Month: August 2023

My Answer To “Name Withheld’s” Question To “The Ethicist”: “Tell Sis To Shut The Hell Up!” Yours?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

An inquirer to “The Ethicist,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, asked this week:

“A year ago, I was told I had a form of ovarian cancer and was given two to three years to live — five years, if I’m in the top quartile of patients. I nursed my husband through metastatic lung cancer for 15 months. It was horrific; I am hoping that God takes me early. My sister, whom I love very much, is part of a fundamentalist Christian church and is one of their top “prayer warriors.” As such, she calls me nearly every day and launches into long prayers asking God to send my cancer to the “foot of the cross.” She implores me to pray with her and says that if I just believe that God will cure me, he will.I grew up Catholic and have fallen away from the church. I believe God is bigger than what we can understand as human beings. I am a data-driven health care practitioner: I believe that everybody has to die of something, and this happens to be my fate. I’ve told her as tactfully as I can that her praying for me and expecting me to pray with her for my cure is upsetting to me. It makes me feel that if there is a God, he must really hate me; otherwise, he would have cured me. (She says that he wants to use me as a “messenger” to others and that it’s the Devil, not God, who gave this disease to me.)…

“What do I say to my sister without belittling her beliefs? I’ve told her that if she wants to pray for me, I would rather she do it on her own time and not ask me to participate. But she is persistent, thinking that she’s going to “save my soul” and my body at the same time. She disputes every reason that I give her and insists that what she is doing is helpful. But it’s not helpful; it sends me into a terrible depression.”

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: A French Town’s Solution To Excessive Speeding In An Intersection

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The town is Bauné, near Angers, home to 1,700 people. But because of its location at the crossroads between two departmental roads, roughly 2,300 cars pass through Bauné and reach speeds of over 60 mph even though the town’s signs at the intersection demand far lower velocity. So in order to get drivers to slow down, some genius had the brainstorm of using the intentionally confounding road markings above, and local authorities agreed to adopt the strategy.

Confused drivers are slowing down, all right. Other effective solutions would have been having blinding strobe lights flashing at drivers or insult-spewing mimes throwing water balloons at windshields.

Here’s an aerial view of the mess:

From The News Media And Democrats, Another “It Isn’t What It Is” Orgy [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

There is no excuse for this, but apparently it works because the American people are generally as gullible as puppies, as lazy as Homer Simpson, and as irresponsible as eight-year olds with firecrackers. Democrats and their news media henchmen and henchwomen once again decided that it was prudent to gaslight the American people on the topic of abortion, where they have no logical or ethical legs to stand on, but never mind, it’s only about “choice,” after all.

During the first GOP candidates debate in Wisconsin, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson all agreed that, in DeSantis’s words,”the Democrats are trying to….allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth.” That is unquestionably true, but most Americans don’t like the idea of killing viable babies in the womb—if that’s okay, why not wait until after a birth and decide then if you want to kill the little bugger?—so the troops were called out to deny reality. (This is the current Rationalization of the Century in Woke World: #64. Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is”)

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Lawyer John Eastman On The Georgia Trump Indictments

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought.  It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.  As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempted here by “formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.”  – An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court. Each Defendant in this indictment, no less than any other American citizen, is entitled to rely upon the advice of counsel and the benefit of past legal precedent in challenging what former Vice President Pence described as, “serious allegations of voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” in the 2020 election.  The attempt to criminalize our rights to such redress with this indictment will have – and is already having – profound consequences for our system of justice. My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful.  I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.”

John Eastman, respected conservative legal scholar, lawyer, law professor and former Dean of Chapman University Law School, as he surrendered last week to authorities on charges in the Georgia case alleging an illegal plot to overturn the Trump’s 2020 election loss.

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Ethics Dunce: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

This news item has the added advantage for me of adding to my file, now voluminous, of ridiculous legal theories that nonetheless cannot be sanctioned violations of Rule 3.1: Meritorious Claims & Contentions, aka. “Frivolous claims” when they are used as the justification for lawsuits. (The profession’s aversion to punishing lawyers for Hail Mary lawsuits apparently applies to all lawyers accept those representing Donald Trump.) Mostly, however, it demonstrates how completely incompetent another progressive big city mayor is when it comes to dealing with crime.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) announced yesterday that his crime-ridden hell-hole of city, rife with property crimes and murder, will be suing automakers Kia and Hyundai for “their failure to include industry-standard engine immobilizers in multiple models of their vehicles.” This, the theory goes, is why there are so many car thefts in the Windy City.

Yes, it’s the cars’ fault that they get stolen! It certainly isn’t the fault of the car thieves, whom the new mayor wants to see treated with compassion, care and as little punishment as possible. Even though the crime explosion in Chicago was the main reason he defeated the previous mayor, Lori Lightfoot (that, and the fact that she was dishonest and incompetent), Johnson’s plan to stop crime is pure John Lennon wishery: defund as much of the police as possible, seek “restorative justice” and “treatment over punishment,” and have judges who will avoid handing down jail sentences.

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Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Mugshot

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’ll say right now, up front, I love it. This might be the most appealing, brilliant thing Donald Trump has ever done in the realm of politics. If he came up with that expression himself, bravo. As a director, I couldn’t have devised a better one for him under the circumstances.

What the photo communicates is…

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On Trump, Tucker, The GOP Debate And The News Media On A Depressing Wednesday Night, Part 3

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

1. The whole evening and its contents spun into an ethics train wreck. My favorite? Vivek Ramaswamy deliberately evoked Barack Obama’s line calling himself a “a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too,” in his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech when he was running for the U.S. Senate, despite the fact that 99% of Americans had forgotten about the moment and just about as many couldn’t care less. “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?” Ramaswamy said. What the heck was he doing? Comparing oneself to Obama isn’t great strategy at a GOP debate, and Chris Christie, who is alert to such things, responded, aptly, “The last person in one of these debates … who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama,” Christie said. “And I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur.” Touche!

But perpetually embarrassing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, attending the debate as a “Trump surrogate” thought part of her job was to emulate MSNBC race-baiters. She said, “Greene: “I was pretty disgusted by Chris Christie and his racist comment towards Vivek Ramaswamy… He compared him to Obama. I thought that was pretty racist.” She actually said that. Several things come to mind:

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On Trump, Tucker, The GOP Debate And The News Media On A Depressing Wednesday Night, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’m feeling better now, sort of, so let us dig in to the hope-suffocating debacle that was last night’s Republican candidates debate. Why debacle? Well, thanks to the complicity of Tucker Carlson, there was no way for viewers to compare any of the candidates to the front-runner who thinks it’s ethical to sit on his lead. (Certain to achieved a .400 average by sitting out a season-ending double-header in 1941, Ted Williams, as a matter of integrity, insisted on risking the historical achievement and played both games anyway, raising his average to .406.) In the harsh glare of live TV, none of the assembled did what they had to do, which was convince substantial numbers of viewers that “Hey! This option is less obnoxious than Donald Trump and would beat Joe Biden!”

As a group, the candidates failed the easiest test, when they were asked by Martha MacCallum, “Do you believe in human behavior causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.” None of the candidates had a sufficiently articulate and knowledgeable response, and having one should be hard. DeSantis used it to grandstand (We are not schoolchildren. Let’s have the debate…”) and then ducked the question. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, meanwhile, ducked the question ANd fled into Fantasyland, saying, “First of all, we do care about clean air, clean water. We want to see that taken care of, but there is a right way to do it. The right way is first of all, yes, is climate change real? Yes, it is. But if you want to go and really change the environment, we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.”

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On Trump, Tucker, The GOP Debate And The News Media On A Depressing Wednesday Night, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an awful display of what Americans will have to choose from if it wants to avoid the Democratic Party’s determined march to censorship, world governance, environmental fascism, abortion at will, open borders, racial preferences and more.

The unethical, frankly nauseating Tucker Carlson suck-up session with Donald Trump was the bottom of last’s night’s barrel, as the former President continued his rejection of the opportunity for voters to see him next to his competitors for the GOP nomination—it’s called “having respect for democracy and the American public, you ass—and allied himself with twin narcissist Carlson’s “Take THAT, Fox News!” campaign. Carlson again showed that he is no journalist, just a self-aggrandizing hack, by never asking Trump a single critical question or anything Donald might take umbrage at, like, say, “Where in the Constitution is your mirage that the Vice-President can refuse to certify the election?” or “How can Americans trust you to be President when you have advocated suspending the Constitution? ” Nah, Tucker was more interested in pressing Trump on whether Democrats would try to have him killed. I suppose, if Trump had not already disqualified himself for any major elected office with his despicable, irresponsible—but not illegal or impeachable—conduct after the 2020 election in one’s eyes, this might have helped:

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