California

What Exactly Are California’s “Values”? Can Anybody Explain?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

ProPublica, an almost entirely pro-progressive, anti-conservative “independent public interest watchdog” organization, shockingly goes after our most progressive state (it’s a close competition), revealing that California allows teachers who have been caught sexually harassing students to keep teaching anyway.

What?? Indeed this seems to be the case. The investigative reporting website states in part, after relating the tale of a teacher named Agan who after an independent panel convened by the state to hear his case deemed him “unfit to teach” based on multiple complaints by students, hired by two other schools prompting sexual harassment accusation by students a

“A broad look at California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing by KQED and ProPublica shows a pattern of delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, that have allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state for sexual harassment or other misconduct of a sexual nature. Agan’s case is one of at least 67 in which the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets. At least 14 of those educators were rehired by other schools, and of those, at least 12, including Agan, still work in education, according to a review of school websites and employment records provided by schools.” Anita Fitzhugh, a spokesperson for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the state automatically revokes teachers’ credentials when they are convicted of sexual criminal offenses, but not necessarily when a district determines they have committed sexual misconduct. She said the state Legislature — not the licensing agency — determines the type of misconduct that results in automatic revocation. The agency appoints a committee to assess noncriminal cases of misconduct, she said. Agan has not been accused of a crime.  “The Commission’s authority balances protecting students as well as the legal rights of educators who have been accused but not convicted of specific crimes,” Fitzhugh said in a written statement.” 

Yikes. What’s going on here? That key question in ethics inquiries seems to be this: California’s kinder, gentler, incompetent approach to enforcing even minimal personal responsibility appears to have resulted in a bizarre calculation that puts children at risk. See, Agan, and many other teachers, haven’t criminally assaulted students or at at least can’t be proved to have done so beyond a reasonable doubt. So as long as the unprofessional, emotionally damaging, conflict-ridden sexual harassing conduct doesn’t rise to the level of a felony, California appears to be satisfied to let bygones be bygones, and a male teacher who leers and drools over and even touches female students get second and third chances to change their ways.

I assume that the teachers unions have a great deal to do with this disconnect that and the fact that the now fairly dead-in-the-water #MeToo movement disgraced itself by turning into a willing DEI weapon. Like so much that goes on in California while alleged adults stand mute and passively by, I don’t get this at all. What does California care about, besides catering to illegal immigrants and environmental virtue-signaling? What value system does a state embrace when it shrugs off sexual misconduct by its teachers?

Unethical (But Informative!) Quote of the Month: Katie Porter

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“It’s the job of the California governor to protect every single Californian,” Porter said. “The sanctuary state policy is designed to make sure that our state resources, the taxpayer dollars, the public servants that we have, are focusing on doing their jobs, which is not cooperating with the federal immigration authorities. These are Californians. They contribute to our economy, they pay taxes, and they’re one of the only ways our state has been growing in recent years.”

  —Former California Congresswoman Katie Porter in this week’s gubernatorial debate  explaining why “sanctuary” states  are crucial to Democrats.      

I have chosen to write as little as possible about California Governor candidate Katie Porter, I think because her very existence embarrasses me and the fact that such an awful human being could be elected to Congress by California voters shows just how beyond redemption that rotting state is. Here was my only entry regarding Porter, from last October:

“In California, the leading candidate to replace Gavin Newsom as governor, Rep. Katie Porter, has been bedeviled by emerging videos of her abusing staffers, refusing to tolerate probing questions from interviewers, and generally acting like a witch on wheels (It’s Halloween!) Porter and her political allies insist that these clips don’t show “the real Katie,’ which is comforting, since that demon impersonating Porter just stops short of spewing green vomit.”

The good news is that Porter isn’t leading in the polls any more, and in fact has the same chances of being governor of the tarnished Golden State as Frosty the Snowman has of being elected Mayor of Hell. The other good news is that her statement above was a public admission of why Democrats are so keen on open borders. It’s not quite a confirmation of “The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, but it is close enough for horseshoes.

Axis-dwellers are so engulfed by their bubble that they can’t imagine anyone being bothered by a statement like that in their own party. This means, as night follows day, that they can’t imagine any progressives or Democrats possessing an understanding of law, national security, fairness, honesty…oh, lots of things.

Her state has welcomed illegal aliens in the hundreds of thousands while an estimated 10 million California residents have fled the state in the last decade. Illegal immigrants are not Californians by definition. They cannot be, because they aren’t citizens, and California cannot make them so. California’s elected officials, she admits, are not cooperating with federal law enforcement to allow millions of law-breakers to continue breaking the law, in order to provide illicit political support to Democrats, and to artificially inflate census numbers so Democrats can cement their power in Congress.

Nice.

To her credit, Porter’s explanation was frank, honest and except for her misunderstanding of that citizenship thingy, ethical. It reminds me of bank robber Willie Sutton’s legendary response when he was asked why he kept bobbing banks.

He said, “Because that’s where the money is.”

On California’s Lawyer Civility Pledge

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

California lawyers in Marin County will soon be required to take a civility pledge as part of their annual renewal oath. The pledge, approved by the State Bar’s Board of Trustees, applies to all 286,000 licensed attorneys and will become mandatory on April 1.

Incredibly, California lawyers, a significant number of them, are objecting. The pledge is “vague,” they say, and could violate First Amendment rights. They also claim that it’s unfiar to change the entrenched courtroom habits of veteran lawyers; in other words, “How dare the bar hinder lawyers who have been successful being assholes?”

The frightening pledge reads simply, “As an officer of the court, I will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy and integrity.”

Pages: 1 2

California Apparently Doesn’t Believe in Following the Constitution

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is unethical. I wonder how the state got that way, and if anything can be done about it?

ITEM: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out to the state that its obviously First Amendment-violating ban on firearms advertising was illegal, and now California must pay more than $1.3 million in legal fees to the plaintiffs. The law was virtue-signalling to California’s gun-phobics; I doubt any honest Constitutional law expert anywhere thought it could pass judicial scrutiny.

Assembly Bill 2571 (AB 2571) prohibited “firearms industry members” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) from advertising, marketing or promoting any firearms or “firearms-related products,” in a manner that is “designed, intended, or reasonably appears to be attractive to minors.” Wow, how about that statutory drafting?

Safari Club International and the other plaintiffs filed suit arguing that the statute violated the First Amendment by restricting commercial speech. They also argued that the law was unconstitutionally vague (Ya think?), a Due Process violation, and that it discriminated against a legal industry and makers of legal products. The rulings agreeing with them are here and here.

ITEM: Voters in California, according to a poll conducted by the Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research, support a proposed “wealth tax” on billionaires with 50% of California voters in favor of the measure and only 28% objecting to it. The concept comes from the Marxist brain of Bernie Sanders, who insists that people who resent other American having more money than they do should be able to just take it.

This scheme probably violates state and federal laws as well as the Constitution. The 5th and 14th Amendments block uncompensated “takings.” California’s 0.4% cap on personal property tax would seem to be a problem. The law also looks like an illegal bill of attainder, targeting specific individuals.

The California Communists who are pushing this bill seem to believe that the state’s billionaires will just be good little proles and hand the cash over. Gavin Newsom, who has no discernible principles, thinks the proposed law will make him look bad when he runs for President, so he says he’s against it.

Maybe all the billionaires, millionaires, entrepreneurs, companies and American citizens will abandon the Golden State to the illegal immigrants, shop-lifters, assorted criminals and censors, leaving California to emulate the dystopian Manhattan of John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York.” Surely there must be a less draconian remedy, but I have no idea what it is.

Supreme Court Partisan Hacks Unmasked!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Supreme Court today refused to strike down California’s new gerrymandered congressional map designed to give Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and turned down a request from a group of California Republicans that would have required the state to continue to use the map in place while their judicial challenge to the map proceeded. If anyone dissented on the Court, he, she or they kept it to themselves.

This is called “following precedent.”

Two months ago the conservative bloc on the Court, over dissents from the Three Little Maids of Kneejerk Progressivism, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use its new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state. In Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, a lower court had sided with Democratic challengers that the “legislature’s motive was predominantly racial,” making the redistricting unconstitutional. (Once again, crying racism was the Left’s default claim.)The majority reversed that ruling in its December 4 order. Justice Alito issued an opinion (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorusch) explaining that “it is indisputable … that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map…was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

The Republicans who challenged the California map were counting on a lack of integrity from the conservative majority although the issue was exactly the same as in the Texas case. But the six conservative, Republican-appointed Justices declined the bait. They ruled for the Democrats just as they had ruled for the Texas Republicans, which was the legal, ethical, fair and objective result. Even those conservative devils Thomas and Alito!

Another false partisan narrative bites the dust.

If the three Democratic women possessed similar integrity, they would have dissented in this case too, as they had in Abbott. But they didn’t, did they?With their votes, they showed that their principles only hold when their favorite party benefits from them.

They are the hacks.

Unmasked at last.

I Wonder How Often This Happens and In How Many Places…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Confederacy Rises Again: LA Country Thinks Federal Law Enforcement Creates “An Emergency”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The progressive/Axis/ Democratic Party/bleeding heart support for illegal immigrants is, I must confess, a mystery to me. The sentiment makes no sense from a basic principles of civilization perspective, nor a legal perspective, a rule of law perspective, a historical perspective, and definitely not an ethical perspective. It is all emotional, as in “How can you punish these poor people for just wanting a better life?,” which reminds me of Woody Allen’s crazy father in “Annie Hall,” who berates his wife for firing their cleaning woman. “She’s colored! She’s been oppressed! She has a right to steal!,” he shouts in a flashback. In 1977, everyone, literally everyone, knew that exchange was a joke. Today, thank to almost 50 years of woke brainwashing, a substantial segment of the population thinks it makes sense. “They have a right to get the benefits of citizenship! They’ve had a tough life! ” or, just as bad, “Ok, but since they came here illegally, they’ve been good! ” Right. How dare we take away from them what they took illegally in the first place, since we didn’t catch them sooner.

Continue reading →

Revisiting “I Don’t Understand This ‘Niggardly Principle’ Story At All…Or Maybe I Do and Am Just Afraid To Accept the Truth”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The Rest of the Story: I’m reposting this essay from almost exactly a year ago because the Free Press has a disturbing update on Holden Hughes (“He Was Falsely Accused of ‘Blackface.’ It Derailed His Life.”), one of the boys whose 2017 selfie was used by an unidentified woke ethics villain to have the children tarred as racists during the George Floyd Freakout in 2020. That ethics villain was an ideological compatriot of my friends who are raving about MAGA and Trump today. That is their “side.”

He’s an adult now, but Holden’s life plans were seriously derailed when the private school he was attending expelled him, not because he really was wearing “blackface” in that photo (he and his friends were smeared with green anti-acne facial masks) but because the woke head of the school believed that appearances mattered more than reality. Last year, a successful law suit by his family against the school ended in a one million dollar verdict for him and another one of the boys. That was just money, however, the damage remained

Everyone should reflect on this cautionary tale (which the mainstream media scrupulously avoided reporting on, and you know why) when the Trump Deranged claim that progressives defend democratic values and deplore ideological bullying. The piece ends,

Last year, shortly after the lawsuit was settled, he started dating a girl he liked. On their second date, he told her about his past and after that, he said, she stopped responding to his texts. He told me that it’s hard to accept that “something completely out of my control kind of inhibits that relationship from going farther.” But he can’t change the past.

“It’s my life, and there’s no avoiding that. It made me who I am today.”

Throughout the entire ordeal of the last five years, Holden told me he would remind himself: “I know who I am. I know my values. I know the real story.” He knows the other story—the one that isn’t true—will continue to haunt him. “I don’t think it’s ever gonna leave me,” he said. But he wanted to speak to me because he believed that putting his story in print, knowing it would be on the internet forever, would be cathartic. For him, it is a chance to finally set the record straight, after trying to hide the lies for so long.

“I am not ashamed of anything that happened,” Holden said. “I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I make them every single day, but doing an acne face mask in eighth grade was not one of them.”

Here is the post, from May 11, 2024:

Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-old California teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well. 

A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.

I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.

Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”

Continue reading →

As I Predicted (Along With Many Others) Judge Breyer’s Partisan and Over-Reaching Order Has Been Blocked…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

…because it was unethical and legally indefensible. Of course, the libertarians loved it because they are almost as Trump Deranged as the Axis. Libertarians don’t like strong Presidents who don’t hesitate to use their Constitutional and statutory powers. Fortunately, most Americans do and always have. Libertarians’ list of favorite Presidents begin with Calvin Coolidge. What color is the sky on your planet, Illya Somin?

A federal appeals court on June 19 extended its block of a Judge Breyer’s flamingly partisan order that directed President Trump to return control of California’s National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was obviously determined to let pro-open border crazies harass ICE agents and riot across Los Angeles.

The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 9th Circuit issued a unanimous order, and one of the three judges was a Biden appointee! The roughly 4,000 National Guard troops can now stay in Los Angeles, to protect federal property and U.S. immigration agents, while preventing a replay of George Floyd Madness that the Mad Left would dearly love to see. Could a “Undovument Migrants’ Lives Matter” group be far behind?

Continue reading →

And Now For Something Completely Stupid and Unethical Too: Carmel-By-The-Sea

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I’m not sure why I never learned that the little California municipality of Carmel-by-the-Sea in Monterey has an illegal and unethical law against high-heeled shoes, since my brain is stuffed with even more useless trivia. I know now, however, and my conviction that California is hopelessly estranged from U.S. values and principles has been reinforced (again).

In 1963 the city passed a law, recommended by a City Attorney who was evidently an idiot, requiring visitors to get an official permit in order to legally walk around the place in heels higher than two inches. You can read the local ordinance here. If one wants to walk around wearing heels over two inches in height and less than one square inch of bearing surface, a permit from the city hall is required. The permits are issued free of charge, with the name of the individual making the request and the signature of a city clerk.

Continue reading →