The American Bar Association’s Unethical and Partisan Formal Ethics Opinion 524

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The ABA is certainly having a revelatory month. We just witnessed this, and also in July the ABA demonstrated that it is part of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, legal division, by releasing as an alleged “Formal Ethics Opinion” what is nothing of the kind. Formal Ethics Opinion 524 is, in reality, the ABA’s version of the too-clever-by-half video issued by six Democrats calling for troops to defy “illegal orders.” Members of the military know that they have an officially sanctioned obligation to refuse to carry out illegal orders; the video posted last November by Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan was a transparent effort to announce to the American public that the President was likely to issue such orders. There had been no impetus for the video, just the usual anti-Trump slander and libel that he was secretly plotting a military imposition of martial law or some other “authoritarian” maneuver.

To its permanent shame (if I have anything to do with it), the American Bar Association just did the same thing. It is a purely partisan, anti-Trump Administration act, one that exposes the ABA for the untrustworthy, power and influence-abusing organization it has become.

ABA Model Rule 1.13, which every state has adopted more or less as written, explains that lawyers representing organizations, including the government, have an ethical obligation “to report an officer, employee or other person associated with the organization is engaged in action,intends to act, or refuses to act in a matter related to the representation that is a violation of a legal obligation to the organization or a violation of law that reasonably might be imputed to the organization, and that is likely to result in substantial injury to the organization.” If substantial injury is likely to result, in the judgment of the lawyer, Rule 1.13 requires the lawyer initially to “refer the matter to higher authority in the organization,” and, if warranted, to the “highest authority that can act on behalf of the organization as determined by applicable law.” If the highest authority “insists upon or fails to address in a timely and appropriate manner an action or refusal to act that is clearly a violation of law,” and the organization’s lawyer “reasonably believes that the violation is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the organization,” the lawyer “may then reveal information relating to the representation whether or not Rule 1.6 [the confidentiality rule] permits such disclosure” to an authority outside the organizational client. That information may be revealed, however, only “to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary to prevent substantial injury to the organization.”

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Friday Open Forum: The Great Stupid Meets Trump Derangement Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

There is so much crazy and stupid ethics stuff out there I just woke up from a crummy night’s sleep and am exhausted already.

Last night, trying to have an intelligent discussion with a lawyer friend who used to be intelligent, I raised the incident I wrote about yesterday and which I continue to think is an unusually important one for the legal profession today: the ABA’s president refusing to be honest-–in front of cameras and under oath—when asked in a Congressional hearing about its extreme woke positions. My friend started screaming at me, literally screaming, with a “whataboutism” attack: what about Trump, what about Todd Blanche, what about the Supreme Court, what about the ballroom, what about the Kennedy Center. It was scary. I was tempted to have her sedated.

Weird things keep appearing on my screen too. Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has no qualifications whatsoever to be a U.S. Senator (and maiden names don’t count) announced that getting appointed to a position she has no business being in isn’t enough, she now is going to run for a full term. A female sportswriter suggested that WNBA star Caitin Clarke complaining about being mugged on the basketball court by the black lesbians who have virtually put a hit out on her has put them at risk of ending up like Emmit Till. Megan Rapinoe, the over-the-hill women’s soccer star who thinks she has something to contribute to society besides hitting a soccer ball with her head, actually said that President Trump was responsible for the U.S. losing in the World Cup and that opposition to biological men playing women’s sports is “an attack on women in society.”Prof. Turley has a post up about how Democrats are now referring to belief in the Constitution as “nostalgia.” The Secret Service has opened more than 10,000 threat investigations this year, which is 40% increase from the same period last year. Yesterday Whoopie Goldberg, on ABC’s “news ” show “The View,” ended the program by ranting, “We need to get out and make changes, because we need to block [Trump’s Presidency] every way we can! That’s all. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.Don’t wait until November. Start looking now.” That is a pure violation of FCC rules, and if the FCC dared to act on it, we would be hearing about Trump trying to censor the press.

But by all means, write about what you want to.

This cheered me up yesterday for about 30 seconds…

Unethical Tweet of the Month: This Is Why You Can’t Have An Intelligent Discussion With These People…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

You have to truly be a blind ideologue to proudly post something this blazingly stupid on social media.

Let’s begin with the pairing of a trans pride flag with the Palestinian flag…the poster is irony-challenged. Jade then pronounces conservatives incurious, a contention that she doesn’t bother to support. I, for one, am curious how dedicated progressives continue to maintain scientific, legal and economic nonsense despite year after year of being embarrassed by their policies.

Then the tweet really gets rolling. Thoughtful people and ethicists believe abortion is “bad” because it involves ending a human life for the convenience of another human who is more powerful. The act would still be the same—homicide—if the Bible had no perspective on the matter at all. Similarly, we don’t believe theft is wrong because the Ten Commandments say so, but because civilization couldn’t exist if it weren’t prohibited.

It is something of an accomplishment that each of the three declarations is more moronic than the one before. “Immigrants are bad because Fox News said so” is a masterpiece of dishonesty and confusion. First of all, no one among conservatives says “immigration is bad.” Presumably Jade means illegal immigrants, but is so addled by the deceitful rhetoric of the Axis of Unethical Conduct that she doesn’t know the difference. I’m surprised she isn’t curious about that.

No, illegal immigrants are bad because they are breaking the law, and breaking the law is almost always bad by definition. Fox News doesn’t need to say so: statutes say so, court opinions say so, experience and common sense says so, Kant says so, Dostoevsky says so, and Hammurabi says so.

And yet the last line still wins the Ignoramus Blue Ribbon. Capitalism is good, not because Ronald Reagan said so, but because capitalism has, over the last 250 years, made the United States of America the richest, most productive, most influential and most creative nation on Earth, with the highest standard of living, the most innovation and the greatest number of contributions to civilization over that period.

You can’t argue with someone who posts nonsense like this. Well, you can, but I won’t. Jade complains about conservatives being incurious, but is so doctrinaire that she doesn’t have enough curiosity herself to check facts and history to find out if she knows what the hell she is talking about.

And she doesn’t.

(Inside) Baseball Ethics: Changing a Rule Without Telling Anyone

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I know people skip my baseball posts, but let’s look at the principle involved. Baseball’s umpires just changed how a rule was being enforced without telling anyone. It’s like double secret probation (if you don’t know the reference, you should). It’s unethical.

Baseball’s pitch-clock rule, which has shaved more than a ha;lf hour off of average game times, isn’t juist for pitchers. “Batters must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the 8-second mark or else be charged with an automatic strike.”Alert to the pitcher means looking at him. In June, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider criticized the habit of Yankees shortstop José Caballero, when he bats, waits until the last possible second to look up at the pitcher. It is widely believed that he does this to annoy pitchers. It works.

This week, Pirates pitcher Dennis Santana appeared to start his wind-up with nine seconds on the pitch clock and Caballero still looking down at his feet. The umpire stopped play to warn Santana he had to wait for eye contact. The pitcher was angry, and after Cabellero grounded out, Santana made a kissy-face at him. Benches cleared as Cabellero shouted back and the two seemed about to come to blows.

In the first game of the Yankees-Pirates doubleheader yesterday, Caballero did his usual last second act but this time was called for a pitch-clock violation. In the video, umpire Quinn Wolcott says to the Yankee player: “You don’t get to do the ‘three, four seconds in the box’ thing anymore.” “I was looking up at nine seconds,” Caballero replies. “You’re picking on me!”

Indeed he was. That near brawl, writers were told, prompted MLB to tell umpires to crack down. “It’s not allowed anymore,” umpire Adrian Johnson explained. “It was the cause of a benches-clearing situation on Monday night. Major League Baseball stepped in. They want it enforced.” Part of the rule prohibits “conduct by batters designed to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position.” Even though for years umpires have accepted that Cabellero’s late look up was just his way of getting ready for a pitch, they reversed themselves without warning the player.

(Caballero’s) been warned all season,” Johnson said. “We were instructed not to warn him. We were instructed to violate him. That’s what it is. It’s a violation.”

Caballero argues, “(The umpire) said they were making new rules today, and it’s on me, because I was deceiving to the pitcher, which doesn’t make sense because, for me … deceiving means you’re trying to trick someone, and I’m not trying to trick someone, because I do the same thing over and over. If you’re gonna make a change of the rule, at least (notify) us before the game.”

All but the last part is ethically debatable. If Cabellero’s routine does confuse and annoy pitchers, and he certainly knows that, then whether his routine was originally devised to deceive pitchers or not, it does deceive them and he keeps doing it anyway.

Changing how a rule is going to be enforced without telling players that, however, is indefensible.

‘Nah, The Smithsonian Isn’t Run By A Woke, Fanatic, Anti-American Cabal!’

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Earlier this week, EA discussed how Rep. Brandon Gill exposed the horrifying wokey nonsense the head of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has inflicted on the museum during her tenure. It turns out that I was too kind, and that this silly, biased and indoctrinated woman is even more intolerable than I thought.

Before she was eviscerated by Gill, Rep. Tim Burchette’s introduction was res ipsa loquitur stuff, so inherently damning that further questioning of Anthea Hartig was unnecessary. The pièce de résistance comes at the 1;35 mark, when we get a montage of Hartig dutifully giving prayer-like “land acknowledgment” grovels to Native American activists. The list is long, but near the top of mockery-requiring leftist rituals that mark practitioners as unworthy of trust, power or responsibility has to be these ahistorical claims that the United States is an illegitimate sovereignty built on “stolen lands.”

It is bad history, bad law and bad logic, transparent virtue signaling to those who don’t know what virtue is. If someone is really so shattered by working and living on “stolen lands” nothing stops such an addled individual from tracking down some member of the Patawippumkokavackimminy tribe and handing over the keys to his or her home. Hartig won’t do that, of course, because she’s either a hypocrite, a pandering fake or more likely both.

Believing it is appropriate for a representative of the U.S.’s national museum to begin every speech or public appearance emphasizing one of our nation’s two alleged “original sins” as if that is the defining feature of the nation should have marked Hartig for swift removal long ago—in fact, how did such a fool get hired in the first place? I can on;y conclude that it is because her political party likes anti-Americanism and wants our country to be seen as a villain, not just by the rest of the world, but by its own citizens.

Another post script on presentation skills: I hate to keep harping on this, but people whose living involves communication have an obligation to learn how to communicate. Burchette is terrible; I found it hard to focus on his content, so annoying was his vocal placement, droning tone and lack of engagement with the camera. Again, this isn’t hard to fix; all it requires is the will to fix it. I resent having to listen to public figures like Burchette. He is either too lazy or stupid to make an effort to help people understand and focus on what he is saying.

“A Nelson” For Wisconsin Democrats: They Championed Early Voting and It Just Blew Up In Their Faces, So Now They Want a Do-Over

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Because, as EA keeps explaining, Democrats cheat.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin this week sent a letter to state elections commissioners begging them to immediately rescind the rule that bars absentee voters from requesting a new ballot if their preferred candidate drops out. Awww. Did Democrats get hoisted by their own petard again? Wonderful! I love it.

Three weeks ago, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the Democratic primary for Wisconsin Governor and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. She dropped out last week after her campaign imploded. So Wisconsin Democrats begged Crowley to get back into the race because he may be their only hope to derail Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong, who is leading in the polls because there are a lot of dumb people in Wisconsin. Not enough, however, for Hong to win in the general election.

But there is a problem, you see. By law, early voting in Wisconsin cannot begin more than 14 days prior to the election, which means early voting begins on Tuesday, July 28, for the August 11 primary. But thousands of voters have already requested and returned absentee ballots, and many presumably included votes for Sara Rodriguez or David Crowley before they dropped out of the race. Once again, as they did with Graham Platner and before that with Joe Biden, Democrats are engaged in an effort to replace a candidate their voters had supported in the usual nominating process when the party becomes convinced that candidate will lose.

Democrats and progressive love early voting. More mail-in ballots, more chain of custody problems, more opportunities to harvest votes and engage in untraceable voter fraud. They also prefer early voting because it favors knee-jerk, low-information voters who vote along party lines down the ballot without knowing anything else about who they are voting for.If late developing news, debate disasters and scandals engulf Democratic candidates, the votes are already in. Universal early voting is bad for democracy, civic responsibility and election integrity, which is why the practice should only be permitted under special circumstances, but never mind: the Left argues that it increases voter access when it really increases opportunities to cheat.

Hong, in 2020, said she supported “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.” After a police-involved shooting this week when a perp with a knife resisted arrest and was shot (black perp, naturally, because there are protests), Hong reiterated that bonkers position.

The ABA’s President Displays Why Every Non-Lawyer Doesn’t—and Shouldn’t— Trust Lawyers

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“This is embarrassing,” Rep. Brandon Gill said, as Michelle A. Behnke ( from Madison, Wisconsin—of course she is), the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, was infuriatingly evasive and displayed nauseating hypocrisy and dishonesty as Rep. Brandon Gill questioned her regarding DEI, bias and discrimination. It was embarrassing, for Democrats, progressives, fans of permanent anti-white discrimination, members of the ABA (the largest American bar association, which I refuse to join expressly because of the organization’s lack of integrity ) so flamingly displayed by Behnke, and especially all lawyers. How can the public trust a “profession” that allows such a shifty, pusillanimous, dishonest individual to represent it by leading its members’ largest and most prestigious organization?

I say this as a legal ethicist: It can’t.

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The Horror. The President Is Putting Statues Of Founders In The Rose Garden

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

President Donald Trump had a statue of Thomas Jefferson placed in the Rose Garden last week, bringing to five the number of sculptures he has added this year. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, and a sculpture honoring Revolutionary War soldiers preceded the one honoring our third President and the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Naturally the Washington Post is sneering at the project, even going to the trouble of finding an expert, Maxwell Anderson, the former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, to sniff that the statues statues are of “negligible artistic value.” You know, not like the Obama Presidential Library…

…or the obscene thing supposedly representing the Kings embracing

…or the King Memorial, which makes me think of Han Solo hanging on Jabba the Hutt’s wall.

The Jefferson statue is of “negligible artistic value” because President Trump selected it, just as the Reflecting Pool upgrade has to be mocked and sabotaged because it is this President’s project. Trump Derangement is pure Cognitive Dissonance Scale craziness: the President’s endorsement of dogs—fortunately he is the only POTUS in memory who hasn’t put a dog in the White House as a political prop—would have much of the Left siding with Mamdani’s anti-canine Muslims.

The statues are also irritants to the Axis and pals because the Rose Garden sculptures that arrived before Tom’s are on loan from Harland Crow, the conservative billionaire who has lavished gifts on Clarence Thomas. That’s also cognitive dissonance at work where it doesn’t belong. The owner of artwork has no relevance to the quality of the art, just as the character of the artist is irrelevant to any assessment of the artist’s work. There should be nothing controversial about the White House honoring patriots and Founders on its grounds, and there isn’t. No Chief Executive in our history has been so absurdly attacked over non-substantive matters. President Trump’s real offense is that he dared to persevere into the headwinds of presumed leftist dominance and prevailed. How dare he?

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Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Minnesota Star Tribune”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

As promised, I am posting the second half of the Ryan Harkins Comment of the Day double-header. This one is an analysis of the revolting Minnesota debacle that had “Knucklehead” Tim Walz pardon a confessed child rapist on the flimsiest of justifications to allow the man to escape deportation, whereupon he was deported anyway. [Is Vang wearing pajamas in that photo? I guess it’s a practical choice for a rapist…] Then Minnesota’s spectacularly incompetent governor complained that no one should suffer because of their “worst day” (the man had repeatedly raped the same girl for years), and was applauded by the state’s biggest newspaper for “standing behind” his indefensible pardon. Walz also implied that the ultimate deportation lacked “due process.”

At the risk of hitch-hiking on Ryan’s post, that last issue is one I find especially perplexing. The Biden Administration deliberately refused to enforce our immigration laws, flooding the nation with so many illegal immigrants that the procedures in place for finding and deporting them were bound to be ineffective, too expensive, too time-consuming, too much of a burden on the courts, and sure to inflame public opinion, making the necessary response politically impractical. It was, progressives thought, a fait accompli, silently accompanied by gloating and mockery. “Sure we ignored the law, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, so there!”

I believe that it was crucial to do something about it, and if it took a uniquely bold and defiant President willing to bend procedures, process, the law and public tolerance to accomplish an important mission, that is what Presidential power is for. Our best Presidents were willing to take matters right up to previously uncrossable lines and sometimes over them, and the Trump Administration commitment to dealing with the illegal immigrant avalanche is in the tradition of Jackson, Lincoln, FDR and Eisenhower at their best.

Sure it’s a slippery slope, and of course Democrats are indignant that their plot is being foiled. Nevertheless, I believe the President has to have the power to do what is in the best interests of the nation when situations arise that the usual processes can’t handle.

Here is Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on the post, “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Minnesota Star Tribune“:

***

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Ethics Dunces: Any Conservative Who Says “Joe McCarthy Was Right.”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Today Stephen Kruiser, a conservative gadfly, began his daily with “The GOP Midterm Theme Should Be ‘Joe McCarthy Was Right'” and later writes, “Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media are… still badmouthing Joe McCarthy after seven decades and he was right about everything.”

That is offensive and ignorant. Ann Coulter has made similar claims over the years. Joe McCarthy was right about just one thing: there were Communists and communist sympathizers in the U.S. government then and there probably are now. He was wrong in his methods, he was dishonest in his tactics, he was hostile to freedom of speech and freedom of thought, he was an anti-Semite and an anti-gay bigot, he weaponized guilt by association, and his response to criticism or opposition was exactly the same as so many minority politicians and women like Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reflexively respond to opposition today. They cry “Racist!” or “Sexist!” Joe cried “Communist sympathizer!” It’s the same tactic.

Senator McCarthy waved papers in the air that he said contained confirmed Communists, but never revealed the names. The consensus is that the papers were probably blank. He wanted all homosexuals fired from sensitive positions because they were, he said, vulnerable to blackmail by Communist agents seeking to recruit them to undermine the United States. (So was being an alcoholic, like Joe.) He cynically exploited Cold War tensions to build his political influence and power, and aligned himself with the same forces in the nation that created blacklists.

McCarthy was the epitome of the patriotic demagogue. “McCarthyism,” which denotes the practice of wielding unsubstantiated accusations and the defamation of political opponents through calculated fear-mongering, was a fair description of the Senator’s methods, and is a perfect description of what the Left’s Axis of Unethical Conduct has been practicing since 2016. You know, like…

Extolling Joe McCarthy, an all-time Ethics Villain and a blight on our political history, is as repulsive as defending Graham Platner, Tim Walz or New York’s Mayor Mamdani. It is historically and ethically ignorant.

Post Script: As much as I view “iconic” Washington Post cartoonist Herb Block as an over-rated partisan hack, he certainly had Joe McCarthy pegged early on. “Herblock” habitually portrayed McCarthy with a bucket of tar and a dripping paint brush, a vivid image of his methods.