Ethics Hero: Military Judge Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr.

Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr, the military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case, threw out confessions by the Saudi defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in a 50-page decision yesterday. After all, the man accused of planning Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing on Oct. 12, 2000 in Yemen’s Aden Harbor that killed 17 U.S. sailors had been tortured by the CIA, or as th agency likes to describe it, “subjected to enhanced interrogation.” Yes, I seem to remember there was something in the Constitution that said you can’t do that. Quite a few things, actually.

Dirty Harry was also lectured on the same point, if I recall, 50 years ago.

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…Ethics Hero: Elon Musk (Again)

(See: “It’s Come To This: “Liking” A Politically Incorrect, Bad Taste Joke On Social Media Can Get You Suspended In The United States Of America”)

Bravo.

Nate Silver Tells The Truth About Media Bias: Ethics Hero

The only surprising aspect of Nate Silver’s latest substack essay is that he actually wrote it and had the courage to put it on the web. He is honest about mainstream media bias, and until he got kicked off his own creation, the 538 blog, Silver was a willing accomplice in this rot in the foundation of our democracy, making a lot of money in the process. Now—finally—he’s using his substantial critical thinking and research skills to expose the bad guys (his former pals before they rejected him : yes, I suspect there’s a measure of vengeance in this)who continue to successfully warp public knowledge and the process of an informed democracy by convincing sufficient number of ovine citizens that the concept of progressive media bias is a right-wing conspiracy theory. The focus of his traitorous analysis is how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has helped address the effects of the media’s partisan bias.

In “Twitter, Elon and the Indigo Blob,” Silver becomes one of the very few progressives of note to admit what has been going on under their cultural assault. Some others include Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss, but Silver is more scientific and detached than any of them, and as a result, his analysis is more persuasive and, I hope, more disruptive to the blue wall of silence the progressive Borg has erected around a throbbing, obvious, disgusting truth.

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Ethics Hero: Jason Aldean, No Weenie He [Updated!]

This is strange. Not only am I not a believer in one of John Wayne’s most quoted movie lines, I’m not especially enamored of Aldean’s latest hit song and the in-your-face message it conveys. However, in one key respect, I admire Aldean’s defiant speech before singing his song tthat has been the target of furious attacks across the progressive spectrum. Here’s what he said…

What makes it a heroic moment is that he didn’t apologize. Too many celebrities, public figures and athletes have grovelled for forgiveness when their words or opinions have prompted attacks on their character and efforts to, as the singer described them, “ruin their lives.” They do it because they fear losing jobs, money, friends and associates, because what we’re experiencing today is culture-wide McCarthyism of the Left. The objectives and the methods are similar, but the ubiquity and power of the electronic media make the threat to freedom of speech and democracy even more dire—and it was pretty scary there for a while in the Fifties.

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Ethics Hero (Corporate Division): In-N-Out Burger

Among the many ways the last few years of Wokemania has reduced the quality of American life and our access to the pursuit of happiness is the creation of the ideology-linked addiction to virtually useless masks and a near-crippling phobia regarding the threat of air-borne illnesses created by fearmongering during the pandemic.

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About This Exchange Between A Reporter Last Week And The White House’s Non-Historic, Non-Incompetent Paid Liar And The Later Response By The White House’s Historic, Incompetent Paid Liar…

1. How can the White House not have a response prepared for this question?

2. How long can the mainstream media refuse to give this slowly exploding story the attention and coverage it obviously deserves?

3. It is true that everybody—I think literally everybody—knew that Joe Biden was lying when he said his son had “done nothing wrong” and when he said that he never discussed Hunter’s dealing with foreign governments with him. But is it possible that the President, his advisors and his party really think that they can duck the scandal with the Clinton “Deny, deny, deny!” formula?

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Ethics Hero: Non-Weenie Chard Scharf

Pronouns again.

A reader flagged this story and it almost got lost in the swirl of ethics chaos this month, so I want to get it up quickly today. Chad Scharf was the vice president of software engineering at the Jacksonville, Florida, location of Bitwarden, which is a cybersecurity firm based in California. I suspect that headquarters locale is at fault for the fact that Bitwarden decided that all employees should include “their “preferred pronouns” in their personal profiles on Slack, an online messaging platform. This was, of course, part of its diversity/equity/inclusion embrace.

DEI is a cover for government, corporate and other sinister educational efforts to engage in discrimination, progressive virtue signalling and indoctrination, and the only way to slow it down until the courts step in is to show some backbone and say, “No.” That’s what Scharf did. He declined to list any preferred pronouns, and that should have been the end of the issue. There is a clear and reasonable presumption that an employee with a male name who doesn’t specify pronouns is content with being identified by male pronouns.

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Ethics Hero: ESPN Pundit Stephen A. Smith

Boy, that’s a headline I thought I’d never write! Smith was a major reason I dropped ESPN from our satellite package: here’s a typical post about his work. The kind of loud-mouthed opinionated jackass that I’d get up and move away from if he was holding forth near me at a bar, if Smith were a white pundit who talked about blacks the way Smith talks about whites, he would be fired mid-sentence. I still stand by the last thing I wrote about Smith in that post: “‘Ethics Dunce’ doesn’t really describe someone like Smith, an arrogant narcissist who feels entitled to inflame racial resentment and division while not only profiting from it, but complaining that he isn’t profiting from it enough. What is that? Maybe it’s just as simple as ‘asshole’.”

And yet…here we are. That video above is from Smith’s podcast, “The Stephen A. Smith Show.” In this case, the fact that Smith sees anti-black racism in all things actually helps. His bias, and he’s all bias, all the time, gives him credibility here. If anyone would be thrilled to excuse black culture malignancy by crying “systemic racism,” it would be Smith. Instead, the amazing number of shootings in Chicago over the Memorial Day Weekend prompted Smith to ask the black community: “When are we going to look at ourselves when it comes to black people being killed in the streets of America?”

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Hallelujah! Sen.Kennedy Puts On The Record The Irrefutable Evidence That Democratic Climate Change Policies Are Incompetent, Dishonest, And Irresponsible…

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) questioned Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk today before the Senate committee on appropriations to discuss the 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy.

The following remarkable exchange ensued during the testimony, and it should be used to confront every climate change activist, believer, hysteric and expert, constantly and repeatedly, until they are forced to admit the truth:

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Ethics Heroes: Dane County (Wisconsin) County Supervisors

Race-baiting, race bullying and using the threat of being tarred as racist have worked speculatively well as unethical political weapons since Barack Obama’s party and supporters perfected them. Thus it is gratifying to see a municipal body refuse to be intimidated when confronted with the demands of a shameless practitioner and her supporters.

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi nominated Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) for director of Dane County Human Services, a position that oversees the county’s largest agency with a $240 million budget and around 800 employees. Almost simultaneously with her nomination Stubbs began mau-mauing those who had to approve the appointment. The weekend following the announcement from Parisi, Stubbs told members of the End Times Ministries International, a church she co-founded and serves as a pastor, that members of the board were putting her under scrutiny because she is black, saying “they have never had a black lead a department, and I would be the first.” She urged her congregation to email the Dane County Board supervisors and demand that she be confirmed. This was sufficient to inspire the good parishioners to threaten the board members with violence.

There were ample non-racial reasons to question Stubbs’ appointment. She was heard on video saying that she planned on keeping both her state legislative job and her new position once she was confirmed, thus acquiring two paychecks for two supposedly full-time jobs. “They said I can’t do two jobs at one time,” Stubbs says on the video. “I can walk and eat and talk if I need to. It’s my choice if I want to [resign].”

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