Law prof: Cohen, Davis and Selling Scandal Testimony

Michael Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, has become “a virtual infomercial for a GoFundMe site,” making multiple media appearances in which he “shilled for donors for his client,” says Jonathan Turley at The Hill. Such fundraising is now “a regular feature of Washington scandals” (witness Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe). But the Cohen/Davis pitch “highlights a troubling aspect” of these campaigns: They amount to “a raw form of buying witnesses,” turning GoFundMe into “a bazaar where one can put money down on the testimony most likely to hurt or help” President Trump. And the danger is obvious: “Faced with massive legal fees and costs,” people “may be inclined to shape their accounts to better fit a popular niche” and so “weaponized” their testimony.

Pollster: There Are Really Two Midterm Elections

It’s “hard to believe, but true,” reports David Wasserman at The New York Times: A switch of eight points from the 2016 presidential results to Democrats in each congressional district this November would give them 44 new House seats, nearly double what they need to take control. Yet that same swing would still mean a Democratic loss of four seats in the Senate. That’s because there are “two very different elections playing out at once.” The Senate “hinges on red, rural states where Democrats are on the defensive,” while the House will be decided “by swing, suburban seats, where Republicans are highly vulnerable.” The long-term danger: “The two parties could become accountable to two almost entirely different sets of voters with boiling contempt for one another’s politics and little understanding of one another’s way of life.”

Foreign desk: Why Won’t BDS Boycott Turkey and China?

No one suggested singer Lana Del Ray’s concert in Turkey was “a political statement in support of the Erdogan regime and the repression of journalists, academics and civil servants,” notes Adam Levick at The Independent. Nor did her concert in China “signify the singer’s alignment with a totalitarian regime” that’s been called “one of the worst human-rights abusers on the planet.” And no called criticized her concert in Russia as an endorsement of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea. But according to BDS activists, only her upcoming concert in Israel (the Middle East’s only free, democratic country) “should be viewed through the lens of the government’s alleged human rights abuses.” This, says Levick, “gets to the heart of the immoral double standards which compromise the BDS movement.”

Culture critic: The Unseen Child-Separation Crisis

There’s a much larger child-separation crisis in America than the one at the border, argues Naomi Schaefer Riley at The Washington Post: It’s in foster care. “In this case, the problem is not that we’re taking too many children away from their parents”; it’s that “we’re not taking enough.” Sounds horrifying, but “the dominant ideology among child protective-services agencies” is that “parents are often the real victims in cases of severe family dysfunction” and “taking away their kids only punishes them further.” This, insists Riley, “has things dangerously backward: Children’s interest should come first.” And this has become more acute with the opioid crisis. Says Riley: “Trapping children in abusive or neglectful situations will only create another generation of victims. Sometimes separation is the best outcome.”

From the right: The Real ‘Enemies of the People’

President Trump has been calling out social-media platforms for their censorship of conservative voices. Ironically, notes James S. Robbins at USA Today, “this used to be the position of the ACLU, before it decided to start balancing speech against its possible impact on the progressive agenda.” Since Twitter, Facebook et al. are private companies, “in theory they should be free to establish whatever content policies they want.” But it’s becoming clear these platforms “are having a corrosive effect on public debate and expression generally.” There may be more public discourse these days, but it’s grown “coarser, more superficial, more vulgar and more prone to threats, insults and violence.” Social media also “empower radicals of all stripes by making it easier for them to collaborate and pass on their toxic brews.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann