A Tragedy in the Czech Republic Reveals the Pro-Abortion Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This is a terrible story, but from an ethical enlightenment and focus perspective, I am grateful for it.

A four months pregnant patient at a Prague’s Bulovka University Hospital received an unwanted abortion procedure when doctors got her confused with another woman. (Both patients were not native Czech speakers.) The woman who lost her baby was at the hospital for a routine check-up, but nurses, doctors, a gynecologist and an anesthesiologist all became convinced she was another patient seeking an abortion. They subjected their victim to a surgical cleaning of the uterus without her consent consent or knowledge. She miscarried following the procedure.

Prague police are treating the matter as a case of negligent “bodily harm.” Is that what it is? A woman losing her unborn child is the equivalent of her losing a kidney? Is the unwanted invasion of her body is the issue here, and not the death of whatever that thing is that their outrageous mistake killed?

One of the clearest pieces of evidence that the entire pro-abortion case is built on intellectual dishonesty is the weird and mystical convention that if a mother wants her unborn child to be regarded as a nascent human being, it is in the eyes of the law, in most states. Someone ripping the unborn baby out of the womb of its mother will be usually charged with a crime against two human beings, not one. But if a woman has been taught to regard a gestating fetus as a wart, a tumor or a “mass of cells,” killing it is no crime at all…just a “choice,” or “reproductive care.”

I want to read or hear an abortion activist, or anyone screaming about how the Supreme Court removed a woman’s “right” to control her own body when her body includes a genetically distinct human being, explain how the law should treat a situation like the atrocity in the Czech Republic. Was a child involved or not? Were two human beings harmed, or one?

Were the doctors and the hospital guilty of a negligent tort, as if they had amputated the wrong leg, or was this negligent homicide?

Ethics Hero: J.K. Rowling, or “Now THAT’S How to Practice Civil Disobedience!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Scotland’s has passed a bonkers hate crime law that went into effect this week. It makes it a crime potentially punishable by up to seven years in prison to “stir up hatred” regarding age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and “variations in sex characteristics.” The law would be such a flagrant violation of the First Amendment in the U.S. that even Democrats would be embarrassed to vote for it, but Scotland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has been hit particularly hard by The Great Stupid. (This would be a propitious time to say a silent but heartfelt “Thanks, guys!” to Tom, Ben, George, John and the rest of the much maligned Founders.)

Being is an especially good position to do so, J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, has decided to lead the principled opposition to the unethical law. Yesterday, as the crime of “stirring up hatred” went into force, Rowling publicly defied it by listing a convicted rapist, several ex abusers and trans activists in a post on Twitter/”X,” asserting that they were all, in her view, men.

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Clueless or Dishonest? Another Questionable Judicial Pick Appears Headed to a Senate Rejection. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

President Joe Biden’s apparently radical nominee to the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Pakistani-American lawyer Adeel Abdullah Mangi, looks doomed after Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada became the latest Democrat to publicly announce that she could not support him. Earlier, the other Nevada Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto had joined lame duck maverick Joe Manchin of West Virginia in opposing the nomination, a DEI pick if there ever was one.

In addition to having no judicial experience, Mangi supports two radical organizations that have signaled some rather alarming values, indeed he helps lead them, by serving on the advisory boards of Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race, and Rights and the Alliance of Families for Justice.

The Rutgers center, which Mangi has contributed thousands to support, is under investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee for hosting an event on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks featuring pro-terrorist Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted of providing material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Center’s director, law professor Sahar Aziz, regularly enlivens his Twitter/”X” feed anti-Semitic rhetoric. Now, these issues could be addressed, explained and defended (though perhaps not successfully), but the aspiring judge used the excuse that he had no knowledge that either of these had occurred in the organization he serves in an advisory capacity when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) asked him about the group’s programming and Aziz’s anti-Semitism.

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Ignorant and Stupid Headline of the Year (So Far): Citizen Free Press

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“DEI comes for Romeo and Juliet”

As EA columnist Curmie likes to say, and I’m sure he will, “Oh bloody hell.”

Citizen Free Press has taken over the conservative news aggregator title from the once ubiquitous Drudge Report, after the latter went pseudo-woke and virulently Trump-Deranged. CFP is conservative and Trump-lovin’ all righ; it’s headline links are also frequently juvenile (“Nancy Pelosi should have kept her pie-hole shut!”). Now we know that nobody connected with the website 1) knows more about theater, drama and Shakespeare than the average Frisbee and 2) doesn’t know what DEI means despite constantly complaining about it.

The linked story tells us that a West End production of “Romeo and Juliet” in London will feature a white actor as Romeo and a black actress as Juliet.

Non-traditional casting has been flourishing in the theater at all levels since at least the 1970s, and creative casting and conceptions of “Romeo and Juliet” are among the most common and varied of theatrical practices. Casting a mixed race couple in that classic tragedy is almost as routine now as casting two white lovers. (I saw a production with that mix just last year). There have been professional versions with two men as R&J, two women, two “non-binaries.” There have been production in which the doomed lovers are played by septuagenarians. The Montegues and Capulets have been transported to China, the African Plains, the hillbilly Appalachians a la Hatfield and McCoys, and galaxies far, far away.

Some of these wild re-workings of the ancient script have been good and even great. Do the right-wing dufusses who run the site not know about the obscure musical called “West Side Story,” in which “Romeo,” aka “Tony” is white, and “Juliet,” or “Maria,” is Puerto Rican? That “DEI” version premiered in 1957.

To sum up: there is nothing “DEI” or even novel about mixed-race casting of “Romeo and Juliet,” or any Shakespeare play, for that matter.

Jeez, conservatives…you really have to get out more. Try to keep up. That was pathetic.

A TRIPLE Jumbo for Joe!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Ok, we need a new rule, as Bill Maher likes to say.

Politicians who don’t have the integrity, energy, tech savvy or whatever else it takes to run their own social media accounts may not deny that what was posted in their names, with their permission, by their paid agents, are their true sentiments. I regard the practice of proxy tweeters and Instagrammers per se unethical anyway: the message says it’s from, say, “Joe Biden,” but it’s really from 22 year-old Ohio State grad Stanislaus “Blinky” Furbusher, a former circus geek whose uncle is a big Democratic donor, and whose opinion about anything would normally not get the national attention a typical Oakland A’s day game gets. That makes such a ghost-posted message a lie, flat out. Say what you will, and I have, about Donald Trump’s often stupid and obnoxious tweets, at least he’s the one who sends them, and he accepts full responsibility for them too. (And he knows how to send them, which admittedly isn’t much, but I bet Joe Biden hasn’t sent a tweet in his life.)

This is all by way of noting that when asked about the political and religious controversy about Biden proclaiming Easter Sunday “Transgender Day of Visibility” [Item #3] (the ridiculously named and conceived “day” pandering to the tiny minority represented by the “T’ in LGBTQ and dedicated to destroying women’s sports), the President, who doesn’t lie like Donald Trump and has a mind like a steel trap (we are told) denied that he had done it.

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Does Justice Merchan Have Conflict of Interest?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In August, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan, tasked with presiding over the criminal case against Donald Trump in Manhattan for 2016 “hush money payments” in violation of election laws, rejected Trump’s lawyers’ claims that the judge had disqualifying conflicts of interest and should recuse himself. The reasons for the recusal seemed a stretch at the time, easily the weakest being that, during the 2020 presidential campaign, Justice Merchan had donated the grand total of $15 to Joe Biden. Another was that the judge’s daughter, the president and chief operating officer of a digital marketing agency that has clients who are Democratic candidates, was obviously going to benefit financially Merchan’s decisions in the case.

Justice Merchan ruled, relying, he said, on the guidance of a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, that his impartiality could not “reasonably be questioned” based on “de minimus political contributions made more than two years ago” or his daughter’s business. The latter, he said, could not be substantially affected by the trial. Trump’s attorneys had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required” because of his daughter’s activities.

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Ethics Dunce and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Mike Gallagher (R.-Wis.)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

As Woody Allen did not say (but somebody did), “The world is run by those who show up.” Rep. Mike Gallagher promised to show up, but has announced that he won’t. This is unethical and a deliberate breach of professionalism, civic duty and integrity. He’s an ethics dunce, as well as a selfish jerk.

Gallagher is leaving to “cash in,” you see. The details of how and where are not definitively known, but Forbes has reported that its “sources” say that he is taking a job with a major defense tech contractor, Palantir. We presumably will find out for certain after he flees the coop—and the House these days really does resemble a coop—but all he has said is that he made the decision after “discussions with his family.” The discussions presumably were on the topic of whether the family would rather be rich or have Daddy working for the betterment of his constituency and the nation.

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Ethics Dunces: 18 Democratic Senators (and Bernie Sanders)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

For the record, the 18 are U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, and U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

They all signed a letter urging the Biden Administration “to take all available actions to streamline pathways to lawful status for undocumented immigrants.” “Undocumented immigrants” are illegal immigrants, and that is all you need to know to assess the unethical and irresponsible nature of the letter, as well as all the signatories to it, which is pretty much a Rogues Gallery of the most radical and destructive Senators in the upper House, with a few surprising exceptions.

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No Wonder We Can’t Trust Political Journalists If They Do THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Why am I not surprised?

White House correspondents are constantly stealing things from Air Force One. In February, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Kelly O’Donnell , felt compelled to send what was described as a “terse email” to her colleagues reminding them taking items like embroidered pillowcases, wine glasses, whiskey tumblers, blankets and gold-rimmed dinner plates “reflects poorly” on the press corps as a whole.

Really? I did not know that! Who would have guessed? Thanks, Kelly!

Actually, O’Donnell’s warning received no responses at all, reportedly, though one member of the press corps apparently returned a pillowcase he had pilfered.

Politico reports that this has been going on for a long time, with reporters stealing taxpayer purchased items with the Air Force One insignia on it being treated as a “rite of passage.” “On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass,’” one current White House reporter told Politico. And then the corrupting correspondent “was like”—OK, guess the rationalization.

Come on, guess! I’ll give you 30 seconds….

Time’s up! Politico quotes thusly: “They were like: ‘Everyone does it.’” Ah yes, the #1 Rationalization of them all, and the watermark of the ethically unlettered, “Everybody Does It.” Politico: “Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time” and ” Reporters recalled coming down the back stairs after returning to Joint Base Andrews in the evening with the sounds of clinking glassware or porcelain plates in their backpacks.”

Politico apparently thinks this is all hilarious, ending its story with a facetious, “Are you IN POSSESSION OF AIR FORCE ONE DINNERWARE? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.“

We receive our information about the work of our President and his staff through the filter of people without even rudimentary ethics alarms: arrogant, unprofessional, untrustworthy and self-indulging assholes.

Addendum: “Easter Morning Ethics Exultation”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The photo above, showing three illuminated cross along Lower Manhattan Skyline in New York city symbolizing the three crosses on Calvary, contrasts sharply with Item #3 of the previous post noting that the White House viewed Easter egg decorations with “religious symbols” inappropriate for the day’s festivities.

I ask, without irony or innuendo: “Is this progress?”

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Pointer: Sachin Jose