I guess I’m strange: relatively trivial things are tipping points with me when it comes to trusting politicians and elected officials. As I’ve mentioned here more than once, I realized Bill Clinton was a pathological liar—much, much , much worse than Trump—when he told a crowd that Thomas Jefferson would be shocked today if he could see that the U.S. had no national health care. Clinton’s named after Tom, and knows that Jefferson believed that the less governments did the better: that was a ridiculous, insulting lie, and for me, signature significance. Now comes the PR photo of Senator Chuck Schumer (estimated net worth: $75 million) proving he’s a regular guy by grilling hamburgers. Based on that shot, Chuck has never grilled a burger in his life. Who puts a slice of cheese on a raw burger? This is a visual lie, and a really dumb one.

Meanwhile…

1. Maybe THIS is the dumbest question anyone’s ever asked “The Ethicist”: Is it okay for her friend to secretly slip a drug into her “manic” husband’s drinks? Apparently the guy is a little too intense, so the friend spikes her spouse’s water bottles with melatonin. The query prompted the shortest answer I’ve ever seen Professor Appiah offer, and it was just what you’d think.

2. Which right is it anyway? In a ruling delivered yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Department of State v. Munoz in one of those ideologically split 6–3 decisions that the news media pretends is the fate of every case. The majority ruling was that U.S. citizens have no constitutional right to have their non-citizen spouses live with them in the U.S. Sandra Muñoz, a citizen, saw her husband denied a visa by the U.S. consulate in El Salvador on the terms of U.S. immigration law that disqualifies someone from obtaining a visa if the consulate knows “or has reasonable ground to believe” that a person is trying to enter the U.S. “to engage solely, principally, or incidentally in” unlawful activity.” Munoz’s husband had been a member of a gang. The supporters of Munoz insisted that the issue was the “unenumerated” constitutional right to marry.

Justice Barrett, writing the majority opinion, disagreed. The right being asserted was a right for a non-citizen spouse to live with their non-citizen in the United States, and no such right exists. Justice Sotomayor, as she frequently does, found the result overly legalistic, writing that the majority required too “careful [a] description of the asserted fundamental liberty interest.”Imagine that: insisting that the assertion of a new constitutional right be done carefully! The lack of care is how Roe v. Wade got on the books without a coherent explanation of where the right to kill the unborn came from. Sotomayor continued, “The majority’s failure to respect the right to marriage in this country consigns U.S. citizens to rely on the fickle grace of other countries’ immigration laws to vindicate one of the ‘basic civil rights of man’ and live alongside their spouses.”

Nothing in the case or the decision stopped the loving couple from being married. The Court just denied the existence of a right to have your non-citizen husband live in the U.S. with you if he’s, say, Jack the Ripper and had been deemed unfit for U.S. residence.

True, the result seems a bit strange when the Biden Administration is looking the other way while child rapists come over the border…

3. No, Andrew Cuomo is no Ethics Hero, but at least he had the guts to state the obvious (that the AXIS denies along with the Trump Deranged) that Trump would never have been charged in the “hush money trial” if he weren’t running for President. Bill Maher, hosting this creep for some reason, agreed.

4. I would be embarrassed to take this course, Duke should be embarrassed to offer it, and…

Here is the course description of “Radical Magic” in the Duke course catalogue:

Currently, patches, t-shirts, and pins pepper Etsy with statements
like “Hex the Patriarchy” and “‘We Are the Granddaughters of the Witches You Could Not Burn.’” Books and think-pieces have been published about this current phenomenon by popular tarot readers, astrologists, and witches, all of whom address the feminist, queer, activist potential of these practices. Most recently, performing powerhouse Taylor Swift has been accused of witchcraft on stage during her record-breaking concert, “Eras,” and Swifties are experiencing a real psychological condition known as “post-concert amnesia.

We will begin with the Salem Witch Trials, traverse the 19th-century spiritualist and occultist movements, pivot to witches and second-wave Feminism in the 1960’s and 70’s, spend some time in the grungy 90’s, and end with witchcraft in our current moment. We will explore the feminist and queer communities who have gravitated towards spells, incantations, and Tarot decks to provide a greater insight into a dominant world that was not made for them. We will examine the literary qualities of Tarot, spells, and incantations, and question the distinction between writing and magic. Is there really a difference between a poem and an incantation? Can the lyrics of a rock song be a hex?”

Why?

5. Well, Willie was not a great ethicist…I felt the recent death of Willie Mays more intensely than I expected. He really might have been the greatest all-around player in baseball history, and Mays was one of those rare athletes who just radiated presence and brilliance. I just read an article that convincingly argued that based on today’s sophisticated metrics, Willie Mays should have won 8 MVP awards instead of only two.

But I was disappointed today, listening to Willie’s long interview years ago with Bob Costas, when Costas asked him if he thought steroid cheat Barry Bonds belonged in the Hall of Fame. (Willie is Barry’s godfather.) Willie answered, without taking issue with Costas’s statement that there is little doubt that Bond’s stats in his peak years were inflated by steroid use, “Yes. He didn’t do anything that other players weren’t doing.”

That’s my second least-favorite unethical rationalization commonly used to excuse Bonds, a human blight on baseball in every way. The first: “Yeah, but he would have been a great player even if he didn’t cheat.”

I really hate that one…