[I had to get up extra-early to wrote this, since there’s no point writing a warm-up once the thermometer tops 80.] Amusing historical ethics note: on August 21, 1980, animal rights advocates Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco launched PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the intervening 40 years, it has become the preeminent animal rights organization in the world, in part because it will do almost anything for publicity. It is also consistently the most ridiculous animal rights organization in the world, and on Ethics Alarms, in a lively battle with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as the most hypocritical and unethical non-profit with “ethics” in its name. The PETA ethics rap sheet is here. When last discussed on Ethics Alarms, PETA was protesting using animals as metaphorical insults because it perpetuates “speciesism.” Jackasses…

1. From the suddenly overstuffed “Incompetence” Files…Mike Richards, the executive producer of “Jeopardy!” who made himself one of the show’s new hosts in a breathtaking display of conflict of interest contempt, lasted less than a week in his new job. Controversial comments he made on a podcast from 2013 “resurfaced,” officials at Sony Pictures Television confirmed. That means someone who didn’t want him to have the job did a maniacal search to find something that would force him to resign. This is, essentially, the Hader Gotcha, and a rotten, Golden Rule-breaching thing to do to anyone unless they are running for office and pretending to be someone they are not. At least Richards recognized that his duties as executive producer required that he dump himself once he became an anchor on the show he has a duty to protect.

The allegedly cancel-worthy comments Richards made came when he was trying to imitate Howard Stern—imagine that as a life objective—by hosting a podcast called “The Randumb Show.” Naturally, this involved saying sexist and racially insensitive things like Howard and Don Imus, who not too many years earlier were still considered witty and brave in their political incorrectness. He refered to a woman’s “boobies.” He said that he aspired to be a “white guy host” like Ryan Seacrest. Salon, which is always a barometer of just how nuts the far left has become, pronounced l such sophomoric banter “alarming.” I know I was terrified when I read them.

2. If this doesn’t prove that our news organizations are worthless, nothing will. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du, a federal judge in Nevada, struck down as unconstitutional a longstanding statute that makes it a crime to return to the United States after deportation. Here reasoning is that the law is racist and discriminatory against “Mexican and Latinx individuals.”

“The record before the Court reflects that at no point has Congress confronted the racist, nativist roots of Section 1326,” Du wrote in her ruling.“The amendments to Section 1326 over the past ninety years have not changed its function but have simply made the provision more punitive and broadened its reach,” Du wrote.

The order dismissed a case against Gustavo Carrillo-Lopez, an illegal immigrant who was indicted during the Trump administration for sneaking back into the U.S. after two deportations. Under Section 1326 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to U.S. Code, entry into the U.S. is illegal for anyone who has been denied admission, deported or removed. The judge applied the now familiar disparate impact reasoning, concluding that “Section 1326 disparately impacts Mexican and Latinx defendants. While no publicly available data exists as to the national origin of those prosecuted under Section 1326, over 97% of persons apprehended at the border in 2000 were of Mexican decent, 86% in 2005, and 87% in 2010.”

Well, the border is with Mexico.

The original 1926 statute was sullied by a lot of racist, natavist and bigoted motives and rhetoric when it was passed. It was re-enacted in 1952 as part of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which the government argued to Du was cleaned of the racism of its original enactment. She did not agree, writing in part,

“The Court does not rely solely on the evidence from 1929, but also considers contemporaneous evidence from 1952. In evaluating that evidence, the Court looks at the interplay between legislative history and relevant historical evidence. Specifically, the Court considers: a relative lack of discussion compared to robust Congressional debate regarding other provisions of the INA; explicit, recorded use of the derogatory term “wetback” by supporters of Section 1326; Congressional silence while increasingly making the provision more punitive; Congress’ failure to revise in the face of President Truman’s veto statement calling for a reimagination of immigration policy; knowledge of the disparate impact of Section 1326 on Mexican and Latinx people; and passage of the so-called “Wetback Bill” by the same Congress only months prior. The Court recognizes that this evidence is circumstantial, and that each instance may not be as probative when considered alone. But in its totality, the cited evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that racial animus was at least one motivating factor behind the enactment of Section 1326.”

The bottom line is that once you get deported for coming here illegally, you can’t be prosecuted if you sneak back. Either Congress agrees on a new, improved version of the now invalid law—that’s not going to happen—or the Supreme Court overturns the woke judge. The third alternative, and clearly what a judge who uses “Latinx” wants, is to encourage non-citizens to defy U.S. law with impunity.

The decision was not regarded as worth reporting by the vast majority of U.S. news media.

3. And while we’re on the topic of”antiracism” and the law, there’s this: 54% of the Yale Class of 2024 are non-white. Clearly, since non-white college students are now outperforming their white counterparts, the U.S. is doing a superb job eliminating any racial achievement gaps.

4. And this…The American Bar Association is considering a diversity training and affirmative action mandate as a condition of its accrediting law schools. That’s bold: such a requirement could force law schools to violate federal law. The plan, expected to be voted on next year, would require schools to “provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” including a mandatory ethics course instructing students that they have an obligation to fight “racism in the law.” Schools would also be required to “take effective actions” to “diversify” their student bodies. Many legal scholars across the country are calling the plan an attempt to “institutionalize dogma” through the accreditation process, not to mention the matter of the nation’s largest legal association demanding that law schools break the law.

This kind of thing is why I do not belong to the ABA.

5. You’ve got to give Michael Moore this: he’s consistent. He has integrity: he is consistent in his hateful biases. If I recall correctly, and I think I do, he attempted to trivialize the Twin Towers bombing in 2001 by comparing the number of deaths to traffic accidents. Lat week, as the Taliban ran amuck, Moore gave an interview to Variety in which he opined that the Taliban was comparable to Southern Baptists. “They’re religious nuts, but we’ve got those here, too,” Moore told Variety. “But [the Taliban] said yesterday in their press conference that girls’ schools are going to remain open. Okay. We’ll see. They also said they are going to operate under Islamic law. That’s exactly how a lot of Southern Baptists want it to be here, too. In a lot of parts of the country, we are following dictates of conservative Christians. It’s wrong there, and it’s wrong here.”