Month: July 2022

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/12/2022: Hispandering, Self-Checkout, And Other Adventures…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Today is the anniversary of a regrettable ethics precedent: Walter Mondale chose the forgettable and undistinguished Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his running-mate on the 1984 Democratic Presidential ticket to vie against President Reagan in his bid for re-election Literally nothing qualified Ferraro for the position except her lack of a Y chromosome, but that was enough, in the early raisingof the ugly head of “equity, diversity and inclusion,” to justify placing a mediocrity “a heartbeat from the Presidency.” It was historic, you see. Well, at least she was a more responsible choice than Kamala Harris.

I am also reminded (Pointer to JutGory) that on this date in 1979, Major League Baseball had one of its more irresponsible and idiotic episodes. Chicago White Sox executive Mike Veeck, in the spirit of his father Bill Veeck who was best known in baseball lore for sending little person Eddie Gaedel up to the plate in an official game, agreed to schedule “Disco Demolition Night,” in which two Chicago disc jockeys would blow up a pile of disco records on the Comiskey Park field between games of a double header. Fans were urged to bring disco records to add to the pile, but the team never collected the platters as promised. First, members of the 40,000+ crowd began flinging the records like killer Frisbees. Then, after the promised detonation., thousands of the disco-haters rushed onto the field, tearing up the grass, lighting bonfires on the diamond, and generally engaging in what Democrats call “an insurrection.” Efforts to clear the field failed, and the visiting Detroit Tigers were awarded a win over the ChiSox by forfeit.

1. More school ignorance of that First Amendment thingy…The Cherry Creek School District in Denver suspended, then expelled, 15-year-old “C.G.” over a Snapchat post showing him in a Nazi military cap with the caption “Me and the boys bout to exterminate the Jews.” C.G. deleted the post and apologized for it within an hour, but it had already been seen by a classmate and shared with parents, who forwarded it to the Cherry Creek School District, resulting in the discipline. His parents sued. The Snapchat message was sent off campus outside of school hours, did not identify the school or target any student, and was sent on a personal cellphone to a private circle of followers. Nevertheless, federal judge dismissed the case in August 2020, finding the school properly disciplined him. For an obviously facetious social media post. That was none of the school’s business. Appropriately a 10th Circuit panel ruled last week that the suit should go forward after all. “Plaintiff has properly alleged that defendants’ discipline of C.G. for his off-campus speech is a First Amendment violation that cannot be dismissed at this stage,” Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Kelly wrote in a 21-page opinion.

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Ethics Dunces: Kathryn Rubino, And, As Usual, “Above The Law”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

What a vile website Above the Law is! The legal gossip cyber-rag, which belched forth the hateful Elie Mystal (who once argued on the site that black jurors should always refuse to vote “guilty” regarding black defendants regardless of the crime or the evidence), covers the progressively rotting legal profession with gusto, and does everything it can to make the profession even more left-biased than it already is. As a recent article by one of Elie’s successors, Kathryn Rubino, shows, a lack of fairness and decency helps the rotting process a lot.

The headline that caught my eye was “On Second Thought, Maybe Federal Judges Shouldn’t Have Hired The Law School Student Famously Accused Of Saying ‘I HATE BLACK PEOPLE’” I was immediately tempted to headline this post, “On Third Thought, Maybe A Site Run By Lawyers Shouldn’t Promote The Concept That Accusations Alone Justify Wrecking A Lawyer’s Career.”

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Ethics Estoppel: Awww, Do The Poor Democrats Regret Putting Biden In the White House? They Can Shut Up And Bite Me…

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I have standing to complain, but they don’t.

A New York Times/Siena College poll just out purports to show that 64% of Democratic voters don’t want Joe Biden to be President after his current term expires, and the reason is that even they can tell the country is falling apart. Biden has been President for less than two years, and yet it has come to this already.

Assuming the poll is accurate (you know…polls) this result warrants a dirge from the tiniest violin in existence. How dare Democrats say this, when they foisted Biden on the nation with full knowledge that he was too old, declining mentally, and was a career mediocrity on the smartest day of his life? It was an epic example of irresponsible citizenship and a breach of trust, motivated, like most actions by members of their party since 2016, by pure, primitive, unreasoning, unquenchable hatred of Donald Trump. They would have voted for an inanimate carbon rod for President in 2020 if polls showed it to have the best chance of winning.

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The Good News Is That For Once The Student Whose Speech Was Punished Isn’t A Conservative. The Bad News is That American University Doesn’t Get That First Amendment Thingy…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Daniel Brezina was one of eight Washington College of Law (at American University) students investigated since May 25 for commenting in a class group online chat regarding Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Another law student complained that the students’ pro-abortion positions expressed during the discussion harassed and discriminated against him because they went against his religious beliefs.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression took on Brezina’s case, and he was finally cleared of any wrongdoing by the school after more than six weeks of being investigated.

Wow. I was an adjunct professor of legal ethics at American. Apparently none of the universities I’ve been affiliated with have reliable ethics alarms.

Maybe it’s me.

Observations:

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From The Signature Significance Files: This Is How Unethical ProgressiveWorld Has Become Over Roe’s Demise

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Megan Fox, a conservative columnist and journalist, has behaved like an ethical journalist should regarding the convenient tale of the 10-year-old pregnant rape victim that has been reported as fact by multiple “respected” news organizations and, most recently, President Biden in his remarks when announcing an almost completely meaningless executive order “protecting” the right of abortion. Fox has tracked the bona fides of the claim and found them wanting.

She notes that after the Washington Post’s Trump-Deranged former conservative Jennifer Rubin wrote an inexcusable column about “forced births” citing the phantom 10-year-old, the Post’s “factchecker,” the reliably biased Glenn Kessler, issued a gentle analysis in which he said that he could find no verification of the story, which had as its single source a pro-abortion activist. When he called her for some kind of details that would show there was such a girl, the reply was, “Thank you for reaching out. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information to share.”

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/11/2022: Twitter Wars And More

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

But first, a cheerful song, because it’s all downhill from here…

Speaking of music, some opening notes are in order:

  • Yesterday was the anniversary of the much-heralded Scopes “Monkey Trial,” a 1925 ethics train wreck that I wrote about extensively last year, here and here.
  • Today, July 11, marks two of the most vivid examples of how random chance changes everything—history, culture, values, traditions– in ways that cannot be imagined. The first was the foolish duel in 1804 between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr that resulted in Hamilton’s premature death (but ultimately in a boffo Broadway musical!). The second was Count Claus von Stauffenberg’s close-but-no-cigar assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1944.
  • Nearer to the present, the apparent collapse of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is disappointing, because it would make reporting on various Twitter-Twiggered ethics issues a lot easier if I could start an account again in good conscience, as I was prepared to do once the service got out from under the clutches of its current censorious and progressive-biased masters.
  • I also haven’t felt like participating in Facebook of late, as the Woke Hysteria among my once rational friends there over the recent SCOTUS decisions is too great a temptation–as in “target”— for me. Right now they just want an echo chamber to scream in, and that’s what they have. Someone somewhere on the web opined yesterday that late night talk shows,  “Saturday Night Live” and its ilk were no longer primarily about comedy, but rather therapy sessions for angry and depressed progressives and Democrats, with the shows using mockery and insults to reaffirm their convictions about “the others”—those dumb, evil, racist conservatives. I think that may be a perceptive analysis. “Saturday Night Live” is a particularly vivid example: the show that once reveled in portraying Gerald Ford as a bumbling klutz and George W. Bush as an outright moron week after week while they were in the White House now hesitates to exploit the comedy gold represented by Biden’s misadventures and Kamala Harris in general. It proves that SNL is more interested in hanging out with the cool kids than actually being funny—which is supposedly its mission. This is a conflict of interest, and the producer and writers aren’t even attempting to resolve it ethically.

1. Twitter Wars #1: @Ka1zoku_Qu0d, an idiot of the sort that literally clogs Twitter, posted this: “Hold on I want to make sure I say this carefully. Yeah Anne Frank had white privilege. Bad things happen to people with white privilege also but don’t tell the whites that.” This caused so much static on the platform that “Anne Frank” ended up “trending.” Continue reading →

Just Because Someone Is An Idiot Doesn’t Mean It’s Ethical To Make A Fool Out Of Him: The Roy Moore Libel Suit Dismissal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New York refused to revive a lawsuit filed by former Alabama Chief Justice and failed Senate candidate from Alabama Roy Moore (and his wife) against  comedian comedian Sasha Baron Cohen. Moore v. Baron Cohen  had its genesis when the “Borat” satirist and actor tricked Moore into traveling to Washington, D.C. to receive a fictional award for supporting Israel and to be interviewed for Israeli TV. It was all a set-up to ridicule Moore on an installment of Cohen’s Showtime production, “Who Is America?”

Cohen presented himself to Moore as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert with a high-tech military intelligence device ( he’s holding it above) that supposedly was able to detect pedophiles. Moore’s Senate run was crushed by credible allegations that he had sought relationships with underage teenage girls: the episode of the program in which the interview aired was introduced with news clips reporting those allegations, including one involving a fourteen-year-old girl at the time. In a cringeworthy confrontation, Cohen’s character waved “the pedophile-detector” over Moore as it beeped loudly. Moore then walked out of the “interview.” Moore and his wife sued for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: NYT Columnist David Brooks

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Compared to most of the mouth-foaming progressive activist and propagandists that make up the New York Times stable of pundits, I suppose you could call David Brooks a sort-of conservative, everything being relative. But he also poses as a public intellectual and “the adult in the room,” which is why his recent disinformation while serving as a guest on the PBS NewsHour last week is so damning.

In a discussion about gun control, Brooks responded to host host Judy Woodruff query, “You agree the likelihood of there being any more federal action on guns is very unlikely?” by saying,

I have never understood why an Australian-style gun buyback is an affront to anybody. It’s an open choice. You can sell your gun or not. But if we’re going to reduce 400 million guns, it would take something like that, not even just banning future purchases. I mean, we have got 400 million here!

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The Tracey Harris Murder Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I stumbled across a year-old CBS “48 Hours” episode that depressed me about the state of ethics alarms in the culture, but to be fair, almost everything is doing that right now.

Tracey Harris (with her daughter, above) vanished from her home in Ozark, Alabama on March 7, 1990. A week later, her body was found in the nearby Choctawhatchee River, and the autopsy revealed that Tracey had drowned, though she had marks on her neck consistent with strangulation. Her death was ruled a homicide. Suspicion immediately fell on her ex-husband Carl, who had continued to live with Tracey and their young daughter after their divorce. He was rumored to be abusive, and had been having an affair with a local teen. Investigators believed, but could not prove, that Carl was the last person to see Tracey alive.

Police and prosecutors interviewed over a dozen neighbors and acquaintances of the Harrises, but there was never sufficient evidence to arrest Carl or seek an indictment. However, the community hostility inflamed by the widespread belief that Carl had murdered his popular former wife drove him to leave the county. Tracey’s parents adopted his daughter, who remains permanently estranged from him.

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Saturday Ethics Blowing In The Wind, 7/9/2022: Dead Ethics Alarms All Over

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Bob Dylan recorded “Blowin’ in the Wind” on this date in 1962. It’s one of my favorite ethics songs, and I have written several parody versions of it focusing on legal ethics issue that the legal profession has not quite figured out yet.

Which reminds me: I heard a wretched Dylan imitation in the background of a movie last night. The increasingly common cheap-out of using a fake version of a famous recording to fool inattentive or ignorant audiences while avoiding paying for the original version is, I feel, both insulting and annoying as well as unethical. Even shows that use oldies as a unifying theme do it, like the “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” fake the records; the closed caption will read “Bob Dylan sings “Blowin’ in the Wind” when it obviously isn’t Bob. Kudos to the directors like Martin Scorsese, who have the integrity and the respect for both their audiences and the original artists to shell out the extra bucks and get rights to play the real thing.

1. President Biden’s failure to urge Americans not to harass officials and judges at their homes or when they are in public as private citizens shows his hypocrisy, lack of integrity, and failure as an ethical leader. ..or it shows that he’s a puppet and his puppeteers are anti-democratic thugs. Note:

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