Big Lies, Big Lawsuit: Dominion voting systems yesterday filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for spreading conspiracy theories that the company was complicit in voting fraud even though there was none.

  The voting company is demanding the huge sum as reparations for lost profits and damage to their reputation. Dominion says in its lawsuit that Fox producers and hosts repeatedly ignored the company’s pleas to correct the record.

  Dominion has also filed defamation lawsuits against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who worked with Trump on his post-election suits to overturn the election. The company is seeking $1.3 billion in damages from each of them.

  The latest Dominion complaint says “Fox  endorsed,  repeated,  and  broadcast  a  series  of  verifiably  false  yet  devastating  lies  about  Dominion.” One of them was that Dominion is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chávez. The lawsuit says, “Fox gave these fictions a prominence they otherwise would never have achieved.” 

  A Fox statement says the company “is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.” 

  Dominion says Fox intentionally fed the conspiracy theories to win back viewers who left for more rabidly pro-Trump outlets. The lawsuit cites as an example one exchange in which Fox host Maria Bartiromo credulously feeds the conspiracy theory spouted by Sidney Powell.

      MB:  “Sidney,  we  talked  about  the  Dominion  software.    I  know  that  there  were  voting irregularities.    Tell  me  about  that.”  

      SP: “That’s putting it mildly. . . . That is where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that  did  not  exist.  .  .  .  That’s  when  they  had  to  stop  the  vote  count  and  go  in  and  replace votes for Biden and take away Trump votes.”

  Former Trump lawyer and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is also named in the latest suit which says,   “Lou  Dobbs,  Maria  Bartiromo,  and  Sean  Hannity  also  continued  hosting  Powell  and  Giuliani, giving  them  a  platform  to  widely  disseminate  and  repeat  their  lies  about  Dominion  to  a national (and, indeed, a global) audience, and embracing those lies as their own by endorsing and repeating them.

  To date, no widespread voter fraud reported on Fox News has been found. 

Clogged Artery: The accident in which a container ship got stuck at a skewed angle in the Suez Canal has grown from a minor incident to a global shipping crisis.

  As crews work to dig the bow and stern of the Ever Given out of the canal banks, by some estimates the traffic jam holds up $10 billion in shipping every day. The Suez canal is the fastest route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and the East Coast of the United States. That’s the route for everything from computers to cars. The ship’s rudder was freed last night and its Japanese owners were hoping to get the ship set straight by tonight, but it’s not looking good.

  The best hope might be a spring tide that raises the water level 18 inches on Monday.

Majority Minority: Israel prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come out of the most recent elections without a majority in Parliament that would keep him in office.

  Netanyahu has a talent for not winning and not losing at the same time. He’s held the office for 14 years. The latest election was Israel’s fourth in two years that resulted in a split between the Prime Minister’s supporters ad those who would replace him. He didn’t win in 2019 and managed to stay in office.  

  Netanyahu has spent the past five years portraying himself as a close ally of Donald Trump. He’s also under indictment on charges of breach of trust, bribery, and fraud.

The Spin Rack: As President Biden condemned Georgia’s new voting laws, Civil Rights groups are looking at legal challenges. The laws are seen as an effort to limit and discourage black voters. Biden called it “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” — Ten people were shot and two killed in three separate incidents in Virginia Beach last night. The police chief called it a “chaotic night in the beach.” — The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the 24-year-old defendant in a rape case cannot be found guilty because the woman he voluntarily got drunk beforehand.

 The Obit Page: The prolific author of novels and screenplays Larry McMurtry who wrote “Lonesome Dove,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment,” and the screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain” has died at age 84.

  Born in Archer City, Texas, McMurtry was the son of a rancher. His aim as a writer was to remove the veil of romance from the cowboy and modern-day West. While his characters were often likable, they were also rogues. The two retired Texas Rangers in “Lonesome Dove,” for instance, were driving a herd of stolen cattle. 

   “I’m a critic of the myth of the cowboy,’’ he told an interviewer in 1988. “I don’t feel that it’s a myth that pertains, and since it’s a part of my heritage I feel it’s a legitimate task to criticize it.’’

A Bounty of Names: Internet obsessives looking for news of the Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal have discovered the offbeat world of ship names. Among those waiting to get through the canal are the Asia Ruby III, Tim Hope, Magic Star, Ever Excel, Energy Centurion, Bulk Venus, Nautical Deborah, and Thor Courage. There’s also a ship simply named  Chris.

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