The New York Times can print the Project Veritas memos. One problem with demanding censorship with regard to a particular text is that you may draw a lot of attention to something that would otherwise have passed largely unnoticed. This is called the "Carol Burnet" effect, I believe. The term goes back to a 1976 column in The National Enquirer that portrayed comedienne Burnett as drunk. It was a short dfour-sentence item that might have been very quickly forgotten had Burnett not sued over it. The litigation lasted for years and ended up being an important precedent. BUT the lesson remains: if you think you are hurt by people who spread item X, consider the degree to which your lawsuit will do exactly that, before bringing it. A simple thought for Project Veritas to contemplate this week. The underlying subject of the memos in question was perfectly obscure. Now it will be clear. It will also be or at least it will briefly seem, important.
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One night on his MSNBC show, Lawrence O'Donnell rather suddenly disclosed something a source had said to him. This was, he said, only a single source, whose name he could not disclose, and there was no confirmation of the statement, but he was going to tell us, anyway. Loan documents from Deutsche Bank, which has had complicated relations with the Trump family business, indicate (according to this unverified source) that there were loans made to Trumpworld on the basis of documentation with co-signers. And that the co-signers were "Russian oligarchs." O'Donnell later apologized for telling us this. I have just re-told it, in the course of saying (as I am about to) that O'Donnell was wrong. But he was working as a representative of a news oriented cable network, as a company man on the job. I'm blogging and on my own time. So I am for the moment free of the sort of responsibilities he violated. Trumpets have seized on the apology as a vindication. Si...