Good morning!
Yesterday I had completed a 3-hour Ethics CLE program for a distinguish national law firm’s D.C. office, aided by my sister, retired justice Dept. and HHS attorney Edith Marshall. (This time, her role was to lead the attendees in the chorus section of my legal ethics parody of “Trouble in River City” from “The Music Man.”) I knew that I should have gotten some posts done when I returned, but a) I was exhausted and b) there were two Game Five play-off games to watch. Sometimes, baseball comes first. Priorities! Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals for an upset win over the Braves, whose horrible fate of giving up ten runs in the first inning I wouldn’t even wish on the Yankees. Imagine knowing you have lost before your team even gets up to bat, and that you’re in front of the home team fans who will have to suffer through three hours of slow, inevitable humiliation. Ugh. The Braves lost with as much dignity as possible in such a hopeless situation. And congratulations to the resurgent Washington Nationals, who came back from a late deficit to tie the game in the eighth, and then won on a grand slam in the tenth. They are now headed to the seven game play-off to determine who represents the NL in the World Series, the first time a Washington, D.C. team has been this close since 1933. D.C. really needed this.
1. Should it matter? Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Ilhan Omar, she of “The Squad” fame (or infamy) has filed for divorce from husband Ahmed Hirsi, whom she only married last year, though he is the father of her three children. Omar’s petition for dissolution of her marriage has been posted online here. Our sole Somali Muslim House member previously was married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who appears to be her brother and whom she married to perpetrate a citizenship fraud in 2009. Omar legally dissolved that marriage in 2017. There appears to have been a period where she was married to both men. Omar has never given a straightforward explanation for her tangled domestic affairs.
Should any of this matter? These things really do constitute “personal, private conduct,” unlike the workplace misconduct that the enablers of Bill Clinton tried to defend by using that term. If Omar did perpetrate a fraud, however, or was married to two husbands, those are very relevant to her fitness to serve as a law-maker.
2. Of course Warren’s digging in. She’s a shameless liar and a demagogue. Democratic presidential candidate and, some say, front-runner Elizabeth Warren is doubling down on her debunked story that she was fired from her teaching job for being “visibly pregnant.” Video evidence and school records indicate otherwise, but this is the same tactical path she trod when her fake Cherokee credentials were called into question. Warren is devotee of the Clintons’ “deny, deny, deny” methodology when caught red-handed, or, in Warren’s case regarding her Native American lie, non-red-handed. [Eh, the joke was there for the picking. Had to take it…]
In an interview with CBS News this week, Warren said, “All I know is I was 22-years- old, I was six months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else. The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job.” That spin is now a standard part of her stump speech.Yet a video that had been posted to YouTube in 2008 shows Warren explaining that her decision to leave teaching was hers alone. When asked about this contradiction this week, Warren explained, “After becoming a public figure I opened up more about different pieces in my life and this was one of them.” That does not explain why documents from the local Board of Education where she taught showed that her contract had been renewed, but that she resigned two months later. “The resignation of Mrs. Elizabeth Warren, speech correctionist, effective June 30, 1971 was accepted with regret,” the June 16, 1971, minutes read.
Warren concedes she was officially offered the position for the following year. but claims that up until then she was hiding her pregnancy. Once she could no longer hide it, she said she was “shown the door.” Yet according to CBS News, “Two retired teachers who worked at Riverdale Elementary for over 30 years, including the year Warren was there said that they don’t remember anyone being explicitly fired due to pregnancy during their time at the school.”
3. Not Right, not Left, just stupid. The City of Portland has banned urinals in the $195 million remodeling of the Portland Building, which houses administrative offices for the city. While urinals use less water than toilets,Portland sees them as a bigoted relic of an oppressive era. Or somethings:
A spokeswoman told NBC affiliate KGW News that she could not estimate how much it will cost to remove the urinals, which have been a feature of the building since its construction in 1982.
Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart explained the urinal ban in an email to employees last February.
“We will continue to have gender-specific (male and female) multi-stall restrooms that are readily available to any employee that prefers to use one. But, there will be no urinals in any restroom in the building. This will give us the flexibility we need for any future changes in signage,” he wrote.
4. Whose statement is more unethical? Oh, Hillary wins this one hands down. President Trump’s entry was this tweet, another now nauseatingly familiar, petty, un-Presidential trolling exercise:
Would Trump love to see Clinton mess up the Democratic Presidential sweepstakes even more than it already is? Sure he would. Hillary naturally rose to the bait, telling PBS’s Judy Woodruff,
“You know, it truly is remarkable how obsessed he remains with me. But this latest tweet is so typical of him. Nothing has been more examined and looked at than my e-mails. We all know that. So he’s either lying or delusional, or both. There was no subpoena, as he says in a tweet this morning. So maybe there does need to be a rematch. Obviously, I can beat him again.”
Right.
First, her emails haven’t been examined and looked at, since Clinton did indeed make certain that 30,000 of them disappeared. Second, even as the Washington Post’s ‘factcheck” tried to spin for her, it had to admit that the emails had been subpoenaed before she had them destroyed. Third, a similar sequence of events in a looming law suit or criminal investigation would be treated as spoliation, the illegal destruction of evidence.
Finally, Hillary did not “beat” Trump in the election. He beat her, by the rules of the election process, as established by the U.S. Constitution. She’s appealing to bias and ignorance.
As usual.
Ethics Alarms 
1. Immigration fraud? That’s not significant?
2. Elizabeth Warren, speech correctionist. At first I thought someone writing the minutes was being flippant. How apt. Speech correctionist indeed. She doesn’t have to hire a consultant. She does her speech correctioning her own self.
#3–Reminds me of the Swedish Feminista Movement against Patriarchal Promoted Pissing, and where they’re even been indoctrinating nursery youth: “Be a Sweetie and Take a Seatie.”
Glass half full?
Inspiring the (IMO) GREAT headline: I’m Taking A Stand Against Peeing Sitting Down
I am understanding why so many men tolerated the Republic of Gilead.
Yay baseball!
Boo politics!
Politics aside, Rep. Omar is still stunningly untrustworthy.
Liz Warren’s entire public facing life is more fiction than fact.
Piss on Portland…any way you like.
Could Hillary be more disgusting? When speaking about Hillary’s campaign, I usually refer to her as that thing the Democrat part ran for President. She can’t even admit she lost…now who is obsessed?
The mighty Dodgers have fallen to the Nats? Caramba! Poor Clayton Kershaw. Why do managers use starters on short rest and as relievers in the playoffs? What are they thinking? “Oh, anybody can be a reliever. No problem. Here’s the ball big guy. Go get ’em.”
In regards to Omar…
Yes it matters; these things reflect her personal character which is relevant.
Very true. There are three things in that that are illegal if she actually did these things. First in the United States it’s illegal to marry your brother. Second, it’s illegal to commit fraud to obtain citizenship in the United States. Third, it’s illegal to be married to two people at the same time in the United States.
Since it includes the very possibility of fraudulently obtaining a United States citizenship, the FBI should be investigating this.
If all these things are true, Omar should be expelled from Congress, prosecuted and thrown in prison and then when she is released someday she should be permanently deported from the United States of America.
I think the fraud was regrading UK citizenship, not US. Not 100% sure on that.
Isn’t the fraud that after divorcing her husband she married her brother to get him into the U.S. and a green card (or whatever) and then remarried her husband, whom she is now divorcing. It’s hard to tell the players without a program.
This sort of thing is the national sport in African nations. Defrauding the government is considered admirable there. It’s called “getting over.” In African nations, the government is just a big pot of money to be siphoned off by the clever ones. It’s great fun. Kind of like clubbing a pinata. People don’t change their stripes just because they cross a border or an ocean. Diversity is not our strength. It can actually weaken our social fabric. This woman is a menace. She lies as effortlessly as a rug.
Regarding #3, a building on my old campus has urinals in both the men’s and women’s rooms.
Apparently circa-1950/60, urinals for women were a thing (skirts/dresses were highly recommended….).
An idea: Let’s just put shitholes in our bathrooms. Just holes in the floor. You can squat or stand or do whatever you want. A la turk. Who needs any porcelain? That’s progress.
Good morning, all. Texas is about to get the first real cold front of the season (finally) so my mood is looking up. Love my state, but it has been HOT here this summer.
1. Omar is corrupt, the product of a corrupt society (possibly one of those much ballyhooed shitholes?) That she mocks the laws of a nation that made her what she is, instead of a slave in her own household (or dead, since she can never shut up) should surprise no one.
Might as well blame Trump, though. Everyone in the media will.
2. Warren is unelectable. The Democrats know this. They just cannot find the brakes on this runaway train, and they SEE that the bridge is out. Trump will eat her lunch with her proven lies in any debate. I bet she won’t step on the stage with him, though, with some remark (‘ala the Ellen critics) about not being seen in the same room with a (fill in whatever slanderous name is in vogue at that time here) and thus there will be no debate.
3. How, exactly, does it make any sense to remove urinals if your bathrooms are non gender specific? If you don’t want those without a penis (or who think they are without, or just ‘feel pretty’ in the moment) to not see one, why not just enclose the urinals in a stall? Men will NOT sit down to pee, and this will result in the public toilets being disgusting due to ‘imprecise marksmanship.’ Next will come laws to FORCE men to pee sitting down. With cameras to catch offenders… or just remove the privacy stalls and rely on wokescolds to report offenders.
Progressives don’t care. This is about making men, once again, the villains of the progressive’s little kabuki theater, so actual public hygiene, personal preferences in exposure to genitalia, and protecting children will go out the window in favor of virtue signalling. Portland voted this bed into office: live with it.
Elections have consequences. Who knew those consequences meant everyone being expected to sit down to urinate?
4. Hillary is the best candidate to rout Warren… and she is unelectable as well. She won’t debate Trump using the dodge described above. Or again, maybe she has to debate? Hillary HAS to been seen ‘standing up to Hitler’ or risk looking weak. So maybe there WILL be a debate?
This time, maybe Trump can demand HE be given the questions in advance, in the name of fair play.
Omar is corrupt, the product of a corrupt society
Perhaps, but it seems to me that in myriad ways — ways to numerous to list — the entire US nation is mired in what I would dramatically call *profound corruption*. What is happening — and it is interesting while also tragic to watch — is that it is all catching up. It is fermenting and maturing in bizarre ways, but in dumbed-down America (one other result from essential corruption, the corruption of education-systems and indeed the proper standards necessary) there is no one home who can understand causation.
When the body begins to rot, each cell lights up with putrescent and furious activity. The larger entity is moribund but at a cellular level things literally light up. I just realized another term for ‘dumbing-down’ is intellectual inanition.
Warren is unelectable. The Democrats know this. They just cannot find the brakes on this runaway train, and they SEE that the bridge is out.
To say ‘the democrats’ really must be an insufficient term for the ‘power-structure’. Though I do not profess to understand it, there is a tremendous dissension within ‘the halls of power’ and within those halls, and especially within the intelligence branch of para-government, they appear to be rallying into action. I assume that for you and for many of the *faithful* who write here, that the corruption of the American intelligence agencies, and their usurpation of power, is a new idea? Wasn’t it Malcolm X who said when Kennedy was assassinated that ‘the chickens have come home to roost’?
What he meant (if I understand correctly) is the same para-military operatives that assassinated key people in various foreign CIA operations . . . had come back to carry out the same sort of operations within America. This points to ‘shadow government’ and ‘para-military power’.
So, if the conversation is really going to be about *corruption* a full conversation about causes and causation needs to be opened up.
It really is true though: every day, especially I notice in the Times, they seem to be cranking up the hysterical tension.
Elections have consequences. Who knew those consequences meant everyone being expected to sit down to urinate?
If it is turned into a question I think it becomes more potential. So: What are the consequences of what is happening, now and today, in America? Where is this going? How does this connect to larger events and developments at a world-level? But to answer that question one has to be clear about the causal chain that got us here. What has happened in America that has brought this into the foreground? Those are demanding questions that require historical analysis of the first order. Where is that *historian* who will lay it out to be seen and understood?
Hillary is the best candidate to rout Warren
OMG, that would be soooooo cool if she got into the fray!
Sounds like just another day in Clown World!
*HONK* *HONK*
Hey! get off the sidewalk . . . 😉
#2 The good-ole-boys club of angry old privileged white man that is Biden’s candidacy is sinking and will likely be on life support in a few months. Warren simply can’t stop herself from being caught openly lying and it will sink her candidacy because she will not be electable as President, she has too much baggage; Warren will fade slowly. Bernie Sanders is done, he is not electable. That leaves Kamala Harris in a really nice sweet spot to walk straight into the Democratic Convention in Milwaukee as the front runner and accept the nomination.
Expect to hear a very well prepared speech from Stacey Abrams talking about voting rights and public integrity at the Democratic convention, this will be setting up the voter suppression conspiracy arguments for the 2020 election.
My prediction, however naive it may be, is that the Democratic Party Presidential ticket will be Harris/Abrams and that ticket will be fully supported by the Obama’s with Michelle Obama stumping for the ticket as soon as the convention is over.
I could be wrong.
One problem…. Who’s Harris?
I wish I were completely kidding, but can’t keep track of which fatal flaw dooms which candidate anymore; after Biden, Sanders, and Warren, it quickly becomes an undifferentiated blur.(meant to be tag)
Willie Brown’s longtime but now former girlfriend.
I think it will be either Warren/Abrams or Harris/Abrams. Either ticket will have the Obamas stumping for them, mostly to a crushing defeat. Warren is not liked by the rubes in Middle America and Harris just seams to bend with the prevailing winds. If the economy stays strong, Trump wins.
jvb
I don’t think you are. I’ve been predicting Harris as the nominee(she’ll be the first black female President, don’t Cha Know?) for some time. Don’t know about her running mate. Abrams is as good a guess as any, but don’t count Michelle out, either.
Stacey Abrams? Surely they jest. An angry, single issue candidate? That issue being she had an election stolen from her?
By 50,000 votes. She has yet to concede the election and insists the current governor is illegitimate. She should be Hillary’s VP running mate. They could both use the same stump speech: “I was robbed!”
*tinfoil hat on*
Obama won’t endorse Biden, so…is he keeping the door open for Michelle?
She’d have one of the major advantages that her husband had: that of no one knowing where she stands on dozens of controversial issues which she won’t be asked about.
Re: No. 3: Potty Parity.
“Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart explained the urinal ban in an email to employees last February.
‘ . . . But, there will be no urinals in any restroom in the building. This will give us the flexibility we need for any future changes in signage.'”
Why does this statement cause the hair on my head (what’s left of it, anyway) to stand up straight? What could that mean?
jvb
Good catch, John. What is that guy thinking and saying?
He’s saying that they will eventually make all the bathrooms an un-gendered free-for-all, because that’s what the current “woke” theory of gender requires. Sorry about your privacy and comfort, ladies, but a very tiny, incredibly loud minority of activists is running the show, and you *will* eventually be forced to share a bathroom with dudes whether you like it or not. (Spoiler: you won’t like it.)
”Warren is not liked by the rubes in Middle America”
If THAT were the only thing she needed to worry about.
Wall Street Democratic Donors Warn Party: We’ll Sit Out, Or Back Trump, If You Nominate Elizabeth Warren
Yep. She told them she was going to garrote them. Why would she think they would sit back and take it?
jvb
Going full Eeyore: I predict that the Tampa Rays will beat the Houston Astros tonight and advance to the ALCS against the Yankees. (not my desire, but my pessimistic prediction)
WHY would I, a close follower of the Astros since they changed owners a few years back, make such a prediction?
Simple: Except for the Yankees’ sweep of the Twins, EVERY TEAM that has won in the MLB playoffs thus far has been the underdog. Yesterday’s results in the Braves-Cardinals and Dodgers-Nats fifth games further leave me quite comfortable with resting my case.
Sorry, Stros. I love you guys, but, this isn’t going to be your year – or your night.
2. Thin Lizzy is scarcely a pale shadow of Hillar. (which makes for a real riddle – which one is a worse candidate for POTUS?)
3. Piss on Portland. Standing.
Boy, I hope you’re wrong.
So do I, but everybody already knows that.
I am happy to have been wrong.
But I wouldn’t want to have to get past the Yankees to get to the World Series.
Check the record, lucky. The Stros have played the (raspberry) Yanks several times this year, both at home and in Yankeeland.
Since the Yankee success this season defies logic and normal analysis—they hit over 300 home runs with their top two sluggers hitting more than 30 fewer than projected; their starting pitching was better than expected despite losing their ace for virtually the whole season, etc.—there’s no way to predict how they will do against the Astros. The Astros had a slightly better record but play in a much weaker division. But they had a lot of injuries too. I’ll pick the “Stros” in 6, but I’m not confident about it.
Yeah, this is going to be a long series for me.
3. Just an anecdote: I accidentally walked into what was marked as a women’s restroom in the Van Gogh museum Amsterdam while not paying sufficient attention to the signage. I thought it a bit odd that there were only women and girls in there, but not too much, since some of their facilities are unisex, and have only stalls with to-the-floor doors and partitions, as did this one. No one objected or seemed to even pay much attention to my gaff.
4. It’s still annoying how often we still hear the “Hillary won the popular vote (or election)” lie. She did not get over 50% of the votes cast, so she did not “win” the popular vote by any normal understanding of the word. Even putting aside the electoral college consideration, there would have to have been another set of rules in place, such as allowing a certain plurality to count as a win, for her to make that claim. To make it worse (for her), Republicans + Libertarians out-polled democrats + Greens (though not by much), so if anything could have been inferred from that, it was a preference for the right over the left
I thought Hillary was given a heads up that a subpoena was coming, giving her time to destroy anything incriminating. Which of course, if true, is actually much worse.
Stipulated: The marriage circumstances and overlapping marriage/divorce dates are awkward and suspicious.
However, the claim that she married her brother seems to stem entirely from a post where the ex-husband referred to Omar’s children as “his nieces and nephews”. I don’t find this convincing. I am friends with two ex’s, and their children call me Uncle “Rich”.
If Omar married a long time friend, and the marriage ended under unfortunate but not malicious terms, there is nothing inconsistent with her children using the avuncular honorific for her ex-husband. Since all three apparently lived in the same house at one time, using such an honorific would almost be necessary for basic household order. The children need to refer to the temporary household member by something
Incidentally, this situation actually exists in my friend group, a married friend currently lives with both her husband and ex-boyfriend. When they originally broke up, he didn’t move out immediately because it was amicable and Boston was too expensive for either to live on their own. (Now that one remarried, he is seeking new accommodations, but neither side is in a terrible rush because Boston is just that expensive).
Hell, I even know someone else who got “married” in a non-legal ceremony, and then married someone else “for reals” a few months later.
Omar is relatively young, and could easily been sucked into such a comical situation (fit for a situational comedy, even). I’ve seen these situations in my own life.If neither is not her brother, there is really not much she can say other than he isn’t. Given the evidence, I am not convinced on this aspect.