February 2017

Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) took to the House floor Feb 7 to dismiss a Washington Post fact check about his claims of voter fraud as a “fake news hit piece.” Leaked tapes from the GOP retreat in Philadelphia in Jan that were given to the Post revealed Rep Brooks discussing voter fraud with Vice President Mike Pence. “In my first election in 1982, Democrats rigged about 25 percent of the voting machines to vote for everyone on the ballot but me. That’s 11 of 45 machines. The whole state was Democrat. Nothing was done to fix it,” Rep Brooks said during the private discussion. The Post conducted a fact check of Rep Brooks’s claims, but could not find any evidence to substantiate the charges.

The Post awarded Brooks its maximum of four Pinocchios, reserved for what it considers “whoppers.” Rep Brooks didn’t offer any additional evidence during his House floor speech. But he maintained the 11 machines failing to register votes for him statistically suggested some intentional foul play. “I proudly wear the Washington Post’s Four Pinocchios like a red badge of courage,” Rep Brooks declared.

A Maryland blogger has settled a defamation lawsuit filed by first lady Melania Trump. Webster Griffin Tarpley, who runs the blog Tarpley.net, has agreed to pay a “substantial sum” and issued a statement apologizing to the first lady and her family, according to a statement from Trump's attorneys. In August, Tarpley published unsubstantiated rumors that the first lady had previously been an “escort” and that she was suffering a “nervous breakdown” because of the presidential campaign. “I posted an article on August 2, 2016 about Melania Trump that was replete with false and defamatory statements about her,” reads Tarpley’s statement. “I had no legitimate factual basis to make these false statements and I fully retract them. I acknowledge that these false statements were very harmful and hurtful to Mrs. Trump and her family, and therefore I sincerely apologize to Mrs. Trump, her son, her husband and her parents for making these false statements.”

[Commentary] The most modern part of America’s economy – communications – suffers under America’s most out-of-date law and most backward-looking regulation. In the absence of Congress passing a modern communications law for the 21st century, it can be hard to see what a modern Federal Communications Commission would or should look like.

As the new FCC, led by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, organizes and focuses on how to legitimately mitigate and reverse the previous FCC’s most retrograde technology-driven regulations, it is much easier to know what is not a modern FCC.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]