Stipulated: I have no idea how many people were interviewed to compile that selection of angry protesters unable to articulate what they were angry about. In my experience, however, it wouldn’t have taken many. At least the guy who defaults to Trump’s penchant for putting his personal brand on things has a point, but if that’s the first thing that comes to mind, the required retort is “Seriously? That’s what you’re out here demonstrating against? The name on the Kennedy Center?”
I wish there were more answers to work with. At least they would form the foundation for discussion. As with the previous post about people who criticize Supreme Court decisions without reading them, I believe it is incontrovertible that if one is determined to protest in public, one must be capable of articulating what is such a substantial grievance that it justifies doing so.
In the past, I have registered disgust with the New York Times (and others) pushing illegal immigrant/open borders propaganda with features highlighting “good” illegals who are allegedly selfless, hard-working, honorable, long-time residents whose only transgression is that they have no business living here in the first place. Ethically, being in the U.S. legally is a condition precedent to my venturing any sympathy for someone facing deportation.
The saga of two teenage brothers from the Republic of Congo who have fallen into I.C.E.’s clutches, however, is different.
Israel Makoka, 18, and Max Makoka, 15, entered the United States legally on F-1 student visas. They were to attend the Piney Woods School, a “historically Black boarding institution” (whatever that is). The brothers weren’t comfortable at Piney Woods so they transferred to a public school in their host family’s neighborhood, Hancock High, in August of last year. A lawyer advised their host family to become their legal guardians so that they could remain in the country, and a judge granted the family’s guardianship request.
No one warned the family that the transfer to a public school would affect the brothers’ immigration status. Nobody knew until the teenagers’ arrest last week that moving from Piney Woods wiped out their legal immigration status. Hancock High is not allowed to host people on student visas, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement got wind of the snafu. The brothers are now facing deportation through, it can be argued, no fault of their own.
The rest of the Times piece is, like all the other “Good Illegal Immigrant” features, full of testimonials about how wonderful the Makokas are. This pattern reminds me of a comic’s routine I heard in which the wit marveled at how the murder victims in all the “Dateline” and “48 Hours” episodes are always described as lighting up every room they enter, being universally loved, and having no flaws or faults. Maybe the brothers are Golden Boys, and maybe not: it doesn’t matter. What matters is justice.
The maxim of the law is that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Mistake of law, however, can be a viable defense. What happened in this case is somewhere between the two, but the youth of these “Good Illegal Immigrants” should, I think, carry the day.
I hope this is recognized as the unintended mess it is, and that I.C.E. gives the Makotas a reprieve.
A very good friend whom I respect tremendously (but who lives in a bubble: he is a theater artist) just posted on Facebook:
“I’m heartsick that the Supreme Court–in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines–has now thoroughly gutted the Voting Rights Act. The right-wing majority has just upended legal provisions that for 60 years have helped ensure that you could not be denied political representation because of your race. Republicans will now be free to gerrymander districts with the intent of minimizing Black representation. It’s a disgraceful decision, undoing one of the major accomplishments of the Civil Rights Era.”
Naturally this standard issue progressive lament received immediate hosannas and replies about evil Republicans and racist SCOTUS Justices. Neither my friend, who is not a lawyer, nor any of the angry commenters had read the opinions in the decisions, and it was obvious from their content. I have read the decision and the opinions in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down a clearly racially motivated Louisiana gerrymander. I also discern that only the dissenters, the Wise Latina, the DEI black female, and the smart lesbian who apparently feels obligated to back her progressive sisters even when they are dead wrong, decided on their position based on ideology and partisan loyalty. The six Justices in the majority decided the case based on the law and reality.
The ignorance and bias of the non-lawyers attacking the decision is depressing. Yes, the Voting Rights Act was one of the major accomplishments of the Civil Rights Era, based on the conditions that prevailed during that era. 1965 was 62 years ago. The civil rights workers who were murdered in Mississippi ( the core of the film “Mississippi Burning”) died in 1964, the year before. To understate the case, Southern states are different now, but Democrats have been using the outdated formulas prescribed in a 1965 law to justify anti-white racial discrimination to this day.
In the majority opinion, Justice Alito correctly wrote,
“The question before us now is whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be added to our very short list of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimination. To answer that question, we must understand exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands with respect to the drawing of legislative districts…. §2 imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race…. In [Rucho], we held that claims of partisan gerrymandering are not justiciable in federal court. The upshot of Rucho was that, as far as federal law is concerned, a state legislature may use partisan advantage as a factor in redistricting. And litigants cannot circumvent that rule by dressing their political-gerrymandering claims in racial garb…. [T]he Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, [so] no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8….”
The whole opinion is worth reading. If one is going to opine publicly about how terrible the decision is, it has to be read: one is ethically obligated to know what the decision was and what the law is supporting it before offering criticism. None of those fuming over the case had read the decision, and neither had my friend. They just listened to MSNOW and read indignant protests by race-hustlers like Barack Obama. They are exactly like George Costanza in a memorable “Seinfeld” episode where he is too lazy to read “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” for his book club so he watches the movie instead. That George! What a lazy idiot. How could he think the movie would be an accurate version of the book?
I asked everyone on the thread whether they had bothered to read what they were condemning and being “heartsick” about. Crickets.
I’m proud to say that Ethics Alarms began identifying Dr. Anthony Fauci as the despicable liar and irresponsible hack that he was and is in December of 2020, during the societal lockdown that wrecked my business, helped kill my wife, hobbled children’s education, destroyed whole industries…well, but it let American elect a senile Democrat as President, so it wasn’t all bad, I guess.
“[L]ying is not an option for someone who has been held up for almost a year as the epitome of an expert representing “science,” who must be believed and slavishly obeyed by policymakers because, after all, scientists only convey cold hard facts. If that’s the basis for your authority, if that’s the reason the news media and the President-elect lecturing us about the virtues of obeying experts and following what the “science” says, no matter how difficult, painful and counter-intuitive it might be, then a high profile expert cannot, must not, and dare not announce later that he withheld facts for our own good. That’s not the role that we have been told anexpert fills. Not telling the public the truth for the greater good is a pubic servant’s tool, and one that is perilous to use at best. We do not expect politicians to always tell us the truth, and we even accept the troubling reality that sometimes they may be right not to tell us the truth. As Pelt, the character played by the late Richard Jordan in “The Hunt for the Red October” says,
“Listen, I’m a politician, which means I’m a cheat and a liar, and when I’m not kissing babies, I’m stealing their lollipops, but it also means that I keep my options open.“
“But scientists, we have been told, over and over again, regarding climate change and the pandemic just to name two of the most egregious examples, aren’t politicians. They deal in facts only. They have no agendas, they aren’t shading or outright hiding the truth to manipulate us. We are told this by people arrogantly treating us like children and fools. Oh, you poor ignorant dolts who a skeptical of what these learned, good men and women know!
“Right. Anthony Fauci, the current symbol of the integrity and reliability of science, lied to the public (and probably to policymakers: who can be sure?) by his own admission.
“He cannot be trusted. He can never be trusted. And, having been held up as the unimpeachable representative of experts and science generally, they can’t be trusted either.”
Well before that post, Ethics Alarms (and many commenters here) had taken the position that the lockdown of the schools and the economy was a near suicidal act made politically unavoidable by the teachers unions, the news media and the “experts” who were, like Fauci, asserting dire consequences as “science” when they were in fact only guesses or worse, deliberate lies to advance a partisan agenda. The mask nearly fell off when the same “experts” that insisted that white people avoid groups larger than five declared that there was an exception for George Floyd mobs because, see, racism is a public health threat.
It was, or should have been, so obvious what was going on, but Fauci played saintly doctor beautifully, bolstered by Axis propaganda like this…
….to crush anyone who pointed out that shutting down the economy and the schools for a virus that was only more dangerous than the flu to people over 65 is insane.
Now, six years after that headline (I have never trusted The Atlantic since, and never will)—too late for all the millions of victims of the pandemic lies and experts malpractice—the walls may finally be closing in on Fauci.
May.
Anthony Fauci’s former adviser David Morens was indicted this week and charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records relating to the origins of the Wuhan virus. He faces up to 51 years in prison. If Morens is guilty so is Fauci, who denied under oath that he funded “gain of function” experiments that modified bat coronaviruses in the same city where the pandemic started. The five-year statute of limitations runs out on May 11.
“99% of this country has no idea who Morens is,” said Oversight Project President Mike Howell after the indictment was announced. “It’s Fauci that they will blame for one of the worst government catastrophes in history in America. And so the test is Fauci. The Morens indictment is great, and we applaud it. But there are a lot of people out there that want to see Fauci held to account for the damage he wrought. [Fauci] lied about one of the most damaging events in American history routinely and was behind a massive coverup of the key factors,” Howell said.
Verdict:true. The Ethics Villain may avoid accountability anyway, because on his final full day in office, President Joe Biden or whoever was operating his auto-pen issued a blanket pardon to Fauci for “any offenses” dating to 2014. After all, it was Fauci’s lockdown (and the questionable election security that it spawned) that made Biden President. A Fauci indictment would neatly set up a judicial determination if the pardon (and others “Biden” issued) is valid.
Again, such a post is signature significance for Trump Derangement. No one who isn’t clinically ill with this cerebral malady would ever post such crypto-libel. It might as well have read “I am not a cannibal” or “I am Marie of Romania.” There is no evidence, none, that Donald Trump is a pedophile, yet the Trump Deranged believe it anyway. What did Donald Trump ever do to justify this delusion? How does beating Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College translate into likely pedophilia?
Now, the long-time friend who posted this today is an actor, and a communist (he’s one of those who says, “Real Communism has never been tried”) but he’s not an idiot. He’s serious and informed. Yet I would no more post a statement on Facebook that is that batty than I would announce that I am the reincarnation of Mae West. My friend only did it, presumably, because he is certain that none of his friends will think less of him for doing so, and that most of them will agree with him.
Ethics question: Should friends let friends make fools of themselves even if most of the people in their bubble don’t realize it? Isn’t this like noticing that a friend has a big piece of spinach on a front tooth? The problem is that someone who posts something this stupid isn’t likely to listen to reason, logic, or rational analysis. Are friends obligated to try to alert friends when they are behaving foolishly in public even though the likely result is losing that friend?
In fact, it’s brilliant, well-deserved, and spot-on. The purpose of trolling Trump-style is to make your opponents, detractors and adversaries start screaming and kicking things. Normally I would say that 1) causing people pain, psychic or otherwise, for no other reason than to do it, is unethical and that 2) for a President of the United States to engage in such conduct is petty, an abuse of position and and beneath him. But the fools, knaves, assholes and clods that make up the Trump Deranged just nearly got the President killed again. This particular trolling post, mocking the “No Kings” idiocy that has polluted the very concept of public demonstrations and protest as free speech, is a wonderful way to respond to those responsible.
To wit..
1 The President comparing himself to the UK’s King Charles brightly illustrates how silly the protest was to begin with. None of the kings extant in the world today, with Charles being the most prominent example, have any real power except for prestige and cultural respect.
2. If Americans and the mews media allowed Trump the formal respect and deference that the English royals receive, our politics, culture and society would be far healthier.
3. The Founders’ concept of our Executive was, in fact, that he have the status of a king but with his powers limited and controlled by two equally powerful government institutions. This is why both John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were shocked when our first President eschewed any of the trappings of royalty.
4. The difference between the conduct of the UK’s King and our President, especially this one, is striking. King Charles, like his mother, rarely allows reporters to shout questions at him, or addresses hostile audiences like Trump was about to do before the shooting started, or will take part in a contentious interview with a journalist as Trump has done many times, most recently with Norah O’Donnell. Framing them both as “kings” neatly points out the distinction. Our king is more accessible, a commoner (one might wish a bit less common) and self-effacing.
5. Real kings, and many of Charles’ predecessors, would execute or imprison critics, especially those as hateful and vicious as those who have taken part in the “No Kings” rallies. President Trump just teases them. That’s the epitome of a beneficent monarch.
6. Ann Althouse this morning chides the White House for, she says, sacrificing integrity (“consistency”) for trolling. Baloney. Trump trolling his undemocratic foes, who do not believe in allowing an elected President to govern, is one constant in his two terms. The post says, in effect, “Nyah, Nyah, Nyah. Nyah! I’m POTUS and you’re not. Bite me!”
Yes, childish, but Trump’s targets are children—worse, really, because children have an excuse for acting immaturely and adults do not. In the context of what he has put up with, it is a restrained, clever, and well-deserved rebuke.
The chart above reflects the results Harvard got from its alums when it asked last month in its alumni magazine what the school should do about its absurd grade inflation, which Ethics Alarms examined here , here, and here.
The red bar shows the percentage of readers who felt that Harvard should “Implement recommendations from a Faculty of Arts and Sciences subcommittee, such as imposing a 20-percent cap on A’s in every class and awarding internal honors based on “average percentile rank” instead of GPA.” In other words, fix the problem. In other words, establish a grading system with some integrity. In other words, ensure that a Harvard College diploma means something other than that a student somehow got admitted to the iconic and supposedly challenging institution.
What should be troubling to Harvard—and us— is that the other options got as much support as they did:
14.1% think that the school should “Grade all classes pass-fail; take A’s out of the equation.” This doesn’t address the problem at all. Harvard doesn’t fail anyone already: it is harder to flunk out of Harvard than almost any U.S. college. The pass-fail option just substitutes one false standard for another.
11.17% chose the “solution” “Nothing; students work hard and it’s unfair to change the rules.” Morons. Who says they “work hard”? Effort doesn’t mean success, achievement or mastery: one can work hard and accomplish nothing. It’s unfair to change what obviously doesn’t work? How does an intelligent, educated person reach that bizarre conclusion? Revelation: over 10% of all Harvard grads are incompetent and irresponsible.
6. 12% voted to “Implement changes, but only if other schools do it too.” Wow. There’s leadership for you. 6.12% of all Harvard grads are apparently weenies.
In related news, the embarrassing Harvard student petition opposing grading reform at Harvard University as “racially harmful” has been removed from Change.org. The petition urged Harvard to abandon the plan limiting top grades because doing so would “mirror and reinforce existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.” I had expressed my dismay at the petition here.
Yes, the Trump DOJ really indicted the Deep State’s scumball ex-FBI Director for his obnoxious Instagram post featuring an anti-Trump seashell message he happened upon on the beach (Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past this guy to arrange the seashells himself and then pretend it was made by someone else, but that is unprovable.)
Trump’s DOJ has unsuccessfully indicted Comey once already. That indictment at least had some law and logic to support it: this one does not. I didn’t think the DOJ and FBI could be so wasteful as to have an ongoing investigation of a seashell formation that has taken eleven months, but to be fair, tracking down all those mollusk witnesses and interviewing them must have been quite a chore.
Last year I wrote, after Comey issued his Instagram post,
“James Comey, the partisan, dishonest, unethical former FBI Director whom Trump was right to fire (but he should have fired him earlier) posted on Instagram, with approval, a message that consisted of the numbers 8647, meaning “rub out the 47th President,” Donald Trump, delineated with sea shells. …
“Nice! It didn’t take long for Comey to realize that this was, to say the least, a tactical error, and he took down the post. In doing so, Comey proved what a mendacious creep he is again by claiming that it never occurred to him that 8647 might be interpreted as a call to have the President of the United States eradicated, offed, murdered, killed…you know assassinated. Never mind that there have been two near misses by the “Kill Trump” club already, that some Democrats and “the resistance” have openly advocated violence, and that for a former head of the FBI to join their ranks is, to put it mildly, unseemly. Comey said he was sorry.
“Not good enough. Not nearly good enough. A former high law enforcement official calling for the assassination of the sitting President is a big deal, attention should be paid, and Comey should suffer more than the indignity of having to channel Emily Litella (“Never mind!”)
“…There is no valid justification for taking criminal action against Comey (who wrote coyly under his shells photo, “Cool shell formation”), but there also is no good reason not to thoroughly humiliate this Ethics Villain either.”
Instead, the crack MAGA lawyers in Trump’s Justice Department decided to thoroughly humiliate themselves instead by using this old, obnoxious, since-deleted Instagram post as the basis for two criminal counts alleging that Comey “ma[d]e a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the States”:
DOJ has to prove under the law that “a reasonable recipient“ of the image of “8647” posted by Comey “who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret” the post “as a serious expression of an intent to do harm” to Trump. It can’t. Among other things, the editing term “86” is ambiguous. Because I have been an editor, I know it means “Kill this section” or “throw away this story.” But even in the editing game, 86 doesn’t literally mean “kill” because you can’t kill something that isn’t alive in the first place. Furthermore, most Americans don’t have a clue that “86” means “eliminate/cut/get rid of/trash, etc.” In fact, the DOJ can’t assume or prove that Comey did, so the “knowingly and willfully” requirement is dead in the water, like the previous inhabitants of those shells.
It’s overkill because the indictment is obviously absurd and you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer, a legal scholar or a beach-comber to figure it out, but Alan Rozenshtein and Ben Wittes at Lawfare—a reliably anti-Trump, Axis-allied site, but that doesn’t mean it is always wrong— examined the legal issues regarding Comey’s post and concluded, “James Comey could have gone a lot stronger than ‘8647’ and still not risked jail.”
Absolutely correct. Taking a picture of an ambiguous message on a beach and calling it “cool” can’t conceivably constitute a “true threat.”
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the U.S. Supreme Court held “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit [a law] to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” A seashell message on a beach complimented by a fired FBI director is likely to incite violence? Come on.
In my continuing quest to identify useful symptoms of Trump Derangement (to shake in the faces of those who deny that there is such a malady, or that it isn’t frighteningly widespread, I found the just-released survey of self-identified Democrats and progressives invaluable. Read it all, but heed particularly one item in the chart above, showing what percentage of this group believes that the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump was a false flag hoax orchestrated by MAGA to create sympathy for Trump ahead of the election.
Almost a fifth, 19% believe this crack-brained theory is definitely true. Another 27% believe this nonsense is “probably true” (despite any evidence whatsoever). That’s almost half, or 46%. I would add to this the 15%, dimwits all, who say they “aren’t sure.” That’s a damning 61% of Democrats and progressives who are so marinated in hate and and bubble-bath that they can’t accept reality.
A man sitting behind Trump was killed by a bullet, and Trump’s ear was grazed. Reviewing what happened at that campaign speech and not concluding that it was an honest-to-Pete assassination attempt and a close call at that constitutes a Bias Makes You Stupid lollapalooza, right up there with thinking the world is flat and dinosaurs didn’t exist. This is signature significance for brain failure, and the name for this variety is “Trump Derangement.” 61% seems a bit small to me, but it’s still damning.
Now it appears that the same 61% (or more) are claiming that last weekend’s attempt to kill the President was also a hoax. From The Hill:
The Philadelphia Phillies (that’s a baseball team, for those of you tragically unschooled in the Great American Pastime) have fired manager Rob Thomson and named former Yankee star and past major league manager Don Mattingly as interim manager.
The Phils are off to a terrible start, especially for a team that has been a World Series contender for four years and was supposed to be one this season. Firing a manager in April, especially a skipper as successful as Thomson has been, is rare indeed, but the Boston Red Sox just did it. Baseball teams are like that: they tend to get caught up in fads. With this firing, many think the New York Mets will follow suit and fire that team’s manager. The Mets, another expected contender with a huge payroll, have been worse than either Boston or Philly. It may also be germane that all three cities are infamous for having impatient and unforgiving fans.
But I digress. Here is the issue: Don Mattingly is an experienced manager and was Thompson’s bench coach, essentially the in-game strategy consultant. He would make perfect sense as Thomson’s replacement, except for one fact…
Mattingly’s son Preston is the Philadelphia Phillies general manager.
That’s Don on the left and Preston on the right above.
Ethics Alarms 