The House Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz was released today and concluded that there was “substantial evidence” that the recently resigned Florida Congressman paid many women, including at least one minor, to have sex with him, in addition to his likely violating House Rules and other standards of conduct “prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.” The 37-page Committee Report is here. Read it and weep, as the saying goes.
Gaetz is clearly what is technically called “a sleazeball,” but we knew that, didn’t we? I found it particularly notable that he wasn’t even defended by his own party, which is what we usually see in the “dissents” in such ethics reports. Gaetz’s defenders on the committee only objected to the report being released despite its subject’s leaving the House, which is not the typical course but is not unprecedented either. The report’s dissenters even goes to the trouble of admitting that they have no objections to the report’s conclusions.
The report was published in full by the House Ethics Committee on Monday morning after the panel secretly voted earlier this month to release it. Gaetz, was investigated for four years by the committee over various allegations.
Of course Gaetz has denied doing anything illegal, while admitting that he was just a wild and crazy guy in his younger days. Lying is small change for someone who has engaged in the conduct described in the report. It does appear that the statutory rape episode was the result of him not knowing how old his sex partner was, which is understandable since he appears to have run through sex partners like they were Tic-Tacs. The committee’s report found that Gaetz had also engaged in more typical ethics violations like accepting gifts in “excess of permissible amounts,” including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018. Even then he “engaged in sexual activity” with at least four women on the trip, giving them money as “gifts.”
The report also alleges that there was “sufficient evidence of Representative Gaetz’s intent to derail the investigation.”
“I am sure someone will do research into who the order has spared, and we will see other multiple murderers, people who killed without remorse and with extreme cruelty, vicious psychopaths who killed for the fun of it, or who murdered children, or who slaughtered their victims after rape or torture. These don’t warrant executions, Biden says on behalf of the Wonderful Woke who refuse to acknowledge that there is a point where an individual has forfeited the benefits of civilization, but the single factor of “hate” elevates murder from really, really bad to intolerable.”
No sooner had I posted than Not The Bee posted exactly what I expected; it popped up in my email, in fact. Among those the President’s mass commutation today saves from the fate they all richly deserve:
As was anticipated after reports that were issued over the weekend, “President Joe Biden announced” today that he has commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers, thus taking them off federal death row. They will now serve out life sentences in prison, being housed, fed, given medical attention and more at taxpayer expense. This was done deliberately to foil the announced intention of President-elect Donald Trump to carry out the verdicts of juries and the courts.
“Biden’s statement”—this is in quotation marks because he didn’t write it, probably doesn’t understand it and quite possibly never read it or approved it—reads,
“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
I. Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), 79, was being wheeled into the House by a staffer when Politico photographer Francis Chung took his picture. Punchbowl News reports that the Congressman screamed, “Who gave you the right to take my picture, asshole?” Nice! The First Amendment gives him the right. Scott was in full public view, and has no expectation of privacy. He doesn’t know that? Why is anyone in Congress who doesn’t understand Bill of Rights 101? Scott has served as the U.S. representative of Georgia’s 13th congressional district since 2003. How can he not know this after 20 years in Congress? Did he once know it and somehow forgot? That seems plausible. Scott has chaired the House Agriculture Committee since January 2021, but colleagues in the House have expressed, all anonymously, of course, concerns about his fading mental abilities. They say he often reads from a script and has “trouble” discussing finer points of policy. Scott also frequently leaves Agriculture Committee meetings and does not return, even though he’s the chairman.
Sarah B.’s perceptive and eloquent Comment of the Day about the inquirer to the NYT’s “The Ethicist” advice column who asked whether the threat of various catastrophes ahead (as she saw them) concluded with a sentence that reminded me of this famous speech from the film “Parenthood.” I’ve been looking for an opportunity to post it. Thanks Sarah B.
It is very easy to mock and deride someone who is silly enough to believe the mainstream media and all the horror stories the left has subscribed to. I like feeling superior for not believing in this version of fantasy land. I felt superior when I was not one of the wackos who declared themselves part of the Navi in Avatar, and I’m feeling the same general happiness when recognizing that I’m not so far gone as to believe this current set of beliefs. Indeed, it is tempting to feel even more so, because so many of my contemporaries follow this insane set of beliefs.
However, I think we need to dig deeper than the mocking laughter this letter so easily inspires. What is this woman really saying? First, she is discussing a desire to have children. This is a desire that fewer and fewer women are subscribing to, usually to their and to societies eventual sadness. Therefore, this desire should be encouraged. Second, she is fearing that we are entering a time of tribulation. Before addressing this in any depth, we should consider what she is probably meaning with these two concerns. The first worry is likely that she feels that bringing a child into this world in a time of trouble means that her child may suffer. The second worry is that in bring a child into this world in a time of trouble would cause this woman to suffer.
The concern of bringing a child into a world in a less than perfect time causing the child to suffer is not a valid one for several reasons. First, the USA, under Trump or not, is better than many if not most places in the world. In addition, the world in 2024 is a better place than nearly all of human history. Less people suffer, and they suffer less than in the past. The human misery index is very low. Children are a joy to the human race, and the hope for the future. Man has always had children, even in tougher times than any we can illogically expect to come about today. The idea that the child MIGHT suffer in the perfect storm is still less likely than the child having a normal life and enjoying every moment his parents lovingly gifted him. Besides, in the best of times, a child will get illnesses and injuries. That is part of growing up. To quote Calvin, quoting his dad, “being miserable builds character.” As some say, if it were not for the heat or the hammer, the steel could not be honed. Adversity is what helps us become the best version of ourselves.
The concern of a parent suffering because they brought a child into a troubled world is ridiculous, because parents will always suffer for their children. Labor is no picnic. Sleepless nights when breastfeeding are a form of suffering. Staying up with a sick kid, or sitting by a kid’s bedside when they are in the hospital for a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, or croup is not exactly enjoyable. Holding them still so a doctor can give them stitches is incredibly painful, even before they kick you. I certainly feel greater pain than my children when they are sick and in misery and I wish I could take their suffering from them, even if it is a good suffering. Heck, it really does hurt me more than my child when I have to discipline them. And again, in the perfect utopia of a Democratic paradise, a child will still cause their parents suffering. Children will be born with special needs. Children will slip past an exhausted or distracted parent and fall into a pool or run into traffic. Accidents will happen, no matter what we do. Also, children will grow up and make poor decisions that cause parents all kinds of heartbreak. (I could mention that many democratic policies make some of those decisions more likely, but that would be of little use talking with this woman.) In short, being a parent is accepting suffering in the course of bring joy to ourselves and others.
My final thoughts on this involve a song by Garth Brooks. “Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” Today, too many people have become convinced that no dance is worth the pain we may have to suffer, especially if we only imagine what the pain may be. I choose the dance.
As frequent readers here know, Ethics Alarms has been referring to the Axis of Unethical Conduct (an Ethics Alarms term, and a fair one) as a totalitarianism-leaning, anti-American phenomenon for years now, as I have tracked the frightening progress on the 2016 Ethics Train Wreck and all of its many offshoots. I have used made this point frequently and, I recognize, emphatically to the point that many object to those and related labels as inflammatory and biased, which they are not because my assessment is objective and accurate. I could also say, with justification, “If the show fits, wear it,” and even “If the shoe fits wear it, you assholes.”
Today I was sent promotional spam by my old hometown newspaper, the lone surviving conservative #2 paper in Boston (The Dominating Axis representative is the always Democratic Boston Globe) after the slow amalgam of four newspapers with long histories of service to the people of New England: The Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, the Boston Record and the Boston American. That headline above was all I needed to spark a head explosion with several subsequent explosions that left bits of brain and bone on my keyboard and computer screen after I read the entire report.
Really, that Washington Post headline from yesterday is impressive. It has just 13 words, and yet there are six separate pieces of misinformation in it. Bravo!
1. and 2. Elon Musk didn’t “force” anything.
3. The Trump Presidency hasn’t started yet. If it had started, that would be a Constitutional crisis, and Milloy as well as the Washington Post are among those responsible for it, since they deliberately ignored the scandal of a diminished capacity White House resident for almost four years.
4. Uh, there was no shutdown, and only an idiot would have thought there would be.
5. A Presidency that hasn’t begun can’t collapse by definition.
6. Chaos is what the Biden Presidency is in now.
Details aside, it is also an excellent example of the fake news category I call “future news.” When what is happening doesn’t supply sufficient fodder for reports and pundits to attack Republicans and their favorite ideology’s opponents, attack those you want to hold responsible for what might happen.
It is hard to choose among Milbank, the despicable Phillip Bump, the deluded E.J. Dionne, dim bulb Ruth Marcus, old hack Eugene Robinson, boringly predictable Kathleen Parker and the certifiably bonkers Jennifer Rubin (all of whom have damning EA dossiers) as the most egregious partisan propaganda agent on this rapidly declining newspaper. Milbank would certainly be a worthy choice. Despite Jeff Bezos’s intermittent efforts to drag the once esteemed paper back from the brink, its staff is obviously so biased and lacking diversity of thought that the task seems impossible.
I keep my digital subscription to the Post because I need to check it for Ethics Alarms issues, because it’s my local paper, and mostly because it reminds me that the New York Times could be worse. But I do believe that bias has made the Post too stupid to survive: I wonder if it will last the next four years.
Why wouldn’t any sane and ethical editor tell Milbank, “Dana, I love ya, but that column makes you look like an apoplectic old fool and this paper look ridiculous. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, go write something that won’t cause spit-takes all over America”?
It’s no excuse and only moral luck, but I am now glad that I have waited so long to conclude the Ethics Alarms inquiry into who was the worst American President. (That final post on the topic is coming this weekend, I promise.)
For important new data is coming in: The Wall Street Journal issued a report based on extensive interviews with White House insiders and Biden aides that indicates there was a years-long cover-up of the degree of cognitive decline Biden had experienced since he was Vice-President. Both the Journal’s reporting and recent New York Times articles indicate what should be treated as a national scandal but probably won’t be.
His party knew that Biden was infirm mentally and physically before he was nominated to run against then-President Trump in 2020. Once he was nominated, Joe’ true condition was hidden from the inattentive public. I knew that Biden was sinking into dementia as early as 2019; it wasn’t hard to see, and I told many friends and associates that. The ones who hated Donald Trump didn’t car. Biden’s successful 2020 campaign was constrained by the (stupid) Wuhan virus lockdown and a complicit news media oddly incurious about a Constitutional crisis materializing right before their eyes.
Once Biden was elected, the cover-up continued. Top cabinet members were unable to meet with him or even speak with him. Biden held only nine Cabinet meetings in four years! Staff regularly stood in for him at official events. Other staff were assigned to keep him from wandering off. Biden couldn’t hold morning meetings because he was “not at his best” early in the day, and he seldom was up to working past 4pm unless he had spent the day gathering his strength and what was left of his wits. Biden cancelled important national security meetings, with his aides explaining to attendees that the President had “bad days and good days.”
It is increasingly clear that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney broke the law as well as several ethics rules while doing her utmost to incriminate President Trump during the all-Democrat/ Never-Trump Republican J-6 committee star chamber orchestrated by Nancy Pelosi. It is wrong to break the law. It is especially wrong to break the law when you are an elected official and law-maker. Such officials should not only be held to a higher standard, but should be role models for the public that elected them. It follows, then, that when they break the law—it seems that Cheney participated in the destruction of evidence as well as coaching a witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, to lie under oath while unethically meeting with her, a represented witness, without her lawyer being present—they should be treated like anyone else who breaks the law.
If elected officials are not prosecuted and held to account when they violate the law, it is the worst manifestation of the King’s Pass, the insidious and pervasive rationalization (#11 on the list) in which individuals who are famous, popular, powerful, accomplished, productive or successful are allowed to escape the earned consequences of their own misconduct when a less powerful or popular individual would face the full penalties of the law. Such episodes seriously erode public trust in our legal system and power structure. The cliche is “No one is above the law,” but except for the case of indisputable bribery or violent felonies, elected officials are seldom prosecuted, and sometimes not even for those crimes.
Wouldn’t you think an alleged ”’factchecking” organization would understand what a lie is? Well, the organization is Politifact, so it’s a trick question. It’s a Democratic Party/progressive propaganda outfit and facts are the last thing it cares about: that group of hacks is easily the most dishonest and unethical of all of these thing, much less trustworthy than second in line from the bottom, which might be Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post’s intermittently fair “The Factchecker” feature. And so it was that as the end of 2024 approaches, Politifact announced that this was its “Lie of the Year,”what Trump said on September 10:
“‘In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs.The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
“With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level,” Politifact moaned.
But even if the “Their eating pets and wildlife from the parks!” story had been a deliberate lie, it obviously was neither the “Lie of the Year” in either of the two categories relevant to the choice: it wasn’t the most destructive lie, and it wasn’t the most indefensible lie. This was:Continue reading →
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