District of Columbia

Stay Classy, DC Police Chief Smith! [Corrected and Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I’ve got four posts up today, and I’m tired, but I can’t resist this one…

Outgoing D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith decided to show what she was made of as she spoke as the honoree in a good-bye ceremony yesterday. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had accused her of manipulating data to make it seem that crime has decreased in the District of Columbia when it had not. She could have stuck around, of course, until the final numbers were in, but instead she decided that she would leave her post “to be with her family.” That’s always a good dodge when you’re being investigated. In her farewell speech, she played the God card (she’s also a reverend at a Baptist church in D.C.), then the “haters” card, and finally the “it’s not my fault” card. Wait: are the statistics correct, or are they wrong? Smith’s argument somehow came out, “The statistics were accurate, but if they’re not, somebody else rigged them!”

That’s accountability, D.C. Government style!

“How dare you? How dare you attack my integrity? Attack my character? You don’t know who I belong to!” she said. Wait, what does THAT mean?

Continue reading →

Now Washington, D.C. Wants To Cheapen Citizenship

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Of course it does.

this week, a D.C. Council committee unanimously approved a bill to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, and just to make sure the intent was clear, an amendment was added including illegal immigrants to the voting rolls as well. Oh, the term used is “undocumented’ or some other cover-word to avoid the sorry truth, but you know what’s going on.

Several towns in Maryland and Vermont already give non-citizens municipal voting rights. Non-citizens vote in school board elections in San Francisco, and cities in California, Maine, Illinois and Massachusetts have similar legislation on the drawing board. The inclusion of illegal aliens is more unusual, but D.C.’s elected officials apparently felt the need to virtue-signal after reacting like stuck Swamp Creatures when a few hundred illegals were bused to their metaphorical shores. Like Martha’s Vineyard, the “sanctuary city”-preening District loves illegals as long as the vast number of them have to be cared for and paid for by Texas, Florida, Arizona…you know, the where Little People dwell.

Continue reading →

It Shouldn’t Require A “Theocracy” to Decide THIS Lawsuit Correctly

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Capitol Hill Baptist Church in the District of Columbia, is suing Mayor Muriel Bowser and the District government for violating its First Amendment right to worship.

Good.

“CHBC desires to gather for a physical, corporate gathering of believers in the District of Columbia on Sunday, September 27, 2020, and on subsequent Sundays, and would do so but for those actions of the Defendants that are the subject of this Complaint,” the lawsuit charges. It seems pretty clear that Bowser is applying one set of rules against religious institutions and another set of piorities entirely when it comes to activities she cares about. In March, Bowser (Is she the most unethical big city mayor in the U.S.? She’s certainly in the running, but it’s a tough field) issued an executive order prohibiting churches from meeting indoors or out because of public health concerns related to the pandemic. D.C.’s  four-stage plan would bar in-person worship gatherings until there is an “effective cure or vaccine” for the Wuhan virus, a rule that can be counted on to wound, perhaps mortally, church communities that have been built up over many decades. Right now gatherings are supposedly limited to 100 people or up to 50 percent of the building’s capacity, whichever is fewer. The 850-member Capitol Hill Baptist Church  has been meeting in a field in Virginia.

The 142-year-old congregation explains in its suit that “a weekly in-person worship gathering of the entire congregation is a religious conviction for which there is no substitute. The Church does not offer virtual worship services, it does not utilize a multi-site model, and it does not offer multiple Sunday morning worship services.”

The church’s covenant, to which all members must agree, pledges that they “will not forsake the assembling of [them]selves together,” as decreed in the Bible.  The church’s website explains,

“Since its founding in 1878, CHBC has met in-person every Sunday except for three weeks during the Spanish Flu in 1918. That changed following Mayor Bowser’s first orders concerning COVID-19 on March 11, 2020. Since that time, the members of CHBC—most of whom live in the District—have been unable to meet in person, as one congregation inside District limits (even outdoors)….CHBC has applied for multiple waivers to the policy. District officials refuse to provide CHBC with a waiver beyond 100 persons as part of a mass gathering…A church is not a building that can be opened and closed. A church is not an event to be watched. A church is a community that gathers regularly and that community should be treated fairly by the District government.”

Fairly? On June 10, the church asked for a waiver so the congregation could meet at currently abandoned RFK Stadium, which is large enough to permit social distancing. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to the request and subsequent appeals until September 15, and then issued a rejection stating that “[w]aivers for places of worship above that expanded capacity (100 attendees) are not being granted at this time.” Continue reading →

Wuhan Virus Ethic Train Wreck Update

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. Dr. Fauci told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton yesterday, “If you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it…You have mucosa in the nose, mucosa in the mouth, but you also have mucosa in the eye. Theoretically, you should protect all the mucosal surfaces. So if you have goggles or an eye shield you should use it.”

Now you tell us!

Though Fauci is in a high-risk demographic, he has never been shown wearing goggles. Or are glasses like he wears (and I do), good enough? If that’s true, he should say so, NOW. Then again, he didn’t wear a mask when he wasn’t social distancing at the Nats game last week.

2. Explain to me again why Fauci is so beloved and sucked up to by the same news media that claims President Trump has “blood on his hands” from his handling of the completely unpredictable pandemic. Fauci has been inconsistent; he has been flat out wrong on many occasions, and then we get head scratchers like a recent interview with PBS NewsHour, where he lauded New York’s disastrous response to the Wuhan virus.

“We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York,” he told PBS’s Judy Woodruff. “New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly.”

Really? Doing nothing to curb the obvious virus-encouraging subway travel at the peak of the outbreak…

was “doing it right”? Governor Cuomo dumping infected seniors into nursing homes was “doing it right?”

Lest we forget.. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser [Corrected And Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I love it when people like “Mad Dog” Mattis claim that President Trump is divisive, and then Democratic elected officials pull stunts like this, which is explicitly and intentionally divisive. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser today had “Black Lives Matter” painted in huge letters on the street that leads to the White House. Yes, it’s government by graffiti!

Gee, good one, Mayor. Next, I recommend standing out in front of the White House and farting in its general direction.

The mayor’s move is a slur, just as “Black Lives Matter” itself is an organized racist insult to non-black Americans. In 2015 (I have not been able to find a more recent statistic), 500 white citizens were killed by African Americans, yet I would not presume  that blacks needed to be told that “white lives matter.” The group’s subtext has always been that somehow white America doesn’t believe that black lives matter. That’s a lie, easily rebutted, and a racist one. Continue reading →

Did Trump’s Impeachment Lawyer Lie To The Senate?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Pat Cipollone, one of President Trump’s lawyer,  stated  that Republicans weren’t allowed to participate in House depositions. This wasn’t true: 47 Republicans who served on the appropriate committees had the right to attend these depositions, and many did attend. Naturally the “Get all Trump allies’ resistance mob regards this an intentional lie, and is demanding that Cipellone be disciplined for professional misconduct.

Wrong.

Writes legal ethics expert Stacie  Rosenzweig, “This is almost certainly a lie rather than a misstatement or misapprehension; I can’t imagine a scenario in which a lawyer with a three-decade career and a reputation for being “well-prepared and even-keeled” would simply not know that.” Her logic is exactly upside down: a lawyer that experienced would not deliberately utter a lie in such a high profile forum where it would certainly be noticed, undermining his credibility to no good end.  Sure enough, the factcheckers were on his misstatement like a shot.

The lawyer probably made a mistake, contrary to Rosenweig’s unjustfied certitude.This may have occurred because the false claim that the GOP was shut out of the depositions was a frequent right-wing talking point, and he didn’t check it. The assertion was at best tangential to his argument; I guarantee that no bar association would discipline any lawyer by using the argument, “You’re too good and experienced to make a stupid mistake.” Good and experienced lawyers made mistakes, sometimes astonishing ones.
Continue reading →

Not Protesters, Just A Mob

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Giving a mob the dignity and legitimacy of referring to them as “protesters” just encourages them. A prime example occurred two days ago in New Haven, at the traditional Harvard-Yale game, the culmination of the Ivy League college football season. Personally, I wouldn’t have crossed the street to attend the 136th edition of “The Game,” though I witnessed the most famous of the them all, 1968’s 29-29 tie. Nonetheless, what a bunch of climate-addled demonstrators inflicted on a large group of students and alumni just trying to have a good time enjoying football, traditions, nostalgia and camaraderie  should not be romanticized. The “protesters” are arrogant, disrespectful and anti-democratic jerks. Boola-Boola.

A large mob of Yale Bowl spectators rushed the field at halftime, demanding that Harvard and Yale divest themselves of investments in fossil fuel and energy companies, delaying the start of the second half by nearly an hour, and causing the game to finish in near-darkness. Students from both schools, who didn’t care who they hurt or inconvenienced, rushed to midfield as soon the Yale band finished performing. ( At least they could have done it while the Yale band was performing…)The contest resumed after the Yale police issued 42 summonses for disorderly conduct. But the wasted hour threatened game’s finish:  the Yale Bowl lacks stadium lights, and the game went to double overtime. Yale won just before it became too dark to play.

The Ivy League referred to the protest as “regrettable.” and Yale said that while it “stands firmly for the right to free expression,” it added that “the exercise of free expression on campus is subject to general conditions, and we do not allow disruption of university events.”

So will Yale suspend or expel any of the mob? Of course not.

Protesters that set out to get attention by disrupting the lives of law-abiding citizens engaged in innocent activities are low-level terrorists. They aim to bypass democracy by creating implicit threats, hoping that their adversaries will surrender to just shut them up and avoid the annoyance. Continue reading →

The Cherokee Nation Believes That It Should Have A Representative In Congress. (It Should)

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

…as long as it isn’t Elizabeth Warren, of course.

Citing treaties with the U.S. government signed in the 18th and 19th centuries, the new elected chief the Cherokee Nation is insisting that the tribe get a delegate to Congress for the first time in history.

“These treaties are sacred. They mean something. There’s no expiration date on them,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., chief of the Cherokee Nation. What I’m asking is for the government of the United States to keep its word.”

You mean, unlike with all those other treaties the U.S. signed with Native American tribes? What’s this? Have you no respect for precedent, man?

Charles Gourd, the director of the Cherokee National Historical Society, told the news media that he and others had wondered  why no Cherokee Nation delegate had ever been seated in Congress despite assurances to that effect. He can’t be serious! If a delegate were finally seated, he and others might then wonder why that provision of a treaty was honored while so many others were breached or ignored at will.

The right for the Cherokee to send a “deputy” to represent them in the United States Congress was first assured by the Treaty of Hopewell of 1785, which defined Cherokee borders and promised certain protections in return. The right to send a “delegate”  to the House of Representatives was specified affirmed in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. The House has several nonvoting delegates,  representing Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States Virgin Islands. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/7/18: Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Good morning.

…And a good morning to remember a very bad morning in Hawaii 77 years ago today.

1. Oscar’s latest fiasco. The Academy Awards, which like all awards shows has descended into nasty political advocacy, undermining its mission and alienating its audience, decided to pick famously non-partisan black comedian Kevin Hart, who is also a successful movie actor, to host. His gig lasted just a few day. People looking to discredit him went digging into  his social media posts, and some tweets from eight years ago–you know, before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had flipped on gay marriage?—were judged as “homophobic.” In a post on Instagram at about 11 p.m. last night, Hart said he got a call from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was asked to apologize for his prior tweets, or step down as host. He chose to withdraw, and tweeted this:

“I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscar’s….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists. I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past. ‘m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart. Much love & appreciation to the Academy. I hope we can meet again.”

The conservative media is calling Hart another example of political correctness run amuck. That’s ignorant and wrong. To be successful, an MC has to be liked and trusted by his audience, which is, for the Oscars, the people inside the theater above all. A huge percentage, even a half or more, of the Oscar audience is gay. No one can host the Oscars while it is known that he once said, even eight years ago, that he was terrified that his son might grow up to be gay. It doesn’t matter that he may have “evolved.”  Hollywood is a substantially gay community, and the host of its biggest party of the year should neither be nor be suspected of being homophobic,

Why the Academy’s vetters and Hart himself couldn’t figure this out is a different issue: gross incompetence. Continue reading →

The D.C. Court Of Appeals Handgun Decision [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled this week that it is unconstitutional for the District government to restrict handgun licenses only to citizens who can prove a “special need for self-protection distinguishable from the general community as supported by evidence of specific threats or previous attacks that demonstrate a special danger to the applicant’s life.” D.C. now must follow a standard system approved by the Supreme Court as not unduly burdensome to Second Amendment rights: issuing permits to adults who pass a fingerprint-based background check and a safety training class.

You can read the whole opinion here.  Two cases were under scrutiny: Wrenn v. District of Columbia and Matthew Grace and Pink Pistols v. District of Columbia.  Circuit Judge Thomas B. Griffith wrote the opinion and was joined by Senior Judge Stephen F. Williams. Judge Karen LeCraft. Judge Karen Henderson, a Republican appointee, dissented.

This is a liberal court, but it properly upheld the Second Amendment while slapping down anti-gun talking points that I have always found obnoxious and totalitarian in spirit. “Why does anyone need a gun? Why do they need a semi-automatic weapon? Why do they need so much ammunition? I don’t need a gun. Guns are dangerous. If I don’t need one, you don’t need one.”

The government doesn’t have the right to tell me what I need. Strangers don’t get to tell me that my needs are unreasonable based on their beliefs and biases. In 2013, playwright and screenwriter David Mamet wrote an op-ed for Newsweek nicely articulating these principles. (If it is still available in its entirety, I lack the cleverness to find it. [UPDATE: Reader Frank Stephens was clever enough, and the link is here]. Newsweek banished the article to its ally The Daily Beast, where all links, including in my post about it, lead. That link is now dead: it just goes to the website. I searched the Daily Beast for the article: it isn’t there. But, oddly, a rebuttal to the article is. I suppose this is how the news media silences the apostates in its midst. Fortunately, this passage survives: Continue reading →