Headline of the Day

Burning Man Has Become a Wrinkled Sausage Fest of Aging Millennial Men, Data Shows

—New York Post once again demonstrating that while their journalism may be complete pants, but the headline writers are top rate

The story is about how the Burning Man crowds are aging out. 

The man will burn…and he’s also getting on in years.

Burning Man — the nine-day celebration of art, music, and anarchist hijinks in the Nevada desert — has been steadily shrinking since its 2019 peak, but the share of people in their 40s and 50s is on the rise, data shows.

The number of free-loving revelers flocking to “the playa” — where each year a city is built on bare sand and razed after a week of drug-fueled, clothing-optional partying — dipped to about 70,000 last year after peaking close to 80,000, according to last year’s census of Black Rock City, the ad hoc municipality that hosts the burn.

But the oldies are proving they have more stamina than the kids. In 2014, burners under 30 made up 30% of the playa. That number plunged by more than half to 14% by 2025.

This is Literally Beyond Parody

So, the paper run by the Amazon sociopath just published an OP/ED titled, "Will Maine uproot Susan Collins? I went to a potato festival to find out."

The rest of the article is even worse. 

That's the hed printed at the top.  The title you would see on a news search would be, "Susan Collins faces a populist test in Maine Senate race," which is what the title tag is set to.probably to avoid widespread mockery.

No link, they don't deserve even the meager traffic that my sh%$#y little blog would send them.

Yeah, the author is a MAGAt, and yes, the Washington Post OP/ED page has gotten even worse than the travesty it was under the mismanagement of the late (and unlamented) Fred Hiatt. 

Will Wonders Never Cease

Both the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have deigned to notice that Trump's self-dealing and corruption are without precedent in the United States.

This is an obvious state of affairs, but the fact that two of the bastions of self-important hack journalism are acknowledging reality is a a  pleasant surprise. 

That F%$#ing Paper

Did the New York times just BOTH SIDES Ken Paxton's sweetheart deal for a child sex predator. Yes, yes it did. pic.twitter.com/wIylCgg5kP

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) June 19, 2026

Since part of the subhed was cropped out by Ecch (Twoitter), let me give you the full bit, "The case, which resulted in a short jail sentence despite years of alleged abuse, has drawn outcry in Texas. So have the attempts to politicize it." 

Yeah, the problem with Ken Paxton cutting a corrupt deal with a child molester is people criticizing the corruption.

What the f%$# is wrong with these people?   

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Why do we have the f%$#ing Wall Street Journal covering metaphorical war between Diet Coke and Coke Zero drinkers?

Even for the culture desk, this is mindbogglingly stupid. 

For decades, Diet Coke has been a durable pop culture icon, as much a symbol of boardroom swashbuckling as high fashion society. Its buzzy 1980s origins featured endorsements from celebrities including Paula Abdul, Whitney Houston and Demi Moore. More recently, limited-edition Diet Coke cans were released to coincide with “The Devil Wears Prada” sequel.

The soda is also beloved across generations. It has been given the mantle of “fridge cigarette” by a Gen Z cohort who, according to Cosmopolitan, want to “blow off steam without the actual fumes” and is repped by quintessential baby boomers, including Bill Gates in a TikTok he posted of himself re-creating Warren Buffett’s recipe for Dusty Diet Coke. (That’s a bizarro mix of the soda, vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and malted milk powder.)

Even the magic button that summons Diet Cokes to the Oval Office reappeared on the Resolute Desk last January, much to the irritation of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

All of this soft-drink soft power belies an uneasy truth for Diet Coke fanatics. The diet soda sweeping the nation is actually the beverage’s own sibling, Coke Zero Sugar—part of a zero-sugar soda boom that accounted for 52% of growth in soft drink sales last year, according to the market research firm Circana. Sales of Diet Coke, by comparison, have been, well, pretty flat since the soda peaked in popularity in 2006.

As Coke Zero gets bigger, and threatens to dethrone “DC” as the most important diet soda property in the Coca-Cola extended universe, the feud between Diet Coke fans and Coke Zero drinkers is getting pretty fizzy.  

If I actually gave a f%$# about the drinks, I would go Tab on their asses, but what bothers me is the journalistic malpractice. 

Cancel Your Subscription

It appears that the OP/ED section of the Washington Post can get even worse than it was under the stewardship of the late and (IMNSHO) unlamented Fred Hiatt.

They just put out an opinion piece criticizing Zohran Mamdani for being too mean to the billionaires who are ruining New York City.

Thank you Jeff Bezos.

I believe that I have stated before, that I would not wish cancer on anyone, and I stand by that.

I still want Jeff Bezos to get Fatal Familial Insomnia, which is much, MUCH, worse.  (I'm not a good person)

They Cannot Do Any Worse Than the Incumbents

I am hopeful that the celebrity gossip news org TMZ has opened a Washington, DC office will improve journalism in the nation's capitol.

This says all you need about the sorry state of, "Real," journalism inside the beltway. 

Even before Bezos destroyed the Washington Post, the media there sucked.

The three members of TMZ’s new Washington, D.C., bureau arrived at Capitol Hill last Monday ready and eager to stick their cameras in lawmakers’ faces and ask them uncomfortable questions. But they were surprised to find that members of the House wouldn’t be returning to work for another day. “I was laughing — ‘Oh, just wait until you see how infrequently these people work,’” said one congressional reporter. “It’s, like, a maximum four-day week.”

The celebrity-gossip outlet’s Washington operation had started off with a bang. The partial government shutdown had enraged TMZ founder Harvey Levin, who thought he might shame Congress back into session by publicizing how lawmakers were spending their recess while federal workers went without pay. The photos did not disappoint. There was a khaki-clad Lindsey Graham at Disney World, holding a bubble wand and boarding Space Mountain. There was Ted Cruz scrolling in his Economy Plus seat. There were members of Congress touring Edinburgh Castle while on a trip to Scotland. “The reaction in D.C. was, ‘Oh, that’s just a codel,’” said Washington communications veteran Nu Wexler, referring to a congressional delegation. It wasn’t clear TMZ understood the distinction or if it cared. “Stories like that will grab people,” said Wexler.

TMZ’s lack of familiarity with Washington’s weird ways is both a drawback and a strength. Its D.C. reporters do not seem to have experience covering Washington. And they are now crowdsourcing their way through the learning curve, asking for help finding bathrooms and restaurants and interview subjects. They’ve also printed out the pictures of House members to study their faces. But as the political paparazzi photos show, they can unearth stories that more jaded reporters have passed over as business as usual. The recent scandal over Eric Swalwell’s much-rumored creepiness and previously unreported sexual misconduct underscored that there is plenty of room for different newsgathering sensibilities.

Here's hoping that they deliver on the promise of a different kind of coverage.

If the entire DC press corps(e) was replaced by monkeys pounding away at typewriters, the quality of the journalism would improve. 

How is This a Bad Thing?

America's lamest newspaper, the New York Times, just bleated their worry that new taxes on ultra expensive 2nd homes might make living in New York more affordable.

The hed reads, "New Taxes Helped Cool London’s Housing Market.Could That Happen in New York?"

That implies that this might help ordinary people looking to live in the city.

The rest of the article is hand wringing about the possibility that this tax might result in losses for the ultra-rich and real estate developers.

To quote Emilio Estevez from the movie Repo Man, "F%$# that."

When these folks win, everyone else loses.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan for a yearly surcharge on second homes in New York City worth $5 million or more could be an elegant political move — one that taxes the rich who don’t live in the city full-time.

If approved, the so-called pied-à-terre tax will be a populist win that avoids levying new taxes on constituents of Ms. Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.

But real estate agents and economists say the tax could be catastrophic for the city’s housing market, hurting not the superrich investors who park their money here, but the very middle- and lower-income citizens it’s designed to benefit.

As to how this would hurt the, "Very middle- and lower-income citizens it’s designed to benefit?"

Crickets. 

The moneybags who, "Have historically made up nearly half of the homeowners in prime London neighborhoods," did not make those neighborhoods more affordable, they made them less affordable.

There is a mention of billionaires leaving London, and that some of said billionaires threw pocket change at charities.

They further claim that, "Smaller landlords threw in the towel, taking tens of thousands of apartments off the market and constricting supply."

Which means that these titans of industry are going on an Ayn Rand style, "Capital Strike," which has never happened in history. 

Osama, Take Me Now!

Fox host complains about low teen pregnancy rates:

"The problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19, the fertility rate is down 7%" pic.twitter.com/YlxCoyZxlx

— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 10, 2026

We have the video

There are always political events which surprise me.

I'm not omniscient, and I acknowledge that.

But nothing could have prepared me for Republicans have come out in favor of teen pregnancy.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

During a Friday segment on Fox News's America’s Newsroom with anchor Dana Perino, senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel called a declining birth rate among people aged 15-19 a "problem."

The discussion revolved around new CDC data showing the United States fertility rate, based on birth rates, has fallen to a record low based. The fertility rate fell 7 percent in 2025, from 53.8 births per 1,000 childbearing aged women—defined as age 15 to 44—in 2024 to 53.1, according to a report released by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics on Thursday.

………

But when reviewing the graph of birth rates by age of the mother over year of birth, Siegel remarked:

"We still have 3.6 million births a year. But the problem is teens and young adults from ages 15 to 19."

Siegel added:

"The fertility rate is down 7 percent, and it’s down 70 percent over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people that are young not to have babies, to wait until they’re in a more stable life situation, until they’re more financially secure. Maybe they haven’t found the right partner."

I'd ask what the f%$# is wrong with these people, but it would be a multi-hour effort just to index that list using a super-computer. 

Ignoring Article 1 of the Constitution

After the House refused to pass the Senate bill funding the Department of Homeland Security, Donald Trump has issued an executive order to pay them anyway.

The exclusive role of the Congress in funding the government is Constitution 101, but Trump ignored this, and the New York Times buried the lede on this, it's mentioned in passing in the 9th paragraph out of 13.

President Trump on Friday signed a directive calling on his administration to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees, an effort to circumvent congressional gridlock and end the record-long shutdown of an agency tasked with protecting the country.

………

The Friday order came after House Republicans refused to clear a Senate plan that would have restored funding to the agency, prolonging the shutdown. Mr. Trump earlier this week had hinted that he would sign a directive calling for all Department of Homeland Security employees to be paid, as he criticized Democrats for their role in the impasse. The president signed a similar memo last week ordering the department to pay Transportation Security Administration officials after about 60,000 employees from the agency had to report for work without pay for weeks. 

………

The workaround could face legal scrutiny, since it is the role of Congress to be the arbiter of federal spending. Mr. Trump’s directive could be seen as an attempt to unilaterally circumvent that responsibility, weakening the legislative branch’s ability to hold the executive branch accountable.

………

The impasse began in February when Senate Democrats refused to support funding for immigration agencies without new constraints on immigration officers.

Weeks later, the Senate sent a plan to the House that funded the Department of Homeland Security, except the immigration agencies. It omitted the restrictions Democrats had sought on federal agents.

Hard-right Republicans declined to support a Senate agreement to fund the department because it excluded money for immigration enforcement agencies.

(emphasis mine) 

Trump's actions are clearly unlawful, and all we get in this story is equivocation ¾ of the way down.

Bad news, and bad journalism. 

As if the Washington Post Could not Get Any Worse

Now the Jeff Bezos' disaster zone will start using AI and algorithms to price gouge subscribers.

I'm thinking that destroying the Post was always his long term goal.

Amid its pivot to AI, the Washington Post is abandoning the traditional fix-priced subscription model.

According to new reporting from Washingtonian, the once-venerable newspaper will now be setting readers’ subscription rates based on an AI-driven algorithm that interprets their personal data, mirroring controversial schemes used by services like Uber, Ticketmaster, and airlines.

Readers were informed of the change in the fine-print of an email they received last week warning them that their fee was being set at a higher price. “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data,” it stated.

The Post is being opaque about how the pricing algorithm works. When Washingtonian asked the Post for comment on the new pricing mechanism, it directed the paper to a blog post from its engineering team which explains its new AI-driven “smart metering model.” The model determines the number of articles that anonymous users, who aren’t registered on the Post’s website, and registered users, who’ve signed up but don’t pay for a subscription, can read before being shown a paywall.

It’s the latest sign of how the newspaper has undergone a tech- and AI-inflected pivot under the ownership of Jeff Bezos. Bezos’s Amazon, for instance, uses a dynamic pricing scheme that determines prices based on details like demand and location.

The Washington Post is complete sh%$.  Amazon is complete sh%$. 

To quote Zathras, "At least there is symmetry."

Jeff Bezos had better pray that there is no afterlife, because he will not fare well if there is. 

Headline of the Day

The U.S. Press Loves To Pretend Widespread Corruption Doesn't Exist

—Karl Bode, describing how our mainstream media studiously ignores rampant corruption in the United States

Even before Donald Trump and his minions turned up corruption to 11, the United States was remarkably corrupt by the standards of "First World" nations.

I just want you to pause and notice something.

The next time you're reading a news story about a particular area of U.S. dysfunction – whether it's gun control, health care, or air travel – notice if the reporter mentions, at literally any point, if corruption and unchecked corporate power sits squarely and undeniably at the heart of the problem.

Here's an example. Earlier this month the New York Times, considered by some to be the pinnacle of U.S. journalism, wrote this story about how the Trump-stocked Supreme Court was preparing to neuter the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to battle climate change (spoiler: they succeeded). 

………

But when the article proceeds toward what we're supposed to do next, you hit this gargantuan turd in the road:

A more definitive way to address the issue would be for Congress to weigh in. Democrats could pass legislation that defined greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, giving the E.P.A. the explicit authority to regulate them. Conversely, Republicans could enact legislation that said the opposite.

But in the half-century since Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it has never mustered the political will to decide this question. And it seems exceedingly unlikely to happen at a time when climate change has become such a polarizing topic.

Why this Congressional gridlock persists is left as an open question for the reader to puzzle through.

The reason we don't have effective protections for climate change (or functional gun control, or universal health care, or cheap broadband) is because the U.S. Congress is often too corrupt to function. Monied interests have polluted state and federal legislatures to the point they no longer serve the public interest.

(emphasis original)

It's all about the Benjamins. 

Lies the Media Tells Us

Notwithstanding the media reports, the 2025 murder rate fell significantly.

The headlines of 2025 painted a portrait of America in chaos, driven by the financial logic of America’s media ecosystem. It’s number one product isn’t news, but fear.

“NYC youth crime doubled since controversial state Raise the Age Law kicked in,” exclaims one hysterical New York Post headline from September. “Business owners express frustration over crime surge in Federal Hill,” reads a banner from FOX45 News, a local outlet in Baltimore. “Office shooter’s rampage shows terrifying rise of motive-free violence, experts warn,” goes a Fox News heading from August.

The scary headlines were all underscored by inflammatory rhetoric from the Trump administration, which continued to insist that America’s cities are crime-ridden hell holes well into the new year.

Selective media coverage of crime certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, though it’s worth revisiting — especially because new data suggests 2025 was actually one of the least violent years for the US in over a century.

According to fresh Council on Criminal Justice crime statistics, Axios reports, murder rates fell 21 percent last year across the 35 largest cities in the US. It’s the single largest one-year-drop ever, the publication reports, and possibly the lowest homicide rates we’ve seen as a nation since the year 1900 — when the last generation of frontier outlaws were still robbing train cars.

Homicide wasn’t the only crime that fell in 2025. Out of 13 crimes tracked by the Council on Criminal Justice, 11 of them were lower last year than in 2024. Aggravated assaults, for example, fell by 9 percent across the 35 cities, while gun assaults and robberies dropped off by 22 and 23 percent, respectively. (The only category that increased was drug crimes, up 7 percent — and which are nonviolent.)

This a toxic combination of the, "If it bleeds, it leads," ethos of local news and the oligopolistic nature of news, particularly broadcast news/

They are selling a lie. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

The New York Times actually became the Internet parody of itself pic.twitter.com/oiPtEbgPCJ

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 18, 2026

I agree.

The New York Times is indistinguishable from parody. 

From the "Mind" of Bari Weiss

Update — Here is another clearer view of the "Whiskey Fridays with Tony Dokoupil" staging at CBS News:

[image or embed]

— Prem Thakker ツ (@premthakker.bsky.social) January 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM

OMFG, it's Real

UPDATE: Jack Daniel’s parent co. Brown-Forman tells me it has nothing to do with CBS’ “Whiskey Friday” concept. “Jack Daniel’s is not involved in any such segment, nor do we have any awareness of the segment and any potential partnerships or sponsorships.”

[image or embed]

— Dave Infante (@dinfontay.com) January 14, 2026 at 9:44 AM

Also, Jack Daniels had no knowledge of this, and wants nothing to do with it.

After the continuous stream of disasters coming from CBS News since Bari "Shanda far de Goyim" Weiss took over, I thought it could not get any more awful.

I was wrong.

The latest idea to spring from the "Very Special brain," aka the Editor in Chief of the Tiffany Network's news division is to have her disastrous choice for CBS Evening News anchor drink on the air once a week.

No, I am not fucking joking.

The new era of CBS Evening News, under the editorial direction of Bari Weiss and featuring new anchor Tony Dokoupil, is off to a rough start. Weiss is meddling and pouting, Dokoupil is not ready for primetime, and the ratings are already slumping compared to last year's numbers. These guys need a win, badly. On Tuesday, they tried to get one by securing an exclusive interview with President Donald Trump at a Ford factory in Dearborn, Mich. 

………

Dokoupil isn't equipped to be an effective nightly news anchor, and he's not the best option to interview a deranged president who can rightly point out that his current career trajectory is entirely owed to the rise of reactionary forces in the country. Surely, this former morning show host has something else to offer. Perhaps we can't judge him until we've seen him fully unleashed on Whiskey Fridays, as reported by Zeteo's Prem Thakker:

………

Is this the exact sort of idea that I've personally seen cooked up by a beleaguered sales team at a struggling digital media company? No comment, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. The CBS News ratings are going to go through the roof as soon as Dokoupil is allowed to get behind this desk and say, "Welcome to Whiskey Fridays, presented by Jack Daniel's, where we drink like we mean it and report like we give a damn."

So we have a political poseur pseudo intellectual hired by Larry Ellison's useless nepo-baby, and we get a, "Sponsored by Jack Daniels, we'll tell the good old boys from Lynchburg Tennessee next week," drunk news.

Bari?  You do know that Comedy Central already has this basic show, don't you?

It's called Drunk History. 

Quote of the Day

Here’s Another Thing You Should Understand About These Guys: The Only Thing the Elite Washington Press Corps Likes More than a Bipartisan Commission on Debt Reduction Is a Stack of Flag-Draped Coffins.

—Alex Pareeneon on Deadspin (Archive link from 2017) describing the complete moral vacuity of the Washington Press Corps(e)

Yes, this quote is truly evergreen.

When a President bombs brown people, the Washington Press Corps(e) in inevitably say that, "This is the day that he become President" 

H/t Atrios.

About that Spiked 60 Minutes Report Describing the Salvadoran Gulag

I can't embed it, but Allison Gill got a copy from when it aired in Canada.

It's just some guy filming his TV, sot he quality is not great, but it is legible and audible.

There used to be a website in the early 2000s called Media Whores Online.

They would have had a field day with Bari Weiss. 

(On edit, found a copy of the video on Archive.org) 

Today in Hack Journalism

Here's the deleted trailer for the now-"delayed" segment. It's almost impressive how much damage Bari Weiss has done to CBS News in such a short period of time.

Someone quickly schedule a prime-time Town Hall with Alan Dershowitz to rectify the harm:pic.twitter.com/382gRG5Lgp https://t.co/3gHRKNES2y

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 21, 2025

Roll Tape!

Bari Weiss canceled the 60 Minutes segment about the El Salvadoran Gulag that deportees have been sent to by immigration authorities hours before it was due to air. 

Her justification is that it needs more work, because the Trump administration refused to respond to request for comments.

If you think that this is hypocritical, stupid, and fucking insane, what part of, "Bari Weiss," don't you get.

In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.

CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”

But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

………

The segment was focused on Venezuelan men who were sent by the Trump administration to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison in El Salvador. In a news release on Friday promoting the segment, CBS News said that Ms. Alfonsi had spoken with several men now released from the prison “who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured.”

Ms. Weiss first saw the segment on Thursday and raised numerous concerns to “60 Minutes” producers about Ms. Alfonsi’s segment on Friday and Saturday, and she asked for a significant amount of new material to be added, according to three people familiar with the internal discussions.

One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.

………

In her note, Ms. Alfonsi said that her team had requested comment from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote.

“We have been promoting this story on social media for days,” Ms. Alfonsi added. “Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘gold standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet.”

The dictionary entry for, "Useful Idiot," has Ms. Weiss' picture in it.

That Fucking Paper

On a day where the prosecution in the Luigi Mangione case agreed not to present some evidence because of law enforcement misconduct, the New York Times decided that it to talk about Mangione's fashion choices.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know." 

The pretrial hearings of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, have finally come to an end. The judge will most likely issue his rulings later, possibly even in January, when Mr. Mangione will be back in a different court for the scheduling of his federal trial. But this hearing has been, in some ways, a dress rehearsal.

Literally.

Witness the defendant’s about-face from crew-neck sweaters to suits. Given the way Mr. Mangione’s looks have become a central part of his narrative in the year since his arrest, the significance of such choices is lost on no one — least of all his legal team.

If you still have a subscription to the Times, cancel it.

^*This is not my term, it was coined by Duncan "Atrios" Black.

This is Nuts

Donald Trump is claiming that he has pardoned Tina Peters, the former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, who was convicted of convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state, and sentenced to 9 years in prison.

She did all this in an attempt to create false evidence of a "stolen" election in 2020. 

With all of the pardons that Trump is issuing lately, my reader(s) might wonder why this pardon is noteworthy.

It's pretty simple.  All of the above charges are State charges, and the President has no authority to do so.  (Well, at least he lacks the authority until the six corrupt Supreme Court Justices make yet another ruling rivaling the awfulness oif Dred Scott v. Sanford.)

Unfortunately, the so-called journalist out there are selling it as a, "Some experts say," as opposed to it being bat-shit insane, because there has been too much in the way of media mergers:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has pardoned Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was convicted in state court on felony charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!”

It was unclear whether Trump was asserting that he has the power to free Peters from state prison. She is serving a nine-year sentence. Presidents have the power to pardon defendants convicted in federal courts, but previous presidents have not claimed that authority in a state case.

Unclear?  Seriously? 

………

The Constitution gives the president the power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States.” The Supreme Court has interpreted that language as referring to federal crimes, not those charged by states.

In a lengthy letter to Trump this month, however, Ticktin disputed that traditional understanding.

“The issue which needs to be answered whether our founders understood or intended when they wrote that the President had the Power to Pardon offenses against the United States, if it meant the states or only the federal government. Did they mean the one central authority, or did they mean the plural, meaning the states which were united?” he wrote.

Ticktin conceded that the claim that the president could pardon people for state crimes “has never been raised in any court” but said Trump should assert that authority in Peters’s case.

It's never been raised in court because the argument is complete bullshit.

Anyone who is a serious journalist should be calling that bullshit out.  This Washington Post reporter clearly is not serioius.