Media
May 19, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Susan Baker read Peggy Noonan’s recent Wall Street Journal column so that you don’t have to. Baker took issue with Noonan in a letter to the editor published yesterday. It’s hard to nail Noonan down in the column, but Baker bites on Noonan’s set-up: Peggy Noonan starts out decrying Joe Biden as “too old and infirm” to be president and Donald Trump as “too crazy” (“2024: A Certain Fatalism Sets
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May 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Digging into our archives I find a previous comment on Rochelle Olson: “Rochelle Olson is a pitiful excuse of a reporter for the Star Tribune. Back in 2006, I called her out as ‘reckless and feckless,’ a judgment I stand by today.” If you run into me around town and have an hour or two to spare, ask me why. Olson covered President Trump’s appearance as the featured speaker at
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May 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times believes that by right, it should have the Supreme Court in its pocket–as, to be fair, it did for quite a few years. So it is doing all it can to discredit the Court’s new conservative majority. It has directed its attacks mostly toward Justice Clarence Thomas, against whom the Times has levied baseless charges of ethics violations. Yesterday the Times went after Justice Samuel Alito,
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May 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Mark Judge is a witness with a powerful story to tell about the operation to take down the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. He tells the story in his 2022 book The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi. Mark recently returned with his timely review of Christine Blasey Ford’s book (cited below). We offered to publish Mark’s review and I have inserted the editorial
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May 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Post has reported that the Biden administration is withholding sensitive intelligence from Israel on the location of Hamas leaders in Gaza. This is how the Post puts it: The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance in an effort to persuade it to hold back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of
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May 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Leading Democrats have realized that Joe Biden is hopeless as a presidential candidate, and that Donald Trump may actually win the election. Their desperation is therefore mounting, and they are pulling out all the stops. For a long time, the New York Times has been basically a clipping service for the Democratic National Committee. But in the present crisis, the Times is taking hysteria to a level that might embarrass
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May 14, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In a nearby post John writes about the case of Myon Burrell. In the early days of Power Line John and I wrote several columns for the local newspapers decrying the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards. Tyesha was doing her homework at the dining room table in November 2002 when she was caught in the crossfire of Minneapolis gangbangers. Myon Burrell was convicted twice of Tyesha’s murder and sentenced to
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May 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Last week we posted Senator Tom Cotton’s close encounter with Jonathan Karl here on ABC’s This Week. Yesterday Senator Cotton appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation (or Deface the Nation, as Rush used to put it). I missed it. You missed it. We all missed it. Here is the video of Senator Cotton’s appearance (full show transcript here). Like Karl, Brennan performs in her capacity as an operative of the
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May 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson
It would be a mistake to rely on the United Nations for information about anything, especially anything related to the Middle East. In Israel’s current war the UN operates as an arm of Hamas. It is nevertheless worth noting — as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies does in this Flash Brief: The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised its child fatality figure from the Gaza
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May 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times, alarmed that its fellow leftists have outed themselves as anti-Semites on campuses and in the streets (not to mention in Congress), has published an interminable article, with four reporters’ bylines, claiming that Republicans are the real anti-Semites. There isn’t much need to read the article, as the headline says it all: “How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel.” The Times purports to use
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May 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Well yes, of course. But at the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman highlights an interview with the Times’s current executive editor, Joseph Kahn. Hope springs eternal, I guess: Regular news consumers may recall Ben Smith as the Buzzfeed editor who helped define post-journalistic coverage of the Trump presidency by publishing the bogus Steele dossier in 2017 while admitting he didn’t know whether it was true or false. Naturally Mr. Smith
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May 6, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Senator Tom Cotton appeared for an interview by ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week yesterday (transcript here). I missed it. You missed it. We all missed it. The interview proceeded in the form of cross-examination. Karl sought to put words in Cotton’s mouth or elicit his agreement to the axioms planted in his leading questions. He wants his colleagues to know he’s working hard on behalf of the Democrats. Addressing
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May 2, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The documentary Rather made its appearance yesterday on Netflix. Directed by Frank Marshall, the film premiered last year at the Tribeca Film Festival. It now becomes generally available via the streaming service. I watched the documentary twice in order to comment on it here. As it turns out, Star Tribune media critic Neal Justin fairly describes it and nails its shortcomings in 114 words, but there is more to be
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May 1, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The documentary Rather airs on Netflix this evening. It celebrates the career of the disgraced former CBS News anchor. I have been warming up for the big show this evening by reviewing the historical record of Rathergate here and here. After the 12 days of Rathergate I joked to John that if they ever made a movie about it, Robert Redford should play John and Dustin Hoffman should play me.
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April 30, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It turns out that Dan Rather isn’t the only beneficiary of revisionist documentaries and feature films that pervert the truth. I somehow missed it, but two years ago a British drama attempted to reverse the narrative of the famous “climategate” scandal of 2009, when a trove of internal emails from the tight-knit circle of scientists clustered around East Anglia University in the UK revealed some serious weaknesses of the standard
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April 28, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Daily Beast’s John Fiallo reports that Dan Rather returns to CBS News today 18 years after his involuntary departure. Fiallo writes (emphasis added): The former CBS News anchor Dan Rather will make a brief return to the network Sunday, appearing in a live interview 18 years after his controversial exit. Rather, 92, is slated to be profiled on CBS News Sunday Morning through an interview with correspondent Lee Cowan,
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April 27, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Hugh Gallagher explored what he called FDR’s Splendid Deception in his 1985 book of that title. In the title Gallagher was referring to FDR’s concealment of the polio-related paralysis that struck him in 1921. Gallagher was also a polio victim who understood the pain underlying Roosevelt’s efforts. Researching the book, Gallagher found that among the 35,000 photographs of Roosevelt at his presidential library, only two featured him in his wheelchair.
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