partisanship

Res Ipsa Loquitur! The News Media’s Anti-Trump Bias Expressed As Naked Censorship

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

first version

“Nah, the news media isn’t biased! It’s just right wing Faux News lovers who say that! The news media OTHER than Fox is fair and objective!”

I get these protests all the time, and I am considering being more direct and unpleasant in my responses when I do. For this statement is either proof of ignorance, stupidity, or dishonesty. There is no fourth option, and the recent example I will now describe shows why.

Earlier this week, a woman noticed a four-month-old girl in a locked car in a New Jersey Kohl’s parking lot . She screamed, alerting passer-by Steve Eckel, the New York Daily News reported.  Eckel called 911 but didn’t wait: he used a sledgehammer to break a window in the car, rescuing the cooking child.

During an HLN interview on cable TV,  the retired New Jersey police officer wore a T-shirt with the legend, “2016 Trump for President.” Yet when the CNN headline news channel ran the interview an hour later, the message was blurred out.

Would a pro-Hillary Clinton, pro-Obama, Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, anti-gun or virtually any other non-obscene message or image be so censored? Never. My assumption, if I saw such a blur, would be that the T-shirt was wildly offensive in some undeniable way, making that blur a slur on Eckel’s character.  (A pro-Trump T-shirt doesn’t exactly speak well of him either, but that’s irrelevant.) Continue reading →

Essay: On Loretta Lynch And Fighting Cynicism And Distrust Regarding The FBI Investigation Of Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

America_Falling_Apar

Warning:

This is long.

I think it’s important

In the wake of Attorney General Lynch’s acknowledgment of wrongdoing in meeting, however briefly and innocently, with Bill Clinton, some  reader comments here are redolent of the destructive distrust of government and leadership engendered by this administration and others, particularly Bill’s. Yet this attitude feeds on itself, and is to an extent a self-fulfilling prophecy. If leaders think that people expect corruption, they are less likely to shy away from it. Cynicism leads to acceptance. Of course, this is one explanation of why the tarmac meeting took place—pure arrogance and a belief that with the news media’s complicity, now virtually any degree of government dishonesty and corruption will be either effectively hidden from the public, or accepted by it.

This is untrue, still. Indeed, this episode is proof that it is untrue, though the news media did make (disgusting and ignorant) efforts to shrug off the clear appearance of impropriety represented by Lynch having a meeting with Clinton the Impeached under these circumstances. Why do I labor trying to write these essays explaining the legal and ethical context of such events if readers are so poisoned by bitterness and distrust that they can’t or won’t process them, and just default to “it doesn’t make any difference, all is shit, all is lost”?  If I believed that, I wouldn’t be spending time—work  time, uncompensated time—writing this stuff. I can earn peanuts directing professional theatrical productions: it makes people happy, gives actors work, and is a lot more fun, believe me.

Paranoia, suspicion, despair, and conspiratorial views of government, which are all these comments represent, are just forms of bias. Bias makes us stupid, and in this case, bias makes us dysfunctional as a people and fearful and miserable as individuals. Continue reading →

Revisiting The “Ten Ethics Questions For Unshakable Hillary Voters”

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments

Hillary Rally

Less than a year ago, I responded to a series of what I regarded then (and now) as irresponsible expressions of support, bias and denial by Hillary Clinton supporters with ten questions designed to rescue them from corruption. At the time, the possibility that an even worse candidate would (or could) be nominated by the Republican Party never crossed my mind.

Although it was largely buried over the last week in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, Clinton’s e-mail fiasco was further exposed as the deep evidence of  long-term Clinton corruption that it is.  One of the most damaging e-mails handled on her private server, for example, was not turned over to the State Department (Hillary has sworn repeatedly a that ALL State Department business-related e-mails were turned over, raising the rebuttable presumption that she had other State communications among the 30,000 or so that her personal lawyers had destroyed.) We also learned that State Department staffers struggled in December 2010 over a serious technical problem that affected emails from the improper server, causing State staffers  to temporarily disable security features on the government’s own systems, thus making them more vulnerable to attack.

In a deposition under oath, Clinton’s IT specialist Bryan Pagliano, a central figure in the set-up and management of Clinton’s personal server, invoked the Fifth more than 125 times.  Meanwhile, the shadowy Clinton Foundation machinations came to the fore once again. An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as Secretary of State identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors, corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded.  The calendar omissions naturally reinforce suspicions that she sought to hide possibly improper or even illegal uses of her influence and position to raise funds for the foundation. While the news media tried to spin Donald Trump’s statement in his attack on Hillary last week that “Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation,” his statement was accurate. For a change.

What was striking about the ten questions, looking at them again, is how little I would alter them today. The major change is that the arguments of those who claimed that evidence of Hillary’s unethical conduct was partisan or inconclusive look even more desperate and dishonest than they did last August. For the same reasons, the passage of time makes Clinton’s shameless and insulting lies seem even more shameless and insulting. The Democratic Party also looks worse and more corrupt: it rigged the nomination for this woman of demonstrably untrustworthy and venal character, as well as of dubious skills. Nothing can surpass the complete abdication of its duty to the United States by the Republican Party and its voters, but this was a betrayal by the Democrats.

Here is the list. I’ll have a few observations along the way, in bold.

“Ten Ethics Questions For Unshakable Hillary Voters” Continue reading →

House Democrats Sit-In To Ignore The Fifth Amendment (Thereby Disgracing Themselves)

/ Jack Marshall / 125 Comments

Sit in

When is it not a partisan act to condemn an entire political party and the followers who applaud it no matter what it does?

One example is unfolding before us: the Republican Party’s absence of sufficient integrity, principle and will to deny Donald Trump the party’s endorsement and nomination for President. It’s not a partisan act to condemn this. It is objective, rational, and responsible.

It is similarly objective, rational and fair to condemn the Democratic Party and its blind, knee-jerk followers for engaging in one of the most cynical, hypocritical and pandering displays in memory: the current “sit-in” to force the House to vote on anti-gun bills that unambiguously bypass the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, denying American citizens their civil rights by government edict.

House Democrats, symbolically led by Rep. John Lewis, the elderly civil rights icon who seems now bent on making an ass of himself, have vowed to “occupy” the House Chamber until the no-fly list ban on gun purchasing is voted on, essentially shutting down that side of Congress.  For those whose brains are functioning, this is about as naked a display of political cynicism as we have seen, even topping Ted Cruz’s destructive government shut-downs.

Two days ago, it was Senate Democrats not Republicans, who voted down a bill that would have given the Justice Department power to block gun purchases by anyone on a terror watch list, provided that the government fulfilled its duty of  due process but going to court and satisfying to a judge  that the person on the list was there was a compelling reason to regard the citizen as a public threat. actually dangerous. That was the bill put forth by Senator Cornyn, a Republican. But Democrats could have the gun control provision they were screaming for be the work of that evil, NRA supported party, so it died in the Senate, 53/47, when enough Democrats voted against it to deny the 60 votes it needed for cloture.

Now the House Democrats are grandstanding and acting like children. Yesterday,  the House Democrats chanted from the floor: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!” and “No bill, no break!” while the House remained in recess.

It is unconstitutional to allow the  federal government power to strip the rights from citizens who have been convicted of nothing without the protection og judicial safeguards.If there is any significant controversy about this, I can’t find it. The theory seems to be that because Democrats don’t like Second Amendment rights, they don’t count, somehow. You know, Democrats aren’t crazy about First Amendment rights either.  Perhaps this is why that liberal champion of long standing, the American Civil Liberties Union, opposes the no-fly bills as vehemently as the NRA. They opposed the Cornyn bill, the closest to one that acknowledges the Fifth Amendment, as well as the Democratic, “Due process? What is this due process of which you speak?” capitulations to hysteria, writing in a letter to Senators:
Continue reading →

Ethics Review Of “Supreme Court Vacancy Theater”

/ Jack Marshall / 104 Comments

Court vacancy

The short review would be “Yecchh.”

The reason that the earlier Ethics Alarms post about the death of Justice Scalia expressed the wish that President Obama on his own declare that he would defer the almost certainly futile appointment of a successor to the tender care of the next President was precisely because it was obvious that any other course was just going to create more ugly partisan name-calling and hypocrisy, accomplishing nothing positive and wasting a lot of energy and time. I also knew that this most divisive of POTUS’s would no more do that than he would deliver his next speech in a duck voice. Thus we have the theater, with people who should know better acting like the Republican Senate’s announcement that it would not be voting on President Obama’s nominee, should he make one, is some  kind of gross breach of duty and ethics, and people who don’t know better acting as if being one Justice short is some kind of Armageddon. Neither is true.

Nor is there any reasonably similar set of circumstances and conditions that makes the GOP’s entirely political decision, and Obama’s entirely political decision to test it, some kind of breach of precedent. There is no precedent—not with these factors in play:

A Democratic President with both Houses controlled by the Republicans

An ideologically and evenly divided Court, with the new Justice potentially having a momentous and nation-changing effect on the determination of many looming cases

An unusually partisan and ideological President who has proven unwilling and unable to seek legitimate input from the opposing party, and who, in fact, has been personally and bitterly insulting toward it

A rebellion against the “establishment” in both parties, from the extreme reaches of both parties, on the grounds that neither is extreme or combative enough

A lame duck, not especially popular President and an approaching national election that is currently being molded by unpredictable personalities and events, and is likely to be hotly contested..

The Supreme Court unusually central to the government of the country.

The vacancy on the Court being created by the death of one of the Court’s most influential, ideological and powerful members.

A degree of political division in the public not experienced since the Civil War.

These are all material factors, made more material in some cases because of the other factors. Thus accusations that the Republican have engaged in some kind of grand, historical crime against democracy is, to the extent the accusers believe it, crap, and to the extent that they don’t, ignorant. Continue reading →

Assessing The Clinton Testimony On Benghazi

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Hillary testifies

In the end, we either learned something worth learning, or we didn’t. It comes down to how important one thinks it is to know that your government lies to you, and to know that a party’s Presidential candidate is a liar as well.

Early in the questioning yesterday, Hillary Clinton was confronted with previously unrevealed e-mails showing that within hours of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, she emailed her daughter, Chelsea, and said that Americans had died at the hands of “an al-Qaeda like group.”   Clinton also informed Egypt’s prime minister and Libya’s president that the attacks were “preplanned” and “had nothing to do with” an anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube.

Days later, Clinton told the American public and families of the Benghazi victims that a YouTube video incited protesters in Benghazi and spontaneously launched assaults.

Why had the e-mails not been unavailable earlier? Well, they were sent via that private server that Clinton set up and used for official government business when she was Secretary of State. They were not originally turned over in response to public records requests and subpoenas, because that’s what the private server was designed for in the first place: to provide protection for Clinton and e-mails that might cause political embarrassment or worse.

Am I being unfair so far? If you think so, wait for the next post. You’re hopeless. The Benghazi committee discovered the existence of Clinton’s private server last year. Was that important information worth knowing? Again, if you don’t think so, do not pass GO. You are corrupted by bias.

The e-mails showed… Continue reading →

Well, I Think We Can See Where THIS is Headed: Ethics Observations On The First Hour Of Hillary Clinton’s Appearance Before The Benghazi Committee

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

Benghazi hearings

1. Last night I watched “All The President’s Men,” and found it newly chilling, and disturbingly relevant. At the end of the film, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards , Jr.) is talking to Woodward and Bernstein—outside his house, because they think it might be bugged—after Woodward has told him that the Watergate cover-up was being orchestrated from the White House (according to Deep Throat). Bradlee says:

“You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up… 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I’m going to get mad. Goodnight.”

After more revelations from the Post’s investigative reporters, (and after the action of the movie ends), the Senate began its hearings led by Democratic Senator Sam Ervin. His Republican counterpart, Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, didn’t make speeches about partisan witch hunts (though that was the Nixon White House’s tactic) nor did he denigrate the investigation, nor did he act as a impediment to the process, or waste time gushing over every Republican witness. He did his job in a competent, cooperative, non-partisan manner and sought the truth.  Even then, it took a long time to get to it.

At issue was the fact that the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence community appeared to be part of the conspiracy. The attorney general and his predecessor, John Mitchell, were poisonously partisan and refusing to investigate the unfolding scandal. The FBI and the intelligence community could not be trusted; former CIA agents had participated in the Watergate burglary. In the absence of an executive branch that could be trusted to investigate itself and be held to account, the legislative branch, aided by the judiciary, had a solemn obligation to do the job. Fortunately, it did. This was only possible, however, because Republicans didn’t attempt to aide in the cover-up and obstruct the search for justice.

2. Such bi-partisan dedication to the nation over politics was also more possible, not to say it was easy, because Richard Nixon was never popular. He had won a landslide re-election only because the Democratic candidate was far left of the nation (he’d be a conservative to many of today’s Democrats), and obviously unqualified. Barack Obama, in contrast, is unbreakably popular with almost 15% of the population, a key Democratic constituency, due to group identification and little else. This has been sufficient to eviscerate any integrity among Democrats regarding the Benghazi hearings and a lot more.

3. The reason the hearings have dragged out so long, as Chairman Trey Gowdy laid out in prosecutorial fashion in his opening statement, is that the Obama Administration, like the Nixon administration, has been stonewalling, delaying and obstructing justice. The contentious issue of Hillary’s e-mails explains why this is true. The fact that Clinton’s e-mails were hidden on a private server made them unavailable to the investigation, and yet without them, the investigation couldn’t be complete. Why didn’t the State Department make this known before 2015? Why has it dragged its metaphorical feet in producing them so egregiously that a judge had to order it to comply? Why didn’t Clinton comply with a committee subpoena. and why did she destroy “personal” e-mails she knew would be requested before they could be examined by anyone not in her employ? If it looks like a cover-up and quacks like a cover-up, it might well be a cover-up. The committee has a duty to the American public to find out what’s going on. Gowdy also said the the public deserves the truth. Why did Clinton and Obama, as well as their designated liar Susan Rice, continue to tell the news media, the public and even the U.N. that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous uprising sparked by a YouTube video when all the evidence indicated that it wasn’t, including the CIA analysis? It’s obvious why, of course: Obama was running for re-election, so the Administration set out to deceive the public. That alone is worth proving, and if it takes a House investigation to do it, fine. We need to know when the country is being run by liars who set out to manipulate elections. No, what Obama did in this instance isn’t on the same level as Watergate. It would still warrant impeachment, however. Continue reading →

Ten Ethics Questions For Unshakable Hillary Voters

/ Jack Marshall / 112 Comments

casual woman - no evil

Jamelle Bouie, Slate regular, can’t imagine Democrats voting for a Republican over Hillary just because she jeopardized national security, flouted her own department’s policies, destroyed evidence, and has lied about both her conduct and its significance continually. “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski said yesterday that she is offended at Clinton’s lies about her e-mail, and is insulted that Hillary thinks that the American public is “that stupid.” She then said “If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, I would vote for her,” thus proving that she, at least, is exactly as stupid as Hillary thinks she is. Then, of course, we have Paul Begala, who memorably said, “Voters do not give a shit. They do not even give a fart… Find me one persuadable voter who agrees with HRC on the issues but will vote against her because she has a non-archival-compliant email system and I’ll kiss your ass in Macy’s window and say it smells like roses.” (I keep quoting this because it perfectly embodies the level of ethical character (that is, 0)  of political operatives and the contempt in which they hold their prey, American citizens.). Then, on the recent post about ethics corruption and Clinton, regular commenter Beth wrote, speaking for informed, intelligent Democrats,

“..we’ll still vote for her in the main election over a Republican who will push for policy positions that we are against.”

I am not picking on Beth, whom I respect and consider a friend, but this is fascinating and alarming to me. She is a mother, and thus committed to teacher her children ethical values;  she is a lawyer, and she understands, for example, that destroying material you know is likely to be subpoenaed is unethical and often criminal. She does not approve of lying. Yet she expects none of this to deter her and other  intelligent Democrats from voting for Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic Party obviously is counting on this kind of reasoning, or they would not be offering such a corrupt, damaged, untrustworthy candidate. Indeed, I sense that the Beth Block doesn’t want to hear or read about Hillary’s slimy activities, because it makes them feel ashamed about what they think they will do two Novembers from now.

It should make them feel ashamed.

I wonder, though: how far will they go with this unethical and irresponsible logic? Thus I have these ten questions for them… Continue reading →

The Clinton E-Mail Scandal, Part Two: The Corrupter, The Corrupt And The Corrupted

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

corrupted2

Like so many political scandals, the Hillary Clinton e-mail mess has multiple benefits even as it reveals the scabrous underside of the American political culture. Prime among the benefits is that it provides a useful test of who is trustworthy and perceptive, and who is untrustworthy due to an excess of bias, partisan fervor, warped values or just mush-for-brains.

The stunningly cynical and dishonest statement by Clinton communications chief Jennifer Palmieri, dissected in Part One, revealed that the Clinton machine really does have zero respect for the intellect of the American public, that the Clintons still believe that you can lie your way out of anything (even if the lies make no sense), and that a lack of ethics really does eat away at gray matter.

Look: every week, sometimes three times a week, I harangue lawyers about how they are ethically obligated to take careful measures to protect proprietary client information that is stored or communicated through electronic means. They immediately comprehend how it is essential, especially government lawyers. Why? Because the government is the most vulnerable of clients, among those who can be most hurt by careless information technology, and is ahead of much of industry and the private sector in developing policies and methods of keeping information as secure as possible. Hillary Clinton’s casual lies about how her “home-brewed” server was no big deal is literally stunning to these lawyers, because they know that no high ranking government official is as cavalier about official e-mails as Clinton’s repeated statements would suggest she was.  As is a pattern among Democrats during the Obama administration, Clinton’s dissembling is designed to fool the ignorant, because the ignorant are many and useful.  It is based on the assumption that nobody, certainly not the news media, will enlighten them sufficiently to understand the magnitude of what Clinton did, and the breathtaking audacity of her lies. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Slate Writer Jamelle Bouie

/ Jack Marshall / 86 Comments

hillary-clinton-winking“Barring an indictment for criminal behavior, Hillary Clinton, if she’s the Democratic nominee, will not lose the 2016 presidential election because of her emails. To think so, or to think they’ll change the race, is to say that scandal will override partisanship; that an otherwise liberal voter will walk into the ballot booth and mark the box for Jeb Bush or Gov. Scott Walker or Sen. Marco Rubio because of digital mismanagement. I liked what Clinton said about early childcare, thinks our hypothetical voter, but sending government email on a private server makes her unfit for the White House.”

—–Slate’s resident racial-distrust monger, Jamelle Bouie, writing about how Hillary Clinton’s still unfolding e-mail scandal will affect her candidacy.

What a cynical and frightening attitude to  express  about one’s own ideological kith!

Could he be right? The typical progressive/liberal/Democrat sees the blatant lies of Hillary Clinton exposed, that she deliberately risked national security, deliberately breached her own department’s and the Obama administration’s policy, falsely denied that any laws or regulations were involved, disingenuously said her conduct was no different from other officials, destroyed e-mails knowing they were about to be subpoenaed in a Congressional investigation, placed national secrets at risk, described the process of unraveling her deceptions and incompetence as “fun,” sent out one surrogate after another to obfuscate and deny the facts and the truth, and repeatedly lied about the matter herself, following a well-established pattern that already causes most of the nation to regard her as untrustworthy, and still that typical progressive/liberal/Democrat will say, “Hey, I like what she said about early child care, so what difference does it make that she’s devious, dishonest, incompetent,  possibly criminal, reckless and thinks the public is made up of dupes?”

Really? Really? REALLY???

Who are these creatures, and how did they get this way? Are all Democrats this completely unconcerned about character and ethics, or is Bouie, who obviously is, just projecting his own crippling ethics rot on others?

That does it.

I’m heading for the bridge…

 Update: A rather more rational and less depressing analysis from Ron Fournier, who, unlike Jamelle, doesn’t try to spin Clinton’s conduct as “digital mismanagement.”