Thanks to my still resonating Verizon services disaster last weekend, this is the second Open Forum in a week. I deem it important to at least try to get back to normal, however, and so here we are.
As a bit of inspiration, I present the tale of a most unethical public servant, former L.A. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Brian K. Williams, shown above. Democrats have become this crazy: on Oct. 3, 2024, while he was in an online meeting involving his official duties, Williams picked up an incoming call on his city-issued phone, excused himself, and called the L.A. Police Department’s Chief of Staff. Williams reported he had just received a call from an unknown man who was threatening to bomb L.A. City Hall. Ten minutes later, Williams texted Mayor Karen Bass and other city officials, writing,
“Bomb threat: I received phone call on my city cell at 10:48 am this morning. The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the city support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda.’ I immediately contacted the chief of staff of LAPD, they are going to send a number of officers over to do a search of the building and to determine if anyone else received a threat.”
But there was no threat. The call Williams had received, an investigation revealed, was from Williams himself, who had used the Google Voice application on his personal phone to place a call to his work phone. The threatened bomb threat was his own.
The Department of Justice announced that Williams, 61, has been charged with the felony of reporting a false bomb threat, and has pleaded guilty. The crime carries a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
Nice.
Your turn!
Ethics Alarms 
This is not a US publication but it’s still an example of how peer review is failing. From the Journal of Medical Ethics (BMJ Journals a subsidiary of the British Medical Association)
https://jme.bmj.com/content/51/1/37
“Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach”
Abstract
In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease.
Seems like a case of mental illness afflicting the authors of this peer reviewed paper to me. Maybe they consulted with a medical AI.
Well, I can provide to you a case study, written up by Larry Niven in 1971, that could be used as evidence to bolster the ‘pregnancy as a disease’ theory. I think this situation fits all the criterion from the abstract.
https://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html
The article presents an interesting perspective; I suspect it is intended as food for thought rather than a complete paradigm in and of itself. The closing statement is, “While classifying pregnancy as a disease comes with some risks, we suggest that a failure to recognise and respond to its disease-like features is likewise problematic, and puts many pregnant people at increased risk, as well as serving to reinforce and entrench social pressures on women in particular.”
Pregnancy is a condition. Whether it counts as a “disease” is a normative judgment, which is subjective. It’s based on a person’s preferences, just like what substances one considers poisonous and what one considers a birth defect. From a legal standpoint, whether something is a “disease” might matter for insurance purposes, but given that pregnancy is currently the only way humans have to create more humans, I think it’s worth making it a special case for protecting and supporting the people willing to undergo it.
From a constructive standpoint, the question isn’t “is pregnancy good” but rather “are there better options?” Right now, no. If people want to work on better options, that would be great. Personally, I think it’d make more sense to put a higher priority on keeping people healthy for as long as possible than on looking at new ways to create more people, which would also solve some of the problems with pregnancy. That said, there’s still nothing wrong with investigating other options. I am a bit surprised that they didn’t at least mention senescence (aging), which I’d consider to be a disease, or at least a harmful health condition that we should try to cure.
Just wondering. Did Williams have a motive for doing this?
I have finished yet another new book that makes sure to propagandize against the Trump administration(s) despite the time gap and the false comparisons.
An otherwise acceptable book, Dear Miss Perkins : A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany, goes Trump-deranged. Usually it’s the prologue or epilogue where the author chooses to toss anti-Trump pseudo-bon mots. Here it begins in chapter 2 with the introductory paragraph (p 29):
“In the Summer of 2016, at the height of Hamilton: An American Musical on Broadway, Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Marquis de Lafayette (Daveed Diggs) slapped hands and sang, ‘Immigrants- we get the job done!’. Crowds roared with applause. Hamilton audiences expressed their disapproval of the unabashed xenophobia of the 2016-2016 Trump presidential campaign. They wanted the U.S. to be a nation of immigrants, where scrappy revolutionaries can ascend to positions of influence, do work that helps people, and perhaps centuries later, achieve great renown.’
Once again, the mischaracterization of Trump being anti-immigrant and xenophobic is reiterated for the gullible. Trump has never argued against legal immigration. His admittedly-sloppy speaking style is often reframed to make the worst possible interpretation argument.
Chapter 12 continues this narrative with four paragraphs of anti-Trump propaganda including, “Donald Trump built his campaign and presidency around xenophobia, from the wall to the Muslim ban to the responses to the pandemic.”
Of course, just as offensive to me were the three pages dedicated to dissecting the School house Rock cartoon “The Great American Melting Pot” as a myth that denies America’s historic racism. In fact, I might be more offended by that accusation right now.
I found some worthwhile information in the book but it’s really hard to enjoy a book about a historical figure when I have to spend much of it dodging false progressive narratives.
1. Anti-Semitism?
2. Rebecca Brenner Graham is the author of that book, and the passages you quote are unconscionable. Kensington is the publisher, and their editors engaged in professional malpractice to allow that crap in an alleged history book. Heck, I regard the use of the smear “xenophobia” to describe the necessary enforcement of immigration laws as signature significance for legal and historical ignorance, and using a Broadway musical about 18th century immigration policies as relevant to 21st Century U.S. domestic affairs as smoking gun evidence of idiocy, or “bias makes you stupid.” I would have thrown the book out the window after reading those passages.
Write a guest post about that section and the significance of a credentialed scholar writing it, and I’ll post it so fast my fingers will be singed….
Done and done. Emailed and thanks.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/05/21/politics/fact-check-white-farmers-south-africa-trump
This is a lie farmers in South Africa are absolutely being targeted and have been for over 20 years. Most of them are white and are very much in the minority.
I have no idea why the media wants to discredit this.
We should be monitoring South Africa. I’ve been talking to people from there for months and I have no doubts the government collapse/civil war is coming.
https://youtu.be/iMD_7DwuQDY?si=fiPjXbKf_QB–YVc
The average murder rate in S. Africa is 36 per 100,000.
One of the most high-risk (often because of gang activity) victim groups in general is taxi drivers, with a murder rate of about 120 per 100,000.
The rate for RURAL white farmers is 140 per 100,000. Keep in mind that these people are also harder to access, and often have significant security measures, like fences, barbed-wire, dogs, firearms, etc. , so it takes more effort to get at them.
I’m no expert on S. Africa, but we were there a couple of years ago (mostly photo “safaris” and other such touristy stuff). Still, the dangers and corruption are evident, even in the countryside, in the form of police “checkpoints” that are mainly there to shake down travelers, and lodge facilities behind walls and wire.
Passing through Pretoria, we saw neighborhoods with every residence surrounded by a high wall and barbed wire. More than half had “for sale” or “lease” signs. Our (black) guide wouldn’t let us out of the vehicle, even on the expansive lawns in front of the Union Buildings.
Not to paint too bleak of a picture, nearly everyone we interacted with, black or white, was friendly, and they seemed to work together well. The “townships” however, are truly horrible; I don’t think we’ve had conditions like those in the US in 100 years. All it takes is a bunch of unethical politicians (a redundancy?) and there are serious consequences.
Already released on a no cash bond, no doubt, and his public defender is already planning to play the race card as part of his preliminary hearing, cue the legacy media, for a news conference. Expect 6 month probation deal in his plea deal, cue Maxine Waters for a post trial news conference. Ho hum, just another day in paradise!
I almost included a similar remark, but decided to leave it as a jump ball.
Marco Rubio didn’t hold back in shutting down Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen in a hearing the other day. Van Hollen is active on X, actively proving the adage “It’s better to remain silent and be thought fool…”, and mostly engaging in displays of his TDS infection.
Here’s a section of his official senatorial website. Is this sort of politics-laden “help” an ethical use of the site?