From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

One more reason why Americans voting for most Democrats in these mid-terms is evidence of serious mental and ethical incapacity.

It is also evidence of how ignorant of our system of government these “migrants” are. Congress can do very little to restrict immigration enforcement, even if it has the votes: yhat tricky Separation of Powers thingy. Imagine setting out on a journey without having accurate information about the likelihood of your being allowed into the country you are heading for.

Morons. And the United States has too many home grown morons as it is.

An Unethical Vote From The Pope, and a Weak Analysis From Professor Turley

Well, I didn’t see this coming.

Because Pope Leo XIV is an American citizen and because he’s an unethical and arrogant SOB, he just became the first Pope ever to vote in a U.S. election. Leo, aka Robert Prevost, mailed an absentee ballot to Will County, Illinois. The clerk’s office has confirmed that “Robert Prevost is on the list of individuals who requested a Vote by Mail ballot.”

Why did the leader of a foreign nation vote in an American election, the very epitome of a leader of another country engaging in election interference? Because he could, that’s all. It is legal, because American legislators never considered this combination of factors occurring. “It is legal!” is also the rationalization (#4. Marion Barry’s Misdirection, or “If it isn’t illegal, it’s ethical“) being used by the cheating Democrats and their drained-of-ethics followers to shrug off their Senate candidate in Alaska trying to game the state’s ranked choice voting system by recruiting another Dan Sullivan to confuse voters. The Pope is a Democrat, so, naturally, he has the same set of values. “Because I could” was also Bill Clinton’s explanation in his autobiography for why he sexually exploited a star-struck female intern while he was President. “Because he can” is also the answer to the question, “Why does a dog lick his balls?”

Stay classy, Pope Leo!

The Pope didn’t have to vote in our mid-terms, and the ethical, diplomatic and respectable (and respectful) decision would have been to eschew the temptation. I thought Popes were supposed to be good at that.

Holiday Ethics: Perhaps The Easiest Question “The Ethicist” Has Ever Been Asked—And He Botches It!!!!

When I saw the headline on The Ethicist’s weekly New York Times column: “Is It Wrong to Leave My 85-Year-Old Mother Alone on Thanksgiving?” I thought, “Wait, is this the Onion making fun of The Ethicist?” No, “Name Withheld” really submitted that question, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, who has been The New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist columnist since 2015 and teaches philosophy at N.Y.U., really thought it was worthy of publication. The inquirer writes in part,

“…The concern here is that my sibling is going out of town for Thanksgiving with his family. My spouse and I would also like to go away for the first holiday we’ve had to ourselves in a long time! But there’s my mother. She’s pretending our proposed getaway is perfectly fine with her and that she’ll find some way to spend the holiday, but she’s clearly not looking forward to it. I’m torn between thinking, She’s a big girl, she’ll manage, and thinking that my spouse and I should suck it up this year and have Thanksgiving with my mother, and then maybe next year things will be different. I’d appreciate your thoughts.”

What the hell? Mom’s not a “big girl,” she’s an old girl, and at 85, every Thanksgiving, heck, every day could be her last. “Suck it up”? SUCK IT UP????? All the mother has is her family, and her children are choosing to leave her alone in her twilight years on the American holiday that symbolizes loving families.

Here is the brain-dead response from The Ethicist, which I am publishing in all its unethical, incompetent glory:

Final Halloween Ethics Fouls

One doesn’t expect much in terms of intelligence, judgment and taste from a reality TV star, but McCall DePron, who is also an “influencer” so that’s two strikes against her before this conduct (Strike three!), is special. Her whole family is tasteless and clueless or being trained to be. That’s the photo above she posted on Instagram of her clan’s so clever Halloween costumes, evoking, celebrating, mocking, giggling at—I don’t know what to call it—one of the most shattering days in U.S. history

McCall is dressed as Jackie Kennedy the day her husband was murdered while sitting by her side. Her himbo hubby is supposed to be JFK before the front of his head was shot off, and her kids are supposed to be John-John, Caroline, and two Secret Service agents. Caroline Kennedy is still alive and surely thinks this trivializing of the day her world fell apart was a wonderful splash of Halloween fun. And, frankly, I’m alive too. November 22, 1963 was a generational trauma for members of my generation; 9-11 doesn’t come close. The fact that a social media “influencer” is so ethically and historically retarded is yet another cultural canary dying in the mine of U.S. society.

DePron took down her “Happy Halloween!” post that included the disgusting photo. Too late, moron. Attaching “happy” to anything related to that day is signature significance proving a porous brain and rotting soul.

Scary Trump-Deranged/Wokified Facebook Friend Update

BOO!

With great sadness I post the following ignorant progressive crap I just saw on a cherished friend and long time professional associate’s Facebook feed. He’s a smart, caring, talented man who was the star of my wife Grace’s “Celebration of Life.” I will owe him forever, but he’s a professional musician and performer who is surrounded by dolts and knee-jerks most of his days, so he has some excuse for believing this garbage…

…since almost everyone he works with, talks to or cares about does. But Christ on a cracker, if I ever post or say anything that stupid, please, PLEASE, somebody come up behind me and cave in my head with a brick.

Don’t make me fisk that junk. “Empathy” has nothing to do with responsible voting in a democracy for any citizen over the age of six. And it’s ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS YOU MORONS!

As I just said, my bubble-dwelling, toxic empathy-infected, MSNOW talking points-poisoned musician friend has some excuse; another Facebook friend, who is a Stage 4 Trump Deranged retired lawyer referenced here before who should know better and once did before his brain asked to leave the building does not. He just posted that Cassidy Hutchinson, the irredeemable “star witness” of Nancy Pelosi’s Star Chamber, the rigged partisan inquiry into the J-6 riot, is a “hero”—you know, for flagrantly lying in her testimony after being coached by vengeance Fury Liz Cheney.

A DC grand jury just refused to indict Cassidy, proving exactly nothing. For any lawyer, regardless of partisan tilt, to call this weak, dishonest, unconscionable woman heroic is evidence of mental illness or creeping dementia. Her EA dossier is here. She’s disgusting. My friend the distinguished retired lawyer is just…depressing.

A Timely Exposition On Just How Awful—and Unethical—Barack Obama Was and Is

In comments on today’s first posts, both Grandma Lisa and peanutclearly45eb6e57bb referenced the destructive path of Barack Obama’s Presidency. Shortly thereafter, I stumbled upon this, a recent interview with Victor Davis Hanson, the conservative scholar and pundit in which he was moved to spontaneously detail Obama’s record of hypocrisy, dishonesty, narcissism, stupidity, and corruption. It is both convincing and impressive, and regarding EA today, timely.

Hansen’s revelations of Obama’s hypocrisy in attacking President Trump’s ballroom is amusingly damning, though it is far from the most significant of the particulars in Hansen’s indictment. Again, the only conclusion an objective reader could reach about Obama is, as I have stated repeatedly, “What an asshole!”

I’ll just whet your appetite with a few excerpts, but you should read it all:

Belated Unethical Tweet Of The Month

That nasty and completely inexcusable tweet from the White House popped up on several websites last week. I hadn’t seen it before or the 2016 post by Clinton that inspired it. Because of the way it was deceptively posted, I assumed Hillary had finally sunk to the bottom of her well of self-pity. The White House post went up on July 1, which is apparently Social Media Day. I didn’t know that either, and what a stupid designation THAT is. Every day is social media day, unfortunately.

But back to the White House’s trolling: how petty, mean and cruel. I can’t imagine anything more frustrating and devastating to an American than winning the popular vote in a Presidential election and losing the election anyway. It’s a fluke when it occurs (that doesn’t mean that the Electoral College isn’t a net benefit to our democracy, because it is), and only Andrew Jackson, Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore and Hillary have suffered that fate. Jackson and Cleveland became Presidents anyway, so only three candidates saw their future places in U.S. history go from defining to footnote because of an anomaly, and of those three, Hillary Clinton was the only one who had good reason to believe she couldn’t lose.

I don’t like Hillary Clinton and we are all lucky that she lost, but mocking someone for suffering a devastating misfortune is unethical no matter who is the target. The tweet basically says, “Nyah, nyah, nyah!”

Presidents of the United States shouldn’t say Nyah, nyah, nyah!” They are supposed to be better than that.

The Judge Flipped At Dawn*

Texas lawyer Ezra Young (right, above) filed a judicial complaint against Judge Ada Brown (left) of the Northern District of Texas who went bonkers during a hearing last April. Brown excoriated Young for—wait for it!— being white. Young corrected her, saying that he is Hispanic (which is white, but the Left’s group-labeling obsession has obliterated that detail for all time), so Judge Brown said he was“white-presenting.” Here’s a description of the exchange from Bloomberg Law:

Throughout the hearing, the judge, a Black woman with Native American ancestry, accused Young of mistreating Black attorneys, took “judicial notice” of her own background in making findings against Young, and repeatedly referred to Young, who is Latino, as being White. Brown called the hearing months after she revoked Young’s ability to practice in her courtroom to weigh whether the lawyer should face sanctions.

“I think what’s happening here, quite candidly, is you are very intimidated for some reason, Mr. Young, with Black excellence, in light of your White mediocrity. Yeah. Right?,” Brown said, according to the transcript. “You should write that down. I mean, you — I’m — you look like a White man, right?”

“I’m not White, Your Honor,” Young replied, adding that he’s Latino. “Well, you are White-presenting; is that fair to say?” Brown said, according to the transcript. Young said that he’s “fair-skinned,” and Brown said that Young had “White privilege” when he argued his client didn’t receive key evidence in the case.

“You’re the White savior, come to save all the stupid Black lawyers in Texas who need your help, from New York,” Brown later said, according to the transcript. . . .

During the April 24, 2026 hearing, Brown accused Young of “racial bullying” toward Black attorneys in the case. Brown also said that Young was acting like a “Chad,” a term Young wasn’t familiar with. The judge said it was the male version of a “Karen.” “It’s someone who calls the manager when they don’t get their way. They stomp their foot when the rules are supposed to apply to them, right?” Brown said, according to the transcript. . . .

During the April hearing, Brown took issue with an article headline describing the case when it went before the Supreme Court of Texas. The article quoted a brief filed by Young that referenced another law professor apparently comparing what happened in the tenure denial to a “lynching.” The judge accused Young of making up that quote to “get a headline.”

“And so when I read a headline — a sensationalized, very racialized headline that says, ‘it’s like I’ve been lynched,’ and it’s literally got no connection to this case, I have to ask you, Mr. Social Media, Main Character Chad, White Hero, Savior, Loves to Help Black People Be An Ally, where the lynching in this case came from?” Brown said, according to the transcript.

She also apparently gave Young a copy of a 1920 newspaper article that described a lynching. “So we don’t find lynching jokes funny down here, sir,” Brown said, according to the transcript.

Fascinating. Brown is a Trump appointee, which means that even supposedly conservative clack judges may have had their brains addled from years of anti-white, anti-male indoctrination, propaganda and an implanted victim mentality. Of she just snapped like a dry twig in the wind. She has been suspended pending psychiatric testing; apparently the judge had been acting strangely for quite a while. Brown has refused to decide some cases and hasn’t shown up to face her disciplinary proceedings. This, Josh Blackman deduces at The Volokh Conspiracy, suggests that “something is amiss” with this judge.

Ya think?

On the Kelly Clarkson “Pretty Woman” Kerfuffle…[Too Many Typos Finally Fixed (Sorry)]

[ I didn’t do my final typo check because I had phone consult, and the result was about 12 typos that I just fixed. I am properly remorseful]

I opened this can of worms (celebrity ethics) so it’s only right that I put the squirmy things on the hook.

After delving into the annoying Crystal Hefner-Jon Lovitz feud (D-list celebrity vs. fading C-list celebrity), I was tasked by esteemed commenter John Paul to weigh in on the incident earlier this month when singer and talk-show hostess Kelly Clarkson claimed on social media that she got the “Pretty Woman treatment” when she went shopping at the Brooklyn-based Art of Play store, which sells home goods, puzzles, games, toys and books and also features a 26-seat theater for performances by magicians. This prompted a social media rebuttal by the store’s owner, and another rebuke by Clarkson.

I was aware of the incident but chose to organize my sock drawer instead of investigating. One reason is that “Pretty Woman” is one of the few famous movies I have never been moved to see. I have it on my list, but Richard Gere irritates me, and romantic comedies about prostitutes have never been my cup of metaphorical tea. So, until I researched it today, I didn’t know what the “Pretty Woman” treatment even is. As a cultural literacy bug, I deserve a rebuke for that—sorry. In the 1990 romantic comedy Roberts plays Vivian, a prostitute who walks into an upscale boutique on Rodeo Drive and is instantly treated by a sales clerk as unworthy of service because she does not appear to be sufficiently wealthy or cultured. The clerk refuses to show Julia any merchandise, and tells her to leave because she does not fit their clientele. Julia returns after she has entranced her sugar-daddy (I’m beginning to remember why the movie didn’t appeal to me), flashes expensive accessories from rival boutiques, and delivers an apparently classic “So there!” kill shot.

Clarkson had posted: “Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me. Wow, dude. You’re an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out 👎”

The store slapped back,

Friday Open Forum, and a Blazing Hypocrisy Episode

Celebrity dust-ups are usually too trivial even for me to get concerned about, but the behavior of pseudo-celebrity Crystal Hefner, Hugh’s gold-digger widow, is truly gobsmacking, and attention must be paid.

Crystal married the wealthy Playboy founder in his dotage after she was a centerfold in the magazine, for love, I’m sure. Now, having become rich herself (estimated worth: $20-30 million)on the profits from Hugh Hefner’s female objectifying enterprises, she is a feminist. Recently she decided to impugn has-been Saturday Night Live alum Jon Lovitz, saying that he had been the “Playboy Mansion’s No. 1 customer.” Lovitz responded that “Any time someone says I’m No. 1, it’s a compliment.” For some reason, the former Mrs. Hefner thought it made sense to get in a war of words with someone a lot quicker on the uptake than she is.

“I think Jon Lovitz is part of the problem,” she told Page Six. “I think many men who came up to that mansion [and] were very sexist and misogynistic are all part of that problem. If I could dismantle that toxic masculinity and patriarchy just a little bit, I will feel happy. It’s very sad.”

The woman married the man who invited everyone to the Playboy mansion! She was at those parties flaunting her sexual assets; she is ethically estopped from wielding the woke patriarchy blather when she owes her status in life to embracing and promoting it.

She targeting Lovitz after a July exchange, when the comic reacted to her Instagram statement that she “regretted” marrying Hugh. “Do you regret the house he bought for you to live in, after his death?” Lovitz responded. “And keeping the money, after you sold it?… And do you regret all he did for you?”

Good questions. Hefner, proving she was fighting above her metaphorical weight class, said, “Jon Lovitz had mentioned to me that Hef had bought something for me or paid for something and that I have no reason to speak because of that. I think his thinking is very outdated. That’s really sad that, just because someone buys you something, it guarantees silence.”

Once a bimbo, always a bimbo.

Well, as Jimmy Durante would say, “I’m glad I got that out: on my x-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”

This is the last Open Forum before the Most Important Election In The History of Mankind. Make it count!