Unethical Website of the Month: “Caffeinated Politics (Opinions And Musings By Gregory Humphrey)”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Veteran EA commenter Steve Witherspoon reads this steaming pile of cripplingly-biased progressive delusions so I don’t have to, but the most recent example of Humphrey’s smug doltery was too much to bear. As a result of Steve bringing it to my attention (again), the site put me in mind of yesterday’s post about how professionals—strictly speaking, those who eschew worldly pleasures in order to do good for the public, civilization and the human race—ought to have a baseline, minimal level of intelligence to qualify for roles that must be filled by trustworthy people. Stupid, ignorant people are not trustworthy. That’s the concept in a metaphorical nutshell.

It’s possible, even likely, that Gregory Humphrey hasn’t always been stupid, but his self-description makes it clear that he has been the victim of Left-infused bias for a very long time, so it would be remarkable if his brain hadn’t atrophied as a result. He describes himself as “a book author…podcaster… political blogger…historian…former radio broadcaster…and former Admin. Asst. WI State Assembly, Gay American.” No field has jumped the political shark any worse than historians, gays of Humphrey’s generation are almost all alienated from the Right because of its stubborn refusal to reject the ancient justification for regarding them as “sinful,” and well, you know, Wisconsin. To be fair, I should probably give Greg a pass for being made stupid by bias, except that in his full-throated advocacy of woke insanity, he is making other people stupid. I can’t forgive that.

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Unethical Quote of the Month and Axis Media “Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much” Tweet of the Century”: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Ethics Alarms had flagged CNN’s incompetence and bias too often already this week: it was getting boring. Then the network, damn them, forced me to write about its crummy ethics again, by posting that ludicrous protest above.

Here is the “journalism” CNN stands behind:

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March Madness Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3-14-2026

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A brief “The Unabomber Was Right” update: yesterday I explained how changes to my Apple phone caused me to miss a planned appointment because I couldn’t figure out the new “improved” alarm setting process. Later, the phone creeped me out. I had intentionally not put my email account on my phone because of security concerns, because people scrolling through their messages when I’m with them annoys the hell out of me, and because I didn’t know how to install it even if I wanted to. At exactly 5:47pm, my email inbox appeared on my phone anyway, without any directive from me, at least not a deliberate one. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation, but I don’t think I’ll like it.

Meanwhile…

1. Professor Turley is alarmed at the quality of faculty members elite universities are hiring now. “Welcome to the party, pal!” He writes in part,

“Professor Muhammad Abdou, who until recently taught students at Columbia University, appeared online this week to spread calls for religious-based violence and glorify the murder of Jews. He did so as part of an event at the Union Theological Seminary, an institution associated with Columbia. While the university recently ended Abdou’s teaching, it is important to remember that this unhinged fanatic was previously chosen by Columbia faculty and administrators to teach their students. Those individuals remain at Columbia… The Islamic studies scholar called on students to “be a threat” as part of the event titled “Death to the Akademy: How to be a thorn in their throat amidst snakes in the grass.” …Abdou told the students: “Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don’t engage in wanton violence, but we don’t accept the negative peace either.”…He praised Elias Rodriguez, the man facing multiple charges for the murder of a young Jewish couple. In what Abdou called the “assassination of two Zionists,” Rodriguez is accused of murdering Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, the two Israeli employees in 2025 in Washington.

“He then reportedly praised their accused killer: “God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives.” [His speech] is reminiscent of the speech of other radical faculty like Cornell Professor Russell Rickford, who celebrated the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7th. Their extremism was not a barrier to being hired. It was likely an enhancement.

“They are examples of why faculty members are unlikely to change the overwhelmingly liberal appointments. Conservatives and libertarians have been largely purged from most departments. While even a moderately conservative faculty candidate will often face organized opposition, radicals like Abdou and Rickford find an eager audience on faculties….Abdou offers just pure hate. There is no discernible intellectual content or insight. Just rage masquerading as scholarship.”

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Julia Angwin

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“I guess it’s no surprise that Superhuman believed it could, in my opinion, break the law. We live in a world where A.I. companies are grabbing every bit of writing, art and music without consent. Where our president is launching wars without the consent of Congress that our Constitution requires. Where Jeffrey Epstein spent years coercing girls too young to provide consent into sexual relations”

—NYT “investigative journalist” Julia Angwin, dragging a flase and ignorant attack on President Trump into her op-ed about a lawsuit having nothing whatsoever to do with him.

Once again, I challenge the oblivious defenders of the New York Times and those who insist that the Axis news media isn’t a full-time Democratic propaganda operation to defend a passage that should never have made it into print.

The essay was headlined, “Why I’m Suing Grammarly,” and the writer had a valid and interesting story to tell on a hot topic: the failings of artificial intelligence. The A.I. editing service Grammarly apparently attaches the names of prominent writers to some of its re-write suggestions. Not only have the writers “quoted” not agreed to the use of their names and authority, the suggestions attributed to them might make them sound like unpublished hacks. Angwin writes,

“Like all writers, I live by my wits. My ability to earn a living rests on my ability to craft a phrase, to synthesize an idea, to make readers care about people and places they can only access through words on a page. Grammarly hadn’t checked with me before using my name. I only learned that an A.I. company was selling a deepfake of my mind from an article online. And it wasn’t just me. Superhuman — the parent company of Grammarly — made fake editor versions of a range of people…In my home state of New York, the century-old right of publicity law prohibits a person’s name or image from being used for commercial purposes without her consent. At least 25 states have similar publicity statutes. And now, I’m using this law to fight back. I am the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Superhuman in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that it violated New York and California publicity laws by not seeking consent before using our names in a paid service…”

Fascinating and informative…and absolutely irrelevant to President Trump, the Iran War and the Constitution. But Julia couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t help herself because she is surrounded all day by Trump Deranged hysterics and bubble-dwelling boobs who spend every waking hour hating everything the President of the United States says or does, so she couldn’t resist inserting an attack on POTUS in her column, even though it was as wrong as it is was gratuitous.

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Once Again, “The View” Raises the Issue of Whether There Needs to Be a “Stupidity Rule” For Professions

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Back in 2024, I posited, only half in jest, that “The View’s” resident lawyer on the all-female idiot panel, Sunny Hostin, had made such a stupid assertion on the program that it should trigger legal ethics Rule 8.3, which mandates that a lawyer who has knowledge of another lawyer’s conduct that substantially calls into question that individual’s fitness to practice law must—must—report that unfit lawyer to bar authorities for professional discipline. Hostin had surmised that “climate change” causes earthquakes and eclipses, and stated this cretinous conclusion on national television, on an ABC News program, which is what “The View” purports to be.

I wrote in part (and in disgust):

“[S]ome people with law licenses are demonstrably too stupid to be trusted by clients. Hostin is screaming proof of the validity of this conclusion, yet there is nothing in the disciplinary rules governing the minimal ethics requirements of lawyers that mentions basic, personal intellectual competence as a mandatory component of professional, legal competence.

There should be. One would think that the challenge of graduating from law school and passing the bar exam would be sufficient to ensure that a lawyer is at least smart enough to come in out of the rain, but in extreme cases like Sunny, one would be wrong….believing that climate change causes solar eclipses is signature significance. You can’t come to such an idiotic conclusion and not be an idiot. This delusion [shows] a crippling deficit in critical thinking skills. One cannot be a trustworthy lawyer without minimal critical thinking skills. When a lawyer demonstrates such a deficit beyond a shadow of a doubt, that ought to be considered a legitimate reason for disbarment.”

Remember, professionals are special members of society whose important roles require that they be trustworthy. True professionals include the clergy, doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officials, military leaders, public servants, accountants, psychiatrists, and teachers, and though it sounds absurd today, journalists. Really, really stupid people are not trustworthy, in fact it is dangerous to trust them. If they are sufficiently stupid, they should not hold any of those societal roles and positions.

Ethics Alarms, as those of you who have read the commenting rules here know, has among its provisions that the moderator, that’s me, may at his discretion ban a commenter who has demonstrated to my dissatisfaction that said commenter is too intellectually deficient to contribute substantively to the discussions. I believe that I have only had to invoke it twice.

Which brings me back to “The View”…

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The Ignorant Axis “Lobstergate” Nonsense

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I’m going to rely heavily on Michael West’s commentary on this morning’s Open Forum, because 1) I was all set to post on this when my computer crashed 2) when I finally got it up and (sort of) running, I saw that he had covered the topic well in the first entries on our weekly ethics free-for-all.

The National Review, still a pit of NeverTrump die-hards, did a good job covering the latest desperation Axis bile, the petty criticism of the Trump War Department for giving the troops steak and lobster dinners. A disgusted veteran on the staff wrote in part,

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Friday the 13th Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

Here’s how my day started: I had one thing that I just absolutely had to accomplish, just one—get my inspection sticker updated. That means, for me, since I now have no one to help with such annoying tasks, getting to the service station I have used for 40 years before they open at 8 am and making sure my car is first in line. Then I have to kill 45 minutes at a coffee shop while they do the inspection, get a call when they are done, walk over to the place, pay, pick up my car and drive home, a less than ten minute drive. To make sure I was first in line, I set the alarm clock that has served me well for 20 years to ring at 7:10 am. That would give me time to wake up, ablute, and get to the station by 7:45.

The alarm rang at 5:35 am. I had set the clock correctly: it just malfunctioned. It’s old, and picked today to break down. Half asleep, I got my super-duper, newest model Apple smart-phone, which I have never once used as an alarm clock, unlike its predecessor. To my horror, the alarm-setting controls were completely different from the earlier model, and absurdly complicated. (This made them better, see.) Half- awake, I tried to puzzle out the device’s twists and turns, which involved two screens, a dial-a-time, a pick-a-sound, volume, a damn check mark, and shifting little buttons to indicate a 7: 10 am wake up alarm. The thing had said “no alarm” and now it didn’t say “no alarm,” which I, fool that I am, assumed meant “alarm.” It didn’t, though I have yet to figure out why. I woke up in a panic at 7:55 am.

I threw on some pants, grabbed my wallet and keys and ran out the door, only to see Spuds looking needy standing behind me. So I hooked him up to his leash to let him relieve himself, which he took his own sweet time doing. Deposited my dog, who promptly went upstairs to take over my bed, ran to the car, sped to the station, and arriving at 8:05 am, found two cars ahead of me, meaning instead of 45 minutes stuck in a shopping and restaurant area, I would be stuck for over two hours, which I can’t afford.

So my inspection sticker is still expired, I got only about 5 hours sleep, I still don’t know how to use my smartphone, and I’m considering either beating my face in with a brick or getting a Jason Voorhees hockey mask and a machete as a prelude to a murder spree.

Amaze me with your ethics eloquence, on the off chance I’m still around to read it.

Case Study: Casting Ethics and When Experts Prove They Are Untrustworthy…[Gift Link Added!]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I suppose because the Oscars (that nothing could make me watch again) are coming up, The New York Times, presumably with the help of its movie critics, published a feature called “When Casting Goes Wrong”[Gift Link], purporting to be their picks “from recent decades” of the worst cast movie roles. A new Oscar recognizes the process of matching actor and role—it’s a bad idea, but never mind. My problem is that the list of 14 manages to miss such flagrant, infamous casting botches that it forces me to doubt any future judgments of these alleged film experts.

True: of the films represented on the list that I have seen, the casting choices flagged were indeed terrible. However, the list somehow omitted what had to be the most inexcusable, bizarre, inept and offensive casting decision in Hollywood history: “Hyde Park On Hudson”’s casting of Bill Murray…BILL MURRAY!…as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I wrote about this 2012 fiasco here. An excerpt:

“There is no artistic or historical justification for having Murray play the iconic FDR. All I can hypothesize is that the producers knew that the movie would be a hard sell to anyone under the age of 80, so they decided, “Hey, Boomers love Bill Murray: they’ll pay to see him in anything!” The result is disrespectful to one of our most important leaders, ruinous to the movie (which has other problems), and the antithesis of artistic competence, integrity and responsibility.I watched this thing looking like the audience in “The Producers” after the completion of “Springtime for Hitler,” with my mouth in what Stephen King calls “a rictus of horror.”

“… [Murray] doesn’t speak like Roosevelt, sound like him, carry himself like him, or display his gravitas, power or personality. To me it looked like the actor wasn’t even trying…that, or the role was completely beyond his narrow talents. Did he do any research at all? To be fair, FDR was special, with a magnificent voice, an actor’s mastery of projecting the desired emotional messages, and physically imposing despite his disability. John Voight, an infinitely more talented actor than Murray, still flopped when he tried FDR in “Pearl Harbor” despite being covered in so many layers of latex that he looked a bit like him, or at least a rubber dummy of him…

“I was shocked to see that there were actually critics who praised Murray’s performance. This is one more bit of evidence that critics can’t be trusted. Presumably, these ignoramuses wouldn’t know FDR if he sat in their laps. One critic wrote that Murray “humanized” Franklin. I suppose one could argue that playing one of our most calculating, politically brilliant, ruthless, astute, complex, essential, influential  and towering American historical figures as a clueless, shallow, unengaged and ironic jerk is “humanizing.” I would argue that it’s just irresponsible and defamatory.”

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AI Robocall Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This has to be illegal. If it isn’t, it is certainly unethical.

I got a call this morning with a caller ID that stated it was from a hospital. If I say “hello” and there is an odd pause, usually followed by a telltale <click> and voice saying “Hello?” I hang up immediately. because it’s a robocall. This time, however, there was no click, and a clear, unaccented, assertive voice called out, “Hello!” I was curious, so I responded,”What do you want?” “We’ve been trying to reach you,” the cheerful young woman said. “Have you been made aware of Medicare cash paybacks?” THEN I hung up. I know an AI bot when I hear one.

The problem is, most people over the age of about 40 do not. This one was good, the best I’ve heard yet. Way back in 2015, Ars Technica wrote about the then-new use of interactive robocalls, but that was before the AI revolution. Last night I had been watching a new streaming series starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis in which a character is addicted to conversing with an AI version of her dead wife. These fake people are improving at a logorhythmic rate, and in about a week the non-humans calling me will be undetectable. That doesn’t mean they will be the same as real callers, which means neglecting to announce to an individual that the voice on the other end of the line is AI-generated is fraud, dishonest, a lie, and, of course, unethical.

There needs to be a tough law or regulation against this practice. Now.

The Rest of the Story: CNN’s Abbe Phillip Forced To Issue On Air Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

As chronicled here, CNN’s talking heads lied repeatedly in an attempt to blame the attempted terrorist bombing in New York City on anti-Muslim, right-wing bigots. First Abbe Phillip repeated the Big Lie that had already been proven false, then she deceitfully continued it with a misleading “clarification” on X, and then “The View’s” fake conservative Ana Navarro repeated the fake Axis narrative a day later. The criticism of Phillip’s lie was so loud on social media that CNN apparently told their incompetent (but black and female, so she will be hard to fire) to do an on air apology, so we got this:

Verdict: 1. Too late. 2. Not good enough. She’s still lying.

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