Fox News stands in legal peril. It says defamation loss would harm all media

 https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161221798/if-fox-news-loses-defamation-dominion-media

In its legal briefs, Fox leans heavily on the idea that news organizations must be allowed to convey allegations by major public figures to their audiences — even wild allegations. Rutgers' Chen says that doesn't hold up if Fox was motivated by profit instead of the newsworthiness of the claims being presented in its programs.

"The fact that there was arguably a motive by Fox to publish these accusations against Dominion based on its own economic interests in retaining Trump viewers would, if believed by the jury, probably destroy that argument," Chen says.

Tucker Carlson, with video provided by Speaker McCarthy, falsely depicts Jan. 6 riot as a peaceful gathering

 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/tucker-carlson-new-video-provided-speaker-mccarthy-falsely-depicts-jan-rcna73673

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in injuries to hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Tucker Carlson releases exclusive Jan. 6 footage, says politicians, media lied about Sicknick, 'QAnon Shaman'

 https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-releases-exclusive-jan-6-footage-says-politicians-media-lied-about-sicknick-qanon-shaman

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine called the charges against Chansley "very sad," saying that the footage proves that he was "harmless." 

"You can see the way those people were walking through the Capitol… they are walking meekly, politely queuing, very peaceable. They don't mean any harm. They are treating the Capitol with reverence," Devine told Carlson. "That doesn't excuse the others, the minority of the protesters who did break windows and fight police and injure police and cause mayhem. But the people who are now being picked up and some of them have been jailed without trial for months, even years on end, did not commit violence. They walked through open doors, they were escorted by police, they felt that this was okay. And I think Jacob Chansley is a classic example of that."

Tucker Carlson shows the first of his Jan. 6 footage, calls it ‘mostly peaceful chaos’

 https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3887103-tucker-carlson-shows-the-first-of-his-jan-6-footage-calls-it-mostly-peaceful-chaos/

As he opened his show Monday, Carlson described the anger among supporters of then-President Trump in the weeks leading to the Capitol riot, noting “they believed the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted.” 

“They were right. In retrospect, it is clear the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy, given the facts that have since emerged about that election,” he said. “No honest person can deny it. Yet the beneficiaries of that election continue to lie about what is now obvious.” 

Tucker Carlson Describes Jan. 6 Rioters as 'Sightseers' in Footage Reveal

 https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-describes-jan-6-rioters-sightseers-footage-reveal-1785905

Fox News host Tucker Carlson says that video footage taken from inside the U.S. Capitol shows that the January 6 rioters were mere "sightseers."

The conservative pundit said during a Tucker Carlson Tonight broadcast on Monday that the small portion of the footage, some of more than 40,000 hours of tape provided to him by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, did not show an "insurrection or a riot in progress."

Carlson claimed, without evidence, that the Democratic Party and the media had conspired to suppress the footage because it "demolishes" the narrative of a riot taking place, while conceding that some of those who breached the Capitol were "hooligans."

Schumer: Settlements not an obstacle to peace

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/schumer-settlements-not-an-obstacle-to-peace/

“The world draws a false moral equivalence between Israel’s actions to defend herself and the actions of terrorists who use children as human shields in their evil campaign to push Israel into the sea.”

False Equivalence Standard Response of Republicans/Trump

False Equivalence: The Problem with Unreasonable Comparisons

 https://effectiviology.com/false-equivalence/

False equivalence is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone incorrectly asserts that two or more things are equivalent, simply because they share some characteristics, despite the fact that there are also notable differences between them. For example, a false equivalence is saying that cats and dogs are the same animal, since they’re both mammals and have a tail.

Saying a bracha on Torah learning

 Nedarim (81a) And why is it not usual for scholars to give birth to sons who are scholars? — Said R. Joseph, That it might not be maintained, The Torah is their legacy. R. Shisha, the son of R. Idi, said: That they should not be arrogant towards the community. Mar Zutra said: Because they act high-handedly against the community. R. Ashi said: Because they call people asses. Rabina said: Because they do not first utter a blessing over the Torah. For Rab Judah said in Rab's name: What is meant by, Who is the wise man, that he may understand this. . . for what is the land destroyed etc.? Now, this question was put to the Sages, Prophets, and Ministering Angels, but they could not answer it, until the Almighty Himself did so, as it is written, And the Lord said, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein: but is not ‘have not obeyed my voice’ identical with, ‘neither walked therein’? — Rab Judah said in Rab's name: It means that they did not first recite a benediction over the Torah.

Telling lies has become the norm for today’s Republicans

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/01/politics/republican-party-kevin-mccarthy/index.html

 To assume lies would sink House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is to misunderstand the nature of today’s Republican Party: They actually demonstrate his credentials to lead it.

That’s not merely because Donald Trump remains the dominant GOP figure. The former President lies incessantly, and his aberrant behavior compels fellow Republicans to lie about him.

The problem runs deeper than one man. For a minority party joining blue-collar voters driven by cultural resentment with affluent donors fixed on the bottom line, gaining and wielding power requires dissembling beyond the conventional equivocation that politicians in all parties have always used to amass popular support.

One of the GOP’s most successful political consultants of recent decades issued that judgment in a confessional 2020 memoir. Stuart Stevens titled his book: “It Was All a Lie.”

Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children

 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/04/politics/fact-check-cpac-2023/index.html

 The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC

 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/fact-check-trump-cpac/index.html

As president, Donald Trump made some of his most thoroughly dishonest speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

As he embarks on another campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night.

Trump’s lengthy address to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects.

Here is a fact check of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s far from the total.)

US agency assessment backing Covid lab leak theory raises more questions than answers – and backlash from China

 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/03/china/china-lab-leak-theory-department-of-energy-assessment-intl-hnk-mic/index.html

 The US Department of Energy’s assessment that Covid-19 most likely emerged due to a laboratory accident in China has reignited fierce debate and attention on the question of how the pandemic began.

But the “low confidence” determination, made in a newly updated classified report, has raised more questions than answers, as the department has publicly provided no new evidence to back the claim. It’s also generated fierce pushback from China.

Rav Soloveitchik & Evolution - by Rav Triebitz

This an excerpt taken from Rav Triebitz's introduction to Rav Soloveitchik's as of yet unpublished lectures on Bereishis The Rav’s view of incommensurability, however, goes only so far. While discussing the Biblical account of the creation of man and its relationship with the modern scientific theory of evolution, the Rav actually appears to be seeking commensurability. He declares:

“Indeed, one of the most annoying scientific facts which the religious man encounters isthe problem of evolution and creation. However, this is not the real problem. Whatactually is irreconcilable is the concept of man as the bearer of a divine image and the idea of man as an intelligent animal in science. Evolution and creation can be reconciledmerely by saying that six days is not absolutely so, but is indefinite and may be longer. Maimonides spoke of Creation in terms of phases and the Kabbalah in terms of sefiros, the time of which may be indefinite. However, our conflict is man as a unique being and man as a friend of the animal. Science can never explain how being came into being, for it is out of the realm of science, while the Bible is concerned with the problem of ex-nihilo. Aristotle could not accept evolution because he believed in the eternity of forms.” (Lecture XII).

These statements, while delivered orally, are an almost verbatim quote of a passage written by the Rav himself in the recently published posthumous work The Emergence of Ethical Man. As is clear from the above quote, the Rav is clearly not satisfied with incommensurability, but is apparently adopting the commensurable approach of Rambam in chapter 30 of section II of the Guide for the Perplexed where he seeks to interpret the first chapter of Genesis in accordance with Aristotelian science, and which the Rav himself criticized in lecture I. Clearly the Rav is not dismissing the contradiction between evolution and the Biblical account of creation by declaring incommensurability. The reference to the Guide where an Aristotelian physical interpretation of the first two chapters of Genesis is presented is clearly intended to set a precedent for a scientifically commensurable interpretation of Scripture. The other example cited, the kabbalistic interpretation of Bereishis in terms of sefiros, is also being cited as a precedent for a nonliteral interpretation of natural terms, thereby avoiding a clash with scientific theory. The Rav’s assertion at the beginning of lecture II that the Bible will employ ancient outdated theories of science for the purpose of communicating the historical event of revelation is apparently being abandoned. For if the nature of revelation is only to reveal the Will of God, and the details of that revelation will therefore be relative to the science and culture of the time, why does the Rav feel the necessity to invoke non-literal readings of the text? It appears to me that the Rav’s remarks concerning evolution are an attempt to achieve what I would call ‘halachic commensurability’ and not, merely, ‘scientific commensurability’. While Judaism views man as the “bearer of a divine image” and therefore endowed with the capacity for transcendence, this transcendence, in the Rav’s words, “was always seen against the background of naturalness. The canvas was man’s immanence; transcendence was just projected on it as a display of colors” (Emergence of Ethical Man p. 9). The Rav is clearly speaking from the standpoint of the halachah. In contradistinction, “Christianity succeeded in isolating them and reducing the element of naturalness to a state of corruption” (ibid.). This has to be seen as a consequence of Christianity’s rejection of the halacha

The issue of evolution and its seeming irreconciliation with the Bible “troubled Christian theologians more than Jewish scholars. The naturalistic formula of man was to a certain extent common knowledge among the Jewish sages, who did not resent it, whereas Christian theologians are still struggling with the secularization of human existence by scientific research. The reason lies in the discrepancy between the Jewish Bible and the Christian Gospels, the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Testaments (Emergence of Ethical Man).

The Rav’s desire to find commensurability between evolution and the Torah is therefore motivated by halachic reasons as opposed to scientific ones. The struggle waged by creationists’ against Darwin is in essence, according to the Rav, a Christian crusade which is in contradistinction to the Halachic conception of man. While Judaism’s objection is to the reductionist interpretation of evolution which reduces man to an animal, it equally objects to the Christian antinomy to evolution which views any naturalistic description of man to be sacrilege. The establishment of commensurability between evolution and the Bible is therefore motivated by a desire to adhere to the true philosophy of Judaism, the halacha, and to thereby exorcise it of Christian and Greek influences. The Rav clearly saw the reconciliation of evolution with the Biblical texts as being vital to Jewish interests.