I have spent far too much time over the course of my life reading and thinking about the Lincoln assassination and the various conspiracy theories surrounding it. It was not until 1983 that I found a single source that attempted to explain why there is so much uncertainty surrounding Honest Abe’s death in a book I bought at The Smithsonian, “The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.” There has always been trivia game of collecting the “amazing” parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the death of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1962, but one parallel is undeniable: government incompetence, inefficiency, bureaucratic stubbornness and deliberate defiance of law created the fertile soil for conspiracy theories to thrive regarding both events.
In part propelled by his “Odd Couple” ally Robert Kennedy, Jr., President Trump has ordered all of the information, papers and materials related to JFK’s assassination released: after all, it’s only been 61 years since Lee Harvey Oswald sent a bullet through his brain. That release still hasn’t happened, and if past experience holds, it won’t this time either.
The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to the Warren Commission or a later board charged with determining once and for all why Kennedy was killed and who was responsible. The records were discovered among the 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found when they undertook to obey Trump’s order, which I’m sure some of my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends will claim is illegal. (If Trump does it and it undermines progressive power, it is illegal by definition.)
Florida lawyer Albert V. Medina, who practices in Boca Raton, had his law license suspended for 10 days, and you’ll never guess why.
Medina shot his brother in the arm while fooling around with a gun, pointing it at his brother and pulling the trigger. The brothers said that they engaged in this “horseplay” frequently: the wounded brother said his sibling had aimed an unloaded pistol at him and pulled the trigger ten times before, as a joke. This time, however, it was loaded.
The brother signed an affidavit affirming that the incident was unintentional, so the criminal case was resolved by Medina’s pleading guilty to the misdemeanor offense of culpable negligence causing injury to another. Medina has been a member of the bar since 2014 with no prior ethics offenses.
I don’t care. The idea of the legal discipline system is to protect the public from lawyers who are demonstrably untrustworthy or unfit to practice law for other reasons. Morons are unfit to practice law, and you can’t fix stupid. What is this guy, eleven years old? Anyone who aims guns at others “as a joke” and pulls the trigger shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects, much less with the legal affairs of members of the public.
Absent a successful brain transplant, Albert V. Medina should have been disbarred.
Funny, I was just thinking about how there hadn’t been a genuine Naked Teacher Principle story in a long time, and POOF!—one magically appears. The last genuine variation of the NTP, as we call it around here for short, was in late December 2023, featuring the Porn Actor University Chancellor. Last year, there was one storie nixed by the NTP qualifications committee of one, the rap-singing teacher, and one really weird story that deserves its own category, The Drag Queen School Principal Principle.
Today’s NTP story, however, is the Real McCoy, as you can probably guess from that photo above of Victoria Triece, 33. Victoria sued Orange County Public Schools for $1 million in 2023 because Sand Lake Elementary would not let her volunteer to assist with her son’s class activities after discovering she had a web presence that was, they thought, inappropriate. Ms. Triece is an Only Fans star, an adult entertainer, and a former cover girl for Playboy and FHM magazine.
In the lawsuit she claimed to be “humiliated'” by the rejection, arguing that her personal life was off limits to be judged by the school administrators. They violated her rights of free speech, free assembly and her right of privacy, she averred, and also subjected her to ‘”sexual cyberharassment” for sharing photos from her OnlyFans site among staff and with media outlets.
See, this is the essence of the Naked Teacher Principle. It isn’t that someone who has exposed (or nearly) their bodacious bod on the web has to be judged unfit or even should be judged unfit to teach impressionable young minds once the photos become public. The NTP just holds that they have no one to blame but themselves if that’s the decision.
Orange County Circuit Judge Brian S. Sandor ultimately ruled that Victoria had no “substantive due process right” to volunteer at the school, so her lawsuit had no valid claims. The judge also wrote that Triece does not have the right to argue with school about being removed, since the volunteer program “does not include any language that confers any right or benefit upon an individual to participate in the program, to remain in the program, or to appeal a removal decision.”
First: I used to post on the Super Bowl ads, as there is usually some ethics-relevant fodder there, but this time I’m only interested in the Nike commercial above, which one of you sent me. Gee, the photography is nice!
The spot begs for the “What’s going on here?” question, to be sure. It is the perfect Rorschach test ad, with so many confirmation bias traps you have to admire the thing just for that. I almost posted it as an Ethics Quiz. Here are some reactions;
1. It is definitely brazen virtue-signaling by Nike, which has been getting hammered for not weighing in on the biological males in women’s sports debate.
2. The equivalent ad would have made more sense in the 1980s, or even earlier. Who needs to be told that women and girls can play sports and excel in 2025?
3. An all-male competition in which a female squad would be sent to the emergency room is a rather strange context for this message.
4. Is this a poke in the eye of excuse-making Democrats, who claim that Kamala Harris’s loss was because voters are biased against women? Or is the ad an exhortation to them to stop bitching and to “just win” by, you know, nominating more qualified female candidates?
Second: Not surprisingly, President Trump showed that he understands the Cognitive Dissonance scale…
From the state that gave us Joe Biden we have this proud incompetent, who had been the Democrats’ chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.Why does the U.S. have a dangerous National Debt? People who think like Senator Coons. That is, badly.
During an interview yesterday on CNN, Michael Smerconish asked Coons about the DOGE revelations regarding USAID’s bizarre waste of funds and Trump’s determination to shut the agency down. Here was the Senator’s defense of spending $20 million to have “Sesame Street” broadcast in Iraq:
“This isn‘t just funding a kids’ show for children, millions of children in countries like Iraq,” Coons said. “It’s a show that helps teach values, helps teach public health, helps prevent kids from dying from dysentery and disease and helps push values like collaboration, peacefulness, cooperation in a society where the alternative is ISIS, extremism and terrorism. And to your point, it‘s pennies on the dollar. The U.S. Department of Defense has an annual budget of about $850 billion. USAID was spending about $30 billion. It is a small proportion of our total federal spending. And as [political scientist Joseph Nye] would often say, it‘s not just soft power, it‘s smart power.”
Smart. Wow. I hear Inigo calling…
The former Children’s Television Workshop, now called Sesame Workshop (SW), is in desperate straits because its HBO gig is over and it is no longer carried by PBS. The ridiculous 20 million taxpayer bucks USAID sends to Iraq of all places—Why not Zimbabwe? Why not Tierra del Fuego? Why not Antarctica?—is classic government waste for objectives that make dim members of the public say, “Awwwww!” It is impossible to ever cut government spending and address the snowballing debt with fools like Coons having any say in our budget and expenditures. It doesn’t help that so many Americans think “It’s Ok to waste X dollars because we waste so much more elsewhere.”
“[T]hey contain the true principles of the revolution of 1800. For that was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of ’76 was in its form, not effected indeed by the sword as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform: the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another, in the two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election.”
—Retired former President Thomas Jefferson, writing to a friend about his election to the office in 1800.
It would be nice, and perhaps even their salvation, if the Democrats would read our history and heed its lessons. Thomas Jefferson believed that democracies had to have periodic revolutions, and came to understand that such upheavals didn’t have to involve violence to be effective. In 1800, the Federalists had lost their way and breached their own principles: John Adams, of all people, had signed a law allowing the President to prosecute political dissidents. President Adams did: his main targets were anti-Federalist newspaper editors, accusing them of trying to provoke an insurrection.
Jefferson was horrified, and so was much of the public. “A legislature had [passed] the Sedition law; the federal courts had subjected certain individuals to its penalties of fine and imprisonment. On coming into office I released these individuals by the power of pardon committed to Executive discretion, which could never be more properly exercised than where citizens were suffering without the authority of law, or, which was equivalent, under a law unauthorised by the constitution, & therefore null,” he wrote in the same letter.
This is all sounding familiar….
The Federalists, certain that Adams had no chance, nominated an alternative candidate. The campaign of 1800 became one of the ugliest in American history. The desperate Federalists had ministers declaring that electing Jefferson, running under the banner of the Republican-Democrats, was the equivalent of rejecting God, that he was an agent of Satan, and that American society would descend into immoral rot if he were elected. Jefferson only prevailed in a deadlocked House of Representatives because a disaffected Federalist star, Alexander Hamilton, supported his longtime political foe after he concluded that the alternative would be disastrous.
No, I did not have Bobby Kennedy Jr. morphing into Alexander Hamilton on my Bingo card. Maybe Kamala Harris will challenge him to a duel. She owns a gum you know…
As President, Jefferson set about undoing almost everything the Federalists had done. He reduced the size of government, cut spending dramatically, and asserted that the states should have domain over much of what the Federalists had sought to control. The Federalists furiously opposed and attacked him, only succeeding in further estranging the party from the American public. The people honored and respected Jefferson because he kept his promise about using the power of the Presidency to advance individual liberty and state autonomy.
The Federalists never won another Presidential election.
As regular EA readers know, individuals, especially celebrities and elected officials, are found guilty here of resorting to the Pazuzu Excuse, named after that potty-mouthed demon who possessed poor Regan (Linda Blair) in “The Exorcist,” when they attempt to avoid accountability for their own words or behavior by saying, usually in a groveled apology, “That wasn’t the real me! I’ve never believed in saying/doing such horrible things!”
The incident of interest occurred on November 21, 2024. As he participated in a tour of the relic of St. Jude’s at the Queen of Apostles parish in Joliet, Illinois, Catholic priest Carlos Martins, the co-host of “The Exorcist Files” podcast, began behaving…. strangely. Father Martins “grabbed the hair” of a 13-year-old girl, placed it “in his mouth” and used it in a “flossing motion,” according to the criminal complaint. Then he sat behind the teenager girl and started “growling.” That’s Father Martins with his friends above.
His conduct prompted the immediate suspension of the tour, and police were summoned. The Diocese of Joliet staff confronted the priest and told him that “he must depart from our parish and out of our Diocese.” “In an abundance of caution, the veneration of the relic and evening mass were canceled,” the diocese said in a release.
That seems prudent.
Martins was processed by the Joliet Police Department, arraigned, and released awaiting his pretrial hearing. The Companions of the Cross, the religious order that Treasures of the Church is affiliates with, said Martins has agreed to withdraw from his pastoral duties in the wake of the allegations against him.
“He remains entitled to due process, as is any accused,” the church said. “The Companions of the Cross look upon allegations of misconduct as an urgent matter that requires serious attention. We pray for all those who are affected by this painful situation.” The Archdiocese of Detroit now lists Father Martins as “Ministry revoked.”
To be fair, Martins’ associates said that he has always been obsessive about flossing. All right, I made that part up. Sorry.
The attorney representing Martins, Marcella Burke, denied the accusations against her client, telling reporters, “Your mothers suck cocks in Hell!” and adding, “Why you do this to me, Dimmy?”
Okay, I was just kidding about those quotes too. What she really said was,”He did not put anyone’s hair in his mouth, let alone ‘floss’ with a student’s hair or ‘growl’ among other completely false and repulsive accusations. This remains a takedown of a good priest and an attempted shakedown of the Church.”
What’s going on here? I have absolutely no idea. I will opine that it must violate some code of ethics for an exorcist to growl at a teenage girl in church.
My law school alma mater—I also worked as an assistant dean there for several years—has been depressingly high on the list of ideologically-obsessed law schools along with Stanford, Yale and many others. Ethics Alarms has never held its fire on GULC based on any sense of misplaced loyalty. However, this time, as the school is being assailed for sponsoring a controversial speaker, I have to take its side for a change. Which is nice.
The Jewish Insider reports that a Georgetown University Law Center student group, a chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, will host Ribhi Karajaha (above) as a speaker next week on February 11. Karajaha is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization. He is planning to speak about “arrest, detention, and torture in the Israeli military system,” an Instagram post says. Karajaha spent three years in an Israeli prison as part of a plea deal after he admitted to knowing about a terrorist bomb plot that killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl and injured her brother and father.
GULC is being criticized for allowing him to speak. On the contrary, it may be very instructive for law students to hear his point of view and to observe how he answers critical questions. This is known as “education.”
I heard Angela Davis speak when I was student. Davis was a radical Marxist, a domestic terrorist and a criminal. Listening to her was an invaluable experience. She was charismatic and obviously brilliant, but she didn’t brainwash me with laser eyes. I witnessed first hand and in person what fanaticism looks and sounds like. Education.
Georgetwon law student Julia Wax Vanderwiel told Jewish Insider that Karajah’s presence on campus “threatens the security of all Jewish students.” What, is he going to morph into Palestinian Hulk and run amuck? He’s going to talk. Words should not make anyone feel unsafe, and if they do, even then the words are still conveying useful information. The unsafe speaker myth has been embraced by the Mad Left as a way to censor speech and muzzle political opponents.
If Georgetown law students are wise and ethical, they will allow the terrorist to speak without disruption. Unfortunately, they have been attending an institution whose Dean has endorsed partisan and political censorship, so I will be genuinely surprised if that is how this episode plays out.
This is perhaps the only downside of my decision years ago that watching the NFL was unethical and complicit with a greed-fueled sport that cripples its participants in exchange for short-term financial rewards. I was completely unaware that since the George Floyd Freakout in 2020, the cynical sports league had included the legend “End Racism” on its fields’ end zones, including in the Super Bowl.
Is there a more perfect example of virtue-signaling than this? That message on a football field does absolutely nothing, accomplishes nothing, changes no behavior or attitudes, and is just a silly “See? We’re cool!” declaration that really signals, “See? We have no shame! We think you’re an idiot!”
There has never been a smidgen of evidence that racism played any part in George Floyd’s death, except from the likes of Black Lives Matter which asserts that because the cop held responsible is white, he must be a racist. The DEI fad arose from the non-race-related death of an overdosing petty perp who happened to be black, and the NFL’s abandonment of its previous end zone slogan is being blamed on—all together now!— President Trump, as he has put that discriminatory and wasteful movement on his hit list. The end zones in today’s game will declare, “Choose Love,” which is just as fatuous but at least appropriate for Valentines Day.
Today I urge readers to join me in boycotting a game that is guaranteed to send some young men, probably many, to a future of being unable to recognize their children before they reach 65.
I sure wish I could call it a blitzkrieg, but, you know, that Hitler stuff..
Lots of people are writing and thinking the same thing, but I’ll state it anyway: the way Trump has begun his second term is politically and strategically masterful, as well as entertaining. It is also unprecedented, with the only remotely similar example in American history being Franklin Roosevelt’s first term as he rushed to get control of both the Great Depression and the cratering moral of the public. No President has moved this quickly and decisively, however, or caught his opposition so flatfooted and impotent.
This is an experienced CEO doing what effective CEOs do best. It took planning, foresight, guts and learning from past mistakes. Here, a substack essay explains how it occurred. The writer doesn’t cite any sources, but it had to be something like what he describes. The critics of Trump who insisted that he was mentally feeble-minded—you know, like all conservatives—and a certain a disaster waiting to happen are being proven so astoundingly wrong that they are reduced to babbling, screaming or saying huminahuminahumina like Ralph Kramden when he was exposed to his wife as a fool.
Here is how you can distinguish the Trump Deranged hacks from the Trump detractors with integrity. The latter will say, “You know, I have to say, I don’t agree with most of what he’s doing, but this is very impressive. I didn’t think he could do it.” Here are the other kind are like Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson in their Times piece called “Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D.” [Gift link!] It’s all the logical fallacy known as “The Texas Sharphooter,” as the authors choose misreported and exaggerated examples of USAID waste without acknowledging the damning grants that would be sufficient to justify distrusting the agency even if it had never given a penny to Politico.
The hair-on-fire hysteria of Democratic Party leaders and the Axis media over Trump’s assault on big government and Great Stupid wokism is noted with disgust in this excellent post at “The Hill” by Jonathan Turley.
“Across the internet, politicians and pundits are in a monstrous mood. The same people who spent the last year declaring the imminent death of democracy if Donald Trump were elected are now insisting that the real threat is the monster he has unleashed upon the federal bureaucracy. For Washingtonians, Musk is the bogeyman they have long described to their children around campfires at night: An outsider who comes to town and lays waste to government waste, firing thousands and slashing budgets…
For decades, both Democratic and Republican presidents have run on reducing government and making it more efficient. But everyone knew that such campaign pledges would be quickly discarded after each election. What is so terrifying this time is that Musk means it. We know that because he has done it before….
Liberals correctly saw Musk’s defiance as an existential threat. For years, they had exercised virtual total control of social media, legacy media and academia. Opposing views were denounced as dangerous disinformation.
The key to their system was that you maintain orthodoxy by coercing people into silence. During the COVID pandemic, scientists who challenged the enforced view of masks, COVID-19 origins, and other issues were banned or fired. Others remained silent as they watched colleagues exiled for expressing their opinions.
Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink.”
The hysterical attacks on Musk are both silly and self-indicting. That TIME cover…
is a good example: for four years the U.S. really did have someone or someones serving as shadow President while Joe Biden leaked IQ points, yet Henry Luce’s fading baby never let their readers in on the secret. President Trump found the perfect individual to delegate one of his most difficult tasks, “draining the swamp,” uncovering the graft and scams, trimming the budget. That’s what successful leaders do: they find the best people to do the hard jobs. I realized how sad and impotent Democrats have become when one of their “leaders” in the anti-Musk rally actually tried to start a “Heigh Heigh Ho Ho, Eon Musk has got to go!” chant. Wow. I almost feel sorry for them.
Almost.
What Americans are witnessing is a transitional, tipping point moment that has rarely been seen in our history. Jackson, perhaps. The two Roosevelts. But it has only been a little more than two weeks! Disney should reprogram its Hall of the Presidents to have all of Trump’s predecessors turn and salute #47. If they weren’t audio-animitons, I bet most of them, may be all, would be thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Ethics Alarms 