Tag Archives: ethics

Maybe Europe Isn’t So Much our Friend

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Begin with so many of NATO’s European members welching on their financial and equipage commitments to NATO. This represents less a matter of their word being worthless, important as that is, but represents far more an utter betrayal of their fellow members. It’s these shirkers’ insistent reliance on their fellow members for protection even as they refuse to be capable of contributing to their fellows’ protection. That betrayal includes us. Europe’s nations might not be able to contribute much to our defense, but as many insist (for the most part correctly), allies are important to our national security.

But Europe’s essential lack of friendliness extends, now, to naked attempts to censor Americans’ speech within our own nation and anywhere else in the non-UK world. Europe intends to (try to) dictate to us what we are permitted to say.

The European Commission’s coercion of Big Tech to globally censor disfavored narratives goes much further than previously thought, according to a House Judiciary Committee interim staff report released Tuesday that tees up Wednesday’s hearing featuring an Irish comedian who was arrested in London for criticizing gender ideology while visiting the US.

And this, from a 2023 handbook by the EC-created EU Internet Forum:

tech companies were expected to moderate content from “populist rhetoric” and “anti-elite” sentiment to “political satire” and “meme subculture.”

Globally, too—which means within the US as the arrest of the Irish comedian demonstrates—not just inside Europe.

And this, giving concreteness to Europe’s enmity toward American businesses and their leadership teams and to us American citizens in general:

Paris police…raid[ed] X‘s local office Tuesday and summoning owner Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino for “voluntary interviews” April 20.
The EC fined X €120 million, or 6% of its global revenue, in the first such DSA action in December, “in obvious retaliation for its protection of free speech around the globe,” the committee said Tuesday.

It’s possible to argue that President Donald Trump’s (R) tariffs are the wrong tool with which to deal with Europe, but it’s increasingly clear that he’s not wrong about the need. My suggestion to Musk and Yaccarino: don’t go to France for the interviews; conduct them, instead, via video over the Internet. There’s little reason to expect that these two, were they to go to France for the interviews, would be freely and easily able to leave after the interviews.

Cancel Culture of the Left

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon was scheduled to speak and interact with children and their parents via an appearance at McKinley Elementary School in Fairfield, CT. Within hours of DoEd’s announcement of the visit, the school canceled the visit. Fairfield Superintendent of Schools Michael Testani [ellipsis in the original]:

…we heard from many families who expressed concerns and shared that they were considering keeping their children home[.]

The editors of the Hearst Connecticut Media crowed:

The appearance was billed as part of the US Education Department’s “History Rocks Tour!” aspiring to visit all 50 states on America’s 250th anniversary.
History does rock. And on this day, Fairfield, Connecticut, was on the right side of history.

This would have been a excellent opportunity for the kids and their parents to have heard thoughts with which they’re not familiar (at least the kids are not) and to interact with, ask questions of, and express their own concerns to the leading government official overseeing so many facets of American education systems.

Instead, this is the school’s management team’s, backed by news opinionators, terror of folks of whom he disapproves saying things of which he disapproves.

The editors added this in their piece:

We don’t know precisely what concerns were expressed.

Nor do they know how many of those parents actually were concerned. Testani chose to not make that datum public, either.

That didn’t stop these worthies, though, from clutching their faux pearls and celebrating another “success” at avoiding hearing a differing opinion.

Stop Wasting Time Arguing the Matter

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Hillary and Bill Clinton have ignored Congressional subpoenas to testify under oath at deposition(s) before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding the Epstein Files matter, and they are currently being considered for Contempt of Congress and referral to DoJ for prosecution.

Now the Clintons’ lawyers are dickering over mechanisms for getting some of their testimony, and Committee Chairman James Comer (R, KY) has rejected the lawyers’ latest stall effort offer.

It’s long past time, I say, to stop wasting time arguing this inarguable matter. The Clintons are bound by law—those subpoenas—to appear and sit for the depositions.

The Committee, through its Chairman, should invoke the precedent set by Jurney v MacCracken and send the Capital Police to arrest the Clintons and hold them in House custody until they agree to be deposed as subpoenaed and do, in fact, sit for those depositions.

Stop wasting time arguing with obstinate intransigents.

Update: since I wrote this and scheduled it for posting.

Attorneys for the Clintons said their clients would “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates” and requested the lower chamber not to move forward with its contempt vote on Wednesday.
“They negotiated in good faith. You did not,” spokesmen for the Clintons said in a statement. “They told under oath what they know, but you did not care. But the former president and former secretary of state will be there.”

That’s an improvement, but there’s no need for “mutually agreeable dates.” There’s no need for anything beyond setting a date and haling the Clintons, via Jurney if needs be, in should they choose to ignore the new date. The House should proceed with its contempt vote this morning, just in case. The House can easily rescind its contempt finding should the Clintons actually appear for the depositions.

And: there being nothing to negotiate, there can have been no bad faith negotiation by anyone.

One last thing: the Clintons should testify separately, not at the same time.

Update update: Success. The Clintons have agreed to sit for their depositions on 26 and 27 Feb, they will be closed door (which supports a no holds barred and no time limits imposed) transcribed, filmed, and last as long as the House deems necessary for each of them. Even more important, the reason for the two days is that they’ll be deposed separately: Hillary on 26 Feb and Bill on 27 Feb,.

Free Speech in Illinois

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Particularly, free speech in Progressive-Democratic Party reigned-over Illinois. A charitable organization, Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender, wants to register as a charitable organization in Illinois, but it’s being blocked by the State’s Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias’ rationalization is that a State law, the General Not for Profit Corporation Act, bars the use of terms like “regular democrat,” “regular democratic,” “regular republican,” “democrat,” “democratic” or “republican”  in any organization’s name without the party’s prior permission. It doesn’t matter that these terms are entirely generic and not—nor being generic, can they be—trademarked or copyrighted in any way.

DIAG is being blocked from registering in Illinois because it opposes Party’s support for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions so they more closely resemble the opposite sex over those procedures’ permanent effects, especially in children. The use of “Democrats” in the organization’s name is just an excuse, and DIAG, along with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have sued the State and Giannoulis over the legitimacy of that part of the law.

This is the level of free speech that Party allows in Illinois: what is freely spoken is what Party says its subjects are free to speak.

An Alternative Choice

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President Donald Trump (R) is considering settling his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over that agency’s illegal (and politically motivated, I say) leak of his tax data to the New York Times. His thought is to send the proceeds to charity.

I have an alternative thought. Require, under the terms of the settlement, the IRS to send the settlement funds to the 401(c)(3) NGOs that it had blocked from certification or whose certifications it had slow-walked. Or, require the IRS to agree to allow Trump to spread the settlement funds across those entities in the IRS’ name.

Sometimes poetic justice also is legitimate justice.