CA’s Sen. Boxer demands press hold Trump accountable

CA’s Sen. Boxer demands press hold Trump accountable

California’s notorious progressive pixie, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, is exiting Congress with the dignity we have come to expect from this Golden State representative.

Apparently oblivious to the constant press attention, fake and otherwise, that President Donald Trump has been accorded since taking his ride down the escalator at Trump Tower in the summer of 2015, Boxer demands that the mainstream media hold him accountable once he enters the Oval Office.

Going forward, I intend to remain very involved in the issues we face, and like all your readers, I will rely on the work you do every single day. As we march into uncharted territory with a new president-elect who has never held elected office — and who at times has threatened the media — the role of the free press is more important than ever.

We need real news, not fake news. We need courageous journalism that questions authority. Your reporters held me accountable for 24 years in the Senate. I am confident they will do the same with the leaders who will take office this January.

The trouble is, the elite media has been dishing out “fake news” for quite some time. Kemeberlee Kaye provided a synopsis of 8 anti-Trump hoaxes initially heralded as “real news” by the press.

Actually, if the press needed to pay attention to an incoming politician, perhaps it should really have a good look at Boxer’s replacement: Kamala Harris.

Armed with “new evidence,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris is taking another run at Backpage after the controversial website’s CEO and owners were exonerated earlier this month of pimping charges and related felonies in a case with powerful implications for Silicon Valley tech firms.

Backpage runs advertisements for escorts who authorities assert are prostitutes. Harris’ attempt to shut down the site threatens technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter because, like Backpage, they publish third-party content on their websites and are protected from liability over that content by a federal act.

Harris tossed in money laundering charges in the new, 40-count criminal complaint.

…Backpage Chief Executive Carl Ferrer, 55, along with the site’s former owners Michael Lacey, 68, and James Larkin, 67, are charged with more than two dozen counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit pimping. Ferrer is also charged with 12 counts of pimping, seven of which involve minors. Harris said the charges are based on new evidence.

Lawyers for the men previously pointed to the federal Communications Decency Act, which frees online publishers from liability over user postings and has been repeatedly interpreted to trump state criminal laws. The men argued that Harris was well aware that they were protected because she signed a 2013 letter with other state attorneys general that unsuccessfully lobbied for an amendment to the law that would have allowed for state-level criminal prosecutions.

One has to wonder at the quality of the new evidence Harris will be offering. Perhaps it will be the same standard she applied to the evidence for global warming when she joined “AGs United For Clean Power,” a coalition of 16 other state attorney generals that tried to promote the climate change agenda by targeting the fossil fuel industry.

Additionally, the team at TechDirt offers this review of the “money laundering” charges.

…Basically, the “money laundering” is that Backpage set up a separate operation to handle billing, after American Express (under pressure from grandstanding politicians) said it no longer wanted to work with Backpage. So, the lawsuit argues, Backpage set up a sort of shell corporation to accept AmEx charges, without it looking like they were coming from Backpage. But in order for it to be money laundering, it has to involve a situation where the money itself is coming from illegal activity, and over and over and over and over again the courts have said that Backpage’s activity is not illegal.

Given the Backpage legal history and the AGs United for Clean Power antics, Harris might make an intriguing subject for a journalist who wanted to actually engage in real reporting.

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