1. Another infuriating case where a man was falsely accused and convicted of murder by lying witnesses: After being imprisoned for 26 years, David Black was finally released after a key witness, dying of cancer, admitted that his testimony had been coerced by police. Another eyewitness had signed a declaration before dying that she “never saw a shooting but was harassed by the police into saying so. “All I wanted to do was go home,” she wrote.
I don’t understand how such witnesses can live with themselves. She just wanted to “go home” so much that she was willing to see an innocent man’s life destroyed. Nice. And there seems to be no way to punish such people that won’t make it harder to address similar miscarriages of justice.
2. This…
Tucker Carlson has either lost his mind or decided that accusing President Trump of treason for supporting a crucial U.S. ally is his best route to continued relevance. I am proud to say that I recognized Carlson for the principle-free creep he is long before he became a right-wing celebrity.
3. Donald Trump attended the re-do of the White House Correspondents Dinner knowing that he would face a largely hateful and hostile audience, did the expected Presidential stand-up routine, and bombed. This gave the news media yet another target for criticism that literally has nothing to do with Trump’s performance as President. Apparently the routine was terrible, but it could have been a Bob Newhart classic delivered with skill and brio and it would have bombed anyway. I speak as a professional in such matters: a hostile audience will almost never laugh at the object of their hostility. Trump is now, absurdly, blaming his speechwriters, an Ethics Foul. He delivered the thing. If he did so without reading it first, that’s his mistake.He hired the writers. He is 100% accountable.
4. Police shot another perp resisting arrest, this one “brandishing” a substantial knife, and as usual the anti-police, presumed-racism mob is angrily protesting in Madison Wisconsin. They don’t know all the facts in the episode, which is still being investigated, the protests are punishing innocent citizens because they have shut down a main thoroughfare, and the protest flunks every item on the EA Protest Ethics Checklist. Meanwhile, Ben Crump, a serial chaser of metaphorical presumed racism police shooting ambulances, is on the case. Of course he is.
5. Gift link! A Native American writes in the Times that “land acknowledgements” are pandering and foolish. He writes in part,
“Because the ritual still treats land as something that can be owned, it names the theft while leaving the idea of ownership untouched. Indigenous relationships to land were not about possession or title. They were about reciprocity, care, responsibility. Wendy Red Star, an Apsáalooke artist, put it this way: “The concept of territory is a completely Western idea. When we make land acknowledgments, we’re putting a Western, colonial concept on the relationship between the Native people who were stewards of the land. It’s not ownership.”
6. Times headline of the month that demands not reading the article under it: “Platner’s Top Campaign Strategist on What Went Wrong.” Gee, I wonder what that could be? That the guy had no qualifications at all? That his background wasn’t vetted? That he had a Nazi tattoo on his chest? That he had written outrageous posts on social media? That he routinely abused women? Was there something else that “went wrong”?
Ethics Alarms 
#5 is bison dung. Tribes were fighting over resources, hunting grounds, and enslaving each other long before whitey showed up on these shores. They were at the mercy of each other and nature. If you want to call that reciprocal…fine.
Yep, when they say these lands were the ancestral lands of a tribe, what they are failing to acknowledge is that tribe likely completely drove other tribes from that land, either by physically forcing them off or completely destroying them.
Modernity is a real challenge for so many cultures. I don’t understand why Indians think they can live as a separate culture within the larger American culture. Doing so seems self-defeating. Same with Islamism. Is it smart to impose a regressive culture and belief system on a population just so you can have four wives and impregnate twelve-year-old girls?
#4: Reporting at Ground Zero here in The 77 Square Miles Surrounded by A Sea Of Reality, I find it…um…interesting that so many hissy-fitting protesters have such great jobs where they can just up and leave them in order to gather at the drop of a hat.
Lefty LUVs them some criminals, and Corey (remembered as “fun-loving”) Ruiz, as a career felon/offender with a record a mile/1.61 kms long (47 arrests in ~18 years) gave them a LOT to LUV!
Yet you should read the Lefty comments on neighborsnextdoor (THEY Report/YOU Decide!) who are preparing to commission a bronze statue.
We’re left to ponder where his…um…grieving family (explicably grown exponentially in the last few days and lined up with the hope of a payday) were in the run-up to this “fun-loving” victim’s demise.
If the Dane County DA’s office had been doing their job, he’d have been in jail for his most recent excellent knife-wielding strangulation adventure.
He’s also still be alive.
PWS
Paulie. Other than yours, is there any honest reporting on this guy?