Tag Archives: ethics

But not Protection of the Community

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It appears that Minneapolis’ Progressive-Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey, of Minneapolis’ post-Floyd murder rioting and his own disdain for letting the city’s police department deal with the rioters infamy, is ready to announce a new police chief—nine months after the Floyd era chief retired.

The new chief’s job description includes this Critical Item:

[A] visionary leader, able to communicate the need for and create long-lasting and systemic change within MPD.

Change within the police department, but no change in hizzoner‘s (non)enforcement policy or the department’s capacity for enforcement.

That’s not very reassuring for the damaged, even destroyed, neighborhoods and businesses, which were almost exclusively minority-populated and -owned.

“Pay Their Way Out of Jail”

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Illinois has a law, signed into that status by Progressive-Democrat Governor JB Pritzker, that will allow folks accused of any of a broad array of felonies, including kidnapping, armed robbery, second degree murder, drug induced homicide, aggravated DUI, threatening a public official, and aggravated fleeing and eluding to walk free pending trial under the law’s cashless bail component. This component takes effect next January.

The problem with this cashless bail foolishness of Illinois—with any jurisdiction’s cashless bail policy—is made crystalline by Pritzker’s reaction to one State’s Attorney’s lawsuit against Pritzker and his Attorney General, Kwame Raoul.

Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe has filed a lawsuit in his county’s circuit court against the governor and state attorney general, arguing that the SAFE-T law violates the state constitution.
Pritzker’s office criticized the lawsuit, calling it a “weak attempt to protect the status quo that lets murderers and abusers pay their way out of jail.”

Pay their way out of jail. Pritzker wants to let murderers and abusers out of jail for free, instead. (And he completely ignored the premise that his policy violates the State’s constitution. Apparently, Pritzker cares not a fig for his State’s supreme law.)

A Tacit Admission?

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Attorney General Merrick Garland (D) has filed his appeal (to the 11th Circuit) of the Federal district judge’s order blocking the DoJ from using certain documents seized in the DoJ’s Mar-a-Lago raid in its criminal investigation. That order parallels the judge’s appointment of a Special Master to oversee and sort through all of the seized documents. Garland’s appeal reads, in pertinent part,

Although the government believes the district court fundamentally erred in appointing a special master and granting injunctive relief, the government seeks to stay only the portions of the order causing the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public by (1) restricting the government’s review and use of records bearing classification markings and (2) requiring the government to disclose those records for a special-master review process[.]

[R]estricting the government’s review and use of records bearing classification markings.

Garland no longer is willy-nilly calling the documents classified. Might this be his tacit admission that the documents aren’t actually classified?

Why does Garland not want them “disclosed” to the Special Master? The judge’s order here was for more than mere disclosure, too; she ordered the documents delivered to the Special Master for the explicit purpose of the Master’s assessment of whether they are classified. Why is Garland so terrified of an independent review, instead of his “trust me” position?

A tacit switch: the judge ordered the documents turned over to the Master, but Garland’s appeal refers only to disclosing the docs to the Master. Is Garland planning on continuing to refuse to turn them over if the Circuit court rejects his appeal of disclosure?

Progressive-Democratic Party Censorship

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There is a bill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, wending its way through the Senate that’s intended to let local news outlets band together to get enough scale to negotiate with Big Tech social media on a less uneven footing for payment from those outlets for their use of content that is taken by those social media and republished.

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) proposed an amendment that would plainly and explicitly prohibit[] payment negotiations from including discussion of content moderation—i.e., that would bar Big Tech from engaging in its penchant for censorship during payment negotiations. Cruz’ amendment wouldn’t even ban content moderation altogether, just during those content payment talks.

The Progressive-Democratic Party Senators voted it down. They blocked even this limited ban on Big Tech censorship.

Senator John Kennedy (R, LA), even as he is a sponsor of the basic bill, is on the right track.

Mr Kennedy said in a statement that he doesn’t understand why Democrats have a problem with the Cruz amendment.

­The Progressive-Democrats want to continue censoring the information us average Americans will be permitted to have. That’s why they have a problem with the Cruz amendment.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) has a counter, she claims.

Ms Klobuchar countered that the bill already contained several protections to make sure it is content-neutral and doesn’t allow discrimination.

This is disingenuous. Were she serious about content neutrality—were she serious about no censorship—Klobuchar wouldn’t be opposed to a clear, simple ban on that along with, or replacing, her claimed protections.

On Aid to Ukraine

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Even in Reluctant Germany, the government’s loyal opposition and a number of incumbent officials are calling for Germany to get out of the way and send tanks to Ukraine so that nation can further, and more rapidly, exploit their current battlefield gains and continue driving the barbarian back out.

But. But, but, but.

“We are simply not going to be the first to send Western-made tanks…” a senior German government official said.

I’m reminded of two lines. One is by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as he channels Sallah: Russians. Very dangerous. You go first.

The other might be by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sort of channeling Conan: Crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and listen to the lamentation of the women. Except that Zelenskyy is quite a bit more gentile than that, and he’d eschew the lamentation part. That’s what the barbarian from the east does. Zelenskyy, instead, would listen to the cheers of the women.