Month: March 2025

“I Really Thought They Would Have Stopped Freaking Out By Now” Friday Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Trust me, I am going to post on the head-exploding reaction of House Democrats to the necessary and just censure of Al Green two days ago. That post is coming: I’ve just been in a quandary over which movie or TV clip from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive to use. It’s amazing how many apply to the behavior of the once honorable party of Jackson, FDR and Carter (but not Clinton or Biden) as their behavior becomes less professional and more loony seemingly by the hour. The options are daunting. I could justify using, in addition to Dana’s scream of confusion above from “Poltergeist,”

  • The clip from “A Man for All Seasons” (“….but for Al Green?”)
  • The “Animal House” “futile and stupid gesture” speech.
  • “You know: Morons.”
  • Sidney Wang on the “stupid theory.”
  • “Madness! Madness!” (Bridge Over the River Kwai”)
  • “He chose…poorly.”
  • “The Naked Gun’s” “Nothing to see here!”
  • “Snap out of it!” and Cher’s classic slap.
  • George’s “Was that wrong?” (This is a strong contender…)
  • The “Plan 9 From Outer Space” clip (“Your stupid minds!”)
  • “This business will get out of control!”
  • Marty McFly’s “He’s an asshole!”
  • The “one big pile of shit” from “Jurassic Park”

That’s more than a third of the total, and I omitted a few that were on the cusp. Well, you’ll see which clip wins the prize very soon.

Meanwhile, please write about something else relating to our mission here, and save your comments for the Democratic Party’s latest disgrace for that post.

Remember The Alamo Today, March 6, When The Fort Fell, And Entered American Lore And Legend Forever.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

No, I didn’t forget the Alamo, and I hope against hope that more Americans than not are at least noting the anniversary of when the mission that became a fort fell in the early morning hours of March 6, 1836. As soon s I get this post up, I’m going to re-watch the 1960 John Wayne movie commemorating the siege and the men who died that day. The Duke’s film has plenty of flaws, but a lack of conviction and passion isn’t one of them; in the end that, plus the Demiri Tiomkin score, is what what makes “The Alamo” my favorite cinematic telling of the story.

Did the old newspaperman’s manifesto from another John Wayne movie, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” ever apply more perfectly to an event in American history?  “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” “I answered them with a cannon shot.” The line in the sand. The couriers who came back to the fort to die. Jim Bowie fighting from his sickbed. Davey Crockett fighting to the end. Truth and fiction, the Alamo is my favorite of all American history tales, and the Alamo itself is my favorite historical site to visit in the United States.

I didn’t have a new inspiration to justify a new post this year, so I’m reprising the one from this date in 2023. Among other things, it included the climax of the Alamo diary Michael West contributed a few years ago.

Now the bugles are silent
And there’s rust on each sword
And the small band of soldiers
Lie asleep in the arms of the Lord.

***

I regard the siege of the Alamo one of the signature ethics events in U.S. history, both for what it was and what it came to represent. There have been many posts on the subject as well as many references to the Alamo in other posts, all of which are accessible here.

Today, March 6, marks the fall of the converted mission. Ethics Alarms has two pieces from its archives to present: Continue reading →

OK, a Show of Hands: How Many Believe That Gavin Newsom Has Had a Change of Heart Regarding Transgender Competitors In Women’s Sports?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I sure don’t.

In the debut episode of the California governor’s new podcast “This Is Gavin Newsom,” Newsom invited Turning Point USA founder and conservative activist Charlie Kirk to banter about politics and public policy. To Kirk’s amazement (the New York Times assumes), Newsom concurred with the political right’s position regarding biological men participating in women’s sports. “I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that,” Newsom told Kirk. “It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.”

The Times was shocked—shocked!—that Newsom would break from the official party line on the issue. In the Senate last week, not a single Democrat supported the House-passed bill banning such cross-gender competitors, despite polls showing that this is an issue in which about 80% of the public agree with conservatives. “The comments by Mr. Newsom, who has backed LGPTQ causes for decades and was one of the first American elected officials to officiate same-sex weddings,” the Times said, “represented a remarkable break from other top Democrats on the issue, and signaled a newly defensive position on transgender rights among many in his party.”

Continue reading →

Sometimes, Though Rarely, Two Wrongs DO Make a Right…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Marco Evaristti’s “art” titled “And Now You Care?” at an art exhibition in Copenhagen consisted of three live piglets confined by two shopping carts on a pile of straw. The artist announced that the animals would be given water but no food until they died. Allowing the piglets to starve to death while on public exhibition was, you see, a powerful commentary on animal cruelty in Denmark, one of the world’s largest pork exporters. Evaristti explained yesterday that he aimed to “wake up the Danish society,” which is insufficiently concerned that tens of thousands of pigs die each day in Denmark because of poor conditions.

Oh, good plan.

Now do child neglect.

The exhibition was set inside a former butcher’s warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen. Large paintings of the Danish flag and slaughtered pigs hung on the walls around the doomed little pigs. “Mona Lisa” this wasn’t.

The pigs were expected to live up to five days, but Evaristti said he also would not eat or drink along with them. That makes starving the helpless animals better, apparently. But as the exhibition space was being cleaned—it looked like a pig sty!— over the weekend, members of a Danish animal rights organization stole the piglets. Evaristti, says he does not expect his art to be returned.

Good.

Inadequate Notes on the State of the Union Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is exhausting. It is why I dreaded another Trump term, even though re-electing the Democrats after they had so disgraced themselves with the Joe Biden administration was, n my view, indefensible. I don’t want to keep writing about all this crap: Trump’s habitual excesses and rhetorical hyperbole, the partisan factchecking, the Axis news media propaganda, the absurd spectacle of Fox News gleefully spinning everything Trump of the Republicans do as marvelous while CNN and MSNBC give the public stony expressions and unrestrained hatred of the elected President of the United States; the increasingly unhinged conduct of Democrats, and the pathetic declarations of Trump Derangement by my Facebook friends (How did that February 28 boycott work out for you, morons?) The State of the Union debacle and its aftermath showed that while some of this has moderated from Trump’s first term in office, its not nearly enough. Will it really be this way for all four years? I see no reason to hope that it won’t be.

I accumulated over a dozen episodes and articles that would support individual post here related to the aftermath of Trump’s speech, and I don’t feel like writing any of them. I’ll touch on some in what follows, a random set of largely disgusted notes and observations….

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: A Spammed Commenter…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…who shall remain nameless.

This:

“Experience the future of companionship with an AI girlfriend chatbot. Designed to listen engage and respond with intelligence and warmth this virtual partner offers meaningful conversations, emotional support, and personalized interactions. Whether you seek a friend a confidante or just casual chats this ai girlfriend chatbot companion is always there for you anytime anywhere. Enjoy a unique ever-evolving connection powered by artificial intelligence.”

I think a blow-up doll is more ethical. The product is as perilous as crack or heroin, and destined to cripple and manipulate vulnerable, lonely people, like, say, me. It is the logical and inevitable next step from 800 sex chat phone lines. They can’t be made illegal; someone will undoubtedly argue that AI girlfriend chatbots can be therapeutic and even, on balance, capable of accomplishing more good than bad.

Sure. As for me, I’m reminded of this post from 2017: The Unibomber Had A Point.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Ethics Quiz: The Symbolic Pardon

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I should have come up with this quiz without a nudge from Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk, but I didn’t. I am ashamed.

Conservative gadfly and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro called on President Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the white, former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murder in the 2020 death of George Floyd in a petition published on Shapiro’s website. (I don’t think it was murder, and I don’t think murder was ever proven, much less “beyond a reasonable doubt”.)

In his entreaty to the President, Shapiro declares, “We write to urge you to immediately issue a pardon for Officer Derek Chauvin, who was unjustly convicted and is currently serving a 22-and-a-half year sentence for the murder of George Floyd and associated federal charges.”

Shapiro accurately describes the incident as “the inciting event for the BLM riots,” which he says “set America’s race relations on their worst footing in recent memory.”

Most importantly, Shapiro says that the guilty verdict was tainted by the “massive overt pressure on the jury to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence or any semblance of impartial deliberation,” and that elected officials “pre-judged the outcome of the trial and took to national media to create pressure on the jury to go along with their preferred narrative.”

This, in my view, should be beyond dispute. I last posted on the way Chauvin was sacrificed in December of 2023, here. “Under these circumstances, there was no opportunity for blind justice to work, and a man is now rotting in prison because of it,” Shapiro concludes.

I concluded in part,

“The contrast between how Chauvin has been treated and the wall of protection erected around the black Capitol Hill cop who shot and killed an unarmed (white) January 7 rioter in 2021 is striking. From the beginning, the case against Chauvin lacked convincing intent, causation, or proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I keep seeing in various documentaries regarding other “true crime” stories rote statements by lawyers, prosecutors and judges about how in the United States, all citizens are presumed innocent and treated equally. If this equal treatment can be withheld from Derek Chauvin, and it has been, then it can and will be withheld by others who are deemed sufficiently unpopular. As [Professor Glenn] Loury writes, the result tells us that “the deep epistemic corruption at the heart of the affair will become, if it goes unchallenged, imperceptible to future generations, simply more evidence that the world is as the poetic truth has determined it to be.” Who will challenge it now? Who has the integrity and courage today to stand up for justice a “racist” who was profitably used as the excuse to advance such marvelous revolutionary movements as critical race theory and “diversity, equity and inclusion”?

Chauvin was convicted in two separate trials, state and federal, and is simultaneously serving a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights along with a 22.5-year state sentence for second-degree murder. He has tried to appeal his conviction numerous times, including to the Supreme Court. He has no plausible avenues to pursue now except a pardon.

Shapiro argues in a video that although Trump cannot pardon Chauvin in the state murder case, it is important for Chauvin be pardoned on federal charges anyway.

“Make no mistake—the Derek Chauvin conviction represents the defining achievement of the Woke movement in American politics. The country cannot turn the page on that dark, divisive, and racist era without righting this terrible wrong,” Shapiro said in the letter. Elon Musk, not knowing when he should “tend to his own knitting,” posted about Shapiro’s petition on Twitter/X yesterday saying, “Something to think about.”

OK, I’m thinking.

Your first Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of March, 2025, is…

Should President Trump pardon Derek Chauvin?

Continue reading →

Never Mind “The Appearance of Impropriety,” Democrats Need To Avoid The Appearance of Stupidity

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Let’s see: the ethical values that Congressional Democrats spat upon last night were competence, responsibility, integrity, respect, civility, courtesy, decency, dignity, self-restraint, prudence, fairness and patriotism. That’s quite an accomplishment in a single event. The party’s decision to challenge the GOP’s well-earned title as “The Stupid Party” last night during the State of the Union address was, in turn,

  • Foolish
  • Juvenile
  • Desperate
  • Embarrassing (to their party, the  nation and the institution of Congress)
  • Damning
  • Damaging to democracy
  • An appeal to the Trump Deranged while simultaneously proving how crippling the malady can be…and…
  • …a gift to the man they hate so much, President Trump.

In “True Grit,” the villain Tom Cheney is shot by young Maddie Ross after he taunts her by telling the girl how to cock the giant pistol she has aimed at him. He is stunned when she shoots him, and cries out, “I didn’t think you’d do it!”

I might make “The Cheney” a new Ethics Alarms distinction. I had read about the ridiculous college campus protest-level tactics Democrats were considering, and posted about them yesterday, as well as noting that the party’s leader in the House, Hakeem Jefferies, had advised them to eschew such nonsense in favor of a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” Jeffries was right for a change, and I really thought all of the stories about the Democrats bringing props and dressing up would prove to be false alarms. I didn’t think they’d do it! Yet when the time for the yearly Presidential “speech “state of the nation” speech arrived, there were the Democrats, looking like the studio audience in a particularly ugly episode of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: President Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

President Trump just used his State of the Union message to call Joe Biden “the worst President in the history of the United States.”

I wasn’t going to watch any of the speech, both because I dreaded what excesses Trump would inflict on his audience and the behavior of the Democrats. But I just couldn’t resist tuning in: the Netflix series I was watching stunk, so I switched over to DirecTV and landed on NBC for literally 20 seconds, maybe fewer. And what did I hear but the President talking about the success of his border crackdown and then insulting his predecessor. I instantly turned off the TV and went to my office to post this.

There was no need to say what Trump said, and no excuse for it. It was just gratuitously nasty, graceless, divisive and hateful. It was historic though, so maybe progressives will be impressed.

No President has used that traditional speech to denigrate a predecessor, and few have used any Presidential speech to insult a previous White House occupant. Presidents, more than anybody, understand the rigors of the job and are expected to convey at least a modicum of respect for the other members of the select group who have taken on the daunting challenge of leading this chaotic, ambitious, essential nation.

I say this with full understanding that Trump’s assessment of Joe Biden was accurate: Ethics Alarms came to the same conclusion over more than a year of analysis. That doesn’t make Trump’s outburst any more forgivable. Trump’s insult sprung from nothing but the worst of his character: cruelty, vengefulness, lack of self-control, immodesty, crudeness. It also, again, showed the President’s astoundingly flat learning curve: his similarly gratuitous attacks in the past made lifetime enemies out of the late John McCain, the entire Bush family, and the Cheneys, with no compensating benefits. He likes upsetting people.

It is the mark of an asshole.

Boy, If Aleysha Ortiz Wins Her Lawsuit, a Lot of School Boards Will Be Sweating Bullets…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Aleysha Ortiz, 19, has sued the Hartford Board of Education and city officials alleging that she cannot read or write even though she graduated with honors from Hartford Public High School in 2024. Her suit accuses defendants of negligence by failing to provide adequate special education services. She told CNN that she was promoted all the way through 12 years in Hartford public school despite never acquiring fundamental literacy skills; in a May 2024 city council meeting, she testified that she was unable to read or write, yet was awarded an honors diploma.

Ortiz is now enrolled at the University of Connecticut: yes, she was accepted and got a scholarship despite being, in her own assessment, illiterate. She explains this by her adeptness in using technology such as speech-to-text and text-to-speech programs.

Says Newsweek, amusingly, “The case has drawn attention to how academic achievement is measured and whether special education students are truly receiving the skills they need to succeed beyond high school.”

Continue reading →