The Verizon attack on Ethics Alarms, my business and sanity also wiped out the planned Friday Open Forum on May 16. Rather than wait for another Friday to roll around—after all, who can tell if my incompetent internet provider will still be functioning four days from now?—I’m going to open up the floor now.
I’m hoping the commentariate can help me get back on track while I have to deal with multiple projects that sat languishing while a hostile time machine sent me back to the 1990s.
Ethics Alarms 
This Day In Hysteria (Intellectual Froglegs with Joe Don Gorman) featured a graphic claiming the following:
Clinton: 12.3M deportations–0 injunctions
Bush: 10.3M deportations–0 injunctions
Obama: 5.3M deportations–0 injunctions
Trump: ~100K deportations–~30 injunctions
Try as I might, I couldn’t verify/confirm them; anyone else?
PWS
I don’t think it’s accurate. I remember Obama being described as ‘deporter in Chief’, having deported more people than previous Presidents. I would have to dig into it, but that’s what I remember.
“I remember Obama being described as ‘deporter in Chief’, having deported more people than previous Presidents.”
A while back, estimable EA participant Humble Talent posted a great defenestration of how the Obama administration redefined “deportation” in order to make its…um…results appear more acceptable. Can’t retrieve it; wish someone else could.
PWS
Here is an article from Legal Insurrection that I’d been saving for the Forum.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/05/a-big-deal-trumps-latest-eo-targets-regulations-that-trap-the-unwary/?vcrmeid=lkO7T6eNkyHIBwgNawk0g&vcrmiid=k1mqk6fN7U2vrv8-WLT4cw
There are so many federal regulations at this point that almost anyone is likely to have violated one or more, probably unknowingly. I think one of the classics that gets cited is classifying a drainage ditch a “Navigable waterway” through various maneuvering amongst the regulations.
This is a major area where the federal bureaucracy is simply uncontrolled and out of control. These sorts of things are areas that Trump can do an enormous amount of good for the country.
It all depends on what you’re trying to navigate. An inflatable kayak or paddleboard can really take you places in areas where agricultural irrigation with shared well water is still in use, on farmlands. Just being facetious. You’re correct on this Country being the most over regulated, than any free Nation. Sharia law may be more restrictive, but I doubt it.
sandsgrandmother brought up this question earlier:
https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/05/13/baseball-ethics-on-mlbs-reinstatement-of-pete-rose-and-the-8-dirty-1919-white-sox/#comment-887648
I’m unconvinced that impact statements in general are ethical. Do we want the punishment for murder (or manslaughter, for that matter) to be influenced by well-loved the victim was, rather than by the circumstances?
One could argue that stealing $100 from a low-income individual has a greater impact than stealing the same from a millionaire. And Jack the Ripper would argue that killing a prostitute has lesser impact on society than killing a grocer. Or what if we switched it from prostitute to meth dealer?
This all presumes we’re judging the crime by it’s relative effect rather than the act itself. When it comes to homicide at least, I’m inclined to think vicyom impact statements shouldn’t be a factor, since they introduce bias into the proceedings by design.
*meth dealer
The family should have spoken for themselves. AI as used here is just an unfair gimmick.
I would be stunned that a court would allow such a stunt. How could such a thing possibly be ethical, and actually can it really be legal? Isn’t this something like hearsay once removed?
Judges get bent out of shape if a lawyer uses AI to craft a brief — and I can understand that. This seems much worse to me.
By and large, it’s not that the lawyer used AI to craft a brief, at least from what I’ve seen. The problem is that the AI make up citations; the judges would be at least as enraged if the lawyer invented his own cases without an AI assistant.