How can the US media NOT be seen as a star chamber*?

CNN's Toobin Rewrites History: Unlike Trump, Obama Had No Scandals!

. . . "This is the way Washington works now. You go work in the White House, you sort of presume you're going to end up having to hire a lawyer for better or for worse,” she shrugged. That’s when CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin jumped in to argue this was only a Trump problem, not a politics problem:

“ 'You know, people in Barack Obama's White House, they didn't have to hire lawyers because there were no scandals. It's true,” Toobin gushed. Trying not to appear partisan, he quickly added, “George W. Bush, there were no scandals to speak of in the White House there.”

"Borger agreed. “That's the way it is now. It's the way it is now,” she stated. Toobin continued defending Obama:

“ 'Well, no, I don't think it's just the times. I think it's the presidency,” he stated, adding, “[I]t's like not all presidents are the same. I mean, this is a president who is under investigation for good reason.' ” . . .

The Seven Most Undercovered Obama Scandals
IRS Targets the Tea Party 
Fast and Furious Scandal

VA Scandal Gets Less Coverage Than Local New Jersey Story 
Relying on “Stupidity of the American Voter” to Pass ObamaCare
ObamaCare Failures
Solyndra Scandal
Ransom for Hostages? 

Exposed: Media Double Standard in Attack on Karen Pence’s Christianity
. . . "The media sunk to a new low when they attacked second lady Karen Pence this week for her decision to teach art at a Christian school in Virginia.

"CNN’s chief national correspondent John King even questioned whether or not Pence should receive taxpayer-funded security protection or government housing because she is working for a Christian school." . . .

Tony Branco

Quora comments that CNN is most unbiased!:  . . . "Two channels clearly take a one sided view of the news. MSNBC's reporting clearly favors the left (liberal Democrat) viewpoint. Fox News should be renamed RNNN (Republican National News Network) because of its close alignment with the a Republican Party and its radically right bias.

"Of all the U.S. news channels, CNN is certainly the most unbiased. However, as with all U.S. based new channels, CNN reports predominantly US news." . . .

*Star chamber . . . "Definitions for an ancient high court exercising jurisdiction in certain cases mainly criminal which sat without the intervention of a jury It consisted of the king's council or of the privy council only with the addition of certain judges It could proceed on mere rumor or examine witnesses it could apply torture" . . .

Biden's Betrayal of SEALs should Doom Presidential Run

Daniel John Sobieski  . . . "Biden was the top choice for 28 percent of likely Democratic primary voters surveyed in a recent University of Massachusetts Amherst poll, despite his not having declared a 2020 presidential bid. Yet while critics of President Trump’s foreign policy accuse him of a degree of recklessness and immaturity that place the nation’s security at risk, Biden’s service in an administration that gave us the criminal negligence and incompetence of Benghazi, provides us with an example of why he should not be trusted with the nation’s security or the lives of its heroes."
"As author and attorney David Shestoksas points out in his review of Betrayed: The Shocking The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17 as told by a Navy SEAL's Father, Biden betrayed the heroes that killed Osama Bin Laden to further his political ambitions:" . . .

"Then there is Joe Biden, whose loose lips got members of Seal Team 6 targeted for revenge and killed in an Afghan mission known as Extortion 17. As Investor’s Business Daily recounted on May 28, 2013:" . . .

. . . "The Chinook helicopter carrying the rescue team was shot down by a Taliban-owned rocket-propelled grenade over the Wardak Province on Aug. 6, 2011, killing 38, including 30 Americans and 15 members of Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden just three months prior." . . .

. . . "The deaths of more than 20 Navy SEALs from the unit that took out Osama bin Laden is connected to a loose-lipped vice president who likes to sometimes pose as a presidential action figure. " . . .       

Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17 as told by a Navy SEAL's Father 

. . . Adding insult to injury, Billy learned that a Muslim Imam was invited by our own US military leaders to “pray” over his son’s dead body. As US war heroes lay in their caskets before their last flight home, the Imam damned America’s fallen warriors as “infidels” who would burn in hell. As US military leaders observed the ceremony at Bagram Air Base, the Imam boasted over the deaths of US heroes with words such as, “The companions of heaven [Muslims] are the winners.”  . . .

Obama stonewalls SEAL Team 6 helicopter crash probe, watchdog says

. . . "Charlie Strange, whose Navy cryptologist son, Michael, was on Extortion 17, told The Times last year that it was too much of a coincidence for Taliban to be standing so near the landing zone. “Somebody was leaking to the Taliban,” said Mr. Strange. “They knew. Somebody tipped them off. There were guys in a tower. Guys on the bush line. They were sitting there, waiting. And they sent our guys right into the middle.”

Oh, well. Celebrities and talk show hosts love the guy, so what do a bunch of warriors - 38 to be exact - mean to the Obamas?

Pentagon releases names of 30 Americans killed in Afghanistan helicopter crash

Wreckage is seen from the Chinook helicopter shot down last week that left 30 Americans and eight Afghans dead.

9/11 Poster Featuring ISIS Rep. Ilhan Omar At State West Virginia Capitol Is Accurate - Democrats “Outraged”

Pamela Geller

"The Democrats and their running dogs in the enemedia are having hissie fits over a poster in the West Virginia statehouse that suggests Americans have forgotten the horrors of 9/11 and the promise to “Never Forget” because Americans are electing pro-jihad, pro-Islamic State Jew-haters such as Ilhan Omar. Indeed, the poster is accurate. Ilhan Omar pushed a judge for lenient sentences for Muslims who joined the Islamic State group. The Islamic State shared the same religious ideology and goals as Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In many cases, the Islamic State was more brutal, more savage than al Qaeda. The poster is correct.
. . . 
"Once again the left equates opposition to jihad terror with islamophobia." . . .

Muslim Kafir-phobia often leads to bloodshed. TD

When is Nancy Pelosi going to rid the House Foreign Relations Committee of Ilhan Omar?  . . . "But in Omar's case, there's a real problem for Pelosi, because Omar's singularly unfit to be in it, given that her repeated expressions of anti-Semitism are indistinguishable from those of a streetcorner 'Jews rule the world' conspiracy theorist, or for that matter, Farrakhan himself.

"Pelosi's response That of a wimp. One can only hope this baggage travels with her as she seeks to win another stretch as Speaker of the House in 2020."

Cis-lesbian fired for misgendering a trans-male rapist

People's Cube, which gives us this disclaimer:

"This is not a spoof. Life has begun to imitate the People's Cube so much that parody fades in comparison with real events. All that's left is to tell it how it is." 

 

"The LGBTQ Commission for the mayor of Baltimore has just fired its only lesbian member, Julia Beck, for using male pronouns while referring to a convicted male rapist who wanted to be addressed as a female. Finding such behavior disgraceful, her former LGBTQ comrades have also denounced her and purged her from their ranks.

"The male convict in question had earlier courageously declared himself a transgendered woman, for which he was cheered on by the progressive local establishment and sent to a female prison. Shortly afterwards he deployed his gender-fluid trans-penis to rape two cisgendered female inmates - a "crime" that he, a self-identified oppressed lesbian who is attracted to other women, can hardly be accused of. The real crime here, of course, was the denial of his chosen gender identity by the knuckle-dragging, close-minded, reactionary traitor to womankind, Julia Beck.

"The delusional lesbian Beck had mistakenly assumed that being a sexual minority entitled her to stating biological facts without clearing them first with the High Commissar of Pronouns and Dangling Participles. A speedy show trial found her guilty of violent transphobia and sentenced her to the status of a cis-lesbian non-person with the pronoun "it." . . .

'Beck was tried by the revolutionary tribunal at Baltimore Transgender Alliance (BTA), where men with penises who self-identified as lesbian women stripped her of her rank as a commanding lesbian activist and demoted her to a lowly private dyke. The verdict stated that biological sex was a thing of the past and that anyone who said otherwise was a Trump-loving Nazi." . . .

Lesbian Activist Faces Leftist Fury After 'Misgendering' a Male Rapist  See her story she has presented to the Heritage (yes, I did say Heritage) Foundation.

Ilhan Omar won’t recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president

Hot Air

"It seems she’s chock full of sound policy views, as people with garbage opinions about Jews so often are.

"Open your mind and try to believe simultaneously that (a) U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be a very bad thing and (b) Maduro is a rodent and Juan Guaido is the legitimate interim president under the country’s constitution. It’s … shockingly easy when you try. Unless you’re Omar." . . .

Choosing bad candidates: Just how educated are Democrat voters these days?

Rich Terrell

Democrats Need To Bounce Rep. Ilhan Omar Off The Foreign Affairs Committee, Stat   "Democrats wanted to shake things up in Washington, and they have. This new Congress has raised all sorts of questions I never knew I needed to be answered, such as: How many blatantly anti-Semitic comments can a Democratic rising star make before members of her own party criticize her? And how many such statements can she make before Democrats take any action?

"Minnesota’s Rep. Ilhan Omar has helped answer that first question. Apparently, a member of Congress must find herself at the center of not one, but two anti-Semitic tweet controversies in the course of three weeks. It wasn’t Omar’s 2012 tweet charging that Israel had hypnotized the world, but her alleging that members of Congress support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship because they’ve been bribed that summoned a strong response.

"The House Democratic leadership issued a statement denouncing the relevant tweets the following day. Notably, however, there was no mention of Omar resigning her seat on the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) in that text. Nor did any Democrat on HFAC choose to respond on the record after those incidents, when I sought comment. Top Jewish groups just this morning demanded that Omar be removed from the committee." . . . 
Melissa Langsam Braunstein, a former U.S. Department of State speechwriter, is an independent writer in Washington DC and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, National Review Online, and RealClearPolitics, among others. She has appeared on EWTN and WMAL. 

From Lartu Vox:

Thomas Lifson: Embarrassing interview admission shows that Kamala Harris is not ready for prime time  . . . "In an English Language interview on Univision last week (hat tip: Weasel Zippers), she demonstrated utter political incompetence, revealing her reliance on platitudes, and her negligence -- a failure to go even an inch deep on a scandal that has rocked her candidacy." . . . 

Another poor Rolling Stone cover choice  "Socialists and Islamists, don’t they ever learn?"

Getting the Party of Infanticide on the Record  "Democrats have always been the party of abortion. For a while, the mantra was “safe, legal and rare.” But in the era of the progressive Left, they have turned that slogan on its head. As of last Monday, Senate Democrats have confirmed that their party is now for unrestricted, unregulated, and unlimited abortion.

"Last week, 44 Senate Democrats voted against legislation that would have required doctors to give the same care to infants who survived abortion procedures as they would give to any other infant. So radical is this new Democratic Party that 44 of them in the “world’s greatest deliberative body” would not even consider protecting a baby who, far from being in utero, has kicked and screamed its way into the world.

"Rather, they hid behind unsubstantiated claims that allowing unwanted infants to die after birth somehow constitutes a form of women’s health care." . . .

AOC’s List Sees Her Chasing Down Something That Doesn’t Exist: “Moderate” Democrats

. . . "Chattering classes would see Democrats siding with Republicans as sheer politics.  AOC spotted it as another opportunity for advancing the theory that’s she’s “boss”." . . .

Tlaib Compares Omar to ‘Civil Rights Icons’ After Latest Anti-Semitism Controversy 

. . . "Tlaib and Omar, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, are often heralded as leaders among the freshman class of House Democrats pushing the party to the left. They both support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has condemned as anti-Semitic for singling out Israel." . . .

Dumb And/or Dishonest Liberals Insult Your Intelligence

       Obtuse: "The definition of obtuse is someone who is slow to understand things. 

An example of obtuse is someone who listens to a joke but doesn't understand the punchline.

Kurt Schlicter

"Who is the guy who really believes that Donald Trump thinks Kim Jong Un is a cool dude? Who is the guy who imagines that Donald Trump really believes that the roly-poly mass murderer had nothing to do with the murder of Otto Warmbier? But if you listen to the elite and their panting puppy media, you would get the distinct impression that Donald Trump actually considers this clown a pal.

"This raises an important question – is the elite itself transcendently dumb, or does it imagine us Normal people are so unfathomably dense as to be unable to conceive that maybe Donald Trump’s flattery of a sketchy guy who has nuclear weapons hanging over the heads of 28,000 Americans (not to mention over the noggins of tens of millions of our South Korean and Japanese allies) might not have been totally sincere? Could it be that, perhaps – and I’m just speculating here – that maybe a successful New York real estate developer, who these very same geniuses have been screeching about being a liar for nearly four years, might not be totally honest about his true feelings toward the pudgy freak he is negotiating with?

"Might not that be it? Nah. He’s gotta love KJU. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

"Either the elite is stupid, or it thinks we’re stupid.

"Call it the “New Obtuseness,” this willful refusal to attribute to a statement, position, or policy the most obvious and manifest intent and, instead, to deliberately fold, spindle, and mutilate it into something unreasonable, unlikely, and unrecognizable that nevertheless conforms to the liberal elite narrative." . . .

Effort to Abandon Electoral College Gains Steam. Here’s What It Would Ruin for America.

Listed as reason #7,387 by Hillary for her loss to Donald Trump  (President Trump, that is)TD

Intellectual Takeout

. . . "While the Constitution, intentionally, gives wide latitude to states to create their own electoral systems, the law passed in Colorado, along with the rest of this effort, would be unprecedented. It would be the first time states potentially outsource their Electoral College votes to the will of the nation as a whole, rather than having elections determined by their own voters. The result of this, ironically, could be very undemocratic.

"For instance, if the people of Colorado vote overwhelmingly for a Democrat, yet the total popular vote of the nation goes Republican, all of the state’s votes would go to the Republican, essentially overturning the will of the people in Colorado.

"The Electoral College is already fairly democratic. Nearly every state switched to direct, democratic elections of electoral votes in the early 19th century, as opposed to selection by state legislatures. What the national popular vote would do is overturn the concept of federalism, which recognizes that states have unique interests that deserve representation in the electoral system. We are not just a nation of individuals, but a nation of communities and states.

"Some have dismissed the Electoral College system as outmoded and unjust. But they are mistaken—the Electoral College system remains highly relevant and necessary today. The 2016 election actually demonstrated that." . . .

"In 2016, states that had gone Democratic in presidential politics for a generation flipped to Republican, in large part because of a unique candidate who appealed to their interests. While one candidate capitalized on their support, the other took them for granted and focused elsewhere. The result was a startling upset that demonstrates why the Framers wanted an Electoral College." . . .

Keep in mind that many who want the Constitution changed are those who choose the current crop of Democrats such as AO-C, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Mazie (Men-shut-up!) Hirono, and Kamala Harris. TD

Takeaways from the House Democrats’ Cohen Hearing

Andrew C. McCarthy  "Lanny Davis Productions.” That should have been the credit on this week’s big Michael Cohen drama. It’s a better fit than “House Oversight Committee.” 

"Knowledge may be power, but electoral victory is subpoena power. That’s of more practical use when the objective, under all the chatter about “collusion” and impeachment, is to render Donald Trump unelectable. Expect another 18 months of this.

"The Democrats are entitled to the spectacle orchestrated Wednesday by Chairman Elijah Cummings and Cohen lawyer (and, not coincidentally, sharp Democratic strategist) Lanny Davis. They won the midterm elections, not just fair and square but going away. The spoils that go to the victor include the authority to compel the appearance of witnesses who will support the 2020 narrative: Trump as “racist, conman, and cheat,” the theme of Cohen’s opening statement — which we may suspect the rough-edged, ambulance-chaser-turned-wannabe-Trump-bullyboy had just a tad of Lanny’s help writing. Chairman Scorsese, um, I mean Cummings, gave Cohen an extraordinary half hour to read it to America without interruption.

"Republicans are not nearly as good at this stuff, mainly for reasons beyond their control. While in the House majority, they tried their best to put the Obama-legacy Justice Department and FBI under the microscope for politicization and abuses of power in the investigations that bore on the 2016 election. But the anti-Trump press didn’t care, which meant the public never heard much about it." . . .