I wish I didn’t have to write about this nauseating mess at all. It is, however, the most throbbing of the current ethics matters in the news, and, as Hymen Roth says, “This is the life we have chosen!”
1. This is getting to be a habit with Democrats, isn’t it? Use democratic, sort of, means to pick a candidate whom they then drive out of the campaign so they can duck any democratic process whatsoever and pick the next candidate as the Politburo chose Soviet Premiers. Nice! Platner won the primary, and anyone who voted for him is a certifiable irresponsible fool. They have no standing to claim they were duped or deceived. The party and its sheep should have to live with their incompetence. George Will called it “condign justice.”
2. Platner has to step aside voluntarily by 5 p.m. July 13 for his party to replace him. As of now, Platner has only committed to pausing his campaign, whatever that means. If he does withdraw, the law gives Democrats until July 27 to choose a replacement.
3. Here’s how serious Democrats are about governance: one of the potential Senators being floated to replace Platner is actor Patrick Dempsey. Dempsey became a TV star after being a B+ list movie player in “Grey’s Anatomy,” a prime time medical soap opera. He is more qualified than Platner for a Senate seat, but then who isn’t? Dempsey’s a high school grad, an expert juggler, a professional caliber auto racer, and has great hair. Sure, why not? If it works, the Democrats can finally nominate Oprah for President.
“If Platner fooled you, maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.”
—-Jim Geraghtyin The National Review in a long, thorough and detailed review of just how obvious it should have been to Democrats and journalists (but I repeat myself) that Graham Platner is “an awful human being, and that fact was about as hidden as a supernova from the start.”
The specific political columnist Geraghty was admonishing is the New York Times’ hard left-biased, consistently unethical hack pundit Michelle Goldberg, one of my favorite examples of the kind of flagrant propagandist the New York Times gives its platform to. [Goldberg’s EA dossier is here.] I haven’t bothered to write about her for a while: The Julie Principle. In a classic “Oopsie!” column, she wrote,
“Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.”
Geraghty’s review of just how smoky the “Platner is a world-class creep” gun was is instructive. That anyone endorsed the guy or believed the lame narrative that he was a “changed man” should make the most knee-jerk Democrat think hard about how trustworthy, honest, and, let’s face it, smart this party and its leadership is. Geraghty makes showing their confirmation bias, corruption and contrived blindness look so easy because it is easy:
“The fact that the Democratic Party is rallying around an unequivocal scumbag like Graham Platner is damning. So desperate is our aspiring totalitarian party to pack the Supreme Court, add automatic Democratic states like Puerto Rico and D.C. to the stars on the flag, open the borders and lock up their political opponents that they are willing to betray their duty to the political system not to present untrustworthy candidates to voters. It doesn’t matter that Platner, about to be nominated as a Senate candidate in Maine, is a liar, a Nazi admirer, a serial sexual offender and has no qualifications for office.”
But for some reason Platner being accused of “rape rape” (in Whoopi Goldberg’s immortal parlance) is too much. What a ridiculous, repellent, disgusting party the Democrats have become! Now, after the latest revelations, previous supporters of this unequivocal scumbag are running for their lives like the rats on board the Titanic.
“I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible. Graham Platner should drop out from the race. I am withdrawing my endorsement,” tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna, who is quite a scumbag in his own right. Democrat Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallegowrote, “The allegations against Graham Platner are troubling and deeply serious. I am rescinding my endorsement.”
Wait, the earlier established facts about Platner weren’t troubling and serious? Democratic anti-gun hysteric David Hogg also withdrew his Platner endorsement today. So did Hollywood Democratic Party lackey Jon Favreau. Finally, The Maine Democrat Party has called for Platner to withdraw from the race.
George Will would call this “condign justice.” Nelson Muntz would say “Ha Ha!” And I channel Connie Corleone when I say, “That’s your party! That’s your party!” No one should let these hypocrites escape accountability for their open contempt for ethics, decency, voters, Maine, Congress or the Republic. Platner’s unfitness for office was already undeniable before Jenny Racicotaccused him of rape, but Democrats were willing to hold their noses, cover their eyes and inflict him on the nation anyway. Never mind Platner, this tells us all we need to know about their character, their trustworthiness and their fitness to govern.
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Added: Senator Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer have withdrawn their endorsement of Platner.
Graham Platner, the professed communist and former Nazi admirer who has lied wildly about his past and is, as progressive Stockholm syndrome victim David Brooks explained on PBS, “a moral degenerate,” has now been credibly accused of rape.
Brooks went on, “The abuse of women, the sexting, the Nazi tattoo, I don’t even need to say anything beyond his Reddit posts, which are not in the past, by the way. He did that for a long time, abusing rape — people who might have been raped, diminishing rape in the military, insulting fellow military officers, calling himself a communist.” Rape would seem to be frosting on this particularly disgusting cake that Democrats were prepared to devour and say “Yum-yum.” Rape? Never mind. Democrats, including Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren have made it clear that they will support Platner in his race against squish GOP Senator Susan Collins because they want to win majorities in Congress no matter what values they have to trash and no matter what scum they have to support to do it.
Today another test of their resolve arrived. One of the named women the New York Times interviewed in its investigation into Platner’s sexual history, Jenny Racicot, 41, elaborated on her previous account to the Times by revealing that Platner raped her. She had originally told the paper only that she cut off contact with Platner after he arrived at her home drunk and engaged in “unsettling” and “reckless” behavior. Now she admits that the “unsettling” behavior was raping her.
Racicot did not disclose the sexual assault for fear of being labeled a rape victim, she told Politico, which broke today’s story. Politico also spoke to the man Racicot dated after Platner, and whom she confided in about the alleged sexual assault, reviewed communications between Racicot and her therapist discussing her decision to come forward, and reviewed communications between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned about getting involved with Platner.
As he has denied so many things that turned out to be true, Platner denied the latest allegation, telling Politico, “These allegations are troubling, serious, and false. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.” He also posted a video to his Senate campaign’s X account shortly after the Politico piece was published in which he stated that the allegations of sexual assault were false and said he and his team are “taking time to reflect on the best path forward.”
I’m sure you remember that Platner also denied that he knew the large Nazi tattoo he had on his chest was a large Nazi tattoo when he got it. Platner is a serial applicant for an Ethics Alarms “Jumbo,” the award a public figure can acquire here when he or she emulates Jimmy Durante in the film of the musical “Jumbo.” Jimmy played a clown apprehended trying to steal the biggest elephant in the world from the circus. Caught elephant-handed and asked by a constable, “Where are you going with that elephant?,” Durante responded, “What elephant?”
Once again I must evoke the 1978 novel “IQ 83,” by science fiction author Arthur Herzog. A man-made virus escapes a lab and begins reducing the intelligence of Americans to idiot levels. “Is We Getting Dummer?” shouts a typo-filled New York Times headline (not that Times headlines over the last several years have been a lot better). The suspense of the plot involves the desperate scientist responsible for the disaster rushing to find a cure before his own IQ dips so far that he starts watching “Three’s Company” reruns and laughing at them. Two hints that the nightmare may be coming true imposed on my consciousness yesterday.
The first is the headline above from Science News. We’re constantly told to “follow the science,” despite constant reminders that our scientists are politicized, careless, sloppy and dishonest. To make things worse, the support staff and journalists who write about scientists’ work and want us to trust their conclusions aren’t too bright. How many people read that headline and didn’t think, “Wait, WHAT?” How could that get into print?
Then there was this: “A new national survey from the Cato Institute, conducted in collaboration with Morning Consult of 2,253 Americans ahead of July 4th and America’s 250th anniversary, finds nearly half (46%) of Americans don’t know what America’s 250th anniversary commemorates.”
Wow. Do we have a great educational; system or what? In truth, we shouldn’t need our schools to teach our children about the founding of our nation. That information is ubiquitous: all anyone needs is to pay attention. Possess intellectual curiosity. Be raised in a family that thinks, reads and discusses current events.
That’s “The Egg” above, from the excellent movie adaptation of “1776.” I’ve performed that number many times as part of the regular repertoire of my now defunct D.C. musical revue group, “The Music Lobby.” (Of course I played John Adams.)
“1776” is one of several movies I always watch this time of year, along with “Gettysburg” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Last night ,however, I took the advice of a friend and occasional EA participant and watched “Eddington,” a controversial 2025 movie that you probably haven’t seen, as very few people have.
Wikipedia describes “Eddington” as a “satirical neo-Western thriller,” which should tip you off that it defies easy labeling. The movie was a box office disaster: I would attribute that to terrible marketing and the fact that “Eddington” has something in it to offend just about everyone. Begin with the title, which reveals nothing about the movie: it sounds like an episode of “Downton Abbey.” In 1965, a satire about the funeral industry based on Evelyn Waugh’s “The Loved One” succeeded with the catch line, “The motion picture with something to offend everyone!” People went to see it on a dare. That might have worked with “Eddington.”
The film is the artistic expression of Ari Aster, the writer/director who is best known for his horror movies. “Eddington” is kind of a horror movie as well: it focuses on a small New Mexico town going especially nuts in 2020 when the rest of the country was going nuts too. It does not have a happy ending (neither did 2020); its protagonist (another fascinating performance by Joaquin Phoenix) is confused, inarticulate, and not very bright. I believe it is the first and probably the best possible embodiment of a “Great Stupid” movie—the term Ethics Alarms uses to describe the cultural, intellectual and political blight that spread its dark wings over the land in 2020.
You may have noticed that that blight is getting more ridiculous than ever in 2026.
The critics were divided over “Eddington,” usually complaining about Aster’s “lack of focus,” meaning that he mocked and denigrated all sides of the political spectrum and did not clearly take sides. That’s a virtue, in my view, as it takes on the Wuhan Virus lock-down and mask mania, social media and screen addiction, “influencers,” Black Lives Matter, the “white privilege” cant, anti-police rhetoric, the gun culture, the homeless, the Bidens, and much more. (I’m going to watch it again.)
Since much of themovie’s benefits lie in its unpredictability, I will not supply any more details except revealing the line that made me laugh out loud. A white teenager is seen lecturing his gobsmacked father at the dinner table about his generation’s determination to “eliminate whiteness,” parroting the now familiar gibberish of Ibram X. Kendri, the Black Lives Matter grifters, and Harvard professors. After listening to the rant, the father pauses a beat to gather his composure, and says, “Are you fucking retarded?“
I’ll publish the best reviews of the movie as guest columns.
But I digress! This is the place for you to choose the ethics topic. Please do so with wisdom, taste, passion and dispatch…
A three-person Minnesota panel including Gov. Tim Walz granted a pardon to prevent an immigrant convicted of sexually abusing a child from being deported.
Or, as PJ Media’s Matt Margolismore colorfully put it, “Imagine being so consumed by hatred for Donald Trump and his immigration agenda that you would hand a full pardon to a man who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl for four years, just to keep him from being deported. You do not have to imagine it. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) actually did it.”
This isn’t one of the “good illegal immigrants” the New York Times is always blubbering about. The pardonee, Tou Lue Vang, is a 42-year-old Laotian-born immigrant convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct after a guilty plea. The details of his crime are especially disgusting. Vang pleaded guilty in 2006 to repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl beginning when she was only 10-years-old and continuing for four years, starting in 2002. When police arrested him in 2005, Vang didn’t even deny his crimes, explaining that it was a “cultural thing” to “marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.” Vang also tried to pay his victim to keep her from telling anyone about the abuse.
A cultural thing, is it? Add one more reason to the long, long list of why the the U.S. should not permit immigration from countries that have values and traditions antithetical to American culture. You know, like child rape…
Vang’s plea deal kept him out of prison because woke states like Minnesota don’t believe in criminal penalties, or something. Nice. It cost Tou his legal immigration status, and he received a final order of removal in October 2006—yes, that’s during the Bush Administration. Never mind: Vang stuck around for nearly two decades until Trump’s Minnesota operation focusing on the “worst of the worst” illegals caught up with him last year. Vang applied for a pardon in July 2025, hoping that the crazies in Minnesota would give it to him and, with Walz’s help, they did.
The pardon came from a three-person panel that consisting of Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), and Minnesota Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. Ellison defended his pardon of the pedophile by citing his opposition to President Trump. I think it is fair to diagnose Trump Derangement when public officials loose child rapists on the public to show their disrespect for the President of the United States.
Today is July 1, which is always treated across the United States as the gateway to a long weekend and the Fourth of July, and little more. This year, it is the run up to the 250th Anniversary of out nation’s founding. July 1 is also, however, the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the most important and most deadly battle of the many important and deadly conflicts in the American Civil War. The two American armies that clashed in the Pennsylvania town sustained more than 50,000 casualties on the Gettysburg battlefield, which may be the saddest and noblest place in America. It is also reputed to be the most haunted, which considering the number of souls lost between July 1 and 3 in 1863, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
[Digression: The Gettysburg Hotel is allegedly haunted, and the proprietors designate specific rooms as haunted. The rent for those rooms is less than the other rooms because, I was told when I called to inquire regarding reservations, “guests tend not to stay the whole night in those rooms.]
Our 250th celebration is an appropriate time to remember Gettysburg, because it is one of those landmark events in American history that could have so easily turned out differently, and if it had, we would never have made to the Centennial, never mind the 250th. The fact that the North prevailed was due to a confluence of random events, the essence of moral luck.
If you have not made at least one pilgrimage to the battlefield, you owe it to yourself, to your family, and to the memory of the combatants, to go. You need not swelter in July. Gettysburg is just as inspiring in the Spring or Fall.
CNN’s summary of yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling that President Trump could fire heads of Executive Branch agencies went like this: “Supreme Court expands Presidential power.” That’s absolutely false. The ruling held that the law blocking Presidents from firing heads of agencies in the Executive Branch was unconstitutional, as many legal scholars have argued for decades, and that the 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had upheld the law at the center of the dispute, was wrongly decided and violated the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. The Constitution has always held that the President, not Congress and not the Supreme Court, has the power to manage the Executive Branch. Fans of judicial activism and our “shadow government” by unelected agencies liked to call this the “unitary executive” theory, as if the idea that the President should have control over the his own branch of government is just a theory. It’s not a theory. It’s the law. SCOTUS was not “expanding” Presidential power by affirming it.
The Supreme Court expanded its own power when it green-lighted a Constitutional amendment in the form of an unconstitutional New Deal law.
The news media, your friends, and even some Supreme Court Justices seem to misunderstand the essence of the judicial review thingy, as well as the Constitutional role of the Supreme Court itself. It doesn’t help that some of the Justices on the Court have similar misconceptions. The two immigration decisions hostile to the Left’s open borders agenda handed down yesterday are causing SCOTUS to be condemned when all they have done is rule that the current administration of the law is legal. And the news media—fuggetaboudit.
Notable was the caterwauling over the Supreme Court ruling this week that the openly abused and distorted Temporary Protected Status really and truly is supposed to be “temporary.” Here is Jake Tapper of CNN “objectively” grilling DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin over deportations of Haitians with that “temporary protected status”:
Tapper: “Will you be deporting all of them?Will they be all deported back to their home countries, Haiti and Syria? And when will these deportations start? Will it be immediately?”
Mullin: “Well, Jake, first of all, Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent. And there’s a lot of people that came over here 15, 20 years ago underneath TPS that’s already changed their status.The whole time these individuals have been here underneath the Temporary Protected Status, they could have applied for a visa. They could have applied for LPR. They could have applied for different directions. But the status itself can be ended in its name itself by saying temporary.”
Tapper: “The Trump administration’s argument is that this was only supposed to last 18 months. My understanding of how the process works is, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has the discretion to extend it if the U.S. State Department says that the countries that these people are from are still considered unsafe, which is why they were afforded TPS status to begin with. Is it the position of the Trump administration that Haiti is a safe country to send these people to?”
Mullin: “Well, we take a lot of things in consideration. Secretary Rubio, the President and I have had multiple conversations about this, obviously… The qualification isn’t quite just that simple. And keep in mind, a lot of these individuals haven’t been here 18 months. They have been here 18 years. Some of them have been here 20 years, 30 years. They have had plenty of time to reestablish their status inside the United States. They have just chosen not to. Then there’s some that has been here the underneath the Biden administration that took advantage of an open border. And those individuals didn’t really come over here because they needed protective status. They came over here because they were taking advantage of a weak leadership. So what we want, and the President has made this very clear, those that are coming to this country legally, they need to be able to contribute to the United States, not be a burden on the taxpayers. And so we are continuing looking at our Temporary Protected Status. Those individuals that do need assistance because of the country they’re in, we’re always looking at them. There isn’t a more generous country in the world than the United States, but we don’t want people to take advantage of it.”
Tapper: “But do you maintain that it is safe in Haiti to send these people back?…The reason I ask is because I heard Stephen Miller, who is driving a lot of this, say that Haiti is safe for Haitians. And I just looked at the State Department’s website, and they have a level four do not travel advisory for Haiti just from a few months ago, from April, and it says, ‘Violent crime is rampant. The expansion of gang organized crime and terrorist activity has led to widespread violence. Crimes involving firearms are common. Crimes include robbery, carjacking, sexual assault and kidnappings for ransom.’ That doesn’t sound safe to me.”
Mullin: “Well, that “do not travel” is not for Haitians.That’s do not travel for the United States, because they are kidnapping or trying to kidnap individuals from the United States because they feel like their family has the money to pay the ransom.”
Tapper: “I understand that. But based on everything I have read, including the U.N. and Human Rights Watch, it doesn’t sound safe for Haitians. More than 8,100 killings documented last year, those weren’t Americans. Haiti is among the top five countries with the highest rates of rape and sexual abuse, with more than 1,200 cases of sexual violence last year. That’s not Americans; 1.4 million people have been displaced. Those aren’t Americans.”
Fascinating! Because of woke logic like Tapper’s, the Supreme Court decision that it was long past the time when Haitians and Syrians permitted to enter the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status based on conditions of decades ago could be told to go home is being called racist and “cruel” by the Axis of Unethical Conduct. The sad (and apparently permanent) fact that Haiti cannot get itself civilized or secure does not make everyone on that perpetually dysfunctional island nation the responsibility of the United States forever. Nor is the reality that Haiti probably will never be safe for Haitians the concern of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The job of the Court is to determine what laws require and prohibit,, not whether one is a good law or a bad law, or whether it is being administered in the most kind and caring manner possible. What is Tapper advocating? He seems to think that SCOTUS should have ruled that all Haitians have a right to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, as long as the U.S. is safer than Haiti. If that’s true for Haiti, it’s true for Syria. If it’s true for Syria, it’s true for Gaza. Somalia. Ukraine. Heck, it’s true for the U.K. If that is the policy our nation wants to embrace, crazy and irresponsible as it is, fine—one of the Communist wackos who won her primary in New York this month advocates that policy—but it is not the Supreme Court’s role to render such an edict. The Court’s job is to declare whether it is illegal for the U.S. to end Temporary Protected Status decades after the events that caused Haitians and Syrians to be temporarily admitted into the U.S.
The Texas State Board of Education has voted to make Bible passages required reading in public schools. The GOP dominated education board voted to pass a new required reading list on last week. Now required literature includes sections of the Book of Exodus for fifth graders, “The Shepherd’s Psalm” for seventh graders, and more. Naturally, Democrats, progressives and Muslims who want the U.S. to become an Islamic society like England and much of Europe are freaking out. And, also naturally, conservatives can’t keep their mouths sufficiently shut to give the law a chance when it gets to the Supreme Court, which it certainly will.
A Republican member of the Texas education board, Julie Pickren, told The Texas Tribune before the 9-5-1 vote that the readings will give students “important insight into the moral and philosophical traditions that have shaped Western civilization. When students engage directly with original writings, speeches, sermons, and foundational texts, they can evaluate ideas and develop a deeper understanding of the principles that have shaped the USA and Texas.”
Them’s fightin’ words to the Left. Board member Evelyn Brooks objected to the list, saying,
“Teachers need to have their autonomy. They’ve been selecting books for decades, for years. This is nothing new. This is not a new concept to teachers. We are simply giving them a mandated list, which I believe is unconstitutional, but regardless of what I believe, let’s not take their autonomy away.”
That isn’t a very persuasive argument either. Democrats and the teachers unions have turned the public schools into progressive indoctrination centers. Today’s teachers can’t be trusted to have “autonomy.” Mandated reading lists are not unconstitutional (Julie’s an ignoramus); even if the Bible section of the list gets struck down, we should take teacher autonomy away from the mountains to the prairie, to the oceans white with foam.
