NPR, in an abominable piece of deceitful journalism two years ago about Ferguson, Mo. ten years after a young black thug there got himself shot in self-defense by a police officer, and his buddy’s lies were immediately accepted as truth by a biased, corrupt news media, wrote in part…
Right. “Many” maintain that justice was never served because of lying, divisive, race-huckster, police-vilifying ethics villains like Rep. Tlaib, who deliberately and repeatedly maintain that facts don’t matter. It isn’t an opinion that Mike Brown was murdered. It is a destructive false narrative designed to keep racial distrust and anger perpetually high. She is a member of Congress. For a House member to make a public statement so irresponsible, dishonest, and corrosive to society isn’t just grounds for censure, it demands censure.
GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Party Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a bi-partisan rebuke of Florida Republican Dan Bilzerian, one of several Republican candidates in Florida’s 6th Congressional District running in the primary today. Bilzerian, a veteran, has run a bare-knuckles campaign to put it mildly, and his latest campaign ad crossed more ethics red lines than any such production in memory. In the process of attacking incumbent Rep. Randy Fine, one of his opponents in the primary, the ad uses AI-generated images (the one on the left accompanies the ad hominem slur “fat Jew”) and such blatant anti-Semitic rhetoric as “Shylock,” “Jewish supremacist” and “satanic whore” while suggesting that Adolf Hitler’s “opinions” many have some validity after all.
Nice. Stay classy, Republicans.
Rep. Fine is among the most vocal and determined supporters of Israel in its war with Hamas and Gaza. Jeffries and Johnson both condemned Bilzerian. “The hateful campaign being run by Daniel Bilzerian in Florida is blatantly antisemitic and shocks the conscience,” Jeffries said. “People of goodwill regardless of political affiliation must reject his vile attacks on the Jewish community. This cannot and will not stand.” “The vile attack ads against Congressman Randy Fine in Florida’s 6th District are disgusting and should be condemned by all political leaders on the Right and Left,” Speaker Johnson said in a statement the same day. “Antisemitism and outward hatred of Jewish communities have no place in our politics or in America.”
There’s no argument that Bilzerian deserves those rebukes and more, but I see no actual principles involved in the decisions of Jefferies and Johnson to attack him. It’s easy for Jeffries to condemn an outlier and rogue GOP candidate for vile attacks on the Jewish community, and it is also hypocritical. His party has extolled and supported plenty of anti-Semites who managed not to be as brazen as Bilzerian, but their statements and transparent attitudes have been “vile” nonetheless. Indeed, Jeffries’s whole party is increasingly sliding into routine Jew-hate, notably on college campuses.
This is a rare case of EA using the same graphic two days running, but there is a good reason.
In yesterday’s morning post, I wrote, concerning Rep. Nancy Mace’s extensive tattoo “sleeves” which she revealed in public for the first time this week, that voters and parties needed to stop letting people with serious emotional or mental issues from getting at the levers of power. I also mentioned that an associate of mine, also fully sleeved, a veteran and a Camp Lejeune victim who suffers from Complex PTSD, once told me that excessive, visible tattoos like Mace’s (and his) are often, even usually, a form of self-harm to cope with serious emotional damage.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has gotten nine tattoos as a member of Congress because getting inked provides “the pain that I need to feel,” the congresswoman said in a revealing profile released on Friday. The 48-year-old congresswoman got the tattoos in “rapid succession” between a period in late 2023 and early 2024, marked by the breakup with her fiancé and an exodus of staffers from her office, some of whom viewed working for Mace as “toxic,” according to Politico.
Aside from a need to feel “pain,” Mace described getting tattoos as a way to “reclaim” her body and identity. One of her nine tattoos is the opening line of Virginia Woolf’s famous novel, “Mrs. Dalloway.” Woolf, as Politico pointed out, committed suicide in 1941 over fears “she was going mad.”
“So my story is I am totally broken,” the congresswoman and South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate is quoted as saying in the profile. Mace details the strained relationship she has with her father, her struggles in becoming the first female graduate at The Citadel and alleged instances of sexual molestation and rape that she’s been the victim of throughout the piece.
“I have PTSD over what I’ve been through,” she said.
The doctrine of subsequent remedial measures holds that evidence of safety improvements, fixes, or changes made after an accident cannot be used in court to prove that a defendant was negligent. However, when a miscreant reacts to an incident of negligence or wrongdoing by taking measures that make it look more guilty without fixing anything, what do you call that? I vote for “really stupid.”
In the wake of its worldwide humiliation in the Jason Arday scandal and its craven, mealy-mouthed public declarations as the mess reached its climax with the fraudulent professor’s death, the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education decided to hide its faculty. The staff list is now offline. When one tries to access it, the screen above appears.
A double-secret faculty! Cool!
Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice promised that the investigation of how an emotionally disturbed fantasist who fabricated credentials, his biography and his scholarship yet nonetheless was passed into the faculty of one of the most prestigious universities in the world would be “thorough and transparent.”
That’s nice, but forgive me for being skeptical: how transparent is Cambridge likely to be when it won’t reveal who’s on its faculty? I suppose it’s possible that the professors are so embarrassed to be associated with Cambridge now that they will enter the Professor Protection Program and are only going out in public wearing Groucho glasses.
[Introduction:This comment by Michael R, in response to the Jason Arday post, “On The Left’s Horrifying Lack Of Integrity In The Wake of The Arday Scandal: I’m Sorry I Was So Right, And How I Wish I Were Wrong. Now What?” is sufficiently extensive and covers such an umortant ethics issue that I deem it worthy of a Guest Column. He begins by referencing the “Everybody Does It” attempted exoneration of the late Cambridge fraudster Facebook post that was favored on the platform by my old friend, a history professor who should know better but who is apparently completely woke-blinded…]
To your long-time Georgetown history professor, you can reply that all he has done is demonstrate why the left has lost all credibility. He thinks he is showing how it is fine to plagiarize. All the has shown is that those institutions no longer care about academic rigor and have no credibility.
Now about the plagiarism. There are different grades of plagiarism. Let me explain why the current round of plagiarism is so devastatingly bad.
When I was in grad school, many of us were asked to carefully check the introduction chapters of foreign students’ dissertations. Because of the difficulty of writing in a foreign language and the differing intellectual property standards in different cultures, there was a lot of plagiarism and the advisors were very careful to detect it and get it corrected before the defense. This is a mockup of a typical Asian student’s introduction.
“Poorly worded original sentence. Sentence directly copied from source 1. Two sentences directly copied from source 2. Poorly worded original sentence tying the thoughts together.Four sentences from source 3. One sentence from source 1. One sentence from source 4. A poorly worded original sentence tying them together. Rinse and repeat.”
You can see what is going on. They lack the English language skills to really blend the thoughts from the different sources together, so they just copy whole sentences (occasionally paragraphs) from many sources and tie them together with some original sentences. This is plagiarism, but this is pretty easy to fix. They are writing a typical intro, they just aren’t doing the paraphrasing and integration of the ideas needed. We would work with the students to get this fixed so that there weren’t any problems. There are probably a lot of programs that didn’t do this, resulting in a massive amount of plagiarism. I am fairly sure this is pretty common in dissertations, especially the Introduction chapters (which are typically reviews of the literature and not original research).
That chart represents the relative number of employees, including lawyers, in the largest U.S. firms to contribute to Republicans. I have written several posts about the “ideological capture” of major U.S. professions and institution, and opined that the extreme progressive bias in the legal profession is among the most threatening to U.S. society and democracy itself. Two examples are here and here.
Right now the D.C. Bar is fighting with the Justice Department over the Trump administration requiring some major law firms to demonstrate that they are not biased against the President and his policies, an effort the Axis (and the D.C. Bar’s staff) calls making them “bend a knee.” The major law firms are biased against this President and his administration, and are increasingly willing to show it. The civil justice system will not work if the legal profession is politicized. Increasingly, it is.
The reason is pretty clear: the vast majority of law schools have almost no conservatives or Republican on their faculties, and my alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center, is typical of the top tier law schools. You can peruse GULC’s disturbing EA dossier here.
I won’t decide what the subtitle of this collection post will be until I finish it, but the photo above has me tempted to use “Going Crazy Edition.” [Update:finished, and yes, that seems like the appropriate heading]
Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Republican, conservative, a military veteran and one of the “hot,” frequently embarrassing GOP women in Congress, just revealed her full arm tattoo “sleeves.” I have an associate, also fully sleeved, who is a veteran, a Camp Lejeune victim, suffers from Complex PTSD, and is a survivor of a chaotic upbringing, the death of a child, and other personal tragedies. He has explained to me that excessive, visible tattoos like Mace’s (and his) are often, even usually, a form of self-harm to cope with serious emotional damage.
Mace is notable for various rogue positions as well as conduct that Ethics Alarms had criticized as being inappropriate for members of Congress, most recently here. Last year, Mace delivered a 50 minute diatribe accusing her ex-fiancé and three other men of rape, sex trafficking and other sex crimes against her and other female victims, and accused South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson of failing to prosecute the men after, she said, she presented his office with evidence. Mace is not stable (she is a lame duck, having failed to run in the primary for her seat to run for the Republican governor nomination, failing badly), and is one more example of how the parties and voters need to stop letting such troubled people reach national leadership position. To be fair, I have determined that being a little (or a lot) nuts is a common trait among our elected Presidents, as is having a traumatic life. Those driven with a passion to lead are by definition abnormal. A congresswoman who feels compelled to say “Look at me! I’m a mess!” by getting “sleeves,” however, should start ethics alarms ringing.
I really didn’t want to post again so soon on this, but the frantic denial and blame-shifting efforts by the Mad Left regarding a disaster of their own making is beyond anything I anticipated, and I anticipated a lot.
Lord Woolley, the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, said Arday had been subjected to the “most horrendous, toxic, vicious witch hunt” leading to his death. Woolley is supposed to be a scholar. A witch hunt describes an effort to pin vile deeds on a victim who is innocent of such deeds. Arday did exactly what he was accused of doing, and he was in the process of being appropriately held accountable for what he did. Cambridge was also appropriately criticized and condemned, and will continue to be.
Today, Lord Woolley said: “We need an investigation into the media onslaught, the vicious media onslaught.” It’s called journalism, you dolt. For once, the left-biased news media did its job and exposed a DEI fraud as well as the institution that betrayed its standards, students and reputation by promoting and defending him. This is rich: the Left wants to investigate its captive news media for reporting the truth.
The hilariously named “Good Law Project” got thousands of idiots to sign an open letter. I’ll bold the most insane parts. It reads,
We, the undersigned, are appalled by the sustained and malicious attacks on the academic integrity of Professor Jason Arday.
Entirely false allegations of plagiarism were made against Professor Arday and referred to two universities. Investigations have found no evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing. The relevant academic journals also found no basis for the claims.
Yet despite these unequivocal findings, rightwing media have attempted to smear Professor Arday’s reputation and undermine his career. That should concern everyone who believes in academic freedom, fairness and due process.
It is difficult to ignore the question of motivation. When a distinguished Black academic is repeatedly subjected to baseless allegations after being fully exonerated, it signals there is an attempt to undermine Black people who hold positions of influence.
Professor Arday, a working class Black man, became the youngest Black professor in the University of Cambridge’s history. His remarkable journey, scholarship and leadership should be celebrated, not overshadowed by campaigns built on allegations that have been comprehensively rejected.
Professor Arday has contributed to public life for many years, building a distinguished record of charitable and community service. This latest smear campaign and the spread of misinformation are deeply alarming – not only because of the impact on one individual, but because of the message they send to aspiring Black and Brown young people who seek to attain positions of leadership.
The demonisation of Professor Arday, and recently on Misan Harriman, risks creating a chilling effect, signalling that success and public service may be met with hostility, misrepresentation, and disproportionate scrutiny.
We stand in unwavering solidarity with Professor Arday. We call on universities not only to defend academic freedom and robust scholarship, but also to confront racism wherever it manifests itself, whether overtly or through persistent attempts to discredit exceptional Black academics.
There can be no place in higher education for campaigns that weaponise baseless accusations to damage reputations and careers. Universities must ensure that excellence is protected and that every scholar is judged on the merit of their work, not the colour of their skin.
Item: 2018. The Miss America Pageant puts Gretchen Carlson, former Fox blonde turned #MeToo icon, in charge. She says it is no longer a beauty pageant. Result: the end of Miss America.
Item: 2021. Victoria’s Secret brings in Megan Rapinoe, vocal butch lesbian athlete and LGBTQ activist to rebrand the female sex fantasy company. Result: Uh, no. It quickly returned to its core values after a period of confusion, sales and turnovers…which included Megan.
Item: 2023. Budweiser brings on feminist marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid who decided America’s top-selling beer needed to be pitched to a younger market, so she made male cross-dressing self-identified female Dylan Mulvaney the symbol of Bud Light in an ad campaign, because there’s nothing that appeals to middle-aged, bear-drinking football fans like “chicks with dicks.”
“He wants to “destigmatise male sexuality”, he says, and “help men to build a healthier relationship” with the women in their lives. “I’m hoping we can be a space for men who feel caught between needing to be manosphere-adjacent and needing to be the performative liberal male,” he says…. “We should promote the idea that we can be excited about sex and we can be excited about each other and excited about touching each other,” he says with a cheeky grin.”
To me, that model on the current Playboy cover is androgynous, scuzzy, and reminiscent of what Hustler thought was sexy. But I am not a marketing target for Playboy, (or Hustler) and never was.
“Playboy” is already the walking dead, but still, the Santayana quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is germane here, as is the principle that when an institution, tradition or product no longer has a place in the culture, you can’t save it by destroying its identity and integrity by pretending that it’s something else. Let these things die with dignity, or at least go down fighting.
As I have mentioned here several times, the past six years and especially the last two have profoundly discouraged me. I have seen the profession I have dedicated what I laughingly call “my career” become more corrupt, greedy and immune to ethics alarms. One of my bar associations—oh hell, I don’t have to avoid embarrassing it any more, do I? The District of Columbia Bar—that I had served well and enthusiastically for over 30 years unceremoniously fired me for daring to dig into a profession-wide ethics problem involving powerful members. Both of the distinguished institutions that gave me a diploma have revealed themselves as fatally politicized and untrustworthy. I have seen so many valued friends, colleagues and associated reveal themselves as literally rendered intellectually crippled by the The Great Stupid, and the nation I revere, respect and admire is being threatened by an ideology espoused by grifters, liars and fools who have somehow managed to bring better and smarter people down to their nauseating level.
The Jason Arday Ethics Train Wreck, which I’m officially designating today, is massively important though its significant has nothing to do with Jason Arday. It is important because…
Such a thing occurring at a major, internationally-renowned institution of higher education, demonstrated just how corrupted such institutions have become
The specifics of the episode illustrate vividly the pure illogic as well as the destructiveness of the whole “diversity is our strength” delusion, but most disturbing of all,
In its reaction to their self-made debacle, the progressive hive’s absence of integrity and inability to admit or even discern “what’s going on here” and conclude that they, and those they have followed, extolled and defended, have been and are spectacularly, utterly wrong.
In short, they won’t or can’t be honest, they won’t or can’t admit that their critics have been right, they won’t or can’t even accept the facts in front of them and reach a rational conclusion. I don’t even know what to call people like this. They aren’t stupid, at least not all of them. They aren’t hypnotized or hearing voices in their heads. So how can they be “fixed”? How do you deal with millions and millions of such people when they and their delusions threaten the fabric of society?
Yesterday I wrote a brief update on the Jason Arday Ethics Train Wreck noting that I had been prescient when I predicted,
“You know, don’t you, that the next step will be a tsunami of op-eds and essays criticizing and condemning the conservatives—racists, all of them— who “killed” Arday with their determination to drive a neurodivergent “of color” out of his remarkable position. So he puffed up his resume a little bit— Everybody does it. How else was someone like him to break through the societal barriers white society has erected to impede people like him? I will be shocked if Arday isn’t quickly canonized as a victim. It is the perfect way to deflect attention away from the real issues behind this tragedy.”
Nevertheless, I did not expect this desperate backlash from the Left to be so pervasive. My long-time Georgetown history professor friend posted with favor this pathetic “everybody does it and if they are white they get away with it” comment:
Doris Kearns Goodwin — Plagiarism/improper attribution. Career survived. Still a celebrated bestselling historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual.
Edmund Morris — Inserted fictional characters and invented scenes into his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan. Controversy notwithstanding, continued publishing and remained a prominent biographer until his death in 2019.
Joseph Ellis — Lied about serving in Vietnam. Suspended for a year, returned to teaching, continued publishing bestselling history.
Laurence Tribe — Acknowledged improper attribution in a book. Career survived; Harvard’s Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus. (Harvard Law School)
Stephen Ambrose — Plagiarism/improper attribution across multiple books; later evidence challenged claims about Eisenhower interviews. Continued writing and remained a bestselling historian until his death in 2002.
Mike Barnicle — Resigned from the Boston Globe amid fabrication/plagiarism controversies. Rebuilt his career. Longtime television commentator and MSNBC contributor.
Mitch Albom — Published a column falsely describing athletes attending an event they didn’t attend. Suspended briefly; remains a bestselling author, columnist and radio host.
Jonah Lehrer — Plagiarism/self-plagiarism and fabricated quotations. Lost major jobs and had books recalled, but returned to publishing books.
Stephen Glass — Fabricated sources, quotations, people and entire stories. Journalism career ended; later earned a law degree and built a career as a paralegal.
Michael Bellesiles — Serious research-integrity problems in Arming America. Lost the Bancroft Prize and resigned from Emory. Later returned to teaching and publishing.
Marc Hauser — Found responsible for multiple counts of scientific misconduct at Harvard. Left Harvard but subsequently wrote books and pursued work outside traditional academia.
Brian Wansink — Cornell found academic misconduct involving data, statistical methods and authorship. Resigned from Cornell; continued professional work outside his former academic position.
Brian Williams — Falsely embellished accounts of his reporting experiences, including the Iraq helicopter story. Lost the NBC anchor chair but returned to national television at MSNBC.
Ruth Shalit Barrett — Plagiarism and accuracy controversies during her journalism career. Continued writing after the original scandal, though later faced another major journalism controversy.
Marc Tessier-Lavigne — Stanford president whose laboratory papers contained serious errors and whose handling of corrections was criticized. Resigned the presidency but remains a Stanford professor and laboratory head.
White academics and journalists do face consequences for lying, plagiarism, fabrication, or misconduct. But that disgrace does not become a death sentence for their careers or their humanity. Many have been allowed to apologize, regroup, keep working, publish again, rebuild their reputations, and have second acts.
I had to point out that her first example, Doris Kearns, is a legitimate and credentialed scholar who taught a course I took and admired, and she never claimed to have run 30 marathons in 35 days or had schools she never taught at listed in her biography. I didn’t bother noting that including Stephen Glass ( or Mike Barnicle or Mitch Albom) with the academics iss an outrageous apples-and-oranges cheat, as they were not academics, and in Glass’s case (and he is very white), his humiliation and condemnation was analogous to Arday’s, and Arday might have also “built a career as a paralegal” if he hadn’t been clinically insane and hadn’t killed himself.
Ethics Alarms 