Ethics Villain and Fick Who I Fear Has Lots of Company: Christina Applegate

Christina Applegate is touring to promote her memoir, “You With the Sad Eyes,” hot off the presses. The “Married With Children” star writes about her illness, multiple sclerosis, and also the abortion she had when she was 19.

“In late April 1991, I fell pregnant,” she writes. “I want to turn away from what happened, but it’s all recorded in my diary. There are moments in my life that are too painful to force into narrative or meaning, so I’ll let my voice from back then speak.” And she does:

“I love this being… I always felt that if I ever got pregnant when I knew it was the wrong time, I wouldn’t have any problem having an abortion. ‘Oh, whatever. It isn’t even a baby yet.’ That’s bullshit. This creature’s incredible — makes me feel whole, safe…I’m fucking pregnant, and I’m killing my child on Thursday. I’m thinking, ‘Where the fuck can I go to recuperate from murder?’…His family will hate me when they find out that I killed their family member because they don’t believe in it. But I can’t have this baby because I have work to do to entertain this fucking world. Besides, I can’t… now.”

Then she says hello and good-bye to the unborn child she is going to, in her own words, murder:

“Hello, little thing. I feel you every moment of my day. Such a tiny existence. Such an immense effect you have. You are a miracle. A tiny handed miracle. I love you, but you know your fate. It’s not your time. I know you didn’t make that decision, but it can’t be your time. You will live on, though. You will live through another. I hope you will forgive me… But mommy can’t be with you right now. But know she loves you — more than any other miracle.”

More Trump Deranged Fake News From The Times..

I’ve decided that I’m going to keep posting these “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” essays until one of the bias-deniers who hangs out in these parts finally screams, “All right! All right! We’ve been lying! Of course the mainstream media is actively trying to undermine the President, especially the Times!

This one is especially timely after a prominent member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers pleaded for support in arguing that Trump should be removed from office because he was mean to the Pope. The member also had the—something—to insist that this was not a partisan issue. I wrote, before refusing to read the many replies supporting the “non-partisan” who wants the 25th Amendment used…you know, like the Axis was claiming during Trump’s first term—to forcibly remove him from office,

“Oh for heaven’s sake. This is not a non-partisan issue, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, dishonest or being paid by the Democrats. 
And it is not a proper topic for conversation here, not that this has stopped the majority Left-leaning political bias on this listserv from leaking out with regularity. Did anyone here ever breathe a bit of concern that the previous President was showing ominous signs of being unfit for office? I don’t recall any, but I’d take seriously their arguments on why this is a legitimate APRL concern now.  Anyone else is prohibited by what I call “ethics estoppel.”

But I digress. Here is yesterday’s headline on a large Times feature (Gift link):

Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

“As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

The second I read that, I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if I can guess who the ‘former allies and advisers’ are. Let’s see if you can guess: I’ll give you 30 seconds..

Hey, Maybe My Suggestion To Have Parties Trade Out Their Worst and Dumbest Can Work After All!

Yesterday, both slimeball Democrat Eric Swalwell and scumbucket GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress as they were about to be investigated for serious sexual misconduct. This was a net win for both parties, Congress, democracy, the public trust and the United States of America.

A few times in the past I have expressed longing for an arrangement that allowed Democrats and Republicans to purge their parties of the worst of the worst by engineering similar trades: “We’ll join you in voting to expel this incompetent asshole if you’ll join us in voting to expel one of yours whom you know is just as bad!”

Matched pairs..

  • Rep. Lauren Bobert and Rep. Ted Lieu
  • Rep. Nancy Mace and Rep. Jamie Raskin
  • Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen. Dick Durbin
  • Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Adam Schiff
  • Sen. Tommy Tuberville and, of course, Sen. Mazie Hirono

You get the idea. The problem is that such a system would take a Constitutional amendment, and that’s not happening, each party would try to get rid of its moderates (Democrats would love to trade away Sen. Fetterman), and, as I see it, horrible Democrats outnumber horrible Republicans right now by about 4-1. Yes, and it’s a slippery slope that both parties would try to manipulate for their own narrow advantage.

It’s not happening. But I can dream, can’t I? Meanwhile, getting rid of both Gonzalez and Swalwell is good for everyone, and we should just enjoy our good fortune.

PS. An AI bias note: I asked Google to identify the dumbest and worst GOP members of Congress, and a list popped right up from Google’s bot. When I asked the exact same question but replaced GOP with Democratic Party, the reply began, “Determining the “dumbest” members of Congress is subjective, as such labels are often based on political opinions, gaffes, or partisan criticism rather than objective measures of intelligence.”

It Looks Like The Biden Administration May Have Killed My Wife…

I feel like Mrs. Kintner in “Jaws.”

A Senate investigation confirms that Biden administration officials at the FDA and CDC knew about a significant stroke risk tied to Pfizer’s bivalent Wuhan virus booster in people over 65. They decided not to let the public know about it….might make them hesitant to get the shot, after all. Can’t have that!

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent a formal notification letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. along with about 2,000 pages of federal documents. “I am sharing my preliminary findings to provide HHS and the public with even more evidence of the Biden administration’s unsupported and unyielding devotion to a harmful vaccine at the expense of the public’s health,” Rep. Johnson begins.

The letter goes on to described how as early as Nov. 2022, the vaccine safety surveillance systems operated by Biden health officials began detecting statistically significant evidence of “ischemic stroke among individuals age 65 and older following injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 bivalent booster.” They did not issue a formal warning to the public. Instead, the Biden White House and HHS pushed to “increase uptake of the booster” for people 65 years and older. In Jan. 2023, a draft Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “communications plan” emphasized the Biden administration’s intention to “increase uptake of the booster.” White House edits buried the significance of the safety signal, for example, changing a sentence that stated that the “signal is moderately elevated” to the “signal is slightly elevated.”

Even as a safety surveillance system continued to detect a statistically significant safety signal for ischemic stroke, Biden health officials posted on the FDA website that “no change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice.”  While Biden health officials continued to let the public believe the vaccine was safe, they initiated multiple studies and statistical analyses including a “Stroke Project” to investigate whether the vaccines really were safe for the population at risk, and the investigations continued through at least September 2025. 

Some Ethics Comments on “Exit Taxes”

1. Neither Tony nor Fox News had the wit or knowledge to point out what should be obvious. They are not reporting adequately by doing so, which requires they explain that…

2. …a tax on leaving a state is unequivocally, undeniably, spectacularly unconstitutional. There is no counter argument.

3. Why, then, are ten states reportedly considering such taxes, which infringe of the right to travel as well as the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Because they are all Democratic Party dominated states, and that party doesn’t believe in the Constitution or the Declaration of Interdependence.

4. I know I’m repeating myself, but this is the party that claimed to be protecting democracy in 2024. No party that really believes in democracy would ever even consider an “exit tax.” The Left unmasks itself with proposals like this.

Why can’t everyone see….

….the ugliness beneath?

This Is What I Have To Put Up With On The National Legal Ethics Lawyers’ Listserv…

What does that tell us? Look: this was posted today on the Association for Professional Responsibility Lawyers’ listserv:

“I am being objective here, so please no backlash. I am wondering if a lawyer would get in trouble for urging others to oust a President who acts extremely erratically.  I am speaking specifically about Trump posting a picture of himself as Jesus and then saying he was doing it as a “doctor.” Even if the President was a Democrat this would appear to be behavior that might indicate dementia. The political party is unimportant.  Would it be “frivilous” under the Rules – the President is still showing up for work. His doctors say he is fine. But that is early Alzheimer’s behavior, isn’t it?  If this is going to make people angry because I asked then forgive me as that is not my intent.”

The writer is a law school professor and practicing lawyer as well as an author of several legal ethics textbooks. The author of that post is also on two current high commissions to review and reform the rules governing lawyer conduct.

Briefly Noted….

Note: Every one of them is a moron.

It is a breach of civic duty to be this ignorant of history and reality and to spout off on social media while cheering on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel news media. In other words, unethical and inexcusable.

Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Headline…

Analysis: Failed peace talks leave Trump with few options to end Iran conflict

That’s CNN.

Note the emphasis. This is Trump’s failure. The near universal framing of the Iran campaign is that the United States is losing, somehow, and it is Iran that has the U.S. at its mercy—you know, like the iconic Black Knight above from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail who insists that he is winning despite losing his arms and legs.

You see, the side that is being throttled in a war is the one with “few options,” and the collapse of peace talks are primarily a problem for the side that is losing. Ending the war is primarily in the best interests of Iran and its people. The anti-U.S., anti-Trump propaganda being spewed by the Axis news media in their reporting on the Iran war may be the most flagrant and unforgivable yet: it isn’t just Trump that they are hurting, or Republicans. They are deliberately harming our nation while giving Iran motivation to stall as long as possible.

Next, we will be reading “Poor Iranians” essays like the Times lament for Gazans. Our news media’s objective appears to be national euthanasia.

Ugh…So The President Attacks The Pope! The Two Diagrams Trump Doesn’t Understand…

This is ridiculous.

The President took to social media again yesterday to announce that he doesn’t like the Pope:

What an irredeemably stupid thing to do.

A Few Notes About Banned Commenters…

1. Good, I’m glad they are gone.

2. The latest bannee, “Jude” managed to get me to respond to a couple of unauthorized comments post-banning. (This is because he wasn’t around long enough for me to remember his name.) In the unauthorized comments, since sent to spam hell, he illustrated the basis for his banishment by stating, with absolute certainly, that the experience I described here was triggered by a scam, and that I made a dumb mistake by calling both the collection agency (a law firm) and the company that had mistakenly charged me. I had been phished, Jude the Obscure Asshole insisted. No, I replied, I had not been phished, and I have sufficient experience with such things to have checked. Jude just arrogantly insisted that he was right and I was wrong, without any of the information I had that he did not.

I just received an email from AfterPay USA. It reads,

“Hi Jack, Thank you for your patience regarding your ID Theft Claim – Disputed Liability with respect to Afterpay account 10082791185.
Afterpay has concluded our investigation and your ID Theft claim has been accepted. You will not be held liable for Afterpay account 10082791185 or any debt incurred from this account.

What does this mean?

  • Afterpay Account 10082791185 has now been closed. 

Thank you,

Vivien
Global Fraud Senior Specialist

I was right. Jude was wrong. So Jude can bite me.