I shouldn’t have to expound on this, as the news and rhetoric from college campuses, academia, Black Lives Matter and “The Squad” ought to make the case. I’ll just note this, among many equally persuasive examples:
York City Mayor Eric Adams has appointed as the chair and executive director of the city’s Commission on Racial Equity Linda Tigani, previously acting chiefequity and strategy officer for the city’s Health Department. Tigani has postedpro-Hamas propaganda on social media, including the slogan “From the river to the sea,” which is explicitly anti-Semitic, a call for the elimination of Israel.
Nice. But she is hardly an anomaly. “Never again!” sounds hollow when Jews willingly ally themselves with those who seek their destruction.
Well, to be fair, Stephen King is an acclaimed writer of horror fantasy, so he qualifies as a thoughtful authority on…wait, no he doesn’t, does he? King does live in Maine, though, so there’s that.
Here’s King’s entire opinion piece titled, “We’re Out of Things to Say.” (I’m not going to read the Times readers’ comments, because they will just send me to the wood-chipper.) as he pretends that a sloppily-conceived, virtue-signaling sigh is enlightenment:
This would be an “Incompetent Elected Official” post, except a) we already know Kamala Harris is incompetent, and b) her penchant for talking nonsense, gibberish or idiocy long ago reached Julie Principle proportions. But other Democrats, notably Hillary Clinton, have appealed to ignorance, emotion and hysteria by doing what Harris did yesterday as part of the wholly predictable Democratic Party/progressive/mainstream media attack on gun rights after a mass shooting tragedy. This one, as you probably know already, was in Maine, and unusually deadly, so the gun-grabbing fanatics and the “Do something!” crazies were really licking their chops.
On stage with Australia’s Prime Minister at an event yesterday, Harris blathered, “Gun violence has terrorized and traumatized so many of our communities in this country. And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.”
As usual, Harris required a translator. It doesn’t have to be “this way” in Australia? Have our communities been terrified there? How has Australia demonstrated what is possible or desirable in the United States? It hasn’t, of course: it hasn’t even demonstrated that it is possible to eliminate mass shootings in Australia, where the National Firearms Agreement of 1996 made semiautomatic weapons and shotguns illegal and mandated the confiscation of close to 650,000 firearms. The NFA requires Australians to wait 28 days before they purchase a gun to allow extensive background checks. Applicants must obtain a license and a permit, be over 18 years old, provide documentation that the weapon will be stored securely and complete firearms safety training. They must also provide a “justifiable reason” for owning the gun, and self-defense doesn’t qualify. A requirement less stringent than this was just struck down as unconstitutional in New York.
Statistics based on research by the Guttmacher Institute seem to indicate that legal abortions increased slightly in the United States in the first six months of 2023 compared with 2020. The assumption is that states with more permissive abortion laws absorbed patients traveling from states with more restrictive laws, and access to abortion pills increased.
Thus the feminist and progressive narrative that Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year created a “Handmaiden’s Tale” hellscape where women were compelled to give birth to children they did not want was, as those inclined to be rational realized, inflammatory propaganda designed to support unhinged attacks on the six Justices in the Dobbs majority. The lie also proved to be a useful Democratic Party election weapon.
As Justice Alito stated clearly in his opinion, the ruling over-turning Roe v. Wade was not a pro- or anti-abortion ruling, but a necessary decision to uphold core Constitutional principles while striking down a badly reasoned precedent. The Constitution does not include a right to abortion, and the Founders would have been horrified at the very thought. Nor is abortion a proper matter for a national law, other than a Constitutional amendment.
The New York Times turned to a biased art historian to discuss the melting down of the Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee that was the focal point of the infamous 2017 riot. Ethics Alarms has spilled too much metaphorical ink over statue-toppling and historical airbrushing already—you can find most of them under this tag or this one. I can summarize them all easily: tearing down statues betrays a totalitarian-mentality and undemocratic values, an intolerance of unpopular beliefs and ideas, and a favorable attitude toward thought-control and censoring history. I hate it, it’s unethical, and I’m not even a fan of Robert E. Lee.
Rigging the commentary (what were the chances that an African-American art historian would object to destroying a Lee statue?), the Times got what it evidently wanted: an almost obscenely gleeful account of Lee’s symbolic melting down. “Acrid fumes penetrated the respirators we had been issued,” Erin Thompson writes. “When the foundryman finally turned off his torch and tapped at the head with a mallet, Lee’s face fell clattering to the floor.” She quotes a founder of the statue-toppling group that helped accomplish the destruction as saying, “It feels like witnessing a public execution.” Clearly, it was a good feeling. You know, like the “reform Communists” felt when they tore down Stalin’s statue and threw his mummified corpse in a hole. “Stalin? Who’s Stalin?” Now the same people who helped the dictator murder millions could pretend it all never happened. It is traditions like this that ensure that Russians never learn from its history, because they don’t like to acknowledge history.
“Many of these lawmakers on the other side of the aisle who had their hair on fire about what appears to have been an inadvertent action taken by Congressman Bowman, to which he is now being held accountable for, within the criminal justice system, regularly defend violent individuals who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, as part of an effort to halt a peaceful transfer of power. And these violent individuals brutally beat and seriously injured 140 police officers, on the day of the insurrection. And many of them, who are having a panic attack, publicly, about Jamaal Bowman have actually defended or refused to comment on the violent mob on January 6.”
—House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.),the man every Democrat in the House voted for to be Speaker, “explaining” why Rep. Bowman shouldn’t be censured by the House for breaking the law, indeed two laws, as well as violating the House ethics code.
To be blunt, this statement by Jeffries exhibits the approximate ethical comprehension of a Cocker Spaniel. It reveals him to be a shameless liar and an ethics corrupter:
I guess the erstwhile “non-partisan” individual rights organization has to do this once in a while so it can claim it hasn’t become the Democratic Party ally that it is, but the gesture is still welcome.
Yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the gag order the judge overseeing former President Trump’s federal 2020 election criminal case in D.C. slapped on him is unconstitutionally broad and vague….which, of course, it is.
“Former President, and now Defendant, Donald Trump has said many things,” the ACLU wrote in a court filing. “Much that he has said has been patently false and has caused great harm to countless individuals, as well as to the Republic itself. Some of his words and actions have led him to this criminal indictment, which alleges grave wrongdoing in contempt of the peaceful transition of power. But Trump retains a First Amendment right to speak, and the rest of us retain a right to hear what he has to say.”
Naturally, the ACLU doesn’t have the guts to weigh in on Trump’s side without including a gratuitous attack on: can’t have the group’s Trump Deranged supporters taking offense, after all !
New Harvard President Claudine Gay can be expected to issue a fourth clarification of her initial reactions to the University’s large anti-Semitic contingent cheering on the Hamas massacre of Jewish citizens on October 7. To read Gay’s inaugural speech upon becoming the new president of America’s oldest and most storied educational institution, one would think “all is well” at Harvard, as Faber College student Kevin Bacon futilely screamed in the epic finale of “Animal House.” In marvelous ramalama-dingdong fashion, the standard issue race-obsessed progressive scholar babbled, predictably as Harvard’s first black President, about “this institution’s long history of exclusion and the long journey of resistance and resilience to overcome it.” Then she proved incapable of reacting forcibly when Harvard’s long history of anti-Semitism suddenly revealed itself not to have been resisted enough. Indeed, Harvard’s relentless efforts at woke indoctrination guarantee that it will flourish.
As discussed here, 31 Harvard campus organizations famously announced that Israel was fully responsible for all the violence erupting in and out of Gaza. Then, after efforts were made to reveal the names of the participating pro-terrorism and historically ignorant students so potential employers could cross them off their lists, we learned how well Harvard imbues its students with the ethical virtues of integrity, accountability, honesty, loyalty and prudence, along with such enabling virtues as fortitude, courage, and sacrifice. At least ten of the groups announced that they no longer endorsed the letter, now that there might be consequences attached to signing it. Some student members swore that they never approved the letter that their groups signed; others proclaimed that they didn’t really mean to say what the letters said, or that they hadn’t read it carefully.
Got it: you’re incompetent, irresponsible and cowardly fools. These reactions do not enhance your attraction as potential employees.
In 2019, 39-year-old Steve Markey, sitting in his car in Minneapolis, was murdered during an unsuccessful carjacking attempt. The two teenage suspects both fired shots at Markey. They were arrested the next day after a string of other violent crimes. Both confessed to the murder.
Minneapolis’s DA before the current woke District Attorney Mary Moriarty said he would try the defendants as adults. One of the defendants, Husayn Braveheart (above), now 20 years old, fought to have his case remain in juvenile court where the punishment would be more moderate than in adult court: his co-defendant received a 22-year sentence when tried as an adult. In November 2022, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Braveheart should be certified for trial as an adult after determining the State had met the burden of proof on a series of public safety factors including Braveheart’s culpability and his history of failing to participate in diversion programs and other therapy.
But at a pretrial hearing in August, Moriarty announced that she had entered into a plea agreement in which Braveheart would serve just 1 year in a workhouse and 5 years of probation. Under the deal, the 20-year-old would serve no prison time for murder.
