Category Archives: ethics

Who Do They Hate More?

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Republicans offered a resolution that would acknowledge the extraordinary sacrifice that law enforcement personnel make in their efforts to keep the rest of us safe while decrying the loud Leftist movement to defund the law enforcement departments within which those police officers operate.

173 Progressive-Democrats in the House voted “Nay.” Those politicians rationalized their No votes with their objections to

language in the resolution that criticized left-wing activists for supporting the defund the police movement and sanctuary city policies for putting officers’ safety at risk[.]

The question arises, then, regarding who Progressive-Democrats hate most: Republicans, who were the primary movers of this simple resolution, or the police the resolution honored.

New Style Job Hunting

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FCC commissioner and sole Progressive-Democrat agency member Anna Gomez wrote a letter in her official capacity to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro (Disney owns ABC) advising him that the FCC’s investigations of ABC were nothing more than a weaponization of the FCC and a campaign to censor news media.

It’s bad enough that a Federal government bureaucrat would so blatantly seek to blow up an agency action with which she disagrees, and she should be fired on that ground alone.

It gets worse, though, as the news writer at the link noted at the end of his piece.

In her letter, Gomez pledged to use “every tool available to me as a Commissioner to shine a light on what this FCC is doing to curtail press freedom and to hold this process to account at every step.”

Gomez knows full well that she won’t successfully block the FCC’s investigation; she can only cast those public aspersions. This isn’t an FCC Commissioner seeking fairness and justice in a government action. This is a Federal government bureaucrat trying to burnish her resume and set up her job hunt, first with Disney or ABC, for when she leaves government. This is abusive even for revolving door bureaucratic practice.

Disingenuous Appeal

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The Virginia Attorney General, Progressive-Democrat Jay Jones, has appealed to the US Supreme Court his State’s Supreme Court ruling that the redistricting map that cut Virginia citizens’ Federal House of Representatives representation from six districts favoring Progressive-Democrats and five Republican-favoring districts to a split of ten Progressive-Democrat-favoring districts and one Republican-favoring. His rationalization is that the State Court’s ruling

deprived voters, candidates, and the commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts[.]

This is a cynical misreading of the State Supreme Court ruling, and it’s Jones’ attempt to deprive voters, candidates, and the commonwealth of their right to elect the candidates of their choice, from a correct list of candidates campaigning in legitimate districts.

The State’s Supreme Court pointed out in so many words what the disenfranchisement caused by the struck map was:

The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment to the electorate on October 31, 2025. By that date, over 1.3 million votes had been cast in the general election, which was approximately 40% of the total vote for that election cycle.

Jay and his fellow Progressive-Democrats are attempting to disenfranchise those 40% of the voters who had no chance to consider the redistricting map before they voted.

Here are Progressive-Democrats refusing to accept their own Court’s decision, a decision the US Supreme Court should uphold by refusing to accept the appeal. That refusal, if it comes and were it also to be explained, should stem from two factors. One is that the State’s Supreme Court Justices know the State’s Constitution better than the US Supreme Court Justices and so the latter should defer to the former on this matter. The other is that, as the State’s Court ruling emphasized, the deprivation was by the State’s legislature through its disregard of their own constitution.

Leakers and their Leaks

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The lede publishes the shameful leak in summary form.

Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who almost discovered it early in the war, people familiar with the matter including US officials said.

Who leaked this stuff? Those US officials and people familiar need to be identified and prosecuted for their mishandling of classified material. This sort of leak damages our nation’s and Israel’s national security, revealing as it does critical, secret operations and methods and techniques each of our two nations employ in the pursuit of defeating our enemies. It also unnecessarily embarrasses another nation, making this sort of operation more difficult to set up and execute in the future. That, in turn, makes our prosecuting the next war we’re forced to fight even more expensive in treasure, equipment, and lives.

To what end? What material good comes from publishing these leaks? Yes, yes, we all have a right to know, but at what cost does the knowing right damn now come? The primary gain in the immediacy is just clicks and status for journalists and their publishers for being the ones to publish.

The press does get to print this stuff, as irresponsible as publishing national secrets is, because the Ellsberg case involving the unauthorized leak (pardon the redundancy) of the Pentagon Papers made legal the receipt of and profit from that receipt of stolen goods, as long as the receiver/publisher is a press outlet.

But the leaks that get such information into the hands of an irresponsible press remain illegal, and the ones doing the leaking are still criminal by their leaking. They need to be prosecuted vigorously and sanctioned heavily.

Gerrymandering

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The subheadline laid it out.

Rep. Steve Cohen’s long career is evidence that the motive is partisan.

Which is a big so what. Partisan gerrymandering perhaps ought to be as illegal as racial gerrymandering, but it isn’t.

The editors partially addressed the so what at the end of their piece:

The Tennessee gerrymander is simply a GOP effort to divide a compact, populated area into multiple stringy districts for partisan gain, which is precisely what Democrats did in Virginia. It’s bad for competitive elections, but it isn’t racist.

The rest of this story is that there’s no “ought to be” IMNSHO regarding the legality of partisan gerrymandering. It’s a violation of the 14th Amendment’s requirement of equal protection of the laws. Competitive elections can occur only when that gerrymandering loophole is closed also.