This is an encouraging development. Maybe, just maybe, cumulative arguments like those that appear at Ethics Alarms eventually create positive change by shining light on unethical situations capable of remedy, and forcing lazy, cowardly or inattentive authorities to change course.

It’s nice to think so, anyway.

Spurred by the escalating controversy over the unfair triumphs of transgender Penn swimmer Lia Thomas in NCAA women’s meets, the NCAA announced a crucial change in its policy regarding transgender athletes. The eligibility of  transgender athletes to compete with women will now follow the sport-by-sport model adopted by the U.S. and international Olympic committees.  The new policy goes into effect immediately.

It would seem to mean that Lia, formerly James, will be out of the pool. USA Swimming policies follow the International Olympic Committee, and IOC’s rules state:

“Trans female athletes must demonstrate a total testosterone level in serum below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 consecutive months prior to competition and must remain below this threshold throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category in any event.”

What will happen to all those records Thomas set while hovering somewhere between male and female has not been determined.

I’m sure the NCAA would have been happy to remain blindly woke if it could have gotten away with it. If Ethics Alarms contributed in some tiny way to making sure they didn’t, that’s encouraging.

What would be even more encouraging is if feminists would stand up for the female athletes they fought so hard for, rather than meekly parroting LGTBQ propaganda.

Yes, your eyes don’t deceive you and the photo isn’t doctored. That’s a teacher in one of the elementary schools at the North Penn School District taping a mask to the face of a student. Some quick-fingered fellow student captured the moment and posted it on social media—give THAT student a civic contribution award.

Here’s the self-damning statement about the incident from the North Penn School District: Continue reading →

Would you guess that I had to look at hundreds of “shortcut” graphics before I found a single one that didn’t relate to computers?

This is a dull date in ethics history. One event worthy of ethics note is the so-called “Dean Scream,” when in 2004, Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean ad-libbed a shriek at the end of a enthusiastic pledge to keep fighting all the way to the convention. He had just finished third in the Iowa Caucuses despite being the supposed front-runner for the nomination according to many prognosticators. But all anyone remembered after that January 19 night was the scream, which was played on loops on talk radio and opened Dean up to merciless ridicule. It was very unfair to Dean, of course, but a preview of what was to come in 21st Century politics, where sound bite mockery overwhelmed substantive argument.  Dean was an unqualified, mean-spirited, radical jerk, as he has proven repeatedly since; those qualities should have ended his career in electoral politics, not a momentarily loss of vocal control. This is no way to run a democracy.

I know a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I was curious about whether I felt the same way about the “Dean Scream” when it occurred. So I checked the Ethics Scoreboard, the Ethics Alarm predecessor that operated from 2004 to 2009, and..I did! In 2006, I included this in a longer post about flaming laptops:

Global circulation of bad moments captured on video, audio, or e-mail may not be ethical when it serves no purpose other than to embarrass someone for amusement or to score cheap political points. The Scoreboard has noted such examples as the sleeping cable repairman, Michael Moore’s gleeful use of footage in “Fahrenheit 911” that showed the former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz licking his comb, and the media’s malicious use of the “Dean scream” tape to make Howard Dean look like a lunatic, effectively sinking his presidential bid. Taking an insensitive or uncivil personal e-mail from another and sending it on a world wide tour to humiliate the writer is similarly unethical.

The fact that the nation was fortunate to be rid of Dean (he did later serve as the DNC Chair) is just moral luck.

1. Bias not only makes you stupid, it makes you unqualified to run the FCC. If the President is serious about seeking unity and bipartisanship, why does he keep nominating proto-single-party ideologues like this? His nominee for commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission has repeatedly tweeted her belief that Fox New is a “threat to democracy,” the current code for “dares to oppose progressive policies.” Gigi Sohn was announced as Biden’s FCC nominee in October, and was hyped as  “one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks.” When she was not confirmed in 2021, Biden re-nominated Sohn this month. The nomination is, as they say, DOA, and should be. In one 2019 tweet, Sohn said, 

“I agree that scrutiny of big tech is essential, as is scrutiny of big telecom, cable & media. And trust me, the latter have played their own role in destroying democracy & electing autocrats. Like, say, Fox News?” 

One year later, when another Twitterer complained about social media censoring  posts about the Hunter Biden laptop story, Sohn replied: “So do you still want me to believe that social media is more dangerous to our democracy than Fox News?”

Without Fox News, for all its own biases, crudeness and excesses, broadcast news would be unanimous and relentless progressive and Democratic Party propaganda….and that is just what the Biden Administration wants, apparently. Sohn’s nomination goes right onto the Ethics Alarms list of brazen ways Democrats are attempting to gut democracy while accusing Donald Trump, conservatives and Republicans of threatening it.

2. Sometimes??? Jonathan Chait has a long and overwhelmingly negative rap sheet on Ethics Alarms, but he recently authored a post that bravely countered the prevailing progressive narrative, which I will discuss in a later post. But its title! “Progressives Still Haven’t Reckoned With It. Sometimes you need to own up to an error so it’s not repeated.”

I think the word you’re looking for, Jonathan, is “always” …which means you have a lot of backtracking to do. Continue reading →

I’m sick. I have been for four days now, and I’m no better than was, arguably worse. I hate being sick, in part because I’m not used to it; I don’t get the flu, and lately, I seldom get colds often either—maybe every three of four years. This is a really bad head cold; on the plus side, it looks as if it’s not heading into my chest. If you think my typing is terrible when I’m healthy, you wouldn’t believe how bad it is when I’m sneezing every other letter and over-dosing on Dayquil.

I only mention it because this has been costing Ethics Alarms about a post a day, leading to the current back-up.

1. This is not a promising sign at all…In the Big Apple, mentally ill homeless man Simon Martial pushed 40-year-old consultant Michelle Go in front of an oncoming subway train, than ranted about being God. Crime has been rising on the subways of New York like everywhere else around the city, and the reaction of new mayor Eric Adams to Go’s murder was to tell reporters, “New Yorkers are safe on the subway system. I think it’s about 1.7 percent of the crimes in New York City that occur on the subway system. Think about that for a moment. What we must do is remove the perception of fear.”

Wow, that’s both “It isn’t what it is” (Rationalization #64) AND Authentic Frontier Gibberish. What the heck is “the perception of fear?” And how do you claim that the subways are “safe” after a woman dies there because a man pushes her into a subway train for no reason whatsoever?

2. Paul Begala can top THAT quote….On CNN, the ageless Clinton hack said, “I think the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers.” Bad leaders make bad followers, and good followers don’t accept bad leaders, or if they do, they quickly get corrupted and become bad followers. Paul Begala followed both Clintons. He’s a living rebuttal to his own statement. Continue reading →

What could it be? A recent study by University of Illinois at Chicago researchers found that speed cameras reduced fatal and serious crashes by 15%, but it also found that camera violations, including running red lights, were more likely in Black and brown communities. “The question then became why,” said Stacey Sutton, associate professor of UIC’s Department of Urban Planning and Policy. “Roadway density is different. Population density, there are fewer businesses for people yet so there may be a good propensity to speed in those areas. And that we’re seeing that would explain some of it.” Reporting on same data, Pro Publica notes that “the [Wuhan virus] pandemic widened the ticketing disparities.”

The study along with “disparate impact” reasoning means that somehow the system is racist—you know, systemic racism again. Those racist cameras. Aided and abetted by the virus. Or something.

Continue reading →