The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Associated Press combined to create arguably one of the worst weeks ever for mainstream media.
Although I realize that most of us have given up on news organizations, the outrage has grown among some of the media’s longtime defenders.
The Columbia Journalism Review, a left-leaning organization tied to Columbia University, published a four-part series that savages The Times’ coverage of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
“No narrative did more to shape Trump’s relations with the press than Russiagate. The story, which included the Steele dossier and the Mueller report among other totemic moments, resulted in Pulitzer Prizes as well as embarrassing retractions and damaged careers,” CJR executive editor Kyle Pope wrote in an editor’s note.
Jeff Gerth, the critique’s author and a former Times reporter, said he believes the Times damaged its credibility outside of its “own bubble” and that even famed journalist Bob Woodard told him coverage of the Russia probe “wasn’t handled well.”
The Associated Press, once a venerable outpost for objectivity, fairness, and balance, has lined up with the woke crowd.
Last week, the AP, where I once worked, issued a directive for its stylebook, once regarded as the most important set of guidelines for journalists.
The organization tweeted advice not to use generic labels for groups of people who share a single common trait, giving as examples the poor, the mentally ill, and the college-educated.
But the AP backed down after the guideline came under fire. The French embassy in the United States joked that it should possibly change its name to the Embassy of Frenchness.
Then The Philadelphia Inquirer weighed in on the foibles of a private restaurant’s failure to uphold political correctness.
Restaurant critic Craig LaBan decried the Union League Club for honoring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“At the end of December, the Union League announced plans to build a $25 million rooftop restaurant with an expansive terrace. Imagining the gorgeous city views from atop the elegant red brick bones of this ornate 1865 building, with breezy outdoor dining and a more casual dress code planned to debut later this year, I’d begun to think this grand addition to the city’s culinary skyline might be just the cue for me to finally write about the city’s reviving private club restaurant scene.
“Or maybe not. This week’s gold medal celebration of Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was a stark reminder that the Union League isn’t just a private social club with pretty good food: its mission is served with an increasingly MAGA-flavored side of political ideology.”
I realize that business and sports reporting had been taken over by leftists, but I was surprised that food reporting had been usurped by lefties.
Nevertheless, all three of these once-venerable institutions got a fair amount of grief from nearly every slice of the political spectrum.
Feinstein official Senate photo, retrieved from her website on January 29, 2023
By John Ruberry
Nearly overlooked earlier this month because of the drawn-out vote for speaker of the House was the breaking of seven decades of precedent in the upper chamber of Congress in the election for largely ceremonial post of president pro tempore of the Senate. Largely ceremonial only up to a point, that is. The holder of that position is third-in-line in presidential succession. Every president pro tempore elected since 1949 had been the longest-serving senator from the majority party. The dean of the Senate is 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein, she has been representing California since 1992. But Patty Murray of Washington, who is a relatively spry 72, was elected president pro tempore, which ups her salary a bit and earns her a security detail.
Feinstein reportedly declined to run for president pro tempore.
Concerns about Feinstein’s mental acuity go back to 2020, when she praised then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsay Graham (R-SC) when the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett concluded. “This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” she told Graham before hugging him, “I want to thank you for your fairness.”
Personally, I think Graham did a decent job during those hearings, but Feinstein overlooked–or should I say she couldn’t remember–that during the Donald Trump presidency it was the duty, in the eyes of the Democrats’ hard-left base, for every Democratic member of Congress to RESIST Trump and the Republicans.
Shortly afterwards, Feinstein stepped down as the ranking Democrat of the Judiciary Committee.
Last spring, her hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, spoke to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as ex-Feinstein staffers, about her mental state. And all of them, anonymously, told the Chronicle that because of memory issues, Feinstein appears unable to serve as senator.
More bluntly, in my words, it looks like Feinstein can’t do her job.
“I have worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details, basically couldn’t resist a conversation where she was driving some bill or some idea. All of that is gone,” a California House Dem admitted to the Chronicle about Feinstein. “She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring. Because there was just no trace of that.”
The same article offered up this damning quote, “There’s a joke on the Hill, we’ve got a great junior senator in Alex Padilla and an experienced staff in Feinstein’s office,” a former staffer said.
Last year the New York Times described an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has witnessed a friend or relative suffering from cognitive decline.
One Democratic lawmaker who had an extended encounter with Ms. Feinstein in February said in an interview that the experience was akin to acting as a caregiver for a person in need of constant assistance. The lawmaker recalled having to reintroduce themself to the senator multiple times, helping her locate her purse repeatedly and answering the same set of basic, small-talk questions over and over again.
Tellingly, a visit to Feinstein’s Senate website offers up a photo of her that appears to be a couple of decades old. That’s the pic you see in this entry. Click here for a more recent photograph.
This month, two Democratic southern California members of the House, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff, announced they are running for Feinstein’s seat–her term expires in 2025. Schiff, who repeatedly lied about having evidence proving Trump-Russia collusion, claims he informed Feinstein of his intentions. Believe that if you want to.
Other candidates are expected to declare their candidacy. Feinstein hasn’t said anything yet, but she’s expected to announce that she will not be running for reelection.
Clearly, Feinstein should have resigned for health reasons at least three years ago.
One way to minimize the chances of having senators–and House members–suffering from cognitive decline is to enact congressional term limits, even though that may mean amending the Constitution. Besides, serving in Congress should be a highlight of someone’s career–not the entire career.
Feinstein’s sad situation is not unique in Washington. Two Republicans who served with Feinstein, Strom Thurmond, who ended his 48 years in the Senate at 100, and Thad Cochran, who resigned after 39 years in the Senate, suffered cognitive challenges late in their careers, as well as one Democrat, Robert Byrd–he died in office when he was 92.
For five months in 2001, at the age of 98, Thurmond was president pro tempore. And when Byrd died, he was president pro tempore of the Senate. Hey, hats off to the Democrats for bucking tradition by electing Murray over Feinstein for that post.
Besides congressional term limits, America also needs smarter voters. Although by all accounts Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is a healthy 89-year-old man. Last year he was just elected to his eighth term. Grassley is a former president pro-tempore.
Having wiser and less selfish members of Congress is probably too much to hope for.
Mental issues can burden younger persons too.
In Pennsylvania, 53-year-old Democrat John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke last year, successfully ran out the clock in his successful Senate election, despite speaking struggles in his few public appearances and a disastrous debate performance.
Joe Biden turned 80 last year and he’s expected to run for reelection. Biden has had many mental miscues in his two years at president. But that’s a problem well worth another discussion.
Please don’t call me ageist. If heart ailments, cancer, accidents, or infectious diseases don’t conquer me first, I am certain that one day I will suffer from cognitive issues.
UPDATE February 14: Today Feinstein announced that she won’t seek reelection. Call me ableist, agist, or whatever. But Feinstein should have quit at least two years ago. She can still resign.
The FBI is one of the most ineffective police organizations in the world and should be put out of its misery.
Over the past 50 years, I had a variety of run-ins and interactions with the Feebs—none of which gave me some confidence about the bureau.
In 1971, the FBI brought me in for questioning. I had taken a photo of an old country bank for a college course, and I had the suspicious look of a college student.
In 1973, several dozen reporters, including me, walked through an FBI “lockdown” of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where the American Indian Movement had set up a protest over U.S. government misdeeds toward Native Americans.
A few months later, I was reconstructing the events over the murder of Fred Hampton, a Black Panther who had been killed in Chicago by the FBI and local police.
As part of a counterintelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, the FBI had taken a keen interest in Hampton, a rising star in the Panther leadership. In the early morning of December 4, 1969, the FBI and the local cops shot and killed Hampton as he slept in an apartment. A later investigation found that only one shot had been fired from inside the apartment.
Fast forward to the Middle East. The FBI usually heads up the investigation when U.S. citizens and representatives die outside the country under suspicious circumstances.
In 1978, I was one of a handful of reporters who flew into the compound of Jim Jones and his followers, where more than 900 people had died. Surprisingly, only two local soldiers guarded the farming community, and it took days before the FBI secured the site.
The FBI also bungled investigations of the U.S. embassy attack in Beirut and the later bombing of the Marine compound in which 241 military personnel died. Again, I arrived a short time after these events and found that the FBI had failed to secure the locales and, subsequently, to find much actionable intelligence about what had happened and who was behind the attacks.
Although I had less contact with the FBI as I moved into academia, I was dumbstruck by the ineptitude before 9/11 and afterward. The political enmity toward Donald Trump and his allies underscored how poorly the FBI had served the country.
As Congress prepares to take a good, hard look at the FBI, the agency needs more than reform, and it may be time to shutter the doors and devise an entirely different approach to national policing.
Update (DTG) Welcome Hotair Headlines readers. If you like Christopher Harper’s work you can find him here every Tuesday Morning at DaTechGuyblog.blog and of course you can find the rest of our Magnificent Seven Writers all during the week.
“Of course he’s worried about it, the laptop that they found from Hunter is basically a step-by-step description of one of the biggest influence-peddling schemes in history. I mean, the fact is that influence-peddling has been a Biden family business for a long time. They have been rather notorious and open about it. I mean, the Fords are known for cars and the Coors are known for beer, and the Bidens are known for influence-peddling, and it’s an entire family affair.” Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School professor.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.” Hunter Biden.
“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” John Adams.
The fictional Corleone family of The Godfather books and movies had a front business, Genco Olive Oil. The Biden family has politics as its legitimate front, specifically Joe Biden’s career in Washington as a senator, vice president, and now president.
Hunter Biden, notoriously served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm, even though the president’s troubled son had no experience in energy. Hunter doesn’t speak Ukranian. But as vice president, Joe was President Obama’s point man for Ukraine. China is America’s chief geopolitical foe, but Hunter had extensive business dealings with Chinese firms, and that means also the Chinese government, as the ChiComms have their fingers in every large business there.
And in one proposed Chinese deal discovered on the Hunter Biden laptop, there would be “10 held by H for the big guy.” According to Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter business associate, “the big guy” is “Middle Class Joe,” the 46th president–Joe would collect 10 percent. In that same deal another 10 percent would go to Jim Biden, one of the president’s brothers.
Last week CNN–yes, CNN–reported that Jim Biden “touted his connection with his politically powerful brother, former business associates say.”
And then there is Frank, Joe’s youngest brother. In that same CNN story, it tells of Frank bragging in 2021 about “the bully pulpit that I have as a result of the privilege of being associated with my brother Joey.”
Also in 2021, WFTX-TV in Florida revealed, “the Berman Law Group of Boca Raton regularly touts their ties with the president–featuring Frank and his family connections–on their website and in promotional materials.”
Were those documents accidentally there? Or is something nefarious going on?
By now it should be clear what the Biden family business really is: Influence-peddling.
The first batch of docs were found at the Biden think tank office in Washington just before the November elections and the White House, including “the big guy,” knew about it and said nothing until CBS broke the news ten days ago.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 