Democrats

Neera Tanden And Ethics Rot

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Neera

After Democrat Joe Manchin announced that he would not support Joe Biden’s hyper-partisan nominee to head OMB because of her impolitic insults to Republican Senators, it was widely assumed that her nomination was dead, and that President Biden would pull it. I suggested that Tanden would withdraw and save him the trouble, but nah, that would be dignified and ethical. Biden, meanwhile, dug in regarding a nomination that was hypocritical for a leader who had pledged not to be divisive, though to be fair, Joe might not be sending his own tweets. “I think we’re going to find the votes to get her confirmed,” Biden told reporters, which would have to mean that either Manchin was going to wake up with a horse’s head in his bed or that some Republican would vote for a woman who routinely called that Senator’s colleagues “monsters” and worse.

I immediately thought of Susan Collins, the whiniest, most mealy-mouthed, weak-tea Senator in either party. She has six more years in the Senate after her upset win in November: maybe the Democrats are working her over. Politico, though, suggests that the White House knows Tanden is a dead POC walking, but “Democrats believe it’s critical the Biden administration does not quickly relent on Tanden after Manchin’s opposition, if only to demonstrate they will not cower immediately to any opposition, including from within the party.” Yeah, that’s good thinking: make an unethical and careless nomination and refuse to admit that it was a mistake when it’s obvious to everyone. Good plan!

In the meantime, the interim plan is apparently to do what progressives and Democrats always default to: accusing anyone who criticizes them of sexism and racism. “I think #manchin has issues with strong, smart, independent, say what they want to women of color. Last month @VP didn’t pay him the proper homage. This month @neeratanden’s tweets are too much. Seeing a pattern?” said journalist Sophia Nelson.

Psst! Sophia! “Smart” people don’t “say what they want” on Twitter if they want to be confirmed by a two-party Senate and what they want is to insult everyone in one of those parties. More, from The Blaze:

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One Acquittal, Three Quotes, Four Reactions

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Trump acquitted

Former President Trump was acquitted in the second impeachment trial stemming from the Democrats’ relentless effort to remove him from office after his shocking election in 2016. In both efforts, the two-thirds super-majority necessary to convict was always impossible, because unlike previous impeachment efforts, these involved no crimes, and were not bi-partisan . They were exercises in pure partisan warfare, despite the contrary intent of the Founders and the flood of exaggerated rhetoric from Trump’s enemies who had presumed he needed to be impeached from the moment he was elected.

The sudden vote yesterday came as a surprise, as the Senate had just voted to allow witnesses in the “trial,” and that would have extended the fiasco considerably. I assume, without knowing, that the Democratic leadership finally figured out that its plot wasn’t working, and that it was time for the party to cut its losses. They might still be considerable. I hope they are considerable. This has wounded the nation badly, and the party that has blathered on about accountability needs some, and hard.

Republican Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania voted guilty along with every Democrat. Interestingly, only two of the seven have a law degree, which may partially explain why they think a guilty verdict is defensible (it’s not.) The two lawyers, Romney and Murkowski, are barely Republicans and have been consistently anti-Trump. The fact that not a single Democrat had the integrity to buck the party’s mandate and oppose such a damaging precedent and such a dubious impeachment tells us all we need to know about the state of the current Democratic Party.

Now, three quotes following the vote:

Quote #1: From law professor and blogger Glenn Reynolds:

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Another Totalitarian Tell: In The House Of Representatives, Only One Party Has To Obey the Rules. Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

metal detector

I will not accept this, and if you do, have your prison jump-suit measured.

You’ll be needing it.

Last week, Democrats in the House passed a new rule requiring members to pass through a metal detector before they entered the House floor. After all several Democrats said they were all scared and stuff of those scary GOP members who support the Second Amendment. Some of them even own those evil guns! ,

Some House members tried evading the metal detectors and entered through what’s known as “the speaker’s lobby,” so Speaker Pelosi began issuing fines for that. Rep. Louis Gohmert was fined $5,000 after briefly leaving the floor to go to the bathroom. Then Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Il) —if it had been a Democrat, we never would have heard about it—caught Pelosi herself entering through the speaker’s lobby and avoiding the detectors. Because metal detectors are for the little people. The beaten people. The submissive or soon to be. Sort of like electric collars.

Fox News (of course Fox News-–you don’t think any of the regime supporting media sources would dare report this, do you?) said:

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Christopher Bedford

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

nationalguard

“None of this matters to the leaders in Washington: Not walling themselves from the public they serve, nor spreading even more fear and distrust among their supporters than already existed. What matters is that the Democrats and the troops be seen as the only things standing between America and a Ku Klux MAGA apocalypse.”

Christopher Bedford, National Review editor, in his essay, The Occupation Of Washington Is Pure Panic Porn — And You Are The Target

I don’t usually like to devote an Ethics Alarms post to quoting another writer’s work, but Mr. Bedford has expressed what I would have so perfectly that I’ll make an exception. Please go to the National Review and read the whole thing, but note these points:

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Ethics Dunces: The 55 U.S. Senators Who Voted That It Is Constitutional For The Senate To Impeach A Private Citizen

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Paul

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) offered the obvious and obligatory point of order resolution that a Senate trial of a private citizen, that being former President Trump, is unconstitutional, which it unquestionably is. The resolution failed 55-45, with every Democrat voting for the measure along with five NeverTrump Republicans: Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

This means that 55 U.S. Senators, all of whom took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, have stated on the record that they will do no such thing. Yet their votes do not decide what is constitutional. The Constitution decides. Consider: not a single Democratic Senator had the integrity, independence and courage to declare that what the Constitution says is what the Constitution says, and that the U.S. Senate should not, indeed must not, ignore it to satisfy obsessive Democratic spite. Not one.

That’s one helluva party you got there, Joe.

In addition to that,

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“The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Impeachment” Becomes An Ethics Fiasco: Ten Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

johnson-impeachment

In this post, “Nancy And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Impeachment “—could it really have just been 12 days ago?—I wrote in part,

Nancy Pelosi came right out and said that her objective in impeaching Trump this time was to stop him from running again. That’s not what the Founders designed impeachment for. She’s admitting that this Congress and her party regard impeachment as just one more political stunt, like ripping up the State of the Union message, boycotting the inauguration, or nominating Kamala Harris. Worse, unless the Senate agrees to rush through a trial the way Pelosi rushed through the impeachment, Trump will already be out of office and a private citizen before he can be convicted—which he wouldn’t be anyway. The Constitution speaks of impeachment and the Senate trial as a means of removing a President, not as a device to say “I hate you! Ooooh, I hate you to pieces!” to an ex-President.

Thus it’s a joke. The first impeachment was a dud. Trump hasn’t been embarrassed, but Congress and the news media have been embarrassed and exposed as fools.

Not that they hadn’t been exposed as fools already.

But “Wait!”—as they say on infomercials–“There’s more!” And it only gets worse:

1. Since the impeachment vote in the House, further investigation of the attack on the Capitol and its time-line has shown that many of the participants had planned to storm the building in advance, in fact had begun preparations before the President addressed the protesters, and had begun to take action while the President was speaking on January 6. Thus the House’s impeachment theory that the President had incited a riot by providing a lit match to an obvious powder-keg is unsustainable n the facts: the powder had already been lit. Nor do the facts support the argument that the President intended to spark a riot, since the words of his speech never suggested violence or alluded to it.

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Ethics Quote Of The Month:Rep. Alex Moody (R-WV) [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

us-constitution-01a

“It is wrong to have sent members of Congress home and then try to adopt without any debate a precedent-setting resolution that could imperil our Republic. The U.S. House must never adopt a resolution that demands the removal of a duly elected president, without any hearings, debate or recorded votes.”

— Congressman Alex Mooney, blocking the Democrats’ idiotic and unethical attempt to pass a unanimous motion calling on Vice-President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which is neither relevant nor legal under current circumstances.

Why yes, Congressman, it is! Not that you don’t deserve credit for speaking up, but it increasingly appears that the latest, most petty and potentially most dangerous effort by Democrats to prematurely end Donald Trunp’s tenure as President is incompetent, grandstanding, and not very serious, as if trying to remove a President shouldn’t always be serious.

On the other hand, after 19 previous attempts, maybe these mini-coups are like eating buttered popcorn to these vicious hacks. Once they start, they just can’t stop.

Mooney’s statement began, “Today I objected to Speaker Pelosi’s attempt to adopt via unanimous consent a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump. Speaker Pelosi should not attempt to adopt a resolution of this magnitude without any debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Exactly. It’s good to know someone in that big, white domey thing can read.

Pelosi’s statement, in contrast, suggest that she’s the one who has become unable to discharge the duties of her office:

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Pelosi’s Unconscionable “Snap Impeachment,” Part II: If This Happens, It Will Be Time To Release A Real “Kraken,” And I Hope I Can Help Feed Pelosi To It…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

clash-of-the-titans-2010-kraken

Plan T, the apparent plan to impeach President Trump for a crime he clearly did not commit, is arguably the worse of the various AUC-contrived removal plots, because it will do the most damage by far. Even the actual impeachment, the ridiculous Plan S, had little long-term effect, and the Democrats abandoned it even as a campaign issue. Even they didn’t take it seriously: like so much of the rest, it was just one more way to denigrate, obstruct and weaken the leader of their own nation. It was part of strategy, that’s all. As I wrote in Part I, this is different in kind:

Plan T must be recognized for what it is: an act of pure hate and vengeance, and a deliberate, calculated insult to Trump’s supporters as well as those citizens who believe that that their government should not behave like third-world failed state.

I admit it: I am angry about this, and if it occurs, I will not forget it or forgive it—and I do not consider myself one of the Trump supporters being ostentatiously slapped in the face. I am angry because this is not how the United States of America behaves towards its leaders. I know readers here are sick of me saying this, but I will say it again because it is true: the nation owes respect and debt of gratitude to every President of the United States, without exception, when they leave office, and that respect should continue to the end of their days, and throughout our history. That’s right, every single one of them, the skilled and less-than-skilled, the competent and incompetent, the best and the worst of them, Andrew Johnson as well as Lincoln, Nixon as well as Eisenhower, the Bushes as well as Reagan, Hoover as well as FDR, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and yes, Donald Trump.

The job was always a killing one and a near impossible, one, and it has only become more difficult and unpleasant. Taking the job is an act of patriotism, and enduring it is an act of courage and character. No President has been treated as atrociously by so much of the public, the opposing party, his own party and the news media as Donald Trump, and it is remarkable that he accomplished as mach as he did under continuous attack. Nearly every other President has been accorded a “honeymoon,” the occasional benefit of the doubt, the opportunity to just play the head of state and accept the pomp, ceremony and traditional acclaim that comes with it. Not President Trump. He was not permitted a peaceful inauguration, nor respectful audiences in Congress to his State of the Union messages, nor the pleasure of throwing out the first ball in the baseball season, nor the host role in the Kennedy Center Honors, nor even an invitation to attend state funerals. Yet President Trump buggered on, as Winston Churchill said, doing his best to try to fulfill his promises and do what in his view was in the best interests of America.

He has been kicked virtually every day of his four years in office, and now his repulsive, vindictive, thuggish foes want to kick him as he goes out the door.

The effort to lay lat weeks riot at the Capitol at Trump’s feet is too cynical and false to be tolerated. Professor Turley had a succinct summary of how disingenuous that is in his recent column in the Hill:

We have had four years of violent protests, including the attacks on federal buildings, members of Congress, and symbols of our democracy. Former Attorney General William Barr was heavily criticized for clearing Lafayette Square last year after protesters injured numerous law enforcement officers, were injured themselves, burned a historic building, caused property damage, and threatened to breach the White House grounds. There were violent riots during the inauguration of Donald Trump and a lethal assault on some Republican lawmakers playing softball. Indeed, this year started as last year ended, with attacks on federal buildings in Portland and other cities.

It is beyond hypocritical for the same people and party that largely encouraged, enables and rationalized these and more to now pretend to be shocked, call a single, particularly stupid and pointless riot at the Capitol a “threat to Democracy,” and to attempt to impeach the President for his role in it, which consisted of endorsing a Constitutionally protected protest. The true threat to Democracy has been ongoing for four years, and it was called “the resistance.” I find it hard to believe that the American people will accept such a transparent and Orwellian distortion of reality, but I know that I won’t.

If the Congress wants to censure President Trump or some other symbolic gesture, fine. As I have written here, it was inappropriate for the President to be challenging the validity of his defeat, even more so than it was for Hillary Clinton to challenge the validity of her defeat, by Trump. Doing so was, in sequence, predictable, irresponsible, dangerous, in many ways justified, and completely in character. I would not object to an official precedent being established holding that no matter how close or dubious an election is, challenges to the results must not be pronounced in public, by POTUS.

Impeachment on this basis, however, is pure lawlessness. Here’s Turley again in another column (this is his specialty, after all). The emphasis is mine:

‘“..Democrats are seeking to remove Trump on the basis of his remarks to supporters before the rioting at the Capitol. Like others, I condemned those remarks as he gave them, calling them reckless and wrong. I also opposed the challenges to electoral votes in Congress. But his address does not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code. It would be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court.

When I testified in the impeachment hearings of Trump and Bill Clinton, I noted that an article of impeachment does not have to be based on any clear crime but that Congress has looked to the criminal code to weigh impeachment offenses. For this controversy now, any such comparison would dispel claims of criminal incitement. Despite broad and justified condemnation of his words, Trump never actually called for violence or riots. But he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to raise their opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to back the recent challenges made by a few members of Congress. Trump told the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices be heard.”….

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Scared Yet? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

Trump Twitter

I have taken quite a bit of flack on social media and elsewhere for my decision, a long and tortured time in the making, to vote for the re-election as President of a man whom I have always, for more than a decade, correctly identified as lacking most of the crucial abilities and characteristics that an American President must have. Primary among these is a commitment to ethical conduct. To these critics, President Trump’s irresponsible conduct in personally attempting to lead a public protest against the 2020 election—much as his political opponents mounted a protest against his election on 2016—proved the folly of my decision..

It did not. The President behaving as I always knew he was capable of behaving merely demonstrated why my decision was such a difficult one and so extended in the making. To the contrary, the conduct of those anti-democratic, totalitarian-tending foes of Trump and the basic American values of which he, in a sick twist of fate, stood as the most reliable and powerful guardian, has convinced me that my decision was the correct one. The Axis of Unethical Conduct has made it undeniable in recent weeks that it intends to abridge speech, stifle dissent, restrict civil rights and weaken Constitutional liberties to the extent it can get away with to cement one -party rule and ideological conformity with Leftist cant.

This is the result I began to fear in late October of 2016, when I decided that I could not in good conscience vote to give power to a party, the Democrats, that I no longer believed were committed to the core values of the United States of America, nor to the rule of law. This is the result I realized was inevitable if President Trump, as awful as he is, was defeated. I was correct. Like all iron-booted parties of totalitarian regimes, Democratic leaders are calling for the punishment of their political opponents. Their allies have begun unprecedented measures to prevent opposing views to be widely circulated, and not just views, but facts. The disgusting riot in the Capitol is being exploited to rush through restrictions on free speech and political discourse while emotion is ascendant and Republicans and conservatives are restrained and embarrassed. As one of Joe Biden’s soon-to-be henchmen famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” The Democrats aren’t, and are creating a far greater one.

I would expect principled Democrats and progressives to see how dangerous and un-American this strike against pluralism by their friends and idols is, but so far, I don’t see it. Maybe there are no principled Democrats and progressives. More likely, they have been cowed and intimidated into the lockstep compliance that today’s Left demands.

Here is the latest attack..

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Ethics Alarms Ethics Check: Did Joe Biden Call Ted Cruz And Josh Hawley “Nazis”? [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Big Lie

I don’t do factchecks, I do ethics checks. Both GOP Senators Ted Cruz and and Josh Hawley have leaped on a Joe Biden attack and said that the President Elect called them “Nazis.” Many conservative pundits and websites have similarly accused Biden of the ultimate “otherizing.”

Biden did not call Cruz and Hawley Nazis.

He told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, where Joe is God,

“They should be just flat beaten the next time they run. The American public has a real good, clear look at who they are. They’re part of the big lie.Goebbels and the great lie. You keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie.”

Because Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler defined the Big Lie tactic–that’s what Biden is referring to when he says “Goebbels and the great lie”— and though they authored one of the biggest Big Lies of all time, saying that a politician or a political party is using the Big Lie tactic cannot be the equivalent of calling that politician Hitler, Goebbels, or a Nazi. The reason is that long before the two Nazi propaganda experts mastered the Big Lie, it had been used extensively for centuries, and it has been used ever since often with great effectiveness, always unethically, by parties and politicians who could not possibly be called Nazis in their beliefs, policies, values or methods. The Big Lie is now a standard political weapon. The idea is to make a public assertion that is so horrifying and outlandish that the public demands that it be denied by its target, and argued about. The genius of the Big Lie tactic is that forcing the argument itself gives the Big Lie credibility. The approach of simply ignoring Big Lies and saying by word or action, “That doesn’t even justify a rebuttal, and I won’t dignify it with one” usually doesn’t work.

I swear, the first example of this that jumped into my head was Harry Reid’s intentional slur during the 2012 Presidential campaign that Mitt Romney had paid no taxes for the previous decade. When asked about his Big Lie after the election, Reid answered, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

The Big Lie tactic is all about the ends justifying the means.

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