When I read this report from the Washington Free Beacon, I was momentarily tempted to officially double-ban the already banned commenter “A Friend” on general ethics principles. This jerk had the gall to keep insisting that the Times is a respectable and reliable source of news and analysis despite Mt. Chimborazo-size heaps of evidence to the contrary. Now, the paper apparently doesn’t care who knows just how stupidly biased it is.
Cheating in elections isn’t just a traditional part of democracy, it is anti-democracy, totalitarian in fact. It is how bad people—yes, they are bad people— seek to gain power they don’t deserve (the fact that they will cheat proves that all by itself). Any candidate who tries to cheat is by definition untrustworthy, and any edition of a political party that supports such a candidate is untrustworthy as well. Both parties have unforgivable records of cheating behind them; perhaps the worst was Richard Nixon secretly sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks to improve his chances of willing the Presidency in 1968, but then he might have won the Presidency legitimately had not the Kennedy mob cheated so effectively in 1960.
Since 2015, the Democratic Party has raised cheating in elections to a core value, adopting the Radical Left’s traditional “by any means necessary” commandment. There hasn’t been a party so corrupt in this respect since the Republican Party of the Reconstruction Era. Long-time readers here may recall that when I realized how much cheating Democrats had engaged in to elect Hillary Clinton, I changed my stated intention to hold my nose, wear a gas mask and keep my gorge from rising as I voted for her over the GOP candidate, whom I had declared unfit for the Presidency in every respect. (I wrote in a name on the 2016 ballot: the man the Democrats had cheated out the White House in 2012.)
The New York Times yesterday exposed their usual heartthrobs with a full report on the brazen Democratic plot to steal a U.S. Senate seat in Alaska. It was so flagrant and outrageous that the Times decided they couldn’t spin or bury the incident without looking like the print version of MSNOW. They deserve no credit for this, and anyone who claims this proves the Times isn’t an “enemy of the people” should get a pie in the face. The Times knows it has to periodically pretend to be an objective and independent news source or it wouldn’t be able to fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. The paper’s staff is unethical, but it ain’t stupid.
The whole article is here (all Times links now get past the pay wall), but a few highlights are in order:
The confession is cynical and mordantly amusing. The Times really thinks its “transparency” will support the myth that the paper isn’t a partisan spin and propaganda organ for the Democratic Party. Well, it might be right. The Times is part of a long-running effort to make Americans stupid.
Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston and a frequent contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy, complained to the Times after he was described twice as a “conservative law professor” earlier this yera. He didn’t object to the conservative description, which is accurate, but that in the Times, a conservative expert or analyst is labelled as such but those quoted from the Left are just “professors.”
Blackman reviewed a New York Times database and found that the Times would routinely brand a conservative but rarely label a progressive, thus representing conservatives as “the other” while left-biased analysts and experts were just good old reliable, trustworthy authorities.
Or, as the freaks chant in “Freaks”: “One of us, one of us! We accept them, one of us!”
Patrick Healy, the Times’s assistant managing editor for trust and standards, acknowledged that Blackman had a valid point. “It can come off like The Times treats liberals as normal and conservatives as unique and worthy of labeling,” Healy told Blackman.
Oh, it “can come off” that way, can it? How big of Healy to concede that. It can come off that way because that’s how the Times reporters, pundits and editors think, how its readers think, and what the paper wants as many members of the public to think as well. All the better to elect those Democrats! [Here is another example of Healy’s weaseldom. Also here, in Item #7]
Healy said the Times needed to be more “discerning” about its labels going forward. Right. Its current practice helps observant readers like Blackman realize just how biased and manipulative the New York Times is. Can’t have that! Healy’s sort-of apology is a perfect Level 10 sinister and unethical apology on the EA Apology Scale:
10. An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.
It’s not a laughing matter.
My recent post about an extreme Trump Deranged friend whom I have so far refused to disabuse of the false notion that I am a solid progressive Democrat, in her view the only people worthy of her company, attracted many excellent comments; several are Comment of the Day worthy. I’m giving CD-VAPatriot the honor, in part because I know her, and know how accurate her self-description is. It would be hard to imagine someone less fairly called “immoral” or less deserving of derision from the Trump Deranged.
Below is CD-VAPatriot‘s Comment of the Day on the post, “Help! My Ethics Conflict…” for your reading pleasure and edification. But first I would like to recommend that you track down Season 7 of “American Horror Story” on Amazon Prime. This brave, creative, often satirical, subversive, genre-savvy anthology series using a spectacular repertory company took on both political extremes in 2017, and many of its plot points proved disturbingly prophetic. It would not be unfair to say the theme of the season was the horror of Trump Derangement, triggered by the fury of progressives, especially feminists, who were emotionally broken by Hillary’s defeat. (We see a lesbian couple’s marriage deteriorate in part because one partner blames the other for Hillary’s defeat after she voted for Jill Stein. This is even funnier today than it was then.)
I had direct experiences with women exactly like the protagonists in “Cult,” the title of the season’s ten installment tale. They told me, one with tears running down her face, that they were terrified of the impending Trump Presidency, and, of course, the Democratic party exploited that irrational fear. Fear is the sub-theme of the season; ironically, it is the crazed conservative cult leader who preaches the power of fear in promoting political change, but we have seen that it is the political Left that has sown fear most relentlessly since 2017: fear of climate change, fear of the Wuhan virus, fear of AI, fear of “fascism,” fear of “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” fear of law enforcement, and fear of Donald Trump in general. The show makes all extremes of the political spectrum look bad without taking sides, an approach that is difficult, wise and in today’s Hollywood, courageous.
Now here’s CD…
Arielle Curry, the principal of Washington Elementary School in Santa Barbara (she’s the one on the left) rigged the vote count in the student election results to elect two losers, including giving her own daughter the post of sixth-grade president. The principal was foiled by a whistleblower, put on administrative leave, and then, incredibly, allowed to resume her job.
Take that last part in slowly. This is the culture in schools. This is the culture in California.
In a letter to parents, Curry wrote that she ” led deliberations after the student votes were tallied that resulted in overriding the outcome of two positions.” She apologized “for allowing this practice to persist” while acknowledging that “our school’s process for selecting student officers lacks transparency and fairness.” She added, “I am committed to making this right moving forward.”
By resigning? Nothing else will do.That letter is all by itself justification for dismissal. What disgusting weasel rhetoric! Altering vote totals to benefit a family member is “deliberations”? She allowed a practice to persist by engaging in the practice…it wouldn’t have persisted if she didn’t engage in it. The school’s process for selecting student officers lacks transparency and fairness? No, she lacks transparency and fairness, also honesty, respect for students, shame, trustworthiness,accountability, and ethics generally.
There are tangible benefits in being elected a student officer at the gifted and talented education magnet school in Santa Barbara’s Mesa neighborhood. Student government members receive privileges like leaving class to attend meetings, while the president gets the opportunity to deliver the graduation speech at the end of the school year. The student body also helps select school activities, including themed events such as “Crazy Hat Day.” (Do they have a “Sociopath Principal Day”?
Cuury tried to steal these perks from deserving students and bestow them on her choices regardless of the election results. How can the school, the district, and the parents allow Curry to keep her job? What possible justification could they cite? (Don’t say it!)
“District officials confirmed the expected policy was for the actual vote totals to determine the winners” one news source says. Ya think? “The district expects that for student/ASB elections, the candidate with the most votes wins,” assistant superintendent for human resources John Becchio said. Really? Then why do you continue to employ a principal who doesn’t get the “most votes win” thingy?
Curry has worked in the Santa Barbara Unified School District for several years, previously serving as principal of Santa Barbara Junior High and as an assistant principal at Washington and Franklin elementary schools. This is how your young are being aculturated, America. These are the people shaping their conduct and values. Do you care? What are you going to do about it?
Me? I’m heading to the woodchipper…
New York’s anti-Semitic, Islamist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in his official statement on the anniversary of the unprovoked and ambush Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel that included the murder of unarmed civilians, rapes, infanticide, and the taking of over 200 hostages, mist of whom died.
I could have had a much longer headline, and had to restrain myself to avoid posting one. Anyone who agrees with this vile man is an Ethics Dunce, as is anyone who voted for him or would argue that such votes can be justified. Mandani qualifies for an EA “Incompetent Elected Official” designation, because condemning the victims of terrorism while supposedly memorializing those victims is incompetent and irresponsible, unless one is an Ethics Villain, which Mayor Mamdani certainly is.
Well, there goes my head.
Apparently there are no genuinely apolitical, unbiased, independent, trustworthy, competent lawyers who have the ability to investigate the accelerating Ethics Train Wreck launched by a booze, pot and ketamine-fueled orgy at a Cornell fraternity. (Previous EA posts on the thing are here and here) Gee, I’m kinda surprised. I would have thought, with all the millions of lawyers in this country, there would be at least a couple without the flaming ethics deficits of Letitia James, the lawfare New York Attorney General appointed Special Prosecutor for the state investigation, and to handle the Cornell investigation…waaait for it…
Sally Yates!
Yes, it’s Sally Yates, the Obama Justice Department appointee who refused to execute President Trump ‘s policies in his first term when she was Acting Attorney General, then after she was fired (she should have been disbarred) joined the Axis Russian Collusion conspiracy. Ethics Alarms had several posts condemning this proudly unethical lawyer, a true Ethics Villain, like…
Key quote (mine):
I was first made aware of the sudden re-emergence of a 2024 gang rape allegation as a media and social media obsession when a friend who was raped began posting furiously about the story on Facebook. A knee-jerk progressive, she is certain that there was a cover-up at Cornell and that the alleged victim is telling the truth, because all women must be believed.
I don’t know what really happened at the Chi Phi fraternity on a fateful October night in 2024, and neither do you, and neither does my friend. Anyone who presumes they do know based on a partisan or ideological bias has elected to board the newly launched Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck in the dining car. Shame on them.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is having a bad year—look at the sudden resurgence of anti-Semitism here—and fraternity rape hysteria should be viewed with particular skepticism. The infamous Duke Lacrosse case occurred in 2006 and my commentary was lost when the old Ethics Scoreboard left the building, but it is still a tag on Ethics Alarms, with this the most directly relevant post. The imaginary gang rape that disgraced Rolling Stone was extensively covered here, however, as you can see. In 2014, “Rolling Stone” reporter Sabrina Erdly wrote a feature about an imaginary co-ed named “Jackie” being gang raped at a University of Virginia fraternity party. UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan, a good little feminist, suspended all fraternities with no actual evidence of wrongdoing. But you know, men are pigs, women are always the victims, and one must always believe all women, even imaginary ones (there was no “Jackie”) when they cry “Rape!”
Ethics Alarms has analyzed several instances of false rape claims as well as the cynical #MeToo fad, which, like the Cornell episode was weaponized by the Left for political gain. The hysteria got many sexual predators their just desserts, and also amassed many unjustly maligned male victims. I don’t know what happened at Cornell, but I do know that the case has already been co-opted by Democrats to inflame a core constituency, angry white progressive women convinced that the U.S. is an oppressive patriarchy that would have the culture emulating “A Handmaiden’s Tale” if it had its way. There’s an election approaching, after all. Hence the emergence of a mother who murdered her three children as the object of sympathy.
Here are what I consider salient facts based on what we do know:
What does this tell you?
Is there a second way to interpret this exchange?
I’m not going to comment much on this post, because the raw reality shouldn’t require it. First I was going to frame this as one of the game show posts, with the title, “Who’s Nuts?” But I did one of those just a few days ago. The unions are Ethics Villains to be sure, but even that doesn’t do them justice based on their letter. I was going to use the “Apocalypse Now” clip “The Horror!” to mock the way the two radical Axis unions reacted to the most reasonable DOE requests imaginable, but this is too frightening to mock. The unions’ letter is an Unethical Quote to be sure, but a 6 page unethical quote is a bit…unwieldy.
According to polls, a large proportion of Americans are willing to put these totalitarian far-left extremists in power because gasoline prices have spiked while the United States confronts a deadly international enemy that it should have crushed 40 years ago. The frightening part isn’t Congress temporarily flipping. The frightening part is that so many Americans are so short-sighted, easily manipulated, ignorant.
Here is the first letter, as Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon calls for colleges and universities to actually educate students, stop being far-left indoctrination factories, ensure intellectual and ideological diversity on campus and not violate the civil rights laws. Let me know if you see anything radical, extreme or alarming there unless one is a committed ideological warrior determined to prevail “by any means necessary”…
Now here is the response of the recently combined American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), both organizations victims of total ideological capture. (Just to follow the theme of recent days, both unions have called for boycotts against Israel.)
Professor Turley, whom I credit with first alerting me to this nauseating open correspondence, writes in part,
“…The alliance with AFT and Weingarten [Me: that’s her, ranting above] is crushingly predictable. Weingarten personifies what I have called the “education cartel,” where teacher unions receive massive contracts and pension agreements from Democratic allies and then turn around and send massive political contributions to those same allies. The losers in this symbiotic relationship are of course the students and their families. Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teachers’ union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds…As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down. The last thing that they want to see is the restoration of neutrality or balance. That is why a policy calling for such reforms is so anathema to them. These organizations are now political organizations that use their dues to pursue radical agendas.”
All true, but the professor’s main concern is the radicalization of a union that purports to represent his profession. My main concern is the crystal clear dishonesty in the second letter and its extreme “it isn’t what it is” arguments. Calling out and preventing institutional discrimination against men, whites, Asians and conservatives isn’t “a partisan concept of national interest.” It’s called “enforcing the law.” The most laughable is the teachers’ union call to make higher education “affordable.” The schools can make tuition more affordable by cutting administrative staff, salaries and construction. Their solution is more taxpayer funding for useless and misleading degrees, but also more reliable woke activists.
With this post, I am belatedly adding “Ethics Villain” to the Ethics Alarms categories. I should have done it before: frankly, properly adding categories and tags to each post after I have finished it is a chore, and I often wonder whether it is worth my time. I’ve posted around 20,000 essays, and the tagging and categorizing process takes about 3 minutes, which means I have spent 5 days worth of waking hours doing it already with no end in sight. I could really use those 60 hours right now.
Anyway, back to Ethics Villain: I have used the term to indicate sort of a super-Ethics Dunce, but that that’s not quite right. Ethics Villains are more like ficks, the EA designation for the people who know what they are doing is wrong and shamelessly do it anyway. In March, I posted an incomplete inventory of Ethics Villains, leaving off Dr. Fauci, who was properly branded with the designation later. Upon reflection, the list was very incomplete, omitting, for example, both Clintons and Barack Obama.
It did include “Virginia Democrats,” however, and that’s from whence today’s Ethics Villain oozed.
***
Local news reports here in Virginia and newly released transcripts from a House July deposition reveal that Arlington’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Taftiac admitted that her office follows a policy in which a DUI charge may be reduced to a different Class 1 misdemeanor when the drunk driver holds DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status. After all, these drunks are special: they are “good illegal immigrants” who face severe immigration penalties for serious law-breaking in addition to the penalties for drunk driving. An office memo urges prosecutors to consider lesser charges when a DACA recipient is arrested for endangering legal, law-abiding citizen drivers and their families as well as pedestrians who looked both ways and waited for “WALK” before crossing a street in what they assumed would be a safe crosswalk. Hey, all they want is a better life!
