Hello, I must be going…

I got my prep done faster than expected, so I have time for a shorter than usual warm-up…

1.  “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?” It’s going to take a while for me to go through last night’s debate, which the Red Sox saved me from having to watch live. I can say this right now, however: responsible parties should not permit completely unqualified, publicity-seeking wackos like Marianne Williamson (and, as I argued in 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump) to enter primaries and participate in debates. This is how you get “A Face in the Crowd”; this is how you set up democracy to fail. There will always be a critical number of idiots in the electorate, and parties have a duty to fulfill a critical gate-keeper function to prevent the grifters, con artists, cult leaders and amateurs from using them to warp elections and the government.

Williamson was babbling about “dark psychic forces” and “emotional imbalance” last night.  Democrats should ding her right now, and tell her she is welcome to run under the banner of the Crystal Party, or something similar.

2. I want to know who the lawyer was who filed this unethical lawsuit so I can file a complaint. A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) against key members of the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over hacked DNC documents, pointing out the defendants “did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place” and therefore bore no legal liability for disseminating the information.

The lawsuit was a PR ploy by Democrats to tie the Trump campaign to illegal activity by Russia and Wikileaks, despite the conclusions of the Special Counsel’s investigation that there is no persuasive evidence that such ties existed. President Trump tweeted that it was significant that  the judge in the case, John Koeltl, was a Clinton appointee, but a trained aardvark could have made this ruling.

“In short, the DNC raises a number of connections and communications between the defendants and with people loosely connected to the Russian Federation, but at no point does the DNC allege any facts … to show that any of the defendants — other than the Russian Federation — participated in the theft of the DNC’s information,” Koeltl said. “Nor does the DNC allege that the defendants ever agreed to help the Russian Federation steal the DNC’s documents.”

He also described the lawsuit’s claims as “entirely divorced from the facts.”  That’s the cue for a frivolous lawsuit charge. There is no theory by which this was a good faith lawsuit. It was a political abuse of the court system.

3. Now THIS is an unethical lawyer… In Louisville, Kentucky, lawyer Lindsey Scott, 63, was charged with second-degree assault for allegedly entering a judicial conference room and hitting lawyer James “J.R.” Moore over the head with a can of Lysol, according to the Louisville Courier Journal, WAVE News and WDRB.

Everything is seemingly spinning out of control…

4. Now it all begins to make sense…The Federalist argues the there is a (biased, partisan) method to Snopes’ madness in fact-checking the spoof stories by conservative satire website The Babylon Bee:

“Snopes called [a recent Bee’s satirical article]  which obviously pokes fun at a real life event, a fictionalized version of the story. “The Babylon Bee has tried to fool readers with its brand of satire in the past,” it said….The article continued, calling the Babylon Bee a “ruse,” which literally means “an action intended to deceive someone.”

…Thanks to the 2016 election cycle, Facebook has partnered with fact-checking websites such as Snopes to combat “fake news.” Snopes, however, categorizes Babylon Bee articles as “fake news.” This threatens the publications ability to share its content.”

Hey, if Facebook can ban Ethics Alarms, no one is safe.