Social critic: Media Miscues Are Always Slanted Left

Poorly sourced and slanted reporting has become “the new standard among prestige media,” charges City Journal’s Seth Barron. We are seeing it increasingly these days, with the publicly refuted BuzzFeed story and now-discredited Covington affair only the latest examples. And it all follows the same pattern: Media miscues “always occur in the same direction, in favor of the liberal perspective.” Over the past two years, “countless ‘bombshell’ reports have signaled grave danger for the Trump presidency,” only to be “relegated to the memory hole” as “outrage ebbs from each discredited story.” Fact is, major media outlets “have shed any pretense to rigor or probity, even as they make ostentatious shows of ‘fact-checking.’ ” Yet they “learn nothing” from their previous rushes to judgment.

Foreign desk: Adopting BDS Could Cost Ireland Big-Time

Since its founding, the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel has largely been symbolic, with little practical effect. But as Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reports, Ireland’s parliament is “looking to change all this,” voting this week on a bill to criminalize any transactions with businesses or individuals in the West Bank. Crucially, “it would require foreign companies with divisions or subsidiaries in Ireland to adhere to the boycott as well.” Thanks to Ireland’s low tax rates, many of the world’s largest companies, especially US tech giants, keep their wealth there. This will force them to choose between their Irish tax haven and their considerable business in the Jewish state. If the bill succeeds (the Senate passed it last July), “Ireland would become the most anti-Israel nation on the planet outside of Iran and the Middle East.”

From the right: What If Mueller Disappoints Dems?

Most Democratic congressional leaders are waiting for special counsel Robert Mueller’s report before deciding whether to pursue impeachment against President Trump. Which leaves Byron York at The Washington Examiner asking the obvious question: “What if Mueller does not accuse the president of wrongdoing, or at least impeachable wrongdoing?” Don’t expect them to say “never mind” and move on — Democrats remain too “deeply, emotionally committed to resisting Trump.” And since the public may not get to see Mueller’s entire report, there is already talk of starting a new House investigation to “replicate what Mueller is doing now,” but with the final result assured. In other words, if Mueller doesn’t do the job for them, Democrats will make sure to “do it themselves.”

Conservative: Biden Is Proof of Dems’ Hard-Left Turn

If Joe Biden’s 45-year career in Washington is the central argument for his presidential candidacy, wonders The Federalist’s David Harsanyi, “why does he spend so much of his time telling us how much he regrets his past decisions?” Like other moderate Democrats, he is busily regretting “some of the biggest debates of the past 50 years.” And when he’s not regretting his past, “he’s evolving from it,” on issues like same-sex marriage, criminal justice and abortion. But Biden’s “constant rejection of his own record” is “a testament to the sharp, and continually accelerating, leftward lurch of the Democratic Party.” If the left wants it, Biden will “always be on board,” and all because of his “biggest regret of all” — that he isn’t president.

From the left: How to Prevent Future Shutdowns

The Week’s Ryan Cooper notices something interesting about federal shutdowns: They’ve all occurred since 1980. Was there something, he asks, “that prevented shutdowns before — and could they somehow be made impossible again?” The answer, he insists, is yes. During past funding lapses, government agencies “just kept on trucking along their previous funding level.” But then-President Jimmy Carter’s attorney general, Benjamin Civiletti, declared that an 1870 law forbids government operations “without an explicit appropriation” — though he added that the president has “leeway” to “make the government ‘workable’ ” (which baldly contradicts the first part). Civiletti “created a whole new law out of whole cloth — one which enshrined an incredibly stupid budget procedure.” Congress should enact a new structure that automatically extends funding levels for an additional quarter.

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann