Category Archives: ethics

A Stolen Laptop

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Jeff Merkley (D, OR), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Appropriations committees, has reported that his laptop was stolen from his office, ostensibly by the rioters who assaulted the Capital Building last Wednesday afternoon. (Ostensibly: frankly, I have no reason to doubt the fact of the theft or which member(s) of which crowd did the theft. However, the deed as theft and who did it remain unproven at this early stage of the investigation.)

Merkley also said he’d left his office unlocked while he went to the Senate floor for the Electoral College vote counting and debates. The importance of that will become clear below.

He apparently isn’t alone in this:

The Justice Department (DOJ) said Thursday during a briefing that “national security equities” may have been among the records stolen during the looting and destruction that stalled the congressional proceedings….

What’s not being reported in the NLMSM is the utter contempt these folks—possibly from both parties—have for our nation’s secrets, our classified information: they won’t even take the slightest pains to protect them.

A laptop unsecured in an unlocked office? Not even in locked away in a safe when the Senator isn’t around? An open office is all the security a Senator—a Senator experienced in handling classified materials, if only by his membership on a foreign relations committee—deems necessary?

Classified “equities” left unsecured in other offices?

How does that work, exactly?

Where are DoJ’s and DIA’s investigations into this manifest mishandling of classified material?

“Fight Like Hell”

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump incited the assault on the Capital Building last Wednesday—or so say Progressive-Democrats, the NLMSM, and the Left generally—with those words.

Here’s the definition of “fight,” per Merriam-Webster:

intransitive verb
1  a : to contend in battle or physical combat especially : to strive to overcome a person by blows or weapons
The soldiers fought bravely.
b : to engage in boxing
He will fight for the heavyweight title next month.
2 : to put forth a determined effort
They were fighting to stay awake.

transitive verb
1  a(1) : to contend against in or as if in battle or physical combat
fought the invaders of his homeland
was fighting a forest fire
(2) : to box against in the ring
fought several strong contenders
b(1) : to attempt to prevent the success or effectiveness of the company fought the takeover attempt
(2) : to oppose the passage or development of fight a bill in Congress
2 a : wage, carry on
fight a battle
   b : to take part in (a boxing match or similar contest)
3 : to struggle to endure or surmount
fight a cold
is fighting cancer
4 a : to gain by struggle
fights his way through
b : to resolve by struggle
fought out their differences in court
5 a : to manage (a ship) in a battle or storm
b : to cause to struggle or contend
c : to manage in an unnecessarily rough or awkward manner

Notice how many of these definitions have to do with physical combat and how many have to do with metaphorically and nonviolently carrying on the struggle.

Those Progressive-Democrats, the NLMSM, and the Left generally are projecting their own propensity for physical violence as the means of getting their way.

And they’re doing it while having downplayed the violence and destruction of the Left’s riots in Minneapolis, New York City, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle over the summer.

Never mind that the importance of the invasion of the Capital Building flows from its status as a symbol—and it’s a hugely important symbol. The damage done the Capital Building, however, is debris in the streets after those summer riots, which burned whole neighborhoods, destroyed businesses, crushed Americans’ ability to earn their living. And that destruction was aimed at minorities in particular. And that destruction was repeatedly billed as largely peaceful, a pent-up frustration being released, as reparations.

More Censorship

Posted on by
Reply

Mark Zuckerberg is at it again, this time blocking a President’s access to his Facebook, which he created explicitly to be a public forum. But only for those of whom he personally approves.

Never mind that President Donald Trump plainly has never intended to obstruct the peaceful transition of power, but merely to continue his fight to ensure only those votes legally cast and counted are counted. That he plainly expected that to demonstrate his reelection rather than confirm his loss is neither here nor there. And it certainly doesn’t compare in the slightest to the refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election, and the Left’s and Progressive-Democratic Party’s active and four-year-long attempts to overthrow the President duly elected that year. That was an effort Zuckerberg and his minions at Facebook not only whole heartedly approved, but they actively supported and participated in, going to the point of censoring the President’s speech.

Nor has anything Trump has said or tweeted condoned any part of the assault on the Capital Building.

This is just rank censorship. Which censorship—any censorship—is just the cowardice of those who are terrified of opposing opinions.

The clumsy or rude phrasing of those opinions is given artificially heightened importance solely to obscure the cowardice of the censors.

Update: It’s become a full-on assault on individual liberties, epitomized by the overt attack on our freedom of speech, but plainly won’t be limited to that.

We have Jack Dorsey banning all Trump speech from his Twitter, along with the speech of his supporters. We have Followers “disappearing” from other Conservatives who tweet.

We have Tim Cook openly attacking a rival to Twitter–and to Apple–with his ban of the Parler app from his app store.

We have Sundar Pichai joining the attack by barring the Parler app from his Google Android app store.

We have Jeff Bezos shutting down Parler altogether with his Amazon ban of Parler from his servers that were hosting the alternative to Dorsey’s Twitter. That shutdown, too, was done with advance notice deliberately too for Parler to withdraw its–and its users’–information from those servers.

We have Mark Zuckerberg, in addition to the above, banning #WalkAway from his Facebook, a hashtag that committed the speech crime of encouraging members of the Progressive-Democratic Party to leave Party while showing those disappointed and disaffected other places where their voices could be heard and taken seriously.

This a full-on attack by Big Tech, by a tiny few oligarchs grown too powerful and presuming to dictate to ordinary Americans what speech will be permitted in the public square, moving openly to prevent Conservatives from having any voice at all in the public square.

Hard to Tell the Difference

Posted on by
Reply

In the aftermath of Wednesday afternoon’s events, the Progressive-Democrats already are blaming their political opponents rather than the thugs who assaulted the Capital Building. And calling for Republican heads to roll.

Ex-HUD Secretary Julian Castro:

@tedcruz is guilty of treason and must resign from the United States Senate.

Here’s Carrie Lam, Hong Kong Chief Executive:

[T]he opposition’s goal of objecting to every policy initiative of the government may fall into the category of subverting state power.

Hard to tell the difference.

So much for Progressive-Democrats’ calls for unity.

Keep in mind, too, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ (D, NY) wish (since realized) for Progressive-Democrat control of the Senate so that, with Progressive-Democrats controlling all of Congress and the White House, there’d be no need to negotiate with Republicans. To Progressive-Democrats, “unity” means “do it our way and be quiet about it.”

An Audit Commission

Posted on by
Reply

A group of Senators are planning to join a (large) group of Representatives to object, tomorrow, to a few States’ Electoral College slates being accepted unless they get agreement to an audit commission, modeled on a 19th century audit commission created for the same purpose that consisted of five each of Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, that will conduct a 10-day audit of elections in the objected-to States.

Naturally, Progressive-Democrats in both houses of Congress together with the NLMSM are up in arms, to the point of hysteria about the move.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN)…said in a statement Saturday that Mr Biden will be inaugurated January 20, “and no publicity stunt will change that.”
For a group of my Republican colleagues to claim that they want an additional federal ‘commission’ to supersede state certifications when the votes have already been counted, recounted, litigated, and state-certified, amounts to nothing more than an attempt to subvert the will of the voters.
It is undemocratic. It is un-American[.]

Progressive-Democrats should leap at the chance of an objective commission doing a serious, detailed audit. Three things would result, two of which would redound to their advantage: the commission would find nothing in sufficient amount to change the claimed outcome, but serious error and outright wrongs would be identified so miscreants could be brought to justice and weaknesses corrected in Congress—restoring faith in our election systems while confirming Biden’s election. Or nothing wrong would be identified, also restoring faith and confirming Biden.

Or, the third item: enough being found to reject enough Electoral College slates to put the election into the House of Representatives for President and the Senate for Vice President.

That Progressive-Democrats are so terrified of a commission audit is instructive.