Just remember, the Ethics Alarms position is to strive as much as possible to remain unbiased regarding a performer’s art regardless of his or her demonstrated political orientation or revealed personal character flaws. I enjoy Bradley Whitford as an actor.
But only an unethical, bullying asshole would write a tweet like that.
How could a lawyer be more unethical?
As unethical, sure: I am confident that there have been other lawyers who are tied with this Michigan lawyer for the title. But more? Consider:
Marco Bisbikis, a Michigan lawyer in good standing, worked as an attorney for the Dan Hutchinson and his wife, wrote himself into popular Oakland County jeweler’s will while he was preparing it for his client, who was also under the impression that his attorney was a loyal friend. (Can you blame him? Who wouldn’t trust a face like that?)
Then Bisbikis paid a hit man to shoot and kill Hutchinson so the lawyer could inherit millions of dollars in a trust fund. On June 1, 2022, outside an Oak Park pawn shop, the hit man did just that. Bisbikis and the hired killer, Roy Larry, were convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation of murder, and felony firearm and in June they were both sentenced life in prison. Two other men involved in the plot were convicted and sentenced last year.
This is an example of why I am disgusted with my field and chosen profession. Just last month I designated Jefferson, a legal ethics professor among other things, as an ethics dunce for her blatantly partisan and biased commentary. This time, it’s personal.
Seeking to find a reliable, trustworthy, accurate source of legal ethics news and developments (since the demise of the excellent legal Ethics Forum, I am reduced to the scattershot, overwhelmingly left-biased commentary on the APRL listserv), I subscribed to the professor’s substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, taking seriously her promise that it would supply a “Monday morning tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics.” But the Legal Ethics Roundup I received this morning, like all its predecessors this month, cheerfully informed me that “For the month of August, the Legal Ethics Roundup is on pause.”
The jersey worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth when he “called his shot” in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series sold over the weekend for $24.12 million, setting the auction record for most expensive sports collectible. The previous record price for any sports collectible was the $12.6 million that a rare mint condition Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle card fetched in 2022. Babe’s jersey far eclipsed the $10.1 million a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals achived at auction that same year, the record for athletic attire until Babe broke it, like he shattered so many records when he was alive.
The sale raises many ethics issues, but the main one is that the exorbitant price is almost certainly based on a fabrication, a lie. It is similar to paying millions for the axe little George Washington used to cut down his father’s cherry tree.
This is an unusual Comment of the Day by Chris Marschner (on the post,“As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn”), but it makes an important point, indeed, the crucial point that exposes the intellectual dishonesty of the Times’ “Think of the Children!” campaign to demonize Israel as it tries to defend its right to exist.
***
I reworked the original Times story to reflect a similar situation in the mid-20th century. All I did was change the name and the players. If the Times had written its report this way, then the Brits, the French, the Poles, the Czecks and others would be goose-stepping to their new bosses and Israel would not exist.
It is obvious to any rational thinker that when a nation faces existential peril from zealots who believe they are the rightful heirs of the entire region and that no one except the devout believers of Mohammed may live peacefully there, that when they are attacked they must eliminate the immediate as well as the long term threat in order to minimize civilian losses. We did this twice in the Pacific and Europe when despots saw opportunities for empire building.
My NYT rewrite:
Oh yeah, she’s secretly brilliant…
And the morons applaud.
Looking for that wood-chipper….
There is a necessary class action law suit that needs to be filed against Experian, the multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company. Its scam, and it is a scam, is diabolically simple: once you enroll in its lowest level paid subscription (just $3.99 a month!), it is virtually impossible to cancel it. I say “virtually” because I would not be surprised if there was some magic, hidden,absurdly complicated way to cancel that one can only access by luck, genius or accident. Thus Experian could argue, “Oh no! It’s easy to cancel: see?”
Experian isn’t the only company to play this profitable, unethical game; since my wife’s death, I have spent an astounding number of hours dealing with dozens of companies’ “customer service” (Ha!) systems that have to have been set up to foil genuine customer service, frustrate efforts by consumers to get out of traps, and to prompt the understandable reaction, “Oh, to hell with it, it’s only a few bucks and I don’t have time for this.”
Today the Times published another in its continuing reporting efforts to demonize Israel, encourage anti-Semitism, support the unconscionable Biden -Harris pressure on Israel to agree to a ruinous cease-fire, and to validate Palestinian terrorism. The Ethics Alarms commentary on this piece is essentially identical to what appeared in its predecessor, As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With “Think of the Children!” Porn…which stated in that the Times report…
“…can evoke no possible response from typical semi-attentive and easily manipulated readers than “Think of the children! The Jews are monsters! Cease fire now! The Gazans have suffered enough! Justice for Palestine!”
And this is exactly the end result that Hamas sought when it launched its cease-fire shattering surprise terror attack on Israeli civilians, including infants, on October 7.”
Just because I would vote for a Muppet before I would vote for Kennedy, he accurately described not only why he has abandoned the corrupt and undemocratic Democratic Party, but why any Democrat with integrity should.
Ann Althouse chose basically the same excerpt from the speech that I would have, so I’ll give her the pointer on the official Ethics Quote of the Week:
Yesterday, as the entry into a credit company debacle that I plan to write about later today (which, as you know, doesn’t mean that I will), about an hour of my workday was taken up listening to a pitch from a representative of Mutual of Omaha trying to sell me on taking out an home equity loan with the company.
I finally answered the phone call with company’s caller ID because I had not answered about 20 earlier calls, and also because I wasn’t sure why the company was calling me. I explained that yes, I do need cash for many things and yes, I have a lot of equity in the home I’ve been paying the mortgage on for 43 years. I also explained that I have no skills in finance or money generally, am swamped in the wake of my wife’s sudden death, and literally don’t know who to trust or listen to.
He said, “Well, we’re a large, well-respected company with an impressive track record in our field.” I had to wrestle my tongue to the ground to avoid saying, “Yeah, my business involves analyzing all the clever and not-so-clever ways companies like yours lie, cheat and steal.” “You’ve heard of Mutual of Omaha, I assume?” he continued.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I was aware of Mutual of Omaha even before Henry Fonda started doing commercials for you.” I’m pretty sure he had no idea who Henry Fonda was.
Then he said, “Believe me, with Mutual of Omaha, you’re in good hands.”
I couldn’t wrestle my tongue to the ground after that gaffe.
“Wait,” I said. You just gave me the Allstate slogan. Now I’m completely confused. Next you’ll be telling me that Mutual of Omaha will be there for me “like a good neighbor.”
This is a special category of incompetence that you just don’t see very often. It’s like a Democrat saying that their party wants to make America great again. But the laugh was almost worth the time I wasted listening to the guy.
Almost.
Ethics Alarms 