6 | http://www.nationalreview.com MARCH 23 , 2020THE WEEK
with long histories of donations to Democrats) and the diva-like
resignation of the trial prosecutors. While the prosecutors’ pro-
posal was a literally sound construction of draconian sentencing
guidelines, it ignored federal law’s imperative that the punish-
ment fit the crime: here, Stone’s hapless obstruction. The Barr
controversy concerned a non-binding recommendation; every-
one knew the sentencing was wholly up to the judge. As for the
claim he was doing the president’s bidding, Barr favored keeping
Stone’s convictions in place and a sentence of more than three
years, in a case Trump would have favored dismissing. In this
case, Barr seems to have found the golden mean between Trump
and his critics.nGrants of clemency to a president’s allies and friends are not
unprecedented, but this president has engaged in them to an
unusual degree. A recent spate of them benefited the “junk
bond” king Michael Milken and former Illinois governor Rod
Blagojevich. Milken’s pardon was justified: It has always
seemed to us, and to other observers, that his real crime was
not the technicality he went down for but making it easier to
depose sleepy corporate managers. Blagojevich is a harder
case: The sentence may have been too harsh, but he has never
expressed any contrition for trying to sell a Senate appoint-
ment. Mercy has to be balanced against other goods, and our
political class is not so full of rectitude that we should show
more tolerance for corruption.nA few days before launching his lawsuit against what he
called “this filthy organization,” the climate scientist Michael
Mann wrote that there “is a possibility that I can ruin National
Review.” Nearly a decade later, we are still fighting his attempt
to do precisely that. Now, after our myriad attempts to get the
meritless case dismissed have failed, we are back in the trial
court, with expensive and time-consuming discovery underway.
Mann’s plan to “ruin” us, as he put it in an email produced under
discovery, is plainly to get to a trial with a politically sympathetic
D.C. jury and hope that the finer points of the law and the First
Amendment are lost. (Short of that, he is surely happy for the
case to drag out further, draining us of energy and resources.)
But it’s clear that the case should never get to that point—hence
our latest motion. Under the First Amendment, Mann has to
prove that we published the Corner post in question with “actual
malice.” That would require him to show that NR actually
believed that the post was “false” (or likely false) at the time of
publication. That is absurd for a number of reasons, including
that—given the nature of The Corner—we didn’t even know
about the post until afterit was published. The case against
NATIONALREVIEWis thus nonsensical at its core. It is also barred
by a federal statute, Section 230 of the Communications Decency
Act, which protects online publishers for hosting content posted
by outside contributors. Mann’s stated intention is to bring us
“down for good.” Needless to say, this is not how a country with
a First Amendment or a culture of free speech is supposed to
work. It’s past time that this suit is dismissed as incompatible
with both, and a failure on the facts and the law.nPresident Trump has nominated Representative John Ratcliffe
(R., Texas) to become director of national intelligence. The job,
held by former senator Dan Coats from 2017 to 2019, is now
filled on an acting basis by Richard Grenell, who is also ournWe already knew that Democrats want to raise taxes on your
income. Now, Sanders wants to raise taxes on Americans’ imag-
inaryincome, too. A bill from Senator Sanders, co-sponsored by
Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), would levy taxes on stock options
when they are vested rather than when the options are exer-
cised. They will be taxed, that is, when the recipient could
make some money from those stock options rather than when
he does. This is bad policy, and constitutionally dubious at that.
The thing about options is, they’re optional: Recipients have a
choice about when to exercise them, and share prices rather
famously go both upward and downward. Senator Sanders’s
scheme would tax workers not only on income they have not
received but on income they may never actually receive.
(People do lose money on stock options; perhaps Senator
Sanders, a lifelong dependent, is unaware of this.) Sanders’s
bill would complicate life for start-ups, which often attract talent
in the early stages through offering a share of ownership in the
company rather than higher cash wages. (You might think that
a socialist such as Senator Sanders would welcome a business
practice that gives workers a larger share of corporate owner-
ship, but he does not.) This is more foolish class-warfare stuff
from Senator Sanders, a proposal that puts his ignorance on
particularly sharp display.nAt the most recent Democratic debate, Elizabeth Warren recited
one of her many oppression origin stories, this one about “preg-
nancy discrimination” she purports to have faced as a public-
school teacher. Warren used the tale of woe to land a hit on
Michael Bloomberg over comments the billionaire allegedly
made years ago to a female subordinate. “At least I didn’t have a
boss who said to me, ‘Kill it,’ the way that Mayor Bloomberg is
alleged to have said to one of his pregnant employees,” Warren
said. Presuming he said it—a reasonable assumption, knowing
Mike Bloomberg—a question for the pro-abortion senator:
What, specifically, was the problem with Bloomberg’s remarks?nWarren has long been a critic of “money in politics.” So it was
with some surprise that we learned the senator, trying to revive
a failing campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination,
announced that she would accept money from super PACs after
all, despite their unholy status in campaign-finance-reform
demonology. True to form, she chalked it up to sexism, bemoan-
ing that she and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar alone com-
mitted to rejecting super PAC money, while “all of the men who
were still in this race and on the debate stage all had either super
PACs or they were multibillionaires and could just rummage
around their sock drawers and find enough money to be able
to fund a campaign.” The motive for her change of heart is
dubious, but we welcome it nonetheless. Perhaps circum-
stances will also inspire her to come around on the Supreme
Court’s Citizens Unitedruling.nThe brouhaha over Roger Stone’s sentencing ended with a
whimper. Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed 40 months’
imprisonment, precisely in the range that Attorney General Bill
Barr had controversially proposed. His suggestion, counter-
manding the four trial prosecutors (including some former
Mueller-probe staffers), who had asked for nine years, prompted
gnashing of teeth from the organized bar, including a petition
signed by some 2,000 former Justice Department officials (manyweek - FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/4/2020 2:58 PM Page 6
UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws