In the last couple of weeks there have been multiple news reports regarding President Biden “Trump-proofing” the government in advance of the newly elected President taking over as the voters have willed. The decision to veto the bi-partisan act that would create more federal judgeships was such a measure: though the new judges are desperately needed to address the backlog in the courts, apparently whoever is pulling Biden’s strings has decided that no new judges at all are better than Trump appointed judges.
Today there was another example. Bloomberg reported that President Biden is will issue an unusually resilient executive order permanently banning new offshore oil and gas development in some US coastal waters.The executive order will bar the sale of new drilling rights in portions of the country’s outer continental shelf, potentially foiling Trump’s promise to ramp up domestic energy production. The plan will exploit a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect US waters from oil and gas leasing. The same law does not without explicitly empower Presidents to revoke the designation. (It sounds legally dubious to me, but I haven’t read the law.)
Trump is expected to order a reversal of these attempted permanent protections, but whether he will be able to do so is unknown.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this…
Do you think it is ethical for an outgoing President to take measures to impede the agenda of the incoming President?
From Israel news sources: “Despite heavy pressure from the United States, Israel refuses to allow the transfer of weapons to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority (PA)…According to a report from Army Radio, the U.S. requested that Israel approve the transfer of AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition and armored vehicles. After discussions among security officials, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi decided to recommend the political leadership not approve the transfers….Under the terms of the [Oslo] Accords, Israel must approve the transfer of heavy weaponry to PA security forces, which occasionally confront terror group members that are armed with superior weapons smuggled with Iranian assistance…
“Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council and the chairman of the Yesha Council, praised the ‘correct decision’….’Transferring ammunition and weapons to the enemy, especially during wartime, is complete madness and a breach of security for the citizens of the State of Israel….The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization – and a terrorist organization should be defeated,’ Ganz declared.”
Ya think?
My favorite quote is “Transferring ammunition and weapons to the enemy, especially during wartime, is complete madness.” Whether or not the Palestinian Authority is fairly described as a terrorist organization, the official position of all the various Palestinian organizations, convoluted and unstable though they are, is that Israel has no right to exist.
I will admit to the possibility that I am missing something, but it seems to me that pressuring Israel at this time to hand over weapons to any Palestinian group is as responsible as pressuring them to make the official language of their nation Swedish and have Israelis wear their underwear on the outside.
Just because the President is demented doesn’t mean we should try to make other countries behave irrationally too.
I missed this, but the White House statement from “President Biden” (Who wrote it? Who approved it? Did the President even know about it?) following the Madison, Wisconsin school shooting two weeks ago couldn’t be a better demonstration of the intellectual dishonesty and ruthlessness of the Left’s anti-Second Amendment fanatics. Apparently gun-phobics are thrilled any time a gun-related tragedy occurs so they can rush out junk like this and fundraising appeals to exploit the event for all it’s worth, and the higher body count the better. The alleged Presidential sentiment deliberately misrepresents the shooting by linking it to standard tenets of the anti-gun agenda that literally have nothing to do with the incident being exploited.
The Biden statement also brands itself as standard issue cant by using the deliberately meaningless Axis phrase “commonsense gun safety laws,” overwhelming used by those whose idea of “common sense” is not to allow legal private gun ownership at all. Then the letter advocates universal background checks, a national red flag law, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines, not one of which would have done anything to prevent the shooting that is supposed to be the subject of the letter.
The shooter in Madison was a 15-year-old girl who couldn’t legally purchase a gun anyway: background checks don’t apply to shooters like her. Nor would a “red flag law” have flagged her, since it doesn’t include children too young to own guns. The shooter didn’t use an “assault weapon”; she used a pistol; nor was a high-capacity magazine involved. Never mind! Guns bad, so this tragedy that might have been prevented if only “we could melt all the guns and give a new world to our daughters and sons” (which we can’t: Who recognizes the song lyric?) justifies rushing out anti-gun propaganda when the appeal to emotion would be most effective.
From the Daily Beast : “President Joe Biden signed 50 new bills into law in a Christmas Eve signing spree as he wraps his last month in office. Among the new laws includes legislation to fight child abuse at residential treatment facilities, fight hazing on college campuses, and a measure that finally designates the bald eagle as the national bird. Many of the bills signed by the outgoing Democratic president on Tuesday were bipartisan efforts—including the bill finally acknowledging the bald eagle. Although the iconic bird of prey is featured prominently on symbols, including the government’s official seal adopted in 1782, the U.S. did not have an official national bird. The efforts to make the bald eagle official were spearheaded by Preston Cook, the co-chair of the National Eagle Center in Minnesota, who first discovered that the country did not have a national bird, according to a Washington Post profile.”
Gee, thank God for President Biden! This might just be the little extra he needs to avoid being named the Worst President Ever in the upcoming Ethics Alarms resolution of its long inquiry into the question.
“Biden” also engaged in some hyper-partisanship when he vetoed the JUDGES Act, bipartisan legislation to create additional district court judgeships. The Senate passed the bill unanimously in August, and a bipartisan House majority finally did so as well in November. It would have created desperately needed 66 new district court seats over the next decade, based upon the recommendations of the Judicial Conference. The bill was endorsed by the Federal Bar Association and the Federal Judges Association. The White House issued a statement that translated means nothing more rational than “we don’t want new judges appointed by Donald Trump, so there.“
“S. 4199 would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” the veto message stated in part. So nobody denies that the U.S. needs new judges, but Biden’s dark masters want the new positions to be created for the right motives. This is a slap at the Republican states that tried to slow down Biden’s waves of DEI appointments over the last six months.
But back to the phony national bird issue: if everyone knew the bald eagle was the de facto national bird since it was obviously the national symbol, being on the seal, on money, on flagpoles and ubiquitous for a couple of centuries, why does the species have to be the official national bird via Congress, the President, and brand new law? So many matters of real importance to try to accomplish before the end of the year: one would think that all is well.
As was anticipated after reports that were issued over the weekend, “President Joe Biden announced” today that he has commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers, thus taking them off federal death row. They will now serve out life sentences in prison, being housed, fed, given medical attention and more at taxpayer expense. This was done deliberately to foil the announced intention of President-elect Donald Trump to carry out the verdicts of juries and the courts.
“Biden’s statement”—this is in quotation marks because he didn’t write it, probably doesn’t understand it and quite possibly never read it or approved it—reads,
“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
It’s no excuse and only moral luck, but I am now glad that I have waited so long to conclude the Ethics Alarms inquiry into who was the worst American President. (That final post on the topic is coming this weekend, I promise.)
For important new data is coming in: The Wall Street Journal issued a report based on extensive interviews with White House insiders and Biden aides that indicates there was a years-long cover-up of the degree of cognitive decline Biden had experienced since he was Vice-President. Both the Journal’s reporting and recent New York Times articles indicate what should be treated as a national scandal but probably won’t be.
His party knew that Biden was infirm mentally and physically before he was nominated to run against then-President Trump in 2020. Once he was nominated, Joe’ true condition was hidden from the inattentive public. I knew that Biden was sinking into dementia as early as 2019; it wasn’t hard to see, and I told many friends and associates that. The ones who hated Donald Trump didn’t car. Biden’s successful 2020 campaign was constrained by the (stupid) Wuhan virus lockdown and a complicit news media oddly incurious about a Constitutional crisis materializing right before their eyes.
Once Biden was elected, the cover-up continued. Top cabinet members were unable to meet with him or even speak with him. Biden held only nine Cabinet meetings in four years! Staff regularly stood in for him at official events. Other staff were assigned to keep him from wandering off. Biden couldn’t hold morning meetings because he was “not at his best” early in the day, and he seldom was up to working past 4pm unless he had spent the day gathering his strength and what was left of his wits. Biden cancelled important national security meetings, with his aides explaining to attendees that the President had “bad days and good days.”
President Biden’s controversial and extreme pardon of his black sheep son did more than call into (further) question his honesty, integrity and trustworthiness. It also highlighted another ugly facet of his failed Presidency.
The power to grant clemency is enshrined in the Constitution is an important failsafe device against legal injustice. When judges or juries convict an innocent person or impose an unjust sentence, often after unethical prosecutorial conduct, Presidents and governors, in the case of state crimes, possess the irreversible power to either commute a sentence to issue a pardon, which wipes the slate clean and removes the conviction altogether. Sure the power, like all powers, can be abused, has been abused and will be abused, but it is still necessary. However, President Biden has used that power appropriately less frequently than any modern President, though our criminal laws have multiplied.
“Mr. Biden has granted 25 pardons and commuted the sentences of 131 other people, according to the most recent Justice Department data,” wrote law professors Rachel E. Barkow and Mark Osler in a September 2024 editorial in The New York Times. “That is a mere 1.4 percent of the petitions he has received, based on our analysis…Mr. Biden has issued fewer clemency grants so far than the 238—144 pardons and 94 commutations—issued by Mr. Trump during his first administration,” the Times’ Kenneth Vogel noted this week.
True, there is still time for Biden to do some good with his pardon and clemency powers, but he should have been using them all along. Biden is extending a pattern in which Presidents increasingly eschew the pardon power. “Between 1932 and 1988 the percentage of total cases acted on by the president that had been sent to him with the Justice Department’s blessing averaged around 30%,” a 2015 piece by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center revealed. “The percentage of cases sent forward with a favorable recommendation dropped to single digits beginning with the presidency of George H.W. Bush, and it has dropped even lower in the past 15 years…The absolute numbers also tell a tale: President [Barack] Obama…granted more sentence commutations than any president since Richard Nixon, but fewer full pardons than any president since John Adams.”
Ah yes, Obama. He was a notable hypocrite on the matter of pardons. Continue reading →
“…And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us…”
—Long-time progressive NYT pundit Frank Bruniin one of the “Harris must win, Trump is terrible” stories and columns in the Times today.
I counted 11 of the latter. Twelve. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Whatever would make you think that?
Bruni has been a member of the Times staff and editorial board for 25 years. Res ipsa loquitur. The Times has at least one (they have, in truth, many) columnist who had a regular platform to spread his biases and misconceptions, and he thinks (or says he thinks) Joe Biden is a good man. Right. There are few politicians of such longevity who have ever left such an unambiguous record of not being a good man, woman, or public servant. Since I’m not writing a book, I’ll just list the bits of Joe’s biography that stick out for me at the moment:
One would think this is obvious, but since the most unprofessional and incompetent White House spokesperson of all time—yes, even worse than Sean Spicer!—still has her job despite the stunt she pulled yesterday, it clearly isn’t obvious enough.
Yesterday? Oh, that. Yesterday President Biden’s DEI paid liar couldn’t deal with Peter Doocy’s questions about FEMA gaslighting regarding its strange shortage of funds to handle hurricane relief while the Biden-Harris administration was sending nearly $157 million to assist displaced people and refugees in Lebanon. Jean-Pierre—who can be seen on “X” and elsewhere denying to reporters that FEMA spends money relocating illegal immigrants and in earlier video clips saying that it does—called Doocy’s daring to question the administration’s excuses “misinformation.”
In case this fact has eluded you somehow, Democrats now use “misinformation” to mean “facts, interpretations and opinions that interfere with a narrative that advances our interests.” When Doocy refused to accept Jean-Pierre’s evasive and contradictory answers, such as stating that FEMA had plenty of fund for hurricane relief despite both President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas stating otherwise, Historic Paid Liar resorted to “slamming her notebook shut and storming out of the briefing room.”
I have to come to the harsh but unavoidable ethics verdict that anyone who votes for the same political party responsible for us having a President in this condition is stupid, irreversibly ignorant, completely uninformed, or a mindless partisan robot eager to love Big Brother.
As I recently reminded readers by quoting from this post in early 2020, the fact that Joe Biden was losing his already tenuous grip on competence was evident before the Democrats nominated him. I wasn’t unusually perceptive; the Democratic Party’s Dark Leaders had to know that the assorted demagogues, anti-US socialists and empty suits competing with him for the Presidential nomination that year had little chance of defeating the Evil Donald Trump, and also that Biden was literally unfit to hold office. Then the pandemic struck, and the party, which aspires to be called The Party henceforth, realized that they could hide Joe in the basement, pretend he wasn’t losing marbles daily, and use pandemic terror spread by its media allies to justify useful changes in election security. Voilà! Victory “by any means necessary.” [Harry Reid chimes in from the Lake of Fire where he now resides, “Romney lost, didn’t he?”]
