He is unlikely to survive, but whether he does or not, it is not a coincidence that there have been assassination attempts on Kirk and Donald Trump while the Democratic Party and “the resistance” has claimed and is claiming that conservatives now place democracy at risk, with Democratic leaders calling for violent opposition, and large swathes of the political Left cheered the assassination of an insurance executive.

If this is not what the Left really wants, it is still what they have encouraged with their irresponsible fear-mongering and reckless rhetoric.

The Supreme Court this week overturned a federal judge’s order prohibiting ICE agents in Los Angeles from stopping people and questioning them about their immigration status based solely on factors like their ethnicity, their appearance, their language or accents and their places of work. If this isn’t “racial profiling,” which courts have found to be a breach of the 4th Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches an seizures, it sure is awfully close.

The 6-3 decision wasn’t signed and had no majority opinion. Justice Sotomayor, predictably (joined by the two other progressive women on the court) said in her typical dissent that “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.” And…

” After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little. Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent.”

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Republicans and conservatives have “pounced” on the fact that a brutal black-on-white murder in Charlotte, North Carolina that occurred on August 22 and was recorded on security video has received no publicity on Axis mainstream media outlets. (That’s how the event will be reported when the progressive, Democratic propaganda media organs finally have to mention the story.) August 22: that’s more than two weeks ago. The clip above captures the moment right before a career criminal, Decarlos Brown Jr., 35, who had 14 arrests on his record, slashed the throat of Iryna Zarutska, 23, on a light rail train in Charlotte, killing her almost instantly.

But it wasn’t news. Huh.

Charlotte embargoed the crime as long as it could, keeping the video secret. This is how the violent and insufficiently policed Democrat-run cities claim that violent crime is decreasing, I guess. Even after the horrific murder became (well, sort of) public, the NY Times, Washington Post…oh, you can name the rest by now, I hope…didn’t find that it was news fit to print or that darkness over the crime would harm democracy. Rasmussen reports wrote yesterday,

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The United States Tennis Association asked broadcasters of the U.S. Open to censor any protests or negative reactions to President Donald Trump’s appearance at the men’s singles final today between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. The President, an avowed tennis fan, was loudly booed when he last attended a match at the Open in his first term

Here’s the relevant section from the USTA email to U.S. Open broadcasters :

“With respect to Broadcast Coverage, the President will be shown on the World Feed and the Ashe Court Feed during the opening anthem ceremony. We ask all broadcasters to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President’s attendance in any capacity, including ENG [Electronic News Gathering] coverage.”

There is no problem with the USTA making it clear to attendees that such demonstrations will, for example, result in removal from the stadium, but telling broadcasters not to report what, if anything, happens during their broadcasts is censorship, as well as asking the broadcasters to be complicit in a lie. The broadcasters, all of them, should tell the association to bite them.

The USTA will show Trump during the National Anthem, which “Bounce,” the tennis substack that is clearly infected with the Trump Derangement Virus and that first reported the memo, calls the playing of the anthem “one of the noisiest and bombastic portions of Sunday’s events” —nice—and describes the USTA’s request as “further complicity in broadcasting Trump’s desired stagecraft for his first appearance at the U.S. Open in a decade.”

Isn’t everyone sick of this attitude? The President of the United States has always engaged in public appearances that emphasize the importance and significance of the office, as well as embracing POTUS’s traditional role as “a human flag.” This isn’t “Trump’s stagecraft” nor is honoring the U.S. at a sporting event “bombastic” except to anti-American progressives like Ben Rothenberg, the writer of “Bounces.”

Sure, people like Rothenberg are the reason we have so many citizens who so revel in hating the elected President of the United states that they cannot be counted on to be civil when their nation’s leader appears in public. Nevertheless, journalists—and broadcasters of sports events are allegedly reporters—are ethically bound to report what happens no matter who it embarrasses or reveals to be an asshole.

1. To start off, let’s survey today’s headlines and anti-Trump spin at the President Trump Jeering Society, aka. The New York Times:

• Many Cities Say Yes to Federal Police Help, but No to ‘Occupation’

• Grand Juries in D.C. Reject Wave of Charges Under Trump’s Crackdown
• How Trump’s Blunt-Force Diplomacy Is Pushing His Rivals Together
• Three Opinion Writers on Whether Congress Can Rein in Trump [Note: All three are vocal anti-Trump pundits]
• Will Trump’s Caesarism Last? [Quote: “Barack Obama and George W. Bush were far more successful at consolidating presidential power, and Trump 1.0 mostly demonstrated that an inexperienced, incompetent president could still be pinned down like Gulliver….” Response: Well yes, when two partisan impeachments and a lengthy investigation weaponized by his Democratic predecessor effectively made it difficult for him to govern…]
• Will Trump Have to Run From the Economy?

• Second Weak Jobs Report Undercuts Trump’s Claims of a Booming Economy

There are no positive stories about the Administration in the Times at all. A few are arguably straight reporting, like “What Has the Trump Administration Gotten From Law Firms and Universities?”

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I would be having an Open Forum on Ethics Alarms today no matter what day of the week it was, unfortunately. The massive theatrical project I am involved in to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the student musical theater organization I inadvertently founded as a first year law student is just a week away now, and today in a particularly challenging segment of production week for me.

And that isn’t all I have to do. I feel like Dick Van Dyke in “What a Way to Go!” (above).

If you are in the Washington, D.C. area or going to be here next week and would like to come to the show (there is only a “suggested donation”), email me and I’ll give you all the details.

Today there are at least two stories that are exploding Trump-obsessed heads all over, and both of them raise serious ethical, legal and constitutional issues. I’ll try to write about both, but you might want to start here yourself. Issue one is the reported Justice Department discussions on making it more difficult for trans individuals to obtain firearms in the wake of the second transsexual mass-shooter in recent years. I think that’s the right count. In a related issue, the news media, and even the AI bots, are in full defensive mode regarding trans shooters.

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Yikes.

Jeff Guinn’s comment on the previous post included a link to a Reason report on Fed governor Lisa Cook’s record before Biden appointed her and Congress confirmed her. since the law permitting Trump to fire her specifies “for cause,” and it usually isn’t just firing for cause when the cause is something everyone knew about (or should have) when the employee was put in the job, her extreme woke craziness can’t be used by the President to dump her, but it can be used to conclude that the woman is untrustworthy, is likely to be motivated by a political agenda rather than the public interest, is almost certainly firmly in the Destroy Trump By Any Means Necessary” camp, and is not above manipulating the interest rates to foil the Trump Administration.

From Reason’s Robby Soave:

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Daniel Currell, a management consultant, has a fascinating and depressing op-ed up at the New York Times site [gift link!] about how Disney’s theme parks have become virtually unaffordable for the average American, indeed even the average middle class American. He writes in part,

…We all judge our well-being against something, typically our past and our peers. Through either of those lenses, the Disney parks — and many similar institutions of American culture — may offer a piece of the puzzle. Compared with the past, a Disney trip is more expensive, to be sure, but perhaps more important, it feels much more expensive, because at every turn one is being invited to level up and spend more. Thanks to social media, we can now see the experiences that divide us. Go to Instagram and search for #Club33, the invitation-only clubs hidden within Disney properties. What you see there will not make you feel a kinship with your fellow man, unless you are one of the very few invited in. America’s 20th century was a fortunate moment when we could rely on companies like Disney to deliver rich and unifying elements of our culture. Walt Disney hoped that his audience would have “no racial, national, political, religious or social differences”; he wanted to appeal to everyone, in no small part because appealing to everyone was profitable. It was a time when big institutions were trusted, and the culture they created was shared by nearly all Americans…The market, and increasingly the culture, is dominated by the affluent. And technology is enabling companies to see these previously invisible class divides and act on them. Based on what we earn, we see different ads, stand in different lines, eat different food, stay in different hotels, watch the parade from different sections and on and on. What’s profitable today is not unification. It’s segmentation.

The article explains that a trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World is now likely to cost a family of four a base cost of $700 on ride tickets alone, plus admission costs. The families who can afford it pay roughly $90 to get front-of-the-line access to a single premier ride, otherwise a less affluent family wait up to an hour waiting to get on. It follows the travails of one middle class family on the dream trip to Disney World it had saved up for over several years. Seven days in Orlando cost about $8,000 for two adults and three children, not counting travel and lodging at an off-site hotel. That was 15% of what the family earned year after taxes, and it was still an inferior experience to what the “elite” could pay for.

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