Media
February 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Minneapolis’s Star Tribune illustrates how the major daily newspaper of a metropolitan area can contribute to its decline. The owner of the newspaper has a high tolerance for mediocrity and the local news reads like public relations for Minnesota’s DFL. Today’s case in point is Briana Bierschbach’s page-one story on the new abortion law Democrats rammed through the legislature in record time: “Gov. Tim Walz signs law strengthening abortion rights
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January 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi has renamed his TK News site Racket. On Saturday he posted “Responding to Hamilton 68” — his analysis of the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s “fact sheet” on the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” that he exposed as a fraud in the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files (the link is to my notes on it). Taibbi summarized his response to the fact sheet in the subhead: “After refusing to answer
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January 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Now that Democrats control Minnesota’s political branches, they are in let’s go crazy mode. I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t want to let them drive me out, but they are doing their best. I want to take my stand and go down fighting. Besides, I’m afraid Florida is so overpopulated that it will detach and capsize. The state overcharged taxpayers in the last biennium by some $18 billion.
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January 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi has posted the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It is a thread that comes in 42 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below) or read in unrolled form via the Thread Reader app here. 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD pic.twitter.com/bLRpDpuWql — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023 Taibbi’s thread addresses the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” fronted by
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January 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Three recordings related to David DePape’s October 28 break-in at the Pelosi residence in San Francisco were released yesterday. The judge overseeing the state criminal case against DePape ordered the release of the tapes on the petition of a consortium of media outlets over the objection of the parties. Picked up by Capitol Police surveillance video, the first of the three recordings depicts DePape’s battering glass to make his way
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January 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I’m a little late with this, but it is still worth a post. These are the cable news ratings for January 13, via RedState. Note the complete domination of Fox News: all of Fox’s programs outdraw all of the other networks’ shows, with the exception of Fox’s 6 a.m. version of Fox & Friends, which still outdraws CNN’s 6 a.m. entry by nearly four to one: Cable News Rankings Fri
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January 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Minneapolis attorney Marshall Tanick has taken a look at the issues raised in the Minnesota Court of Appeals hearing on the murder conviction of Derek Chauvin. Marshall discusses the hearing in the Star Tribune op-ed column “Did Chauvin get a fair trial?” I wrote about the hearing here last week. Marshall more or less provides a second opinion that aligns with mine, if somewhat faintly: [T]he core of the argument
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January 25, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Actually, Kevin McCarthy kicks butt would be more like it. Yesterday Speaker McCarthy “officially booted Reps. ADAM SCHIFF and ERIC SWALWELL from the House Intelligence Committee.” McCarthy set forth his decision in a letter to Hakeem Jeffries posted on Twitter. The lady and gentlemen of Politico Playbook find the letter “short on details about the two California Democrats’ sins[.]” You can grok that the press wants to pick up its
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January 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took a few questions on the Biden classified documents matter at yesterday’s briefing (White House transcript here). The New York Post covers this aspect of the briefing here. KJP performed a few golden oldies. For example: “I’m going to continue to be prudent from here. I’m going to be — continued to be consistent and make sure that those questions go to my colleagues
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January 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Supreme Court announced this afternoon that the leaker of the Dobbs draft opinion remains at large. That is unfortunate for many reasons, including the damage done to the Court as an institution and the physical danger to which the leak subjected the justices supporting the draft opinion. It’s also unfortunate that the Biden administration appeared not to give a rip. I gleaned from one of the stories on the
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January 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
No one “familiar with the matter” delivered the goods in Andrew Kerr’s Washington Free Beacon story “Photos Place Hunter Biden in Corvette at Site of Classified Docs in July 2017.” No, Kerr’s story is based on photos and other information extracted from Hunter Biden’s laptop. The photos demonstrate the security issues raised by President Biden’s storage of classified documents at his Wilmington residence and in the garage there. The story
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January 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
When I read that Derek Chauvin had no lawyer to appeal his murder conviction to the Minnesota Court of Appeals I was incredulous. I put out the call on Power Line for an attorney to step forward to represent him on appeal in the highest tradition of the profession. Minnesota attorney Bill Mohrman answered the call. Bill is a founding partner of Mohrman, Kaardal & Erickson as well as a
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January 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Everything we know in the Biden classified documents matter derives from Biden’s attorneys. In other words, it is inherently unreliable. The existence of the matter was leaked by unidentified sources. Attorney General Garland has since publicly appointed a Special Counsel and more classified documents have been discovered in Biden’s Corvette garage and elsewhere. Mysteries abound. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published a story explaining the role of Biden’s lawyers based
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January 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
There is a flood of stories on the Biden classified documents matter in the media today. Before we turn to them, let us note the clarity White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre shed on her state of knowledge when she briefed the press this past Friday (transcript here). We subsequently learned that her account was “inoperative,” to borrow a resonant Watergate term, at the time she gave it. It had
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January 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Today’s New York Post cover is something of a classic. It flags Steven Nelson’s story “Classified Biden docs found in his Delaware garage next to Corvette.” The story includes photos of Biden in his ‘vette, including the one on the cover with the garage door open. How secure can you get? In my comments on the breaking news yesterday afternoon I noted Biden’s assertion that the garage is locked and,
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January 10, 2023 — Scott Johnson
CBS News seems to have broken the story that Vice President Biden left office with classified documents in 2017. The New York Post follows up here. The Washington Post story here (behind the Post paywall) carries the bylines of four reporters. All the stories on the related investigation cite the statement of Biden attorney Richard Sauber. I have tracked down the statement on Twitter (below). Sauber’s statement implicitly distinguishes this
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January 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The Washington Post, today: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters Russian influence operations on Twitter in the 2016 presidential election reached relatively few users, most of whom were highly partisan Republicans, and the Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior, according to a study out this morning. The study, which the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics
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