RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/wapos-jennifer-rubin-calls-for-mobs-to-harass-sarah-huckabee-sanders-for-the-rest-of-her-life/

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went on the attack against Sarah Huckabee Sanders on MSNBC’s AM Joy on Sunday, calling on left-wing minions to harass the embattled White House press secretary for the rest of her life. She also warned two female Republican senators not to vote for any potential Supreme Court nominees who might endanger her beloved right to abort unborn children.

Rubin, the left’s favorite conservative (they call her a conservative, I don’t), claims that Sanders is inciting violence by criticizing the press. (You know, like every press secretary in the history of press secretaries.) Rubin warned that “lives are on the line” and called for a million protesters to harass and intimidate Sanders. “I don’t think what’s most effective is throwing Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of a restaurant. I wouldn’t serve her either, frankly, but what’s most successful is getting a million people on the street to protest,” she said. (Tell us more about who you would and wouldn’t serve in a restaurant, Jen. You’ve said that bakers who refuse to make cakes for gay weddings are “grandstanding on bigotry and making a virtue out of the vice of prejudice.” I guess that doesn’t apply to your virtue signaling.)

“Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press — after inciting against the press,” a vituperative Rubin said. “These people should be made uncomfortable, and I think that’s a life sentence frankly. [Emphasis added]

But Rubin wasn’t finished with yet, warning Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) not to vote for a Trump Supreme Court nominee who might erode abortion rights, an issue that appears to be near and dear to Rubin’s heart.

“Let’s get a million people to go to Maine or a million people to go to Alaska and start putting pressure on those senators,” said Rubin. “So it’s perfectly civil to do that — no one is telling them to be violent protesters, but we’re not going to let these people go through life unscathed,” she said.

“The message to those two women by Democrats, by pro-choice women in those two states, by the entire states of Maine and Alaska has to be simple,” she said. “You vote for this, Ms. Collins, Miss Murkowski, this is on you. We won’t accept these nonsense excuses.”

“It has to be all-out on the ground in those states,” she continued, “those women have to be put under a glaring light so that they finally have to make a choice that goes against their party — unless they were phony pro-choice women all along, which is distinctly possible.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fighting-free-speech-at-the-new-york-times/

As the leaders of Western Europe continue to surrender their countries to Islam – and to punish those who resist by trying to shut them up – one fact of which we’ve all been reminded is that Americans are very lucky indeed to have a First Amendment. Across Western Europe, citizens who are worried about Islamization express envy for America’s free-speech protections. Meanwhile, American leftists who, unable to answer their opponents’ arguments effectively, would prefer to be able to shut them down, tend increasingly to view the First Amendment as a thorn in their side.

Even many members of the Fourth Estate, whom you might expect to be vigorous First Amendment champions, are now taking on what they deride as an excessive attachment to free-speech rights. At the vanguard of this unholy crusade is the New York Times. On June 5, the Times ran an op-ed by Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, who on several previous occasions has taken to its pages to defend sharia law. This time, Feldman argued against applying the First Amendment to social media on the grounds that it would “make it harder or even impossible for the platforms to limit fake news, online harassment and hate speech.”

The one good argument Feldman has on his side is that Facebook and Twitter are private companies with the right to ban whomever they wish. On the other hand, both of these platforms have become huge parts of the public square, not only in the U.S. but around the world. As for Feldman’s reference to “hate speech,” it’s a concept that has no proper place in American law and that is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. On this score, Feldman failed to acknowledge that both firms are notorious for having banned (for example) users posting objective facts about Islam even as they allow terrorist groups to continue to employ their services.

But enough about Feldman. More problematic than his op-ed was an article by Adam Liptak – which ran, note well, as a news story, not an opinion piece – that the increasingly senile Gray Lady published on July 1. The headline, “How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment” (on the front page of the Times’s website, it read “How Free Speech Is Being Used as a Weapon by Conservatives”; in the print edition, it was “How Free Speech Was Weaponized By Conservatives”), drew on a June 25 comment by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. When the Court, on First Amendment grounds, struck down a California law forcing pro-life “crisis pregnancy centers” to post information on their premises about where to get an abortion, Kagan complained in her dissent that conservatives were “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

Interesting turn of phrase. What it comes down to is the age-old sentiment that my speech should be protected but yours shouldn’t. When I say something you don’t like, I’m safeguarded by the First Amendment; if you say something I don’t like, you’re “weaponizing” that amendment. Coming from the likes of Elena Kagan, of course, the use of the word “weaponize” is especially priceless. Kagan is, after all, a perfect example of the kind of judge who, when she is out to justify practices she likes, is gifted at “discovering” in the Constitution rights that the Founders never put there and that nobody ever noticed before. In other words, she’s an extremely loose constructionist. But when she sees her ideological opponents actually making use of their very clearly spelled-out First Amendment rights to say things she deplores, Kagan is eager to find some way to pretend that the First Amendment doesn’t say what it quite explicitly says. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/nyt_undercuts_mueller.html

Two New York Times writers have offered evidence that the actions of the Russians and former director James Comey may not have been so crucial to the defeat of Hillary Clinton after all, calling into question the raison d’etre of the Mueller investigation.

First, Charlie Savage on June 28, commenting on the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted that Donald Trump promised to name conservatives to the high court. Savage then acknowledged, “Court-focused voters helped deliver Mr. Trump’s narrow victory over Hillary Clinton….” (Actually, the win was not “narrow.” Trump got 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227.)

Another editorial on the surprise defeat of Rep. Joseph Crowley by 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders-ista, in the primary for a House seat from a district extending from the Bronx to Queens attributed the ten-term congressman’s loss to

“a sense of hubris and complacency… the kind that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump… In Mrs. Clinton’s case, it may have stopped her from campaigning harder in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, places where Mr. Trump eked out narrow victories. In Mr. Crowley’s case, it may have led him to become smug.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/first-amendment-donald-trump-journalist-attacks/

Describing Trump as uniquely antagonistic to the First Amendment among presidents is preposterous.

Members of the Fourth Estate, especially the TV reporters, have a curious view of the First Amendment. They seem to be under the impression that it says something like this:

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; nor shall any president troll Jim Acosta or describe Katy Tur as “little”; nor shall any president draw undue attention to honest errors committed by the press in their noble pursuit of speaking truth to power; nor shall any president say the New York Times or Washington Post are failing when they totally aren’t; nor shall any president fail to ensure White House briefings are televised to maximize exposure of journalists who have put a lot of work into their hair and makeup; nor shall any mouthpiece of any such president bestow undue prominence in said briefings to reporters from Newsmax or the Daily Caller; nor shall any president be unduly mean to the press in general.

Last night a prominent TV journalist posted a take on the First Amendment of such breathtaking inanity that it amounted to pundit malpractice. It was as if the doctor who does your annual checkup failed to notice you have a knife sticking out of your abdomen. It was as if the mechanic you hired to rotate your tires forgot to put several of them back on your car. Report to accept chastisement, Kasie Hunt, Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News: You said one of the dumbest things any Washington journalist has said in the Trump era, and that is saying something.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270549/politics-iconic-images-dawn-perlmutter

A photograph of crying two-year-old Yanela Sanchez became the iconic image of children being separated from their parents after crossing the border illegally. The photograph immediately went viral and was featured in international coverage around the world. Yanela Sanchez became the face of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy. The cover of the July 2, 2018 edition of Time Magazine depicted a photoshopped image of Yanela looking up at President Trump, with the heading “Welcome to America.” The crying toddler was also pictured on the June 16 cover of The New York Daily News with the headline: “Callous. Soulless. Craven. Trump.”

The image, taken by photographer John Moore of Getty Images, was immediately bestowed iconic status and designated the visible symbol of family separation in the ongoing immigration debate. Iconic photographs function as symbols of historical events, controversies, persons or locations and sometimes they are representative of an entire generation. Protests and war are popular themes of iconic photos because they capture heroic, tragic and significant incidents.

The primary criteria of iconic photographs are their emotional effect. There was no shortage of images of crying children at the border. What distinguished this photograph from others is that it depicted Sandra Sanchez, Yanela’ s mother, being patted down by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The image of a Border Patrol agent frisking a Honduran woman in front of her crying child was granted iconic status because it reinforces anti-police propaganda that portrays officers as inhumane, heartless, racist and violent. The image went viral because it evoked anti-police sentiment. Overt and subliminal messages work particularly well when they resonate with previously inculcated narratives. Continual negative media depictions of law enforcement have programmed public perception to interpret the image as a police officer terrorizing a child by harassing her mother.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270554/media-accuses-trump-its-own-crimes-daniel-greenfield

On Tom LoBianco’s LinkedIn profile, the former Associated Press reporter self-identifies as a “White House reporter covering Trump Russia probes.” At CNN, LoBianco writes that he “covered the 2016 presidential race and the Russia probes.”

Now LoBianco is in trouble for reasons having nothing and everything to do with the Russia probe.

Earlier this year, Elliot Broidy, a Trump ally and Republican fundraiser, was targeted by Qatari hackers. Broidy had been sharply critical of the terror state which has been linked to everything from 9/11 to Iran. And his emails were quickly peddled to media figures who spun them into pro-Qatari hit pieces.

When Broidy struck back with a lawsuit targeting Qatar and its lobbyists, phone records showed that LoBianco had spoken three dozen times to a registered foreign agent of the Islamic terror state.

LoBianco’s stories were nakedly hostile to Broidy, the Saudis and the UAE to the extent that they were hard to distinguish from Qatari propaganda. And they were aimed at what LoBianco and his collaborator deemed a “secret campaign” to “alter U.S. foreign policy and punish Qatar.” LoBianco’s story accused Broidy of not registering as a foreign agent, but he was the one allegedly colluding with a Qatari agent.

In his story, LoBianco wrote of a “cache of emails obtained by the AP.” The emails are described as having been “anonymously leaked.” A more factually accurate term would have been “hacked” or “stolen.” And LoBianco and the AP had no problem with posting these stolen emails online.

There was nothing unusual about that. Media organizations routinely publish stolen emails while describing them as ‘leaked’: a term associated with classified government or corporate documents, not stolen private correspondence. Like LoBianco’s stories, they emphasize the role of the news organization in “analyzing” the “documents” while evading the question of how they came into their possession.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/26/defense-of-ali-watkins-exposes

In an attempt to defend its hiring of Ali Watkins, the young reporter caught having an affair with a now-indicted Senate staffer responsible for protecting some of the country’s most delicate secrets, the New York Times needs the reader to believe several incredible things:

President Trump, the Justice Department, and “right-wing” commentators are the true villains for targeting Watkins;
The affair between James Wolfe, the head of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee and a married man 32 years her senior, and Watkins is just an example of how “complicated” relationships can be in Washington, D.C.;
Watkins’s ties to a powerful man with inside information about people related to the Trump-Russia probe had nothing to do with her being hired by top news organizations, even though she casually shared that information during job interviews;
Despite repeatedly citing unnamed “intelligence officials” in many of her articles, Watkins did not use her lover as a source;
Watkins has been on a two-week “pre-planned” vacation since her ex-boyfriend was arrested on June 7 and charged with lying to the FBI about his relationship with her. (She has worked for the Times for six months.);
Watkins—not people like Carter Page, who she smeared in her reporting thanks to classified gossip from her Scoop Daddy—is the real victim because the feds seized her email and phone records.

Got all that?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/the_sad_state_of_journalism_in_the_era_of_trump_derangement_syndrome.html

Worst of all: this is from Politico, not the Onion, as Mike@Doranimated tweeted. One or more editors of a publication that aspires to be the insider’s guide to Washington, DC, read an approved for publication a story knocking Trump advisor Stephen Miller for his behavior in third grade.

Let that sink in a minute, and never forget it when you look at anything published by Politico.

http://politicalmavens.com/

On Thursday, June 21, the Times offered a front page article entitled “Incivility Infests Life in the U.S. on Trump’s Cue” , along with a heads-up about “The Art of Hooking Up” that appears on the front page of its Arts section. That review is of an installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale devoted to the “places and practices of casual sex,” specifically gay hookups with “colorful condoms and other sexual accoutrements” scattered on the floor of the pavilion. Although there are 71 participants in this biennale, in keeping with the Times’ devotion to promoting all things gay, this is the one it chose to highlight. More items deemed newsworthy on that day included violence in Nicaragua, the Taliban killing of 30 in Afghanistan and the omission of “horrific details” from the UN report on Syrian chemical attacks.

Missing from the news altogether was the fact that on June 20th, Hamas fired 45 rockets into Israel, aimed at heavily populated areas near the border, one landing near a kindergarten. This omission is particularly notable since the Times handled Hamas’ storming Israel’s border fence with burning tires and explosive kites with daily front page coverage featuring gruesome pictures of Gazan fatalities and wounded “civilians.” It called this military attack a “protest” and labeled Israel’s retaliatory measures as disproportionate, barely mentioning that the majority of Gaza’s “civilian” activity was performed by Hamas terrorists continuing their calculated use of women and children in lethal activity to arouse international sympathy. As the Arabs have repeatedly stressed, their love of martyrdom and death give them a decided edge over Israeli values of choosing and preserving life.