KABOOM! Lindsey Graham’s Sister Is Appointed To Replace Lindsey Graham Because…She’s Lindsey Graham’s Sister

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Once again, the U.S. has inexcusably trivialized its government by suddenly reverting to the principles of a hereditary monarchy. This tendency is deeply embedded apparently, and the Adams, Harrison, Bush and, of course Kennedy families have taken full, indeed excessive, advantage of it. Why do we let them? Because, unfortunately, the American public is largely too lazy, reflexive and dumb to operate a republic competently, as we are reminded every day.

Rushing to let a female relative replace a dead member of Congress or a governor, as so many have in our history, is particularly foolish. Historians and others have tried to mitigate the stupidity by emphasizing that this was one of the most effective ways for women to get political power in the U.S. when they were largely unrepresented. That is like saying women becoming Senators, House member and state governors through cooking competitions makes cooking competitions a good way to select leaders. Diane Kincaid, a political scientist who studied the topic in the 1970s, wrote, “statistically, at least, for women aspiring to serve in Congress, the best husband has been a dead husband.” Twenty-five years later, scholarsLisa Solowiej and Thomas L. Brunell concurred that it “is arguably the single most important historical method for women to enter Congress.”

Forty women became members of the House of Representatives as successors to their dead husbands, with only one doing it by election with her husband still alive, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI). Widows were appointed to succeed their dead U.S. Senator husbands in 1931, 1936, 1948, twice in 1978, 1992, and 2001. Neither party is the greater offender: both have done it too many times, and once was too many. It doesn’t make the tradition more tolerable or ethical that now and then the female family member turned out to be reasonably competent: that’s moral luck. A U.S. Senator chosen by throwing an egg into a crowd might also turn out to be good one. It doesn’t make throwing eggs a responsible way to pick members of Congress.

Just three women have taken over the state house from their husbands. I guess people take the post of governor a bit more seriously.

Until today, however, just being the sister or brother of a dead member of Congress has never been a ticket to the halls of power. All of this is preface to stating here that the appointment of the late Senator Lindsey Davis’s sister Darline to replace him is indefensibly lazy, foolish, irresponsible and unethical. Here is how our ethics-savvy President broached the topic on Truth Social:

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Ethics Dunce: Yes, It’s Ana Navarro Again!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

This is a remarkable exchange for several reasons.

First, Ana Navarro, the long-time fake Republican, token Hispanic, DEI and Trump-Deranged shill who has a regular platform on ABC’s “news show” “The View,” makes a deceitful statement designed to mislead viewers, especially those who have been in a cave for the past two years. “There have been at least five” people killed by ICE she intones, as if the immigration enforcement agents have been going house to house murdering people. Her deception is right out of the playbook of the Left’s “defund the police” lunatics. Law enforcement officers sometimes have to shoot people to protect themselves. They also sometimes kill people who irresponsibly place themselves in harm’s way by interfering with the officers’ lawful execution of their duties, or when lawbreakers resist arrest. These incidents are investigated and sometimes result in discipline or even criminal charges.

Second, CNN’s Abby Philips, who has to be the most dead-faced round-table moderator in the history of television and one of the most incompetent, just sits there like a barnacle, as usual. An ethical moderator would correct Ana’s garbage on the spot, lest the discussion be built on a false foundation.

Finally, listen to Navarro’s babbling when she is caught like a rat in a trap! Caroline Sunshine asks, “Do you know the names as well of Americans who have been killed by illegal immigrants? Do you have that list, too?” [Aside: Sunshine is one of those people who makes me realize that I made a serious wrong turn somewhere in what I laughingly call “my career”: to say her credentials to be a pundit on CNN in such a discussion are paper-thin is to be generous. Sunshine is a former Disney and B-movie starlet who was rapidly advanced through GOP and Trump I press ranks substantially on the basis of her looks.] That was exactly the right question to expose Navarro’s bias and intellectual dishonesty. Navarro’s reply…

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Hypocrisy and Double Standards Like This Show a Corrupt Journalist and a Deeply Unethical Character:

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I expect politicians to be hypocritical and without integrity. Journalists, however, especially those who engage in commentary, must display consistent principles, values and priorities or be disregarded, ignored and reviled as destructive, unprofessional, untrustworthy hacks.

Anahit Misak “Ana” Kasparian styles herself a progressive political commentator, a media host and a journalist. With the blatant hypocrisy revealed in the tweets above—first, her pious condemnation of anyone who would gloat about someone’s death, followed by her tweets today rejoicing in the death of lifetime public servant Lindsay Graham—Kasparian reveals herself to be a monster by her own standards.

Ethics Dunce: Philadelphia Phillies Pitcher Zack Wheeler

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The ol’ clock on the wall says it’s time for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game again. I have pretty much sworn off baseball’s so-called “mid-summer classic” that I once eagerly anticipated, since it stopped being a genuine game decades ago. It even got worse when they abandoned baseball rules for tie games and went to a—yecchh!—“sudden death” home-run derby tie-breaker. Nonetheless, it is still possible for a player to behave like an ass in the run-up to the game, which always includes roster shuffles and substitutions as players get injured or beg out for one reason or another. This year, the designated ass is Philadelphia ace pitcher Zack Wheeler.

The National League has a surfeit of worthy starting pitchers for its All-Star roster, notably Milwaukee’s amazing Jacob Misiorowski, who in addition to being unhittable so far in 2026 also threw the fastest pitch ever thrown by a human being, 104.5 miles per hour. But Misiorowski has a “tired arm” (can you blame him?) and is skipping the game; several other pitching stars have had to back out of the NL squad as well. But when veteran right-hander Zack Wheeler was invited by Major League Baseball last week to join the team as an injury replacement, he refused in a snit.

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While We’re On The Topic Of Dumb Sports…THIS

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yes, it’s true, I regard professional soccer and professional women’s basketball as less than diverting, but this sport, Australia’s Run Nation Championship (RNC), not only requires morons to watch and play it, the sport is likely to turn competitors into morons if they aren’t already.

Part Sumo wrestling, part Easter egg cracking, part “Jackass” and part bumper-cars, the “sport” involves muscular contestants running into each other at full speed to see who falls down. This idiotic competition was spawned by ‘run it straight,’ a social media trend that had random people running into each other for online views. The videos of stupid teens colliding and often suffering injuries have gotten millions of views online. The Run Nation Championship is trying to make the sport mainstream.

RNC has different weight classes. Most participants, called runners, have a background in combat sports, rugby, or American football. Run Nation co-founder and CEO Tremaine Fernandez says he’s trying to make the new sport as safe as possible…you know, like the electric chainsaw juggling contests do. Fernandez admits that the collisions still risk concussions and serious injuries, but his organization has doctors on the sidelines, so it’s all good.

Sports neurologist Rowena Mobbs, among others, has been calling for the sport to be banned.“Certainly every time they run up and clash in that way, there’s likely to be at least a microscopic brain injury,” Dr. Mobbs said. “They are high-risk and harmful activities, and almost having these protocols and practitioners there whilst good overall, I would ask, is it sort of giving an air of reassurance, an illusion or an impression that these activities are safe?”

You mean that children and teens and drunks and cretins will think, “Hey, this looks like fun!” and people will get maimed and killed? Of course they will! I guarantee this new pastime, which essentially takes the complex strategy, scoring and rules elements out of football and hockey to focus on what its fans really like—the violence—will become a sensation in the U.S., fueled by social media, on-line gambling, and low IQs.

Ban it? Hey, this is America. We have a right to the pursuit of happiness, and if running full tilt into consenting people makes some dim bulbs happy, then let them do it. A few thoughts:

1. The female runners should make just as much as the male runners. It’s only fair…

2. The biggest societal benefit of the sport will be its Darwinian selection features.

3. As with NFL football, anyone who watches this sport is complicit in the injuries it will cause.

“Bad Day at Black Rock”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Several friends accuse me of going down rabbit holes too often, hence my scattered, random, unfocused life.

One of the films I was considering for the post “Twenty-Five Indispensable Movies For Understanding American Culture” is “Bad Day at Black Rock,” a strange, almost surreal 1955 drama directed by John Sturgis, who loved ensemble casts (“The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape” were two of his best.) I had watched the film a few times, first as a teenager, and found it vaguely disturbing each time. When the movie didn’t make the cut, I decided to watch it again. It still is disturbing.

The movie is often called a “neo-Western.” I never thought of it as a Western (and you know me and Westerns) but finally I see the point. It takes place in the West, the town looks like one of the ramshackle collections of run-down buildings I associate with Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, and the plot could have easily been transferred to the 1880s with Randolph Scott as the protagonist. A stranger comes to a California desert town on a train that almost never stops there, and everyone starts acting paranoid. Obviously the residents have a dark secret. What is it?

Instead of Randolph Scott we have Spencer Tracy playing the stranger, a World War II veteran with a disabled arm. It’s late 1945, and he has come on a mission of kindness and respect: the father of a young soldier who saved his life and died in the process lives nearby (or at least that’s what he thought) and the stranger, named John Macreedy, wants to give the father the soldier’s medal of valor in person. Tracy never was in a Western, but he was used to playing idealists with a mission of principle. “Bad Day at Black Rock” pits him against an all-star team of sinister villains (Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine) and conflicted “I don’t want to get involved” weenies with guilty consciences (Walter Brennan, the town doctor, and Dean Jagger, the weak and alcoholic sheriff). The movie gives off a weird, unrealistic vibe similar to “High Noon,” though in this movie the good guy comes to town on the train, he is outnumbered by the villains, and is a bit more successful, in the end, in convincing some residents with consciences to help him.

I don’t want to give you more plot details; one of the reasons the film works is that the audience is so slowly let in on the conspiracy afoot. There are these ethics and cultural lessons on display, however:

1. “Bad Day” was the first film to confront the issue of the American mistreatment of Japanese Americans in response to Pearl Harbor, though it is done in a deliberately indirect way.

2. A harsh lesson of the film is that hate, frustration and patriotism can turn good people into monsters.

3. The ravages of conscience are prominently on display. This is how secrets get exposed and conspiracies fall apart.

4. It’s a lesson taught in so many movies but still an important one: a single bold soul willing to do the right thing at personal risk can change anything, because he or she can stiffen the resolve of the less intrepid who witness the act. Or, in the alternative, the bold one gets crushed.

5. Alcohol has fueled so many tragedies and tales of destruction in America, it is amazing to me that anyone paying attention calls Prohibition anything but a noble effort to fix a problem gone horribly wrong.

6. American anger and resentment against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and the excesses it spawned, should be taught in schools, and if that is too much to ask (you know, like teaching students to read), then at least show them “Bad Day at Black Rock.”

Unethical Quote of the Week: Graham Platner

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“Fuck Ice. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts.”

—-Graham Platner, asshole.

That withdrawal statement is the water mark of a babbling moron. A vote for this guy was a vote for dignity? When has Platner ever demonstrated a shred of dignity, including in this withdrawal letter? He’s also borderline illiterate: “Jobs they can raise families on“? “This broken system to be righted“? “This American experiment to be furthered“? Well, at least we know Platner writes his own stuff.

Also: What “movement“? The “new politics” the Mainers voted for when they voted for Platner is old politics: fantasy wishes promised by demagogues. There is no “Palestine” to free. Europe is learning the hard way what open borders means (which is the civil translation of “Fuck ICE.”)

I am being told that “Up the Heart” is the rallying cry for the Portland Hearts of Pine, Maine’s first professional soccer club. Oh. That sure makes a lot of sense…it’s as if LBJ’s announcement that he would not run for re-election in 1968 ended,

“With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office–the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President. Tippecanoe and Tyler too!“

Ethics Quiz: The US Soccer Team Collective

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The U.S. soccer women’s national team had nothing to do with the U.S. men’s national team’s success in the World Cup it was eliminated by Belgium. Never mind though: because the men and U.S. Soccer allowed themselves to be bullied by woke-think and self-righteous women like Megan Rapinoe into an equal pay deal, the money–$16 million—the men earned will be split 50-50 with the women. Or as one wag put it: the men earned the money while the women stayed home. The news media has called the arrangement “ground-breaking.” It’s ground-breaking, all right. So would an agreement that required the men to clean Megan’s house with a toothbrush.

I should state up front that I could not care less what the men do with their prize money, and if they made a deal to give half of it to homeless puppies or the Obama library, that would be fine with me. However, this does represent a distortion of “equal pay” and one more high profile (well, for those who pay attention to soccer anyway) slide down socialism/communism’s slippery slope.

U.S. Soccer keeps 20% of the prize money, with the remaining 80 % is to be split evenly between the men’s and women’s player pools. That comes out to roughly $246,153 per player. Now, if we want to rationalize this crummy deal for the men, it could be described as a team unity, one for all and all for one device. That’s not what’s really going on, however. When the woman play in 2027, they will earn much less prize money than the men did no matter how well they do. The USMNT earned $13 million for reaching the round of 16 at the 2022 World Cup. The USWNT earned just $1.87 million for reaching the same stage at the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Unfair? That contrast in rewards reflects a difference in talent and ability. In a meritocracy, which is what the United States is fighting to remain after 250 years of success with that motivation to excel, it is absolutely fair that the men earn more. A good men’s college soccer team would beat that U.S. woman, and the men play a faster, better, more entertaining version of the game. The Left’s version of fairness, however, is based on sharing benefits with the collective regardless of who did the most to earn them.

The men, weenies all, let themselves be pressured into the prize-sharing surrender in 2022, when blind DEI was ascendant and the Biden Administration along with the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct were twisting logic, ethics and fairness into metaphorical pretzels. We are now at the cross-roads of what “fairness” is. Does it mean to each according to his or her needs, and from each according to his or her ability?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is...

Is the U.S. Soccer “Equal Pay” deal fair, responsible and ethical?

The Black Lesbians of the WNBA Are Assaulting Caitin Clarke

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

…and the league is letting them get away with it, while the Axis sports media pretends not to notice.

Three years into her pro career, Caitlin Clark is a recognized superstar and a driver of WNBA attendance, merchandising and popularity. She is, however, a white heterosexual in a league dominated by black lesbians, so she has been targeted, attacked, bullied and injured out of, as Outkick recently put it, “a loathsome combination of race idolatry, jealousy, and territorialism.”

The outlet (now owned by Fox) writes,

“As Clark’s popularity grew during her rookie season, critics increasingly attributed it to “whiteness” rather than talent, charisma, or style of play. Commentators such as Jemele Hill argued that Clark’s appeal was inseparable from her being a straight White woman in a league made up primarily of Black and lesbian players. “We would all be very naive if we didn’t say race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity,” Hill told the Los Angeles Times in 2024.”

Hill is an anti-white racist and routinely enables others in her quest as regular Ethics Alarms readers know. For example, she claimed that Harvard’ incompetent, plagiarizing DEI president Claudine Gay was forced to resign because she was black, not because she embarrassed the university. [Incidentally, I am constantly confused because Jemele Hill is a black anti-white racist female sports commentator and Jamelle Bouie is a black anti-white racist male New York Times columnist. I know they are different people, but neither should be taken seriously. I apologize in advance if I mix them up, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.]

Clark was viewed as an outsider and an interloper on black, gay territory, so she was targeted from the beginning. Chennedy Carter hit her with a blindside hip and then entered a social media post encouraging other players to “hurt” her next time. (Baseball would suspend a player who did that.) DiJonai Carrington poked Clark in the eye during a playoff game later posted online accusing Clark of “white privilege.” Angel Reese committed several hard fouls against Clark and posted TikTok video mocking her as a “white girl afraid to catch the fade.” Nice. Baseball would suspend a player who did that, too.

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Mayor Mamdani Flunks An Accountability Test

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Question: How does a mayor of New York City manage to leave “Little Italy” off a New York City map of ethnic communities?

Answer: It happens when that mayor is 1) a Muslim, 2) hostile to other ethnic, cultural and religious cultures, 3) raised by parents who themselves were estranged from American culture, and 4) has no management or governing experience, and 5) has assembled a staff whose radical ideological orientations are compatible with his but who mirror his deficits in orientation, experience and and training.

The result was the “New York City Immigrant Enclaves” map above, released and now going “viral” on social media after someone actually looked at it and noticed that the map omits “Little Italy” as well as Jewish and Irish neighborhoods while highlighting 30 other immigrant communities across the five boroughs. The careless map is part of the city’s Neighborhood Passport campaign tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

That’s kind of embarrassing, don’t you think? Here’s another question for fully acculturated Americans: What is the first “ethnic enclave” in New York City that comes to mind after Harlem? Surely the answer is “Little Italy,” which features so prominently in the iconic film “The Godfather, Part 2.” Not only is the famous and unanimously praised movie embedded in pop culture history and still routinely shown on cable’s various movie channels, it is near “Casablanca” as having one of the most quoted screenplays of all: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “This is the like we have chosen,” “I just want to wet my beak,”and others.

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