Tag Archives: ethics

It’s What You Ask

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Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton ran last Tuesday’s mid-day-ish presser, and she was asked about polling indicating that President Joe Biden (D) routinely gets low approval ratings regarding his handling of our economy and how a then-upcoming speech would impact those ratings. Dalton replied with this:

Well, what I would say is that the president’s economic policies are incredibly popular. When you ask people what they think about investing in our roads, bridges, and airports, what you—when you ask people what they think about educating and empowering workers, when you ask people about how they feel about reshoring, manufacturing jobs, and investing in America, those things are incredibly popular.

Well, of course they are. What American isn’t enthusiastically in favor of motherhood and apple pie? What us Americans aren’t happy about is Biden’s actual performance in doing anything toward achieving those starry-eyed goals. The President’s men carefully do not ask about Biden’s execution; they ask only about those popular intentions, and then they claim that because everyone loves their mother, everything is hunky dory.

This is the cynicism of the Biden White House.

Plausible Deniability?

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Whistleblowers are telling Congress that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was actively blocked from pursuing his investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax evasion and influence peddling machinations, including being denied permission to pursue the IRS’ tax concerns and being denied permission to bring serious (or any) charges against Hunter Biden in other jurisdictions than Delaware. These claims directly contradict Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prior sworn Congressional testimony that Weiss would have a free and unrestricted hand in his investigations.

Matthew Whitaker, Acting Attorney General under former-President Donald Trump, suggests that Garland might actually have had no knowledge of the obstruction coming from his office:

I also know how the Department of Justice works and Merrick Garland is being kept in the dark by a lot of this.
He’s not communicating with these US attorneys in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia who are doing his dirty work.

And

The Deputy Attorney General, who has day-to-day oversight of those offices, certainly is trying to keep things out of Garland’s office. And not only would I bring those US attorneys in front of Congress after they bring the six witnesses, I would also bring the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division who would have had to approved or be involved in these cases.

Whitaker is being generous. These deputies trying to set up a case of plausible deniability for Garland. They’re failing at that.

Garland is an active participant in this obstruction by his deputies, if only by his continued allowing the obstruction to occur. Garland also assuredly knows of the obstruction at least since the publicity of the whistleblowers’ claims has become so widespread, and he’s still done nothing about it.

There is no plausible deniability here; Garland has constructive knowledge of the obstruction, and he has had all along: even if he doesn’t watch TV or read print news, these deputies work directly for him, Of course he knows what they’re doing, and he knows it in real time.

Merrick Garland must go. But House time and resources shouldn’t be wasted on impeachment when there aren’t the votes in the Senate for a serious trial, much less legitimate chance for a conviction. Instead, Congress and Congressmen must effectively impeach this person by widely and loudly publishing his many peccadilloes—most blatantly, for instance, investigating mothers protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and allowing his FBI to “investigate” traditional Catholics as “right wingers”—and by deleting from the appropriate appropriations bill all funding for the office of Attorney General as long as he’s the AG.

Biden’s Pick to Run the CDC

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With the current CDC honcho leaving the position at the end of the week, President Joe Biden (D) has picked Mandy Cohen, ex-North Carolina Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to run the agency. This is the woman who, while in the NC government,

  • acceded to Anthony Fauci’s words and directions unquestioningly throughout the Wuhan Virus Situation
  • idolized Fauci with a mask featuring his image
  • imposed harsh restrictions that disrupted everyday life with no medical—or any other—benefit
  • bragged about enforcing mass shutdowns

Nominees to the CDC Directorship aren’t subject to Senate Advice and Consent, so Biden can just appoint her.

However.

The Congress can have an impact on her appointment: the House can decline, through the appropriate appropriations bill, to fund the position of CDC Director and the Immediate Office of the Director, with the latter’s 10 Offices and Chief of Staff, until a suitable Director is appointed. The House can decline to fund the CDC as a whole. The Senate can pass the House’s bill and send the relevant appropriations bill to the President.

All that would take is the political will of the Republican majority in the House along with unified Senate Republicans in conjunction with the House declining to pass any sort of budget item via reconciliation.

Reforming FISA

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One outcome of Special Counsel John Durham’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee is an apparently re-energized, at least by many in the Republican caucus and a few Progressive-Democrats, to reform The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That’s all to the good, to the extent any serious reform actually occurs.

The most important reform of this Act, though, is the complete elimination of the secret Star Chamber that is the FISA Court. Federal Judges have long known how to seal records that legitimately don’t belong in the public’s eye, at least in the moment. The court’s proceedings, though, are, and should be, public.

So it must be for any sort of FISA-related court. Relevant records can be sealed—primarily the warrants FBI agents are seeking, which process is old hat for any legitimate Article III court, as well as State courts—until the warrants are executed. But this FBI has demonstrated that it will openly lie to the FISA court and that it will fabricate evidence in order to get their warrants. That’s on the FBI. What’s on the FISA court judges is their blithe acceptance of further FBI blandishments after the FBI had been caught out in its dishonesty. That makes the FISA court complicit in the dishonesty.

That badly wants the elimination of the secret court. There is no alternative; there must be no secret courts in the United States.

Full stop.

It’s Ours By Right, Dammit!

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No Labels is looking hard at running their own President/Vice President ticket for the 2024 election. The Progressive-Democratic Party is in fury over the possibility, to the extent that its Arizona arm is going to court to try to stop No Labels from registering its candidates in that State.

It [the Arizona chapter of the Progressive-Democratic Party] filed a lawsuit in state court against No Labels alleging that the signatures we collected and the petition approved by Arizona’s secretary of state should be thrown out.

Party’s rationale—and they’re absolutely serious:

No Labels’ presence on the ballot could “make it more difficult to elect Democratic Party candidates,” and “require [the party] to expend and divert additional funds and staff time on voter education to accomplish its mission in Arizona.”

It’s Party’s God-given right to have its members elected; they shouldn’t have to compete for voters.

I won’t be surprised when if Party files a subsequent suit to do away with Arizona elections altogether on the grounds that Party shouldn’t have to expend and divert additional funds and staff time on voter education to get its members elected. Just appoint them, and save all that time and waste.

This is what Progressive-Democratic Party one-party rule looks like.

Side note: it’s only the Progressive-Democratic Party that insists on obstructing competing candidates from even competing. Republicans similarly are concerned about what a third party would do to their own candidates’ chances, but Republicans engage only in jawboning against the third party while preparing to compete against the third party’s candidates as enthusiastically as they are against Progressive-Democratic Party candidates.