Tag Archives: ethics

Doctors and Gun Rights

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Many in the medical profession have gotten their panties in wads because, on the matter of guns and gun rights, someone was impertinent enough to suggest that they’re really not that expert.  The National Rifle Association, it turns out, had demurred from an American College of Physicians paper calling for ways to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a threat—with “threat,” of course, defined by the ACP.

“We have an intimacy with our patients that nobody else has,” she said. “We open them up. We put our hands inside their body. And to have somebody say to you ‘You don’t belong here, this isn’t your lane’ is really condescending and really inappropriate. It’s time to post the pictures. Let’s show people what it looks like to work in a trauma center.”

With that first hand knowledge, doctors should be looking to minimize the opportunities for and occasions of gun violence. Moving to disarm honest Americans will only increase gun violence and increase doctors’ ER work load.

What’s condescending and really inappropriate is doctors pretending that gun violence is the fault of guns in the hands of honest Americans, freely carried as our 2nd Amendment—an outgrowth of our right to life and to defend that life—acknowledges our right to have and to do.

The ACP objects to domestic-violence offenders having access—never mind the corollary limitations on access by those living with the offenders (and never mind the hazy definitions of such offenders outside the clear core of that crime)—to guns.

More generally, the ACP objects to laws requiring States to honor each other’s concealed carry permits.  I don’t hear, though, the ACP objecting to laws requiring States to honor each other’s drivers licenses.  The outcomes of motor vehicle accidents are at least as horrific and far more numerous than the outcomes of gun encounters.

Perhaps the medical profession’s arrogance and hypocrisy disqualifies them from pontificating on gun rights.

A Bogus Beef

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Recall CNN‘s Jim Acosta striking a White House intern (albeit lightly) and actively preventing her from doing her job.  In consequence of that, the White House suspended Acosta’s accesses to the White House.

Now CNN is suing the White House to get Acosta’s credentials back.  They’re doing it, too, on the risible grounds that the suspension violates Acosta’s 1st and 5th Amendment rights of free speech and due process.

Sure.

Acosta is in no way restricted from speaking his piece or from asking questions, either personally or in his capacity as a member of the press, although for the time being, he can’t ask his questions at White House pressers.  With regard to that last, the freedom of…the press, here personified by CNN, is in no way restricted since the suspension applies to Acosta personally: CNN is free to appoint another of its employees to attend such gatherings and ask such questions as CNN might consider useful.

Furthermore, getting credentials for access to the White House is a privilege, not a right; due process plainly does not apply.  On the other hand, striking White House personnel—or anyone else—however firmly or lightly is neither a right nor a privilege for anyone, much less for members of the press.

In my view, Acosta should not have his suspension lifted until his boss publicly apologizes for Acosta’s misbehavior.

Yapping

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It’s what porch dogs do.  The current noise-making is from Progressive-Democrats objecting to Matthew Whitaker having been appointed Acting Attorney General after Jeff Sessions’ resignation at the request of President Donald Trump.

A number of lawmakers called upon Whitaker to recuse from the Russia probe, citing his criticism of the investigation.

Some years ago, Whitaker expressed some opinions about the investigation of which these Progressive-Democrats disapprove, and so they want him to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation.  Because anyone who, at any time, has said anything of which those folks disapprove is automatically disqualified for any government job.

The yapping has reached the point where the State of Maryland has asked a Federal judge to keep Whitaker from acting in his role on the grounds that he wasn’t legitimately appointed.  Never mind that the

Vacancies Act [formally, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act] allows the president to temporarily fill a position that requires Senate confirmation with any official who’s been in the department for over 90 days.

Specifically, the relevant part of the Act says

The President can select a senior “officer or employee” of the same executive agency who is equivalent to a GS-15 or above on the federal pay scale, if that employee served in that agency for at least 90 days during the year preceding the vacancy.

Whitaker was AG Sessions’ Chief of Staff from October 2017—something more than 90 days.

Whitaker’s assignment is entirely legitimate. As for recusing, those calls, aside from the noise for noise’s sake aspect, is insulting to Whitaker’s integrity, insisting as they do that he’s not capable of exercising his responsibilities, including vis-à-vis the Mueller investigation in an objective, balanced manner.

Whitaker—and Trump—should ignore the yapping and simply proceed as though the street were merely filled with the noise of children playing.  (Not that I would ever mix metaphors.)

Jail Works

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Liberal shenanigans in New York during the week before this week’s midterm elections:

Laura Ebert, an economics professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, was charged with misdemeanor larceny for stealing signs supporting Republican candidates….

She’s making excuses and spinning her misbehavior.

Ebert said she was caught in a moment of weakness and high emotion and meant no harm to McGovern nor did she know she lived there.
“I have family I love that support Trump, so I was after the sign, not the person.  I have apologized and feel bad, but clearly the GOP is putting a big deal [of] spin on this.”

Caught up in the emotion of the moment?  Republicans are doing the spinning?  This is typical Liberal excuse making and blame shifting.  This woman is a professor at a college.  She’s a highly intelligent, well-educated, fully rational woman; she knew full well what she was doing at the time she did it.  She knew what she was doing when she formulated her plan and stopped her pickup to do the theft.

She apologized.  Nonsense; her words are empty rhetoric.  She spoke from the heart at the time she did her stealing.  Her “apology,” now, is solely because she’s in trouble and hoping to get out of it. Will she argue at her court date next week that had Willie Sutton only apologized, he should have been excused?

This looks like a Class A misdemeanor under New York law, for which the maximum penalty is a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.  That works, for someone as talented and rational as a college professor, a woman who plainly knows better.

Censorship

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The ramp-up in political spending across Facebook’s social networks, which also include Instagram, is breathtaking: In 2014, digital ad spending was 1% of all political ad spending. Now it’s 22%, or about $1.9 billion, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Facebook says that politicians have spent nearly $300 million in the US on Facebook ads since May.

And

Politicians who want to reach the same voters their competitors are reaching on Facebook have little choice but to go there, too.

Which helps explain why Facebook was so willing to censor conservative political ads.