Because
National Review is a non-profit organization — literally — we don’t have the resources to face down the fine gentlemen at Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells, who are bullying us on behalf of the Voter News Service into not delivering you the news. As I write this at 2:50 p.m., I know who is very narrowly ahead in New York and is having a banner day overall. I know who is going to get a huge bounce from today and sweep through the Southern round of primaries next week. I know this because sources have
told me. This is
news. But I can’t report it.
It is worth noting a few ironies. The first is that a consortium of news organizations has united around an effort to supress the news. Get this — the networks are essentially threatening to sue another journalistic organization for exercising its First Amendment rights! We might expect this of Brown & Williamson. But of ABC News? The other is that the VNS case — which has been used to beat Slate and now NR Online into submission — appears as flimsy as a Jennifer Lopez Grammy dress. Pace our friends at Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells, you can’t copyright fact, and the “hot news” doctrine that VNS alternatively hangs its case on has been rejected by serious courts. (Given its massive resources, this is a fight Slate and Microsoft should have waged — but apparently guts aren’t in as plentiful supply in Redmond as stock options.) The encouraging thing is that other web outlets will inevitably print the news, no matter how many lawyers bill $500-hours drafting up threatening letters.
The news will out — it’s just a fact. Maybe the gents at Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells should try to copyright that.
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