1. Well this is certainly moronic…NBC senior reporter Alex Sietz-Wald said out-loud on MSNBC that the biggest challenge for Democrat governors ending their mask mandates is that the Left has made mask-wearing such a fetish of their woke identity that they may resist giving it up:

So I think this is going to be a challenge for a lot of Democratic leaders to get their base comfortable with the idea of going back to normal. I mean, for the past two years so much of the identity of what it meant to be a Democrat, to follow the science, was tied up in masking and following these rules and regulations. And if you didn’t do that, you were, you know, a bad person, you were Ron DeSantis, you were a denier. So, now, these Democratic leaders need to get their base comfortable with unwinding all of that.

Follow which science when? The masking has long been virtue-signalling for those who think complying with arbitrary authoritarian edicts is virtuous. It was most appropriate that the first Democrat TV personality to proclaim that “I would wear a mask and I might do that indefinitely. Why do I need the flu or a cold even?” was “The View’s” resident moron, Joy Behar. In a moment of rare self-awareness, she attributed this decision to “the little voice in her head.” Indeed, few have smaller ones, and Joy proved it by being caught just hours later dining out with her friends without a mask. Continue reading →

Over at Quillette, an American University teacher calling himself “Keith David” (I can’t find a reference for him) writes “A Student Sleuth Found Evidence that Our University Practices Reverse Racism. Here’s Why I Advised Him Not to Publish It.”

It is a long article, and deserves to be read in its entirety even at the risk of having your head explode. I find the author’s approach to the problem both typical and depressing, but before I enumerate my reactions, here are some major points in the article: Continue reading →

Fortuitously, this time the emergency room visit is occurring on a Friday, when an open forum would normally occur anyway! What luck! Calloo callay!

Go crazy with ethics analysis and provocation, please. I’ll see ya when I see ya…

Those who like to maintain that the Founders were infallible and the Constitution flawless would do well to remember this date, when the U.S. narrowly averted a disaster entirely made possible by bone-headed drafting of our road-map to a republic. On February 17, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the United States, the first peaceful transfer of power from one political party in our history, as Jefferson’s fledgling Democratic-Republicans upset the Federalists of Washington, Adams and Hamilton. It was a close call, however, because Jefferson was nearly defeated by hos own Vice-President, the sinister Aaron Burr (That’s him on the left above.)Though Jefferson and Burr ran on the same ticket, the Constitution required state elector votes for both men to be counted separately. As a result, Jefferson and Burr emerged from the process tied at 73 electoral votes apiece, while the sitting President, John Adams, came in third at 65 votes. This sent the final vote to the House of Representatives. Of course, if Burr weren’t a sociopathic cur, he could have solved the botch by simply withdrawing from the Presidential race since nobody voted for him to be President. The Federalist-controlled House of Representatives, meanwhile, was happy to see Jefferson enmeshed in the controversy, and were delighted in the dealock  In the end it was Federalist Alexander Hamilton who saved the day and the nation, as he persuaded the House to vote against Burr, whom he called unfit. (This moment of high principle—Jefferson and Hamilton were far from pals–led to the duel with Burr in 1804 that resulted in Hamilton’s death.)  As for the ridiculously incompetent voting system, it was cleared up by the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804. The fact that the first version didn’t inflict Aaron Burr on the still-vulnerable United States, however, was pure moral luck.

1. “Best Excuse for Unethical Conduct” of the Month: Bruce Lee, a Chicago ticket broker, was convicted of fraudulently selling tickets to White Sox games and  sentenced to prison this week. The  federal judge rejected his defense that he had actually helped the team, because it wasn’t going fill those seats anyway and the fans who bought his fake tickets spent money on food, drink, and souvenirs. The judge called the argument that nobody was harmed “delusional,” and saying that it was important to make the point to others who might try similar schemes that getting caught would have negative consequences.

The judge must be a Republican, since that line of reasoning appears to be taboo on the other side of the aisle regarding “minor” crimes. Continue reading →

1. There were three interesting developments on the legal front today with ethics implications:

• Royal slime-ball Prince Andrew, already shunned by the Royal Family, agreed today to pay an undisclosed sum to a victim of Jefferey Epstein’s sexcapades who accused the younger brother of Prince Charles of sexually abusing her when she was a minor. David Boies, showing his versatility after representing Harvey Weinstein, is the lawyer for  Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre. The amount of the out-of-court settlement will be not disclosed, Boies revealed.  Giuffre sued the Duke of York in August 2021, claiming that he abused her on multiple occasions in 2001 when she was a 17-year-old victim of the sex trafficking ring Epstein ran for decades. Of course, a settlement doesn’t mean that Andrew is guilty. Then again,

• The New York Times was found by a jury not to have defamed  Sarah Palin when it maliciously accused her of inciting murder with her campaign map. The jury didn’t know it, but the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, had already announced that he would dismiss Palin’s complaint regardless of what they decided, as a matter of law. “We’ve reached the same bottom line … but it’s on different grounds,” the Judge said upon hearing their verdict. “You decided the facts; I decided the law. As it turns out, they’re both in agreement in this case.”

Too bad, but both the jury and the judge were right. The problem wasn’t malice despite the Times’ absurd claim that no malice was intended, a key element of the standard for finding defamation when the media attacks a public figure. The problem was that the editorial in question was still opinion, even though it stated Palin’s guilt as a fact. Had the same statement been in an alleged news story, it would have been a different matter.

• Insurers for the bankrupt Remington Arms Company and its subsidiaries agreed to pay the Sandy Hook Elementrary School families the maximum amount of damages available to them, $73 million. The settlement deal will also allow them to release thousands of documents that the plaintiffs obtained in discovery. A settlement isn’t precedent, and both sides had good reason to be wary of a trial. The victims in the Sandy Hook massacre raised the possibility of a jury persuaded more by emotion than law. Still, he unbroken record of attempts to find gun manufacturers liable for shootings made going to trial a risk for the anti-gun forces. As is typical, both sides claimed that they were pleased with the deal.

Continue reading →