Month: April 2024

The Explanation For Everything That Afflicts Americans of Color Is Systemic Racism, Part II: Botched Executions

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A report released last week by Reprieve, a human rights group that opposes the death penalty apparently shows that the lethal injections of convicted murderers are botched more than twice as often as the executions of white convicts. Spinning, the New York Times says, “That finding builds on a wealth of research into racial disparities in how the U.S. judicial system administers the death penalty. The proportion of Black people on death rows is far higher than their share of the population as a whole.”

“We know that there’s racism in the criminal justice system,” said Maya Foa, an executive director of Reprieve. “We know it’s there in the capital punishment system, from who gets arrested, who gets sentenced, all of it. This is, though, the first time that it’s been looked at in the context of the execution itself.”

To start with, they don’t “know” that at all. It is a self-perpetuating theory built on other debatable assumptions, such as believing that the disproportionate number of blacks on Death Row, and in the U.S. prison system generally, is because a disproportionate number of blacks commit crimes that legitimately put them there. Second, how exactly does doing a bad job killing a condemned prisoner show racial bias?

More from the Times:

Continue reading →

Recipe for Confusion: Take A Trump Ad-lib, Spoon in a Measure of Tucker Carlson Demagoguery, and Mix Both into JFK Assassination Conspiracy Hysteria

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Again, I must invoke Curmie’s versatile “Oh bloody hell!”

I have been studying Presidential assassination history and conspiracy theories since before I had to shave, and I have little patience with those who misrepresent, distort or exploit these events. Just two days ago, I was pointing out that the much-admired Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” was a blight on the culture despite my belief that entertainment should have a wide margin for creative license. The musical—the songs aren’t bad—is based on the absurd premise that John Wilkes Booth’s motivation for his decision to assassinate Lincoln is a mystery, and that, like other POTUS assassins and attempted assassins, he was trying to make a difference in a society that had ignored and marginalized him. That’s just crap for most of the historical killers and wackos portrayed in the show, but especially Booth. “Was it bad reviews, Johnny?” a balladeer croons. Of course not, you idiot: no assassin ever made his motivations clearer than John Wilkes Booth.

He was a dedicated Confederate partisan; he blamed Lincoln (correctly) for not letting the South go its own way, he was crushed that the South was headed for defeat, and believed that if the Union government could be decapitated (the plot was to kill Lincoln, Vice-President Johnson, Secretary of State Seward and General Grant in a single night) the South might yet prevail—and his plan might have worked. No mystery! But our history is constantly misrepresented to the historically ignorant and illiterate, that is to say, most of the public, often for the selfish purposes of rumormongers and worse.

You know, like Tucker Carlson.

Continue reading →

This Time I WANT to Defend Donald Trump…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The almost unanimous mainstream media mockery of former President Trump briefly snoozing during the kangaroo court “hush money” trial isn’t the most noxious example of biased, hostile news media coverage as the Axis attempts to, again, clothesline the American leader so many of them have pledged to destroy (Hi there, NPR!) , but it’s particularly contrived and ignorant. Attention should be paid: these are the people crippling democracy while claiming that they want to save it.

The idea, of course, is tit-for-tat: Republicans and conservatives (along with anyone with eyes and ears who isn’t so biased they can’t think) have been pointing out the obvious crisis that the man supposedly overseeing our government is failing mentally and physically, unable to keep a full schedule or speak coherently, almost certainly operating with a metaphorical hand shoved up into his suit and head to give the (barely credible illusion) that he is really calling the shots, in thrall to a dangerous far left cabal, and too old to be safely entrusted with the Presidency even if all of the forgoing weren’t true. Therefore the counter argument, juvenile as it is (“So’s your old man!”) is to default to “wahataboutism” (as well as the usual anti-Trump Big Lies). Trump’s too old! Trump’s no more able than Biden!

Continue reading →

The Explanation For Everything That Afflicts Americans of Color Is Systemic Racism, Part I: Insomnia

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

…someone just has to figure out how and why. Or just assume how and why. Oh, hell, just hand over the reparations already!

Researchers believe that black Americans are likely to have more trouble sleeping than the white Americans who oppress them. In fact, the darker your skin color is, the less sleep you get, says Dr. Dayna A. Johnson, a sleep epidemiologist at Emory University. “The theory is that racial minorities experience a stress that is unique and chronic and additive to the general stressors that all people experience,” said Johnson, a sleep disparity pioneer. “We all experience stress, but there are added stressors for certain groups. For certain populations, racism fits into that category.”

A Johnson-headed study published in the journal “Sleep” claims to find that experiencing racism and can cause people to have problems falling asleep. (What did the researchers do, hire people to racially discriminate against their subjects before bedtime?) The study also concluded that people who anticipate racism may experience interference with their sleep-wake cycle because the dread causes their body to be in a heightened state of anxiety, with higher blood pressure and accelerating heart rate. By this, I glean that being told by the media, politicians and race-hucksters that American society is all racist all the time causes black Americans to lose sleep. Got it. And being white, this is my fault.

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Mississippi

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared April 2024 as Confederate Heritage Month in the state, following a 31-year-old tradition that began in 1993. Beauvoir, the museum established in the home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Biloxi, announced the proclamation in a Facebook post on Friday, April 12. Governor Tate’s proclamation read,

“Whereas, as we honor all who lost their lives in this war, it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us. Now, therefore, I, Tate Reeves, Governor of the State of Mississippi, hereby proclaim the month of April 2024 as Confederate Heritage Month in the State of Mississippi.”

I have argued vigorously on Ethics Alarms against toppling the statues of important historical figures associated with the South’s disastrous and misguided attempt to secede from the Union and the bloody war that resulted. That is because erasing history is a form of public mind-control and totalitarian to its core. Moreover, many of the figures now being denigrated and “cancelled” with their memorials defaced or eliminated and their names erased from buildings and institutions had complex lives and careers worthy of honor, study and memorializing despite their participation in the rebellion.

Most of all, perhaps, the practice creates a dangerous precedent and a slippery slope: today Robert E. Lee, tomorrow Thomas Jefferson. When I first posted that warning here, many ridiculed it. Not long after, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson and even Washington became targets of the statue-topplers.

But those were human beings. The Confederacy was a movement, deadly and and unethical, rooted in a theoretically legal defense of an inhuman and evil practice. There is no way to commemorate the Confederacy’s “heritage” without appearing to justify and celebrate the slavery it represented, as well as the scars it left on America. Declaring Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi might not be intended as coded racism, but then again it might.

Starting the tradition was tone deaf and suspicious in 1993. It is divisive and offensive to continue the tradition in 2024. The next step down the same slope would be “Jim Crow Heritage Month,” wouldn’t it? After all, we can “gain insight from our mistakes and successes” and “come to a full understanding” of “the lessons learned yesterday and today” from the South’s post-Civil War system of apartheid and discrimination too.

Frankly, I am amazed that Mississippi is still romanticizing the Confederacy.

Catchy tune, though.

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…(Really Stupid and Careless Mistake Corrected)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Wow.

Letitia James really is an idiot, isn’t she? How could the New York Attorney General be so reckless as to go on camera and deny what is a matter of record? I guess one answer would be “She’s a dead-eyed, arrogant and Machiavellian political operative who lacks the necessary integrity to be a prosecutor…and she’s an idiot.”

This video should be used extensively by Trump, the Republican Party, and to whatever extent possible where the other Trump cases are proceeding. It vividly and revoltingly demonstrates the partisan nature of the Democrats’ lawfare against the former President. Nah, it’s not selective prosecution! How could anyone think that? Criminalizing politics? What are those conspiracy-spouting conservatives talking about?

James isn’t is uniquely repellent—Fani Willis, the equally dishonest Fulton County DA, is arguably worse— but still is an appropriate face to put on all of the Democratic Party’s efforts to win the 2024 election not on merit but by the time-tested totalitarian device of charging political opponents with crimes. (Trump is a fan of Putin?) You never know: there may even be some progressives with integrity who will decide they don’t want to be associated with such anti-democratic tactics…and that is exactly what they are.

Thanks, Letitia!

Bitter, Pathetic, Miserable Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yes, I know I’m breaking my own rule about not using unflattering photos of Hillary Cinton, a pledge I made during the 2016 Presidential campaign I think—it might have been earlier. She deserves it in this instance.

I feel genuine compassion for Hillary, just as I do for Al Gore (and Samuel J. Tilden) up to a point. It must be terrible to win the popular vote for President of the United States and lose the election. I think it must be a little like what I am trying to deal with right now after waking up one morning and finding my wife dead.

Hillary is bitter and angry, and I understand that. The ethical mandate in such a situation is to strive to deal with these emotions with dignity, and, in her position as a public figure that many Americans admire and respect (mistakenly), to serve as a role model for everyone else who finds themselves suddenly losing something or someone that assumed they had firmly and safely in their embrace.

She’s failed that mandate spectacularly and repeatedly. Clinton lost the Presidency, not only by the quirk of the Electoral College, but also through her own perfidy, arrogance and incompetence, yet she refuses to take responsibility for any of that. In her view, at least publicly, it is all Donald Trump’s fault, along with the”deplorables” who voted for him. From the moment she learned that she had lost the 2016 election in a stunning upset, Clinton has set out to do everything and anything she can to hurt him, beginning with declaring his election illegitimate, spawning the Russian collusion investigation that crippled his Presidency, and using every opportunity to trigger the Trump Deranged with inevitably diminishing returns.

Continue reading →

American Historians Becoming Woke, Biased, and Corrupt

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Jack Henneman operates an excellent podcast called “The History of the Americans.” In his latest installment, he varies from his usual format to give us an editorial on the topic of the corruption of American history scholarship. Regular readers here would assume that I would approve, for Ethics Alarms has been deploring the ethics rot among American history academics for many years. Introducing his podcast, Henneman explains that he recently attended the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco. “I learned a lot,” he writes, “especially how transparently politicized so many professional historians seem have become.”

“This episode recounts some of what I saw and heard, and concludes with my many thoughts on the greatest benefit of learning history, whether history should be ‘useable,’ and,” he adds, “why deploying history for partisan political purposes, as is now happening widely and overtly, corrupts history absolutely.”

The podcaster/historian does an excellent job, and it is work enhanced by his keen understanding of ethics. I listened to the podcast yesterday, and today read the truly nauseating partisan propaganda spewed on Bill Maher’s HBO show by once respectable historian Jon Meacham. Meacham wrote, among other celebrated tomes, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.” (I don’t know why I’m promoting this traitor to his profession’s book, except that it is excellent, and he wrote it before he jumped the ethics shark, in 2008). He has since become a partisan Democrat to the point where I would view it as a conflict of interest, and one that he has not been forthcoming in disclosing.

It takes a lot for MSNBC to punish anyone for being unethical, that being one of the far, far left network’s missions, but Meacham was fired as a paid MSNBC contributor after he failed to disclose to the network that he was a Biden speechwriter. Before he was caught playing the role of objective scholarly analyst who was secretly being paid to endorse one party, he had made such obviously slanted claims as asserting on MSNBC that the Clinton impeachment process was wholly partisan, while Trump’s first impeachment was not. That’s not just biased, it’s counter-factual: Clinton’s impeachment had a bi-partisan House vote of 258-176, with 31 Democrats joining the Republicans. No Republican voted for Trump’s first impeachment. This is in the same category of dishonest historical analysis for partisan gain practiced by CNN’s pro-Democratic “Presidential scholar” Michael Beschloss, who just makes stuff up now.

Meacham is always described as a “Pulitzer Prize winning historian,” so it is prudent to recall that Nikole Hannah-Jones also got a Pulitzer for the fake history in her “1619 Project.” But when he’s being a pundit, which is apparently most of the time lately, Meacham just skips the facts as it suits him. He tweeted, for example, in 2019, that Trump’s mean tweets about “the Squad” meant that he “has joined Andrew Johnson as the most racist President in American history.”

Continue reading →

Pop Quiz: See If You Can Guess What Aspect of This Question to “The Ethicist” Intrigues Me…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Hint: it isn’t the question the inquirer is asking…

“My husband and I are thrilled to be welcoming our first child this spring, after an arduous I.V.F. journey lasting nearly two years. We ended up needing an anonymous egg donor, whom we found through an egg bank, to conceive our child. Select family members and close friends who knew that we were trying are aware that we took this route. However, my husband told me that he doesn’t want anyone else knowing that we used donor eggs, and that he is upset that some people already know. He is afraid that in a few years, someone will let slip to the child that they were conceived with donor eggs before we as parents have a chance to tell them ourselves. He believes we’re violating our unborn child’s right to privacy by sharing this fact with others. His fear stems from an experience in his family in which an aunt accidentally revealed to a cousin that his biological father was not the man who raised him. I have pointed out to him that what he fears is not likely to happen, that this is our story to tell as much as our child’s; and I’ve reminded him that we should let our child know how they were brought into this world at as young an age as possible, using language they can understand. Further, I wouldn’t have been able to get through this incredibly difficult and painful process without the small group of family and friends we had to rally around us. It was important to me to be able to share the experience with this group, and with some other good, trustworthy and loving friends. He doesn’t understand or respect this and is depriving me of something I hold dear by insisting on secrecy — and this is what hurts the most. I have pleaded with him to see my side, but he doesn’t budge. Out of respect for his wishes, I’ve now kept it from several additional close friends, which has been painful for me. What could possibly bring him around? Or how could I make peace with his position? And have I really deprived our unborn child of a right to privacy by telling a few people about how the child was conceived? “

Just to get this out of the way, my answer would be, “Tell your silly husband to get over it. Trying to keep these kinds of secrets is eventually indistinguishable from lying. The truth, as they say, will out.”

Did you figure out what I focused on? Know your ethicist! What interests me is this: “He believes we’re violating our unborn child’s right to privacy by sharing this fact with others.“

The Ethicist, a long time contributor to the Times, clearly a progressive-leaning academic at a super-woke school (NYU), accepts that as a legitimate issue in his answer. Yet his employers, virtually its entire staff, definitely most if not all of his NYU colleagues, and definitely most of his students, accept as a matter of progressive gospel that the unborn child has no right to live, and if the mother chooses to treat the fetus or embryo or baby as a wart, a tumor, or an unwanted invader, then that’s what it is. Does the unborn child’s right to privacy magically appear once the mother has decided not to kill it? How does that work, exactly?

Abortion advocates should have to explain these contradictions. They don’t. They can’t.

Ethics Observations on the Trump “Hush Money” Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Last week Jonathan Turley issued a thorough indictment of the trial in Manhattan, which he described as “a clear example of the weaponization of the criminal justice system.” The George Washington University law professor has been saying this from the beginning about Alvin Bragg’s partisan prosecution, and it should be self-evident: a criminal case relying on the slimier-than-slime, convicted perjurer and disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen as an essential witness should never be pursued, and it is a violation of prosecutorial ethics to do so.

I was surfing between various news networks’ analyses of the case, and only the usually silly “Fox and Friends” crew stated the most important conclusion that the others carefully avoided. It’s a political prosecution, and the purpose is to get a conviction by any means possible, even one tainted and sure to be overturned, so the Democrats can run against Trump as a “convicted felon.” Justice has nothing to do with it, as Turley’s careful assessment makes clear.

The other purpose is to interfere with the certain Republican candidate’s ability to campaign, because he otherwise has the energy and ability to campaign, while his Democratic opposition does not. Yes, the Democrats are interfering with the 2024 election and attempting to rig it even as in other prosecutions and in campaign attacks, they claim Trump is an existential danger to democracy and that his claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” are “baseless.” The unethical conduct of the Democrats in prosecutions like the “hush money” trial is itself a rebuttal of that statement. If I had to define “hypocrisy,” I couldn’t come up with a better example than that.

The question this week was whether it is fair to try Donald Trump in New York City. That’s easy: no. All of the lawfare cases are calculated to go to trial in communities extremely hostile to Trump: New York, D.C., and Fulton County, Georgia, the solid Blue heart of a mostly conservative state. Given the stakes and the defendant, judges should move all of the cases, just as the trial of Derek Chuavin and the three other cops implicated in George Floyd’s death should have been moved out of the Twin Cities, if the objective had been a fair trial rather than to mollify Black Lives Matters.

Continue reading →