EA discussed “ideological capture” earlier today focusing on the law and academia, but as Americans who were paying attention (and who don’t rely on the Axis news media for the news), we were introduced last week to the desperate straits of the Smithsonian Institution, saddled with a woke ninny who gives “land acknowledgments” at every opportunity, and who pretended, under oath, not to know just how obsessed with promoting racial division and public contempt for their own nation the museum under her charge is.
On July 4th, the White House released a thorough and nausea-producing report on just how much “ideological capture” has infected the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). Titled SAVING AMERICA’S STORY: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage, the report, which you can and should read here, presents a damning case.
I had written earlier about this monstrosity,
…on the Smithsonian website, but there is so, so much more. For example, here is the Smithsonian insinuating, in text-book fake news fashion, that Ben Franklin may have used “enslaved persons” (the new, approved woke-speak for “slaves”) in his research, though there is absolutely no evidence of it.
The full segment on FOX this morning where I went after @NYCMayor. It includes the back and forth with me and @GriffJenkins which eventually led to FOX apologizing twice FOR me after I left! By the way I like Griff a lot:) pic.twitter.com/hef9LMRCoT
Some commenters were exercised that I called Whoopi Goldberg’s exhortation on “The View” for her audience to “block [Trump’s Presidency] every way we can! That’s all. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. Don’t wait until November. Start looking now” a pure violation of FCC rules, which it is. Broadcast networks are permitted to use the airwaves only if they hew to the public interest. Editorials are in the public interest when they are labelled as such, and political endorsements are permitted. However, a network, in this case ABC, using the privilege of a government-owned and regulated broadcast channel to call on its audience to block the elected government of the United States is not in the public interest, and no news program with an FCC license has ever crossed that line before.
Now comes Fox News, swinging to the other extreme. Radio host Sid Rosenberg joined “Fox News and Friends” last week and launched into a rant against New York’s Muslim, Hamas-supporting, anti-Israel, communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as you can see above. The trigger was the Mayor’s grandstanding about wanting to arrest Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes.
Rosenberg was a guest, and as a guest, was not speaking for Fox News, nor was Fox News responsible for his opinions. Nonetheless, “Fox and Friends” co-host Griffin Jenkins felt it was necessary to distance the network from Rosenberg’s opinions and to disavow them directly to the Fox viewers.
“We know there are heated feelings around this war last hour, while discussing the role anti-Israel is playing in the rise of antisemitism, one of our guests labeled New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a quote, “terrorist,” Jenkins said. “Now that word carries an extremely serious meaning, it should not be used freely and its important we distinguish between strong political criticism and factual allegations.”
All Fox News needed to say, if it really needed to say anything, was to repeat the hoary disclaimer that the opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of Fox News. Who in broadcast news ever distinguishes between strong political criticism and factual allegations? On the other networks, guests, contributors and sometimes hosts routinely call President Trump a racist, a fascist, a pederast, a criminal, a dictator, demented, a murderer and worse. Virtually never does a representative of the program apologize or disavow these extreme accusations, and I only say “virtually” because I can’t monitor all the networks all the time.
Jenkins is right: enabling terrorists, encouraging or rationalizing terrorism doesn’t make someone a literal terrorist. However, he pushed back on that position when Rosenberg stated it. That was all that is necessary. He was engaging in responsible news analysis moderation. The other networks seldom even meet that standard.
The Washington Free Beacon, which mixes really dumb features, like “Exclusive Sports Analysis: Kate Upton Is the GOAT of WAGs (and Always Will Be)“, with some good investigative research from time to time, just revealed Ossoff’s make-up bill as if they had discovered that he secretly had a long-term romantic relationship with an elk. Behold:
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.) has spent thousands of dollars in campaign funds on “makeup services” in 2026, and his artist of choice has a long list of Hollywood credits… Ossoff has paid makeup artist Stephanie Ponder $2,887 for “makeup services” since February, federal campaign finance disclosures show. The most recent payment of $900 came on June 10. ..Ossoff’s four-figure makeup expenditures stand out among federal candidates. The Georgia senator who is running for reelection against Republican Rep. Mike Collins (Ga.), has reported spending more on makeup than any other candidate this year, beating out the likes of far-left Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). Ocasio-Cortez has spent $1,837.93 on “campaign event hair & makeup services” in 2026, while Tlaib has spent $320 on “hair and makeup services.”
What is that? Is it news? Does it make a difference to anyone except by pinging their biases? Politicians and elected officials are in the public eye and perception matters; nobody should be shocked or disturbed to learn that a Senator pays for make-up services. Is the idea that it’s somehow scandalous that a man uses make-up? Why is that different from Joe Biden’s hair plugs, which everyone forgot about, or Richard Nixon using base to tone down his infamous five-o’clock shadow?
Clyburn is already presumptively a blight on the body politick since he is widely regarded as responsible for “saving” Joe Biden’s candidacy in 2020. And didn’t that work out well!
Even aside from his role in the Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck, Rep. Clyburn has one of the worst Ethics Alarms dossiers of any politician. Most recently, EA noted that Cliburn told the dim-bulb ladies “The View” that Republicans were trying to restore slavery, and that isn’t even necessarily the dumbest thing he has said in public over the years. Cliburn is neither honest, ethical, fair or bright, but he did walk shoulder-to-shoulder with the sainted Martin Luther King in civil rights protests, and that is sufficient justification, according the the Left’s addled value system and his South Carolina district, to guarantee the man a lifetime sinecure in Congress.
Every now and then Clyburn says something so outrageous that it even has to make progressives and Democrats doubt the wisdom of letting the 86 year-old hang around to make Congress dumber. This week, he was asked by a Vox reporter about artificial intelligence and its tremendous influence on the workplace, education, and the economy. Not only did Clyburn answer that he’s never used AI, he admitted that he hadn’t heard of ChatGPT before this month.The exchange in part:
Reporter: “No ChatGPT, no Claude for you?”
Clyburn: “Believe it or not, I didn’t know what that was until about a week ago. ChatGPT, or whatever it is.”
Reporter: “You didn’t know ’til a week ago? Wow. I mean, I’m jealous. You’ve kept yourself in a bubble.”
Clyburn: “That may sound strange to you. I didn’t know what that was.”
…
Reporter: “How do you effectively legislate as a member who is distant from some of those technological shifts that are affecting folks’ lives right now?”
Clyburn: “I have a great staff. I wish I could know everything. I don’t know everything, and I don’t spend my time trying to learn everything. What I spend my time doing is trying to surround myself with people who do know stuff. I know how to legislate. I know how to build relationships, and I hire people to bring knowledge into the game that I can put to practice.”
Give him credit for one thing: Clyburn is at least transparent about how clueless and incompetent he is. He wishes he knew everything? How about knowing that massive technological changes are occurring right now and that the AI revolution erupted in 2024? Clyburn really said that he knows how to legislate while admitting that he doesn’t keep informed of what he needs to legislate about.
Nobody who pays any attention to the news, the culture, social media, the law, education, the economy…anything current, really, could have missed “ChatGPT, or whatever it is.” Ah, but Rep. Clyburn still marched with MLK Jr., and that’s what really counts in 2026.
There are almost always good reasons to find any week terrible for ethics reasons, and this week is no exception. I, however, am talking about a terrible week from a personal perspective. For example, my “improved” DirecTV service broke down completely, and it took the company an unprecedented four days to get a technician here. Desperate to save the expense, a representative called me—after I had spent over an hour two days before trying every “troubleshooting measure,” given a rep a live video of my TV, and endured the usual aggravation of DirecTV’s horrible website, customer service line, its vocal fry-infected AI, multiple “one-time codes,” barely understandable script reading live agents from Sri Lanka or Tierra del Fuego, and the worst on-hold music in the history of the universe. The woman who called blessedly had an accent that was usually decipherable, but what she made me do to try to fix the problem the service had already concluded was unfixable reminded me of this bit from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (it starts at the 2:35 mark.)
Another low-point: a close friend on whom I was depending on helping me with several tasks that she had offered and committed to assisting with suddenly stopped answering phone calls, texts and emails, finally sending me terse message that she “didn’t have space for me” in her life right now and not to contact her. No explanation, no discernible reason. I did have a warning of sorts, as she had been gratuitously remote, hostile and cruel for about three weeks.
I have never treated anyone like that in my life, and can’t imagine a circumstance where I would regard it as appropriate conduct. Who does that?
The ABA is certainly having a revelatory month. We just witnessed this, and also in July the ABA demonstrated that it is part of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, legal division, by releasing as an alleged “Formal Ethics Opinion” what is nothing of the kind. Formal Ethics Opinion 524 is, in reality, the ABA’s version of the too-clever-by-half video issued by six Democrats calling for troops to defy “illegal orders.” Members of the military know that they have an officially sanctioned obligation to refuse to carry out illegal orders; the video posted last November by Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan was a transparent effort to announce to the American public that the President was likely to issue such orders. There had been no impetus for the video, just the usual anti-Trump slander and libel that he was secretly plotting a military imposition of martial law or some other “authoritarian” maneuver.
To its permanent shame (if I have anything to do with it), the American Bar Association just did the same thing. It is a purely partisan, anti-Trump Administration act, one that exposes the ABA for the untrustworthy, power and influence-abusing organization it has become.
ABA Model Rule 1.13, which every state has adopted more or less as written, explains that lawyers representing organizations, including the government, have an ethical obligation “to report an officer, employee or other person associated with the organization is engaged in action,intends to act, or refuses to act in a matter related to the representation that is a violation of a legal obligation to the organization or a violation of law that reasonably might be imputed to the organization, and that is likely to result in substantial injury to the organization.” If substantial injury is likely to result, in the judgment of the lawyer, Rule 1.13 requires the lawyer initially to “refer the matter to higher authority in the organization,” and, if warranted, to the “highest authority that can act on behalf of the organization as determined by applicable law.” If the highest authority “insists upon or fails to address in a timely and appropriate manner an action or refusal to act that is clearly a violation of law,” and the organization’s lawyer “reasonably believes that the violation is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the organization,” the lawyer “may then reveal information relating to the representation whether or not Rule 1.6 [the confidentiality rule] permits such disclosure” to an authority outside the organizational client. That information may be revealed, however, only “to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary to prevent substantial injury to the organization.”
There is so much crazy and stupid ethics stuff out there I just woke up from a crummy night’s sleep and am exhausted already.
Last night, trying to have an intelligent discussion with a lawyer friend who used to be intelligent, I raised the incident I wrote about yesterday and which I continue to think is an unusually important one for the legal profession today: the ABA’s president refusing to be honest-–in front of cameras and under oath—when asked in a Congressional hearing about its extreme woke positions. My friend started screaming at me, literally screaming, with a “whataboutism” attack: what about Trump, what about Todd Blanche, what about the Supreme Court, what about the ballroom, what about the Kennedy Center. It was scary. I was tempted to have her sedated.
Weird things keep appearing on my screen too. Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has no qualifications whatsoever to be a U.S. Senator (and maiden names don’t count) announced that getting appointed to a position she has no business being in isn’t enough, she now is going to run for a full term. A female sportswriter suggested that WNBA star Caitin Clarke complaining about being mugged on the basketball court by the black lesbians who have virtually put a hit out on her has put them at risk of ending up like Emmit Till. Megan Rapinoe, the over-the-hill women’s soccer star who thinks she has something to contribute to society besides hitting a soccer ball with her head, actually said that President Trump was responsible for the U.S. losing in the World Cup and that opposition to biological men playing women’s sports is “an attack on women in society.”Prof. Turley has a post up about how Democrats are now referring to belief in the Constitution as “nostalgia.” The Secret Service has opened more than 10,000 threat investigations this year, which is 40% increase from the same period last year. Yesterday Whoopie Goldberg, on ABC’s “news ” show “The View,” ended the program by ranting, “We need to get out and make changes, because we need to block [Trump’s Presidency] every way we can! That’s all. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.Don’t wait until November. Start looking now.” That is a pure violation of FCC rules, and if the FCC dared to act on it, we would be hearing about Trump trying to censor the press.
But by all means, write about what you want to.
This cheered me up yesterday for about 30 seconds…
I know people skip my baseball posts, but let’s look at the principle involved. Baseball’s umpires just changed how a rule was being enforced without telling anyone. It’s like double secret probation (if you don’t know the reference, you should). It’s unethical.
Baseball’s pitch-clock rule, which has shaved more than a ha;lf hour off of average game times, isn’t juist for pitchers. “Batters must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the 8-second mark or else be charged with an automatic strike.”Alert to the pitcher means looking at him. In June, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider criticized the habit of Yankees shortstop José Caballero, when he bats, waits until the last possible second to look up at the pitcher. It is widely believed that he does this to annoy pitchers. It works.
This week, Pirates pitcher Dennis Santana appeared to start his wind-up with nine seconds on the pitch clock and Caballero still looking down at his feet. The umpire stopped play to warn Santana he had to wait for eye contact. The pitcher was angry, and after Cabellero grounded out, Santana made a kissy-face at him. Benches cleared as Cabellero shouted back and the two seemed about to come to blows.
In the first game of the Yankees-Pirates doubleheader yesterday, Caballero did his usual last second act but this time was called for a pitch-clock violation. In the video, umpire Quinn Wolcott says to the Yankee player: “You don’t get to do the ‘three, four seconds in the box’ thing anymore.” “I was looking up at nine seconds,” Caballero replies. “You’re picking on me!”
Indeed he was. That near brawl, writers were told, prompted MLB to tell umpires to crack down. “It’s not allowed anymore,” umpire Adrian Johnson explained. “It was the cause of a benches-clearing situation on Monday night. Major League Baseball stepped in. They want it enforced.” Part of the rule prohibits “conduct by batters designed to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position.” Even though for years umpires have accepted that Cabellero’s late look up was just his way of getting ready for a pitch, they reversed themselves without warning the player.
(Caballero’s) been warned all season,” Johnson said. “We were instructed not to warn him. We were instructed to violate him. That’s what it is. It’s a violation.”
Caballero argues, “(The umpire) said they were making new rules today, and it’s on me, because I was deceiving to the pitcher, which doesn’t make sense because, for me … deceiving means you’re trying to trick someone, and I’m not trying to trick someone, because I do the same thing over and over. If you’re gonna make a change of the rule, at least (notify) us before the game.”
All but the last part is ethically debatable. If Cabellero’s routine does confuse and annoy pitchers, and he certainly knows that, then whether his routine was originally devised to deceive pitchers or not, it does deceive them and he keeps doing it anyway.
Changing how a rule is going to be enforced without telling players that, however, is indefensible.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin this week sent a letter to state elections commissioners begging them to immediately rescind the rule that bars absentee voters from requesting a new ballot if their preferred candidate drops out. Awww. Did Democrats get hoisted by their own petard again? Wonderful! I love it.
Three weeks ago, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the Democratic primary for Wisconsin Governor and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. She dropped out last week after her campaign imploded. So Wisconsin Democrats begged Crowley to get back into the race because he may be their only hope to derail Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong, who is leading in the polls because there are a lot of dumb people in Wisconsin. Not enough, however, for Hong to win in the general election.
But there is a problem, you see. By law, early voting in Wisconsin cannot begin more than 14 days prior to the election, which means early voting begins on Tuesday, July 28, for the August 11 primary. But thousands of voters have already requested and returned absentee ballots, and many presumably included votes for Sara Rodriguez or David Crowley before they dropped out of the race. Once again, as they did with Graham Platner and before that with Joe Biden, Democrats are engaged in an effort to replace a candidate their voters had supported in the usual nominating process when the party becomes convinced that candidate will lose.
Democrats and progressive love early voting. More mail-in ballots, more chain of custody problems, more opportunities to harvest votes and engage in untraceable voter fraud. They also prefer early voting because it favors knee-jerk, low-information voters who vote along party lines down the ballot without knowing anything else about who they are voting for.If late developing news, debate disasters and scandals engulf Democratic candidates, the votes are already in. Universal early voting is bad for democracy, civic responsibility and election integrity, which is why the practice should only be permitted under special circumstances, but never mind: the Left argues that it increases voter access when it really increases opportunities to cheat.
Hong, in 2020, said she supported “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.” After a police-involved shooting this week when a perp with a knife resisted arrest and was shot (black perp, naturally, because there are protests), Hong reiterated that bonkers position.
Rep. Gill confronted the Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History after we uncovered an exhibit that called Mickey racist for allegedly symbolizing blackface.
These exchanges are hard to watch unless you enjoy watching dishonest, woke propagandists being publicly exposed as the disgraces to their professions and the enemies of democracy that they are.
When the White House announced that it was reviewing Smithsonian exhibits for left-wing bias about a year ago, I wrote here (in part):
“There can be little question that the current curators of the Smithsonian museums have used their positions to promote woke agenda items and to manipulate the exhibits to try to indoctrinate museum visitors. Most of what the Federalist flagged as well as the White House’s items are genuinely objectionable…For example, Ibram X. Kendi is a race-hustler, and his presence anywhere in the museums is signature significance.
“Does the Pride Flag have genuine historical significance? I suppose so. But emphasizing Ben Franklin’s early slave-holding stinks of the “1619 Project”: by the time that he was a Founder, Ben had become a vocal foe of slavery.
“I believe that a nation’s museums should err on the side of emphasizing the positive aspect of its history and culture, but that’s easier to say than to execute. Substituting one extreme bias for another is not a solution. But as I wrote in the previous post on this topic, I think finding an ethical balance will be a futile exercise.”
Ethics Alarms 