Month: March 2023

Open Forum, Spring Training Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Here’s your chance to get in rhetorical shape for the ethics rigors ahead in what promises to be a challenging summer.

Baseball’s Spring Training has just six days to go, but it also is the only part of the 2023 season prep with genuine full-team workouts. This is because so many players participated in the World Baseball Tournament on teams ranging from Israel and Australia to Cuba and South Korea. In the finals, the Japanese team won it all this week in a close 3-2 win over the United States. Mike Trout, the best player on Earth, struck out with the tying run on base.

Meanwhile, MLB issued a bunch of rule adjustments embarrassingly—ridiculously, really– late, because, as is often the case when new rules and laws are passed, the people passing them didn’t think through all of the ramifications and unintended consequences of the changes they were making.

One piece of good news for MLB is that the institution of a time limitation on how long pitchers could take to throw the ball to the plate and limits on batters stepping out of the box to fiddle with their batting gloves or whatever cut more than 20 minutes of dead time out of the average game. That’s a lot, and infuriating, because the wasted time could have and should have been curtailed long ago without having to use a pitch clock.

But enough of baseball—the Red Sox will be fine, incidentally, don’t believe what you hear—it’s time to

Play Ethics!

“Nah, There’s No Big Tech Bias!” Google’s AI ChatBot Provides A Smoking Gun

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I think the first appearance of the ironic refrain, “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” in an Ethics Alarms headline was in 2018. Since then, I’ve used it dozens of times, and easily could have justified using the sarcastic refrain hundreds, indeed thousands of time since. Even though the evidence of sinister, relentless, intentional and unethical biased reporting by the mainstream media is manifest and continuing daily, its allies (and naive “useful idiot” defenders) continue to argue that declaring that it is what it is constitutes a conservative “conspiracy theory. In doing so, they aid and abet the attempted destruction of American democracy.

The mainstream media’s perceived role as propaganda and deception merchants for the Left is reinforced by similar efforts by social media, the entertainment industry, and Big Tech, though the latter’s machinations are a bit more difficult to nail down. Google, a prime villain, has so many ways to slant public discourse and hamstring non-compliant voices, one main way being through the alignment of search results through its mysterious algorithms. Google’s latest innovation, however, unintentionally provides a window into the biases of the people behind the tech.

Google’s just launched an Artificial Intelligence chatbot called “Bard” as a competitor of ChatGPT, which had been getting lots of publicity lately. Bard’s screaming progressive/Democratic bias quickly revealed itself when conservative users ran some basic tests.

“Not the Bee’s” tech specialist Neo submitted two identical questions to Bard:

The answer to the first question:

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On Joe Biden’s Judicial Nominations: They’re Called “Diversity Nominees” And Some Of Them Couldn’t Judge A Dog Show

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Goodness gracious,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said before being rushed to the hospital, not because of this though it surely didn’t help, “Is this the caliber of legal expert with which President Biden is filling the federal bench for lifetime appointments? Is the bar for merit and excellence really set this low?”

Why yes, Mitch! It is the caliber, because skill, experience, and demonstrated qualifications are no more the Biden administrations priorities in naming federal judges than they were in Joe’s choice of Vice-President, Cabinet members or White House press secretary. Already, we have seen absurd spectacles like Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren, nominated to serve as a U.S. District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Washington, and according to shameless partisan hack Sen. Patty Murray, very qualified for the job and “truly exceptional,” proving unable to explain under questioning the contents of the fifth or second articles of the Constitution—you know, that old thingy that district judges are supposed to know and understand?

Lucky for her, along comes another Biden nominee, U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews, also nominated to be a U.S. district judge, to make sure Charnelle doesn’t feel too bad. During his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing this week, Crews (above, left) was asked by Senator Kennedy (above, right) who also was the one who stumped Bjelkengren, to describe a Brady motion and the landmark Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland.

Crews could not. He had no idea what either were, saying that as he recalled Brady was a Second Amendment case! KABOOM! He was getting the crucial landmark decision, a staple of first year law school criminal law, mixed up with the so-called Brady Law, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Pub.L. 103–159, 107 Stat. 1536, enacted November 30, 1993), which mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the U.S.,and imposed a five-day waiting period on purchases. It has nothing to do with Brady v. Maryland.

At least he didn’t get Brady mixed up with “The Brady Bunch.”

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Ethics Hero: Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Faced with a stark choice that other major law school deans (like the Georgetown Law Center’s Dean William Trainor) have botched during The Great Stupid, Stanford’s dean courageously chose the values of free speech, academic freedom and pluralism over the currently more popular progressive law student fad of censorship, mandatory wokism, and totalitarian tactics. She’s undoubtedly expecting a protest from her fetal lawyers, and surely will get it.

Responding to the school’s national embarrassment when a mob of students shut down the speech of an invited federal district court judge whose opinions they didn’t like—aided and abetted by the school’s “DEI” dean—Stanford’s Jenny Martinez announced yesterday that the students involved as well as the rest of the student body will attend a mandatory half-day training course on “freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.”

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Parody Ethics: What Is This Case Doing At The Supreme Court? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Well, KABOOM! There goes my head.

Absurdly, Jack Daniel’s, the largest American whiskey manufacturer, sued VIP Products, one of the principle American dog toy manufacturer (Spuds loves their toys) over a parody plastic squeaky toy modeled on Jack Daniel’s bottles. (Spud likes a squeaky toy that looks like a Coor beer bottle). On the dog toy, as you can see, instead of describing “Old No. 7 Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey” manufactured by “Jack Daniel’s,” the toy is “Bad Spaniel,” “Old No. 2 on your Tennessee carpet.”

Oral argument at the Supreme Court was yesterday. Finding a likelihood that consumers would confuse the “Bad Spaniels” toy with Jack Daniel’s, the trial court ruled in favor of the liquor company and barred VIP from continuing to manufacture the parody toy, ruling, believe it or not, that that consumers would confuse the “Bad Spaniels” toy with Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Yeah, I always have that problem, mixing up dog toys with liquor bottles. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed on both counts, because the trial court’s theory was…well, let Sidney Wang explain:

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Lawyer Jerry Goldfeder

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“You know, it’s not a slam-dunk. But I think that survives a motion to dismiss, and then let the jury decide.”

—-Jerry H. Goldfeder, a special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP and an  expert in New York state election law, to the New York Times regarding Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s supposedly imminent indictment and prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

That is an flat-out unethical endorsement of prosecutorial abuse of power, for not only a lawyer, but a lawyer in a major Manhattan law firm, being quoted as authority in the New York Times, uncritically, of course.

An ethical prosecutor does not bring a case unless he or she is certain that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The issue isn’t whether the prosecution will prevail, but whether the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to justify it prevailing with an objective and fair jury. Surviving a motion to dismiss is not an ethical standard; it’s the bottom-of-the-barrel standard. The judge agreeing that the case has no merit at all as a matter of law, is not the equivalent of holding that the case should not be brought by an ethical prosecutor. “Hey, who knows if the guy is guilty or if we have the evidence to convict? Let’s just get it in front of a jury and see what they think!”

Unspoken in this case: “After all, the point is to make Trump look bad, right? If we can get a conviction, it’s frosting on the cake.”

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UPDATE! The Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump Prosecution Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

  • Unethical quote, and a telling one: Sunny Hostin, arguably the most unethical member of “The View’s” panel of idiots though Joy Behar is far and away the dumbest and most obnoxious, said the quiet part out loud yesterday while making the legally ignorant claim that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has a “slam-dunk” criminal case against former President Donald Trump. “I think the goal is to never have this man be in a position of power again — not even [as] a crossing guard,” Hostin, a lawyer, said on the show. And there it is! Not only does Hostin admit that these various prosecutions are political, but she has no problem with that, which means that she has no problem with using the legal system for partisan warfare, and undermining democracy by criminalizing politics, banana republic-style. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” boasted  Joseph Stalin’s infamous secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria. One of Stalin’s methods was to sic Beria on any political foe and count on his henchman to  find or fabricate a crime that justified imprisoning him or making him “disappear.” This has been the modus operandi of Democrats since the dawn of the “Destroy Donald Trump” era. People like Hostin are telling us who and what they are. Pay attention, and take them at their word.
  • Later—I would say “incredibly” but sadly it isn’t hard to believe at all, CNN’s Don Lemon quoted Hostin on the air regarding the “slam-dunk” case. Yes, he really did quote a member of “The View” to inform CNN watchers on a legal issue. Jonathan Turley, an actual legal expert who isn’t welcome on CNN because he spits out progressive Kool-Aid, and is just a bit more reliable on such topics, has declared Bragg’s potential indictment as a “Frankenstein indictment….to convert a misdemeanor for falsifying financial records into a prosecution of a federal crime.” He added, “There are serious challenges to this prosecution, including an argument that time has expired under the statute of limitations.”

You know: a slam dunk. Continue reading →

A Perfect Explication Of The “2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck” By Someone Other Than Me

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Nicely timed to compliment yesterday’s post officially christening the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump Prosecution Ethics Train Wreck as yet another extension of the horrifically destructive—and still rolling—-2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck is a post on a substack I had never heard of called “The Ivy Exile,” ironically a title I could use myself. It includes an excellent explanation of that most disastrous of all recent ethics train wrecks, though I have been attempting to explain it for seven long years.

Ethics Alarms’ intense concentration on the phenomenon, which I believe is the most dangerous and significant cultural ethics breakdown in American political history, exceeding even the Red Scare and the McCarthy Era, has been costly. So many people hate Donald Trump so much, or are so committed to the progressive excesses he has significantly curtailed, that they rejected this site because it has insisted, and will insist, that core ethical and democratic values must apply to all regardless of their character or perceived misconduct. The efforts by what I have branded the Axis of Unethical Conduct, the “resistance,” Democratic Party and mainstream media to scar and defile American tradition and process in order to undermine, punish and remove a duly elected President, and its disastrous influence on the public that has promoted bright-line legal and ethical breaches that would once have been unthinkable, have so polluted civic discourse and political culture that it may never recover.

Yet many previously rational and intelligent people, once followers of this blog as well as my social media contacts, reflexively chose to regard my insistence that ethics and democratic mandates must apply to Mr. Trump (as the prime offender the New York Times would say) exactly as they must to any other President, political figure, American or human being as evidence that I had become a MAGA fanatic, a “Trumpist” and/or a fascist.

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Comment Of The Day: “Fire Them All: No, Training Cannot Fix Teachers Like This One”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sarah B., proving that Ethics Alarms Comments of the Day do not have to be novelettes in order to make the grade, offers her reaction to the post about the Texas charter school’s grudging admission that forcing 7th graders to pose like sex workers seeking a “date” may not have been appropriate classroom fare:

***

I saw this and it saddens/frightens/infuriates me so much that I can hardly express it.

I believe that this exhibit, one of so many examples, proves that I need to change my answer to a question I get asked a lot.

“Why do you homeschool?”

Usually I cite my wanting to raise my children in my value system, the need of my second child to have incredible flexibility for medical appointments, a desire to control various aspects of the curriculum such as including cursive and home ec, inculcating them in my faith, nationwide illiteracy rates of 45% in fourth grade and 25% in 12th grade (local isn’t much higher), and my experience as a math tutor showing me that children are not taught math appropriately anymore.

The answer I should give is, “Why don’t you?”

Ethics Quiz: The Unmasked 97-Year-Old Driver

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Some background is necessary. Last month, by far the stupidest TV show currently on the air and arguably one of the top ten most ridiculous shows in U.S. entertainment history proved that metaphorical jewels van be found in garbage. On the pile of over-produced, pablum-for-morons, steaming idiot box crap called “The Masked Singer,” the scene in the video above emerged. Dick Van Dyke, now 97, was the secret singer (and dancer) disguised in a full-body costume worthy of a Disneyland character parade. The reaction of the studio audience, judges and Van Dyke himself when he was “unmasked” was unquestionably sincere as well as moving; yeah, it choked me up (though I’m easy.)

The episode, which shows the “Mary Poppins” icon to be something of a freak of nature (but we knew that when he performed a dance routine in the sequel to “Mary Poppins” a few years ago), is relevant to the issue on Ethics Alarms. Yesterday, Dick was behind the wheel of his a 2018 Lexus LS 500 in Malibu when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into gate, sustaining minor injuries.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it responsible for a 97-year-old to be driving, and for society to permit one to drive?

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