Month: January 2023

Lock ‘Em Up!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, a group of corporate managers and their lackeys will actually have to spend time in prison for killing people, instead of just reaching into company coffers and paying a fine. If that does happen to the Boeing villains, it might save a lot of lives.

Boeing negotiated an agreement with federal prosecutors allowing it to pay a fine of $2.5 billion instead of being prosecuted for killing the 300 passengers who didn’t know they were flying in a plane, the 737 Max that its makers knew was going to crash sooner or later, and probably sooner. The families of the victims of that crash opposed the settlement on the grounds that the government violated their rights by agreeing to it without consulting them first. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled last year that the victims were victims of a deadly crime so the government should have consulted with their heirs. This week, Judge O’Connor specifically ordered Boeing to present representatives for a criminal arraignment, meaning that he has rejected the settlement, and that there will be criminal charges after all.

Good.

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End Of Week Ethics Exegesis, 1/20/2023, SCOTUS Ineptitude, The Child Shooter’s Parents, A Coinkydink, And More…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[NOTE: This was another one of those posts that I had to squeeze in and get up before I had a chance to do a careful proofing. Coming back to it hours later, it is so embarrassing to find all the irritating little typos: missing letters, transposed letters, words I thought I typed in but didn’t. Ugh. I’m sorry.]

***

The mainstream media (and Democrats, but I repeat myself) is doing everything it can to try to make Lyin’ George Santos the big story rather than Joe’s Biden’s document scandal, which has nicely exposed Biden’s hypocrisy along with that of law enforcement and the Trump-Deranged. The Republicans have made it easier for them than it should be: Kevin McCarthy should have created a committee called “Shameless Lying Committee and placed only Santos on it, and made him chairman. Oh, maybe have Adam Schlitt on it to keep George company. McCarthy’s canned line about how Santos was elected to represent his district by voters and they deserve representation is worse than if he said nothing at all. Santos gets to vote on bills, and that’s all an incompetent, lazy, gullible district like his deserves. (If Santos says one more time that he’s done nothing wrong, I may jump out my office window.)

Back to the news media: This morning I watched CNN, Fox, News, and BBC all at once on the DirecTV “News Mix” channel. The experience would be depressing to anyone under the delusion that broadcast news is anything but a confederacy of dunces. As the abrasive and smug “Fox and Friends” kept repeating the same outrage about Joe’s stash of classified materials, CNN interviewed high school students in Santos’ district in an obviously carefully staged segment purporting to show that teens are more ethical and instinctively wise than their elected elders. (Hey, look at these kids! Let’s let 16-year-olds vote!) When one student said that Congress should vote to expel Santos, his grandstanding teacher didn’t point out that Congress can’t, probably because the teacher doesn’t know.

Neither CNN nor the teacher brought up Joe Biden’s career of making up credentials and experiences, which would have been an interesting counterpoint for the aspiring Democrats in the student group (there was one self-proclaimed future Republican, which doesn’t mean there weren’t others afarisd of getting wedgies) to ponder: the thrust of the segment was that Santos and the GOP acceptance of him pushed the students into the Blue.

MSNBC, as usual, was even more flagrant in its bias, and also funnier. It had—get this—Al Sharpton and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele discussing how corrupt and incompetent Republican House members were. Michael Steele calling anyone incompetent is like, well, Sharpton calling anyone corrupt. Steele is now a Never-Trump talking head for MSNBC in the Ana Navarro mold, because his flip-flop was the only way anyone would hire him to give his opinion on anything. He was a disaster as RNC head, embarrassing the party by such stunts as okaying a fundraising mailing that intentionally masqueraded as a census document—while the census was underway. Congress passed a bi-partisan law making such chicanery illegal.

Mostly Steele is just an idiot. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it should be flashed up on the screen any time this dolt tries to be a pundit. When he was running to be re-elected RNC head (he lost), Steele was asked during the one debate among the contenders to name his favorite book. The other hacks (like Reince Priebus, the eventual winner) said that a Ronald Reagan’s biography was their favorite book, but Steele, trying to seem erudite, said “War and Peace.” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he quoted (from “A Tale of Two Cities”), causing questioner Tucker Carlson to facepalm.

1. The SCOTUS Dobbs leak can’t be found. That’s bad enough. Equally bad were the stunning revelations of sloppy procedures at the Court, probably long the status quo, that nonetheless made this scandal inevitable. From the 20-page report

1. Too many personnel have access to certain Court-sensitive documents. The current distribution mechanisms result in too many people having access to highly sensitive information and the inability to actively track who is handling and accessing these documents. Distribution should be more tailored and the use of hard copies for sensitive documents should be minimized and tightly controlled.

2. Aside from the Court’s clear confidentiality policies and the federal statutes outlined above, there is no universal written policy or guidance on the mechanics of handling and safeguarding draft opinions and Court-sensitive documents, and practices vary widely throughout the Court. A universal policy should be established and all personnel should receive training on the requirements.

3. The Court’s current method of destroying Court-sensitive documents has vulnerabilities that should be addressed.

4. The Court’s information security policies are outdated and need to be clarified and updated. The existing platform for case-related documents appears to be out of date and in need of an overhaul.

5. There are inadequate safeguards in place to track the printing and copying of sensitive documents. The Court should institute tracking mechanisms using technology that is currently available for this purpose.

6. Many personnel appear not to have properly understood the Court’s policies on confidentiality. There should be more emphasis on training so that all personnel fully understand the policies.

7. Bills were introduced in the last Congress which would expressly prohibit the disclosure of the Supreme Court’s non-public case-related information to anyone outside the Court. Consideration should be given to supporting such legislation.

Summary: The Court’;s security has been incompetent and inexcusable.

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No Way Back For CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
Too late. Waaay too late.

CNN broke this story yesterday. Suddenly, under new ownership, the once respected cable journalism channel further retreated from its shameless partisan bias that metastasized during the Obama Presidency and ruined Ted Turner’s creation.

It’s doomed. There is no recovery from destroying trust, at least not when recovery will take years. On one night last week, every Fox News program had better ratings than all of CNN’s offerings for that night combined. This was completely predictable, and is a cautionary tale.

CNN’s abandonment of anything resembling objective, ethical and responsible journalism as it morphed into MSNBC-lite chased away conservatives, Republicans, independents and anyone who wanted to get accurate, complete news that wasn’t slanted, manipulated or censored to favor Democrats and their allies. If they didn’t go to Fox News, holding their noses, they defaulted to the web (like me.) CNN’s viewership was almost completely reduced to 1) old, half-awake traditionalists in denial who fooled themselves into believing that this was the same news source that used to be announced by the sonorous tones of James Earl Jones and 2) leftist partisans for whom the likes of Joy Reid, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O’Donnell and the other hacks on MSNBC were too much for their gorges to bear.

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KABOOM! I Just Read AGAIN The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Website Section On “Whiteness”….How Can That Racist Offal Still Be Up? [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The official position of the Smithsonian Institution is apparently that white people are a blight on humanity. My head exploded after the first time I became aware of this, in a post that generated a lot of excellent comments in 2020. Like a fool, I assumed the outrageous text (and the chart that earlier post focused on) had been removed. I was wrong.

It’s time to revisit the issue, especially since my head just exploded again.

Here’s a sample of the woke, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, “1619”-style racist drivel (and libel) that appears on the website of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the “Nation’s Attic’s” most recent major addition. I know most attics have creepy , smelly stuff in them, but this should not be tolerated.The page headlined, “Whiteness” reads in part,

Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized. 

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.  

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept – but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin….

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Cultural Illiteracy Meets Judicial Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This was resolved in September 2022, but I missed it, and attention should be paid.

An Illinois lawyer was representing a client in an age discrimination lawsuit that arose out of an attempt to purchase property and, chagrined at the judge’s ruling at one point, uttered the Elizabethan era word, “gadzooks!” under his breath. The judge admonished the lawyer not to make comments “under your breath,” and the attorney replied, “I said, ‘gadzooks!'”  The judge shot back, “If you make one more comment that’s offensive to this court, I will hold you in contempt of court.”  The lawyer, apparently astonished, said: “Gadzooks is offensive to the court?”

The judge stated: “You are now in contempt of court. I’m fining you $1,000.” When the the lawyer replied, “May I ask the court.”  The judge stated: “You are now (at) $2,000!”

During the eventual disciplinary hearing—the episode tied up the lawyer for years—the judge testified that she did not know what “gadzooks” meant but found it offensive, and that she regarded the exclamation an attempt to impugn her ruling.  The lawyer testified that he did not consider “gadzooks” to be offensive, and also  testified that he did not yell or shout “gadzooks” as the judge claimed. When he did raise his voice during the trial, it was so his 83-year-old client could hear him, he said. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Condign Justice Or Schadenfreude?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In India, two cock-fighting enthusiasts bled to death at cockfighting events. Both were fatally wounded knives attached to their roosters’ feet.

 Gande Suryapraksha Rao was tying blades to the feet of his prized cock before a bout when his bird,  alarmed by the crowd, flew up and cut Gande’s leg. He bled to death before they could get him to a hospital. In the second incident, a 20-year-old spectator was cut by a bladed bird as he stood near the cockfighting pit. The blade  cut open the man’s hand, and he also bled to death.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is,

Would it be unethical to publicly express satisfaction in the two men’s fate?

…like if I were to write of their demise, “Good!” ?

They are human beings, after all, and cruelty to animals is not a capital offense. Are these incidents really like a bomb-maker blowing himself up by mistake? A bank robber who trips leaving the bank and dies in the fall? A drug dealer who ODs on his own product?

Or are these deaths condign justice that should be hailed far and wide to send the message that the underlying conduct is intolerable?

__________________

Pointer: JuGory [I had miscredited this, then corrected it and botched the edit. Sorry to all.]

Ethics Dunces: Hamline University Administrators

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This is how my mind works: a cowardly, foolish and irresponsible university does a double-backflip policy reversal after pandering to Muslim bullies on campus, and my mind immediately goes to Emily Litella’s SNL catchphrase, the U.S. News controversy over school rankings (which was supposed to be this morning’s  opening piece) and…Cracker Barrel. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s quite conceivable that the same   weenies who were running Cracker Barrel a while back are now in charge of Hamline, a small and evidently crummy Minnesota university.

Regarding Emily: after its obviously outrageous mistreatment of an adjunct art professor in response to an in-class controversy (described at Ethics Alarms earlier this month) properly attracted harsh criticism from all sides, the unjustly maligned and sacked teacher sued. Then Hamline folded like a tyro facing Amarillo Slim in Texas Hold’em. Hamline’s president, Fayneese S. Miller, had puffed herself up like a woke bullfrog to virtue-signal about how respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.” In this case, “respect” meant ignoring the fact that some Muslim students were throwing a fit over an art teacher teaching art that some extreme sects of their religion think should be taboo (Some Muslims don’t like freedom of expression, and might kill you to prove it) even though the course instructor had given them ample warning and opportunity to avoid the Satanic spectacle of viewing this famous painting….

.After all, letting the inmates run the asylum is what a lot of wokey schools do these days. But once the notice of the lawsuit was received, and Hamline’s lawyers informed the school’s leadership that they were going to lose and lose big, Fayneese, together with the chair of the university’s board of trustees who was  probably holding a shiv to Miller’s kidney, litella-ed this pathetic retraction: Continue reading →

2022 Worst of Ethics Awards: Most Unethical Mayor And Unethical Rationalization Of The Year

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

That video that I saw today on the Federalist site clinched two 2022 Worst of Ethics Awards for me, not that either was a tough call.

Unethical Rationalization of the Year: #64. Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is”

Frankly,Rationalization #64 would won this award in each of the past three years, which is pretty amazing for such a late addition to the list.

The reason, I think, is that the American public either has behaved so gullible and stpudly, or the political class and journalists have concluded that it is so gullible and stupid that the strategy of calling night day, day  night,good bad, bad good and failure success has become too attractive to resist. 2022 was the zenith of this revolting development so far, but there is no reason to think 2023 won’t be worse. We’re hardly started, and there is Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters that the White House is being transparent about Joe’s confidential documents stash while she refuses to answer questions about it. Last year, the administration line about the chaos at the border was that the border was secure. LGBTQ+ activists looked us right in our eyes and told us that a man became a woman simply by deciding he was, and sports leaders announced that biological men who were now trans women had no advantage over natural-born women in athletic competitions while it was obvious that they did. Meanwhile runaway inflation wasn’t runaway inflation, Twitter’s partisan censorship wasn’t partisan censorship. John Fetterman was not cognitively impaired by his stroke. The January 6 House inquiry was unbiased and fair, with no partisan objectives. And when Joe Biden gave his Reichstag, he sounded and looked like a Nazi while accusing Republicans of being Nazis. There’s lots more. I’ve never seen anything like it. Continue reading →

In The Dispute Over The Fate Of The Elgin Marbles, It Is Time For The Brits To Choose Ethics Over Law

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

My mother stole a piece of the Parthenon. She was Greek, my father and she were visiting Athens, and when no one was looking (including my father) she scooped up a 1 x 8 inch chuck of white marble by the ruins and smuggled it home, where she displayed it on her fireplace mantle. My sister and I were horrified when we learned what the piece was, and plotted various ways to have it returned without getting our aged mother prosecuted. When they moved from Arlington, Mass. to Arlington, Va, the item just vanished, or so Mom said. (We didn’t believe her.) It was never seen again.

I think about this family scandal whenever I think of the seemingly endless dispute over the Elgin Marbles.

In the early 1800s, Lord Elgin, a British aristocrat, shipped to England treasures of Greek antiquity that he had strip-mined from Greece, including the carved frieze panels that had decorated the Parthenon. Supposedly this was done with the permission of Turkey, which was then ruling Greece, which is like your home invaders giving neighbors permission to take the art off your walls. The “Elgin Marbles” were sold to the British government and became among the most valued artifacts in the collection of the British Museum in London. As my mother’s son, I know they were among my top three favorite exhibits when I first visited, along with the Rosetta Stone and Paul McCartney’s handwritten draft of the lyrics for “Yesterday.”

Well, Greece has been asking for the Elgin Marbles back for over two centuries now, and if the museum has a leg to stand on in keeping them, it pretty much comes down to that hoary (and not exactly true) line, “possession is 9/10s of the law.” However, recent decades have seen a cultural shift as Western colonization and imperialism have acquired a bad reputation. Many museums are returning such looted treasures to where they were created and, I believe, belong. Why, then, haven’t the Elgin Marbles been sent back to Greece as its government demands, urges, and begs?

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