LEOPARDS NEVER CHANGE THEIR SPOTS: P.J. Media’s Paula Bolyard is the first one who gets to the core of another slimy attack on what is perceived as “conservative” media. John Solomon of JustTheNews.com broadcast with partner Real America’s Voice an exclusive interview with former President Trump. They discussed, among other things, Trump’s vow to take on “federal machinery of censorship of political speech.”

Literally, before the sun came up, DNCC sock-puppets at The Daily Beast published a story claiming —  with no evidence — that Solomon had been fooled, and talked to either an impostor or an “AI bot.” Did The Daily Beast call Solomon to ask about it? Nope. Did they call the Trump campaign to verify? Nope. That would be asking too much.

Although other media hedged their bets reporting on the alleged punking, Bolyard got right to it. Bolyard quoted the original (and now memory-holed) Daily Beast article as saying:

“Robert J. Sigg, the owner of the network, told The Daily Beast on Thursday night that the “Trump” on the call sounded “like ChatGOP” to him and that “an internal investigation will be needed” into whether his hosts were duped […] “This is not the company values that the American people tune in for,” Sigg added. “This is a major oversight by John and Amanda both. Our news directors will need to go through additional training about journalism practice and how to present the facts and truth to the American people.”

One little bitty problem with that: Neither Sigg nor the network ever said any such thing. The network responded to The Daily Beast‘s smear job saying that:

“These are all scurrilous lies in a fake quote that The Daily Beast never received from our network. Ironically, in a story they wrote about RAV being duped, it was The Daily Beast in fact that may have been “punked” into believing they had a qualified quote from us.”

Here’s the best part: the CEO of The Daily Beast is one of the same people who brought you a shit-show called “Gawker.”

Remember them?

“Bro Culture in the C-Suite (Redux)”: Investigative reporter (and dear pal Susan Antilla, a prize-winning journalist) published a marvelous series in The Insider proving what we all knew: “Bro” Boys are More Often Than Not Scum.

The douchenozzle at center is Arias Organization CEO Simon Arias, III.

Let’s start with the gross part, shall we?

“Women say they were fed date rape drugs, compared to dog puke, and forced to watch a boss masturbate […] One former agent told Insider she was worried she’d made a big mistake early on, when her boss commented about her large breasts in front of colleagues, calling her “Jugs.” Another woman who worked there told Insider she was compared to dog puke. Senior managers called men in the office “studs” and “stallions,” according to the lawsuit; women were called “sluts,” “bitches,” and “whores.”

This is not some mom-and-dad strip mall insurance agency. It’s part of a nested series of companies that lead up to Globe Life Inc., an S&P top 500 company. It has 3,543 employees nationwide, and annual revenue of…wait for it…$5.2 billion.

Now lets get to the “comeuppance” part. After the women sued everybody in sight, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway slashed its stake in Globe Life from 6.35 million to 2.52 million shares. And when Warren Buffett makes a move like that, regulators take notice:

“Insider has spoken with four former Arias agents who said a Pennsylvania Department of Insurance investigator questioned them about the company’s culture and indicated that the department was looking into whether the company had defrauded its customers. One said the investigator, Michelle Billotte, asked about “company culture and sexual harassment.”

It goes to show you that people who act like @ssholes often disrespect the law as much as they disrespect other people:

“Two sources told Insider that a representative of the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General was also asking questions about Arias. One, a former agent, said he spoke with William McKee, an investigator in the office’s insurance-fraud section, about Arias agents who had increased customers’ premiums by adding coverage without their knowledge. The former agent said he also shared information about colleagues who would drum up extra commissions by using phony names to write policies for people who didn’t exist.”

Although civil suits are pending, no criminal charges have been filed against Arias or any of the Globe entities.

Nonetheless, good investigative reporting teaches us that Justice Brandeis was right: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

OH, THIS WILL WORK OUT WELL: Sure, it’s possible that at most some lackey will hand-select a fawning mail for a “real” response, but I’m betting dollars to doughnuts that they are going to use an AIChat-thingy.

Only an Open Records Act filing will tell. Stay tuned.

Here We Go Again: Remember President Obama’s “Operation Choke Point” in which financial and insurance industries were pressured to “choke” industries of which the far left disapproved?

And I’ll give you two guesses which industries — although entirely legal — those are. (HINT: Firearms dealers, Adult film industry…pretty much all the fun stuff.)

Ah, good times, good times.

President Biden has brought the Good Times back! JustTheNews.com has reported that:

“One of the first acts that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency did under President Joe Biden was put a hold on a Trump-era rule that would have ensured fair access to banking services from going into effect. The rule would have prohibited major financial institutions from arbitrarily discriminating against businesses.”

To be fair, Republicans on the state level have passed laws to restrict minors from being able to access porn sites. But at least those laws have been debated in public and voted upon, and are currently undergoing challenges in court.

But the far left has long weaponized the IRS, DOJ, EPA, and other executive agencies in ways that circumvent Due Process. Again, the administration does what “paternalistic socialism” always does: Enforce their restrictions about what you can read, eat, save or spend without public hearings, notice or debate.

And these people say “Democracy Dies in Darkness”? Really?

THE IRONY: IT BURNS  As has been often said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H.L. Mencken

“Workers at Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco told to work from home due to crime.”

*BADA-BING* The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals utterly smoked the Biden Administration’s Thought Police in a hearing yesterday over whether the injunction against government collusion to suppress conservative speech on social media should be lifted.

JustTheNews reports that:

“Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod declared in court that the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade social media companies to remove, throttle and suppress purported misinformation on COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop and elections reminded her of a mafia movie.”

Government lawyers did everything they could to soft-pedal the meetings White House officials had with social media executives, claiming that the meetings and emails were “merely requests” in the public interest. The three-judge panel wasn’t buying it. At all. Judge Don Willett blasted the DOJ lawyers for making that excuse:

“Federal officials appeared to practice “fairly unsubtle strong-arming” and make “not-so-veiled threats” in the vein of “this is a really nice social media platform you’ve got there, would be a shame if something happened to it.“

Golly, where have we heard that before?

The court did not issue a ruling immediately — appeals courts rarely do — but as The Good Professor says, “Read the Whole Thing.”

Most litigators will tell you to never bet on a ruling just from the questions and statements of judges in a hearing, but having won and lost my share of these, when you see this much blood on the floor, you get a good sense of where things are going.

Should this case continue in the same direction, conservative and independent publishers, bloggers and pundits are going to have a field day bringing cases against social media companies for acting as government surrogates.

MORAL CONSISTENCY? WHAT’S THAT? NBC News is reporting through Reuters that the Iraqi government has criminalized the word “homosexuality.” The report says that:

“Iraq’s official media regulator on Tuesday ordered all media and social media companies operating in the Arab state not to use the term “homosexuality” and instead to say “sexual deviance” […] The Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC) document said that the use of the term “gender” was also banned.”

My research shows that the Jihad Squad hasn’t uttered a single word about it. Ilhan Omar (D-Mi.); Rashida Tlaib (D-Mi.); Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have consistently attacked Israel in specific and Jews in general. Tlaib and Bush recently tried to gin up a boycott of Israel’s President Herzog addressing a joint session, issuing a bellicose if not downright hateful press release saying:

“Bestowing President Herzog with the rare honor of a joint address to Congress while the Israeli apartheid government continues to enable and directly support racism and brutal settler attacks is a slap in the face to victims, survivors, and their loved ones—including the families of Americans murdered by this regime like Shireen Abu Akleh and Omar Assad.”

OK, fine. Legislators and their constituents have every right to advocate for their constituents’ views, even odious ones. But waitaminnit…

These same faux-Progressives claim to be “allies” in the LGBTQLMAO “struggle.” It’s easy to blast away at targets like Israel because it’s accepted in academia and Hollywood. But isn’t this the very same bunch who insist on DEI and focus heavily on gay rights?

Moreover, have a look at the endorsements for Ilham Omar of which she boasts. Those are some pretty interesting names. None surprising, but why are people and entities who ought to know better, like Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi — and get this — Stonewall DFL (who works to elect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allied Democrats to public office in Minnesota) silent on the Iraqi criminalization of even using the word “homosexual.” And silent on the Jihad Squad’s silence. Nancy Pelosi, who owes a lot of her political power to the “allies” in Hollywood ought to be asked this.

But she won’t. Because this is what crybullies do. 

MONEY? WHAT MONEY? I’m still surprised — although I shouldn’t be — that there are still people out there who refuse to believe that the Biden family ever got money from Ukranian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese companies and oligarchs.

But JustTheNews brought the receipts: The House Oversight Committee now has traced more than $20 million in funds from questionable places.

“In its third memo analyzing bank records, the GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee reported it had found a clear pattern of the Biden family and its partners doing business with Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Chinese and Romanian figures who had legal and other troubles and then collecting money around the times of gaining access to Joe Biden.”

What’s the story now, “Big Guy”?

LIVE IN THE BUBBLE, WALLOW IN TROUBLE: Your Jawdroppingly Insane Lack of Self-Awareness of the Year.  Variety writes a speculation story of interest to maybe 12 people in the media industry bubble, reporting that Jeff Zucker, formerly Top Dog at CNN may buy the network. Zucker flips out and says though a flack: “It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false.”

*”There’s a dossier proving Trump got peed on by Russian Hooker.”

*”COVID will kill us all unless every human on Earth is vaccinated.”

*Contributor Donna Brazile passed the questions for a CNN-sponsored debate to the Clinton campaign.”

*Caved to Erodogan by not televising the pro-Democracy riots in Turkey.

*”That Covington Kid was a Racist.”

*”Hunter Biden’s laptop was a fake, just Russian disinformation.“

LULZ.

THERE’S WRONG, AND THEN THERE’S INSANELY WRONG: Roy S. Gutterman, a professor at Syracuse University and a self-professed expert in “free speech” published an Op/Ed piece on (where else?) CNN that misreads the remarkable victory handed to free-thinkers — especially in on-line forums — by Louisiana Federal District Judge Terry Doughty.

Doughty’s judicial opinion is the first to recognize that yes, the Biden Administration has been in bed with BigTech to directly, clearly and unambiguously censor or demonetize conservative speech, or speech that represents a threat to the preferred narrative. And you can bet your boots that a lot of the pro-censorship lefties are nervous. Very nervous.

The most glaring “nothing to see here” on Prof. Gutterman’s part is his glossing over and minimizing a key element:

“[C]riticism by government officials and gentle requests to take down content — absent concrete administrative or prosecutorial action — goes far short of censorship.”

“Gentle requests?” Who does he think he’s kidding? Nice media platform you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

And oh, what a shocker! Gutterman appeals to emotion and that good old sawhorse “saving Democracy from misinformation”:

The complaint cites occasions when the Biden administration threatened to take antitrust action against the companies over misinformation about Covid-19, vaccines and elections or undo Section 230, a legal shield that protects tech giants from lawsuits. This also falls short of actual censorship. [Empasis added].

So let’s see if we have this right: There is no censorship, and no threat of censorship, but when the government does take or threaten to take action over what they call misinformation, “this also falls short of actual censorship.”

Anybody else see the circular logic being employed here?

HEROES: I’ve had more than a few in my pursuit of truth, accuracy, democracy and the First Amendment, ranging from Floyd Abrams to Marty Garbus to my mentor Burt Neuborne  and Nat Hentoff.
Watch this, and understand why Tucker Carlson is in that pantheon.

.@TuckerCarlson discusses Jan. 6 with Russell Brand @rustyrockets: "They are clearly lying." pic.twitter.com/wIVkDetPfn

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 7, 2023

LET THE WRIST-SLAPPING BEGIN! Hunter Biden charged…breaking…

AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING… While the clueless losers chant “RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!” we learn from The Daily Caller that Zombie-in-Chief Biden has allowed Xi’s goons to run amok here in the U.S.:

“A Chinese intelligence agency quietly operates “service centers” in seven American cities, all of which have had contact with Beijing’s national police authority, according to state media reports and government records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.”

Ed Driscoll posted a related story here.

WHAT WHERE THEY EXPECTING? Talk about posting your “L’s”. The Guardian is reporting that smug liberals (well, no, The Guardian would never say that) in Michigan celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council. And on Pride Week, that city council has quite openly — even proudly — passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property.

Gee, who would’ve seen that coming?

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said former mayor Karen Majewski. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”

Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, who was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote to become the nation’s first Yemeni American mayor, told the Guardian on Thursday he tries to govern fairly for everyone, but said LGBTQ+ supporters had stoked tension by “forcing their agendas on others.”

All animals are equal.
Some animals are more equal than others.

STANDING UP FOR YOUR BELIEFS (Oh, is that “ableist?”): More from JustTheNews on Professor Scott Gerber, who has the nerve to question the value, scope and size of DEI. Kudos to FIRE, once again.

Bad professor. No soup for you.

BREAKING NEWS: The Clown Show Shall Continue. JustTheNews has an exclusive just in that Donald Trump’s legal team have been informed that an indictment is forthcoming in the next few days:

“Federal prosecutors have notified Donald Trump that he is a criminal target and likely to be indicted imminently in a probe into alleged classified documents – even as the Justice Department declined to delay charges to give time to investigate allegations of witness tampering submitted by the former president’s legal team, according to multiple people on Wednesday familiar with the case.

The sources directly familiar with the case told Just the News that DOJ declined to delay the planned indictment of Trump to investigate allegations that a senior prosecutor working on the case tried to influence a key witness by discussing a federal judgeship with the witness’ lawyer.”

More to come…

PELOSI, AOC MIGHTILY P*SSED OFF, THREATENING LAWSUITS: (Satire)
“It was our idea first,” the pair of disinformation-fighters said in a joint press conference that never happened. “Our concern about saving democracy from bad ideas with which we don’t agree was blatantly ripped off by the Nation of Zimbabwe, and we are investigating possible actions in the WIPO courts.”

Although Representative Hank “Guam Might Tip Over” Johnson (D-Ga.) was a co-sponsor of H. R. 6971, which would have created a federal commission to prevent misinformation and disinformation, upon learning that the alleged idea theft originated in Africa, he consulted the Congressional Black Caucus who people familiar said encouraged him to stay silent on the matter. The United States currently provides Zimbabwe with more than $368 million each year with foreign aid.

THE CURRENT STATE OF LIABILITY FOR “CAUSAL” SPEECH: As a committed civil libertarian and experienced advocate of First Amendment freedoms in all its forms, I — like most Instapundit readers — reject the notion that someone’s “feels” were damaged by something they read, watched or heard and subsequently they deserve financial compensation in law.

Blaming speech for things other people do (in violation of alleged cultural norms) is equally repugnant. It strips the moral agency from the reader and viewer, and is paternalism in its most abhorrent form. We’ve seen it a million times. I was in a newsroom when Rep. Giffords was shot, and heard editors immediately yelling at reporters to start looking for “right-wing” media that Jared Loughner may have been “inspired” by. Massive fail. I mean, just look at the guy.

When liberal fascists strip away peoples’ moral agency (and thus, the notion of individual responsibility) they then believe they have license to regulate speech on an imaginary causal link to violent acts. Fortunately, the law rejects this for the most part.

Short of lawsuits, of course, if your club hates a particular person, they can virtue signal their “honorable” intentions by targeting others and sweeping them into a “basket of deplorables.”  (As an aside, Hillary Clinton will never know how much damage she did to the body politic with that craven polarization).  Media and public figures with a conservative leaning readership or following are consistently smeared as “right-wing.” This agreed-upon narrative is underwritten by a well funded campaign to ruin their reputations and bring them down by pressuring advertisers, or just plain hysterical cybermob “deplatforming.”

The motive reasoning varies, but it is usually justified as targeting “disinformation” that “destroys democracy.” A laughable and overbroad notion, but there’s gold in them there hills: Some hucksters have ginned up a for-profit business model called “NewsGuard” that deems itself the moral authority on who is and isn’t producing “disinformation.” The curious part is that this company is advised by (Ret.) General Michael Hayden. He’s one of the 51 signatories to the infamous and now thoroughly discredited “Russian disinformation” letter that was used to silence reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop. How these guys can claim the high moral ground is beyond me.

So which exceptions allowing speech restriction are philosophically acceptable and pass constitutional muster? Obviously, speech that knowingly provides a direct opportunity to engage in sex trafficking, murder, and the like. But burning the American flag is protected speech (although I can think of several friends who would be motivated to punch the arsonist’s lights out). Even generalized death threats against the President of the United States, without more, have been protected as “hyperbolic” and “expressive” speech. Remember this little gem that was passed around by Occupy Democrats and the Koz Kids? Oh what fun we had. Good times, good times.

But claims of emotional distress caused by watching something have always failed. Yet an interesting case is developing in California. For quite some time, the nanny state has been demanding more and more supervision of speech by BigTech social media companies who claim to be mere conduits. They want it both ways, exerting influence over social media and denying responsibility at the same time. Yielding to public and political pressure, they have hired teams of moderators (usually with a far-left bent) to scour the platform and remove offensive postings.

Can you imagine sitting in front a screen all day having to sift through Anti-Semitism, ethnic slurs, gruesome videos and obscene photographs? Moderators at Tik-Tok have filed a suit against their employer’s parent company, claiming that “the company did not adopt reasonable measures to mitigate harm from having to watch disturbing content.” Courthouse News reports that:

“As part of their jobs, Reece Young and Ashley Velez say they watched hours of disturbing videos showing necrophilia, bestiality and violence against children, while working for independent “content moderation” firms ByteDance hired. The plaintiffs claim that as a result, they were unable to take breaks from graphic videos because queues of videos which were not supposed to contain graphic content often did, and the resulting harms were exacerbated by ByteDance’s strict productivity standards.”

The judge in the TikTok case has denied the company’s Motion to Dismiss, and it may very well proceed to trial. On one hand, this is one of those “why can’t they both lose?” moments. The usual — and winning — argument against would-be censorship is simply replying that “if you don’t like what you see, change the channel.” But to be fair, these people can’t change the channel.

So the irony abounds here: “We know better than you, so shut up and listen only to state-approved media.” Then, when part of that approval process requires people to be exposed to arguably offensive material, the nanny state has backed itself into a corner. They can’t claim speech “causes” harm except in instances where they are trying to determine if that same speech is capable of causing harm.

Pretzel logic, indeed. This is going to be fun. I’ll go make popcorn.

AN INTERESTING HYPOTHETICAL: WHEN IS IT DOXXING? Stephen Green’s earlier post made me wonder, “How in the hell can these people complain, when they keep voting for legislators who openly plan to ruin the communities they represent?”

Amusingly, we constantly hear from the leftists who insist that Clarence Thomas is not really black, or Condoleezza Rice is not really a woman because they “legislate against their own interests.” At first blush, I find that appalling, because frankly, how does a well-off, white, Ivy-League editorialist get to wrestle self-determination away from someone else? It’s not just dehumanizing, it’s condescending and kind of…fascistic.

But here’s the hypothetical I would present to journalists and bloggers: We know from the public record that Oregon State Rep. Farrah Chaichi is the sponsor of the bill that essentially gives homeless people property rights over public spaces. That leads one to wonder if any of these homeless encampments are near Chaichi’s residence.

Aye, there’s the rub. I am not suggesting to anyone that they locate her residence and publicize it. But would it be “doxxing?” I have no doubt that if someone were to post her address or a picture of her home, they would be accused of “inciting harm” or “inviting violence.” That’s not a statement without merit, although the left are historically famous for doing just that, especially to judges who issue rulings with which the cybermob disagree. And that same mob often punches down much lower than just judges: News commentators like Tucker Carlson who are targeted for vilification have had their families confronted at their homes by Antifa nuts and others on the far left:

Some of you may remember the boneheaded move by The Westchester Journal News, who in 2012 published an interactive map listing names and addresses of licensed and registered gun owners. Although the paper eventually removed the post and apologized, by then it was too late.  That map (and the names and addresses of perfectly law-abiding gun owners) is still floating around. The internet is forever.

But at what point does that residential information become important to telling the whole story? And can it be presented without raising security concerns? (As an aside, when I was at Bloomberg News, we did the same kind of story regarding guns, but at my direction our data only showed how many registered weapons were in a particular zip code: no names, no addresses.)

Should Chaichi’s residential address be sussed out and published? Would it be fairer or less offensive to simply describe the neighborhood in which she lives, and go look to see if there any homeless encampments nearby? Or is her address crucial to telling the story?

Discuss, I’ll go make coffee.

CAN YOU SAY “HYPERGAMY”, BOYS AND GIRLS? I knew that you could.

WHAT DID THE PRESIDENT KNOW, AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? John Solomon’s JustTheNews.com just broke a bombshell of a story that leads any reasonable person to ask that question. It turns out that a well-respected IRS agent of senior experience has documented and is planning to disclose evidence of specific interference being run by Biden appointees in the DOJ, including warnings to others in law enforcement to not ask about Hunter’s shenanigans. The lede graf says it all:

“A decorated supervisory IRS agent has reported to the Justice Department’s top watchdog that federal prosecutors appointed by Joe Biden have engaged in “preferential treatment and politics” to block criminal tax charges against presidential son Hunter Biden, providing evidence as a whistleblower that conflicts with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent testimony to Congress that the decision to bring charges against Biden was being left to the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware.”

David Weiss, the Attorney General for the District of Delaware found that he did not have jurisdiction over Hunter’s tax matters because Biden did not file taxes in Delaware. When Weiss tried to refer the matter to the appropriate AG’s, he was stiff-armed.

Who would have thought that Merrick Garland (who swore before Congress that “Delaware U.S. Attorney Weiss had full authority, free from political pressure, to pursue a case against Hunter Biden in any part of the country”) turned out to be a lying sack of dog poo?

OF COURSE THEY SETTLED: Apparently Fox (and their insurance company) settled the Dominion case. Duh. While people will freak out about how sad they are that Fox “got out of it” trust me, this is not my first rodeo, and settling before trial is very very common among all of them.

MY SHOCKED FACE: I, for one, do not doubt for a second that it’s entirely possible Permanent Washington (CIA, FBI, etc) had a hand in the murder of Malcolm X. I’m not defining his character or programmatic either way, but anyone (except modern Democrats) ought to see the very real possibility. And it makes perfect sense that (providing there is an evidentiary basis) the Shabazz family would bring a lawsuit.

I know, many of them cheered them on as “angels doing God’s work” when they were ginning up evidence against Trump, (“How dare you sully the good name of the FBI!” harrumphed The New York Times) but many of us who lived thru LBJ and Nixon always knew that the Deep State is not some tin-foil hat theory.

Ngo Diem could not be reached for comment.