Ethics Observations on the National Debt…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Citizen Free Press, the conservative news aggregator that grabbed the niche from The Drudge Report after the latter went Trump Deranged, is constantly highlighting the National Debt’s explosion. This is legitimate news. Here is an item that appeared today:

“10 years ago today Trump promised to eliminate the national debt.Instead it has doubled to $39 trillion.“

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Nation Debt was suddenly important to the Axis again, as those who were horrified over the minuscule number of casualties in the Operation Epic Fury were desperately looking for some way to criticize the amazing rescue of the downed pilot in Iran. All of a sudden, the Left was grousing about Trump spending all that money to rescue a single soldier (The Axis has no integrity at all. I hope that’s clear by now) and citing the National Debt.

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Update on “Ethics Observations On the Allied Injury Group’s ‘Your Favorite Attorney’ TV Ads”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Last year, almost a year ago, I posted this commentary about the Allied Injury Group’s TV ad that embodied all of the horrors the legal profession used for a century to ban lawyer marketing and advertising (thus forgetting about the First Amendment thingy, you know, just like today’s progressives..). In the process, I managed to make an unethical mistake, mislabeling the slimy law firm involved and calling it the Allied Law Group, a non-slimy law firm that was none too pleased. I apologized profusely to the representative of that firm who called to ream me out and made the correction pronto.

The main thrust of the original post was that the ads seemed to present the silly character giving the pitch as a lawyer, and no matter how unlikely that seemed it was a bright line ethics violation as misleading advertising.

This morning I saw the firms’ new add, which dropped at the end of March. That notice, with chase lights running around “not a lawyer,” appeared a few second in.

Good. We ethicists have to take our meager victories, however rare, to maintain our sanity.

Consumer Alert! Merrick Bank Is Incompetent: Do NOT Get A Merrick Bank Credit Card

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’ve had it. Some day, before I die, I am hoping against hope that just one month will see all of my online bill-paying take place smoothly and without my having to spend 30 minutes to an hour negotiating a terrible, non-user friendly system, usually made more frustrating by a well-meaning, polite, but nearly incomprehensible non-English speaker. I just went through one of these nightmare experiences with Merrick Bank, which I am forced to deal with because I use its credit card for certain minor expenses. Almost every month, there is some kind of snafu, forcing me to grit my teeth and call customer service. Here is what happened this time:

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Observations On Byron Noem’s ‘Bimbofication’ Scandal'”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Not only was this Comment of the Day a sharp analysis of a weird story: I learned about “The Lavender Scare.” under President Eisenhower.

Here is our Netherlands correspondent Cees Van Barnveldt’s COTD on the post, “Ethics Observations On Byron Noem’s ‘Bimbofication’ Scandal'”...

***

I am not going to milk the hypocrisy on the side of the Democrats angle here, except to says that a member of a party that celebrates people like Admiral Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health, and Sam Brinton as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition and transgenderism in general should be ethically estopped from ridiculing Bryon Noem for his particular sexual interests. You cannot explain to me that transgenderism is normal and acceptable, and Bryon Noem’s sexual interests are not.

In the 1950s there was a Lavender Scare, in which LGBTQ+ people were disqualified from working for the U.S Federal Government. President Dwight Eisenhower signed EO 10450, which defined “sexual perversion” as a security risk (blackmail), leading to the firing of over 10,000 employees. Intense investigations involving lie detector tests and interviews with families and neighbors were launched to identify gay and lesbian employees; those who were not cleared in these investigations were forced to resign. EO 10450 was rescinded under President Obama.

Sexual morals have liberalized since the 1950s. The election of Ronald Reagan as POTUS ended divorce as a disqualifier for high office in elections. The Bill Clinton impeachment fiasco settled issues as well: consensual sinful sexual conduct is not a disqualifier for the Presidency. That settled the matter for conservatives too: popular politicians do not have to resign for extramarital affairs and other sins. Trump as POTUS is supported by conservative Christians despite his colorful marital and sexual past. Elon Musk has 14 children with multiple women, which did not disqualifying from DOGE. Scott Bessent as Secretary of Treasury is openly gay. Many do not see transgenderism as a kink or perversion anymore, disqualifying a person from office (Rachel Levine). So why is Bryon Noem’s interest in cross dressing a matter of ethical concern? Shouldn’t we simply see this issue as a personal matter, only of interest to the Noem family?

One of the main reason the issue is raised is that the Noem family professes to be evangelical Christians. The double life of both Bryon and Kristi Noem violates Biblical morals. Kristi had a longstanding extramarital affair with Corey Lewandowski, which I think was an ethics issue due to the work relationship of Kristi and Corey. Many were surprised that husband Bryon, who was fully aware of the affair, did not file for divorce. Did he not have any self respect? Was he tied to Kristi with golden handcuffs? Did he perhaps have a cuckold fetish? Now we know what was happening. Bryon quietly quit the marriage a long time ago, indulging in his own sexual interests. And Kristi knew about it, and did not care. This is not the picture of a Christian marriage. But not living up to Biblical norms does not make it an ethics issue in a society that has said farewell to Christian sexual ethics.

Easter Sunday Ethics Eggs…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yesterday the New York Times tried to weasel out of the major embarrassment, described here, by printing a correction on its front page. That’s obviously not good enough. The episode was emblematic of how far into the ethics abyss journalism has sunk. The Times getting the name of NATO wrong was more than a mistake, it was a mistake that should have been publicized in every other news source, but it wasn’t. Mostly conservative platforms informed the public about the fact that the supposed bulwark of American journalism proved that it is staffed with incompetents, propagandists, boobs and hacks by making an error that literally was impossible unless the Times… is staffed with incompetents, propagandists, boobs and hacks.

Also yesterday, a friend—Trump Deranged (of course) and a politically active Democrat—told me that President Trump had been secretly checked into Walter Reed Hospital and might be seriously ill or dead. This information came from the same sources that convinced another freind that Israel PM Netanyahu had been killed in an Iran missile strike. Then, this morning, here is how the Daily Beast reported on that fake story: “White House Forced to Address Claims of Trump Health Crisis.” See? The evil White House was “forced” to come clean about something that wasn’t true in the first place. Americans are now in the position that they have to seek out the “news” source most likely to support their wishes and world view because there is literally not a single one that is objective and trustworthy.

Wonderful.

Meanwhile…

1. The Times is full of empathy for Representative LaMonica McIver, Democrat of New Jersey, who is engaged in a “lonely legal fight,” it says, to avoid accountability for physically interfering with immigration agents outside an ICE detention facility in Newark. For her illegal grandstanding last May, McIver was charged with “assaulting, resisting or impeding” federal officials after she was filmed getting involved in the confrontation. She has refused to take a plea deal. and is seeking to have the case against her thrown out, arguing that the Constitution’s “speech-or-debate clause” protects members of Congress from legal liability when they are conducting legislative business. She is also arguing that physically interfering with ICE is “speech.” This is how a Democrat sucks up to the extreme wing of her party today. It is more than unethical: this conduct is dangerous.

2. Civility check at the dog park: this morning I tried to get a dog park romp in for Spuds before a predicted downpour (we got soaked anyway). An English Pointer who mysteriously regards my dog as the Devil was there and as she has before, charged Spuds growling and gnashing. He, as is his wont, just stood his ground and wagged. The owner quickly leashed her dog and began to exit the park, and as she passed me, I said, cheerfully, “I see your dog is still freaking out over mine for no reason. It’s okay, Spuds doesn’t take it personally!” She turned and snapped, “I resent you denigrating my dog. I’ve never had any trouble with her!” This dog has charged out of the darkness off the leash at me to barked at Spuds several times. If my wife had been with me (being dead, she was not), she would have metaphorically burned that jerk’s ears off, and I came oh-so-close to emulating her. But I pleasantly smiled and ignored the…woman. I almost wish I could prime my pit bull mix to take that pointer’s face off the next time she rushes him, but Spuds isn’t like that. Grace, however…

3. Not quite as bad as not knowing what NATO means, but still…Here is “Meet the Press’s” incompetent Kristin Walker today interviewing Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson:

“Secretary Johnson, weigh in on that point and the fact that there is no head of DHS right now at a time when DHS is shut down. Does that do real damage?”

No, I think what does real damage is that alleged journalists we count on to, you know, inform the public of the news don’t follow the news themselves. Markwayne Mullin, former GOP U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, was confirmed as DHS Secretary on March 23rd, 2026 That was almost two weeks ago. [Pointer: Newsbusters]

4. Hypocrite of the Week: Anthropic! The Wall Street Journal reports that AI developer Anthropic issued a copyright takedown request for more than 8,000 copies of its Claude Code AI model’s source code that was inadvertently released. That’s rich: this company running to copyright protection when it was built by stealing intellectual property from others.

When Anthropic was just getting started, for instance, it needed access to training data to build its Claude AI model, so it relied on digital books. The company downloaded millions of pirated volumes from an online “shadow library” called LibGen. Anthropic also downloaded books from the “Pirate Library Mirror”—doesn’t that sound ethical! For this, a group of authors sued Anthropic, which resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement. Anthropic also scanned and destroyed millions of used physical books in a secret project called “Project Panama; it involved involved cutting the pages out of the books, scanning them, and destroying the evidence. Again, the owner of the copyrights were not compensated.

5. The Jaden Ivey Ethics Train Wreck. This story was mentioned on Friday’s (barely used!) Open Forum. I have no sympathy for anyone in this mess: there are no good guys, just dunces and villains.

In a series of live videos on his Instagram account, the Chicago Bulls’ injured player declared the NBA’s Pride Month is “unrighteousness” (“The world can proclaim LGBTQ, right? They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA does, too… ‘Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness’”) and condemned abortion as the “wicked decision to murder a baby,” adding “They call abortion good but it’s not good in the sight of God.” Hours later, the Bulls waived him for “conduct detrimental to the team.”

The NBA and the Bulls have been grovelling for approval to all manner of woke causes, forcing their players to ratify their political positions in the process. Nevertheless, an entertainer—think of Disney’s “Snow White,” Rachel Zegler, helping to sink her employer’s movie by alienating potential audience members with gratuitous opinions—has an obligation not to shoot off his mouth or keyboard with potentially divisive political opinions that can cost his employer money and box office. That’s what Ivey did.

But the King’s Pass, or rather the “Non-King’s Smackdown,” was also at work. Ivey was injured, and already had a reputation of being a disruptive presence on a team. The Bulls didn’t lose much by canning him, and cynically used the move as a virtue-signalling opportunity. If Ivey had been a high-scoring, healthy star, I guarantee the team would have handled the episode differently.

Comment of the Day: “The Cowardice and Obstinacy of the Trump Deranged: A Depressing Case Study From Facebook (I Despair)”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Our house moderate/common-ground seeking/ division-mending optimist/ space-traveling commentator Extradimensional Cephalopod authored another helpful post, and his (its?) perspective is always provocative. It was also buried so deep in the comments that I wonder how many read it, so giving the piece COTD status is appropriate.

Here is E.C.’s Comment of the day on the post, “The Cowardice and Obstinacy of the Trump Deranged: A Depressing Case Study From Facebook (I Despair)“…

There will absolutely be people who aren’t prepared to handle the possibility that they’re wrong.  I recognize those people when their responses don’t engage with what I’m saying, no matter how many times I repeat the question.  They’ll reply with non sequiturs, strawmen, or simple repetition.  Even the most basic and reasonable questions, asked with complete respect, will slide right off of their mind.  

Those people are not the low-hanging fruit.  We can disregard them for the time being.  Someone else can create an environment where they feel safe enough to let go of the dogma they cling to, but that doesn’t need to happen right now.  

Part of why I use the values reconciliation method on everyone is that if I don’t, everyone looks like that to me.  Barking at people just starts an endless circle of barking.  Mutual defensiveness creates the illusion of intractable conflict.  I wrote an article about that: https://ginnungagapfoundation.wordpress.com/2025/12/12/how-can-we-stop-chihuahua-rhetoric/.

There is almost no possibility that a person will start thinking reasonably if the approach I use, no matter how solid the logic, appears to threaten their values.  Instead, I work to create conditions that reward people for reflecting.  

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OK, Now “What’s Going On Here?” Saturday Is Starting to Scare Me…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

What the hell?

I’m seriously considering letting Ethics Alarms comment-bomber and New York Times/Axis News Media apologist “A Friend” try to defend this.

Neither the reporter who wrote the story nor the editors who passed on it, nor anyone else in the draft-to-publication process, knows what NATO stands for, yet the paper presumes to opine about it. And this isn’t Weekly Reader; this is the New York Times, supposedly the gold standard for U.S. journalism.

Why would anyone trust a news source that would do something this incompetent and careless?

“What’s Going On Here?” Saturday Continues: Why Is The President Signing Obviously Unconstitutional Executive Orders?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

President Donald Trump yesterday signed a second executive order aimed at regulating college sports. It lays out specific transfer and eligibility rules, limits how athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness, and threatens schools that violate rules with financial penalties. The EO comes less than a month after the President attended a roundtable of college sports and business leaders convened by the White House collegiate sports-related issue and potential federal legislation.

Yesterday’s executive order is flat-out unconstitutional. It directs the NCAA to create rules that mandate college athletes can play for “no more than a five-year period” and allows them to transfer schools only once before they graduate without having to sit out a season. A school that plays an athlete who doesn’t meet these new limits could risk losing its federal funding. The NCAA is also commanded to update its rules to create a national registry for player agents while establishing policies that prevent schools from cutting scholarships or other opportunities for women’s and Olympic sports in order to pay their athletes.

The rule changes are scheduled to go into effect August 1. Fat chance.

The EO will be challenged in court and can’t possible survive constitutional scrutiny. The theory is that Trump, who has always been a big sports fan, is trying to spur legislative action or push (bully?) the NCAA into making changes he thinks are prudent. But this is none of his business, or any President’s. It is also an abuse of the Executive Order. Is he just trolling? Trying to kill Trump Deranged Americans by making their heads explode?

The “No Kings” nonsense is spectacularly silly, but Trump deciding to act like a king by sending out toothless and illegal edicts is no way to respond to it. The President should use his power, influence, position and “bully pulpit” on matters of state, not matters that reside firmly and undeniably within the discretion of private bodies and organizations, like the NCAA.

The EO on college sports isn’t just obnoxious, stupid, illegal and politically obtuse, but obviously so. Even the President has to know that: he’s remarkably constitutionally obtuse, but he can’t be that ignorant, can he? And he’s surrounded by lawyers: surely all of them can’t be incompetent. Can they?

What’s next? An EO declaring that everyone should wear their underwear on the outside? A declaration that pineapple doesn’t belong on pizzaa? An order that people should stop saying, “No worries?”

It’s “What’s Going On Here?” Saturday! First Up…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“What’s going on here?”

Instapundit re-posted this, and for the life of me, I don’t know what the hell the conservative critic is alleging. I’ve watched or attended almost every Fenway Park opener in the last 40 years. Some things change, but not the crowd’s spirit or the nostalgia of being in a ballpark where so little has changed since 1912, when it had its first opening day (and The Titanic sank).

Yeah, I miss Curt Gowdy (that’s him narrating in the video), but the Red Sox have been blessed with terrific play-by-plat announcers over the years. The Green Monster hasn’t changed much: it still has the hand operated scoreboard. The team wore its classic gleaming white home uniforms as they always do on Opening Day.

What’s “radicalizing”? There are no blacks in the crowd or on the field, because it was 1950, the Red Sox were the last team to break the color line, and Boston was then and is still a largely segregated city. I saw the Red Sox opening game yesterday on TV: there still aren’t many black spectators. A black Broadway performer, born in the area, performed the National Anthem (and sang off-key): So what?

Is the “radicalizing” feature the fact that nobody wears suits and dresses to baseball games anymore? Seriously? Sure, the fashions at the 1950 game seem quaint, but “radicalizing?” I like to be comfortable at baseball games.

The only hint of politics at yesterday’s game came when Boston’s woke mayor Woo and the Bay State’s Governor, Maura Healey were booed by much of the crowd. (Good!).

What am I missing here? What was so upsetting about the brief clip of the Boston baseball opener 76 years ago?

Ethics Dunce: Sec. of War Hegseth

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Oh come on.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth lifted the suspension of Army pilots under investigation for hovering near Kid Rock’s Tennessee mansion last week to give the rabid Trump supporter a “shout-out.” In a post on social media, Hegseth also saluted the B list rocker and said “pilots suspension LIFTED. No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.”

Kid Rock posted two videos of him waving to the Apache helicopter as it lingered near the pool outside of his Nashville estate. The musician said, “God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her.” That’s nice. It doesn’t justify or excuse military pilots using government equipment for partisan demonstrations that were not ordered or approved by superiors.

The Army confirmed that two Apache helicopters from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbell had taken part in the frolic flights and that the crews involved had been suspended pending an investigation “The Army takes any allegations of unauthorized or unsafe flight operations very seriously and is committed to enforcing standards and holding personnel accountable,” Army spokesman, Maj. Montrell Russell said in a statement.

Apparently not seriously enough. Kid Rock pooh-poohed the possibility of repercussions for the pilots, saying, “I think they’re going to be alright — my buddy is the commander in chief!”

Yecchh.

Unprofessional, destructive to military discipline, redolent of special dispensations for partisan loyalty, incompetent, irresponsible, foolish and wrong. I’d love to know the genuine reactions of our military personnel. My late father, the major, who was a stickler for military order and discipline, is probably spinning in his Arlington grave.