Trump Is Heckling MD. Gov. Wes Moore Over His Bronze Star Lie. Good!

I wrote about Md. Governor Wes Moore’s long-term lie about being a Bronze Star recipient in August, when another Democratic Governor who had lied about his military service, Tim “Knucklehead” Walz, was running to be a heartbeat from the Presidency. Apparently Marylanders—Democrats? Progressives?—don’t care about politicians pretending to be war heroes when they weren’t. Interesting. I know my Dad, who was awarded a genuine Bronze Star for battlefield valor as well as a Silver Star, would have considered Moore’s lie disqualifying for public office, and I’d agree with him.

Now, as Trump feuds with various Democratic governors over his threat to send in the National Guard into their crime-ridden cites represented as otherwise with fake statistics, he’s stooped to his usual ad hominem methods regarding Moore, referencing his stolen valor history. Normally, I would regard such tactics as a cheap shot: Moore’s position on the Baltimore crime rate has nothing to do with his military record.

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The Red-Pilling of Jonathan Turley

Yesterday George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley registered one of his increasingly frequent columns mocking the Democratic Party. Conservative pundits, blogs and websites continue to describe him as a liberal Democrat professor because it makes his criticism seem more damning, but I’d be shocked if Professor Turley continues to support his old party.

In the post he writes, a bit in his academic weenie mode, unfortunately, “As many know, I was raised in a politically active, liberal, Democratic family in Chicago and worked much of my life for Democratic candidates and campaigns. This week again reminded many of us how far the party has moved from its more centrist history. That includes another call to pack the Supreme Court with liberals to force or ratify sweeping political and social changes.”

What Turley is really saying is that his old party is now thoroughly nuts, and he’s embarrassed to be associated with them….as he should be. As anyone should be.

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August’s “Imagine” Award Goes To…

…that ridiculous meme, spotted today on social media. The Ethics Alarm’s “Imagine” Award is named after John Lennon’s worst song—well, depending on how you feel about “The Ballad of John and Yoko”—and the absurd utopian fantasy delusions it represents. (John wasn’t even serious about it, but progressives still get misty-eyed when they hear his con-job.)

Ah yes, the perfect society, where everyone succeeds regardless of effort, ability or character! Also where money grows on trees, nobody dies, food and mansions are free, children run and play and never are sad, and pigs fly. Some smart people really think about this crap.

Whoever led them to waste their time, passion and energy bemoaning the fact that up is up, down is down, life is unfair and human beings can never create perfect anythings has a lot to answer for, and yes, I include Jesus and Karl Marx in that group.

The Lisa Cook War

Maybe President Trump has read more history than his detractors give him credit for. Trump 2.0 has appeared to take a lot of inspiration from the transformational “If I have the power, why not use it?” Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, and in his attempt to wrest control over the economy from the Fed (created by The Second Worst President Ever before Biden wandered into the White House, Woodrow Wilson), Trump seems to be emulating another effective and transformational President whom he has previously praised, “King Andy Jackson.”

Jackson famously killed the predecessor to the Federal Reserve, the Second Bank of the United States. The Second Bank of the United States had been chartered for twenty years before Old Hickory took aim at it. It was a hybrid creation, a private institution with exclusive authority to manage the nation’s economy, particularly through the management of currency, without Presidential or Congressional interference. on a national scale. Jackson believed that the decisions of Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank, was biased, in league with Republicans, and not worthy of the trust the bank’s dubious authority required. Sound familiar? He also believed that the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional.

In early 1832, Biddle, in open alliance with the Jeffersonian Democratic- Republican Party’s leaders Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster submitted an application for a renewal of the Bank’s twenty-year charter four years before the charter was set to expire. This was a partisan political move to force Jackson, leading a new breakaway populist offshoot party into making a contentious decision prior to the 1832 presidential election in which Jackson’s Democrats were likely to have to defeat Clay. Jackson was not the man to back away from a fight. (Sound familiar?) When Congress voted to reauthorize the Bank, President Jackson vetoed the bill with a veto message accusing the Bank of the United States of pitting “the planters, the farmers, the mechanic and the laborer” against the “monied interest” that represented the elite and powerful against the interests of the American public. Guess who had the public behind him, and who won what was called “The Bank War,” the popularly elected President of the United States?

Now we have the War against Lisa Cook. President Trump said on Monday that he was taking the extraordinary step of removing Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 2022, in what the always objective New York Times calls “a legally dubious maneuver that could undermine the independence of the nation’s central bank.” Or did they write that in 1832?

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Oh No. Not Flag Burning Again…

Along with a somewhat more arguable EO regarding cashless bail, President Trump just signed an executive order purporting to make “desecration” of the flag a crime and to detain and remove non-citizens who engage in it.

Ugh.

The Supreme Court in 1989 issued a 5-4 ruling that found burning the U.S. flag is protected by the First Amendment. Bush I made a big deal over this as a campaign issue; it was foolish and trivial then, and now that there is SCOTUS precedent declaring the gesture protected speech, that should be the end of the matter. Trump blathered on about flag-burning last year: I was hoping we had heard the end of it. Guess not.

I was stunned that the decision that flag-burning was protected speech was as close as it was. It has been the Left promoting the punishing of political speech (like prosecuting drivers who scuff up “Pride” symbols painted on city streets): shouldn’t conservatives see the slippery slope looming with the criminalization of flag burning?

Trump’s executive order is flagrant pandering. The Axis has been so reliable in opposing more rational measures that now he’s over-reaching. People who burn flags are telling us what they are. It’s useful information.

And it’s definitely protected speech.

Wow…Not For the First Time, President Trump Doesn’t Know What the Hell He’s Talking About…

The topic, fortunately, is baseball, not the economy, foreign policy, or making America great again. Still, it is not a good sign when the leader of the free world spouts off like an ignorant fool professing absolute certainty without any genuine expertise whatsoever. If he does this about baseball…well, you can complete that sentence.

President Trump now demands that Roger Clemens be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite enough evidence that he used banned steroids late in his career to put him in the Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa et al. Rogues Gallery of cheaters with great stats who fail the Hall’s character requirements. In a post on Truth Social today, Trump said that he had just played golf with the 11-time All-Star pitcher, and apparently this makes him an authority on The Rocket’s dubious past.

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Unraveling The Left’s Lawfare Assault On Democracy, (Cont.)

The “lawfare” the Democrats employed against Donald Trump in 2023 and 2024 was a substantial, audacious and damaging breach of all previous political principles, a transparent effort to hold power by using the legal system to eliminate the party’s most powerful adversary. I believe the damage to our system is permanent, much as Democrats eliminated impeachment as an important restraint on the Presidency by using it in such a flagrantly partisan manner in two illicit impeachments. Now there is no longer a taboo against a party using partisan prosecutors to find ways to bobble major political figures using the Soviet “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” method. Even though the Democrats failed, in part due to bad cases, in part to incompetent prosecutors, and most of all because of the astounding determination and resilience of their target, Donald Trump, this strategy will become standard operating procedure, and our system will be nastier, uglier, and less functional for it.

Gee, thanks Democrats!

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Open Forum: Normalcy Is Just Around the Corner, I Swear

(The first and perhaps the last time I will echo Warren G. Harding…)

I know, I know…for another week, I have failed to get more than two posts (on average) up per day, and even those posts have been shorter and less substantive than usual. A confluence of the many obstacles this persistent infected hematoma in my leg has imposed on my activities and an usually heavy workload in other areas have created the problem, but the leg is getting better….for example, the tips of my toes are no longer purple, and, sitting at my desk just aches rather than causing stabbing pain. Here’s an example of how loused up I am: I haven’t watched an entire Red Sox game in August, something hadn’t happened since I was 10.

Meanwhile, speaking of Boston, when did the city of my birth morph into the Confederacy? Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has been making defiant statements and Bluesky posts (signature significance, by the way) about the city in her charge being “safer” because it refuses to cooperate in enforcing Federal law. Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, vowed to “flood the zone” with federal immigration enforcement in response.

Good. I don’t understand how the sanctuary states and cities can be allowed to get away with this return to the “nullification” movement in the South that was a catalyst to the Civil War. I don’t understand the logic of Wu and other Democratic mayors and governors arguing that impeding the enforcement of laws enhances safety. I don’t understand why the Democrats have lashed themselves to the pro-illegal immigration anchor: how can this possibly help the party regain trust and respectability?

As a footnote, Wu amuses me when she boasts about Boston being the “safest major American city.” All of America’s major cities are unacceptably crime-ridden; all of them are governed by radically progressive and woke Democratic mayors. Saying that one of them is the “safest” is like raving about the best episode of “Three’s Company.”

Well, enough from me. This is your space: use it wisely and well.

Oh! One more thing: today I was offered a contribution from a new commenter that read, “Daha enerjik ve canlı bir masaj deneyimi isteyenler için İzmir masöz kızlar iyi bir tercihtir.” Sadly, I did not deem this worthy of admission to the ranks of privileged commenters.

Mid-August Ethics Round-Up, 8/19/25

This is the life I have chosen: I just was hit with a $400 charge (350 euro) for mistakenly using a licensed image last year that—get this—belongs to Germany. With all my posts, its only the second time this has happened: my practice is to apologize, take the graphic down, and pay the fine. This is what ethicists do. This one hurts a bit more than the last ($750) charge, just because of the time of year (cash flow is rough) and the confluence of projects. Hey! EA is due for another installment of my mass tort/ non-lawyer partner law firms/ litigation financing scandal report! Watch this space….

1. Weird story of the day: A park ranger at Yosemite was fired for mounting a Pride banner (above) on El Capitan. Of course, NBC, in its report, drips with sympathy for the (trans) woman, whom it insists on calling “they” resulting in a completely confusing report:

“‘I’m devastated,’ said Joslin, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns. “We don’t take our positions in the park service to make money or to have any kind of huge career gains. We take it because we love the places that we work. I have a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, and I could be making a lot more money in Silicon Valley, which is only a few hours away, but I made career choices to position myself in Yosemite National Park, because this is the place that I love the most.’”

Then why did you use your position to make an unauthorized political statement while marring the natural beauty that tourists expect to see in National Parks? More from NBC (them)…

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Trump Says He’s Going To Try To End Mail-In Balloting. Good.

The President hinted yesterday that he’s planning on using an Executive Order to shut down mail-in balloting. Of course the Axis is going bonkers, although they would probably be going bonkers if Trump said that he wanted to make mail-in balloting universal across America—whatever he says, does or wants to do is by definition evil, you see. Also naturally, the President paired his warning with his usual off-the cuff exaggerations, giving foes wonderful targets for tangential attacks. No, the U.S. isn’t the only nation or even one of just a few nations to use mail-in ballots, as CNN and others were quick to note in “Nyah nyah nyah! He lied again!” fashion, to which my response is “So the Hell what?” Both “everybody does it” and “everybody doesn’t do it” are invalid rationalizations.

The Multiple Sclerosis News Network this morning felt that a strong argument against Trump’s war on mail-in balloting is that he urged voters to use the device to vote for him and Republicans in 2024. Stupid pundits appeal to stupid people: of course he did. That was the system in use: Trump foolishly hamstrung his own campaign by telling Republicans not to vote by mail in 2020. The Axis advocates of insecure elections (all the better to cheat you with!) also say that the fact that Trump won the popular vote in 2024 (by a slim 1.5% margin) proves that he is wrong about mail-in ballots and that the system doesn’t favor Democrats.

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