Louisiana Wingnut Rep. Clay Higgins Bulldozes Protester. WHAR ASSAULT CHARGES?

Rightwing Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana — known around these parts as the ‘WHAR BOXES?’ guy, or simply WHAR BOXES — took it upon himself to play bouncer Wednesday when a young protester got a little too mouthy during a press conference being held by prominent House Wingnut Caucus members including Higgins, Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), Paul Gosar DDS (R-Arizona) and others. (Higgins later tweeted that the presser was about the very real threat to US sovereignty posed by the World Health Organization, which is part of the UN One-World Communist Plot, which seems like indispensable context.)

The protester, law student and organizer/troublemaker Jake Burdett, 25, told the Daily Beast he’d actually been in DC for a Medicare for All rally led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), but when that was over, he saw the Freedom Caulkers setting up and decided to be a free speech pest, which is his right as an American citizen.

Spotting Gosar and Boebert, he decided to stick around. “I figured I’d ask them some tough questions,” he said. “Bird-dog them, whatever you want to call it.”

And indeed, as Burdett’s videos show, he was definitely heckling the rightwing dipshits, which may happen when politicians hold a “press conference” in public.


In the first video, Burdett shouts questions while Gosar is speaking, asking about his appearance at a confab held by neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and about that embarrassing campaign ad made by Gosar’s own siblings, urging people not to vote for him. As Freedom Cockups try to tell Burdett to leave, Higgins steps in to promise he’ll answer all Burdett’s questions later (about Gosar, sure!) if the young man will just stop recording and be quiet. Higgins does get right up in Burdett’s face to deliver that offer of help.

In the first video, Higgins fairly calmly introduces himself and says, “All I’m asking you to do is just peacefully stand by with your camera and I promise you — look at me — I’ll come talk to you straight up and answer all your questions. Fair enough?”

And yes, Burdett wanted to know how on earth Higgins would be in a position to know anything about Gosar’s very public embarrassment.

But Burdett hadda go and persist. While Boebert spoke, he asked her about her divorce, and asked her whether it was at all related to that time in 2017 when her restaurant customers got diarrhea from tainted pork sliders. Sure, it was a rude, nonsensical, pesky question. And goddamn it, it was also perfectly legal because this is America and we can ask rude stupid questions of our elected leaders in public, Crom bless our First Amendment!

And because we are indeed a nation of laws, our elected leaders are not allowed to assault us just for being annoying, although that’s what Higgins did. Here’s video from another angle, showing Higgins grabbing Burdett to eject him (nearly knocking over another person in the audience) and manhandling Burdett away from the speakers all the way to the sidewalk.

Burdett wasn’t harmed or arrested; he told the Daily Beast that he was questioned for about a half hour by Capitol Police and told he could go. But he was certainly none too happy that the Capitol Cops didn’t seem very interested in hearing him tell them he’d been assaulted by a member of Congress.

“It’s one thing for anybody to do that,” he said of Higgins’ behavior. “But for a sitting U.S. congressperson to think that that’s OK—it just shows an extra level of entitlement, that they feel they’re untouchable and the law doesn’t apply to them.”

For his part, Higgins, a former sheriff who loves to act the Tough Guy, later took to Twitter to lie about the encounter, claiming that Burdett was “a 103M” (police code for “disturbance by a mental person,” never mind the bad English usage) and insisting in an attached video that Burdett (an “agitator activist”) was “very disruptive and threatening, in violation of the law.”

Higgins gives himself credit in the video for having “successfully de-escalated the situation,” a phrase with which we’re certain the Inigo Montoya meme would take issue. He also claims that Burdett “aggressively disrupted” Boebert and “approached her in a threatening manner,” which just isn’t the case. He was rude and shouty, not threatening.

Say, is this a good place to mention that in 2007, Higgins, then in law enforcement, was accused of beating up an innocent bystander to an arrest, and then lying to Internal affairs to cover it up? The former cop also busted for helping with that alleged cover-up is now a congressional aide to Higgins. Higgins resigned before he could be punished for that incident.

Burdett told the Daily Beast that he’s now “evaluating my options” and that “if it looks like there is a strong case for assault and [there is] an attorney willing to take on the case, I am absolutely prepared to press charges.” On Twitter, when Burdett asked for any attorneys to tell him if they thought he had a case, civil rights attorney Andrew C. Laufer replied, “Yes, assault, battery, and a potential civil rights violation.”

Former US Attorney and current MSNBC legal commentator Joyce Vance was succinct: “Looks like an assault to me?”

[Daily Beast / Lafayette Daily Advertiser / Salon / Nola.com]

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The Flat Circle Of Republican Stupidity

Republicans long for a past that never was, and this inevitably leads them to sound like idiots as they twist themselves into pretzels trying to rationalize their calls for societal regression. Need examples? Let’s look at some in the Sunday shows!

We’re Not Book Burning, You’re the Book Burning!

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel was on “Fox News Sunday,” and while discussing the party’s post 2022 debrief report, she said a few things that were surprisingly truthful.

MCDANIEL: […] biggest takeaway we are taking is independents did not break our way, which has to happen if we’re going to win in 2024, which usually that’s what causes that red wave. And abortion was a big issue in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvanian. […] Republicans are migrating. They are migrating to red states. […] But it means the White House electorally isn’t available to us unless we go through a purple or blue state. And those states are getting bluer, because red voters are moving to the red states. […] the path to the White House runs not just through independents, but every single Republican getting on board.

It’s pretty shocking to hear anyone in the RNC, much less its chairperson, point out an objective reality. So what different actions or rhetoric do they plan to use to better their chances in 2024? Like, for example, abortion:


MCDANIEL: […] What abortion is a bad idea to Democrats? Ninth month, eighth month, seventh month? They can’t even articulate an abortion that’s a bad idea. Gender selection, if it’s a girl, you get to abort it. Tax-funded abortions for people where it’s against their religious conscience. […]

Nothing, then. They plan on changing nothing and expecting different results. If only there was a phrase for that.

Actually, correction, they do have another political strategy: The ole’ “we’re rubber, you’re glue”!

When asked about Republican attacks on trans people, which are politically unpopular, McDaniel attempted some very strained whataboutism.

MCDANIEL: […] the Democrats are using this word book banning. […] That’s a lie. There isn’t book banning. What Republicans are doing are protecting our children and parental rights […] But it’s good to know the Democrats playbook and we’re going to push on that, especially coming from the Democrat party that is banning freedom of speech, that is canceling people, that is destroying your life if you don’t think with their orthodoxy. This is the Democrat Party who is saying if you think outside of the box and everything, we are dictating to you, you will make you lose your job, we will destroy you.

Republicans have literally been fighting Disney because it dared exercised free speech, made book banning much easier, extended Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bigotry, and threatened to separate children from parents who are not bigoted toward their trans kids. But, sure, it’s the Democrats who are “destroying anyone who doesn’t conform to orthodoxy and taking their jobs while threatening to destroy them.”

Speaking of, how’s that dirt file on fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson?

Let’s Default Our National Debt!

House Republican Whip Tom Emmer appeared on CNN’s “State of The Union” and wouldn’t directly state that his party won’t force a default on the nation’s debt.

Host Dana Bash tried pointing out specifically how the cuts they want would hurt his constituents, but Emmer made it clear he will ignore them or just blame Nancy Pelosi when the reality doesn’t match his delusions.

GOP’s Vanity Tech Douche Candidate Returns

NBC’s “Meet The Press” had on Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Although considering his polling, calling him a candidate is a bit too generous, but nonetheless, we are all subjected to his stupidity on TV and expected to take him seriously. So fresh from giving Don Lemon his last good journalistic moment on CNN, Ramaswamy made Chuck Todd look like Walter Cronkite.

When Ramaswamy brings up an example of a person who says their gender doesn’t align with their biological sex, he seems to know the difference between sex and gender. But when Todd questions his stance on gender being binary, Ramaswamy then perhaps deliberately conflates biological sex with gender.

RAMASWAMY: Well, there’s, there’s two X chromosomes if you’re a woman. An X and a Y, that means you’re a man.

TODD: There’s a lot of scientific research out there –

RAMASWAMY: There’s a biological basis for this —

TODD: There’s a lot of scientific research out there that says gender is a spectrum.

RAMASWAMY: Chuck, I respectfully disagree.

Funny how these transphobic clowns want to bring biology into this UNTIL scientific research disputes their transphobia and then they fall back on what they “feel” or disagree just because.

Ramaswamy also equates abortion with murder but says it’s a “states’ right issue.” That’s not how “states’ rights” work, even if a Republican nominee barely polling above skim milk says so.

Asa Hutchinson’s Decimal Points

Speaking of polling, Asa Hutchinson announced he was running for president almost exactly a month ago. He appeared on CNN’s “State Of the Union” this week to call for going back to a Republican Party that died long before Trump came down an escalator in 2015. So how are Republican voters embracing this? We’ll let this picture summarize it.

Can this change for Hutchinson? Likely not when he is polling lower than the fictional Conor Roy in “Succession,” who we actually compared to Hutchinson too optimistically.

Phrasing, Steve Scalise!

When asked about any possible tension between himself and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on ABC’s “This Week,” Steve Scalise chose an odd way to describe their closeness yet trust.

Could be worse: Scalise could have kept misunderstanding what “raw dog” is.

Have a week



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This Week In Libelslander!

It’s a big week for defamation cases — and threats!

In the wake of Dominion settling its incredibly valid defamation lawsuit against Fox News for $787 million, it’s important to remember that most defamation cases are stupid bullshit that waste the time of our courts and taxpayer money, all in an effort to stop other people from criticizing the rich and powerful.

Why Did Fox News Settle And Why Didn’t They Do It Two Years Ago?

But remember we shall, thanks to three Republicans who couldn’t help but make fools of themselves in order to aid us all in our continuing civic education. In Texas, secessionists have filed a defamation lawsuit arguing that it’s illegal to call seceding from the union “seditious treason.” In Florida, a state legislator is threatening to sue her constituents for defamation for stating true facts to her face. And in Utah and/or DC, Senator Mike Lee continues to make us all wonder if he did, in fact, actually go to law school. (Maybe he attended with George Santos?)

So let’s dig in!


Let’s start in Texas

Jeff Leach is a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives. He’s, well, pretty terrible on most issues. He doesn’t think women are full citizens and supports total abortion bans. He opposes gun regulation, wants a constitutional amendment to ban state income tax, and supported SB 1, a voter disenfranchisement bill Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed last year.

However, unlike many other members of his party, Representative Leach does not actually support sedition and treason against the United States.

Texas always has some crazies talking about seceding from the union. And for extra special fun, those crazies include several Republican members of the state Legislature! Last month, these anti-America enthusiasts introduced HB 3596, which they call the “TEXIT Referendum Act.” In effect, the TEXIT bill would trigger a statewide vote on whether or not Texans want to engage in Civil War 2.0. (And not for nothing, the author of HB 3596 was none other than Representative Bryan Slaton, whose other key issues include calling drag queens groomers and taking rights away from women … and who has recently been credibly accused of sexual misconduct for preying on a young Capitol intern who is “under the age of 21.” In fact, he’s been so credibly accused that last night he resigned!)[Due to an editing mistake by me, the Editrix, we incorrectly said Slaton had resigned. In fact, that was an entirely different Tennessee Republican member of the House who resigned after serial grotesque sexual harassment of House interns. You can understand our mistake. No apologies to Bryan Slaton.]

To his credit, Leach was … not a fan of the TEXIT proposal.

(More good Leach tweets here on Texas secession here, here, and here.)

So far, Leach has been right and the TEXIT bill has not moved since being assigned to committee.

But now, we get to the good part.

Wednesday, while he was chairing a House Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee hearing, Leach was served with a truly ridiculous defamation lawsuit about … his tweets.

The person suing Leach is Morgan McComb, a constituent with a very sane Twitter feed who fancies herself a “Republican activist.” She describes herself in her bio as “A TRUE Conservative TX Grassroots Leader, Mom & Patriot Community RE-Organizer. Rescues horses. God Guns Guts and Glory!” so you just know she’s on the level. McComb is also currently under felony indictment for violating Texas’s online impersonation statute. In 2020, she allegedly used “the name and photo of a rival Republican campaign operative in Frisco” and “used the account to publish the other campaigner’s records from family court, psychological and counseling records, and a criminal court record.” She seems nice!

So McComb is, umm, an interesting character. But when you come across a case this bad, you also have to consider the lawyer. McComb’s lawyer in this truly ridiculous case is Frisco-based Paul Davis. Davis is a supergenius who posted a video of himself outside the Capitol at the January 6 insurrection and still thinks he did nothing wrong. Since losing his old lawyer job for, you know, participating in a coup attempt, McComb has decided to make a name for himself by filing the worst lawsuits he can think of and branding himself a “lawyer for patriots.” He also has the dubious achievement of filing perhaps the most bogus of all the anti-democracy suits after the 2020 election, arguing the entire 117th Congress was “illegitimately elected.” (Here’s that complaint. It’s a doozy.)

The suit is being funded by the “Texas Nationalist Movement,” a group of people who are exactly who you think they are. TNM has apparently been excitedly hoping for an opportunity to file exactly this ridiculous lawsuit for a while now, with a blog on its site from July 2022 titled “Should TEXIT Supporters Sue Opposers Who Accuse Us of Treason?”

The suit against Leach for all the libelslander is pretty much what you would expect from all of these brilliant minds.

To the Complaint!

Although McComb whines about several of Leach’s tweets in the complaint, there is only one where he addresses her directly.

According to McComb, this defames both her and … the Texas secessionist movement?

“In fact, one obstacle to the movement for Texas independence is that many people mistakenly believe that it literally is sedition or treason to advocate for Texas independence.”

idk.

According to the complaint, Leach’s tweet is defamation per se, because “Neither McComb’s support for the TEXIT Bill nor a belief that “Texas should secede from the United States” fit the definition of treason or sedition under the United States Code or any other applicable law.”

Riiiiiiiight.

Adorably, taking a close look at the complaint itself shows just how meritless it is. The case the suit cites for support is Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity v. Dickinson, where the Texas Supreme Court just ruled … that it was not defamatory for a forced birth proponent to call abortion rights activists “murderers.”

We hold that the challenged statements are protected opinion about abortion law made in pursuit of changing that law, placing them at the heart of protected speech under the United States and Texas Constitutions. Such opinions are constitutionally protected even when the speaker applies them to specific advocacy groups that support abortion rights. In our state and nation, an advocate is free “to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject,” perhaps most especially on controversial subjects like legalized abortion.

To most people with a modicum of logical reasoning, it would be pretty obvious that this case does not, in fact, support a finding of defamation here. But, according to the complaint,

Leach’s statements can be distinguished from
the statements at issue in the Dickson case because a reasonably
intelligent member of the public is not equipped with the same general
understanding and awareness that supporting Texas independence is not
sedition or treason as compared to the general understanding that
abortion is not legally defined to be murder.

In fact, one obstacle to the movement for Texas independence is that many people mistakenly believe that it literally is sedition or treason to advocate for Texas independence. Thus, the holding the Texas Supreme Court reversing the Dallas Court of Appeals holding in Dickson does not apply to the facts of this case. Therefore, under the reasoning of the Dickson precedent, Leach’s statement is actionable defamation.

No, I don’t have any ungodly idea what that is supposed to mean. And at no other point does the complaint attempt to explain why it’s constitutionally protected speech to call someone a murderer but not a traitor. Or, for that matter, how McComb and her buddies plan on seceding from the union without committing treason or sedition. Since in our history, seceding from the union tends to be an act of war, and therefore, you know, seditious treason.

But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good story!

Meanwhile, in Florida …

Earlier this week, Florida state Senator Ileana Garcia voted for SB 1718, a bill that would make it a felony for anyone in Florida to associate with an undocumented person. While a group of Floridians talked to Garcia about her vote, Thomas Kennedy, an immigrant and political activist, called her “illegitimate” and stated that she won her election because of “a ghost candidate.”

Guess what? It’s true! Alex Rodriguez, the ghost candidate in question, pleaded guilty to taking bribes in the election fraud scheme that helped elect Garcia. He was recruited by Frank Artiles, a former Florida state senator, who paid Rodriguez to change his party affiliation from Republican to independent and put his name on the ballot.

The reason? The incumbent Democrat in the district in question also had the last name Rodriguez. In the end, Rodriguez the ghost candidate, who did not campaign at all, received 6,382 votes. Garcia won her senate seat by 32 votes.

So, naturally, Senator Garcia’s response to a constituent pointing out this inconvenient truth was to threaten to sue him.


Kennedy: You have no validity. You won because of voter fraud.You’re illegitimate.

Garcia: llegitimate how, Thomas?

Kennedy: You won because of a ghost candidate funded by [Florida Power & Light].

Garcia: Put him on video saying that.

Kennedy (to Garcia staffer videotaping the exchange): You won because of a ghost candidate funded by FPL.

Garcia: If I sued you tomorrow for that comment, would you be up for that?

Kennedy: Sue me. Sue me. Sue me for defamation.

Garcia: It’s on record. It’s on record. It’s on record. We got a good defamation bill coming up. We got a good defamation bill coming. What’s coming up now, what’s coming up now is the validity of a couple of other things that are going on.

The bill Garcia is referring to here is SB 1220/HB 991, an anti-free speech proposal designed to stop people from criticizing Ron DeSantis and other Republicans. And in particular, it says that you don’t even have to prove you suffered any harm or damages if the defamation suit is about the fact that someone called you a racist, sexist, homophobe, or transphobe.

Yes, really. It is actually that bad. The bill has been condemned far and wide as an attack on free speech — which it absolutely is. In particular, it is intended to scare oppressed people into being afraid to publicly stand up for themselves. Make no mistake, SB 1220 is a fascist bill that is designed to silence critics and further oppress groups of people the state has already historically sought to disenfranchise.

It’s also incredibly unconstitutional, but the Roberts Court has given fascists every reason to think that they will do the bidding of their fellow Republicans, precedent and rule of law be damned.

Once again, for the cheap seats in the back: TRUE STATEMENTS ARE, CATEGORICALLY, NOT DEFAMATORY. But Garcia’s immediate jump to legal threats tells you exactly where she stands: She will use the legal system to silence her critics, even if she has to change the law to do it.

So that’s fun …

I always enjoy mocking this particular version of stupid bullshit. For whatever reason, it seems to be my sweet spot (luv u, Bob Murray, Diamond & Silk, and my buddies Monty and Steve). And while I do appreciate the entertainment, these kinds of lawsuits and threats are actually a huge problem in our legal system.

Because this isn’t just about one or two hilariously batshit cases. Using completely meritless lawsuits to try to shut up people who disagree with you is now a common tactic of politicians, the mega-rich, and other powerful people. From Donald Trump and Devin Nunes to Don Blankenship and Bob Murray, abusing the legal system to stifle free speech has become an everyday.

Just to get in on the fun, on Tuesday Utah Senator Mike Lee, otherwise known for his efforts to stage a coup, tweeted that it was defamation to report true facts about Clarence Thomas’s corruption.

Lee also showed his ass in this tweet (not literally, thank god). In addition to being just entirely wrong about the definition of defamation, the freedom-loving senator also made it a point to criticize New York Times v. Sullivan, the case that made it harder for public figures to sue people for being mean to them. For years, far-right looney toons like Lee and Donald Trump have been openly saying they want to be able to use the legal system to attack people for criticizing them. Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have already written that they want to overturn Sullivan, because powerful men should be able to do whatever they want.

Now, it looks like Lee is even saying we should change the definition of defamation to include true facts. That is, emphatically, not a thing, but with this Supreme Court, who the fuck knows.

The American legal system is already set up to work for the rich and only the rich. Even when a lawsuit is entirely meritless, the people defending a defamation, libel, or slander lawsuit usually have to pay their own attorneys’ fees — and even if you get a lawsuit dismissed at an early stage, several hundred dollars an hour adds up quickly.

These kinds of lawsuits and threats also pose the danger of simply stifling critical speech before it is uttered. Most of the time, scaring people into silence is the entire point of suing in the first place. Small local news outlets, independent journalists, activists, and everyday citizens alike must be free to criticize public officials and public policy decisions.

Speaking truth to power is exactly the kind of thing the American legal system should protect, not punish.

As the Supreme Court held in Sullivan, the United States has

“a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

Free speech is something Americans should be proud of and fiercely protect. Even people we don’t like have the constitutional right to be assholes. Like Mike Lee!

[ Complaint ]

For more legal rants (and kittens!), follow JLC on Twitter (for now), or mastodon, or wherever!

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Texas delivers consequences to disruptive law school protesters

Regular readers of Twitchy know about how students at Stanford shouted down conservative Federal Judge Kyle Duncan and how students at Yale Law School did something similar to a panel on civil liberties (because irony is dead).

(Full disclosure: this author is an alumnus of Yale Law School and is embarrassed for these chuckleheads.)

Now it seems that the chickens might be coming home to roost in Texas.

In order to be licensed to practice law, Texas (like most states) requires a person to have good character—which in our experience is mainly a matter of not having anything in one’s record that shows poor character. And the State Bar of Texas has some bad news for disruptive protesters:

The text of the tweet cuts off but it says ‘ … who was subjected to vulgar heckling when he attempted to deliver prepared remarks.’

Kudos to Mr. Cruz for taking action.

Again, here’s the remaining text: ‘ … Nathan Hecht, the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, wrote on behalf of the bar examiners, who evaluate applications to the bar. ‘School reactions to recent violations of free-speech policies suggest that reliance is not justified.”

In other words, since Stanford wasn’t enforcing their own rules, the Bar needed to take up the slack.

The last sentence says ‘The admission process should examine whether applicants can be expected to fulfill this promise [of courtesy and civility].’

What do you think the chances are that the students who said this call themselves feminists?

To fill in the cut off text: ‘ … he plans to file bar complaints against the students who disrupted Duncan, some of whom, such as Denni Arnold, have been identified.’

Good for him. Seriously.

To fill in the cut off text: ‘ … not in compliance with accreditation standards that require it to promote free speech.’

This got some praise:

Mr. Randazza is a respected First Amendment Lawyer.

This.

We’ve lived there. As long as you have air conditioning, it’s a pretty nice state.

Of course, not everyone is pleased:

Free speech doesn’t mean that you can scream all the time and let no one else get a word in edgewise. The First Amendment does allow for neutral time, place and manner restrictions, including shutting everyone up so a speaker can actually speak, especially in classrooms and in court. And the State Bar of Texas can reasonably ask that if a person can’t let other people speak at school, will that person be equally disruptive in court?

(And the Bill of Attainder issue is too silly to bother with.)

Another person thought they had the perfect solution: lie!

Ironically, maybe the Bar is hoping for a few liars. This is pure speculation, but it is probably easier to justify excluding a person from the legal profession for lying about their incivility than it is for the incivility itself. So, maybe this is designed to be a proverbial ‘perjury trap’.

Aaron (Sibarium) defended Texas’ argument:

And the principle of civility is enforced in other contexts without any difficulty. For instance, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism’s official twitter account posted this story called: ‘The True Cost of Incivility in the Legal Profession’.

That article discussed a New York case where a deposition was constantly interrupted by childish insults by opposing lawyers, leading a judge to sanction the lawyers by forcing them to pay over $68,000. They were also ‘mandated to attend a [legal class] on civility and provide the … instructor with a copy of the deposition transcript at issue so the instructor could use it in his seminar ‘as an example of uncivil sanctionable behavior.”

Ouch. To be a fly on the wall in that class …

And if we can go off on a rant, here … law schools are not serving their students well if they don’t constantly expose them to other points of view and if they don’t ensure that they know how to express disagreement with those persons logically and civilly. In court, you can’t just shout ‘that person is a transphobe!’ and expect to win most cases. And even if a lawyer doesn’t practice in litigation, your words and behavior is likely to be scrutinized and even the subject of legal action involving people who think in ways very different from your own. A good lawyer seeks to understand how other people think, how their arguments work, and (if necessary) to tear those arguments apart, civilly, using that knowledge. A lawyer educated in a cocoon, a lawyer who can’t even cope with disagreement, is a bad lawyer.

(Gets off soapbox.)

Of course, one person was confused about the whole issue:

Occupational hazard, we suppose.



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Ron DeSantis’ remarks on blogger bill shatter yet another breathless BS media narrative about him

Last week, NBC News breathlessly reported that the Florida legislature was considering taking up a bill from a single state senator who wanted to require paid bloggers who cover the governor, his office, and the state legislature to register with the state. Naturally, the featured image for their story was a photo of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the bill and had given no indication that he supported it.

NBC News had their narrative: Ron DeSantis is an authoritarian fascist dictator, and way too many people out there predisposed to hate him swallowed that narrative, hook, line, and sinker. Well, now we have to ask if NBC News plans on doing a followup to their original story, given what DeSantis said today during his State of the State Address:

Not only was there nothing to really strike down, because the state legislature didn’t take up State Sen. Jason Brodeur’s stupid bill, but DeSantis has made it clear that he does not and would not support such a measure — and he’s absolutely right to be disgusted with the media who were more concerned with making him look like an authoritarian fascist dictator than they were with the actual facts.

Yep. That was by design.

And yet another BS narrative about Ron DeSantis shatters into a million pieces.

Is this the clip Rubin is referring to? With noted NBC News “presidential historian” Michael Beschloss sounding off about “Rick DeSantis,” aka the second coming of Mussolini?

How embarrassing for Michael Beschloss. How embarrassing for NBC. How embarrassing for the mainstream media.

Where does Ron DeSantis go for his apology? Because he sure as hell deserves one.

To be fair, the media aren’t sorry, so we really can’t expect them to apologize.

As if they’d ever walk it back.

(3/4 seems pretty generous, honestly.)

And, gluttons for punishment that they are, the media keep going back for more. Don’t expect them to learn any lessons from this. They didn’t learn any the last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that …

Like we said: gluttons for punishment. And instead of owning up to their mistakes, count on them humiliating themselves even further in order to save face.

Hey, we have faith that the MSM will come up with something.

***

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Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium shines scary spotlight on woke, anti-free-speech Biden judicial nominee

It’s easy to get lost in the sea of screwups and garbage policies from Joe Biden’s administration, but it’s also extremely important to try to stay afloat. Because you need to know what these people are doing. Because it could have long-term, really bad consequences.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, who has done really excellent work exposing insidious leftism in higher education, has a new scoop about Joe Biden’s nominee for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Maria Araujo Kahn’s record should concern each and every one of us, and in a thread accompanying his story, Sibarium explains why:

Judge Kahn is very, very bad news:

Here’s the video, by the way, in case you’re interested:

Lovely. Just the sort of mentality you look for in a U.S. Court of Appeals judge.

Are you worried yet?

But wait — all this gets worse still:

Any other left-wing nutjob Biden nominees we should know about?

Liberal journalists and activists love to screech about “extremist” judges and whatnot. Well, what would you call the women discussed above if not extremists?

Donald Trump may be an aspiring authoritarian, but when it comes to Joe Biden, it’s not aspirational; it’s real. And it’s scary.

Because the crazy is coming from inside the White House.

***

Related:

Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium details the hell Yale Law put part-Cherokee student and Federalist Society member through over BS ‘racism’ complaints

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PhD. discovers conservatives are ACTUALLY saying whatever they want on podcasts and REEE (thread)

Conservatives … saying whatever they want?! OH NOEZ!

Not WHATEVER they want.

Really?!

WHATEVER they want!

How can this be?!

You know the face you make when you look to see where your DoorDasher is and you see they’re going the wrong direction and they’ve already picked up your food? Yeah, just made that face. Seems this PhD. spent a long time collecting data about conservatives saying whatever they want on podcasts.

Can’t make this up.

Now, she claims this study was done over 36k shows from across the political spectrum.

But it’s interesting how she only seems to focus on mean ol’ conservatives saying whatever they want.

Which external fact-checks did she use?

Which dictionary?

Wanna bet it was PolitiFact or Snopes?

In fact, there are even MORE conservatives than she documented out there saying WHATEVER they want.

REEEEEEEE.

Apple.

K.

This though …

We’ve seen firsthand what the government and public health were doing with messaging, narrative, and media … did it ever occur to this doctor that maybe these ‘false claims’ were conservatives trying to get the TRUTH out there?

Nah.

Two years doing this.

Holy cow, did someone pay for this?

Yay academia. *eye roll*

The Guardian.

Because of course.

Guess how her data is going over?

Psh, sense of humor?! NEVER.

Terrifying.

Oops.

Yeah, we notice these deep dives ever really only go one way, and then when the Right does their own deep dive we see garbage like this.

She spent two years collecting this data.

Wow.

Ruh-roh, there’s someone else saying whatever they want.

Better write that down.

The nerve.

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