I think I could check through the names of the 20 or so most prolific Ethics Alarms commenters and guess with nearly 100% accuracy how each of them will respond to this ethics quiz.
Eight Republican Senate Republicans released a letter after President’s Trump was declared guilty as charged in his mysterious “he did something illegal in there somewhere and besides, he’s a bad guy and everyone should hate him” trial in Manhattan. It declares that they will not do anything to support President Biden for the rest of his term in office: not vote on any legislation for non-security funding, not vote on judicial and political nominations, not not vote in favor of “expedited consideration and passage” of any Democrat-proposed legislation.
Signed by conservative GOP Senators Mike Lee, J.D. Vance (Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), the terse missive states,
“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in an un-American war. As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart. To that end, we will not 1) allow any increase to non-security related funding for this administration, or any appropriations bill which funds partisan lawfare; 2) vote to confirm this administration’s political and judicial appointees; and 3) allow expedited consideration and passage of Democrat legislation or authorities that are not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”
Your first Ethics Quiz in the Month of June…
Is this a responsible and ethical response to the perceived “lawfare” unlashed against former President Trump?
(or is it just grandstanding?)
Either way, the letter is ominous, and just a whiff of the toxic fumes engulfing the nation’s politics that are certain to have unpleasant, sickening, and even fatal effects on the American experiment. This begins the endgame that I warned was approaching once the “resistance,”Democrats and the news media commenced the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train. That tag describes the Left’s strategy of denigrating the system that elected Trump, refusing to confer on him the deference and respect every POTUS must have to begin his term and have a prayer of serving his term in office while following his official oath, and relentlessly seeking to undermine him, withhold from him the traditional symbols of legitimate Presidential power and public support, and, if possible, get him removed from office without another election.
The letter continues that unconscionable train wreck. It is not in the best interests of the United States for cultural, political and societal ethics train wrecks to keep rolling on. If the the letter is designed to stop it, that would be a good thing. Does anyone believe that the Senators’ letter isn’t designed instead to just take the train in another destructive direction?
Ethics Alarms 
I have come to the conclusion after reading the many comments on this and related topics that there are two camps: one that is willing to play to win by any means necessary and those who believe that we should project the highest ethical standards yet offer no option as to how to do so in a manner that is successful and ethical.
The last time we faced the conundrum of half the population believing the other side is evil and must be destroyed we sacrificed 600,000 human lives to arrive at a conclusion. And, we then we simply ended the government sanctioned violence against part of the population.
Do we condemn Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus? Do we condemn Sherman’s march to the sea where he destroyed the entire southern economy killing many non combatants. The answer is no because history is always written by the victors. We cloak what would otherwise be unlawful acts as necessary evils.
If we are truly a nation of laws and not men the prosecutorial discretion must serve the people as a whole and not just a favored group or political ally. Such discretion must require prosecutors to explain in writing why not bringing charges on one is different than throwing the book at another for similar or even lesser violations. The desire to resort to tit for tat by the populace simply reflects a belief that they have no power to change that which they find antithetical to American ideals
I believe there is sufficient intellectual capital available to address these issues properly rather than emotionally. It is just a damn shame we tend to let our biases rule the conversations.