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Mueller: This Should Not Be The End
Mueller has concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. After two years of concerted attacks by a biased press and a corrupt bureaucracy, the collusion fantasy has been laid to rest.
Now let’s talk about collusion.
In 2016, and for the first time in U.S. history, a sitting administration used the power of federal law enforcement to spy on the opposition party during a presidential election. It justified that spying by citing a fraudulent document (the Steele Dossier), paid for by its own party’s candidate, as the basis for the warrant. The spying was overseen by fiercely partisan officials in the Department of Justice openly contemptuous of the opposition candidate. Other administration officials tried hundreds of times, without explanation or plausible justification, to gain access to confidential information collected during the spying.
If the administration’s party’s candidate had won the election, it seems certain that none of this would ever have come to light, an administration and Department of Justice shot through with corruption would have welcomed its successor, and its misconduct would have been buried forever.
That didn’t happen. Now the lingering corruption of the Obama era must be exposed and removed.
Published in Politics
Really? What story has Fox News fabricated and broadcast for over two years in order to benefit the Republican Party?
Surely you’re not claiming that the mainstream media is NOT a partisan institution? Why is a partisan institution entitled to such broad constitutional protection that is never extended to its partisan opponents?
Don’t be silly. Reasonableness is an objective legal standard and has been for centuries. It’s not a feeling. At any time in your lifetime, has the mainstream media not favored the party of government?
What you’re calling sophistry on my part, I’m calling dangerously willful ignorance on your part. The mainstream media has for your entire lifetime been an ally and advocate of the Democrat Party.
Liberty Defender, eh?
Read it again. He’s calling Big Media a “partisan institution,” but he’s pointing out to you that the Democratic Party, and its wholly-owned media subsidiaries, are not the government. Believe it or not, America’s political parties are not government agencies. They, and the media, and you and me, are allowed to be partisan. The first amendment applies to all of us.
Joshua, this would be well and fine in another setting, but you need to learn how we do things here.
If, in order to defend your side–your “us”–you need to assume that your opponent…
…then it is your right, indeed your duty to your comrades-at-arms, to do so.
Our Ricochet rules of engagement can be as liberating for you as they are for others, once you get accustomed to them.
You and Henry seem to be treating this as some sort of a intellectual game–mental tiddlywinks, or a rational discussion in search of truth, or something. What about kids throwing beer cans on your lawn–I suppose you are for that, too? Did you want Hillary to win, is that what you are saying?
No, I’ve said again and again that the press is partisan. But even partisan institutions enjoy robust First Amendment protection, because that’s how the Constitution works. I don’t know what “not extended to its partisan opponents” means: we all enjoy robust First Amendment protection, and are free to express whatever opinions we like.
Of course! The mainstream media was opposed to Reagan and both Bushes; it favored Clinton and Obama. The press tilts left and has for decades, attacking Republicans and studiously looking the other way when Democrats are in charge. It is, on balance, a biased collection of people.
But that’s no excuse to deprive them of their Constitutional liberties, any more than depriving gun nuts or school teachers of their Constitutional liberties is justifiable simply because they also are biased collections of people.
It seems to me that LD is very much saying that the media are effectively an arm of the government, and should be denied 1st Amendment rights because of that. In that regard, Joshua is addressing the very argument that LD made:
And earlier:
Joshua and Henry are directly countering the very argument made.
@skipsul, I believe @markcamp is engaging in sarcasm. His ribbing is directed at LD, not at yours truly.
Round about the time that an institution’s self-policing degrades is when we start talking about government making up the difference.
The press has for a long time been self-policing – we can argue about how ‘balanced’ they were when Cronkite was cronking but it is clear that by comparison to that leaden age they aren’t even trying to self-police and are not only unbalanced but unhinged and unmoored.
It seems to me that it is one thing for government to monitor or restrain the press and quite another for it to shield it from citizens seeking redress for wrongs committed by the press.
Libel laws not applying to ‘public figures’ is an understandable exception but it is also not equal protection under the law. Thus sliding the scale towards a public figure being able to put the hurt on a publication that harmed them doesn’t seem to me an attack on the Freedom of the Press as such.
Not that they won’t squeal like a stuck ink barrel about it.
@skipsul:
Joshua’s right. My apparent criticism of him and Henry was not that at all. I was gently spoofing the logical fallacies that we humans, even on Ricochet, are often tempted to engage in. When I try really hard to be funny, occasionally I am, but usually this happens.
I hope that LD and the others who sometimes (or who, in a few edge cases, always) fall prey to the allure of non sequitur fallacies (there he goes again with the Latin), out of an abundance of commendable enthusiasm for the President of the United States–whom we all support–will take it in the spirit in which it was intended.
It is even ok if they engage in friendly trash-talk directed at me*. You will delete the expletives, and I will laugh at the really good stuff and never take offense at the rest.
*As long as they don’t make a logical argument–I would consider them “fighting words”, and I can’t be held accountable for my actions at that point. I might even respond with a non-sarcastic reply, stating my agreement or disagreement, and the factual or logical basis of it. Ricochet would go downhill from there, straight to heck.
I’ve explained how the Democrat Party is the party of government. You responded to an argument I wasn’t making by ignoring the term as I defined it, and employing your own definition. I think someone else “sarcasted” on that technique in an earlier post.
You and I disagree. This kind of surprises me, given that your original post is such vigorous advocacy of aggressively investigating and punishing obvious Democrat Party corruption. As I pointed out many posts ago, I’m not really making a new argument, I’m making the same one that Andrew Breitbart made.
This is a tangent of a tangent, but you have indeed raised a fascinating discussion topic. In 1968, reporting on the outcome of the Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite declared that the war was a stalemate, probably unwinnable. The truth was that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had been so thoroughly routed by the US and South Vietnamese forces that the communists were incapable of further waging war in South Vietnam.
I confess that growing up during the 70s I was under the clear impression that the Tet Offensive had been a defeat for the US and South Vietnam. The opposite was true.
That’s how the press policed themselves 50 years ago. Have things deteriorated?
nope
It certainly feels like they have, but that could just be us being more distrustful.
But it doesn’t. The dismissal of Sarah Palin’s libel suit against the New York Times proved that. “First Amendment for me, but not for thee,” sayeth the judiciary on behalf of the New York Times.
How is that supposed to be equivalent? If Sarah Palin says/writes publicly that the NYT is a socialist rag responsible for supporting regimes around the world that engage is genocide and are therefore responsible for murders, and the NYT sues her for libel, and succeeds, then you’d have an argument of unequal treatment.
Ah, sorry. I hadn’t noted the particular terminology you’re using.
No, we should not restrict the first amendment rights of people who happen to disagree with us, even if there are a lot of them and they all keep saying the same kinds of things. Sorry, I am not a First Amendment absolutist, but I am awfully close.
I understand the facts
I understand the problem you claim exists: you disagree with the verdict.
What changes to the law do you propose to solve the problem? A, b, c, or some other law?
There, fixed it for you. And that is probably the only change Liberty Defender was referring to.
Then I agree with the proposed change of Liberty Defender. Under the Constitution, libel laws were legal. The sophists of the court of the “Living Constitution” over-ruled them for the case of the press, by fiat. By stare decisis, their bastard law is the law.
If I wait patiently, I will eventually agree with everyone on Ricochet about something.
It would be better if you just agreed with ME, about EVERYTHING. :-)
I have never suggested that anyone’s First Amendment rights ought to be restricted because he or she happens to disagree with us.
The mainstream media don’t just disagree with us. The mainstream media fabricate, prevaricate – they LIE to us and about us, and they leverage their lies against us through their seamless government connection. The mainstream media then claim that the First Amendment protects them from suffering any consequences.
The mainstream media are integrated with, and virtually indistinguishable from the federal government.
We deny Second Amendment protection to felons, since they have demonstrated their willingness to abuse their right to keep and bear arms. It is not unreasonable to suggest that constitutional protection should not be extended to a press that abuses its First Amendment rights by not being independent, by not being honest, and by leveraging its status with government to harm innocent political adversaries and the public. The First Amendment ought not protect such corruption.
If it doesn’t protect such corruption, then we don’t have a first amendment.
I don’t mind punishing certain corrupt expression — fraud and slander, for example. My objection to LD’s formulation is in its presumption that “the press” has a “status with government.” The press — that is, most of the people who constitute it — likes Democrats. It agrees with the Democratic agenda. That doesn’t make it special, or different from people like me who have nothing more than a keyboard and a Ricochet account and a blog. It’s just people who choose to associate with each other and who share a common view.
Now, if government gives favorable treatment to certain press companies, that’s another matter. But I don’t think it does, not in any meaningful sense. As far as I understand it, the special lenience regarding libel and slander as applied to public officials applies to everyone, not only the press. If we want to fiddle with that law, that’s fine, but fiddle with it for everyone, not just the press.
Again, my specific objection to the thrust of LD’s argument is that it asserts something I reject, a special status for the press relative to the rest of us filthy scribblers happily exercising our First Amendment rights. There should be no such special status in law. Beyond that, shared sympathies are irrelevant to me.
I hate losing, but I can see that achieving peace on Ricochet is worth it, so I’m in.
You can ensure that, from this moment on, I agree with you about everything.
You don’t even need my help!
That’s an interpretation I cannot understand, that the 1st Amendment protects government corruption. Really? Do you really mean that, Reticulator?
The 1st Amendment opens with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In other words, the government may not corruptly put its awesome power behind any religion.
But you’re suggesting that the same 1st Amendment demands that the government be protected when it puts its awesome power behind a dishonest, partisan press? I don’t get that.
Put another way: as I’ve pointed out, Sarah Palin v. New York Times proved that individuals have zero power against the press, even when that press is knowingly and intentionally dishonest about an individual.
In the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, the press completely integrated itself with the highest levels of the federal government. The government knowingly took a Democrat-Media Complex work of fiction, and used it to wage a years-long government campaign against a Presidential candidate, then President-elect, then President.
Now, if we accept your formulation, that the 1st Amendment must protect government-press corruption, that means that individuals have zero power against government.
I don’t think that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
I think so. It protects government corruption, and it protects our ability to combat it.