Ethics Test For Progressive Americans, PART II: The New York Times Has Already Flunked

The Times has so many dishonest, biased, partisan and unethical columnists that, as I have written too many times, identifying the worst of the worst is well nigh impossible. With the execrable Charles M. Blow mercifully retired as the Times house anti-white racist, it is at least easy to single out the most unethical black pundit currently disgracing the paper. That would be Jamelle Bouie. He has one of the worst EA dossiers of any Times pundit (though not as bad as Blow’s) going back to when he was a writer for Slate. However, as indefensible it was for the Times to hire Bouie, it is even worse that no editor, publisher or staff petition stopped his latest screed from being published under the Times masthead.

Here is your second gift link to a Times product of the day, though this “gift” is more akin to a flaming bag of dog poo left on your front door. Among its features…

Ethics Update On the Axis Freakout Over Virginia and Tennessee’s Redistricting Results

[Note: I apologize for the funky formatting here, but it’s not my fault: WordPress again messed with its (terrible) “block system” with no warning and I’m trying to figure it out.]

I’m posting the graphic above again because it is res ipsa loquitur, rebutting on its face what so many of the hysterical Democrats, elected officials, pundits and partisan reporters are screaming as they survey the results of their own corruption and hypocrisy.

As Ethics Alarms has been asserting (and proving) for a decade now, the Left cheats. Its “they go low, we go high” mantra has always been cynical gaslighting, but the somnolent Right allowed them to escape accountability (and their just desserts) far too long. Donald Trump, whatever his ethical flaws may be, has always understood the concept of fighting back. This time it really paid off, and all Americans should be grateful. Yes: we should fervently seek fair districting in every state. Maybe the current chaos will eventually lead to that. However, letting one party rig the system unanswered while the other party just sits and shrugs is worse than the chaos.

Scott Greenfield, defense lawyer, blogger, Jack-hater and progressive legal pundit, deserves praise for a nearly completely ethical and unbiased analysis of the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the dastardly gerrymandering trick Virginia’s “moderate” governor and its corrupt Democrats tried to inflict on half the state’s voters. He writes in part,

“The confluence of a few unfortunate circumstances resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court holding that the state constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting plan as a counterbalance to other states’ legislative redistricting plans to eliminate congressional districts deemed “safely” Democratic was unconstitutional. Wags and cynics will imagine this ruling to be the product of radical rightist activists. It was not…Neither the majority nor dissent took unprincipled positions, both having some merit to their position, but the point of a ruling is to reach a determination. The Virginia Supreme Court did so, in a principled fashion, and it ruled the redistricting amendment unconstitutional under the state Constitution. It was a crushing defeat for Democrats, but that doesn’t make it partisan or radical. Sometimes, you lose. While the combination of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision and this Virginia ruling has set in motion a partisan war that serves to make congressional elections a by-product of widespread cynical gerrymandering rather than a reflection of the will of the voters, perhaps one of the most noxiously anti-democratic efforts to rig an election possible, don’t blame the Virginia Supreme Court for “losing” safe districts for Democrats. The court did its job and its ruling, no matter what outcome you would have preferred, was grounded in a principled reading of the state Constitution.”

Good for Scott. He is still, however, a Trump Deranged, biased progressive (like most trial lawyers), so he also wrote…

“If you want to find blame, it’s in the legislatures that decided to sell out their citizens, their voters, at the open and notorious behest of Trump. For all his baseless bluster about rigged elections, we’re finally going to have one and Trump demanded the rigging.”

Bad Scott. Bad. Look at the damn chart above. Democrats had already rigged Congressional elections. Did you wonder why the predicted “red wave” in 2022 never materialized? Wonder no more. Nine Democrat-dominated state legislatures made it virtually impossible for Republicans to get elected. President Trump, that kingly fascist, had the sense and combative instincts to get his party to try to even the odds. The “red” states that did that through redistricting (gerrymandering) followed their constitutions. Virginia did not. Naturally, the losers blame Trump.

Former DNC chairwoman and current ABC contributor Donna Brazile naturally took the same dishonest path. Remember, Brazile was the Democrat who first tipped me off to her party’s cheating ways: as a paid CNN “contributor” in 2016, she used her insider status to tip-off Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton regarding the questions she would be asked at a CNN “town meeting.” This was so unethical even CNN couldn’t tolerate it, and she was fired. Yesterday Brazile joined GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher to give a masterclass on double standards and leftist gaslighting. Republican redistricting efforts are, she said, “immoral,” while Democratic efforts are what “voters decided.”

Voters in Virginia “decided” on the gerrymandered map based on the referendum’s false statement, indeed exactly the opposite of reality, that the new map would “restore fairness.” Remember?

“Restore fairness” by making sure that a 50-50 party split would be represented by a 10-1 Democrat district map. Sure.

Then Brazile played the race card, as Democrats inevitably do when the facts aren’t in their favor. “I come from one of those states that all of a sudden, the Supreme Court said, ‘Well, we don’t like partisan gerrymandering. No, we don’t like racial gerrymandering.’ So, one out of three voters in Louisiana is a black voter. One out of three. And they are now thinking of eradicating. So, that says people from some parts of Louisiana can represent New Orleans better than the folks who are representing—or Baton Rouge. It is wrong, it is immoral, and it is unjustified.”

Well-said, mush-mouth. “They” are thinking of “eradicating” black voters? I think Donna was trying to say that the Jim Crow laws that were still in effect de facto if not de jure in Southern states in the early Sixties justifies “good racial discrimination” in 2026, 60 years later. You can read her logic- and law-free rant here.This is, however, apparently the fake narrative the Axis has decided to run with, proving with its attempted cover-up just how desperate and unprincipled it is.

On yesterday’s MSNOW propaganda-fest “The Weekend,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) compared the 1857 Dred Scott ruling to the SCOTUS decision that the 1965 Voting Rights Act could no longer justify anti-white discrimination in the Southern states, and declared the Roberts Court “one of the most racist courts in American history.”Got it. If the Court doesn’t allow the Democrats to rig its Congressional maps to pack the House with as many blacks as possible, it’s racist. Morelle also parroted the “will of the voters” lie in attacking the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of redistricting referendum. Did the MSNOW host point out for its viewers that Morelle was misrepresenting both decisions? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

This how House minority leader Hakeem Jeffreys reacted to his party being foiled in its unconstitutional, dishonest power-grab in Virginia:

Smoking Gun Evidence That Democrats and Progressives Seek One-Party Rule, Not Democracy: The Virginia Special Election

This is another integrity test for your woke friends who claim that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.

Tomorrow, Virginians (like me) will go to polling places to decide whether to vote for a “proposed constitutional amendment.” Note that the proposed amendment isn’t included on the ballot. This is because Democrats, who dominate the state government cheat. There is no other way to explain this.

Constitutional amendments, which must be approved by Virginia voters, have to be on the ballot with a full explanation of the amendment available to the public at least 90 days before the election. Virginia Code 30-19.9 provides,

“The explanation shall contain the ballot question, the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment, and a statement of not more than 500 words on the proposed amendment. The explanation shall be presented in plain English, shall be limited to a neutral explanation, which may include a brief statement on the effect of a “yes” and “no” vote on the question but shall not include arguments submitted by either proponents or opponents of the proposal.”

How has it been “made available”? I don’t know: I hadn’t seen it, and I’m fairly informed on such matters. Maybe it was in something I thought was junk mail. Maybe Democrats think posting something on a website nobody is likely to visit is sufficient advance notice. The alleged required explanation of the current proposed amendment is here. In addition to the deceitful and misleading language on the ballot above, we see:

From The Ethics Alarms Archives: “One More Time, The Second Accuser Scenario, And Fairness For Justin Fairfax”

Yesterday, the horrifying news was that former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party (you know, like Jasmine Crockett and Eric Swalwell) whose career was derailed by sexual assault allegations, murdered his estranged wife and killed himself.

The knee-jerk defenders of Fairfax among Virginia Democrats were head-exploding in 2019, as this EA post from February of that year reminds us. I held at the time that two rape allegation from two different women was sufficient to mark Fairfax as untrustworthy and unfit for office considering the factors surrounding them. I would not have guessed that they portended a murder-suicide, but I must admit that Fairfax’s violent and tragic last act didn’t shock me either.

***

From the Washington Post today:

“A Maryland woman said Friday she was raped by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) in a “premeditated and aggressive” assault in 2000, while they both were undergraduate students at Duke University. She is the second woman this week to make an accusation of sexual assault.

The woman, Meredith Watson, said Friday in a written statement through her attorney that she shared her account immediately after it happened with several classmates and friends. Watson did not speak publicly Friday and her lawyer did not make her available for an interview.

Watson was friends with Fairfax at Duke but they never dated or had any romantic relationship, the lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said.

“At this time, Ms. Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character,” Smith said in the statement . “She has no interest in becoming a media personality or reliving the trauma that has greatly affected her life. Similarly, she is not seeking any financial damages.”

Now what?

An unrelated accusation of conduct X does not mean that a previous unsubstantiated accusation of the same conduct is true. However…

  • In the case of habitual or characteristic misconduct—like being a sexual predator or a sexual harasser—the likelihood that there have been more, undisclosed episodes involving the individual accused is high.
  • Thus the absence of a credible second (or third, fourth, and onward) accuser in a matter like this is legitimate evidence arguing for the innocence of the accused. An example would be Clarence Thomas.
  • When subsequent allegations are substantially similar to the original accusation, they are especially damning. Bill Cosby is the poster case for this variation. Another exampole: Kevin Spacey.
  • When the second and additional allegations are suspiciously timed, as during an election or a political controversy, when they involve general misconduct only, lack named accusers or when they are sketchy in their facts and proof, they should be regarded with extreme skepticism. The add-on Kavanaugh accusations fit this description.
  • The fact that a court decision or an official investigation has not definitively determined that misconduct has taken place does not require individuals, groups and the public to discard commons sense, if they can eliminate bias from their decision-making. O.J. Simpson, it is fair to say,  is guilty of murder, and it is completely fair to regard him in that light. Barry Bonds used banned and illegal drugs to enhance his major league baseball career. Harvey Weinstein is a sexual predator who traded professional advancement for sex. We don’t need admissions here to come to informed decisions.

Now what does all of this mean for Justin Fairfax, next in line to be Governor of Virginia if Governor Northam decides, as an honorable public servant should, that he has made such an irredeemable ass of himself by his obfuscations, double-back flips, and tap-dancing around the question of whether he had a photo of himself in blackface in his yearbook that no Virginian in his or her right mind could possibly feel secure trusting such a boob to handle the affairs of the Commonwealth? What is fair? Continue reading

Virginia’s Democrats Push More Viewpoint Censorship From The Left (Psst: That’s Unethical. Also Illegal.)

Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia has signed into law a bill that ends tax exemptions for Confederacy-honoring organizations in the state.

Huh. Funny, I thought the Democratic Party was the one that was running on a platform of protecting civil right, like freedom of thought, association and speech from that eeeevil, fascist Republican king, Donald Trump. Did I get that mixed up somehow? I guess I did.

“The signing by Ms. Spanberger on Monday is the culmination of a years long Democrat-led push to shake off the state’s legacy as the capital of the 11 Southern, slaveholding states that seceded from the country in the 1860s,” sayeth the New York Times in a sympathetic news story [Gift Link]that again proves there is no Democratic Party initiative so indefensible that the Times won’t try to spin it into virtue.

Awww, is Virginia all sad because of its history, and trying to erase it so nobody remembers? Tough. History is history and facts are facts. It is totalitarians and the followers of Orwell’s Big Brother who try to alter the past to confuse the public. Virginia was at the very center of the Civil War. Its citizens and soldiers were courageously trying to defend their “country” as they understood it. Those alive today who see those patriots as worthy of praise, study and honor have a fully defensible position, and even if it weren’t defensible, it is as worthy of non-profit status as any other position.

What Virginia Democrats Consider “Moderate”

Virginia was told by the local news media that Democrat Abigail Spanberger was a “moderate Democrat,” and enough suckers believed that spin that she was easily elected Governor over GOP candidate Winsome Sears. On the way to her “moderate” rule, Spanberger refused to condemn the Democratic candidate for Attorney General when text messages came to light in which he appeared to condone violence and murder as legitimate political tools. (He was elected too.)

Spanberger is only moderate in a political world where the middle-of-the-road Democrat cheers the death of Charlie Kirk, wants the Second Amendment repealed, thinks illegal immigrants are the salt of the earth, want men to be able to slaughter women in athletic contests by waking up one morning and deciding they are women, and think “hate speech” should be prohibited by law. Thus it is that the now Democrat-dominated Virginia legislature has filed bills that will likely reach her desk and that…

  • Bans future attempts to clean up voter rolls (HB111)
  • Makes it illegal for state agencies distributing federal dollars to NGOs to investigate whether they’re engaged in fraud (HB1369)
  • Makes it illegal to hand-count ballots (HB968)
  • Allows mail-in ballots to be counted one week after election day (HB773)
  • Allows for absentee ballots to be received and counted for three days after election day (HB82)
  • Eliminates the requirement that large last-minute campaign contributions have to be publicly reported at least 24 hours before election day (HB1348)
  • Removes the State Board of Elections’ ability to dispatch law enforcement officers to collect vote tallies from a locality that refuses to publish them (HB1321)
  • Joins the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for allocating Virginia’s electoral college votes in presidential elections (HB965)
  • Automatic restoration of voting rights for felons after they’re released from prison
  • Allows for votes to be cast “electronically through the internet” (HB493)
  • Creates public funding of political campaigns at the local level (HB162)
  • Abolishes all mandatory minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter, assaulting a law enforcement officer, possession and distribution of child pornography, and all repeat violent felonies (HB863)
  • Makes it harder for judges to deny bail, even in the case of things like aggravated assault, armed robbery, and drug trafficking (HB357)
  • Gives convicted murderers, rapists, and terrorists a chance to get out of prison early (HB853)
  • Drastically reduces the criminal penalty for robbery (HB244)
  • Bars prosecutors from mentioning a criminal’s prior convictions during the guilt phase of a trial, even if it’s for the same crime (HB1070)
  • Transfers the Department of Juvenile Justice from the Secretary of Public Safety’s purview to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (SB21)
  • Reduces the amount of time that the Commonwealth can compel a convicted criminal to pay court fees from 60 years to 10 (SB180)
  • Taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries (HB1245)
  • Bans most discretionary state contracting under $100K from going to businesses owned by White men and allows state agencies to award contracts to women or minority-owned firms that are 5% more expensive than a bid from a business owned by a White man (HB61)
  • Punishes VMI for adopting an anti-DEI stance (HB1374 & HB22)
  • Abolishes all Confederate-themed license plates (HB1344)
  • Eliminates the tax-exempt status for all Confederate history groups (HB167)
  • Renames Columbus Day to “Indigenous Peoples Day.” (HB858)
  • Makes it illegal to approach within 8ft of somebody within 40 feet of an abortion clinic (SB137)
  • Enshrines the Axis narrative about January 6 and teaches it in public schools (HB333)
  • Allows localities to adopt rent control measures (HB1177)
  • Increases the sales tax in Northern Virginia, adds an additional sales tax for home deliveries, raises the car tax for electric vehicles, and imposes new sales taxes for streaming services, concerts, gym memberships, nail salons, barber shops, tanning beds, tattoo parlors, dry cleaners, shoe repairs, carpentry, painting, plumbing, electrical, HVAC.

But wait! There’s more!

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

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

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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About That “Racist” Democrat Sign in Virginia…

I’ve been wrestling with myself over whether to comment on the photo above, which is getting lots of play in the conservative media (especially in the D.C. area) and none at all in the Axis news sources. To begin with, I have been wondering whether the sign is a fake. The alleged message that is causing all the ruckus is on the back of the sign, and something else is on the other side that I can’t quite make out. Odd.

Winsome Sears is the Lieutenant Governor in Virginia and was widely regarded as a rising star of the GOP when the conservative black woman was elected, but she has been regularly thrashed in the polls compared to her Democratic opponent, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a pro-abortion Pelosi acolyte whose shtick is to pose as a “moderate” since compared to so many of her thoroughly whacked-out woke colleagues, she is one.

Is that message on the back of the sign really racist? It is unquestionably stupid, and proposes a dubious analogy, but is referring to a candidate’s race inherently “racist”?

I tend toward regarding that message as Golden Rule-based, as in “How would you feel if a law prevented you from using public facilities?” I suspect that Sears could deftly explain why the two situations are not equivalent, but by the admittedly low standards of political signs generally, I’m inclined to give that one a pass.

The other issue being raised by the sign in some quarters is the age, gender and race of the woman holding it. Many have commented on how the loudest protesters against the National Guard’s efforts to reduce crime in D.C. are white seniors, and white senior women especially. Why is this? Aging hippies? Is it because seniors are the demographic most likely to watch cable news, and thus are most susceptible to MSNBC brain (and ethics) rot?

Ethics Quiz: Slapping Down the Daughters of the Confederacy

On the heels of the previous post about intolerant progressives came my awareness of the news that both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly, dominated by Democrats, passed bills that would eliminate long-standing tax exemptions for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that was founded in 1894 for female descendants of Confederate soldiers. The group’s mission was and is to honor Confederate ancestors through memorial preservation—an increasingly difficult job—and charity work. It is currently exempt from paying property taxes and recordation taxes, which are charged when property sales are registered.

This week the State House of Delegates passed a bill revoking the group’s exemptions as well as the property tax exemptions for two other Confederate heritage groups, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Inc. and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society.

To state the obvious, the three non-profit groups have been targeted because many legislators don’t like their beliefs and activities. Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said it was important to revoke the exemptions from “organizations that continue to promote the myth of the romantic version of the Confederacy.”

How dare they?

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