Month: March 2024

For the EA “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” Files: Iowa Lawyer David L. Leitner

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

My chosen profession of legal ethics has not been covering itself with glory lately.

The Iowa Supreme Court suspended 68-year-old lawyer David L. Leitner as explained in a discouraging story in the Iowa Capital Dispatch. He’s out of the practice of law for two years: I would have disbarred him. First, Leitner represented an Iowa seed dealer who was convicted of bankruptcy fraud in 2007 after the lawyer helped him hide assets. Leitner created a company for the seed dealer with himself the company’s manager , allowing the seed dealer to send part of his income to the company while hiding it from the government, which the dealer owed about $71,000. (Can’t help clients try to defraud the government. Can’t go into fake businesses with clients designed to cheat on taxes. Pretty basic legal ethics.)

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Regarding Sen. Britt’s Incompetent SOTU “Response”

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Ugh. Distinguished EA commenter valkygrrl gets the pointer and my gratitude for this one: she flagged Senator Britt’s performance in an email late last night, and I might never have seen it otherwise. Here, if you were fortunate enough not to see this thing without a trigger warning, it is…

I already said “Ugh,” now I’ll say, “Yecchh!”

To begin with, the whole concept of the opposition “response” is built on a lie. Although the speech is always presented as a reaction to what America just heard and saw, it is always (has there been an exception?) a pre-written and prepared speech often based on the transcript of the President’s speech released before he delivers it, but sometimes just based on what the opposing party assumes the President will say. So it is always fake: the speaker refers to the speech, but the speaker seldom (ever?) has the wit to go off script and comment on what just happened.

Britt definitely didn’t, and, presumably, couldn’t. Biden was shouting and acting like he was on speed. The State of the Union is supposed to be a Presidential address on the state of the nation itself, not a campaign speech. Biden made numerous false statements. He called illegal immigrants “illegals”—which they are—instead of the benign “migrants” the Axis uses to blur the issue. He mangled rape and murder victim Laken Riley’s name on the same day his party overwhelmingly voted against a House bill that established the outrageous requirement—in the democratic Party’s view— that illegal immigrants arrested for crimes should be detained by ICE. Surely the GOP must have some prominent party member quick and articulate enough to give a genuine response to a State of the Union based on what the speech performance really was. Ted Cruz could do it. Rand Paul. Heck, get a right wing radio talk-show host for the job.

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Searching For the Most Apt Analogy for George Santos Turning Up at the SOTU…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is it Scarlet O’Hara, forced by Rhett Butler to play the seductive Woman in Red at Melanie Wilkes’ birthday party, after he discovers her flirtations with Melanie’s husband? Is it the proverbial skunk at the picnic? Or was the expelled GOP Rep. emulating Davey Crockett in the most recent film account of the Alamo (which, I note with shame, I barely acknowledged this year since my week was occupied with another more personal tragedy), defiantly staring down his foes after the battle was lost?

Or do you have a better analogy? Whatever George Santos was doing by showing up last night, it took gall, which we know the serial liar, fraudster and poseur has in abundance.

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Friday Forum: What SHALL We Talk About Today?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Something cheery, hopeful and encouraging? That would be nice.

A note regarding the mostly inconsequential happenings at the SOTU last night (It was interesting that Justice Thomas decided not to come, given that he is hardly in a position to want to draw attention to himself): this was the first post I put up after finding my wife’s lifeless body, and we had discussed the cynical idiocy of the concept, which Grace found gobsmacking. Last night Biden said “Hold my beer!” and announced that he has ordered the U.S. military to construct a temporary port in Gaza to facilitate hundreds of trucks of aid into the region each day….while the U.S. gives support to Israel’s war effort, which is what necessitates the aid. If last week’s Gaza-supporting actions were responsible and incompetent, and they were, what should we call this?

Conservative wag Stephen Green‘s answer: we should call it “desperately trying to keep Michigan’s electoral votes,” since there are so many Muslims and Hamas-supporters there.

Hack Attack Warning! Pre-State of the Union Address Temperature-Taking: The News Media’s All-in and The Smell of “It Isn’t What It Is” Already Wafts Through the Air

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I promise I won’t make a habit of this, as tempting as it is going to be. But the Axis (let me know when I don’t have to explain or link to a description of this handy Ethics Alarms term every time I use it) is in full panic, say anything, “AHHHHHHGGGHHHH!!!” mode when it isn’t spouting insulting boilerplate, and I have nobody here right now to rant with (Grace was very, very good at that). So hear we go:

1. Try to catalogue the dishonesty, misdirection and sophistry in that MSNBC discussion among Jenn Pasaki and her team of shameless hacks regarding illegal immigration. It’s a phony issue! If you are concerned about it, you’re a racist! There’s no difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration (the usual trick when progressives riff on this issue.) It’s so hilarious that anyone would be concerned about it! This is a Hanlon’s Law challenge: is it possible that wokeness has made all of these women that stupid, or are they just Goebbels-level evil?

2. I also will try to stop using “hack” so much to describe shameless hacks like the most Unethical Famous Presidential Historian Ever, lapping the Kennedys’ lackey Arthur M. Schlesinger, Michael Beshloss. I wonder how they treat this shill for any and all Democrats at historian conventions. Today he said (on MSNBC, natch, where being a regular “contributor” is signature significance for a h…sorry, a historian with no shame) that “this is a real historical moment” and warned, “We could be a dictatorship next year if Donald Trump is elected and carries through on his threats and carries through on his threats to suspend the Constitution. That’s what’s at stake.” (Pssst! Mister Historian! Donald Trump never “threatened” to suspend the Constitution.) Hey, can I use “asshole”?

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Ethics Observations on Great Britain’s Persecution of Sam Melia

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

But you know and I know an awful lot of people, including elected officials, educators and journalists, who wish this could happen here, will do what they can to see that it does happen here, and regard themselves as enlightened and virtuous for believing this.

[Aside: I first (and last) heard that Mothers of Invention riff when I was a freshman in college. I made me laugh then, and it just made me laugh now. Yes, I am looking for things that will make me laugh.]

Sam Melia is an activist who was recenly sentenced to two years in prison for making and distributing offensive stickers, including thos saying,

  • “It’s OK to be White”
  • “White Lives Matter”
  • “Love your Nation”
  • “Stop Anti-White Rape Gangs”
  • “Stop mass immigration”
  • “Reject white guilt”
  • “They seek conquest, not asylum”

Other stickers are unquestionably racist or anti-Semitic. One asked: “Why are Jews censoring free speech?,” for example. He’s a member of neo-fascist Patriotic Alternative, and is clearly an asshole, distributing printable stickers and encouraged his followers to download them and sick them them up in public places. In January, at Leeds Crown Court, Melia was found guilty of distributing material “intended to stir up racial hatred” and “encouraging racially aggravated criminal damage,” though there was no such damage. Last week he received his sentence of two years in jail, and British progressives are just thrilled about it.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) says that when Melia was arrested in April 2021, police “found in his wallet” stickers that expressed “views of a nationalist nature.” When police searched Melia’s home, they “discovered a book by Oswald Mosley” and other evidence “of Melia’s ideology.” Yes, in Great Britain, home of the Magna Carta, Locke and W.S. Gilbert, you can now be imprisoned for what you believe and what opinions you express.

Thanks to the First Amendment, the U.S. has been spared that step into totalitarianism so far, but the double standards applied to the January 6 morons and the George Floyd marauders show that the potential for erosion is strong.

British political writer Brendan O’Neill spends more time explaining what’s wrong with Melia’s persecution than he should have to, but he finishes his critique strongly:

“We need to trust ourselves more to confront hateful thinking and to ensure our communities are safe for everyone, rather than inviting officialdom to restrict and punish ideas we don’t like. Censorship both expands the state’s jurisdiction over the individual’s mind and weakens social solidarity by discouraging the public from directly confronting bigotry in preference for asking the government to cover our eyes and ears. The impact this has on the free society is devastating.

Even some liberal campaigners might feel uncomfortable defending the free-speech rights of a bigot like Melia. They need to get over themselves. As the American essayist HL Mencken said: ‘The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.’

And that is exactly why our aspiring censors—in the Congress, in the White House, in the news media, in universities, in DA offices—need to be stopped now. Immediately. This year.

The Ethical Conflict of the Artist’s Self-Rejected Art

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I was certain that Ethics Alarms had explored the problem of estates issuing, publishing and otherwise profiting from famous artists’ works when the artists have specifically said that the works involved were to be withheld from the public. It has not, however. I suppose the issue is ripe for an ethics quiz. However, as this is an issue that has always intrigued me, I’m going to use a current controversy to delve into the matter now.

Gabriel García Márquez (of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” fame, among other works) labored on a final novel in his last years. After five versions and constant edits, additions and deletions, he gave up. He ordered his son to destroy all versions of “Until August” upon his death. That occurred in 2014, but the novel was not destroyed as he requested. All the drafts, notes and fragments were deposited at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, in its Gabriel García Márquez archives. Now Márquez’s sons are defying their father’s wishes further and having the novel published this month. Because the author is a major international literary figure, the “new” work is considered to be a major publishing event.

But is it ethical to publish the novel at all, if 1) it wasn’t finished 2) its creator decided it wasn’t up to his standards, 3) the work risks diminishing the author’s reputation, and 4) the artist specifically directed that it be destroyed?

There just aren’t any clear rules for this problem. Whose interests take precedence, the creator of work of art, or the public and future generations that might benefit from it?

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It’s Good to Know That We Can Depend on Good Ol’ Snopes For Hilarious Pro-Democrat Spin in the Coming Months…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

My friend Tom left for home today after keeping me sane and helping me cope in the week since Grace died. Now I’ve awakened to an quiet and empty house, more ugly tasks and thoughts to face during the day, and a big confused and needy dog. But I also woke up to Snopes, bless ’em, showing all the shameless depths its fake “fact checking” services will go to try to cover up for Democrats as the election approaches, and it genuinely made me laugh.

You never know where support will come from in such difficult times.

In this post yesterday, Ethics Alarms made the easy call that a high VA official sending out a memo telling its hospitals to remove the iconic Times Square V-J-Day kissing photo demonstrated the warped values and priorities of Joe Biden’s Woke is Everything administration. The uproar over her dumb and dumber memo was such that VA Secretary Denis McDonough immediately stepped in and rescinded it (and you just know he didn’t want to). This was legitimate news and illustrative of a serious problem as well as the cultural stakes at issue in November, but the memo went out to the Axis of Unethical Conduct —“the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media, now allied to defeat the Republicans and Trump by any means necessary—that this is just another “Republicans pounce” story if it is anything at all. MSNBC ignored it. CNN pretended it didn’t happen. (Fox News did cover the story, which proves it is just a shill for the GOP, of course: if you know about what the VA did, see, you’re just a Fox News zombie…). The New York Times: “Memo? What memo?” Of the Usual Suspects when the news media is ordered to do a clean-up on Aisle Woke, only The Hill broke the embargo.

Aside: Doesn’t this phenomenon bother you? Shouldn’t it bother everybody? The way the MSM had handled the story is as ominous as the story itself. This is election interference by disinformation, and it is going on right now.)

But that wasn’t enough; the dishonest fact-checkers had to get into the act. Snopes, which Facebook used(maybe it still does) to decide what information to censor, got itself declared an Unethical Website and banned as a source here in 2016 when it spun absurdly for Hillary during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Its effort to do the same for the Biden Administration Ethics Train Wreck is, if anything, even worse:

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John Kerry Enters the “Incredibly Stupid Statement” Competition!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I heard about this, initially thought it was some right-wing pundit’s exaggeration, and then thought, “Wait, it’s John Kerry. He might really have said something this skin-peelingly stupid.” And indeed he did.

Kerry is a ridiculous human being, always lacking self-awareness, always personifying the worst of arrogant, corrupt and incompetent Washington. With a straight face, and without suddenly slapping himself silly as soon as the words tumbled out of his mouth, this life-time pious, virtue-signaling phony actually opined that people would feel better about Russia as it wages war against Ukraine if it would do it with more concern for threat of climate change.

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In Memory of Grace: “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

When I last re-posted this early Ethics Alarms entry from 2010, I called it, “Since Ethics Alarms Appears To Be The Only Source Trying To Publicize This Problem, Here, For The Third Time.” Not much has changed since then, except that my wife is dead. Listerine played a major role in killing her: Grace’s last major relapse—she battled alcoholism her entire adult life—occurred right before the pandemic when she impulsively drank down an entire jumbo bottle of the vile stuff and shortly thereafter took a nearly fatal fall off a curb outside our home. She never fully recovered from the effects of that fall, though other, less catastrophic relapses involving the mouthwash occurred at regular intervals.

As I explained in an earlier introduction, the original post “raised an important and shamefully under-reported topic, one that despite my exhortations then has yet to be adequately examined in the media.” In 2016, when I googled various combinations of “mouthwash,” “Listerine,”‘alcoholism,” and “alcoholic,” the first result was still my post. [UPDATE: The Ethics Alarms post is now about 100 deep, behind such links as “Should I switch to alcohol-free mouthwash?” Note that since 2016, Google’s algorithm buries EA in its searches because it is insufficiently in tune with the Axis.]

“Most people who are not afflicted with the disease of alcoholism have no idea that mouthwash is a popular stand-in for liquor, or that is used to deceive family members who think an addict is no longer using or intoxicated,” I wrote in the 2016 intro. First I was prompted to re-post the essay after I had been shocked to hear a physician friend who treated alcoholics plead complete ignorance of the links between mouthwash and alcoholism. The last time, it was the surprising reaction of my own physician, who is usually up-to-date on all medical research, and had treated alcoholism sufferers at the VA. He had never heard anything about the problem.

I’m re-posting this time because of Grace. The quote from my 2016 intro is still valid:

“Despite my frustration that what I regard as a true exposé that should have sparked an equivalent article in a more widely read forum has remained relatively unknown, I am encouraged by the effect it has had. Most Ethics Alarms posts have their greatest traffic around the time they are posted, but since 2010, the page views of this article have increased steadily…More importantly, it has drawn comments like this one:

‘Am looking after my twin sister who is a chronic alcoholic. She has been three days sober and then she just walked in and I couldn’t work out what the hell happened. She was in a stupor , but there was no alcohol and I am dispensing the Valium for detox period and she smelt like mint!! Found three bottles of it !!! This is my last big push to help her and she pleaded innocent and no idea it had alcohol in it! Hasn’t had a shower for two days but keeps her mouth fresh and sweet !! Thanks for the information. Much appreciated XXX’

“Most of all, I am revolted that what I increasingly have come to believe is an intentional, profit-motivated deception by manufacturers continues, despite their knowledge that their product is killing alcoholics and destroying families. I know proof would be difficult, but there have been successful class action lawsuits with millions in punitive damage settlements for less despicable conduct. Somewhere, there must be an employee or executive who acknowledges that the makers of mouthwash with alcohol know their product is being swallowed rather than swished, and are happy to profit from it….People are killing themselves right under our noses, and we are being thrown of by the minty smell of their breath.”

Here again is “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit.” Maybe this time it will help someone to avoid Grace’s pain and her ultimate fate.

I’m so, so sorry, my darling, that I couldn’t give you the peace you needed to fight this curse.

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