From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:

Nice.

I’d say that qualifies as an unethical tweet, wouldn’t you?

It doesn’t matter what the Democratic Party’s social media account was responding to, does it? (Stephen Miller referred to Democratic Party candidate for Texas governor as “trans.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that..) What does matter is that the party that has (often justifiably) condemned Donald Trump for immoderate social media posts, lack of self-control in his rhetoric and an addiction to ad hominem attacks stooped well below anything Trump has ever tweeted with a “Sopranos-esque” “Shut up you ugly fuck!”

That doesn’t mean the President won’t eventually go that low, but for the nonce, I really don’t care to hear anyone from that party (or that pimps for it, like, you know, the news media) criticizing the President for unpresidential language.

The tweet also tells us, as others have, what the character and attitudes of young Democrats are. If you don’t like mis-installed ethics alarms of current Democrats and progressives, just wait for the ones coming up the ranks.

In related news, Chicago’s WGN reports:

“An alderperson for the City of Waukegan was charged after allegedly mailing in a vote on behalf of her dead mother. Dr. Sylvia Sims Bolton was charged with knowingly falsifying election material, a felony, and disregarding election code, a misdemeanor.The investigation began in March, according to the Lake County clerk’s office.According to election records, a vote by mail ballot for Mary Sims, her mother, was issued and mailed by the Lake County Clerk’s Office on Feb. 5.On Feb. 12, the Lake County Clerk’s Office processed the cancelation of Mary Sim’s voter registration after receiving notification of her death record from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The ballot was returned on Feb. 26

During a review, election officials identified that the voter’s death record had been processed prior to the return of the ballot. After evaluating the returned envelope and confirming that the ballot had been submitted after the voter’s recorded date of death, the matter was escalated internally and reported to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office for investigation.

Bolton is accused of voting for her mother after she had passed away. She surrendered Wednesday morning.

‘The safeguards and verification procedures in place within our election system worked exactly as intended,’ said Anthony Vega. ‘Our staff followed established protocols, identified the irregularity, and immediately coordinated with law enforcement to ensure this matter is thoroughly investigated. Protecting the integrity of our elections remains our highest priority.’

The investigation did not uncover any facts linking the above allegations to her city duties as an alderperson.”

Gee, I wonder what party the “alderperson” belongs to? Since the media report doesn’t say, I’m assuming she’s a Democrat. (She is.) And how ironic that the only person who uses the mail-in ballot system to cheat happens to be an elected official!

Okay, I’m being arch. The Democratic party likes cheating and gaslighting. Just as Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary said under oath that the Southern border was secure and the entire party (as well as its media enablers) insisted that President Biden was “sharp as a tack,” it has claimed for years now that there is “no evidence” of widespread voter fraud and the more secure election procedures are “a return to Jim Crow.”

Ethics Observations on the National Debt…

Citizen Free Press, the conservative news aggregator that grabbed the niche from The Drudge Report after the latter went Trump Deranged, is constantly highlighting the National Debt’s explosion. This is legitimate news. Here is an item that appeared today:

10 years ago today Trump promised to eliminate the national debt.Instead it has doubled to $39 trillion.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Nation Debt was suddenly important to the Axis again, as those who were horrified over the minuscule number of casualties in the Operation Epic Fury were desperately looking for some way to criticize the amazing rescue of the downed pilot in Iran. All of a sudden, the Left was grousing about Trump spending all that money to rescue a single soldier (The Axis has no integrity at all. I hope that’s clear by now) and citing the National Debt.

Dan Rather May Be The Most Ethically Estopped Critic In Human History

Saying it is a “dark day in the halls of CBS News,” Dan Rather, the disgraced CBS anchor who was fired after trying to use a forged document to kneecap President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, went straight into Fantasyland as he condemned the selection of Bari Weiss to oversee CBS News.

“The former opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times is not a reporter. She has never worked in television news and she has never led a staff larger than a few dozen,” Rather ranted on his substack. “That all changed this week when David Ellison, whose Skydance Media recently acquired CBS, installed Weiss in a position created for her. She will not report to the president of CBS News — as one might expect — but to David Ellison directly.” Rather finds it horrific that Weiss would even consider criticizing Democrats and Republicans with equal intensity, since everyone knows that Trump and the Republicans are evil. “While one must keep an open mind, it is hard to do so when such a statement portends a push for ‘bothsidesism’ and arguments reliant on false equivalences. There can be no equivalences drawn between the two political extremes in this country, especially when one extreme is led by a man who rarely speaks without lying.” Got it. “Bothsideism” is nothing but a deliberately pejorative term for “objectivity.” If you have decided that one side is always right and the other side is by definition wrong, you end up like Dan Rather, a biased, untrustworthy hack.

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Mets Announcer Gary Cohen Was Right and Cubs Rookie Matt Shaw Is…What, Exactly? And What Am I?

Chicago Cubs rookie third baseman Matt Shaw skipped the Cubs’ game against the Reds on Sunday after receiving a call from Charley Kirk’s widow. Instead, the player attended the memorial event for the assassinated activist at State Farm Stadium in Arizona. Shaw is not just a Kirk admirer: Shaw had something of a personal relationship with Kirk that he described as important to him, though they were not close friends.

During Tuesday’s Mets-Cubs game at Wrigley Field, game, Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen said, “Shaw had Cubs world in a tizzy this weekend when he was not here for the Cubs game with the Reds — a game they lost (1-0) and in which his lack of presence was felt. It was later revealed that he had been given permission to attend Charlie Kirk’s funeral.”

Cohen added, “I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird.”

Naturally, Kirk-worshiping Mets fans erupted on social media, with some pledging to boycott any games announced by Cohen and others insisting that he be fired. Now, Cohen didn’t say anything negative about Charley Kirk at all. Moreover, he was 100% right. It is very weird, although weird would not be my word for it. Skipping an important game in the waning days of a baseball season when your team seeks your services is selfish and unprofessional. Shaw is a rookie and “only” makes the MLB minimum of $760,000; nonetheless, that salary commits him to being available to play if he is healthy. This wasn’t his wife giving birth or a desperately sick child or the death of a parent—the MLB Players’ Union bargained for special leave for such events.

Some wags have pointed out that the rookie is hardly a star: he’s about a league average hitter, though his fielding at third is outstanding. That misses the point. He was obligated to play baseball, not to go to a memorial ceremony. An actress bailed on an ethics program she was supposed to assist me on, with almost no notice, because her grandmother died. ProEthics, as in me, blackballed her after that, and I told her not to bother auditioning for any professional shows in the D.C. area I directed. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just showing up, and I couldn’t trust this alleged professional to do that.

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Ethics Dunce: Anyone Who Buys Karine Jean-Pierre’s Book [UPDATED!]

You would have to put a gun to my head to make me buy Ethics Villain Jake Tapper’s book about the Biden dementia cover-up, but at least Jake has a somewhat less despicable co-author and two-brain cells to rub together. What possible excuse is there for buying and reading the book Biden’s ex-paid liar, Karine Jean-Pierre announced yesterday: “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines”?

I can think of two: brain damage and excessive admiration of chutzpah.

In order to get some buzz yesterday, Jean-Pierre announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party to be an “independent.” “I think we need to stop thinking in boxes, and think outside of our boxes, and not be so partisan,”she said in an Instagram video. Her publisher risibly insists that Jean-Pierre’s book will offer “clear arguments and provocative evidence as an insider” about the importance of dismantling misinformation and will argue that it “can be worthwhile to carve a political space more loyal to personal beliefs than a party affiliation.”

Ethics estoppel doesn’t begin to describe how unethical it is for this fool to criticize “misinformation.” She was not only paid to lie for the apparently all-lies-all-the-time Biden administration, she was one of the most flagrant liars about Biden’s incapacity, including claiming that videos showing the President babbling, wandering off or freezing were all fake.

Every White House Press Secretary lies, but Karine was shockingly bad at it, and at talking, which would seem to be the minimum skill someone in that position should have mastered. How could she possibly offer “clear arguments and provocative evidence” about anything?

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David Hogg is the Ethics Dunce Democrats Deserve

Anti-Gun Twerp David Hogg is catalyzing a split in the Democratic Party because he is ethically inert. Well, good. The Party asked for it, and deserves to get it.

The current ugly rift has occurred because Hogg, who was elected a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee in an absurd party meeting in which everyone present agreed that the main reason Kamala Harris isn’t President today is because too many American are sexist and racist, has made it clear that he will use his leadership position in the party help defeat Democratic Party candidates and current elected officials who do not meet his standards of “by any means possible” progressive activism.

DNC Chair Ken Martin protests, saying, “Let me be unequivocal: No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger.Voters should decide who our primary nominees are, not DNC leadership. Our role is to serve as stewards of a fair, open and trusted process, not to tilt the scales.”

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Comment of the Day: “Enough Trivia and Silly Stuff: This Is Incompetence That Can’t Be Ignored”

This story has been officially designated an Ethics Train Wreck, and I may have to post further on it yet. Once again, we are at the infuriating point where it is impossible to get an un-spun, un-distorted, straightforward explanation of what the issues are, with most conservative news sources downplaying the episode and most Axis sources gleefully “pouncing.” Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has hardly been candid, with the White House Paid Liar being particularly egregious in that respect.

The Humble Talent Comment of the Day that follows is the first of two I will post today. HT has been on fire: these is his observations regarding the post, “Enough Trivia and Silly Stuff: This Is Incompetence That Can’t Be Ignored”:

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While I generally agree with the flow of the commentariat here, I think there is a massive difference between what Hillary Clinton did, and what Pete Hegseth did, and that progressives are ethically estopped from being smug about this. I’ve shifted even more on this since the hearing yesterday.

First off, I think it’s helpful to articulate what people actually did:

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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]

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 Alarms Is Ethically Estopped From Criticizing the Casting of Cynthia Erivo as Jesus in “Jesus Christ Superstar”

Yes, that’s “Jesus Christ” in the upcoming Hollywood Bowl production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Needless to say (I hope!) Jesus was not black, female or lesbian. Moreover, the character’s songs were not written for a female voice, but rather a powerful rock tenor.

Never mind, though. This is stunt casting, maybe even D.E.I casting. It’s not fair to the work, the music, and for audience members who are Christians, it may seem just a teeny bit irreverent. But Erivo is currently hot, Oscar nominated for a (I thought) rather single-note portrayal of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, in the exhausting film version of “Wicked.”

The story and a lot of the book of “Superstar” is taken right from the Bible, but even the original stage production was attacked as blasphemous when it premiered in 1971. The “rock opera” had begun its cultural life, like The Who’s “Tommy” a bit later, as a recording. Director Tom O’Horgan put it on stage with such innovations as a King Herod who pranced around as a flaming transvestite and Jesus and Judas blasting into microphones. The film version had still more anachronisms. Jesus and the disciples encounter tanks rolling across the Sinai Desert, for example.

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The Hegseth Confirmation, and Great Moments in Ethics Estoppel: The Concern That New DOD Sec. Hegseth Won’t Be Ready “24-7”

I probably wouldn’t have voted for Pete Hegseth to be Trump’s DOD Secretary; certainly not until he answered a lot of crucial questions he never was asked. He should have been grilled about the extent of his management, oversight and negotiation experience, but the Democrats, because they have no principles, decided to use the Kavanaugh strategy to slime him (because that worked so well the first time).

Hegseth is easily the worst of Trump’s major appointments, and the fact that he was confirmed last night (by the narrowest margin possible) demonstrates that the terror expressed by the Trump Deranged that unlike last time around, the Republicans in Congress are inclined to help their party’s President achieve his goals rather than obstruct them is justified. (To that, my reaction is “Tough. You have nobody but your own party to blame, along with people like you who enabled and supported an arrogant, incompetent, corrupt, untrustworthy, and increasingly totalitarianism-embracing government.”)

This morning I decided to surf between MSNBC and CNN to hear the screams of the Axis propagandists who hang out there [Oh NOOO! ICE is really arresting illegals! Oh NOOO! Trump is making villains like Anthony Fauci pay for their own security details! Oh NOOO! Trump is killing DEI!] When they weren’t screaming about all of that, they were indignant that someone was now leading the Pentagon who could not be trusted to be ready for a crisis phone call every hour of the day, 365 days a year. These assorted partisan hacks and the Democratic party “contributors” who joined in their self-righteous lament are ethically estopped from making that complaint about Hegseth.

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