U.S. Society

Time To Pass the “No Sanctuary for Criminals Act” (or to Consider Kicking Oregon Out of the United States)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In 2017, the “No Sanctuary for Criminals Act” (HR 3003 ) would have prohibited federal, state and local government entities from obstructing or restricting law enforcement actions related tothe enforcement of immigration laws. That and a similar House-passed bill in 2015 were blocked in the then-Democrat-controlled Senate, because the Democratic Party is committed to facilitating illegal immigration.

How much? This much: the Oregon Department of Administrative Services is conducting mandatory staff training sessions to ensure that its employees do not to cooperate with Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). Oregon’s sanctuary laws prohibit state and local law enforcement and government employees from assisting federal immigration officials with immigration enforcement. This has to stop. Of course the laws are unethical, as are similar anti-law enforcement laws around the country.

This week Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services sent an email to 11,000 employees reminding them to complete its “Oregon Sanctuary Promise” training. Debbie Dennis, deputy director of Oregon’s Administrative Services, said in the email,

“A new training will be assigned to you in Workday (starting Friday, Jan. 17) and I want to explain its importance and the timeline for completing the training. The title of the training is Oregon Sanctuary Promise and it covers Oregon’s laws relating to our status as a ‘sanctuary state.’ Many of you know that Oregon was the first state to pass a law (in 1987) prohibiting state and local police and government from helping federal authorities with immigration enforcement. This training is about Oregon law and how it affects what state employees can and cannot do. The training will help you identify if you are witnessing behavior that violates the law, and you will know what action to take. And in the rare event that any of us are approached to assist in immigration enforcement, we’ll know the steps Oregon law specifies we must take. The training takes about 30 minutes, and we have 30 days to complete it. Workday will assign it to you Friday, Jan. 17, and I ask that you make completing it a high priority, working with your supervisor if you experience any workload or other issues that hinder this assignment.”

Now that polls suggest that even a majority of Democrats want at least the criminal illegals deported and with the entire party seemingly at death’s door, making the “sanctuary” movement illegal as it should be might finally be attainable. The cities and states behaving like Oregon have always been unethical: they appear to be under the delusion that enforcing our borders is the equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act. The progressives’ insane attitude toward illegal immigration and the Federal duty to enforce the immigration laws has been unethical from the start. When ethics fail, the law steps in, and in this case, it is high time.

I don’t think there is any mechanism for expelling a whole state, but if there has to be a test case, Oregon would be an excellent choice.

New Rule: Bill Maher Deserves No Credit For Rants Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This much-praised clip from Maher’s HBO show goes into the Ethics Estoppel file.

Not that it isn’t a thorough and effective defenestration of the Democratic Party for its role in the disastrous LA fires, it is. However, its excellence only magnifies the revolting hypocrisy that is, and always is, Bill Maher.

Maher, an amoral, anarchist libertarian, has been a pimp for progressives and Democrats and their policies for his entire career, except when they directly threaten his comfort and interests. He is an a enabler and propaganda agent for the Left who periodically has these loud and much-praised outbursts of the obvious to create the illusion that he has integrity and is a truth-teller. You know he voted for Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom and Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and probably even Adam Schiff. He actually anticipated the Wuhan lockdown’s role in putting Democrats in power, saying on the HBO show that the economy crashing would be “worth it” if the result would be getting rid of Trump. Maher wouldn’t dare say that the Palisades fires would be “worth it” if it meant putting Republicans in power in California.

I’d begin changing my opinion of Bill Maher if he owned this disaster, which is a direct result of the ideology and party he supports 90% of the time. He doesn’t and won’t. Like the slightly less despicable Jon Stewart, Maher is a clown-nose-on/clown-nose-off hubris-radiating phony as well as an odoriferous hypocrite. I’d applaud that monologue if it was performed by J.D. Vance or Greg Gutfeld, or, in the alternative, if it was really funny. Maher doesn’t even warrant the “Welcome to the party, pal!” clip.

Asshole.

Inauguration Prelude Ethics Round-Up, 1/18/25

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

My head just exploded. The New York Times. oh, about three years late, maybe more, does an exploration of the effort to hide Joe Biden’s increasing disability from the public. The key conspirators, the Times says, were “Jill Biden, the first lady, and Hunter Biden, his surviving son, fervently believed in his ability to win. Mr. Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, the counselor to Mr. Biden, knew when and how to deliver information, along with Annie Tomasini, the deputy chief of staff. She and Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s most senior aide, took tight control over the president’s public schedule.”

I wonder if any of them were as capable as Edith Wilson.

The Times does not enlighten us as to why its crack reporting team never did any reporting about this Constitutional debacle while it was going on, perhaps because the answer is too obvious: the Times, like the rest of the Axis media, was complicit and wanted the Democrats to get away with it. Then the Times readers, who the now-banned Ethics Alarms defender of the Times always cited as evidence that the paper wasn’t as biased and unethical as it obviously is, mostly disgraced themselves with one or more of these positions: 1) It was worth electing Biden because he beat Trump in 2020; 2) Trump will be worse; 3) It was all Biden’s aides’ fault. 4) He was a good President. 5) Biden still would have done better than Harris. None accused the Times of betraying its mission and and its readership. Occasionally a lone commenter made an observation like this:

“In any other situation Biden would have been considered a part time worker and wouldn’t even have qualified for health benefits. Yet he was allowed to continue as president while working less hours than a crossing guard. This was a covered up coup where someone or some persons were really making decisions.”

Here’s a gift link to the piece.

Meanwhile,

1. What an unethical—and stupid—hill to die on. The House of Representatives passed legislation banning trans women who are biological men from competing in women’s sports. The vote was 218-206, with all Republicans present supporting the bill and all but two Democrats opposing it. Apparently the Democratic Party is unwilling to abandon the absurd argument that preventing female athletes from losing games, matches, scholarships, championships, records and maybe an eye by having to compete with newly-minted women who are taller, heavier, stronger and better due to the advantage of going through puberty as a male is just plain old discrimination. “Republicans fearmonger about the trans community to divert attention from the fact they have no real solutions to help everyday Americans,” ranted Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.). “Transgender students, like all students, they deserve the same opportunity as their peers to learn teamwork, to find belonging, and to grow into well-rounded adults through sports.” The first part of that statement is deflection, and the second part is misdirection. Transgender individuals don’t deserve the opportunity to have an unfair advantage and to endanger the safety of women they compete against. Doing what she does, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said, “Let me tell you something: Trans people ain’t going nowhere, just like when the racists wanted to make sure that black people somehow were going to be dismissed in this country, we ain’t left either.” Now there’s a brilliant analogy, but it appears to be all the Democrats can come up with. You know, ‘Racial discrimination is based on prejudice and nothing else.’ The effort to keep trans women out of women’s sports is not “invidious discrimination” but the acceptance of reality.

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Ethics Dunce: Michelle Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Trump-Deranged are cheering Michelle Obama’s decision to boycott Donald Trump’s Inauguration. Personally, I wouldn’t cross the street to greet Michelle, so I am inclined to think that her petty effort to show her contempt for the duly-elected President of the United States (and virtue-signal to the Axis) has little significance other than telling us more about her character.

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10 Ethics Observations on the White Judge’s Email

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Caroline Glennon-Goodman, a Cook County judge, shared a meme that depicts a smiling black boy and a black child’s leg with an electronic monitor on it, a fake ad for “My First Ankle Monitor.” The judge wrote “My husband’s idea of Christmas humor.” It was supposed to go to a friend, but she sent it to the wrong person, another judge ( #@!%^!& autofill!) Oopsie! That judge reported her and the post became public.

Glennon-Goodman has been reassigned by the Circuit Court’s Executive Committee, and ordered to undergo bias training and will face a state disciplinary investigation. The executive committee wrote that Glennon-Goodman’s alleged actions “may violate the Code of Judicial Conduct” and it said it was temporarily reassigning her and referring the matter to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board “to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

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On Trump’s Second Term Portrait

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I heard some talking-heads blather about the release of incoming President Donald Trump’s new official portrait on Fox, CNN and MSNBC, and quickly decided it was not worth my time. Then I looked at the thing and decided it was worth a little bit of my time after all.

It is a remarkable choice by Trump, since he obviously approved it, something we cannot say with certainly about the current President’s portrait, or anything he did or said, amazingly. On the Trump-Hating news outlets, they have been saying that it bears an uncanny resemblance to his immortal mug shot…

…which is only true in the sense that he isn’t smiling in either of them and both are images of Donald Trump.

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Pre-Inauguration Friday Morning Open Forum…With a Personal Note

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Well, today has started like so many other mornings lately: by me being kicked out of bed by my dog. (We’re going to have to talk about this.) Then, like so many Fridays, I find myself thinking about how the entire weekend is going to be devoted to work and depressing chores, causing me to feel like I owe myself a tiny break today, but I won’t really take one, just slack off enough to make me feel lazy and irresponsible.

Then I visited my email, and told a website optimizer who claimed EA had “no web presence at all” to bite me. I wish it had more “presence” just as I wish I could figure out a way to make some money for the work I do here about four hours a day without minimizing readership, but I can’t, and that’s that. I didn’t start Ethics Alarms for profit, and I won’t run it that way.

Finally, as I stare at another blank “Add New Post” page, I find myself getting all warm, fuzzy, teary and grateful over the outpouring of appreciation and kindness I have received over the past horrible year from so many of you out there. I wish I were organized enough to write individual notes, but I’m not…that kind of thing was among Grace’s jobs, because I’m too scattered and easily distracted to do it competently.

This was especially true during the holidays. I got cards with messages that made me cry, gift cards, and checks: one of you even stopped by the house to deliver a gift (and give me some much needed human company and live face-to-face conversation.) I received almost as many seasonal greeting from the readers here as I did from people around the country I have actually met—hmmmmm, maybe that should tell me something.

It all meant a great deal to me, and does, and will. Thank you for reading, thank you for caring, and thank you for giving me something to look forward to during each and every day, especially during a year during which most days began with me hoping that everything was just a bad dream, and that I would find Grace in the shower, like Bobby Ewing at the end of that infamous fake season on “Dallas.”

Well enough mushy stuff: get to work. You have some brilliant comments to write, and I have to go argue with a pit bull….

Joe’s “It Isn’t What It Is” Farewell” Part II: The Disgrace

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

[Read the Introduction here]

I really don’t feel like going through this; it’s reminds me of that old gross-out camp song about “great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts, mutilated monkey meat” and “concentrated chicken feet.” It degrades the office. It degrades everyone who listened to it. It degrades me to have to describe it.

Over at PJ Media, Ed Morrisey had an equivalent reaction, calling it “the worst case of valedictory projection ever” and writing in part,

Beware the oligarchy, warned the president who … just gave George Soros a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Beware the oligarchy, warned the president who … cajoled and pressured tech billionaires to comply with his attempts to censor speech and suppress dissent through his State Department’s Global Engagement Center. 

Beware the oligarchy, warned the president whose party gets massively funded through Arabella, a network of leftist billionaires using dark money to fund candidates and activist campaigns. 

But this offal from the Oval Ofiice demands a thorough fisking, much as I’d rather pound nails into my scrotum, so here we go. (The gift-linked Times transcript is here.)

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Joe’s “It Isn’t What It Is” Farewell” Part I: Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

We long ago reached the point where anyone paying attention swallowed comforting myth that any modern President delivers a farewell address that he really composed himself, but President Joe Biden’s scripted cavalcade of lies and hypocrisy is in a whole different category.

It stretched credulity to believe that the same man who mumbled this on national TV in June during the debate that effectively put him out of office just a half-year ago—

“He had the largest national debt of any president four-year period, number one. Number two, he got $2 trillion tax cut, benefited the very wealthy.What I’m going to do is fix the taxes. For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raised $500 million – billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period. We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if – we finally beat Medicare.”

….could compose, much less think, what he repeated off a teleprompter last night after resting all day.

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Oh-Oh. We Have Descended into Some Diabolical Hellscape Where Chris Cuomo Is Making Valid Ethics Observations….

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Cuomo, aka. “Fredo” on the Hegseth hearing…

The country’s in the very best of hands….

Meanwhile, while Cuomo is spot-on, here’s a quote from alleged conservative intellectual David Brooks, who today leveled similar criticism, but discredited himself with this:

“The hearings got better as they went along and more junior senators got to speak. Senator Mazie Hirono was excellent, asking substantive questions: If the president ordered you, would you order troops to shoot protesters in the legs? Would you follow an order to use the military for mass deportations?”

I can’t even tell if Brooks was being sarcastic; he has written so many outrageous things since his brain was surgically removed by the New York Times and replaced with a bag of Cheetohs. Sarcasm is not typically his metier. If Brooks was attempting sarcasm, he’s lousy at it: no columnist who wants to be taken seriously should ever, ever utter the words “Senator Mazie Hirono was excellent” in jest, irony, or God forbid, sincerity.