"Before the election, you'd be hard pressed to find a group of media and political commentators willing to talk about Russia the way they do today.

"In fact, pooh-poohing concerns about Moscow's obvious hostility to the U.S. was all the rage as recently as 2012. It was a great punchline during the presidential debate between then-President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney.

"Similarly, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who gave a good damn about Manafort before the 2016 election. That guy has been running scams and engaging in clearly unethical and illegal behavior for years. And it's not like he was a non-entity in political and media circles. Most just didn't care. But now that Trump is president, it's a very serious matter.

"I'm all for getting the crooks. I'm all for rooting them out, one by one. I just wish it didn't take Democrats losing a presidential election for it to happen."

"Liberalism has always struggled to balance the protection of minority rights against majoritarian institutions and -- less often appreciated -- the protection of individual rights. The American Left has liberated itself from such considerations by abandoning liberalism for identity politics and a might-makes-right ethic. Why compel Jack Phillips to knuckle under? Because you can, and because you hate him. Hate is an inescapable part of tribalism, and hate is now the single most important organizing principle of the American Left.

"T. H. White understood this ethic, which he described as the constitution of an ant colony: 'Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory.' To the cranky dissidents such as Jack Phillips, and to the likewise unassimilated nonconformists of our time, we owe a debt of gratitude. If the human ethic survives the ant ethic, it will be in no small part because of them."

"A Gallup survey three years ago found that 40 percent trusted the media; two years ago, the trust meter declined by 8 points, to 32 percent. Now even that low bar looks like the good old days.

"Yet instead of soberly examining their conduct, most in the media ratchet up the vitriol, apparently believing that screaming louder and longer will lead the public to hate Trump as much as they do.

"But as the surveys show, their bias is a boomerang. With media behavior undermining public trust more than anything Trump says or does, a return to traditional standards of fairness and a separation of news from opinion are essential."

"Every now and then, I'll read some news that makes my eyes bug out and my jaw drop to the floor because I can't believe how stupid it is.

"This week, it was the news that fired FBI agent Peter Strzok has raised over $400,000 for his legal costs and lost income via a GoFundMe campaign.

"Let me rephrase: Actual people with actual brains actually decided that the best use of their hard-earned cash was to just give it away to this dude. I really can't believe it. I mean, I thought I was bad with money until I saw people were giving theirs to Peter f***ing Strzok. I can spend my money much more wisely than that, and I'm saying that as someone who once spent $20 to have a single Slurpee delivered to her apartment so she didn't have to go outside.

"Personally, I am someone who believes that Strzok should have been fired sooner. His job demanded that he remain unbiased, and we have text-message proof that he was not. We have text-message proof of him literally saying he wanted to take Donald Trump down. It's also not like Strzok has lived his life in a way that would make him a particularly sympathetic figure. After all, on top of him being bad at his job, it seems that he was also pretty bad at being a husband. Like, I may not know a ton about marriage (I am single and live alone with a cat), but I do know that the people we call 'good husbands' are generally ones that don't cheat on their wives. I do know that much!"

Read entire article here.

"Recep Tayyip Erdogan is learning a lesson that history has taught, sometimes harshly, to many men of his kind in the past: Tyrants have power, but markets have more power.

"If you are a tyrant, you can declare a 'state of emergency' to give yourself special powers. Indira Gandhi did it to crack down on political opponents in 1975, and Pervez Musharraf did it for the same reason in 2007. At the close of the Cold War, KGB boss Vladimir Kryuchkov tried to do it to reverse perestroika. And President Erdogan did it to consolidate his political power. What he did with his expanded powers was predictable: He dismissed more than 100,000 public officials who did not support him politically; he shut down critical newspapers and media outlets, along with troublesome schools, charities, and civil-society groups, seizing their assets without compensation. He arrested 50,000 people on trumped-up terrorism charges and held many without trial. He seized the passports of dissidents and froze their bank accounts.

"But capital in the 21st century is slippery. It is restless, and it will not sit still for abuse. It is difficult to seize. The iron fist of tyranny is no good against 21st-century capital, which slips between the tyrant's grubby little fingers like water. Turkey's currency, the lira, lost half its value as the world's investors discovered themselves having second thoughts about exposing themselves to the caprices of a vicious autocrat. Erdogan, for all his sultanic pretense, is nearly defenseless against the power of simple preference. ...

"Erdogan can lock up dissidents and shut down newspapers. But he can't lock up the markets, and the markets are no longer buying what he's selling."

"West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Robin Jean Davis announced her resignation early Tuesday, just hours after the state House of Delegates adopted articles of impeachment against every justice serving on the court. ...

"Davis and three of her colleagues were impeached in the state legislature late Monday. Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justices Allen Loughry and Elizabeth Walker will now stand trial in the state senate. The fifth member of the court, Menis Ketchum, resigned on July 27. He is expected to plead guilty to two corruption charges in federal court on Aug. 29.

"The impeachment articles allege the justices failed to effectively administer the state courts, approved compensation for senior judges in excess of statutory limits, and abused state resources through lavish renovations to their chambers and unauthorized use of state vehicles for personal travel.

"GOP Gov. Jim Justice will appoint successors to any justice removed from office following the Senate trial.

"Local media and state auditors discovered the justices cumulatively spent over $1 million on furniture and aesthetic upgrades for their state offices -- Davis spent some $500,000, according to the impeachment articles, including $23,000 for design services and $20,000 for a sectional carpet."

Read entire article here.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish.

"The FBI has finally fired Peter Strzok, the former senior counterintelligence official whose anti-Trump texts have compromised the bureau's investigations of Hillary Clinton's unauthorized State Department email server and Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

"Media responded Monday by questioning whether the White House influenced the decision.

"How about another question: What does a fed have to do to get fired in this city?

"Strzok, who oversaw both the Clinton and Russia investigations, was a toxic employee; his stupidity matched only by his hubris. The bureau should've fired him long before the president weighed in on the issue."

"Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat and 2020 White House hopeful, delivered a speech last week celebrating the widespread use of 'identity politics' that Democrats hope to use to win back the House and Senate.

"'Identity politics' is the tactic of dividing people into 'identity' groups such as black, white, Hispanic, Asian, female, Muslim or whatever. Once divided into their various labeled train cars, the voters in each car are fed a political message tailored to their specific race, religion or gender.

"In the good old days, there was another term for this. It was called 'racism.' And good people everywhere in civilized society rejected it.

"Of course the media is too absorbed covering the latest irrelevant Klan rally to give the appropriate attention to a sitting United States senator publicly defending racist political tactics on her march to the White House.

"Maybe Facebook will shut down her website. But I wouldn't bet on it."

"A judge late Wednesday signed off on the settlement between the IRS and hundreds of tea party groups, closing out the last major legal battle over what all sides now agree was unwarranted and illegal targeting for political purposes.

"The IRS agreed to pay $3.5 million to groups that were wronged by the intrusive inspections, and insists it's made changes so that political targeting can't occur in the future.

"A few issues are still being fought over in the courts -- including whether former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner will be allowed to forever shield her deposition explaining her behavior from public view, and whether the IRS should pay attorney fees -- but this week's decision closes out five years of litigation over the targeting itself."

"Big tech has made a big mistake. Swept up in a wave of political correctness and the fallout from the Russia investigation, many of the largest online platforms have embarked upon a fruitless adventure in censorship that can only further divide rather than unite the nation. These internet companies have lost sight of the most basic principle underlying the First Amendment, that no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, we must put our trust in the power of a free market of ideas. ...

"Just yesterday I personally received a notice from Google disallowing an ad I placed on its platform, one that has been running for weeks, with a cryptic notice mysteriously referring me to the guidelines for political advertising. Only it was not political advertising at all. I placed an ad for a political game, Two Seventy, that I built with friends for fun that allows people to reenact campaigns. But Google's computers saw the names of political figures and, bingo, I was censored, given no one to call and asked to fill out a form to try to lift this unfair restraint on my speech. This is what will happen with increasing frequency. The automated bots on online platforms can become roving censors unable to understand the true context of what they are reading and, yet, wielding enormous power to delete, downgrade or hide words, pictures and information.

"Until now, the big tech platforms like Google, YouTube, and Facebook stayed out of censoring. They preached the benefits of an open and connected society. If they were going to delete material, it would mostly be on a very limited basis, using a scalpel, not a machete. Sometimes they even tolerated too much freedom on their platforms and were fined for accepting fake drug ads, and for failing to police their platforms of sex trafficking and other crimes. They also have not always been vigilant enough to catch bots and fake accounts. They made some mistakes that they could and should fix to the best of their abilities. ...

"The big tech companies will only find themselves enmeshed in a growing public crossfire if they become active arbiters of content, purveyors of speech codes, and forerunners of a 'Bladerunner' future. Congress should remove the content liability exemption from companies exercising too much power over user content. Or, better yet, the industry should adopt a uniform published code with clear standards mirroring the Supreme Court and have tough cases judged by a panel that genuinely has equal numbers of liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Maybe we should have an internet freedom amendment to the Constitution.

"As the ACLU once understood well, the very essence of the First Amendment is tolerating speech we hate, and standing up for it takes courage. We need some more of that kind of courage today."

Read entire article here.