Government & Politics

American Journalism’s Integrity Death Spiral, PART I: Illegal Voters and “Stonewalled”

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Stonewalled

This week, the Washington Post published a story on the results of a  study by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). The study appears to show that more than 14%  of non-citizens were registered to vote in both the 2008 and 2010 elections, that  6.4 % of non-citizens voted in 2008, and 2.2%  of non-citizens voted in 2010. This, the study reasonably concluded, would be enough to change the results of some close elections, both then and, if the same kinds of numbers hold true, in the coming one.

Since the partisan fight over voter ID’s and various measures that make it easier to register to vote still rages, I assumed that this would be a big story. Hope springs eternal, and I am an idiot. Even though the source of the report was the Washington Post, a reliable liberal/progressive/Democrat-promoting mainstream media engine, the story was buried, or at least has been so far. Perusing the list of links to it on the web, I found fewer than 20; in contrast there were more than 500 links on Google to reports of the death of Jack Bruce, the bassist for Cream.  Moreover, the 20-ish links contained nothing but right-leaning and conservative blogs, networks and publications: Fox (of course)…Brietbart…the National Review…The Daily Caller…The Washington Times…The Examiner, a few more. ABC? CBS? NBC? MSNBC? (“Illegal immigrants? That’s  immigrants, you racist!”) NPR? CNN? The New York Times? USA Today? No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. (The Wall Street Journal hasn’t covered the study either.)

This is just the most recent example illustrating how miserably the national media does its job, and how its choice of stories is unconscionably warped by the political and ideological agendas of publishers, editors and reporters who abuse their positions and discard the duties of their profession and their country. Continue reading →

Incompetent Unannouced Presidential Candidate of the Month: Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Monica Lewinsky fellow-cyber-bullying victim Hillary Clinton, who is widely-expected to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2016, proclaimed this week,  while speaking at a campaign event for Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley:

“Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly. One of the things my husband says when people ask him what he brought to Washington, he says I brought arithmetic.”

This statement is at least as much signature significance regarding Clinton’s competence to hold elective office as Todd Akin’s career-ending claim that victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant, “The View’s” former co-host Sherri Shepard confession that she thought the world might be flat, and Sarah Palin’s falsely reported—but funny! So who cares if it’s true since we hate her?—statement that she can see Russia from her house in Alaska. Some sources explained this jaw-dropping denial of reality as Clinton “moving left.” Actually, even Stalin wouldn’t try to deny that businesses create jobs, though he would probably suggest ways to stop people from telling you that, like, say, killing them. This isn’t “moving left.” This is called “losing it.” (I think Clinton looks drunk, personally.)

It is fitting that the statement came in support of Martha Coakley, whose last campaign in Massachusetts collapsed after her almost equally ridiculous statement that Red Sox icon, Curt “Bloody Sock” Schilling, was a Yankee fan. We shall see if Clinton’s denial of basic economic realities matters to her true blue supporters as much as Coakley’s admission that she knew nothing about the culture of the state she was running to represent in the Senate (she’s also on the say to losing her campaign to be governor, thank God. Yankee fan???) mattered to Bay State residents. Continue reading →

Update On “The Hitching Post,” The For-Profit Chapel Being Required To Hold Same-Sex Weddings

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Emily Litella

“Never mind!”

From NPR in Boise:

The city of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, says the Hitching Post, a for-profit wedding chapel owned by two ministers, doesn’t have to perform same-sex marriages.The city has been embroiled in controversy ever since the owners of the Hitching Post sued the city. They say a city anti-discrimination law threatened to force them to marry same-sex couples now that gay marriage is legal in Idaho…Initially, the city said its anti-discrimination law did apply to the Hitching Post, since it is a commercial business. Earlier this week, Coeur d’Alene city attorney Mike Gridley sent a letter to the Knapps’ attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom saying the Hitching Post would have to become a not-for-profit to be exempt.

But Gridley said after further review, he determined the ordinance doesn’t specify non-profit or for-profit. “After we’ve looked at this some more, we have come to the conclusion they would be exempt from our ordinance because they are a religious corporation,” Gridley explained.

…Leo Morales of the ACLU of Idaho said the exemption makes sense as long as the Hitching Post primarily performs religious ceremonies. “However, if they do non-religious ceremonies as well, they would be violating the anti-discrimination ordinance,” Morales said. “It’s the religious activity that’s being protected.”

…The group that helped create Coeur d’Alene’s anti-discrimination ordinance says the Hitching Post shouldn’t have to perform same-sex marriages. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations says in a letter to the mayor and city council that the Knapps fall under the religious exemption in the law.

In other words, the result is as I said it would be, and as Professor Volokh opined that it should be.

The ethical thing, of course, would be for the Knapps to treat same sex couples as the loving human beings they are and marry them like they do any other loving couples. But when it comes to administering a religious ceremony, the State cannot force the Knapps to do what their beliefs don’t permit. Meanwhile, that’s some legal talent they are hiring in Idaho. “But Gridley said after further review, he determined the ordinance doesn’t specify non-profit or for-profit.” Upon further review? I’d think the city’s attorney would actually read the applicable statute before threatening a business and its owners without cause.

Oh, Mike? Upon further review, the Constitution doesn’t specify non-profit or for-profit either. But thanks for causing a thoroughly unnecessary controversy based on knee-jerk political correctness and sloppiness. Unless… you knew your theory was garbage all along, and were trying to bluff the Knapps into doing what you felt was the right thing, and their constitutionally guaranteed rights be damned. You wouldn’t do that, would you? I hope not. It would be unethical.

 

Unethical Website of the Month: Million Hoodies Movement for Justice

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
Different hoodies, different races, same ethics...

Different hoodies, different races, same ethics…

Million Hoodies Movement for Justice is, in its own way, as racist as “Chimpmania,” and, I would argue, far more harmful.

The Chimpmania racists live on the margins of respectable civilization. They are the direct ideological descendants of those who wore hoods and lynched blacks in the South, but they operate in the shadows. Their hateful words and beliefs are almost universally recognized for what they are, the product of ignorance. The vast majority of Americans of any race or creed would be mortified to be associated with the site, or with anyone who read it.

In contrast, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice projects the sheen of respectability, and aims to advance legitimate, if debatable causes: the elimination of police militarization, and the banning of profiling. It is, however, as racist in its assumptions about whites as Chimpmania is regarding African-Americans, just more subtle. Continue reading →

When An Apology Isn’t Enough: Carol Costello’s Ugly Partisan Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

cnn

For over a month now, the left-leaning media on cable and the web have been snickering over unsubstantiated reports of “a drunken brawl” involving the Palin family. Especially since no charges were filed and no accounts were verified, the amount of attention the story received was itself proof of the media’s irrational anti-Palin, and by extension, anti-conservative Republican animus. If there was any doubt, CNN’s Carol Costello obliterated it in a performance that any respectable news network would regard as mandating dismissal.

Yesterday, introducing a recording in which Bristol Palin described the events at the infamous party, Costello smirked, “This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across. Well, come across in a long time anyway…Enjoy!”

Palin’s oldest daughter was heard describing what happened to her after she confronted the party’s host, whom she accused of pushing her little sister:

“So we were in a limo. I walk back up. “Did you push my sister?” And some guy gets up, pushes me down on the grass, drags me across the grass. “You slut, you f—ing c—, you f—ing this.” I get back up, he pushes me down on the grass again And he pulls me by my f—ing feet. And he’s the one that’s leaving and I have my 5-year-old, they took my $300 sunglasses, they took my f—ing shoes, and I’m f—ing just left here?”

Costello made it clear that the image of Palin being pushed down and insulted delighted her beyond all measure, and said “the long bleep was my favorite part.”  That’s the part where Bristol described herself being called a “fucking cunt.”  Nice. Costello ended the segment saying, Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Monica Lewinsky

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Under that bus is Monica Lewinsky, and it wasn't Matt Drudge who threw her there.

Under that bus is Monica Lewinsky, and it wasn’t Matt Drudge who threw her there.

It truly pains me to have to write anything negative about Monica, who was exploited and humiliated by a President of the United States, and had her life permanently derailed because she trusted and even loved a rogue who regarded her as little more than an animated sex toy. Her re-emergence now, however—yes it is sad and desperate and makes me furious at Bill Clinton all over again—in the new guise of a “cyber-bullying” victim is intolerable, a delusion on multiple levels, despicable blame-shifting, and a welcome weasel-out of-accountability-free card for the Clintons. Yeccch.

I’m sorry for what happened to you, Monica, but you’re 40 now: it’s time to start seeing life more clearly—especially your own and the reasons why you are in the mess you are.

“Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. I was Patient Zero,” Lewinsky said in a speech Monday to Forbes’s Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia. “The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet.”

It has to take a near-fatal injection of self-serving historical air-brushing for the ex-intern to say this with a straight face, and it tells us volumes about the audience that it didn’t start throwing tomatoes:

  • She wasn’t a “completely private figure.” She was a woman having a sexual affair with the President of the United States while he lied about it—to his wife, his staff, and under oath (I haven’t covered all of the lying, either.) That makes her an individual who is engaged in conduct with tremendous public and official consequences who is only “private” because a powerful official is using his power to make it so. The proper term is “inevitable public figure waiting for the dam to break.”
  • The reason for her humiliation was and is William Jefferson Clinton, and no other. He is the one who described her as “that woman,” while denying what was true. He is the one who made his relationship with her part of a legal record while he was trying to avoid the consequences of another “bimbo eruption,” as his long-time “fixer” liked to call them.

Continue reading →

Supplemental Comments On The President’s Ordered Kiss

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I’m in NYC for a law firm seminar, and expect to get back to Ethics Alarms late if at all, so I want to make a couple of clarifications lest the comments on yesterday’s Ethics Quiz go astray.

I am not blaming the President for what is a standard, culturally embedded demonstration of male dominance, presumed female submissiveness and abuse of power. He is part of the culture that tolerates this, and while it would be immensely beneficial if he used his influence as a role model to move us away from this conduct that is a major, if under-recognized, way that the glass ceiling is kept intact, I recognize that this is a lot to ask, and that he has other pressing matters to deal with.

Make no mistake, however, that the male power-hug, power-kiss is a stubborn remnant of the patriarchy. I know that astute feminists (and others, like me) know this, and the fact that they don’t have the integrity or the courage to condemn the conduct when it surface’s in  a political ally is disappointing if not surprising.

To those who (absurdly) claim that the woman’s response in the video was consensual, I only ask them to speculate what her alternative to submitting to the POTUS ordered smooch was. She knew the incident was on television. He is the leader of the free world, she is, by comparison and to the public, at least, nobody. Should she have embarrassed him by refusing? Should she reject the President of the United States when he his being “nice,” thus instantly making herself the center of a controversy? Of course not. This is why the position the President placed her in was unfair.

It is, however, incredibly, disturbingly common. From Richard Dawson’s mandatory kisses from female contestants on the original “Family Feud,” to the old lions of the plaintiffs bar trying to cop a feel with my young female staffers at an association convention, men in power, and men generally, feel they have a right to this culturally accepted invasion of a woman’s physical person, and women feel obligated to permit it. Every time they do, they do their little bit to keeping men in a step ahead of them.

That’s the real issue here, not sexual assault.

 

How Trust Dies, Part II: A Trivial White House Cover-Up With Signature Significance

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Yeah, but this is little Big Brother stuff, so why worry?"

Yeah, but this is little Big Brother stuff, so why worry?”

President Obama was speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago on Monday,  and you know how he is when he goes off his teleprompter.

He was talking about returning home to Chicago,  and said

“One of the nice things about being home is actually that it’s a little bit like a time capsule. Because Michelle and I and the kids, we left so quickly that there’s still junk on my desk, including some unpaid bills (laughter) — I think eventually they got paid — but they’re sort of stacked up. And messages, newspapers and all kinds of stuff.”  

The White House, however, removed the “unpaid bills” part from the official transcript which was sent out after the event, so it now reads “there’s still junk on my desk, including some — newspapers and all kinds of stuff.​” Associated Press reporter Josh Lederman noticed the deception and alerted another reporter who was at the event, who sent out an email alerting her colleagues and everyone else who receives reports from the White House press corps. Continue reading →

On Forced Acceptance Of Same-Sex Marriage: The Slippery Slope Stops Here

/ Jack Marshall / 113 Comments

Hitching-Post-Idaho

Donald and Evelyn Knapp, pictured above, are ordained ministers who conduct weddings at their for-profit chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, called “The Hitching Post.” After this year’s ruling by an Idaho federal judge that the state had to recognize  same-sex weddings, a City of Couer d’Alene deputy city attorney went on  local TV to say that for-profit wedding chapels could not legally turn away a gay couple without risking a misdemeanor citation. The Hitching Post, he noted, “would probably be considered a place of public accommodation that would be subject to the ordinance.” The Knapps say the the City Attorney’s office has made the same assertion in telephone conversations with them.

Now, the Volokh Conspiracy reports, the Knapps have moved for a temporary restraining order, arguing that applying the anti-discrimination ordinance to them would be unconstitutional and would also violate Idaho’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

They have to win. As Professor Volokh, a First Amendment authority of fame and renown, explains, Continue reading →

How Trust Dies, Part I: The D.C.’s Election Commission’s Brazen Jumbo

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
DC Voters Guide

That’s the real D.C. flag on the right. I think it looks better upside down too…

[Jumbo: a Jumbo is a special Ethics Alarms award for conduct that emulates the gag from the Broadway musical and film “Jumbo,” in which Jimmy Durante, as a circus clown trying to steal an elephant, is caught red-handed by a sheriff, and asked, “Where are you going with that elephant?” “Elephant? What elephant?,” Jimmy replied.]

As readers who travel here often know, I really hate, hate, hate obvious lies. They are cowardly, they are insulting, and when they are authored by public officials, they recklessly foster public cynicism and distrust. You can’t do your job right, and you don’t even know when it’s pointless to lie? Why should we trust you to be able to do anything right?

Of course, we shouldn’t.

You will seldom see a more blatant and embarrassing example of the desperate, immediately apparent lie than this one from the District of Columbia Board of Elections after it mailed out 305,164  copies of the official D.C. voter guide with the D.C. flag on the front cover printed upside-down. This immediately provoked much local media, pundit and social media hilarity and mockery, but no, announced the Board. This was no lazy clerical error from the government famous for them. This was intentional! A devilishly clever strategy!

The election board’s  spokeswoman, Denise Tolliver explained that the upside-down flag was a deliberate move—an upside-down flag is a distress signal, after all—to grab the attention of voters and “see how many clicks we can get.” “People are responding, aren’t they?” Tolliver said. “They’re paying attention. It’s working!”

Nobody believed it, of course, because the only idiot in the conversation was her, and, by proxy, her superiors. Eventually  the board’s executive director, Clifford Tatum, confessed. “No, this is an error,” he e-mailed a D.C. Council member. Continue reading →