This is way, way worse than Watergate

Media Silent As Christopher Steele ‘Hero’ ‘Spymaster’ Narrative Crumbles

It became a well-worn talking point that Steele was considered credible because of his excellent work for the FBI on FIFA corruption. In fact, that’s what the FBI told the secret spy court that granted warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. They said Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.”

It wasn’t true. Steele’s prior handling agent at the bureau told Inspector General Horowitz that he would have never approved such a description of Steele’s work, since most of his prior work had not been corroborated and none of it had ever been used in criminal proceedings.

Journalist who fell for the Steele/Fusion GPS con should have taken a lesson from Sir John Keegan:

As defence correspondent, then defence editor of The Daily Telegraph, i decided that entanglement with intelligence organisations was unwise, having concluded, by that stage of my life, through reading, conversation and a little personal observation, that anyone who mingled in the intelligence world, in the belief that he could make use of contacts thus made, would more probably be made use of, to his disadvantage. I continue to believe that to be the case.

 Intelligence in War

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Mueller and Comey failed egregiously

Sir Vernon Kell, the first head of Britain Security Service (MI5) believed that counter-espionage officers needed the following characteristics:

Freedom from strong personal or political prejudices or interest; an accurate and sympathetic judgment of human character, motives and psychology, and of the relative significance, importance and urgency of current events and duties in their bearing on major British interests.

In no way shape or form does this describe the men and women who launched Crossfire Hurricane, the Midyear Review, and persecution of Maria Butina.

Instead we see an intense partisan commitment and a completely unbalanced rage at Trump.

Entitlement, simmering resentment, and #LearnToCode

Jill Lepore’s piece on the decline of newspapers (discussed here) appreared just before the latest round of media lay-offs. The timing was perfect and perverse at the same time. Lepore could write the piece secure in her bubble and confident that her readers and the public at large shared her sentimental attachment to newspapers and journalists. Then, almost as her piece was published, those illusions were rudely dispelled, shattered, mocked.

In short, #LearnToCode showed many in the media class that large numbers of the public viewed them with a combination of contempt and anger. (The resulting freakout was as hilarious as it was predictable.)

Early on in her mawkish apologia Lepore actually helped explain both the contempt and the anger though she probably thought she was pleading for compassion and respect.

The newspaper mortality rate is old news, and nostalgia for dead papers is itself pitiful at this point, even though, I still say, there’s a principle involved. “I wouldn’t weep about a shoe factory or a branch-line railroad shutting down,” Heywood Broun, the founder of the American Newspaper Guild, said when the New York World went out of business, in 1931. “But newspapers are different.”

Maybe Heywood Broun did not weep about idle factories in the depth of the Great Depression, but I am sure many men and women did as they pondered the lost jobs and bleak future of their communities. All too many in the MSM seem to share Broun’s sense of entitled callousness--  the conviction that their jobs are special and their pain deserves singular sympathy.

David Gelernter gives us this vignette from the 1996 campaign trail:

Today's elite loathes the public. Nothing personal, just a fundamental difference in world view, but the hatred is unmistakable. Occasionally it escapes in scorching geysers. Michael Lewis reports in the New Republic on the '96 Dole presidential campaign: 'The crowd flips the finger at the busloads of journalists and chant rude things at them as they enter each arena. The journalists, for their part, wear buttons that say 'yeah, i'm the Media. Screw You.' The crowd hates the reporters, the reporters hate the crowd-- an even matchup, except that the reporters wield power and the crowed (in effect) wields none.

Drawing Life

Two decades ago journalists thought they were ten feet tall and bullet-proof. They could arrogantly dismiss and insult those who dared criticize them. Today the swagger is gone but they still arrogantly demand pity and compassion from those they insulted.

If anyone wants to understand’s Trump’s ascendancy in the GOP a good place to start is with that confrontation in 1996. And then remember what old John Adams said about the colonists’ continued opposition to Great Britain in 1776:

Resentment coinciding with Principle is a very powerful motive.

They still don't get it

Or maybe they do and just don't dare admit it

Interesting review by Nick Carr of a revealing new book-Trump and the Media

Media democratization and the rise of Trump

If there is a way out of the crisis, it may lie in Fred Turner's critical reexamination of past assumptions about the structure and influence of media. Just as we failed to see that democratization could subvert democracy, we may have overlooked the strengths of the mass-media news organization in protecting democracy. Professional gatekeepers have their flaws - they can narrow the range of views presented to the public, and they can stifle voices that should be heard - yet through the exercise of their professionalism they also temper the uglier tendencies of human nature. They make it less likely that ignorance, gullibility, and prejudice will poison our conversations and warp our politics.

Note-The "crisis" is the fact that Hillary Clinton was not allowed to become president.

When a journalist talks about "democracy" what they really mean is "mediated democracy" where Deciders and Experts carefully "curate" the choices put before the public.

PowerLine, where I first found the term, captures the essence of "mediated democracy":

We live in a political system that has not yet been adequately described, but one might call it a "mediated democracy." Mediated by a self-appointed, generally ignorant but highly opinionated "elite" that is not elite by any conventional measure-income, intelligence, education, social position-but that successfully dictates the terms of political discourse even though it no longer controls (exclusively, anyway) the means of production of the news.

(For journalists and academics to speak of Democracy when they really mean this bastardized version is truly Orwellian. Fascists and Stalinists can readily accept the form while arguing about where to draw the line between acceptable and forbidden opinion. A true democrat like G. K. Chesterton would laugh the writers right out of the room.)

Journalists and academics think democracy is in crisis because the voters - darn them - bypassed the Mediators and neutered the Deciders.

Here's a key point that undercuts the "Russia hacked the election" hysteria that has seized hold of the minds of Journalistic Deciders and Mediating Experts:

Keith N. Hampton, of Michigan State University, finds "no evidence" that any of the widely acknowledged malignancies of social media, from fake news to filter bubbles, "worked in favor of a particular presidential candidate." Drawing on exit polls, he shows that most demographic groups voted pretty much the same in 2016 as they had in the Obama-Romney race of 2012. The one group that exhibited a large and possibly decisive shift from the Democratic to the Republican candidate were white voters without college degrees. Yet these voters, surveys reveal, are also the least likely to spend a lot of time online or to be active on social media. It's unfair to blame Twitter or Facebook for Trump's victory, Hampton suggests, if the swing voters weren't on Twitter or Facebook.

This is something the MSM probably hopes we forget:

Trump's Twitter account may have been monitored by only a small portion of the public, but it was followed, religiously, by journalists, pundits, and politicos. The novelty and frequent abrasiveness of the tweets - they broke all the rules of decorum for presidential campaigns - mesmerized the chattering class throughout the primaries and the general election campaign, fueling a frenzy of retweets, replies, and hashtags. Social media's biggest echo chamber turned out to be the traditional media elite.

Related:

Journalists and Twitter redux

Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?

Why Twitter?

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Whatever they are, they aren’t ‘strategists’

One of my pet peeves with cable news is the way they’ve completely devalued the word ‘strategist’ and stripped it of meaning.

PR flunkies, advertising hustlers, fast-talking pollsters, and fund-raising scammers-- they all become “strategists” when they are introduced at the start of a “news” segment.

Meaning-free titles for the cynical players on fact-deficient news shows.

And we wonder why Trump won?

We really are ruled by inept experts

Brutally honest takedown of Ben Rhodes:

As Boyish Ben Rhodes Drops Truth Bombs, Obama’s Media Mask Crumbles

Democratic presidents once received foreign policy advice from men like Gen. George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and Henry Stimson. For Obama, we get advisers like Marie Harf, Tommy Vietor, and Ben Rhodes.

Yet almost nothing about Mr. Rhodes is exactly normal. In the first place, as highlighted by the piece’s author, David Samuels, the president’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications has zero background in anything to do with national security. Instead, Mr. Rhodes is a novelist manqué, born into a well-connected family on Manhattan’s Upper East Side (his brother David is president of CBS News), who picked up an MFA in creative writing from NYU with plans to become famous for his novels. However, 9/11 caused him to ponder current affairs and he wound up a speechwriter to Barack Obama during his successful 2008 run for the presidency. Per the cliché, the rest is history.

Something to keep in mind for those in the MSM who worry that Trump lacks foreign policy experience and the right sort of advisors:

Then there’s the awkward fact that White House reporters may be every bit as inexperienced and unworldly as they’ve been described--but so is Ben Rhodes. Before becoming Mr. Obama’s factotum he had done no more in the national security arena than most of the uninformed reporters he’s criticized.

Tom Ricks also minces no words about Rhodes:

A stunning profile of Ben Rhodes, the asshole who is the president’s foreign policy guru

Ben Rhodes let the cat out of the bag, he destroyed the pretensions of the MSM and the foundations of what Power Line called “mediated democracy.”

We live in a political system that has not yet been adequately described, but one might call it a "mediated democracy." Mediated by a self-appointed, generally ignorant but highly opinionated "elite" that is not elite by any conventional measure--income, intelligence, education, social position--but that successfully dictates the terms of political discourse even though it no longer controls (exclusively, anyway) the means of production of the news.

The MSM, which sees itself as the main enforcers of this corrupt system, failed utterly with Obama and the people around him. They were gullible; they got played. And now they want this story to go away. They have work to do. Some one has to explain why Hillary is the only rational choice for POTUS and preach that Trump is outside the accepted (i.e. MSM defined) bounds of political discourse and experience.


Related:

Making sense of the Age of Obama

How we live now: The rule of the inept experts

Logic only a journalist could love

MSM to public: "Sure we're in the tank for Obama, whatcha' gonna do about it?"

Notes on the current crisis

More proof the MSM is in the tank for Hillary

Follow the money is just so 20th century.....

.... at least when the money flows to Team Clinton

This deserves to be a bigger story.

Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection

John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone

The revelations of the so-called Panama Papers that are roiling the world’s political and financial elites this week include important facts about Team Clinton. This unprecedented trove of documents purloined from a shady Panama law firm that arranged tax havens, and perhaps money laundering, for the globe’s super-rich includes juicy insights into how Russia’s elite hides its ill-gotten wealth.

Almost lost among the many revelations is the fact that Russia’s biggest bank uses The Podesta Group as its lobbyist in Washington, DC. Though hardly a household name, this firm is well known inside the Beltway, not least because its CEO is Tony Podesta, one of the best-connected Democratic machers in the country. He founded the firm in 1998 with his brother John, formerly chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, then counselor to President Barack Obama, Mr. Podesta is the very definition of a Democratic insider. Outsiders engage the Podestas and their well-connected lobbying firm to improve their image and get access to Democratic bigwigs.
...

John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone with this ruse. They are lobbyists for Vladimir Putin’s personal bank of choice, an arm of his Kremlin and its intelligence services. Since the brothers Podesta are presumably destined for very high-level White House jobs next January if the Democrats triumph in November at the polls, their relationship with Sberbank is something they—and Hillary Clinton—need to explain to the public.

RTWT and follow the author on twitter.

Explaining Trump

Lot of truth here:

Trump and the Delayed Reckoning for the 2008 Financial Crisis

We might have had this reckoning earler, but the Tea Party let itself be captured by the RNC

Do we want to solve problems or elect Republicans?

For many of his supporters, Trump is a weapon Jacksonians can use to break the logjam of sclerotic, mediated democracy

The 2008 crisis also sucked the power from most the the GOPs best slogans.

From 2009

There is no doubt that a sizable minority of the population is opposed to bigger government. This minority is large enough to boost the ratings of talk radio. It drives readership for rightwing blogs and raises money for some candidates. But is it it enough to win election?

40% is an enormous share in radio ratings. It is also the bad end of a landslide election.

The usual mantra of "No socialism, Free Enterprise!" just seems inadequate in the face of the current economic realities.

Key fact number one. As Obama moves toward "socialism", he does so at the behest of the "capitalists". It is not as if he is sending paramilitary gangs to take over successful, profitable businesses. Obama, like Bush before him, is compelled to act because the capitalists screwed the pooch, crapped the bed, and then muttered "maybe my bad" when their recklessness sent the financial system off a cliff.

The broad public knows this, and that makes it hard to win them over with cheap slogans about socialist bogeymen.

And finally, failure theater does not work so well when there is an Army of Davids paying attention to what is going on.

From Duke Lacrosse to the Unsinkable Donald Trump

Last night ESPN aired a new episode in their 30 for 30 documentary series. “Fantastic Lies” was a searing look back at the Duke lacrosse case/hoax/scandal.

Overall, it was an outstanding piece of work. Admittedly, it skimmed over a great many points and left out others. That is inevitable when you have to cover a complex, year-long, story in 90 minutes of television.

For what it is worth, here are a few of the points about the case that deserve more attention.

Journalists were not just wrong about the case. They were arrogantly, viciously, proudly wrong.

Reporters and pundits did not just attack the members of the lacrosse team. They attacked anyone who tried to defend the team and its players. The documentary really should have included the brave stand made by the Duke women’s lacrosse team and the vitriol they received from the press for proclaiming their belief in the ‘innocence’ of the men lacrosse players.

The documentary lets the MSM off the hook. It lets the clowns and kommissars claim that failure was inevitable because the story was “a perfect storm.”

Failure was not inevitable. Some people were not caught up in the perfect storm. “Fantastic Lies” would have been much better if it had included the thoughts from someone like Stuart Taylor on the failure of the media.

More detail on this point can be found here:

Duke lacrosse: The AJR review

Duke lacrosse: Can the MSM look into the mirror?

Duke lacrosse: “Totalitarian Whiff”

A small point but a telling one:

“Fantastic Lies” whitewashes ESPN’s participation in the media mob that abetted Nifong.

When the documentary hid this fact it continued a long tradition of smokescreens and fig leafs. In that sense it is emblematic of the media cover-up that has gone on for ten years. The MSM cannot look in the mirror and admit its mistakes.

Which is why this happened:

None of the MSM outlets that messed up so horribly did anything to reform themselves. Nor did the Duke administration.

The Gang of 88 still rules the roost in Durham. The MSM still falls for hoaxes like the Rolling Stone story on UVa and “Hands up. Don’t shoot.”

When Evan Thomas of Newsweek tried to defend the magazine’s indefensible rush to judgment he came up with one of the most quoted lines of the whole saga.

“We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong."

And that is what ties this into the Trump phenomenon. Journalists and their lapdog media critics keep whining that millions of people ignore their rigorous fact-checking and debunking of Trump’s claims and promises. They say they are puzzled and I bet they are. If they really understood what was happening they would be terrified.

Millions of voters ignore the MSM attacks on Trump because they assume the MSM is filled with liars who prefer the Narrative (i.e. propaganda) to facts and truth. That is not entirely correct and it does not make Trump a good choice for president, but it does help explain why so many happily ignore the MSM.

If the old media has lost power, it is because they wielded it recklessly and unwisely.

One last point in Trump’s favor.

When the MSM ginned up their unthinking outrage mobs, professional conservatives and Republican politicians were slow to respond. Some happily ran with SJW pack. Most hid and hoped it would blow over.

When a Trump supporter says they like DJT because “he fights”, the background context is the craven cowardice of resercons like Tucker Carlson and gutless politicians too numerous to mention.

UPDATE: It is only fair to note that Tucker Carlson has come a long way. A long, long way and in the right direction.

Tucker Carlson:Quite the transformation

Even more on point now

From Mickey Kaus back in January:

Give Brats a Chance

Journalists love to publicly complain about the influence of money in politics — it’s one of those safe causes that doesn’t compromise your objectivity. But when it comes time to campaign, journalists do the donors’ dirty work for them by refusing to cover candidates who aren’t backed by lots of money. Those candidates are deemed “non-viable” oddities and not worth telling voters about.

There’s no excuse for this: 1) It’s a self-fulfilling prediction. Of course fringe or underfunded candidates won’t be ‘viable’ if they can’t get press (“free media”) to catch the voters’ attention; 2) Even if long-shot candidates stay on the fringe, covering them would have entertainment value. Newspapers cover obscure TV stars these days. Political candidates are often — I’d say, usually — more colorful than actors. The premature winnowing by self-satisfied journalistic pros drains democracy of much of its exuberance, presenting voters with a sharply limited array of options. No wonder they feel alienated. Then the pros scold them for low turnout.

Every real scandal needs a Sussman

That would be Barry Sussman a former editor at the Washington Post. He is one of Watergate’s forgotten men. But that makes him no less important.

Indeed, by ignoring Post editors Harry Rosenfeld and Barry Sussman, the oral history project doesn’t even fairly depict what truly went on inside the newspaper during those fateful months. This is particularly true in Sussman’s case. The author of a well-regarded history of Watergate, The Great Cover-up , Sussman provides a sorely needed corrective to the fabulistic account of the Post’s coverage that was presented in All the President’s Men (both the book and the film), and reprised in Robert Redford’s recent documentary, All the President’s Men Revisited.

Sussman was a city editor at the Post at the time of the break-in. He became the special Watergate editor in mid-July 1972, when managing editor Howard Simons decided to go after the story. Sussman put Bernstein and Woodward on the story full-time, and in reality, a troikanot a duowas responsible for the summer/fall 1972 coverage that won the newspaper (not Woodstein) a Pulitzer Prize. According to interview notes by Alan Pakula, taken as he was preparing to direct All the President’s Men, managing editor Simons and metro editor Rosenfeld thought if any single person at the Post was deserving of a Pulitzer it was Sussman.

From Washington Decoded

Sussman did not get his recognition. Woodward and Bernstein may not have gotten their Pulitzer, but they did get something better: a makeover by the mythmaking Hollywood dream machine. Sadly, the myths have clouded the public’s understanding of Watergate and investigative journalism ever since.

All the President’s Men has a nice description of the key role Sussman played in the Post’s coverage of Watergate:

Sussman was a walking compendium of Watergate knowledge, a reference source to be summoned when even the library failed. On deadline, he would pump these facts into a story in a constant infusion, working up a body of significant information to support what otherwise seemed like the weakest of revelations. In Sussman’s mind, everything fitted. Watergate was a puzzle and he was a collector of the pieces

Alan Pakula’s notes are also revealing:

“Barry made [editorially] acceptable the work of two junior reporters . . . They didn’t understand what they had often and couldn’t write it.” Sussman’s role was to “interpret the significance [of what the duo gathered] and to structure it in terms of news articles [which necessitated] quite a bit of rewriting.” Sussman also played a larger role in guiding the reporters during the critical first months than was commonly understood.

New media have many advantages, but this suggests that there are also weaknesses in their business models. Fox News, like their cable competitors, has aggressively eliminated the Sussman role. (See here.)

The Army of Davids and citizen journalism can do many things, but until now it has lagged in supplying context (that thing that turns data into information) and reasonable inference (which turns information into intelligence). All too often we count on the reader to supply them.

Which is a fine and democratic attitude. A fine attitude that ensures that the vast majority of potential readers will be left in the dark since they are not obsessive consumers of political news.

No wonder HRC and Biden are still politically viable. Almost by design the sharpest, best-informed criticism of them is destined for the memory hole even as it is published.

Explaining the Trump phenomenon

This might be the best explanation I've read about the roots of the Summer of Trump

Trump Is A Demon Of The Establishment’s Design

The circus that is the American election cycle has an added bit of flair this time. No, not the possibility of a female on the ticket. We had that buzz of excitement in 1984 and 2008. It is the spectacle of a self-promoting, billionaire blowhard taking the “Bulworth” approach towards a legitimate run for the presidency. Donald Trump has added spice to the 2016 presidential election cycle and in the slow, summer news season to excite cable news operatives. He has rocketed to the top of the polls, rustled Establishment jimmies, and caused conversations to take place that no one would expect.

As much as he is loathed by the Establishment, he is a demon of their design.

RTWT.

One point he makes is near and dear to my heart:

Trump has years of active Twitter use to get inside the media’s OODA loop and change the framing of any report. The media’s biased use of Twitter, as if it is the pulse of “the people” despite Twitter’s proven liberal and black demographic skew, allows Trump to use what is the equivalent of an Internet CB Radio to increase visibility and shape media coverage. The system has allowed Twitter to have an effect because Twitter is a leftist tool to shape narratives in the left’s favor.

Previously:

Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?

Blogging was a direct attack on MSM hegemony at both the micro (fisking) and macro levels (explanation space). I just don't see Twitter as the same threat. It is a flood of unmemorable chatter that is easy to ignore. Blogging had the potential to break the power of the MSM guild. Bloggers, at their best, presented arguments. Arguments can both change minds on the immediate subject and undermine the credibilty of those establishment pundits who present weak cases on a regular basis. (Yes, i'm looking at you Brooks and Frum).

At a minimum, blogging brought a lot of outsiders to the pundit/editor game. Twitter seems more useful as a way for insiders like Kurtz to extent their brand and magnify their voice.

So basically Johnny Rotten wrote the Trump platform decades ago

This seems timely

Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski in The Right and the Power (1976):

In criminal law the rule is well recognized that one who learns of an ongoing criminal conspiracy and casts his lot with the conspirators becomes a member of the conspiracy. Once the existence of a conspiracy is shown, slight evidence may be sufficient to connect a defendant with it. But one odes not become a member of a conspiracy simply because of receiving information regarding its nature and scope; he must have information regarding its nature and scope; he must have what the courts describe as a "stake in the success of the venture." He "must in some sense promote the venture himself, make it his own, have a stake in its outcome. …" Although one member of the conspiracy must commit a overt act, it is not necessary that every conspirator do so.

The company she keeps

Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal has been a conspiracy theorist for a long time.

“Grassy Knoll” Sid:
Hillary’s Personal Conspiracy Theorist

Four decades ago, Blumenthal was not only in league with JFK assassination buffs who claimed shots were fired from the proverbial grassy knoll--he also argued earnestly that “the reason the hopes of the ‘60s were not realized was because a group of people at the top made certain they were dashed.”

The previous sentence comes from Government By Gunplay, a 1976 paperback book edited by Blumenthal and Harvey Yazijian. Yazijian being one of the founding members of what was called the Assassination Investigation Bureau (AIB), then headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts....


Government by Gunplay would bear Blumenthal’s editorial imprint more than anyone’s. He wrote the foreword, the epilogue, and two chapters (one on the FBI’s COINTELPRO plan against the Black Panthers, and another on the Rockefeller Commission).

The misrepresentations, distortions, and falsehoods that Blumenthal either wrote or associated himself with are so numerous and stupendous they defy listing. ...


there is no indication that Blumenthal retracted or ever distanced himself from the rampant paranoia and crude, Soviet-style propaganda evident in Government By Gunplay. (Change the names of the editors, contributors, and publisher, and Government By Gunplay is almost indistinguishable from the slew of Soviet disinformation tracts about the assassination published from the 1960s to the 1980s, save that it is more thoughtful and informed, and much better written). Blumenthal’s penchant for spinning conspiracy theories has persisted, the only difference being they seem to have become more sophisticated.

RTWT

As HRC says, she has known Blumenthal for a long, long time. They became friends when Blumenthal's "vulgar Marxism" was still fresh and his penchant for conspiracies was on full display.

Worth noting:

Philip Agee, a disgraced former CIA officer who was effectively functioning as an agent of Cuban counterintelligence by 1976, wrote the introduction to Government By Gunplay.

Also worth noting: Blumenthal's far-Left views and "paranoid style" was no hindrance to his journalistic career. The Washington Post, New Republic, and The New Yorker were happy to give him a big megaphone and treat him like a star.

Hilliary's MSM provided tailwind

Must read by Ace:

For the Media, Democrat Scandals Can Never Be Reported Straight, But Must Always Be Controversialized/Partisanized By Noting that the GOP is "Seizing" on Reports of Scandal

Some time ago, Sharyl Attkinson introduced a new concept to me: that when she wrote about Republican malfeasance, her media employers were perfectly willing to run her stories straight, but when she reported on Democrat malfeasance, the left immediately began to "controversialize" her reportage, and her employers often gave in to their narrative.

CNN's Carol Costello makes his point:

CNN’S COSTELLO: ‘CLINTON CASH’ BOOK ‘REAL VITRIOL’

“CNN Newsroom” anchor Carol Costello characterized Peter Schweizer’s upcoming book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” as “real vitriol” on Monday.

The Clintons continue to cover-up for something that the media promises us is nothing

But Jon Stewart assures his sycophants in the MSM that there in no Benghazi scandal

AP: Hillary used more than one device for e-mail while SecState

I wish that the MSM would remember Ben Bradlee's lodestar when the WaPo was the only paper pushing the Watergate investigation:

If they’re [the Nixon campaign]clean why don’t they show it? Why are there so many lies? I’ll tell you why. Because you’ve got them.

I also wish the press would stop acting surprised when they discover that the Clintons tell lies. Jonah Golberg from two years ago:

Hillary, Benghazi, and the continuing cover-up
A lot of people in Washington apparently forgot how good Hillary Clinton is at not telling the truth.

Wednesday, in her testimony before both the Senate and, later, the House, Clinton brilliantly fudged, dodged and filibustered. Of course, she's a pro. Clinton was slow-walking depositions, lawyering up and shifting blame when many of her questioners were still civilians down on the farm.

QotD

But, tell me, why do Democrats assume a hard-drinking 68-year-old who suffered brain damage in a domestic fall two years ago that took her six months to get over will be more on top of her game in 2016 than she was at age 60 in 2008?

Here.

I wish Keviin Williamson would tell us how he really feels

Can we finally—finally!—be done with the Clintons?

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton schemed to subvert record-keeping and transparency rules for reasons that are probably more or less communicated by her surname: The Clintons are creeps and liars and scoundrels and misfits, always have been, always will be. They are the penicillin-resistant syphilis of American politics.

This point is absolutely critical:

When the law does not apply to the lawmakers and law-enforcers, you are not being governed: You are being ruled. And we are ruled by criminals.

If you treat IRS rules the way the IRS treats IRS rules, you go to prison; if you treat federal law the way the secretary of state does, you go to prison. If you treat immigration controls the way our immigration authorities do, you go to prison. If you’re as careless in your handling of firearms as the ATF is, you go to prison. You cook your business’s books the way the federal government cooks its books, you go to prison.

Hillary Clinton is not going to prison. She’s going to release whatever emails she feels like releasing and dare any of you peons or your elected representatives to try to make her do otherwise. You’ll take what she offers, and you’ll like it.

The Ukraine crisis without blinders

An astute and succinct analysis by David Warsh:

Two Views of Russia

It was Nuland who in February was secretly taped, probably by the Russians, saying “F— the EU” for dragging its feet in supporting Ukrainian demonstrators seeking to displace its democratically-elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, two months after he rejected a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of one with Russia. She made a well-publicized trip to pass out food in the rebels’ encampment on Kiev’s Maidan Square in the days before Yanukovych fled to Moscow.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin said the other day, “Our Western partners, with the support of fairly radically inclined and nationalist-leaning groups, carried out a coup d’état [in Ukraine]. No matter what anyone says, we all understand what happened. There are no fools among us. We all saw the symbolic pies handed out on the Maidan,” Nuland is the pie-giver he had in mind

Victoria Nuland is a character right out of House of Cards or The Honourable Schoolboy.

Before she was nominated to her current job, Nuland was State Department spokesperson under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Congressional firestorm over the attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

So how did the Obama administration manage to get her confirmed – on a voice vote with no debate? The short answer is that she was stoutly defended by New York Times columnist David Brooks and warmly endorsed by two prominent Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona.

She is also the wife of Robert Kagan, an advisor to GOP presidents and GOP presidential candidates.

I really wonder what went though the mind of Mitt Romney and his closest advisors when they realized that the flack lying about Benghazi and leading the charge against Romney on that issue was married to one of their foreign policy advisors.

Like I said, Politico could not do that scene .justice; it requires the talents of a LeCarre or Evelyn Waugh.