Tag Archives: ethics

The Potential Deportation of Khalil

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Mahmoud Khalil is the Columbia University Hamas terrorist- and Palestinian-supporter currently in ICE custody in Louisiana with a view to formally revoking his student visa and green card and deporting him. Matthew Hennesey, in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, is mostly correct in his piece regarding Khalil and others of his ilk who come to our nation ostensibly to better their own lot but in actuality to push their hatred of America and try to damage us from within.

However, he had this in his piece’s endgame:

With all that in mind, what’s the big rush [to deport Khalil]? The man’s wife is evidently eight months pregnant.

This is utterly irrelevant. The woman knew what she was doing when she married him, and she married him entirely voluntarily. She also can freely choose to go with her husband, if he winds up being deported. If she (equally freely) chooses to stay, there are a number of American agencies—governmental, non-governmental, charity—that provide support for single perinatal women and single mothers with babies (and older children) to care for.

The Jewish students whom Khalil so broadly and deeply harmed with the pro-terrorist “protests” he helped organize—group actions that prevented them from getting to their classes, overtly threatened them, seized and vandalized buildings with Nazi-oriented graffiti specifically targeted at them—had no choice in the matter. The Jewish students were carefully targeted, and separately as the Columbia management team still is demonstrating, those students have no support facilities.

Circular Pseudo-Logic

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William Galston had this bit of circularity in his Tuesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal:

Economists studying past tariffs have found that their effects endured even after the tariffs were removed. … Further, the Federal Reserve Board is concerned about Americans’ increased inflation expectations, which could trigger a damaging price spiral.
The American people smell a rat. In a recent poll by the Economist/YouGov, 68% said that higher tariffs mean higher prices and that consumers will bear a large share of the burden.
They’re right. Tariffs are import taxes paid in the importing nation.

It couldn’t possibly be that we Americans poll that way because that’s what we’re told by a steady stream of news writers, including a plethora of them who cite “economists” or who cite named economists without also citing those economists’ data.

Instead, these news writers just make their bald, unsubstantiated claims, providing no data at all.

It may well be true that tariffs, by their nature, are inflationary. That certainly seems plausible. However, plausibility isn’t fact, and it would be good to see the evidence—including evidence indicating how inflationary tariffs are, if they are, and under what circumstances.

Who Really Needs Security Clearances?

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have got their panties in a twist because President Donald Trump (R) has withdrawn Perkins-Coie’s Federal security clearances among other actions regarding the law firm. The editors claim it’s all about Trumpian retribution:

That’s the only way to read his extraordinary executive orders targeting big Washington law firms for federal punishment and investigation. Mr. Trump’s decision to use government power to punish firms for representing clients breaks a cornerstone principle of American justice going back to John Adams and the Founders.

Perhaps. But that’s the editors’ spin, and they present it, in typical news opinionator fashion, as if it were fact and the only possible fact of the matter.

On the other hand, it’s also true that Perkins-Coie, other big Washington law firms, and the individual lawyers in those organizations have no need whatsoever for blanket, routinely extant, Federal security clearances just because. Those should be granted on a case-by-case basis, centered on the lawyers directly involved needing access to classified material in order to defend a client. Furthermore, as soon as that defense is concluded, or as soon as the lawyers in question are no longer involved, those clearances should be canceled; they’d no longer be needed.

Neither should a law firm itself have any security clearance at all. Only those lawyers directly involved in a case needing classified access should have the associated clearance.

These editors would do well to get their angst back under control.

Professorial Disingenuosity

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Columbia University professors who support pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian protests, mostly humanities and liberal arts professors, claim that those “protests” are actually innocent students exercising their free speech rights. Other professors at the school, mostly medical and STEM types, claim they’ve been too busy “doing their jobs” teaching and researching to worry about such mundane things as campus disruptions.

Those former either know better, and they’re being disingenuous in their wide-eyed innocence claims, or they’re breathtakingly ignorant of what free speech actually means. It’s not free speech when the “protestors” block others’ right to their own free speech by shutting off their ability to speak at all, or by shutting down the campus altogether, or by preventing others from exercising their free speech right to not listen to the “protestors.” The “protestors” are engaging in the abhorrence of censorship.

Neither are the “protestors” exercising free speech when they seize and occupy campus buildings and prevent the ordinary course of business in those buildings. Those “protestors” are executing illegal takings of others’ property and denying them and the users’ their accesses.

Neither are those “protestors” exercising free speech when they damage or destroy equipment in those illegally seized building or paint graffiti on and in the buildings. Those “protestors” are engaging in criminal destruction and in vandalism.

The medical and STEM professors also know better. As Pericles said a while ago, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” And Plato: “Those who think they’re too smart to engage in politics are destined to be ruled by those who are dumber.” These professors are just being cowards, hiding away from their responsibilities.

They’re all worthless; they all need replacement.

A Good Start

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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has pulled the security clearances and accesses to a number of Biden and other former government officials.

I have revoked security clearances and barred access to classified information for…Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, James, Bragg, and Andrew Weissman, along with the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden “disinformation” letter. The President’s Daily Brief is no longer being provided to former President Biden.

But it’s only a start. I have said before, and I’ll say again: when anyone leaves Federal government employ, for any reason, for any duration other than an authorized leave of absence, that now ex-employee should have his security clearance pulled the day he walks out the door. Even those on a leave of absence should have their access to classified material suspended until he returns to duty at the end of his leave.