It took 10 days for Pete Buttigieg to even acknowledge the East Palestine derailment.
And when he finally said something, he only tried to distract from his own failures and push regulations which have little to no connection to the East Palestine derailment. pic.twitter.com/1YtTGJtW0T
“Iowa has joined a growing list of states that have banned sex change treatments for children after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new bill restricting the practice into law Wednesday.
The bill, SF538, says that a healthcare professional in the state of Iowa “shall not knowingly engage in or cause any” treatments “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or affirm the minor’s perception of, the minor’s gender or sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex [at birth].” (RELATED: Utah Bans Hormone Therapy And Gender Surgeries For Minors)
Further, the bill restricts the practice of removing any healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue as well as bans the administration of hormone-blockers to delay puberty.
“Children should not be pushed to receive experimental medical treatments that can leave them permanently sterile and physically marred for life,” Republican state Sen. Jeff Edler said, according to The Des Moines Register. “Iowa has a duty to protect its citizens, especially our children.” (RELATED: Tennessee Legislature Passes Ban On Child Sex Changes)
Iowa Democrats decried the bill, claiming that its passage denied parents the choice to do what they felt was best for their children. “I was under the impression that this session was going to be all about parents rights,” Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Konfrst stated during the bill’s debate, according to CNN. “So I guess the way I’m going to read this bill is that parents know best until the government does.”
Reynolds argued the science “isn’t conclusive” to support life-altering treatments for children. “These [treatments] are irreversible. We don’t even understand the long-term effects,” Reynolds said, according to KCRG.
“I’m a parent. I’m a grandmother. I know how difficult this is. This is an extremely uncomfortable position for me to be in. You know, I don’t like it, but I have to do what I believe is right now is in the best interest of the kids,” she continued.”
“Very early in her new book, Mary Eberstadt notes that a new kind of intolerance is “strangling open discussion across the West.” And as she argues in her text, this new brand of intolerance is linked closely with the sexual revolution. Now, at first hearing, that just doesn’t sound plausible. The sexual revolution was about an end to repressive moralizing. It was about greater tolerance for individual sexual freedom. It was about a healthier, more relaxed, less shame-infected attitude toward sexuality in general. And I know what I’m talking about. I was there in the late 1960s, and I thoroughly enjoyed its early stages.
But here’s the catch, which the author explores so persuasively in chapter 3. The new intolerance around sex is not an accident or “passing nuisance, but a full blown, quasi-religious substitute faith for Christianity. Its dogma both derives from and is designed to protect the sexual revolution . . . [and it’s] rooted in a rejection of the Christian moral code.” Thus, a virtue like modesty is not merely laughed at, but resented as a weed in the garden of sexual ecstasy. Celibacy is either incomprehensible, or seen as emotionally crippling. Normative heterosexuality has the unpleasant smell of a stable human nature; a nature that establishes one form of sexual behavior as normal, and others as wrong, unhealthy, and destructive.
So where does this lead; or rather, where has it led? I want to go back to the author’s point about the new intolerance “strangling open discussion across the West.” That word “strangling” in particular caught my eye. And the reason is simple. The University of Virginia social scientist, Bradford Wilcox, noted recently that one in three collegiate women now report being choked during their most recent sexual encounter. Research from the United States, the U.K., and Germany shows that choking is now prevalent among young adults in consensual sex, and women are disproportionately the target. Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but strangling one’s sexual partner doesn’t strike me as helpful to much intimacy—or even an especially fun time.
But it does make a perverse kind of sense. Beautiful things, removed from their intended purpose and misused, first become tiresome, then ugly, and then poisonous. The Marquis de Sade may have been a moral cretin and a thoroughly loathsome creature, but in his appetite for sexual deviance and violence, he was the logical end result of human sexuality without restraints. Sex, especially for men, has a strong undercurrent of aggression. In the biblical vocabulary, that aggression is a by-product of the fall. Becoming a mature adult male, instead of a drone or predator or Peter Pan, involves mastering and reshaping that aggression into an ability to protect and provide; to give and receive intimacy within the confines of a long-term, purpose-driven relationship.
In the C. S. Lewis story, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, the demons actually consume lost souls as a kind of cognac or elixir; in effect, hell feeds on the damned to satisfy its libido dominandi, its thwarted appetite to dominate. And something similar happens in a lot of today’s sexuality. Sex is about the self, getting and digesting what the self wants; taking and consuming satisfaction from the other sexually involved but entirely foreign self. The biblical ideal of “two becoming one flesh”—in anything but the passing instant—is definitely not the plan. But the really weird thing about the sexual revolution, sixty years on—and I never would have believed this when I was twenty—is that the frequency of sex between young adults has actually collapsed. And again, this is logical. It flows from fatigue, boredom, fear of effort, fear of failure, fear of disease . . . and pandemic pornography.”
Good, time to get the magnifying glass on Epps. I look forward to the answers to a lot of questions about Epps that we Americans have. Maybe even explore the perjury he committed which was proved by Jan 6 security video. Perhaps a subpoena before congress might clear things up.
The groomers don’t want parents having rights that might interfere with their grooming of kids.
So neither do Democrats.
26-year-old Dem. Rep. Maxwell Frost says that a Parents' Bill of Rights would result in "hate, bigotry, and yes, sometimes death of our students." pic.twitter.com/pBQ1h9GvPh
Can you show us on this doll where the Bad Orange Man hurt you Hakeem? He knows Trump has nothing to do with this, but he needs a boogeyman.
Hakeem Jeffries: The Parents' Bill of Rights "has everything to do with jamming the extreme MAGA Republican ideology down the throats of the children and the parents…" pic.twitter.com/Tbs3pOSjWC
Yes having parents decide rather than unconcerned bureaucrats at the DOE is the worst thing ever!
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
A Parents' Bill of Rights "hands a vocal and extreme minority of parents the power to dictate what every American child learns." pic.twitter.com/La9Ji1bqae
“The mainstream press has reacted predictably in recent weeks after Fox News’s internal communications and witness depositions were disclosed in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network. Blinded by resentment at Fox’s success as an alternative media voice, many media organizations offered a distorted narrative—largely parroting Dominion’s spin—that the disclosures doom Fox’s legal defense. Commentators from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and other outlets, gleeful at the prospect of a Fox setback, cheer on as the defamation case heads toward a trial date.
But the real significance of the disclosures is exactly the opposite of what these media outlets claim. Two things are clear: First, if the applicable law is faithfully applied, the facts completely upend Dominion’s defamation claim against Fox. The case should be decided in Fox’s favor, if not at the trial stage, then on appeal.
Second, a ruling against Fox would be a major blow to media freedoms generally, subjecting news outlets to the prospect of outsize liability whenever they report on newsworthy allegations that turn out to be false.
Right after the 2020 election, President Trump and his team repeatedly alleged that Dominion machines had been used in a voting-fraud scheme. Although these allegations weren’t substantiated, as attorney general, I couldn’t immediately discount them. Finding the truth required an investigation, which I authorized. Over the next few weeks we found no substantiation or discrepancies, and based on expert assessments I became increasingly convinced the claims against Dominion were unfounded.
Meanwhile, several Fox News hosts interviewed members of the president’s team—Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell chief among them—about their Dominion claims and whether they had evidence to support them. As the record shows, the hosts presented the claims as unproven allegations and didn’t say they were true. Nonetheless, Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion in damages (20 times Dominion’s 2018 valuation), claiming that in reporting on the Trump team’s allegations, Fox effectively was promoting them as true.
Emotions seem to have gotten the better of the mainstream media’s judgment. The theory advanced by Dominion is profoundly dangerous to the media industry as whole. Memories are very short and imaginations very limited if the left thinks that only Fox would be vulnerable to lawsuits in a world where defamation liability could be incurred for simply reporting allegations made by others. Does anyone remember the endless false claims of “Russian collusion” that dominated the news from the 2016 presidential election through most of the Trump administration; or the false “Iraqgate” claims with which George H.W. Bush was bombarded during his 1992 re-election campaign; or the lurid allegations, which were given wall-to-wall cable news coverage, that Michael Avenatti made during the Senate confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh?
The press can report on these matters without incurring liability for defamation because existing laws give them wide latitude to do so to encourage uninhibited discourse on matters of public concern. The scope of this legal protection is well-settled, and Fox acted well within it for three reasons. First, it isn’t defamatory for journalists to report on newsworthy allegations made by others, even when those allegations turn out to be false. As long as claims are presented only as allegations and not asserted to be true, legal responsibility for any defamatory content rests with those making the allegations, not the news outlet. If you examine the relevant statements by Fox hosts in context, it is clear the company was simply reporting the allegations, not reporting that those allegations were true.
Second, defamation applies only to false statements of fact, not statements of opinion. Thus, it isn’t defamatory for a journalist to provide commentary—stating an opinion about an allegation—as long as he doesn’t assert that the defamatory aspects of the allegations are true. Thus, in Fox’s case, to the extent hosts made comments suggesting the claims were troubling, or serious, or warranting an investigation, those comments were opinions and can’t serve as the basis for a defamation claim.
Finally, it has long been held that First Amendment considerations require giving media speakers more “breathing space” for protecting unintentional false statements made when reporting on issues of serious public concern or on actions of key players in those controversies. These cases are governed by the “actual malice” standard first enunciated by the Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). In these circumstances, a media speaker isn’t liable for defamation, even for a false statement of fact, unless he knows when he makes the statement that what he is saying is false or gravely doubts its truth.”
As everyone fixates on possible Trump indictment, a massive scandal is rocking the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial.
For 2nd time this month, Judge Kelly has suspended the jury trial amid evidence of FBI misconduct.@USAO_DC must reply by 1pm to this explosive filing: https://t.co/ZjOMpGQuGb
“Victory here is not the end result,” says Patel. “It is to expose the fraudulent reporting by so many in the mainstream media and the only way to do that is expose their corrupt sources and that is what the judge has granted https://t.co/2lTkX4JmfM…
“Watch out, Adam Schiff, Alexander Vinman, Fiona Hill and assorted other Russia/Ukraine hoaxers. Kash Patel is coming for you in a courtroom in Virginia.
The former Russiagate investigator for the House Intelligence Committee has filed a $23 million defamation action against Politico for falsely claiming he misrepresented himself as a Ukraine expert and fed lies to Donald Trump about Ukraine — which ultimately led to the then-president’s impeachment.
Patel’s suit contends that Politico knew that Schiff, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was “a wholly unreliable source,” a “congenital liar and inveterate leaker [and] a demagogue with an axe to grind against President Trump [and] Kash.”
Hill and Vindman, former NSC officials-turned-star impeachment witnesses, helped push Schiff’s lie that Patel was Trump’s “Ukraine whisperer,” the suit alleges.
Also in Patel’s crosshairs are Schiff’s staff, his Democratic colleague Eric Swalwell, his “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, Hill’s boss, former national security adviser John Bolton, and the author of the Politico article, Natasha Bertrand, who also laundered the CIA’s Big Lie in October 2020 that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.”
.@TuckerCarlson: "For 100 years…The United States has been the preeminent nation on Earth…It was the American Era. That era just ended – A little over 2 years into Joe Biden's Presidency." pic.twitter.com/8l7U5fp4TF
Tell the truth about the Biden Crime Family and they will send their brown shirts after you.
#1 Hunter Biden used FBI mole named ‘One-Eye’ to tip him off to China probes…
Ex-FBI chief gave $100K to Biden grandkid trust as he sought future work…@TheJusticeDept, you've had this since 2019 — isn't this a crime? pic.twitter.com/KL1rUcWU6L
— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 23, 2023
#3 Ye Jianming told Luft that Hunter had an informant in the FBI “or formerly of the bureau, extremely well placed, who they paid lots of money to [provide] sealed law enforcement information.”
DOJ asked Judge Kelly to force defense team to vet questions related to FBI informants WITH THE GOVERNMENT before any were asked in front of the jury. Kelly, of course, complied.
This is chilling. The U.S. Air Force illegally released military records of several GOP candidates to the Democratic Party which then leveraged the material to run attack ads on at least one of them: @JRMajewskihttps://t.co/HMLbhf4zjY
FAKE “Trump Supporters” at Manhattan Protest Are Identified As an Actor And an Anarchist (Possible Antifa Member) By Independent Journalist [VIDEO] https://t.co/pb1QWC0Ltm
Don't worry folks. Even though the FBI has been spying on J6 defense teams and infiltrating them with FBI informants, they would never dare infiltrate or incite the January 6 crowd. Because they said so! Scouts honor! https://t.co/gFHrHoNhwR
The shroud of secrecy surrounding the FBI’s foreknowledge and engagement in the events of January 6 is disintegrating, no matter how hard Beltway lifers try to keep it intact.”
“Five Proud Boys, including the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, are accused of conspiring to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” on January 6, 2021. It is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s most consequential case related to January 6; convictions will help build a similar case against Donald Trump largely based on his infamous “stand back and stand by” remark to the Proud Boys during an October 2020 presidential debate.
Most of the evidence is nothing more than inflammatory, braggadocious chatter in group texts; Tarrio wasn’t even present at the Capitol on January 6. Another defendant, Ethan Nordean, can be seen on surveillance video walking through an open door as Capitol police stood nearby.
Similar to other so-called “militia” groups tied to January 6, no one brought weapons to the Capitol that day; no one was charged with assaulting police officers or lawmakers. A key piece of evidence that prosecutors claimed was a road map for the “attack” on the Capitol wasn’t produced by any Proud Boy but by a former intelligence asset who himself sent the plan to Tarrio through a third party.
The document represented just one more instance of how a government agent helped shape the government’s narrative that the Proud Boys plotted in advance to carry out an “insurrection” on January 6. In fact, much like the FBI-engineered plan to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, court proceedings confirm that FBI assets might outnumber criminal defendants.
At least 10 and possibly up to 15 FBI informants were embedded in the group months before and continuing after the events of January 6. Informants participated in numerous group chats, cozied up to leadership, and even accompanied the Proud Boys to Washington.
One known informant, according to a September 2021 New York Times report, was involved in the first breach of Capitol grounds and entered the building that afternoon.
But prosecutors and Judge Timothy Kelly have tried their best to prevent the public from learning the full scope of the FBI’s involvement. The docket is littered with sealed hearings and filings; prosecutors presented to the defense team heavily redacted reports related to FBI informants just before the trial began.
“Everything has been done under cover,” one defense attorney recently complained in court. A consortium of major news corporations also knocked Kelly this week for holding “sealed hearings and exclud[ing] the press and public from attending proceedings in this high-profile case.”
Kelly also took the highly unusual and prejudicial step of requiring the defense to “pre-clear” questions with prosecutors before asking a witness about the use of informants—but information is slowly trickling as the defense finally gets their turn.
For the second time this month, Kelly suspended the trial on Wednesday after prosecutors confessed that a key witness for the defense, who was scheduled to testify on Thursday, had worked as an FBI informant during the entire investigation. Although prosecutors have known for months that the defense might call this person as a witness, they waited until the last minute to tell defense attorneys, who were blindsided by the news.
It got worse from there. A bombshell motion filed by the defense shortly after the disclosure revealed the informant cozied up to defendants and their attorneys for more than 20 months—from April 2021 until January 2023 when the trial began.
“During this period of time, the CHS (confidential human source) has been in contact via telephone, text messaging and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant,” wrote Carmen Hernandez, the public defender representing Zachary Rehl. “During this period of time, the CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families. The CHS also engaged in discussions with one of the defendant’s family members about replacing one of the defense counsel. The above may not include all the communications that were initiated by or engaged in by the CHS.”
Hernandez demanded “all recordings or reports that it may have regarding the defense team, all interview reports or FBI memos relating to the recording or reporting of the defense team, and all internal memos prepared by the United States Attorney’s Office and Department of Justice attorneys relating to any reporting on and recordings of the defense team.”
—
“As the trial drags on, Kelly has his hands full running interference for the Justice Department. (Kelly is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the same office handling every January 6 prosecution.) The judge abruptly suspended the trial a few weeks ago amid the discovery of thousands of hidden messages exchanged between FBI agents that discussed doctoring a report about an informant, destroying evidence, and FBI surveillance of communications between Rehl and his former attorney.
After prosecutors claimed, without evidence, that the evidence-destruction chatter pertained to a closed case and that Rehl surrendered his rights to attorney-client privileged by using a monitored communications system from jail, Kelly dropped the matter entirely.
Kelly this week similarly quashed a defense subpoena to compel testimony from another Proud Boy who also turned out to be an FBI informant. Proud Boy member Kenneth Lizardo, Kelly admitted in his order, “closely interacted” with the group, particularly Tarrio. Lizardo picked Tarrio up from jail on January 5—he had been arrested on charges of burning a Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020—and drove him to an underground garage where Tarrio met with Stewart Rhodes, the now-convicted head of the Oath Keepers.
Lizardo warned he would invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid potential criminal charges himself for his involvement with the Proud Boys and presence at the Capitol on January 6. So Kelly let him off the hook while noting Lizardo “has had a reporting relationship with the FBI.”
That’s one way to put it.
FBI officials to this day refuse to answer questions about the bureau’s foreknowledge and engagement in the events of January 6. The January 6 committee did not bother to interview FBI Director Christopher Wray or then-head of the Washington FBI field office, Steven D’Antuono, who also ran the Whitmer fednapping hoax.
But the shroud of secrecy is gradually disintegrating no matter how hard Beltway lifers like Judge Kelly attempt to keep it intact. Recent polls indicate a solid majority of Americans believe federal assets provoked the Capitol protest; revelations emerging from the Justice Department’s biggest case will only bolster those justified suspicions.”
State Sen. Megan Hunt (D), speaking directly to Republicans, reaffirms vow to filibuster all legislation if #NEleg anti-trans bill passes:
"No one in the world holds a grudge like me. And no one in the world cares less about being petty than me. I don't care. I don't like you." pic.twitter.com/IBvOV3g5ey
Teddy the Clown is against the “Parents Bill of Right” that give parents the right to know what's going on inside your child's classroom. No surprise he’s against it – he hates kids, he’s all for the far left agenda no matter what @CNN@MSNBCpic.twitter.com/7jIpVM3h2f
Wandering Views 
Yes, the Chinese and Russians are thankful to Biden as well.
Idiots.
“Dem Rep. McCollum Thanks Biden Defense Officials For Focus On Abortions And Climate Change…”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Mayor Pete is outta his league.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Good. Finally some sanity.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2023/03/23/iowa-bans-child-sex-change-treatments/
“Iowa has joined a growing list of states that have banned sex change treatments for children after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new bill restricting the practice into law Wednesday.
The bill, SF538, says that a healthcare professional in the state of Iowa “shall not knowingly engage in or cause any” treatments “for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of, or affirm the minor’s perception of, the minor’s gender or sex, if that appearance or perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex [at birth].” (RELATED: Utah Bans Hormone Therapy And Gender Surgeries For Minors)
Further, the bill restricts the practice of removing any healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue as well as bans the administration of hormone-blockers to delay puberty.
“Children should not be pushed to receive experimental medical treatments that can leave them permanently sterile and physically marred for life,” Republican state Sen. Jeff Edler said, according to The Des Moines Register. “Iowa has a duty to protect its citizens, especially our children.” (RELATED: Tennessee Legislature Passes Ban On Child Sex Changes)
Iowa Democrats decried the bill, claiming that its passage denied parents the choice to do what they felt was best for their children. “I was under the impression that this session was going to be all about parents rights,” Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Konfrst stated during the bill’s debate, according to CNN. “So I guess the way I’m going to read this bill is that parents know best until the government does.”
Reynolds argued the science “isn’t conclusive” to support life-altering treatments for children. “These [treatments] are irreversible. We don’t even understand the long-term effects,” Reynolds said, according to KCRG.
“I’m a parent. I’m a grandmother. I know how difficult this is. This is an extremely uncomfortable position for me to be in. You know, I don’t like it, but I have to do what I believe is right now is in the best interest of the kids,” she continued.”
LikeLiked by 4 people
“THE NEW INTOLERANCE”
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/03/the-new-intolerance
“Very early in her new book, Mary Eberstadt notes that a new kind of intolerance is “strangling open discussion across the West.” And as she argues in her text, this new brand of intolerance is linked closely with the sexual revolution. Now, at first hearing, that just doesn’t sound plausible. The sexual revolution was about an end to repressive moralizing. It was about greater tolerance for individual sexual freedom. It was about a healthier, more relaxed, less shame-infected attitude toward sexuality in general. And I know what I’m talking about. I was there in the late 1960s, and I thoroughly enjoyed its early stages.
But here’s the catch, which the author explores so persuasively in chapter 3. The new intolerance around sex is not an accident or “passing nuisance, but a full blown, quasi-religious substitute faith for Christianity. Its dogma both derives from and is designed to protect the sexual revolution . . . [and it’s] rooted in a rejection of the Christian moral code.” Thus, a virtue like modesty is not merely laughed at, but resented as a weed in the garden of sexual ecstasy. Celibacy is either incomprehensible, or seen as emotionally crippling. Normative heterosexuality has the unpleasant smell of a stable human nature; a nature that establishes one form of sexual behavior as normal, and others as wrong, unhealthy, and destructive.
So where does this lead; or rather, where has it led? I want to go back to the author’s point about the new intolerance “strangling open discussion across the West.” That word “strangling” in particular caught my eye. And the reason is simple. The University of Virginia social scientist, Bradford Wilcox, noted recently that one in three collegiate women now report being choked during their most recent sexual encounter. Research from the United States, the U.K., and Germany shows that choking is now prevalent among young adults in consensual sex, and women are disproportionately the target. Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but strangling one’s sexual partner doesn’t strike me as helpful to much intimacy—or even an especially fun time.
But it does make a perverse kind of sense. Beautiful things, removed from their intended purpose and misused, first become tiresome, then ugly, and then poisonous. The Marquis de Sade may have been a moral cretin and a thoroughly loathsome creature, but in his appetite for sexual deviance and violence, he was the logical end result of human sexuality without restraints. Sex, especially for men, has a strong undercurrent of aggression. In the biblical vocabulary, that aggression is a by-product of the fall. Becoming a mature adult male, instead of a drone or predator or Peter Pan, involves mastering and reshaping that aggression into an ability to protect and provide; to give and receive intimacy within the confines of a long-term, purpose-driven relationship.
In the C. S. Lewis story, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, the demons actually consume lost souls as a kind of cognac or elixir; in effect, hell feeds on the damned to satisfy its libido dominandi, its thwarted appetite to dominate. And something similar happens in a lot of today’s sexuality. Sex is about the self, getting and digesting what the self wants; taking and consuming satisfaction from the other sexually involved but entirely foreign self. The biblical ideal of “two becoming one flesh”—in anything but the passing instant—is definitely not the plan. But the really weird thing about the sexual revolution, sixty years on—and I never would have believed this when I was twenty—is that the frequency of sex between young adults has actually collapsed. And again, this is logical. It flows from fatigue, boredom, fear of effort, fear of failure, fear of disease . . . and pandemic pornography.”
LikeLiked by 5 people
Fed plant wants an apology?
Tough. Don’t like it, sue him. Discovery will be a hoot.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The groomers don’t want parents having rights that might interfere with their grooming of kids.
So neither do Democrats.
Can you show us on this doll where the Bad Orange Man hurt you Hakeem? He knows Trump has nothing to do with this, but he needs a boogeyman.
Yes having parents decide rather than unconcerned bureaucrats at the DOE is the worst thing ever!
In their own words….
LikeLiked by 3 people
Weak you say?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dominion-should-lose-its-case-against-fox-defamation-voting-trump-election-malice-sullivan-hosts-1e6a8a11
“The mainstream press has reacted predictably in recent weeks after Fox News’s internal communications and witness depositions were disclosed in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network. Blinded by resentment at Fox’s success as an alternative media voice, many media organizations offered a distorted narrative—largely parroting Dominion’s spin—that the disclosures doom Fox’s legal defense. Commentators from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and other outlets, gleeful at the prospect of a Fox setback, cheer on as the defamation case heads toward a trial date.
But the real significance of the disclosures is exactly the opposite of what these media outlets claim. Two things are clear: First, if the applicable law is faithfully applied, the facts completely upend Dominion’s defamation claim against Fox. The case should be decided in Fox’s favor, if not at the trial stage, then on appeal.
Second, a ruling against Fox would be a major blow to media freedoms generally, subjecting news outlets to the prospect of outsize liability whenever they report on newsworthy allegations that turn out to be false.
Right after the 2020 election, President Trump and his team repeatedly alleged that Dominion machines had been used in a voting-fraud scheme. Although these allegations weren’t substantiated, as attorney general, I couldn’t immediately discount them. Finding the truth required an investigation, which I authorized. Over the next few weeks we found no substantiation or discrepancies, and based on expert assessments I became increasingly convinced the claims against Dominion were unfounded.
Meanwhile, several Fox News hosts interviewed members of the president’s team—Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell chief among them—about their Dominion claims and whether they had evidence to support them. As the record shows, the hosts presented the claims as unproven allegations and didn’t say they were true. Nonetheless, Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion in damages (20 times Dominion’s 2018 valuation), claiming that in reporting on the Trump team’s allegations, Fox effectively was promoting them as true.
Emotions seem to have gotten the better of the mainstream media’s judgment. The theory advanced by Dominion is profoundly dangerous to the media industry as whole. Memories are very short and imaginations very limited if the left thinks that only Fox would be vulnerable to lawsuits in a world where defamation liability could be incurred for simply reporting allegations made by others. Does anyone remember the endless false claims of “Russian collusion” that dominated the news from the 2016 presidential election through most of the Trump administration; or the false “Iraqgate” claims with which George H.W. Bush was bombarded during his 1992 re-election campaign; or the lurid allegations, which were given wall-to-wall cable news coverage, that Michael Avenatti made during the Senate confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh?
The press can report on these matters without incurring liability for defamation because existing laws give them wide latitude to do so to encourage uninhibited discourse on matters of public concern. The scope of this legal protection is well-settled, and Fox acted well within it for three reasons. First, it isn’t defamatory for journalists to report on newsworthy allegations made by others, even when those allegations turn out to be false. As long as claims are presented only as allegations and not asserted to be true, legal responsibility for any defamatory content rests with those making the allegations, not the news outlet. If you examine the relevant statements by Fox hosts in context, it is clear the company was simply reporting the allegations, not reporting that those allegations were true.
Second, defamation applies only to false statements of fact, not statements of opinion. Thus, it isn’t defamatory for a journalist to provide commentary—stating an opinion about an allegation—as long as he doesn’t assert that the defamatory aspects of the allegations are true. Thus, in Fox’s case, to the extent hosts made comments suggesting the claims were troubling, or serious, or warranting an investigation, those comments were opinions and can’t serve as the basis for a defamation claim.
Finally, it has long been held that First Amendment considerations require giving media speakers more “breathing space” for protecting unintentional false statements made when reporting on issues of serious public concern or on actions of key players in those controversies. These cases are governed by the “actual malice” standard first enunciated by the Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). In these circumstances, a media speaker isn’t liable for defamation, even for a false statement of fact, unless he knows when he makes the statement that what he is saying is false or gravely doubts its truth.”
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Move along….
Nothing to see….
Just a corrupt DoJ….
LikeLiked by 3 people
Democrats support the child mutilators, not the children.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Funny because it’s true.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Pass the popcorn. 🙂
——
https://nypost.com/2023/03/22/ex-house-russiagate-investigator-kash-patel-sues-politico-over-impeachment-lies/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
“Watch out, Adam Schiff, Alexander Vinman, Fiona Hill and assorted other Russia/Ukraine hoaxers. Kash Patel is coming for you in a courtroom in Virginia.
The former Russiagate investigator for the House Intelligence Committee has filed a $23 million defamation action against Politico for falsely claiming he misrepresented himself as a Ukraine expert and fed lies to Donald Trump about Ukraine — which ultimately led to the then-president’s impeachment.
Patel’s suit contends that Politico knew that Schiff, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was “a wholly unreliable source,” a “congenital liar and inveterate leaker [and] a demagogue with an axe to grind against President Trump [and] Kash.”
Hill and Vindman, former NSC officials-turned-star impeachment witnesses, helped push Schiff’s lie that Patel was Trump’s “Ukraine whisperer,” the suit alleges.
Also in Patel’s crosshairs are Schiff’s staff, his Democratic colleague Eric Swalwell, his “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, Hill’s boss, former national security adviser John Bolton, and the author of the Politico article, Natasha Bertrand, who also laundered the CIA’s Big Lie in October 2020 that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.”
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Thanks Biden and Democrats.
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Tell the truth about the Biden Crime Family and they will send their brown shirts after you.
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Corrupt and broken.
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Corrupt….
Like Judge Kelly…
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Gee, why do we have a recruiting problem….?
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They lie to your face.
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Not safe, not effective.
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Nope, no Antifa here….
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And they would never lie…..
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Imploding, and that’s a good thing.
“Informants Everywhere
The shroud of secrecy surrounding the FBI’s foreknowledge and engagement in the events of January 6 is disintegrating, no matter how hard Beltway lifers try to keep it intact.”
https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/23/informants-everywhere/
“Five Proud Boys, including the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, are accused of conspiring to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” on January 6, 2021. It is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s most consequential case related to January 6; convictions will help build a similar case against Donald Trump largely based on his infamous “stand back and stand by” remark to the Proud Boys during an October 2020 presidential debate.
Most of the evidence is nothing more than inflammatory, braggadocious chatter in group texts; Tarrio wasn’t even present at the Capitol on January 6. Another defendant, Ethan Nordean, can be seen on surveillance video walking through an open door as Capitol police stood nearby.
Similar to other so-called “militia” groups tied to January 6, no one brought weapons to the Capitol that day; no one was charged with assaulting police officers or lawmakers. A key piece of evidence that prosecutors claimed was a road map for the “attack” on the Capitol wasn’t produced by any Proud Boy but by a former intelligence asset who himself sent the plan to Tarrio through a third party.
The document represented just one more instance of how a government agent helped shape the government’s narrative that the Proud Boys plotted in advance to carry out an “insurrection” on January 6. In fact, much like the FBI-engineered plan to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, court proceedings confirm that FBI assets might outnumber criminal defendants.
At least 10 and possibly up to 15 FBI informants were embedded in the group months before and continuing after the events of January 6. Informants participated in numerous group chats, cozied up to leadership, and even accompanied the Proud Boys to Washington.
One known informant, according to a September 2021 New York Times report, was involved in the first breach of Capitol grounds and entered the building that afternoon.
But prosecutors and Judge Timothy Kelly have tried their best to prevent the public from learning the full scope of the FBI’s involvement. The docket is littered with sealed hearings and filings; prosecutors presented to the defense team heavily redacted reports related to FBI informants just before the trial began.
“Everything has been done under cover,” one defense attorney recently complained in court. A consortium of major news corporations also knocked Kelly this week for holding “sealed hearings and exclud[ing] the press and public from attending proceedings in this high-profile case.”
Kelly also took the highly unusual and prejudicial step of requiring the defense to “pre-clear” questions with prosecutors before asking a witness about the use of informants—but information is slowly trickling as the defense finally gets their turn.
For the second time this month, Kelly suspended the trial on Wednesday after prosecutors confessed that a key witness for the defense, who was scheduled to testify on Thursday, had worked as an FBI informant during the entire investigation. Although prosecutors have known for months that the defense might call this person as a witness, they waited until the last minute to tell defense attorneys, who were blindsided by the news.
It got worse from there. A bombshell motion filed by the defense shortly after the disclosure revealed the informant cozied up to defendants and their attorneys for more than 20 months—from April 2021 until January 2023 when the trial began.
“During this period of time, the CHS (confidential human source) has been in contact via telephone, text messaging and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant,” wrote Carmen Hernandez, the public defender representing Zachary Rehl. “During this period of time, the CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families. The CHS also engaged in discussions with one of the defendant’s family members about replacing one of the defense counsel. The above may not include all the communications that were initiated by or engaged in by the CHS.”
Hernandez demanded “all recordings or reports that it may have regarding the defense team, all interview reports or FBI memos relating to the recording or reporting of the defense team, and all internal memos prepared by the United States Attorney’s Office and Department of Justice attorneys relating to any reporting on and recordings of the defense team.”
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“As the trial drags on, Kelly has his hands full running interference for the Justice Department. (Kelly is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the same office handling every January 6 prosecution.) The judge abruptly suspended the trial a few weeks ago amid the discovery of thousands of hidden messages exchanged between FBI agents that discussed doctoring a report about an informant, destroying evidence, and FBI surveillance of communications between Rehl and his former attorney.
After prosecutors claimed, without evidence, that the evidence-destruction chatter pertained to a closed case and that Rehl surrendered his rights to attorney-client privileged by using a monitored communications system from jail, Kelly dropped the matter entirely.
Kelly this week similarly quashed a defense subpoena to compel testimony from another Proud Boy who also turned out to be an FBI informant. Proud Boy member Kenneth Lizardo, Kelly admitted in his order, “closely interacted” with the group, particularly Tarrio. Lizardo picked Tarrio up from jail on January 5—he had been arrested on charges of burning a Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020—and drove him to an underground garage where Tarrio met with Stewart Rhodes, the now-convicted head of the Oath Keepers.
Lizardo warned he would invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid potential criminal charges himself for his involvement with the Proud Boys and presence at the Capitol on January 6. So Kelly let him off the hook while noting Lizardo “has had a reporting relationship with the FBI.”
That’s one way to put it.
FBI officials to this day refuse to answer questions about the bureau’s foreknowledge and engagement in the events of January 6. The January 6 committee did not bother to interview FBI Director Christopher Wray or then-head of the Washington FBI field office, Steven D’Antuono, who also ran the Whitmer fednapping hoax.
But the shroud of secrecy is gradually disintegrating no matter how hard Beltway lifers like Judge Kelly attempt to keep it intact. Recent polls indicate a solid majority of Americans believe federal assets provoked the Capitol protest; revelations emerging from the Justice Department’s biggest case will only bolster those justified suspicions.”
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Dems are all in for child mutilation.
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