Month: March 2019

Illinois’ Top Legal Officer Turns His Back On Jesse Smollett Issues

Authored by Mark Glennon via WirePoints.com,

It’s a legal fiasco earning headlines across the world, but the Illinois Attorney General has nothing to say about the growing list of legal questions surrounding dismissal of the case against Jussie Smollett. It’s inexcusable.

Let’s be clear. Attorney General Kwame Raoul had no involvement, we hope and assume, in the decision by the Cook County States Attorney’s office to drop the case. That’s what he said on Twitter Tuesday, and it’s all he has offered on the matter:

The Cook County State’s Attorney has primary criminal jurisdiction over criminal matters in Cook County and has discretion in how it handles criminal cases.

Cook County chose to exercise its jurisdiction in this case and as a result, the Attorney General’s office had no role in this prosecution. The Attorney General’s office investigates matters of public integrity based on specific and credible allegations.

That’s it? Hiding behind such a narrow view of an Attorney General’s role is monumentally hypocritical for Raoul.

From the start, he claimed vast responsibilities.

In his victory speech on election night, he said he and other attorneys general had to collaborate “because of the direction Donald Trump is taking us,” and he needs to “defend the decency of this country as we know it.”

Since then, he has attempted to assert influence over a broad range of matters. For example, he said on Twitter that he “must continue to advocate for critical climate action and hold the Trump administration accountable when it disregards the plain text of the law in its quest to dismantle environmental protections.” Most recently, he issued a statement on the Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, saying Mueller should be forced to testify before Congress.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul

At a bare minimum, Raoul should be condemning the rank injustice that was done, just as Mayor Emanuel and other officeholders have.

More importantly, he should be pressing for answers and providing direction on at least some of the myriad, open issues in this affair, or making sure somebody else is doing so.

For example, the judge in Cook County ordered the case file sealed, but they can be unsealed. Who would do so? Who is looking at whether that can be done here? We certainly can’t count on the Cook County State’s Attorney. Could Raoul commence that process, or at least take a position on who should make a determination of whether it should be done?

Who if anybody is providing support and assistance to federal authorities who are still considering bringing their own charges? Somebody should be ensuring that all evidence earlier collected by the Chicago Police gets to the Feds, and Raoul could be assuring that is happening.

What about the serious ethical questions raised about Kim Foxx, the Cook County State’s Attorney who corresponded with Smollett’s allies about having her office duck out of the case entirely?

Most importantly, what about voiding the dismissal entirely because of Foxx’s botched “recusal” from the case? See our separate article why that should mean that her office had no authority to continue to handle the case, rendering the dismissal voidable. Clearly that’s something Raoul should be spearheading.

Then there’s the complaint by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, which they sent to the United States Justice Department, claiming Foxx interfered with their investigation. Surely that’s a matter for the state’s Attorney General to take an interest in.

Finally, there are questions about possible political interference. They are vague but growing. It was Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, who emailed Foxx to say she was reaching out on behalf of Jussie’s family to express “concerns” they had with how the investigation was being handled. And Foxx said she would “not be where he is today” without Kamala Harris, the presidential candidate. If concrete allegations on political interference materialize, where do they get asserted?

Some of these matters may not be formally within the attorney general’s enforcement authority, but surely the state’s top legal officer has some responsibility for helping sort this mess out.

Why has Raoul turned his back on the case? Mark Konkol, writing in The Patch, probably has the answer:

Foxx has strong ties to the state’s top prosecutor charged with investigating elected officials accused of violating state law, rookie Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. Foxx, the political protégé of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, served on Raoul’s transition team after the 2018 election. Raoul spokeswoman Vanessa James declined to comment Tuesday.

Greg Hinz at Crain’s recently summarized the consequences of the Smollett calamity perfectly:

[T]he next time police are reluctant to prosecute a case of gay-bashing . . . the next time people are afraid to testify against someone with clout . . . the next time average citizens let gang bangers go free because they’re scared to cooperate . . . the next time police just don’t want to put in extra effort because they think it’s not worth it . . . the next time people laugh when you say you’re from Chicago . . . remember this case.

Are those not matters worthy of the state’s top legal officer’s attention? Then again, given his close political ties to so many involved, maybe we’re better off if he stays in hiding.

*  *  *

UPDATE: State Rep. David McSweeney, a Republican from the Chicago suburb of Barrington Hills, filed a resolution Wednesday asking Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul to “conduct a full, prompt, and comprehensive examination” of the case.

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Pound Tumbles As Brexit Deal Defeated By 58 Votes

Despite a last-minute round of defections from some Labour MPs and Tory Brexiteers, what reporters jokingly referred to as “meaningful vote 2.5”, the third vote on May’s withdrawal agreement, has been defeated 344-286, a margin of about 60 votes.

In a speech after the result, May raised the possibility of new elections. The pound tumbled on the results.

GBP

Cable started weakening ahead of the vote on speculation that the group of Brexiteer Tories voting against the bill would be large enough to hand May a third defeat. Reports attributed to SNP MPs about a “sizable” group of Tories massing in the ‘no’ lobby pushed the currency even lower. Early reports estimated that the vote would fail by roughly 50 votes.

May ended the debate on Friday with an impassioned speech, telling MPs that she was “prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended to secure the right outcome for our country.” She also said there would need to be a “greater involvement of Parliament” during the next phase of talks with the EU, when the two sides will hash out the details of their future relationship.

While Friday’s defeat is yet another major setback for the prime minister, who will now presumably push for a much longer Article 50 extension that could last for months or even years, the margin was better than the last two votes, indicating that May has made progress – just not enough to finally deliver Brexit.

Brexit

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In New Zealand, a Democracy Turns Against Itself: New at Reason

One of the oldest criticisms of democracy is that it’s prone to degenerating into little more than mob rule, driven by the latest panic, hatred, or revulsion to consume people’s attention. When it comes to stoking such strong emotions, writes J.D. Tucille, it’s difficult to top the effect of the brutal mass murders committed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the wake of that crime, the country’s government has succumbed to blind reaction by restricting speech, depriving innocent people of arms, and heightening domestic surveillance.

It’s a grim illustration of just how vulnerable the “liberal” element of liberal democracy can be, Tuccille suggests.

Under pressure, democracies have a nasty habit of acting like panicked crowds, suppressing anything frightening or just different in a search for security and conformity. That’s true in the United States as well as in New Zealand, argues Tuccille. But it’s a habit worth breaking if liberal democracies are to rebut their critics and demonstrate their ability to remain bastions of freedom.

View this article.

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A Partial List Of Sinister Things “The Russians” Have Been Accused Of Doing

Max Blumenthal’s indispensable investigative journalism site The Grayzone Project has issued a handy resource to the now deflated ‘Russiagate’ hysteria, and compiled what’s described as “A Very Incomplete List of Sinister Things Vladimir Putin/Russia/’the Russians’ Have Been Accused of Doing”.

The Grayzone writes: According to the finest minds of Western media and political life, “The Russians” have been responsible for everything from sowing discord with sex toys to weaponizing everything from humor to sexual assault allegations to “black America’s experiences.”

Below is the Grayzone’s lengthy, but merely partial list: 

* * *

  • Forcing Donald Trump to hire Rex Tillerson (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor).

  • Forcing Donald Trump to fire Rex Tillerson (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor, eight days later).

  • Forcing Donald Trump to give concessions to North Korea (Rachel Maddow, MSNBC anchor).

  • Meddling in the 2018 Italian parliamentary election (George Soros, investor; Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former president of Denmark, former secretary general of NATO and Michael Chertoff, former U.S. secretary of homeland security).

  • Winning the 2018 Italian parliamentary election (Haaretz, The Hill).

  • Hacking the 2017 French presidential election (Michael Rogers, NSA director, Politico, numerous other outlets).

  • No, really, hacking the 2017 French presidential election (Jamie Raskin, U.S. congressman, after French government denied Russian involvement, stating the hack was “so simple it could have practically been anyone”).

  • Brexit (New York Times, numerous other outlets).

  • Helping rise of far-right AfD party in the 2017 German election (Time).

  • Causing the 2019 U.S. government shutdown (Haaretz).

  • Making the New York Times editorial board criticize Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko (Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine).

  • Weaponizing sexual assault accusations in order to attack Kremlin critics (George Takei, Kremlin critic accused of sexual assault).

  • Weaponizing information (Theresa May, UK prime minister).

  • Weaponizing misinformation (NPR).

  • Weaponizing the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe (Philip Breedlove, U.S. general, NATO, John McCain, U.S. senator).

  • Weaponizing humor (CNN, BBC).

  • Weaponizing “black America’s experiences” (Slate).

  • Using the popular cartoon Masha and the Bear as “soft propaganda” to indoctrinate British children (The Times of London).

  • “Promoting sex toys on Instagram to sow discord in the US” (Quartz).

  • Influencing the Standing Rock movement (Buzzfeed).

  • Making “‘useful idiots’ of unwitting environmental groups and activists” (U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology).

  • Targeting the U.S. embassy in Cuba with “some kind of microwave weapon, that is so sophisticated, that the Americans don’t even fully understand it” (Ken Dilanian, MSNBC reporter).  [The microwave weapon turned out to be crickets].

  • “Infiltrating” America’s Christian conservative homeschooling movement (Casey Michel, Think Progress)

  • Inflaming “race wars” across America with Facebook ads (Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic)

  • Assassinating self-exiled Russian journalist Sergei Babchenko. (Ukrainian government) [Babchenko turned up alive the following day and revealed that he had faked his death in cooperation with Ukraine’s security services].

  • Whatever the hell Jonathan Chait was trying to explain with a Glenn Becksian diagram – “a plausible theory of mind-boggling conclusion” (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine).

  • Arming the Taliban (John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan; Nick Patton Walsh, CNN) [Nicholson’s claim was debunked by a two star US general speaking under oath. The report by Patton Walsh was thoroughly demolished by Tasks and Purpose).

  • Employing U.S. senator Rand Paul (John McCain, U.S. senator).

  • Interfering in the Catalan referendum (US Congressional Democrats)

  • Planning to interfere in Israel’s 2019 elections (Israeli Shin Bet General Security Service)

  • Recruiting Princeton/NYU professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen to influence U.S. policy (Bill Browder, CEO Hermitage Capital).  [Browder’s tweet was deleted after people pointed out that casually calling for Americans to be investigated by the FBI is not a good idea].

  • Funding The Intercept (Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and DNC head).

  • Spreading disinformation about Ukrainian neo-Nazis carrying out Roma pogroms (Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and DNC head).

  • Inflaming the NFL kneeling controversy “to make a big issue seem like an even bigger issue” (James Lankford, U.S. senator).

  • Inflaming ICE detaining immigrant children in cages controversy – “using the current family separation & immigration debate to sow discord among Americans”  (James Lankford, U.S. senator).

  • Orchestrating the mailing of pipe bombs to Democratic lawmakers and liberal figures (Chuck Todd, MSNBC anchor).

  • Tricking Guardian journalist Luke Harding into writing a questionable, thinly-sourced story in order to make it look like Harding is an untrustworthy journalist.  (“Alex Finley”, ex-CIA officer writing under fake name).

  • Using “Soviet-era tricks to evoke racist white fears” (Terrell Starr, Washington Post).

  • Harvesting “American rage to reshape U.S. politics” (New York Times).

  • Dividing America (New York Times).

  • Using “vaccine debate to sow discord” (New York Times).

  • Sowing discord in the 2018 elections (Dan Coats, director of national intelligence).

  • Targeting African-Americans to suppress 2016 election turnout (New York Times).

  • Amplifying “existing divisions in American society” (USA Today).

  • Hacking “the mindset of the American people” (Malcolm Nance, MSNBC contributor and grown man).

  • Tricking Americans into thinking Jesus hates Hillary Clinton (New York Times).

  • Supporting Bernie Sanders (New Knowledge, which was later caught interfering in the 2017 Alabama Senate election).

  • Tricking Americans into voting for Bernie Sanders, via Facebook ads featuring drawing of buff Bernie Sanders (New York Times).

  • Turning Jill Stein into a Russian agent (Zac Petkanas, Democratic strategist, former Hillary Clinton campaign director of rapid response).

* * *

Is Putin using his influence to support/oppose [insert whatever you want here]?  You’re probably right!  For more information, please contact the appropriate Putin disinformation warriors:                                                                   

  • Anything that can be sprinkled with meaningless terms like “active measures,” “useful idiot,” and “kompromat” and repackaged as expert analysis – Atlantic Council’s Disinfo Portal. 

  • Things even the Atlantic Council won’t touch – Louise Mensch. 

  • Game Theory – Eric Garland. 

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UMich Confidence Rebounds In March As Low Income Americans Expect Big Pay Gains

Consumer confidence rebounded in March to 98.4 from last month’s 93.8, slightly above the average of 97.2 recorded in the past 26 months. The March gain in the Sentiment Index was entirely due to households with incomes in the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution.

Middle and lower income households more frequently reported income gains than last month, although income gains were still widespread among upper income households. Indeed, the last time a larger proportion of households reported income gains was in 1966.

Rising incomes were accompanied by lower expected year-ahead inflation rates, resulting in more favorable real income expectations …

Finally, it should be noted that too few interviews were conducted following the summary release of the Mueller report to have any impact on the March data; if there is any, it may affect the April data. As noted in last week’s special report on the politicization of economic expectations, the divergence between Democrats and Republicans has remained substantial. It is unlikely that the average level of sentiment, however positive, has the same impact on consumer spending given the sharp political differences. Nonetheless, the data do not indicate an emerging recession but point toward slightly lower unit sales of vehicles and homes during the year ahead.

 

 

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New Home Sales Surge In February As Mortgage Rates Tumble

After disappointing pending home sales, February new home sales beat expectations, rising 4.9% MoM after a massively upwardly revised January jump of +8.2% (revised from -6.9% MoM).

The 667k SAAR is the highest since March 2018…

While tumbling mortgage rates helped, we also note that the median sales price fell 3.6% from a year earlier to $315,300.

Purchases of new homes rose in three of four U.S. regions, led by a gain in the Midwest, while transactions in the South, the largest region, climbed to the highest level since 2007. Sales in the West were unchanged.

The supply of homes at the current sales rate decreased to 6.1 months, the lowest since June, from 6.5 months in January.

New-home purchases are seen as a timelier barometer of housing than those of previously owned properties, as they’re calculated when contracts are signed rather than when they close.

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‘They’ve Got Big Problems’: Trump Vows To Hold Officials Behind Collusion ‘Hoax’ Accountable

President Trump told a packed audience in Michigan on Thursday that he’s been fully vindicated by special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and those who perpetrated the Russia ‘hoax’ will now be held to account, reports PJ Media.  

Trump called the Russia probe a “sinister effort” to undermine his election victory, and now “The Russia hoax is finally dead,” Trump told the crowd. 

“We defeated a very corrupt establishment and we kept our promise to the American people and it is driving them crazy. Today, our movement and our country are thriving. Their fraud has been exposed and the credibility of those who pushed this hoax is forever broken. And they have now got big problems,” said Trump.

“This group of major losers did not just ruthlessly attack me, my family, and everyone who questioned their lies. They tried to divide our country, to poison the national debate, and to tear up the fabric of our great democracy, the greatest anywhere in the world. They did it all because they refused to accept the results of one of the greatest presidential elections, probably number one, in our history.” 

Of note, a four-page summary of Mueller’s report said that the special counsel investigation found no collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, however it also says that the report “also does not exonerate him.” 

Pencil-neck Schiff

Trump took some time mock Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who has the “smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen.” 

“Sick. Sick. These are sick people. And there has to be accountability because it is all lies. And they know it is lies. They know it. They know it is. Jerry Nadler, I have been fighting him for many years. He was the congressman from Manhattan. I built great things in Manhattan. I had to beat him many times and now I have to come here and I have to beat him again. Can you believe it? I want every record in the history of the Trump Organization,” said Trump, mocking Nadler. . “We will find something somewhere along the lines. A mistake must have been made. These people are sick.”

Ridiculous Bullshit

Trump said that Democrats will need to “decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit – partisan investigations, or whether they will apologize to the American people.” 

 

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Brett Kavanaugh Explains Why He Voted to Grant Buddhist Inmate’s Stay of Execution

The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 last night to grant a stay of execution to a man scheduled to be put to death in Texas.

Patrick Murphy, whose case I wrote about yesterday, was convicted under Texas’ law of parties in the 2000 murder of a police officer. While he didn’t pull the trigger, Murphy was involved in the robbery that led to his compatriots committing murder.

“I’m not challenging the guilt of the crime,” he told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth this week. “My role was basically really to be the getaway driver.”

Despite not having been directly involved in the murder, various courts have refused to grant him a stay of execution. But Murphy also alleged that his First Amendment right to freedom of religion was being violated. He converted to Buddhism while incarcerated, but the State of Texas would not allow his spiritual adviser to be by his side in the execution chamber, since the Rev. Hui-Yong Shih is not an employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

A federal district and circuit court would not grant Murphy a stay, meaning only the U.S. Supreme Court (or executive clemency) could spare his life. The Court came through on Thursday night, ruling:

The State may not carry out Murphy’s execution pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the State permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.

Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were the only justices who would have denied a stay. While the Court as a whole did not explain its reasoning, Justice Brett Kavanaugh did publish a concurring opinion detailing his own decision.

“In this case, the relevant Texas policy allows a Christian or Muslim inmate to have a state-employed Christian or Muslim religious adviser present either in the execution room or in the adjacent viewing room,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But inmates of other religious denominations—for example, Buddhist inmates such as Murphy—who want their religious adviser to be present can have the religious adviser present only in the viewing room and not in the execution room itself for their executions.”

“In my view, the Constitution prohibits such denominational discrimination,” he said.

There were two possible solutions, he added. The state could let religious advisers of all faiths in the execution chamber, or confine them to the viewing room. The key is equal treatment. The state cannot give preferential treatment to Christian or Muslim inmates over Buddhist prisoners, Kavanaugh said.

The Court’s ruling surprised some observers, because it seemed to rule the opposite way in a similar case in Alabama last month. Dominique Ray, a Muslim inmate, wanted his imam to be by his side before he died. The state would not oblige for security reasons, since it does not employ any Muslim imams. But in that case the Court’s decision didn’t rest on the constitutional question: The justices ruled 5–4 that Ray had waited too long to file a petition for relief.

That did not seem to be an issue in this case, at least for Kavanaugh. The justice wrote in a note at the bottom of his concurring opinion that “Murphy made his request to the State in a sufficiently timely manner, one month before the scheduled execution.”

According to UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh (of Volokh Conspiracy fame), the Court’s most recent ruling may also reflect a backlash “from scholars whose views the justices respect” following their decision in the Ray case. “And of course justices should be open to changing their minds when they are persuaded that they were likely mistaken,” he tells NPR.

Regardless of their reasoning, the ruling is most certainly a positive. As Ilya Somin notes today at The Volokh Conspiracy:

Whatever can be said about the procedural question, it’s a good thing that the justices have taken a major step towards clearing up any confusion over their stance on the substantive one. Whether in death penalty cases or elsewhere, it is indeed impermissible for the government to discriminate on the basis of religion.

Murphy will now go back to death row.

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You’re A Sucker If You Don’t Believe The System Is Rigged

Authored by Kurt Schlichter, op-ed via Townhall.com,

Imagine you spent two years completely screwing up at your job, I mean not merely getting every single thing wrong but loudly, proudly getting in everyone else’s face about how right you are. You’d get fired, terminated, 86’d, and Schiff-canned. But not the mainstream media. The media hacks failed for two years-plus, nonstop and without equivocation, but are they ever going to be held to account? No, they’re just going to gather in a big circle and Pulitzer each other.

Imagine you committed a racial hate crime where you falsely accused people who didn’t look or think like you of a horrible atrocity, and that you’d have gladly picked some poor saps with the wrong skin tone out of a line-up and sent them to prison for decades given the chance. Now imagine the two half-wits you hired to help you managed to get caught on video buying their stereotype get-up and spilled it all to the fuzz, though the fact you paid them with a check – because you’re a criminal mastermind – was already enough to get a grand jury to indict your sorry AOC. Now, what are the chances the DA is going to transform your 16 felony counts into a $10K fine and a couple days community servicing? Your chances of said outcome are poor. They are poor because your pals are neither Mrs. Obama or Willie Brown’s gal pal.

Now imagine that you studied really hard while the rich kids partied and smoked dope and splattered water on you by running their BMWs through puddles as you walked home from high school. Imagine your last name is “Chang,” or that your dad is a soldier and not a hedge fund manager, or that your mom is a waitress and not a TV bimbo. Now imagine how you feel when Durwood Richguy IV gets admitted to Harvard when he can’t count past 10 with his Gucci loafers on and you get slotted on a waiting list for Gumbo State.

Imagine you handled classified information and you took it home and put it on your iPad. Do you think the FBI would be super-concerned with your feels about it and give you a pass, like Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit got from Jim Comey, or would you be bunking with Michael Cohen? And speaking of that Looming Doofus, if you lied under oath in front of Congress, do you think you’d be free to wander the country, posting stupid tweets of yourself staring at trees and beaches?

Yeah, sure, that would totally happen.

The American dream has morphed into the American grift. And we normal people are the marks.

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop accepting the ruling class’s lies. And let’s stop lying to ourselves. America has changed. There used to be one standard, one set of laws, one set of rules. Now, there are two.

The one set of rules for normal people is designed to jam us up, to keep us down, to ensure that the power of the powerful never gets challenged.

And the one set of rules for the elite can be summed up like this: There are no rules.

The media howls about the rule of law. Democrat poohbahs cry about the rule of law. The Fredocon gimps whimper about the rule of law. But the “rule of law” they aspire to is merely their rule over you. To them, the rule of law is not some transcendent principle. Its purpose is not to ensure equality and fairness in our society. It’s a weapon designed to make sure nothing disrupts their scam.

Why do you think our elite is so eager to pass new laws and regulations? Is it because normal people like you and me are running wild in the streets? No, of course not. They don’t want to regulate political campaigns to make sure elections are fair. They want to regulate them so they will always win and we never will again. They don’t want a Green New Deal because they care about the weather in 2219, but because they want to take our power and our money for themselves. They don’t want to ban our guns because we’re dangerous to other Americans but because, armed and ready to defend our rights, we’re dangerous to their power.

Do you, even for a second, think any of the rules, regulations, statutes or laws they propose are even going to be applied to them? Do you see the DOJ ever indicting some liberal Dem or some pliable submissivecon for “campaign finance violations?” We know the answer to that because Hillary is wandering around the woods, with a goblet of screw-top Chardonnay glass in her withered paw, free as a bird.

Do you see them giving up their SUVs and trudging to work on foot or riding in some greasy, stinky bus? Will they give up their air travel? How about their beef? Tofu veggie burgers are for peasants. And their minions will always have guns even as you are rendered disarmed and defenseless.

Our elite is not elite. Instead, it’s a bunch of bums who somehow got a little money and took the reins of power and are now shaking-down our great nation for every penny they can wring out of it. We owe them nothing – not respect, not gratitude and certainly not obedience.

If you still wonder how we got Trump, just look around you. He’s a cry for help, a scream against the injustice we’re surrounded by. This injustice is poison to our country. This injustice is what makes republics fall apart, when the worthless ruling class pushes its contempt in the people’s collective face so hard and for so long that the population finally screams “The hell with this!”

It can’t continue. It won’t continue.

*  *  *

That’s the essential message of my novels People’s Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire, about an America split apart into red and blue nations and going uphill and way, way downhill, respectively. Check ‘em out so that when the consequences of our failed elite’s venal, stupid decisions arrive, you won’t be surprised.

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Busybodies on Both Sides of the Atlantic Are Trying to Kill the Internet: Reason Roundup

Good news for Grindr, bad news for Airbnb, and mixed news for Section 230 in new court rulings. What do U.S. web regulation efforts and the new European Union Copyright Directive have in common? Both are brazenly branded by politicans as one thing while really being about censorship and control.

Kate Andrews of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs notes that intellectual property protections can divide “the classically liberal community.” But the EU’s copyright directive, passed this week, “is in many ways not an issue of copyright law at all,” she writes. “The legal right to protect one’s work is being used as a guise to bring in taxes by stealth and burden online platforms with near impossible standards of conduct.”

As part of this plan, Europe is imposing a “link tax” online that will fundamentally change the relationships between media, search engines, and social platforms. “Far from a copyright protection,” adds Andrews, this is “really an attempt to find something new to tax in one of the few areas of everyday life that hasn’t yet been slapped with a government price tag.” (Read more on these directives from Reason’s Scott Shackford here.)

In the U.S., meanwhile, the assault on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act continues. “Internet companies were once the darlings of Capitol Hill, celebrated by lawmakers as examples of American innovation,” writes Jeff Kosseff in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. “It’s safe to say the honeymoon is over.”

Kosseff—a computer science professor at the Naval Academy and author of an upcoming book in Section 230—explains it like this:

Section 230 was enacted in 1996, but its origins can be traced back to a 1959 U.S. Supreme Court case and, of all things, a Los Angeles bookstore. In 1956, Eleazar Smith, the 72-year-old proprietor of a bookstore that was located on Main Street a few doors down from where the Nickel Diner currently sits, was arrested after a clerk at the store sold a copy of the pulp novel “Sweeter Than Life” by Mark Tryon, considered obscene under city and state law, to a Los Angeles police officer.

At trial, Smith testified that it took him months to read a single book, and therefore that there was no way he could personally review each of the thousands of books in his store. A local judge disagreed and sentenced Smith to 30 days in jail.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Smith’s conviction, concluding that California law violated the 1st Amendment because the statute penalized Smith even if he had no reason to know of the obscene book. Smith vs. California resulted in 1st Amendment protections for bookstores, newsstands and other content distributors.

Section 230 is basically that, but for the digital sphere.

Kosseff seems to think that digital platforms haven’t been strict enough about censoring content; I disagree. But he makes a good point in noting that there are many voluntary or at least narrower solutions to the perceived problems than to destroy this fundamental provision.

A recent case about the hookup app Grindr affirms the importance of Section 230. This week the Second Ciruit Court of Appeals found that the app was not responsible for a user impersonating his ex and directing men to his former partner’s house. The ex-from-hell can be held legally responsible, but not the platform. Were things otherwise, a small handful of bad actors could topple every social community and app we know.

But a bad omen on 230 comes from a recent Airbnb case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court dismissed an Airbnb and Homeway challenge to a Santa Monica law that would hold those companies legal liable if users listed Santa Monica rental properties.

“Perhaps this decision may not be as obviously lethal to the Internet as the EU’s passage of the Copyright Directive with Articles 11 and 13, but only because its consequences may, at the moment, be less obvious—not because they stand to be any less harmful,” writes Cathy Gellis at Techdirt. More here.

FREE MINDS

Department of about damn time:

FREE MARKETS

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the “Paycheck Fairness Act,” which “would make sweeping changes” to the existing Equal Pay Act, according to the National Law Review:

The EPA currently prohibits gender-based pay disparities unless they are based on one of the following four bases: (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by the quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex. The Paycheck Fairness Act would narrow the fourth “catch-all” basis to “a bona fide factor other than sex, such as education, training or experience.” The Paycheck Fairness Act further provides that the “bona fide factor” justifying gender-based pay disparities would only apply where “the employer demonstrates that such factor: (i) is not based upon or derived from a sex-based differential in compensation; (ii) is job-related with respect to the position in question; (iii) is consistent with business necessity; and (iv) accounts for the entire differential in compensation at issue.”

It would also forbid employers from asking about salary history and make the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collect pay data, would make the Labor Department study and disseminate these statistics, and would provide federal funds for salary-negotiation training for women.

QUICK HITS

  • “Because Democrats and their media allies invested so much political capital in the now-discredited Russia collusion theory, they have not only failed to topple Trump, they’ve actually strengthened his hand immeasurably,” suggests Michael Tracey at Fortune. “Democrats have ended up giving the moral, political, and logical high ground to a president who is perhaps the most venal and sleazy individual to ever walk the Earth. Trump is a chronic complainer, often about the pettiest of slights, but Russiagate is the one subject about which his complaints have actually been legitimate. It’s astonishing but true: Democrats and the national media chose to spend three years validating Trump’s one grievance that actually has merit.”
  • An interesting review of self-help books by Jordan Peterson and Amy Alkon, from Australian liberarian Helen Dale.
  • An update on the federal case against Columbus Police Officer Andrew Mitchell:
  • “The Center for Reproductive Rights has expanded their current lawsuit in Mississippi, adding a challenge to the state’s six-week abortion ban recently signed into law,” notes WLBT. “The Center is asking a federal court to block the law before it takes effect on July 1.”
  • “A federal judge ruled today that New York’s notoriously nonsensical law criminalizing ‘gravity knives’—which groups have said for years is used by New York City to selectively prosecute people, especially the working class and minorities, for carrying common folding knives—is unconstitutionally vague,” reports C.J. Ciaramella.
  • The ACLU of Ohio is challenging an Akron-area anti-pandhandling ordinance:

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