Month: June 2022

Weekend Ethics Warm-Up, 6/4/2020: Bring On Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy, Unethical Days…

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Indoctrination is everywhere, and you WILL be assimilated. Waiting for my car to be delivered from the garage by Valet Parking at the D.C. Marriott Hotel, I saw that there were four channels playing in the lobby for guests: CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg and Fox…Sports. The news channels were all braying about Peter Navarro, a Trump advisor I barely remembered, being indicted as if it were the equivalent of the Watergate tapes being revealed. Fox News had more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined for very good reasons, by never mind. THAT news is biased…

1. Lazy! Speaking of propaganda, the ostentatious “Pride Month” pandering is already suffocating and it’s only the 4th. Why is a month dedicated to LGBTQ promotion? Wouldn’t it make more sense to promote heterosexuality—you know, for survival of the species purposes? Pretty much every day is “Pride Propaganda Day” now—isn’t the Month redundant now? And what the hell is there to be proud of? Holding that someone should not be awash in shame for something they have no control of isn’t the same as concluding they should be proud of it. I’m not ashamed of being bald, but why would I be proud of it?

The corporate pandering is particularly nauseating (and suffocating), with rainbows attached to everything. One, it reminds me of the saccharine Seventies and the costumes in “Godspell,” and Two, I think of that kid pouring maple syrup on everything on his dinner plate in “To Kill A Mockingbird.” “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” Scout blurts out, rudely. I feel like her. A progressive website was shocked and angry to discover, and complained accordingly, that 25 major corporations that have been the most publicly rainbow-besotted also  donated more than $13.2 million to what it calls “anti-LGBTQ politicians” since the start of 2021. Well, to progressives, holding that  teachers shouldn’t be giving classes in fellatio to third-graders is “anti-LGBTQ,” but more to the point, those corporations are all insincere, and following what they perceive as virtue-signalling mandates, just as they were when they sucked up to Black Lives Matter. Continue reading →

When Polling Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Gallup is both one of the oldest polling organizations and among the closest to objective, making it doubly irresponsible when it injects nonsense and ignorance into policy debates. This is what it did with two recent polls, headlined thusly: “Steady 58% of Americans Do Not Want Roe v. Wade Overturned” and “‘Pro-Choice’ Identification Rises to Near Record High in U.S.”

The immediate response here is “So what?” Abortion, at least since the misbegotten Roe v. Wade SCOTUS ruling in 1973, is matter of Constitutional law and individual rights, and neither of these are determined by popular opinion.. Nor should they be. Yet the reflex refrain of demagogues and the habitually dishonest when they are out of legitimate arguments is “the public overwhelmingly supports/opposes [fill in the blank],” a contention that inevitably depends on polling.

The threshold question Gallup asked its respondents on the abortion issue was “With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?” Useless. Did Gallup define what “pro-choice” or “pro-life” meant? Nope. Do “pro-choice” Americans believe a potential mother should be able to “choose” to kill a viable fetus right up to the moment of birth? Do they believe that abortion involves the taking of a life at any point? Ever? Do they care? Who knows? I don’t think most of those who responded that they were “pro-choice” know. It’s garbage in, garbage out: the poll results are meaningless, but they will still be cited as if they are profound.

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Ethics Dunce: Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Fetterman is the Democratic nominee in an upcoming US Senate election that could determine whether Republicans can take over control of that half of Congress. He suffered a strokeA right before the Democratic primary last month, and had been unacceptably vague about the episode as well as his health generally. Yesterday the facts began to come out. Fetterman, 52, and his physician confirmed that he has a heart condition called cardiomyopathy as well as an irregular heartbeat, or atrial fibrillation. [Full disclosure: I been an atrial fibrillater for decades. But I’m just an ethicist, and have no significance whatsoever. Unlike Fetterman, however, I do take my medication.]

A pacemaker and defibrillator have now been implanted, but Fetterman is still not well enough to begin campaigning, and it is uncertain when he will be sufficiently recovered. Moreover, the revelation of cardiomyopathy is not just news, but significant news that Fetterman’s campaign initially withheld. According to the Mayo Clinic, cardiomyopathy can lead to heart failure. It’s  disease of the heart muscle that reduces the organ’s ability to pump blood to  the body and brain. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Encore: “Possessed Lawyer Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The best legal ethics story I have ever heard and probably ever will hear arose in Arizona in 2010. I have regaled CLE seminars with it many times since, and it is ever green. After I mentioned the case again today at a Federal Bar convention program, I found myself wondering if I had ever posted about the weird episode on Ethics Alarms. Indeed I had, but it was way back in September of 2010.Here’s how long ago that was: Instagram didn’t yet exist, the statement that Donald Trump would be the next President might get you committed, and the only commenter on the post was “JJ,” whom I have completely forgotten.

Clearly, it’s time for an encore, so here it is, slightly expanded.

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Is it unethical for a lawyer to claim she is possessed by a client’s dead wife?

This  question has been puzzling professional responsibility experts for decades. Okay, not really. In fact, surprisingly, it just doesn’t happen all that often. But in Arizona, a lawyer is now facing suspension for claiming that she was possessed by the spirit of a client’s dead wife, then lying about it under oath. The dead wife is being accused of illegal immigration.

OK, I made up that part, too.

Sorry.

The ABA Journal reports that the lawyer, Charna Johnson, began representing a client during his divorce proceedings. While the divorce was in process,  the client’s wife, who was fighting many demons even before she got in the possession business, committed suicide. Johnson then represented the husband in probate proceedings, but one day became convinced, according to her sworn testimony and that of two witnesses, that the client’s wife had possessed her, like that real demon, Pazuzu. Continue reading →

Note To Gov. DeSantis: The Tampa Bay Rays Are Not The Same As Disney

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I defended Gov. Ron DeSantis’s cancellation of Disney’s long-standing special status with the state of Florida, because, ethically, partners shouldn’t publicly attack partners without consequences, and because Disney’s privilege of self-government was in great part a product of the company bolstering core American values and a family-friendly culture. No, I pointed out more than once, this was not a case of a corporation being singled out to be punished for a political position the state opposed, but a situation where special benefits could no longer be justified if Disney was no longer going to hold up its end of the original mutually-beneficial deal of yore, which could be reasonably seen as “You don’t meddle in our business, and we won’t meddle in yours.” Moreover, giving Disney special benefits that other theme parks in the state didn’t have could not be justified as fair and reasonable any longer.

It now appears that I may have been giving Gov. DeSantis more credit than he deserved, and that his slap at Disney was, at least in part, an example of a state government punishing a company for a political position it had every right to hold, state, and act upon. Yesterday we learned that DeSantis intends to veto a $35 million bill for Florida to pay for a Pasco County facility that would serve as for the Tampa Bay Rays’ spring training home. The reason is, apparently, the baseball team’s public message above.

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Georgetown Law Center Finally Reinstated Ilya Shapiro. Big Whoop! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Yesterday, after a 122-day punitive investigation into a 45-word tweet, Georgetown University Law Center finally reinstated Ilya Shapiro as the senior lecturer and executive director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. It should not take a four-month investigation to reinstate a faculty member for clearly-protected political expression, even had his controversial tweet not been self-evidently true, which it was. But that’s Georgetown for you.
Way back in January, Ethics Alarms first reported on this embarrassment to my law school alma mater and former employer. Following President Biden’s woke-pandering pledge to appoint a black woman to fill a looming vacancy on the Supreme Court, Shapiro issued a sharp tweet opining that restricting the choice of justices by race and gender was not the best way to identify the most qualified or experienced jurist. For this he was called a racist by the Law Center’s dean, and suspended. I followed the episode (with disgust) in several posts: exploring the unethical conduct of Dean Treanor, regarding a letter of protest signed by many law school professors (but none from GULC); on the alumni and student protest led by Luke Bunting; and cheering Federal Judge Ho’s support for Shapiro in an address at the law school.

Ethics Clean-Up On Aisle Thursday, 6/2/2022: An All-Stupid Tag Team Event!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

What a mess!

I watched the controversial Netflix Ricky Gervais special. I find Gervais funny but tiresome after a while, and a lot of the jokes are cheap: taking dumb tweets from his detractors and highlighting what’s dumb about them is the epitome of low-hanging fruit, for example. Are his jokes about trans individuals hateful and “dangerous”? If you claim to be woman and have a penis, I think at very least you are obligated to appreciate the opportunity for ironic and absurdist humor, and Gervais’s mockery of the pronouns battle is both funny and illuminating.

His most provocative comment is at the very end, as he defends humor in general against the assault of the offended. He’s a joke absolutist, which I question ethically, but his tale about he and his brother making a pact that if they ever thought of a remark that was funny, they would say it, “win, lose or draw,’ with no self-censorship has me intrigued. His reasoning is that humor serves as a balm for humanity, and there is a net loss if fear of one person’s negative reaction kills an unborn joke that might cheer, and uplift the spirits of others. At it core, this is a utilitarian argument.

1. When the only tool you have is a hammer... NYC City Councilwoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who represents neighborhoods in Brooklyn, shot off this tweet:

What a bigot! What an idiot! She was so sure a white guy did the killing that she tweeted this without even checking, and sure enough, he was black. She’s the epitome of the current knee-jerk strategy of her party in response to virtually everything now. (Did I mention her party? Did I need to?)

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I Think We Can Safely Conclude That This Was Unethical…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In Brazil, a culture where respect for women is comparable to the U. S. in the early 19th Century, Gabriel Coelho forced Tayane Caldas, his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend, into his car as she was walking home from school.  He drove her to his home, and the 20-year-old Coelho then tattooed his full name on the girl’s face, as you can see above. Coelho claims that Tayane consented.

So I guess she wants to get back together with him…

Actually, that seems unlikely. For one thing, she had requested and received two restraining orders against Coelho, one in 2021 and another this year.  Still, Tayane’s mother had to encourage her daughter to press charges against her ex-boyfriend, as she was initially inclined to simply hide her new face tattoo with make-up. The fact that she even was thinking this way shows how primitive female self-esteem can be in Brazil.

Gabriel Coelho is under arrest, though his father backs his ridiculous defense that she consented to be branded. Of course he does. Men like Gabriel don’t turn out believing women are property without a role model.

If The Last Post (About Emerson College Promoting Anti-White Racism) Bothered You, Samuel L. Jackson Has A Suggestion Before You Read This One…[UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

In Illinois, Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will now require teachers to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students. Let me repeat that…

Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will now require teachers to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.

This is called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading.” It’s transformative, all right. It is a great way to transform black students into societal cripples who cannot master what many behavioral scientists believe are the most crucial skills for life success, because they are given an institutional pass.

This ridiculous and divisive concept is, of course, yet another effort to eliminate persistent discrepancies between racial groups by pretending that they are caused by racism, and lowering standards so everyone has an equally low bar to clear.  OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionately hurt the grades of black students, like for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in  assignments. This will, you know—don’t they know?—set up black students to skip work, misbehave in other settings, and fail to complete their assigned jobs and tasks. Continue reading →