Hellooooo?

Well, I missed the 2-ish deadline, after which only the most dedicated or bored Ethics Alarms readers check in on Saturdays, and the blog is already mired in the predictable holiday slump. My fault. But as Saroyan said, if just one human being sings your song, you haven’t lived in vain…

1. I see that Ann Althouse has a leftist troll. Interesting. Although the Wisconsin law prof blogger is a center-left commentator herself, her commentariat has gradually become almost completely anti-progressive in tone and substance. I see this happening on all the blogs where the predominant and virtually mandatory anti-Trump bias isn’t encouraged or observed. Now she has a recently-pressed commenter named “President Toilet Paper Shoe’s Perfect Phone” who is flooding threads with supercilious attacks on the other commenters and even Ann herself. The comments are obnoxious, abrasive, and smug. Why does Althouse tolerate them, as she is an aggressive moderator? I think she is letting this guy get away with comment misconduct because she wants more viewpoint diversity.

I sympathize, but this is “The Leftist Jerk’s Pass.” She should ding him. I would.

2. Cute or not, having a baby mayor is child exploitation.  Whitehall,  Texas, has a seven months old honorary mayor after his parents bought the title  a charity auction in October, but his anti-abortion activist parents are promoting Charlie McMillan as the “new face of the anti-abortion movement in America.”

They have even attached a slogan to his “office”: “Make America Kind Again.”

“One of his campaign platforms focuses on the brave and courageous choice that… his birth mother made for life,” said Charlie’s adoptive mother Nancy Jane McMillan. “She was in the midst of a crisis pregnancy and chose not to terminate the pregnancy but to carry him, and we were the incredibly blessed recipients of that brave and courageous choice.”

Charlie’s parents are on the development board of the Houston Pregnancy Help Center, a Christian organization that steers women with unplanned pregnancies away from abortion. His adoptive mother continues,  “Just a little bit of kindness goes such a long way, and in this time of political and cultural divisiveness in the United States, it’s neat to see how a baby, a seven-month-old, with a campaign promise to make America kind again, can, we believe, impact change.”

Got it. He’s a prop. It’s unethical to use human beings, especially those who can’t consent, as props. The child has the right to grow up to be a fervent abortion rights activist without having to be haunted by his conflicting “positions” when he was a helpless baby mayor.

3. Continuing to serve as a much needed alternative to an unethical mews media…President Donald Trump retweeted an article, Thursday night, which contained the name of a person alleged to be the whistleblower who filed a complaint relating to the commander-in-chief’s dealings with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Of course, this is impeachable. Sure it is. The Daily Beast reported that Ivanka Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, had privately cautioned th Presient against saying or posting the name in public, arguing it would be counterproductive and unnecessary, as in “one more non-crime that the news media and the resistance would claim he had committed.  Some claim  the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 that forbid retaliation against an employee for “blowing the whistle” prevents a President or member of Congress from identifying the Ukraine call leak, whose name is Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst, committed Democrat and consort of Joe Biden, Rep. Schiff, John Brennan and other Impeachment Plan S architects. The some that claim that are either lying or have taken leave of their senses. Robert Litt, former general counsel for the office of the director of national intelligence, told National Public Radio in November: “Anybody who is thinking about outing the whistleblower has to take into account the possibility that if something happens to the whistleblower, there would be some civil liability for causing that to happen. And while disclosing the identity of the whistleblower isn’t necessarily unlawful, creating a hostile work environment might be viewed as retaliation.”

What utter nonsense.  If the name of the so-called whistle-blower has already been published and is a Google search away, how could anyone, no matter who, be found liable who just names him one more time? He can’t be outed. He’s been outed already, and for more than a month.

Nonetheless, this fantasy “outing” attracted “resistance”condemnation. Amy Siskind, president of the New Agenda, tweeted on Friday: “This is not acceptable behavior from the so-called leader of our country, and he must be called to task for it!” (Take note of how the Guardian and others call Siskind the head of a “non-partisan advocacy group.” “So-called leader” marks that description as a lie immediately, as is the same description of any news source that would falsely call a group denying the President’s legitimacy “non-partisan.”)

Does the public have a right to know what every reporter, member of Congress and millions of people who are engaged and who believe (unlike the Washington Post, ironically) that “Democracy dies in darkness” already know? Yes. Unequivocally yes. Yet the mainstream media had deliberately withheld the information from the public. As I wrote when humble little banned-from-Facebook Ethics Alarms published the name,

Quite apart from being futile, pointless, and wrong, this desperate effort by Democratic Party and resistance allies—like social media and outlets like The New York Times— to prevent the public from understanding exactly how tainted by bias and conflicts Ciaramella is,  the suppression effort is mind-meltingly stupid. How more vividly could they demonstrate that the impeachment process is rigged, and that public manipulation and deception are  considered key components of its success?

The President did what the news media had a duty to do itself. Good for him. It was the right thing to do.