I Wonder 1) What Will Be Done About This…Because Obviously It Cannot Stand, and 2) Whether I Should Wear A Bag Over My Head From Now On

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The nine-page settlement agreement of President Trump’s unwinnable lawsuit against the I.R.S,, which already included an illegal tax-free provision, had that one-page coda. I wrote about it yesterday, but this is sinking in.

I feel like an idiot. Since 2016, I have tried hard to be fair to Donald Trump, to give him the presumption of good will and legitimacy all Presidents deserve, and indeed must have to function. I am certain that the attitudes of the Trump Deranged have been destructive, undemocratic, biased and irrational, but this latest development raises the strong possibility that they happened to be right.

A Democratic, progressive criminal defense attorney who believes, with so may of my friends and colleagues, that the President “Trump “has two, and only two, motivations: Self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. He’s done nothing in his second term to suggest otherwise”—a starting point that I still believe is biased and based substantially on hate—writes today in part,

“Can Trump do this? Is any of this lawful and constitutional?….[T]his post hoc addendum to a “settlement agreement” that elevates the concept of collusion to its apex breaks ground never before molested. The idea of any past President doing something so audacious, so self-serving, so blatant, seems incredible. The public would never accept it. Perhaps the public still won’t, even if the MAGA faithful will. That remains to be seen, subject to the likelihood of the Democratic Party doing something to self-destruct and remind Americans why they elected Trump a second time despite knowing who he was. There is no ready answer as to what can be done about this…We are deep into virgin territory of graft, corruption and self-dealing, with little expectation of any governmental guardrail holding fast…And much as it’s hard to fathom what he could do that’s worse than this, it would be stunningly naive to believe that we’ve hit rock bottom.”

The rest of Scott Greenfield’s commentary is, as usual, marred by the typical hyperbole of a true-blue progressive and Trump hater, but in those words above I find nothing that I can reject. I regard the episode a betrayal of trust by everyone involved, especially the President, reckless, beyond rational defending, destructive to the nation, and politically stupid.

Now what?

Making Americans Dumber and More Ignorant Every Day: MSNow!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Jonathan Turley quoted a gobsmacking statement from MSNow’s consistently ridiculous Katy Tur that is, I kid you not, too stupid to qualify for Unethical Quote of the Month.

Commenting on Speaker Mike Johnson’s evocation of natural rights at the “Rededicate 250” rally on the mall in Washington, DC., she said, “What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government? They come from “you, our creator and heavenly father.” Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?”

No, you moron, it is him correctly interpreting what Thomas Jefferson wrote about natural rights, the core of the American philosophy of liberty and individual determinism over government domination. The Declaration states without equivocation, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Who or what “The Creator” is was consistently left up to individual faith and judgment by the Founders, who often used neutral terms like “Providence” to describe the origins of life, humanity and the universe. Jefferson’s point, which of course statists like the Axis of Unethical Conduct and its mouthpieces like Tur want to ignore, is that certain rights accrue in a just society to an individual automatically, and government cannot ethically or morally take those rights away. To maintain that such rights have to be granted by the government is to declare humanity unacceptably dependent on the power and will of others. The Declaration, Constitution and the Bill of Rights explain what the government can’t do.

How can someone who doesn’t understand this—because they never learned it, presumably—get to be a network news host? It’s horrifying. Similarly horrified by Tur’s ignorance, Jonathan Turley wrote today,

“The Revolution was fought over natural rights that belonged to colonists as human beings, bestowed by God and defended by the American Revolution. The Constitution created a system that guaranteed the protection of those rights contained in the Declaration of Independence.Speaker Johnson was speaking directly to the foundation of this Republic in reaffirming his faith in natural rights. Of course, the rejection of natural rights in academia and politics is consistent with the view that our rights evolve with a “living Constitution.” What the government giveth, the government may taketh away. The debate reflected in Tur’s comments could not be more timely or elemental on our 250th anniversary. We must again decide not just who we were then but who we are now as Americans. There are many who want to decouple our system from natural rights as they “reimagine” American democracy and “trash” the American Constitution.”

No wonder so many Americans are gulled by the Democrats’ cynical claim to be “protecting democracy.” They don’t know what American democracy is.

“The Unabomber Was Right”#10: DirecTV Proves It Can’t Be Trusted

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

They haven’t always been titled exactly that way. but the first “The Unabomber Was Right” post went up in 2017, and there have been nine since, with the most recent being here, in January. Today, however, I experienced an all-time classic.

Getting up earlier than usual, and waiting for my coffee to cool, I tuned in DirecTV channel 71 as I have been doing for, oh, 30 years or so. That channel is “News Mix”, which allows me to see sxi screens: CNN, Fox News, MSNow, BBC America, and two weather channels. To my surprise, the screen said the channel was not available, because I did not subscribe to it. Even more perplexing was the language of a second screen that popped up. “Newsmix is blocked. Our search for another channel does not indicate that your selection is available.”

Now that is the notice I get from DirecTV when a baseball game is blacked out because of regional restrictions. The news is blocked? Were we conquered by Iran overnight? I tried everything. Shutting down the TV. Disconnecting the satellite box. I kept getting those alternating screens.

So with a huge sigh of resignation, I realized that I was about to enter, once again, “The Customer Service Zone”:

“You unlock this door with a futile key of naive expectations. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of annoying AI bots, a dimension of infuriating repetition, a dimension of incompetence. You’re moving into a land of both impenetrable accents and ineptitude, of scripts, disconnections and ass-covering. You’ve just crossed over into… “The Customer Service Zone”!

DirecTV has a new, perky, sexy female voiced AI, but after I gave her all the information I asked for, she handed me over to the old AI, which asked me exactly the same questions I had just answered. I was told three times that the conversation might be recorded, so maybe someone will hear my shouts into the phone of “I already answered that!” and “And I answered that already too!”

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Nah, The Democratic Party Doesn’t Have a Anti-Semitism Problem! Strange That It Has A Congressional Candidate Whose Campaign Said…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (lt will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).”

This is TX-35 Democratic candidate Maureen Galindo. And her very existence unmasks the Democratic Party and the American left revealing the monsters they have become.

She’s not a fringe candidate either. Galindo was the top Democrat in the March primary election, with 29.2% support to her closest competition’s 27%. Since no one got a majority, Galindo advanced to a runoff election to take place next week against sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia. An awful lot of progressives and Democrats (I mean “awful lot” both ways) like anti-Semites and hate Jews.

As we are increasingly seeing…we are also seeing the Axis of Unethical Conduct trying to spin away the obvious implications of Democrats producing such a vile candidate with a “Republicans have anti-Semites too!” deflection. This was Bill Maher’s deceitful tactic, as I wrote earlier this week.

Watchdog group StopAntisemitism, which is one of those “independent” groups that always bashes Republicans, said, “The standard that Democrats rightly apply to right-wing anti-Semites must apply equally to left-wing Jew-haters. Democratic leaders must clearly, publicly denounce these bigots infecting their party without hedging. They must decline to appear on platforms with Hasan Piker. They must stop winking at extremist voices and truly stand for the principles they claim to stand for.”

Wait: what “right-wing Jews haters” are leading candidates in a Congressional race? Who is a Republican equivalent of Hasan Piker? Anti-Semites Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have been emphatically rejected by President Trump, MAGA, and most conservatives. The Axis is now trying to claim that the PAC Lead Left that has spent $428,713 backing Galindo according to the latest data from Federal Election Commission filings is really run by Republicans. The problem with that dodge is that ethical, fair people won’t support anti-Semites no matter how much is spent on their political ads, unless the voters like anti-Semites and hate Jews. Both Piker and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who polls highly among potential 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates, endorsed Galinda. Is AOC a double-secret Republican agent?

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More on the President’s Unethical and Collusive $1.7 Billion IRS ‘Slush Fund’ Settlement 

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Or in other words,

If you can process this whole astounding ethics debacle and come out anything but but disgusted and disillusioned, you apparently are capable of rationalizing anything.

Hint: This is not a good thing.

In this post, I wrote about the gob-smacking, unprecedented settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns. My conclusion yesterday: “[T]his deal stinks, and should be challenged ethically if not legally. The whole Justice Department and the Treasury Department too had irresolvable conflicts, and should not have been allowed to make a settlement with their own boss.”

I learned of this revolting development two days ago, when a Trump Deranged relative asked me why my ethicist head wasn’t exploding over “Trump’s corrupt deal with the IRS that gave him a billion dollars to pay his militia, the J-6 rioters.” I had no idea what she was talking about. See, she only watches MSNow for news, and of course they were all over the story, as were all the Axis news platforms. The last few days I have been less than diligent in my bi-partisan news searches, mostly checking websites. However, that potentially exaggerated description of what two Executive cabinet departments and their employees who Trump can fire at will agreed to in settlement of a lawsuit that almost certainly would have been tossed by any judge who could beat Justice Jackson in Scrabble turned out to be shockingly accurate.

Now we are learning that the deal is even worse than it first appeared to be. This account is straight from Politico. I will not make a habit of the lazy Instapundit-Althouse blogging practice of posting a long quote or article and asking readers, “What do you think?”, but the ethics horror here is pretty straightforward, and I would just be rewording the item unnecessarily:

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Thomas Massie (R.-KY)

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

I would’ve come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”

—Rep Thomas Massie, (R-Ky) after losing his primary against a Trump-endorsed candidate.

I would have more respect for Massie if he just came right out and called his opponent a “Jew-lover.”

Nothing could more emphatically validate President Trump’s decision to oppose Massie, who has cemented undying infamy at Ethics Alarms by insulting a victorious opponent in his concession speech. Such lack of civility, respect and decorum only exacerbates the decline of civic comity in Washington, and there is no excuse for it. Being a poor loser shows poor character, and an inability to meet one of the key markers of virtue in Rudyard Kipling’s “If”: “Meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.”

Naturally the Washington Post lionizes Massie in defeat, saying his lost primary was because of his “consistent unwillingness to go along to get along,” and that “Massie’s independence earned the enmity of President Donald Trump, who deployed his political machine to crush Massie and recruited primary winner Ed Gallrein. Yet the quixotic congressman, for better or worse, always seemed more driven by ideas than personalities.”

Yeah. One of those keen “ideas” was anti-Semitism. Burying the lede, the Post’s long sigh regarding Massie’s loss culminates in this admission:

“He was the only House Republican to vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism. Reasonable people might oppose U.S. aid to Israel, but Massie too often did so with over-the-top, even conspiratorial, rhetoric.”

Well nobody’s perfect.

Post Script: You want unethical “advocacy journalism”? Read the MSNow spin on Massie’s loss. Trump’s “revenge,” “a huge cost,” the whole event is presented as a platform for more Trump-bashing. No mention of Massie’s anti-Semitism, which all by itself justifies, indeed mandates, his loss. But then the MSNow gang is angry about all those dog-rapes…

Ethics Dunces: The Congressional Black Caucus (As Usual)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I checked to see if Ethics Alarms has ever had a post about the Congressional Black Caucus, and there have been many, that didn’t indicate an an unethical culture embedded in the group like a tic.

No.

So I suppose the recent example shows that at very least, the CBC is consistent.

For over six years now, the NCAA and other collegiate sports organizations have been asking for Congress to reform college sports, which has been confused and chaotic since schools were told that they had to treat college athletes like mercenaries rather than students. The SCORE ACT is sorta kinda such legislation, and was was supposed to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives this week but was pulled from the floor at the last minute.

A few hours before the vote was again postponed indefinitely, the bill slammed into a roadblock when the Congressional Black Caucus and its 54 voting members in the House announced unanimous opposition to the SCORE Act, not because of anything the bill contained or ignored. The CBC announced that it would oppose the law until the SEC, ACC, and NCAA started protesting state gerrymandering and redistricting that didn’t benefit black Democrats. In other words, the CDC is practicing extortion. It is telling sports organizations that they must endorse the “good discrimination” against whites that the Supreme Court just declared illegal and unconstitutional (because, you know, it is), and if they don’t, well, the CBC will just refuse to vote for laws that have nothing to do with race, redistricting, sports or college. Neener neener!

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A “What’s Going On Here?” Ethics Challenge: Trump’s $1.7 Billion IRS ‘Slush Fund’ Settlement [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Whatever is going on, it’s unethical.

President Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service in January of this year, claiming that the agency had not done enough to prevent the leak of his tax information to ProPublica and the New York Times by Charles Littlejohn, a former I.R.S. contractor who pleaded guilty to the crime in October 2023. The lawsuit, asking $10 billion in damages, was remarkable in many ways, not the least of which was that the President of the United States was suing an executive branch agency of the Treasury Department, which is under his control. Whether he could do that was a key issue, as was whether his law suit came too late: by some calculations, the statute of limitations ran out before the President filed his suit.

Meanwhile, there was also a question regarding whether Justice Department lawyers would be conflicted out of defending the suit. And whether the I.R.S. could be held liable for the conduct of Littlejohn, who was a contractor and not an employee.

I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they judged as fatal flaws in Trump’s suit and advised the Justice Department to move to dismiss it. The memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, but no one is saying whether it ever got to DOJ before any of its lawyers ever appeared in court to respond to the suit or dispute any of Trump’s claims, came to a bizarre settlement. DOJ agreed to an unusual deal that creates a $1.8 billion fund in exchange for Trump withdrawing his suit. The money is being called an “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate people who say they were wrongly targeted by the federal government. Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General, will appoint five people to a commission that will oversee the distribution of the money, though the President will be able to fire any of the commission members, or, for that matter, Blanche, who had previously been one of Trump’s lawyers.

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OK, Maybe Bill Maher Is Sincere In His Criticism Of Democrats and Progressives…MAYBE, Part II: Why Bill’s “New Rule” Is Not As Ethical As He Thinks It Is

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In Part I, I published Bill Maher’s surprising slap at Democrats and progressives for their unethical drift into anti-Semitism. It’s pretty good—for Bill. The 18 paragraphs are numbered so I don’t have to repeat them here, especially since WordPress nearly sent me to the woodchipper when I was trying to compose the first post. I’m sorry that you’ll have to jump back and forth, but so do I, to write this.

And away we go…

1. Everyone has a right to be anti-Semitic, just as everyone has a right to lie, or commit adultery. Advocating anti-Semitism, promoting it, and acting on it is still unethical. These ethical nuances, rights vs. law vs. ethics, are beyond Maher’s comprehension.

2. See? Bill immediately defaults to a Rationalization #22 defense of Israel. It isn’t the worst country! Wow. Talk about a back-handed compliment!

3. Not quite as bad as China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, and North Korea, eh? Way to make anti-Semites feel ashamed, Bill….

4. Ezra Klein is nothing to be proud of. He has been a leader of Axis bias for a decade.

5. A “They’re just as bad” (Rationalization #2) cheat by Maher, and he’s cherry-picking. Carlson has been excoriated by conservatives for his anti-Israel stance. He is not representative of the Right at all, and I, for one, never thought he was.

6. Bill managed not to mention the Times’ “dog rape” libel.

9. Maher likes the #22 rationalization so much he comes back to it. This is because Bill doesn’t get ethics. He also evokes “Everybody does it!” here, the hoariest rationalization of all. Jeez Bill…read a book.

10. The “new rule” is about Democratic Party anti-Semitism, but the candidate he writes the most about is an obscure anti-Semitic Republican. Huh.

11. Israel overwhelmingly has the “right-wingers” on its side, and it has the President of the United States on its side in particular. Maher never mentions President Trump at all. He’s only willing to infuriate his audience so much, apparently.

12. Trying to continue his false equivalence argument regarding anti-Semitism on”both sides,” Maher pairs two typical leftist academics with…Candace Owens? She is persona non grata among conservatives, a true embarrassment, and she is the opposite of an academic, as she is illiterate.

13. Again with the rogue Republican joke in a statement about Leftist anti-Semitism, and again, Bill is cherry-picking. There is a reason that Margery Taylor Greene isn’t in Congress any more. Representing her idiocy as mainstream Republicanism is despicable. Rep. Fine’s sharp quip after one of Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim minions derided dogs was, in my opinion, undiplomatic but defensible. No dogs in the U.S. have engaged in any mass shootings or terrorism.

14-18. Bill finishes very strong, almost making up for his rationalizations and weasel words on the way to his conclusion

You Know That Ridiculous “100 Best Vocalists” List? The Guardian says “Hold My Beer….”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Well yes, John, I’d say that’s a fair and accurate assessment.

Read the Guardian’s explanation of how they got this list. It’s even worse than the list itself, but it does explain the bias creating this mess with this single phrase: “Atwood’s horribly prescient The Handmaid’s Tale.” Prescient? I guess I missed the U.S. turning women into involuntary full-time baby machines.

This is a DEI list, and not a very smart or informed one. No Mark Twain, because “Huckleberry Finn” has been cancelled. Jack London was too much of a toxic masculine writer for these weenies, I guess. “Treasure Island” is too full of men and boys too. “The Three Musketeers” is nowhere to be found; nor is “The Count of Monte Christo.” The women in “Ivanhoe” are too girly. But knee jerk political correctness kicked three of the very best novels, all written by women, off the list: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Gone With The Wind,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” almost certainly the most influential and important American novel ever written. Humor is pretty much verboten, unless it’s anti-war humor (“Catch 22”). P.G. Wodehouse wrote the funniest novels of all time: the problem with including him would be picking which were the best. Yes, ancient odd-ball novel “Tristram Shandy” is on the list: I challenge anyone to claim it has even half the outright belly laughs of Wodehouse at his best.

Not including Tolkien is inexplicable (and I don’t even like his writing); similarly, the greatest novels that engage children while reaching adults as well were cut: “Wind in the Willows,” Watership Down,” and especially the two Lewis Carroll classics, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” both among the cleverest, most original, most quoted and influential novels in the English Language.

Meanwhile, one entry on the list, “The Turn of the Screw,” isn’t even a novel. I thought the vocalist list was absurd because it was lazy and ignorant, but “The Hundred Best Novels of All Time” is even worse, because it is overtly political. “Never has such a list been more needed,” The Guardian says. Why would incompetent, biased, misleading lists ever be “needed?” Amusingly, the explanation of this thing starts with the correct assessment in its very first sentence: “[C]ompiling a list of the greatest novels of all time is an impossible task.”

Here is the stupid list. Go crazy…

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