Tag Archives: ethics

Civility

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Congressman Andy Harris (R, MD) had an op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal in which he decried the quality of current discourse and its lack of basic norms of decency. He closed his piece with a bit of naïve hope:

We must return to civility. We need to be able to agree to disagree, and express our disagreements through the democratic process.

That would be nice. However, notice that it was persons of the Left attacking Conservatives and people of the center right whom he described. The Progressive-Democratic Party has become the party of character assassination and destruction.  While they are not—yet—antifa dominated, the Party’s methods are those of the worst of the Left’s thugs.

It isn’t possible merely to agree to disagree with those who would destroy.

There’s a parable about a mouse and an owl. The mouse thinks the owl is mistaken. The owl thinks the mouse is lunch.

An Investigation

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No, not that one.

Senator Lyndsey Graham (R, SC) said on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that he’s going to investigate [the whole program is interesting, but skip ahead to 15:28 for the Graham interview, which lasts for a bit in its own right] who “destroyed Dr Ford’s trust” by outing her after she had requested anonymity when communicating her charge to her Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo (D, CA), and her Senator, Dianne Feinstein (D, CA).  Graham pointed out, too, that there were only three groups of people who knew about Dr Ford’s letter: Feinstein and her staff, Eshoo and her staff, and Dr Ford’s lawyers.  Someone or some ones from those groups are the only ones who could have leaked Dr Ford’s letter and outed her.  Yes, I’m omitting the obvious fourth—that Dr Ford outed herself.

What’s instructive here is that it’s a Republican who wants to get to the bottom of that despicable betrayal.  The Progressive-Democrats are shockingly silent on the matter.

A Deported High School Student

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Recall the first debate between Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) and Beto O’Rourke, Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Texas Senator.  Ol’ Beto told the tale of a mistreated Dreamer [emphasis added]:

the salutatorian at tiny Booker High School in the Texas Panhandle, recently deported to his country of origin, not even speaking the language.

Oops.

It didn’t happen [emphasis added].

The honor student in question was actually the valedictorian.
She spoke the language.
It happened a decade ago, not recently.
And most importantly, said Yamile Guerrero Rosales, “I wasn’t deported….”

Oh, the lady was, at the time, here from Mexico, and she had to deal with six months of paperwork concerning her then baby, still stuck in Juarez.  But she’s now a naturalized citizen (tough to achieve after having been deported) and an accountant for a Booker area company.

Aides insist that O’Rourke was operating on second-hand information.  But come on, even the Dallas Morning News checks this kind of information, why didn’t O’Rourke?  Even if this was nothing more than an honest mistake—I’ll spot him that, tentatively—he’d repeated that tale on the campaign trail several times before he got to the debate and got fact checked.

Nor is this the first serious…error…O’Rourke has made (he now claims that an unidentified passenger in his own vehicle corroborates his claim).  It likely won’t be his last.  Is this the level of “carelessness” we want representing us in Texas?

Remember this, this fall.

The EU and Iran

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The European Union is busily working with Iran to develop a channel for payments that’s outside the normal flow of currencies so that the EU and Iran can continue to do business with each other outside the US sanction regime.  The purpose of this is so the EU can facilitate Iran’s economy and so the EU can make money.

Nothing wrong with that last, at all.  The EU should be working to support its businesses.

There are other ways of achieving that, though.  With this path, the EU is making itself complicit in Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

[High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica] Mogherini said Iran has remained fully committed to its obligations under the nuclear deal, as certified by a dozen reports from UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. She also hailed the 2015 agreement as a major achievement for diplomacy and nonproliferation….

This is entirely disingenuous. On what basis does Mogherini believe Iran’s claims?

What inspections? No one is allowed to inspect Iran’s civilian facilities without weeks of advance warning. No one is allowed to inspect Iran’s military facilities, where weapons development primarily occurs, at all. Iran isn’t being inspected for compliance.

How is an agreement to delay nuclear weapons development for a few years (even stipulating Iran is honoring the delay) followed by complete release of all restrictions on Iran’s nuclear weapons development a major achievement for nonproliferation?

Mogherini and her EU cohorts have chosen not to explain any of that.

Feinstein’s Weapons Distortion

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Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) isn’t only dissembling in the course of her Progressive-Democratic Party’s shambles-making of the Judge Kavanaugh Supreme Court Justice confirmation process.  She’s dissembling regarding our right to keep and bear Arms, also.  Using the hoo-raw the Party created during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (she’s the Ranking Democrat on that committee), she had this comment in the lead up to a question she had for Kavanaugh:

I’m talking about your statement on “common use.”  Assault weapons are not in common use.

There are two cynical distortions in that claim.  One is her “assault weapons” nonsense.  There are no assault weapons available to civilians in the United States.  Assault weapons are weapons capable of fully automatic fire (some of which can be possessed, but not borne, by collectors under very narrow circumstances) and heavy weapons—antitank weapons, crew-served fully automatic weapons, and the like.  Feinstein is carefully conflating the term “assault weapons” with semi-automatic rifles, which most assuredly are in common use in our nation, as she tries to emotionalize a completely rational matter with her scary term.

The other is her business about common use.  Here’s the 2nd Amendment in its entirety:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There’s nothing in there about common use.  The Supreme Court has ruled on the need for common use, but this flies in the face of that Amendment on two grounds: one is the Court’s manufactured standard—it’s law-making from its bench—of commonness of use.  The other flies in the face of history and of the environment in which We the People ratified our Amendment: a significant fraction of the cannons used by our side during our Revolutionary War were privately owned.  Plainly, given their expense in obtaining, maintaining, and operating, they were possessed only by the wealthy—they were not in “common use.”  The Court’s ruling simply wants reversal so as to bring the matter back in line with our Constitution.

That second point might be a bit obscure, but the first is blindingly obvious.  Even to a Progressive-Democrat.