Juneteenth is our first, and one hopes, last DEI holiday. The idea of having national holidays contrived to celebrate particular racial, ethnic and gender groups in an outburst of white male guilt is anti-American to the core and profoundly offensive. True, Rationalization #22 (“There are worse things.”) provides some solace; the holiday is hardly the worst thing that the national freakout over a drug-addicted black thug resisting arrest in Minneapolis and running into the wrong cop inflicted on the U.S. But the year Biden’s autopen established it, 2021, speaks volumes.

Meanwhile….

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Talk about res ipsa loquitur.

Another title I considered for this post: “Now THAT’S a comb-over!”

I know that it is wrong to take an instant dislike to someone because of his or her appearance. You can’t judge a book by its cover, after all, it is what’s inside that matters, and so on. A dear friend and theater world associate died this year, and he was a odd-looking, gay, neurodivergent costume designer who presented himself in public so bizarrely at times that it boggled my mind. He was also as kind a human being as you could find in a lifetime of searching.

But Kolby, Kolby, Kolby...the fussy mustache? The prissy smile? That hair? I find myself asking, “What are the chances that this guy is even barely tolerable? What message is he sending with all of this? Why is he sending that message?

Related questions include: How serious can Democrats be about attracting support from young men if they promote their embrace of this guy? Does the whole party reject the premise of the Cognitive Dissonance Scale? If he’s a secret political genius or something, shouldn’t they hid him in bunker or have him wear a mask like Mexican wrestlers?

Would you let someone who looked like this date your daughter? Your son? Would you trust him to babysit?

I’ll give Dana the last word…

Ethics Alarms giveth and Ethics Alarms taketh away…

I was considering dropping this post, which has been on the runway in a holding pattern, but decided that I couldn’t let the Boston Red Sox get too full of themselves for doing the right thing.

Before its 10-8 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays a week ago, fans including families and children expecting an innocent night with the National Pastime entered the gates of Fenway Park to be confronted by a drag show. The Red Sox had a stage built in front of concessions stands so exhibitionist narcissists with various gender issues could pose and preen.

Huh. Now what does cross-dressing, transvestism and non-standard sexual proclivities have to do with baseball? The answer is absolutely nothing, except that baseball teams under MLB Comissioner Rob Manfred and the Red Sox longtime owner John Henry (who once dated Katie Couric, which is all you have to know) are cringingly woke. The Sox went so far as to paint “Black Lives Matter” on the outside of Fenway facing the Mass Pike in 2020, and more than half the team boycotted the traditional invitation to the White House after its last World Championship in 2018. (Racist Orange Hitler was President then too).

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I can.

Three, in fact.

But I’ll save them for the end. Meanwhile, yesterday’s mass scream of frustration was about as futile and useless as a protest can be. Let’s review the Ethics Alarms Protest Ethics Check List:

1. Is this protest just and necessary?

2. Is the primary motive for the protest unclear, personal, selfish, too broad, or narrow?

3. Is the means of protest appropriate to the objective?

4. Is there a significant chance that it will achieve an ethical objective or contribute to doing so?

5. What will this protest cost, and who will have to pay the bill?

6. Will the individuals or organizations that are the targets of the protest also be the ones who will most powerfully feel its effects?

7. Will innocent people be adversely affected by this action? (If so, how many?)

8. Is there a significant possibility that anyone will be hurt or harmed? (if so, how seriously? How many people?)

9. Are the protesters prepared to take full responsibility for the consequences of the protest?

10. Would an objective person feel that the protest is fair, reasonable, and proportional to its goal?

11. What is the likelihood that the protest will be remembered as important, coherent, useful, effective and influential?

12. Could the same resources, energy and time be more productively used toward achieving the same goals, or better ones?

The cumulative clear answers show a protest that is even sillier than the usual ones. We don’t have a king, and Donald Trump doesn’t act like one. If he did (or could), all the obstructionist, partisan judges we have seen over-reaching to block his legitimate policies would be in prison, without heads, or on the lam. The anti-democratic citizens (and illegals) demonstrating yesterday are not the supporters of our elected President and our system that elected him, but those who still refuse to accept that election (or his first one, for that matte).

They were also carrying signs like this (in Boston, at least):

Yes, this guy’s a moron.

“Number of kings holding steady at zero,” one conservative wag tweeted.

“The No Kings protests appear to be a massive success,” wrote long-time Trump Derangement victim Jonathan Chait. Success at what? Meanwhile, con-artist Elizabeth Warren tweeted, ‘Today, I stand with the millions of Americans making clear this country doesn’t belong to a king. It’s a democracy, and it belongs to the people.”

And the people voted for Trump over the undemocratically-nominated DEI hack your party gave them as an alternative, after four years of using a shell of a man as a puppet POTUS.

Trump is as much a king as Warren is a Native American.

I see three positive results of the protests. First, they were entirely peaceful, reminding everyone smart enough to be reminded but dumb enough not to have figured it out themselves. The events produced what constitutional protests are supposed to look like, and they were exactly what the anti-ICE riots in L.A. are not. Second, the protests illustrated why the Democratic Party is so unpopular and in danger of crumbling, just like its representatives in Congress showed us when they acted like second-graders to protest Trump’s State of the Union speech a few months ago. The protests contained a mess of varied far-Left obsessions, illustrated by Pride flags, pro-Hamas displays, call-outs for illegal immigrants, and advocacy for socialism and Communism.

Mostly, however, the protests were a nice safety valve release for the Trump Deranged like the sad, once-intelligent seniors on my Facebook feed, who sounded like they were going to the senior prom.

Vance Luther Boelter, the man being sought for the murder of two Minnesota state legislators, was appointed by Democratic Governor Tim Walz to a state board in 2019. Boelter also had flyers for today’s anti-Trump “No Kings” protests in his car along with a manifesto and a list of 70 political targets.

Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband were fatally shot in their home, and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife barely survived the assassin’s attack on them. Hortman had received a lot of publicity for voting to block state benefits from going to illegal aliens.

Gov. Tim (Knucklehead) Walz said these appeared to be a “targeted act of political violence.” Boy, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to slip something by Tim…

Walz, as you probably know, has been fomenting violence against ICE and the Trump Administration by calling the immigration enforcement agency “the Gustapo.”

And another irresponsible and partisan court ruling is stayed…

Last night, in Newsom v. Trump, Federal District Court Judge Charles Breyer issued a ruling against President Donald Trump’s federalization of some 4000 California National Guard troops without California Governor Newsom’s request to stop the violent protests against ICE deportations in Los Angeles.

Gee, what a surprise: the judge is the brother of retired knee-jerk progressive Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. With amazing speed, Reason had a “Yay team!” essay to post by libertarian legal scholar Ilya Somin, who wrote, “Judge Breyer’s opinion strikes me as impressive and compelling.”

That’s odd: Breyer’s opinion strikes me as “it isn’t what it is” partisan junk, and plainly so. Somin’s defense of it struck me as libertarian junk. Somin:

“As Judge Breyer explains, National Guard troops are normally under the control of their state governments, and can only be federalized in narrowly specified emergency circumstances. The statute Trump relied on to federalize California National Guard troops, 10 U.S.C. Section 12406, can only be used in one of the following situations:

1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;

(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or

(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States

The professor then writes that (2), the obvious justification being used by Trump, doesn’t work because “there is no rebellion.” There isn’t? Democratic cities across the country have been refusing to allow illegal aliens to be arrested and deported and openly defying Federal law. Now the “sanctuary cities” are allowing those illegals and their supporters to riot and endanger ICE agents while mayors and governors call the protests “peaceful” (and some governors call the Ice Agents “the Gustapo”…)

Rebelling against Federal law is a rebellion.

Breyer’s opinion did not even mention President Johnson sending in the Guard to Birmingham, Alabama without Governor George Wallace’s assent, the famous precedent for Trump’s action. How convenient.

Then, after Reason’s applause, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals paused Breyer’s order A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit scheduled a hearing in the case five days from now.

Sooner or later, Trump’s move will be ruled ethical, legal and legitimate.