Mark Judge

It’s good that the justices are speaking out. But conservatives need to understand that there is nothing to all the media stories concocting ethics complaints about the justices —they are simply being targeted by coordinated “oppo research” campaigns.

Oppo or “opposition research” is used in politics to destroy political enemies. Genuine ethical questions usually involve things like bribes and the abuse of power. Opposition researchers, on the other hand, find people you dated when you were 16 years old and get them to say nasty things about you. They then try and use those things to stir up controversy. They feed it to the media then try and personally destroy the targeted person to get them to step down from public life.

It baffles me that by now conservatives are still fooled by this tactic. They assume that where there is smoke, there must be fire—when the left makes the smoke up out of thin air.

I have been warning about the left’s plan to do this to the conservatives on the Court for more than five years. I first brought it up in 2018 while talking to an old friend over lunch in Georgetown. I had been oppo researched, almost to death, to prevent Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a high school friend of mine, from taking his seat on the Court. I told my friend that even though Brett made it, the oppo was just getting started. She laughed in my face. (She did not laugh when she read my account of the Kavanaugh hit in my book The Devil’s Triangle.)

Since then, I have spent hours, days, weeks, and months trying to warn the political right. They are going to go after the friends and family of the justices. They are going to dig up all kinds of nonsense. They are going to secretly record them.

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I often ask, when reading articles, how the writer chose and expanded on the topic, particularly when they have no expertise in said area. Seeding and fertilizing is common.

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More.

“Like most legacy newspapers, we have an editorial voice and it happens to be center-left, and we have a robust nonpartisan opinion section that includes views of conservatives on a number of local issues,” he said. “Our commentary is pro-democracy, pro-transparency, and clearly labeled as opinion. Like legacy newspapers, our opinion section is completely separate from our news reporting.”

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Also, Wisconsin Watch.