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Editors note: The death of Rush Limbaugh, the growth of Newsmax and charges of censorship by Amazon and other book sellers are among the forces shaking up conservative media companies. In this three-part series, the Deseret News examines the challenges facing radio, television and book publishing, and how those challenges might affect the companies and you: the reader, listener and viewer.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley lost a book deal. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling lost fans. And now, even as a prospective merger of two large publishing houses in the U.S. is rattling the industry, Amazon is deleting content it deems offensive from the worlds largest platform for book sales.

In this tumultuous landscape, can conservative authors still continue to speak freely and sell books?

Yes, publishers say, but they may have to change the way they do business in a culture newly cognizant of the power to cancel people with unpopular opinions.

We dont let it directly determine what we publish, but the fact is, with every book, there is always fear that the book is going to be pulled. The authors feel very vulnerable, said David Bernstein, publisher of Bombardier Books, a conservative imprint of Post Hill Press.

Conservative fears were realized this month when the book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Catholic scholar Ryan T. Anderson, vanished from the Amazon website three years after it was published.

Four Republican senators, including Utahs Mike Lee, called the action political censorship, saying in a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon has openly signaled to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms.

But the controversy over Andersons book is only the latest action troubling conservative writers and publishers. Others include the cancellation of a forthcoming Hawley book critical of technology companies by Simon & Schuster, protests against a new book by Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, and an open letter signed by people in the publishing industry who say no one affiliated with former President Donald Trumps administration should get a book contract.

The tremors shaking book publishing usually go undetected by the public, since the average reader only pays attention to the book, its content and the author, not the company that publishes a book, said Thomas Spence, who became president and publisher of Regnery Publishing a year ago.

Regnery, founded in 1947, has published books by Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin and Dennis Prager, among other conservatives well acquainted with controversy. Regnerys success was a major reason that the largest publishing houses in the U.S. established their own conservative imprints, publishing insiders say.

But the outcry against authors who express unpopular beliefs is growing louder in the environment known as cancel culture, and some writers are warning that recent events will effectively muzzle conservatives. The backlash to Amazons decision, however, suggests that the outlook for conservative publishing is still bright. Heres why.

Andersons book, described by author Rod Dreher as a well-written, scientifically informed critique of gender ideology by a leading Catholic public intellectual, is still for sale on the website of the publisher, Encounter Books, as well as on the Barnes & Noble website and other places online.

Anderson, who recently became president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told Dreher, writing for The American Conservative, that he has sold a couple of thousand books in the past week, adding this is unheard of for a three-year-old book.

He noted that Amazons action came at the same time Congress was considering the Equality Act and suggested that Amazons action has a silver lining, which is this could be (the) further catalyst thatll interrupt the libertarian slumber of many conservatives and prompt them to think critically about what, for example, the natural law says about both the justification of and limits to economic liberties.

Author Abigail Shrier is not as optimistic. Shrier, a journalist whose book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, has been removed twice from the Target website, wrote that the Amazon case is dangerous because of the outsized influence the company wields in publishing.

As a direct result of Amazons action, many outstanding books will now go unwritten; they will not be commissioned whenever Amazons distribution is the slightest bit in doubt. As I write this, authors are being dropped by agents or politely refused representation, based on what the agents now know Amazon will not carry, Shrier wrote.

Shriers book, however, is still listed on Amazon, as is God and the Transgender Debate, an examination of what the Bible has to say about gender by Southern Baptist theologian Andrew T. Walker.

So is a take on Andersons book, Let Harry Become Sally, an e-book by Kelly R. Novak that Amazon billed last week as a #1 best seller.

Amazon has not given a specific reason for removing Andersons book, saying only that the company reserves the right to delist content that violates its standards.

In an email, Anderson said this could be a moment that determines how the company will operate going forward. If Amazon hears from enough people, perhaps that will lead it to reconsider its decision and not just on me, but also preventing future de-platforming. If Amazon gets away with this, itll likely lead to more de-platforming in the future.

While Anderson can only speculate about the reasons his book is no longer on Amazon, Hawley, the Missouri senator, knows why Simon & Schuster canceled his book contract because the company put out a statement. Without giving specifics, the publisher said that Hawley, a Trump supporter who was the first senator to say he would challenge the 2020 election results, had a role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints; at the same time, we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom, the statement said.

Hawleys book deal was canceled the day after the riot. The next week, more than 250 authors, editors, agents and other workers in publishing signed an open letter that said no companies should publish work by anyone who incited, suborned, instigated or otherwise supported the riot, or who was a participant in the Trump administration. The number of signers is now approaching 600.

But within two weeks, Hawley had another publisher in Regnery, and Spence explained the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, in which he said cancel culture is more appropriately described as blacklisting.

Not so long ago, publishing professionals would have been horrified to be accused of it. Today they compete to see who can proclaim his blacklist with the fiercest invective, Spence wrote.

So far, Amazon hasnt been inclined to cancel Hawleys book; its accepting pre-orders for The Tyranny of Big Tech and gives a release date of May 4.

Spence said hed been following Hawleys career knew he was a Yale Law School graduate and was a former Supreme Court clerk and had thought it would be nice to have a book from him before this one essentially landed in his lap. A lot of people have sent me emails saying, Oh, youre so courageous, thanks for taking a stand and taking this book, and I have to blush. I think I did the right thing, but I dont know that it was particularly courageous in this case, he said.

Getting canceled by Simon & Schuster has raised the profile of the book a lot, he added.

That has happened before, said Bernstein of Bombardier Books. When Simon & Schuster canceled a book by Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, the far-right commentator self-published Dangerous and sold upwards of 100,000 copies, Bernstein said.

Donald Trump Jr. also self-published his second book, Liberal Privilege.

Bernstein said that conservative imprints such as Center Street at Hachette Book Group or Sentinel at Penguin are ghettos within the largest publishing houses, which he said skew young and liberal. The problem with conservative books within the large publishing houses is that theyre not going to support you if there is any controversy. The first whiff of controversy, Josh Hawley gets his book canceled. The first whiff of controversy, (Florida GOP Congressman) Matt Gaetz gets his book canceled. The editors get fired or get shifted around. Or the imprint gets closed. All of these things are happening at an increasing pace right now.

The New York Times recently reported that longtime editor Kate Hartson, editorial director at Center Street, had been let go and that Hartson told colleagues she thought her termination was because of her political beliefs. She had published books by Donald Trump Jr., Newt Gingrich, radio host Michael Savage and Rand Paul, among others. Her most recent book was reported to be Unmasked: Inside Antifas Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, by Andy Ngo.

Not every objection to an author results in a book being canceled. When Penguin Random House Canada announced that it was publishing Jordan Petersons Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, the company had to hold a town-hall style meeting for employees who were upset about the decision. It was published anyway. (In the U.S., the book was released March 2 under Penguins Portfolio imprint.)

And some authors, like J.K. Rowling, have the benefit of being too successful to be truly canceled, Bernstein said. Her position in publishing is kind of untouchable. When you make up that much of a companys bottom line shes like a line item of her own on their balance sheet no company is going to release her and give up that revenue.

For many conservative authors, however, the fear of being de-platformed is real, whether it be on a sales platform or social media.

Frankly, the number of books that get pulled off of Amazon is infinitesimal, but these stories get magnified and people are rightly concerned, because the number of people being de-platformed on Twitter started off being very small, too, Bernstein said.

Small conservative imprints such as Bombardier may benefit from the current environment if authors seek publishers who share their views. But so may Regnery, whose namesake, the late Henry Regnery, published Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher in 1979.

Spence, who said his views were shaped by the First Things essay Why the News Make Us Dumb by C. John Sommerville and The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, welcomes the business, although he realizes that this may be a particularly vulnerable moment for conservative publishers.

Certain big players in the publishing world have the power to make our business very difficult if they want to. Thats Amazon and Google, all the people targeted by Josh Hawleys book, and maybe Im stupid to be publishing a book punching them in the nose, Spence said.

If we couldnt sell our books on Amazon, that would be a pretty serious blow. We sell most of our books on Amazon. What they have done on rare occasions is make it more difficult for people to find our books. He cited Shriers book, which Regnery published. The company wanted to buy ads that would make the book more prominent in searches, but Spence said that Amazon would not let them buy ads for that book.

Spence is also cognizant of the power of Facebook and Twitter, and that social media platforms could also take action to block promotion of one of his authors or books.

Theres a lot of potential hazards on the road ahead, he said. But its also good times for Regnery, because theres no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy is good.

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Is Amazon allowed to censor conservative books? - Deseret News

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It is to the eternal shame of many in the self-styled progressive community that they have turned against the library system for the crime of tolerating free expression

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If Dr. Seuss Enterprises did anything useful last week in taking six of the late doctors books out of print, surely it could have done something more useful by showing its work: Which hurtful and wrong depictions and descriptions of non-white people did its panel of experts consider beyond the pale, and which did it not, and why? Seuss Enterprises is free to publish and not publish whatever it wants, but its decisions will contribute to a much broader and important conversation about what to do with otherwise beloved or revered literature, especially childrens literature, that reflects unfortunate attitudes of its period.

Some of the culprits are clear: In If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950, stereotypical caricatures of African and Asian men are depicted helping young Gerald McGrew collect his menagerie including from the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant, where young Geralds aides all wear their eyes at a slant. But much of the other material is far less obviously problematic not just compared to the six delisted titles, but potentially also to Seusss most famous and beloved works, which his executors presumably wish to continue selling for profit.

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The Grinch is thought of by some as a Jewish stereotype, taking diabolical glee in subverting societal norms and desecrating Christian traditions, as University of Michigan literature professor Ryan Szpiech wrote in 2019. In 2014, Kansas State University childrens literature scholar Philip Nel argued the Grinch also echoes 19th-century caricatures of the Irish and that The Cat In the Hat is about a conflict between white children and a black cat whose character and costume borrow from blackface performance.

These were academic analyses, not denunciations. Neither was calling for any of Seusss work to be unpublished. But in the court of public opinion nowadays, things can spin out of control awfully fast. No ones setting these (books) on fire. No ones saying you cannot read them, Nel told Esquire last week, arguing the controversy was overblown. No ones saying they must be removed from libraries. No ones saying they must be removed from your home.

I can report from Toronto that this is not the case. Now looms a larger question, Toronto Star journalist Evy Kwong intoned last week on the papers TikTok account: What happens to the books that are still in the bookstore or at the library?

Its unclear on (sic) whether Dr. Seuss Enterprises will be mandating that the six books be removed from circulation across the globe, the paper reported.

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In a follow-up article on Monday, another Star reporter found and interviewed a woman who was offering for sale her personal copy of one of the cancelled Seuss books. The reporter explained that the womanbelieves she should maintain freedom to have or sell the titles, despite the conclusion of others or positions of companies much in the way she might believe the Earth orbits the sun and not vice versa.

Does it really need explaining that books are private property? That libraries have something much closer to an obligation to retain out-of-print or unpopular books than an obligation to get rid of them for historians sake, if no one elses?

The Chicago Tribune reports the citys public library system will allow the copies currently on loan to remain with their borrowers, and honour existing holds, and thereafter temporarily keep the books as reference copies while it assesses long-term options. If one of those options is not keeping at least one copy each as a reference item, then we have wandered into a very dark place. I trust that wont be the case in Chicago.

The Star, meanwhile, managed to find a Toronto bookstore proprietor who objected even to library staff taking the time to review the books content before deciding what to do. If the people who produce the book say theres an original culture concern why are you questioning it? Miguel San Vincente demanded to know.

Libraries have something much closer to an obligation to retain out-of-print or unpopular books than an obligation to get rid of them

Its mind-boggling. The Toronto Public Library keeps copies of discredited memoirs, preludes to genocide, inspirations to terrorists, anti-Islamic and anti-Christian and anti-Semitic and anti-atheist screeds, pulp non-fiction from Ann Coulter and Naomi Klein alike, and everything in between and beyond. Because thats what a library is for.

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It is to the eternal shame of many in Torontos self-styled progressive community that they have turned against the library system for the crime of tolerating free expression a grotesque phenomenon that reached its nadir when it dared unapologetically to rent a room to a feminist (but allegedly transphobic) activist in 2019 to deliver a really quite anodyne speech.

And it is bewildering that they cant see the truth lying just beyond their own noses: that if they ever manage to win these battles to silence unpopular voices of the moment, they will inevitably wind up ruing the day.Every year the American Library Associations Office for Intellectual Freedom publishes a list of the most challenged books in American libraries. In 2019, eight of the top 10 were on the list because of LGBTQIA+ content. The other two were Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale and the Harry Potter series.

When culture warriors on any side lose the plot, dispassionate librarians in Toronto and many other cities are there to help them find it again. They just have to let them do their jobs. Assuming (confidently) that Torontos chief librarians dont decide to send the troublesome Seuss titles to the woodchipper, or alternatively to put them front and centre in their branches childrens sections, I suggest we defer to their wisdom.

Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley

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Chris Selley: For the love of Seuss, leave libraries alone - National Post

Here is this weeks installment of The New York Times is ALWAYS lying about criminals (and probably everything else).

The Times desperately wants you to believe that there are actual cases of innocent people being put to death in America. Their current poster boy for the cause is Sedley Alley, executed in 2006. But the Criminal Lobby is hoping a post-mortem DNA test on evidence that has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence will allow them to howl that an INNOCENT man was executed!

I knew nothing about this case, but I knew the Times description of the facts was a lie. How did I know?

1) No jury would have convicted a man, much less sentenced him to death, much less had that sentence repeatedly upheld, on such a flimsy record; and

2) There is no credible evidence that a single innocent person has been put to death in this country for at least 75 years.

Here are the facts the about the Criminal Lobbys latest baby seal.

On the night of July 11, 1985, two Marines from a naval base in Millington, Tennessee, reported a possible kidnapping after they heard a female jogger screaming, Dont touch me! Leave me alone! They ran in her direction, but just as they got close, a station wagon peeled off the side of the road. A gate guard also reported seeing a station wagon, which he said was being driven by a man constraining a woman.

All three witnesses described the car as a late-model green or brown Ford or Mercury station wagon with wood paneling, Kentucky tags and a loud muffler.

Alley, who owned a dark green 1972 Mercury station wagon with wood paneling and a Kentucky license plate, was brought in for questioning at 1 a.m. that night. The Marines whod reported the kidnapping identified Alleys vehicle as the one theyd seen, both by sight and by the roar of the muffler.

But Alley and his wife gave a satisfactory explanation for their whereabouts and were released.

At 6 a.m. on July 12, the body of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne Collins was found in a nearby park. Alley was arrested and promptly confessed to murdering her claiming it was an accident.

He told his wife, Yes, I killed the gal at ... Orgill Park.

In his lengthy, tape-recorded confession, Alley tried to soft-pedal his barbaric crime, claiming hed hit Collins with his car by accident, and only decided to savagely beat her to death because, as he was driving her to the hospital, she threatened to turn him into the police.

Alley then took investigators to the precise spot where hed murdered Collins and even showed them the tree where hed broken off the branch that hed jammed inside of her.

At trial, Alley admitted he did it, but pleaded insanity. The jury didnt buy it, convicted him and sentenced him to death.

Here is what the Times Emily Bazelon tells that papers clueless readers about Alleys case:

[T]wo Marines ... reported crossing paths with Lance Corporal Collins while she was running. They said that moments after they saw her, they dodged a brown station wagon with a blue license plate ... [L]aw enforcement officers stopped Sedley Alley, then 29. He was driving a dark green station wagon with a blue plate.

Times readers are led to believe that although witnesses said it was a BROWN station wagon, Tennessee yokels picked up a guy in a GREEN station wagon!

Except thats not true. The BOLO alert (be on the lookout) put out by the Naval Investigation Service identified a a brown or green Ford or Mercury station wagon with woodgrain on the sides.

Bazelon:

When the investigators began interrogating him, Mr. Alley, who had been drinking, denied knowing anything about Lance Corporal Collins and asked for a lawyer. But 12 hours later, he signed a statement confessing to the murder.

Times readers are supposed to think these backwoods Nazis interrogated Alley without a lawyer for 12 hours until he confessed! In fact, the only reason he signed a statement 12 hours later was that, after being questioned the night of the crime, he was sent home. Alley wasnt arrested until after Collins body was discovered the next day, whereupon he quickly confessed.

Bazelon:

Mr. Alleys admission, which he later said was false and coerced ...

Yes, later in the sense of 20 years later. For two decades, Alley never denied hed murdered Collins. He only recalled that his confession was coerced in 2004, when he was trying to delay the hangmans noose.

Bazelon:

But the location he gave for the collision didnt line up with the witness accounts.

There were no witness accounts for the collision for the simple reason that there was no collision. My car hit her by accident was Alleys attempt to mitigate his barbarous crime.

You know what else, Emily? His car wasnt seen driving in the direction of the hospital, either!

Somehow, his lies not matching the facts is supposed to be a point in Alleys favor.

Bazelon:

[Alleys confession] did not match the physical evidence. ... He said he ... stabbed her with a screwdriver and killed her with a tree branch. ... And the autopsy report showed that Lance Corporal Collins was not hit by a car nor stabbed with a screwdriver.

Again: There was no collision.

Im not sure what Bazelons point is about the screwdriver and the tree branch, but heres the evidence presented at trial:

The pathologist, Dr. James Bell, testified that the cause of death was multiple injuries, [many] of which could have been fatal. ... He testified that the injuries to the skull could have been inflicted by the rounded end of defendants screwdriver that was found near the scene ... He identified the tree branch that was inserted into the victims body. It measured 31 inches in length and had been inserted into the body more than once, to a depth of twenty inches ...

Bazelon:

Tire tracks found at the crime scene didnt match Mr. Alleys car, shoe prints didnt match his shoes, and a third witness who saw a man with a station wagon, close to where Lance Corporal Collins was killed, described someone who was several inches shorter than Mr. Alley, with a different hair color.

Times readers are perfectly prepared to believe that a jury of toothless hicks looked at evidence overwhelmingly clearing Alley and convicted him anyway.

But that didnt happen, because having seen the evidence for themselves, Alley and his lawyer decided his best course was to admit he did it and plead insanity. All this alleged evidence is post-hoc nonsense invented by defense lawyers that has not been admitted under the rules of evidence, has not been subjected to cross-examination, and would not prove his innocence.

Seventy-five years and counting with no credible evidence that a single innocent person has been put to death in America.

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Ann Coulter: NYT Was he innocent? Answer: No - Today's News-Herald

In the span of just 13 minutes, the Oscar-shortlisted short documentary Hysterical Girl unpacks a lot.

The film directed by Kate Novack not only elucidates one of Sigmund Freuds most famous case historieson a suicidal teenage girl the psychoanalyst called Dorabut how Freuds writing about her continues to impact our culture more than a century later.

We have one foot in 1900, Novack tells Deadline, and we have one foot in 2020.

The documentary draws a link between the Dora case and more recent examples of the reaction to women who have accused powerful menBrett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and othersof sexual misconduct or assault.

Novack observes, I think it then becomes really hard to argue, Oh, no, thats the case from the past, Freud isnt relevant anymore, weve moved on.

As the film reveals, Dora had been sexually assaulted at age 13 by an adult male, a family friend. Doras parents dismissed her story as false, but Freud believed her. Crucially, though, he labeled Doras problem as hysteria, and informed his patient that the trauma she felt resulted from trying to repress sexual feelings aroused by her assault.

This father figure [Freud], this authority figure, responded to her on the one hand by believing that this had occurred, producer Andrew Rossi explains, but by trying to convince her that there was some other reason that it took place, and that actually she wanted it.

Freud interpreted a dream Dora related to him as a fantasy of forced seduction, implying her actual sexual assault amounted to that.

The [film] really is about this young sexual assault survivor having a voice, Novack comments, and about the legacy of Freuds theories in helping to silence and shame survivors.

Freuds conclusions about Dora map onto the notorious 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Thomas, when Anita Hill testified he had sexually harassed her during an earlier phase in the jurists career. Hysterical Girl intersperses clips of the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee cross-examining Hill.

I find the references to the alleged sexual harassment to be the product of fantasy, Republican Senator Arlen Specter declares. Later in the documentary Specter intones, Miss Hill was disappointed and frustrated that Mr. Thomas did not show any sexual interest in her.

The film includes a rapid-fire succession of similar moments from recent American historyconservative commentator Ann Coulter dismissing Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, Rush Limbaugh branding as a slut a woman who supported insurance coverage for contraceptives. In another brief clip, Paula Jones recounts her fear of accusing President Clinton of sexual harassment when he was governor of Arkansas. Whether its Jones, Hill or Ford, or innumerable other women, such claims have met with knee jerk skepticism.

We live, in a sense, in a world Freud shaped.

He helped to bring systems of disbelieving women into the 20th, and then beyond into the 21st century, Novack says. The Dora case is sort of exhibit A in that trajectory. The Dora case tells that story most vividly in a way that really, sadly I think, lands somewhat seamlessly in the contemporary moment.

The filmmakers cast a teenage actress, Tommy Vines, to play Dora. Instead of costuming her in turn-of-the-20th-century attire, she wears clothes of today, situating Dora not in the misty past but the present.

Tommy was 16 at the time, the same age as Dora, Rossi points out. She seems to embody this youthful fragility, and the whole world is ahead of her.

Dora, whose real name was Ida Bauer, went through 11 weeks of therapy with Freud, but then broke it off.

Dora persisted in denying my interpretation, Freud wrote, ascribing the young womans repeated rejection of sexual advances from her attacker to jealousy and revenge.

Hysterical Girl contains glimpses from films like Last Tango in Paris and Rosemarys Baby directed by mento further illustrate the durability of narratives that purport to explain the psychology and motivations of women.

It can be depressing how deeply embedded these ideas are. Theyre so embedded that they can be invisible, Novack observes. I almost view Freudian thinking, especially around this issue, as like a religionits there, but you dont see it. And so I think that by calling it out and naming it, it can be an important part of the process. I hope that the film can contribute in that way.

The documentary is part of the award-winning Op-Docs series of the New York Times. The newspaper shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for exposing the Harvey Weinstein scandal, reportage that set off a societal reckoning with sexual abuse of women by men in Hollywood and other industries.

[The Times] played such an important role in breaking and really moving along and pushing it to be really an international story, the Weinstein story, Novack notes. For the film to exist on their site, it was a natural audience, and it really meant a lot to us personally to have it there.

The final five Oscar nominees in the documentary shorts category will be announced Monday, March 15. In the meantime, Novack and Rossi are savoring the shortlist recognition.

I hope that it will bring awareness to the film, and that more people will see it, Novack tells Deadline. It means a lot also that maybe some of the filmmaking [choices] resonated with people who are our peers.

To the extent that it is taking a position which is political, and that its taking some formal risks, or is not conventional, its really heartening to have this recognition of the film, Rossi affirms. If people can think about the issue of survivors coming forward and being disbelieved, and from this maybe reconsider some of the entrenched cultural norms, every effort to change that is tremendously important.

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Hysterical Girl Filmmakers On How Freuds Study Of Traumatized Girl Impacts Today, From Clarence Thomas Hearings To Brett Kavanaugh - Deadline

I assume its overkill to continue listing the evidence against death row inmate Kevin Cooper, duly convicted of committing a quadruple murder back in 1983. The blinding proof of his guilt was covered in last weeks column.

To review, this included shoeprint evidence, footprint evidence, cigarette and tobacco evidence, blood evidence and DNA evidence, proving that this violent rapist and mental hospital escapee:

hid out in a house next to Doug and Peggy Ryens Chino Hills, California, home for two days after escaping from prison;

used a hatchet and hunting knife taken from his hideout to hack to death two adults and two children at the Ryen home andcritically wound a third child;

stole the familys station wagon and later abandoned it in Long Beach, along with his DNA on prison-issued cigarettes, before escaping to Mexico;

returned to California, where he raped a woman at knifepoint, leading to his capture.

This week, well consider the specific claims made by The New York Times Nicholas Kristof purporting to raise doubts about Coopers guilt.

Kristofs special pleading proves that no one on death row is innocent. I didnt pick this case. The anti-death penalty zealots picked it, splashing it across the Newspaper of Record. I have to believe they didnt choosetheir worst example to showcase,so lets look at the honesty of their arguments about Kevin Cooper.

KRISTOF:

Although Josh [the 8-year-old who miraculously survived the hatchet attack] had indicated that the attack was committed by several white men, the sheriff announced just four days after the bodies were found that the sole suspect was Kevin Cooper

First of all, eyewitness testimony is the least credible evidence, particularly in the case of children - as the child molestation hysteria of the 1980s demonstrated and even more particularly in the case of a child whos found lying in a bloody mess surrounded by his murdered familymembersafter having his throat slit and being attacked with a hatchet.

In any event, Joshnever said he saw three men.He said he initially thought it must have been the three Mexicans who had stopped by the house looking for work earlier in the evening. But even in his initial interviews from his hospital bed, he said he onlysawone assailant in the house:a man with bushy hair.

KRISTOF:

Sadly, a tan T-shirt believed to have been worn by one of the killers didnt produce enough DNA to provide a profile.

That IS sad. Luckily, its also not true. The Department of Justice DNA lab at UC Berkeley did find Coopers DNA on the tan T-shirt discarded near the murder house, which also containedpartial DNA profiles of two of the victims, Doug and Peggy Ryen.

KRISTOF:

Could the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office really have planted evidence, including placing Coopers blood on the tan T-shirt? We do know that the sheriffs office had a history of going rogue. Floyd Tidwell, the sheriff, was himself later convicted of four felony counts for stealing 523 guns from the evidence room [further denunciations of the sheriffs department].

The planted evidence ruse is a popular one for springing murderers, except oops! the T-shirt tested by the Berkeley DNA labwasnt in the possession of the sheriffs office.The tan T-shirt, along with the cigarette butts from the Ryens station wagon, had been in the custody of the San Diego Superior Court Evidence Clerk from the end of the trial right up until 2001, when they were shipped directly to the Berkeley DNA Laboratory for testing.

KRISTOF:

Likewise, hairs found clutched in the victims hands werent Coopers (no hairs from an African-American were found at the crime scene) but didnt lead to a match with a suspect, either.

While I love the idea of a 10-year-old girl ripping an African Americans hair out by the root as he came at her with a hatchet, the clutched hair nonsense has already been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by the courts.

A team of DNA experts spent weeks testing hairs from Jessicas hands, as well as two hairs found on Doug Ryens right hand and one hair from Christopher Hughes arm. Their conclusion? The testing failed to identify another assailant and confirmed that all tested hairs most likely came from one or more of the victims.

As U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn L. Huffexplained:

This should not be surprising.The hairs adhered to the victims bodies, including their hands, because there was a large amount of blood on the victims and a large amount of hair on the debris-ridden carpet. Also, the victims each sustained hatchet wounds to the head, causing clumps of cut hair to fall to the ground. Both animal and human hair were recovered from the hands of the victims. Just as with the animal hairs, the cut and shed human hairs adhered to the bloodied victims hands because the victims came in contact with the carpet when they were dying on the floor.

Finally, Kristof tries to pin the murder on other suspects (whom we know arent guilty or hed be defending them).

KRISTOF:

A different longtime suspect in the case recounted, not long after the murders, how he had killed the Ryens and Chris Hughes.

I guess confessions are only questionable in the case of the Central Park rapists. Kristof doesnt say who the confessor is specifically, but it sounds like the one repeatedly put forward by Coopers lawyers. Courts have characterized this so-called confession asa mental patients secondhand version of a confession.

KRISTOF:

This other suspect is a white man whom Ill identify just by his first name, Lee, for he must be presumed innocent

Lee came to the attention of the authorities during the investigation after his girlfriend, Diana Roper, fingered him as the killer: She reported that he had returned home late on the night of the killings wearing bloody coveralls, in a car that resembled the Ryens station wagon.

Roper turned Lees bloody coveralls over to the sheriffs office which eventually threw them away without testing them. By then, the sheriffs office had arrested Cooper, and deputies didnt want a complication.

Dont be fooled by Kristofs fake humility he must be presumed innocent all that blather about what Roper said was invented by defense attorneys.

Roper was not technically Lees girlfriend: She was his bitter ex. Far from bloody, the few red splotches on the coveralls were most likely paint (along with manure and dirt). Roper told investigators that she didnt even know if the coveralls belonged to Lee.

But let me quote from the court that reviewed the coveralls evidence: [I]ssues of guilt, innocence and sentence should never be decided on information obtained from persons whobelieve they are witches and believe an article of clothing is connected to a crime because of a vision they receive during a trance.(Emphasis mine.)

Yes, Ropers evidence was based on a vision she had during a trance because she believed she was a witch. These facts are exhaustively detailed in court orders and opinions but are entirely absent from the vast news coverage of Coopers case. Might distract from the claim that the sheriffs office tossed the coveralls only to avoid a complication in their single-minded pursuit of the wrong man as Kristof claims.

No one on death row, not one person, is innocent. Believe nothing you read in the media about their putative innocence. Its always lies and nonsense, as with Kristofs pet murderer, Kevin Cooper.

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LIBERALS [HEART] MURDERERS! - Ann Coulter