Good morning!
I’m hoping that I can get back on a more regular schedule soon, and I want to express me thanks for everyone’s patience with the unexplained gaps in commentary and the “warm-ups” that have been turning up ad odd hours of the night.
1. Ethics Alarms defamation suit update! The banned Ethics Alarms commenter whose feelings I hurt received notice that his appeal of the trial judge’s rejection of his absurd defamation claims was rejected, as was his motion to file a non-conforning brief, and his motion for sanctions against me as a Massachusetts lawyer. Within minutes he had filed a motion for reconsideration. This, of course, requires me to file a response. It is vengeance by pro se abuse, of course, and wildly unethical, but I assumed this was what I was in for.
2. More “Welcome to my world!” notes. A Democratic candidate for Congress in Michigan whom I referenced as an aside in this post in June about one of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s dumb tweets invaded my in-box last night to ask that I take down the post, saying in part,
I am sending this email to you to formally request that you remove my name from this website. As you are aware AOC has received a number of death threats. I am a candidate running for Congress in Michigan and I recently had someone shoot a bullet through the window of our headquarters. We are in the process of getting security however your decision to place my name on a website with someone who is constantly in danger [is] extremely dangerous to my safety and the safety of others. I have contacted the police & I am also in the process of contacting the FBI. I will be certain to point out your website.
To which I said, in essence, “Bring it on.” I don’t respond well to threats, especially stupid ones. This party really does have a problem with free speech, doesn’t it?
3. Here’s why I don’t belong to the American Bar Association…President Trump’s Ninth Circuit judicial nominee Lawrence VanDyke was called arrogant, lazy, ideological and an anti-LGBTQ bigot in the American Bar Association’s official evaluation of his qualifications for the post. This was based on accusations against the nominee from unnamed associates, sniping at him from the shadows of anonymity.
“Absolutely outrageous and couldn’t be further from the truth,” protested Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. VanDyke served as state solicitor general under Laxalt, Others interviewed by the ABA for the reports said that their positive recommendations were greeted with perfunctory indifference by ABA personnel. Joseph Tartakovsky, Nevada deputy solicitor general for three years under VanDyke, said his ABA phone interview lasted seven minutes at most, during which “it was clear to me that she was going through the motions.” Tartakovsky said he was “surprised and dismayed” when he read the ABA’s critical letter, as he gave VanDyke a strong recommendation, saying he was an “exceptional lawyer” and “born to be a judge.”
I don’t know anything about VanDyke, who could be a legal genius or a judicial hack. I do know the American Bar Association has long been dominated by Democrats and progressives, and is among the many professional associations that has disgraced itself and its members by tacitly allying itself with the “resistance.” The ABA has been incapable of objective assessments of the qualifications of judicial nominees for decades, and should not be trusted with the assignment.
4. Facebook ethics, or what passes for them. Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg upset his troops when he announced that his social media platform would not fact-check political ads and censor them for being “false.” Facebook had been using the biased and untrustworthy PolitiFact and Snopes as fact-checkers, so obviously his was the right decision. His minions, however, have been vocal in dissent, even recruiting Hollywood Hard-Lefty Aaron Sorkin to write an “Open Letter” of protest.
I obviously have some experience with Facebook’s objectivity in deciding what information should be published or not, since Ethics Alarms has been banned from the site without any explanation. These people can’t distinguish “facts’ from opinions they don’t like, especially when the opinions contradict the agendas of the Axis of Unethical Conduct (Democrats, “the resistance,” and the mainstream media). Sorkin claims that he fears for children believing that “Kamala Harris ran dog fights out of the basement of a pizza place while Elizabeth Warren destroyed evidence that climate change is a hoax and the deep state sold meth to Rashida Tlaib and Colin Kaepernick.” but the sooner kids learn how to sniff out garbage, the more competent adults they will be. Who is Sorkin kidding? He knows it isn’t the crazy stuff he wants Facebook to smother: he doesn’t want ads that argue that Democrats have been trying to overthrow a President without winning an election, because when you are conducting a disinformation campaign you don’t want any opposition.
Ethics Alarms 
Emily Rafi is an idiot. Vote for her opponents! (You should make that your Carthago delenda est. Heck, post flyers in her district.)
Like “It’s OK to be Emily Rafi”?
It’s OK to be an idiot. Vote Emily Rafi in 2020!
Did she actually confess to having someone shoot a bullet through her headquarters window.
“I recently had someone shoot a bullet through our campaign headquarters”
Seems to me anyone that stupid should not run for Congress.
I recently had someone misunderstand the passive voice. I guess I am confessing to grammar sins. 🤷♂️
Passive voice is not a sin because it can be used for rhetorical purposes.
To actually send a demand letter which states she herself orchestrated the shooting is beyond stupid.
You have no idea. I didn’t explain the most stupid part of our disagreement, because I’m a nice guy.
On the other hand,Chris, she would fit right in.
Emily Rafi obviously doesn’t understand what it means to herself in the public square. Is threatening people with violence wrong? Of course. Yet she, and other members of her party, seem to think that they are super special and should never face any opposition. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Note the Democrat support for Antifa, the most violent hate group in America today.
So, she’s running for Congress, but wants to remain anonymous? Or is it only websites that have critical, unflattering things to say about her that she wants censored? Or does she simply not want to be associated with the more radical, stupider members of her party?
Sorry, Ms. Rafi, but you put yourself in the public eye. Toughen up or give up the campaign.
“Toughen up AND give up the campaign.”
Friends don’t let friends run as Democrats!
Harsh, but fair.
and funny.
Has anyone noticed that wanting to impeach President Trump, for threatening to withhold foreign aid, to convince the Ukraine to reopen a criminal investigation, is so much like indicting Governor Rick Perry for vetoing a bil because Rosemary Lehmberg refused to resign?
I have to admit that I take small, petty, sick enjoyment out of checking on W’s website every now and again and reading his annotated uploads. I’m sorry you’re going through this, and I’m sure it doesn’t feel this way to you, but his parentheticals are comedy gold.
Yeah, I don’t visit his website, and haven’t since I discovered that his interest in “Judicial Misconduct” was a ply to get me to help him smear a judge. The lonely pro se is a tragic phenomenon, and I actually have felt sorry for the guy since witnessing his Captain Queeg act in court.
If that’s true, you actually might want to.
You probably don’t need anything more than you have to succeed on the appeal of the appeal of your motion to dismiss, but I’m sure that some of the stuff he’s posted is self-implicatory.
2. In which the Democrat Party continues to hate free speech.
Problem? Well, they want to say when it is allowed and when it is not, so yeah, I’d say that was a problem.
You should publish a photo of the entire email. People who are deliberately trying to violate your constitutional rights have no right an expectation of privacy for such a communication.
3. ABA
You are in good company. Upon hearing about what you wrote about, Randy Barnett, Georgetown law professor and longtime Volokh Conspiracy member, just canceled his ABA membership over that unethical ABA rating for Van Dyke.
4. Sorkin is like the rest of the Left — censorship of opinions they dislike is very high on their priority list, along with repealing or radically revising the 2nd, 6th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.
2. Eric Ciaramella. There. The censored “whistleblower’s” name, on strong evidence. I view the Democrats’ (and media’s) withholding of the man’s name from public disclosure as evidence of obstruction of justice, and of conspiracy to perpetrate the same.
This article covers the mole and his tracks pretty well:
https://heavy.com/news/2019/10/eric-ciaramella/
Terrific article.
Jack
The op ed writer named anonymous will have a book published with the same title soon.
How in the hell can a publisher make the claim the book is non-fiction without risking a fraud charge at some point? For the life of me I cannot understand how an author can claim to be a senior staff member within the White House without proof. More importantly, why the cloak and dagger when whistleblower protections would provide the veil of anonymity if the writer claims to be a patriot in service of the country. This book to me proves the existance of the coup.
#4 really bugs me.
Has anyone here been to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London?
It is a wonderfully democratic free speech in the heart of London. You can go listen to any different kind of nuts get on their soapbox and pontificate on whatever they want.
That is apparently what Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be: a completely unrestrained market of speech.
His critics? Idiots. Their supporters? Useful idiots.
They want things fact-checked. They don’t want lies by politicians to get on Facebook.
Fools! They know not what they do.
They don’t know what facts are.
Progressives I know on Facebook expressed joy because Warren’s Medicare for All will pay for itself without raising taxes on the middle class.
Is that a fact? Is that true?
Of course it isn’t! It is a prediction. It is NOT a fact, whether or not it turns out to be true in the future.
Any global warming prediction? No.
If you like your doctor…no!
Read my lips, no new…no!
I did not have sex with that woman…okay, that was untrue.
So much of what politicians do is that they make promises. Those are not facts!
I don’t trust Facebook to understand what is a fact and what is not. The press can’t figure this out; I don’t think techies are much smarter.
Yet, whether he is smarter than them or not, Zuckerberg does not want to do that.
Oh my gosh! How could I miss it? Any poll on primary or presidential election would have to be blocked by Facebook.
-Jut