Category Archives: ethics

Blue about Blue Slips?

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For a long time—nearly a century, according to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA)—the Senate had a tradition (not a rule) that Senators from the home State of a judicial nominee had to approve that nominee—send forward a “blue slip” before that nominee could be considered, or even sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The administration of President Donald Trump has tended to disregard that tradition.  In fact, he’s sent seven—according to Feinstein, again—appellate court nominees to the Senate over “the objection of home-state Democrats” and—the horror—gotten them confirmed, including a number to the California-based 9th Circuit.

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A Desperate Establishment?

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It’s not often I agree with Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley (D, MA) or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY), but on this I do.  It seems that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intends to blacklist political firms that support primary challenges to current (senior) Progressive-Democratic Party Representatives and Senators in Congress.

Here’s Pressley on the Party’s attempts to limit voter choice:

If the DCCC enacts this policy to blacklist vendors who work with challengers, we risk undermining an entire universe of potential candidates and vendors—especially women and people of color—whose ideas, energy, and innovation need a place in our party[.]

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Take It or Leave Us

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Here is one of the final steps in Brussels’ studied refusal to deal in good faith with Great Britain’s leaving the EU in all the long “negotiations.”  With the Brits’ departure now set for 12 April, the EU’s Chief Negotiator for the United Kingdom Exiting the European Union, Michel Barnier, has issued the EU’s ultimatum:

  • The possibility of a successful “meaningful vote” on the withdrawal agreement in the next few days. “The only way to avoid a no-deal Brexit is and will be through a positive majority. We should continue to make this point in the public debate,” Barnier said.
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Naïve

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A bunch of non-defense and non-foreign policy folks—and so experts on both—don’t think we should be moving to defend ourselves against our enemies.  Such actions might…provoke…them.

Dozens of scientists, health care professionals and academics have written a letter to the UN calling for an international ban of autonomous killer robots, saying recent advances in artificial intelligence “have brought us to the brink of a new arms race in lethal autonomous weapons.”

These tools might also fall into the hands of terrorists and despots.

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Progressive-Democrat Disingenuousness

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The manufactured anxiety of many Progressive-Democrats and their support entities over release of the Mueller report is breathtaking.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I, VT) wants

the whole damn report.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, MA)”

The American people deserve to see the full report.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar (D, MN):

Today, like everyone else, I want to see that Mueller report.  It’s time to make the entire report public. That’s justice.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris:

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Cowards

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The Senate voted on the Green New Deal, but the proposal, first offered in the House (and yet to be voted on there), failed a cloture vote to let it come to the floor for discussion, debate, and subsequent vote up or down.

The Senate on Tuesday failed to advance the Green New Deal, the ambitious plan to combat climate change proposed by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after what Democrats said was a politically-motivated show vote.
The measure, which needed 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle, failed in a 0-57 vote, with 43 Democrats voting present.

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Risks

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Or, perhaps, threats.

Take careful note of this tweet from Matthew Brennan.  Not only does this system know who Brennan is without any input from him (this time).  It knows where he is and where he’s going.

Imagine that identification and tracking ability in the hands of Government.  The government in the tweet is the PRC’s, but that’s not the only government spreading surveillance systems around the nation like butter on warm toast.

 

H/t to ralf.

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Unseemly

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Marc Thiessen thinks President Donald Trump’s commentary about John McCain are unseemly, and they hurt Trump more than they do anything else.

…the president isn’t “hurting” the senator since he’s dead and that he’s only “hurting himself” because he’s “stepping on his own story” regarding the strong economy.

But this just shows how obliviously self-important Thiessen and his fellow “journalists” are: it’s their story they’re writing; it’s their conscious, deliberate editorial decision to “report” on and “analyze” superficialities like exchanges of ad hominem attacks (not only involving McCain; that’s just the latest NLMSM compulsion) rather than to do the harder work of reporting on and analyzing actual policy decisions, proposals, and outcomes.

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Biden Wants Abrams?

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Is Progressive-Democratic Party primary candidate wannabe for President—and the most Progressive candidate in (or almost in) the Party primaries—really thinking about asking Stacey Abrams, ex-Minority Leader of Georgia’s House of Representatives and late of the race for Georgia governor, to be his Vice President candidate in his campaign?

That brings up a question of what he really thinks of Abrams:

I mean, you got the…African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking [woman]. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Or is he simply that desperately pandering?

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Time for a Clean Break

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No more bad faith pseudo-negotiations by Brussels.  No more dithering and bad-skilled pseudo-negotiations by Theresa May.

The UK asked the European Union to delay its departure from the bloc until June 30, an extension that if approved would give Prime Minister Theresa May just weeks to break an impasse in Parliament over her withdrawal deal.

It’s not just an internal impasse between the PM and Parliament. It’s also and more importantly an impasse between Great Britain and Brussels.

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