The Executive Order That Obama Knew Was Illegal Was Finally Struck Down

Did you know that President Trump was an authoritarian, abused his power and violated the Constitution?

Nothing Trump did in office was as clearly, obviously and intentionally a direct violation of the Constitution’s limits on Presidential power as what President Barack Obama did in 2012 when he could not get Congress to pass a law allowing so-called “Dreamers” to stay in the United States. He used an Executive Order to establish the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program despite saying himself (remember, Obama is supposedly a Constitutional Law scholar) that he didn’t have power to do it.

That was the exact moment when I concluded that Obama was not only a weak and feckless President, but an arrogant and dangerous one.

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Comment Of The Day: “It Looks Like Donald Trump Was Betrayed By Another One Of His Lawyers, Someone Else…Or Himself”[Corrected]

I really don’t want to contribute to the Donald Trump glut in the media and the web, and if everyone else would just ignore the guy like ex-Presidents, non-elected officials currently in office should be ignored, I wouldn’t have to post about him at all. This video from the Ethics Alarms clip archives is relevant..

But the news media won’t stop, simultaneously fueling Trump’s continued influence and prominence and claiming that he is an existential evil who must be destroyed. This obsession was excusable, sort of, when he was President, but now it is pure hypocrisy. Trump, of course, publicity junkie and narcissist that he is, loves the attention, and it makes him stronger. The other side of this weird coin is that he has also been grievously mistreated politically, journalistically  and by the culture, to a historical degree. As with Bill Clinton when he was beleaguered by the Monica scandal, I have to grudgingly admire Trump for his resilience, endurance, and resolve. Clinton, however, only went through such travails for a year or so. With Trump, it has been constant since 2015. His defiance is Churchillian.

In his Comment of the Day, Steve-O-in NJ came up with something I’ve been searching for: a good analogy for the hate that Donald Trump has been subjected to. Tellingly, Steve’s analogy is a nation, not another human being. But in Steve’s example, only one man was demanding destruction, not whole institutions and sectors of society: Cato the Elder, also known as Cato the Censor and Cato the Wise.
Boy, I would much rather write about Marcus Porcius Cato ( Born: 234 BC, Tusculum, Italy; Died: 149 BC, Rome) than Trump. His best quotes alone should pique your interest, among them:
  • “After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.”
  • “An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.”
  • “Anger so clouds the mind that it cannot perceive the truth.”
  • “Grasp the subject, the words will follow.”
  • “He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent.”
  • “He who fears death has already lost the life he covets.”
  • “I can pardon everybody’s mistakes except my own.”
  • “I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment.”
  • “If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave.”
  • “Patience is the greatest of all virtues.”
  • “The hero saves us. Praise the hero! Now, who will save us from the hero?”
  • “The worst ruler is one who cannot rule himself.”
  • “Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters.”
  • “‘Tis sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity.”
  • “Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the post, It Looks Like Donald Trump Was Betrayed By Another One Of His Lawyers, Someone Else…Or Himself”:

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Afternoon Ethics Mop-Up, 10/5/22: Flip-Flops, Cheating, A Bad Law Suit And Careless Name Change

It has been raining for five days straight here.

But never mind: what matters is that October 5th marks the date in 2017 when the New York Times blew the whistle on Hollywood mega-producer and major Clinton money source Harvey Weinstein, setting in motion all sorts of cultural. legal, political and societal forces no one could have predicted, as well as providing many depressing ethics lessons. For example, virtually everyone who pretended horror at Weinstein’s predations knew about what he was doing long before, but said and did nothing, and yes, this almost certainly included powerful Democrats as well as alleged Hollywood feminists. Yecchh. The sudden awareness of sexual harassment in high places—as if Bill Clinton hadn’t been enough to make it obvious—was quickly weaponized to take down powerful men in business, the arts, news media, politics and more, some deservedly (Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer…) some not so much (Al Franken). The Weinstein movements #MeToo and Time’s Up also catalyzed the effort to smear Brett Kavanaugh out of his Supreme Court nomination, though they went oddly mute when Joe Biden was accused of doing privately the kind of thing he had been photographed doing to hapless girls and women for years. How and why this happened was neatly illustrated when the co-founder and COB of “Time’s Up” was revealed to have helped Andrew Cuomo discredit his multiple sexual harassment accusers.

Despite its ugly partisanship, hypocrisy and cynicism, the Harvey Weinstein Ethics Train Wreck, documented here, has still had its salutary effects. Bill Clinton’s reign as a Democratic rock star finally ended. Woody Allen was at last shunned in Hollywood. 

Best of all, the double standards and empty virtue-signaling of feminists and progressives were impossible to miss. Good.

1. Remember, Karine Jean-Pierre, the President’s paid liar, says that “If you are not with where the majority of Americans are, that is extreme.” A new poll by the Trafalgar Group, taken September 17-20 and including more than 1,000 likely 2022 election voters, showed that 1.4% of voters “believe eliminating gas-powered cars and moving to electric vehicles is the best solution.” Just thought it was worth mentioning…Speaking of Karine, it has been fascinating watching her claim that when the still-high gasoline prices edge down, it is President Biden’s brilliant work paying off, but when it goes up, it’s everybody else’s fault. Now gas is going up again, and OPEC has voted to cut production, probably meaning that it will start rising sharply. Ultimately, her re-flip-flop will pose another “Just how gullible is the American public?” test. The results of the earlier ones have not been encouraging. Continue reading

We Have To Talk About Velma…

I wish we didn’t.

I wouldn’t raise the issue except that the conservative blogs and commentators seem to be horrified by this most minor of pop culture developments—the sexual orientation of a five-decades-old Hanna-Barbara cartoon character?–and the usual progressive suspects are awash with joy. (Well, I guess you have to take your victories where you find them, however minuscule.)

The ethics issues are encompassed in the routine question, “What’s going on here?”

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It Looks Like Donald Trump Was Betrayed By Another One Of His Lawyers, Someone Else…Or Himself

Just because Trump is paranoid doesn’t mean almost everyone around him isn’t trying to stab him in the back.

From the New York Times:

Shortly after turning over 15 boxes of government material to the National Archives in January, former President Donald J. Trump directed a lawyer working for him to tell the archives that he had returned all the documents he had taken from the White House at the end of his presidency, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The lawyer, Alex Cannon, had become a point of contact for officials with the National Archives, who had tried for months to get Mr. Trump to return presidential records that he failed to turn over upon leaving office. Mr. Cannon declined to convey Mr. Trump’s message to the archives because he was not sure if it was true, the people said.

The story was leaked to, naturally, Maggie Haberman, the full-time Trump Fury on the Times staff. She’s currently peddling a book full of anti-Trump tales, gossip and embarrassments. A lot of her stories over the last six years have been about what the President supposedly said behind closed door, or suggested, or asked others to do, none of which actually came to anything but the point is to make Trump look bad, dangerous or stupid. Of course, ethical aides, associates and lawyer don’t tell hostile reporters (or anyone at all) about such conversations because they are in the positions they are because the President trusts them. Donald Trump has been betrayed by such people more times, I would estimate, than all of the last six Presidents combined. Continue reading

The Failure Of “Bros”: Why Don’t Minorities Accept The Right Of Majorities To Feel Like They Do?

Gee, what a shocking development! Non-gay audiences haven’t flocked to see a romantic comedy that advertises itself like that!

I’m a movie fan. I have lots of gay friends, family members and associates: I worked in the theater for decades. I respect them all; I support their right to live and love and marry whomever they please; I want them to be treated like any other law-abiding Americans in all things as they are judged solely on the content of their character, and regard discrimination and bias against them as despicable and unconscionable.

But I don’t enjoy watching gay sex and related activities.  I have every right to feel that way. I would no more pay, or take time out of my sock drawer duties, to see “Bros” than I would watch an NFL game, or attend a one-man show by Alec Baldwin. So sue me. But I think there are millions of Americans with similar tastes, and they span the generations.

Apparently the makers of “Bros” convinced themselves that non-gay (I will say “cis” when there is a loaded gun at my head and not before) Americans, who are, believe it or not, the majority, would go to see a romantic comedy about gays because they have been told that they should, and are bigots if the don’t comply. Non-gay America replied, “Bite me!,” and good for them. Continue reading

October Surprise! Ethics Observations As Herschel Walker’s Past Strikes Back…

The first observation is that neither of the surprises should surprise anyone at all. Former NFL football star Herschel Walker is about as vulnerable a political candidate for high office as one can imagine, even in the “Get Trump!” era. I’ve covered much of this already. He’s exaggerated his scholastic achievements, hidden the fact that he has several children conceived without the formality of marriage, admitted bouts with mental illness and a suicide attempt, and vaguely acknowledges committing domestic violence.

Walker has no political experience or relevant achievements that would make him a qualified candidate for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. He’s a local celebrity and has personal charisma; he is also an African-American in a state with a lot of black voters (and football fans). That’s about it. In the United States of America in the Age of the Great Stupid, that can also be enough.

It was irresponsible for the Republican Party to present such a cynically-chosen nominee to the voters of Georgia, incompetent for voters to check his name in the primary, and certifiably stupid for the GOP to store a substantial amount of their chances of taking back control of the Senate on such a shaky vessel.

Yesterday, they all got what they deserved… Continue reading

‘Hi! I’m Chris Cuomo! I’m An Incurable Dummy, A Proven Liar, Proudly Biased, Unprofessional, I Was Fired For Sexual Misconduct And Ignoring Conflicts Of Interest, And Now I Want You To Let Me Tell You What To Think…’

Those weren’t quite his words, but that is a fair summary of the message sent by disgraced CNN face-man Chris Cuomo, aka. Fredo, as he launched his new NewsNation show, creatively named, “Cuomo.”

“So, this show is going to be different than what I’ve done in the past because I’m different and I’ve spent a lot of time looking and listening on the sidelines…It’s obvious to me that we need people in my position to do more,” Chris babbled in his premiere yesterday. “To not just play or even referee the game that is plaguing our politics and society. That means exposing the game, show when it’s played, show how it’s being played, and also to be more transparent about where my head is on the issues that we cover.”

Who are people in “his position,” do you think? People who only got their prominent jobs on TV news (not to mention an admission to law school) because their fathers were famous and popular governors of New York? People who think “hate speech” isn’t protected by the First Amendment, as Cuomo once claimed on Twitter? People who use their positions of public trust to pimp for their corrupt brothers? There is nothing, quite literally nothing, about Chris Cuomo or his record at CNN before he was justly though tardily fired that would make any human being with enough functioning brain cells to give a marmoset a good game of Scrabble think, “Hey, I can learn something from this guy!”

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Now THAT’S A Grudge!

Icky, unethical, or just remarkable devotion to an agenda? Whatever it is, I’m sort of impressed. When most people say, “I’ll piss on your grave!” they are just indulging in wishful thinking.

Dean Eichler, 68, of Bergenfield, N.J. was finally secretly recorded on video pulling into the Tappan Reformed Church Cemetery in his SUV for his daily ritual. As he leaves the motor running, Eichner slowly walks towards Linda Torello’s grave while unzipping his fly. Eichner urinates vigorously on her final resting place, then returns to his SUV and drives away.

43-year-old Michael Murphy used hidden cameras to catch the performance after finding traces of urine along with plastic bags with feces whenever he visited his mother’s grave in Orangetown, New York. The elderly man visits almost every day at around 6:00 am. He is, as you might guess, Linda’s ex-husband whom she divorced 48 years ago. Michael got permission to set up the cameras; apparently this ritual has been going on for a long, long time. Interestingly a woman, assumed to be Eichner’s spouse, accompanies him on his morning visits.

Murphy says that his mother’s brief marriage to the guy ended when she became pregnant and he didn’t want to be a father. (There’s got to be more to the story than that!) “How he found my mother’s grave site we are not sure. But this stems back to a problem almost 50 years ago,” Michael wrote on Facebook. He says the family has had no contact with him since 1976.

Police say there is nothing they can (or will) do about routine grave-pissing, but Linda Torello’s son is trying to determine if a complaint for grave desecration will prompt some action.

You know, the late Stephen Sondheim could have written a musical about this.

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Pointer: Oddity Central

Monday Ethics Madness, 10/3/22: Remembering O.J., And More

October 3 is another date that lives in infamy…ethics infamy, legal infamy, celebrity infamy, race relations infamy. On this day in 1995, the sensational, infuriating trial of O.J. Simpson ended with his acquittal of the double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. After 252 days, jurors decided that Simpson’s guilt had not been proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” despite more than enough evidence to convict just about anyone else who didn’t have an all-star team of criminal defense lawyers. Among the many ethics alarms set off by and during the trial:

  • The imbalance between the resources available to the state in high-profile criminal cases and what a wealthy defendant can use to defend himself stood out in sharp contrast to the situation in typical cases, where the imbalance is reversed.
  • The influence of the Rodney King riots and the deft manner in which Johnny Cochran turned the trial into racial payback perverted justice and the culture—but was the epitome of zealous representation, the lawyer’s creed.
  • A weak judge, Lance Ito, allowed the defense to engage in unethical and otherwise questionable tactics, but in a setting where lawyers are arguably obligated to exploit every advantage a trial judge lets them get away with.
  • Prosecution incompetence, exemplified by such decisions as not asking for a different venue, seeking to seat African-American women on the jury, insufficiently vetting Mark Fuhrman, and the infamous gloves debacle, literally allowed Simpson to walk free from a double murder.
  • The weakness of the jury system was exposed, as the Simpson jurors proved easy to confuse regarding complex and technical scientific evidence.

And much more.

1. More college loan ethics! The Consumer Financial Protection Board ruled last week that colleges that lend directly to their students cannot later refuse to release a student’s transcript as a way of forcing them to make loan payments. The issue arises with for-profit colleges that can make their own loans to students.  The bureau said transcript withholding as a tool to collect these debts is “designed to gain leverage over borrowers and coerce them into making payments,” and are therefore abusive and excessively punitive.

“Faced with the choice between paying a specific debt and the unknown loss associated with long-term career opportunities of a new job or further education, consumers may be coerced into making payments on debts that are inaccurately calculated, improperly assessed, or otherwise problematic,” the bureau wrote. Continue reading