My Trip To Walgreen’s: A Nation of Assholes, 2024

One of the posts I have most frequently referred to was this, in which I predicted that if Donald Trump was elected President, the entire culture would coarsen, become more uncivil, and, in essence, “rot from the head down.” And I was right, though I did not predict that that the Left’s anger at Hillary’s shock defeat and its eight year determination to destroy Trump “by any means necessary” would play such a large role in the process. After all, it was a Democratic member of the House (and a woman!) who said, “Let’s impeach the motherfucker!” It was another one who urged “the resistance” to make themselves obnoxious by confronting members of Trump’s administration on the street. Robert DeNiro, an anti-Trump fanatic, has been the most publicly vulgar celebrity by far and far more MAGA cap wearers have been the victims of assaults and confrontations than purveyors of it: people like Jussie Smollett have had to manufacture pro-Trump attacks.

Then again, the Right is responsible for a popular coded chant that means, “Fuck Joe Biden.”

Whatever the reason, The Coarsening, as it would be called if this were a horror movie, has come. I just did an ethics program for a federal agency that asked me to concentrate on civility, because it was deteriorating there.

All of which brings me to my trip to Walgreen’s today.

Continue reading

What a Surprise. A Court Seems To Think A Democratic Prosecution Of Donald Trump Might Be A Teeny Bit Biased!

There are so, so many reasons a Donald Trump victory over Kamala Harris is essential to restoring justice, ethics and a healthy democracy to this nation. It is a tragedy, or perhaps a cosmic joke, that none of those reasons have very much to do with the desirability of having Trump as President for four years. Never mind: what has been going on in the U.S. under the false justification of innate Leftist superiority is frightening, pernicious, and has to be stopped, which includes appropriate punishment.

One of those reasons the Axis must pay is its use of the legal system to harass, hobble, and if possible to jail Donald Trump. The conviction for—well, something—in the rigged Manhattan trial is certain to be overturned on so many grounds it’s like a 1L law school exam, but the case still has given Democrats the chance to describe Trump as “a convicted felon.” The dubious sexual assault case against him (which only proceeded because New York suspended the statute of limitations so Trump could be “got”) let them call the Republican Presidential nominee an “adjudicated rapist” after another politically motivated trial. Then we have the Fani Willis Follies in Georgia, where a prosecution against Trump was derailed because an incompetent and and corrupt D.A. used the case to get her lover on the Fulton County payroll. There are a couple more dominoes to fall in the disgusting “warfare” campaign against Trump, but as long as he loses in November Harry Reid will be high-fiving in Hell, because like Reid’s lie that Mitt Romney paid no taxes, the unethical strategy “worked.”

Continue reading

Our Anti-Democratic Indoctrination Camps Get Slapped Down Again

Americans don’t appreciate the critical work on their behalf being done by groups like Turning Point USA, FIRE, and Prof. Jacobson’s Equal Protection Project, all of which would be termed “threats to democracy” under Joe Biden’s rhetoric.

This time it was Turning Point that stepped up. Riley Gaines, the gutsy and articulate former college swimmer who has become the de facto leader of opposition to allowing biological males compete as women against female athletes, was scheduled to speak at the University of New Mexico. The event was sponsored by Turning Point’s student organization on campus. The University told the students that they would have to employ extra security staff because Gaines would naturally be a catalyst for potential violence since the current mutation of student progressives like violence. (That wasn’t exactly what they said, but I’m acting like a journalist this morning.) TP-UNM told the University that it expected around 100 attendees and that the Gaines event would would last around three hours. It then received an email including an invoice that charged the students $10,202.50 to let a conservative speaker give her views on campus (well, again, that wasn’t exactly what the email said. It’s just what the email meant.) The charge covered the use of 33 security officers, or one for every three anticipated attendees, in the discretion of the university.

If your First Amendment alarm doesn’t sound after reading that, it might not have been installed correctly.

After the event, which went on without incident and minimal protesting, the final invoice that UNV delivered was about half the original amount. I’m guessing a UNV lawyer told UNV, “Mmmmm, I think $10,000 is too obviously a ‘Shut up, you bigoted conservatives!’ message. You might get away with $5,000.”

It didn’t. Turning Point sued, and yesterday, in Leadership Institute v. Stokes, a court struck down the UNV policy and its inflated, speech-constricting invoice. “Plaintiffs have shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their overbreadth claim because the security fee policy does not contain limiting language that includes “narrowly drawn, reasonable and definite standards[,]” and it does not include anything to prevent UNM administrators from exercising their discretion in a content-based manner….,” the court ruled.

Good.

_______________

Pointer: The Volokh Conspiracy

The News Media Has Sunk To Its Lowest Level of Journalism Ethics Yet During This Year [Link Fixed]

…which is not to say that it won’t sink even lower. The slobbering Kamala Harris coverage by MSNBC may be the nadir so far: Is the network’s openly biased MSNBC host Stephanie Rule the symbol of the pre-2024 elections news media corruption, or is it ABC’s anti-Trump hacks Lindsey Davis and David Muir, who made the Harris-Trump debate a three-against-one affair?

Before being Harris’s choice for a friendly, softball interview, Harris said on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that it didn’t matter to her if Harris evaded questions and refused to clearly delineate her policy positions. Why? “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she’s running against Trump.”

Ruhle further rationalized, “We have two choices, so there are some things you might not know her answer to. And in 2024 — unlike 2016, for a lot of the American people –we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”

That’s journalistic objectivity in 2024. She “knows” what Trump will do? What, like letting mobs of illegals cross the borders? Prosecute political opponents? Explode the national debt? Appoint people for their ethnicity, sexual orientation and skin color rather than their ability to do the job? Refuse to fire even the most flagrantly incompetent? What is she talking about?

Continue reading

Ethics Hero: This Kid…

I don’t grant the 10-year-old this honor because of his assessment of Harris, but because he had the guts and the integrity to give that answer, without blinking, to a CNN propagandist.

I fervently hope after our indoctrination factory in the public schools get their hooks into him, he maintains the fortitude and independence he declared here. Oh, I’m sure it’s likely that his parents would answer the same way. Nevertheless, it was a bracing moment. There is hope.

I’m surprised CNN didn’t “factcheck” him….

Scientists Who Make Recommendations Like This Forfeit the Privilege of Being Taken Seriously

And yet how many climate change hysterics, including some regulators and elected officials, will quote them as authority anyway? Geena has an answer…

Researchers at the University of Cambridge announced their solution to the contribution of air travel to world-ending carbon emissions: force airplanes to fly more slowly. Reducing flight speeds about 15% would add an average of 50 minutes to flights. The measure would slash fuel burn by 5 to 7%, reducing the 4% industry contribution to overall climate change. These findings will be presented to the science-savvy delegates at the United Nations.

The scientists argue that longer flights could be offset by more efficiently organized airports with fewer holdups. Apparently these people haven’t flown recently. Can distinguished scientists also be deluded morons? It’s a rhetorical question.

Continue reading

Why I Just Billed A Client For My Dog’s Evening Walk….

In “The Firm,” the corrupt lawyer played by Gene Hackman tells new associate Tim Cruise that he is supposed to bill for every second he is thinking about a client’s work, in the shower, on the toilet, at the movies. Inflating fees is one of the most flagrant and common of all lawyer misconduct, and it is almost impossible to prove unless a lawyer does something stupid like billing more than 24 hours a day (and an amazing number of lawyers have tried that). In the film version of “The Firm,” in fact (though not in the novel) Cruise’s character uses proof that the mobbed-up firm he worked for was over-billing clients to wiggle out of his own legal and ethical dilemma.

As a general rule, I think it’s generally dishonest to bill clients for every thought.

I am preparing an ethics report, and doing so with a famous, legendary, super-credentialed lawyer who charges four times what I do as my ethical adversary. His experience and credentials make me look like comparative piker, but 1) I’m on the right side of this issue 2) his ethics report was pathetic and 3) this case is in my wheelhouse, not his.

Continue reading

Huh. I Wonder Why There Are No “Trump-Vance” Signs Anywhere In My Neighborhood?

Virginia is a so-called “purple state,” and even though Northern Virginia is Woke Central (Remember my neighbor who had a giant “Black Lives Matter” display in front of her house for almost three years?), there are plenty of Republican, conservatives and Trump supporters. And yet I have driven my car and walked Spuds all over the area, and I see only Harris-Walz signs. Why is that?

I think it is because Republicans have been intimidated. Professing fealty to the Leftist totalitarians who propped up a puppet President and covered up his disability, then appointed his successor while blathering on about how they were protecting Democracy, is considered proof of virtue. Expressing a contrary view risks being Dershowitzed and cancelled. I see the same phenomenon on Facebook. The vast, vast majority of my friends write the most fatuous, absurd pro-Harris propaganda imaginable, but the conservatives I know are posting pictures of their dogs and talk about movies and TV.

Continue reading

Ethics Villain: Former NYC Pandemic Lockdown Czar Dr. Jay Varma

We can now add this shameless creep to the list of powerful state and municipal hypocrites—they are too many to list, but EA spotlighted some of them— who violated their own excessive pandemic restrictions because, after all, they are better than the little people, and because they could. I’m filing all of them with the health officials who announced that letting Black Lives Matter disrupt cities and government functions while doing millions of dollars in damage made the racist, Marxist group immune from the restrictions on church gatherings, funeral and family gatherings.

Jay Varma, however, is special.

Dr. Jay Varma was the senior advisor for public health in New York City under Mayor Bill de Blasio, another ethics villain. Varma imposed extraordinary restrictions on public outings, gatherings, and personal activities. But a video has been released showing Varma admitting that he ignored his own policies to attend sex parties. A spokesman for Varma told CBS News New York he and his wife held two sex parties in a hotel with friends after he had banned such gatherings; Varma also admitted participating in a dance party with about 200 people underneath a Wall Street bank in June of 2021.

Varma was fired as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies after confirming the reports about the video. Good. But it’s not enough. There have not been adequate consequences for any of these power abusing, elitist totalitarians and liars.

Surprise ! Open Forum!

September and October 2024 are going down in the ProEthics annals as the busiest months since the pandemic freakout and among the busiest months of ethics consulting I’ve had ever. What this means, I do not know, but today, once again, I have legal training session that will occupy my attentions this morning. Thus I am opening the weekly free-for-all a day early.

The big news, but with no details yet, is that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is about to be indicted. I expected this, not necessarily with Adams but with one or more of the horrible crop of arrogant, autocratic Democrat mayors who run so many of our major cities. They have a collective chip on their shoulders the size of El Capitan, most of them are “of color” and determined to make up for lost time and opportunity. I expect more of this: the Democratic Party has spawned a culture of corruption that is dangerous and increasingly difficult to hide.

Speaking of a culture of corruption, Paul Pelosi once again read tea leaves or something and guessed what the Feds were about to do to Visa, so he dumped $500,000 in the company’s stock two months before the company was sued for anti-competitive business practices. He has done a lot of this investment management magic since his wife has been a power in Congress. The X account “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker” flagged the trade when the Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Visa, alleging that the company maintained an illegal monopoly over the U.S. debit card market.

Nothing to see here, move along…

But I digress. The ethics topics are up to you.