Category Archives: ethics

Republican Ego-Ridden Obstructionists

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The “conservative” House Freedom Caucus now is holding its collective breath until the dozen, or so, members are blue in the face if they can’t have their way every time. As a practical matter, they’re blocking the Republican Party from passing bills strongly favored by Republicans, including those self-styled Freedom Caucus Republicans, bills like a procedural rule for a vote on a bill to stop the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail the use and sale of gas-powered stoves.

We hold the floor, crows Matt Gaetz (R, FL). As of last Wednesday, all votes for the rest of the week had to be canceled because of the temper tantrum of these Precious Few.

Just to illustrate the utter foolishness of the children of the tantrum, Congressman Chip Roy (R, TX) complained that the gas stove bill wasn’t thrown into a Christmas tree version of the debt ceiling and spending cuts bill that was just passed. Then he said—and he actually was serious,

We should be serious about forcing votes to get it done[.]

And then he participated in blocking that vote.

This is the same mistake the then-newly elected Tea Party Caucus made, and those members were personally responsible for the failure to repeal Obamacare during the early months when repeal had the best chance. The repeals weren’t pure enough to suit them, they said their version or the highway, and they got the highway on any repeal. Most of those Congressmen learned the lesson of the failures caused by “their way or the highway” virtue-signaling obstructionism.

It’s time now for the crop of Republican virtue-signalers in that “Freedom” Caucus to (re)learn the same lesson, a crop led by Congressmen Roy, Gaetz, and Andy Biggs (R, AZ). Or at least to acknowledge that their “Freedom” Caucus stands for freedom for them and eh for everyone else, and therewith give fatal credence to what used to be a mere trope that Republicans cannot govern.

“Be More Like Europe”

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That’s the mantra of the Left-Wing extremists who have become the center Left, and that was the rationalization of the Progressive-Democratic Party, of which those extremists have become the center, as Party pushed, those years ago, Obamacare, their precursor to socialized medicine.

Today, there’s this, from the part of Europe that is Great Britain. GB’s National Health Service, the Party’s model for what they want Obamacare to become has achieved this milestone:

More than 18,000 people died in Scotland last year [2022] while on NHS waiting lists[.]

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar pointed out that the NHS wait list death toll (already far too high IMNSHO) just six years ago was 7,868.

This is what socialist medicine does to honest citizens.

Yet Another Excuse by a Progressive-Democrat

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Virginia’s Progressive-Democratic Senator Tim Kaine wrote a brief letter to The Wall Street Journal‘s Friday Letters. He had proposed an amendment to the debt ceiling bill that would remove completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and in his letter, he actually claimed this as his rationalization:

I support reforms to the permitting process for energy projects. But cherry-picking one project….

And yet Kaine has proposed zero serious permitting reforms in his tenure in the Senate. Instead, he’s happy to carp from the safety of the sidelines regarding MVP, rather than—since he was proposing an amendment anyway—offering an amendment that would have generalized the MVP “exception.”

Go figure.

“I’m saying when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal”

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That’s what President Richard Nixon (R) told David Frost in an interview, those years ago, when Frost asked him about Watergate.

Now, after Progressive-Democratic Party Presidents, guys like Barack Obama and current President Joe Biden, laundered that philosophy through their own agendas, we get to the Progressive-Democrat-run January 6 Committee.

The Democrat-led House Select Committee to Investigate January 6 doctored a key piece of its evidence, adding audio to silent US Capitol Police security footage used to create a dramatic video montage for the opening of its primetime hearings last summer, according to a Just the News review of the original raw footage and interviews.
In at least two instances identified by Just the News, the panel’s sizzle reel that aired live and on C-SPAN last June failed to identify that it had overdubbed audio from another, unidentified source onto the silent footage. Multiple current and former Capitol Police officials as well as key lawmakers and congressional aides confirmed that the closed-circuit cameras that captured the video do not record sound and that it was added afterwards.

And this:

A former spokesman for the January 6 committee told Just the News that the panel was supposed to clearly mark any video that was dubbed with another audio source, and it did so on some occasions in the sizzle reel.

That, though, emphasizes the misbehavior. But marking some videos as dubbed, but not others, the Committee made it seem as though those others were not dubbed, but had audio in the original. It’s hard to believe that Party’s staff were careless or mistaken in this. They knew what they were doing, and they demonstrated the skills necessary to do it.

The depth of the misbehavior:

One video clip from the genuine security footage shows an aerial view of the US Capitol Building without sound as the riot unfolded on January 6. Yet during the hearing the same clip aired with audio of crowd noises.
Another clip shows rioters entering the building through the Senate wing door. Viewers can hear glass breaking and a lot of shouting as the clip played during the hearing, but the Capitol Police and others have confirmed that the genuine and original version of this security footage had no audio.

In any other venue, such misbehavior would be evidence tampering, a very serious felony. However, when members of the Progressive-Democratic Party do it, that means it’s not illegal.

Remember that in 18 months, or so.

FBI Director Wray in Contempt of Congress

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FBI Director Chris Wray has said in so many words that he will not honor the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena for a document. Committee Chairman James Comer (R, KY) now says he’s

taking steps to hold…Wray in contempt of Congress….

The FBI Director in contempt of Congress? How about the FBI as an institution in contempt of Congress—and of us citizens?

In any event, good luck getting the Biden DoJ to prosecute the case, but it’s useful to go on the record, and further to demonstrate anew the protective cloak that the Biden administration throws around its own.

It also would be useful if the House, as part of its budget-setting, were to apply the Holman Rule to Wray and his Deputy Directors, and cut their salaries to $1.00 per year.