CHINA IS ASSHOLE.

SO IS DISNEY.

SOME PEOPLE DID SOME THINGS: Apparently CNN has appointed Ilhan Omar to Editor-in-Chief of CNN. Because “a car” just happened to do something. Just like those planes just happened to crash into the WTC on 9/11.

Shame on you, CNN.

ARE WE SKIPPING SOMETHING?: The last COVID strain was called “Nu.” Going down the Greek alphabet, today’s new variant is called “Omicron.”

The W.H.O. wouldn’t want to offend China, now, would they?

UPDATE: It occurs to me that if they had any guts they’d have named it “Winnie.” But China is asshole.

FAKE IT TIL’ YOU MAKE IT: Perhaps Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has been taking legal lessons from the same crew who ginned up the “Steele Dossier” to get FISA warrants used against Carter Page, et. als. JustTheNews has a blockbuster report out this morning, where the journalists used cellphone and toll booth records to prove that Rep. Thompson’s signed subpoena was based in part on a wholly fabricated source.

The Jan. 6 commission in Congress made headlines when it issued a subpoena citing “credible evidence” that on the day before the Capitol riot, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik attended a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington where Trump advisers discussed how to overturn the November 2020 election. The subpoena was supported by a citation to Bob Woodward’s book “Peril.”

Except for one eensie weensie minor detail:

Kerik was 300 miles away in the New York City area on Jan. 5, 2021, according to his own car’s toll booth records reviewed by Just the News. He left Washington the night of Jan. 4 and did not return until the morning of the riots, according to Kerik’s own account at a speech this weekend in Chicago. And that book by Woodward? It makes no claim about Kerik attending a meeting at the Willard on Jan. 5. In fact, the book doesn’t even mention the former NYPD commission once in its 482 pages.

Reporter John Solomon went as far as fact-checking with Woodward himself. Maybe Thompson had a different edition? Maybe Solomon was missing something? Nope:

Woodward and his coauthor, fellow Washington Post journalist Robert Costa, confirmed to Just the News in a statement Monday night that they did not allege Kerik attended a Jan. 5 meeting at the Willard. “The subpoena for Mr. Kerik references page 234 of our book, ‘Peril,'” the Post journalists said. “That page, however, does not mention Mr. Kerik in any way. In fact, he is not mentioned anywhere in our book.”

Making up facts to obtain a subpoena? There oughta be a law!

SUICIDE BY SILENCE?  It’s no secret by now that corporate media has no problem demonizing or delegitimizing what they perceive as “right-wing” media. Tucker Carlson, once America’s favorite conservative, is now depicted as pure evil, somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. In fact, the phrase “right-wing” itself is attached to the name of some outlets as a sign by left-leaning media to signal to readers that their readers should immediately ignore whatever factual information that the outlet might be presenting, much the same way hoboes in the 1930’s would leave chalk marks on the street in front of houses to warn others of a dangerous approach, say, a jealous husband with a shotgun or a mean dog.

The Biden government has this week presented that same corporate media with a moral dilemma that, if ignored by corporate media, may be a form of suicide. The Associated Press reported this morning that in opposing James O’Keefe and Project Veritas’ motion to designate a Special Master to review the documents seized by the FBI in an early November raid, federal prosecutors told the court that the motion should be denied, in part because:

“Project Veritas is not engaged in journalism within any traditional or accepted definition of that word. Its ‘reporting’ consists almost entirely of publicizing non-consensual, surreptitious recordings made though unlawful, unethical, and or/dishonest means.”

Of course, we ought to be free to dislike — or even disparage — any outlet or voice with which we disagree. That goes for Alex Jones and Rachael Maddow alike. But the mainstream media has a dog in this fight, whether they like it or not: the use of hidden cameras or surreptitiously obtained audio has become not just a staple of investigative reporting, but a moneymaker for outlets who normally express a disdain for any platform that publishes material they deem “non-woke” or “right-wing” or otherwise offensive to their sensibilities.

There are two streams of thought that ought to encourage corporate media to take an aggressive stand in O’Keefe’s defense. One is the stream that flows from no lesser an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court, in a line of cases from Bartnicki v. Vopper, where a third-party had published allegedly illegally obtained material with no hand in the illegal acquisition of the material. Professor Jane Kirtley of the University of Minnesota and former director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is far from being a conservative, but in an opinion piece published today expressed the all-too-rare quality of an honest liberal putting principle before preferences. Her dislike of Project Veritas is made clear right up front:

“Many journalists repudiate Project Veritas and its methods, contending that the organization is ideologically driven and routinely violates established norms of media ethics. As a professor of media ethics and law, I’ve been grappling with how to think about Project Veritas and its escapades for years. Like many media lawyers, I wish it would just go away.”

But Kirtley knows — and most laudably — expresses her respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. She continues to say, quoting Bartnicki, that :

“A stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. If Project Veritas was not involved in the theft of the diary, it could also be covered by the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which bars both federal and state law enforcement from seizing journalists’ work product and documentary materials except in very limited circumstances.

In fact, the Justice Department has been prohibited from even subpoenaing journalists by Attorney General guidelines that date back to 1974 – although investigations into leaks of classified information led to notable exceptions to this rule during the Obama and Trump administrations […] If Project Veritas is found guilty of a crime, any journalist who transports leaked or “stolen” information across state lines could be charged with violation of the law. It’s unclear what that means today when so many documents are transmitted electronically. Or, if the government narrowly defines “the press” based on its political outlook or ethics, then no news organization is safe from attacks by future administrations.”

Kirtley is correct, of course, in that allowing O’Keefe to be defined as a journalist simply because of his political agenda or outlook creates an unsafe (I’d say soviet) future for journalism. But another stream runs down the same mountain that ought to encourage outrage from the press and cause a serious re-think from the Biden administration, to whom the Justice Department ultimately answers.

Corporate media has made millions of dollars and spent untold lucre defending the exact same reporting techniques that Biden’s prosecutors would have “disqualify” O’Keefe from First Amendment protection.

If the use of hidden cameras, undercover stings and “illegally obtained” information is now a judicial litmus test as to who is and isn’t deserving of First Amendment protections, then NBC better close up shop today. In Wilkins v. NBC, the network used hidden cameras to produce the “Hardcore Hustle” report, which exposed the then-growing practice of charging for so-called “toll-free” 800 lines which provided callers with access to 900-number type adult entertainment lines. (This was before the Internet, back when one had to put some effort into getting their smut). In that case, ultimately, the public interest in the story surmounted the private interests of the parties who were surreptitiously filmed.

Similarly, if the Biden Justice Department is able to re-define journalism as they wish here, ABC needs to sell their equipment and find new work for their investigative team. In Desnick v. ABC fake patients were sent into an ophthalmologist’s’ office to record evidence that Sam Donaldson breathlessly told viewers “[I]n our undercover investigation of the big cutter you’ll meet tonight, we turned up evidence that he may also be a big charger, doing unnecessary cataract surgery for the money.” It would be wise of the Justice Department to heed well Judge Posner’s stern holding in that case:

“Today’s “tabloid” style investigative television reportage, conducted by networks desperate for viewers in an increasingly competitive television market constitutes-although it is often shrill, one-sided, and offensive, and sometimes defamatory-an important part of that market. It is entitled to all the safeguards with which the Supreme Court has surrounded liability for defamation.”

The list of cases where major networks used hidden cameras or surreptitiously obtained material is lengthy, and often praised by those who traffic in that style of reporting. Who can forget the glee with which every media outlet rebroadcast the secretly made videotape of Mitt Romney telling donors “that 47% of Americans are dependent on the government” and “believe they are victims.” Of course, no context challenging the meaning of Romney’s words was provided, but no matter: The secretly taped video was posted online by Mother Jones magazine in the fall, several months after the fundraiser in May in Boca Raton where Romney spoke. The video created a national uproar as President Obama and his Democratic allies used Romney’s words to illustrate how the Republican was out of touch. But to the best of my knowledge, no FBI raids were conducted upon Mother Jones or any of the hundreds of outlets who republished the video. Nor should there have been.

There are a few signs that smarter and perhaps more honest journalists and their lawyers are, like Kirtley, seeing the dark clouds that the Justice Department’s actions portend. Asking if O’Keefe is a journalist in the eyes of the law, Politico’s Josh Gerstein also interviewed Kirtley and others, and noted that:

While many of O’Keefe’s tactics are unsavory, they are far from unknown in the mainstream press. Hidden-camera stings and undercover reporting have fallen out of fashion at most traditional news organizations, but they were once a staple of network television news magazines. In the 1970s, the Chicago Sun-Times bought a rundown bar and rigged it out with hidden cameras, successfully capturing city inspectors demanding bribes. NBC’s popular and controversial series, “To Catch a Predator,” revolves around hidden-camera stings.

If corporate media wants to survive into the next administration — and the ones after that — they will have to step up to the plate and pressure the Biden Administration to rethink this new effort at “disqualifying” outlets because of either their views, or their investigative techniques when properly executed. American government simply does not have the right to “license” or “define” journalism. In Turkey, CNN famously avoided broadcasting images of ongoing anti-Erdogan demonstrations and instead broadcast a documentary about penguins. Penguins.

Perhaps major media, who have already cut their investigative reporting to the bone, are planning as we speak on making exclusive deals with the San Diego Zoo. Because footage of penguins may be all that news outlets are allowed to publish.

SORRY, BUT THIS NEVER GETS OLD:

COMIC BOOKS LATEST PART OF ADMINISTRATIONS “COVID PLAN”: JustTheNews is reporting that Homeland Security is creating comic books to push COVID masks, fight disinformation on 5G and elections. According to the the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA):

“Disinformation is an existential threat to the United States, our democratic way of life, and the critical infrastructure and functions on which it relies. CISA’s Resilience Series (of which Real Fake is its first graphic novel) communicates the dangers and risks associated with dis- and misinformation through fictional stories that are inspired by real-world events.”

The artwork is kind of generic, IMHO:

If you like this sort of thing you can download them directly from the Feds. I find the use of the word “resilience” a bit odd…because to me it seems we ought to be “resilient” against any use of propaganda, but hey, that’s just me.

PORTRAIT OF A DOMESTIC TERRORIST, 2021.

**UPDATE** About 30 mins after I posted the above on Bookface…this:

SMELLS LIKE PANIC: It’s one thing to lose ground in polling, but walking out during a TV interview is a no-win situation.

“C’mon, man. You should have asked better questions early on,” the Democrat admonished his interviewer, whose bio lists interviews with a who’s who of political leaders.

Not unrelated, The Hill’s Joe Concha reported last week that:

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) scolded the press on Tuesday, insisting that journalists do a better job of selling President Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill to the public.”

It’s nice to see that reporters are starting to tire of being stenographers.

YOU COULDN’T MAKE THIS UP IF YOU TRIED: A slight denouement on Ed Driscoll’s post about how President Biden might have more to answer for. Have a look-see at The Daily Mail’s story and the hellaciously ironic note on the video graphics…

Heh, “corrupted file.” 

I GOT TOOK, SORT OF: My apologies to InstaReaders who pointed out that the photo of Steven Colbert’s house in Montclair, NJ I posted yesterday is not accurate, and was instead a picture of the house in Caldwell, NJ used to film “The Sopranos.” My bad.
Drenched in shame, I researched it more fully, and here’s a pic of Colbert’s house: still pretty swank, a massive carbon footprint, and guess what? No solar panels.
So I’m still calling bullsh*t on this nonsense.

FILE UNDER SHOW-BIZ HYPOCRISY: The networks are virtue signaling as hard as they can, by creating this pablum. Meanwhile:

GET WOKE, GO BROKE– PART DEUX: I never blame someone for having a really stupid idea. I do blame a room full of executives who say “Yeah! Let’s do it!”

Without further ado, I present to you the latest and greatest attempt to monetize “social justice” and its invariable meltdown: “CBS Backtracks On ‘The Activist’ After A Backlash, Including From One Of Its Hosts.” My favorite part:

“Besides the fact that there will be millions of dollars spent on hair, makeup, travel, celebrity hosts and judges, production, distribution that could have gone to the activists and organizations that will be featured, this is deeply dangerous,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an anti-police-violence activist whose organization, Campaign Zero, has helped shape police-reform efforts around the U.S., speaking on MSNBC.”

My second favorite part:

“This extends a societal belief about what a good activist looks like: someone who is ready for prime time, someone who fits a particular archetype and is great on social media and is perfectly marketable,” Cunningham said.”

FILE UNDER “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR“: Facebook and Ray-Ban announced that they are rolling out “smart” Wayfarers that have a built in camera, with a tiny lens capable of recording, well, just about anywhere. Where have we seen this before?Oh yeah…Google tried it a while back, and it turned out to be a very very bad idea. “Lots of people are comparing it to the failed disaster that was Google Glass (which gave rise to the term “Glassholes”).”

I remember “glassholes” being punched in the face in more than a few bars, and as Techdirt pointed out, Facebook’s attempt at limiting their liability is, well, stupid:

“[T]hey seem to think that they can stop people from covering the LED light that goes on when you’re recording… by claiming that it’s a terms of service violation. That’s what a Facebook VP told Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopoulos, whose article on the whole Facebook glasses thing is absolutely worth reading. But this bit is just pure silliness and makes Facebook look ridiculous…”

But as always, the Law of Unintended Circumstances is going to bite more than a few Silicon Valley types right in the butt. Allow me to explain.

Many states (including California, Michigan and Florida) have “two-party consent” privacy laws that cover surreptitious recording, and usually the question will turn on “public interest” or “newsworthiness” (bye bye, Gawker) or whether instead the parties recorded without consent were in a place with a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Now here’s where it gets interesting.

For decades, the corporate media and their “say yes to anything” lawyers had convinced most courts that when sued on these laws, the location and circumstances of recording offered no such reasonable expectation. For example, in Desnick v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., media lawyers convinced Seventh Circuit Judge Gerald Posner, after undercover cameras were used to expose a crooked doctor that:

“The test patients [wearing hidden cameras contrary to Illinois law] entered offices that were open to anyone expressing a desire for ophthalmic services and videotaped physicians engaged in professional, not personal, communications with strangers (the testers themselves). The activities of the offices were not disrupted […] Nor was there any “invasion of a person’s private space.”

Ok, we get it. Let’s fast forward to 2019. The Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, was determined to prove that Planned Parenthood was violating federal law and “selling” baby parts. So, like ABC News in Desnick, they sent in some people wired for video and sound, posing as potential purchasers of the “baby parts” to have lunch in a public restaurant to get Planned Parenthood staff to talk about financial arrangements. And talk they did. The undercover video shows Dr. Mary Gatter, the Planned Parenthood senior executive who infamously laughed “I want a Lamborghini” about payments for aborted fetal parts, again haggling over per-specimen pricing for livers, lungs, and brains.

Planned Parenthood went ballistic, and sued CMP in federal court in San Francisco, where the judge did a fair amount of mental gymnastics (“the cases […] consider contextual facts in addition to the fact that the recorded conversation was in a public and open space”) to hold that whether a conversation in a public restaurant was made with a “reasonable expectation of privacy” was a matter for a jury to decide. So off to a jury it went, where, unsurprisingly, the San Francisco jury found the CMP liable for more than $2 million in damages.

So what does all this have to do with GoogleGlass 2.0 and Facebook? This is where the Law of Unintended Consequences comes in. The corporate media put aside their “right to know” arguments used previously to record people surreptitiously, and sotto voce, cheered the result of the CMP case and a parallel criminal case pushed by Planned Parenthood. That’s all well and good, and frankly, I don’t care whether you are for or against abortion-on-demand. That’s your business.

But my business is safeguarding the public’s right to know about matters of public concern and seeing all the facts, especially regarding a 501(c)3 that essentially does its thing at the expense of the public fisc. The corporate media were eerily silent on the CMP case. When salacious headlines (and profit) can be had, corporate media has no problem at all weighing in, waving the flag and demanding the “right to know.” I have personally been involved in such “intervenor” motions, and have no shame in having done so. But the major corporate media and their law firms stayed silent here.

So the $64 question is: When some dope uploads a video made in a restaurant or bar  embarrassing another person, and yet more dopes at Buzzfeed, CNN, or The Washington Post republish that video without asking the most fundamental of questions, how can they get around — let alone dispute — the CMP opinion’s holding that it has to go to trial? The corporate media editors and their lawyers — generally smart people — missed the boat, and it seems sadly clear to me that their alleged vow to protect and defend the First Amendment is only contingent upon where in the political spectrum their bill-paying clients fall.

MORE FAKE BUT TRUE (Update Edition): Ed Driscoll highlighted the Zero Hedge post showing that Rolling Stone f*cked up again, never bothering to check with the hospital if the doctor making these claims even worked there. (He doesn’t). But why let the facts get in the way with a hot take that aligns with your readers’ narratives?

RS did not correct or retract. Instead they ran an “update” that shows the central premise of the story is wrong. This should have been spiked. You’d think after they committed journalistic suicide falling for the UVA rape hoax, they’d have learned their lesson.

HAS THE PENNY DROPPED FOR THE BBC? I’m not surprised by the sad facts of this matter, but I am surprised it got past the Political Correctness Team at the BBC:

“The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police. He has now been identified as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a 32-year-old Tamil, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and sought refugee status […] Samsudeen had been arrested a number of times before Friday’s incident. But [Prime Minister] Ardern said that every legal avenue to keep him out of the community had been exhausted.”

Of course, the sway that the Pallywood Crowd holds over the UK press and elite is legendary. It was only a few years ago that the English village of Rotherham was exposed as a hotbed of misogyny of the worst kind, when Pakistani-born gangs of men abducted and raped more than 1,200 girls. Local government and much of the media were in full-blown politically correct denial that the gangs were almost all Pakistani Muslims. Criminologist Graham Hill wrote in 2020 that:

“The South Yorkshire police were scared to take action against a group of Asian men who were sexually abusing a young girl for fear of triggering unrest in the Asian community and being branded racist.”

Most of the UK press used the euphemism “asian” to describe them. And as we would later see here in the States this same dynamic works to the perpetrators’ advantage. Hill pointed out that:

“In 2011 Jack Straw, the former home secretary, suggested there was a cultural element to the then new phenomenon of “grooming gangs” and suggesting some men of Pakistani origin see white girls as “easy meat”. The former Blackburn Labour MP spoke out after two Asian men who abused girls in Derby were given indeterminate jail terms. At the time, he was quickly shouted down and labelled a racist.” (Emphasis added).

This is highly relevant today, as we watch the Taliban drag Afghanistan back into the 11th Century. The “Squad” continues to use this political correctness as a shield and sword when confronted on issues large and small. The question is whether House Democrats will finally start to distance themselves from knee-jerk bleating about “racism” and “islamophobia.” Every time the Taliban continue to further subjugate women, people ought to demand that the Democrats — including AOC, Tlaib, Omar and if he is coherent that day, the President– address the issue.
I’m not betting on much of a response.

JUST GAMING IT OUT: PJ Media and others reporting that Harris is suffering from “Havana Syndrome.” Here’s the exercise:

Not hoping it happens of course, but I’m gaming out a scenario where Harris has to step down before Biden for this mystery illness, Biden and Dems appoint a cogent and plausible Veep, giving Biden the room to step down at a later date and avoid the National Nightmare that a Harris Presidency would be.

This would be a great time to re-read Fletcher Knebel.

I’m just going to leave this here:

“WE PULLED THE PLUG, AND THEY COLLAPSED.” So says Ret. Army General Jack Keane, a retired American four-star general, former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. (Look him up: He’s a genuine badass).

The statement was made in a column published today by Judith Miller, a veteran correspondent with highly specialized expertise and experience in the Middle East. The takeaway from that column? “President Joe Biden spent much of his speech Monday blaming everyone else but himself and his administration for the foreign policy catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan” says Miller:

“Biden blamed the debacle on Barack Obama for having surged U.S. forces in Afghanistan to fend off the Taliban, Donald Trump for having negotiated a terrible deal with the Taliban committing American forces to leave precipitously by May 1—and, most egregiously, Afghans themselves for supposedly being unwilling to fend off the Taliban’s horrifying advance. Only a month ago, Biden justified his decision to abandon the Afghanistan effort by arguing that two decades of American military training and over $1 trillion in economic and military support had left the Afghan government and its military more than capable of defending their country; yesterday, he castigated Afghans for not being able to do so.”

Miller seems to be saying, like the rest of the nation except for a few sycophants, that Biden should have seen this coming. Using strategic analysis as a basis for her view, Miller continued:

“[T]he Afghan forces did not collapse on their own. Prior to President Trump’s strategically flawed deal with the Taliban, Afghan security forces and the Taliban had fought to a virtual military stalemate […] Neither could defeat the other. But the withdrawal of American air support and intelligence information regarding the disposition and strength of Taliban forces had severely affected the Afghan military, depressing Afghan capabilities and morale. So, too, did Biden’s closure of seven military bases in the height of the fighting season. “We pulled the plug and they collapsed,” said General Keane.”

It’s also worth noting that the sycophants trying to sell the “Trump’s fault” line glibly elide the fact that Biden has reversed dozens of Trump policies, from abortion to education to policing to oil pipelines. Yet this one just kind of slipped by him. And his defenders.

DENIAL AIN’T JUST A RIVER: They can spin it all they want, and some folks have bought the gaslight that “we never said defund the police” but the DNC needs to stop peeing on our legs and telling us it’s raining. There’s no viable, coherent — or honest — “but Trump” applicable here. Let pal Judy Miller explain in this interview.

Meanwhile, a screen grab above from this morning. This woman parked her car, turned on the 4-way blinkers, calmly walked out and blew the other woman’s brains out in broad daylight.

ABOUT SECTION 230: In an Instapundit item below, John Tierney links to a City Journal article that frames up “Big Tech Censorship” as the the most “controversial” problem with Section 230, which provides immunity to “internet service providers” for content ostensibly created by third parties.

While I agree that the censorship problem has to be solved by either a judicial ruling that declares the web a “public space” or a re-write of the statute, I think the real problem is that  the more common problem is an overly broad statute that allows virtual newsrooms to defame with impunity. The statute was passed in part to protect companies like AOL and CompuServe for content they didn’t create, particularly, kiddie porn.

One prescient court noted in the early years of digital space that:

“The internet (or ‘Net’), heralded as the most significant achievement in human speech since the printing press, has become ground zero in a legal battle over the First Amendment and the right of individuals to speak (or rather type) anonymously. At its best, the Net is the ultimate conduit for free speech and expression; at its worst, the Net can be a character assassin’s greatest weapon.”

The statute reads in relevant part:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

The provision means that ISPs like AOL are not legally responsible for the defamatory postings of third parties. But neither are newsrooms, because the broad language of Section 230 defines “interactive computer service” as:

“The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.”

As much as I support protection for a free and vibrant press, allowing “breathing space” for good faith errors, the broad word “any” has been used to allow some pretty nasty stuff to be published, from Gawker to Occupy Democrats to Wikipedia.

If they are going to “fix” 230, they need to consider this.

GOOD IDEA, BUT BAD EXECUTION: JustTheNews has a report about Wisconsin state Sen. Julian Bradley (R-Franklin) proposing a new piece of legislation that would force the tech companies to show their algorithms and explain the policies that decide who gets blocked and who gets to post freely.

I’m all for it in concept, but Bradley makes in part, a fundamental error in saying:

“Bradley is quick to point out that judges have ruled lawmakers and other elected officials cannot block or ban people from commenting on their posts, even if those comments are negative or ugly. The courts have ruled, essentially, that social media is the new public town hall and some online speech is protected.”

Bradley’s error is reading the caselaw a little too broadly. The courts have not ruled essentially, that “social media is the new public town hall.” What they have ruled is that when public officials (be they Trump or AOC) use these platforms, their accounts are “official” government business and Freedom of Information or “Government in the Sunshine” laws, as well as the First Amendment prohibit blocking any segment of the public from reading those communiques. That’s not the same as declaring social media a “public square.”

Unless and until Congress drafts a law (or the Supreme Court rules, I suppose) declaring these platforms a “public square” the Tech Barons will still have filtering control. Given the current make-up of Congress, it inures to the Dems’ benefit to keep letting their donor Tech Barons filter out contrarian voices, so I would not look for this kind of law soon. For the record, I do think these platforms are already a de facto public square.

STILL THE SAME SWAMP CREATURES: Bloomberg News reporting yesterday that Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul made stock trades in Google’s parent company, Alphabet, just a week before the House Judiciary Committee advanced six bipartisan antitrust bills. The trade netted him a $4.8 million gain, and it’s risen to $5.3 million since then as the shares have jumped. What a lucky guy!

The laughable part is that Nancy (she’ll always be Granny Winebox to me), who presents herself as a strong, intelligent, worldly woman said through a spokesperson that:

“The speaker has no involvement or prior knowledge of these transactions,” her spokesman Drew Hammill said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.”

Don’t you love it when the most powerful woman in the world says “I don’t know nuthin'”?

THIS JUST IN: Remember Imran Awan, the horrible dirtbag who worked for horrible dirtbag Debbie Wasserstein-Schultz? Awan, an IT specialist accused of improper access to certain congressional computers, was arrested in July 2017 at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, as he tried to board a flight to Lahore, Pakistan. He had wiped his cellphones of any data, and federal agents found a résumé in the name of “Andrew Awan,” which they said suggested Awan planned to leave the country permanently, according to court documents.

Unsurprisingly, because then-President Trump tweeted about the case, the mainstream media took him up as a cause celebre, and they kept referring to a “conservative conspiracy” theory. He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of fraud in a plea deal. All in all, some shady shit, given that:

Most Democratic lawmakers cut their ties with Awan and his family after the criminal investigation became public in early 2017. But Awan continued to be employed by Wasserman Schultz, although it’s unclear what his job duties were, given the fact that he had been barred from accessing the House IT system for months.

Fast forward to today. Horrible dirtbag Awan had filed a lawsuit against The Daily Caller and others, alleging all sorts of claims in libel, emotional distress, and what not. Today, D.C. Superior Court Judge Fern Sadler dismissed his complaint against The Daily Caller.

Order Granting in Part Defs’ Mots to Dismiss(256115651.1).