Milo, Geert Wilders, Ann Coulter to Headline Historic 'WAKE UP' LGBTrump RNC Event...

Milo, Geert Wilders, Ann Coulter to Headline Historic 'WAKE UP' LGBTrump RNC Event... https://t.co/W4NUv6pJhm

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) July 13, 2016

Conservative champions Pamela Geller, Milo Yiannopoulos and Dutch Party for Reform leader Geert Wilders will rally the crowd for Donald Trump for President. Music will be provided by Cleveland DJ Mike Filly. The event will be held from 10 PM until 1 AM on Tuesday night July 19th at Cleveland State University.

@Nero, @AnnCoulter, Geller, and Wilders to headline RNC LGBT event https://t.co/3Crt1gj3Oq… via @jring24 pic.twitter.com/e9Nw7DEaBQ

— Red Alert Politics (@RedAlert) July 13, 2016

PRESS REVOLTS OVER OFF-RECORD MEET What "off the record" means and why it matters to you.

◼ Holder runs into roadblocks on off-the-record meetings on leaks - CNN ◼ Via Drudge

Attorney General Eric Holder's plans to sit down with media representatives to discuss guidelines for handling investigations into leaks to the news media have run into trouble.

The Associated Press issued a statement Wednesday objecting to plans for the meetings to be off the record. "If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," said Erin Madigan White, the AP's media relations manager.

The New York Times is taking the same position. "It isn't appropriate for us to attend an off-the-record meeting with the attorney general," executive editor Jill Abramson said in a statement.

Like the New York Times and the Associated Press, CNN will decline the invitation for an off-the-record meeting. A CNN spokesperson says if the meeting with the attorney general is on the record, CNN would plan to participate.

The Huffington Post's Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, also said he will not attend unless the meeting is on the record. "A conversation specifically about the freedom of the press should be an open one. We have a responsibility not to betray that," Grim told CNN.

But Politico posted an item on its website saying editor-in-chief John Harris plans to attend one of the meetings with Holder.

◼ The New York Times and AP right to refuse Holder spin invite - Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post

◼ FOX NO! FOX NEWS REJECTS HOLDER'S OFF-THE-RECORD MEETING - William Bigelow/Breitbart

◼ REPORTERS NOW PRIESTS...7 Reasons Why the Media Shouldn't Keep Eric Holder's Secrets - Ron Fournier/National Journal

Off the record generally means the information cannot be shared with the public. "Off the record" is (or should be) rarely used in Washington because it puts a reporter in the position of a priest: Keeping the government's secrets.

By tradition, conversations in Washington are on the record unless the journalist and the official mutually agree to other terms.

Unfortunately, many reporters confuse or abuse these terms. First, news stories (including some of my own) are littered with "blind quotes" from officials granted anonymity to settle scores, disseminate talking points, or opine.

Second, unethical reporters play games with ground rules. Howard Dean, a former governor, presidential candidate, and Democratic Party chairman, complained on MSNBC's Morning Joe that journalists habitually conduct conversations "off the record" and later attribute the information to an anonymous source, a violation of the source-reporter agreement.

Political figures also confuse and abuse the terms. When journalists cede their authority to negotiate the terms of a conversation or briefing (which happens far too often in Washington, a subject for a separate post), government and political operatives spin, distort, demagogue, and even lie "on background" and "off the record"--knowing their names won't be attached and thus they won't be held accountable

Hopefully, this is enough background to explain the many reasons why bureau chiefs should meet with Holder only "on the record"--with every detail made public and attributed to the attorney general and his guests.

1. This is important stuff. The debate over balancing liberty and security needs to involve the public, and not be limited to a handful of government officials and the media elite.

2. The media's fundamental job is to shine a light in the darkest corners of government. If we stand for anything, it's transparency and accountability. Meeting secretly with Holder borders on hypocrisy....

7. Obama's team still doesn't get it. One wonders why the media would trust Holder's motive given how the administration has conducted itself so far. The most recent case in point: When The New York Times and AP announced that they would not meet with Holder "off the record," Democratic Party spokesman Brad Woodhouse tweeted that the decision "kind of forfeits your right to gripe." Well, no--it doesn't. Woodhouse was treating the media like a political opponent: Attack, distort, and deflect. He probably didn't realize the Orwellian implications of his wisecrack. Even the liberal ACLU took issue with it. (Read the rest, at the link)

◼ MSM TURNS... - Tim Stanley/Telegraph

Those of us who inhabit the Right are left with some small satisfaction that we saw all this coming and were crying “crook” long before the mainstream media did. But the tragedy is that the undressing of the emperor didn’t occur before the election, which means we are stuck with him for another four years. Perhaps that's a tragedy for Obama, too. So consumed by fury and conspiracy has his administration become that he seems sadly isolated. If Obama's going to go the full Nixon route, it would probably be quicker for him to write a friends list than an enemies one.

◼ Holder Given June 5 Deadline to Explain Involvement in Reporter Search Warrant - minutemennews.com

Now, a majority of Americans are saying that they’d rather go back to life under that crappy 2009 system than be forced to live under Obamacare.

◼ Obamacare poll is even worse than it looks - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein

Guy Benson ◼ points to a new Fox poll with findings that he describes as “brutal” for President Obama’s health care law. Specifically, Benson highlights this question:

22. Do you think it would be better to leave the new health care law in place, or would it be better to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009?

Better to keep law: 34 percent
Better to go back to previous system: 56 percent

Those numbers are bad enough on the surface, but they’re even worse when compared with polling data from 2009, which shows that Americans weren’t exactly thrilled with the status quo. In a Pew survey taken in June 2009, in the early stages of Obama’s health care push, 30 percent of Americans said they thought the health care system required “fundamental changes” and 41 percent responded that it needed to be “completely rebuilt.”

◼ The unwelcome role of the IRS in Obamacare - Michael Gerson/Washington Post

...the IRS is not merely implementing Obamacare. It engaged in a regulatory power grab to ensure that it could implement Obamacare....

As the implementation of health care reform moves forward, Congress may need to take another look at the law anyway. The unintended effects of Obamacare now seem unavoidable: higher premiums in employer plans; additional burdens on a Medicaid system already struggling with quality issues; cost controls in Medicare that will drive out providers; a perverse incentive structure that encourages businesses to dump employees on the exchanges while discouraging the young and healthy from signing up, eventually raising costs.

But the IRS power grab is a reminder of how shoddy the law really is. The whole enterprise is precariously perched atop a flimsy bureaucratic excuse. And the agency providing that excuse is a discredited mess.

What is refreshing about the recent spate of scandals is that it has restored skepticism and intellectual honesty among mainstream reporters.

◼ False equivalences, leaps of illogic - Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post

In our hyper-partisan politics and media environment, it is not enough to take words at face value. The impulse to make analogies and jump to conclusions while making inferences about the speaker or writer is overwhelming. To be clear:

◼ You don’t have to be a conservative to criticize Obamacare or spying on reporters.
◼ You don’t have to want Hillary Clinton knocked out of the 2016 race to want to get to the bottom of Benghazi.
◼ You don’t have to want Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for president to appreciate his proposals for reforming drug laws.

◼ Stay Shocked - Peggy Noonan's Blog

...Again, if what happened at the IRS is not stopped now, it will never stop. The next White House will come in and they’ll know they can do it too. And if they’re unlucky enough to be caught, they’ll have a have a few uncomfortable moments in Congress, and a few people who were going to retire in the summer will retire in the spring. And it will all go on.

We are at a point now where you can make a list of things that, all combined and allowed to continue, can kill America. This is one of them. Widespread belief that the revenue-collecting arm of the US government is hopelessly corrupt is one of them.

There is such a thing as national morale. Ours could use a boost. People have grown cynical. They expect nothing good to happen. They expect it all to be swept under the rug. They expect no one to pay a price. It is a matter of profound public need that the U.S. government show and prove that it is capable of correcting itself, that Leviathan can stop itself.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, PIERS MORGAN: OBAMA SCANDALS PROVE GUN ADVOCATES AREN'T CRAZY

◼ How big of a wake-up call are the Obama scandals, especially the ones surrounding the seizing of phone records from the Associated Press and the IRS's targeting of conservatives? - John Nolte/Breitbart

So big that two of the media's most shameful and shameless gun control advocates -- Joe Scarborough and Piers Morgan -- have finally conceded that arguments made by pro-Second Amendment activists against the expanding of background checks might not be so ridiculous.

In a roundtable discussion on Friday's "Morning Joe," Scarborough said that because of the IRS scandal, “My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals.” He added: "People say, ‘Hey, if they do this with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights?’”

Mika agreed completely: "That is a really, really good point." Even the Huffington Post's Sam Stein agreed.

The thrill is gone:

◼ Chris Matthews sours on Obama - Dylan Byers/Politico ◼ CHRIS MATTHEWS: He does run the IRS. He runs the Treasury Department. He runs the United States government, and he is accountable for it, and this is nonsensical. - Washington Free Beacon

Why Do Some Liberals Become Conservatives?

◼ These days it may seem as though the entire nation is moving ever leftward. But on the personal level it’s actually much more usual for political change to go in the opposite direction: from left to right. - Jean Kaufman/PJM

It’s not that uncommon an event, either — in fact, there’s a whole literature of political memoir written by left-to-right changers (such as David Horowitz and Norman Podhoretz, to name just two).

One changer closer to home is founder and former CEO of PJ Media Roger L. Simon, who talked about his own story in a recent speech in which he admitted that, despite his having written a book about his change experience, the how and why of political change is still a mystery to him.

Political change is something I’ve thought about long and hard because it happened to me, too, about ten years ago. In fact, struggling to understand and explain that change was one of the things that first drew me to blogs and blogging. I agree with Roger Simon that the vast majority of people are exceedingly reluctant to change their political beliefs and identification, and that was my experience, too; in fact, I’ve titled my own change story “A mind is a difficult thing to change.”

...Rarely, if ever, are prospective changers actually seeking change. In fact their previous political positions on the left may be quite firmly and strongly held, and they would probably consider anyone quite mad who had the audacity to inform them of the transformation about to take place.

But although they may not be interested in change, change is interested in them. It usually begins with something external, some new information encountered seemingly by accident, something that starts to bug the person because it contradicts or doesn’t fit easily into his or her pre-existing framework. It’s like a buzzing fly that won’t quit and can’t be ignored. It causes discomfort, a sense of unease, and the disequilibrium that comes from the dilemma known as cognitive dissonance.

It’s such an unpleasant experience that people are usually eager to resolve it. How they do that is one point at which changers split off from non-changers. The latter group, if faced with that very same information, might just swat that fly — that is, in their discomfort at the knowledge that seems incongruous with their previous beliefs, they would either discredit the new information, minimize it, rationalize it, or shut it out entirely, thus ending the discomfort and the dilemma.

But those who ultimately end up as changers can’t seem to put it away that easily. For them, something once seen cannot be unseen. Perhaps they have a different habit of mind to begin with, one more accustomed to challenging its own beliefs and assumptions, one more uncomfortable with contradictions.

...Another less dramatic way a change experience can begin is with the perception that the mainstream media has lied about something. It can even be something that seems quite small and unimportant by itself, but then it happens again, and again, and a pattern begins to emerge. This learning usually also comes about by accident. For example, a person might happen across the original of a speech from which a truncated quote had been taken, and suddenly realize that the quote was probably edited that way in order to purposely mislead. The advent of the internet has increased the opportunities for this sort of discovery, because it’s much easier to compare the two texts.

...Being on the receiving end of this experience can’t help but be profoundly disturbing. Perhaps it even drives some people under cover, and or back into the liberal fold. But for most, it seems there is no turning back, because — as a fortune cookie I got a few years ago succinctly put it — “one’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” (Read the whole piece, at the link.)