President Biden was speaking before Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law [ the group calls the January 6 riot a white supremacy insurrection, so you know what its biases are] as another chapter in his ongoing division and hate tour, making the case that Republicans and conservatives are racists and that systemic racism runs rampant over the land. At one point in this now familiar slander, he said, “I was able to, literally, not figuratively, talk Strom Thurmond into voting for the, the Civil Rights Act before he died. And I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s real progress.’ But hate never dies, it just hides. It hides under the rocks.”
Fascinating. The Civil Rights Act was passed in the Senate by a 73 to 27 vote on June 19, 1964. Biden wasn’t elected to the Senate until January 3, 1973. Senator Strom Thurmond of Dixiecrat fame was one of the 27 “nay” votes on the iconic bill. Other than that, what Biden told the group was “literally” true. Well, that bit about ” before he died” is shaky: Thurmond died in 2002.
“Americans are losing faith in their schoolteachers,” the Washington Post proclaimed a year ago. Gee, I wonder why…
California’s woke attorney general, Rob Bonta, has filed a lawsuit against Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County to halt the county’s requirement that parents be notified when their child changes pronouns or gender identity, or seeks to use a bathroom assigned to a gender opposite to his or hers. In other words, the legal representative of the California state government wants the state to have the authority to withhold information about a family’s minor children from the parents of those children at the discretion of its agents. This attitude is now rampant in schools around the country, primarily because the education community has been thoroughly politicized and is no longer trustworthy.
Earlier this month, Washington and Lee University, as part of its contrived efforts to keep using the names of two American icons who also were slaveholders while continuing to grovel to the political correctness mob, removed markers erected in memory of Robert E. Lee’s famous horse, Traveller. The steed’s gravestone was removed (he’s buried on the campus), and a commemorative plaque came down as well.
Traveller carried Lee during the Civil War and later, when the ex-general became president of the then-Washington College from 1865 until his death in 1871. Traveller died a few months after his owner. But newly uncovered documents revealed that Traveller was a virulent racist, and worse, kept a stable of enslaved Shetland ponies on the Washington and Lee campus.
“Without facts or economics on their side, they [“climate deniers”] flatly deny what is happening to our planet and what we must do to save it. They incite a movement against what they falsely label ‘climate change fanaticism,’ as they conveniently forget that the dictionary definition of a cult is the dismissal of facts in devotion to a lie.”
—-Biden Administration “climate envoy” John Kerry, speaking in Scotland after arriving on his private jet that emitted more carbon into the atmosphere than any of the automobiles I have driven or will drive in my lifetime.
Wow. Imagine, people actually voted for this boob to be President. And what a wonderful example of projection: has there ever been any movement that smacked of cultism more than the climate change freak-out? Kerry, whose entire public career has been a sustained war against facts (most people still think he’s Irish, for example), embodies the discredited theory that saying something is true when it isn’t constitutes a fact. Here’s a fact: crippling the U.S. economy to reach climate change policy goals will achieve nothing except hardship and disaster unless a magic formula is developed to force China, India, Russia and developing nations to do the same, and there is no such formula. What is it, then, that we “must do” to save the planet, John? Accept a Democratic Party dictatorship? Put the U.N. in charge of everything and everybody? Put YOU in charge?
This topic was unwittingly recommended by my younger sister, a reliably liberal Democrat who, to my knowledge, has never read Ethics Alarms once in its 23 years of existence. (Don’t you think that’s strange? I think that’s strange, but I refuse to let it bother me. Much….). She had to tell me about the eruption of an international women’s rights, #MeToo, “sexual assault” cancel culture controversy in the wake of Spain’s first Women’s World Cup championship because I pay as little attention to soccer, international or otherwise, as humanly possible.
Shortly after the championship game’s final whistle, Luis Rubiales, the head of Spain’s Soccer Federation, joined the jubilant on-field celebration, and at the award ceremony, Rubiales took midfielder Jennifer Hermoso’s head in both his hands and…kissed her on the lips!!!!
Searching for relevance and headlines now that her own soccer career is mercifully over, woke activist Megan Rapinoe told The Athletic that the kiss reflected “the deep level of misogyny and sexism in the federation. It made me think of how much we are required to endure.” (I don’t know about the “we” part in Rapinoe’s case: I think an over-excited soccer official would be more likely to spontaneously kiss a scorpion.) Everybody piled on. Spanish soccer coach Jorge Vilda ripped Rubiales, saying in part “I regret deeply that the victory of Spanish women’s football has been harmed by the inappropriate behavior that our, until now, top leader, Luis Rubiales, has carried out.” Eleven members of the Spanish women’s team coaching staff tendered their resignations over the weekend, expressing “their firm and categorical condemnation of Luis Rubiales’ behavior towards Jenni Hermoso.” 81 Spanish players, including all 23 World champions, vowed to go on strike and refuse to play until Rubiales is removed from his position. FIFA, the international soccer organization, suspended Rubiales from all football-related activity for 90 days pending an investigation—yeah, maybe he secretly planned the kiss weeks in advance, for example). The Spanish government publicly supported the decision.
The town is Bauné, near Angers, home to 1,700 people. But because of its location at the crossroads between two departmental roads, roughly 2,300 cars pass through Bauné and reach speeds of over 60 mph even though the town’s signs at the intersection demand far lower velocity. So in order to get drivers to slow down, some genius had the brainstorm of using the intentionally confounding road markings above, and local authorities agreed to adopt the strategy.
Confused drivers are slowing down, all right. Other effective solutions would have been having blinding strobe lights flashing at drivers or insult-spewing mimes throwing water balloons at windshields.
There is no excuse for this, but apparently it works because the American people are generally as gullible as puppies, as lazy as Homer Simpson, and as irresponsible as eight-year olds with firecrackers. Democrats and their news media henchmen and henchwomen once again decided that it was prudent to gaslight the American people on the topic of abortion, where they have no logical or ethical legs to stand on, but never mind, it’s only about “choice,” after all.
During the first GOP candidates debate in Wisconsin, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson all agreed that, in DeSantis’s words,”the Democrats are trying to….allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth.” That is unquestionably true, but most Americans don’t like the idea of killing viable babies in the womb—if that’s okay, why not wait until after a birth and decide then if you want to kill the little bugger?—so the troops were called out to deny reality. (This is the current Rationalization of the Century in Woke World: #64. Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is”)
“I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought. It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempted here by “formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.” – An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court. Each Defendant in this indictment, no less than any other American citizen, is entitled to rely upon the advice of counsel and the benefit of past legal precedent in challenging what former Vice President Pence described as, “serious allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” in the 2020 election. The attempt to criminalize our rights to such redress with this indictment will have – and is already having – profound consequences for our system of justice. My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful. I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.”
John Eastman, respected conservative legal scholar, lawyer, law professor and former Dean of Chapman University Law School, as he surrendered last week to authorities on charges in the Georgia case alleging an illegal plot to overturn the Trump’s 2020 election loss.
This news item has the added advantage for me of adding to my file, now voluminous, of ridiculous legal theories that nonetheless cannot be sanctioned violations of Rule 3.1: Meritorious Claims & Contentions, aka. “Frivolous claims” when they are used as the justification for lawsuits. (The profession’s aversion to punishing lawyers for Hail Mary lawsuits apparently applies to all lawyers accept those representing Donald Trump.) Mostly, however, it demonstrates how completely incompetent another progressive big city mayor is when it comes to dealing with crime.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) announced yesterday that his crime-ridden hell-hole of city, rife with property crimes and murder, will be suing automakers Kia and Hyundai for “their failure to include industry-standard engine immobilizers in multiple models of their vehicles.” This, the theory goes, is why there are so many car thefts in the Windy City.
Yes, it’s the cars’ fault that they get stolen! It certainly isn’t the fault of the car thieves, whom the new mayor wants to see treated with compassion, care and as little punishment as possible. Even though the crime explosion in Chicago was the main reason he defeated the previous mayor, Lori Lightfoot (that, and the fact that she was dishonest and incompetent), Johnson’s plan to stop crime is pure John Lennon wishery: defund as much of the police as possible, seek “restorative justice” and “treatment over punishment,” and have judges who will avoid handing down jail sentences.
I’ll say right now, up front, I love it. This might be the most appealing, brilliant thing Donald Trump has ever done in the realm of politics. If he came up with that expression himself, bravo. As a director, I couldn’t have devised a better one for him under the circumstances.
Ethics Alarms 