Category Archives: ethics

More of the Dishonesty of Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Deal

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First, this lie from President Barack Obama, spoken through his Guy Who Sits in the State Department’s Chair, John Kerry:

Iran had 12,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, and that’s enough if they enriched it further for 10 to 12 bombs. They had it. That’s what Barack Obama was dealt as a hand when he came in: 19,000 centrifuges already spinning….

The facts, via Omri Ceren:

The Iranians didn’t have 12,000 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) when Obama took office they had 0 kg of HEU. Kerry might have been thinking of the 12,000 kg of low enriched uranium (LEU) they had by 2014, but that doesn’t work either because the Iranians stockpiled most of that under Obama: as of February 2009 they only had 1,010 kg of LEU. They also didn’t have “19,000 centrifuges already spinning” they had 3,936 centrifuges spinning. And they were not 2 months away from breakout but instead were just getting around to stockpiling enough uranium for a single bomb.

Obama claimed, this time through his Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, in response to the question of why he welched on his promise to us fellow Americans that he would end Iran’s program:

Well, first of all, the issue of Iran having a nuclear program was already established in the previous administration.

He said that with a straight face, too, as though he actually were serious. Never mind that, being an existing program, there was, indeed, something to end—something which he had promised to end, and which he chose not to.

 

h/t Power Line and Omri Ceren, who corresponds with Power Line

A Court Gets it Right

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This time a State Supreme Court, in particular, Wisconsin’s. Recall that some rogue Democratic Party prosecutors in Wisconsin have been persecuting a number of Wisconsin citizens for the dastardly crime of supporting Scott Walker. Recall further, that the law under which this victims were being persecuted was claimed by those prosecutors as allowing them to silence their victims, even to the point of preventing those victims from speaking publicly about their persecution. Hence the term “John Doe statute.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court took a dim view of such…shenanigans. Last part first: the Court ruled that the prosecutors must

cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation.

If it had been me, I’d have required the prosecutors to post a substantial all cash bond against their performance of this requirement, and for 10 years thereafter against their continued performance, but I’ll take this. Still, I’d like the bond in light of the Court’s evident disdain for the prosecutor’s behavior:

…the special prosecutor relies upon, leads us to the unsettling conclusion that it is left to government bureaucrats and/or individual prosecutors to determine how much coordination between campaign committees and independent groups is “too much” coordination. In essence, under his theory, every candidate, in every campaign in which an issue advocacy group participates, would get their own John Doe proceeding and their own special prosecutor to determine the extent of any coordination. This is not, and cannot, be the law in a democracy…

The special prosecutor has disregarded the vital principle that in our nation and our state political speech is a fundamental right and is afforded the highest level of protection. The special prosecutor’s theories…would assure that such political speech will be investigated with paramilitary-style home invasions conducted in the pre-dawn hours and then prosecuted and punished. In short, the special prosecutor completely ignores the command that, when seeking to regulate issue advocacy groups, such regulation must be done with “narrow specificity.”

And

It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a “perfect storm” of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them.

Another problem, though, is that this disregard for the law and for the speech of others isn’t limited to the Wisconsin branch of the Democratic Party.

The Court’s decision can be seen here.

Oxen and Gorings

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Howard Kurtz is upset about some (Republican) politicians pushing back on press foolishness. He spent much of his column at the link writing about Republican candidates objecting to the press’ hyping of manufactured problems (Rubio’s traffic tickets, Christie’s bridge problems, and so on) and decrying the candidates for spending so much time acting like their oxen were getting stabbed. Then Kurtz made this remarkable remark:

[A]t some point candidates have to figure out how to use the press to sell their message, rather than just complaining.

Because if the candidates bypass the press, rather than “figure out how to use the press,” the press wouldn’t have much to do.

Alternatively, the press is used to being used by the Left, what’s wrong with those Republicans?

Never mind that the legitimate role for what used to be the press is to be independent, objective observers and reporters and not to be “used” for political purposes at all.

Whose ox is being gored, really?

The Encryption Divide

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Silicon Valley and Washington have spent the past year arguing over whether technology companies should enable users to encrypt their digital lives in such a way that not even the Federal Bureau of Investigation could unscramble the information.

And

In private conversations, administration officials have said they don’t want Congress to pass a new law or to dictate to how tech companies should write code, said people briefed on the conversations.

That much is appropriate.

There’s no divide here, except in the minds of an overreaching government. The Constitution is quite clear. Get a warrant. That’s often inconvenient to Government. That’s part of the point.

Anything for a Fee

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The American Law Institute periodically issues “restatements” that attempt to codify the common law—but also shift the law in the direction the institute wants it to go.

Reason enough to distrust this gang.

That’s nothing, though, compared with this:

The institute’s restatement defines the tort of battery as any contact with another person that “offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity” or—the new addition—contact that is highly offensive to another person’s “unusually sensitive sense of personal dignity, and the actor knows that the contact will be highly offensive to the other.”

Aside from the blatant assault on individual liberty this thing represents, it’s an insult to Americans everywhere: it says we’re all such special snowflakes that it’s unreasonable to expect us to suffer the bumps and bruises of human interaction without mumsy coming to the rescue. For a fee.

My sense of personal dignity is unusually sensitive to the pronouncements of the ALI—and being such highly educated and well informed persons, of course they know this.

Do I have a case? Of course not: the ALI has its own unusual sensitivity to mere plebes demurring from their pronouncements. But they’d enjoy the fee.