Late first post again today, for a very good reason: I’ve been researching and pondering what to write about the sad, pathetic, useless (well, maybe not useless, as I will elaborate on later) “No Kings” protests today. It even took me a long time to settled on the most direct and simplest of the myriad hilarious memes on the topic, as you can see above. (Powerline has a bumper crop in its weekly conservative meme collection, here.)
I was originally going to feature a depressing photo posted on Facebook this morning by two of my favorite people, both retired lawyers, both learned, accomplished and intelligent, and catastrophically Trump Deranged. It shows them smiling in a gathering mob of D.C. “No Kings” protesters, as they hold one of the vague protest signs printed up with George Soros’s money. Sure, I was going to blur out their faces, but I don’t want them to take my criticism (or diagnosis) personally. It’s not their fault that they have lost their frickin’ minds. They live in a bubble, they have always been Democrats, they subscribe to the Washington Post, but they had no way of predicting that their powers of critical thinking could ever be so eroded by hate, bias, and misinformation.
This is one of those situations where my ethics alarms steered me to exactly the opposite position of almost everyone I know. Like the Axis media, they are generally pronouncing Sec. Hegseth’s cracking down on leaks at the Pentagon as one more “assault on democracy.” No, it is just another example of the Trump Administration having the guts to do what should have been done long ago.
What Hegseth called in a tweet “Press Credentialing for Dummies,” news organization reporters are now subject to the following rules:
1. No roaming free in the Pentagon. Good.
2. Reporters must wear badges identifying them as such. Good.
3. Press can not solicit criminal acts. Best of all.
Ethics Alarms has long held the position that “journalists” abuse their privilege under the First Amendment by freely (smugly, irresponsibly) engaging in information laundering by publishing leaks from individuals who broke the law or their ethical duties by telling reporters what they were forbidden to reveal. Since we now know that these untrustworthy professionals (which means they are not professionals at all) do not have the best interests of the nation at heart, making news organizations agree to reasonable restrictions as a condition of holding press credentials is the responsible course.
I endorse the analysis at Victory Girls on this issue, which wrote in part,
Freedom of the Press means that you get to REPORT news items. It does not mean you get to demand and be granted access to wherever you want. The media and far too many politicians have forgotten or are willfully ignoring that salient point….in World War II there was a slogan. A very important slogan: “Loose lips sink ships.” To be blunt, people were shitcanned from their jobs or even thrown in prison during that time period for breaking those rules. [But]in the last twenty years at least, Pentagon weenies and the media have cultivated relationships that have led to media breaking stories chock full of those “unnamed sources” about Pentagon dealings. Too many of those reports, especially during President Trump’s first term, were designed as hit jobs.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. In protest of the new restrictions, most of the news organizations covering the Pentagon, even Fox, are boycotting the assignment rather than agree to Hegseth’s terms. The news media brought this on themselves; they will find no sympathy here. They have been, after all, “enemies of the people.” I see no reason to trust enemies with access to Pentagon secrets. In fact, doing so is unethical: incompetent and irresponsible.
The case, Louisiana v. Callais, involves the question of whether Louisiana’s congressional map violates the 15th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it clearly includes two districts with boundaries based on race. The objective was to create two majority black districts. In other words, use race as the reason for determining Congressional districts.
Justice Jackson’s head-exploding argument? Giving blacks special advantages in the matter of representation was like making special accommodations for the handicapped under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Black Americans, you see, are permanently handicapped because of the crippling effects of slavery (which ended 160 years ago) and Jim Crow (which ended 100 years later, about 60 years ago.)
“So going back to this discriminatory intent point, I guess I’m thinking of it, of the fact that remedial action absent discriminatory intent is really not a new idea in the civil rights laws. And my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA,” Jackson said.
“Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities,” the DEI Justice explained. “And so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings. And it didn’t matter whether the person who built the building or the person who owned the building intended for them to be exclusionary; that’s irrelevant. Congress said, the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities if readily possible. I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system. Right? They’re disabled. In fact ,we use the word ‘disabled’ in [Milliken v. Bradley]. We say that’s a way in which these processes are not equally open. So I don’t understand why it matters whether the state intended to do that. What Congress is saying is if it is happening … you gotta fix it.”
Got it! American blacks are permanently disabled. This is the rote justification for affirmative action forever, DEI (which Jackson understandably has an affection for), and reparations for slavery. It is a jaw-droppingly demeaning characterization of black Americans, and pure stereotyping.
Her “logic” also misses an obvious and crucial point: when the 1964 Voting Rights Act was passed, the U.S. was just barely leaving the Jim Crow era. Brown v. Bd of Education was only ten years old. Inter-racial marriage was still illegal in many states. Progressives and race-hucksters like Jackson refuse to acknowledge that there has been massive progress in race relations since 1964, and they deny that progress because it means giving up their own benefits from the phenomenon of presumed racism. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Jackson’s statement marks her as a racketeer.
That quote from Jackson is damning (and it bolsters the EA case that Joe Biden was the worst POTUS ever, since he appointed this partisan hack) and should be headline news, but it’s not. Gee, I wonder why… Over at SCOTUS blog, the new proprietor, Amy Howe, provides what she represents as a thorough analysis of the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais without mentioning Jackson’s outrageous theory at all. So far, I have only seen it mentioned on conservative blogs and news sites. In fact, I was driven to Breitbart, a site I banned for being biased and untrustworthy, to find the full quote.
Is Jackson the worst SCOTUS Justice ever? I think she’s worse than Sotomayor, which is pretty amazing, but no, I’m sure there have been worse ones in the Courts dim past. But she is pretty assuredly the worst Justice in my lifetime, and that would include the execrable Harry Blackmun, who inflicted Roe v. Wade on the nation as well as the indefensible majority opinion declaring that baseball, alone among professional sports and billion dollar private businesses, should be immune from the antitrust laws. Harry was an mediocre judge in over his head thanks to a Peter Principle Nixon appointment, but he was at least smart enough not to claim that being black was the equivalent of being disabled.
Ugh. Yesterday, President Trump posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Medal of Freedom. That was an appropriate way to express admiration and appreciation for the martyred conservative activist. (MSNBC, alone among the networks, didn’t feel the ceremony was newsworthy. Now, a newsworthy ceremony for the network was President Biden giving the Presidential Citizen’s Medal to Liz Cheney for running a Star Chamber against American citizens tand her own party o make sure the public understands the difference between bad rioting—the half-day Capitol embarrassment by conservative morons—and good rioting—the nation-wide, May through December 2020 Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful protests” by Democrats—at least according to”MS.” Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias…).
The State Department said yesterday that it had determined the six unidentified foreign nationals from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa should lose their visas after reviewing their online social media posts and clips about Kirk. “[We]will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws,” the State Department said. “Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”
Celebrating.
Next up from this weirdly thin-skinned gang: prosecuting whoever celebrates LA Dodger victories in the baseball play-offs. The move hands a metaphorical spiked club to the Trump-Deranged who claim this President wants to cancel the First Amendment. Dumb. Abuse of power.
In Michael Crichton’s terrific 2004 novel “State of Fear,” never made into a movie because it makes a strong case that the purveyors of climate change hysteria are just ignorant hooey-mongers, a character modeled on Martin Sheen travels to a tropical island suing the United States for alleged climate change damages and is eaten by cannibals. I was reminded of this episode when I read excerpts from his “blistering anti-Trump speech” on MSNBC yesterday.
Sheen epitomizes the “Shut up and act!” Hollywood activists, except that he is more afflicted with the Dunning-Kruger than most. He is neither particularly bright or well-educated, and is one of those fascinating actors who is successful playing characters smarter than he is, whereupon he gets confused and thinks that he is the smart one.
This is how desperate MSNBC was yesterday to find someone able to thrill its Trump Deranged audience: they stooped to allowing Sheen to rant interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. What possible enlightenment does Sheen offer anyone on any topic not related to acting (which has been his full occupation since he was a teenager) , and what possible credentials does he have (more than, say, someone you hit with a rock thrown randomly into a crowd) to opine on the Trump Presidency? Does Sheen know he just played a President? Does Wallace? Does MSNBC?
Here is what that sad, sick network thought was worth broadcasting:
[ This was last year’s Columbus Day post, and I decided that I couldn’t improve on it, so up it goes again. It is, after all, the proverbial two-bird stone: a straight reminder of how much we, and the world, owe to Chris, and how narrowly we avoided electing a pandering idiot as President. Another Columbus Day Ethics Alarms post worth visiting is this one, because it has the link to Stan Freeberg’s immortal Columbus riff on his “Stan Freeberg Presents the United States of America,” one of the most inspired pieces of musical satire ever.
But back to Columbus Day: its cancellation in some woke-lobotomized states (Indigenous Peoples Day) was part of the “America is evil and we should all be ashamed” cultural poison that the Mad Left has been trying to choke our society with for a long time. President Trump has more pressing challenges as he takes on the herculean task—it compares to Herc cleaning out the Augean Stables, the last and most disgusting of his Twelve Labors—of repairing our culture, but clarifying the significance of Columbus finding the New World is part of it. Let’s be clear: by any utilitarian analysis the European migration to North America was a very good thing indeed, probably inevitable, and beneficial to the entire world. Thank-you, than-you, thank you, Columbus. ]
“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.”
—Kamala Harris in 2021, pandering to the “America is a blight on the Earth and the world would have been better without it” bloc in the Democratic Party in a Columbus Day address.
In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Louis Carroll’s Mad Hatter asks Alice the riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” One would think that the question in the headline above is equally obscure (the Guthrie, in Minneapolis, is one of the most respected and celebrated regional theaters in the country) but it has an answer. Like the Colbert late night show, which has since its inception sought to exclude anyone who isn’t woke, obsessed with progressive politics or, since 2015, Trump Deranged, the Guthrie now aims at entertaining only that same audience, except in its case only the wealthy, white, upper-middle class demographic within that audience, or others willing to sit still for relentless leftist propaganda and cant.
A recent audience member for The Guthrie’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Dolls House” wrote about his experience. “A Doll’s House” is about as moldy a feminist tract as there is (I once called the play the drama equivalent of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” but much longer, and even more over-exposed (it was written in 1879, so its analogies with the real state of womanhood, especially in the U.S., have been increasingly forced as time goes by. (No, her husband did not stop Nora from having an abortion: she would never have dreamed of killing an unborn child.)
Weiss left the New York Times with a damning letter of resignation after not being able to tolerate the paper’s flagrant Democratic and progressive bias. This morning CNN said that she “claimed” it was biased, just as Uri Berliner “claimed” that NPR is biased and Christopher Columbus “claimed” the world wasn’t flat. The New York Times and NPR (AND CBS, AND ABC, AND NBC…) are screamingly and undeniably biased to the extent that they can’t be said to be practicing trustworthy journalism at all.
Reportedly the CBS staff is freaking out over Weiss’s “10 core journalistic values” for the network news division. That the CBS culture is steeped in “advocacy journalism,” aka propaganda distribution, is proven by the fact that they are objecting to what was once accepted and standard journalistic values:
1.Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is. 2. Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual. 3. Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly — wherever it leads. 4. Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world. 5. Journalism that explains things clearly, without pretension or jargon. 6. Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny. 7. Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate. 8. Journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity. 9. Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era. 10. Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavor to present the public with the facts, first and foremost.
“I’m an H.I.V.-positive gay man who is distraught with where the country is headed [1], so I am actively participating in protests. I have a liberal friend who lives in an overwhelmingly Trump-supporting small town and is married to a Trump supporter. She messages me often about her fears of what is going on [2] and seems equally distraught. I’ve shared with her how current politics could affect my life [3] and how, although I’m very aware of my privilege [4], I’m concerned about people who aren’t as privileged and how they could be affected.[5] But she doesn’t participate in protests [6] and doesn’t like to actively show her views except on social media.[7] There are protests in small towns close to her that could use her support. [8] Once, there was a B.L.M. protest in her town, but she had ceiling fans being installed. [9] She passed on another recent protest because she had a birthday party. She has never participated and I’m getting increasingly annoyed. [10] I think it’s important to show up. [11] I also know that everyone is different, so I’m trying to reconcile this. [12] She comes off to me as someone who’s comfortable in her life and doesn’t want to shake anything up [13], which is the height of hypocrisy to me. [14]
I feel like apathy is how we got here in the first place [15], and I’m really struggling with how and whether to keep people like this in my life.”
I wish I could be confident that “The Ethicist” chose this foolishness to show that there really are deranged people out there so watch out, but I doubt it. The short and pithy response to it should be “You’re an asshole. Seek help.” But how many of you know people who think like “Name Withheld”? The footnotes…
The headline raises an interesting question: can an ethics villain be an ethics dunce, since ethics villains by definition don’t care about ethics, so how can they be judged stupid for ignoring them? Ah well, a topic for another day. Ann Althouse would ask Grok to resolve the issue…if I ever start quoting AI here regularly, someone please come up behind me and bash in my head with a brick.
I’ve been putting off the National Football League announcing that its now iconic halftime show during the 2026 Super Bowl in Santa Clara will star Bad Bunny, a performer I was mercifully unaware of before the announcement. After all, I could write this post any time between now and February 9, 2026, the day after the national sports event that I will not watch again because the sport it involves is deadly.
Today, however, I am in a bad mood, so it’s time. The Super Bowl has evolved as cultural phenomenon that is one of the rare yearly American events that unifies the nation, families, races and commerce. It is supposed to be non-partisan, non-political, and G-rated so families can watch the game and its surrounding hoopla with their children. When Janet Jackson exposed a nipple during a halftime performance, you would have thought that she has performed a human sacrifice by the reaction in the news media.
But now it is 2025, the Great Stupid still stalks the land, Trump Derangement reigns in the corporate suites, and thus the National Football League, which happily pays its players to become brain-injured, has chosen as its star attraction during the Super Bowl half-time show…
Ethics Alarms 