WHO NEEDS VIAGRA? THIS GIVES ME WHAT THEY CALL A SCHADENBONER*: Michael Wolff’s New Book Is a NYT Bestseller—With Just Over 3,000 Copies Sold. Now mind you, The Daily Beast isn’t very good with those “fact” thingies, but that’s the price they have to pay to sit with the Juice Box Mafia.

But how the hell do you get on the NYT “bestseller” list but sell only 3,219 copies in total? We know Hilary “My Turn, You Stupid Serfs” Clinton pulled it off by having friends’ charitable organizations buy truckloads of them, and I seem to remember The Lightbringer did the same thing.

But Michael Wolff? Srsly?

*(h/t to David “Iowahawk” Burge for coining such a great word).

THIS WILL SURPRISE NOBODY:

“This chaos is the result of Democrat-led Soft on Crime policies, no different than their Open Border debacle,” Rep. Burgess Owens said. The chickens may have come home to roost, but will it sway public policymakers’ minds?”

Violent boomerang: Liberals victimized by crime policies they advocated.

You get what you vote for.

“DOES THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION HAVE IT IN FOR ELON MUSK?”
JustTheNews says:

“Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter (now X), relaxed its misinformation policies on the platform, and become increasingly critical of Democrats and the Biden administration, federal agencies have begun probing X, Tesla, and SpaceX, raising questions about targeting of the billionaire’s breadth of companies.”

This weaponization of government makes Nixon look like an amateur.

SOMEBODY LEND ME THEIR “SHOCKED FACE”, MINE IS WORN OUT: Just The News is reporting that even our own State Department says China continues to be a very very naughty boy:

“China’s government is investing in “unprecedented resources” in disinformation, surveillance and censorship tactics to influence the worldview of the country, according to a State Department report[…]The communist-run country faces international criticism for such issues as its record on human rights, unfair international trade practices, spying on other countries and not condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

Of course, that didn’t stop the Bidens from accepting $260,000 in wire transfers originating from Beijing that listed Joe Biden’s Wilmington home as the beneficiary address when he was running for President.

Deluded apologists countered by saying “Hey, Hunter lived at Joe’s house in Wilmington. Nothing fishy there.”

Not so fast. Hunter Biden notes in his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” that he was living in California at the time the wire transfers were made.

So there’s no evidence, right?

The Washington Post: We have to destroy the First Amendment in order to save it. In what has to be the most blockheaded analysis I’ve read in years, The Post ran a story this afternoon titled “Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks.”

Of course the conservatives and libertarians are leading the charge. It’s the fight against government coercing, cajoling or even cooperating with publishers (electronic and otherwise) to suppress right-leaning views.

To paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the Constitution, Stupid.”

The people who want to censor the right have put a new dress on their pig.  The Washington Post painted it thusly:

“The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.”

“See, we have a First Amendment right to figure out how to suppress others’ speech. We’re the real victims here.”

As you may remember, as The Hill reported on Missouri v. Biden:

“A federal appellate court concluded Sept. 8 that multiple White House, surgeon general, FBI and CDC officials likely breached the fine line separating permissible government persuasion and jawboning from illicit “coercion and significant encouragement” when they repeatedly — and often successfully — lobbied social-media companies “to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites.”

At that oral argument, Judge Don Willett had no problem with federal agencies publicly criticizing what they judged false or dangerous ideas. But that wasn’t how Biden’s winged monkeys compelled submission: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on . . . subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats” said the Judge.

Willett expressed his disgust with the mafia-like tactics of the Biden administration: “That’s a really nice social-media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Gosh, I wonder if the Judge is an Instapundit reader?

MY SLIGHTLY CONTRARIAN VIEW: The lovely and talented Ed Driscoll posted a Red State take about a CNN talking head getting killed by Rep. Matt Gaetz.

To be sure, there is a not-unwarranted schadenfreude when CNN and the other DNC stenographers get busted so easily for being so wrong on something so simple to check. But allow me to propose a different view:

No doubt, the talking head (or her producer, more likely) got it wrong (Gaetz voted for the bill twice).

But to her credit, Ms. Phillip utters the three most important words a journalist can ever say: “I stand corrected.” (Note also that Gaetz was very gentlemanly about it.)

One of the dirtiest little secrets in media and media law (and I ought to know) is the overwhelming hubris they display when fact-checked, digging in their heels and insisting they are right. It took The New York Times a week to correct the slander that George W. Bush “served a plastic turkey” as a photo-op to US troops in the Middle East. And a wide swath of Democrats still believe it.

So, gentle reader, I propose that while Ms. Phillip (and/or her producer) are hopeless amateurs, I see some ray of sunshine in her admitting she was wrong and upon that basis, having no reason to continue the interview, given that its premise was faulty.

**Updated with correct name spelling. Thnx, IP readers!**

A GLIMMER OF HOPE IN THE “EQUAL PROTECTION” DEP’T: JustTheNews is reporting that:

“The same Fulton County grand Jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants under a Georgia state racketeering law also used the same law to indict 61 people who were protesting against the building of an Atlanta police training center.”

Now, most folks I know call the Trump indictments “lawfare.” (To be fair, there’s something vaguely reminiscent about South American dictators tossing possible challengers in the pokey. I’d imagine Valerie Jarrett et. als. wish they could borrow of one General Pinochet’s helicopters…)

Now, what’s the story here? These people protesting against the building of the police training camp?

Were they good citizens like Mom and Dad merely using their First Amendment rights to redress government? Nope.

Were they perhaps a little “over-the-top” greenies who got carried away? Nope.

“The 61 defendants, just 13 of whom are from Georgia, are members of Defend the Atlanta Forest, an anarchist, anti-police, and anti-business extremist organization,” the attorney general’s office said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

A total of 61 protesters have been charged with violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act. Some face additional charges of domestic terrorism, arson and money laundering. Most are not from Georgia.

Attorney General Chris Carr said in a press conference announcing the indictments, that:

“As the indictment asserts, members of Defend the Atlanta Forest subscribe to a philosophy of anarchy. They hold a core belief that society should abolish police, government and private business and as further alleged, they’re willing to bring about such changes ‘by any means necessary.”

Nice little line here:

“If you come to our state and shoot a police officer, throw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, set fire to police vehicles, damage construction equipment, vandalize private homes and businesses, and terrorize their occupants, you can and will be held accountable,” Carr said.”

Traveling to another state to shoot police officers, throw firebombs at LEO, torch police cars and commit mayhem? Gee, what kind of people would do that? And how are they funded? 

So much for that “peaceful protect” excuse the MSM has been gaslighting us with regarding Antifa and “Defund the Police” types running wild with no accountability.

Waiting to see which far-left Democrats put up their bail. Worth following, IMHO.

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…