Month: April 2022

Ethics Wrap-Up: Stupid Confirmation Tricks

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Marx said that history begins as tragedy and ends up as face. Let’s begin with a farce. Here was the headline of a Washington Post Op-Ed today: “The Senate Judiciary Committee mistreated Judge Jackson. I should know.” The author: Anita Hill, the Democratic lawyer and former staffer of Clarence Thomas who ambushed the then-SCOTUS nominee and accused him of unverifiable sexual harassment (for example, she said he once made a joke about a pubic hair on a Coke can in a meeting!), smearing and embarrassing him on national TV. In this latest screed, she’s not analogizing Thomas’s treatment by Democrats to that of Republicans attacking Jackson. It’s the criticism of herself for turning those 1991 hearings into a circus she thinks is telling, for she is black, and…wait, Thomas is also black, and he, like Jackson, was being considered before America for the highest court in the land. But Hill’s a black woman, see, so that justifies the column’s thesis, apparently. She’s a law professor, and that’s the quality of her analogy skills. Let’s hope Judge Jackson is better.

Hill has been making a living off of her unethical attempt to derail Thomas’s career for over 30 years. The only fair response to her at this point is, “Shut up, Anita.”  But at least she made me laugh.

Now that we’ve checked the funny papers, back to the news:

The Senate today confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, with three Republicans adding their support to the unanimous Democratic block, making the vote 53-47.

Ethics observations: Continue reading →

“Diversity And Inclusion,” Georgetown Style

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This story combines many Ethics Alarms themes of late: Georgetown University’s ethics corruption, progressive racial discrimination, woke hypocrisy, and, of course, The Great Stupid.

Georgetown’s Campus Ministry has scheduled to two events specifically for black students.  First is an online “Black Hoya Meditation” tomorrow, advertised as a gathering “grounded in belonging and centered on healing and wellness.”

Isn’t “belonging” the opposite of “inclusion” when it is limited my color or group membership? “Healing” from what? Presumably from all the white supremacy-inflicted carnage. Or something Continue reading →

From The “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring” Files: The Sarah Lawrence College Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

For “don’t ring,” maybe substituting “don’t exist” would be appropriate. I question the competence and sanity of any parent who would allow their child to attend Sarah Lawrence College after this.

You can read the details of the astounding story here and here, but I’m not especially interested in the evil Larry Ray, who was just convicted in New York on 15 counts including extortion, forced labor, sex trafficking, obstruction of justice, and various financial crimes, and faces life in prison. Nobody needs an ethicist to explain that his conduct was unethical (I hope!). I’m interested in this [From the Washington Post]:

After a federal securities fraud conviction, charges related to a custody dispute and a bail-jumping case, Ray was released from a stint behind bars in 2010.He began living at his daughter Talia’s dorm suite at Sarah Lawrence, a private liberal arts college in Westchester County, just north of New York City. There, he encountered Talia’s roommates and injected himself into their lives. Ray cooked meals and hosted late-night chats for the college sophomores, promising them he could help them lead “better, more honest lives…He told them that he had special training that could help them gain clarity and discipline…He said if they shared their deepest feelings with him, he could help resolve their problems…

Claudia Drury was 19 when she met Ray at the dorm suite called Slonim Woods 9. She testified that after drawing her into his orbit, Ray eventually physically abused her. At the same time, she said, he convinced Drury that she had tried to poison him and owed him huge sums of money as a result.

Eventually, Drury told jurors, she worked four years as a prostitute, meeting clients in hotel rooms and paying Ray $10,000 to $50,000 per week. In 2018, she said, Ray suffocated her with a plastic bag after she told a regular client that his name was on a website Ray created to post embarrassing and damaging information he could use to control her.

Continue reading →

Wait…WHICH Side Of The Ideological Divide Is A Threat To Democratic Institutions Again?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

This is so outrageous that even after three cups of coffee I don’t know what to call it. Pathological hypocrisy? Playing with metaphorical matches in a kerosene factory? Prime Great Stupid? Help me out here.

In reaction to a relatively obscure 5-4 Supreme Court decision yesterday, numerous woke journalists and pundits went bonkers and argued that President Biden should just defy the ruling, you know, like Andrew Jackson did when he supposedly said, after the Court (correctly) ruled against his position in Worcester v. Georgia, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”

More about that later.

The Supreme Court yesterday temporarily reinstated a Trump environmental policy that made it harder for states to block projects that could cause water pollution. The opinion, on the so-called “emergency docket” that allows the Court to rule on urgent matters without hearing an oral argument, was unsigned and without any written explanation (so much for Justice Barrett’s “Read the opinion” remarks) prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to join the court’s three left-leaning justices in criticizing the majority’s use of the emergency docket, or as critics call it, the shadow docket.” The particulars of the case don’t matter; what does matter is the Left’s nascent totalitarians in the news media calling for direct defiance.

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Observations On The Unethical Tweet Of The Month”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Michael West’s Comment of the Day was less a commentary on  a post than an observation triggered by it. There’s been a lot of lawyer-style analysis around here of late, so it’s high time for an engineer’s perspective—in some respects the reverse of the legal problem-solving method–  to be highlighted, in reaction to the post, “Observations On The Unethical Tweet Of The Month.”

***

Science is a wonderful thing. The rise of empiricism as a practiced discipline by professionals from it’s rudimentary roots in ancient philosophy has allowed mankind the ability to learn beyond his superstitious ancestor’s imaginations. And combined with that human imagination – the knowledge gained by science has empowered us to manipulate, to engineer, incredible solutions to direct problems as well as reduce mere inconveniences and discomforts to non-entities.

Scientists and engineers, by merely studying a problem, determining predictable laws that govern the interactions within problems and using that knowledge to develop a solution, opened up the power of man’s intellect.

But therein lies another problem. We think we can engineer, we can manipulate our way to solve everything. We think we’ve studied the factors going into a problem so thoroughly that we know the right solution. I’m an architect, and we have a saying – “A problem thoroughly defined is more that half-solved”. By “defined”, we mean, researched, studied, determined our constraints and our opportunities. Very rapidly, in the design process – the more we spend in studying the problem the more our options are narrowed down to one or two appropriate solutions. Soon, the solution presents itself. Continue reading →

And Now For Something Completely Stupid: “Cracker Jill”

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

The Great Stupid obviously know no bounds.

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay has announced that “Cracker Jills” is now an official product, because popcorn and peanuts are obviously the way to celebrate women  in sports. The snack will be available in ballparks, and as part of the pandering exercise, PepsiCo will donate $200,000 Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF).

Cracker Jills are no different in substance than the 125-year old classic Cracker Jack snacks, but the packages features five different representations of women on the special-edition bags. They represent the most populous ethnicities  in the U.S. according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, because just representing just one woman to stand for all would be racist, or “exclusive” or something. Continue reading →

Pre-Baseball Season Ethics Warm-Up, 4/6/2022 (Before I Am Distracted For the Next 7 Months)

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The 2022 baseball season starts tomorrow; the Boston Red Sox will play the New York Yankees. This will elevate my mood and lessen my stress until the ned of October, absent unforeseen disasters. It will also provide yet undetermined fodder for ethics posts, for baseball is and ever has been an ethics cornucopia with relevance to the rest of the culture and society. I’ve often considered starting a baseball ethics blog—there isn’t one— but even fewer people would read that blog than this one.

1. The Times spreads misinformation about the Wuhan virus while accusing a doctor of spreading misinformation about the Wuhan virus. Apparently the news media fearmongering about the pandemic will never end. In a front page article earlier this week, the Times told readers that the virus and its close family members have “now killed nearly one million people in the United States.” That’s an inflated figure, how much so we may never know. It does not distinguish between those who died from the virus and those who died with the virus” to the CDC, which set out to maximize fear of the infection so the government could take liberty-squelching measures and get away with it. The next day, the Times had another front page article that provided clues to the previous article’s deliberate deceit: “Covid and Diabetes, Colliding in a Public Health Train Wreck.“ A married couple both got the virus; the woman recovered easily, the man is now confined to a wheelchair. He has diabetes, and the article tells us ” several studies suggest that 30 to 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred among people with diabetes.” Other studies find that that being obese my triple the likelihood of death during the pandemic. Here is the photo from the article:

I find the comparison with how the news media handled AIDs in the 80s fascinating. AID crippled the immune system, and sufferers were often killed by opportunistic infections that they would have fought off before acquiring the HIV virus. Yet these people were always described as AID victims, and their names added to the list of those who had perished “from” AIDS. But when a Wuhan virus infection adds to the health risks of diabetes or obesity, it’s the virus that gets credit for the death—because that’s what the the new media wants the public to fear. Continue reading →

“When Ethics Fails, The Law Steps In”…Or In This Case, Technology

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

That’s part of a feature from a 1920’s magazine about how catchers and pitchers communicate regarding pitch selection in baseball. (I had Earl Smith on one of my favorite Strat-O-Matic teams, the 1922 Giants!) Trying to steal signs so a batter would know what pitch was coming—a huge advantage—was long part of the game and considered legal and fair, as long as the efforts came on the field. Once a team started using  spies in the stands and secret relay systems not involving players, the practice became unethical.

In 2017, as exhaustively discussed here in these posts, the Houston Astros used a technology-assisted system of sign stealing to win their division, the American League play-offs, and the World Series. It was one of the three most significant scandals in the history of the sport, trailing only the Black Sox World Series fixing plot in 1919 and the steroid scandal on the Nineties. Baseball, as a sport that values continuity and nostalgia, hates to change, but as with its acceptance of replay challenges to over-turn bad calls by umpires, the sport cannot pretend that technology hasn’t rendered some aspects of the game obsolete. There are too many ways to use technology to steal signs now.

Major League Baseball, following the Ethics Alarms motto that when ethics fails, the law steps in (and usually makes a mess of things), tightened its rules and penalties for illegal sign-stealing, but wisely recognized that rules wouldn’t be enough. Baseball managers, coaches and player are not known for well-functioning ethics alarms, and the financial benefits of cheating can be substantial: several Astros players had spectacular years at the plate in 2017 far beyond what they achieved before or since. All of them are many millions richer for it.

And thus it is that Major League Baseball announced yesterday that teams this season will begin using electronic devices that transmit signals from catchers to pitchers. Continue reading →

Ethical Quote Of The Week: Justice Amy Coney Barrett

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Does (a decision) read like something that was purely results driven and designed to impose the policy preferences of the majority, or does this read like it actually is an honest effort and persuasive effort, even if one you ultimately don’t agree with, to determine what the Constitution and precedent requires?”

—-Justice Amy Coney Bryant during remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, explaining how Supreme Court decisions should be judged and assessed.

She predicated that advice with the recommendation, “Read the opinion.” Of course, most Supreme Court critics, even those writing op-ed critiques, often don’t bother to read SCOTUS opinions. The public almost never does, and the vast majority of the public is inadequately educated to understand the opinions if they did read them. Its so much easier to treat holdings that clash with one’s politic preferences as politically-driven positions rather than carefully worked out exercises in law, history and balancing of rights and interests.

She added,

Continue reading →

Incredible: Trump’s Lawyers Try An Even More Unethical Judicial Recusal Argument Than The One Democrats Are Using Against Justice Thomas

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Where does Donald Trump find his ridiculous lawyers? Did they get degrees by sending in applications from match book covers or comic books like the one above?

Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Peter Ticktin want U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks to recuse himself from Trump’s lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton of being part of a conspiracy casting his 2016 campaign as colluding with Russia (which, of course, she was). Their motion, filed this week argues that Middlebrooks could be biased because Hillary’s husband selected him for the court in 1997.

Their motion says in part,

“There is no question that Judge’s Middlebrooks’ impartiality would be questioned by a disinterested observer, fully informed of the facts, due to Judge’s relationship with the Defendant, either, individually, or by the very nature of his appointment to the Federal Bench, by the Defendant’s husband. The most important issue is not simply that justice must be done, but also that justice must appear to be done. This could not be more important in a case like the above styled cause, where wrongs in regard to a presidential election are to be redressed.

Continue reading →