Month: January 2013

The Montgomery County Finger-Gun Massacre of 2013: Who Didn’t See THIS Coming?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

And speaking of the Curmies…

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if finger's that can be be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can't be right...

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if fingers that can be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can’t be right…Stop me when we made our kids dumb enough…

Take post-Sandy Hook hysteria, add school no-tolerance idiocy, mix well in one of the most knee-jerk liberal communities in the nation, and what do you get?

A six-year-old in Maryland’s Montgomery County suspended from school for making a finger and thumb gun gesture, of course.

The NBC story concentrates on  “whether the boy understands the implications of the gesture.” What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.

This is, in order of importance,

  1. Child abuse. This young boy is being treated like a wrongdoer because the adults around him are acting like babies. Will they suspend him for making really scary faces next? Biting his pizza slice into threatening shapes?
  2. Proof of incompetence on the part of the school administrators. Why incompetence? They are stupid, that’s why. Only certifiably stupid people would think it is fair, sensible or reasonable to punish a First-grader for making a gesture kids have been making on playgrounds for hundreds of years, without a single casualty.
  3. Why many people lose respect for anti-gun zealots early in life. They forfeit all respect by acting like ninnies.

The dismaying aspect of this is ridiculous episode is that it has happened before in other schools, and clearly the message wasn’t sent clearly enough to the previous offenders–that is, the fools who victimized innocent children for miming, drawing or otherwise suggesting guns—that this kind of conduct is a career-ender. It should be; it has to be. Such irrational fearfulness, bad judgment, panic, disregard for the sensibilities of the young, lack of proportion and brain dysfunction forfeits all right to trust, and such fools must not be allowed to have power over young bodies and minds.

UPDATE: The school rescinded the suspension.

Unethical Quote of the Week: House Speaker John Boehner

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“Go fuck yourself!”

—House Speaker John Boehner to a surprised Senator Harry Reid last week at the White House, apparently in response to Reid’s comments to reporters that Boehner was “a dictator.”

If Boehner is going to talk like that, we might as well have Ron Burgundy as Speaker. At least he's funny.

If Boehner is going to talk like that, we might as well have Ron Burgundy as Speaker. At least he’s funny.

Stay classy, Mr. Speaker.

Admittedly, there are few individuals on Capitol Hill more deserving of such a rebuke than Sen. Reid, but Speaker Boehner is obligated not to be the agent delivering it. Such personal incivility is inexcusable no matter how insulted Boehner felt, and no matter how high tensions were running during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Americans should expect their elected officials to conduct themselves with the dignity, honor and civility their positions demand. When they stoop to vulgarity and pure invective, they not only disgrace themselves, but also shame their high offices, the institutions in which they serve, and the nation. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“And, by the way, I’ve gotten some pushback in email and on the web  saying that it was “shameful” and “appalling” for me to tie Clinton’s health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I’ve been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I’m glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That’s how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.”

—- Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse

I know I’ve been citing Prof. Althouse a lot lately, but she’s been on quite a roll. Her quote is self-explanatory. Brava!

UPDATE: Right after I posted this, I read Kathleen Parker’s Washington Post column headlined “The Character Assassination of Hillary Clinton.” In it, Parker essentially makes exactly the objection that Althouse says she hates. Continue reading →

Ethics Mess In Kansas: The Lesbians and the Sperm Donor

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
The parents in happier days

The parents in happier days

Auto mechanic William Marotta must rue the day he responded to a Craigslist ad placed by Angela Bauer and her life partner Jennifer Schreiner. They were seeking a sperm donor, for the obvious reasons, and he had sperm to donate. The trio then signed a contract in which all agreed that Marotta would have no rights to any child his sperm spawned, nor future responsibilities regarding the child’s care. Schreiner was artificially inseminated and conceived, making her the child’s mother, as Bauer stepped into the role of the child’s father. Exit Marotta forever, with thanks.

Or so he thought. Continue reading →

Cast Your Vote For The 2012 Curmie Award, Honoring The Worst In Education!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Teacher, blogger, deep thinker and Ethics Alarms combatant Rick Jones launched his annual Curmie Award last year, bestowed on the person or institution who most embarrasses the profession of education, on his superb blog, Curmudeon Central. Most of Rick’s Curmie nominees would have to be called ethics miscreants, and indeed several of them were featured on Ethics Alarms, so I asked Rick if I could present his nomination to the Ethics Alarms community and invite you to vote on this year’s winner. Here are Rick’s finalists, with his commentary and links to his posts about them. (Note: the link is the same with many of them, as several of the ultimate nominees were first exposed in the same, epic post. And you think I write long blog entries…) Rick writes of his criteria:

“I have tried to weigh a variety of factors: the egregiousness of the offense on its face, the extent to which it might be portentous of further bad things to come, any sense of particular injustice (punishment of the innocent or even of the heroic, for example), the degree to which the Curmie-worthy outrage might have been a spur-of-the-moment outburst rather than a deliberate act, any mitigating circumstances, whether the problem seems to have been appropriately addressed, whether the case looks a lot like a different nominee, etc.”

Now here are his nominees (in Rick’s words): Continue reading →

Hollywood’s Ridiculous Hypocrisy on Guns

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
"Say hello to my little friend! And while we're on the topic of guns, don't you think it's time to be sensible about gun control?"

“Say hello to my little friend! And while we’re on the topic of guns, don’t you think it’s time to be sensible about gun control?”

In a move stunningly unconscious to outrageous hypocrisy, the group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” have posted a video on on its website and Youtube (of course), featuring an impressive array of solemn Hollywood celebrities chiding Americans for not doing something about guns “yesterday” and to “demand a plan” to end gun violence. The problem? Many of these same celebrities owe their presence on the video to Hollywood’s obsession with gun violence, without which they would be just anonymous pretty faces. They owe their mansions and private planes to that gun violence too, which they have happily, willfully and lucratively acted out in scores of violent films and television shows. How can they presume, given how they make their living, to lecture anyone on the topic of guns?

I have some theories. Many of them are dumb as bricks. Most of them are automatic co-signers of the manifesto for any cause branded as liberal, the Hollywood religion,and don’t bother to think about whether it is consistent with their life choices or not. Probably all of them, working every day in one of the most ethics-free, cut-throat, dishonest and hypocritical sub-cultures that has ever existed in the United States are completely numb to the concept of hypocrisy, as apparently are the mayors, who work in the culture of politics, which is only somewhat better. Continue reading →

Professional Discipline For Unethical Law School Deans?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Why not?

What the North Carolina Bar considers a trustworthy lawyer...

What the North Carolina Bar considers a trustworthy lawyer…

Law professor Ben Trachtenberg has caused a stir by suggesting in a law review article for the University of Missouri Law School Journal  that law school administrators responsible for intentional and egregious misrepresentations in advertising for their schools have violated the professional ethics codes and could, and should, face discipline, such as disbarment.

I don’t want to cause Nando a fatal cognitive dissonance attack, really I don’t, but I agree with the professor wholeheartedly. I have long believed that the Model Rules prohibition of dishonesty in Rule 8.4 should be applied to lawyer conduct not related to the practice of law more frequently and stringently than it is. Lawyers, for their own protection, are fond of the fictional Clinton myth that one can be an upright and trustworthy lawyer while displaying deceitful and dishonest conduct in their “personal lives,” as if lawyers are ethically schizophrenic. The proof: John Edwards still has his license.

The law school deans that Trachtenberg targets, however, don’t get the benefit of this pass. They are lawyers who were dishonest in their professional duties that, while not requiring a law license, have a clear impact on the legal profession.  Trachtenberg writes,

“In light of the common application of Rule 8.4(c) to lawyers who engage in dishonesty unconnected with the practice of law, there is little doubt that dishonest law school marketing conducted by members of the bar justifies professional discipline. Paul Pless lied repeatedly, over a period of years, about the quality of incoming students at the University of Illinois College of Law, deceiving the ABA and U.S. News, along with prospective students and others who relied on statistics they compiled.191 Mark Sargent conspired with colleagues to engage in similar conduct at Villanova.192 Can anyone dispute that these men engaged in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”? Surely serial dishonesty—committed with the purpose of gaming the rankings used by prospective students deciding whether and where to spend tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars—is at least as serious a violation as falsifying a resume and transcript.”

Sure it is. As with Edwards, however, the profession is unlikely to be willing to expand the range of activities by lawyers outside of actual practice that will trigger discipline. Continue reading →