Regarding “fake news”, this Powerline story links to a column by V D Hanson. It is a bit more serious and important than our Schumer/Bustos “news story”:
The wages of fake news
Hanson relates many fake news items relentlessly perpetrated by Democrat operatives/the dominant press. Our pages have recounted by way of links and own commentary how “against interests” Trump’s victory, looked at rationally, must be vis a vi the Russians. That Russia tries to intercept emails is not really news, we do the same thing to them. That Hillary was so criminally negligent with US security, and that she lied about what e-mails she deleted and that she criminally failed to turn over documents she was obligated to do, and was let off, that should be ongoing news until it is resolved by a thorough Congressional review.
If the Russians hacked the Democrat National Committee (DNC), who made it easy for anyone to do so by the way, (it probably wasn’t a hack but a leak by a righteously outraged Bernie supporter), even if true, that isn’t as much news as the revealed lies, duplicity, manipulations of the DNC and the collusion of the so called independent press.
Now about the propriety of meeting with the Russians — it is what senators and congressmen do for crying out loud. The question to Sessions was in the context of the presidential campaign, which in that context he denied doing, and regarding which there is no evidence to the contrary. Consider these comments, an AP dispatch:
Kremlin: Sessions uproar an impediment to fixing relations (excerpts)
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters he did not know anything about the meetings last year between Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Sessions, who at that time was a U.S. senator. Sessions also was a policy adviser to Trump’s campaign. . . .
Peskov argued it was normal for an ambassador to meet with officials and lawmakers, adding that “the more such meetings an ambassador has, the more efficient his work is.”
. . .
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, was more combative, denouncing what she described as the U.S. “media vandalism.”
“Let me open a military secret for you: It’s part of the diplomatic job to have contacts in the country they are posted to,” she said sarcastically. “It’s their obligation to meet with officials and members of the political establishment.”
Zakharova also drew a literary allusion to George Orwell’s “1984.”
“The media in the United States have become such a Big Brother, moving far beyond professional ethics and their own competence, raising accusations and passing judgments by fabricating false information,” she said.
Alexei Pushkov, the head of the information policy committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, described Democrats’ demands for Sessions’ resignation as a “borderless paranoia.”
“Hysteria in the U.S. has driven politicians into a trap,” Pushkov tweeted. “You met a Russian? That’s an end to your career. You concealed it? You go to prison. The spirit of Joseph McCarthy has been waiting for its hour to come.” . . .
Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies, a group of leading Russian foreign policy experts, said “the highest level of paranoia vis-a-vis Russia” in the U.S. makes any thaw in relations unlikely. . . .
Lukyanov ridiculed the portrayal of Russia as a “kingmaker everywhere in the world” and deplored what he called a “self-defeating and self-destructive approach” by the U.S. establishment.
“Everything we hear isn’t harming Russia that much but is harming the credibility of the United States,” he said. “If Americans themselves believe that countries and leaders outside the U.S. can decide how they vote, that’s very bad.”
DLH and R Mall
