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Monday, January 28, 2019

GAY AUTHORITARIANISM

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN GAY MARRIAGE, JUDICIAL NOMINEES

Jim Obergefell is the successful plaintiff in the case where the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to same sex marriage. Eric Murphy is a lawyer who, in his capacity as Solicitor General of Ohio, argued against inventing such a right.

President Trump has nominated Murphy for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sen. Rob Portman, one of Murphy’s home state Senators, backs the nomination, even though Portman supports same sex marriage.

The Washington Post has published an op-ed by Obergefell blasting Murphy and criticizing Portman for supporting him. The op-ed displays ignorance and arrogance in equal measure.

According to Obergefell, Murphy “argued that my marriage in unconstitutional.” Murphy made no such argument.

His contention was that the constitution creates no right to same sex marriage. This doesn’t mean that same sex marriage is unconstitutional. If the appropriate legislative body had approved of same sex marriage, instead of barring it as Ohio did, the marriage would not have been problematic.

In short, Obergefell’s marriage was neither mandated nor prohibited by the constitution. And because it wasn’t mandated by the constitution, it wasn’t unconstitutional for the state not to recognize it. Or so the argument went.

Murphy’s other sin was using “dog whistles such as ‘traditional marriage’ in his brief.” Obergefell doesn’t bother to explain what improper signal “traditional marriage” sends. The term merely indicates that marriage traditionally has been considered to be between a man and a woman. Obergefell might not like this fact, but it’s indisputable.

Obergefell grudgingly recognizes that Murphy, as Ohio’s Solicitor General, was required to defend the law against same sex marriage. Thus, he offers Murphy a way to atone for his non-sin of defending that law. He insists that Murphy affirm that the Supreme Court got Obergefell’s case right and that “discrimination against the LGBTQ community would have no place in his court room.”

But the legality of same sex marriage has no claim to be a litmus test for court of appeals membership. Four Supreme Court Justices think Obergefell was wrongly decided, as do a number of court of appeals judges — those who ruled the other way before the Court handed down its landmark decision.

Murphy is obligated to follow the law as laid down in Obergefell, but not to agree with the decision. Anyone who doesn’t understand this shouldn’t be having his op-eds published.

Obergefell’s demand that “discrimination against the LGBTQ community have no place in [Murphy’s] court room” also betrays ignorance. As a judge, Murphy’s obligation will be to treat all litigants fairly, regardless of sexual preference, etc., and to strike down those discriminatory acts that violate the law. Equally, he will be obliged to uphold actions the LGBTQ community considers discriminatory if the law does not prohibit them.

The gay rights movement has made substantial contributions to America, making us a fairer and more humane nation. However, there’s an authoritarian strain to movement as it exists today.

Obergefell’s op-ed comes from that strain. It’s a demand that a judge confess to an error he may not believe he committed and that he ignore his duty to follow the law and instead pledge fealty to a particular movement’s agenda and party line.

The op-ed is too poorly argued to have merited a place in the op-ed page of a supposedly respectable newspaper. But its placement there has the virtue of highlighting the authoritarianism lurking in the contemporary gay rights movement.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/gay-authoritarianism.php

Nathan Phillips, character assassin: what even his critics seem to be ignoring about him

I’ve read an awful lot about the Covington incident and Phillips’ role in it. Left and right are in profound disagreement, of course, about most of it. But there is one “narrative” about which many on both left and right seem to agree, and that is that people initially came to conclusions based on the first short video, and that the left hated Sandmann and the other boys based on people’s perceptions of that video, amplified by discussions on social media and in the press.

So even if you think the Covington teens were innocent and the rage against them obscene, you tend to think that rage was a reaction to the first video and the press and all the other viewers and tweeters who were similarly rage-filled.

The role of Phillips himself was (and still is) felt by the right to be the following: that he purposely stirred up the initial face-to-face confrontation, that he lied about his military service, lied when he stated the boys had said “build the wall,” lied when he said they had approached and surrounded him, and that he also omitted the details of the racial and other slurs the boys (and the Native Americans) had endured coming from the Black Israelites. And the media gave Phillips a forum for repeating those influential lies.

However, what’s being almost completely ignored even on the right (the NY Post is just about alone in mentioning it, and they don’t emphasize it much at all) are Phillips’ most vicious lies, told quite early in the game (I’ll get to what they were in a minute). These particular lies probably had a big role in shaping people’s perceptions of the boys and helped to spur their widespread demonization.

It was Phillips himself who quite early on, during his Saturday interview with CNNthat set the original tone and was widely disseminated, gave the following description of the Covington boys:

It looked like these young men were going to attack [the Black Israelites]. They were going to hurt them. They were going to hurt them because they didn’t like the color of their skin. They didn’t like their religious views. They were just here in front of the Lincoln — Lincoln is not my hero, but at the same time, there was this understanding that he brought the (Emancipation Proclamation) or freed the slaves, and here are American youth who are ready to, look like, lynch these guys. To be honest, they looked like they were going to lynch them. They were in this mob mentality.

That is not some disagreement about who went up to whom, or whether the wall was mentioned by the boys, or what caps some of them wore. This is an extremely defamatory statement by a political agitator, designed to shape perceptions that the boys were vicious racists with a killer instinct. The language is purposefully inflammatory and of the harshest variety.

It is a lie, and unless Phillips is clinically insane and out of touch with reality (something I don’t believe is the case), it is a knowing and purposeful lie about a bunch of teenagers who were minding their own business. It is a lie so egregious, so foul, that I really lack words to describe the depth and depravity of that lie.

And as far as I can see, just about everyone is ignoring it now.

The lie wasn’t a one-off, either. This incredibly misleading article in Rolling Stone(written that same Saturday) is typical of reactions to the incident as well as to another statement by Phillips that he gave (in an interview with the Detroit Free Press) on Saturday [emphasis mine]:

“There was that moment when I realized I’ve put myself between beast and prey,” Phillips told the Detroit Free-Press. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals [the Black Israelites] was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that.”

So that saintly elder Nathan Phillips, casting himself as peacemaker, defames the boys once again, in terms designed to inflame the left into a frenzy of hatred against them as beasts preying on innocent black people. And the left (and some on the right) bought his peacemaker-against-beasts story, perhaps because of his Native American status and because his demeanor while telling the story fed into some other stereotypes that he, as an activist, was well aware they held.

Note also the literary reference (although I’m not sure how conscious it was on Phillips’ part) in speaking of “their pounds of flesh,” which is an old anti-Semitic trope from “The Merchant of Venice” that has passed into the common vernacular for describing a vengeful, bloodthirsty (and also money-hungry) person.

Why is practically no one highlighting these words of Phillips? He certainly did his bit, and then some, to set the story and release the howling Twitter dogs. Of course, people on Twitter—and especially the newspeople who pushed all of this further into the spotlight, never questioning Phillips’ statements but simply broadcasting them—were fully responsible for what they themselves did and said. My point is that Nathan Phillips was a very active and involved leader in setting the extreme tone of the demonization “narrative.”

If not for that long video that finally emerged (ironically, as a result of the Black Israelites taking it and posting it), Phillips’ pernicious and poisonous narrative would have carried the day. As it is, his narrative continues to override reality for many many people. And that is also with the assistance of the MSM, including Savannah Guthrie’s gentle, respectful later interview of him (a contrast to her challenging one of Sandmann) that failed to question Phillips on a single one of his lies. Rather, she let him continue to spread his narrative as he wished.

The evidence indicates that Phillips is an activist hatemonger who should be sued, but unfortunately he has shallow pockets and is therefore probably safe from lawsuit. I also believe it likely that someone and/or some activist group is guiding and financing him, and I hope the truth about that will be revealed as time goes on.

But my question remains: why is this portion of the story not being emphasized, even by those on the right who are highly critical of Phillips? Are they afraid of being demonized themselves for pointing out the obvious, if it reflects even more poorly on a man who’s been lionized by the left and the media? Or have they just forgotten those quotes of his because they’ve been buried in a sea of other verbiage?

https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/01/26/nathan-phillips-character-assassin-what-even-his-critics-seem-to-be-ignoring-about-him/

Sunday, January 27, 2019

SHUTDOWN, WE HARDLY NOTICED YE

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN

This afternoon, President Trump announced a deal to fund the portion of the federal government that has been “shut down” for the next three weeks, with no provision for border security. Many conservatives are howling, but I am not sure this temporary resolution of the shutdown is a big deal–just as I didn’t think the shutdown was a big deal in the first place. Speaking for myself, I never noticed it. This year’s “shutdown” was even purer political theater than most.

Trump says he intends to negotiate with the Democrats over border security for the next three weeks; the Democrats say they will negotiate in good faith. Which is ridiculous, of course.

At the White House today, Trump strongly suggested that if the Democrats don’t agree to wall funding during the next three weeks, he will declare an emergency and start building the wall with funds he can easily find within the military budget and other areas of the executive branch. That presumably will lead to litigation.

Ultimately, I agree with Collin Peterson, Minnesota’s 7th District Congressman who is perhaps the most conservative Democrat left in Congress. Peterson urged his fellow Democrats to give Trump the $5.7 billion he was asking for, and added: “Why are we fighting over this? We’re going to build that wall anyway, at some time.” I think that is right. Regardless of whether you think today’s agreement represents a setback, the wall is going to be built. Unfortunately, a lot of illegal immigrants, including gang members and perhaps terrorists, are going to enter the country in the meantime.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/shutdown-we-hardly-noticed-ye.php

ROGER STONE’S ARREST: WHAT’S SCANDALOUS, AND WHAT ISN’T

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN FBI, ROBERT MUELLER, RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
Let’s start with what isn’t scandalous: the charges against Roger Stone. Scott embedded Robert Mueller’s indictment here. Byron York has a good summary of the charges.

The salient point is that Mueller’s indictment of Stone confirms that the Trump campaign had nothing to do with the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee or their publication by Wikileaks. The allegations against Stone all have to do with what happened after Wikileaks dumped the first batch of DNC emails. Stone tried–unsuccessfully–to get in touch with Julian Assange or someone else who could tell him whether Wikileaks had more emails, and if so, what they contained. As Byron points out, everyone in the political world, in the Summer of 2016, was trying to find out whether Wikileaks had more DNC emails, and if so, what they contained.

There is nothing wrong with what Stone did. Mueller charges, rather, that Stone lied to a Congressional committee about his actions. If that is true, Stone is in trouble. But the charges against him do not support the theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to invade the DNC’s email system. On the contrary, the Stone story is just more confirmation that the Trump campaign had nothing to do with it.

Now, for what is truly scandalous about Roger Stone’s arrest: the manner in which it was carried out. The arrest was preserved on video because someone–presumably either the FBI or Mueller’s team–tipped off CNN, and CNN had cameras stationed in front of Stone’s residence at 5:00 in the morning. The video shows a dozen heavily armed FBI agents carrying out what can fairly be described as a paramilitary operation against Stone’s home. Why? Was there some reason to think Stone was so dangerous that it required a pre-dawn raid by a dozen agents with AR-15s to take him into custody?

No such claim has been made, nor would it be plausible. The show that Mueller and the FBI put on for the cameras of their political ally, CNN, was a disgrace. Here it is:

A few years ago, I couldn’t have imagined saying this, but the FBI has proved to be corrupt and hopelessly politicized. It needs, at a minimum, a thorough housecleaning. It might even be necessary to put the FBI out of business and start over with a new federal investigative agency.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/roger-stones-arrest-whats-scandalous-and-what-isnt.php

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Conservative Scholars Rebut Cornell Prof's Claim That Paying for Green New Deal 'Isn't a Thing'

BY TYLER O'NEIL JANUARY 22, 2019

CHAT 34 COMMENTS

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congressional candidate from New York, waves during a rally, Friday, July 20, 2018, in Wichita, Kan. (Jaime Green/The Wichita Eagle via AP)

Estimates vary for the price of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's signature "Green New Deal" (my PJ Media analysis found it would cost $49.109 trillion over the first ten years), but most agree that the sticker price is extremely high. However, Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, claimed that paying for the Green New Deal "isn't a thing" and that inflation isn't, either. Two scholars shot down his economics gobbledygook.

A fellow with The Century Foundation and regular commissioned author for the New America Foundation, Hockett also does regular consulting work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund, Americans for Financial Reform, and a number of federal and state legislators and local governments.

Hockett's key passage comes early in his Forbes article. "The money that’s spent, for its part, is never ‘raised’ first. To the contrary, federal spending is what brings that money into existence," the professor argued. Citing the vaguely Keynesian idea that government spending adds value to the economy, he used economic jargon to suggest that conservative naysayers are either stupid or deceptive.

Hockett went even further, however. He claimed that America's current economy struggles with deflation, so worries about inflation are misplaced.

Joel Griffith, research fellow in financial regulations at the Heritage Foundation, shot back against Hockett's strategy.

"Large and small countries alike have experienced excessive rates of inflation as a result of governments debasing currency," Griffith told PJ Media. "As examples, consider Germany in the first half of the 20th century, Argentina in the late 1980s, or Venezuela today."

Inflation devastates savers and the economy. "Regardless, politicians are tempted to simply 'create' currency to pay for expenditures because the hidden tax of inflation is sometimes more politically palatable than either incurring more debt, raising taxes, or cutting spending."

Griffith admitted that "the federal government indeed could 'tax' some of the funds out of circulation" to prevent some of this inflation, but these tax hikes would stunt growth.

The last ten years of American monetary history serve as a clear warning of monetary manipulation, he argued. "The Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars out of thin air, using these dollars to buy government debt and mortgage-backed securities." To restrain inflation, "the Fed began paying banks to hold excess reserves at the Fed."

"We haven't seen a bout of inflation -- thanks to this. But the economy has been distorted as the Fed has ensured much allocation of capital to housing and government debt," Griffith explained. "This suppressed investment and lending to the private sector. Many economists believe this contributed to the historically slow recovery following the Great Recession."

Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ Would Cost 8,000 Times as Much as Trump's Border Wall Request

Griffith claimed that money-printing strategies "would be a Frankenstein monetary experiment. Inflation and/or stunted growth would result. Let's heed the lessons of Venezuela, Argentina, and the Romans," and reject these dangerous policies.

"This guy strikes me as not exactly serious," Myron Ebell, director at the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), told PJ Media, referencing Hockett's article. He argued that Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal would devastate the economy just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal did.

"The New Deal was an expansion and continuation of [Herbert] Hoover's disastrous policies, Hoover on steroids. It didn't work and it prolonged the Great Depression," Ebell explained. The big government "solution" actually worsened the economic problems at the time.

As for Ocasio-Cortez and supporters of her Green New Deal, "what they're proposing is permanent depression. I've called it the 'Back to the Dark Ages' manifesto or the 'Back to the Stone Age' manifesto," the CEI director said.

Even if there were no economic problems with the Green New Deal, the program's environmental goals would prove impossible, Ebell argued.

"We get 80 percent of our energy from coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas," he said (82.9 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration). "We get a very minuscule amount of power now from renewable energy and that is heavily subsidized. There is no way that the grid can operate on 100 percent renewable power."

In 2018, about 6.3 percent of U.S. power came from wind, with 1.3 percent coming from solar. "When you get around 20 percent wind and solar in the grid it becomes very unstable," Ebell explained, largely because the production of both wind and solar energy vary enormously based on the time of day.

"They could throw however many trillions of dollars into it, and it's just money down the rat hole. This isn't just a question of dollars and cents, it's about reality," Ebell quipped. "They're trying to create an alternative reality in the same way that the Nazis did and that Lenin and Stalin did and that Mao Zedong did. It's an alternate reality that doesn't work."

The CEI scholar argued that the Green New Deal overlooks certain realities. "The fact is that the world is not energy rich, it's energy poor. There are still billions of people who live with no electricity or little electricity," he said. "Most of these people are in very hot climates and don't have air conditioning, like India or Indonesia."

"The second reality is that global warming might become a problem but it's not a crisis," Ebell argued. "The crisis has been manufactured in order to create a huge climate industrial complex that can command the redistribution of colossal amounts of money."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls for 70 Percent Top Tax Rate in 'Green New Deal'

"There is a huge climate industrial complex benefitting from this, but it's not reducing emissions," he said. Even "if the United States reduced its emissions to zero, it would have no impact on global warming, because Chinese emissions have gone up so rapidly."

"The U.S. going back to the stone age will not do anything to stop global warming," Ebell emphasized.

As for global warming, the false impression of a crisis is "driven by alarmists who use scary computer model predictions, which have been completely falsified by the actual temperature data." Ebell claimed that the current rate of warming is "about one-half to one-third of what the United Nations average of computer models has predicted."

Furthermore, if climate alarmists were truly focused on curbing emissions while providing power, they would support nuclear power, Ebell argued. "They're really not serious. The leading alarmists are not sincere."

"The whole thing is a scam. Sincere people on the Left are somewhat naive about the way powerful special interests operate — they don't seem to understand that 'Al Gore Incorporated,' and various wind and solar companies, and Tesla, they're looking out for their own self-interest, too," Ebell said.

In short, the Green New Deal is an impossibly ambitious plan that would destroy America's economy, fail to make America run on 100 percent renewable energy, fail to address climate change, and enrich the climate industrial complex. People like Al Gore would win big time, but Americans would lose, badly.

Professors like Robert Hockett can use economic jargon to make it seem like none of this is a problem, but Americans should be able to see through his gobbledygook. Printing money — under whatever economic justification — is no solution to these very real problems.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/economist-claims-paying-for-green-new-deal-isnt-a-problem-well-just-print-money/

A BATTLE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SHOULD RELISH

A BATTLE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SHOULD RELISH

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN JUDICIAL NOMINEES, SUPREME COURT

Yesterday, John noted that the escalating Democratic attacks on Catholicism are, in part, an attempt to prepare the battlefield for the day when Justice Ginsburg dies or is unable to continue on the Supreme Court. In that event, said John, President Trump will likely nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ginsburg, and Democrats will make Barrett’s religious faith the basis for attacking her nomination.

To which I say, bring it on.

Judge Barrett is the mother of seven children. Two of them were adopted from Haiti. Her youngest biological child has special needs. She is a remarkable and very sympathetic women.

In addition, she is a first rate legal mind. Barrett graduated summa cum laude from the Notre Dame Law School, where she was executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She then clerked for our friend Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.

As a law professor at Notre Dame, Barrett was twice named “distinguished professor of the year.” She continues to teach law as a sitting judge.

Do the Democrats really want to got after someone this sympathetic and this distinguished because she believes in the tenets of the Catholic faith? The answer seems to be yes. After all, they did it when Barrett’s nomination to the court of appeals was before the Senate.

But the Supreme Court is different. The public pays virtually no attention to battles over appeals court nominees. By contrast, as we saw with Brett Kavanaugh, fights over Supreme Court nominees rivet the nation.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that Judge Barrett is nominated to the Supreme Court in mid 2020, as the presidential race is heating up. Let’s hypothesize further that Senate Democrats try once again to savage Barrett because, as Sen. Feinstein once put it, Catholic dogma “lives loudly within” her.

How would serious, believing Catholic voters take this? Probably not well.

For this reason and because of her stellar qualifications, I’d be delighted to see President Trump nominate Judge Barrett for the Supreme Court if the opportunity arises. I’m a little less confident than John that Trump would nominate her. She interviewed with Trump for the last vacancy. According to the rumor mill, for whatever that might be worth, the interview didn’t go that well.

But if the Democrats are prepping the battlefield for a fight over Judge Barrett’s religious beliefs, it’s because (as John suggested) they can’t help themselves, not because they are thinking clearly about strategy.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/a-battle-the-trump-administration-should-relish.php

Friday, January 25, 2019

TRUMP: HERE I COME, READY OR NOT! [UPDATED]

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN NANCY PELOSI

There has been much speculation about the State of the Union ever since Nancy Pelosi purported to withdraw the House’s invitation to the president to speak in the speech’s traditional home, the House chamber. Some have speculated that Trump might deliver his speech to a cheering throng, away from D.C.–the alternative I advocated–or that he give the speech at the Southern border.

But today President Trump threw down the gauntlet on Instagram, making public this letter to Nancy Pelosi. Click to enlarge:

The punch line:

Therefore, I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the state of our union.

I look forward to seeing you on the evening of January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very important, on location!

What’s Nancy going to do? Tell the Sergeant at Arms to lock the door?

UPDATE: In response to Trump’s letter, Pelosi remained obdurate. Trump apparently has decided to go elsewhere, saying “The State of the Union has been canceled by Nancy Pelosi because she doesn’t want to hear the truth.” More specifically, she doesn’t want the voters to hear the truth.

Trump says he will “look for alternative venues” for the State of the Union. Maybe this means he will follow my suggestion:

I would like to see Trump deliver the State of the Union before a cheering throng of 15,000 or 20,000 in an arena. He could invite members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court to attend, and simultaneously deliver his report on the state of the union to Congress in writing.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/trump-here-i-come-ready-or-not.php

Lawyer forCovington Catholic Families Gives Media 48 Hours to 'Retract and Correct' Smears

Lawyer for Covington Catholic Families Gives Media 48 Hours to 'Retract and Correct' Smears

BY DEBRA HEINE

Lawyer Robert Barnes appears on Fox and Friends.

Lawyer Robert Barnes on Fox and Friends. Image via YouTube.

Robert Barnes, the lawyer representing the Covington Catholic High School kids who were smeared by the media, is warning reporters, celebrities, and others with large media platforms that they have until Friday to correct the record, or they will be sued.

Because of their sloppy reporting of what transpired in Washington, D.C., when two groups of protesters confronted a group of Catholic high school students who were waiting to catch a bus last Friday, the teens and their families have become the subjects of ongoing threats and harassment from a hateful online outrage mob.

On Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, Barnes, who is representing the families at no cost, explained that because the kids are private citizens and minors, anything someone says about them that is false can be libel, according to the law. Rather than proving malice, "all you have to prove is negligence," he said.

So a lot of these journalists have been saying false statements about these kids, false statements about the kids that were at the Lincoln Memorial, false statements about kids that were in various photographs related to the school, slurring and libeling the entire school and all the alumni for the school, and all you have to prove is they were negligent in doing so and by this standpoint, by this point in time, it is clear that anyone who continues to lie and libel about these kids has done so illegally and can be sued for it.

Barnes said he was representing the families in a possible class-action lawsuit pro bono because libel lawsuits are difficult for average citizens to bring as they are very expensive. "They cost between a quarter of a million and a million dollars in legal fees to bring," he explained. "So I wanted to equalize the playing field. These are people who couldn't afford to bring this claim on their own behalf. That's why I offered my services for free because somebody needed to stop this from reoccurring."

The attorney stated he was giving the the libelers 48 hours to correct and retract their smears.

"Everybody now is on 48-hour notice. So by Friday everybody needs to retract and correct any false statements they have issued about these kids. That includes any major member of the media, that includes any major celebrity, that includes anybody with a substantial social media platform. If you've said anything false about these kids, they are willing to extend you a 48-hour time period — a period of grace consistent with their Christian faith — for you to, through confession, get redemption and retract and correct and apologize."

The lawyer warned that if libelers don't do this by Friday, they may be "a defendant in a lawsuit because those lawsuits will start to occur next week."

When asked to put a dollar amount on the damages the families are seeking, Barnes replied: "The nice thing about defamation law is that when a particular form of lie or libel is particularly inflammatory, you're allowed to seek what's called per se damages. This means you don't have to prove any individual damages to you. It's just that it's so offensive that the jury gets to assign what those damages are."

He added that "those damages can range from $50,000 to $300,000 to, in the Gawker case, millions and millions of dollars. So all these people that have lied and libeled better be checking their bank accounts if they're going to continue to lie and libel these kids."

The attorney said that one of the people he was looking at is Maggie Haberman, a reporter for the powerful and influential New York Times.

"She falsely made statements about these kids. She basically invited their expulsion from school, the ruining of their reputations. She did so based on inadequate review of the information, a failure to look at the evidence, and despite knowing from her own newspaper how false those original statements are, she has yet to retract, yet to correct, yet to apologize, and she'll be one of the people sued if she doesn't do it in the next 48 hours."

Barnes told the Fox and Friends hosts that he is representing three different groups of families: the kids "who were at the Lincoln Memorial who have been libeled"; families of kids who have been in some of the photos and had false statements made about them based on those photos; and "alumni who feel that their entire school and everything associated with them has been libeled and they too want to seek legal remedy for these people who refuse to correct, retract or make any apology for their false statements."