I’m sorry that I used the “However Much Contempt You Have For [Fill in the blank], It’s Not Enough…. already today, because the unethical Axis news media earned the introduction today repeatedly. The prize goes to Mediaite (and others) who pulled a Trump answer out of context to claim that “Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’” The exchange was clarified in the body of the article, but, as Mediaite knows well, the anti-Trump crazies largely wouldn’t bother to read the whole story (it’s hard to read with all that mouth-foam on the computer screen) and just cited the headline as more evidence that Trump is Hitler.

Reading the exchange, it is clear as crystal that Trump was expressing uncertainty about the degree to which various sections of the Bill of Rights applies to illegal immigrants and other non-citizens, and, therefore, what upholding the Constitution means in that specific context only. Ethics Alarms expressed uncertainty in the same matter yesterday, but I am not at all in doubt as to whether a President must uphold the Constitution.

The news media is despicable, untrustworthy, unethical and destructive. Enemies of democracy, the public, the people, and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I have no idea what can be done about it. Partisan, corrupt unethical law firms can be targeted and punished, indoctrination factories pretending to be independent institutions of higher education can be hobbled and discredited, but they don’t have specific Bill of Right’s provisions singling them out for immunity from government action.

The New York Times Editorial Board today issued a dishonest, hysterical editorial employing hyperbole, massaged facts and biased analysis to accuse the President of having “wounded this country, and there is no guarantee that we will fully recover” while comparing the first 100 days of his term to” the post-Reconstruction era, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, Watergate and other times.” This, from a newspaper that saw nothing untoward about unelected ideologues using a demented President, whom the Times helped elect, as its beard, and its favorite party employing politicized prosecutions of its primary opposition to hold power through undemocratic means. You can read it: [Gift link!]I don’t deem it worthy of fisking, frankly. The Times editors are part of the same dangerous corruption that Mediaite’s hacks engage in, just from a loftier perch.

I really don’t know what I’m going to do with my Trump Deranged friends. They literally are acting nuts; they don’t make any sense. The Axis allies—journalists, scholars, Democratic politicians, lawyers, ethicists <sigh!> and pundits are making even less sense, so there’s no one to pull the unhinged back onto their door-frames. In the Open Forum there was some discussion of Rep. Omar (D-Somalia) repeatedly telling a reporter to “fuck off.” This is not a sign of good mental health. Oh, heck, let me scroll though my Facebook feed and see what madness is afoot…Ah! Here’s a meme lacking juuuust a bit of context:

Like so much else I see from this clown corner, it’s too dumb to respond to. Then there are these certifiably idiotic political cartoons, which Steve Witherspoon linked to in the Open Forum. They reinforce my conviction, often stated here, that the entire genre of political cartooning is an anachronism and a vehicle for shallow thinkers to have their infantile analysis given undue gravitas by readers as dim as they are.

Meanwhile…

Continue reading →

“These rallies will focus on the importance of the rule of law, judicial independence and the need for lawyers to be free from the fear of retribution as a result of who they represent. The rallies will also involve the reaffirmation of our professional oaths.”

—One of the many alleged “ethics lawyers” promoting lawyer rallies in over 50 cities in today’s “Law Day of Action” protesting the Trump Presidency.

Too bad my sock drawer is in such bad shape…this group has mostly cheered on the Biden Administrations’ lawfare against Trump and the J-6 rioters as well as the politicized bar discipline inflicted on Trump’s lawyers. It has shrugged off large law firms capitulating to pressure from the Left and corporate clients not to represent conservative causes and public figures (so much for lawyers sincerely opposing “fear of retribution as a result of who they represent”), and members have remained silent while partisan judges have overstepped their authority to interfere with the lawful exercise of Presidential power.

There is no more hypocritical profession in American today than lawyers.

Yesterday several sources, citing polls, felt that it was significant that “President Trump’s approval rating after 100 days is the lowest of any President after that period since the beginning of the polling era.”

This is deceit. The distinction is significant indeed, but not for the reasons the news media wants the public to believe.

Every elected President except for Donald Trump in his first term begins with a substantial so-called “halo effect” where a strong majority of the public approves of him because they approve of the institution of the Presidency, its earlier, greatest occupants, and the system of government that put him, and them, in the White House. In his first term, Trump was unethically robbed of this “norm” (Hey, I thought it was Trump who shattered democratic norms?!) by the coordinated attack on his legitimacy and the Electoral College along with the false “Russian collusion” narrative promoted by the Axis of Unethical Conduct.

The President after the 2024 election had something approaching the halo—call it a half-halo—because the public was so disgusted with Joe Biden and because Trump won the popular vote. Nevertheless, his favorability was greatly diminished compared to past POTUSes because the despicable Democratic Party smear that he was a new Hitler-on-the-hoof had a large proportion of the public tainted with hate and fear.

Trump is almost alone among Presidents in that his first hundred days were occupied with substantive action, much of it bold and transformative. As soon as a new President does something, anything, he will likely lose support. Trump has done more in his first hundred days, by far, than any previous Chief Executive with the arguable exception of Franklin Roosevelt, who had the benefit of taking over a catastrophic situation in which doing anything was deemed an improvement over the Depression policies of Herbert Hoover, which could be fairly described as “Be patient, it will all get better soon.”

FDR, therefore, is a distinguishable exception. Other than him, Trump is unique. His Hundred Days have been unusually bold and productive. Of course that loses him polling points.

One of those partisan-biased Presidential historians like Douglass Brinkley could explain this, and if they had any integrity, they would. But they don’t.

—-I would respect my various Facebook friends, including many lawyers, posting diatribes about President Trump’s deportation efforts “violating the rule of law” if they had ever, ever, evinced similar concerns about President Biden or whoever…) deliberately foiling U.S. immigration laws while allowing millions of illegal immigrants to breach our borders and scatter, often leaving violent crimes in their wake.

—-As a Greater Bostonian who was brought up in the shadows of Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, the Paul Revere House, Fanuel Hall, the Old North Church and other Meccas of the American Revolution (I must not omit the one such landmark in my home town of Arlington, the Jason Russell House, where Jason and several Menotomy Minute Men were shot to death on April 19 by the British while they were hiding in Jason’s closet), I’m going to save the Ethics Alarms celebrations of the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” and related events for Patriots Day, which is tomorrow.

Meanwhile…

1. Just to push Harvard further down the Cognitive Dissonance Scale where it belongs, I want to note that Cedric Lodge, manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School from 2018 until March 2023, will plead guilty to stealing body parts that had been donated for research and selling them for thousands of dollars to non-medical personnel, aka ghouls, who collect them as trophies. Nice! He had been entrusted with handling cadavers that were part of the medical school’s Anatomical Gift Program and were supposed to be cremated after the research on them had been completed. Instead, Lodge “turned the morgue into a shopping emporium for brains, skin and other body parts, that were purchased by collectors.” Investigators say that he drove the stolen body parts to his home in New Hampshire.

2. Baseball Ethics alert! New York Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. was ejected from Thursday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays for arguing balls and strikes with home-plate umpire John Bacon. That’s an automatic ejection now. Immediately thereafter, the angry player referred to the incident on in a Twitter/ X post, writing, “Not even fucking close!!!!!” I can’t say he was wrong…

Jazz Chisholm Jr. has been ejected for arguing balls and strikes pic.twitter.com/eQcGyu2qqW

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) April 18, 2025

Continue reading →

This is unbelievable, or would be if the U.S. news media hadn’t become a parody of itself.

On the home page of the New York Times, it is virtually one long scream. “A Startling Admission From a G.O.P. Senator: ‘We Are All Afraid’” ominously hints one headline. (Two guesses who the Senator is). David Brooks is calling for an “uprising.” because apparently, a President trying to fix throbbing problems and fulfilling promises he ran on isn’t “normal.” (A senile President being puppeteered by unknown, unelected individuals was normal enough for Brooks, I guess.) If the U.S. doesn’t invade El Salvador to spring an illegal immigrant, Trump is defying the Supreme Court and defying the rule of law! (There are three articles just on this). As I predicted, Trump saying that Harvard should be taxed is represented in another story this way: “With Harvard Threat, Trump Tries to Turn IRS into a Political Enforcer.“

In yet another freak-out, the Times assembles three of its most Trump Deranged pundits—nah, no balance needed, why would you want that?-–to declare “Trump is disappearing people like the Soviet Union.” (The “people” are that single illegal immigrant in the Salvadoran prison.)

Meanwhile, over on my Facebook page, a smart, usually rational and well-read individual I have previously mentioned posted an anti-Trump declaration and in the replies, wrote in response to a comment that only “racists, misogynists and redneck voted for Trump”, “I loved Harris and Walz: smart and experienced.” I had to wrestle my fingers to the ground.

Bring some ethics sanity to my world, would you please?