When the New York Post broke its “Hunter Biden laptop” stories in October 2020, mainstream media tried to ignore them. On the social media side, Twitter  banned linking to them and Facebook used its algorithm to minimize discussion of them pending “fact checks” that apparently never happened.

The Streisand Effect — a tendency toward keen public interest in anything that looks like a cover-up — came to the rescue. If you were the least bit interested in presidential politics, you knew as much as you wanted to about the matter (and then some) in short order.

The fallback plan, as is so often the case these days, was to trot out “former intelligence officials” in an attempt to discredit the laptop’s provenance and contents as a “Russian disinformation” operation.

Seventeen months later, even the New York Times admits the laptop (and the incriminating emails) are very real. Without, of course, admitting any prior error or bias. What was the problem back then? Or, alternatively, what’s the problem now?

The “problem” back then wasn’t that the stories weren’t true. They clearly were. But they were also potentially damaging to Joe Biden, and helpful to Donald Trump, in the November 2020 presidential election. That’s why the Post ran the stories and Fox covered them; that’s why other outlets ignored or tried to discredit them. If you think American mainstream media are non-partisan, think again.

The “problem” now? In December, federal investigators served subpoenas to Hunter Biden and several associates pursuant to a tax probe. Grand jury testimony followed, with indictments possibly to come. Publications which wouldn’t touch the story then are racing to get ahead of it now.

I didn’t consider the matter any more a “scandal” than Trump’s hush money to Stormy Daniels. Everyone already knew Trump was a philanderer, and that Biden abused his influence to financially benefit and protect his son. Voters had already made up their minds on the importance of such things before the story broke.

But if Hunter Biden is indicted, Joe Biden probably won’t seek a second presidential term. And any likely successor will bring similar closets full of skeletons, which our media protectors will reveal, or try to conceal or discredit, based on their partisan leanings..

“Just the facts, ma’am” journalism has always been myth, not reality. But our media should willingly give us those facts, even with partisan spin, instead of trying to hide or discredit them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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If my picture appeared in the dictionary next to a word, that word would likely be “anti-government.” Or perhaps “pro-gridlock.” I don’t like government much, and I’m happier when it’s not getting anything done. Especially anything described as “bi-partisan,” which usually means something incorporating the worst instincts of Republicans and Democrats alike.

But on March 15 the US Senate, in a stunning display of  un-gridlocked  bi-partisanship, voted unanimously to do something I wholly approve of.

The august deliberative body, in an unusual collective seizure of wisdom, voted to stop demanding that everyone move their clocks forward one hour each spring, and back one hour each fall, by making “Daylight Saving Time” permanent as of November 2023.

This may seem like a minor thing — at least if you’re not one of , or a loved one of, the 30 excess auto accident fatalities University of Miami economics professor Austin C. Smith ascribes to our annual “spring forward” — but it’s also a GOOD thing.

We could quibble over making Daylight Saving Time permanent or abandoning it altogether, I guess.

My wife is on the “abandon” side because she likes her daylight earlier in the morning (as do many parents with kids who have to catch a bus to school in the dark).

I’m on the “make it permanent” side because I get up at oh-dark-thirty anyway, and prefer to have some light left if I feel like tinkering in the garden or mowing the lawn (don’t get me started on the lawn) before bed.

But the big issue, to the extent that there’s an issue at all, is the discombombulation that arbitrarily changing our clocks twice a year causes.

“Springing forward” robs those of us who live on schedules of an hour of sleep, and we’re just not the same for a couple of weeks while our bodies adjust (hence the grog-induced car wrecks and other negative side effects).

“Falling back” theoretically means an extra hour of sleep one Sunday morning, but try telling that to young kids and pets. They’re up wanting breakfast or barking to go out and do their business at the same “natural” time for days or weeks afterward.

The whole thing made little sense even when electric lighting was a luxury and almost everyone worked “daytime” hours. It makes no sense at all now.

Kudos, for once, to the Senate. To the House and the president, go and do thou likewise.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, as the US approaches — according to the official statistics — 80 million confirmed cases and a million deaths, most Americans seem to finally understand that America’s “public health” institutions were the opposite of helpful in combating the disease.

US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has a solution: Triple the number of such institutions at the top.

He’s introduced an amendment to Section 401 of the Public Health Service Act which would split the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases into three separate agencies (a National Institute of Allergic Diseases, a National Institute of  Infectious Diseases, and a  National Institute of Immunologic Diseases).

Each of these new technocratic/bureaucratic organizations would get its own director, its own staff, and its own budget in addition to its own, theoretically smaller, bailiwick.

Paul’s focus here seems to be on the baleful influence of one man: NIAID director Anthony Fauci.

While it’s true that Fauci was the most prominent public face of government failure in the pandemic, he was hardly, as Paul’s press release puts it, a “dictator in chief.”

Fauci didn’t have the power to drag his heels on approval of  COVID-19 vaccines (he doesn’t head the Food and Drug Administration).

Nor did he have the power to mandate vaccinations (those mandates were done at the state level and by other federal departments), or implement Soviet-like internal “vaccine passport” requirements (ditto).

He didn’t have the power to mandate the wearing of masks. Again, those mandates were local, state, and other federal agency affairs. In fact, early on — before politics took full hold of pandemic response — he  stood on the science and pointed out that there’s no significant evidence that masking reduces the spread of viral diseases.

He didn’t have the power to mandate or forbid the use of hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat COVID-19. In fact, no agency had the power to forbid those treatments, since they are both FDA-approved drugs which doctors are free to prescribe “off-label” at their discretion.

Fauci really only exercises two types of power.

One is the aforementioned power of the “public face.” He spoke authoritatively from a “top” government position, so people assumed (for a little while, anyway) that he knew what he was talking about.

The other is the power of controlling funding for research. That power comes in handy when you want research that supports your claims, and don’t want research that contradicts them.

In his quest to “get” Fauci, Paul proposes to create three new “public faces” to push whatever policies they happen to support, and three new points of control over research funding to justify those policies.

That’s like trying to subdue a knife-wielding maniac by handing him a machine gun and a baggie full of PCP-laced methamphetamine.

If we want to avoid future stupendous “public health” failures and the authoritarian power grabs that inevitably accompany those failures, we need to eliminate, or at least reduce, the authority of the people and institutions that fail. Tripling the technocracy won’t fix it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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