Ethics Quotes

If You Wondered If President Trump’s Elimination of Rep. Thomas Massie’s Chances Of Being Re-Elected To Congress Was Ethical and Necessary, Wonder No More…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Massie, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky, emerged as a troublesome anti-Trump rebel motivated substantially by his opposition to Israel. He was defeated in an expensive Republican primary battle decided when President Trump endorsed his opponent: it was so expensive because anti-Jewish and anti-Isreal haters from both political parties gave generously to keep Massie on Capitol Hill. Among his fans are—no surprise— Al Jareeza, the Arab news agency, and ex-MAGA boob-turned-full-time-publicity-whore-Trump-basher Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie, you may recall, claimed that the Rothschilds may have caused California wildfires using secret space lasers, and refused to support the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Bill in 2024, arguing that the measure could convict Christians for the Bible account that Jewish leaders handed Jesus over to to be crucified. I’m not a believer in guilt by association, but in the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene I could be persuaded to make an exception. Now to be fair, Massie is smarter than Marjorie.

But then so is my coffee mug.

Massie blamed AIPAC and “Zionists” for his defeat, and today, with nothing to lose, he took the House floor to deliver an alleged remembrance of the victims of the 1967 friendly fire attack by Israel on the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War. Thirty-four U.S. sailors were killed and another 171 wounded in the incident which, like the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, is a favorite of anti-Israel conspiracy theorists. An investigation—more than one, in fact— concluded that the tragedy was the result of mistake by Israeli forces in believing they were attacking an Egyptian ship. Israel took responsibility for the disater within hours of the incident on June 8, 1967, officially apologized and later paid millions of dollars in restitution to the families of victims and to wounded survivors.

Never mind. Anti-Semites like Taylor Greene, Massie and lots and lots of powerful Democrats are convinced that the incident was one more plot by those evil Jews.

Again, this occurred in 1967. Why would a U.S. Congressman decide that it needs to be rehashed now, in 2026? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. We said things like that in 1967.

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Update on the Update: “Trump Derangement Update: A Conversation With a Sufferer”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This post, which attracted a surprising amount of traffic for a sleepy Sunday, was also the target of cherry-picking criticism from some quarter, because that’s what progressives, Democrats and the Trump Deranged do when they can’t debate fairly on the substance.

“Your friend never ends up on substantive outrages? Not one? Ever?” “Does that mean the discussion always ends up on non-substantive outrages and never substantive outrages?” The theme of the post was clear to anyone willing to consider it. A numbered point in the post also immediately became a current news flashpoint: I wrote,

4. The discussion keeps coming back to the Capitol riot and the fact that Trump keeps claiming that he “won” the 2020 election. My response is that it’s quite possible that he did win in 2020, though unlikely, and that nobody should care what he says he believes. (I suspect that Trump keeps saying this to drive people like my friend to the edge of madness.)

Now, see, let me be clear because there are readers out there incapable of fairly absorbing the issue. I regard the fact that Trump keeps saying that he won the election as non-substantive. It’s trolling. I regard his motivation for saying this very substantive. The Trump Deranged’s fury over his style and trolling technique is emblematic of how they (and the Axis that has indoctrinated them) are unwilling to focus on the serious, indeed dangerous, destruction of public trust that the Left’s assault on election integrity has inflicted on the nation. Here is a perfect example of where the reflex news media deflection to “Republicans pounce!” in order to distract the public from the unethical Democrat conduct that caused them to “pounce” is blazingly obvious.

When Trump walked out of the “Meet the Press” interview yesterday, the catalyst was his accusation that the primaries in California for Mayor of Los Angeles and Governor were rigged, just as the 2020 Presidential election was rigged. “Meet the Press” hostess Kristen Welker immediately, her face contorted with anger…

…took the Axis position: “You have no evidence!” But there is evidence. It is mostly circumstantial, but it is still evidence:

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Ethics Quote of the Week: President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“You ought to straighten out your press because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”

—President Trump, after expressing frustration and contempt with the questions of “Meet the Press” hostess Kristen Welker and ending the interview.

Bingo. The President is exactly right, and the nation’s Founders would have agreed with him. The United States does have a dishonest press, untrustworthy, biased, partisan and irresponsible. As the Scott Pelley debacle this week proved vividly, most of Welker’s colleagues don’t even know how biased they are. The news media has become, as another Trump quote stated, “the enemy of the people.” Its corruption is undermining democracy, and making responsible citizenship difficult if not impossible.

This is a perfect coda to the previous post. The President showed Welker no respect because she deserves no respect, and neither do her counterparts on other TV news and commentary programs. Her facial expressions were hostile. Her body language was as well. Welker’s protests that she had gone to great lengths to meet the President for the interview should not have deterred the President from leaving, and didn’t. Bravo.

My tip for Kristin: if you want a full Presidential interview, be professional and don’t set out to deliver partisan talking points.

Proposition: A Basic Knowledge Of US History Should Be Prerequisite For Running For Congress, Because It Is Incompetent And Irresponsible For Any Rep. To Be As Ignorant As Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

A straight “Unethical Quote of the Week” or “Incompetent Elected Official” EA honor still doesn’t do Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) justice. She is special. Well, I hope she is.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was crossing rhetorical sword points with Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) during the House hearing over U.S. military action in Iran. When Rep. Chu accused the administration of not caring about Americans’ financial struggles—which is, after all, completely irrelevant to the decision to defang a hostile nation seeking nuclear weapons that has been at war with the U.S. since 1979— Bessent asked her who was President of the U.S. during World War I. After a pause, apparently to check all the blank files in her memory banks, Chu answered “I don’t know.”

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Chuck Schumer’s Gary Condit Impression

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

In 2001 ABC’s Connie Chung interviewed Congressman Gary Condit about his relationship with Chandra Levy, his then missing intern with whom Condit was romantically linked. Condit was the prime suspect in her disappearance and murder, so he agreed to a TV interview to “clear the record.” To say he did not accomplish that objective is an understement. Every time Connie Chung asked him directly about their relationship, Condit repeated the mantra, “I’ve been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life. But out of respect for my family, out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship.” This made him seem slimy, evasive, and guilty. It turned out that Levy had been murdered by a stranger, but Condit’s career was as dead as she was thanks to the image he conveyed in that interview.

Evading a question by repeating the same answer word for word every time it is asked is an unethical practice, and a damning one. It might as well be accompanied by two boldly lettered signs one reading, “I’m afraid to answer these questions, but I think if I keep evading them the public is too stupid to figure that out” and the other reading, “This statement is brought to you by my lawyer.” Yet Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the putative leader of the Democratic Party did a Gary Condit impression when he was asked four times about the apparent implosion of the Graham Platner campaign to be the Democratic nominee to unseat RINO Maine Senator Susan Collins.

Here is how it went :

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The Graham Platner Candidacy in Maine Reaches Signature Significance Status on Many Fronts

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yikes.

I haven’t written much about the Graham Platner debacle in Maine. I will have to now, because he is a walking, talking, lying human ethics train wreck, and strong evidence of the contempt our political parties have for both the Republic and its voters. Democrats think they have a real shot at defeating long-time “centrist” Republican Senator Susan Collins, who is pretty much a NeverTrumper. The fact that Platner is running unopposed in the Democratic primary to be the party’s choice to oppose her has been looking for some time as if the Mad Left is whistling past the graveyard, and incidentally, desperate, deluded and nuts. I summarized Platner’s virtues exactly a month ago here, writing in part,

“He has said women who are raped are at fault. He said that blacks don’t tip. He has called called white, rural Maine dwellers stupid. He uses “fag” to describe gays. Platner praised Hamas, rationalized urinating on corpses, and has denigrated police officers. He once referred to Jesus as a “zombie” and the Virgin Mary as a “skank.” He also had a Nazi tattoo on his chest and defended it for years. On the plus side, Platner approves of political violence, so at least in that sense he’s a mainstream 2026 Democrat.”

And the hits just keep on coming for Platner. Today we learned that his supposed occupation as a small town Maine harbormaster—-See? He’s a real Maine-y blue collar guy!—is a rather wan resume item. The Washington Free Beacon reports,

“Platner’s town of Sullivan got by without a harbormaster from February 2022, when Platner’s predecessor resigned, until September 2023, when town officials tapped Platner to serve as “an interim Harbor Master until one could be hired,” records show. Platner had volunteered for the role in case Maine law required Sullivan to have one, though the town’s Harbor Committee noted at the time that it was “not clear” he was needed because “operations in the Harbors are handled by those who use the Harbors without dispute” and because the role’s “largest challenges are clerical” and “can be handled by the Harbor Committee.”Platner dropped the “interim” title in March 2024, when he completed the basic training required to be considered a “qualified Harbor Master.” He served in the role until the summer of 2025, when he launched his candidacy, according to Sullivan town manager Ray Weintraub, who told the Free Beacon that being town harbormaster generally consisted of collecting rent fees for Sullivan’s fewer than two dozen permitted moorings, where boats can anchor offshore. “We don’t really have any working waterfront, so to speak, other than a couple of boat launches,” Weintraub explained.”

Wow, this guy is really qualified to be a U.S. Senator! You wonder why “the country’s in the very best of hands” and ends up with idiots, crooks, fakes, poseurs and dolts in Congress? You know, like Republicans George Santos, Lauren Boebert, Margery Taylor Greene, and (oh, let’s pick a Democrat out of the hat) Ex-Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, who resigned from Congress moments before the House Ethics Committee was going to sanction her, among other offenses, stealing nearly $5 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for her campaign? It’s because parties keep nominating ridiculous, untrustworthy, unqualified people. Platner, however, is special.

He’s also been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and AOC, another unqualified, incompetent boob.

The juiciest revelations about Platner came from his wife, who, the New York Times revealed, warned his campaign that her lovey-bug has a habit of sexting other women during their marriage. Classy! An Anthony Weiner wannabe! But that’s not all! Here is the transcript of the cringe-worthy video the Platner campaign persuaded his wife to post (hold onto your head!):

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Unethical Quote of the Month, and More “Good Bigotry”: New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“If women, Democratic women, just show up and vote, we’re good. We don’t need any of the men.”

….New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

The Governor’s unethical and bigoted statement was made at the recent DNC Ruled and By-laws Committee meeting.

It isn’t only men who should be disgusted with Grisham’s statement, her vision and her attitude. Women of any partisan persuasion should as well. Hers is the feminist equivalent of Nikita Khrushchev’s infamous “We will bury you!” threat. “We have enough power that we don’t have to care what you think, want, believe in or need,” is her message to half the nation.

No, John Brown Is NOT a Role Model For “Social Justice Reformers,” and Anyone Who Says So —Like Hakeem Jeffries’s Brother—Is Both Unethical and Dangerous

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I co-wrote a book about Clarence Darrow (you can buy it here: it’s cheap), and one of the points I made in the Introduction was that the U.S.’s most famous trial lawyer also believed in terrorism. Well, Darrow had his quirks, and he frequently argued that one of his murderer clients should be acquitted because the murder was justified (it worked, too!). He was ethically and morally wrong about Brown, as I asserted here in a post that republished a shortened version of Darrow’s famous eulogy for the anti-slavery vigilante. It was written long after Brown’s death, of course; Darrow used to deliver the speech on anniversaries of Brown’s birthday on May 8. The most famous section of Darrow’s passionate speech:

“The radical of today is the conservative of tomorrow, and other martyrs take up the work through other nights, and the dumb and stupid world plants its weary feet upon the slippery sand, soaked by their blood, and the world moves on.”

Darrow was an early progressive when the movement began, on the extreme end. In his “ends justifies the means” glorification of violence as a means of social change, we can see the seeds of where modern progressives have gone off the metaphorical rails and become a genuine threat to the rule of law and democracy. In Darrow’s time (he was active from 1890 to 1932) there were few progressives who would go as far as Darrow, though the anarchists did. They were the terrorists of the day, but Darrow defended labor leaders who also believed that murdering the exploitive capitalist here and there as well as their political enablers was the right thing to do.

Thus Darrow defended “Big Bill” Haywood (February 4, 1869 – May 18, 1928), an American labor organizer, a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. “Big Bill” was indicted for engineering the booby-trap murder of Frank Steunenberg, a former governor of Idaho. Darrow got “Big Bill” off (Just look at this guy! You just know he did it.)…

….but by arguing that even if he was guilty, its shouldn’t matter because he was on the right side. Fortunately, Darrow’s arguments in favor of just murder were confined to the courtroom and his John Brown eulogy once a year.

This week, Hasan Kwame Jeffries , an Ohio State University history professor and the brother of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, declared in a social media post that “John Brown understood that the only way to free Americans from the scourge of white supremacy was to get rid of white supremacists by any means necessary. He was right then. He is right now.” Gee, do you think Prof. Jeffries is at odds with his brother in this appeal to violence? I doubt it.

Prof. Turley has called out the Democratic House minority leader for encouraging violence on the Left, and lionizing John Brown is literally a justification of violence. If Republicans and the news media don’t confront Democrats and the party’s leaders with Prof. Jeffries’s words, they are being negligent and irresponsible.

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Ethical Quotes of the Week: Medal of Honor Recipients Will Swenson and Matt Williams

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Her face (as usual when she isn’t interviewing a Democrat or an Axis ally) etched with pain. ABC’s awful Margaret Brennan dragged out the “Everything is Terrible Under President Trump” Big Lie and asked two Congressional Medal of Honor recipients a “When did you stop beating your wife?”-style question. “What specifically makes you optimistic? Because this country, at times, can feel dark, these days, there’s a lot of darkness. What makes you feel optimistic?,” she asked.

You see the trick? She framed the question so that it would mean “I’m optimistic despite how terrible things are with this Fascist President.” But Will Swenson, on the right, didn’t fall into her trap. He answered,

“Well, ultimately, because we’re in Washington, D.C., and everything revolves around politics, we have to remember that politics aren’t everything. American lives continue on. Children are born, children go to school. Lives are achieved. Dreams are achieved. This country is a great place. It’s not politics. It’s not just what’s the news bites coming off of media. Ultimately, we continue forward as a country, continually imperfect, continually evolving forward, always trying to achieve a more perfect union. That’s what’s important to remember, what we can achieve aspirationally. No other place in history, time or on this planet have ever gotten to where we are today. We need to be proud of that, and we need to remember that is what we stay focused on, what we can be.”

Then Brennan, disappointed with the answer, tried to reframe it to meet her agenda, saying, “What we can be, and the promise of it….” Ah. So you agree there’s nothing NOW to feel good about, but maybe things will get better! She is scum. When Brennan asked the same question to Matt Williams (on the left) he also plowed under her “gotcha!” attempt, saying,

“You know, I agree with Will. I think, you know, it’s- it’s so important to remember who we are as a country, and take an opportunity to celebrate that, and think about all the- the challenges that we’ve overcome, how far we’ve actually come. You know, I think if you- if you frame it that way, you think very deeply about our trials and tribulations from beginning to today, we’ve made tremendous strides. Our country is, you know, we’re a super- global superpower. Our economy is doing well. All those things are great. And- and take politics aside out of this whole conversation. Just talk about our communities, that- that we live in, and the people that you surround yourself with, and your families, and the opportunity to be free and, you know, choose what school you go to, and where you want to live and do what you want to do, and what career path you go down or don’t if you want to, you know, I mean, there’s so much to be positive about. And I think the opportunity to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, you know, over the course of this next year is- is amazing. There’s so many great places to visit. You know, the National Mall is going to be full of Americana. And what we’re going to- celebrating ourselves, which I think we should take the time to do. I think it’s very important. You know, across the country, you know something we’re very passionate about at the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, is a phenomenal beacon that stands to talk about and house our, not only our story, the story of the Medal, and what the Medal represents itself. And I would challenge people to go there and celebrate our history as well. You know, it’s so important. There’s so many great things to go do and great things to visit and don’t just take part in it, because it’s something to do on a weekend, right? Think about why you’re doing it, and when you’re there in the crowds and you’re enjoying yourself, and you’re taking your family to go talk about our country and celebrate our country, actually celebrate it. Be grateful for what you’ve got and the opportunity that was provided for you. If you do that, I don’t see how you can’t be optimistic about our future.”

Disappointed that her “dark times” leading question failed, Brennan ended the interview.

Ethics Update On the Axis Freakout Over Virginia and Tennessee’s Redistricting Results

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

[Note: I apologize for the funky formatting here, but it’s not my fault: WordPress again messed with its (terrible) “block system” with no warning and I’m trying to figure it out.]

I’m posting the graphic above again because it is res ipsa loquitur, rebutting on its face what so many of the hysterical Democrats, elected officials, pundits and partisan reporters are screaming as they survey the results of their own corruption and hypocrisy.

As Ethics Alarms has been asserting (and proving) for a decade now, the Left cheats. Its “they go low, we go high” mantra has always been cynical gaslighting, but the somnolent Right allowed them to escape accountability (and their just desserts) far too long. Donald Trump, whatever his ethical flaws may be, has always understood the concept of fighting back. This time it really paid off, and all Americans should be grateful. Yes: we should fervently seek fair districting in every state. Maybe the current chaos will eventually lead to that. However, letting one party rig the system unanswered while the other party just sits and shrugs is worse than the chaos.

Scott Greenfield, defense lawyer, blogger, Jack-hater and progressive legal pundit, deserves praise for a nearly completely ethical and unbiased analysis of the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the dastardly gerrymandering trick Virginia’s “moderate” governor and its corrupt Democrats tried to inflict on half the state’s voters. He writes in part,

“The confluence of a few unfortunate circumstances resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court holding that the state constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting plan as a counterbalance to other states’ legislative redistricting plans to eliminate congressional districts deemed “safely” Democratic was unconstitutional. Wags and cynics will imagine this ruling to be the product of radical rightist activists. It was not…Neither the majority nor dissent took unprincipled positions, both having some merit to their position, but the point of a ruling is to reach a determination. The Virginia Supreme Court did so, in a principled fashion, and it ruled the redistricting amendment unconstitutional under the state Constitution. It was a crushing defeat for Democrats, but that doesn’t make it partisan or radical. Sometimes, you lose. While the combination of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision and this Virginia ruling has set in motion a partisan war that serves to make congressional elections a by-product of widespread cynical gerrymandering rather than a reflection of the will of the voters, perhaps one of the most noxiously anti-democratic efforts to rig an election possible, don’t blame the Virginia Supreme Court for “losing” safe districts for Democrats. The court did its job and its ruling, no matter what outcome you would have preferred, was grounded in a principled reading of the state Constitution.”

Good for Scott. He is still, however, a Trump Deranged, biased progressive (like most trial lawyers), so he also wrote…

“If you want to find blame, it’s in the legislatures that decided to sell out their citizens, their voters, at the open and notorious behest of Trump. For all his baseless bluster about rigged elections, we’re finally going to have one and Trump demanded the rigging.”

Bad Scott. Bad. Look at the damn chart above. Democrats had already rigged Congressional elections. Did you wonder why the predicted “red wave” in 2022 never materialized? Wonder no more. Nine Democrat-dominated state legislatures made it virtually impossible for Republicans to get elected. President Trump, that kingly fascist, had the sense and combative instincts to get his party to try to even the odds. The “red” states that did that through redistricting (gerrymandering) followed their constitutions. Virginia did not. Naturally, the losers blame Trump.

Former DNC chairwoman and current ABC contributor Donna Brazile naturally took the same dishonest path. Remember, Brazile was the Democrat who first tipped me off to her party’s cheating ways: as a paid CNN “contributor” in 2016, she used her insider status to tip-off Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton regarding the questions she would be asked at a CNN “town meeting.” This was so unethical even CNN couldn’t tolerate it, and she was fired. Yesterday Brazile joined GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher to give a masterclass on double standards and leftist gaslighting. Republican redistricting efforts are, she said, “immoral,” while Democratic efforts are what “voters decided.”

Voters in Virginia “decided” on the gerrymandered map based on the referendum’s false statement, indeed exactly the opposite of reality, that the new map would “restore fairness.” Remember?

“Restore fairness” by making sure that a 50-50 party split would be represented by a 10-1 Democrat district map. Sure.

Then Brazile played the race card, as Democrats inevitably do when the facts aren’t in their favor. “I come from one of those states that all of a sudden, the Supreme Court said, ‘Well, we don’t like partisan gerrymandering. No, we don’t like racial gerrymandering.’ So, one out of three voters in Louisiana is a black voter. One out of three. And they are now thinking of eradicating. So, that says people from some parts of Louisiana can represent New Orleans better than the folks who are representing—or Baton Rouge. It is wrong, it is immoral, and it is unjustified.”

Well-said, mush-mouth. “They” are thinking of “eradicating” black voters? I think Donna was trying to say that the Jim Crow laws that were still in effect de facto if not de jure in Southern states in the early Sixties justifies “good racial discrimination” in 2026, 60 years later. You can read her logic- and law-free rant here.This is, however, apparently the fake narrative the Axis has decided to run with, proving with its attempted cover-up just how desperate and unprincipled it is.

On yesterday’s MSNOW propaganda-fest “The Weekend,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) compared the 1857 Dred Scott ruling to the SCOTUS decision that the 1965 Voting Rights Act could no longer justify anti-white discrimination in the Southern states, and declared the Roberts Court “one of the most racist courts in American history.”Got it. If the Court doesn’t allow the Democrats to rig its Congressional maps to pack the House with as many blacks as possible, it’s racist. Morelle also parroted the “will of the voters” lie in attacking the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of redistricting referendum. Did the MSNOW host point out for its viewers that Morelle was misrepresenting both decisions? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

This how House minority leader Hakeem Jeffreys reacted to his party being foiled in its unconstitutional, dishonest power-grab in Virginia:

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