double standards

Not Quite De Minimis Non Curat Lex, But Mighty Close…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

When I heard that Rep. Omar had been “assaulted” and “attacked,” I assumed that something violent had occurred. When I read that a “substance” has been “hurled” at her, I assumed that the substance was 1) toxic and 2) aimed at her face.

Nah. The idiot squirted liquid harmlessly at her chest, and the “substance” turned out to be vinegar. It might as well have been water. For her part, the scamster, anti-Semitic “Squad” member didn’t even appear startled, much less harmed.

Yes, there is no question that this qualifies as an assault, as it placed a victim in legitimate fear of an un-consented to touching. The “substance” could have been bleach or battery acid or that stuff that made Margaret Qualley crawl out of Dem Moore’s back, and it could have been squirted in her eyes. We obviously can’t have public figures or even random, normal citizens on the street having that happen to them, so the “attacker” has to be tried and punished, I would assume with probation and a fine.

However, in reality what occurred was less consequential than a cream pie in the face, and Omar has been playing victim now for days, whining about bigotry and intimidation, and behaving as if not going into hiding after a few drops of vinegar hit her clothes (Would that even stain?) makes her Joan of Arc. And she’s getting TV time for doing it!

Meanwhile, the Left’s pundits are furious that President Trump suggested that the mini-spectacle was “staged.” Of course Trump should shut up in cases like this, but if they were going to fake a pathetic “attack” on Omar to give her a chance to play victim and wanted to make sure she was never in a scintilla of peril, that’s what it would look like.

The Left is also ethically estopped from complaining about Trump’s effort to minimize an indignity inflicted on a Democrat after so many Trump Deranged pundits, like Joy Reid, claimed the assassination attempt on Trump where a man sitting behind him was shot dead was “staged.” Then there was so much of the Left’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death, as in “Hooray!”

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Should It Matter If a Children’s TV Hostess Is a Virulent, Lying Anti-Semite?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It is remarkable the things you learn while searching for ethics topics that have nothing to do with President Trump.

For example, I had never heard of Ms. Rachel, perhaps because my ‘kid’ is 31. Ms. Rachel is the professional moniker of educator, YouTuber, and singer-songwriter Rachel Accurso. She created the YouTube series “Ms. Rachel” (originally known as “Songs for Littles”), a children’s music series that focuses on language development for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

That’s nice! Unfortunately, she can’t resist exposing the fact on social media that she hates Jews . Last week, she “liked” a post by one of her followers on Instagram that said “Free America from the Jews.” Oh-oh. Then she posted a video in which she wept pitifully and claimed that she had meant to delete the thing but inadvertently “loved” it.

Oh. Well, anyone can make a mistake, though I don’t see how someone could make that one. The problem is that this kiddie educator has been ranting on social media about Israel “genocide” in Gaza for quite a while now. Earlier, she posted on Instagram, ‘”Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Iran.” Last year she filmed a ‘Letter of the Day’ video with Palestinian journalist, Motaz Azaiza. Azaiza has praised Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, in which infants and children were massacred among other victims. He once posted online, “May God curse the Jews themselves.”

Call me judgmental, but hosting an anti-Semite like this guy seems like an ominous sign for a child educator. Yet Ms. Rachel appears to be uncancellable. Over at “Unspiked,” Brendan O’Neill speculates why. He writes in part,

“The Damocles sword of cancellation dangles precariously over all of us for such trifling speechcrimes as wondering if the Koran is bollocks (Islamophobia) or thinking immigration should be curtailed (racism). And yet you can openly rub shoulders with anti-Semitic people or anti-Semitic posts and the cancellers will look the other way.

“Be honest: what fate would befall a kids’ entertainer if they hosted on their show a man who had once said ‘Fuck all black people’? And if they then liked a post on Instagram that said ‘Get all blacks out of America’? We know exactly what would happen. They would be savagely cancelled. The only time we’d ever see them again would be in a Netflix documentary 20 years hence about the much-loved kids’ clown who lost it all by chumming about with racist scum.

“…The exact opposite has happened with Ms Rachel. She may have exposed the kids who follow her to a man who once said ‘Curse the Jews’, and she may have liked a post calling for the mass expulsion of Jews from the US, but she will survive. And thrive. Cancel culture will lay not one finger on her. And we all know why: because Jews enjoy none of the protections of ‘political correctness’. Jews have not been granted access to the kingdom of liberal concern. Offending Jews is seen as a lesser crime than offending any other group. Ms Rachel will suffer no consequences so long as her blunders only touch on the lives and feelings of Jews.

“The real problem is not Ms Rachel, who’s fundamentally just another celeb building a virtuous self-image from the rubble of Gaza. It’s the politics of identity. It’s that ideology’s ruthless demotion of Jews to the bottom of the league of identities. Scuff a page of the Koran and you’ll be had up for Islamophobia. Film a kids’ video with a man who said ‘Curse the Jews’ and you’re grand. There it is: the merciless neo-racialism of the woke era….”

This is another Cognitive Dissonance Scale issue at heart. Maybe a competent online children’s educator can still be regarded as effective and trustworthy as long as she keeps her vile political and social views out of her videos, songs and books. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, I’d rather have someone who isn’t a lying anti-Semite entertaining my children if I have a choice.

You?

The Clintons’ Head Exploding Letter

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Just when Tim Walz and Minneapolis’s insurrectionist mayor Jacob Frey seemed to have an insuperable lead in the 2026 “Political Assholes of Year” race, around the turn come perennial contenders Bill and Hillary Clinton!

The world’s strangest married couple refused this week to testify in the House’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and its Republican leader, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, quickly said he would take steps to hold them in contempt of Congress. That’s good: they are in contempt of Congress, but the letter is outrageous for other reasons. Being completely shameless, as we all know they are, they refused their civic duty to come testify when their government calls by loading up their missive with Trump Derangement-nip, turning it with every Axis of Unethical Conduct Big Lie and talking point they could think of (yes, the missed a few) while styling themselves as heroic for desperately trying to stop Bill’s metaphorical Jeffrey Epstein chickens from coming home to roost. Naturally the New York Times is trying to cover for Bill, writing,

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Ethics Observations on That “Racist” Winsome Earle-Sears Cartoon

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Observation #1: it’s not racist.

Conservatives and Republican pundits in Virginia and elsewhere are “pouncing”on an online political cartoon re-posted by the Powhatan County Democrats, who were transparently trying to change the subject after their party’s candidate for Virginia Governor looked like a coward and sounded like a fool in her recent debate with the Republican candidate, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

“The Democrat party of Virginia everyone. Open racism, open hatred, and endorsed violent fantasies. Where is the bottom of their depravity? This is disgusting,” quoth one social media wag in a tweet widely quoted by critics. Twitchy, the conservative website that focuses almost entirely on goings on at “X,” called the cartoon “blatantly racist.”

Much as it gives me pleasure to see Democrats and progressives “hoist by their own petard,” the petard in this case being reflex race-baiting, it’s still an unethical tactic. Here is the real Sears…

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Update on the Jay Jones Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

As related here, Jay Jones is the (black, so he can do no wrong and accusing him of such is racism) Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General who through texts made it clear to a colleague that he believed that his adversaries deserved to be killed, and worse, that their children (“little fascists”) deserved to be killed as well.

To those who, like his desperate defenders, claim this was “just a mistake”—you know, like Joe Biden’s debate meltdown was “just a bad night”—I reply that Jones’ rants were signature significance. He wasn’t joking (compared to Jones’ “jokes,” Jimmy Kimmel’s Charley Kirk comments were comedy gold) and a normal, decent, trustworthy human being never even thinks about wanting his adversaries’ family members dead, much less communicates them to others. No, not even once.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Jeffrey (Ew!) Toobin

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“This criminal crusade against political adversaries is completely unprecedented in all of American history.”

–—CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin (and why is he still allowed on the air by an allegedly respectable news network?) regarding the so-called Trump revenge plot against Democrats.

It is amazing that any journalist, pundit, progressive or Democrat would have the gall to say that. It is true that weaponizing the justice system to attack, hobble, and eliminate political foes is a totalitarian tactic that the United States had been wise to avoid, but if there was ever a valuable “democratic norm” the Left must take full responsibility for shattering, it is this one. “Unprecedented!” Incredible.

I would say “You’ve gotta hand it to Toobin,” but that would lead me into a joke that I would hate myself for making…

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Pssst! Somebody Tell Sen. Klobuchar That She Needn’t Work So Hard At Embarrassing Minnesota With Gov. Walz Doing Such a Bang-Up Job of It…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

When did “Minnesota Nice” mutate into “Minnesota Stupid”?

Following the charging of a Wisconsin judge who pretty clearly obstructed justice and used her position to prevent an illegal immigrant and criminal from being arrested, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D. Minn), as you can see above, tweeted, “This is not normal. The Administration’s arrest of a sitting judge in Wisconsin is a drastic move that threatens the rule of law. While we don’t have all the details, this is a grave step and undermines our system of checks and balances.”

Remind me to shake that in front of the faces of my various friends and relatives who supported this shallow, foolish woman when she was running for President in 2020. Her tweet is one more smoking gun proving that Democratic officials will find excuses to accuse President Trump of threatening the “rule of law” and “separation of powers” and creating a “constitutional crisis” regardless of what he and his administration does.

Hilariously, Klobuchar admits that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about —“we don’t have all the details”—but in fact the details already made it as clear as Saran-wrap that Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan deliberately set out to interfere with the lawful arrest of an illegal immigrant. Dugan’s bizarre conduct revived memories of another lawless judge with a soft spot for illegals, Massachusetts District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, who was indicted in federal court in Boston on obstruction of justice charges for preventing an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer from taking custody of an alien defendant. She delayed ICE while her staff secretly let the illegal escape out the courthouse back door in the Spring of 2018, before Trump Derangement had reached pandemic levels.

The details on Dugan’s effort to thwart law enforcement are worse, as this thread by Prof. Margot Cleveland amply demonstrates. Also hilariously, Democrats are condemning what sure looks like a legitimate criminal charge against a Democratic judge as politically motivated after they spent 2024 applauding lame, contrived and blazingly political prosecutions of Donald Trump while they intoned, “Nobody is above the law.”

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Ethics Verdict: The Signal Chat Ethics Train Wreck Is Hopeless

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Perhaps none of the revolting incidents of the past several years showing how partisanship and confirmation bias have made public agreement on reality impossible—Can we agree that this is not a good thing?—is more clear cut than the Signal Chat Ethics Train Wreck.

I am morose.

On the Trump-Deranged, Axis pounces! side, we have Hillary Clinton’s op-ed for the New York Times. It is archived, for some reason: if that link doesn’t work, I put the whole thing in a comment here. The fact that Clinton, of all people, would have the utter gall and lack of self-awareness to write the thing is damning enough; that the Times would print it and that its mostly Trump deranged subscribers would read it without ending their subscriptions, going into shock or hurling themselves out the nearest window supports Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day (#2!) posted last yesterday. Note his title.

I’m going to quote the appropriately uncivil conservative assassin Ace of Spades on this for two reasons. He writes of Clinton’s critique,

“This drunken Satanic sow illegally used her own server so that her communications would be protected from exposure by records retention laws. This was a secret server until someone discovered it — she did not disclose it so that the federal government could copy all of these messages. She did not disclose it so that people fililng FOIAs would even know what records to request. And she sits her in Her Satanic Hubris and accuses others of using Signal to “avoid records retention” laws. By the way, in case you don’t know this, Biden approved the use of Signal for communication precisely because it was more unhackable than the easily-hackable federal systems.”

Reason #1 is that Ace is right, and the venom is appropriate. Talk about ethics estoppel! The fact that Donald Trump and the Electoral College saved America from this vile, dishonest, sinister and destructive woman should alone ensure the former a place in the pantheon of national heroes and the latter enshrinement in the “Best Ideas of the Founders’ Hall of Fame.”

Reason #2 is this final sentence: “By the way, in case you don’t know this, Biden approved the use of Signal for communication precisely because it was more unhackable than the easily-hackable federal systems.” Here is Ace attacking Clinton for her ridiculous hypocrisy, and in the same post citing Biden as an authority to justify the Trump team’s use of Signal, which blew up in their collective faces! For years, Ace has derided Biden as a drooling puppet, but now, when it is convenient, he cites one of “his” “decisions” to excuse the Trump Administration for a security breach, when the whole thrust of the administration since inauguration day has been to reverse, condemn or remove as much of what was done or decided during the last four years. Wow—Flagrant hypocrisy while justly pointing out flagrant hypocrisy! How can anyone trust the Right when it covers a story like that? The Trump Administration should trust in absolutely nothing the Biden Phantom Presidency left behind until it has been tested, verified and tested again. The Biden team used Signal? That doesn’t excuse Hegseth and Waltz having a high level meeting about a military operation using the platform, it makes it worse.

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Addendum to “Enough Trivia and Silly Stuff: This Is Incompetence That Can’t Be Ignored”: Conservative Media Integrity and Competence Test Ahead…[Updated and Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

So far (7:25 pm, March 24), there is not a peep about this disturbing story at the Citizens Free Press or at PJ Media, including Instapundit. Not a good look.

Naturally the usual Axis media, anti-Trump news sources are all over the story, as they should be, perhaps with a little less glee, but still. Among conservative publications, I see it at the New York Post, the Boston Herald, and the Washington Examiner. The Daily Caller has the story, if a bit late. Fox News carried it, though their pundits tonight have been mum so far.

Citizens Free Press and PJ Media better catch up quick. If they stall much longer, they deserve no credibility and are ethically estopped from complaining about the “legacy media” burying stories uncomfortable for Democrats. There is no excuse for this.

Ethics Quote of the Day: Prof. Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“If you view conservatives judges and justices as “lawless,” then every decision that they issue can be construed as a “crisis” in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.”

—George Washington University law professor and lawyer Jonathan Turley

I decided to ignore the recent open letter signed by approximately 950 law professors declaring the second Trump administration a “Constitutional crisis,” because it was so obviously a mass exhibition of both “bias makes you stupid” and the overwhelming partisan slant of the legal profession, upon which Ethics Alarms has commented many times. The letter is the equivalent of the infamous one in 2020 signed by all those national intelligence experts who wanted everyone to know that the Hunter Biden laptop was really Russian disinformation, but the current letter is worse. Lawyers, as professionals, are required to be trustworthy. Trustworthy lawyers don’t put their names on legal misinformation and political propaganda like this latest “Trump is a dictator” attack. (The American Bar Association has issued a similar statement.)

I’m glad I waited and let Professor Turley eviscerate these disgraces to the law and academia. Cruelly, he has more influence, visibility and credibility than little ol’ me. In his blog post and column for The Hill titled “Panic politics: Law professors’ umpteenth ‘constitutional crisis’ falls flat”, Turley neatly points out,

  • “The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! On my Facebook page, lawyers and even a couple of professors regularly proclaim as fact that President Trump is “defying” the Constitution.

Biased, ignorant and Trump-Deranged is no way to practice law, son.

Read the whole thing, but here are some more excerpts: Continue reading →