Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough! The legacy media rarely lie outright, but their biases can be seen in their editorial choices of what to cover, and what to ignore

One thing I saw frequently on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — in the weeks before the election were claims, unsourced claims, that Kamala Harris Emhoff’s campaign had internal polling which was showing that she was losing to former President Donald Trump. Those were cheering, no doubt about that, but I am heavily biased toward verifiable claims, claims that I can back up on The First Street Journal. I make no claim that my site should be considered part of the credentialed media, nor do I claim it to be unbiased; my occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach, and I are both definitely politically conservative, even though we have some disagreements on a few issues.

But while the credentialed media have long told us that the contest between Vice President Emhoff and Mr Trump was a close one, one thing I never saw, in any of the credentialed media sources I do check — The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, to name just a few — was any hint that the Emhoff campaign knew they were behind. Yet someone, at the very least, was leaking that information, leaked it well enough that some conservative sites heard it. Continue reading →

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Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and hate!

It is entirely possible that I have been, believe it or not, too charitable to our friends on the left. In my recent article, Will Bunch uses his Freedom of Speech and of the Press to tell us that he hates Freedom of Speech and of the Press, I mocked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far-left columnist Will Bunch for his tirade against MSNBC’s (supposed) journalists, Joe and Mike Scarborough for having gone to Mar-a-Lago and meeting with former and future President Donald Trump. Mr Bunch told his readers about the brave “journalists left who do plan, in a moment of increased risk, to keep asking the tough questions in this muddled new era,” but trashes two (purported) journalists who have gone to cover a story about the next President of the United States as somehow “supplicants,” showing fealty and making obeisance to him. Uhhh, you can’t “keep asking the tough questions” to Mr Trump if you are unwilling to talk to him in the first place.

I would have thought that a journolist, oops, sorry, journalist like Mr Bunch would appreciate freedom of the press and the willingness of journalists to go into hostile territory, to get their stories, to report the news, even from people who didn’t like or respect them. Continue reading →

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough!

Upon seeing this tweet from Eyal Yakoby, I had to check the article to see if it was as bad as I suspected. In some ways, it really wasn’t, because most of it was based on the legal problems for José Ibarra’s defense, and the decision to seek a bench trial, a trial by a judge rather than a jury.

Laken Riley’s killer never stood a chance

For all the political controversy surrounding Jose Ibarra, the outcome of this trial was never in doubt.

By Danny Cevallos, MSNBC legal analyst | Thursday, November 21, 2024 | 7:07 PM EST

Jose Antonio Ibarra was convicted on multiple counts of murder Wednesday in the February killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. Ibarra was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, along with other consecutive sentences for lesser crimes, including aggravated assault with intent to rape and “peeping Tom.”

Riley’s murder became a political rallying cry at this summer’s Republican National Convention because Ibarra entered the country illegally in 2022. But for all the political controversy, the outcome of this trial was never in doubt.

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Will Bunch uses his Freedom of Speech and of the Press to tell us that he hates Freedom of Speech and of the Press

Let’s get this part out of the way early: I have little respect for Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch’s intelligence. But even he ought to have seen the silliness in his Tuesday morning newsletter.

Mr Bunch began with his very great concern that our “45th and soon-to-be 47th POTUS” would be cracking down on free speech and dissent:

Mother Jones also notes in a new piece that the anti-Gaza-protest playbook will likely inspire a Trump regime in other ways, including following through on his campaign threats to deport campus protesters. Cornell University grad student Momodou Taal — a protester whose student visa was revoked but has dodged deportation, for now — told the magazine that last spring’s crackdown set an awful precedent, saying: “I think what [President Joe] Biden has allowed for is that the clampdown is made easier for Trump now because the groundwork has already been laid.”

Indeed, Cornell’s moves to suspend Taal and other pro-Palestinian students who disrupted a job fair in September is just one part of a campus crusade against dissent and, arguably, free speech that seems to have succeeded in sharply reducing protests against the killing of civilians in Gaza — or against anything else for that matter.

Uhhh, even Mr Bunch (unwittingly?) admitted that Mr Taal “disrupted a job fair,” which means that this was beyond freedom of speech and peaceable assembly, but was infringing upon the freedom of speech and peaceable assembly of other people.

Mr Bunch then advocated the new social media site Bluesky, the anti-Twitter refuge of those who can’t stand actual freedom of speech: Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Inquirer keeps up with the hate of Donald Trump even after the election

Wouldn’t the answer be, to children who might ask why former and future President Donald Trump beat current Vice President and future private citizen Kamala Harris Emhoff in the election, that the United States held a free and fair election, and as in every election, one serious candidate won, and one serious candidate lost? But no, the American left, having gone off the rails in their #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, think something else is required.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

How do we explain this election to our children?

Children need us to accept their gift of hope, even if we aren’t feeling it, and they need us to use it to fight for them.

by Gwen Snyder, For The Inquirer | Wednesday, November 13, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

The past two months have been a whirlwind of autumnal novelty and stimulation for my preschooler. There was Sesame Place, then her 3rd birthday, then her first day of school. Just as things began to settle, we launched into a cascade of Halloween activities. And then, fast on their heels came the election.

Continue reading →

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The Washington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s investigation of President Nixon and Watergate, bringing down a Republican president, chose to protect a Democrat.

“Democracy Dies in Darkness”, huh?

The Washington Post added that tagline to its masthead in February of 2017, claiming that it wasn’t an attack on newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, deciding “to come up with a slogan nearly a year ago, long before Trump was the Republican presidential nominee,” though nobody in particular believed that. I question the timing, as Robert Stacy McCain would say.

The paper’s owner, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, used the phrase in an interview with The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, at a tech forum at The Post last May. “I think a lot of us believe this, that democracy dies in darkness, that certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light,” he said at the time, speaking of his reasons for buying the paper.

I am glad that my favorite reporter, Heather Long, stepped back from the newspaper’s Editorial Board a couple of months ago, so that she can’t be blamed for this drivel.

Trying to protect Biden, Democrats sacrificed their credibility

Democrats’ coverup of the president’s decline hurt their claim of being the party of truth.

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Yet another liberal blames Democrats’ loss on Freedom of Speech

I saw Michael Tomasky’s whining article in The New Republic on Friday, and mused about commenting on it, but Robert Stacy McCain beat me to it. It’s a good article, and I recommend it.

Mr Tomasky blames Kamala Harris Emhoff’s defeat on those poor, ignorant, unedumacated saps who don’t get their information exclusively from the mostly liberal credentialed media, The New York Times, The Washington Post — which lost over 250,000 subscribers when owner Jeff Bezos cancelled the upcoming endorsement of Mrs Emhoff — ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and the other approved credentialed media outlets. I’m guessing that he wouldn’t have included the much more conservative New York Post!

I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. Continue reading →

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Freedom of Speech even for those who hold repugnant views. Today's election is a referendum on conservatives who protect Freedom of Speech, and liberals who would like to shut you up

It will be no surprise to either of my two regular readers that I do not thing particularly highly of Bill Kristol. The scion of a well-to-do family, now with an estimated net worth of $10 million, was born on December 23, 1952, which had him turning 18 in late 1970. If he really believed that war was a great idea, he was of age to have enlisted in the United States Army to help fight in Vietnam .  .  . but he didn’t. His draft lotter number was 171, so he was kind of on the cusp of being called up to serve, but in any event, never served a single day in uniform. Being Jewish, Mr Kristol could also have volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defence Force, which could have used his service in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but he didn’t do that, either.

Mr Kristol just loves him some American involvement in wars, advocating American involvement in just about any war, anywhere, but let’s tell the truth here: he supports having other people fight in those wars, not himself and not his children. He has been advocating a position, immediate Ukrainian membership in NATO, in which even his fellow traveler, Max Boot, has said would probably involve the United States directly in a war with Russia, with nuclear-armed Russia.

We get it: Mr Kristol hates Donald Trump. I’m not sure why, because our 45th President was the greatest friend to Israel that there could have been, moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and getting the negotiations which resulted in the Abraham Accords, but #TrumpDerangementSyndrome knows few bounds.

But, to me, this tweet by Mr Kristol, saying, “We’ve all had the privilege of being allowed to fight a good and worthwhile fight,” in which he meant fighting against Mr Trump, and he was doing so on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — which demonstrates owner Elon Musk’s dedication to the Freedom of Speech! Mr Musk vocally supports President Trump, but my Twitter feed is full of posts from those supporting the crackpot from California, the war in Ukraine, and the anti-Semitic babble of those who support Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and who hate Israel.

That’s important, because we cannot forget that today’s liberals are the ones who want to ‘regulate’ speech, to prevent the dissemination of Wrongthink.

Remember, how the Biden Administration tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and that very liberal hater of free speech, Nina Jankowicz.

This is part of what is at stake in today’s election: whether we will have people who are dedicated to freedom of speech and our constitutional rights in office, or those who believe that our individual rights must be curtailed, for some cockamamie concept of what they see as a ‘greater good.’ We’re already seeing that in Europe, where governments are arresting and imprisoning people for praying outside of abortuaries, or protesting against Israel’s conduct of the war, two radically different things from two diametrically opposite parts of the political spectrum. Don’t think that there are not a whole Americans who would do the same thing.

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The losses at The Washington Post * Updated! *

My subscription to The Washington Post is very reasonable, and far less than subscriptions to The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other newspapers. Both the Times and the Inquirer endorsed Kamala Harris Emhoff, whom I regard as a crackpot, socialist, and unChristian supporter of prenatal infanticide, but I didn’t cancel my subscriptions to them over their endorsements.

I doubt that anyone would have cared had the Post endorsed Mrs Emhoff, and I also doubt that newspaper endorsements mean much, especially now that their circulation continues to decline. Newspapers are, as I have previously called them, 18th century technology.

We have previously noted how the butthurt left were cancelling subscriptions to the Post, but have apparently misunderestimated just how butthurt they have been! From National Public Radio:

Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement

Continue reading →