I’m traveling again today, so once more I’m asking readers to keep the ethics fires burning by taking over the blog and engaging with each other on whatever ethics-related issues and current events that come to mind. Several blogs I frequent do this regularly, and in most cases the exercise has devolved into nonsense or worse in short order. Nothing like that has happened here, and it is a credit to the quality of active participants here that I’ve never seen any hint of that.
If I were on the open forum today, I’d probably want to discuss Bernie’s heart procedure (reminding us that 70-plus-year old Presidential candidates may not be responsible); the statement by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez that “billionaires should not exist”—nah, she’s not a Communist!—and the not-so-surprisng news that Rep. Schiff coordinated with the whistleblower before his complaint was filed.
But that’s just me.
That does lead me to my idea, however. For an Ethics Alarms project, I would like to launch a separate website dedicated to presenting all of the relevant news, evidence and commentary regarding the Democratic Party/ “resistance” impeachment efforts. This would be a non-partisan site where citizens could be informed regarding this fiasco without news media spin and hype. I can’t do this alone, however, so a condition precedent to going forward will be finding two or more partners to assist with the site.
If you are interested, please contact me off site at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Chuck Todd, a representative of the side of the aisle that has demanded the end of the Electoral College, hinted at ending the Senate for it’s unequal representation, and called for expanding and packing the Supreme Court under the next Democrat administration, has now declared that Trump is directly attacking the rules that govern our democracy.
You can’t make this stuff up.
A) Principal and security guard should be in jail, based on the video evidence.
B) Superintendent should be fired for not immediately removing the principal and security guard from the school.
I read about this and agree with you wholeheartedly.
Not an ethics subject in the slightest, but the volume of replies for this one made me think of it.
Jack- Would it be possible in the Blog’s current form to put a “collapse” function in the comments? A clickable item in each comment that would hide everything nested under it? Because when skimming through the comments to follow a discussion it would be very handy to click “collapse” and hide the 20-comment digression in the middle of a conversation thread, or in posts like this or the warm ups to click “collapse” and hide the lengthy discussion on Issue A rather than scrolling a mile down the page to find comments on Issue B.
(For an example of what I mean you could check out the comments at the Ask A Manager blog, which I also read regularly).
I have limited control over the features WordPress provides. I’ve looked for some way to do this…iy might be in a “widget” somewhere. It’s a good idea, and I’ll keep looking.
New question:
What do we think of the judge in the Amber Guyger trial giving her a hug and a bible after the victim’s brother did so? For me, the brother demonstrated an amazing state of grace and forgiveness, especially from an 18 year old. I am not sure I could have done so at 18.
As for the judge, she crossed the line and breached her duty of impartiality.
jvb
I’m inclined to agree. It’s the reverse side of Michigan’s Judge Rosemary Aquilina verbally dancing on the grave of Larry Nassar during his sentencing, gloating that she was sentencing him to die in prison. I wouldn’t say Judges should be compassionless, but we shouldn’t be seeing them making displays of which defendants they feel more or less sorry for in an ideal world.
This would be grounds for the prosecution to appeal the sentence.
It sounds like a bit of a revival broke out and the judge got swept up in it. I find that beautiful, but also a breach of duty, at the same time. I wonder if it will be enough for her to apologize and promise that it won’t happen again.
She did, although doing so in conjunction with a pretty tough sentence means that she’ll get no grief about it professionally. A really stupid thing to do, though.
Agreed. I thought that, while good-intentioned, it messed with the barrier between the court and the litigants. You know what they say about the road to Hell, eh?
jvb