The American Bar Association’s own website says, “All of us have implicit biases.” I asked its president which groups she holds bias against. pic.twitter.com/Pebduv8lVL
— Congressman Brandon Gill (@RepBrandonGill) July 22, 2026
“This is embarrassing,” Rep. Brandon Gill said, as Michelle A. Behnke ( from Madison, Wisconsin—of course she is), the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, was infuriatingly evasive and displayed nauseating hypocrisy and dishonesty as Rep. Brandon Gill questioned her regarding DEI, bias and discrimination. It was embarrassing, for Democrats, progressives, fans of permanent anti-white discrimination, members of the ABA (the largest American bar association, which I refuse to join expressly because of the organization’s lack of integrity ) so flamingly displayed by Behnke, and especially all lawyers. How can the public trust a “profession” that allows such a shifty, pusillanimous, dishonest individual to represent it by leading its members’ largest and most prestigious organization?
Graham Platner seems like old news now that the Maine Democrats have another working-class hero to run against Susan Collins: a temperamental logger instead of a part-time oyster fisherman, Troy Jackson. I meant to post this Comment of the Day a week ago but got distracted: never mind. Ryan Harkin’s observations are still relevant, and, as always, he does a thorough and articulate job. This is the first half of a Ryan Harkins Comment of the Day double-header, with the second half arriving tomorrow morning.
I think the observations from various conservatives is correct about the Democratic Party’s embrace of Platner: they are looking for the Democratic answer to Donald Trump, and thought maybe they found him in Platner. The problems here are manifold, though. First and foremost, they don’t understand what makes Trump popular to conservatives. Second, in searching for a masculine model, they have no idea what actual masculinity is. They took Trump’s crass behavior and somehow reasoned that they needed someone crass. (As though all their foul-mouthed, guttersnipe-turned-millionaire grifters weren’t crass enough!) They noticed Trump’s promiscuity and thought they needed someone who treated women dirty. They saw Trump’s businessman persona, and they thought they could create a businessman aura around their candidate. The problem in all of this is the Democrats cannot (and have for a generation at least) see anything beneath the surface. They are so caught up in superficial details and labels that they cannot even fathom there are depths that have to be considered.
Conservatives don’t like Trump’s promiscuity or narcissism; they tolerate it for Trump’s other characteristics and Trump’s record. Trump professed a love for the United States, which Democrats can never do. Trump identified the problems conservatives have, especially the hostility they have felt at values that have underwritten the United States since its founding: faith in God, self-determinism, and hard work. They have felt repressed by governments who catered to anyone but them, and especially to those groups who specifically weren’t them. Faith in God was derided; self-determinism was racist, violent, and toxic; hard work was treated as something to be punished. They have been struggling with the feeling of being replaced by foreigners, all the while being told they were imagining things. They were forced to observe, and call phobic if they didn’t support, every alternative lifestyle they had always believe was detrimental to a healthy family life. The list goes on and on.
“Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, and those folks received Presidential pardons.”
—–The Minnesota Star, cheering on Gov. Tim “Knucklehead” Walz’s sick decision to pardon a serial child rapist in an attempt to foil efforts to deport him.
No one can trust a news source capable of putting such illogical, unethical garbage in print. Defense by non-sequitur! “Sure, he raped a child repeatedly for years, but Jeffrey Dahmer ate people!” There is no basis for comparison between the J-6 rioters, all citizens and jailed, some for a couple of years, for a single act, and a non-citizen who never spent a day in prison despite pleading guilty to multiple child rapes. The Star’s bizarre logic doesn’t even rise to the level of the worst of all rationalizations, Rationalization #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse, or “There are worse things.” Is the idea that Walz trying to let a child molester stay in his state is good because Trump’s pardon of the rioters wasn’t? What is the Star trying to say? Do the editors even know?
Then the Star’s grand finale is to quote with approval another one of Walz’s idiotic outbursts. “Taking them out with no due process”? Vang received a final order of removal in October 2006! There was due process to spare.
Not for the first time, I find myself wondering how the once great state of Minnesota came to such a precipitous decline in values and common sense. Once represented by the likes of Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, it is led by a principle-free, incompetent fool, with an addled newspaper like the Star warping the news to disguise his incompetence. Minnesotans used to be smart, creative, rational. They had standards, they had pride. What happened? Now they are sitting by while their state’s #1 paper applauds their Governor for pardoning a child rapist, and one who made it clear that he doesn’t think raping children is anything to get upset about. Americans are just weirdly prudish about such things!
So the citizens of Minnesota just nod their heads as their governor first pardons the man who rapes little girls and pays them to keep quiet, because Kamala choice’s to be VP wants to foil efforts to remove criminal non-citizens. They keep nodding as that governor describes years of multiple rapes as the rapist’s “worst day” [Vang didn’t think they were bad days at all], and nod some more as the Star calls Walz a hero for trying to inflict a sexual predator on their state permanently.
Several Ethics Alarms reader alerted me to this gobsmacking story, further evidence that the political left in this country is in the process of suffering a nervous breakdown. I am still not certain I am glad they did.
The court alluded to in the title is the Hawaii Supreme Court. That state needs to be given a bit of leeway for its excesses and delusions: Hawaii, even after more than half a century as our 50th state, is still a very different culture from the other 49. That’s part of its charm when you visit there, but it also has allowed a problematic mindset to linger. Hawaiians just don’t think the usual rules should apply to them, even in relation to the Constitution. Two years ago, in State v. Wilson, the Hawaii Supreme Court wrote that “[t]he spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons,” and that Hawaii would read the Second Amendment “differently than the current United States Supreme Court.”
Oh. Except that a state can’t do that.
More recently, the same justice who wrote that defiant legal nonsense authored a full-on attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, tacked onto a rather mundane case about prosecutorial misconduct. I will re-publish the whole amazing section below, but KABOOM! It is head-exploding. The diatribe, because that’s what it is, covers voting rights, campaign finance, abortion, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, the major questions doctrine, Chevron deference, the spending power, the removal power, and birthright citizenship, while accusing the Roberts Court of being racist.
Such tangential rhetoric is known as dicta, parts of a legal opinion that carry no substantive legal weight at all since it is pure opinion without definitive case authority. Even dicta, however, is subject to certain professional and ethical constraints. The Hawaiian Supreme Court rantis a bright line breach of several tenets in state’s Code of Judicial Conduct.
Canon I states, “A JUDGE SHALL UPHOLD AND PROMOTE THE INDEPENDENCE, INTEGRITY, AND IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDICIARY AND SHALL AVOID IMPROPRIETY AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY.“
Under that banner are three mandates: Rule 1.1. Compliance with the Law, Rule 1.2. Promoting Confidence in the Judiciary, and Rule 1.3. Avoiding Misuse of the Prestige of Judicial Office. A statement that announces that a judge does not feel bound by U.S. Supreme Court decisions violates Rule 1.1. A judge attacking the integrity and motives of the U.S. Supreme Court undermines confidence in the judiciary, as prohibited by Rule 1.2. A judge using the prestige of his office to impugn a higher court is by definition an abuse of office, breaching Rule 1.3.
But wait! There’s more!
Canon 2 states, “A JUDGE SHALL PERFORM THE DUTIES OF JUDICIAL OFFICE IMPARTIALLY, COMPETENTLY, AND DILIGENTLY.”
The anti-SCOTUS section shows a judge giving priority to his partisan and political beliefs over his duties as a judge, violating Rule 2.1. His unhinged attack on past SCOTUS jurisprudence indicates that he is incapable of “upholding the law,” and that he is also incapable of “impartial” conduct. Moreover, the opinion constitutes a flagrant bias based on political affiliation, breaching Rule 2.3.
The outburst is even worse than the many rules violations suggest. The logic is tortured, the law is bad, and the arguments are hysterical as well as not based in reality; worst of all, the Hawaiian judges appear not to understand how SCOTUS fits into the Constitutional governance formula. The core goal underlying the tantrum is an arrogant belief in judicial activism and judges usurping legislatures, as the Warren court did habitually.
As a final rotten cherry on this putrid sundae of unethical judicial conduct, The National Review noticed that a bot probably wrote the text. Nice. My position is that judges using AI to write their opinions is impeachable conduct, but then so is issuing such an attack on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here is the section, and I must add, having just read it through again, the naked Trump Derangement and partisan extremism is shocking. This isn’t just unethical. It is judicial insurrection. Luckily, progressives don’t read court opinions…
Following a theme that began with this morning’s ethics quiz, we now have the viral controversy over the obnoxious Lake Aswego (Oregon) Theater and Cafe marquee for “The Odyssey.”
On social media (and elsewhere), the theater’s owners are being accused of “disgustingly blatant antisemitism” as Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer and senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute put it on “X.” I’m sorry I haven’t kept up on Lake Oswego movie theater marketing trends: apparently this one makes a habit of cheeky, politically provocative or otherwise controversial marquee messages. In February, for example, the theater’s message promoting “Melania,” the Amazon MGM documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, read, “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.” Amazon pulled the movie from the theater, and the proprietors reacted with a “Who, us?” shrug.
That example is not irrelevant: Lake Oswego is heavily Democratic, reliably voting for Democratic candidates for all federal and state offices. The last time a Republican was favored by voters was in 2016, when it narrowly favored Republican Secretary of State candidate Dennis Richardson while the city and the state went into Hillary Clinton’s column in the Presidential race. Lake Oswego is in Oregon, one of the most fanatically progressive, Democratic and woke states in the union. 80% of Democrats, the Pew Research Center says, hold “an unfavorable view of Israel” as of June 2026, an 11-point increase from 2025.
How likely is it that the marquee in a place like Lake Oswego, was deliberately praising “the Jews” (You know, as in “the Jews made a heroic odyssey”to Canaan”) as opposed to cheekily denigrating them? Not bloody likely at all. Is the message an innocent comparison of the endless warring between Israel and Palestinians to the Trojan War? If so, then why only mention “the Jews”?
The online debate has seen a suspicious effort to deflect the real issue by arguing over whether “the Odyssey” was really before “the Jews.” Does the theater mean the actual voyage (there probably wasn’t one), or Homer’s poetic description of it? That’s not the real issue, and the debate over it is pedantic sophistry. The issue is whether the marquee is anti-Semitic, designed to appeal to anti-Semites (you know, progressives and Democrats), and cleverly composed to do so while giving the theater and fans of the smear plausible deniability.
For a sports league that few care about and fewer watch, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sure gets into a lot of ethics controversies. Take this one, for example:
The WNBA suspended Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello without pay for one game after she referred to black Atlanta Dream star Angel Reese as a “protected species” in a remark that was picked up by a hot mic during a game.
In the Dream’s 111-92 win over the Tempo last week a Toronto player had a foul called on her after an offensive rebound tussle involving Reese. As the foul call was being reviewed, Brondello yelled at the referees, “Angel…she’s a protected species!” The WNBA announced the next day that Brondello must sit out the Tempo’s next game, and won’t be paid for it, adding,”The WNBA expects all coaches and team personnel to uphold the highest standards of professionalism and respect that are fundamental to our league.”
Brondello, who is white, had issued a written apology earlier, reflexively groveling so she wouldn’t be cancelled as a racist in a league where 81% of the players are “of color.” She wrote,
“Angel, I’m sorry. Last night, in the emotion of the moment after Nyara’s injury, I used a phrase that I shouldn’t have used, and I take full responsibility for that. My frustration was with the officiating, but my words unfairly put the focus on you. I also understand that my words carried an impact beyond what I intended, particularly for Black women in our league, and I’m deeply sorry for that. I’ve spent my career competing with, coaching and learning from incredible Black women. I regret that my words caused hurt to a community I respect so deeply. I have a lot of respect for you as both a player and a person, and I sincerely apologize to you, your teammates, and the Dream organization for my comment.”
Reese, meanwhile, couldn’t resist the urge to play victim and to imply that either everyone knows that Brondello is a bigot or that white people in general think of blacks as a separate species. She piled on thusly on “X”:
Nice. What Brondello should have said about Reese was “She’s an asshole.”
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Was it fair and responsible for the WNBA to suspend Brondello for calling a black star a “protected species”?
Zach Dean, a pan-sports commentator for Outkick, the conservative sports commentary website absorbed by Fox New, pronounced the suspension wrongful and even dangerous. He wrote in part,
One way you can tell with 100% certainly brainwashed (or dishonest) progressives is if they complain about NPR and PBS losing their government funding. It is the watermark of “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” gaslighting. This morning I received an unsolicited and unwelcome exhortation in my email inbox from the propagandist above, insulting my intelligence by seeking my money by telling me…
A billion-dollar hit to our industry is enough to make any Chief Financial Officer sweat. And that’s exactly what happened to public media one year ago today, when Congress voted to eliminate federal funding. My job as NPR’s CFO isn’t just to balance the books; it’s to protect a vital public asset. Today, I’m asking you to take action with me.
The NPR Network cannot back down on our mission because we know that millions of people rely on this trusted journalism and programming. And, I am so grateful that we don’t need to back down because supporters like you stand with us. Our strength – and our independence – has always come from you, the public. The NPR Network continues because the public decides it will.
I can tell you firsthand: you can’t run a world-class, independent newsroom on hope. A free press doesn’t just happen. Public media needs growing, reliable financial support to fuel essential reporting and build what’s next. Now is the time to give. Not just for yourself, but for our collective right to know the facts. Your donation of any amount is needed. Every dollar makes a difference.
Power to the public,
Daphne Kwon
P.S. When you make a donation to support this essential public service, you declare that you value access to the facts, for all.
“Access to all the facts”!
By pure coincidence, shortly after reading that garbage I saw that Newsbusters had posted some of the transcript of NPR’s anchor A Martinez (he humbly doesn’t claim to be THE Martinez) interview Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn) regarding President Trump’s recent televised speech. Highlights, as the Axis hack repeatedly invited the Democrat to attack the President and provided no balance or skepticism whatsoever:
The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:
“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”
Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:
That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.
Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.
In May, Ethics Alarms expressed its horror here, here and here over the unethical, conflicted deal engineered by Trump’s acting-Attorney General and Trump’s Treasury Dept. to bestow undeserved benefits on the President, his family, and the Trump Organization. I wrote at the end of the last of these, “I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense.”
Well Calloo! Callay! It has been stopped, and very emphatically too.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her 56-page order yesterday that the President and his fellow plaintiffs, his adult sons and the Trump Organization LLC, may not refer in any judicial, administrative or other official proceeding to the “purported ‘settlement agreement'” that gave them broad protection from federal government audits and investigations. The judge then sanctioned the attorneys that represented Trump in his personal capacity, Daniel Z. Epstein of Epstein & Co. LLC and Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC.
Good. They should be sanctioned. They should be suspended. If I had the choice, I would disbar them. They are both a disgrace to the legal profession.
“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,” Judge Williams wrote. “It was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the parties were not adverse.”
“Because the parties were not adverse”! Bingo! On that basis, the case should have been at very least stayed by this same judge until Trump was out of office and not controlling the adversary party, and may I add, DUH! Judge Williams was asleep at the switch in May, and perhaps that adds to her obvious fury now. Her one excuse is that she didn’t realize exactly what was going on because it happened so fast and no President has had the gall to try anything like this before.
The movie is “Little Big Man,” 1970’s very strange, sui generis, Western satire/drama anti-Vietnam film that visits Western movie tropes, warps history, and mixes horror with humor. I was second-guessing my leaving it out of “Twenty-Five Indispensable Movies For Understanding American Culture,” so I decided to watch it again.
Is it “Little Big Man”anti-American? I don’t know: the film certainly shows our culture’s admirable ability to engage in self-criticism and reflection fearlessly when it is called for. None of the other films on the list deal sufficiently with the U.S.’s conflicted feelings about Native Americans and their unjust but unavoidable fate. That’s too big an issue to leave off the list.
