Government & Politics

It Happened Again…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I have mentioned before that I find it remarkable that if you can string three sentences together and appear relatively affluent and educated, people assume that you hate the President and believe that “everything is terrible.”

Today I was waiting in an inexcusably long line because Harris Teeter’s had only one check-out station open even though it had to know that the snow-phobic Northern Virginians would be stocking up for the weekend snow storm. I found myself behind a chatty and pleasant woman close to my age. She struck up a conversation, and, as usual, I was not at a loss for words. We talked about movies and history, National Parks, the Tunnel Tree, and Theodore Roosevelt.

She said she wished it were a longer line because she enjoyed the conversation so much, and out of the blue said that if we weren’t going to be so snow-bound, she would join a protest somewhere, because there is so much to protest. She said it as if she didn’t think there was a chance in a million that I wasn’t in complete agreement. After all, I was friendly, polite and articulate: surely I must be terrified by the threat to democracy that all decent people—all her friends and social media pals and those smart pundits on MSNBC—see.

I saw no point in challenging her. In my experience, when I ask, “What exactly do you think is so terrible?” the answers that come back are vague, evasive, non-substantive or factually wrong. She seemed happy and was enjoying my company. Why break the mood? I’ll probably never see the old bat again. I did not want to prompt an imitation of that woman in “The Birds.”

I was dying to point out, I must confess, that her disdain for Donald trump was at odds with her stated admiration of Teddy Roosevelt, since Trump’s view of his office is more Rooseveltian than any POTUS since TR, with the exception of his cousin Franklin. I’m pretty sure Trump had Teddy in mind when he reacted with defiance after being shot: Roosevelt pulled the same stunt in 1912.

It is remarkable that everyone around here just assumes you are a member of their progressive club, or cult, or delusion. Never have I had anyone make the opposite assumption, that I am one of them, the evil people who think this President is doing many things that desperately need to be done, and that he deserves more support and respect for having the guts to do them.

Why is that?

Don Lemon Was Never A Real Journalist, and He Can’t Claim to Have Been One When He Invaded That Church

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Not to say I told you so, but I told you so: Ethics Alarms flagged Don Lemon as an unethical, biased, arrogant, preening disgrace as a journalist long before he was finally canned by CNN, and he has done nothing but live up to my assessment, indeed, show how restrained it was, since. See? I’m smart!

Over the weekend an anti-ICE mob stormed a church in St. Paul on the theory that one of the pastors was an ICE agent. I know, that makes no sense to me, either. They interrupted the service, chanting Renee Good’s name, “Hands up, don’t shoot” and other nonsense that had nothing to do with the service was shut down. Lemon was part of the mob.

The administration has been investigating the disruption at the church as a violation of the Face Act, a law that makes it a crime to physically obstruct or use threats of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking to participate in a service at a house of worship. It seems pretty clear that this is what the mob did, and that Lemon is as guilty and any of the thugs who did this.

Lemon filmed the event and claimed he was just there as a journalist. No, he’s an ex-journalist, as am I: I was on the staff of my high school newspaper. Lemon made his claim of being at the illegal intrusion as a reporter rather than a participant is weak, and made weaker by his comments on the podcast “I’ve Had It” with Jennifer Welch. “And there’s a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are, you know, in the religious groups like that,” Lemon said. “It’s not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they’re entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, white supremacy, and they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country, when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It’s religious freedom, but only if you’re a Christian and only if you’re a white male, pretty much.”

Doesn’t sound like he was in that church as an objective observer to me. Lemon is such an idiot. Listen to him in the clip above, implying that there is a Constitutional right to burst into a church, stop a service, and protest something that has nothing to do with the service or the parishioners at all.

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From Uvalde, The Message Is “Don’t Criminalize Incompetence and Cowardice”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A deranged gunman massacred 21 people at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary three years ago. The murderer is dead and someone must be held accountable, so a former school police officer was tried for abandoning or endangering children. Adrian Gonzales (above, checking his phone like he probably did as the kids were being shot), the first officer to arrive at the school, faced 29 counts of abandoning or endangering children, 19 for the dead and 10 more for survivors. A jury found him not guilty yesterday. Soon the pretty clearly incompetent school former school police chief Pete Arredondo will face trial later on similar charges, and we should expect the same result.

One of Ethics Alarms’ encomiums is that when ethics fail, the law steps in and usually makes a mess of things. If people won’t do the right thing because it’s the right thing, making them do what the state says is the right thing because they’re afraid of being punished is a very poor substitute. Those following the law may not have any concept of what the right thing to do is.

The Uvalde prosecutions arise out of anger and frustration, and reasonably so. Emotions, however, are not reliable motives for law enforcement. The school’s police pretty clearly failed the children of Robb Elementary because Gonzales and Arredondo choked when an unexpected crisis required them to place themselves in harm’s way. As much as we find it disheartening, lack of courage in a crisis cannot be criminalized. These officers thought they had accepted a relatively low-stress job in a quiet community. They hadn’t dealt with a gun-wielding madman before. Sure, we’d like to know that a Dirty Harry is ready to let an active shooter “make his day,” but in the real world—and, I will say without more than my own assessment, increasingly a nation of weenies—that is probably not going to happen. Gonzales had received active shooter training and was also a co-instructor in such a course, but training, however, is one thing, and the a real gun-wielding killer is another.

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Ethics Quiz: The Despicable Representative From The Great State of South Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is a bit of departure from the usual Ethics Alarms quiz. I’m not going to ask whether conduct is ethical or not, or what the ethical response is to a particular conflict or dilemma. No, I’m going to ask what a fair and proportionate description would be of the latest vile, racist crap emitted by this serial hate-mongering demagogue.

That’s Rep. James Clyburn—recognize him? He took credit for getting Joe Biden nominated in 2020, and thus has blood on his hands from the carnage out country has suffered from four years of governance by faceless, unelected woke bureaucrats pulling the strings of a senile President. Gee, thanks, Jim!

Check out Clyburn’s EA dossier, easily one of the most damning short of Nancy Pelosi or the late Rep. Barbara Lee. Clyburn’s 85 now, and an “icon,” because he marched with Martin Luther King (but then so did Marion Barry). But he’s always been an flagrant anti-white racist and hyper-partisan liar. Nonetheless, Clyburn topped himse;f while appearing in “The View,” which itself is showing symptoms of dementia. He told the ignorant ladies, and the even more ignorant viewers who watch their daily idiocy, that the modern GOP is trying to bring back slavery. “Anything that’s happened before can happen again,” Clyburn said, as the Trump Deranged of “The View” sat rapt, as if at the feet of the Buddha. “They were trying to set up a process that will allow this country to return to what it was in 1876 when the election got thrown into the House of Representatives and they were able to overturn what Abraham Lincoln and the Congress had done successfully getting rid of slavery. That is what they’re attempting to do today. I get sick and tired of hearing people say this ‘it’s never been like this before,’ Yes, it has!”

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Ethics Villain and American Apostate: California Governor Gavin Newsom

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

How can Gavin Newsom defend his anti-American, traitorous outburst against the President of his own country yesterday in Davos, Switzerland? He can’t. It is indefensible. His only defense is that the Trump Deranged and his Machiavellian party will let him get away with it.

Newsom decided it was a good move—meaning beneficial to him politically, never mind his nation—to urge European leaders to oppose the President of the United States. Got that? An American state governor and an aspiring President himself called global leaders “pathetic” for failing to oppose his own nation’s elected leader.

“I can’t take this complicity of people rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders. I mean handing out crowns, the Nobel prizes that are being given away. It’s just pathetic. And I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage,” Newsom said, speaking to reporters. “Trump is a T-Rex. You mate with him or he devours you, one or the other, and you need to stand up to it,” he continued, calling on Europeans to “stay tall and united.”

Against his nation.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse, As the Blogger Hits A Grand Slam…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“Tolerance?! I would think it’s considered homophobic just to use the word “tolerance,” which connotes minimal acceptance and little more than a willingness to refrain from discriminating or saying actively mean things. In fact, I’d suggest it is the demand to do so much more — to celebrate pride in sexual matters and to endure indoctrination sessions that force feed questionable fine points — that has made people resistant and more likely to check a less gay-friendly box on the survey.”

—Quirky but perceptive Madison, Wis. bloggress Ann Althouse, commenting on the Times’ “Americans Are Turning Against Gay People” yesterday.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Lawyer Kimberley Hamm, Spinning For The Clintons

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“There’s an accommodation process when you’re talking about a President or a former President.Contempt is punitive; it’s not about enforcement. If you want to get the information, agreeing to accommodations is one way of getting it.”

—Kimberly Hamm, a partner at Morrison Foerster, after being cherry-picked by the New York Times to excuse Bill and Hillary Clinton for trying to defy a Congressional subpoena.

For some strange reason (I’m being facetious) Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to think that they are excused, unlike any other Americans (or, say, Michael Corleone) from obeying a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee. Hamm, as we know how these things work, was tracked down as a putative objective “expert” by the Times to excuse the Clintons and impugn Republicans who are not inclined to accept their offensive and arrogant defiance, as Ethics Alarms highlighted last week.

There should be a “heightened standard” when it comes to a subpoena of a former President, Hamm said. Oh really? Show me your authority for that assertion, Counselor. But first show me where you made a similar statement about armed raids on former Presidents’ homes over disputes regarding classified documents.

What utter balderdash: “contempt is punitive and not about enforcement.” How dumb does this lawyer (and the Times) think we are? Punishment is always about enforcement. A law that has no penalty for its violations isn’t a law at all. You know, like immigration laws during the Biden Administration.

The Times reports that negotiations between Representative James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and the slippery Clintons over their refusal to testify before his Committee in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation broke down today, “hours before a scheduled vote to hold the couple in contempt of Congress.” Read the whole thing if you like (gift link), but the basic facts are clear: the Clintons feel they have a special right to avoid being grilled in public, and they don’t.

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Calling “A Friend”! Tell Us Again How The New York Times Is Non-Partisan, Fair, and Trustworthy…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yeah, I’m trolling. So sue me.

A mob of Minnesota pro-open borders, anti-Rule of Law, insurrection-minded, Jacob Frey toadies and crazies invade a church service and harass parishioners on the pretense that the minister supports immigration enforcement, and the framing of the event by the nation’s alleged “newspaper of record” is to call the trespass and mass assault a “protest” and to focus on I.C.E. tactics when the issue is anti-I.C.E. tactics. The immigration control agency was not involved in this criminal act in any way, yet it is in the headline.

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

For readers new to Ethics Alarms, “A Friend” is an unfriendly, denial-soaked ex-commenter here who banned himself from the comments, an act that is addressed specifically in the blog Comment Policies. Unlike even the most disrespectful and defiant bannees of the past, who typically issue a one or two finals shots and then sink into the obscurity they so richly deserve, this jerk has adamantly refused to comply with the site’s owner and moderator, me. Thus for years he has repeatedly blog-bombed posts with comments that I have to delete while also sending me emails that also go directly to spam, because he is somehow convinced that he’s smarter than everyone else. You know,

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From The Ethics Alarms “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Dept…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Our President’s letter to the Prime Minister of Norway:

“Dear Jonas:

“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Observations, as I consider heading for the nearest bridge…

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Wisconsin’s Governor Perfectly Exemplifies The Pro-Illegal Immigration Mob’s Logical, Legal and Ethical Disconnect

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Ponder this brief news item from the state’s WBAY. I’ve footnoted it for reference and easy mockery:

“MADISON, Wis. (WBAY) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says he’s “very concerned” about immigration officials targeting farm workers, [1]especially as ICE arrests ramp up across the Midwest.

“Evers says his team is keeping an eye [2] on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s presence in the state.

“According to the most recent data, a University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers survey found 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms is performed by people living in the country illegally. [3]

“’I can probably say in my sleep [4], our state will be destroyed economically if suddenly we decide anybody undocumented [5] is going home or has to leave [6]Wisconsin,’” Evers said.

“‘When asked if ICE is welcome in Wisconsin, Gov. Evers said he doesn’t see the need for the federal government to come here.'”[7].

“He believes the state can handle immigration enforcement itself.” [8]

Riddle me this: How many internal contradictions can one fit in a single news article?

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