1.  I’m trying to get this up while I prepare for a new legal ethics seminar, teaming once again with the brilliant D.C. actor Paul Morella who has toured the country in the Clarence Darrow one-man-show he and I collaborated on more than a decade ago, using Darrow’s career and courtroom oratory to analyze modern legal ethics.  Readers here have encountered a lot of those Darrow-related discussions already. For once, I’m grateful most lawyers don’t frequent this blog.

2. This now viral photo of the faces of CNN’s talking heads and analysts at the moment they realized that the Democrats had lost the Georgia Sixth District special House election that was hyped to be the beginning of a surge to the Left rejecting Donald Trump…

…and this one…

…are more than just gags. They are smoking gun evidence of the stunning lack of professionalism in journalism, and especially CNN. If there was any sensitivity or commitment to ethics on that set or in that production chain of command, every one of these arrogant hacks would have been told, “I want poker faces up there at all times. Objective and fair news reporting includes body language and facial expressions. Your attitudes warp your reporting. If anything about your demeanor betrays your personal preferences or political biases, you’re getting suspended. Got that? This isn’t a cheerleading squad.

3.  This warrants its own post, but today will be a squeeze, so I’ll focus on the astounding chutzpah of  that race’s loser here and now. Losing Georgia Six Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff was interviewed by NPR’s Rachel Martin, and this exchange resulted:

MARTIN: How do you feel about the money that’s been spent on this campaign? The Atlanta Journal Constitution published a calculation that said you and your opponent have spent or reserved over $40 million for TV and radio ads. Does that disturb you? What does it say about our political culture?

OSSOFF: The role of money in politics is a major problem and particularly the role of unchecked anonymous money. There have been super PACs in Washington who have been putting up tens of millions of dollars of attack ads in air for months now. When you have that kind of an environment, it’s necessary to raise the resources to fight back. I’m proud of the fact that my campaign has raised that money in small-dollar contributions, on average less than $50.

MARTIN: Although, it was your party that started the big spending. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also found your campaign and groups supporting it spent about $2 million more in ad spending than Handel during the runoff.

OSSOFF: Well, the overwhelming majority of money spent supporting my opponent has come from super PACs in Washington. And the overwhelming amount of money that’s been spent supporting my candidacy has come from small-dollar donors. But there’s no question that money in politics is a major problem, which is one of the reasons that we need campaign finance reform so that candidates and campaigns will spend more time talking to voters and discussing the issues and less time raising money.

This guy couldn’t even vote for himself because he didn’t live in the Sixth District. By the end of May, his opponent, Congresswoman-elect Handel, had spent $3.2 million dollars, and Ossoff had spent $22.5 million, most of it from out-of-state, making the race the most expensive House race in history. Ossoff tried to buy the election, in other words, but now that he has lost, he’s condemning big money in politics.

4. The Congressional Black Caucus rejected an invitation to meet with President Trump. A letter released by the chair of the committee, Cedric Richmond, cited actions by the Trump administration “that will affirmatively hurt black communities” “Given the lack of response to any of the many concerns we have raised with you and your administration, we decline your invitation for all 49 members of the Congressional Black Caucus to meet with you. I fail to see how a social gathering would benefit the policies we advocate for,” Richmond added.

This is incompetent and unethical governing. The CBC is, once again, boycotting the President to pander to “the resistance” rather than doing its job. Any meeting can be productive. No meeting can never be. One member, at least, gets it;  the Vice Chair of the CBC, Rep. Gwen Moore told CBS News..

“We don’t have the luxury of saying we won’t meet with the president of the U.S..We have 1,399 more days left in his presidency and I don’t think that our communities would be served well by our not engaging.”

5. Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at Essex College, says she was fired after a televised debate with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Good.

Based on what she said, she should have been fired before she got off the air.

She appeared in the role of a defender of the Black Lives Matter movement, defending the group’s all-black Memorial Day event that blocked participation by color. If you weren’t black, you couldn’t attend. (This kind of conduct is why comparisons of BLM with the KKK are not unfair.) Durden’s initial  response to the issue was, “Oh, boo hoo hoo!” Later, she said, ”you white people are just angry you couldn’t use your white privilege card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter all-black Memorial Day celebration.”

Durden says she wasn’t speaking on behalf of Essex, which is a predominantly black college, or on behalf of Black Lives Matter. In fact, during the interview, she specifically says she speaks only on behalf of Lisa Durden.

Durden told Inside Higher Ed, that she was escorted from her classroom when she returned to the university, and was told she was being suspended and investigated.

Now she’s claiming that her rights are being infringed claiming that Essex used her as an example to other professors who might be outspoken in their views. “They wanted to send a message. ‘See what happened to Lisa Durden? You know it could happen to me.’ Free speech doesn’t matter if you’re a professor, make people mad and you’re in trouble.”

Durden is an idiot as well as a racist. She protests that she wasn’t speaking on behalf of Essex, a predominantly black college, but only on behalf of herself. Wrong. She was introduced with her title; she was only invited on the program because she was a professor, and when you embarrass your employer by showing the world that it not only hires racists but allows them to indoctrinate students with their racist attitudes, you risk being fired.

Her colleagues don’t seem too bright either. They have circulated a petition and written personal letters to the Essex  administrators asking for her to be re-hired.

“For those of us who are involved in advocacy, politics, who may hold opinions which differ from those in different spaces, this kind of thing has a terrible chilling effect,” one Essex professor wrote. “As this suspension will become public in the world of academia—and especially in black public intellectual circles—it will bring more negative publicity to our institution even as we are trying to move forward with our new president.”

Here it comes,my obligatory, “We all know that if a white professor in any university in the U.S. had made equivalent comments about African Americans, nobody would be defending her.”