That this episode could occur anywhere is ominous evidence of just how determined our progressive-infested institutions are determined to indoctrinate rising generations.
Gabby Stout, a junior at Ardrey Kell High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, and part of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district, received permission from the school to paint a message on the school’s “spirit rock.” This is a large boulder on school grounds traditionally used by students to paint various opinions and messages. They don’t have to be wise or uncontroversial either: one such message was “Black Lives Matter.”
Stout painted a Bible passage and her support for the recently assassinated Christian conservative leader of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. For reasons never explained (but you can guess, can’t you?) the school quickly reversed itself. Within hours the school officials ordered her message to be painted over.
I was going to make this an Ethics Quiz, which is typically what I do with issues I believe can generate multiple and diverse ethics verdicts from the analytical and perceptive readers here, and often with matters I am not certain about myself. However, Michelle Obama’s custom designed skirt she decided to model as she appeared on a stage at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago this week before “stakeholders” (Translation: Donors) was so indefensible by anyone who has not been permanently Obamafied, the crippling mental state where one is incapable of criticizing anything either Obama does or has done, ever, that my building a quiz around it would be dishonest.
Somebody should tell her—Remnick didn’t—that pretty much everyone in the nation who wasn’t in a coma during the Biden administration before the election—that’s almost four years of painful observation—had figured this out the second Biden announced his candidacy. Those few dense souls who hadn’t already recognized the obvious certainly saw the writing on the metaphorical wall when Joe descended into Authentic Frontier Gibberish during his debate with Donald Trump. And surely when the result of Joe’s egocentric and demented botch resulted in his party anointing the hopeless and hapless Kamala Harris, absolutely everyone with the possible exception of Harris herself knew that Joe had engineered a disaster, though not without the incompetence of many, many others paving the way.
Hillary also proclaimed that if Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the Democratic Party had held a competitive Presidential primary, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the Vice President, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump.”
I was once accused of engaging in deliberate candidate confusion. Arlington, Massachusetts is the largest municipality in the U.S. that still employs the ancient town meeting government structure. When I graduated from law school, I registered to run for the town Board of Selectmen, which sort of serves as the town equivalent to the U.S. Senate with the town meeting members playing the House of Representatives. People freaked out. My father was well-known and respected in Arlington, and since our names were the same, both of us were accused of deliberately trying to mislead voters.
But Democrats really did try to cheat this way in Alaska. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is trying to hold off a challenge by former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat trying to flip a critical GOP seat as her party is determined to take over the U.S. Senate in November despite being repeatedly revealed as the most cynical, ruthless and untrustworthy major U.S. party in history. To aid the cause, Democratic Party operatives recruited a retired teacher also named Dan Sullivan and got him on the ballot to split the Republican vote so Pelyola could prevail.
Piper Rockelle is human civilization rot. The child star turned slut-for-bucks epitomizes how the social media age has curdled childhood, taste and ethics. It’s an ugly story, and one that I was blissfully unaware of until recently.
Piper, 18, has been performing for money since she started winning kiddie beauty pageants—a dubious “ick or ethics” activity itself—from about the age of three. Her mother began uploading clips of her prancing around to YouTube when Piper was 8. The mother, a stage mother from Hell (and hopefully destined to end up there) moved her budding meal-ticket to LA when the girl was 10, “homeschooling” her (it is anyone’s guess how much of the schooling involved actual education) while selling her daughter’s images online. Next, Mom began recruiting “the Squad”, a group of other preteen children to exploit with Piper as the leader. First they were filmed doing darling little girl things until they were transitioned to tween “crush content”: scripted reality show-style drama with episodes about infatuation, coming of age, teenage angst, first kisses and dating.
Piper Rockelle became the most famous online “kidfluencer.” Her tween and teen content was popular and lucrative on YouTube, and Piper built a fan base of millions of bored low-lifes and budding pedophiles on TikTok and Instagram. Then, in 2022, eleven members of the Squad sued Rockelle’s mother Tiffany Smith, and her boyfriend and business partner, Hunter Hill, alleging abuse and exploitation. TheirYouTube channel was demonetised, costing Piper and her mom hundreds of thousands in lost dollars every month.
The San Francisco Giants asked for this controversy; Major League Baseball asked for this controversy; LGTBQ+ culture bullies asked for it too. They got it. Good.
Three Giants pitchers, Landen Roupp, who started last Friday’s game against the Cubs, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, who also appeared in the game, have been officially reprimanded by MLB, which notified the players that similar behavior “would not be tolerated in the future.”
The three pitchers had Bible verses written on their caps. Roupp’s cap read “Gen 9:12-16” with the writing reaching the “Pride” logo on his cap. It was “Pride Night,” when Major League Baseball forces its players to express a political and social position with which they may not personally agree. The verse in question reads like this:
It is not an anti-homosexuality passage, but then any Bible reference on Pride Night might be seen as subversive.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB’s chief communications officer Pat Courtney told “The Athletic.” Later, the office added as clarification,
Some recent studies suggest that Trump Derangement is taking on the characteristics of mental illness. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who isn’t suffering from it, and this latest example should go into the research files.
Anne Schedeen was one of those moderately successful, fungible and forgettable actresses who can most charitably described as a “working professional.” When a sitcom role that has you starring as a puppet’s protector—Alf was an illegal alien from outer space who had crash-landed in a family’s garage, and Schedeen played the mother in the family that helped keep him secret from government authorities—-is your most famous credit, you will not get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But upon her death at 77, Schedeen’s family thought it appropriate to virtue-signal to their fellow Trump Haters by issuing this tribute:
“She leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of creative energy, whip smart humor, delight in her family, adoration for little dogs, burning hatred for Trump, passion for second-hand thrifting, and love for a good story. We are bereft without her. We loved her so so much, as did all who met her.”
That, my friends, is insane. Variety, meanwhile, the so-called bible of the entertainment trade, didn’t have to put that feature in the statement in its headline, but did. None of the other outlets reporting the death thought that weird section was any more worthy of highlighting than Anne’s “passion for second-hand thrifting,” because it isn’t. Variety’s typical reader, however, is just as insane as Anne Schedeen.
I cannot imagine any previous President being used in this manner. Being noted for hatred of anything as a life highlight is hardly impressive; to me, that headline demonstrates what a wan career Schedeen had. No, she was never in a successful movie, never had a big role, never was nominated for an Oscar or Emmy, BUT she did hate the President of the United States, so there’s that.
The family might as well have pointed out that she won an award in the fourth grade for an essay about her goldfish. Having one’s family hurl your hatred at a President from beyond the grave is hardly as impressive as Ahab screaming at Moby Dick right before the Whaie Whale drags him down, “Thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!” Ahab was nuts, but at least he wasn’t mad at Moby for mean tweets and enforcing immigration laws.
The family and Variety using the death of a minor actress to spit at the President, however, is a sad, foolish madness.
I haven’t written much lately about my miserable existence since my wife of 43 years, Grace Elizabeth Bowen Marshall (who secretly commented here under the screen name “E2”) turned up dead Leap Year morning with no warning. Because I am at heart incompetent at anything other than the things that interest me and I am natively really good at, I am still struggling mightily with the wreckage of my life, home and business in the wake of her demise.
Just yesterday, I discovered an important task regarding legal obligations that I had completely forgotten about because it was in the category of “things Grace does so Jack can concentrate on other stuff.” I discovered it because a friend who is a talented operations whiz has been forcing me to go through files, papers, and accumulated memorabilia, especially in my office, something that I literally would never do without someone a) forcing me and b) telling me how to do it. This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life, because I don’t get enjoyment from nostalgia, only sadness, anger (at myself, mostly) and regrets.
The nasty surprises, especially from the financial side, have been arriving daily. (Sondheim’s “And Another Hundred People Just Got Off Of the Train” comes to mind). That important task I have completely whiffed on is typical of many: this was something Grace and I agreed would be her responsibility, and I happily left it in her usually capable hands for more than thirty years—never thought about it, in fact. Well, because of age, an illness that was worse than I knew and possibly other issues, she had just stopped taking care of this rather important matter for quite a while. Catching up now is going to be difficult, time consuming and expensive. I should have addressed this shortly after she died, but I was not exactly thinking clearly, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know, as Don Rumsfeld would say.
U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia had a habit of having noisy sex with a police commander in her chambers during office hours. This resulted in a “chambers workplace that was extremely uncomfortable and troubling for clerks,” a judicial panel concluded.
Gee, ya think?
Ross was nominated to the bench in the Northern District of Georgia in 2014 by President Obama. Of course she was. She’s a Democrat, she’s black, she’s arrogant, and she’s unqualified to be a judge. A special committee released damning findings of misconduct in a report two weeks ago. Ross was found to have lied about having sexual intercourse in her chambers—judges aren’t supposed to lie either—but inexplicably, the Eleventh Circuit and Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability decided sufficient punishment was to bar Ross from serving as a chief judge and require her to write apology letters to her clerks. Other than that, she only received a private reprimand. The disciplinary report signaled a whitewash by stating, “Although the special committee is deeply troubled by the conduct in which the judge engaged, the subject judge has demonstrated a strong propensity for rehabilitation and continued diligent service to the judiciary.” She lied to investigators! She was screwing around during work hours. That’s “diligent service to the judiciary”?
I’m sorry, Kim, to have to call you out as the unethical hack you are—I’m an ethics expert, you know— but then I didn’t ask you to invade my email inbox with your incompetent and deceptive substack essay, “Stop Talking About Biden. Start Talking About Trump. And no, I’m not linking to that dumb screed, because I’m not going to help you promote alleged expert commentary that in fact makes the public more ignorant than they already are.
Wehle is a member of the law professor Trump Deranged ward, which is quite extensive, as my recent unpleasant experiences with my own ilk, legal ethics professors, has amply demonstrated. Her background doesn’t suggest that that she is a progressive, but who knows. It is hard to believe that any lawyer who cites as authority the likes of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), both with extensive Ethics Alarms dossier s(because they are both spectacularly dishonest, biased and unethical) has any other excuse for doing so.
The argument that President Trump should be removed because he is mentally ill or demented has been a go-to “let’s get rid of Trump without having to beat him in an election” almost from the moment he was elected in 2016. It was high on the list—Plan E-— of my “Presidential Impeachment/Removal Plans, 2016 to 2020,” which you can easily review at the link above. As I wrote then, here Democrats and their allies expose their totalitarian drift: declaring anyone who opposed Soviet Communism had to be mentally deficient was a staple of the USSR. At this point, I consider anyone making that argument today proof of one or more conditions: crippling Trump hate, total lack of integrity, or wilful blindness. Since I don’t like writing the same post twice, I adequately explained what was so blatantly biased about the Second Term’s 25th Amendment bleating when I wrote in disgust in “Presidential Removal Plan E” In the Dumbest Way Possible, Raising the Need For a Similar “Incompetent Journalist Removal Plan”,
Ethics Alarms 