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”?

PALIN V. NEW YORK TIMES: NOTHINGBURGER OF THE YEAR. The dust hasn’t quite settled on the meaning and effect of Judge Rakoff taking the case away from the jury. But having followed the case from its inception there are some deeper issues to be considered. This is not a law review article and I’ll try to keep the jargon to a minimum. I also apologize for the length of this note, but there’s a fair amount of background context that needs to be laid out. That said, the issues fall into two groups: first, the potential endgame of this case; and second (and far more importantly), the implications about media and the way they treat the public in general.

As for the case itself, in short, it revolved around an editorial that regurgitated the “conventional wisdom” that Palin’s infamous “crosshair map” impelled lunatic Jared Laughner to shoot Representative Giffords. Unfortunately for the Times, they had previously published a news article that clearly exonerated Palin from any vicarious liability. In editing and fact-checking the editorial however, the Times staff purportedly looked only at previous editorials and not news articles. So the theme for Palin was “don’t you people even read your own paper?” That’s not a bad question.

There were a few oddities in the judge’s handling of the case. I’ve litigated before Judge Rakoff and found him to be highly intelligent and virtuously unbiased. Nonetheless, during the Motion to Dismiss phase (in which the judge is required under Rule 12(b)6 to review only the motion papers), Rakoff decided nonetheless to hold an evidentiary hearing. This was appealed and the usually press-friendly Second Circuit pointed out the error in holding such a hearing and sent the case back to Rakoff. After discovery had been completed Rakoff held that there was “a genuine issue of triable fact” appropriate for a jury to decide. Then things got weird: While the jury deliberated, Rakoff announced publicly that he would grant “JNOV” to the Times, meaning that under Rule 50, a reasonable jury would “not have a legally sufficient evidentiary basis to find for the party”.

What does this mean for the endgame of the case? It seems to me that Rakoff handed Palin a serious appealable issue on a silver platter. The un-sequestered jury had learned about Rakoff’s decision prior to their finding for the Times. It seems to me that it’s not unreasonable to assume that jurors either took that as an implicit instruction or were subliminally influenced by Rakoff’s decision.

Here’s where it gets kind of interesting (at least to constitutional law geeks). Normally a jury finding is almost sacrosanct in appeals, and jury findings will not be overturned unless there is a showing of “manifest injustice.” Not so for First Amendment cases. Federal courts exercise “independent appellate review” and essentially look at every aspect of the case (called “de novo” review). Although the Times initially denied that the editorial made a defamatory assertion, they were rightly able to argue that as a public figure, Palin had to prove more than bumbling idiocy on the part of the Times, but that they published it with knowing falsity. On those grounds, it’s highly unlikely that the Second Circuit would reverse the finding. More problematic for the Times is whether or not Rakoff’s announcement so contaminated the jury deliberations as to warrant a mistrial. This all remains to be seen.

The implications outside of the case are far more serious in my mind. To begin with, it appears to me that the Times’ “victory” will only calcify the media’s terrible and repetitive habit of jumping to erroneous and often defamatory conclusions. We saw CNN settle the lawsuit brought by “the Covington kid” after they lost a Motion to Dismiss pleading that their broadcasts were not defamatory statements of fact but “mere opinion.” Even today the “ready, shoot, aim” habit again reared its ugly head.

The Las Vegas Sun today published an editorial decrying “increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans” in connection with the attempted assassination of Louisville, KY mayoral candidate Democrat Craig Greenberg. This was after it was revealed that the alleged shooter, Quintez Brown was not only a former Louisville Courier columnist specializing in race issues but was a self-described Black Lives Matter activist. Underscoring that fact is the revelation that Brown’s $100,000 bail was paid by the BLM-aligned Louisville Community Bail Fund, who states on their fundraising page that:

“To build transformative communities, we must perform transformative acts of liberation. Cash bail is one of the aspects of the criminal justice system that keeps communities wrapped up in systemic slavery and in debt.”

A Daily Caller headline summed up the media’s knee-jerk reaction perfectly: “Former Biden Campaign Staffer Tried To Blame Attempted Assassination On ‘Right Wing Rhetoric,’ But Suspect Is Left-Wing Activist.” That article pointed out that “Brown is an anti-capitalist activist who praised Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung in a post on Twitter.” The odds are pretty darned good that no amount of “violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans” would convince Brown or his cohorts to do anything, let alone take a shot at a political candidate.

Sadly, there are no winners here except for the law firms. The Times’ “victory” exposed a high degree of untrustworthiness, if not ineptitude. (Fortunately for the Times, ineptitude is not tantamount to actual malice). In addition, Palin was reportedly a terrible witness, according to observers, and her claims of emotional damage were empty and unconvincing.

The biggest losers – again – are the media who are already suffering an all-time low in public trust, and the readers who look into these publications for truth in reporting.

MY SHAMELESS BLEGGING: As some of you may know, I was a photojournalist in the late 70’s to mid 80’s before becoming a media lawyer.

I recently discovered a trove of negatives that are a real time capsule of a violent and yet charming time and place, both long gone. I’m crowdfunding the cost of scanning more than 200 rolls of black and white film, and of course, printing a high quality photobook.

The link to the Indiegogo campaign is here.

The campaign page shows a few samples of what the book will be like. (Having trouble upload photos to Instapundit at the moment.)

DEBUNKING THE WARREN REPORT:  Emerald Robinson published a piece on Substack today about Thomas Lipscomb‘s forthcoming book “The Oswald Letter” and it reveals a calm, reportorial approach to the still-unsettled questions about the assassination of JFK. It also raises newer questions never asked before.

This is not tin-foil hat stuff. Lipscomb discovered many facts that truly challenge the integrity of the Warren Commission. In the excerpt published today, Lipscomb and co-author Jerome Kroth look at an artifact from that fateful day and explain how it severely undermines the Report.

The windshield of the limousine in which Kennedy was killed has been in the National Archives for almost 59 years. The problem is that it’s highly unlikely that is it genuine, and the history of this windshield points to solid forensic evidence that one of the bullets — possibly the lethal one — fired into the car came from the front, not from behind where Oswald was allegedly perched in the Book Depository:

The Secret Service had the Presidential limousine shipped from Dallas to the White House garage the night of the assassination. Then they sent it to the Ford Factory at River Rouge in Detroit, where it was built, for refitting. […]  a senior manager there was ordered to immediately report to the glass plant lab. In a recorded interview, [the senior manager} said “And the windshield had a bullet hole in it, coming from the outside through…it was a good, clean bullet hole, right straight through, from the front. And you can tell, when the bullet hits the windshield, like when you hit a rock or something, what happens? The back chips out and the front may just have a pinhole in it…this had a clean round hole in the front and fragmentation coming out the back.”

The Ford employee’s story is backed up by interviews with Dallas police officers who also said “There was a hole in the left front windshield…It was a hole, you could put a pencil through it…you could take a regular standard writing pencil…and stick [it] through there.” Lipscomb interviewed several people on the record who saw the windshield, including hospital staff.

Two really strange facts stick out: First, the windshield in the National Archives has no such hole. Second, and perhaps more ominously, not a single person who could verify that there was a shot from the front — including the surgeon who inserted the tracheal tube in the dying JFK — was quoted in the Warren Report. Many were never even interviewed by federal authorities.

There are a lot more details to come…

Merely a system test. Nothing to see here.