How The Drudge Report Became Vladimir Putin’s Top Media Cheerleader

OLIVER WILLIS/Media Matters:

On Labor Day, visitors to the Drudge Report, the conservative news aggregator operated by Matt Drudge, were greeted by an above-the-fold story about the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Obama at the G20 Summit in China. Drudge’s headline for the story was “Lion And The Pussycat”:

The Drudge headline is part of a larger pattern from the site of consistently promoting Putin and his strongman style of leadership (the “Lion”), which Drudge has often contrasted with President Obama, whom he characterizes as a weaker leader (the “Pussycat”). Drudge has also consistently promoted pro-Russian news and information, repeatedly harping on the idea that American power is weakening and in decline.

Matt Drudge has extolled the virtues of Vladimir Putin for some time. In 2013, Drudge declared that “Putin is the leader of the free world,” adding to a chorus of conservatives backing the Russian leader. Around the same time, Drudge featured Putin at the top of his site as “Putin To The Rescue” (a headline he would re-use two years later) as the leader began discussing a possible military role for Russia in Syria.

Over the past few years, Drudge has used his site to promote a steady stream of stories favorable to Putin, often while denigrating President Obama and the United States.

Drudge’s boosterism of Putin has continued even as the FBI and other investigative services have alleged that hackers working at the behest of Russian intelligence have compromised American computer systems, including via an intrusion at the Democratic National Committee.

The U.S. director of national intelligence has also recently testified that an inquiry is currently underway to see whether Russians are attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Drudge Makes A Putin/Trump Connection

Drudge has couched some of his stories about Putin with accompanying articles and headlines comparing his leadership style to that of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

In December, Drudge highlighted a Financial Times piece that compared Putin to Trump using the text, “Russian president offers glimpse of strong leader.” This was paired with an article describing Putin as part of a “strongman revival” showing a “global trend.”

During the Republican primaries, Drudge spotlighted a comment from Putin describing Donald Trump as a “very talented man.”

Drudge Hypes Putin As A Strongman

The Drudge Report has repeatedly highlighted stories focusing on Putin as a strong or tough world leader, often in a military context.

The Drudge Report placed an above-the-fold link to a threat from Putin that he could use nuclear weapons against ISIS.

Putin made it above-the-fold in a link to a Breitbart News article referring to ongoing negotiations over Syrian chemical weapons. The headline was “Hand ‘Em Over,” with a photo of Putin.

Drudge hailed Putin for “flex[ing] muscle” as elections approached in Russia, bundling that link with others offering defenses of Putin against American criticism:

Drudge gave above-fold treatment to a story asking if Russian airstrikes had killed the leader of ISIS (they hadn’t) with the headline “Did Putin Kill ISIS Leader?” The report linked did not name Putin or even reference Russian forces and their activities in the Middle East at the time. It appears Drudge invoked Putin’s involvement on his own.

As Putin moved to annex Crimea, Drudge put the headline “Putin Promises ‘Aid’ For Ukraine” above-the-fold.

As the annexation progressed, Drudge labeled the campaign as “Putin In Control.”

Hailing Putin, Attacking Obama

In addition to articles promoting Putin as a strongman, Drudge has also sought to use those stories as a contrast to President Obama and United States policy.

When Putin wrote a New York Times op-ed questioning the concept of American exceptionalism, it wasfeatured at the top of the Drudge Report.

While linking to a New York Post story claiming that Obama has turned Putin into the most powerful leader in the world, Drudge used the headline “Red Planet: Putin Snubs Obama.”

Drudge promoted a Chinese claim that “Putin Humiliated USA.”

He also highlighted a story about a “Putin cafe” that “has Obama toilet paper.”

Drudge linked to a story purporting to tell “how Putin beat Obama in Syria.” The original headline referred to “monstrous Putin,” but Drudge removed the adjective once he aggregated the story.

After Russia engaged in airstrikes in Syria, Drudge juxtaposed a news link of that action with another story in which Putin called America “weak.”

After the November 2015 terrorist attack in Paris, Drudge led his site with a headline asking if Putin would be the one to “rescue” the world from ISIS

Defending Putin

When Putin has been involved in international controversies, the Drudge Report has been a part of his administration’s pushback, often with links to official Russian news outlets, or those with state sponsorship.

The Drudge Report highlighted a story from the state-financed Russian news outlet RT in which Putinclaimed that he would neutralize a purported “missile shield threat” coming from America.

When leaked files showing international efforts to move money offshore to avoid taxes referenced Putin, Drudgelinked to an official denying Putin’s involvement.

Putin Chronicler

Drudge has also used his platform to chronicle Putin’s day-to-day activities as leader of Russia.

He made a note of a Putin visit to Iran, which for some reason was featured above-the-fold.

When Putin said he was considering running for a fourth presidential term, Drudge compared him to Stalin, and it was meant in a positive light.

A story from the official Russian news agency Tass speculating that Elton John might meet with Putin while in Russia for a concert received a Drudge link.

Drudge headlined photos of Putin working out “Ripped Putin Hits The Gym.”

When Russian planes bombed targets in Syria, Drudge headlined the story above-the-fold as “Putin Blitz.”

When world leaders attended a meeting of the G20 in Russia, Drudge posted photos of Putin greeting them along with the headline, “World Into The Arms of Putin.” He also wrote that “Obama shows up late -- and alone -- to dinner with Putin.”

A story about the Russian Defense Ministry purchasing dolphins was paired with an article headlined “Fighter Jets Sent To Watch Putin.”

An announcement that a state media agency in Russia was dissolving also made it above-the-fold on Drudge.

Drudge linked to a report from the Russian news agency Tass about a meeting between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping with a picture captioned “Putin Courts Xi.”

When Putin played in a hockey game, that made the Drudge Report too.

Drudge illustrated an ABC News story on Putin’s exercise regimen with a photo of the president.

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Drudge took note of a Putin encounter with leopard cubs in Sochi, Russia.

After the 2014 Olympics in Russia had concluded, Drudge put “Games Over: Putin Ready to Take Off Gloves?” above-the-fold.

How Matt Drudge Serves As Alex Jones' Web Traffic Pipeline

BEN DIMIERO/Oliver Willis/Media Matters for America

Matt Drudge has long been conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' biggest ally. According to a Media Matters review, the heavily-trafficked Drudge Report has promoted at least 50 separate articles at Jones' Infowars website in 2013, and has linked to at least 244 different articles on the site in the past two years. 

Drudge announced this week that he had privately told friends that 2013 would be the "year of Alex Jones." Considering Drudge's penchant for promoting Jones and his Infowars website, those comments are more of a promise than a prediction.

Alex Jones is a radio host famous for pushing absurd conspiracy theories about a host of issues, including that the U.S. government perpetrated or was otherwise involved in the 9-11 attacks, the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Space Shuttle Colombia disaster, and the Aurora movie theater shooting.

Jones has lately made headlines for his most recent conspiracy that the Boston Marathon bombings were a "false flag" attack staged by the government. Drudge has provided several links to Jones' site in the days since Jones started floating Boston conspiracies, including an article highlighting the father of the bombing suspects claiming his sons had been set up. 

The links to Jones' site in the wake of the Boston bombings are not surprising; he has sent a steady stream of traffic there in 2013.

Among the fifty Infowars pieces promoted by Drudge so far in 2013: a story mulling over claims that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may have been "surreptitiously" given cancer, possibly by the U.S. government; numerous articles promoting conspiracies about supposedly ominous ammunition purchases made by the Department of Homeland Security; and a story comparing Obama to "other tyrants" -- including Stalin, Hitler, and Mao -- that have "used kids as props."

Drudge has been consistently linking to Jones' site for years (Drudge Report also features two permanent links to the Infowars mainpage). Among the 244 Infowars articles Drudge has promoted since April 2011:

• A November 2012 article promoting claims that James Holmes, the man currently on trial for the mass shooting at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, may actually have been under the influence of CIA "mind control." The piece was based around a story told by an "alleged inmate" supposedly in jail with Holmes, who claimed Holmes told him he was "programmed" to kill by an "evil" therapist. 
• A July 2012 post highlighting an interview between Jones and Joseph Farah, editor of conspiracy website WND. During that interview, Farah suggested that if Obama were re-elected, people like him and Jones would be "hunted down like dogs."
• A March 2012 piece suggesting that the death of conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart may not have been the result of natural causes, but instead related to a "damning" video about President Obama Breitbart had supposedly planned to release the day of his death.  
• An April 2011 article responding to President Obama's release of his long-form birth certificate headlined, "New Obama Birth Certificate is a Forgery." The story states: "Our investigation of the purported Obama birth certificate released by Hawaiian authorities today reveals the document is a shoddily contrived hoax. Infowars.com computer specialists dismissed the document as a fraud soon after examining it."

A 2012 study by Think Progress found that in addition to frequently linking to Infowars, Drudge also regularly sends his readers to WND, a site best known for its promotion of conspiracies related to President Obama's birth certificate.  

Since Jones has started floating various nonsensical conspiracy theories about the Boston Marathon bombings, several conservatives have spoken out against Drudge's repeated promotion of the radio host.

Fox News contributor Erick Erickson, who is editor-in-chief of the influential Red State blog, tweeted on April 18, "I hope Drudge stops linking to infowars." Responding to Erickson's tweet, fellow Fox News contributor Jebediah Bila echoed his concern, adding that she had "been saying this for months." On April 24, Red State editor Ben Howe joined the chorus, tweeting "I'd love it if Drudge Report stopped linking to Infowars."

Shortly after Drudge announced it would be the "year of Alex Jones," Jones returned the compliment, announcing that the conservative publisher was "breaking through the electronic Berlin Wall of globalist bullshit, as cowards do nothing!"

Jones has previously praised Drudge for helping push his work. In an interview for Rolling Stone with Alexander Zaitchik (now a reporter for Media Matters), Jones credited Drudge with helping to promote a 2010 campaign against the Transportation Security Administration:

In November, Jones put on a demonstration of his power by employing his latest guerrilla technique. Asking his audience to stage a mass online search of the phrase "Revolt Against TSA" -- a tactic known as Google Bombing -- Jones instantly manipulated the term to the top of Google's search index. As intended, the maneuver caught the sensitive traffic antennae of Matt Drudge, who put the TSA story on the national news agenda. "Our show was the detonator on the cap of the TSA story, and Drudge was the barrel of the gun," says Jones. "The result was a direct head shot on the New World Order."

Despite Jones' well-known history, Drudge is not the only right-wing figure that has played a role in validating him. Former Rep. Ron Paul and current Sen. Rand Paul; Fox News' Lou Dobbs and Andrew Napolitano; and gun activists like Ted Nugent and Larry Pratt have made repeated appearances on Jones' program in recent years.

Drudge-Hyped Obama Video Turns Out To Be Publicly Covered 2007 Speech

BENJY SARLIN/TPM

Sean Hannity, The Daily Caller, and Drudge Report spent hours hyping a racially explosive secret video of President Obama. But the bombshell clip turned out to be a public speech from June 2007 that was covered by the major networks, including FOX News, at the time.

Excerpts of the open press speech to historically black Hampton University were already easily available (and quickly discovered by reporters after Drudge teased the clip on his website hours before the “new” Daily Caller/Hannity clip even aired). But Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson claimed the video was relevant because it contained additional ad-libbed portions that went off the prepared remarks.

Among the sinister revelations Drudge, Hannity, and Carlson cited: Obama’s use of what they considered an overly African-American cadence to his voice in front of the majority. “This accent is absurd. This is not the way Obama talks,” Carlson said on FOX. Drudge Report teased “THE ACCENT” and “THE ANGER” as scoops.

Hannity, who was a leading figure on the right in promoting Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright as a story in 2008, also pointed to Obama acknowledging Wright as “friend and great leader” at the event. As was widely reported at the time, the two were close until Obama disowned him later that year over his continued inflammatory comments.

The Obama campaign dismissed the video as the work of “Romney’s allies” to distract from his 47 percent comments, although the Romney campaign denied having anything to do with the story and appeared reluctant to discuss it in any capacity.

Despite protestations by Carlson that the media ignored Obama’s speech, CNN’s Peter Hamby pointed out that FOX News aired video of the speech at the time:

BRIT HUME: In the meantime, Senator Obama today said the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse what he calls a quiet riot among black Americans, a riot he suggests is ready to erupt. Obama said African American resentments and frustrations are building, especially, he said, because so many blacks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still displaced 21 months after Hurricane Katrina. Obama warned against conditions similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: Not only do we still have the scars of the riots and the quiet riots that happen every day, but how in too many places all across the country, we haven’t even bothered to take the bullet out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Obama was speaking at a conference of black clergy at Virginia’s Hampton University.

Hannity and Carlson accused Obama of injecting race into the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina. While Obama never mentioned race while discussing the disaster in his speech, he complained that the federal government was slow to waive a Stafford Act requirement governing disaster relief that required the affected area to pay some of the costs of aid that they waived after 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew. According to Obama, this reluctance “tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!”

Obama was hardly the only one complaining about ongoing fights with Congress and the Bush administration over the Stafford Act requirement at the time, however. Then-Congressman Bobby Jindal (R-LA) led a push the same year to revise the law to lessen its funding requirement in circumstances like New Orleans’. On the Senate side, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) pushed hard for more waivers. Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, echoed Obama’s complaints almost word for word for a PBS Frontline segment on the Stafford Act.

“Now, one thing that really aggravated us is the federal government waived the match after 9/11, after Hurricane Andrew, after Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii,” he said. “It was hard for us to understand why they were reluctant to waive the match in our case, when we suffered the first and third worst disasters in the American history. Thankfully Congress remedied that, [but] it took too long. Haggling over the match slowed down projects.”

Arrrr you serious?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Drudge Promotes Story From Conspiracy Website Claiming Obama Plans To Murder Conservative Journalists

By Ali Gharib/Think Progress

The website Drudge Report, an aggregator that sends a massive amount of web traffic to stories linked on its pages, posted a report from the 9/11 Truther website InfoWars in which two of the nation’s leading right-wing conspiracy theorists Alex Jones with Joseph Farah discuss their paranoia about being attacked by the Obama administration.

In the interview, Farah said he saw a drone over his property in Northern Virginia and suggested that the Obama administration was targeting him. Here’s a screen capture of the Drudge link, with the words “Spy Drone Buzzes Journalist’s Secluded Home…” highlighted in red:

In the interview, Farah told Jones:

I live in one of the most rural places you could possibly live in Northern Virginia and there could only be one thing that this drone was spying on and that would be me, that would be my property. [...]

This is the first term. If [Obama] is re-elected, it’s going to be war. They will be openly at war. We will be hunted down like dogs.

(Listen to clips from the whole Jones radio interview with Farah here.)

Farah also mentioned another damaging right-wing conspiracy theory that vaccine programs are a dangerous and airport security patdowns as evidence of government “attempts to control us.” He went on:

This is where the resistance starts. Because this is part of conditioning for what is really the ened game for them…

It’s everything our founding fathers fought against. And we gotta be like our founding fathers all over again. And the only question in my mind is whether we have the fearlessness, the courage and the conviction that they had to do that.

When the Romney campaign recently outlined its strategy to ignore mainstream media and work its message through right-wing websites, Drudge was at the top of the list. ThinkProgressnoted at the time that Drudge has a history of promoting Birtherism and Jones’s 9/11 Truther website InfoWars.

But it’s hard to keep track of the dizzying number of conspiracy theories Alex Jones and Joseph Farah can expound upon in one ten-minute interview. What’s most remarkable is that Mitt Romney’s favorite news aggregator linked to it. (HT: Michael C. Moynihan)

Paper: Drudge is falsely portraying our Obama story

By Gavin Dahl

The public editor of a newspaper in Michigan called out online news portal Drudge Report today, accusing the site of being "constantly on the lookout for making mountains out of molehills."

Wednesday afternoon the huge top headline on the news site read: "Students asked for 'citizen status' prior to Obama commencement."

Drudge linked to an article published by the Kalamazoo Gazette two days earlier, Monday morning, about routine background checks performed ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama to Kalamazoo Central High School.

"K-Central students are not being asked to provide proof of citizenship status," Kalamazoo Gazette public editor Joyce Pines writes. "They have been asked to fill out the same paperwork and answer the same questions throughout their entire public school career."

Von Washington Jr., the principal of Kalamazoo Central High School, said he has been told this will not stop any senior from participating in the graduation ceremony, and it's also his understanding that this is standard operating procedure for audiences who will be close to the president.

K-Central found out May 4 that the school won a national competition, for which the school submitted a video, that will bring Obama to its commencement as graduation speaker. The ceremony will be held at 7 p.m. June 7 at Western Michigan University’s basketball arena.

"The students in the Drudge photo are not K-Central students, by the way," she added.

In fact, the photo used by Drudge Report to suggest the Secret Service is looking for illegal immigrants in the mix of the winning school's students was taken in November. According to Politico, that was when President Obama launched the "Educate to Innovate" campaign, a $260 million public-private investment to improve American science and math education.

Despite the new article, and an added update at the top of the page Drudge is linking to, the headline remained atop the Drudge Report web site Wednesday evening. M.C.L comment: I'm shocked that the head douche of the right wing online media twisted a headline to fit in what his right wing sugar daddies want.

Drudge "not sympathetic" to the facts on Kagan's gun-rights record

From Media Matters:

Matt Drudge(R-edit the headline quick) posted a headline stating that Elena Kagan is " 'Not Sympathetic' to Gun Rights Argument," referencing comments Kagan reportedly made in a 1987 memo about an appeal to the Supreme Court. In fact, the view that the Second Amendment does not protect civilian gun rights was generally accepted at the time Kagan wrote those words.

A Drudge Report headline claimed: "Kagan 'Not Sympathetic' to Gun Rights Argument":

Report: In 1987 memo, Kagan wrote she was "not sympathetic" to argument that Second Amendment protected civilian gun rights

From the May 13 Bloomberg News article to which Drudge linked:

Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was "not sympathetic" toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol.

Kagan, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high court this week, made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man's appeal.

The man's "sole contention is that the District of Columbia's firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to 'keep and bear arms,' " Kagan wrote. "I'm not sympathetic."

When Kagan wrote memo, it was accepted that the Second Amendment did not protect civilian gun rights

In 2008, Stevens and three other justices agreed that the Second Amendment did not protect gun rights for non-military purposes. In a dissent to District of Columbia v. Heller, the case that struck down Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban, Justice John Paul Stevens, who Kagan has been nominated to replace, stated that "there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution." Stevens' dissent was joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. From Stevens' dissent:

Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939) , provide a clear answer to that question.

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

In 1987, no Supreme Court or federal appellate court decision had found that the Second Amendment protected the right to carry guns for non-military purposes. In Heller, a 2008 case, Stevens cited United States v. Miller, a 1934 Supreme Court case that upheld a ban on sawed-off shotguns, and stated: "Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there; we ourselves affirmed it in 1980." Stevens also stated:

Until the Fifth Circuit's decision in United States v. Emerson, 270 F. 3d 203 (2001), every Court of Appeals to consider the question had understood Miller to hold that the Second Amendment does not protect the right to possess and use guns for purely private, civilian purposes.

Even Ed Whelan concedes that Kagan's memo does not "establish her current views on the Second Amendment"

From a May 13 blog post by National Review Online's Ed Whelan:

I am of course not contending that Kagan's 1987 statement establishes her current views on the Second Amendment, but (depending on how one reads her statement that she was "not sympathetic") it may well be one piece of evidence that supporters of Second Amendment rights try to factor into their overall calculus.

In the legal context, the term "not sympathetic" does not connote personal political views

Whelan claims that by using the term "not sympathetic," Kagan may have been referring to her personal views. From Whelan's blog post:

[I]t's interesting that Kagan, rather than stating that the claim was meritless, wrote that she was "not sympathetic" to it. Now perhaps Kagan simply used those concepts interchangeably (in the same way that lots of folks say "I feel" when they presumably mean "I think"). Or maybe it means that long before President Obama spelled out his lawless "empathy" standard, Kagan thought it meaningful to form and express her legal judgment in terms of her personal sympathy (or, in this case, lack thereof).

Supreme Court justices have often used the term "sympathetic" to refer to their agreement with legal arguments. Examples of justices using the word "sympathetic" or a form of that word to refer to agreement include:

• Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas:

As I have previously explained, I believe that the Court's approach in Begay, like its approach in this case, "cannot be reconciled with the statutory text." I nonetheless recognize that "stare decisis in respect to statutory interpretation has 'special force,' " and I am sympathetic to the majority's efforts to provide a workable interpretation of the "residual clause" of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), while retaining the "categorical approach" that we adopted in Taylor v. United States. In light of Taylor and Begay, I agree that this case should be remanded for resentencing. I write separately, however, to emphasize that only Congress can rescue the federal courts from the mire into which ACCA's draftsmanship and Taylor's "categorical approach" have pushed us. [emphasis added, citations omitted]

• Justice Thomas, who wrote in a dissent:

In the end, I am sympathetic to petitioner's argument that §636(b)(3) should be read in pari materia with §3401(b). See Brief for Petitioner 38 ("If, in enacting the [Federal Magistrates Act] Congress believed a defendant's explicit, personal consent was constitutionally necessary to bestow authority upon a magistrate judge in federal misdemeanor cases, then a fortiori Congress would have believed that such explicit, personal consent is necessary to permit a magistrate judge to conduct felony jury selection"). And I share his view that Congress undoubtedly would have adopted something akin to §3401(b)'s requirements had it authorized delegation of felony jury selection. See Peretz, supra, at 947, n. 6 (Marshall, J., dissenting) ("I would think, however, that the standard governing a party's consent to delegation of a portion of a felony trial under the additional duties clause should be at least as strict as that governing delegation of a misdemeanor trial to a magistrate"). [emphasis added]

• Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote in an opinion:

Even the District Court, ultimately sympathetic to VMI's position, found that "[t]he Report provided very little indication of how [its] conclusion was reached" and that "[t]he one and one-half pages in the committee's final report devoted to analyzing the information it obtained primarily focuses on anticipated difficulties in attracting females to VMI." [emphasis added]

• Justice Stevens, who wrote in a dissent:

Because I believe that political gerrymanders are more objectionable than the "racial gerrymanders" perceived by the Court in recent cases, I am not entirely unsympathetic to the Court's holding. I believe, however, that the evils of political gerrymandering should be confronted directly, rather than through the race specific approach that the Court has taken in recent years. [emphasis added, citations omitted]

Drudge's other Second Amendment attack on Kagan is equally baseless

Drudge also baselessly attacked Kagan for asserting that Second Amendment protections are "not unlimited," a statement with which Justice Antonin Scalia and the conservative majority of the Supreme Court agreed in Heller.