Once again, a pile-up on Route Ethics has me doing another Saturday multi-story post. These take twice as long as most posts to prepare, and generally attract less than average traffic and minimal comments. Nonetheless, they are necessary, for me if not anyone else, just to come closer to covering the topic.

Sooooooooooo,

1. Starting off lightly, with more evidence from “The Ethicist” that people are indeed getting ethically dumber: Today’s inquirer literally asks, “Is lying ethical?”

2. The D.E.I. Ethics Train Wreck hasn’t stopped yet, Harvard notwithstanding. The University of California, Los Angeles, was accused by a whistleblower of discriminating on the basis of race in violation of California and U.S. law. Black and Latino applicants. it was alleged, are held to lower standards than whites and Asians on exams and other measurements of competence. The dean of the medical school, Steven Dubinett, denied the claims and said that students and faculty “are held to the highest standards of academic excellence.” Hiring and admissions decisions are “based on merit,” not race, “in a process consistent with state and federal law.” Oopsie! Dubinett himself directs a center within the medical school, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, that includes an illegal a race-based fellowship.

3. More on UCLA: You can read about how far UCLA’s medical school has fallen here. The take-away from the report is that both admissions and graduation standards are being lowered for minorities. One professor claimed that “a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot.” “I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” another UCLA professor said. “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”

In related news, a recent investigation found that Natalie Perry, the leader of the DEI-fueled Cultural North Star program at the UCLA School of Medicine, plagiarized large portions of her doctoral dissertation.

4. Speaking of anonymous sources, here is how the Washington Post describes its source for a “Run away!” report claiming that “Russ Vought, the former President’s budget director, is laying the groundwork for a broad expansion of presidential powers”: “according to some people involved in discussions about a second term who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.” Journalism!

5.And speaking of “journalism”: Unbelievable. CNN at this moment is giving an “ex-neighbor” of Justice Alito and his wife his “15 minutes of fame” to try to keep the ridiculous upside-down flag scandal flying…

6. Welcome to “Flat-Learning Curve Theater!” In today’s pro-terrorism demonstration near the White House, protesters are proclaiming Biden’s promised “red line” regarding the Israeli war effort to be cynical sham designed to placate opponents of his sort-of pro-Israel policy. Ya think? Wouldn’t you think that after Barack Obama’s “red line” fiasco, Biden and/or his ventriloquists would avoid using that same term? Nah. This guy can’t even waffle competently.

7. It’s Ethics Alarms mailbag time! Today I got this repressing note off site:

Then, I read your article disgracing Clarence Thomas.  How someone can write that about Thomas, a beyond minimal monetary issue, and not say a word about $5M bribes taken by our installed Dictator and his disgraceful son, is beyond the pale.  That you don’t see your cognitive dissonance tells me that your over-schooling and DC lifestyle has brainwashed whatever ethics you might have had down the drain.  In short, unless you take on the Bidens, your claim to being an ethicist (which objectivity defines) is as phony as his election.

Thus proving that MAGA cultists can be at least as ethically inert as the Trump Deranged. My response: “Taking two posts out of almost 17,000 on Ethics Alarms and making conclusions regarding my perspective is, I’d say obviously, unfair, irresponsible, impulsive, and, frankly, lazy. Though people like you have trouble believing this, Ethics Alarms is about ethics, not politics, not partisan favoritism. “Whataboutism” cuts no ice here. I’m a specialist in professional ethics, and the absurd, unprofessional, unethical conduct Justice Thomas has engaged in would be just as unacceptable from Justice Kagan or any progressive Justice, and I would flag it the same way. That you would call letting a politically active “friend” pay for a house “beyond minimal” is a tell, and not one that reflects well on you. Nor does one individual’s unethical conduct excuse another individual’s unethical conduct. The site is full of instruction on this basic principle. Double standards is something else entirely: for example, prosecuting Trump for the same offense President Biden is apparently being forgiven because he’s too addled for a jury to convict him is unethical and unforgivable. Holding Justice Thomas to basic principles of honesty and disclosure is both ethical and essential. If you pay attention on Ethics Alarms, you may learn something about ethical reasoning. You obviously need to do this, based on your email.”

On Ethics Alarms, this guy would be the Right’s version of Banned Bob. 

8. But this analysis should cheer his soul: Here is the level of commitment those so-called “defenders of democracy” the Democrats are running this year have for American values…

Paula Collins, a pro-pot lawyer who will be the Democrat opposing Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) in New York’s 21st Congressional District come November, told a town hall event that “Even if we were to have a resounding blue wave come through, as many of us would like, putting it all back together again after we’ve gone through this MAGA nightmare and re-educating basically, which that sounds like a rather, a re-education camp…I don’t think we really wanna call it that. I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.”

Hey, what a great idea! Make people love Big Brother! Maybe by threatening to have hungry rats eat their faces! She should write a book about that!