Tag Archives: ethics

Oxen and Gorings

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Howard Kurtz is upset about some (Republican) politicians pushing back on press foolishness. He spent much of his column at the link writing about Republican candidates objecting to the press’ hyping of manufactured problems (Rubio’s traffic tickets, Christie’s bridge problems, and so on) and decrying the candidates for spending so much time acting like their oxen were getting stabbed. Then Kurtz made this remarkable remark:

[A]t some point candidates have to figure out how to use the press to sell their message, rather than just complaining.

Because if the candidates bypass the press, rather than “figure out how to use the press,” the press wouldn’t have much to do.

Alternatively, the press is used to being used by the Left, what’s wrong with those Republicans?

Never mind that the legitimate role for what used to be the press is to be independent, objective observers and reporters and not to be “used” for political purposes at all.

Whose ox is being gored, really?

The Encryption Divide

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Silicon Valley and Washington have spent the past year arguing over whether technology companies should enable users to encrypt their digital lives in such a way that not even the Federal Bureau of Investigation could unscramble the information.

And

In private conversations, administration officials have said they don’t want Congress to pass a new law or to dictate to how tech companies should write code, said people briefed on the conversations.

That much is appropriate.

There’s no divide here, except in the minds of an overreaching government. The Constitution is quite clear. Get a warrant. That’s often inconvenient to Government. That’s part of the point.

Anything for a Fee

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The American Law Institute periodically issues “restatements” that attempt to codify the common law—but also shift the law in the direction the institute wants it to go.

Reason enough to distrust this gang.

That’s nothing, though, compared with this:

The institute’s restatement defines the tort of battery as any contact with another person that “offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity” or—the new addition—contact that is highly offensive to another person’s “unusually sensitive sense of personal dignity, and the actor knows that the contact will be highly offensive to the other.”

Aside from the blatant assault on individual liberty this thing represents, it’s an insult to Americans everywhere: it says we’re all such special snowflakes that it’s unreasonable to expect us to suffer the bumps and bruises of human interaction without mumsy coming to the rescue. For a fee.

My sense of personal dignity is unusually sensitive to the pronouncements of the ALI—and being such highly educated and well informed persons, of course they know this.

Do I have a case? Of course not: the ALI has its own unusual sensitivity to mere plebes demurring from their pronouncements. But they’d enjoy the fee.

The Fox Investigating the Hen House Leak

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The Department of Transportation is investigating the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) following a FOX Business Network report, which uncovered misconduct and cheating in the air traffic controller program. The DOT released a statement on their investigation.

That FBN report exposed broad-based, institutionally directed cheating on FAA Controller selection exams and systemic bias in handling the exams’ results.

Now the fox—or the weasel, your call—is going to determine whether there was any misbehavior.

Stand by for another whitewash.

No Heart

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According to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the US has successfully trained about 7,000 Iraqi soldiers and about 2,000 counterterrorism service personnel out of a goal of 24,000 in total. Carter said this about that rather large shortfall:

We simply haven’t received enough recruits[.]

Hmm….

Yet President Barack Obama thinks it’ll be cool to send 450 more US soldiers to Iraq to train the Iraqis.

Again I say, Hmm….