I confess: I find the reports of the recent hearing before the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility bizarre, the intensity of the prosecutor ,Hamilton “Phil” Fox III of the  Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel surprising, and demand that Giuliani be disbarred surprising. I am limited as to what I can discern from these reports, and to some extent it’s my own fault: until now, I was not aware that such hearings were streamed online, so I could have watched this inquiry live two weeks ago. I can’t now, because one can only watch the broadcasts live; they are erased after they are completed. Good to know, but it’s too late for me to make a first hand analysis.

Among other things that confuse me is why the Washington Post assigned a non-lawyer (and definitely a non legal ethics specialist) to cover the hearing and write the story. That explains the infuriating vagueness of the reporting, as in the repeated explanation that Giuliani is being accused of “misusing his law license.” I know the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct pretty well, as I’ve taught it for over 25 years: “Misusing a law license” doesn’t appear there. Nowhere, including in the Post, can I find the specific rule or rules that the former New York City mayor and prosecutor allegedly violated. There has to be a rule. In New York, Giuliani’s license was suspended on a court’s determination that he  made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements that widespread voter fraud undermined the 2022 election.

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What a failure today has been, and all I was absolutely determined to accomplish was getting the lights on the tree…

1. NOW he’s figured it out..Former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, weenie that he may be, has now figured out how Twitter should operate. He has penned an interesting piece full of regrets and second thoughts, containing these proposed core Twitter principles for the future. He begins his reflections,

There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified. 

I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead:

1. Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control.
2. Only the original author may remove content they produce.
3. Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.

The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles. This is my fault alone….

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I love this! It’s got everything you want in a smoking gun biased news media reveal, and best of all, there’s only one way to interpret it. Once again, the lesson is, “When these people show you who they are, pay attention, and believe them.

In the December 12, 2022 Washington Post story discussed in the previous post—this is the Post’s effort to spin the recent revelations by Elon Musk as the opposite of what they are [Item #2]—the Post’s reporters Cat Zakrzewski, Joseph Menn and Naomi Nix originally wrote, its editors passed on, and the Post published,

But Taibbi and Weiss are not “conservatives.” Taibbi was a reporter and pundit for the very progressive “Rolling Stone” until he became disgusted with the unethical and biased trend in his profession. Bari Weiss was a New York Times editor until she left in a similar demonstration of independence and integrity. If fact, the very reason Elon Musk chose them to be among the analysts and reporters of the Twitter documents he is releasing was precisely because they were not “conservative,” but journalists who have protested and exposed exactly the kind of unethical and anti-democratic conduct the “Twitter Files” reveal. Referring to Weiss and Taibbi in this way was an effort to discredit them and to imply that they are the biased and unethical ones.

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12. Well, that’s one...Rep. Ro Khana (D-CA) on Fox Business:  “It is wrong to censor newspapers. It is wrong to censor journalists. Look, The New York Post hasn’t written a kind thing about me in my six years in Congress. They’re a conservative-point-of-view paper. But that doesn’t mean that you can stop publishing their pieces or articles or censor their journalists from sharing stories…it just offended the basic principles that our country is based on…”

See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? [Pointer: Other Bill]

11. Let’s boycott this unethical restaurant for Christmas...I object to boycotts, but the Metzger Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Virginia should be run out of business in the public interest. The non-profit Christian lobbying organization Family Foundation of Virginia was refused service after making a reservation for a private event because members of the service staff said they were made “uncomfortable” by the group’s political and religious beliefs as stated on its website. The religious discrimination is illegal, the political discrimination is unethical, and the restaurant’s explanation is moronic:

“Metzger Bar and Butchery has always prided itself on being an inclusive environment for people to dine in. In eight years of service, we have very rarely refused service to anyone who wished to dine with us. Recently we refused service to a group that had booked an event with us after the owners of Metzger found out it was a group of donors to a political organization that seeks to deprive women and LGBTQ+ persons of their basic human rights in Virginia…Many of our staff are women and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community. All of our staff are people with rights who deserve dignity and a safe work environment. We respect our staff’s established rights as humans and strive to create a work environment where they can do their jobs with dignity, comfort and safety.”

Fine them, boycott them, bankrupt them. In this country, being able to support political organizations and lobby for laws and policy is a basic American right; aborting living human individuals is not. The claim that this is an “inclusive” environment is a lie. Even religious bigots have a legal right to eat in restaurants, but restaurants have no right to discriminate against them. The principles, if you can call them that, advocated by the Metzger Bar and Butchery is poisonous to democracy. The complaining staff should have been given the choice of serving the group, or learning to code. [Pointer: RB] Continue reading →