC talking points and fundraising emails. In today’s missive (below), President Biden said:

“I’ve spent my career working to pass common-sense gun laws. We know that when we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. We know that gun manufacturers have spent two decades marketing assault weapons which make them the largest profit. We must have the courage to stand up to the industry and the lobbies.” (Emphasis added).

I am not a firearms or ordinance expert, and ask IP readers to explain to me the following:

1. Is it true that “Assault Weapons” are the manufacturer’s “most profitable” products? Profit (and Biden may not understand this) does not mean total revenue, but rather gross revenue less cost of good sold per unit;
2. Is it provable or possible that the number of “assault weapons” sold includes military and law enforcement sales, which would artificially juke Biden’s numbers whether he understands “profit” or not.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THE LAW MAKE? I HAVE MY “FEELS”: The best part about being set up for an ambush is when you know you’re being set up for an ambush.

I did a 3-way debate on I24 TV this afternoon, where I had the opportunity to blow three really stupid (but popular) ideas out of the water: 1) “That the stricter the gun laws the lower the gun violence” (Chicago, anyone?); 2) “You can’t yell ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater” (um, that was dicta overturned more than 50 years ago, the Professor from Vanderbilt had no clue about it); and 3) speakers have to be held accountable for others’ actions.

As to the last point, some of you will delight in the blank deer-in-the-headlights stare I got when I asked them about James Hodgkinson or James Lee. When I asked them if we should hold Greta Thunberg liable the next time some eco-warrior hurts someone, they pretty much vapor-locked.

Friends, there’s a lot I admit to not knowing. But when it comes to free-speech issues, you’d damned well better not bring a knife to a gun fight.

UPDATE: Bumped, by Glenn.

THE LAST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD QUALIFIED TO SPEAK ABOUT “FIXING” JOURNALISM: First, note that in the UK they refer to on-air talent as “presenters,” not “journalists.” Good for them. In the US, we have had bimbos and mimbos like Diane Sawyer (ABC) and Stone Phillips (NBC) not only crow about being “journalists” but lecture others about how to do it. Never mind that (and I can’t disclose it for professional reasons) many of these “TV journalists” when sued for libel have signed affidavits and in deposition admitted that “they don’t research or write” and they essentially “just read what’s put in front of me.”

Even Rachel Maddow has pleaded in court and under oath that she was not presenting “facts” but instead “opinion.” Said the 9th Cir. in affirming dismissal of a libel case brought by One America News:

“[T]he MSNBC host’s statement that the far-right network was “paid Russian propaganda” was “an obvious exaggeration,” rather than an asserted fact.”

Oh, “an exaggeration. ” Never mind then. And these are the hypocrites who complain about Tucker Carlson’s passionate Op/Ed work as “disinformation? (Never mind that Carlson doesn’t make “facts” up out of thin air, more often than not has a provably solid basis for his “opinion.”)

So lets have look across the pond to see what our British cousins are saying to “fix” Journalism. Well, The Press Gazette, a pretty good publication covering all matters media in the UK noted that:

“BBC News presenter Ros Atkins has said that change in the news industry is a “necessity” if it wants to survive because “news is not a given in people’s lives” anymore.”

Atkins’ list of things to fix sound like the kind of self-serving well-paid-for psychobabble that passes for analysis of journalism in today’s graduate schools. To be fair, some of Atkin’s “suggestions” are in fact what I teach as primary elements in learning and doing journalism, such as identifying problems in the public interest and providing evidence clearly. If you need a “presenter” to tell you that mass media needs to do a better job at those things, I’d suggest that the education and training of young journalists is severely messed up.

But what I find most objectionable is the reliance on buzzwords that inculcate a culture of self-promotion rather than public service:

“The fourth thing on my list is making sure your work has a digital and social dimension. This might seem obvious, but it’s worth reiterating. If we’re spending money on journalism that has no digital dimension, we should ask hard questions about whether that is money well spent. And then if we’re making digital content, then we have a plan for how this will be shared by people,” he went on.”

His final comment is the dreariest example of gibberish so acceptable in journalism schools:

“The next thing I will say… is how are you going to tell a story… we can see the digital revolution as a distribution revolution, a different way of getting things to people but actually it’s a storytelling revolution,” Atkins said. “We’re living in an age of extreme creativity and in news, we need to match that. We should look far and wide for storytelling inspiration.”

I don’t even know what that means. And coming from the state-sponsored scandal factory that is the BBC, I find it more than a little, um, unself-aware that any of these clowns have the gumption to lecture anyone else.

I’m an old, I guess.

“THE 80’S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR FOREIGN POLICY BACK”: Oh how they laughed at the zinger from then-President With The Greatest Trouser Crease Ever. He assured us even back then that “the cold war has been over for more than 20 years.”

But look at the world now.

My close friend and former teammate at Bloomberg News, Rob Urban, is something of an Eastern Europe specialist, and in the early days of Bloomberg Urban helped build many important bureaus, from Moscow to Prague to Warsaw. His piece, published a few months ago speaks the wisdom of the witness:

“The strongman image was especially effective after Yeltsin, who walked slowly and stiffly because of a bad back, and was frequently intoxicated. When he had run for re-election in 1996, I remember footage of him riding a snowmobile on vacation and it really looked like he was strapped to the machine, just a body flopping around. Then came Putin, bare-chested, on horseback.”

Nobody I’m aware of in the political media have asked Obama if he regrets that “joke” or “insult” (depending on your point of view). But anyone who uses idiotic phrases like “the Putin Price Hike” to explain away our own flaccid economic policies knows literally nothing, and are likely to believe that Putin magically sprang up upon the election of Donald Trump. They are dead wrong.

** Note that you have to register to read the entire Independent article, but’s free.

YES, IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY, STUPID: President Galantamine tried his best to remember James Carville‘s infamous (and successful) 1992 Clinton talking point. But the poor man kept getting confused about whether inflation was a good thing (“It’s our strength” he babbled) before his handlers and a supplicant press corp glossed it over.

I’ve noted elsewhere that for all the sippy cups banging on the highchairs of America’s elite, Roe is simply not the high-salience issue that will re-elect Biden. Not when business news sites (even those run by Biden-friendly corporations) point out that as of right now:

“As of March, close to two-thirds, or 64%, of the U.S. population was living paycheck to paycheck, just shy of the high of 65% in 2020, according to a LendingClub report. “The number of people living paycheck to paycheck today is reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic and it has become the dominant lifestyle across income brackets,” said Anuj Nayar, LendingClub’s financial health officer.”

Yet, Democrats are still struggling to understand the importance of bread-on-the-table issues and keep whistling past that graveyard. One outfit, interviewing Democratic officials nervous about “electability,” said that:

“On Monday night, several left-leaning congressional candidates joined an emergency organizing call with activists reeling from a draft Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.”

When real America can’t pay its grocery bills, put gas in the car, or buy eyeglasses for their kids, all the screeching — and I do mean screeching — by Elizabeth Warren will not overcome Carville’s time-tested truth.

WILL IT TAKE ANOTHER 90 YEARS? Back in February, Prof. Glenn linked here to a New York Post Op/Ed wherein it was raised (quite rightly, IMHO) that The New York Times ought to give back the Pulitzer Prize awarded them for their breathtaking, page-turning and epically false reporting on “Russiagate”, where the NYP pointed out:

“With the entire Russiagate affair exposed as a Clinton campaign fabrication, it’s the clear duty of The Washington Post and New York Times to give back the Pulitzers they won for “reporting” the fake news. Clinton campaign cash ordered up the “Steele dossier,” with Democratic operatives providing some of the rumors and a cynical Russian exile asking buddies to supply rank speculation for the rest. Other Clintonites actually hacked Trump computers, including White House ones after he took office, to create another smear, as Special Counsel John Durham’s latest filing revealed.”

Just as Harry Ried (D-NV) when caught lying about “Mitt Romney never having paid taxes”  responded, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” So too, the DNC stenographers at The New York Times all but helped ensure that even normally intelligent people — some to this day — insist that Trump was a “Putin puppet” and do whatever they could to keep The Bad Orange Man out of the White House. After all, what’s lying to a bunch of rubes when compared to Saving Democracy From The Worst Man Ever?

So it was with a fair amount of interest I read  David Folkenflik’s NPR story published yesterday wherein it seems that — at least regarding a 90 year-old story — higher-ups at The Times are openly reconsidering giving back the 1932 Pulitzer Prize awarded to the infamous Stalinist Walter Duranty, who published falsehood under the Times‘ banner. Most famously, Duranty dismissed claims that there was a deadly famine, and one that historians have roundly argued was engineered by Stalin himself.

As a professor of media law and ethics, I’ve lectured quite a bit on “fake news” and in teaching that it has been around for quite some time, I share this graphic with students:

Folkenflik does a nice job of revisiting the Times‘ revisiting the issue. He notes that:

“In 2003, public pressure led the Times and the Pulitzer Prize Board to conduct parallel reviews of Duranty’s work and the prize. The board found no “clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception.” It decided against withdrawing his award. (The Pulitzer Prize administrator at the time, Sig Gissler, declined to comment for this story.) Then-Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said he had concluded stripping Duranty’s work of the award would be like airbrushing history — in essence, a “Stalinist” approach. (A historian hired by the Times as a consultant in evaluating Duranty’s work would publicly denounce that conclusion shortly after.) The newspaper publicly posted an essay representing its institutional position, calling his work discredited and explaining why.”

Fast forward to today, where there is perhaps a glimmer of hope that major news organizations actually start to take responsibility for knowingly false stories:

“It was a very different time and place,” says Joseph Kahn, who is about to rise from managing editor to executive editor at the paper. “The notion that you have a single correspondent on his or her own defining a take on a major story doesn’t feel like the world we live in today.” Kahn, a former foreign correspondent and top international editor for the paper, says the Times has 40 journalists in Ukraine right now. He says what the Times is doing now is in some ways making up for the paper’s past shortcomings. The paper has shined a light on potential Russian war crimes and Russian propaganda efforts.”

Perhaps it will take less than 90 years for The New York Times to reconsider their prize-winning and utterly false “Russia” reporting.

TAKING THE LIBERTY OF BRAGGING A LITTLE: Here’s a picture of the new Sen. Fred Thompson Courthouse in the Middle District of Tennessee. My architect brother Laurance did the design consulting with architect Michael Graves and was the Advisor of Design and Construction for GSA and the Administrative Office of the US Courts.

In short, he made it all happen, and I couldn’t be more proud.

AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING! JustTheNews digs deeper into the Hunter Biden files (you know, the ones everyone told us was Russian disinformation) and finds yet more shady sh*t:

“[M]emos gathered by the FBI show, the charitable discussions evolved into an expanding relationship between Hunter Biden and Chinese energy giant CEFC to include business deals that would eventually reap the Biden family millions of dollars.”

For those who think this is nothing, and has no bearing on the President, you need only answer ONE question to shut me up:
WHO IS “THE BIG GUY” WHO GETS HIS 10%?

GOOD NEWS OR A NOTHINGBURGER?: Yesterday, Rep. Raskin (D. – MD 08) announced that “the House Judiciary Committee voted to pass H.R. 4330, the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, legislation introduced by Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Congressman John Yarmuth (KY-03) and Congressman Ted Lieu (CA-33) that would safeguard a free and independent press by establishing a federal statutory privilege to protect journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources and prevent federal law enforcement from abusing subpoena power.”

It sounds like a good idea. The bill has a very wide definition of journalist that ought to cover bloggers as much as anyone else. “Covered” journalists are defined as those who are involved in (whether for profit or not):

“[G]athering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”

But wait! There’s more! The bill also requires that any agency seeking to spy on a journalist must provide a Federal court with a reason for the interception that shows by a “preponderance of the evidence” that the information is sought to prevent violence and that the journalist must be given notice and an opportunity to respond (usually filing a motion to quash). Ok, we like that. Secret warrants are bad.

But it’s always the goddam exemptions. The bill contains workarounds so wide you could drive a truck through it. First, it does not apply if the agency says the journalist is “suspected of being an agent of a foreign power.” Am I the only one who remembers Adam Schiff (D- Liarsville) calling Tucker Carlson a “Russian agent” on live TV?

Moreover, the protection from spying does not apply to anyone suspected of involvement with terrorism. That’s all well and good, but it was a scant few weeks ago that parents concerned about the curricula to which their children might be exposed were branded as “domestic terrorists” by the National School Board Association, who prompted the DOJ to “direct the FBI to investigate threats of violence at school board meetings.

Finally, the exemption does not apply if the journalist is “suspected of committing a crime.” The is the hole you can get two trucks through. Sure, David Gregory can wave an illegal-to-possess high capacity magazine around on TV without fear of being spied upon, but if James O’Keefe uses a hidden camera, well, that could be a crime.

I’ve learned a long time ago that it doesn’t matter what you call a piece of legislation. That’s for spin purposes: You could easily pass “The Happy Puppy and Blooming Flowers Act”, even if buried in the exemptions is explicit permission to drown left-handed babies. The key thing is given the extraordinary abuse of phrases like “terrorism” or “national security” and the like, this bill doesn’t really do anything.

It’s always about the definitions. And the problem is the people applying those definitions just can’t be trusted.

ARROGANCE OR STUPIDITY? EMBRACE THE POWER OF “AND”: It’s no secret that the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, is a raving moron. But I can say based on 40 years experience as a reporter and media lawyer — and pal Mark Tapscott will back me up on this:

Nothing, but nothing, sends up a red flag to reporters quite like when a politico files a “motion to seal” court proceedings. It’s catnip. Total catnip.

From the Chicago Tribune:

“The Park District’s motion to seal the case acknowledges a Zoom call occurred involving high-ranking city lawyers Celia Meza and John Hendricks, then-Park Board President Avis LaVelle and parks Chief Operating Officer Patrick Levar, as well as Smyrniotis, who was the Park District’s deputy general counsel, and then-general counsel Timothy King. The Park District argues that the case should be sealed to protect its interests as it defends a separate lawsuit brought by an Italian Americans group over Lightfoot’s removal of a Columbus statue in Little Italy.”

Who wants to be the first to tell these corrupt jokers that government organizations do not have privacy interests in the first place…

LET’S PLAY ANOTHER ROUND OF “A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT:” Most media observers last week were either timidly admitting (or boasting, depending on their posture) that yes, conservative and right-leaning or oriented news organizations were right all along about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The NY Post had the story (as did others) and summed it up nicely:

[The Washington Post and New York Times] (Mottos: “All the news that’s fit to print” and “Democracy dies in darkness”) joined in the drive to suppress The Post’s reporting off the laptop, playing up bogus, clearly partisan claims that it was somehow “Russian disinformation.”

It turns out that another media walk-back (or crawl-back, given the time it took) happened last week, though with much less fanfare. The Hill finally admitted sub rosa (by adding corrections to many stories) that investigative reporter John Solomon of JustTheNews did not make any errors in his reports about Ukraine and other stories, and finally (this began in 2017!) their newsroom review did not find any unethical behavior as they had previously asserted. Solomon published a succinct statement, saying in part:

“Although the review ultimately did not undermine what I reported, I remain disappointed that The Hill did not seek to interview me. The criticism of my work in the newsroom’s review involved a determination that my columns departed from standard opinion content because they contained too many facts and revelations. To that, I plead guilty. For over a century of great journalism, opinion columnists from Jack Anderson to David Broder to Robert Novak broke enormous stories, factually documented, on the opinion pages of their publications, just like I did at The Hill. I feel no need to apologize for trying to follow in that tradition or to inform the American public.”

Of course, a lie travels around the world before the truth is out of bed, and Solomon has been subjected to a lot of unfair and disrespectful treatment as The Hill’s initial condemnation began to take root.

“Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” — Raymond Donovan

** Disclosure: I often perform legal review of stories published by JTN.**

NO MEA CULPAS, BUT AT LEAST THEY ARE REPORTING NOW WHAT THOSE “CRAZY PEOPLE” KNEW ALL ALONG: The AP reported last week that three Russian oligarchs named in the infamous “Steele Dossier” have dropped their defamation lawsuit against Fusion/GPS, the Clinton-backed outfit that convinced the media elites that Trump was a Russian stooge or even an asset.

Note the AP’s third graf is clear as a bell about the background:

“The Steele dossier has been largely discredited since its publication, with core aspects of the material exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors. A special counsel assigned to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has charged one of Steele’s sources for the dossier with lying to the FBI, and has also charged a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting in which he relayed concerns about Alfa Bank.”

A few scant weeks ago this would have appeared only in “right-wing” Russian disinformation publications. And nobody is holding their breath waiting for an apology from the media elites or the intelligence officials who pushed the narrative.

Am I the only person who remembers Adam Schiff (D-Crazyworld) calling Tucker Carlson a “Russian asset” on live TV?

The oligarchs who sued got what they wanted: acknowledgement that the whole Russian dossier story was baloney. Unfortunately, so many people still believe it, proving once again that a lie goes halfway around the world before the truth is out of bed.

Or to quote Harry Reid when caught lying about Romney not paying taxes: “It worked, didn’t it?”

OH, NOW THEY BELIEVE US: The New York Post points out in this story that:

“People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity,” the Times writes. “Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” […] But wait, it doesn’t end there. In October 2020, the Times cast doubt that there was a meeting between Joe Biden and an official from Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company for which Hunter was a board member. “A Biden campaign spokesman said Mr. Biden’s official schedules did not show a meeting between the two men,” the Times wrote, acting as a perfect stenographer.”

Jonathan Turley’s post last year about the mainstream media stealthily admitting that yes, the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was the real thing. We’ve known ( and by “we” I mean anyone with a good sense of skepticism) for months that the lapdogs in DC and NY newsrooms made sure the laptop was toxic: Russian disinformation, a GOP trick, you name it. If there was a reason to ignore it and make it toxic to even talk about, they did it. Professional liar and shameless mutant Jen Psaki continued to push the narrative as far and as hard as she could, from the bully pulpit of the White House.

The facts about the final, inevitable but snail’s crawl to acceptance of its accuracy speaks volumes about the way DC newsrooms operate. In fact, few folks know that John Solomon’s “JustTheNews.com” had revealed the laptop and its contents’ authenticity as far back as 2020. I know this first hand, because I performed the legal review and “backread” of the story. This episode highlights a deeper, more persistent problem: the toxification of center-right, right-leaning or other news organizations that are designed for more conservative (or open minded) readers.

How many times in raising a point with someone have you cited Fox News or OAN only to be met with dismissal: “Oh, Fox, yeah, right.” It’s a form of deflection, and it works. Once the source has been broadbrushed as “unreliable” the substantive conversation stops.

Herein lies the problem with that latest play toy of the media crowd, namely “disinformation.” To be sure, people from across the social and political spectrum have posted knowingly false or at best, poorly researched stories. But even though I am not a classical scholar, I’ll bet you that during elections in the Rome of Octavian (around 27 B.C.) there were whispering campaigns accusing candidates of terrible things. It’s old wine in a new bottle. We’ve just developed louder, faster, and broader ways of spreading falsities. (Gratuitous plug for Glenn’s book that touches on this topic).

Reporting about disinformation has become a cottage industry. Several newsrooms have assigned reporters (usually very young, very inexperienced, and very liberal) to a “disinformation beat.” Eventually, Parkinson’s Law will come into play. Work and personnel expand to consume the available resources. To keep their beat (and their jobs) there is a built-in incentive to “over-label” other newsrooms (especially those with a conservative readership).

Worse yet, leave it to old time dead-tree publishers to try to cash in on the “disinformation” business. Veteran publisher Steve Brill (with whom I admit having a few unpleasant exchanges) has come up with NewsGuardTech.com, a website that touts itself as the be-all and end-all of cataloging “bad” news organizations. Imagine Snopes on steroids with a journalism degree.

A look at the advisors and investors is used as a selling point for why the public should trust them, and why corporations should pay for their reporting service. In fact, I think it does the opposite. One of their advisors is Jimmy Wales, the creator and Lord Ruler of Wikipedia. Res ipsa loquitur. Another is Retired General Michael Hayden, who as head of the CIA expanded the agency’s surveillance on American citizens, including members of the U.S. Senate. He seems nice. 

The ownership and advisors are also chock full of people straight from the C-suites of the advertising and lobbying industry. Advisor Israel Mirsky describes himself as “a Madison Avenue technologist with a background in computer science.” And oh yeah, among the investors is Publicis Groupe, a vampire squid among “governmental relations” and advertising agencies. Incidentally, Publicis gave Joe Biden almost $100,000 in campaign donations. And we’re supposed to believe there is an ethic of neutrality (let alone honesty) there? If enough ad agencies can be persuaded that a newsroom is “fake” then you have successfully executed them.

I’m kind of hoping that this latest fad dies out. It’s the latest iteration of everyone screaming “FAKE NEWS” and until mainstream media starts to admit and publish facts that they don’t like, this is going nowhere.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

**CORRECTION: Lede updated to show NYT’s recent admission was reported in the NYP yesterday and Turley’s post was from last year. I apologize for the confusion.***

I’M NOT A TAX LAWYER, BUT I PLAY ONE ON INSTAPUNDIT: JustTheNews.com is reporting that a bill making its way through the California legislature would allow a nonprofit organization’s tax-exempt status to be revoked if the state’s Attorney General determines the organization has “actively engaged in, or incited the active engagement in, acts or conspiracies defined as criminal under specified federal law.”

The “No Tax Exemption for Insurrection Act” is a reaction to the January 6 riots in D.C. When I read the text of the bill, it seems to me that if passed in its present form, it would be a sitting duck for constitutional challenge. For one thing the geniuses in California don’t seem to realize that under U.S. tax law, there are several kinds of “tax-exempt” status. Some, like 501(c) 3 organizations are already prohibited from being involved in political activities. But others, like political organizations registered as 501(c)4, 5, or 6 charities may legally be both tax-exempt and involved in political activity.

The problem as I see it, is that the California bill, by overbroadly using the phrase “tax-exempt” rather than specifying which kind of text-exempt organization” most likely fails to pass constitutional scrutiny under the 14th Amendment by  treating entities differently based on their political stance, and “void for vagueness” under Supreme Court rulings such as Grayned v. City of Rockford:

“It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined. Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning. Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. […] Third, but related, where a vague statute “abut[s] upon sensitive areas of basic First Amendment freedoms, it “operates to inhibit the exercise of those freedoms.” Uncertain meanings inevitably lead citizens to ” `steer far wider of the unlawful zone’ . . . than if the boundaries of the forbidden areas were clearly marked.”

Here’s a fun fact: Although it is anticipated that such a bill would target conservative groups, ironically, it could just as easily be used to strip liberal advocacy groups of the same rights. A cursory search indicates that at least eight Planned Parenthood entities operate in California under 501(c)4, a category that allows legislative advocacy.

For now at least.

I’MMA JUST LEAVE THIS HERE: As a member of NYU’s teaching community, I got the below in my email this morning.
“Male-presenting”? Wouldn’t “perceived as Male” be more Wokish?*

*”Wokish” is not a modifier, but rather a noun for the insane language twisting we’ve all come to know and love. As in “Do you speak Wokish”?