Citizenship

Let’s Take The “Deranged And Unethical Ideologues” Test!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

keep-calm-it-s-only-a-test-2

Recognizing insanity shouldn’t be that difficult, or impeded by political orientation. Yet as the Rachel Dolezal fiasco proves, it can be. (Now that we know that she previously claimed to be discriminated against because she was white, and heard her tell Matt Lauer that a black man was her father because she thought of him as her father, will all the loyal left culture warriors who chose to die on that silly hill after I warned them that they would regret it learn anything? I doubt it.)

Now, in the interest of improving everyone’s non-partisan wacko-detection and rejection skills, I offer these two examples, one from the left, and one from the right. If either seems reasonable to you, you flunk.

First, from the right, we have… Continue reading →

Our Unethical Justice Department’s Attack on Reason

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Reason

While we’re on the topic of progressive/Democratic fascism, did you hear the one about the Justice Department?

I continue to wonder when cognitive dissonance will kick in and genuine humanist liberals who have been willing to support this President and his arrogant, bumbling administration through one botch and fiasco after another finally realize that trampling on basic rights in defiance of the Constitution isn’t OK, even when done in the name of an African-American President. Time is running out, and so far, except from some notable exceptions, all I see is shrugs and smiles. “Well, they are terrorists.” “Well, they are racist cops.” “Well, it’s teabaggers.” “Well, it’s just a Faux News reporter” “Well, it’s for a good cause.” “Well, the ends justify the means.”

Will this latest example of the fascist inclinations of the hard left be a tipping point? I doubt it. The expected shrug will be “Well, they’re just asshole blog commenters.”

Let me just say this to my many progressive friends: You’re disgracing yourself, and betraying all the good values you think you stand for.

Obama’s Department of Justice has issued grand jury subpoena to force Reason.com to release the identity of commenters who made what the Justice Department claims are threats on the life of a Federal judge. Reason is a libertarian, and as far as I can tell, non-partisan, publication as well as an excellent one, but as you might expect from any source that cares about individual rights, it is very critical of the Obama administration. Not that this had anything to do with it being targeted by the Justice Department—why are you so cynical?

The topic in which these comments occurred is of no interest to me here; you can read about it in the links. The main point to ponder is that this is a frightening abuse of power, government bullying, blatant incompetence and an effort to chill free speech, especially since the Supreme Court last week ruled that a “true threat,” and thus outside the protection of the First Amendment, couldn’t possibly be like the comments in question.  Which of these comments, criticizing a federal judge’s decision against a drug dealer (a lot of Reason’s commenters love their illegal drugs) would you say is a “true threat”? Continue reading →

The Tamir Rice Fiasco: A Step Toward Embracing Mob Justice In Police Shootings

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Oh, yeah, THIS is going to work...

Oh, yeah, THIS is going to work…

Because they believe that law enforcement officials did not move fast enough to indict (or not) the officers involved in the tragic, mistaken shooting of Tamir Rice, community activists are going  to seek the indictment and arrest of the Cleveland police officers involved by using a little-known and eccentric Ohio law that permits citizens to go directly to a judge with affidavits to seek murder charges. We can only hope that the judge chosen for this end-around has the courage and integrity to reject the petition as the attack on due process that it is.  I would not want to bet the farm on that happening.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice’s death is one of the most horrible among the spate of police shootings that have caused local and national outrage in the past year. On November 22, 2014 two police officers, 26-year-old Timothy Loehmann and 46-year-old Frank Garmback, responded to a city park after receiving a police dispatch call about “a male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people.” A 911 caller had reported that an African American male was pointing “a pistol” at random people in the Cudell Recreation Center and that “he is probably” a juvenile .The caller also said the gun was “probably fake,” but was unable to tell whether the weapon was real or not because the orange barrel markings used to identify toy weapons had been removed. This information was never relayed to the officers. Continue reading →

Now THESE Are “Feminazis”…Melissa Harris Perry and Kamila Shamsie

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments

feminazi

Rush Limbaugh assured himself of a permanent place in the Feminist Hall Of Villains when he coined the term feminazis to describe militant women’s rights advocates two decades ago. Limbaugh’s use of the term was excessively broad and unfair to be sure—to Rush, all feminists are feminazis— but it has become newly appropriate and useful as the Left increasingly advocates fascist tactics when it sees no quick route to its objectives using such repugnant means–to them—as the free market, open debate, merit-based advancement, and individual autonomy.

Is tarring these arrogant ideologues who favor enforced “equality” over basic Constitutional rights such a pejorative label uncivil, unfair or hateful? Why no, in fact. Sadly, tragically, frighteningly, it is entirely accurate. Here are two examples:

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry

Bemoaning the fact that male professional sports pay their athletes more than female sports(because they are more popular, because more men follow sports and because male athletes are, on average, bigger, faster, stronger and better) Harris-Perry made this statement on her far-left even for MSNBC show on the network:

During the break I was trying to think up a solution to the problem of building audience (for women athletes), so my solution is in 2016 we go completely dark on all media coverage of men’s sports, just for one year. We have the only televised sports, the only print sports, it’s only women’s sports, and we’ll just see whether or not women could get a fan base if in fact they were the people who were constantly on our televisions and in our newspapers.

That’s a reasonable “solution” to this TV personality, scholar, teacher, author, pundit, feminist, fascist. Cripple lawful businesses. Restrict communications. Limit commerce, advertising, marketing, merchandising. Restrict the public’s entertainment choices, and male athletes’ earning capacity. After all, it’s all about the vagina, right? If women can’t compete against men, then just eliminate the men, their rights, and their advantages by edict. The First Amendment, the right of contract, equal protection, due process, enjoyment of life—why should they stand in the way of the progressive, feminist agenda?

This is how fascists solve problems.

Melissa Harris-Perry is a feminazi.

PS: In the comments, esteemed reader Charles Green chides me for not taking Harris-Perry suggestion as a joke. First of all, the woman is humorless. Second, the fact that she knew her suggestion could never happen isn’t the same as a joke. That would be a solution to her, because she is squarely in the ends justify the means camp, like all extremists. I am sure readers could concoct “jokes” similar in spirit about “solutions” (facsists love “solutions,” you will recall) to other “problems” involving ethnic, racial or gender designations that Harris-Perry, for one, would condemn in the harshest terms. I know Rush could…

Continue reading →

Lincoln Chafee’s Batty Ethics Argument For The Metric System

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments

Lincoln_Chafee_official_portrait

Ugh. I can’t let this pass.

Yesterday I happened upon Lincoln Chafee on one of the Sunday shows, giving his elevator pitch for why he should be President. You may recall that Chafee, former Republican Senator and Governor of Rhode Island, turned independent after being defeated for re-election and now is following Bernie Sanders’ example, declaring himself a Democrat for the purpose of getting nominated. Chafee is another politician, like the Bush bothers and Hillary Clinton, who owes his initial political prominence to being related to a popular political figure rather than his own innate abilities. As he made obvious the more he spoke…

His two primary campaign positions were 1) “Wage peace”—whatever that means. This is right up there with John Lennon songs as serious policy discourse,  though I’m sure ISIS is fascinated by the concept, and 2) Adopt the metric system. Chafee borrowed this from the idea machine known as the Andrew Johnson administration, as Andy was the first President to officially acknowledge the benefits of the U.S. adopting the less eccentric measurement system used by Europe. I’m sure we all can agree that this is one of the most pressing issues facing the country today.

However, Chafee really got my attention, and sparked this post, when he attempted to combine his two prime objectives, which is no mean trick. I tried to find a transcript, video or a news report to document this, but so far I have failed: maybe everyone is trying to be nice. I swear I am not making this up, though I wish I were.

Chafee argued that the United States should adopt the Metric system because it invaded Iraq and didn’t find the weapons of mass destruction.

He really did. Continue reading →

Inexcusable Political Reporter Incompetence: “Inalienable Rights? What Inalienable Right?”

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
Quick, Will, Meredith: Who is this guy? Is he a} Harpo Marx b) Bruce Jenner or c) Thomas Jefferson?

Quick, Will, Meredith: Who is this guy? Is he a} Harpo Marx b) Bruce Jenner or c) Thomas Jefferson?

This isn’t about bias, although a good case could be made that bias is at the root of the problem. It is about supposedly experienced political reporters not knowing, understanding or respecting the Declaration of Independence.

Lat week, the Associated Press’s Will Weissert wrote AP’s report on Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement of his candidacy for President, and included this:

“In a nod to the tea party, he said: ‘Our rights come from God, not from government.'”

This is ignorant, embarrassing, and wrong. He should be sent back to school, fired, or suspended, and so should the editor that let this pass. That our rights (our “inalienable rights”…ring any bells, Will?) come not from government but from God (“their Creator”…Will?), or, if you will, nature, innate humanity, the cosmos, or however you roll, is not the invention of the Tea Party, nor is citing the concept pandering to conservatives. Perry’s statement simply shows that he is familiar with and has proper reverence for the mission statement and founding document of the United States of America, as this AP reporter clearly does not.

Here, Will, you dolt, let me refresh your recollection:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Got that? Your inexcusable, factually, legally and philosophically mistaken idea that governments grant rights is in direct contradiction with the basis of this nation’s founding, and the Constitution created to enable the mission as stated by Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress in 1776. The segments of the news media and the progressive community that make assertions like Weissert’s–call them the Ignorant Left—are arguing for a system in which government dictates what rights we have or don’t have—you know, like the King of England. This is specifically un-American, because it was the exact basis on which the United States declared that being part of the British Empire was intolerable.

Meredith Shiner at Yahoo Politics did the same thing in March, tweeting in reaction to Ted Cruz’s announcement of his candidacy:

“Bizarre to talk about how rights are God-made and not man-made in your speech announcing a POTUS bid? When Constitution was man-made?”

Bizarre, is it, Meredith? Do you live here? Did you attend college, or high school? The Constitution represents the human beings making up a democratic government securing  rights that every human being are born with and that may not be taken from him or her. Did you miss class that day when the Declaration of Independence was being taught? Or can you just not read?

Is it God that’s the hang up? I bet it is, since Democrats, progressives  and journalists (but I repeat myself) have utter contempt for religion and the concept of God. Well, you badly educated fraud of a “political analyst,” Thomas Jefferson was not exactly Martin Luther. This is why he used the term Creator. Creator—did you miss all of your English classes too? Creator can mean God, as well as designer, builder, designer, inventor, founder…but Jefferson was a terrific writer, and knew that words can mean different things to different people in the same context, so he used a word that also can suggest agency, a beginning, causation, determinant, a catalyst, genesis, inducement, instigation, origin, root or source. Jefferson was also a scientist, and understood more than most–certainty more than you—that we do not have all the answers. What he said, and what the Founders endorsed, and what the Constitution was written to execute and establish for all time, was that human beings have certain rights from the instant they are born, and that no government has to grant them or take them away.

Whatever their flaws, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry understand that, as anyone qualified to seek the Presidency must. Shiner and Weissert do not understand that, and thus are unqualified to vote, much less to be political reporters.

___________________

Pointer: Newsbusters

Ethics Quote Of The Week: The Sunlight Foundation

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

We will honor Twitter’s latest decision, but it stands at odds with a fundamental understanding of our democracy. A member of Congress does not and should not have the same expectation of privacy as a private citizen. Power can only be accountable with a generous application of transparency.

—The Sunlight Foundation, announcing the demise of its service Politwoops, a site that tracked and preserved tweets deleted by hundreds of politicians.

Maybe a better logo would have helped...

Maybe a better logo would have helped…

Twitter, without explanation, changed its stance on Politwoops, which allowed the public to see tweets that politicians, upon reflection, decided that they didn’t want the news media, constituents or opponents to see.

Says the Sunlight Foundation:

What our elected officials say is a matter of public record, and Twitter is an increasingly important part of how our elected officials communicate with the public. This kind of dialogue between we the people and those who represent us is an important part of any democratic system. And even in the case of deleted tweets, it’s also a public part — these tweets are live and viewable by anyone on Twitter.com and other platforms for at least some amount of time….Politwoops was created because public communications from public officials should be available to anyone who wants to see them. The site isn’t just about blunders, but rather revealing a more intimate perspective on our politicians and how they communicate with their constituents. It has created a unique lens to reveal how the messages from elected officials can change without notice or explanation — because Politwoops did not allow for such reversal of messaging to quietly be swept under the rug.

But Twitter is a private business, and can make whatever policies it wants.

I wonder who got to them…

Ethics Hero: Senator Rand Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Thanks, Snator, we needed that.

Thanks, Senator, we needed that.

Rand Paul has disqualified himself from being considered for the Presidency by rational voters in many ways. His suggestion to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he would have waited for market forces to end Jim Crow, and voted against portions of the Civil Rights Act was enough all by itself. Paul’s embrace of isolationism—he often sounds like Michael Moore on foreign policy—is as fanciful as it is dangerous.  He has no executive experience, and based on some of his statements (and positions), I’m convinced he’s just not very smart.

Not only that, but he is the most arrogant candidate in a field that may contain Chris Christie, and that’s incredible.

Nonetheless, his filibuster-like Senate speech against National Security Agency counter-terrorism surveillance, forcing key portions of the Patriot Act to expire, was a brave, principled, and important act. In the end it was also a futile act, and the Senate quickly passed provisions that Paul opposed. The Daily Beast headlined the story, “It’s NSA 1, Rand Paul 0.”

It was still a public service. Yes, Paul alienated most of his party, and he took a huge risk: a single terrorist attack here will automatically turn him into a national pariah, and coming the same week that we discovered conclusively that the TSA is a joke, the chances of such an event occurring seem likelier than ever. (Saying, however, as Paul did, that “people here in town …secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me” was inexcusably  stupid. Really? People want to see American citizens die to make Rand Paul look bad, when he makes himself look bad on a regular basis?) The point Paul made, however, and it needs to be made again, and again, and again, is that there is no reason to trust the NSA, and no reason to trust the current federal government either. The fact that on security matters we have no real choice is frightening and disheartening, but nevertheless, no American should be comfortable with his or her private communications, activities and other personal matters being tracked by the NSA, which is incompetent (See: Snowden, Edward) and which lies, or the Obama Administration, which doesn’t care if the NSA lies, and has repeatedly shown that it has no qualms about violating the Constitution until a Court stops it. Continue reading →

KABOOM! The Fascist School Superintendent Who Is Training Children To Think Like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
Bad one. Been building for a while.

Bad one. Been building for a while.

Explain to me why this story isn’t national news, while a principal pulling a valedictorian off the graduation program when he insisted on making graduation a vehicle for his coming out as gay—to his parents—is. Never mind. We both know know. Journalists see discrimination and homophobia even where it isn’t, but fascism increasingly bothers them less and less.

That’s because, I fear, they are Democrats. I will return to this surprising and alarming theme in a moment.

At Northwest Mississippi Community College, where the graduation ceremony for Senatobia High was held,  the superintendent asked the crowd not to scream or cheer and to hold their applause until the end. As always happens—always, always,always––a few relatives couldn’t contain themselves. Four guests shouted various felicities and exhortation to their graduates out of turn

They are strict in Mississippi: all four were kicked out of the event.

But that’s not all. They are really strict in Mississippi: Senatobia Municipal School District Superintendent Jay Foster filed ‘disturbing the peace’ charges against the people who yelled at graduation, and police  issued warrants for their arrests with a possible $500 bond.

KABOOM!

Well, my head’s been threatening to explode for quite a while now*, and this finally did it, big time. Congratulations Jay Foster, you foolish, unethical, unkind, tin-god fascist. You did it.

Foster refused to be interviewed on camera, but told the media that he’s determined to have order at graduation ceremonies. I recommend snipers, Jay. Or maybe duct tape. This fascist idiot is responsible for educating children! Does he realize he’s educating them to be…Democratic Senators? Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Officials Of The Month: The Connecticut State Senate

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

The Connecticut Senate this week approved a probably unconstitutional bill requiring all Connecticut colleges and universities to adopt the “yes, means yes” policy when it comes to sexual consent, similar to California’s cypto-fascist law. The bill dictates a completely unenforceable standard for sexual consent It was bi-partisan fascism, and passed 34-1. Sen. Joe Markley, R-Southington, was the lone vote against it.

According to the bill’s champion, Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly,  it is “is redefining the definition of consent.” She explains that under the law, college students would be required to “say yes” or indicate nonverbally through “physical cues” that they are willing to have sex with another college student. And what “physical cues” would qualify? How about eye contact, and the kind of communications that we celebrate in the arts and literature? What about the “look of love” that Dusty Springfield sang about? Enough, Mae? How would schools enforce such a law? Cameras in every room? A panel of “physical cues” experts, watching every possible sexual encounter? Continue reading →