Can the Super-Conservative Former Weekly Standard Staffers Find Anyone to Leak to Besides CNN?
They've leaked like a sieve to CNN for two weeks. Do they not know any conservatives? Or are all of their contacts and twitter pals media liberals?
The first big leak was also to Oliver Darcy -- this one, Steve Hayes' self-serving, written-to-be-leaked, mea-non-culpa, barely-disguised job application to the liberal media which pretended to be about the TWS staff but which was really all about what a great hire Steve would make for The Atlantic. And they've been leaking to CNN ever since. Really strange because I keep being told that they're the Only True Conservatives Left In America but they don't have anyone on their Leak Rolodexes besides Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy.
And oh -- about that claim that Hayes kept the site from giving away its virtue to the lure of clickbait...
It wasn't even an original take -- he just swiped the very conservative opinion journal Vanity Fair's headline from the week before

Forgotten Eighties Mystery Click
Oh here it comes/That funny feeling again winding me up inside/Every time we touch/Hey I don't know/Oh, tell me where to begin cause I never ever/Felt so much
Hint: First look at a band with a new frontman

Your Highly Educated, Super-Intelligent Betters in the Journalism Class Can Do No Wrong
Oh, except that they claimed that the QAnon "borrowed" the phrase "And the truth will set you free" from David Icke's book title, rather than, you know, recognizing that both got the aphorism from a rather more influential source-- JESUS TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO
So smart. Please sign me up for your ridiculous newsletter which you laughably call a newspaper.

'Laverne & Shirley' star Penny Marshall passes away at 75. RIP [Weirddave]

NeverTrumpers and Democrats (BIRM) Hang with the Emir in Qatar

Steele (works for Fusion) testified in court that the DNC funded cash to him to "challenge the validity of the outcome" just in case Hillary lost in 2016.
[ArthurK]

Theresa May: There Will be No Second Referendum on Brexit
On the other hand, a FT article notes that she is exploring delaying a vote on her Brexit plan from March 29th to as late as July 2... Apparently July 2 is a hard deadline because that's when the new European Ministers of Parliament would be sat. And if Britain hasn't elected any in May (as it would not, if it were leaving the EU), then they'd have no representation in the EU Parliament, which would create legal problems for May.

Scottish Parliament Orders Their Cafe to Stop Selling Gingerbread Men and Start Selling Gingerbread Persons, to Fight Sexism
Apparently this is how the Scottish Parliament is fixing the problem of 30% of females in the Parliament saying they've been sexually harassed
Scotland is terrible. This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed that they're not embarrassed.

New York Times Liberal on the Downfall of The Weekly Standard, which he claims, for some reason, was an intellectual endeavor or something: "This is what happens when the commercial forces trying to dumb down the American media run into a pocket of people trying to resist those forces."
And of course here's Jonah Goldberg praising fellow cuck David Brooks' attack on anyone who didn't care for The Weekly Standard's brand of artisinal vintage neocuck 1996 conservatism: "The negative responses to this column will be like the results of an allergy test. The more intense the response, the greater the evidence of ignorance, idiocy, venality, political pettiness or intellectual corruption."
Doesn't Jonah Goldberg know that Liberal Fascism was meant to be a cash-in grift to peddle to marks on cruises, not a handbook?

What Your Charitable Gift to Commentary Is Paying for Today:

1. Twitter Flirt-Fights About Rom-Coms

2. "Twitter" Humor That Consists of Merging The Played-to-Death "Die Hard Christmas" Flirt-Fight With the Played-to-Death Add One Word Twitter Time-Waster

3. Suuuuuper-Funny Puns About Movies. Offered on Twitter.
As a worried father might say to his sexually-confused son: Have you tried not being on Twitter?

Update: Alice Walker Has Promoted Icke Before; Is a Member of the BDS Movement (Because Of Course She Is)

NeverTrump Grifter Rick Wilson Now Going on Lavish Junkets to... Qatar
LOL! No one saw this coming. I expect a lot of NeverTrumpers will soon be making the pilgrimage to Money Mecca and living the high-life in Doha, Sex in the City 2 style, and they'll come back telling us how important it is for the Iran-Turkey-Qatar axis to be in control of the Middle East. Because of Principles, see??!!!

It's a Cuck Stampede! The Herd of Independent Minds Who Style Themselves "Conservative Thought-Leaders" Have Held a Twitter Conclave and Decided That the Ruling Striking Down Obamacare is "Bad"
Ever get the feeling you've been conned for the past 20-30 years?

Israeli Company Reports New Method Destroys Cancerous Tumors Linda Sarsour gets a lump in her... throat. [J.J. Sefton]

“Britain’s political class could see a revolution like they’ve never seen before,” yellow vests UK warn They have a nice template, courtesy of the good ol' USA. [CBD]

This video is a jokey one about whether or not the release of The Last Jedi created the worst December 15th in history. He ranks it among other terrible December 15ths. But this entry on the list is the most nightmarish kidnappping I've ever heard of and I'm very surprised I haven't heard of it before. Content warning for real horror. Vicious, horrifying crime.

Trump Offers Kind and Thoughtful Words to Mark the Passing of The Weekly Standard

A federal judge in Texas has ruled Obamacare's individual mandate unconstitutional — the rest of the law, he says, is inseverable and thus invalid. This seems important. Is it? Hat Tip: Cumberland Astro [CBD]

Hold Music of BateWorld's Customer Help-Line

Interesting Thread: 1, a Random Anonymous Account Once Again Goes After Salena Zito, In Order to Defend His Great Pals at the (Former) Weekly Standard; 2, a Reporter Comes in to Tell Him He Knows For a Fact of At Least One Weekly Standard Staffer Who's Engaged in Coordinated Political Messaging with a Political Party
Speaking generally on the subject of journalistic integrity: It's astonishing to me that Jim Swift felt comfortable -- protected, even -- promoting the hit on a fellow journalist at TWS' sister publication Washington Examiner. Why would he feel comfortable doing that? I don't even pay my cobloggers and they are quite scrupulous about not going after someone they know is associated with the blog. They could, but they don't. I mean, I could "fire" them, but what do they care? It's an unpaid volunteer gig.
So why did Jim Swift feel like it was okay to go after Zito? He could actually be fired from a paying job, one would assume, for joining, without permission, a scalp-hunting operation for the employee of a sister magazine.
I've asked this before, and I'll ask it again: Was there a firewall between TWS and Bill Kristol's other, largely Omidyar-funded political operations? Or did Kristol just casually recruit people being paid by Clarity Media to do some ops for him? I actually don't know --but Bill Kristol had his fingers in two different pots, the independent journalism (supposedly) pot and the paid political operations pot, two pots that must not mix in any real "journalistic" endeavor, and no one has ever even bothered denying that sometimes these might blur together. No one has ever explained what protocols were in place to prevent such a thing and keep TWS business from mixing with Kristol's side-gigs.
Does no one else care about this, even a little bit, or does everyone in the know understand and accept that this is just how the donor-supported establishment "conservative" media rolls and has always rolled? Is no one shocked by the payments by Google and "partnerships" with FaceBook (which result in stalwart defenses of Google and FaceBook) because everyone understands they're all whores for money and you can't blame a whore for putting out for rent?