“…Earlier this year, ABC News demoted Ross when he returned from a suspension handed down after he reported incorrectly on live television that fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn would testify that Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while Trump was still a candidate. The report raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.
…The fumble was another in a series of black marks for Ross, who has been at ABC News since 1994 after spending nearly two decades at NBC. Perhaps most infamously, Ross reported in 2012 that Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes may have had ties to the Tea Party movement. He has not been sanctioned for past errors…”
Ross signed off with thissanctimonious, self-serving tweet:
Yeah, cuz’ like Captain Redlegs and Dan Rather before him, Brian knows…
Provided of course Ross gets to determine what’s right. Perhaps Brian could begin by reporting what no one else in the MSM seems interested in covering, as…
Holy Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, Batman! Though no one knows how they’ll act until placed in a given situation, we somehow doubt our ability to “perform” at knife-point.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
We lead off the last edition of the week with three excellent pieces from the WSJ on the impact of Kennedy’s retirement on Roe v Wade. First, the Editorial Board highlights how Progressives are calling the same play they’ve used since 1973:
“Some things in politics are predictable—a New Jersey tax increase, a “no” vote by Senator Rand Paul, and an abortion-rights scare campaign every time a Republican President makes a Supreme Court nomination. And sure enough, the predictions of doom for abortion and gay rights began within minutes of Anthony Kennedy’s resignation last week. These predictions are almost certainly wrong.
“Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months,” tweeted Jeffrey Toobin, the legal pundit, in a classic of cool, even-handed CNN analysis soon after the resignation news. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer was almost as definitive. “Whomever the president picks, it is all too likely they’re going to overturn health-care protections and Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 abortion-rights decision, Mr. Schumer declared. “We don’t need to guess.”
The first thing to keep in mind is that this is what Democrats and their media allies always say. They said it in 1987 when Justice Kennedy was nominated. They said it in 1990 about David Souter, again about Clarence Thomas in 1991, John Roberts and Samuel Alito in 2005, and Neil Gorsuch in 2017. They even claimed the Chief Justice might overturn Roe because his wife is a Roman Catholic.Mrs. Roberts is still waiting to write her first opinion.
The liberal line is always that Roehangs by a judicial thread, and one more conservative Justice will doom it. Yet Roe still stands after nearly five decades. Our guess is that this will be true even if President Trump nominates another Justice Gorsuch. The reason is the power of stare decisis, or precedent, and how conservatives view the role of the Court in supporting the credibility of the law…”
Second, Bill McGurn explains what Liberal opposition to any remotely conservative SCOTUS appointment is really about:
“Whenever a Supreme Court seat opens up during a Republican administration, headlines start warning that American women will soon be in for a new Dark Ages if Roe v. Wade—the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion across all 50 states—is overturned.This time around, with Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, the fifth vote to overturn Roe has just become a numerical possibility.
Unfortunately, what ought to occasion a healthy debate over a contentious issue once again looks to be clouded by a handful of dubious orthodoxies.In rough order, they are as follows:
First, that Roe is the settled law of the land.
Second, that litmus tests are bad and unhelpful.
Finally, that an individual’s stand on abortion determines where he stands on Roe.
Start with settled law. The obvious reality is that Roe remains one of the most unsettled decisions in the history of the high court. After all, if one seat change will really mean the death of a nearly 50-year-old precedent, the rulingcan’t be as settled as claimed.
Ditto for assertions by Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that “at least 20 states” are “poised to ban abortion immediately” if Roe is given the heave-ho. Which itself confirms both that any national “consensus” is fake and that the scare over Roe now showing up in news coverage reflects the understanding among Roe supporters that their legal rationale remains weak and nationally unpersuasive.
As for litmus tests, Democrats are more honest here. Almost all Senate Democrats will vote against anyone the president picks, and almost all will invoke concerns over Roe as part of their defense. This reflects another reality.The Supreme Court is the Democrats’ preferred legislature for getting their way on socially contentious issues. How much easier to gain five justices’ votes than to do the hard work of winning over the American electorate.
…There are decent arguments, rooted in stare decisis, on why a Roberts court would be unwise to overturn Roe—or at least refrain from doing it all at once. And there are equally strong counterarguments about the corruption Roe and Casey continue to inflict on the body politic.The strongest is that the court has usurped a decision that a free and self-governing society would leave to the ballot box.
This pro-life columnist embraces all the arguments about the need to protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us. But the Constitution says nothingabout abortion. All government of, by and for the people guarantees is that such issues are to be decided by the American people themselves, acting through their elected representatives…”
“All this panic is supposed to be about the future of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing abortion as a right. In fact, the threat to Democratic political rule is even bigger than Roe, which was about just one thing. What is at risk is the rationale for judicial overreaching that was created in the court’s 1965 decision, Griswold v. Connecticut.
Supreme Court decisions don’t often produce phrases that enter the vocabulary of political life, but Griswold did.The phrase is “penumbras formed by emanations.”
Griswold is worth recalling because it established a right to privacy, though the Constitution says nothing about any such right. Justice William O. Douglas famously explained how this could be, arguing that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.”
Douglas’s “penumbras” decision, though ridiculed, defined the post-’60s era of “judge-made law,” in which achieving a result that reflected liberal values or policy goals mattered more than the legal reasoning to justify it. This results-driven view is what routinely sent Justice Antonin Scalia into eloquent and volcanic dissents.
Though capable (on rare occasions) of rigor in his reasoning, Anthony Kennedy was willing to swing toward decisions that simply affirmed what he thought were ascendant cultural mores.With the Trump Supreme Court nominations, this long era of judge-made law is at risk, if not over.
First with Neil Gorsuch and now with Justice Kennedy’s successor, Donald Trump is putting a stop to ruling by penumbra. It’s a historic shift, and Mr. Trump’s opponents are going absolutely crazy…”
Including…
Another Conservative Columnist Wants You to Vote Democrat This November
…a number of die-hard Never-Trump “Conservatives”. As long-time contributor and one of the last living Conservatives in the Portland area Bill Meisen noted, “They do this right when Trump is in the middle of actually implementing the policies they’ve ‘claimed’ to advocate their entire careers. Do they really think the country would be better off with a President Hillary, Speaker Pelosi and a Socialist Supreme Court?!? It shows they never actually believed anything they ever wrote. I guess making sure you’re invited to the right social gatherings is worth compromising any political integrity you ever had.”
That…or their acute distaste for The Donald has unhinged their judgement.
Meanwhile, as Matt Vespa details at Townhall.com, the…
“This is not a drill; abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcementis the new rallying cry for the far left.Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) called for it, as has New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who challenged and recently beat top Democrat Joe Crowley in a major upset last week has also called for it. Debra Haaland, who is the Democratic candidate for the 1stcongressional district in New Mexico, also supports abolishing the federal law enforcement agency. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) has introduced a bill abolishing ICE—and you bet Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is behind this policy push as well.(Which means the idea is DOA for the rest of the century!)Yet, while dissolving ICE may be turning into the progressive left’s latest crack cocaine addiction, Democratic pollsters are nervous that a) the position is too extreme (it is); and b) it plays right into the Republican Party’s hands (which it does) (via AXIOS):
Celinda Lake, longtime Democratic pollster, told Axios: “I worry that abolishing ICE tips the issues from humane treatment to security. The Republicans are already trying to move the issue in that direction.”
Lake added: “Voters believe we need some enforcement of border security — not just for immigration, but for security. I wish we were pushing this to: ‘We need comprehensive immigration reform.’“
…Mr. Penn also found immense opposition to sanctuary cities. When voters polled were asked, “Should cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crimes be required to notify immigration authorities they are in custody or be prohibited from notifying immigration authorities?”, Eighty-four percentsaid the cities should notify immigration enforcement agencies. By party breakdown, 94 percent of Republicans 76 percent of Democrats, and 83 percent of Independents, agreed with that position.
Similarly, almost two-thirds of Americans didn’t give a hoot in Hell about the separation of the children of illegal immigrants from their parents. So why the hue and cry?!?
Notnational security, but rather purely partisan politics…in which the MSM, through its aiding and abetting thereof once again forfeited its right to First Amendment protection.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, toThe Lighter Side:
Finally, we’ll call it a day with this brilliant suggestion from NRO‘s Heather Wilhelm:
“...let’s try to imagine that world without social media, if only for sport.
Without social media, for instance, would the social train wreck surrounding the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va. — you know, the one that banished Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family this week — have devolved into the embarrassing conflagration it is today? Sure, various people acted like jerks, but people have occasionally acted like jerks since the beginning of time. But let’s imagine l’affaire Red Henwithout “the fire and ire of social media,” as theWashington Post aptly put it.It’s rather enlightening.
Without social media, would we have seen a frenzied rash of vengeance-strewn over-the-top Yelp-bombings — often aimed at the wrong restaurant?Without social media, would a woman who has the poor luck of sharing the same name as the Red Hen’s owner watch her personal information get emblazoned all over the Internet, earning death threats in return? Without social media, would the saga have wildly pinged and ponged and flamed and finally escalated to the point where a man was arrested for pelting the Red Hen with manure?
As an aside, the act of pelting something with manure seems like a lose-lose situation, does it not? I mean, first, you have to actually gather the stuff, unless you have a long-suffering octogenarian butler who will reluctantly do it for you. Next, you have to transport the manure, which might befoul your rollerblades. Finally, in order to hurl the cow poo, you have to hold it in some way. Even if you’re wearing gloves or using a slingshot or utilizing one of those makeshift potato guns, you will probably get some of it on your hands. Then you might get traces of it in your eyes, which could lead to a raging case of conjunctivitis, which is an absolute nightmare for those of us who wear contact lenses, let me tell you.
The passionate hurling of manure, in short, is a degrading business. Now that I think about it, it might also serve as an excellent metaphor for social media.
Certainly, there are good things on social media: baby pictures, dog pictures, funny videos, goofy memes, and sponsored links where you can compulsively buy things like South Korean “miracle masks” or Gwyneth Paltrow’s entire nighttime skincare routine…
…What do social-media users get in return? Sure, there are vacation shots and wedding photos, which are nice. On the flipside, Lanier outlines how social media rewards jerky behavior, encourages mass jerkdom in the larger populace, corrupts journalism (“the more successful a writer is in this system, the less she knows what she’s writing”), corrodes empathy, encourages fakery, deprives arguments of context, distorts reality, spreads unhappiness, and on and on and on…”
We’ll close with two cases in point, both courtesy of FOX News. In Exhibit “A”, we learn how an…
Forget whether you consider trophy hunting immoral (though welean that way); forget whether this kill improved the survivability of the herd, that sometimes herds need to be culled, or that a nearby-village was supplied with 2,000 lbs. of fresh meat. Keep it to yourself!!! Frankly, right, wrong or indifferent, anyone stupid or narcissistic enough to publicize such an event in this manner…
…deserves to be subject to the anger of the unenlightened masses…not to mention may not be playing with a full deck!
Exhibit “B” demonstrates how those who inexplicably care WTF the demonstrably demented denizens of social media think of them are destined for depression:
“As one of the world’s most sought-after supermodels, Coco Rocha is used to being the subject of media scrutiny. However, the Canadian cover girl wasn’t expecting for her children to endure harsh criticism from strangers.
…Back in 2015 while on vacation in Hawaii with her family, including her then-6-month-old daughter Ioni, Rocha received backlash for posting an Instagram photo that indicated she fed her baby with formula.
Some commenters accused Rocha of being too lazy and self-centered as a parent to feed her child breast milk, the preferred food for babies according to the World Health Organization.Rocha told Fox News she was both stunned and saddened by the brutal backlash.“I remember crying in the airport at Hawaii and [my husband] James started helping me with what I would write to people,” she recalled.“I was emotional about that because no one knew why I did it but thought their opinion mattered.”
…I now block everyone. I’ve blocked them all, which is good for my health.”
All because her mammary glands couldn’t produce enough breast milk to feed her infant. Hey,…makes NO SENSE TO US!
Here’s the juice: we don’t know Coco Rocha from Coco Chanel or Cocoa Puffs, but one thing’s for certain: had Ms. Rocha been a Navy fighter pilot instead of a “super model“, she wouldn’t have given a flying fart what anyone else thought of her ability to breastfeed. ‘Cuz, like honey badger…
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