Well, I think I’ve fulminated enough for one morning…I’m done.
Ethics Dunce: George Will (How Sad…)
Once upon a time, I used to read George Will regularly. He was erudite, he was principled, he was equally critical of both political parties, and he was a reliable champion of ethical values. I don’t know if it was Donald Trump who broke him, but Will’s intellect and integrity certainly didn’t survive Trump’s rise. If nothing else, Will is an elitist, and the prospect of an unmannerly low-class boor entering the White House was too much for George’s aging brain to bear. He snapped, and suddenly the slave of cognitive dissonance, he decided that if a man like Trump was allied to the democratic and political principles he had spent his professional life passionately advocating and defending, then he shouldn’t defend them any more.
Snobbery over substance. Good plan, George!
Since his decline into irrelevance or senility I haven’t wasted a moment on Will’s writings; I don’t care what he thinks, because he no longer thinks clearly. His latest in the Washington Post, however, is special. Risibly titled “Amend the Constitution to bar senators from the presidency,” it checks all the boxes of a truly bad, indeed unethical, op-ed.
Will’s simple-minded argument is…
Banning senators from the presidency would increase the probability of having senators who are interested in being senators, and would increase the probability of avoiding:
Presidents who have never run anything larger than a Senate office. Who have confused striking poses — in the Capitol, on Twitter — with governing…
Oh I see now: George isn’t really advocating banning Senators from being President. He’s just cranky that Senators aren’t doing a better job, and deceiving his readers into believing there’s any solution other than electing better Senators. Of course, Will has never been willing to dirty himself with actual policy making or trying to build public consensus; it’s so much easier to stand on the sidelines and call everyone else idiots.
Wonderful Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 4/29/22: Chauvin Appeals, Curmie Attacks, Totalitarians Unmask, And More
You know, I used to choreograph crap like that.
1. Reading assignment! Esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter Curmie has, as promised, posted an essay on his blog discussing the revolting development described here in item #3. I really should have devoted a whole post to it myself: that’s the saga of the San Francisco eighth-grade teacher who was pounced on by her school by being too informative in her instruction on American slavery: She actually brought cotton bolls into class. As he always has done, Curmie’s commentary is sharp and persuasive, and I recommend it highly. Here’s a sample…
Of course, there are those who need to be perceived as victims or they would evaporate like dew in an Arizona August morning. If they can’t complain that the real history of this country isn’t being taught, they’ll complain that it is. Naturally, the teacher in question was suspended for five weeks, and one can reasonably suspect that her subsequent apology was coerced as a condition of her reinstatement. It has all the authenticity of the fake confessions of American POWs in the Korean War. The problem here goes beyond punishing a teacher for doing nothing wrong. Her travails are the direct result of doing something right. Humiliating good teachers for doing their jobs has become a blood sport. This must stop.
Indeed it must, along with a lot of other things we are seeing lately courtesy of the Wonderful World of Woke. The question is how?
2. Wilful ignorance or sinister propaganda? Here’s a second reading assignment: progressive columnist Frank Bruni’s op-ed in the Times opposing the idea that parents should exert oversight on what their children are taught in school. Somehow he managed to miss entirely the core element of trust. Once too many teachers decided that their function was to engage in political indoctrination, once the web allowed parents to read about school punishing students for making finger guns and teaching their kids to sing songs extolling Obama, and when an unexpected side effect of (wrongly) closing the schools was to allow parents to witness the kind of instruction that goes on and the kinds of social justice warriors who handled it, responsible parents decided that it was time to assert themselves. And they have, and are. Good. Continue reading
It Took Lionel Porter 20 Attempts To Pass The Massachusetts Bar Exam But That’s Not Why The State Won’t Let Him Practice Law
…although it should be.
No, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court refused to allow Lionel Porter to become a lawyer because while he was in the midst of flunking all those bar exams, he practiced law without a license. The April 22 opinion explains.
I am stunned that any state, especially my home state of Massachusetts (where I passed the bar the first time despite studying for it almost always while listening or watching the Red Sox drive to the 1975 pennant) would allow anyone to take the bar exam that many times. It’s just not that hard, especially since Mass. went to the all-multiple choice Multi-State exam. I knew and know a lot of lawyers, and only one flunked the bar. That was my father, who took the exam the first time without studying just to see how he would do. (He just missed passing.) Continue reading
Unethical Quote Of The Month From An Unfit Biden Judicial Nominee [Corrected]
“I said it in my role as an advocate to make a rhetorical point.”
—-ACLU lawyer Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, nominated by President Biden for the federal judiciary, in response to a question by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) about why she told a Princeton audience that police kill unarmed blacks “every day.”
In the exchange you can see in the video clip above, Choudhury’s excuse for lying outright to a student audience at Princeton is that she did it to “make a rhetorical point.” Oh! That’s all right then!
Sen. Kennedy was quite appropriately aghast, as should any professional, citizen, lawyer or judge should be. The President’s nominee to sit on the bench for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York quite literally is saying that a lawyer can lie in public for a reason she deems appropriate. No, she can’t, not ethically, not if she wants to be trusted, and lawyers, like judges must be trustworthy. Her answer to Kennedy is signature significance for an unprincipled ideologue (her employer, the ACLU, is full of them, but that’s no mitigation) who is unfit to be a judge (and in my view, unfit to be a lawyer.)
The Unethical Student Loan Debt Cancellation Ploy
The push to cancel student loan debt is another example of the Left embracing a terrible, foolish, indefensibly unethical policy for no better reason than hope that it will allow them it to gain political power. Word around Washington is that President Biden is “seriously considering” canceling up to $50,000 in student debt for all. Translation: Biden’s puppeteers/handlers/advisers are probably trying to get him to do it, insane and irresponsible as it may be, but Joe may be inclined to do it on his own, because 1) he’s just not very bright; 2) he’s not very bright and his cognitive functions have been deteriorating in front of the whole nation; and 3) he never had any integrity anyway.
The late Rush Limbaugh, commenting on Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in 2012, lamented that “You can’t beat free stuff!” He said that Democrats were always willing to buy votes by promising to pay for more or making “the rich” or private business do so, from living wages for jobs not worth them, to national health, to free college degrees and more. Tilting the U.S. to socialism and a “nanny state”? If that’s what it takes to win, sure! Turning the national debt into a ticking time bomb that future generations will have to suffer for? Why not? Student loan forgiveness is as good an example of Rush’s point as I can imagine.
It is unethical in so many ways…
It’s Time To Play “You’re The Supreme Court!” Today’s Challenge… The Praying Coach!
“Hello everybody! Welcome to another exciting challenge on the game show everyone is talking about, “You’re the Supreme Court!” Today, we take on a challenge that crosses into legal, ethical and logical gray areas. What is the right way to handle a football coach who won’t stop praying on the football field? Are you ready, contestants? Here we go!”
Former Bremerton (Wash.) High School assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy began “taking a knee” at midfield long before NFL players were Kaepenicking. Kennedy knelt in prayer at midfield after games, and was often joined by members of the team. Bremerton public school officials fired him from his job in 2015 when he refused to stop his on-field prayers, which his superiors said violated the Constitution’s prohibition against government endorsement of religion. Bremerton sued, and all this time his case has been winding its way through the system, finally reaching the Supreme Court in oral argument this week.
The question before the Court is whether Kennedy’s on-field prayers are protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty or violate the First Amendment by promoting his religion in a government supported setting. The justices will issue their opinion decision in June. Continue reading
Post Trauma Ethics Stress, 4/27/22: “Gaslit,” SCOTUS, And School Bullying (By The School!)
I had two and a half hours of painful dental work (bill, with insurance, 2,300 bucks) this morning, followed by blood tests from my doctor in the afternoon. This followed the Red Sox losing a game in Toronto after a two-run homer by the Jays with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. The dental work was more fun. Then I learned that my drug prescription insurance had been cancelled thanks to an administrative screw-up on their end. Life is bleak.
1. Is it me? It’s possible that “Gaslit,” the Starz move purporting to be about Martha Mitchell, strike me as more ham-handed anti-Republican/conservative propaganda because there is so much of that now from all angles of the media that my eye is permanently jaundiced. It’s also possible that it’s one more smug “Remember, conservatives are evil and stupid!” entry employing the same broad, unfunny approach that characterized Alec “Oops!” Baldwin’s Trump imitation and “Don’t Look Up!” Whatever the Watergate crowd was, they weren’t stupid, but that’s the version of history we get in “Gaslit.” Julia Roberts is getting races for a completely lazy performance that doesn’t evoke Mitchell at all, ad isn’t amusing either. (She can do better.) Then there was the portrayal of John Mitchell by some obviously too-young actor who was so smothered in padding and double-chin latex that he looked like Jiminy Glick’s father. He still didn’t look like Mitchell, sound like him, move like him or evoke Nixon’s Attorney General and bag man in any way, but he was gross and repulsive, and that’s clearly what mattered to the director and producers. Similarly unrecognizable to anyone remotely familiar with the Watergate cast is the portrayal of John Dean, who would be a fascinating character in a drama. In this amateurish satire, he’s just another idiot, something Dean was definitely not. I guess its not as ridiculous as it seems that the actor playing G. Gordon Liddy is getting raves for playing him as certifiably insane; in fact, it’s predictable, since the cheering reviewers are of the same bias as the film-makers, but it’s a lousy impression. They couldn’t even get the mustache right! Making Liddy into a buffoon removes all menace from the character, and Liddy was genuinely scary, because he was not stupid. In fact, it is clear that there are quite a few G. Gordon Liddy types behind the scenes in the Biden Administration (as there were in the Trump White House), but never mind: only Republicans threaten democracy.
The fact is the Nixon and the gang almost got away with their attack on democracy; that they didn’t was just chance. It remains to be seen if Biden’s puppeteers will do better. To me, “Gaslit” seems like one more diversionary tactic from the Hollywood wing of the Democratic Party.
But it might just be a crummy movie.
Signature Significance: Washington Post Editorial Board’s Fantasy
How can anyone take seriously, much less trust, a newspaper with an editorial board that would publish something like this?
The headline was clickbait, at least for me: “Biden shows once again why he is a huge upgrade from Trump.” I had to read it. “Once again”? “Huge upgrade”? I wondered what on earth the Post could be referring to. The answer took me by surprise.
The editorial was lauding Biden’s pardoning or commuting convicted criminals who committed nonviolent federal crimes. Well, I’m not going to quibble: the traditional POTUS use of the Presidential pardon power is a low, low, lower than low bar to clear. I haven’t seen the full information on those who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted, but they were overwhelmingly drug offenders, and overwhelmingly “of color,” because that’s how this Administration rolls. There is, I surmise, virtually no chance that Joe was personally involved in the choice of who to pardon, and scant chance that he had to do anything more than sign off on the selections made by Elizabeth G. Oyer, the Justice Department’s pardon chief.
Still, the Presidential pardon power is shamefully underused, and has been grossly misused in the past, notably when Bill Clinton, in the waning days of his Presidency, pardoned fugitive Marc Rich, who had been indicted on federal charges of tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. Why did Clinton do this? His ex-wife pledged millions to Clinton’s Presidential library, and suddenly Rich was pardoned.
It was a bribe, straight up. How does the Post describe what Clinton did? A “pardon of a Democratic donor looked like a quid pro quo.” Is that a fair or accurate description? No, but the deceit allows the Post editors to say “President Donald Trump was far worse.” Really? Far worse than taking millions of dollars to pardon scum like Marc Rich? That deliberate misrepresentation is also an excellent reason not to trust the Post.
Trump is condemned by the Post because he pardoned some of his loyalists like Mike Flynn, Joe Arpaio and Steve Bannon, all of whom the Post ranks as worse than Rich by virtue of being connected to Trump. I hold most of those pardons justifiable. The Democrats criminalized politics when Trump was elected: those associated with the President had targets on their backs for partisan prosecutors to aim at. Though the Post’s editors don’t mention it, Trump also pardoned a lot of non-violent offenders who were worthy of mercy.
Here is something else that they don’t mention: if all we are talking about is pardons and commutations, Biden is a “huge upgrade” over Barack Obama, and so was Trump. By Thanksgiving of 2010, a full two years into his first term, Obama had pardoned two turkeys (one the previous year) and no human beings.
But of course the Washington Post doesn’t have the integrity to mention that.
The larger point is this: It is ridiculous to cite the use of the pardon power as evidence of any President’s virtues as a leader. There are literally millions of Americans who would be spectacular at issuing pardons. That doesn’t mean that they would be effective Presidents. How often are numbers of pardons and commutations cited by historians in assessing Presidencies? I can answer that: almost never. It is a relatively minor part of the job, and being a responsible and competent wielder of that power (giving Joe a very large benefit of the doubt) doesn’t make Biden a “huge upgrade” over any of his predecessors.
Shackle-Tightening Update: Wikipedia Joins The Left’s Hunter Biden Cover-Up
The ongoing and frightening effort by progressives and Democrats to hide information that might let Americans know what’s going on in their government and nation (or what might be going on) killed another canary in the democracy mine last week.
Coincidentally<cough!>timed with the recent disclosure that Eric Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s business partner, made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015 including meetings with then-Vice President Joe Biden, Wikipedia editors eliminated its page for Rosemont Seneca Partners, the investment company connected to Hunter’s alleged multimillion dollar influence peddling schemes. The risible explanation for the removal was that the company was “not notable”—you know, like Anne Applebaum’s shrugging off Hunter’s laptop as “uninteresting.” Schwerin was president of the company, and President Biden has repeatedly claimed that he had no involvement with his son’s business dealings.
The Left’s efforts at propaganda and information air-brushing appear to be getting increasingly brazen as the mid-term elections approach, and with them the threat that the Democratic plan to transform America is facing imminent collapse. While their mouthpeices attempt to promote ideological censorship by bemoaning “misinformation” and “disinformation,” the would-be architects of a benign woke dictatorship are also trafficking in de-information, with the sleazy Hunter Biden a primary beneficiary, and, as a consequence, his father as well.
