The Scandal Sheets:  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who’s also the owner of The Washington Post, has gone public with what he describes as attempted extortion and blackmail by The National Enquirer, whose publisher David Pecker is a close friend of President Trump.

  Bezos wrote in an online post that, “I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought. I’m glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing.” 

  The Enquirer recently revealed that the married Bezos was having an affair with a former Los Angeles television anchor and published some of their intimate texts. When Bezos commissioned an investigation to find out whether the exposé was published for political reasons traceable back to President Trump, the Enquirer threated to publish private photos also purloined from Bezos.

  Trump hates Bezos and the Post.

 The Enquirer offered to hold back the photos if Bezos killed the investigation. The Enquirer lawyer suggested, “A public, mutually-agreed upon acknowledgment from the Bezos Parties, released through a mutually-agreeable news outlet, affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AM’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces, and an agreement that they will cease referring to such a possibility.”

  Bezos wrote, “Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.”

Big Green:In an attempt to put Democrats out front with a grand plan to save the world from climate change, two of the party’s most liberal and progressive members of Congress yesterday unveiled their“Green New Deal.” Freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward Markey called for elimination of additional carbon emissions by 2030.

  The resolution is ambitious to the point of absurdity and has little chance of being put up for a vote.  It includes a 10-year commitment to convert “100 percent of the power demand in the United States” to “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources,” to upgrade “all existing buildings” to meet energy efficiency requirements, and to expand high-speed rail so broadly that most air travel would be rendered obsolete.

  Ocasio-Cortez in particular is calling for radical change in both politics and policy. “Climate change and our environmental challenges are the biggest existential threats to our way of life,” she said. “We must be as ambitious and innovative in our solutions as possible.”

Power Battle:While the Senate Judiciary Committee is approving his replacement, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is scheduled to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee. 

  The committee wants to know whether Whitaker has shared information about the Special Counsel investigation with President Trump, and whether Trump fired Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions in order to interfere with the investigation. 

Nation:The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a Louisiana law that could have left the state with only one abortion clinic. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberals on the court. — Joining his government’s blackface scandal, Virginia’s top Republican admits that he was an editor of his 1968 college yearbook that featured racial slurs and pictures of white students in blackface. 

Failing Upward:What President Trump calls the “failing New York Times” has attained the Holy Grail of the modern newspaper business, selling more digital advertising last year than print. In the fourth quarter digital advertising jumped to $103 million while print fell 10 percent, to $88 million.

  While newspapers are laying off journalists all over the country, the Times has also added 120 people to the news department, bringing the total to 1,600, the biggest in the paper’s history. 

Crib Sheet: Speaking of the Times, the paper’s former editor Jill Abramson has been accused of plagiarism and egregious mistakes in her new book, “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts.”It’s an examination of the new world of journalism through profiles of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, and BuzzFeed.

  Vice correspondent Michael Moynihan took an interest in what Abramson wrote about his organization and found errors of fact as well as a series of passages that were only slightly re-written from other sources. 

  The book was written and is being sold on the foundation of Abramson’s journalistic rectitude as a reporter and editor. Eric Wemple writes in The Washington Post, “It’s that hefty past that floats the entire book.” 

  Abramson, whose voice drips with condescension when speaking with reporters who question her, says she has pored over the book and attributes her troubles to errors of footnoting, but nothing dishonest. 

The Obit Page:Frank Robinson, the Hall of Famer who played 21 seasons of professional baseball, hit 586 home runs, and became the first black manager in the major leagues, has died at age 83.

  Playing mostly for the Cincinnati Reds and Baltimore Orioles, Robinson was the only winner of the Most Valuable Player Award in both the National and American Leagues. — John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who was the longest serving congress member in US history and who helped write landmark laws, has died at age 92.

  Dingell was in Congress for 59 years. He helped to write and pass the National Wilderness Act in 1964, the Water Quality Act in 1965, the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, and the Clean Air Act in 1990.

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