The “Safe Return” memorial overlooks the entrance to Squalicum Harbor at Zuanich Point Park in Billingham, Washington. Community leaders dedicated the 16-foot monument on Memorial Day, May 31, 1999 to honor commercial fishermen from the Bellingham area who died or disappeared at sea. The sculpture features an eight-foot bronze fisherman casting a mooring line as he returns to port. He stands on a 19-ton block of red granite, bearing the names of local fishermen who never made it safely home.
But the statue is racist, you see. That fisherman is really out to lynch a black man. He’s carrying a noose, right?
At least that’s what Cara M. Munoz thought as she harassed workmen cleaning graffiti off the memorial. It may have been what the idiots who defaced the memorial thought too.
“What is that? You don’t want to respond? But that’s OK,” Munoz shouted. “Are you going to do anything about the noose hanging above your head?…“That’s a noose.That is a hate symbol by definition.” She continued to harass the workers until police arrested her on charges second-degree malicious mischief. Then she spit on the officers.
Munoz is proud of her stand against “white supremacy” and all those lynchings performed by fisherman in Washington. She posted several videos of her confrontation with the workers. These people are so certain they are righteous and reasonable in their indignation. The summer of 2020 permanently damaged their brains and personalities. I’m surprised Cara wasn’t wearing a mask, too.
The Great Stupid is particularly intense and contagious in Washington as well as its West Coast neighbors Oregon and California. I think it should be a recognized legal defense when sufferers like poor Cara behave like this.
Palm Beach has re-named its airport the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. I don’t know why this was felt to be necessary or desirable, but I don’t care what airports are named, and those who do, I believe, have deep emotional problems as well as strange priorities.
But in a gobsmacking bit of virtue-signaling to the Trump Deranged, United Airlines has announced a new policy offering passengers free flight changes if landing at an airport named for the current President of the United States is too traumatic. Anti-Trump wackos can now reroute to Fort Lauderdale or Miami at no extra charge so the Palm Beach airport’s name won’t cause such fliers permanent psychic damage.
A United memo to reservation agents reads,
“If a customer does not want to fly to the airport, use your empowerment to offer acceptable alternatives such as Fort Lauderdale Airport (FLL) or Miami International Airport (MIA), [telling the customer] ‘I understand that you’d rather not fly to this airport anymore. We can look at nearby airports like Fort Lauderdale or Miami instead. Is that an acceptable alternative?'”
To be fair to United, which is hard for me because I detest that airline, there were a ridiculous number of crazed reactions made the airport’s online contact form after the airport was renamed last week. Such as,
“How do we continue to get on our knees for such a narcissistic criminal so-called president?”
“I am writing to assure you that as long as you are calling this airport anything closely related to ‘TRUMP’ I will NEVER FLY INTO THERE. NEVER! You have 100% lost all my family’s business. Despicable move!”
“Hopefully you’ll have plenty of airbags to catch the barfs from people as they drive up.”
Yes, this is clinical. Maybe United is basing its pandering on the American with Disabilities Act.
Now it’s your turn…you pick the ethics topic, I sit back and enjoy.
1. The President has gotten much better at delivering speeches from a teleprompter which means that he’s worked on it, something neither George W. Bush or John McCain had the commitment and diligence to do. Trump was always better when riffing, but that led into interminable, unfocused rants, like his infamous 2024 nomination acceptance speech. Last night’s speech was, for Trump, remarkably crisp, succinct, and well-delivered.
2. As he was starting off, making the speech feel like a State of the Union message, I could see in my mind’s eye all the “lies” that the Axis fact-checkers would complain about this morning. I wish the President didn’t have to describe everything he views as an accomplishment in hyperbolic terms, as a superlative: “the best,” “the greatest,” “the biggest.” Surely he must know that the habit automatically invites skepticism: if some achievement really was the best, Trump would have a difficult time getting anyone to believe it. Isn’t there an advisor, a friend, a supporter, someone who could tell him this is a self-defeating approach?
3. My vote for the most unethical hyperbole last night: “This country was dead.”
4. The President was pointed as he brought out into the open the Deep State sabotage and the mainstream media propaganda that has hindered both of his terms. Good.
Ken White, once a brilliant, analytical libertarian blogger and an Ethics Alarms Blogger of the Year, has been so corroded by Trump Derangement that he managed to get himself banned from Bluesky for the unhinged post above.
The fact that Ken would stoop to being on Bluesky at all, since it is the most censorious of social media platforms, was already shocking, but that junk above is worthy of people like Bette Midler and Sunny Hostin, whose combined IQs wouldn’t equal what Ken White’s used to be.
How could this happen? I am put in mind of the Eugene Ionesco play “Rhinoceros,” in which people in a small French town start inexplicably turning into the dumb, snorting, horned beasts. It happened to Ken and Curmie…who’s next?
“Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”
—-Minnesota Governor and all-time worst major party Vice-Presidential candidate ever Tim Walz, complaining about the deportation of Tou Lue Vang, an admitted and convicted child rapist and illegal resident, after Vang was pardoned by Walz.
I first wrote about this disgusting tale here, after Walz pardoned a Laotian child-rapist who had his legal resident status revoked 20 years ago because of the conviction. Walz made it clear that his pardon was designed to foil the Administration’s deportation efforts, though there could be no serious argument that a child rapist qualifies as a “good illegal immigrant” even under pro-open borders logic that there is such a thing.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had Vang deported anyway, as he had the power to revoke his latest deportation-blocking status, and off he went: So long, farewell, Auf Wiederseh’n, goodnight!
That offensive, idiotic quote was Walz’s defense of his unethical pardon and critique of Rubio’s action. Those were supposedly rhetorical questions, but the answers are the opposite of what Walz appears to believe…which, when one considers that we are talking about the deportation of a man who had repeated sex with a 10,11,12 and 13 year old girl over four years and shrugged it off as normal in his “culture,” raises all sorts of different disturbing questions.
“Did deporting a serial child rapist make us any safer?” How could it be otherwise? “Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable?” Walz is presumably talking about Vang’s children. If by “more stable’ he means “less vulnerable to sexual abuse,” the answer to that one is also “yes.” But incredibly, Walz managed to top the idiocy and ethical obtuseness of his first two questions with his third: “Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”
To begin with, I must mention that Walz is almost as English language-challenged as the boob who picked him as her running mate. I’m guessing he meant, “Is deporting Vang more fair and just than giving him a second chance after his one mistake?” For there is no improving on the bonkers and demonstrably false idea that it is wrong to judge people based on their worst day, when that day is sufficiently damning. That idea is irredeemable: it enshrines a rationalization to insulate wrong-doers from accountability.
Governor, let me introduce you to the the concept of signature significance. It holds that a single act can be so significant that all by itself that act stands as a legitimate basis on which to assess the character of the individual performing it. Raping a child is as convincing an example of signature significance as one could imagine. Child rapists, even those who engage in it only once (which is almost never the case) are not good people, good citizens, or good immigrants, legal or illegal. Walz’s “worst day” delusion doesn’t even apply to Vang, for he raped his young victim again and again over a four year period. That’s a lot of “worst” days. Did Walz even know whom he was pardoning?
The comment also attempts to minimize the seriousness of child rape. It isn’t as if Vang drank so much he lost control once or had a psychotic break: he sexually abused a child repeatedly. Walz’s attitude is evidently, “Okay, so he raped a little girl. Haven’t we all done things we regret?”
The man is an ethically-addled moron….and the Democratic Party nominated him to be “a heartbeat from the Presidency.” Think about that.
The non-rhetorical questions raised by Walz’s latest indefensible outburst:
How did someone like this get to be a state governor?
Who among his voters can defend their votes?
Nick Arama writes at RedState: “Anyone who thinks like this should not only never be Vice President, but he should never hold any position that requires any kind of judgment ever.” Can there be any doubt about that assessment?
Why would any thinking American trust a party that ran someone like Walz for national office, or a party that would nominate for President someone who thought this guy was an able and qualified public servant?
As it doesn’t come up that often, once again I must review what the Ethics Alarms “Kaufman” designation signifies. I hand out the award for alleged ethics violation or other news stories so unremarkable and trivial that they are literally not worth talking about or thinking about, except to note how foolish it was to raise the matter in the first place. From the EA glossary:
“George S. Kaufman was a celebrated wit and playwright (“The Man Who Came To Dinner”, “You Can’t Take It With You”, and many more, usually in tandem with Moss Hart), and he moonlighted as a panelist on the early TV show, “This is Show Business,” which often featured a celebrity who would consult the panel members about a personal problem. On one show, singer Eddie Fisher ( father of Carrie and Isla, husband of Debbie Reynolds and, scandalously, adulterous lover and eventual pre-Richard Burton spouse of Elizabeth Taylor) wanted advice from the panel because desirable women refused to go out with him because of his youth. Kaufman ‘s unsympathetic reply:
“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope. The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”
A “Kaufman” is awarded when someone, usually in the news media, makes a big deal about something so trivial and unremarkable that it demands apathy. We are all familiar with fake news, and one of its more annoying sub-categories are stories that are presented and framed as news that aren’t news at all. People Magazine just came out with a doozy, as “Hazel” used to say on the long-running sitcom that nobody but me remembers: “Mom Defends Decision to Give Her Daughter an Unconventional Name: ‘It Just Felt Perfect’ (Exclusive)”
SURPRISE LANDING An insect crashed @KTLA reporter @RachelMenitoff's live shot last night, and we must praise her professionalism. Who else could remain this cool!? pic.twitter.com/a0naM2zxq9
— KTLA 5 Morning News (@KTLAMorningNews) July 15, 2026
This is a companion piece to yesterday’s celebratory post honoring the DoorDash driver who completed her delivery after being hit by a car. With her “the show must go on!” exemplary professionalism, Menitoff’s composure under extreme “EW!” has to be cheered, and, arguably, was even more impressive than Miracle’s performance under duress.
Menitoff was reporting live for KTLA in Los Angeles on the lingering effects of Southern California’s heat wave when a huge flying cockroach landed on her shoulder and crawled across her chest.
“And it’s a lot more comfortable at this hour, but we’re still in the 80s here in the Valley,” Menitoff was saying, “So overnight temperatures aren’t necessarily dropping, and this leads to less recovery time from the daytime heat…” Meanwhile, the ugly thing was visible as it scurried across her stomach, chest and neck before jumping onto her microphone, presumably to make a statement.
Only after the live shot ended did Menitoff exclaim, “Oh gosh! Oh, I feel something,” and try to deal with the bug. “I knew it was on me,” she said later. “But I knew if I took notice of it, I wouldn’t be able to continue on with the report. So I said to myself, just get through this moment and then kind of shake it off.”
Brava. Unfortunately, since everything is political now, even this incident was quickly exploited for partisan effect. In a classic of over-reach, Vigilante ex-mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt shared the clip on X to criticize Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is challenging incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 mayoral race. Pratt said the insect symbolized conditions in Raman’s council district, where the Rachel’s report took place.
The House this week passed a measure, the Sunshine Protection Act, that would set America’s clocks to daylight saving time permanently once it clears the Senate and is signed into law by the President. The bill itself raises no ethics issues at all: it is the reactions to it and the reasons, real and alleged, for those reactions that ping ethics alarms.
The headline is tongue-in-cheek, incidentally. Most of my life I heard that Daylight Savings Time was Ben Franklin’s idea. Ben was an amazingly prolific innovator and out-of-the-box thinker, but he was not the originator of the practice, so we can neither blame him nor praise him. Another myth is that DST was implemented for the benefit of farmers. Actually, farmers have been one of the strongest opponents of DST because the factors that influence farming schedules, like dairy cattle’s readiness to be milked, are dictated by the sun, so clocks going back and forth just complicates things. In general, Retailers, sports, and tourism interests like daylight saving, while agricultural and evening-entertainment interests do not.
Personally, I just want one time in place all year, because the changeover is traumatic for me whenever it happens. I have a long list of screw-ups, missed deadlines and meetings on my record. I bet no year has ever passed without one.
Like so many policies, the Daylight Savings Time tradition has had and continues to have all manner of unintended consequences, and those are controversial too. There is some data that shows that crime and accidents are reduced by DST, but precise causation issues make such data inherently dubious. A 2017 analysis of 44 studies concluded that DST leads to electricity savings of 0.3%, but we now know, or should, we can’t trust studies because we can’t trust the reseachers who perform them. Ditto for a 2017 study in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that estimated that “the transition into DST caused over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually,” primarily by increasing sleep deprivation. Another study claimed that hospitals see a 24% increase in heart attacks and a 6% increase in fatal crashes each year when the time changes.
President Trump has advocated permanent Daylight Savings Time, so that’s enough for the Axis of Unethical Conduct to oppose it. Predictably, the Washington Post rushed to publish “Why standard time is better for your health than daylight saving time:A proposed bill would make daylight saving time permanent. But standard time is actually better for your body, according to science.”
According to science! Even the Post’s readers tended to agree that this take was hooey. A typical reaction:
The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:
“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”
Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:
That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.
Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.
How is that possible? I’ve got, as Jimmy Durante used to say, “a million of ’em” and would be happy to let Kwame Anthony Appiah, the NYU philosophy prof, take a shot at a few of them in guest columns so I could get them off my list.
Today the best he could come up with was this, which I’ve redacted, from “Name Withheld”:
“I am the mother of two adult children. Their father and I divorced when they were both under 10…they were close to him until their teens…During college, they cut ties with him altogether…He is self-absorbed and has sometimes been verbally abusive…Once brilliant, he now seems to hover somewhere between brilliance and madness. I sometimes receive dozens of manic messages from him in a row about his anger toward the children, his plans to live forever, rebirth, interstellar travel and other subjects. He is also homebound, in precarious health and in his mid-60s…I have encouraged my children to reconnect with him…My younger child has professed to be “not ready.” I respect that. Still, I worry that he will die and that the children will live with regret….My children know he has health problems, but I’m not sure they fully grasp that death can come suddenly.They will, of course, make their own decisions. But I wonder …Should I encourage them to see their father, so that they do not later regret staying away? Or should I keep my fears about time running out to myself?”
Wait: Where’s the ethics issue? There is none. This is “Dear Abby” or “Ann Landers” stuff. I have nothing against advice columns, but supposedly “The Ethicist” column is supposed to be about, you know, ethics.
Ethics Alarms 