Pray for Curmie.
Sad News: Ethics Alarms’ Esteemed AWOL Columnist Just Posted This Trump-Deranged Meme on Facebook…
Pray for Curmie.
Ethics Alarms Award Nominee
Smug, Self-Satisfied Progressive Asshole of the Year: David Litt
The obnoxious screed “Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?,” authored by an obscure writer I never heard of (three of his better-known mentors are above) and hope I never hear of again, was deemed appropriate content for New York Times readers, and not as satire either.
Litt epitomizes the type of insufferable elitist jerks that have made the modern Left the pit of despond that it has become over the last decade or so. Yuck. Was this guy ever a tolerable human being? The Times should be required to publish a full analysis of how Litt got this way as a public service, kind of like that episode of “I Love Lucy” where her book draft was sought by a publisher to use in a how-to tome to illustrate what writers shouldn’t ever do.
The column is about how Litt “felt a civic duty to be rude” to his wife’s younger brother because he hadn’t seen the light and surrendered his mind to the Woke and Wonderful. A few excerpts will tell you all you need to know about Litt, but I may add a little commentary here and there:
Pro Tip: Don’t Extol Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Because It Will Make You Look Like An Idiot [Expanded]
For your early morning reading pleasure, I give you Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s 4,568th (approximately) unhinged rant about climate change and how evil conservatives are destroying, oh, everything. I saw this dog’s breakfast “liked” and “loved” on Facebook by smart people who should know better, and am hoping against hope they didn’t actually read the thing.
Whitehouse is Little Rhodey’s senior U.S. Senator, Democrat of course, and his speech this week on the Senate floor (several members had to be hospitalized after they rolled their eyes too hard) was reflexively praised by “The Nation,” which employs far, far, FAR left lunatic Elie Mystal as an editor.
[Digression: You remember Elie, don’t you? He can only appear in public now on MSNBC without being chased by men in white coats carrying butterfly nets. He was too extreme for the left-biased legal gossip rag “Above the Law,” which published his radical nonsense before he went completely bonkers. Elie has opined that all black jurors should always vote to acquit black defendants no matter hwo guilty they are. Nice. (I wonder what the ABA would say if juries paid any attention to him?) More recently he called for foreign nations to issue sanctions against the U.S.]
Read it. Or at least try. I dare you. I double dare you. First, it is garbled, rambling and incoherent (not unlike this), perhaps not quite Authentic Frontier Gibberish, but too close to be tolerated from a U.S. Senator. Second, and this has always been true of his rants, Whiethouse obviously doesn’t understand climate change science at all, like all hysterics who want the U.S. to spend trillions and cripple the economy based on speculation. This country can’t slow down climate change, whatever it is, without the vast majority of the world joining in and they won’t, don’t and can’t. This includes giant countries India and China. Does Whitehouse really not comprehend this, or is he just pimping for a world dictatorship? Oh, who knows? There is no justification for paying any attention to him, ever.
Whitehouse has, for example, repeatedly said that Americans who oppose the climate change “consensus” should be imprisoned. To this, law professor/pundit Glenn Reynolds responded,
“First, this man should be voted out of office as soon as human possible. His ignorance is dangerous. Second, the state bar should require him to undergo at least 100 hours of mandatory continuing legal education on the subject of constitutional law, with emphasis on the First Amendment. Newsflash: joining together to discuss common interests and even–gasp!–funding research, white papers and lobbying efforts to advance one’s perspectives on an issue isn’t illegal; its free speech.”
It should be no surprise that Whitehouse implies that the Texas flood is the result of evil Republicans and Donald Trump not caring about our planet slowly burning up, though there is no evidence of the tragedy being caused by climate change (or DOGE cuts). [Added] I just saw this…
Awwww. Too BAD, Senator!
But he has other villains to finger: “dark money” that elects those evil Republicans (funny, getting far more money in donations than Donald Trump didn’t seem to help Kamala Harris any); “creepy billionaires,” and a “captured Supreme Court.” In fact, I can’t let this pass; here is that part of the rant:
More Fun With Zohran!
Zohran Mamdani, the slick Muslim communist who bids fair to be New York City’s next incompetent, ruinous mayor, is already showing himself to be useful and amusing in the ways that he is inspiring his Axis defenders to reveal to all just how dishonest and corrupt they are. For example…
Item I: The New York Times, which broke the story on how Mandani claimed to be black on his application to Columbia, has been attacked in some woke quarters (that is, much of New York City) for, you know, practicing actual journalism rather than burying inconvenient news and issuing useful leftist propaganda. Keith Olbermann, Professional Progressive Asshole, tweeted on behalf of the lunatic fringe by issuing this…
Since the story has been authenticated by multiple sources including Mamdani himself, one must wonder what “standards” Keith is referring to if not “the Axis media’s job is to support all Democrats and progressives, and to deceive the public to the extent possible when necessary.”
Times assistant managing editor for “Standards and Trust” Patrick Healy rushed to tweet the official explanation for why the Times would published such a story. Oddly, the paper never did this when it was asserting that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, or when it was publishing misleading statistics to terrify readers about the Wuhan virus so a panic-fueled lockdown would wreck the economy, or when it declared that the Deep State intelligence community was quite sure that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a nothingburger. But I digress. Healy grovelled,
“Our reporters obtained information about Mr. Mamdani’s Columbia college application and went to the Mamdani campaign with it. When we hear anything of news value, we try to confirm it through direct sources. Mr. Mamdani confirmed this information in an interview with The Times. Mr. Mamdani shared his thinking about the limitations of identity boxes on forms like Columbia’s, and explained how he wrote in “Uganda,” the country of his birth – the kind of decision many people with overlapping identities have wrestled with when confronted with such boxes. We believe Mr. Mamdani’s thinking and decision-making, laid out in his words, was newsworthy and in line with our mission to help readers better know and understand top candidates for major offices.
“We sometimes receive information that has been hacked or from controversial sources. The Times does not solely rely on nor make a decision to publish information from such a source; we seek to confirm through direct sources, which we did with Mr. Mamdani. On sourcing, we work to give readers context, including in this case the initial source’s online alias, as a way to learn more about the person, who was effectively an intermediary. The ultimate source was Columbia admissions data and Mr. Mamdani, who confirmed our reporting.
“We heard from readers who wanted more detail about this initial source. That’s fair feedback. We printed his online alias so readers could learn more about the person. The purpose of this story was to help illuminate the thinking and background of a major mayoral candidate.”
Translation: “Oh please, please, don’t be mad at us! We were just trying to be a real newspaper for a change! It’s been a while!”
Architecture Ethics: If George Costanza Really Became An Architect…
…he might have designed something like that bridge above, the Rail Over Bridge in Bhopal, India.
Central India’s Madhya Pradesh Government recently suspended the seven engineers responsible for the incompetent and dangerous design. Two construction companies have also been blacklisted, and small wonder. The bridge cost 200 million rupee ($2.3 million) and was announced 10 years ago to improve connectivity between Mahamai Ka Bagh, Pushpa Nagar, and the station area with New Bhopal. It was meant to eliminate long delays at railway crossings and shorten the commute for nearly three hundred thousand people.
VD Verma, the chief engineer on the project, claims that he and his team had no choice but to include the 90-degree turn because of land space and the presence of a metro station nearby. Of course he had a choice: tell officials that there was no way to build a safe bridge in the area available. Bhopal authorities are now trying to purchase more land, to allow the implementation of a safer turn. See, the idea is to do that before you build the bridge, not after.
I don’t understand how this could happen, do you? Nobody spoke up in either the planning or the construction stage to say, “Hey, wait a minute! You can’t have 90 degree turn on a bridge!”? Apparently these workers, so far unidentified, completed the bridge…
George, meanwhile, replied regarding his design,
Being Married Without Your Consent? Yeah, I’d Say This Is “Toe in a Plug of Tobacco” Level Unethical: “Someone Has Been Very Careless”
Ethics Alarms has often cited the dry desiccated toe in the plug of tobacco that is the essence of “res ipsa loquitur,” or “the thing speaks for itself”: “Someone has been very careless.”
This leads me to the bizarre experience of a Texas man, whose name so far has been withheld, presumably because he feels like an idiot. He says he was married to his ex-fiancée without his knowledge. The 42-year-old victim was in a committed relationship with 36-year-old Kristin Marie Spearman. They were about to get a Wayne County marriage license but got into a heated argument that culminated in his breaking off their romance. His ex-fiancée was not one to give up without a fight, however.
Her ex- received a gift bag from Bath & Body Works containing some products along with a copy of an officiated marriage license with his and Spearman’s names on it and a photo of his ex-fiancee holding up the document legally declaring them to be husband and wife. Kristin had managed to get a local pastor to certify the marriage even though the groom wasn’t in attendance. She then took the certified marriage license to her local county clerk’s office and filed it with officials. As far as the records go, it’s a legal marriage.
Spearman has been arrested and charged with third-degree felony stalking. The pastor, meanwhile, has a lot of explaining to do.
From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files….[Updated]
That’s one of the anti-Musk “exhibits” displayed by Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM). Yes, she’s an Incompetent Elected Official. (I can’t wait for her to scream “Those budget figured don’t add up!”) Yes, she’s an embarrassment. Yes, she’s an idiot. [Special thanks to long, LONG-time commenter Neil Dorr, who informed me who the math genius was.]
Before I proceed, HIT IT, L’il Abner and Marryin’ Sam!
Rueful observations…
1 And they wonder why American trust in our government institutions is falling…
2. If Democrats can’t find a legitimate poll to justify their positions, they just make one up. That is proof right there…
3. Even if that chart were not completely incompetent, dishonest and absurd, how is a poll on what DOGE is doing and has done relevant to anything? All it shows is that the public’s inattentive and gullible consumption of partisan propaganda from news organizations causes it to believe one thing or another. A poll has no bearing on whether a government program or action is wise, effective or necessary.
4. Consider how many government employees had to be lazy, ignorant or stupid (or all three) for that chart to get into the hearing and on TV. We begin with the Congresswoman, of course, then all of her staff and the drones who made the chart.
5. As usual, this is one more indictment of the public school system.
6. The Democrats are doing their damnedest to snatch away the GOP’s longtime title as “The Stupid Party.”
7. The social media wags are having a ball with this one. Example: “I agree with that poll 110%!”
8. Democracy Dies in Cretinism.
Ethics Quiz: The Anti-American Professor
I know, I know…there are a lot of these, probably many thousands, but most manage to pretend to not be likely to mold vulnerable young minds in to wanting their own fellow citizens dead. Georgetown Professor Jonathan Brown, however is special.
He is a full professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University [above] and the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization. He is clearly the campus cheerleader, one of them anyway, for Islam, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I would personally have Brown frisked for strap-on bombs if he was ever a guest at one of my dinner parties, however. Fortunately, I am as likely to ever be in a position to hold a dinner party as I am to clone a passenger pigeon.
On Twitter/X he wrote last week, among other things, “I’m not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops…I’m surprised this is what these FDD/Hasbara people have been auto-erotically asphyxiating themselves for all these years…Ironically, the main takeaways (in my non-expert opinion, and I’m happy to be corrected) from all this have nothing to do with a US attack: 1) Iran can take a licking; 2) if Israel attacks Iranian cities, it gets fucked up pretty bad. I mean I’ve been shocked at the damage Iranian missiles caused; 3) despite his best efforts, Reza Pahlavi HVAC repair services still only third best in Nova.”
When his post came to light and some harsh criticism began coming his way, Brown quickly made his account private so nobody but fellow Jihadists could see what he’s thinking, and wrote, “I deleted my previous tweet because a lot of people were interpreting it as a call for violence. That’s not what I intended. I have two immediate family members in the US military who’ve served abroad and wouldn’t want any harm to befall American soldiers” Brown later deleted that post too.
Imagine anyone thinking that his published hope for an Iranian strike on a U.S. base was a call for violence! What’s the matter with these people?
Fox News did some journalism and revealed that Brown is married to a journalist for the television network Al Jazeera and that her father was deported to Turkey for supporting and aiding an Iranian terrorist organization.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Should there be any adverse consequences to Brown, or any similarly behaving professor, for his social media outburst?
Lest We Forget: This Was the Most Unethical and Indefensible Partisan Act of 2025 So Far
The Democratic Party seems hellbent on self-destruction, but the Axis media burying, under-reporting and generally spinning its worse transgressions may slow the process a bit. This week, there was a scantly reported act by the party that cannot be defended—-if you have a defense to propose, please send it in—but it came in a week so saturated with consequential news both ethical and otherwise that I’ll wager most Americans missed it.
Senate Democrats refused to participate in the first Congressional hearing regarding the cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline while in the White House, the question of whether his “autopen executive orders” and appointments were valid, and the potential Constitutional breaches these represent. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) attended the first Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on the topic this week. Then almost immediately Durbin, the ranking Democratic member, walked out in protest with Welch behind him, with a lame and cynical whataboutist call for the committee to investigate President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to respond to illegal immigration enforcement rioting in Los Angeles. (The courts took care of that one, Dick, despite the attempts of your party’s captive judiciary.)
Then Durbin blathered, “The Republican majority on this committee has not held a single oversight hearing despite numerous critical challenges facing the nation that are under our jurisdiction.” Desperately, he cited the assassination of a state lawmaker in Minnesota, now pretty authoritatively proven to be the act of a lone wacko, and last week’s handcuffing of Sen. Alex Padilla at a DHS press conference, when the grandstanding jerk was properly treated according to Secret Service protocols. “Apparently, armchair diagnosing former President Biden is more important than the issues of grave concern, which I have mentioned,” Durbin said.
The ABA Is Defending Its Racially Discriminatory Scholarships…Of Course It Is.
Res ipsa loquitur, no?
In April, the American Alliance for Equal Rights led by Edward Blum, the scourge of affirmative action and “good discrimination” policies, filed a complaint in an Illinois federal court alleging that the American Bar Association’s 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship discriminates against white applicants. Since their skin color renders them unable to apply, this contention seems beyond debate. The question is whether, as a trade association, the ABA has a right to discriminate.
The Alliance said it is representing an unnamed white male law school applicant who says that he would apply for the $15,000 Legal Opportunity Scholarship were he not prevented from doing so because he is the “wrong” race. The ABA awards between 20 and 25 such scholarships annually to incoming law students, according to its website, which is excerpted above.
I should have covered this in April: sorry. [Believe me, if I could find a way to work on the blog full-time without ending up living on cat food and in a shack by the docks, I would.] Anyway, this kind of thing is why I do not pay dues to the ABA, and why I am suspicious of any lawyer who does. It is an interesting case. I assumed that Blum would lose if the case proceeded, and that his main objective was to shame the ABA into opening up the race-based scholarships to all. But the ABA has no shame. And I knew that.
The American Bar Association responded to Blum’s suit this week, arguing that a scholarship program designed to boost diversity among law students is protected free speech. The 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship, the largest lawyer association in the nation asserts, is protected under the First Amendment. In its motion to dismiss the ABA also claimed that plaintiff American Alliance for Equal Rights lacks standing to sue.
Ethics Alarms 