The Times on Project Veritas a week ago:

Hours after F.B.I. agents searched the homes of two former Project Veritas operatives last week, James O’Keefe, the leader of the conservative group, took to YouTube to defend its work as “the stuff of responsible, ethical journalism.”

“We never break the law,” he said, railing against the F.B.I.’s investigation into members of his group for possible involvement in the reported theft of a diary kept by President Biden’s daughter, Ashley. “In fact, one of our ethical rules is to act as if there are 12 jurors on our shoulders all the time.”

No, I’m sure Biden’s daughter gave them her diary of her own free will.

Project Veritas has long occupied a gray area between investigative journalism and political spying, and internal documents obtained by The New York Times reveal the extent to which the group has worked with its lawyers to gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices can go before running afoul of federal laws.

The documents, a series of memos written by the group’s lawyer, detail ways for Project Veritas sting operations — which typically diverge from standard journalistic practice by employing people who mask their real identities or create fake ones to infiltrate target organizations — to avoid breaking federal statutes such as the law against lying to government officials.

There are parallels here of course – the Times has documents which it has “obtained” and so does Project Veritas.

The documents, a series of memos written by the group’s lawyer, detail ways for Project Veritas sting operations — which typically diverge from standard journalistic practice by employing people who mask their real identities or create fake ones to infiltrate target organizations — to avoid breaking federal statutes such as the law against lying to government officials.

In other words it’s pretty shady (and the lawyer sounds pretty shady too). Is the Times equally shady and in the same way?

“Because intent is relevant — and broadly defined — ensuring PV journalists’ intent is narrow and lawful would be paramount in any operation,” the group’s media lawyer, Benjamin Barr, wrote in response to questions from the group about using the dating app Tinder to have its operatives meet government employees, potentially including some with national security clearances.

Shady, sleazy, scummy…but legal! Maybe.

The documents give new insight into the workings of the group at a time when it faces potential legal peril in the diary investigation — and has signaled that its defense will rely in part on casting itself as a journalistic organization protected by the First Amendment.

But it’s not. There the parallels are not very close. The Times may lean “liberal” or centrist-Democraticish, but it employs and publishes plenty of conservatives and it’s not a dirty tricks organization. The Times is a real newspaper, Project Veritas is conservatrickster.

Return of prior restraint:

A New York trial judge has temporarily blocked the New York Times from publishing some materials concerning the rightwing activist group Project Veritas, a rare step that the newspaper said violated decades of first amendment constitutional protections.

The order by Justice Charles Wood of the Westchester county supreme court covers memos written by a Project Veritas lawyer and obtained by the New York Times.

Remember the Pentagon Papers?

“This ruling is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent,” Dean Baquet, the Times’s executive editor, said in an emailed statement.

“When a court silences journalism, it fails its citizens and undermines their right to know,” he added. “The supreme court made that clear in the Pentagon Papers case, a landmark ruling against prior restraint blocking the publication of newsworthy journalism. That principle clearly applies here. We are seeking an immediate review of this decision.“

Baquet’s statement referred to the US supreme court’s 1971 rejection of the Nixon administration’s attempt to stop the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, which revealed details unwelcome to the administration about US military involvement in Vietnam.

They want to keep their secrets.

It’s an outrage!

Richard Segovia’s house is as loud as the Latin rock music he teaches children to play in his basement studio. With colors ranging from jungle green and royal blue at the pavement to a red and yellow sunburst at the ridge, the otherwise modest Spanish-style home is essentially one enormous mural, a crowded portraitof long-gone musicians, Segovia’s family members, social activists, various psychedelia, and the odd jungle animal.

Segovia has lived in San Francisco’s Mission district since 1963, and he sees himself as a custodian of the neighborhood’s culture, specifically as the birthplace of Latin rock. (Carlos Santana, a family friend, grew up nearby.) But increasingly the 68-year old “Mayor of the Mission” finds himself face to face with a stark representation of all the color that has been bled out of the city over successive waves of tech-fueled gentrification.

“I walk the neighborhood every day and I see all these gray houses,” Segovia says. “It’s like being in a cemetery.”

Noooooooo. San Francisco is gorgeous and one of the ways it’s gorgeous is all the pistachio and peach and hyacinth houses. One of my few complaints about Seattle [leaving aside the explosion of new high-rises] is the passion for drab muddy dark dreary colors for the houses – gray, darker gray, brown, tan, mud, smoke. I stop to drink in every brightly colored house I see and wish there were more of them. What is wrong with people? Why would anyone want San Francisco to be more gray?

From the Golden Gate Bridge’s International Orange hue to the elaborately carved and painted façades of the Painted Ladies fronting Alamo Square, vivid color has long been the grammar of San Francisco’s vernacular architecture.

Yes but also of the much more ordinary Little Boxes, way out in the Sunset and Richmond, the flattest and least interesting part of the city (except that it’s next to the ocean), which are a sea of pink and lavender and pale green, or at least were when I lived in SF decades ago.

But apparently that doesn’t say Money loudly enough.

But more and more, amid the pastels and the gold-leaf embellishments, you see a striking juxtaposition: 125-year-old houses painted in the tones of a cold war-era nuclear warhead or a dormant cinder cone. In neighborhoods like the Mission and the Haight, this phenomenon reads to some residents as an erasure of the Latino community or of the lingering counterculture. Gentrification gray homes have become a totem of affluent interlopers.

It’s a crime.

The Daily Mail has a useful reminder of some of Adrian Harrop’s nastiest work. (Reading the piece also gives me an unpleasant awareness of the Mail’s conspicuous persecution of Meghan Markle via the sidebar – two headlines about her doing some unremarkable things but presented with hostile contempt. Ugly…and in fact quite similar to Harrop himself. Both Harrop and DM are relentless persecutors. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that they both target women.)

None of the GP’s alleged cyber victims were named. But in the case of A, he posted her full name and details of her job, and continued to do so even when she asked him to stop due to concerns for her safety.

He warned her that he would only stop if she deleted her tweets and then her Twitter profile.

The GP derided one Twitter rival, telling her that he felt sure ‘your morning medication will have kicked in’. He then added a pill emoji.

He referred to A as ‘the creepy, stalkerish one’ before revealing her full name. A responded by tweeting back: ‘This is crossing a line. You are directly exposing me to harm’.

He then said he would only do so if she apologised for all she had tweeted, adding that he didn’t want her or others with her views to ‘feel safe or welcome here’.

Harrop claims all this is to help “the trans community” but I don’t think it is, I think it’s sadism. He enjoys it. Doing it “to help” is just a fig leaf.

Twitter user E was another of those to have engaged in Twitter battles with Dr Harrop’s ally, C.

The GP again referred to the woman’s health, despite knowing nothing about it. Then he urged her: ‘Try to stay calm, dear. Don’t get your knickers in a twist’.

He referred to the ‘fabulous’ idea of going on a trans activists’ trip that would take in Westminster Cathedral and Waterloo station before ending up at the iconic Wentworth golf club in Virginia Water, Surrey – close to E’s home.

The tweet was decorated with emojis representing a golf course, a church and a train. Another tweet referred to the schools attended by E’s children.

You wouldn’t want to go to that guy to treat a hangnail.

They what?

Yesterday it emerged the Labour Party had suspended the membership of Gil House pending investigation for allegedly engaging in prejudicial conduct that was “grossly detrimental to the party”. Gil’s crime? Insisting that “only women experience the menopause”.

Perhaps the Labour Party was confused by the name? Perhaps they think it’s only men who experience the menopause because look it says it right there, men o pause. It’s a pause that men do. Could that be what the Labour Party was thinking? Because that would be less stupid than…

So the Labour Party has decided to be the Stupid Party. It’s impossible to dignify this insulting nonsense with anything less crude than STUPID. Punishing someone for saying only women experience menopause is as stupid as saying no one knows why some people are men and some people are women and anybody who says they do know is a liar.

This utterly bonkers row is causing huge internal upset. One embarrassed Labour source blasted the party’s position on Trans issues stating:

“UK Labour rules, unlike the actual law, are based on gender and not sex – therefore they go behind the law, or as they would like the law, just like Stonewall does.”

Gil House, a loyal Labour Party member who was planning to stand as a councillor, has now resigned from the party.

You couldn’t make it up.

On today’s Woman’s Hour Emma Barnett asked Nancy Kelley, CEO of Stonewall, a lot of probing questions, and pushed for non-evasive replies. It’s the first segment and it lasts about 35 minutes. It’s good stuff.

Jo Bartosch on the BBC’s Politics Live comedy hour yesterday:

The moment of hilarity arrived when Ellie Mae O’Hagan, director of the think-tank CLASS, was asked by presenter Jo Coburn about the definition of ‘woman’. In response she said: ‘You know, I actually don’t know why some people are women and some people are men.’

After claiming her view was shared by most women (though who knows if they were women), O’Hagan then said that those who claim to be able to tell a person’s sex are ‘liars’.

And that’s why the human race has proved unable to reproduce over the past 300,000 years.

O’Hagan’s nonsensical comments were made during the course of a wider discussion on gender self-identification with the Labour MP Rosie Duffield. Duffield has been targeted by trans-rights campaigners who want her kicked out of the Labour Party for daring to suggest that ‘only women have a cervix’. The threats she received for stating this fact have been so severe that, earlier this year, the police warned she was at risk if she attended the Labour Party conference.

But so what, right? She’s just a woman. As long as there are plenty of trans women attending, who cares?

During Politics Live, Duffield made the point that those who are vulnerable, the very people the left claims to care about, can’t afford such luxury beliefs as ‘transwomen are women’. After all, it isn’t professional leftist think-tankers like O’Hagan who are at risk of being locked in a cell with a convicted male rapist who identifies as a woman. No one can buy their way out of abuse, of course, but having money does mean you’re less likely to end up in either a domestic-violence refuge or in prison.

Money can buy a woman’s way out of abuse, if she lives long enough to put it to use. She can spend that money on a plane ticket to far far away.

While it might not be reported in the pages of the Guardian, according to the Crown Prosecution Service 436 ‘women’ were convicted of rape between 2012 and 2018. Given that, according to the law, rape is defined as a crime that can only be committed by a man using his penis, that means 436 male rapists have been recorded as female, because they feel they have a female gender identity. Despite this, O’Hagan still claimed that she ‘didn’t know [of] a single incident where a woman has been put in danger because of a trans person’.

She has no right to say that. A trans “woman” murdered a lesbian couple and their son in Oakland a few years ago, to name just one. If O’Hagan doesn’t know that she damn well ought to find out before pontificating on the subject.

Had O’Hagan bothered to speak to women in prison she might have come across the victims of transgender rapist Karen White. After he was incarcerated in a women-only prison, he went on to sexually assault female inmates.

I guess such things are beneath the notice of the O’Hagans of the world.

Why Adrian is in the hot seat.

Look at that second one. “I did it because I’m so compassionate, unlike you, Karen!”

You wouldn’t want him handing you an aspirin, let alone anything more intrusive.

Maya Forstater welcomes the end of No Debate:

“No debate” has been the longstanding position of Stonewall since it took up the cause of overwriting sex with by self-identified gender. It has refused all invitations to take part in discussion with those who disagree with its “trans women are women” position.

So when on Tuesday night Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley spoke alongside Naomi Cunningham, Chair of Sex Matters, and answered questions from members of the LGB Alliance, history was made. 

The debate was about what Stonewall calls “conversion therapy” and reasonable people call not encouraging teenagers to rush into permanent changes to their still-changing bodies.

The proposed law would make it a criminal offence for a therapist or other professional to try to encourage a child who has declared themself trans to feel comfortable about their sex instead of putting them on puberty-blocking drugs.

…

Barrister Naomi Cunningham was a late addition to the event, after some Middle Templars, including members of the “EllGeeBeeTeeQueueCommunitee” (in Nancy Kelley’s smoothly practised phrase — lesbians  in old money) argued that Stonewall’s position did not represent them and should not be the only view presented. 

In response to the new line-up 100 barristers, pupil barristers and law students anonymously “signed” a letter of protest calling for Ms Cunningham to be de-platformed. 

Because what right do lesbians have to dispute anything Stonewall says? The nerve of them. Karens.

Cunningham pointed out why we need to debate ideas:

Debate informed by evidence is how we test ideas and proposals: if they’re any good, they’ll stand up to being poked with pointed questions. If they don’t stand up to being poked, they’re no good. This idea underpins our whole profession. 

There’s a further idea, which is that ideas and proposals that are too bad to stand up to pointed questions should not become policy.

Allison Bailey, a barrister suing Stonewall for victimisation also asked a question “How are you going to stop lesbians being harassed to accept transgender males into their dating pool when you are comparing lesbians to racists and anti Semites? It is coercion.” 

Nancy Kelley looked uncomfortable and replied “We are talking about two separate things: lesbian sexuality and who people date.”

Wut? Separate how?

The audience was split between those giving applause to Ms Cunningham when she called medicating same-sex attracted young people to stop them going through puberty “modern conversion therapy” and to Ms Ozanne when she made an apology to the trans community for Ms Cunningham being there at all. But over drinks and dinner the audience discussion was cordial and animated. Barristers and their guests, from all sides, explored the issues.  Nancy Kelley dressed in papal purple sat at the top table away from further debate and resolutely swerved any discussion other than small talk about her pets (she has fish, dogs and lizards), or burnishing Stonewall’s laurels for its assistance in evacuating Afghan refugees. 

Today Emma Barnett interviewed her on Woman’s Hour. I gather she came out of it a bit battered.

David French on Kyle Rittenhouse and the self-defense defense:

The trial itself has not gone well for the prosecution, for reasons that relate to the nature of self-defense claims. Such claims are not assessed by means of sweeping inquiries into the wisdom of the actions that put the shooter into a dangerous place in a dangerous time. Instead, they produce a narrow inquiry into the events immediately preceding the shooting. The law allows even a foolish man to defend himself, even if his own foolishness put him in harm’s way.

But perhaps more so if he’s a white man, and a whole hell of a lot less so if he’s a black man. As for women, they don’t generally get the chance to self-defend.

The defense has presented evidence not only that Rittenhouse was attacked, but that there was reason to believe he acted—under Wisconsin law—to “prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.” The jury will have to determine whether Rittenhouse’s belief was reasonable, and whether it was reasonable for each person he shot.

The narrow nature of the self-defense inquiry is one reason people can escape responsibility for killings that are deeply wrongful in every moral sense. Take, for instance, cases in which bad cops create danger and confusion through incompetence or excessive aggression, and then they respond to the danger or confusion they created by using deadly force.

Examples abound. Police gave confusing and conflicting instructions to Philando Castile before he was shot and killed, and to Daniel Shaver before he was gunned down in a hotel hallway. The killing of Breonna Taylor is another example—police used terrible tactics, but once an occupant of the home fired on them, a grand jury decided, they were legally entitled to fire back.

That’s a hard distinction to make – morally wrong but legally permissible. It’s a hard one to make and a harder one to accept. I understand it, I think, but by god it chafes.

But that brings us to the danger of Kyle Rittenhouse as a folk hero. It is one thing to argue that the law is on Rittenhouse’s side—and there is abundant evidence supporting his defense—but it is quite another to hail him as a model for civic resistance.

As seen in Kenosha, in anti-lockdown protests in Washington State, and in the riot in Charlottesville, one of the symbols of the American hard right is the “patriot” openly carrying an AR-15 or similar weapon. The “gun picture” is a common pose for populist politicians. Mark and Patricia McCloskey leveraged their clumsy and dangerous brandishing of weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters into an appearance at the Republican National Convention.

And Lauren Boebert’s pro-gun antics got her elected to Congress.

This happened:

“Oh did I say ‘lacks a citation’? Of course I meant ‘cites.'”

Weasel.

Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame lets us know how perfected they all are:

I am proud not just of what we as group contributed as actors to the franchise but also as the children that became young adults that walked that path. I look at my fellow cast members now and I am just so proud of who everyone has become as people. I am proud we were kind to each other that we supported one another and that we held up something meaningful.

They’re just so wonderful as people, unlike that witch who created the whole thing. They’re kind to each other (but not to that witch, without whom they would be no one in particular) and they support one another (but not Her) and they held up something meaningful. It’s not clear what that means – they held up Harry Potter? Or they held up Incloosivity? Whichever, the point is, they did, and She…didn’t.

I don’t admire Harry Potter myself, but I admire these cowardly backstabbing creeps much much less.

Via Screechy Monkey: another rapist gets a stern frown instead of a prison sentence.

A New York man who pleaded guilty to rape and sexual abuse for assaulting four teenage girls during parties at his parents’ home will not face jail time after a judge Tuesday sentenced him to eight years probation.

Niagara County Court Judge Matthew J. Murphy III said he “agonized” over the case of 20-year-old Christopher Belter, who was accused of committing the crimes when he was 16 or 17. Belter pleaded guilty in 2019 to felony charges that included third-degree rape and attempted first-degree sexual abuse, as well as two misdemeanor charges of second-degree sexual abuse.

Although Belter faced a maximum sentence of eight years in prison, Murphy concluded that jail time for the man “would be inappropriate” in a ruling that shocked the courtroom.

The rapes were appropriate; punishment for the rapes would not be appropriate. Women are such privileged Karen bitches.

Steven M. Cohen, an attorney for one of the victims, denounced the judge’s sentencing, saying to reporters Tuesday, “Justice was not done here.” He told The Washington Post on Wednesday that his client, who was joined by some of the other victims in the courtroom, was “deeply disappointed” in the sentencing.

“My client threw up in the ladies room following the sentencing,” Cohen said. “If Chris Belter was not a White defendant from a rich and influential family, in my experience … he would surely have been sentenced to prison.”

Ah so that’s what makes jail time “inappropriate” – he’s a rich kid so he really wouldn’t like being locked away from the perks of being a rich kid.

Not to mention the porn.

In 2018, Belter, then 17, was charged with first-degree rape, third-degree rape and sexual abuse for the assaults. As part of a plea deal, Belter pleaded guilty in 2019 to lesser felony charges of third-degree rape and attempted first-degree sexual abuse. The judge at the time, Sara Sheldon, placed Belter on two years’ interim probation and gave him the chance to apply for youthful offender status in his sentencing, which would have lessened the maximum prison time and allowed him to not register as a sex offender.

Sheldon, who has since retired, predicted Belter would struggle to comply with the restrictions placed on him in his initial probation — and she was proved right. Belter acknowledged in court last month that he had violated his probation by installing software on his personal computer that allowed him to view pornography, which was restricted. Belter had told his probation officer that he had been watching porn since he was 7 years old, the News reported.

Porn on the one hand, angry trans women on the other – women just can’t catch a break these days.

Much discussion about this from Ellie-Mae O’Hagan:

Anyone who claims to know “why some people are women and some people are men” is a liar.

Therefore, this man here is a woman because he says so.

Longer excerpt:

“All I care about is the principle of live and let live,” she says fatuously. Oh yes? What if a neighbor moves into her house while she’s off chatting to the BBC, and won’t let her in? What if someone ignores a zebra crossing and runs over her? What if gender critical feminists say men can’t be women?

Never mind, let’s go watch for squirrels.

Ingratitude thou marble-hearted fiend.

The cast and crew of the Harry Potter movies are coming together for a reunion, with one notable exception – the author, JK Rowling.

HBO Max announced on Tuesday it would bring together the cast members from all eight Harry Potter films for a retrospective special entitled Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return To Hogwarts. 

The release said it would feature stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – who have not made a public appearance together since the premiere of the last premiere of the franchise, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, in July 2011, as well as filmmaker Chris Columbus, who directed the blockbuster film.

The Mail doesn’t say whose decision it was that Rowling won’t be there.

Oh yes? Well I want Ellie Mae O’Hagan to really think about why it might be upsetting for women to have men calling themselves women, and bullying any women who don’t comply.

QAnon shaman gets 41 months in prison.

The sentence matches one [Judge Royce] Lamberth imposed on a former mixed martial artist filmed punching a police officer during violence, who was sentenced last week to 41 months in prison. The two are the stiffest sentences handed down in any of the roughly 675 riot prosecutions.

…

While in detention, Chansley was diagnosed by prison officials with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. When he entered his guilty plea, Chansley said he was disappointed Trump had not pardoned him.

Trump doesn’t do things for other people.

So DOCTOR Adrian Harrop decides it would be a wizard idea to blab to a journalist (a highly partisan journalist) for publication during his GMC hearing. And share documents with the journalist. The journalist is Ben Hunte, the outlet is Vice.

From Ben Hunte’s dispassionate journalisticky report:

A British doctor who used social media to defend trans rights could lose his job because of complaints about his posts. 

He didn’t just “defend trans rights.” Not even close.

Dr Adrian Harrop, a GP based in Liverpool is currently going through a Medical Practitioners Tribunal hearing regarding his conduct on his Twitter account, which he dedicated to speaking up for trans lives. 

He dedicated his Twitter account to bullying and harassing women who spoke up for women’s rights.

The witnesses and tweets involved in the case are currently being kept anonymous, but VICE World News was sent all of the material being discussed in the tribunal, including the full dossier of allegations, witness statements, and documents defending the doctor. 

Was sent? What, by the tooth fairy? Santa Claus? Teddy the transgender bear?

If Harrop sent it…well I don’t imagine that will meet with universal approval.

Then there’s a lot of stuff that makes it easy to identify people who were anonymous.

No doubt it’s all part of a cunning plan.

School of trans.

Anna Slatz has more:

In October, Colmers Farm Primary School gave its Year 6 studens an assignment to write diary entries from the perspective of “Tilly, a transgender bear.” The school initially posted about the results of the project on their Twitter, but has since deleted the month-old tweet, likely due to some emerging public attention. The tweet had included screenshots of some of the children’s assignments, which were quickly preserved by netizens.

Here’s the tweet:

Start the indoctrination early!

All students were required to state “I can define/understand what transgender and transitioning means” at the beginning or end of their essays.

They’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated. In primary school.

The assignment was part of the school’s No Outsiders scheme, one created by author and teacher Andrew Moffat.

Who?

Andrew MoffatMBE (born 1972) is a British teacher at Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, and the author of several books and educational resources, including the No Outsiders programme, an approach to teaching primary school-aged children about diversity and tolerance, for which he was nominated for the Global Teacher Prize.

What kind of “diversity” and “tolerance” though? Does diversity include bullies, sadists, exploiters? Are children taught to “tolerate” cruelty, hitting, biting, lying?

Back to Anna Slatz:

People have reported that while No Outsiders claims to teach respect for all forms of diversity, there is an extreme slant on transgender subjects and issues, as well as an outright misrepresentation of some facets of the U.K’s Equality Act in favor of supporting gender ideology at the expense of other protected rights and groups.

Who knew Teddy was a secret agent?

Oh honestly.

The BBC woman to the right of Rosie Duffield asks her: “Do you understand why transgender people and groups of people who have been excluded from that definition have become upset about it?”

For god’s sake! The whole point of definitions is to exclude almost everything! You can’t make definitions “inclusive” without destroying them as definitions. Let’s define definitions as being inclusive of all the meanings, possible and impossible – that will be useful!

Definitions need to be exact and narrow and accurate, in order to do their job. If you start InClooding extras, then what you get is a worthless definition. Women are by definition adult human females, and if you’re adding words like “infant” or “tiger” or “male” to that definition you will be talking useless gibberish.