…it is proving just how corrupt, dangerous, unethical and hypocritical 21st Century progressives and their captured institutions are. Only to anyone paying attention, however. Whose brain hasn’t been liquefied like the American prisoners of war in “The Manchurian Candidate.
Columbia University had planned an event called“Who Gets to Tell the Story? Press Freedom & the Public Square,” to explore the challenges to Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech. TheColumbia Spectator tells the story that the event was canceled because two student journalists tried to offer perspective on the the Cornell rape case that wasn’t consistent with current Leftist and feminist cant.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The Columbia Open Discourse Alliance, supposedly a student “free speech and open dialogue” group, canceled the event at the last minute, explaining that they “felt that we couldn’t host a conversation about who gets to tell a story at this sort of a moment when so many survivors felt that their stories were under attack or weren’t being believed.”
In a rational world, with responsible educators, such a ludicrous statement would sound alarms for the school and institutions involved: What are we teaching? Why are our students so devoid of critical thinking skills? How do we fix this? Nah. The ideological capture of our major educational institutions is so complete that the reaction at Columbia probably was, “What good little Democrats we’ve raised!”
The Cornell Rape Ethics Train Wreck just made a nasty stop.
The captain of the Piner High School football team posted the phrase “Free the Cornell Seven” on Instagram.
So what? That post is entirely, completely, protected free speech, and any semi-informed American dolt over the age of 18 should know it. That message does not involve the school or its students in any way. It is pure opinion.
Not punished, however, were the approximately 200 students—nobody bothered to take names or count them— who walked out of class to protest the fact that their school hadn’t sufficiently punished a fellow student for making a statement of opinion that could not be legally, ethically or constitutionally punished. This is bonkers. The conduct of those students must be punished. Not only that, the teachers and administrators responsible for them not comprehending the essentials of free speech, the First Amendment and the Constitution at such an advanced age should be sacked.
The protesters demanded “accountability” for the football team captain. So did many parents, who complained to the school district that the message “makes light of sexual assault and should not be tolerated.” Not be tolerated? The school’s principal’s answer to the parents should have been,
“Mind your own damn business and get out of my face. You need to go back to high school yourself. You don’t know what you are talking about. First, anyone, including a student here, is free to post any opinion on a controversy in New York on his or her personal social media accounts any time they choose. We have to “tolerate it.” Second, there is no evidence that a sexual assault occurred, despite your fellow travelers on the Left seeking to wreck the lives of young men as a show of solidarity with the worst of American feminists.”
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.
Let’s see: what happened in the World of Jew Hate in the past 24 hours? Admittedly, this will only cover stories that leftist mainstream media hasn’t successfully embargoed: it is fine for the Democratic Party to be anti-Semitic, see, it’s just a bad look if the positions and conduct are expressly anti-Semitic right before an election, except to Muslim voters, of course.
Die Linke, Germany’s rising populist-left party, won 26% in elections to Berlin’s House of Representatives, its best performance ever. Meanwhile, a branch of Die Linke in Berlin recently welcomed Macklemore, the anti-Semitic rapper, and on election night a Die Linke MP was photographed with a representative of a pro-Palestinian group with terrorist connections.
Canada is experiencing a surge of Jew hate. The Jerusalem Post reports “a significant rise in antisemitism, threats, and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions…In 2025, 788 hate crimes targeting Jews were reported to police across Canada. Jews accounted for approximately 71 percent of all police reported hate crimes motivated by religion. .. During the most recent Rosh Hashanah, mezuzahs were torn from the doors of Jewish students’ rooms at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Days later, an armed man arrived at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville while worshippers were inside on Yom Kippur. A police officer protecting the synagogue was seriously wounded.
In the U.S.—remember, we’re just talking about today’s news—
The University of Californiapetitioned a court to kick out the Justice Department’s lawsuit accusing UCLA of tolerating antisemitic harassment while seeking repayment of $2 billion in research grants. UC calls the case “political coercion” (how dare the government restrict a university’s right to allow the persecution of Jewish students on campus?) and argues that UCLA has made substantial changes since August of 2024, when a court ruled that “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith” and ordered the university to guarantee equal access to campus. A battle between anti-Israel students and counter-protesters was allowed to proceed without significant action by campus police.
Close to me in Alexandria, a group of rabbis accused Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland of normalizing anti-Semitism. In a letter this week to the district’s [completely Democrat] leadership, they wrote in part, “Over the last three years, we have been on the front lines of the current crisis of skyrocketing school-based antisemitism. We meet regularly with students who are hurt and confused and parents who are angry that their children are experiencing harassment, isolation, and threats to their fundamental physical and emotional safety. We are alarmed that the lack of a meaningful response by MCPS has led to an increase in the normalization of antisemitic attitudes, language and behaviors in our schools.” Montgomery County is the most progressive and Democrat-dominated district in one of the most Democrat-dominated states in the nation.
Political parties, politicians and candidates, and
The lazy, incurious, complacent public itself.
More than a third of U.S. adults (35%) can’t name all three branches of the government. The 2026 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,034 U.S. adults from August 6 to 9. Only 65% can name the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The results of that poll were 70% in 2025 and 65% in 2024.
Parents have an obligation to teach such basic civics, if they know it themselves. That any high school lets a student graduate without being able to name the three branches of government is disgusting and constitutes the negligent killing of democracy. I wonder how many teachers are in the 35%? I probably will be happier if I don’t find out.
Other news in the Annenberg poll are ominous but have fewer real consequences. When asked in to name the specific rights protected by the First Amendment, 73% cited Freedom of Speech, less than the 79% who got it right in 2025. Under one-half (43%) could name Freedom of Religion (because, I surmise, less than half care much about religion in today’s America), fewer than one-third (31%) named Freedom of Assembly and, surprisingly at least to me, only 29% named Freedom of the Press (29%). Almost nobody, just 12%, remembered the right to petition the government. In all, only 9% of respondents could correctly name all five rights in the First Amendment, while 24% could name none of them. A similar number, 25% thought the Right to Bear Arms, the Second Amendment, was part of the First.
You know. Morons.
The poll helps explain the infuriating campaign ads I have been seeing during the telecasts of Red Sox games this month. Democratic House member Chris Pappas (Mass.) is the most flagrant villain, telling two-digit IQ voters that he will “fight I.C.E” (Congress can’t fight I.C.E., which is an Executive Branch agency) and “block abortion bans.” If there are abortion bans they are at the state level, so Congress has no say. Nobody has seriously proposed an abortion ban at the national level, which would probably require a constitutional amendment, and that’s not happening.
“Ignorance is costly,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “You can’t protect and cherish rights that you don’t know you have.”
Bingo. And that’s exactly why aspiring totalitarians like the state of U.S. civic competence just the way it is.
He’s not wrong. And MSNOW, CNN and Politico are not by any stretch of the imagination the “independent” news organizations they say they are, or even genuine journalists, since it is remarkably obvious that they are really “Democratic Party surrogates with press credentials,” as one wag accurately describes them. And they are, as the President stated in one of his most audacious, bold and correct assessments, “enemies of the people.”
It is also true that as pivotal mid-terms approach, those three outlets and many others are throwing a major portion of the weight of the news media into spinning, concealing, misrepresenting and and prioritizing news stories in the manner most likely to push votes to Democrats and Socialist/Communists, not based on facts, law, common sense, logic or the best interests of the nation, but based on an ideological agenda.
Never mind. Trump’s actions here are futile, and I assume he knows it; if he doesn’t, then he has a bunch of lawyers to fire. He’s doing this to focus attention on the Axis news media’s unethical and corrosive efforts to manipulate elections, as it did in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Yes, it’s unethical for a President to deliberately violate the Constitution knowing that his actions will be struck down. It’s also unethical for journalists to use First Amendment protections to abuse their power and undermine democracy, but there is nothing in the Constitution that stops them from doing it
“The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” MS NOW said in a statement posted on X. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalists in our democracy,” it added. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.
Yada yada. That’s all the right rhetoric. Too bad it’s such a scumbag organization using it.
“We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hinderance or interference from the government and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right,” CNN said in a statement posted on X. “We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account, and we will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear or favor,” the statement added.
Of course, CNN made virtually no effort to hold the Obama and Biden administrations “to account,” but were, instead, complicit in their unconstitutional behavior. The Constitution, however, doesn’t say what biased and unethical news organizations can’t do, just what the government can’t do to them.
Politico Press, the publication’s communications team, said that “POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them.”
The funny word in that statement is “continue.”
Nevertheless, President Trump doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, making the metaphorical ethical leg mighty weak as well.
I wish I had the gust to post this on Facebook. And the fact that I know that it would upset so many of my long-time friends is itself an indication of how ethically warped the political Left has become. In fact, “ethically warped” is a euphemism for a far more damning and accurate term.
[This one is pretty funny too, but it’s not really an ethics meme…]
EXCLUSIVE: Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains how he has secretly enacted a policy of racial discrimination in faculty hiring—which is illegal in California.
1. These people cheat. They are proud of their cheating: it’s “the ends justifies the means” exemplified. This is a law school dean—at a prestige law school!— openly admitting and rationalizing violating the law.
2. He also says that he’ll lie under oath to deny what he said.
3.Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has a long and disgusting EA dossier (at the link) but is always—always, no exceptions—represented in the mainstream media as respected legal scholar. I don’t respect him: he’s an Ethics Villain, and undeniably so.
4. Notice that he says “diversity is important” but he never says why it’s important. This is just an article of faith with the Left. It is important because it just is, that’s all, and they say it is, so there.
5. I’m playing the Learned Judge tonight in a law school production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury” (1875, and as funny and sharp now as it was on opening night.) The Foreman of the Jury, a bass-baritone role, is being played by tiny female student, a soprano, who is inaudible and who can’t remember her entrances. She is easily the least able member of the chorus. Why was she cast in that role? She is the only “student of color” who auditioned, and the student organization has by-laws requiring “diversity” in casts. As a result, the show sounds worse, looks worse, all of the cast members who are qualified for their roles will get fewer benefits from their work and dedication as a result, the audience will enjoy the show less, and the exploited student, who is a very nice young woman, will be embarrassed in public. If I had to describe a perfect example of what’s wrong with DEI logic, I doubt that I could come up with a better one. Yet ideologues like Chemerinsky still use their authority to assure the world that discriminating against white males in pursuit of diversity is an “unalloyed virtue, as Gilbert might say.
6. Our cast—all of them (but me!) list their “pronouns” in their program bios— had a rehearsal in the faculty lounge. There are only two newspapers there for faculty perusal: The New York Times and the Washington Post. Nah, U.S. law schools aren’t Leftist indoctrination centers! What a ridiculous conspiracy theory…
7. Do let me know if any Axis news media outlet breathes a word of this incident. My bet: there won’t be any.
The recent discussion on the uselessness, and hence unethical nature, of advocating the impossible sent me back to Immanuel Kant. All Kant did was think and write: in 1795 he decided to muse about how there could be an end to war. Kant was not one to accept “Do something!”; he would always try to figure out what would or might accomplish the desired result. Of course, being a philosopher, he left it to others to execute his plan for the betterment of humanity.
His essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” proposes structural and moral conditions necessary if war is going to be eliminated from civilization. Kant, not being deluded, did not believe peace natural to humanity, rather he argued that peace must be carefully constructed through a clear legal framework. His six Preliminary Articles (immediate steps to prevent conflict) and three Definitive Articles (the long-term foundations required for permanent peace) were the magic formula.
The Six Preliminary Articles (Immediate Steps)
These are immediate prohibitions of legal, financial, and military conditions that make future wars inevitable.
1. No flawed peace treaties. No treaty of peace is valid if it is signed with a secret reservation or loophole that could restart a war in the future. A treaty must represent a genuine end to hostilities, not just a temporary truce.
2. Don’t treat states like property: An independent state must never be acquired by another through inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift, because a state is a society of human beings with its own right to self-determination.
3. No standing armies, because, Kant argued, keeping standing armies threatens neighboring states and ensures a never-ending arms race, making pre-emptive wars more likely.
4. Governments must not create national debts to fund military buildup or foreign intervention.
5. No forcible interference in other nations, because violating a nation’s sovereignty is an offense against the independence of all peoples.
6. “Dishonorable tactics” during war must be banned. Atrocities that destroy the underlying trust required for future peace.
“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”
—Kellie Farina, one of the three jurors interviewed following the mistrial called in the Lindsay Clancy murder case, after the jury deadlocked 11-1 with a single hold-out male juror refusing to vote for acquittal.
That may end up being an iconic unethical quote, one that echoes through the years as America comes to realize how shattered the values of American women have become in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The especially nice touch is the use of “viciously,” don’t you think? ‘Imagine, this idiot was somehow stuck on the fact that a mother murdered her three small children viciously! What’s the matter with him?’
I’d like to know what’s the matter with anyone who can “get over” the fact that three children were murdered by their own mother “viciously.”
