It is beginning to look like Fani Willis, Georgia’s African-American Democrat Fulton County prosecutor who pledged to “get” Donald Trump, really is involved in a serious conflict of interest involving the case and even criminal conduct. The mainstream media is taking notice, it is no longer a “right wing conspiracy theory,” and most interestingly, Willis has not denied the allegations, which appeared in a court filing.
“Wait a minute, God! You did not tell me,” she added, “as a woman of color it would not matter what I did — my motive, my talent, my ability and my character would be constantly attacked….A divorced single mom who doesn’t belong to the right social groups, who doesn’t necessarily come from the right family, doesn’t have the right pedigree — the assignment was just too high for lowly me. All I brought to the table, God, is my mind, my heart, my work ethic, my undying love for people and the community.”
One of the New York Times’ least Stockholm Syndrome-suffering conservative pundits, Ross Douthat, has an entry at the Times digital page called “Why Jan. 6 Wasn’t an Insurrection.” He does a good job, and the column would be useful one to circulate to your Trump Deranged social media buddies who have been brainwashed by the constant use of the word to falsely describe the idiocy that unfolded on that day…President Biden being one of the main offenders. Douthat begins with the same expression of frustration over the constant Big Lie-mongering on this topic that I have been suffering from over the entire three-year interim:
I’vewrittenseveraltimes about the case for disqualifying Donald Trump via the 14th Amendment, arguing that it fails tests of political prudence and constitutional plausibility alike. But the debate keeps going, and the proponents of disqualification have dug into the position that whatever the prudential concerns about the amendment’s application, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, obviously amounted to an insurrection in the sense intended by the Constitution, and saying otherwise is just evasion or denial.
I know the piece is behind a paywall, so hopefully Mt. Douthat’s understanding, I’m going to quote a bit more freely from his work—with attribution!!!—than I usually would. He announces his agreement with legal scholar Steven Calabresi in Reason magazine, who has pointed out that the “paradigmatic example” that the drafters of the 14th Amendment had in mind “should guide our understanding of its ambiguities.” That would be the Civil War, “in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed.” Says Douthat, perhaps wondering why he should have to, “a five-hour riot probably doesn’t clear the bar.” Ya think?
Last January, Ethics Alarms introduced the “Bite Me!”, an Ethics Alarms designation reserved for either an individual whose “response to being bullied, pressured and threatened into submissiveness is to say, “Do your worst. I believe in what I am doing, and I don’t grovel to mobs,” or as used several times in the course of 2023, the author of unethical conduct that demands the response, “Bite me!”
Our increasingly (under President Biden) power-abusing and dictatorial federal government ranks the first “Bite Me” of 2024 for this “Karen”-ish nonsense: the federal government is asking state agencies to stop posting traffic signs using humor, like one above in Maine, and has given the states two years to ease off the funny stuff, after which the “or else” will kick in. DOT says that funny signs can be distracting, and, of course, since all Americans are hopeless sheep who must be protected from even the periodic ill-timed giggle, Biden’s micro-managing minions think it is in their legitimate jurisdiction to dictate the tone and wording of traffic messages.
It’s pretty obvious that Donald Trump is going to lose his case before the three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel. The former President is claiming that all former Presidents are absolutely immune from prosecution for crimes they may have committed while in office. It’s easy to knock that argument down as just bad policy, and the judges did just that at oral argument this week.
Judge Florence Y. Pan asked Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, demanding a yes or no answer,“Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”
Sauer answered that prosecution would only be permitted if the President were first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Of course that can’t be right. It would mean that a President with a large majority in both Houses of Congress could do virtually anything without legal consequences. One might argue that such a clear “crime or misdemeanor” would always trigger a bi-partisan impeachment, but after seeing most Republicans refuse vote to eject certified rotter George Santos from the House and Democrats line up behind Rep. Bowman after he set off a fire alarm to disrupt a House vote and then lied about it, I am no longer sure.
Oh…that’s lovely “Emily Pellegrini” above, the sensational digital model created with the assistance on an AI program. After just four months on Instagram, she has nearly 150,000 fans and is well on her way to being a web influencer. I think Natalie Portman should sue, especially since Emily may be a better actress than she is.
But I digress. See if you can find some of the beauty in ethics today.
…or the politicians and untrustworthy elected officials who use both for unethical ends.
Further reinforcing his Ethics Alarms status as an Ethics Villain, the now retired Dr. Anthony Fauci blithely told lawmakers on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic this week that “social distancing guidelines”—warning the public to keep six feet apart from anyone else supposedly to limit the spread of the Wuhan virus — “sort of just appeared” without scientific input, and was “likely not based on scientific data.”
Oh! That’s nice! Schools remained closed well into 2021 substantially as a result of the social distancing guidelines that he stood by and allowed to be issued without scientific data. I was screamed at in several public places because I knew the social distancing edicts were garbage from the beginning, just like the “don’t touch your face!” nonsense and 95% of all masks. My sister has been a phobic about physical contact ever since March of 2020: she has yet to allow me into her house, and will only speak to me at my home ten feet away on the front yard. Research studies and other health officials pooh-poohed the social distancing mandates early on while media scaremongers—-after all, it was vital to wreck the Trump economy if he was going to be brought down—were quoting some “experts” saying that we should all wear masks and socially distance forever. Fortunately my pop culture addiction served me well: I recognized all of the CDC recommendations from the 2011 pandemic movie “Contagion.” They were exactly the same, proving to me that “social distancing” and the rest were just boiler plate “Do something!” measures off the CDC shelf. (They didn’t work in the film, either.)
The Julie Principle comes into play when an undesirable or annoying characteristic or behavior pattern in a person or organization appears to be hard-wired and part of their essence. In judging such a person or entity, it is useful to keep the lyrics of Julie’s song from “Show Boat” (“Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man O’ Mine,” lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein Jr., music by Jerome Kern) firmly in mind, when she sings…
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…I’ve gotta love that man til I dieCan’t help lovin’ that man of mine!
It comes into play when one is tempted to keep criticizing and calling attention to such individuals or organizations behaving in the same unethical way they always do when there is no chance, literally none, that they will, or will even want to, change their habits. Beneficiaries of the Julie Principle on Ethics Alarms in recent years have included Kamala Harris, who always babbles semi-incoherently, White House paid liar Karine Jean-Pierre, who is forever incompetent, New York Times anti-white bigot and Trump Derangement victim Charles M. Blow, and PETA, which is reliably ridiculous.
It is true that Donald Trump will always get the benefit of The Julie Principle here in one area: his characteristic oblique and stream of consciousness manner of communicating. However, as recent outbursts have vividly illustrated, he cannot be julied—yes, I just invented a verb—when he (relatively) clearly states his intentions, beliefs, or versions of reality. Attention must be paid.
A recent feature in the intermittently cretinous New York Magazine feature “The Intelligencer” by the thing’s demonstrably inept editor Margaret Hartman illustrates the problem. Here are what she ranked as “8 Awful Things Trump Said in Iowa.”
At one rally, Trump said, riffing on U.S. aircraft carrier technology, “Think of it, magnets. Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.” I can’t let that kind of ignorance go. That’s signature significance for someone who has inexcusable gaps in his basic knowledge, and who therefore cannot be trusted to make responsible and competent decisions. It also suggests the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Trump is ignorant and doesn’t know he’s ignorant, or he would not be broadcasting his ignorance in public.
In contrast, this quote: “First they say, ‘Sir, how do you do it? How do you wake up in the morning and put on your pants?’ And I say, ‘Well, I don’t think about it too much.’ I don’t want to think about it because if I think about it too much maybe I won’t want to do it, but I love it because we’re going to do something for this country that’s never been done before” is pure Trump Derangement fodder. He’s kidding around, but the dedicated “Get Trump!” bashers can’t resist treating such Trumpian flights of fancy as important. This is an example of why Trump critics are so biased that they can’t be trusted.
Hartman writes, “Trump claimed [the Civil War] — much like the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Hamas war — could have been avoided entirely if we had a master dealmaker like him in the White House back in 1861.” Trump has opined thus before. It is mandatory left-wing cant that to even suggest that the Civil War could have or should have been avoided is evidence of racism, so naturally Hartman pounced. Trump is certainly dead wrong that Lincoln could have avoided the Civil War without just letting the Confederate states leave the Union, but the position that more competent Presidents than Lincoln’s immediate predecessors Pierce and Buchanan (both in the finals of the Ethics Alarms “Worst President” competition) might have been able to come up with a compromise that eased slavery out without a disastrous war is held by a small group of historians. It’s not an “awful” thing to say.
#5 on Hartman’s list is so bizarre that it qualifies as another example of her own Trump Derangement. Read it yourself. Apparently it’s “awful” that Trump objected to a Ron DeSantis campaign ad. This is so dumb that I don’t need the Julie Principle to ignore it. “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” works just fine.
Trump did nasty imitations of Biden, his speech issues and his confusion. Verdict:Pure Julie Principle. Hartman finds this disgusting and so do I, but that’s who this guy is, and anyone paying attention knows it. It’s not worth reporting or complaining about at this point.
Trump again mocked the late Senator John McCain’s physical disabilities while condemning his decisive vote that killed the attempted Obamacare repeal. That’s not Julie Principle stuff, that’s insanity. It broadcasts Trump’s flat, indeed declining, learning curve, and shows that a man who wants to be President is obsessed with grudges and revenge, which is scary. Trump’s attacks on McCain when the ex-prisoner of war was alive cost him support from many veterans. Mocking him now again is beneath what even I thought Trump was capable of. No Julie here.
“He glorified January 6 insurrectionists” writes Hartman.Anyone who calls the rioters “insurrectionists” forfeits the right to be taken seriously or trusted. Trump said they are being persecuted, which is true. He called the Biden-enabled stampede of illegals at the border an insurrection, which is sloppy hyperbole, but that’s typical Trump, and Julie Principle all the way.
The worst of Trump’s “awful things,” according to “The Intelligencer” was that when he touched on the recent school shooting in Iowa, he said,
“I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa.It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
That’s Trump, through and through. It’s not Julie Principle territory, though. It’s worth pondering. He is right, after all, in the sense that these tragedies cannot be allowed to get in the way of facing immediate long term problems. This is a competent military leader’s attitude, as well as a typical CEO’s. Our current reaction as a culture is to turn particularly horrible tragedies into opportunities to appeal to emotion and signal our virtue: Trump doesn’t do virtue-signalling, and I regard that as one of his strengths much of the time. On the other side of the matter, effective leaders have to know when to play mourner -in-chief. This instance show that Trump can’t perform that function: if he had to announce the Challenger disaster as President, he would have said, “This is a terrible tragedy, but we can’t let it slow down our space exploration,” instead of quoting “High Flight,” as Ronald Reagan did. This is useful intelligence regarding Trump. Verdict: No Julie Principle pass.
The final tally: only three of Hartman’s “eight awful things” are worthy of special attention, and escape the Julie Principle’s pass.
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A diversion: In that video clip from the MGM “Showboat,” Ava Gardner as Julie is being dubbed by singer Annette Warner, who was not credited. This was back in the day when studios dubbed actors routinely if they weren’t primarily singers; today, the pendulum has swung completely, so the voices of non-singers like Russell Crowe (in “Les Miserables”) are inflicted on audiences. The dubbing of “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” was particularly unfair, for Gardner could sing, and worked hard on the song. She didn’t know until she say the movie that Warner had taken over her vocals.
Warren, I discovered researching the story, was still performing as recently as 2017, and is apparently still with us at the age of 101. Ava Gardner, born in the same year, has been dead for 33 years.
This juicy legal ethics scandal is churning in the conservative media while the left side of our corrupt journalism is clearly going to slow walk it as along as possible or until the facts evaporate. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the story first: The Democrat district attorney prosecuting Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, Fani Willis, may have engaged in egregiously unethical conduct in prosecuting the case.
[A] motion, filed Monday by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, alleged that Willis andspecial prosecutor Nathan Wade“have been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case.” It also contended that Wade had paid for lavish vacations that he and Willis took with the money his law office was paid for his work on the election interference case.
Though this is right up the Ethics Alarms alley as a legal ethics story, I hesitated to post on it until the facts were verified by a neutral and reliable source. They haven’t been. Frankly, it is difficult for me to believe that Willis or any prosecutor could do something so stupid in any matter, but especially in such a high profile case. Continue reading →
As I thought it might, the post about the Army’s head sexual assault prosecutor being fired because a decade’s old email suggested that defense attorneys would have to fight hard for the rights of accused servicemen being targeted by politicians “with an agenda” quickly attracted intense commentary.(Oddly, or perhaps not, the story has been largely ignored by mainstream media. My mining of obscure legal ethics sources has its benefits.) No commentary was more illuminating or useful than this, the Comment of the Day by 77Zoomie, on the post, “Army Policy Is Apparently That ItsProsecutors Must ‘Believe All Women’”…
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Some thoughts from someone who has both prosecuted and defended sexual assault cases in military courts.
Although it is a difficult concept for most civilian attorneys to grasp, the military justice system that was put in place in the early 1950s (as the Uniform Code of Military Justice) Is designed to accomplish two, sometimes contradictory, tasks. The first is to provide constitutional due process to service members accused of any of a specific list of crimes delineated by the UCMJ. Military defense counsel are obviously crucial in this process because they are frequently the only individuals with the capability to adequately overcome the tremendous advantage possessed by the prosecution on a military installation. Prosecution authority rests ultimately in a series of commanders at various levels. These individuals have unlimited resources at their disposal, including the ability to select potential jurors and to influence proceedings in any one of a thousand different ways, some obvious but most not. Military defense attorneys are generally removed from the formal chain of command so that local commanders cannot affect the career of a zealous defense counsel working to protect the interests of her client.
This story, initially reported by the Associated Press, is at very least ominous, and at most a reminder that the Biden Administration’s position is that a man accused of sexual assault is considered guilty until proven innocent.
Unless the man is Joe Biden, of course.
At the beginning of last month, the Army’s head sexual assault prosecutor, Brig. Gen. Warren Wells, was fired from his job by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. The justification given was a 2013 email in which he had the audacity to remind Army defense lawyers that they were the last line of defense against false accusations. The message read,
Ethics Alarms 