Ebony & Irony

The media begins to chum the political waters for race-baiting.

There was little doubt that race was one of the larger underlying narratives of the 2008 presidential campaign.  The election of the country’s first African-American president, by the largest popular vote margin in twenty years, was widely hailed by Barack Obama’s supporters as a sign that racial relations had truly improved.

And now, what of the electorate that gave Obama 69 million votes, 365 electoral votes, and an 8% margin of victory?  According to the polling analyst du jour, America has not only returned to being a land of racist voters but, in fact, always was:

Though many people believe that our first African-American president won the election thanks in part to increased turnout by African-American voters, Stephens-Davidowitz’s research shows that those votes only added about 1 percentage point to Obama’s totals. “In the general election, this effect was comparatively minor,” he concludes. But in areas with high racial search rates, the fact that Obama is African American worked against him, sometimes significantly.

 

“The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote,” Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his study. “This implies racial animus gave Obama’s opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide.”

Apparently Obama was supposed to have won by 11% or even 15%.  Or maybe simply by acclamation.

Where is this thesis of latent racism coming from?  Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University, who gleaned his insight from that fount of all wisdom – the Internet.

Stephens-Davidowitz coupled internet search histories with racially charged words with searches for “Obama”, compared them to results for the 2004 election, and faster than you can google “the Bradley effect,” surmmerized that Americans are actually super secret racists.  And if you believe the liberal-leaning polling outfit, Public Policy Polling, you may need to add roughly one-quarter of African-American voters to the ranks of the racists since they’ve soured on Obama in North Carolina.  Perhaps Stephens-Davidowitz is saving that study for after he get his doctorate in an unrelated major.

There are a few issues within Stephens-Davidowitz’s thesis that most people wouldn’t contest.  Racists still do exist in some places in America and the electorate’s view on the condition of race relations has plummeted since Barack Obama’s election:

A myriad of reasons explain such stark polling data, but it doesn’t help that the media consistently attempts to propagate stories that seek to find racists around every corner.  Especially in political coverage which implies that to oppose President Obama is to oppose him based on the color of his skin.  It’s false and deeply insulting.

It’s also an attempt to prepare the battlefield post November.  As Stephens-Davidowitz concludes:

The state with the highest racially charged search rate was West Virginia, where 41 percent of voters chose Keith Judd, a white man who is also a convicted felon currently in prison in Texas, over Obama just this May. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 most-racist areas, according to the search queries used.

…

 

What does this mean for this year’s contest? “Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate’s winning the popular vote by a third,” Stephens-Davidowitz explains. “Prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania.”

 

The narrative is set.  If Barack Obama loses re-election, the nation of progressive, racially-harmonious voters will have suddenly become extras in a remake of “Deliverance.”  But is this exactly a wise political strategy?  It’s bad enough when one party blames their defeat on the electorate being stupid enough to fall for the rhetoric of the opposition, but what is there to be gained from inferring that voters are racists?

Do Republicans need to counter that if you vote for Barack Obama, you’re secretly a religious bigot who hates Mormons?  Sheesh.

…when S. E. Cupp will be getting her phone call from Barack Obama?

Illuminating: See Andrew Ferguson’s The New Phrenology, in the Weekly Standard. It digs through the history (long), motivations (predictable) and methodology (laughable) of the constant dribble of “social science” that claims liberals are genetically/chemically/socially wired to be good-hearted, open-minded, whole human beings, while conservatives are clenched little demi-humans:

It is a principle of psychopunditry that the political differences between right and left—the differences, in Mooney’s scheme, between those who would fearfully deny reality and those who embrace it unafraid—originate in two personality types. As it happens, the liberal personality, as psychopunditry describes it, is a perfect representation of those traits that liberals say they most admire. Liberals are “more open, flexible, curious, nuanced.” Conservatives are “more closed, fixed, and certain in their views.” But don’t get the wrong idea: Mooney insists he is not saying “conservatives are somehow worse people than liberals.” That would be judgmental, and Science is clear: Liberals aren’t judgmental. “The groups are just different,” he goes on amiably. Indeed, he warns that the truths he reveals in his book “will discomfort both sides.” Fairness requires him to be evenhanded. On the one hand, conservatives won’t like the scientific fact that they tend to deny reality and treat their errors as dogma. On the other hand, liberals won’t like the scientific fact that all their well-meaning attempts to reason with conservatives are doomed.

A young psychopundit called Chris Mooney has just published a book entitled The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, which seeks to explain the Republican “assault on reality.” He is a very earnest fellow, and an ambitious one. He glances over an array of conservative political beliefs and sets himself a goal: “to understand how these false claims (and rationalizations) could exist and persist in human minds.”

His list of false claims is instructive. Along with the usual hillbilly denials of evolution and global warming, they include these, to grab a quick sample: that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 will increase the deficit, cut Medicare benefits, and lead to the death panels that Sarah Palin hypothesized; that tax cuts increase revenue and that the president’s stimulus didn’t create jobs; that Congress banned incandescent light bulbs; and that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.”

The list of errors is instructive because they aren’t properly considered errors, though the misattribution is in keeping with the modern ideologue’s custom of pretending that differences of opinion or interpretation are contests between truth and falsehood. It’s perfectly reasonable for conservatives to assume that offering health insurance to 43 million people will cost a lot of money, and thereby increase the deficit; and it’s perfectly reasonable to distrust notoriously mistaken budget forecasters who say it won’t. The act redirects vast sums away from Medicare, which should require cuts in service. Palin’s “death panel” was a bumper-sticker summary of a rational expectation—that the act will transfer the unavoidable rationing of health care from insurance companies, where most of it rests now, to the government, which will be forced to bureaucratically reshuffle the vast sums spent on end-of-life care. Mooney is right that Congress did not ban the incandescent light bulbs that most of us are used to; but it did ban their manufacture—a distinction without a difference. As for the Christian nation: The country was founded by Christians who nevertheless resolutely declined to create a Christian government. Mooney’s conflation of the American government with the American nation is an error that conservatives are less likely to make. Studies show.

It is a principle of psychopunditry that the political differences between right and left—the differences, in Mooney’s scheme, between those who would fearfully deny reality and those who embrace it unafraid—originate in two personality types.

Someone needs to do a “study” on why liberals are so insecure that they need to constantly puff up their own sense of intellectual entitlement with hack “science”.

According to the Twin Cities’ leftysphere and mainstream media:

• Writing thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of abusive and harassing tweets about people you disagree with, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including over “work” hours?  Not stalking.
• Claiming on a large conversation thread on Twitter that someone has been convicted of driving while intoxicated?  Not Stalking.  (OK, it’s legally more like defamation, but it’s part of the previous bullet).
• Leaving dozens, maybe hundreds, of Google-turds all around the web under a transparent sock-puppet ID (whose source is trivially easy to trace), and setting up a sock-puppet website about an embarassing incident (naturally, with the parts that aren’t embarassing carefully excised away for the perp’s enjoyment) under a false but drearily transparent sock-puppet ID,  with the help of a “source” who should have known better (and does, today), and engaging in this behavior against many, many people under many, many monkers and doing that and much, much more with such demented abandon that when something bad did finally happen, he felt the need to make sure people knew it really really wasn’t him who was responsible, this time:  Good heavens, no – not Stalking, silly wingnut.
• Going to a public building, with intentions publicly displayed under one’s own name, with a clearly-stated express intent well within the bounds of free speech, and obeying the rules – including the ones about “threatening people” – and doing it while carrying a baby and hauling a stroller:  “Stalking”

I’ve always tried to treat people the way I’d like to be treated.  Seriously, I do – I mean, a good chunk of the Twin Cities left think that “Expressing any sort of conservative opinion” is a form of assault, but beyond that I do try to keep things on the up and up.

But I have had about enough.

The media is all abuzz over Ted Nugent’s  rather inflammatory commentary at the NRA convention.

I was struck my Andrea Mitchell’s comments on the Today show this morning – every line of the story included a carefully-enunchated to Nugent being a “Mitt ROMney supporter…”

I guess it’s a good thing that I can still be amazed by anything; after my decades of pointing out the bias and perfidy of the mainstream media, it’s probably a good thing I can still be this outraged.

Dear mainstream media (and idiot leftybloggers); if I say I “support” Mark Dayton, and then go rob a bank, it doesn’t make Mark Dayton complicit in the crime.

Further proof that the Democrats’ main constituency is the stupid.

A Maine state Democrat legislator urges Dick Cheney’s execution:

Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston)…used his Twitter account to express his view that former Vice President Dick Cheney should be executed…Kruger made the statement through his Twitter account this past summer, saying, “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams,” a reference to technology that would allow Kruger to watch the proposed execution of the former Vice President of the United States.

But at least there were no crosshairs involved.  And he didn’t mention the word “reloading”.  So it must be OK.

The funny part?  Kruger is the chair of the Maine Legislature’s “Moderate Caucus”:

This comment has led some to question the validity of Kruger’s moderate credentials.

Lori Sturdevant and Brian Lambert will vouch for him.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s revelation that NBC altnered the tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to bump up the “Racist” factor comes the news that Zimmerman didn’t say “It’s a f****ng coon”, but rather “It’s f***ng cold“.

CNN cleaned up the audio from the 911 call.  I took a listen to it.  While some quibble, it seemed pretty clear to me that Zimmerman was saying it was “f****ng cold”.  You be the judge.

If that’s the case – and I believe it is – then what we have here is a case of the media (aka “Obama’s Praetorian Guard”) committing a series of calculated lies, or at least making a curiously congruent set of unwarranted assumptions, that might not have been carefully designed to whip up racial tensions on the part of blacks (to draw their attention away from their catastrophic unemployment rate under Obama) and against civilian gun ownership (so as to make white liberals like “Spotty“, among many others, care about just another dead black kid) – but it’s hard to see how events and news would have unfolded differently if they had been trying.

We saw all of this here in the Twin Cities last fall with the Evanovich case; until Mike Freeman, the Henco prosecutor, exonerated the shooter, the local media was doing its absolute level best to whip up exactly the same combination of racial and anti-gun frenzy.

I was going to invoke Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”  But it doesn’t completely appliy.  It’s actually a contender to be a corollary to Berg Seven, if not a law unto itself:

“Any time the liberal media (to say nothing of leftyblogs) “reports” on guns or race, they should be distrusted but verified.  And then, almost invariably, distrusted some more“.

I lost count of the cases in point decades ago.

NBC’s editing of George Zimmerman’s 911 call just happened to make his statement sound frothingly racist.

Here’s what Today show listeners heard:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

Here’s what he actually said:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Got that?

The editing changed Zimmerman’s statement from an answer to a dispather’s request for information  into an affirmatively racist statement.

Erik Wemple at the WaPo:

No matter how you feel about Zimmerman, that bit of tape editing was unfair to the truth and to Zimmerman’s reputation, such as it is. Reaction on Twitter and elsewhere to my previous post on this matter, was brutal toward NBC, with many comments suggesting the worst about the network’s motivations, reliability and so on.

And why might that be?

Because every editing “flub”, every “fake but accurate” story that gets past the “layers and layers of gatekeepers”, just happens to defame someone liberals want defamed?

Nah, it must be us.

NBC “apologized”:

During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.

Read: “The damage we wanted done is done; the Democrat / media (ptr) narrative was served.  We’ll try to be more artful in our slander next time, so as not to get caught”.

Bias?  What bias?

As we grind on through the ongoing morass of the Martin case in Florida, it occurs to me that there’s an article I should have written a month ago, when the “Stand Your Ground” bill was wending its way toward Governor “I’ve Got Two .357 Magnums” Dayton’s dim-witted veto.

It turns out a lot of liberals – in Minnesota and nationwide – are really unclear on basic logic, to say nothing of how the law works.

So as mu public service to the left, to try to educate them to a point where they might be able to participate literately in discussing the issue, I’m here out of pure unvarnished compassion to help them out.

Well, Freaking Duh! – I’ve brought this one up before – but as long as liberals say it, I’m going to have to repeat it. Lefties like to refer to “Stand Your Ground” bills as “Shoot First” bills. And I have to ask – have any of you hamsters ever thought about what happens in a legitimate self-defense situation when you shoot second?

No, I guess not. I’ll give you a subtle hint; you get kidnapped, raped, strangled, stabbed and shot.

“Shooting Second” is a really lousy idea.

(I know, I know – they’re trying to “frame” the term. And I’m just doing my best to have the frame blow up in their faces).

More Of That There Fancy Law Talk – When trying to explain what’s wrong with “Stand Your Ground” laws, liberals will get hushed, snd solemnly intone that “they mean people can shoot in self-defense if they feel they’re being threatened”. They usually follow up with one of those Jon Stewart smirks.

And I’m forced to slow waaaaay down – not so much “theatrically” as out of hope that exaggeraged emphasis will help me cut through the sludgy wall of intellectually-entitled smugness – and ask “what do you think people claim when it comes to “self-defense” in any state, regardless of whether it’s a “Stand Your Ground” state like Florida, or a place that actively persecutes the law-abiding gun owner, like the District of Columbia?”

“It is ALWAYS based on someone’s “Feeling” that they are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.. Always, always, always.”

“I mean, what do you think – that in Minnesota, there’s a Predator drone up aloft carrying out surveillance over dark alleys and trailer parks, so that there’s a photographic, objective trail of empmrrical third-party evidence as to which shootings are or are not self-defense?\  Flying up there with the unicorns that have all the money for your governlment spending plans?”

“No – in all 50 states and the D of C, self-defense is always, always, always, no exceptions about a party claiming to have felt in imminent danger of death or great harm. The difference is in how state law treats it; in Minnesota, the shooter has to prove the shooting was justified; in about half the states, the county attorney has to prove they weren’t”.

They usually run crying to their TV to see what Bill Maher tells them around this point.

Remember those hazy, crazy days three years ago? When Americans were just starting to rebel against Barack Obama’s encroaching socialism? And the Administration responded by starting its endless search for that elusive conservative hate group that would justify all the paranoia that Janet Napolitano was channeling through the media?  When Homeland Security started distributing “watch lists” including tax protesters, pro-life groups and everyone who’d ever gone skeet shooting?

And how the left tittered with glee when they finally found their “right wing bitter gun-clinging extremist militia group” all chock-a-block with “weapons of mass destruction” that were ready to launch their holy war against all that was enlightened?

No?

Well, then the Administration will be happy.

But I remember “the Hutaree”, the hapless MIchigan “militia” group that coudln’t shoot straight…

…or, apparently, actually justify any of the federal charges heaped upon them:

DETROIT — A federal judge on Tuesday gutted the government’s case against seven members of a Michigan militia, dismissing the most serious charges in an extraordinary defeat for federal authorities who insisted they had captured homegrown rural extremists poised for war.

U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said the members’ expressed hatred of law enforcement didn’t amount to a conspiracy to rebel against the government. The FBI had secretly planted an informant and an FBI agent inside the Hutaree militia starting in 2008 to collect hours of anti-government audio and video that became the cornerstone of the case.

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“The court is aware that protected speech and mere words can be sufficient to show a conspiracy. In this case, however, they do not rise to that level,” the judge said on the second anniversary of raids and arrests that broke up the group.

Roberts granted requests for acquittal on the most serious charges: conspiring to commit sedition, or rebellion, against the U.S. and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. Other weapons crimes tied to the alleged conspiracies also were dismissed.

But all that Tea Party violene is out there, somewhere!

Maybe that “cut propane line” at the brother0-in-law of an obscure Democrat operative will pan out into something yet!

One dark, ambiguous evening, a black youth was shot under circumstances that, to the local media, were confusing. Not much information was available; the youth was shot by a citizen with a legal handgun.  The citizen claimed self-defense.

So the local media did what they always do on big stories – shootings! – when not much information is available, as they waited for the details of the investigation to go public.  They found stuff  to write about.

They interviewed the deceased’s mother and family – who, stricken with grief, demanded justice.  They talked with friends of the deceased, and community leaders, many of whom wondered why the law allowed mere citizens to use lethal force, or to be able to claim “self-defense” with such seeming impunity.

Some of the media’s learned observers scratched their furrowed brows and pondered aloud (or in print) whether the changes the legislature had made in 2005 to the state’s laws regarding self-defense were wise – repeating things many of them had written at the time.

I am of course, not talking about the Trayvon Martin case.  I’m talking the Evanovich case in Minneapolis last fall.  You had the family.  You had the friends and community leaders.  Furrowed learned brows?  Check .

You had everything you have today in the Martin case, with one exception; a resolution.  Media caterwauling notwithstanding, it was a legitimate enough case of self-defense to prompt the frothingly anti-gun, anti-Second-Amendment, anti-law-abiding-citizens-with-guns Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman to praise the shooter.

The point of this post is not to try to compare the Evanovich and  Martin cases; in terms of the factual and legal specifics, it’d be stupid to try, since we, the non-investigators, know nothing about the facts of the case.

Well, almost nothing; we know what the local Florida and national media have told us about the case.

And if there are any lessons from the Evanovich shooting to apply to the Martin case, they are…:

1. When it comes to emotionally-charged cases, the media is no better off at getting the facts than we are.  And that’s a best case.  Because…
2. …whether they will admit it or not, the media has a narrative; the higher up the media food chain you go, the worse it gets.  The law-abiding gun owner, the bitter, gun-clinging Jebus freak, is a powder keg just waiting to blow.  They’ve been saying it, one way or another – if not in their editorial stances, then via their editorial selection bias – since 1983, when Florida passed its “Shall Issue” law.  They did it with each of the 30+ states that have passed similar laws in the past 29 years.  They did it when Florida passed “Stand Your Ground” seven years ago, and in each of the dozens of states that have some combination of “Stand Your Ground” and “Castle” laws.   They’re still predicting it.  We’re still waiting for it to happen.  But hey, it’s only been almost thirty years; one of these days, the powder keg’s just gotta blow, right?

On gun issues even more than most others when it comes to the mainstream media; distrust, then verify.  Then, almost invariably, distrust some more.

That’s not to say the Martin case might very well not be a legitimate shooting.

We don’t know.

And when I say “we”, I mean “especially those of you who get your information on the case from the mainstream media”.

More later.

You’ve probably seen this story in the past day or so – Bristol Palin calling out the President’s and, especially, liberals’ hypocrisy in re the “war on women”:

You don’t know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next. You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha. After all, you didn’t want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:

“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” you said. “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”

And I totally agree your kids should be able to speak their minds and engage the culture. I look forward to seeing what good things Malia and Sasha end up doing with their lives.

All very, very true.

But here’s why I’m a little surprised my phone hasn’t rung. Your $1,000,000 donor Bill Maher has said reprehensible things about my family. He’s made fun of my brother because of his Down’s Syndrome. He’s said I was “f—-d so hard a baby fell out.” (In a classy move, he did this while his producers put up the cover of my book, which tells about the forgiveness and redemption I’ve found in God after my past – very public — mistakes.)

If Maher talked about Malia and Sasha that way, you’d return his dirty money and the Secret Service would probably have to restrain you. After all, I’ve always felt you understood my plight more than most because your mom was a teenager. That’s why you stood up for me when you were campaigning against Sen. McCain and my mom — you said vicious attacks on me should be off limits.

It didn’t work, of course; the hog trough that is the lefty “alternative” media spawned an entire movement of “Triggers”.

Yet I wonder if the Presidency has changed you. Now that you’re in office, it seems you’re only willing to defend certain women. You’re only willing to take a moral stand when you know your liberal supporters will stand behind you.

But…

What if you did something radical and wildly unpopular with your base and took a stand against the denigration of all women… even if they’re just single moms? Even if they’re Republicans?

Y’see, that’s the thing; the President could do it.  He’s got his Daily Koses and Bill Mahers and NPR and a herd of George Stephanopouli to do the actual dirty work for him; the Prez  could take the high road!

But he won’t!

Because Bristol Palin, and Alan West, and 4th CD candidate Tony Hernandez, and every black, hispanic, asian, gay or female Republican conservative that you see is the single biggest threat the Democrats face; they’re the apostates.

As the Democrat parts of this country shrink – mostly due to the pathologies that come from Democrat mismanagement – the Dems big long-term hope is “demographic shift” – the idea that as “minorities” become the majority, the Dems will eventually be unstoppable.

That is, of course, entirely predicated on minorities staying on the plantation. and voting in lock step for Democrats forevermore.  And those that don’t – the apostates – are the greatest threat that exists to that vision.

Centuries ago, as the Catholic Church’s struggling and corrupt bureaucracy struggled with change, they sent out the various Inquisitions to find and convince the various heretics and apostates to get back in line – by killing them for their own good, if necessary.

It didn’t prevent half a billion unforced turnovers as the Protestant movement established itself – but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Bristol Pallin may not have expected the Chicago Inquisition.  But her mother, and Alan West, and Laura Ingraham and every Asian and Latino conservative that showed up at caucuses this year certainly should.

Because they are the visible signs of the Democratic party bleeding to death.

Via Breitbart, video of Eric Holder in 1995 claiming we need to “Brainwash” the citizenry when it comes to guns:

Holder was addressing the Woman’s National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to “change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC” about guns.

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”

Holder went on, of course, to run one of the most egregiously, disastrously corrupt programs in the history of American government, “Fast and Furious”, a program hatched entirely to trade Mexican (and American) lives for points against the dreaded “gun lobby”.

Local political leaders and celebrities, Holder said, including Mayor Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, had been asked to help. In addition, he reported, he had asked the local school board to make the anti-gun message a part of “every day, every school, and every level.”

Despite strict gun control efforts, Washington, DC was and remains one of the nation’s most dangerous cities for gun violence, though crime has abated somewhat since the 1990s.

Note to Attorney General Holder:

I shot about 300 rounds over the weekend.

It was cool.

Spread the word!

Always, always, always – when you see stories in the mainstream media about conservatives’ moral crimes and misdemeanors, remember two things:

• Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds” – has never been challenged, much less repealed.
• It’s the liberal press.  If’s most likely either painstakingly stripped of context, if it’s not an outright lie.

With that in mindThe Gateway Pundit notes an example of the media jumping all over the story of a “Tea Party Leader” accused of rape.

Untrue?  Naturally.  The guy had no connection with any Tea Party organization that anyone with the Tea Party could identify.

We have, of course, run into this before in Minnesota – during the 2010 campaign, Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “Independent” ran a piece claiming that some schlub who left a profane and insulting message on the AFSCME voice mail was a “Tea Party Organizer”, notwithstanding the fact that not a single actual Tea Party organizer had ever heard of the guy.

If Charles Manson called himself a Tea Partier, the media would run with it.

Gotta hand it to the DFL.

They’re playing a pair of “fours” this election.   But they’re playing them for all they’re worth.

Intellectually and politically, the DFL is running on fumes this year.  The closest thing they had to a legislative agenda – “tax the rich!” – stalled and died in the legislature.  The regional economy is slowly (sloooooowly) obsoleting their “We have to tax our way out of deficits!” meme.  They’re looking at Obama’s eroding popularity and hoping that the President’s coat tails are like the ones on a tank top.   And redistricting, for all of the partisan media’s backing and filling, looks to be mostly a wash in the near term, and reflects long-term demographic changes that can not bode well for the DFL (other than the progressives’ great long-term fairy tale, “lots of potential liberals are immigrating to the US”, which is of course true provided that we allow generations of new Americans to stay ignorant about what this country’s about – which is, of course, Democrat policy).

In response, the DFL really has only a few points to run on:

“Aren’t Those Republicans Awful People?”  In 1998, when the Democrats had a skirt-seeking missile in the White House, they responded by teaching a generation of American teens that oral sex wasn’t really sex at all, and demanding that we all just Mooooove On.  The French were laughing at us after all.

Now, after a low-grade “sex scandal”, Mary Fransion’s manufactured gaffe and a few other minor incidents, expect the Party of Infanticide to plead “family values”, making me wonder if all those teenagers from the Clinton era – now pushing thirty – will need years of therapy to sort out the mixed messages.

“Just Look At The Economy!” Minnesota’s economy is doing better than most.  Not North Dakota-good, but not bad.  The DFL and media (ptr) will work overtime to convince Minnesotans that correlation – Mark Dayton is governor and the economy sucks less than the rest of the US – equals causation, scrupulously ignoring that it’s the GOP majority in the Legislature that have done all the positive work this past few years (and, likely as not, eight years of Pawlenty’s leadership and four years of his stymying of the DFL that set the stage for the relative level of health we have).

“We Saved The Vikings!”  And they’ll save snowmobiling and binge-drinking, too, if they have to!

The mainstream media – especially the Strib, which profits from the current Dayton/Bakk plan – spun this as a partisan issue (and part of it was; principled conservatives joined a few principled liberals, like John Marty, in rejecting Wilfare), playing up Dayton and Senate Majority Leader Bakk’s “leadership”, and only incidentally scratching the surface of their plan, which seemed to rely on money borne down from heaven on the backs of unicorns. (You can go to MPR to read what I was reporting on two weeks ago, if you’d like).

Of course, with the Senate tabling the bill, that’s looking a little dodgy.  But no worries – the Dems still have the big daddy of them all:

“It’s Inevitable!”  One of my favorite aphorisms is an old Hungarian saying: “the best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are”.

The DFL apparently read it too.

The DFL and the media – and on this, as few other issues, when I say “pardon the redundancy”, it rings truer than usual – are doing their best to portray this next election as an inevitable winner for the DFL, for…well, whatever reason.  Redistricting favored them (more on that probably later today), or people are sick of GOP squabbling and want the government to “get things done”, or demographics make it inevitable, or the economy is racing back so fast that Obama’s coattails are going to lift them up, or Minnesotans just loooooooove keeping their beloved government fat and happy…

…or all of the above.  Because the best way to win an election may not in fact be to appear as if you already have – but it doesn’t hurt to add it in there, either.

So this blog will spend a good chunk of the next seven and a half months covering the DFL Ministry of Truth’s attempts at psychological warfare.  There’ll be no shortage of material.

Last week, Rep, Mary Franson released a video response to constituent questions.  One of the questions was about welfare.

In the video (since removed, unfortunately), Franson compared welfare to treating people like animals – by creating dependence, making it impossible for them to live without help.  In other words, government treats them like pets, zoo creatures, livestock – creatures of whom they are the master.

Now, food stamp recipients aren’t animals – but the DFL chanting point machine, Carrie Lucking and Denise Cardinal of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, Greta Bergstrom of “Take Action Minnesota” and most of Minnesota’s lumpen gray mass of leftybloggers – are certainly a bunch of rhetorical hyenas.  They took Franson’s statement, water-boarded it until all the context went away, and put it out there as ‘Mary Franson Compares People On Food Stamps To Animals“.

And that’s how the media – in the bag for the DFL as they almost universally are – ran with it.

It was a lie, of couse; the DFL, being intellectually and morally bankrupt, has had nothing but lies for the past 30 years.

But since misogyny – Rush’s misguided statement about Sandra Fluke, not Bill Maher saying Sarah Palin would diddle Rick Perry if he were black, or Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a “slut”, or Maher calling Palin a “c*nt”, naturally – is in the news, let’s look at the biggest case of misogyny going on in Minnesota right now.

Because lies have consequences.

Franson has been a lighting rod for Minnesota’s demented left for a long time now.  A Central Minnesota teacher and leftyblogger apparently expressly condoned some of the local droogs-in-the-making in bullying one of Franson’s children in school because, in his role as moral judge, jury and executioner, he figured it served her right, having a parent who opposed gay marriage (LL has the audio; it’s a fairly searing indictment of the “Clockwork Orange”-y inner id of way too much of public education today, not to mention the dingo-like morality of a good 80% of Minnesota leftybloggers).  By extension, it served her right, being a conservative woman.

Because women, like blacks and latinos and gays, are supposed to be liberals.  And if they wander off the reservation, there need to be consequences.

And DFLers are promising consequences for Franson’s latest remark (as filtered through the Hyenas and the media).  Franson has received death threats, crude-to-the-point-of-prehensile attacks, and giggly snarks from the loathsome Paul Thissen, and, Saturday morning, a protest on her front lawn – prompting even some of the less-depraved leftybloggers to urge juuuust a smidge of caution.   (Can you imagine the furor if someone like this – who does, by the way, represent the DFL – turned up at a Tea Party?)  Incredibly, House Minority leader Paul Thissen disavowed any knowledge of the threats of violence, and tried to turn it into another snark.

So the story is this:  the hyenas of the Ministry of Truth twist Franson’s statement far out of context to whip up hysteria – part of a long-running campaign to harass Franson and, indeed, all conservative women, to make being involved in politics too emotionally draining for all but the supernaturally-toughest conservative women (and by God, your leading conservative women could make a Navy SEAL cry uncle).  Hysteria duly ensues, with less-mentally-gifted DFLers promising one of their made-to-order mini-riots on Saturday.

The media wants to know…

…if Franson really thinks food stamp recipients are reeeeealy animals?

Franson, fortunately, responded:

The real news story is the death threats and vicious, sexual, misogynist emails I have received in connection with the video that has been taken down and for which I have apologized. I’ve never compared people with animals as I think too highly of the human person. This is why it’s immoral for government to enable dependency, a subject my critics are fierce to avoid. Democrats are content with

the poverty status quo; republicans are not.

I’d be happy to forward to you some of the emails if you are interested. Otherwise, the subject that I understand you wish to interview me about is both stale & dated and

has been eclipsed by violence from the left. I think your viewers would be more interested in the latter than the former.

Best regards,

Mary Franson

It’s more than a little tempting to drive to Alex this weekend with a camera.  Indeed, if there are any conservative activists in the neighborhood, it’d be good to get the festivities on tape.  This blog will run your footage for you.

And I have a feeling I won’t have to shave any context to make it shame the DFL.

PS:  I implied above that there is a concerted rhetorical campaign to so intensely harass conservative women, blacks, latinos and gays to the point that they stay out of politics.  I’m wondering – can you imagine how some DFL hamster like Betty McCollum or Sandy Pappas would melt down if they were the target of the constant misogynistic hatred that the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Laura Ingraham, Mary Franson or any other conservative women are?

Imagining is all we can do, of course.  Because it just.  Doesn’t.  Happen.   Not like this.

Every once in a while you run into a lawyer – or wannabe lawyer – whose idea of argument is to tell you “you’re not positive you don’t not know you’re right, are you? Are  you?  ARE YOU?”

The idea, of course, is to bog your own sense of logic and reason down with so many non-sequiturs and strawmen that you’re not sure you don’t not know you’re right.

Or something like that.

It may not make sense the way I explain it.  But if you watch what the partisan media will be doing this next eleven months, somehow it all makes sense.

It fits in with the great sales bromide “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS”.

Which brings us, for the final time, to Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s WaPo op-ed earlier this week in the Strib, which is to this year’s effort to make people ignore the question “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

Third, the media’s obsession with false equivalence: How the election is covered will almost certainly have a measurable impact on its outcome.

When we think of this, conservatives may think of things like “the inexperienced and radically-connected Barack Obama not getting vetted as much as your typical mid-sized city mayor, while GOP candidates get their records gone over with electron microscopes”, or “The Twin Cities media gave Tom Emmer and all his contributors the equivalent of a rectal exam, while the sum total of the Strib’s coverage of Mark Dayton’s well-known mental illness and alcohol issues was a single story the January before the election, about eight months before anyone outside the wonk class gave a crap”.
That’s not what Vanden Heuvel means, of course:

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman describes what he’s witnessing as “post-truth politics,” in which right-leaning candidates can feel free to say whatever they want without being held accountable by the press.

There may be instances in which a candidate is called out for saying something outright misleading; but, as Krugman notes, “if past experience is any guide, most of the news media will feel as though their reporting must be ‘balanced.’ “

[MItch doesn’t even know what to say here.  He’s at a loss for words. I mean, the obvious – “Paul Krugman has become the nation’s crazy great-uncle, slowly descending into madness as the family watches the disintegration around the table every Thanksgiving” – but Krugman’s a gimme.  The idea that someone could say “political reporters strive for balance” is absurd on its face; the idea that they pull punches on Republicans because they want to appear balanced is less deranged than “there’s a bunch of elders of Zion that have these evil protocols…” only in a moral sense.  Anyway – Mitch is otherwise at a loss to address that last bit, and invites contributions from his reading audience – Ed]

In that world, candidates can continue to say things that are “flatly, grossly, and shamefully untrue,” as The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne described it, without fear of retribution.

Obama has traveled the world and “apologized for America,” says Romney.

Except that, no, he hasn’t.

Wait – so the media is “biased toward conservatives” because they don’t attack conservatives’ opinions of Obama’s “America Last” philosophy in slavish detail?

The stimulus “created zero jobs,” says Rick Perry.

Except that it created or saved at least 3 million.

Wait – the media is “biased toward conservatives” because while reporting Republicans campaign rhetoric, they don’t counter with Obama Administration chanting points, which are themselves wrong and largely unchallenged in the mainstream “conservative” media?

Obama is going to “put free enterprise on trial,” claims Romney.

How does he square that with the nearly 3 million private-sector jobs created under Obama policies in the past 20 months?

And then, agreement with the Administraiton’s chanting points is the barometer of truth?

These three factors are key not only to understanding this campaign and election but to seeing just how far we have to go to reclaim a democracy that is driven by the people themselves.

The biggest factor in going as far as you “have to go”, if you’re on the left, is making people see everything but how far they’ve slipped since 2008.

Think the media is up to the job?

The Strib seems to be getting into its A game.

More over the next ten months or so.

As part of Barack Obama’s campaign to keep Americans from asking themselves the vital question “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”, they’re getting back to an oldie but goodie – one that’s been more or less on the sidelines since the end of the Healthcare debate; how anyone opposing Obama is some sort of “extremist” or another:

In keeping with its previous line of attack, the Obama campaign’s manager Jim Messina said in a statement that the “extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory” shortly after the results were announced early Wednesday.

“No matter who the Republicans nominate, we’ll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win — vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules, end Medicare as we know it, roll back gay rights, leave the troops in Iraq indefinitely, restrict a woman’s right to choose, and gut Social Security to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.”

This from the administration that spent all fall using Social Security funding as a political football.

Messina also warned of “unprecedented” spending by outside groups on campaign ads and urged the president’s supporters to step up donations and on-the-ground organizing ahead of the November vote.

And remember – BOO!  Extremists are around every corner!

So in my series on Defamation law so far, I’ve focused on the elements of the defamation case.

But what if you’re accused of defamation?  How do you defend yourself against a defamation suit?

As you may have figured out from an earlier installment, the best way is to prove that what you said is true…

II. Defenses to Defamation

A. Truth

Truth is a complete defense to a defamation claim. This is simply the flip side of the requirement that plaintiff prove the falsity of the alleged defamatory statement.

…or at least not completely false.

And when there’s some public interest to the subject – say, the target/plaintiff is some sort of public figure, or the story relates to some important public issue?   Then it gets a little more complicated.

The Supremes have spoken on this issue directly, although if you’re not a lawyer, not especially clearly.

B. The First Amendment

1. Public Officials/Public Figures: Actual Malice must be proven.

The First Amendment requires that a defamation plaintiff prove actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth when the plaintiff is a public official or public figure. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). This is a much higher burden of proof for a public figure plaintiff. Instead of showing objectively that a “reasonable person” knew or should have known the defamatory statement was false, a public figure plaintiff must prove the intent of the defendant was malicious, or that they acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This allows the defendant to prove its good faith intent and efforts as a defense.

This is a tricky bit – the kind of thing that keeps lawyers in Lexuses.

Here’s how it works:  If I claimed that Brad Carlson (of the Brad Carlson blog – a public figure, to be sure,and the Northern Alliance’s “The Closer” show), was”convicted of drunk driving” [*], and Brad shows it was false, he’d also have to prove that I was being malicious, or acting in reckless disregard of the truth.

How would that happen?

Would it be considered “malicious” if I had spent months tweeting about my anger toward and hatred of Brad [**}?

Or, perhaps, if it were pointed out to me that the “source” I’d used was bogus – like in the example we showed yesterday – and I not only refused to apologize and retract, but indeed doubled own on my story?

Well, again, that’s the kind of thing that makes some lawyers happy, wealthy people.

Therre is more to it, of course.  It’s the law; there’s always more to it:

2. Matter of Public Concern: Actual Malice must be proven.

In cases where the media defendant is treating an issue of public concern, the First Amendment also requires proof of actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth, even if the plaintiff is not a public figure. Gertz v. Robert Welch, 418 U.S. 323, 349-50 (1974). See also Hepps, 475 U.S. at 775 (In non-public concern, non-public plaintiff defamation case, First Amendment does not bar application of mere negligence standard for defamation); Dun & Bradstreet v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749, 761 (1985) (Powell, J., concurring).

In other words, if my quip about Brad’s (hypothetical) DUI were part of a larger story – say, Brad had uncovered a massive corruption scam at the Ramsey City Hall, and the defamation was part of the larger discussion?   Well, then Brad would have to prove that I acted maliciously, and the courts might well err on the side of protecting my right to free speech.

Maybe.  Probably.

But for purposes of this discussion, let’s just say there’s no larger issue; I just wanted to bag on Brad.  Then – if you read this the quote above at face value – the fact that I’d not gotten my facts straight would be considered, on its own, as malicious.

3. Matter of Public Concern: Plaintiff Must Prove Statement is False.

Proof of falsity required when media defendant addresses topic of public concern; regardless of public/private status of plaintiff. Hepps, 475 U.S. at 775-76.

4. Actual Malice must be Shown by “Convincing Clarity.”

Where the plaintiff is a public official, he must prove actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth with “clear and convincing proof”. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 286 (1964); Gertz, 418 U.S. at 342; Hepps, 475 U.S. at 773.

That means the burden of proof would be on Brad.  And he’d pass that burden with panache, since the only place where Brad shows up as a drunk driver is here.

5. Falsity May Have to Shown by “Convincing Clarity.”

Public figure plaintiffs may have to prove falsity by “clear and convincing evidence” as protected under New York Times v. Sullivan. Sharon v. Time, Inc., 599 F. Supp. 538, 558 (S.D.N.Y. 1984); Firestone v. Time Inc., 460 F.2d 712, 722 (5th Cir. 1972), cert. den., 409 U.S. 875 (Bell, J., specially concurring).

In other words, gray areas are bad.

But there is no gray area there.  Brad never had a DUI, and there is no larger, compelling public interest in the story.

Smells like malice to me.

So go back to the first episode of this piece.  If I were to write – in earnest – that Brad “The Closer” Carlson had been convicted of drunk driving, and…:

1. …it’s clearly false (which it objective is, with no gray areas) and…
2. lt’s defamatory (and accusations of infamous crimes, including those involving potential jail time or moral turpitude are considered defamation per se under Minnesota law), and…
3. One or more third parties heard or read the accusation, and…
4. it can be shown that I made the accusation out of malice or reckless disregard for the facts at hand, and…
5. There is no larger public interest served by invoking the First Amendment to defend my right to accuse Brad of drunk driving…

…well, we have not a few lawyers tuned in here.  Do you think Brad’d have a case?

I’m just curious.

More in two weeks or so.

[*] Which he was not.  I mean, seriously.  Not at all. This is just an example.

[**] Which, to be sure, I have not.  I have nothing  but respect for my broadcast colleague.  Indeed, he’s one of the godfathers of conservative political satire in this state, via his tenure as as Protest Warrior.

For the past week that I’ve been writing this series on defamation law in Minnesota, I’ve been focusing on the letter and spirit (as captured in case law) of the law.

Today, I’m going to go down a tangent, and talk about the mechanics of the law – specifically, how legal records work.

Or, rather, how they don’t work.

When you to google and search, for example, for “DUI Records Minnesota“, you get quite a few sites; once you get out of the ad hits with the pink backgrounds, you are helpfullly presented with  quite a few options purporting to allow you to “search Minnesota DUI records online!”.

Sounds promising!  And after all, isn’t that the wonder of the Internet? That all information is instantly available online?

I tried the first one after the ad links; “duirecords.org“, which promises that you can “Search MN DUI Public Arrest Records Online”.  And just to be curious, I typed in my own name.

And I got back something that made my heart sink into my stomach:

…that’s me!

But then I thought about it for a moment.  I’ve never had a DUI.  I’ve never had any form of impaired driving contact with the police – I’ve never been pulled over on suspicion of any sort of drunk driving.  Nothing,  Zero.  Zip.  Never.

There’s a reason for that.  I don’t drive drunk.  Indeed, I rarely have more than two drinks at a sitting.

And yet this site – this site that purports to “Search Public Records” to return DUI convictions – was saying that I’d had a DUI!

So I wondered – given that nearly 10% of Minnesotans do have a drunk driving record, what other Minnesotans have been convicted of driving under the influence?

I picked a few names, completely at random:  I started with Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, of Fraters Libertas, a bunch of known drinkers:

Wow.

Next,  I tried my friend and radio cohort, Ed Morrissey, who has publicly disclosed he lives in Eagan.

And I was shocked:

Holy crap.  You think you know a guy!

Next – since our last gubernatorial race was settled by a bogus “DUI” charge against Tom Emmer, I thought I’d see if what was fair for the goose were fair for the gander.  Does Mark Dayton have a “drunk driving record?”

Wow!  Someone tell the media!

But I’m starting to smell a rat.  It almost looks as if this site will turn up a record on almost anyone.

I tried Archbishop John C. Nienstedt, the supreme poobah (I’m a little fuzzy on the terms of the Catholic hierarchy) of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul:

And, finally, just out of a fit of untrammelled serendipity, I entered the name of my favorite Twin Cities’ blogger, a person whose keen insights, nimble wit and sparkling writing have enlivened many an idle morning, Professor William Gleason, a chemistry professor at the U of M:

Note:  Someone pointed out that I got Gleason’s middle initial wrong.  No, I did not!  Go search the “database”; there are a plethora of William Gleasons out there!  Dozens!  Including the one with Professor and Blogger Gleason’s middle initial!

It  seems everyone has a DUI!

So I clicked on the “results” link:

What? I’ve gotta pay for public records?

Well,no.  The site above is an advertising site.  Indeed, it’s a form of spam.

Indeed, if you google virtually any form of legal activity – divorce, criminal records, bankruptcy – you will find pages and pages of these spam and scam sites, all designed to get you to pay money for what are, at most, slightly repackaged Google searches.

What “duirecords.org” does is take virtually any input you give it, run a search on, say, Google, spits back the results to make it look like it has something, sucks you in to a link to make you pay for…

…well, that’s as far as I pushed it.  I’m not going to pay to find out.

Now, you can get public records – or at least, names and charges and dates – from the official Minnesota court records (you have to click “Begin Search”, and accept the disclaimer).  Wherein you’ll find that in the past 15 years, there has been no “Mitchell P. Berg” convicted of DUI anywhere in Minnesota – and that I’ve been pulled over for expired tabs and forgetting my insurance card.

Expensive? Dumb?  Sure – but not DUI.

———-

The takeaway is this:  Say I were to write “John Doe, Age 46, of Mazeppa, was convicted of DUI” based on the output of the “DuiRecords.org” website…:

I specifically disclaim any insinuation that any Mr. Doe of Mazeppa has ever committed any crime, by the way. This is just an example.

… believing it to be a genuine public records website, rather than, as we’ve shown, an advertising site that turns up “records” on anyone.  

And ten, say, someone wrote to tell me, specifically, that “your “source” on Mr. Doe is an ad site, not a source of actual public records?”

And yet, I doubled down on my story – redoubling my assertion that Mr. Doe had been convicted of DUI?  Rather than retracting it and apologizing to Mr. Doe?

Well, that could fairly be seen as “failing to take reasonable care” to ensure that a defamatory statement (remember, accusations of infamous crimes are defamation per se under Minnesota law) is accurate”.

OK.  There is no serendipity at all in this series.  There’s a point.

We’re getting to it.

Since I started this series a couple of weeks back, we’ve enjoyed a fascinating journey of learning – in this case, about what “defamation” – libel and slander – really really mean.

Here’s an interesting bit; as we noted yesterday, “false” can mean either “what the defendant said is false”, or “the defendant, with reasonable care, should have known it was false”.  Indeed, the case law makes it pretty clear:

D. Negligence Is Standard Of Liability

In Minnesota, the defendant is liable if it “knew or should have known in the exercise of reasonable care” that the defamatory statement was false. Jadwin, supra. This is the standard formulation for liability based on negligence, that is, liability arising from failure to take due care.

This is a low standard of liability.

In other words, if you accuse someone of having committed an infamous crime because you didn’t take the reasonable care to know that it was not factual, you are liable.

But what about free speech?

However, First Amendment considerations substantially limit the application of this standard.

So the courts will err on the side of free speech if there is any way to do so.

Still – if I were to write “Wang Fui Schlabotnik of Eden Prairie has a child porn conviction”, and Mr. Schlabotnik does not, Mr. Schlabotnik’s attorney might well argue that the First Amendment, free speech, and the rights of an open, unfettered press (in all its forms) aren’t served by my lying about his client’s criminal record – and defamation needs to be false, and false claims of infamous crimes are “defamation per se” under Minnesota Law (as we discussed last week).

And I suspect he’d have a point.

OK.  I’ll cop to it. This series on the legalities behind defamation is not entirely an academic exercise, and it’s really not completely a flight of blitheful serendipity.

But there’s plenty of time to talk about that.

99 weeks, to be exact.

More later.

In the first couple parts of this series – admittedly something I’m writing out of pure unvarnished serendipity – I noted that Minnesota recognizes “defemation” when someone says something false and defamatory about someone, to someone else.

Today, we move on to the definition of “false”.  From this very useful site, which has been my source for much of this series, we will look – in effect, and with a nod to Bill Clinton – into what the meaning of the term “isn’t” is.

C. The defendant knew or should have known that the communication was false

Defamation allows recovery for unfair damage to reputation. As a consequence, if true statements are made about a person which damage their reputation, they cannot maintain a lawsuit.

That’s the first thing they teach you when you start learning how to be a reporter; make sure you’re writing the truth (or at least writing from verifiable fact).  And be ready to support the veracity of what you write; take good notes, and don’t toss them when the story’s done.  Have good solid cites for anything in contention.  Uses sources that you’re sure won’t burn you, and verify even the trustworthy ones. Don’t be a dummy.

Because the surest defense in a defamation suit is the truth.

It hasn’t always been this way:

This is a relatively recent development. One origin of libel and slander laws was a criminal cause of action by the English Crown used to silence its critics; hence, it was the truth of the alleged libel which provoked the lawsuit.

And this – the tradition of suiing over embarassing but true information – is one of the things that makes media work in the UK such a nasty, brutish business; it’s very easy to prove defamation.  And the absolutism with which our system approaches free speech (except when liberals are talking about talk radio) is at least in part a direct result of that tradition.

It’s part of Minnesota’s judicial canon.  I’m going to add just a little bit of emphasis to the following:

For example, the Minnesota Supreme Court has held:

We hold that a private individual may recover actual damages for a defamatory publication upon proof that the defendant knew or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known that the defamatory statement was false.

Remember those two bolded bits.  They may become important later.

Wait – I said this whole series was unvarnished serendipity, didn’t I?

Well, remember them anyway.

The conduct of defamation defendants will be judged on whether the conduct was that of a reasonable person under the circumstances.

Jadwin v. Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co., 367 N.W.2d 476, 491 (Minn. 1985). Other cases follow this reasoning. See LeDoux v. Northwest Publications, Inc., 521 N.W.2d 59, 67 (Minn. App. 1994) (“In order for a statement to be defamatory . . . it must be false.”); Janklow v. Newsweek, Inc., 759 F.2d 644, 648 (8th Cir. 1985), cert. den., 479 U.S. 883 (1987) (“Libel, by definition, consists of publication of a false and unprivileged fact.”).

The article takes great pains to estabish that falsity is a big-kahuna element of defamation..  It’s important.

This part is also pretty vital: the whole statement needs to be false.

Minor inaccuracies are not subject to defamation claims if the overall substance of the statement is true. “The plaintiff cannot succeed in meeting the burden of proving falsity by showing that only that the statement is not literally true in every detail. If the statement is true in substance, inaccuracies of expression or detail are immaterial.” Jadwin, supra, 390 N.W.2d at 441.

In other words, if I wrote “Todd Yamamoto, a Vikings fan from Edina, crashed into a tree”, and Mr. Yamamoto did crash into a tree, but was a Packers fan who is mortified to be associated with the purple and gold?  The suit is likely doomed!

But if I wrote “Bucky Yamamoto, Vikings Fan from Edina, crashed into a tree because he was free-basing with a drunk 16 year old girl”, and there was no freebase and the girl was 35 and his wife?  That’d be a problem.

(Dear Bucky Yamamoto – I don’t know that you exist. If you do, my apologies).

No Defamation by Implication. Failure to report all the facts may lead to a defamatory conclusion by the reader. But unless the overall substance of the statement can be proven false, no defamation claim will arise. “[T]he cause of action known as defamation by implication . . . is not recognized in Minnesota.” Kortz v. Midwest Communications, Inc., 20 Media Law Rep. (BNA) 1860, 1865 (Ramsey County Dist. Ct. 1992). A public official may not maintain a defamation by implication claim. Diesen v. Hessberg, 455 N.W.2d 446, 451 (Minn. 1990).

This was one that surprised, and sometimes infuriates me.  I thought the Strib’s Rochelle Olson defamed Alan Fine back in 2006, when it reported all the “facts” about his ancient domestic abuse arrest except the ones that could have exculpated him in the public eye, just in time for the election.  Not so; Ms. Olson and the Strib got the basic facts right; they just selected or omitted true facts in such a way as to ensure and maximize political damage to Fine and his campaign.

Slimy?  Sure – but not actionable.

Oh, the bit says that the defendant “knows or should have known” that their allegedly defamatory communication was false.

That means if they knew it was false, or they should have after taking reasonable care.

For example, say that I said that “Carrie Ann Trzeszelewska, age 22, of Forest Lake got a DUI”, and someone wrote me to say that there were two Carrie Trzeszelewskas – one age 22, that I wrote about and another woman, Carrie Raye Trzeszelewska, age 44 of Hugo, that actually had the DUI?  And that there was a state website where I could have checked that fact, either before writing the statement (as I should have) or as part of an immediate and humble retraction (as would have been the proper Plan B), but that I disregarded because I either didn’t care or was positive I had the right Carrie Trzeszelewska?

That might cause me a legal problem.

As I said, this entire series is borne of unvarnished serendipity.

OK.  Not entirely.

More tomorrow..

The Star/Tribune Editorial Board puts the happiest, rah-rah-local-team-iest face they can on the aftermath of “Operation Fast And Furious”, the “Justice” Department’s infamous “gun-running sting” that morphed into an organized attempt to slander America’s gun owners and gun dealers to undercut the Second Amendment movement – and tried to play the issue against the GOP.

They start out with the facts, more or less…:

The agency’s “Operation Fast and Furious” was supposed to monitor illegal gun sales from small-time gun buyers to large weapons traffickers, but after the sting operation failed an ATF analyst concluded that about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons linked to the operation have not been recovered.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way – and the one that I’m pretty well convinced history will find accurate – was that the program was supposed to create a trail of guns from small American gun dealers to the narcotraficantes, that would allow the Administration to step in in 2012 and declare they were shocked, shocked to see a trail of firearms from Texas to the carterls.  This, of course, would allow them to frame the “bitter gun-clingers” of the Second Amendment movement, in classic Alinsky style, as aiders, abetters and profiteers from Mexico’s anarchy.

The Strib starts with some bipartisan gurglings…

It’s been reassuring to see dogged Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley take a lead role in the congressional investigation. While Jones, who will continue to serve as U.S. attorney in Minnesota, works to straighten out the agency’s internal operations, the American people deserve a thorough review of what went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious.

…which lead to the paper’s real goal; finding some way of tying this fiasco to the GOP and the Right (emphasis added):

[It’s] already clear that the ATF has suffered from being without a permanent director since 2006, when Congress began requiring Senate confirmation of the position.

President Obama nominated Andrew Traver, special agent in charge of ATF’s Chicago field division, in November 2010, but like other candidates he’s been opposed by the too-powerful gun lobby.

And there you have it.  For the “crime” of demanding better accountability in the leadership of the BATFE – a government agency with a decades-long history of colossal, epic, face-palming incompetence and politicization aimed at law-abiding gun owners – the Strib editorial board wants it to share in the responsibility for a bureaucratic cluster-hug designed entirely to slander that same movement.

The BATF doesn’t need Minnesota’s US Attorney to fix it. It needs to be shut down, its staff scattered to the four corners of the country, and have its offices demolished and the land beneath it salted.

The Strib editorial board has less interest in “fixing the BATF” than it has in cutting down Barack Obama’s opponents – or at least limiting damate to their President.

Remember last spring, when the Dems lept up and down like organ-grinder monkeys on espresso, claiming that Supreme Court of Wisconsin (SCOW) Justice David Prosser had “choked” fellow SCOW justice Ann Walsh Bradley?

Leftybloggers will no doubt hope you don’t.  I’ll refresh everyone’s memory here and here.

Was it 1000% bullcrap?  Hey, it was a liberal meme; I’d only be amazed if it wasn’t.

Because it was.

Neither Supreme Court Justice David Prosser nor fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will face criminal charges for a June altercation that broke out as the judges were considering Gov. Scott Walker’s union bargaining law, a special prosecutor has determined.

In an interview, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett steered resolutely clear of specifics about the reasons for her decision.

“The totality of the facts and the circumstances and all of the evidence that I reviewed did not support my filing criminal charges,” Barrett said Thursday.

Which is, I suspect, lawyer-talk for “there was no there, there, but I’ll be damned if I”m going to piss off a SCOW justice”.

So there you go, lefties.  On to your next facile group slander!

Let’s ask some rhetorical questions.

1. If Code Pink got as exercised over torturing context as they did over torturing terrorists, would they protest against leftybloggers?
2. If liberal bloggers and media couldn’t express themselves in terms of framing the opposition, would they all go mute?
3. If liberal bloggers couldn’t argue from false premises – indeed, strawmen full of words and ideas that they jam forcibly (rhetorically) down their opponents’ throats, could they argue at all?
4. If the “loaded question without any evidence to lead one to the question” were a death-penalty offense, would the morgues overflow quickly with leftybloggers, or would they overflow very very quickly?

Apropos nothing [*], Eric Austen from “Outstate Report” writes in re a piece by Walter Scott Hudson that appeared in True North and, in so doing, hits all four of the above in a piece called “What Is This True North Contributor Suggesting? Denying Treatment To Those Unable To Pay?“.

For entertainment purposes, I’ll note (in red!) which of the four austen-tatious bits of rhetorical excess Austen is indulging in as we go through the article.  Keep score at home!

(Yep – the title itself counts as [1, 2, 3 and 4], a rare quad-fecta!)

All in all this post from contributor, Walter Scott Hudson, is standard conservative rhetoric about how bad Obamacare is and how awesome it is that one Appeals Court in the United States [3 – of course there’s “one” court; they dont’ travel or rule in packs!] struck down its individual mandate. Yet there is an instructive piece that everyone ought to read and digest because it speaks to the extremism that has become mainstream conservative thought:

If a conservative orders a pizza in the woods, and Eric Austen isn’t there to hear it, is the conservative still “extreme?”

Sure – but only when you accept Austen’s loaded, strawman-via-framing premises.

He quotes Hudson:

In other words, citizens must be forced to purchase health insurance to pay for services which hospitals are forced to provide. Force begets force.

Solving every problem – from developing a Java widget to repairing society – requires thought on two levels; “Policy” – the theories, principles and goals you set to solve the problem, and “mechanism”, the mechanics and blocking-and-tackling that actually implement the Policy.

As a matter of libertarian-conservative policy, forcing people and institutions to do things is bad.  The individual healthcare mandate has been spawning arguments for decades, long preceding Obama.

I know Walter Hudson. He’s a pretty libertarian guy, and it shows, as the quote continues:

This brings into question the whole notion of economic mandates. Clearly, despite the political class’s reverence for “compromise,” this is an either-or proposition. Either you believe people ought to be forced into economic transactions, or you don’t. The moment we accepted the premise that the needs of the sick and injured place some claim upon the property and labor of health care providers, we created the problem which the individual mandate is intended to solve.

Which refers to an iron-clad law of conservative policy; any government attempt to make something worth other than what people will naturally pay for it (in this case, free) has unintended (?) consequences.

Austen:

Is Hudson suggesting that we shouldn’t force hospitals to treat the sick and injured if they are unable to afford treatment? That’s certainly how it reads to me [1, 3, 4].

And it’s expecting a bit much to ask Austen to read anything a conservative writes in the spirit in which it’s intended.

He’s suggesting stating that the government’s attempt to force the availability of health care has the “unintended” consequence of making health care less affordable, and in turn “forcing” the government to coerce people into paying something other than they naturally would for health care -which, predictably, in turn, will cause other “unintended” consequences.

I’d also suspect Hudson knows there are better ways to treat the uninsured than compelling health care providers – some of them, anyway – to work for free.  And there, you’re getting into “mechanism”, which is another entire discussion.

Modern conservatives, mostly in an attempt to oppose anything this President does  [1, 2,3]…

Let’s stop to demand a little honesty from Austen, here; it’s not this President.  It’d be any President that sought to nationalize a sixth of the economy, whether it was John Kerry or Ralph Nader or Algore or Hillary Clinton.

I’m going to add a little emphasis to this next bit:

…have taken their economic “freedom” message to an extreme as evidenced by this post. They know[3] that without the individual mandate, bringing down health costs simply will not work in the free market UNLESS we make that market even more free and allow the denial of services to those who cannot afford them.

Rule of thumb: if you read any sentence that starts with an accusatory “they know that…”, demand to see evidence of clairvoyance.

Austen certainly can’t provide any.  Conservatives know that health care can be made affordable; it won’t be easy, and it’ll upset the applecarts of a few entitled classes along the way, but it can be done.  Aggressive use of self-managed care, health savings accounts, retail medicine, and de-emphasis on third-party money will bring down the cost; so will ditching some of the other – ta daaaa! – mandates that government has forced on providers (mandatory mental health coverage,

While it is certainly true that allowing the health industry to deny care to those unable to pay will bring down costs, I doubt very much that Americans would agree to such a society no matter how much “freedom” it brings[1].

No kidding!

But that’s not the society that Hudson – or any conservative – is asking people to agree to.

As a matter of principle – “policy” – we oppose mandates.  We do favor – indeed, require – some creative thinking on how to solve the health insurance problem.

And if the best the left can do is concoct sinister motivations from context-mangled hijackings of high-level policy statements, then perhaps it’s time we got our shot; we can’t do any worse than the crowd in Washington, Saint Paul and everywhere else.

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