The American Bar Association’s own website says, “All of us have implicit biases.” I asked its president which groups she holds bias against. pic.twitter.com/Pebduv8lVL
— Congressman Brandon Gill (@RepBrandonGill) July 22, 2026
“This is embarrassing,” Rep. Brandon Gill said, as Michelle A. Behnke ( from Madison, Wisconsin—of course she is), the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, was infuriatingly evasive and displayed nauseating hypocrisy and dishonesty as Rep. Brandon Gill questioned her regarding DEI, bias and discrimination. It was embarrassing, for Democrats, progressives, fans of permanent anti-white discrimination, members of the ABA (the largest American bar association, which I refuse to join expressly because of the organization’s lack of integrity ) so flamingly displayed by Behnke, and especially all lawyers. How can the public trust a “profession” that allows such a shifty, pusillanimous, dishonest individual to represent it by leading its members’ largest and most prestigious organization?
The ethics in the now viral incident at the start of a Chicago Cubs baseball game are clear as a mountain stream. A Gen Z slug was ignoring the National Anthem, a Vietnam vet sitting behind him took offense and demanded that he stand, and when the kid resisted, gave him a sharp slap “upside the head.” Then the young fan finally stood up.
The online debate is contrived. Of course…
…the young fan was being disrespectful and deserved the rebuke
…he was also being ignorant, forgetting that there are a lot of veterans who take loyalty and reverence to the nation they served very seriously; my father would have said something to him
…he still had a right to sit if he chose to, though doing so was unethical,
…hitting the kid was indefensible, even if the contact was light and more symbolic than serious, and
…the young fan showed good judgment by capitulating and not allowing the conflict to escalate.
Further observations…
1. To his credit, the slapper says that he regrets the slap.
2. He also says he and the kid shared a beer at the game. That speaks well of the young man. It is also very typical of the kind of human comradery I have witnessed at baseball games many times over the years. Everyone there has a bond with everyone else—they are baseball fans and usually fans of the same team.
3. Lots of the critics of the veteran remind us that the slap was battery. No, it wasn’t assault: assault is when the victim is placed in fearful anticipation of unwelcome contact; battery is the contact itself. Since the slappee was hit from behind and didn’t see it coming, there was no assault, just battery.
4. Though technically a tort and a crime, the chances of either getting substantive legal redress is about zero. De minimis non curat lex.
5. If the slapper was the kid’s father, mother, or sibling, we never would have heard about the episode
5. Questions: would the veteran have handled the situation the same way if the kid had been black? Female? A Muslim? My guess: no, no, and no.
6. If the kid was with a group of peers, would he have stood? Would the vet have confronted him if he were with friends?
7. Would a black fan have behaved the same as the white kid? Maybe. If not, however, the incident would be characterized as a racial clash by the media.
“Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, and those folks received Presidential pardons.”
—–The Minnesota Star, cheering on Gov. Tim “Knucklehead” Walz’s sick decision to pardon a serial child rapist in an attempt to foil efforts to deport him.
No one can trust a news source capable of putting such illogical, unethical garbage in print. Defense by non-sequitur! “Sure, he raped a child repeatedly for years, but Jeffrey Dahmer ate people!” There is no basis for comparison between the J-6 rioters, all citizens and jailed, some for a couple of years, for a single act, and a non-citizen who never spent a day in prison despite pleading guilty to multiple child rapes. The Star’s bizarre logic doesn’t even rise to the level of the worst of all rationalizations, Rationalization #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse, or “There are worse things.” Is the idea that Walz trying to let a child molester stay in his state is good because Trump’s pardon of the rioters wasn’t? What is the Star trying to say? Do the editors even know?
Then the Star’s grand finale is to quote with approval another one of Walz’s idiotic outbursts. “Taking them out with no due process”? Vang received a final order of removal in October 2006! There was due process to spare.
Not for the first time, I find myself wondering how the once great state of Minnesota came to such a precipitous decline in values and common sense. Once represented by the likes of Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, it is led by a principle-free, incompetent fool, with an addled newspaper like the Star warping the news to disguise his incompetence. Minnesotans used to be smart, creative, rational. They had standards, they had pride. What happened? Now they are sitting by while their state’s #1 paper applauds their Governor for pardoning a child rapist, and one who made it clear that he doesn’t think raping children is anything to get upset about. Americans are just weirdly prudish about such things!
So the citizens of Minnesota just nod their heads as their governor first pardons the man who rapes little girls and pays them to keep quiet, because Kamala choice’s to be VP wants to foil efforts to remove criminal non-citizens. They keep nodding as that governor describes years of multiple rapes as the rapist’s “worst day” [Vang didn’t think they were bad days at all], and nod some more as the Star calls Walz a hero for trying to inflict a sexual predator on their state permanently.
Several Ethics Alarms reader alerted me to this gobsmacking story, further evidence that the political left in this country is in the process of suffering a nervous breakdown. I am still not certain I am glad they did.
The court alluded to in the title is the Hawaii Supreme Court. That state needs to be given a bit of leeway for its excesses and delusions: Hawaii, even after more than half a century as our 50th state, is still a very different culture from the other 49. That’s part of its charm when you visit there, but it also has allowed a problematic mindset to linger. Hawaiians just don’t think the usual rules should apply to them, even in relation to the Constitution. Two years ago, in State v. Wilson, the Hawaii Supreme Court wrote that “[t]he spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons,” and that Hawaii would read the Second Amendment “differently than the current United States Supreme Court.”
Oh. Except that a state can’t do that.
More recently, the same justice who wrote that defiant legal nonsense authored a full-on attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, tacked onto a rather mundane case about prosecutorial misconduct. I will re-publish the whole amazing section below, but KABOOM! It is head-exploding. The diatribe, because that’s what it is, covers voting rights, campaign finance, abortion, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, the major questions doctrine, Chevron deference, the spending power, the removal power, and birthright citizenship, while accusing the Roberts Court of being racist.
Such tangential rhetoric is known as dicta, parts of a legal opinion that carry no substantive legal weight at all since it is pure opinion without definitive case authority. Even dicta, however, is subject to certain professional and ethical constraints. The Hawaiian Supreme Court rantis a bright line breach of several tenets in state’s Code of Judicial Conduct.
Canon I states, “A JUDGE SHALL UPHOLD AND PROMOTE THE INDEPENDENCE, INTEGRITY, AND IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDICIARY AND SHALL AVOID IMPROPRIETY AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY.“
Under that banner are three mandates: Rule 1.1. Compliance with the Law, Rule 1.2. Promoting Confidence in the Judiciary, and Rule 1.3. Avoiding Misuse of the Prestige of Judicial Office. A statement that announces that a judge does not feel bound by U.S. Supreme Court decisions violates Rule 1.1. A judge attacking the integrity and motives of the U.S. Supreme Court undermines confidence in the judiciary, as prohibited by Rule 1.2. A judge using the prestige of his office to impugn a higher court is by definition an abuse of office, breaching Rule 1.3.
But wait! There’s more!
Canon 2 states, “A JUDGE SHALL PERFORM THE DUTIES OF JUDICIAL OFFICE IMPARTIALLY, COMPETENTLY, AND DILIGENTLY.”
The anti-SCOTUS section shows a judge giving priority to his partisan and political beliefs over his duties as a judge, violating Rule 2.1. His unhinged attack on past SCOTUS jurisprudence indicates that he is incapable of “upholding the law,” and that he is also incapable of “impartial” conduct. Moreover, the opinion constitutes a flagrant bias based on political affiliation, breaching Rule 2.3.
The outburst is even worse than the many rules violations suggest. The logic is tortured, the law is bad, and the arguments are hysterical as well as not based in reality; worst of all, the Hawaiian judges appear not to understand how SCOTUS fits into the Constitutional governance formula. The core goal underlying the tantrum is an arrogant belief in judicial activism and judges usurping legislatures, as the Warren court did habitually.
As a final rotten cherry on this putrid sundae of unethical judicial conduct, The National Review noticed that a bot probably wrote the text. Nice. My position is that judges using AI to write their opinions is impeachable conduct, but then so is issuing such an attack on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here is the section, and I must add, having just read it through again, the naked Trump Derangement and partisan extremism is shocking. This isn’t just unethical. It is judicial insurrection. Luckily, progressives don’t read court opinions…
Ray County (Missouri) Prosecutor Camille Johnston, 46, had “inappropriate sexual affairs “with three men, including a defense attorney representing several criminal defendants in cases prosecuted by Ray County, and Juan David Gutierrez an illegal immigrant accused of sexually assaulting another woman. The third unethical sexual relationship was with yet another defendant in a criminal case, and Johnston fired the employee who discovered it.
Yikes. Even the late Steven Bochco didn’t dream up a prosecutor that sex-crazed, and all of his lawyers were in perpetual heat.
Johnston’s fling with Gutierrez was her masterpiece, however. Get this: Gutierrez was being prosecuted in Ray County, but this Ray County prosecutor gave him the keys to her car so he could flee to Florida, where she joined him on her vacation!
Johnston, the filings against her state, was guilty of an “obvious appearance of a conflict of interest” —- “Appearance”???? — had “forfeited the office of prosecuting attorney.”
I don’t understand this story at all. Did the woman have a psychotic break? How can someone rise to the level of prosecutor, or for that matter pass the bar after graduating from law school, who is capable of behaving this way? Maybe she learned she has only a year to live, and decided to go out with a bang…well, several bangs I guess. I would have guessed that she was hideous or something and desperate for a date, but she’s not. My next guess would have been that she was so sexually alluring that defendants and colleagues were constantly courting her, but that isn’t evident either. How could this happen?
And yet, over the past 20 years, I have been stunned and disillusioned by the low level of professional ethics of so many prosecutors, who are supposed to maintain exemplary ethics. I suppose having sex with anyone in pants is, all in all, not as unethical as knowingly prosecuting an innocent defendant, and that ethical breach is a lot more common than going on vacation with an illegal who assaults women.
One way you can tell with 100% certainly brainwashed (or dishonest) progressives is if they complain about NPR and PBS losing their government funding. It is the watermark of “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” gaslighting. This morning I received an unsolicited and unwelcome exhortation in my email inbox from the propagandist above, insulting my intelligence by seeking my money by telling me…
A billion-dollar hit to our industry is enough to make any Chief Financial Officer sweat. And that’s exactly what happened to public media one year ago today, when Congress voted to eliminate federal funding. My job as NPR’s CFO isn’t just to balance the books; it’s to protect a vital public asset. Today, I’m asking you to take action with me.
The NPR Network cannot back down on our mission because we know that millions of people rely on this trusted journalism and programming. And, I am so grateful that we don’t need to back down because supporters like you stand with us. Our strength – and our independence – has always come from you, the public. The NPR Network continues because the public decides it will.
I can tell you firsthand: you can’t run a world-class, independent newsroom on hope. A free press doesn’t just happen. Public media needs growing, reliable financial support to fuel essential reporting and build what’s next. Now is the time to give. Not just for yourself, but for our collective right to know the facts. Your donation of any amount is needed. Every dollar makes a difference.
Power to the public,
Daphne Kwon
P.S. When you make a donation to support this essential public service, you declare that you value access to the facts, for all.
“Access to all the facts”!
By pure coincidence, shortly after reading that garbage I saw that Newsbusters had posted some of the transcript of NPR’s anchor A Martinez (he humbly doesn’t claim to be THE Martinez) interview Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn) regarding President Trump’s recent televised speech. Highlights, as the Axis hack repeatedly invited the Democrat to attack the President and provided no balance or skepticism whatsoever:
The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:
“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”
Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:
That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.
Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.
62 %, approximately, of the students in New York City’s public schools are black or Hispanic. In its eight most prestigious and academically rigorous high schools, however, only10% of the students in the incoming freshman class will be black or Hispanic, just like last year. 80% of the seats will be filled with Asian and white students, mostly Asians. This pattern of racial and ethnic disparity has existed for years at the city’s elite public high schools. Not surprisingly, the seeming inequity creates anger, frustration, demagoguery and and accusations of racism. Solutions, however, have been elusive and remain so.
Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, perhaps the most famous of the city’s specialized high schools (after the renowned High School For the Performing Arts), only awarded three of its 777 offers to black students, 21 to Hispanic students, and the rest to white and Asian students. Admission to these schools is considered a potential way out of poverty, but that factor (true or not), is not included in the consideration of who gets in. The sole criteria are the scores on a 114-question, three-hour exam, the Specialized High School Admissions Test. It is designed to assess a student’s math, English and critical thinking skills, along with time management ability.
Under the boot-strapping “disparate impact” logic used to find racism whenever results don’t fall neatly into demographic percentages, the admission test has been perpetually attacked as racially discriminatory, but no one has figured out how or why. Nor has anyone been able to devise a skills or ability test that does not consistently result in the same racial and ethnic stratification. Hispanics do better than blacks, whites perform better than Hispanics, and Asians perform the best of all. Sure enough, while just 19% all public school students in New York City are Asian, they received 57% of the offers for the specialized schools.
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.”
Well Calloo! Callay! It has been stopped, and very emphatically too.
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.
“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,” Judge Williams wrote. “It was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the parties were not adverse.”
“Because the parties were not adverse”! Bingo! On that basis, the case should have been at very least stayed by this same judge until Trump was out of office and not controlling the adversary party, and may I add, DUH! Judge Williams was asleep at the switch in May, and perhaps that adds to her obvious fury now. Her one excuse is that she didn’t realize exactly what was going on because it happened so fast and no President has had the gall to try anything like this before.
This is a remarkable exchange for several reasons.
First, Ana Navarro, the long-time fake Republican, token Hispanic, DEI and Trump-Deranged shill who has a regular platform on ABC’s “news show” “The View,” makes a deceitful statement designed to mislead viewers, especially those who have been in a cave for the past two years. “There have been at least five” people killed by ICE she intones, as if the immigration enforcement agents have been going house to house murdering people. Her deception is right out of the playbook of the Left’s “defund the police” lunatics. Law enforcement officers sometimes have to shoot people to protect themselves. They also sometimes kill people who irresponsibly place themselves in harm’s way by interfering with the officers’ lawful execution of their duties, or when lawbreakers resist arrest. These incidents are investigated and sometimes result in discipline or even criminal charges.
Second, CNN’s Abby Philips, who has to be the most dead-faced round-table moderator in the history of television and one of the most incompetent, just sits there like a barnacle, as usual. An ethical moderator would correct Ana’s garbage on the spot, lest the discussion be built on a false foundation.
Finally, listen to Navarro’s babbling when she is caught like a rat in a trap! Caroline Sunshine asks, “Do you know the names as well of Americans who have been killed by illegal immigrants? Do you have that list, too?” [Aside: Sunshine is one of those people who makes me realize that I made a serious wrong turn somewhere in what I laughingly call “my career”: to say her credentials to be a pundit on CNN in such a discussion are paper-thin is to be generous. Sunshine is a former Disney and B-movie starlet who was rapidly advanced through GOP and Trump I press ranks substantially on the basis of her looks.] That was exactly the right question to expose Navarro’s bias and intellectual dishonesty. Navarro’s reply…
