Tag Archives: ethics

Full Circle

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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance filed a new brief urging the Federal court in which he pleads District cases to allow him to execute his subpoenas for years of records regarding Trump businesses.

Vance is relying to an amazing degree on newspaper claims.

Court documents cited articles by The Wall Street Journal…and by the Washington Post….

Imagine that. Newspapers make unsubstantiated claims, which draw clicks to their outlets. Then prosecutors with axes to grind start manufacturing civil and criminal cases based on those newspaper articles, gaining political street cred for their ambitions. Then those newspapers write extensively about those civil and criminal cases as they develop, gaining yet more clicks for their outlets.

The circle is a vicious one, too.

Unlawful Delay?

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The Hong Kong Bar Association says the People’s Republic of China government’s move to delay Hong Kong’s legislature elections by a year “may be unlawful.”

They are mistaken; the delay is not unlawful. Unlawfulness presumes that there are laws to be broken. In a nation that rules by law—as opposed nations that operate under the principle of rule of law—any law is what the men of the People’s Republic of China government say it is. And they’ll adjust the text of a law, or rescind one or write a new one, at whim to suit their whims.

There are no laws that can be broken in the PRC. A law in that nation is simply a strip of clay, to be molded and remolded at convenience.

Believable?

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Congresswoman Karen Bass (D, CA) now denies she’s a Castro simpática.

What Bass said when Fidel Castro died—in 2016, mind you—was this:

I wish to express my condolences to the Cuban people and the family of Fidel Castro. The passing of the comandante en jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.

Now she’s claiming

…she did not realize the impact she would have by referring to Castro as commander in chief of Florida’s Cuban exile community.

Notice that: impact on the Cuban émigrés in Florida. Her original statement claimed Castro’s death was a loss to the Cuban people. On the island, as well as those who escaped to Florida, or to other nations besides the US. Apparently, she still sees Castro’s death as a loss to the people of Cuba still trapped in Cuba.

This highly talented politician—a Federal Congresswoman and high on the Progressive-Democratic Party’s short list for Vice President candidate—for whom words are her stock in trade, did not understand what she was saying, did not under stand the words and phrasing she was selecting as she wrote them for her speech.

No.

Can anyone seriously believe Bass? She spoke her truth from her heart the first time. Now she’s speaking only to cover her political behind.

Flynn, Mandamus, and the DC Circuit

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The DC Circuit has decided to rehear General Michael Flynn’s request for a mandamus ruling ordering the DC District Court to accept Flynn’s motion—agreed and proffered by DoJ—to drop entirely the case against Flynn. The Circuit plainly does not trust the original Circuit ruling to issue the mandamus and so to order the lower court.

The Wall Street Journal has opined on the matter. While I disagree with the DC Circuit’s decision to retry the Flynn mandamus appeal en banc, I more strongly disagree with the WSJ‘s rationale for not rehearing it.

It will stoke more public cynicism about the politicization of the judiciary. This alone ought to have persuaded the DC Circuit not to rehear its panel’s decision.

No court should hear or not hear a case, or rule in a particular direction, based on public perception of the court. Every court—if it’s to preserve the legitimacy of the court and of the judiciary as a whole—must make those hear/rule decisions based only on the merits of the case at hand.

That is the subject and purpose of the judges’ oaths of office and the subject and purpose of the Judicial Branch.

Hong Kong’s Elections

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They were scheduled for 6 September. Now they’re delayed by the People’s Republic of China for a year; although it was Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam who delivered the news.

Officially, the delay is due to the Wuhan Virus. However, the virus situation has been known for some months, but just before the decision to delay,

12 pro-democracy candidates were disqualified from running in the poll, for reasons including perceived subversive intentions, opposition to the new security law, and campaigning to win a legislation-blocking majority.

There it is in all its naked glory: that new security law that lets the PRC government in Beijing determine what is subversive and so criminal. Included in the current definition is democracy: it’s a crime for Hong Kongers to try to elect city legislators that will represent them rather than Beijing.

The move has one additional outcome: in the absence of a City legislature, the government of the PRC will fill the legislative vacuum.

This is freedom PRC style.