Good Morning!

1. The National Review began its story on this topic thusly:

“California and New York will become the first states to allow illegal immigrants to practice law and be sworn in as lawyers. In so doing, they will grant the privilege of upholding the law and defending the U.S. Constitution to people who have intentionally violated the rules, and who have no right whatsoever to be here.”

This is a fair and objective description. I detest conservative radio talk show host Micheal Savage, who wrote a right wing attack tome called “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder” just as I detest that title, and the approach to civil discourse and political disagreements that goes with it. (Ann Coulter preaches the same message, but is funnier when she does it.) However, when I read about things like this, I feel a magnetic pull to the position. In 2013, Governor Brown  signed into law a provision allowing illegal immigrants to be awarded licenses to practice law in the state California. At the same time as he vetoed nother bill passed by his reliably wacko legislature that would have allowed those who would not obey the nation’s immigration laws to be eligible to serve on juries, and thus pass judgment on the alleged crimes of U.S. citizens. Ponder that contrast for a minute, and see if your head explodes. Brown had a convoluted explanation for the seeming contradiction, but what he was doing was obvious: he was pandering to illegals and their supporters. Serving on juries is an obligation of citizenship that citizens find onerous: telling illegals that they didn’t have to meet this obligation while still harvesting citizenship benefits was a welcome decision.

At the time I wrote,

“I am not surprised by this turn of events, just made nauseous by it. I almost closed comments for this post. If I really have to explain to someone why those who have never taken affirmative steps to become citizens in this country should not be allowed to practice its laws after years of being in defiance of its laws, I’m not sure its worth the effort.”

I thought this was just another example of California gradually abandoning basic American values and moving leftward away from the United States and into the ocean. Apparently it wasworth the effort to explain what’s wrong with letting lawbreakers play a key role in our legal system, because this particular strain of insanity has proven itself contagious. NR writes that this development “represents a profound illustration of the lack of respect we have come to exhibit for our system and the principles it ostensibly undergirds.” I would not go so far as to say “we” yet: this is, or should be, so self-evident an example of Bizarro World progressivism that it might be used as a vaccine against the virus.

The “profound illustration of the lack of respect” progressives “have come to exhibit for our system and the principles it ostensibly undergirds” remains the idea that it is ethical or sane to allow foreigners to cross our borders and begin exploiting the benefits of American citizenship whenever they feel like it.

2. From Fred:  Houston police department overtime rules for its DWI task force pay time-and-a-half overtime for all hours spent in court. This gives cops—let me re-phrase that: unethical cops— financial motives to go to court whether or not an arrest was legitimate, so some of them have made bogus arrests and cashed in.  One officer made 476 DWI arrests, many of which were later dismissed. Never mind: he got the time and a half regardless.  The officer, William Lindsey, was shown in court documents  to have made more money from combined overtime pay than he did from his regular salary from 1992-2004. In the first eleven months of 2004, Lindsey earned a total of $145,957, of which only $63,924 was regular salary while $82,032 was paid overtime for his DWI arrests. As a result, Lindsey was the highest paid officer in the city. He retired after reporters began to question the situation in 2006.

This is called a “perverse incentive.” If any organization has one, it is a good bet that it will also have an unethical employee or ten who are ready to pounce and cash in. The solutions are, in reverse order, regular and effective ethics training (by me, preferably), better hiring practices that make unethical employees less likely, and policies devised using an Ethical Decision-Making process, most of which require considering the worst case scenario.

3. Speaking of ethical decision-making systems, the man who introduced me to them, my mentor, legal ethicist and friend and who got me into this field, Michael Daigneault, has a new blog himself that can be relied upon to discuss ethics regularly and perceptively. It can be found on the website of the the company he launched with his wife, Quantum Government L3C. The D.C. area based firm consults with organizations to assist them in developing more effective leadership and governance.  A slice of his first post, called “Beyond Ethics”:

“A fish rots from the head down.” It’s a cliché, yes, but it’s a cliché because it’s repeated so often; and it’s repeated so often because it’s so often true. What I have continually observed over the years is a failure of genuine leadership at the Board or senior management level. These failings frequently resulted in organizational cultures that ignored (or even encouraged) unethical or unprincipled decisions. Likely causes were as varied as the organizations I came into contact with…a lack of clarity around tradition-bound leadership roles and responsibilities…too much authority in just a few individual’s hands…lip service by leaders to an ideal – and then actions to the contrary…the absence of proper boundaries…a lack of transparency and – yes – sometimes a systemic failure by leadership to set forth the ethical standards (and then clearly communicate, model and reinforce them) that are a vital part of a sustainable organization’s DNA.”

4.  As long as Joy Reid hosts a show at MSNBC (and Al Sharpton, of course. Wait, there’s also Lawrence O’Donnell…and “Morning Joe,” and…), there is res ipsa loquitur proof that the network has no respect for truth, journalism ethics, or its viewers. Reid is one more anti-white racist, but in her desperate effort to slime President Trump and give credibility to the Russian collusion conspiracy theories, she revealed just how reckless and stupid she is.

Her theory last week, expressed on Twitter, was that one more bit of evidence that President Trump is in the tank for Putin is that he has had “two Russian wives.” She tweeted,

“Donald Trump married one American (his second wife) and two women from what used to be Soviet Yugoslavia: Ivana-Slovakia, Melania-Slovenia.”

Yugoslavia was never part of the Soviet Union. It was a Communist country, and considered an Iron Curtain nation, but its long-time dictator, Josip Broz Tito, was by far the most defiant, independent and successful of the Communist bloc leaders.Tito was popular in Yugoslavia in part because he had the courage to break with Stalin in 1948. You can learn about that here, as Reid could have, if she bothered to do any research before shooting off her metaphorical mouth. Yugoslavians were no more “Russian” than I am. They detested the Soviet Union almost as much as Joy Reid detests the President of the United States and those who voted for him.

Ivana Trump, the mother of Trump’s first three children, wasn’t even born in Yugoslavia, but in what is now the Czech Republic, formerly known as Czechoslovakia.Well, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, they’re all Russia, right, Joy?

What an idiot.

Beyond her laziness and ignorance, Reid’s argument is pure bigotry, xenophobia and guilt by association. Hey, my son was really born in Russia: if marrying a Slav and a Czech mean that the President must be a Russian tool, what does that make me?