Nothing like reminding voters who are tempted to vote for candidates who want to impeach you why they hate your guts…
The quote, uttered ad lib (of course) at a rally in Perry, Georgia, over the weekend:
“Jon Ossoff personally sponsored a bill to bring armies of migrants from terror-infested countries like Libya, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia. Remember what I called them? Shithouse countries.”
I am reading indefensible conservative pundits trying to rationalize this unpresidential and uncivil discourse by countering, “Is he wrong?” That’s not the point. It wasn’t the point when he first was accused of using the vulgar and undignified term in 2018.
I wrote extensively about the ethics train wreck the then “alleged comments” set off. Like so much the Axis media publicized then and now, the episode was based on hearsay reporting on a private meeting, with the media freakout—pretending that no other President used vulgar and denigrating language behind closed doors—being dishonest and partisan. As usual.
Rep. Omar actually said this on live TV after asked by MSNOW mega-hack Chris Hayes whether she married her brother as part of the tangled web of fraud and lies the anti-American “Squad” member is accused of creating. Wow. Is she setting up a Luke and Leia defense? Hayes asked, “You’re not related to him at all?” “Not to my knowledge,” she replied.
That’s Omar’s lawyer banging his head against the wall above.
Omar also called allegations that she married her brother “insane”and then gave that hilarious answer. Allegations that Omar and her ex, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, got married in a failed effort to get him a green card are all the inventions of “right-wing conspiracy theorists,” the Congresswoman insisted in her first interview since federal agents raided her Washington, D.C. home last week.
Omar then told Hayes she was living “paycheck to paycheck,” when Hayes asked about documents in which Omar seemed to say she and her current husband had a combined net-worth of some $30 million. That was just a mistake, she said. “I have a Toyota Camry that’s from 2016. It’s our only car. I rent my DC place and my Minneapolis place, and so I mean, I don’t know, that sounds like not the majority of Congress, but there’s some of us that don’t come from wealth and don’t have wealth,” she insisted.
There are reports that many voters are ignoring true accounts of statements and conduct by Democrats running in the mid-terms because they can’t believe what they are reading and hearing. Omar’s answers about marrying her brother and making the “mistake” of estimating her wealth at $30 million when she must really have to shop at Costco make this phenomenon completely plausible.
Finally, regarding Hayes: I watched the interview so you don’t have to. This is journalism to MSNOW: Hayes talks to Omar in an obsequious, sympathetic, “you poor dear, how terribly you have been treated” manner that is the opposite of putting a politician on the “hot seat.” Putting her in a comfy chair while getting a foot massage and yummy snacks would be more accurate. This is how Axis journalists “speak truth to power” now when they are speaking to progressives and Democrats. My mind flashed back to Katie Couric on “Today” grilling Ross Perot like he was Beelzebub and Tim Russert interviewing Louis Farrakhan like Perry Mason cross-examining a witness he was trying to make confess to a murder. Quite a contrast.
Our current VP was subjected to a CBS “town hall” over the weekend where a series of generally none-too-bright questioners peppered Vance with questions that he hesitated to answer with the clarity and forcefulness necessary. I thought Vance’s strength was supposed to be communication. Maybe Trump can get rid of him…
You can read the transcript here, but my main nausea came from Vance’s weenie responses to two questions regarding illegal immigration. CBS set him up to some extent with the first one, asked by a nun, Sister Nancy Sylvester. The Veep is Catholic, of course, and spoke as if he felt he owed some kind of deference to Sister Nancy despite the fact that her question bypassed law and policy and went straight to toxic empathy. She asked…
“Mr. Vice President, we are sisters who minister at the southern border in the United States, as well as here around Detroit, and they are constantly seeing families who are affected by our immigration policies. They see the trauma of children who are separated from their parents, sometimes on a moment’s notice. They go to school and they come back and they’re not there. And they have to sort of fend for themselves. And so they, the sisters see the kind of effect, the fear and violence of the ICE behavior. We know the complexity of this issue, but what really pains us is how it’s being implemented in such ways. And so I’m going to, sort of know that both of us share the same faith. We may not always agree, ’cause I understand you don’t always even agree with our pope sometimes. And so I want to, though, wonder what would you say, how would you justify to people of faith, especially those of us who try to follow the gospel, how the behavior of the ICE men and women can constantly be justified to, in terms of the kind of values we live, wanna live by, and also what policies would you advocate to try to promote more compassionate and respective behavior toward our immigrant sisters and brothers?”
Elected officials and responsible citizens can’t accept the false premises underlying such a question, but Vance did. He replied, after wasting time showing his concern for the Pope’s health and pandering to his fellow Catholics,
“So let me say, one, we’re trying to strike the right balance. And when you have a country where approximately 25 million illegal aliens have come in over the past 30 or so years, many of them completely unchecked and unvetted, we’re trying to strike a balance between how do we do law enforcement, but how do we also do it humanely, and how do we not do so little law enforcement that you actually empower some of the worst people in the world. And so—I think that it is constantly a work in progress. When you’re talking about millions and millions of people and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers, you know, we’ve even just in the past year or so increased training protocols. Because I do think that men and women of ICE, by the way, it’s like the men and women of law enforcement. Most of them are amazing people who are patriots and they want to do a good job protecting their country. Sometimes you have some people who make mistakes. Sometimes you have some people who really screw up. And obviously we have a responsibility to prosecute, investigate when people do screw up.”
Clear as mud, and incompetent. His duty was to begin by saying, first, that the Sister was talking about illegal immigrants, and the “immigration policies” of enforcing the law. These aren’t “immigrant sisters and brothers,” but illegal immigrants who should not benefit from taking what isn’t theirs to take, It’s nice that she and her colleagues are trying to ease the burdens law-breaking illegals have inflicted on their own children, but that is not the fault of the United States or its primary concern, nor should it be. “Following the gospel” means, as the wonderful Pope has made clear, open borders, and the disastrous consequences of that are blazingly evident in Europe and increasingly in the U.S. You cannot govern competently and responsibly with faith and the the idealistic teachings from a culture 2,000 years ago. Law enforcement wouldn’t have incidents of overreach, bad decisions, accidents and mistakes if lawbreakers didn’t force the government to deal with their destruction.
I have a dear friend and occasional commenter on EA who thinks like Sister Nancy. This is the poison well of misplaced Christian charity that creates the “Good Illegal Immigrant” myth and the absurd parallels between Mary and Joseph and the millions of illegals the Biden administration encouraged to first break our immigration laws, and then to engage in further lawbreaking.
Then CBS host Tony Dokoupil introduced another questioner, a naturalized citizen named Niv Agarwal. Sister Nancy had just asked, “I’m interested in how, from your very core of your faith, how would you want to be, how do you want to treat immigrants? Because in many cases, we get, they all are called terrorists sometimes by people. They are—like, how does, what, what would you want? What would you want to do?” Great: Shut up, Sister, you ignorant slut. Tony segued to Niv, whose infuriating question was along the same lines. He said,
“Hey, my name is Niv. My family and I immigrated here about 20 years ago, and I became a citizen about five years ago. So you were the first person I voted for, actually….One reason, because of the reasons you just mentioned, I was concerned about border safety, as in the trafficking and the drugs, not because I think immigrants actually take away jobs from Americans, but after seeing ICE behave like military police, and you recently call H-1 visa workers foreign indentured servants. I think Americans are anything but safe. So I’m just curious, why, why are you scapegoating immigrants for the issues you’re supposed to be solving as a Vice President?”
Immediately, Vance should have said,
“Let’s get two things straight once and for all, Niv. First, the issue is illegal immigrants, not legal immigrants like you. Stop letting open borders advocates confuse the issue by adopting their dishonest rhetoric. Second, if an illegal immigrant has a job in this country, by definition he or she is taking that job away from an American, because if that illegal wasn’t here, an American would have that job. So if you don’t think immigrants actually take away jobs from Americans, you’re confused. Nobody is “scapegoating immigrants.” Again, we are talking about illegal immigrants. I would think, as an immigrant yourself, you would insist on that distinction. We are correctly pointing out the harm done to the nation, society, the economy and law-abiding citizens when foreign citizens come here illegally, and ICE acts exactly as law enforcement has to act when criminals are being protected by rogue state and local governments and misguided Americans who have accepted pro-open borders propaganda as you have.”
If the Republicans get clobbered in the mid-terms, a main reason will be their incompetence and rhetorical cowardice.
Why is there any controversy over this, especially in the wake Democrats’ years-long cover-up of Biden’s galloping dementia and Mitch McConnell’s mysteriously long recovery from “a fall”?
Talk about “protesting too much”…the North State Journal (NSJ) asked former Gov. Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign if he was committed to fulfilling his six-year term if elected in November and if there were any health problems that might impede him. Cooper is 69 years old, so a six year term would take him to 75. NSJ had previously emailed those questions to Cooper’s campaign eight times without answers, and after the ninth time, it received a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action.
The Elias Law Group sent the letter. The firm is run by Marc Elias, the former campaign lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential run and a frequent target of Prof. Turley. The inquiring letter stated, “Governor Cooper intends to complete his entire term, and any suggestion that he is ‘experiencing a neurological issue,’ or that any health condition would prevent him from completing his term, is categorically false and defamatory.”
The NSJ asked Cooper’s Republican opponent Michael Whatley who is more than a decade younger than Cooper the same questions and the Whatley campaign said he would complete his term and that he didn’t have any health issues. Why is that so hard? Meanwhile, since when is a reporter or news organization asking a question “defamatory”? Insinuation in the form of a question isn’t usually held to be defamatory, especially from the news media, which is supposed to make people think and has broad protections under the First Amendment. I view this legal intimidation tactic as unethical—Don’t sue me, Marc, it’s just an opinion!—and Cooper siccing lawyers—you know, professionals who have graduated from law school AND who are members in good standing of a state bar after passing the bar exam?—-on an outlet for asking a question he apparently doesn’t want to answer to be signature significance: no trustworthy candidate would do that, ever, even once.
In related and gobsmacking news, Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassleysaid yesterday that he has not decided whether he will seek reelection in 2028. He is 93 years old. It is only moral luck that he has stayed healthy and able to serve in his current term, which was irresponsible for him to seek in 2022 when he was 89, and indefensible for voters to allow. In fact, I believe running for national office after 75 is unethical for our laws to allow. At least Grassley will answer questions about his age and health without trying to censor news reporting.
Since Oct 7 2023, every human on the planet has had a choice. To stand with Israel, the Jewish people, and Western Civilization, or with Hamas, Terrorism, and the evil actors who would tear it down. That Time for Choosing is ever-present. Who do you choose? #WeAreNotOkpic.twitter.com/FIW8ChBx2T
“This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”
New York’s anti-Semitic, Islamist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in his official statement on the anniversary of the unprovoked and ambush Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel that included the murder of unarmed civilians, rapes, infanticide, and the taking of over 200 hostages, mist of whom died.
I could have had a much longer headline, and had to restrain myself to avoid posting one. Anyone who agrees with this vile man is an Ethics Dunce, as is anyone who voted for him or would argue that such votes can be justified. Mandani qualifies for an EA “Incompetent Elected Official” designation, because condemning the victims of terrorism while supposedly memorializing those victims is incompetent and irresponsible, unless one is an Ethics Villain, which Mayor Mamdani certainly is.
I alluded to my post on the old Ethics Scoreboard about the infamous Duke lacrosse team rape case in a recent EA post, suggesting that it may be a template for what we are going to see transpire in the still developing Cornell frat house gang rape saga. Fred Davidson, a cherished reader and commenter here, tracked down the essay on The Wayback Machine and sent the link in the comments. I’m reposting that essay here. If ever a prosecutor was a candidate to be just as unethical as Mike Nifong (who was disbarred), Letitia James is it. I want to acknowledge my webmaster for Ethics Alarms who edited and formatted all my posts, the talented Lauren Larson.Would that she was still working with me now.
***
From the North Carolina Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct:
“The prosecutor represents the sovereign and, therefore, should use restraint in the discretionary exercise of government powers, such as in the selection of cases to prosecute. During trial, the prosecutor is not only an advocate, but he or she also may make decisions normally made by an individual client, and those affecting the public interest should be fair to all. In our system of criminal justice, the accused is to be given the benefit of all reasonable doubt. With respect to evidence and witnesses, the prosecutor has responsibilities different from those of a lawyer in private practice; the prosecutor should make timely disclosure to the defense of available evidence known to him or her that tends to negate the guilt of the accused, mitigate the degree of the offense, or reduce the punishment. Further, a prosecutor should not intentionally avoid pursuit of evidence merely because he or she believes it will damage the prosecutor’s case or aid the accused.“
How Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong can reconcile his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case with this explanatory comment from his bar association’s rule governing the ethics of prosecutors is a mystery. But it is no mystery what his violation of these principles has created: one of the worst ethics train wrecks of the past ten years, a mess that can stand with such recent ethics fiascos as the Terri Schiavo dispute and the Valerie Plame Affair. In fact, Nifong’s handiwork may have caused more human wreckage than either of these. But like all ethics train wrecks, this one had more than one shaky hand on the throttle:
The Duke lacrosse team: While not earning their horrific treatment by Nifong, many of the players on the team were irresponsible in their conduct, disrespectful to the hired exotic dancer who ultimately became their accuser, and reckless in their disregard for the reputation of the university and its sometimes contentious relations with the Durham community. For example, a few hours after the alleged rape, team member Ryan McFadyen sent an email to his team mates in which he fantasized about murdering and sexually abusing strippers. It may well have been composed as a tasteless joke, but it was certainly evidence of an unacceptable level of contempt and callousness toward the human beings the team had hired to entertain them at the party, not to mention strong evidence of a brain-pan insufficiency. McFadyen was suspended after a team mate, in another ethically questionable move, decided to circulate the disgusting e-mail so that it wound up in the hands of the police and, worse still, the media. Did it have any probative value in the case? No—McFadyen wasn’t one of the players implicated or indicted. Still, he ended up suspended from school, the local media used the e-mail to make the team look like a tribe of cannibals, and the seeds of racial conflict were sown and fertilized. The e-mail effectively threw gasoline on an already incendiary situation, and contributed mightily to the lacrosse team’s coach resigning and Duke canceling the lacrosse season.
The Impeachment Clause in the U.S. Constitution was written by the Founders to create an emergency “Get Rid of a Rogue President (or other high Federal official) Free Card,” to be used in a bid-partisan process featuring due process, hearings and a trial. The Democrats cynically used the process as part of their undemocratic and ruinous campaign to make it impossible for the elected President to govern, because he had committed the unforgivable sin of blocking Hillary Clinton’s rose-strewn path to the White House. Like the fake, Hillary and Obama engineered Russian collusion hoax (and in Trump’s second term, the J-6 kangaroo hearings in the House, both of Trump’s impeachments were contrived, politically motivated, and Constitutionally indefensible. The damage was done, the precedent set. Impeachment is now toothless; the Founders’ metaphorical safety valve is done. What once was framed as cooperative, bi-partisan inquiry to be triggered by genuine abuses of power is now just another toothless and corrupt tool of political warfare. Good job, everybody!
Rep. Thomas Massie(R-KY), on the way out after losing the primary for his seat earlier this year, filed eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth this week.
I have mentioned that Democrats cheat, haven’t I? I’m pretty sure I have.
This episode is pretty nauseating, though I must say I don’t recall any non-President earning two EA brickbats in such rapid succession, so Acton has at least distinguished herself. At the same event where the Democrats’ candidate for Governor of Ohio demonstrated how not to speak in public (Hey Amy: I could fix that in about two hours if you had the sense to hire me, or any other competent speech coach for that matter) Acton witnessed a brief disruption in the crowd which her campaign decided to sell as an assassination attempt.
Naturally, the Axis news media rushed to spread the false narrative. As usual. Gotta elect these Democrats, Socialists and crypto-totalitarians by any means necessary, right guys?
“Dr. Acton was giving a speech at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent at a fair in Canfield, in the northeastern part of the state, when a man pushed through the crowd, knocking over two elderly audience members, according to the county sheriff, Jerry Greene, and two witnesses. The man did not draw his weapons, according to Sheriff Greene and the witnesses. Dr. Acton was not injured. Two officers of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, part of Dr. Acton’s security detail, detained and handcuffed the man, according to Dr. Acton’s campaign and the sheriff. The man was found to be carrying two pistols and a Taser in the shape of brass knuckles after he was detained, according to the sheriff and the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Ohio law allows residents to possess and carry concealed firearms without a permit.”
That was, by far, the most accurate report I have read. I won’t even blame the Times for its misleading headline (“Armed Man Arrested After Charging Toward Democratic Candidate for Ohio Governor”) since its report had to debunk what other news organizations were claiming, thanks to Acton’s campaign’s deceit. The incident didn’t “involve” Acton, unless you regard anything that happens in a crowd listening to a speaker as involving the speaker. The arrested man also didn’t “lunge” at Acton. He wasn’t close enough to her to “lunge.” Acton was never touched, injured, or threatened. Nor has his motive in rushing through the crowd been determined; the incident is still being investigated.
The Times story says that 38-year-old Patrick Havas has been charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of misdemeanor assault, one for each of the seniors he knocked over, who were apparently uninjured. There were no charges involving any crime aimed at Acton. Witnesses say he was trying to get close enough to the candidate to ask a question, because he was calling her name.
Never mind. Democrats still leaped at the opportunity to paint Acton as an assassination victim.
I was tempted to make this another Res Ipsa Loquitur post.
Jeez, will somebody tell her? Nobody wants to hear anyone shouting and screaming like that into a microphone, but it is especially unappealing when a woman does it. It’s shrill, its undignified, and it’s ugly. Her voice cracks, and she’s acting unhinged.
I posted about the impediments to women getting elected President in November of 2025 after the New York Times Gail Collin’s wrote a column titled, “Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?” The lament would have been more plaintive if she hadn’t been reacting to Kamala Harris’s defeat, which was less due to the candidate being female than it was due to her being a cackling, incoherent idiot.
I wrote in part,
“The first female President is likely to come from a new template of female leadership that does not require that a credible female leader seem as unfeminine as possible and fit the male stereotypes of what a President looks like. That process will take time. Women have not been drawn to politics long enough or in substantial numbers until relatively recently. The talent pool still isn’t very large or deep. Men have a lead of a couple of centuries. Of course, it will only take one break-through female leader to change the template quickly and permanently. It’s too bad that Sigourney Weaver wasn’t interested in politics.”
In the first installment of what I fear will be a long-running series, I focused on all the high-ranking women in government who had disgraced themselves recently, including three female members of Trump’s Cabinet. I ended that post by writing, “I have theories about why our system and culture doesn’t produce competent and trustworthy female leaders in sufficient numbers, as well as why those it does produce tend to be corrupt and incompetent power-abusers. I will leave those theories for another day.”
Those theories are still for another day, but the fact that so many female politicians are wretched public speakers who don’t know how to modulate their voices, where to place it in their heads (think chest, ladies), and the basics of presentation, is a major impediment.
