Government & Politics

Well, I Think We Can See Where THIS is Headed: Ethics Observations On The First Hour Of Hillary Clinton’s Appearance Before The Benghazi Committee

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

Benghazi hearings

1. Last night I watched “All The President’s Men,” and found it newly chilling, and disturbingly relevant. At the end of the film, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards , Jr.) is talking to Woodward and Bernstein—outside his house, because they think it might be bugged—after Woodward has told him that the Watergate cover-up was being orchestrated from the White House (according to Deep Throat). Bradlee says:

“You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up… 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I’m going to get mad. Goodnight.”

After more revelations from the Post’s investigative reporters, (and after the action of the movie ends), the Senate began its hearings led by Democratic Senator Sam Ervin. His Republican counterpart, Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, didn’t make speeches about partisan witch hunts (though that was the Nixon White House’s tactic) nor did he denigrate the investigation, nor did he act as a impediment to the process, or waste time gushing over every Republican witness. He did his job in a competent, cooperative, non-partisan manner and sought the truth.  Even then, it took a long time to get to it.

At issue was the fact that the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence community appeared to be part of the conspiracy. The attorney general and his predecessor, John Mitchell, were poisonously partisan and refusing to investigate the unfolding scandal. The FBI and the intelligence community could not be trusted; former CIA agents had participated in the Watergate burglary. In the absence of an executive branch that could be trusted to investigate itself and be held to account, the legislative branch, aided by the judiciary, had a solemn obligation to do the job. Fortunately, it did. This was only possible, however, because Republicans didn’t attempt to aide in the cover-up and obstruct the search for justice.

2. Such bi-partisan dedication to the nation over politics was also more possible, not to say it was easy, because Richard Nixon was never popular. He had won a landslide re-election only because the Democratic candidate was far left of the nation (he’d be a conservative to many of today’s Democrats), and obviously unqualified. Barack Obama, in contrast, is unbreakably popular with almost 15% of the population, a key Democratic constituency, due to group identification and little else. This has been sufficient to eviscerate any integrity among Democrats regarding the Benghazi hearings and a lot more.

3. The reason the hearings have dragged out so long, as Chairman Trey Gowdy laid out in prosecutorial fashion in his opening statement, is that the Obama Administration, like the Nixon administration, has been stonewalling, delaying and obstructing justice. The contentious issue of Hillary’s e-mails explains why this is true. The fact that Clinton’s e-mails were hidden on a private server made them unavailable to the investigation, and yet without them, the investigation couldn’t be complete. Why didn’t the State Department make this known before 2015? Why has it dragged its metaphorical feet in producing them so egregiously that a judge had to order it to comply? Why didn’t Clinton comply with a committee subpoena. and why did she destroy “personal” e-mails she knew would be requested before they could be examined by anyone not in her employ? If it looks like a cover-up and quacks like a cover-up, it might well be a cover-up. The committee has a duty to the American public to find out what’s going on. Gowdy also said the the public deserves the truth. Why did Clinton and Obama, as well as their designated liar Susan Rice, continue to tell the news media, the public and even the U.N. that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous uprising sparked by a YouTube video when all the evidence indicated that it wasn’t, including the CIA analysis? It’s obvious why, of course: Obama was running for re-election, so the Administration set out to deceive the public. That alone is worth proving, and if it takes a House investigation to do it, fine. We need to know when the country is being run by liars who set out to manipulate elections. No, what Obama did in this instance isn’t on the same level as Watergate. It would still warrant impeachment, however. Continue reading →

The New York Times Goes Full Orwell

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

ralphie_soap

Expanding on the recent alarm sounded here about the Democratic Party and progressives increasingly resorting to the tools and values of totalitarianism in order to by-pass democracy in their quest for power, I must flag today’s editorial by the New York Times, calling for the “retirement” of the word “alien.” As in all disguised efforts to indoctrinate by making opposing views impossible to express or even think, the Times uses a set of false arguments to achieve its goal, which is apparently open borders. Why does the most preeminent newspaper in the country have such a sickening and irresponsible view? I don’t know. These are the people who determine the content of the news, however. I’m not sure which would make this screed more frightening, the fact that the editors don’t recognize the methods of totalitarianism, or the fact that they do, and are embracing them.

Here, in part, is the editorial’s argument for “retiring,” as in “banning,” the word “alien,”  with my comments in bold:

Over the years, the label has struck newcomers as a quirky aspect of moving to America. Many, understandably, have also come to regard it as a loaded, disparaging word, used by those who regard immigrants as less-than-human burdens rather than as assets.

[ Straw man. Who that was not immediately condemned far and wide has ever described immigrants as less than human in the last 50 years? The Times is engaging in deceit: this editorial isn’t about “alien,” but illegal aliens—you know, the people that Donald Trump was obviously talking about and the Left and illegal alien advocates intentionally misrepresented his comments to push their agenda. As for the term “illegal immigrants,” damn rights it’s disparaging, because they are illegal, and citizens and newspaper editors ought to regard law-breakers as “burdens rather than as assets.”]
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“Why Does Hillary Think Her E-mail Scandal Is So Funny?” And Other Brief Ethics Notes To Get The Week Off To A Depressing Start…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

W dead guns

Most Unethical Grieving Mother Of The Year

A caring  friend of Chanelle Chavis created a GoFundMe account asking for donations to Chavis’ 3-year-old daughter’s Camber’s funeral after the grieving mom told the friend that her daughter had died in an accident.  Later, moved by the plea, a woman gave  Chavis a $5,000 personal check to pay for Camber’s funeral expenses after Channelle exchanged text messages with her.

Nearly a month later, investigators found that the body of Camber Chavis was still in deep freeze at the funeral home, and no arrangements for burial had been made. Oh—this was no boating accident. The little girl had been murdered by her father.

On October 16, Chanelle Chavis pleaded guilty to obtaining money by false pretenses, a misdemeanor, and received a six month suspended sentence.

These cases of conning people into donating money are basically  all the same, but bit by bit, they make our society less kind, less generous, and less trusting. The law may see this is a minor crime, but there is nothing minor about the damage it does to our society.

Sure, We Don’t Need Guns… Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: President Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

President-Mitt-Romney-mock-up

As Ethics Quizzes go, this one is a little different.

Conservative political writer Matthew DesOrmeaux has written essay titled “Here’s What Would Be Happening if President Romney Had Bombed a Hospital in Afghanistan…”.  Here is the key section:

If Romney had been elected in 2012 and in the year before his reelection campaign had bombed a hospital, decided to keep troops in Afghanistan, and had details of his robot assassin program leaked, things would probably look a little different today.

If Romney were president right now, the White House would be surrounded by protesters and candlelight peace vigils night and day. Some would wave American flags, some would wave signs calling for impeachment, some would have pictures caricaturing the president as Hitler or an animal. They would chant “Not in our name!”, or “Bring them home!”, or “Hey ho, hey ho, Romney has got to go!”

If Romney were president, nightly news reports on CBS, NBC, and ABC would have regular features on war crimes, quagmires, and collateral damage. CNN would be wall-to-wall with team coverage of protests, interviews of bombing witnesses, and Anderson Cooper walking through rubble in full body armor.

If Romney were president, every political analyst left of Judge Napolitano would be fretting over the war-weary public turning the upcoming election into a referendum against the president and his party. Vox and FiveThirtyEight would have maps showing how many Senate seats Republicans would lose because of the president’s sure-to-plummet approval rating. And then there’s MSNBC.

If Romney were president, MSNBC would be holding mock war crimes tribunals on Chris Hayes, explaining the ins and outs of the process with expert guests. Lena Dunham would be on Maddow every night aghast (but still giggling!) at this warmonger-in-chief. Chris Matthews would be yelling at Michael Moore, trying to find out when charges would be filed at the Hague.

If Romney were president, Democrats in Congress would be calling for hearings and investigations for each transgression: the bombing, troop levels, and drone policy. Chuck Schumer would hold daily press briefings scolding the reckless president from behind the glasses perched precariously down his nose. Someone would accurately quote Sheila Jackson-Lee condemning the terrible bombing of the “orphanage in Pakistan”.

But Mitt Romney isn’t president, Barack Obama is, so no one cares.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Are these fair assumptions?

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Ethics Alarms Reminder: Don’t Forget About The Links…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Homemade-Sausage-Recipes jpg

Those links to other websites on the left are seldom accessed, I suppose because most blogs accumulate them on a quid pro quo basis: link to me, and I’ll link to you. Ethics Alarms doesn’t do that. If the link is there, it’s because I use the site to identify ethics issues or as an information resource. I don’t remove links because a site has removed mine or refuses to link to this one; I don’t take revenge on bloggers who write nasty things about me, either.

This isn’t personal, it’s just ethics.

I’ve been meaning to highlight some of the links for a long time, so readers might be moved to check them out. I assume you are familiar with the news aggregation sites, right, left and center, that I use the most: Mediaite, Politico, Drudge, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Google News, Think Progress, memeorandum, and Fark (great for teacher scandals!), as well as the ones that I don’t use, because they are either too biased to trust or have proved untrustworthy, like Breitbart, Buzzfeed, Gawker and The Daily Kos. (I am close to abandoning the Daily Caller as well.) Here are eleven links you should explore; I’ll have other lists of links for you now and then: Continue reading →

Ethics Musings II : The Dark Side Of The Democrats’ Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

outdoor-american-flag

The dark side of the Republican Party is well documented, I’d say, and much of it is on display among the I’ve lost count how many is it now? field of GOP candidates for the Presidency: an affection for theocracy, anti-intellectualism, ideological rigidity in defiance of reality, self-destructive contempt and lack of sympathy for the poor, hypocrisy, estrangement from the evolving culture, an absence of integrity and courage. In other stygian corners lurks outright racism and misogyny.

Based on the display in the Democratic Party’s presidential debate, however, the Democrats’ dark side is scarier by far, in part because it appears party wide. That party, with its roots in the philosophies of Jefferson, Jackson, FDR and Kennedy, is approaching a full embrace of the principles and methods of leftist totalitarianism. Worse yet, the news media appears to be in full alliance with this effort. Worse still, Democrats in the public don’t seem to care. The party called Democratic is increasingly rejecting the principles of democracy, and its public doesn’t care.

During the debate, we witnessed: Continue reading →

Obama’s Avoidance Of Accountability Reaches Previously Unimagined Heights

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Obama shrug

Having encountered this immediately prior to last night’s debate among the Democratic contenders for the 2016 Presidential race, the praise heaped on Barack Obama’s abysmal record, repeated defiance of law and ignorance of basic leadership mandates—never honestly identified as such, of course—approached head-exploding levels of dissonance. It briefly subsided when Jim Webb, answering the question of what the candidates would do differently, so diplomatically delivered damning criticism that I doubt many in the room realized it. He said in part…

[If] there would be a major difference between my administration and the Obama administration, it would be in the use of executive authority…I have a very strong feeling about how our federal system works and how we need to lead and energize the congressional process instead of allowing these divisions to continue to paralyze what we’re doing. So I would lead — working with both parties in the Congress and working through them in the traditional way that our Constitution sets up…

Translation: Under Obama, the Constitution has been violated repeatedly because this President won’t deign to work closely with Congress, and has chosen instead to govern by executive fiat, which is not how the Constitution requires laws to be made.

He also said he would lead, which he undoubtedly would do. Obama, just two days earlier in his “60 Minutes” interview, demonstrated yet again why he can’t lead. He is incapable of accepting accountability for what he does, and what those under his authority do. Sometimes the utter awfulness of his values, usually because of his narcissism, makes me want to challenge his supporters to defend what is manifestly indefensible.

This is such a time.

Here is the section of the Steve Kroft interview: Continue reading →

Ten Ethics Observations On The Democratic Candidates Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

cnn-democratic-debate-large-169

1. It was rigged, and rigged to boost Hillary. Anyone who believes that she just happened to end up dead center—you know, like Trump ended up dead center in the first GOP debate?—by luck of the draw will believe anything. There was Clinton, a lone woman surrounded by men, next to Sanders, the only man in the group that would make her appear young by comparison, with the two candidate, Sanders and O’Malley, who have refused to criticize her directly positioned as her wing men, and the one candidate, Jim Webb, most likely to draw blood as far away from Clinton as possible. (She never addressed him once during the debate.) I don’t know if the placement was the work of the DNC, which would be my guess, but it was blatant and unfair.

2. The debate didn’t actually start for almost a half hour after its scheduled time. Anderson Cooper was talking as fast as an auctioneer, and always trying to cut off candidates in their comments. That extra time would have helped. Speaking of delays and padding, why the Star Spangled Banner? This wasn’t a ball game.

3. Apparently CNN imported the audience from Bill Maher’s HBO show. The frenzied screaming, primarily for Clinton and Sanders and anytime anyone mentioned free stuff, bashed Republicans or gave tacit, coded approval of open borders, was juvenile and made the event feel like a partisan rally…. Continue reading →

JEB! Cheater! Unethical! DISQUALIFIED

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
The plant, overacting...

The plant, overacting…

Donald Trump was speaking  at a Jon Huntsman / The Hill “No Labels” event, a female audience member later identified as Lauren Batchelder posed as a feminist Trump antagonist. You can see the exchange in the video below…

But she was not a typical audience member; she is a paid staffer of a  GOP Senator and a volunteer for the Jeb Bush campaign, as a recent tweet demonstrated.

NH 6

The news media, looking desperately for someone to embarrass Trump, began framing the narrative an a pro-choice audience member who “Trumped Trump.”

A little research, however, showed that Lauren Batchelder is a current staffer for pro-life Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH),  and is currently also working in New Hampshire as a volunteer for the Jeb Bush campiagn.  In other words, she was a plant, she was misrepresenting herself, and this was a contrived cheat to mislead the American people while undermining Trump for the benefit of Jeb Bush.  Batchelder, like any good conspirator, tried to cover up,  deleting her tracks on social media.   The Last Refuge, however, preserved some:

[LinkedIn Profile HERE] [Twitter HERE] [Instagram HERE] [ FaceBook HERE]

The Bush fallback position, not surprisingly, is that she was a rogue staffer, acting on her own. The campaign’s words, however, were more focused on changing the subject. Allie Brandenburger, a spokeswoman for Bush’s campaign, said Batchelder is not a paid staff member ( OK, she’s a volunteer, a distinction without a difference) and attended the convention on her own (or so he claimed), but then immediately tried to change the subject, saying  in an e-mail,  “We can’t help but notice Mr. Trump does seem to be very sensitive about being challenged by women.”

Yes, we understand; That’s why you set this up. This was obviously a talking point, since Tim Miller, Bush’s spokesman, tweeted nearly the exact same thing, saying, “For what its worth, Lauren is not a Jeb staffer but the Jeb staff is amused by how sensitive Donald is to being challenged by women.”

Funny, I’m not amused. At best, Bush, Ayotte and the Republican establishment failed to properly train and supervise a staffer and volunteer sufficiently. More likely, she was given signals, like the IRS was in its illegal sabotage of Tea Party groups, that encouraged her to engage in unethical conduct. Most likely, it was a Nixonian dirty trick by a desperate, flailing, failing candidate. Unless Bush can prove that it was a case of negligent management on his part, and that proof cannot consist of Batchelder falling on her sword, and apologize appropriately to Trump and the public, then we must assume that the worst explanation is the right one.

As before, I consider making Donald Trump appear to be a victim an irresponsible  and incompetent act. As of now, I consider Jeb Bush to be desperate, untrustworthy, and foolish. He has no credibility as a leader, a campaigner, or a potential President.

_________________________

Sources: Washington Post,  Last Refuge

Democratic Candidate Debate Integrity Watch: Will Anderson Cooper Make Hillary Defend Her Unethical Private E-Mail? Will Her Opposition?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

HillaryClinton phone

The Democratic Party is in the process of ridiculing democracy at work on the other side of the aisle, as it seems to be emulating the Communist Party, USSR style. Its pre-anointed nominee for President, Hillary Clinton, is being exposed—exposing herself, really—as a liar, as incompetent, as a terrible campaigner and as possessing no core values (but she’s a fighter!), and yet her alleged rivals refuse to call her to account on the issue that has revealed so many of her deficits, the private e-mail server. The party is limiting debates to protect her from the public realization that she’s a dud, and Democratic talking points keep surfacing to confuse and distract regarding the e-mail issue. The story was broken by the New York Times, the lies were authored by the Clinton campaign team, and the irregularity was sufficient to spark an ongoing FBI investigation, yet everyone from Clinton’s surrogates, loyal pundit supporters and the candidate herself—and her Deceit Sensei husband—continue to represent the matter as a GOP concoction.

The evidence is strong that CNN, which hosts tonight’s debate, is in on the fix. Here’s an exchange from last week between CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield and Democratic strategist, a.k.a Hillary Clinton strategist, Robert Zimmerman:

BANFIELD: But you’ve got to – you’ve got to admit, Robert, that the Republicans are delivering any script that – that Bernie Sanders may need to go after [Hillary] Clinton. What’s her ammo against Bernie Sanders?

ROBERT ZIMMERMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Look, here’s the deal: any Democrat who resorts to reciting Republican talking points is going to hurt themselves amongst the grassroots-

BANFIELD: So you’re saying you don’t think he’s ever going to touch the e-mail scandal – or, it’s not even a scandal-It’s really a controversy. But ‘scandal’ is the Republicans’ word for it-

ZIMMERMAN: Yeah-

BANFIELD: So far, no one has determined there’s any scandal there.

ZIMMERMAN: Of course not! And I think Senator Sanders is too fine a person to engage in reciting Republican talking points like that. But there will be debates around issues; debates around policy; and it’s going to be pretty exciting. This is going to be an historic debate, because CNN’s present – really, bringing the Democrats to the nation for the first time.

Some notes on this disgraceful example of a journalist behaving as a partisan flack:

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