Jonathan Turley

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/22/2020: Let’s Stop Moping Around! Get Up! Get Out! Attack The Day! [Now With Leonard Bernstein!]

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

 

Update: I decided we needed a less pokey version, so now we have Leonard Bernstein’s, and the whole thing. THAT should cheer you up…

Boy, am I sick of everyone telling me how depressed they are.

1. Translation: “I’m an idiot.”  Now Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is saying  that the city will close the so-called “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.” It turned out to be exactly what anyone with any sense predicted it would be, with three shootings so far and a rape, along with a leader ( war lord?) who had the gall to complain when the Seattle EMTs didn’t immediately respond when shots rang out. The mayor  had said that the anarchist outpost would lead to a “summer of love,” marking her as a Sixties-romanticizing dolt, but now she says she was obviously joking-–yes, the Joke Excuse. She never said it was “in jest” before the completely predictable violence broke out.

I apologize for not highlighting her as an Incompetent Elected Official of the Month, but she was competing with Bill De Blasio.

2. Fearmongering. It should be apparent by now that the news media does not want the country to re-open, does not want the economy to begin recovering before the election, and is pushing its anti-reopening goal through fearmongering, in part by focusing on isolated cases of individuals getting hit by the Wuhan virus particularly hard.

This morning HLN kept repeating a long feature about a thirtyish Broadway star who has been disabled by the virus for 80 days, and another man not in a high-risk group who has been suffering for 100 days. The Times and the Washington Post are full of apocalyptic reports about the number of cases rising. Another news outlet said, “The U.S. reported more than 33,000 new coronavirus cases on Saturday – the highest total since May 1 – while the surge of infections in several states is outpacing growth in coronavirus testing.”  ARRRGH! We;re DOOOMED!

One commentator called this “needless” frightening the public. Wrong. It is  needed because it is a part of the ongoing effort to defeat President Trump.

The Centers for Disease Control predicted that cases would increase as the country reopened, not that it has much credibility at this point. Remember? The lock down was never intended to stop the spread of the disease, but to slow it down,  flatten the curve, stock up on supplies, fix the CDC’s testing botch, and find treatments. That was mostly accomplished. The nation cannot continue to let the economy deteriorate: depressions kill people too.

Meanwhile, the death rate is declining even as the number of cases spike, and there’s a reason for that. In all outbreaks, a disease claims the most vulnerable first. This is known as Farr’s Law, named after William Farr,  a British epidemiologist and early statistician  who recognized the importance of death statistics and identifying causation. Not only has the current epidemic claimed many of the most vulnerable in the U.S., thanks in great part to the catastrophic decision of states like New York to send infected seniors to nursing homes, millions of Americans have antibodies.

The combination means that even if there are lots of new cases going forward, the death toll is likely to be far less severe than it has been. Do not hold your breath waiting for the media to explain this.

Just for fun,  check and see how many news organizations have mentioned Farr’s Law. Continue reading →

Regarding The Guy Charged With a Machete Attack Who Has A Machete Tattooed On His Face

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know these stories are stupid, but I love them, and besides, I can’t pass up the chance to correct Jonathan Turley.

Justin Arthur Allen Couch, 25, pictured above,  is charged with using a machete to attack the victim in the arm and leg during an argument in Tarrytown, Florida. The victim is alive but may have permanent injuries. Couch, as you can see above, has a drawing of a machete tattooed on his face. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Of course, the tattoo doesn’t prove that he’s guilty of a machete attack. It’s circumstantial evidence at best. In fact, if I were defending Couch, I’d be tempted to argue to the jury that the machete should make them question whether Couch was the attacker. Who would be so stupid as to use a machete as a weapon when one is right there on his face? I sure wouldn’t. I’d use a hammer, a golf club, a seafood fork, indeed anything but a machete.

Then again, I would never have a machete tattooed on my face. That act alone raises a rebuttable presumption that Couch is an idiot.

Professor Turley, writing about the case, opines,

Face tattoos are unlikely to be receive assistance from the court in allowing a shroud or covering. The machete tattoo is one of the choices in life that comes back to haunt you in your machete attack case.

The Professor could doubtless make me look like a baboon in a law school class, but he is wrong on this topic, which is a specialty of mine. Turley cites some amusing cases, like the man accused of sexual assault with a forehead where a tattoo reads “I’m a pornstar. I fuck Teen Sluts”…

…and this doofus, who faced charges for multiple crimes….

Continue reading →

So Apparently This Is The Media’s Rule: What Joe Says, Goes…Even His Big Lies.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

A month ago, Professor Turley, who has been gradually losing patience with the totalitarian tactics of progressives and the media, noted that the term “conspiracy theory” was almost exclusively reserved in the media for Trump and his supporters. Yet Joe Biden had repeatedly said that he was certain Trump plans to delay the election this fall. Although this assertion, Turley wrote, “is utterly without factual or constitutional support,” Biden’s fear-mongering, linked to Big Lie #3: “Trump Is A Fascist/Hitler/Dictator/Monster,” was accorded the status of “a prediction” in a Politico article. “It has been peddled by various Democratic figures and commentators for months and is all the rage on the internet, even though it should be sold as a set that includes a tin foil hat and an electromagnetic ghost detector,” wrote the professor.

“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, and come up with some rationale why it cannot be held,” said Biden. To fair, rational, objective people who have not been disabled by the Trump Hate Virus, this is despicable, and no more acceptable from a political leader than the worst of the President’s tweets, like the one suggesting that Joe Scarborough might have murdered an intern. Compare the news media treatment of Trump’s conspiracy theories and Biden’s.

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias. Continue reading →

KABOOM! I Do NOT Enjoy Having My Head Explode First Thing On A Saturday Morning, But NBC HIRED LISA PAGE!!!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

On one level, my head blew because this is such a cynical, flagrantly biased act that rejects any concept of ethical journalism. On another, it blew up in shame. With all the nauseating evidence I’ve discussed here pointing to a rotting American journalism that sees itself as the engine of partisan propaganda rather than the means to an informed public, I somehow didn’t think it was this bad. This is my own bias at work: I’m a sap. I want to believe that somewhere, buried deep in the mainstream media, there is integrity and the spark of respect for democracy.

Page was the FBI attorney engaged in an adulterous relationship with Mueller investigation team member Peter Strzok. Their text messages raised legitimate questions about the anti-Trump bias in the FBI and  among those handling the “collusion” matter.  In particular, the reference to the FBI investigation as “insurance” if Trump was elected in an exchange between the lovebirds in  August 2016 seemed to be a smoking gun.

Recently, Page’s name has surfaced  in  the Michael Flynn case. In newly released  texts between Page and  Strzok, who was significantly involved in the pursuit of Flynn, Page suggested that Flynn could be set up using the federal law that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that “it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in,”  reinforcing other evidence that there was a “get Flynn” mentality at the FBI. Thus Page’s conduct will be a live topic in the upcoming inquiries in Congress and the Justice Department surrounding the methods and motives of the FBI as it pursued Flynn and sought to undermine the Trump Administration. It is outrageous to have an analyst who will be analyzing events that involve herself…or once was considered so, when journalists paid attention to ethics. Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Inflammation, 6/4/2020: Censorship, Groveling, And Ice Cream

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Searching for ethical outrages not related to the George Floyd Freakout,

…..and not having much luck.

1. What does it tell us that so many employees of the New York Times oppose freedom of speech? It’s a rhetorical question. Prominent employees of the New York Times protested because they disagreed with this op-ed by a U.S. Senator:

Opinion writer Roxanne Gay’s argument was typical:

“As a NYT writer I absolutely stand in opposition to that Tom Cotton ‘editorial.’ “We are well served by robust and ideologically diverse public discourse that includes radical, liberal, and conservative voices. This is not that. His piece was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the constitution doesn’t exist.”

Oddly, when Times Op-Ed  writer Bret Stephens called for the abolishment of the Second Amendment, nobody on the Times made the “as if the Constitution doesn’t exist” argument. Moreover, the argument against Cotton in this case is legally dubious to say the least. Whether the Insurrection Act should be used to restore order in riot-torn cities is a separate issue. There is precedent indicating that it can be so used, and even if there was not, Sen. Cotton’s opinion is quite a bit less objectively outrageous than various leftist screeds the Times happily bombards its readers with routinely.

Professor Turley’s reaction: “There is a growing orthodoxy in journalism that is now openly calling for the censorship of opposing views.  It is particularly problematic when opinion writers seek the removal of editors for allowing such opposing positions to be published.” Uh, yes, professor, “problematic.” It is a whole lot more serious than that.  Un-lablable pundit Andrew Sullivan was more assertive, as Turley should have been, tweeting,

The Op-Ed was designed so it offers an opposite view to the Editorial board. Liberals believe that ideas should be open to debate. This should be utterly uncontroversial in a liberal paper….It’s important to understand that what the mob is now doing to the NYT is what they did to Evergreen University. They hate liberal institutions and they want them dismantled from within. These people are not liberal and they are a disgrace to journalism….What’s happening at the NYT is an attempted coup.

Isn’t this inevitable, however? When a news media source regularly manipulates its news and reporting for ideological ends, why wouldn’t its employees eventually lobby for the next step, which is active censorship of views the organization deems “inappropriate”?

2. Note to Drew Brees: If you don’t have the guts to stand up to social media mobs, keep your mouth shut and your social media accounts occupied with football trivia.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees had opposed the NFL kneelers, now back in the news because if they had been permitted to keep grandstanding at NFL games, nobody would have knelt on George Floyd’s neck. Or something—I’m sure there’s a connection in there somewhere—by telling Yahoo Finance in an interview, “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country….Is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not,” Brees said, “We still have a long way to go. But I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart, is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together. We can all do better. And that we are all part of the solution.”

But then the twitter mob descended, so the big, strong, straight-talking quarterback groveled on Instagram like a little glasses-wearing bot being stomped by a bully, writing on Instagram (accompanied by a nauseatingly pandering graphic of a white hand and a black one grasping each other):

I would like to apologize to my friends, teammates, the City of New Orleans, the black community, NFL community and anyone I hurt with my comments yesterday. In speaking with some of you, it breaks my heart to know the pain I have caused.

In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country. They lacked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy. Instead, those words have become divisive and hurtful and have misled people into believing that somehow I am an enemy. This could not be further from the truth, and is not an accurate reflection of my heart or my character.

This is where I stand:

I stand with the black community in the fight against systemic racial injustice and police brutality and support the creation of real policy change that will make a difference.

I condemn the years of oppression that have taken place throughout our black communities and still exists today.

I acknowledge that we as Americans, including myself, have not done enough to fight for that equality or to truly understand the struggles and plight of the black community.

I recognize that I am part of the solution and can be a leader for the black community in this movement.

I will never know what it’s like to be a black man or raise black children in America but I will work every day to put myself in those shoes and fight for what is right.

I have ALWAYS been an ally, never an enemy.

I am sick about the way my comments were perceived yesterday, but I take full responsibility and accountability. I recognize that I should do less talking and more listening…and when the black community is talking about their pain, we all need to listen.

For that, I am very sorry and I ask your forgiveness.

We know what happened here. Brees’ employers and agent todl him he was jeopardizing his income and market public relations, so he was forced to beg for forgiveness. What are the odds that he wrote that apology himself?

But it’s sure reassuring to know that he stands “with the black community in the fight against systemic racial injustice and police brutality and support[s] the creation of real policy change that will make a difference.” I’m sure he knows what that is, and can answer the 13th question.

3. And while we’re on the topic of the 13th question, here’s what socialist Vermont ice-cream makers Ben and Jerry think is an answer. I’ll break in here and there when I can’t stand it…

All of us at Ben & Jerry’s are outraged about the murder of another Black person by Minneapolis police officers last week and the continued violent response by police against protestors.

Like the good Leftists they are, Ben and Jerry begin with falsity to frame their argument. It is not a murder until due process of law had determined it to be a murder. “Another” is rhetorical dishonesty. Police action against rioters, arsonists and looters is not “violent response.” It is mandatory law enforcement.

We have to speak out. We have to stand together with the victims of murder, marginalization, and repression because of their skin color, and with those who seek justice through protests across our country. We have to say his name: George Floyd.George Floyd was a son, a brother, a father, and a friend. The police officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck and the police officers who stood by and watched didn’t just murder George Floyd, they stole him. They stole him from his family and his friends, his church and his community, and from his own future. The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy. What happened to George Floyd was not the result of a bad apple; it was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and culture that has treated Black bodies as the enemy from the beginning.

This is racist, inflammatory, vicious rhetoric calculated to provoke fear, violence and hate.

What happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis is the fruit borne of toxic seeds planted on the shores of our country in Jamestown in 1619, when the first enslaved men and women arrived on this continent. Floyd is the latest in a long list of names that stretches back to that time and that shore. Some of those names we know — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, Martin Luther King, Jr. — most we don’t.

Normally I would bail on any article that conflated Emmit Til, who was lynched 75 years ago, and  Martin Luther King, who was assassinated, with Ahmaud Abbery, whose death did not involve police, with Eric Garner, who died in an example of sloppy police work while resisting arrest, with Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a Hispanic man in self -defense and whose death also had nothing to do with police, with Michael Brown. An argument that starts off with such deliberate misrepresentation cannot be respected.

The officers who murdered George Floyd, who stole him from those who loved him, must be brought to justice.

They are arrested and charged, and will stand trial. Or do Ben and Jerry want Emmett Till-style “justice”?

At the same time, we must embark on the more complicated work of delivering justice for all the victims of state sponsored violence and racism. Four years ago, we publicly stated our support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Today, we want to be even more clear about the urgent need to take concrete steps to dismantle white supremacy in all its forms. To do that, we are calling for four things: First, we call upon President Trump, elected officials, and political parties to commit our nation to a formal process of healing and reconciliation. Instead of calling for the use of aggressive tactics on protestors, the President must take the first step by disavowing white supremacists and nationalist groups that overtly support him, and by not using his Twitter feed to promote and normalize their ideas and agendas. The world is watching America’s response.

Translation: Unilaterally submit to our ideological position. Right. Again, this is an unserious argument that is entirely political.

Second, we call upon the Congress to pass H.R. 40, legislation that would create a commission to study the effects of slavery and discrimination from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies. We cannot move forward together as a nation until we begin to grapple with the sins of our past. Slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation were systems of legalized and monetized white supremacy for which generations of Black and Brown people paid an immeasurable price. That cost must be acknowledged and the privilege that accrued to some at the expense of others must be reckoned with and redressed.

Translation: Reparations! Who didn’t see that coming? Reparations, of course, would do more to exacerbate racial tensions than almost anything I can think of, and again, the idea isn’t serious, because it is politically impossible, and should be. It is a “solution” to justify endless criticism for not adopting it.

Third, we support Floyd’s family’s call to create a national task force that would draft bipartisan legislation aimed at ending racial violence and increasing police accountability. We can’t continue to fund a criminal justice system that perpetuates mass incarceration while at the same time threatens the lives of a whole segment of the population.

Translation: Authentic Frontier Gibberish. It’s meaningless.

And finally, we call on the Department of Justice to reinvigorate its Civil Rights Division as a staunch defender of the rights of Black and Brown people. The DOJ must also reinstate policies rolled back under the Trump Administration, such as consent decrees to curb police abuses.

Police shootings and police involved deaths have declined during the Trump Administration, though the Obama Administration had a completely racialized Justice Department and Civil Rights Division. This is Trump bashing disguises as police advice.

Unless and until white America is willing to collectively acknowledge its privilege, take responsibility for its past and the impact it has on the present, and commit to creating a future steeped in justice, the list of names that George Floyd has been added to will never end. We have to use this moment to accelerate our nation’s long journey towards justice and a more perfect union.

It’s virtue-signaling and dog-whistling without substance.  Like ice cream, it may taste good to many, but there’s little of substance to savor later. The 13th question isn’t even nicked in this screed.

Alert: Prof Turley Reviews The Rod Rosenstein Senate Judiciary Hearing

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Professor Jonathan Turley, a trustworthy analyst, one of the few, just posted his summary of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Despicably, Democrats had attacked the hearings as if there was no reason to be troubled about the way the investigation of “Russian collusion” was handled despite a mountain of evidence indicating that it was biased, motivated by partisanship, and quite probably illegal. Rosenstein’s testimony, as Turley points out, demonstrated how disingenuous that partisan complaint was. He writes, “Rosenstein said that there is a legitimate question of ‘why it happened?’ That would seem to support the hearing that Democrats are denouncing. ”

Why yes, that seems to be a fair assessment.

I recommend reading Turley’s spin-free account because it is unlikely that the mainstream news media will adequately cover the hearing, since that would interfere with cheerleading  and rationalizing the riots.

Is that overly harsh? I don’t think so. Even the sometimes infuriatingly diplomatic professor is showing signs of losing patience at the constant, shameless efforts to bury the truth. I passed the stage he is reaching now a few years ago.

Some highlights and lowlights: Continue reading →

Ethics Dispatch from The Sick Ward, Memorial Day Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Hi.

I won’t say I’m back, because I thought I was over the hump two days ago, and that proved to be a rash miscalculation. But on this, one of many days during the year when I am prompted to remember my father, Major Jack A. Marshall, Sr., I need to make a special effort to ring in, as he would have.  As I have mentioned before, Dad never let illness or injury keep him sidelined for long. It was a matter of honor for him.

1.  Front Page Ethics: When I was preparing to write yesterday’s warm-up, this was going to be the first item…

The Times has tried to come up with every way possible to hype the Wuhan virus outbreak, and, simultaneously, the economic consequences of battling it, to cause as much alarm, fear and panic as possible. I’ve mentioned a few of the stunts, like spiking red graphs that extend beyond the margins of the paper. Those who have  died from the virus have received special treatment, with profiles and photos in the paper, because dying of this cause obviously makes a citizen more important than someone who is killed in a robbery or who died of a ruptured spleen.  This was more of the same: a small-print listing of 1,000 deaths supposedly from the virus. It was an act of pure sensationalism, teeing up cheap attacks on President Trump, another exmaple of how far into hackery the Times and the rest of the news media has fallen

An amusing note: nobody is expected to actually read a page like that, so who knows who accurate it is, but wouldn’t you think that the editors would have made sure that at least the names entered at the beginning of the list were actual pandemic victims? The New York Post reports

[O]ne of the first names on the paper’s earlier editions of the front page, Jordan Driver Haynes, 27, didn’t actually die from the virus. He was murdered, according to local reports. Haynes’ body was found in a vehicle left in a wooded area off a highway in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the local NBC affiliate reported.

Details, details. After all, the point of the stunt wasn’t to report accurate news, but to hype the death tole. The Times could have done the same thing with the number of deaths from the old fashioned flu (60,000, heart disease (about a half-million)lung cancer (135,000) or drug overdoses (67, 000). If 2020 holds to the trends of the last decades, there will be about 620,000 abortions performed. Of course, the dead in these cases don’t have names, but if they did, how would the Times publishing a thousand of them on its front page be regarded?

Isn’t this kind of gross over-emphasis a form of fake news?

Like so many of the propaganda we have been witnessing lately, this is aimed at the gullible and the easily misled, and for everyone else—perhaps a minority, we shall see, just further removes the new media from its position of influence. Continue reading →

Susan Rice Again, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Continuing with the observations regarding this remarkable document…

4. I was once involved in an anti-trust lawsuit triggered when all of the competitors of the company I was working for gathered together and conspired on ways to sink my employer’s business. Before the minutes of the meeting, the group’s lawyers prepared a statement that that the group absolutely intended to obey all anti-trust laws, and the meeting would embody the ideals represented in those laws. Then they went ahead and, based on a recording of the meeting, planned ways to conspire against our business in direct violation of the laws they claimed to hold in such high esteem.

It was really comical; these idiots though that by having everyone sign a statement that they weren’t doing what they obviously were doing, this would provide some plausible deniability.

5. We now know that Rice’s bizarre memo was written upon the advice of the White House Counsel’s Office. Rice says she waited 15 days because it was her first opportunity to do so, since she had been so darned busy. It would be a more likely srory if Rice had any credibility at all, which she does not.

6. Let’s let Andrew McCarthy try to explain what’s going on here. The anti-Trump news sources will never give him a forum, so he’s related to Fox News, but McCarthy was spot-on in predicting the course of the Mueller investigation, as is as knowledgeable on the machinations of the Deep State as anyone. He explained in part,

How amusing to find President Obama’s national-security advisor, Susan Rice, suddenly calling for public release of the Flynn–Kislyak conversation intercepted by the Obama administration in late December 2016. I called for its release nearly three-and-a-half years ago. Dr. Rice, in a familiar pattern for her, has spent the ensuing years saying things that were obviously untrue only to reverse herself once the paper trail starts to dribble out.

….Rice has gone from claiming to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to — now — a call for the recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to be released because it would purportedly show that the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn (y’know, the guy she said she had no idea they were investigating).

Naturally, we have now learned that Rice was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s Trump–Russia investigation, including its sub-investigation of Flynn, a top Trump campaign surrogate who was slated to replace Rice as national-security advisor when President Trump took office.

Regarding the memo, McCarthy writes, Continue reading →

Amazing! Someone Actually Fact-Checked Barack Obama! Not So Amazingly, He Was Again Using His Position To Mislead And Divide

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Also not so amazingly, the fact-checker was Prof. Jonathan Turley, a rare academic and legal professional who has the integrity to go where the facts take him, not his colleagues’ partisan agendas. Unfortunately, his refusal to join the “resistance” has resulted in his being vilified, as well as exiled to Fox News if he wants to be heard.

Barack Obama was heard on a private call to say that the “rule of law is at risk” after the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. As with so many other narratives the Left has pushed in the past three years, this one is exactly the opposite of reality. Recently declassified documents show that the Obama FBI and Justice Department engaged in illegal  investigative and prosecutorial misconduct, targeting Flynn and framing him as part of their efforts to bring down President Trump. They also suggest that President Obama was aware of the operation. Such abuses for political gain pose the real threat to the rule of law.

Obama is reported to have said that “There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free.”

Here’s Turley, who, nice guy that he is, can still barely disguise his contempt: Continue reading →

Here’s Some More Refreshing “Kool-Aid”: Prof. Turley Explains The Mike Flynn Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The prevailing attitude toward the growing and eventually irrefutable evidence that hostile forces within the FBI and the Justice Department were unethically,  illegally and unconstitutionally working behind the scenes to undermine the President and, if possible, have him removed from office was that this was just another right-wing conspiracy theory. That spin allowed the mainstream media to justify refusing to investigate the many smoking guns that were being uncovered,and to report on them using the familiar techniques it employs when it wants to protect its fellow Axis of Unthical Conduct allies, the Democrats and “the resistance.”

The illegal FISA  warrants to allow surveillance of the Trump campaign that a federal judge eventually ruled constituted both judicial and prosecutor misconduct were a small part of the ethics train wreck that was the Mueller investigation. When Ethics Alarms accurately described this breach of law and ethics, I was accused here of “drinking the Kool-Aid,” in a now familiar ploy by blinded or unscrupulous partisans to throw up metaphorical sand and dust, allowing wrongdoing to prevail. By their definition of the term, Prof. Jonathan Turley has mixed-up another delicious pitcher of the beverage. Yum!

Let me interject here what a continuing Ethics Hero Turley is. Almost alone among law professors, scholars and academics, he has been willing to call out ethical misconduct throughout the Trump Administration years thus far without consideration of who benefits or whose political fortunes the truth might harm. For this, progressives have regularly denigrated as a traitor to the cause, the cause being “Get Trump.”  Turley is a Democrat and an old fashioned liberal—you know, the kind that had integrity—but never flinches when it is time to call out the Left on its increasingly unconscionable conduct.

Now the Constitutional Law expert has turned his legal analysis skills on the developing Michael Flynn story. His unequivocal conclusion: “The Flynn Case Should Be Dismissed In The Name Of Justice.” Continue reading →