I’m wagering the general run of reporters have favored the Democratic Party since about 1935 and the general run of editors since about 1960. In the national press corps, the margins by 1992 were about 8 to 1. However, the media wasn’t a n extension of the Democratic Party and the media could pay the salaries and offer the working opportunities to recruit creamier talent than they can today. See Brent Bozell’s old newsletters. As recently as 1998, the print media was given to reporting quite inconvenient to the Clinton Administration. (Bozell was of the view that the broadcast media were extensions of the White House press office).

See the period critiques of Seymour Hersch by Martin Peretz and Michael Ledeen, as well as the book reviewer for Time. See the critiques by Garry Wills a half-generation later.

James Bowman pointed out about 15 years ago that people who write exposes for a living – and that includes ‘investigative reporters’ – are properly viewed with skepticism for structural reasons. They took an advance. If there is no scandal, they’ve got no book.

That piece you linked to at The Atlantic was written by Adam Serwer, not John Podhoretz. And Serwer’s always been a leftist, as far as I know.

There is a great scene in the movie, “Absence of Malice” where the reporter, Sally Fields, and her editor are trying to come up with a term for an unknown source.

The movie, one of my favorites, was made in 1981 and this Roger Ebert review tells us how much has changed since then.

Would real investigative reporters actually commit Field’s mistakes, improprieties, misjudgments, indiscretions, and ethical lapses? Generally speaking, no, they wouldn’t. And if they did, they shouldn’t have. And furthermore, their editors would never let them get away with it. (The unbelievable laxity of the editors in “Absence of Malice” creates the movie’s greatest credibility gap.)

Roger was a leftie but those days were another world.

The release of the retraction from Muller’s office was completely self serving. They had to release as the facts would have eventually come out and they had to get on top of it lest they look bad. But they let the speculation percolate for almost twenty four hours before issuing the denial on a late Friday afternoon thus projecting they image they are on the side of the angles while doing maximum damage to the President.

By Monday morning a whole new crisis will be in the forefront – perhaps it will be reported that due to the government shutdown Melania took the initiative to make the President a ham sandwich and the seven will go ape – and this incident will be nowhere to be seen.

But I guarantee that three weeks from now if asked the average person of democrat persuasion will assure you that the President ordered his lawyer to lie to congress under oath and is thus beyond evil.

Another thing that I find interesting is Amy Klobugar’s extensive grilling of William Barr on “obstruction of justice”. It almost seemed like she was trying to set him up to be forced to turn on the President when this story broke. Did she know what was coming and was part of the plot?

I surely do not want to come across as a nut who believes in conspiracy’s that have wheels within wheels but I am beginning to believe that there are wheels within wheels.

Law enforcement sources: two guards who stand outside the building where Mueller’s team is working? Two traffic cops who were part of Mueller’s escort?

You get the idea — this kind of sourcing tries to imply that someone sitting around the table with Mueller spilled the beans, when in reality it is likely someone who is very peripheral.

There; fixed it for you.

By the way “those people” are the same people in both instances.

What seems (more than anything else) to motivate the residue of NeverTrumpers is defending what they said the day before, at which point they were defending what they said the day before that. Well, that and their disgust that anyone would attempt to enforce the immigration laws. Near criminal conduct by the Democratic Party and the permanent government doesn’t interest them.

Podhoritz bit hard on this hook.

It’s not just the collusion. It’s the conspiracy.

On Thursday evening, BuzzFeed News dropped a bombshell, reporting that President Donald Trump told Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney, to lie to Congress about the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a real-estate project in Moscow during the 2016 election, a period in which the Russian government was seeking to aid Trump’s presidential campaign.

What a shame.

So, I knew the story was bullsh*t as soon as I saw it, and even if I hadn’t had the plea agreement to read, I would have not believed it because the matter being lied about was so damned trivial that no one would suborn perjury to stop it being made public.