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.
Wow, it takes some impressive ineptitude to get two “Incompetent Elected Official of the Month” designations in less than 30 days, but this creep was up to the challenge.
Yesterday the House voted 413-2 to censure Edwards. The House Ethics Committee recommended the action after it found last month that he had engaged in unprofessional and inappropriate behavior with two former female staffers. EA wrote about that stage of this episode here.
Edwards then stood up and sort-of-kind-of apologized, but not really, saying,
“I want to say something directly and publicly to the two women who have been at the center of all of this. I am sorry. I’m sorry that my actions, my judgement or the way that I expressed a friendship ever put either of you in an uncomfortable position. My intentions were only grounded in what I understood our friendship to be and in genuine admiration and respect that I had for each of you. Not only as professionals, but as people. I ask each of you, Republican and Democrat alike, to look beyond the headlines and examine what the committee actually found. I am not asking for special treatment, I am asking for fair treatment. I am asking you to decide if the punishment before you is supported by the evidence proportional to the conduct actually established.”
“Do you watch the news? Do you listen to the radio? Do you read anything about what’s going on in the world? Because the problem with lawyers relying on AI hallucinations is an above-the-fold story every single day.So either you have buried your head in the sand … and that’s an intentional choice to be uninformed, or you took a gamble, and neither of those are consistent with the code of conduct.”
Aarons’ brief included references to imaginary witnesses and fake testimony from at least one real witness. That AI bots are likely to make up case cites and even statutory language has been recognized and publicized widely, not just in legal publications but in the general news media since early 2024. Lawyers, including those with large national law firms like Morgan & Morgan and even the Justice Department continuing to file these bogus bot-authored court documents is amazing to me. And they are too stupid, ignorant and lazy to even proof-read what the bots wrote! One judge recently railed specifically at using ChatGPT for legal work, which he compared to using Mad Magazine as a legal reference.
Bacon threw the metaphorical book at Aarons, removing him as attorney from the case of a 60-year-old man convicted last year of murdering his wife, found him in contempt of court, ordered him to pay $5,000 to a client protection fund, and referred him to the bar for potential discipline. The murder appeal will be handled now by a public defender.
It isn’t just lawyers, of course, who deserve tongue-lashings like this. Teachers, professors, newspaper editors, legislators, politicians, screenwriters, and, yes, judges to name just a few of the affected groups have an obligation to keep up-to-date on the AI revolution, and a disturbing number of them are not even close, which is inexcusable.
Two veteran members of Congress, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. James Clyburn recently indicated that they were ill-informed regarding AI. That this is, frighteningly, not unusual shouldn’t give us any comfort. Lawmakers are notorious for taking an inordinate amount of time to understand new developing technology, as when the late Senator Ted Stevens, while chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, described the internet as a “series of tubes.” Like the internet but perhaps even more so, however, artificial intelligence is a civilization-altering (and perhaps -threatening) phenomenon moving at the speed of light. Those who are too dim, indolent, unimaginative and irresponsible to keep up need to get out of the way and retire to some nice, safe, quiet pursuit like beachcombing or golf.
Oh…it’s the Rules of Professional Conduct, Your Honor, not the “code.” Judges have ethics codes. Lawyers haven’t been governed by a “code” for 40 years.
Dan Koh is delusional. The frightening thing is that the there are a lot of brain-washed progressives in Massachusetts who are so far gone that they won’t realize how crazy and hypocritical that ad is.
First of all, to lead with dead-eyed Joe Biden saying Koh’s name because two syllables is probably all they could get him to utter after 34 takes and maybe some AI dubbing, isn’t what I would call a boffo opening. Then to follow with Kamala Harris—why would anyone vote for someone Harris endorses? She picked Knucklehead Tim Walz as her running mate! Next Koh boasts about being a senior White House advisor who was either so dim that he didn’t realize the President was a rutabaga, or so corrupt that he was part of the cover-up of Biden’s dementia. There is no third option. Biden’s term was the most disastrous in American Presidential history: what did Biden fix, with Koh’s expert counsel?
Then he ends by saying “Democrats you trust” endorse him, and there are Biden and Kamala again. I can’t think of many Democrats less trustworthy than those two. Oh, maybe Adam Schiff, Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Omar and a few other scumbags, but it’s close. Harris endorsed Black Lives Matter, and said she wanted redirect public resources away from the police but didn’t support defunding the police, a typical muddled Harris policy position. As a Presidential candidate Harris said she wouldn’t change anything Joe Biden did…you know, like opening the borders and appointing a DEI Cabinet of incompetents, lackeys and dolts. Kamal;a also swore she worked at a mysterious McDonalds that apparently appears for day and then vanishes into the mist, like Brigadoon.
Joe let his addict son use him as an influence peddling prop. He promised to be a moderate and to bring the nation together, then allowed the far Left to run his crippled Presidency. He insisted that he was sharp as a tack while refusing to have his cognition tested after his brain had retired to Boca Raton. True, he “beat Medicare.”
That ad is like something out of an alternate universe.
UPDATE: After this was posted, the Senate confirmed Blanche despite the fact, and it is the fact, that doing so was indefensible and irresponsible.
So much that it horrifying from an ethical perspective has occurred lately in all sectors and in both political parties (actually “all three” might be more accurate, with the socialist/communists slowly but surely stomping out the Democratic part like the Cro-Magnons wiped out Neanderthals) that I am searching through the thesaurus for synonyms. I’m sick of writing unethical, unconscionable, inexcusable, unforgivable, indefensible, disgraceful, nauseating, shameful, corrupt, incompetent and irresponsible, so I can only imagine how sick of reading it you must be. Let’s see: Execrable. Gotta use that one more. Untenable? Not strong enough. Of course, I could always default to Prof. Turley’s academic weenie-speak, with “troubling” and “problematic.” I’ll work on it. Meanwhile, here’s what I posted before Republicans mortified themselves…
***
I was just about to write a post about how confirming Todd Blanche as the new U.S. Attorney General is so unethical and unconscionable that any Senator voting for him should put a paper bag over his or her head. Then I was compelled to click on the above titled op-ed [gift link!]today by a former Trump first term Justice Department official. His analysis is so biased and frequently full of…beans that it made my stomach hurt. Nevertheless, Blanche is a disgrace. He should not only be be unanimously rejected, he should be disbarred. There are others, but one reason is enough. And EA has written about it several times.
“In May, Ethics Alarms expressed its horror here, here and here over the unethical, conflicted deal engineered by Trump’s acting-Attorney General and Trump’s Treasury Dept. to bestow undeserved benefits on the President, his family, and the Trump Organization. I wrote at the end of the last of these, “I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense”…U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her 56-page order yesterday that the President and his fellow plaintiffs, his adult sons and the Trump Organization LLC, may not refer in any judicial, administrative or other official proceeding to the “purported ‘settlement agreement’” that gave them broad protection from federal government audits and investigations. The judge then sanctioned the attorneys that represented Trump in his personal capacity, Daniel Z. Epstein of Epstein & Co. LLC and Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC.Good. They should be sanctioned. They should be suspended. If I had the choice, I would disbar them. They are both a disgrace to the legal profession.”
An so is Blanche, who approved this illegal, unconstitutional, monstrosity. Senator Lisa Murkowski, the nepotism RINO Senator from Alaska, proved that, like a blind squirrel, she can find a metaphorical acorn when she became the second Republican to oppose Blanche’s confirmation. Murkowski said in a statement that she feared that Blanche would “fail to check the worst impulses of this administration,” and cited, among other less convincing examples (like the Epstein Files), the settlement agreement that included the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. “The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Ms. Murkowski said. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”
Ya think? That he agreed to that deal at all is smoking gun proof that Blanche is a political hack who will ask “How high?” when the President says “Jump!” GOP Senators are, idiotically, saying that they will support Blanche if he promises that he won’t pursue that deal. So Blanche issued documents narrowing or dissolving aspects of the settlement that he shoould have never approved in the first place. So what? I don’t care if he groveled an abject apology, wore a hair shirt, flagellated himself and ate dirt in penance. He approved the evil thing: it’s signature significance for an untrustworthy, corrupt, incompetent wimp. Would he be worse than his predecessor Pam Bondi, whom Ethics Alarms flagged as one of Trump’s worst appointments from the start? Gee, I don’t know: was “Bay Watch” dumber than “Hart to Hart”? We are still talking about a level below reasonable tolerance.
Is it really that hard to not be a total asshole while you are an elected representative supposedly serving the public good? Members of Congress represent the nation, our Constitution and the Founders while they have that honor. Why can’t they all recognize their duties, which include being a role model and not bringing disrepute upon the institution, and conduct themselves accordingly? (To turn it around a bit: why are voters so lazy and inattentive that they elect such creeps?)
Today’s featured creep is GOP Rep.Chuck Edwards, who just dropped out of the race for his seat, leaving his party with no candidate and no incumbant going into a crucial mid-term election that will determine whether Congress spends the next two years impeaching the President. He wrote on “X” yesterday,
“After much prayer and reflection, I’ve decided to withdraw from my re-election campaign. I will complete my current term. Serving Western North Carolina has been the honor of my life. Thank you for your trust, prayers, and support. God bless WNC and America.”
Gee, he mentioned prayer twice and God once in a 43 word post; I guess that means he must be a good man. (I’m sure a disturbing number of people believe that.) If serving was such an honor, why did he behave like Harpo Marx ? The House Ethics Committee recommended this week that Edwards be censured for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.” Translation: he engaged in sexual harassment in the workplace.
I don’t understand this at all. Even for Seattle, the current controversy over the ex-chief of police is nuts.
The city’s far left Mayor Katie Wilson is under fire for the city’s botched handling of the Bite of Seattle mass shooting, which saw seven people shot with three dying. A toddler was among those wounded. Seattle Police issued a brief report to the public shortly after the shooting, urging everyone to stay away from the area, but nothing more for five hours, when a press conference was called. The city’s emergency alert system wasn’t activated, though this is exactly the kind of situation it was designed for.
Meanwhile, Police Chief Shon Barnes was out of town, as he is remarkably frequently. He was at a police convention in Dallas; since March, he’s also attended police gatherings in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Baltimore. Barnes doesn’t reside in Seattle full time, you see. He lives part-time in Chicago, where his family is. Over the last six months, Barnes has been out of town for about seven weeks, including four trips to Chicago.
When he got back to his place of employment, Barnes got in the face of a reporter who dared to ask him whether reports were accurate that Barnes planned to be away from Seattle until mid-August, and whether his travel schedule might be a bit problematic. Barnes stepped into his questioner and said, “I don’t have to tell you where I go…,” before a city employee pulled the chief away from the reporter and out of the room. At another news conference, Barnes denied that he frequently travels or is routinely absent from the city, and said that he doesn’t travel as much as he would like to. He really said that.
Subsequently Mayor Wilson announced that Barnes had “resigned.” Incredibly, the Seattle City Council was troubled by that. City Councilman Bob Kettle said working with Barnes was going well—yeah, it all seemed to be going swimmingly!—and that firing him would just increase the city’s feeling of insecurity. Barnes lasted a year, and the city has had four police chiefs in just two and a half years.
Wait, let’s back up a bit. Why would any major city—Seattle is one, or at least used to be until it was engulfed by The Great Stupid—hire a police chief who wasn’t prepared to reside full time in that city, or at least nearby? Unless the individual was some kind of miracle worker, it makes no sense. Based on his biography Barnes is an anti-policing police advocate, a social justice warrior, and, of course, he’s black:
Ethics Alarms 