“What’s going on here?” Good question: even more appropriate than usual. Who started this ethics mess may never be known, but who is responsible for it getting out of control is clear.

This adorable group, the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir…

based in Greenville, South Carolina, had toured Williamsburg, Virginia before coming last week to Washington, D.C., to visit key historical and governmental sites. The group was about to sing the National Anthem in National Statuary Hall when Andrew Tremel, the visitor operations manager at the Architect of the Capitol, halted them. But David Rasbach, the founder and director of the choir, told Tremel that congressional offices had granted permission for the group to perform, so Tremel relented and gave the okay. Video of the debacle, however, shows Rasbach cutting off the singers in the middle of the “Star Spangled Banner’s” fourth verse of the song. A female Capitol Police officer had directed a congressional staffer to stop the performance. Rasbach told everyone who would listen that she informed him that such performances are considered demonstrations, and that demonstrations in the U.S. Capitol are banned (as many jailed January 6, 2021 protest participants will now attest).

She also said, allegedly, that some people were or would be “offended” (by little children singing their nation’s patriotic anthem in the U.S. Capitol. You know, like in “Doctor Strangelove”: “Gentlemen. You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”).

The Capitol Police dutifully rose in defense of one of its own, saying in a statement:

“Recently somebody posted a video of a children’s choir singing the Star-Spangled Banner in the U.S. Capitol Building and wrongfully claimed we stopped the performance because it ‘might offend someone. Here is the truth. Demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol. Of course, because the singers in this situation were children, our officers were reasonable and allowed the children to finish their beautiful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. The Congressional staff member who was accompanying the group knew the rules, yet lied to the officers multiple times about having permission from various offices. The staffer put both the choir and our officers, who were simply doing their jobs, in an awkward and embarrassing position.”

Oh no you don’t, said Rasbach. “That is not true—he did not lie to anybody,” the director said of the congressional staffer. Rasbach said that the female officer put her hand down, directing the staffer to stop the performance. Indeed, the video shows that the choir was not allowed to finish, as you can see at the 2:26 mark in the video below…

🚨The Rushingbrook Children's Choir sang the National Anthem in Statuary Hall. a Capitol Police officer stopped them mid-song. Capitol Police claims they didn't stop the choir. The choir director tells the whole story in my exclusive interview here. 🚨https://t.co/ZRNbWy75la pic.twitter.com/ijiq4pw3X8

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 2, 2023

After he had directed the choir to stop singing, Rasbach says he spoke to the female officer and asked her, “How do you think this is going to affect these children? Their first time visiting their Capitol and then they have this disappointment.” Her response, he claims: “She shrugged her shoulders, saying, ‘They sounded beautiful, but… They can go outside and sing.”

But wait! There’s more!

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What a mess.

Blinded by wokeness and desire to pander to typical Californians (if not typical baseball fans, which is, after all, their market) the Los Angeles Dodgers invited the group ‘The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ to the team’s Pride Night this year, coming up fast on June 16. The group mocks religious objections to certain sexual practices and orientations by satirizing religious imagery and employing cross-dressing. They have been fairly described as flamboyantly anti-Catholic drag queen nuns. Recognizing that this may not have been the wisest move (a low level LGBTQ staffer seems to have sneaked the group on to the list of invitees), the Dodgers retracted the invitation. You know what that meant: there were screams of bigotry and protest from left-wing activists, including a teachers’ union that warned that refusing to honor the drag queen nuns “will lead to more deaths.” That’s the ticket these days: anything short of full endorsement of fringe sexual groups makes one complicit in theoretical hate crimes. Being weenies, Dodger officials went into full grovel mode. They offered their “sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and their friends and family.”

Now religious fans and Catholic groups are upset. This is a binary situation: the Dodgers can be targeted by the anti-religions, LGBTQ+ zealots as bigots, confident that local news media will support them, or it can honor a group that is openly hostile to people of faith. Good job, Dodgers!

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May 29 is the anniversary of the moment when, at 11:30 a.m. in 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, became the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the exclamation mark of Hillary’s remarkable and ethically admirable life. He was the first admittee into The Ethics Alarms Hall of Heroes as an Ethics Hero Emeritus. His story is republished (from the defunct but still available Ethics Scoreboard), here.

1. About that cartoon…Ethics Alarms mentioned the hypocrisy of the despicable Memorial Day Weekend cartoon inflicted on the nation by the Washington Post, which ham-handedly compared Republicans to fascists authoritarians. Authoritarians hold power by fearmongering and falsehoods, and any defender of cartoonist Ann Telnaes‘s juvenile drawing (using the hallowed graves at Arlington National Cemetery as a cheap prop) will have to explain away Chuck Schumer’s nicely-timed slap at the single branch of the government which currently stands in the way of the numerous Biden Administration incursions on the Constitution. In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court unanimously held that the EPA had exceeded its authority (as a part of the executive branch, that means the Biden Administration) by forbidding an Idaho couple from building on their build on land near Priest Lake under the Clean Water Act. The court said that the land does not constitute a wetland under the CWA, and made it crystal clear that the words of the statute demanded that decision. Yet even though the decision was unanimous, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader attacked the decision this way on Twitter: “This MAGA Supreme Court is continuing to erode our country’s environmental laws. Make no mistake—this ruling will mean more polluted water, and more destruction of wetlands. We’ll keep fighting to protect our waters.” Two Obama appointees and Biden’s SCOTUS appointee joined in the ruling, but Democrats want to represent the unanimous decision as “MAGA.” In this case, at least, it was—if MAGA means not allowing the government to break laws and exceed its authority because it has decided it’s for “the greater good.” The White House also attacked the decision, neatly avoiding the matter of all 9 justices concluding that the EPA was violating the law and infringing on the property rights of American citizens. “It puts our Nation’s wetlands – and the rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds connected to them – at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers, and businesses rely on,” wrote Joe’s puppeteers. It’s all Trump’s fault! These MAGA fanatics like Justice Sotomayor seem to think that the government, which knows best, should follow laws before doing by edict what it deems wise!

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Does anyone recall anything like this happening in previous crazy times, like the mid-Sixties? If you somehow missed this episode, “listen my children and you will hear…”

Shellyne Rodriguez was an adjunct art professor at CUNY Hunter College in New York City. When she saw a group of pro-life students, members of Students for Life, distributing anti-abortion materials on campus earlier this month, she attacked, throwing their pamphlets in the air and screaming at them, saying,

“You’re not educating shit! This is fucking propaganda! What are you going to do like anti-trans next? This is bullshit! This is violent. You’re triggering my students!”

After a shaken student tried to babble and apology (for existing?)Rodriguez responded, “No, you’re not! Because you can’t even have a fucking baby. So you don’t even know what that is…Get this shit out of here, fuck this shit!” Then she threw the group’s pamphlets off their table.

Hunter’s pro-choice student group, CUNY for Abortion Rights, tried to defend the indefensible, thus destroying their own credibility, stating (falsely)

“Hunter College adjunct educator Shellyne Rodriguez approached the display, constructively critiqued the group members, and eventually physically took down items from the table.  Her actions to shut down the tabling were fully justified, and are part of a long and celebrated CUNY legacy of confronting groups such as military recruiters who disseminate misleading information. Anti-abortion groups are in collusion with anti-queer and trans, anti-labor, anti-Palestinian campaigns, in a larger [sense] violate people’s bodily autonomy, economic well-being, and collective determination.”

The statement was co-signed by the Palestine Solidarity Alliance.

But wait! There’s more!

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