Politics

While Cockburn was flipping through the channels last night, he came across Tucker Carlson, whom the media decries as a racist, interviewing Kyle Rittenhouse, whom the media decries as a murderer. Rittenhouse’s lawyer had accompanied him to this interview, and the pair announced that they planned to pull a Sandmann. That is, they want to sue the mainstream media over its smearing of Rittenhouse and the suppression of the facts that would have clarified the circumstances surrounding his shooting of three men in downtown Kenosha during a riot. Other claims have floated that Rittenhouse was a racist. Joe Biden even posted a video implying that Rittenhouse was either a white supremacist or part of a militia group.

Timothy Johnson, a "researcher" with Media Matters for America, announced Monday that he had left the organization after ten years — and apparently not on amicable terms. Johnson not only accused his former boss of covering for a sexual predator, but offered a rare mea culpa for his time with Media Matters. Maybe —  just maybe — he notes, the organization dedicated to using out-of-context quotes, spurious accusations, and old tweets to destroy the livelihoods of its political enemies is not the virtuous place he thought it to be. In a long tweet thread, Johnson claims that Media Matters editorial director Ben Dimiero knew for years that a male staff member was engaging in sexual misconduct but did nothing to stop him. He writes: This man suddenly resigned.

As goes California... …so goes the nation. The Golden State is used to its trailblazer status. But in recent years it has been a harbinger of what is to come across America for all the wrong reasons. Endemic homelessness, soaring overdose deaths and rising crime dominate politics in the state’s cities. An increasingly hostile environment in which to do business has fueled an exodus from the state that only accelerated once the pandemic, and the associated restrictions and mandates, arrived. Now, California looks poised once again to be a sign of things to come with regard to the backlash against the progressivism that has got the state, and in particular, its cities, into the current mess.

Janet Yellen makes her excuses Did Joe Biden ignore the advice of his treasury secretary when compiling the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the early days of his administration? That is what a new biography of Janet Yellen suggests. On Friday Bloomberg reported that, according to Yellen biographer Owen Ullmann: “Privately, Yellen agreed with [Larry] Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly.” According to an advance copy of the book, out in September and titled Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All, Yellen told the White House that the Covid spending package should be scaled back by a third.

Elon Musk recently posted a meme about Jeffrey Epstein and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Twitter, the brand he's soon (maybe?) hoping to buy. The meme says, “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?” While Cockburn has nothing but reverence for his governmental overlords, Musk's reference to the Jeffery Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell client list does stand out as a particularly juicy piece of news. The mainstream media has avoided the list like the Spanish Flu. Doesn’t the average person deserve to know which of their esteemed leaders has taken a trip to the infamous Little Saint James Island?

On Friday, June 3, assailants vandalized the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, not far from Cockburn's Washington home. An unknown party splashed a gallon of red paint on the center’s front door and doormat, as well as egging the place and spraying graffiti on the walls that said, “JANE SAYS REVENGE.” “As the day unfolded, there was a lot of positive outreach," Janet Durig, the pregnancy center’s executive director, told Cockburn. "We’ve had people asking from all over the area asking if anything is damaged or needs to be replaced.” She also said, “The police were extremely helpful.

Normally Cockburn regards himself as well above the mere paparazzi — or at least too dissolute to properly operate a camera. But he happily made an exception on Wednesday to catch the verdict in the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial, held at the Fairfax County Courthouse just outside his native Washington, DC. It was the region's most captivating trial of an unstable blonde since the Clinton impeachment. And sure enough, the jury found that Heard had defamed Depp, and that Depp had defamed Heard. Yet while Depp was awarded $15 million, Heard was only awarded $2 million, all of it in compensatory as opposed to punitive damages. It's a win for Depp, and Cockburn will have much more to come from the courthouse.

What primary season has taught us so far It may not feel like it, but we’re only two months into a seven-month-long primary season ahead of this year’s midterms. There are still thirty-seven states in which the voters are yet to have their say on the major parties’ candidates ahead of Election Day. In other words, it’s still early. But with the calendar front-loaded with attention-grabbing showdowns in important states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, it’s not too late to tease out some big-picture takeaways.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest gun control legislation would restrict the sale and trading of many handguns. But it also does something else: it includes a substantial ban on toy guns and other functioning replicas, such as airsoft guns. This is an ignorant display of power, and far more petty than it is precautionary. If the government can control pseudo-guns, then what is safe from its interference? The actual text of the law itself states under the criminal code that (emphasis added): For the purposes of sections 99 to 101, 103 to 107 and 117.‍03, a firearm is deemed to be a prohibited device if...the firearm is designed or intended to exactly resemble, or to resemble with near precision, a firearm...