Some upsetting ethics episodes, like a Democratic Congressman behaving like a 7th grade jerk, lying about it, and being supported by his party and the news media, and this story, sufficiently monopolized my time and thoughts this week that quite a few issues and stories that need exposing risk being left behind…so here we are.

And I find myself wishing there was some Saturday morning adult TV equivalent to the old array of Saturday morning entertainment shows for kids that used to begin my weekends when I was just a sprout. Those shows above were actually a later generation’s (inferior) options. For me, my Saturday mornings were affirmatively weird, including non-cartoon fare like Andy Devine’s show (“Twang your magic twanger, Froggie!”), Ventriloquist Paul Winchell with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith (why Edgar Bergen didn’t sue, I’ll never know) , lisping vaudevillian Pinkie Lee (“Hello, it’s me! My name is Pinky Lee! With a checkered hat and a checkered coat, a funny tickle in my throat, and a silly laugh like a billy goat…”) and of course, “The Howdy Doody Show.” Cheap Hanna-Barbara cartoons were just starting to take over: “The Adventures of Ruff and Reddy” was the camel’s nose in the tent.

Well, maybe I’ll see if I can get early morning Saturday ethics entertainment up on Ethics Alarms for adults and ethics-minded teens needing stimulation. I guarantee it will be better than “The Banana Splits.”

1. Trick or Treat! Where to begin? Well, Halloween has become a frolic for The Great Stupid in recent years, and 2023’s scary days are starting off in a similar vein. In my increasingly silly state of Massachusetts (which is considering killing Columbus Day and replacing it with “Indigenous Peoples Day”) the Northboro Public Schools sent a letter to parents this week noting that students aren’t allowed to wear costumes to school for Halloween and the traditional parade through the hallways was canceled. Why? Oh, come on, it’s easy. DEI! The banning of the Halloween fun will supposedly advance the district’s “core values of equity and inclusion.” How, nobody would say. Instead of costumes and a parade, the school district told parents that students would participate in a “Fall-themed spirit day.” Catchy! I feel more inclusive already. Still, nobody really explained why not letting kids dress up in costumes one day a year advances “diversity, equity and inclusion.” One knee-jerk woke parent quizzed about it ventured, “There is the money aspect: Not everyone can afford a Halloween costume.” BUZZZZZZZ! Wrong, Equity Face. Great Halloween costumes require creativity, not money. Schools are supposed to cultivate creativity. Dumb, woke, incompetent people are running public schools, and the result is going to be more dumb, woke, incompetent citizens.

2. Like the old saw about weather, ‘Everybody complains about the deterioration of public education, but nobody does anything about it.’ The New York Times published two laments by Jessica Grose about how bad things are: “People Don’t Want to Be Teachers Anymore. Can You Blame Them?” and “Teachers Can’t Hold Students Accountable. It’s Making the Job Miserable.”

Sure I can blame them. Teachers have become one of the bulwarks of the Democratic Party and the radical progressive movement, which have turned education policy away from, for example, education, and decided that it was racially discriminatory to require such things as discipline, deadlines, successful performances on tests and actual proficiency in key subjects. And the ignorant and unethical U.S. public is pushing to make sure that the next generation is more ignorant and unethical still. Althouse, who somehow has time to read the reader comments on Times articles, posted this one:

To offer one example to support Grose’s article, I asked a student where their essay was. It had been assigned a week before, and we used two of the class days since to work on it in class. I monitored progress over their two days and reminded students about the due date when we moved onto the next unit. The day the essays were due, one student told me he had been busy with sports and would turn the essay “once he could get around to it.” I told him that he would receive a late penalty, but he would receive credit as long as he turned it in before the end of the marking period. That night, I received a scathing email from the boy’s parents castigating me for speaking to her son in such a fashion. She wanted to remind me that her son had other obligations, some more important than my class. I didn’t respond to the email that night. When I arrived at school the next morning, I had gotten another email from the same parent demanding to know why I hadn’t responded yet. In class, the boy told me that his mom had already emailed me and wanted to know why I hadn’t responded. He then held up the phone with her on the line, expecting me to talk to her while we were in class. I politely told him that he should tell his mother I would reply as soon as possible. The problem is this kind of behavior isn’t an outlier anymore.

Another problem is that the essay assignment was probably “What other gender would you like to be and why” or “Describe a common form of systemic racism in the U.S.”…

3. Stop making me defend Hillary Clinton! For some reason, the conservative pundits are all over poor Hillary after she ranted to Christiane Amanpour about those horrible Republicans and added,

“And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure. He’s only in it for himself. He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions, and when do they break with him? You know, because at some point, you know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen.”

Aping the worst of the Trump Deranged, the Right’s heralds are declaring that Hillary “has gone full Mao” and was seriously advocating that MAGA hat wearers be sent ro re-education camps. That’s ridiculous. Blind Trump fandom does resemble a cult, and Hillary was just extending a metaphor, one that I have used myself. What was really wrong with her blather was the “He’s only in it for himself” line, which I now realize needs to be added to the Ethics Alarms list of Axis Big Lies about Trump. Donald Trump is one of the very few U.S. Presidents of recent vintage to lose money while in the White House. His brand is in ruins, and his political activity is the reason he is being prosecuted by fearful Democrats. How, exactly, can anyone argue that Trump wants the Presidency just to benefit himself? He genuinely wants to make America better in his judgment: all Presidents do. Hillary talks as if Trump is the only narcissist who has ever lived in the White House. Someone should introduce her to her husband. Or Barack Obama.

4. Today’s first reminder that the Democrats find free speech and expression inconvenient to their aspirations of single party rule: Read this bill submitted in January by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx). It’s not going anywhere, and if it did, the thing would be quickly struck down by SCOTUS as a First Amendment violation. The significant aspect of it is that it was proposed at all. Under the bill’s provisions, the Justice Department could prosecute anyone whose speech or published opinions “could, as determined by a reasonable person, motivate actions by a person predisposed to engaging in a white supremacy inspired hate crime or by a person who is susceptible to being encouraged to engage in actions relating to a white supremacy inspired hate crime; and (iii) was read, heard, or viewed by a person who engaged in the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of a white supremacy inspired hate crime.”

The bill, of course, assumes “reasonable persons” are woke, totalitarian-minded progressives, and “white supremacy” is whatever such reasonable people say it is, such as, for example, opposing anti-white hiring and college admission practices.

5. Today’s SECOND reminder that the Democrats find free speech and expression inconvenient to their aspirations of single party rule: The Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California charged an annoyingly non-woke lawyer with, among other things, engaging in “moral turpitude” and violating state and federal law “by directing others to commit acts of violence.” Thus, the bar counsel reasoned, she should be disbarred. The lawyer opined in several tweets that looters in L.A. should be shot. Uh, no, ruled the State Bar Court In the Matter of Brown, that’s not a punishable ethics offense. See, those are called “opinions.” There is this thingy called “freedom of speech.” Among other things, the Court pointed out that there was no evidence that anyone in a position to actually shoot looters read the tweets, since almost nobody followed the lawyer’s Twitter feed. I wouldn’t vouch for the judgment of any lawyer who would post such lizard-brain outbursts like “They should be shot. And if it was your business, you’d pull the trigger,” but if dumb tweets were grounds for disbarment, Larry Tribe would be working at Wendy’s. What matters is that the apparatus of bar associations is being weaponized for political intimidation.

6. But at least this isn’t France, where a survey conducted by the research firm the Consumer Science and Analytics Institute found that 41% of French citizens surveyed support a lifetime limit of four air flights per person due to concerns regarding climate change. After all, limiting French air travel would affect the world’s climate…well, not at all, but it’s a nice gesture, don’t you think? The Great Stupid is an international phenomenon.