Month: August 2025

The Unabomber Was Right, Example #7,853

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

My first “The Unabomber was right” essay was in 2017, and he’s been proven more right with every passing year. In that post, I began,

“As I understand it, Ted believed that technology was destroying society, making us all slaves to it, and taking the joy out of life. I have yet to see how blowing people up addressed this problem, but then he shouldn’t have had to be right about everything. The evidence has been mounting since 1995, when he killed his final victim,that  the Unabomber  wasn’t quite as crazy as we thought.”

The intensity of that conclusion has only multiplied with time, further technological excesses and inconveniences, and experiences like today’s trip to Staples to buy some wildly over-priced black ink for my crummy Hewlett Packard printer, purchased by my late wife when our ethics training and consulting business was even more financial distress than it is now.

It is a Sunday on Labor Day weekend, and the parking lot at the strip mall near my house was, as I expected, nearly empty. Staples, however, had the longest line at the single register open I had ever seen there. Some of this was the fault of Staples, which like just about every other chain, decided to keep its workforce cut to the minimum after the pandemic eased. After all, where else will the customers go? All of the stores have lousy service now; all of them are understaffed. For that, you can blame the progressive idiocy of raising the minimum wage to the point where it costs too much to pay for minimally-able employees. The result: fewer jobs, inflation, Staples-style (CVS-style, Home Depot-style, etc.) non-service.

But I digress. The huge line moved like a rabbit through the alimentary canal of a snake (maybe slower) because, I soon realized, everyone was using an app on their cell phones, and neither they nor the clerk were quite sure how the system worked. One woman was at the register for 20 minutes all by herself, looking and pounding on her smart phone, showing it to the poor guy trying to check her through. Every single purchase appeared to take at least three times as long as it would have before the addition of the apps to the process.

When I finally got to the head of the line with my three items, it still took too long: I had to enter two phone numbers, confirm my address, and “tap” with my card, but I was easily the quickest customer through the line, because all I did was pay for my stuff. A woman behind me actually said, “Wow! That was quick!”

I replied, “Want to know my secret? I bring up what I want to buy and pay for it.” You warned us, Ted. We just didn’t listen….

Ethics Hero (Sort of): Jay Carey [Updated & Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In my recent ethics seminars I have been discussing categories of conduct that are ethical but illegal and legal but unethical. The best example of ethical and illegal is civil disobedience, when a citizen intentionally and openly violates a law to call attention to the law’s (alleged) flaw or flaws, and commences to accept the consequences of his or her crime in order to focus public attention on the injustice. (Clarence Darrow loved civil disobedience…).

Jay Carey received a Bronze Star during the Iraq War, and joined a (misguided) veterans’ protest against the deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital because he has been watching too much CNN or something. What does a North Carolina resident know about crime in Washington, D.C.? OK, he’s probably Trump Deranged and Axis media-brainwashed, but never mind, that’s not the issue here.

The veteran was arrested after burning an American flag near the White House and says he plans on taking his case, if it proceeds, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Presidents don’t make law, and Congress will make no law that infringes upon our rights in accordance with the First Amendment,” Carey told reporters. Trump’s recent executive order declaring that flag-burning was a crime (EA discussed it here) prompted him to engage in civil disobedience.

“I realized that I needed to, that day, go and burn a flag in front of the White House to have the biggest impact and send the message to the President that he’s not allowed to do that,” Carey explained, He burned the flag in Lafayette Square, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, making sure that his defiance was captured in videos posted on social media.

Carey is seen telling bystanders that the President’s executive order violates the First Amendment. “I served over 20 years in the United States Army,” he said. “I fought for every single one of your rights to express yourself in however you feel that you may want to express yourself.”

In the earlier version of this post, I said at this point, “That’s the way to do it, Jay. The Founders would be proud. Good luck: I think you’ll win this one.” The problem is that as far as civil disobedience goes, at least, Jay did not accomplish his objective. As commenter Chris Marschner points out below, Jay was only charged with lighting a fire in an undesignated area and lighting a fire in a manner that causes damage to real property or park resources. He might as well have been burning New York Yankees pennant. There is no way his case will get to the Supreme Court, and he didn’t manage to violate the pseudo law he was protecting.

So there is one more requirement for ethical civil disobedience: competence. Under stand the law you’re trying to violate. Since Jay Carey didn’t, I can’t really award him an Ethics Hero designation for his attempt. But it was a sincere attempt.

Melania and Vanity Fair

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

One of the nauseating Axis catch-phrases is that Trump’s is not a “normal” Presidency. That is true, but it is the people saying that who have made it so. A particularly petty example, which I rank near the organized effort to stop Trump in his first term from participating in the Kennedy Center Honors program (that worked out well!) is the catty, mean girls decision to keep Melania Trump, obviously one of the most attractive and glamorous of all First Ladies (she makes Jackie Kennedy look like a Muppet) of all the women’s magazines, when covers featuring the First Lady had previously been routine. Puppet President enabler Jill Biden was judges worthy of several covers, but not Melania Trump. Nah, there’s no ladies magazine media bias!

The snotty boycott reached its apotheosis earlier this month, when sources reported that staffers at Conde Nast’s “Vanity Fair” threatened a walk-out over the possibility of a Melania Trump cover. A “mid-level editor” supposedly said that she’d “walk out the motherfucking door, and half my staff will follow me” if the magazine tried to “normalize this despot and his wife.” “Normalize.” “Despot.”

Nice. How fair and rational. Also reportedly, Melania told the magazine to get lost when it proposed a cover after snubbing her (because her husband is eeeevil) all this time. Good.

Just because the Trump-Haters have been trying to tear the nation apart doesn’t obligate the victims of their vendetta to prostate themselves to make peace.

End of Summer Ethics Countdown, 8/30/25: Of Trailblazers, Dogs, Firings and Things.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This date, I am told by the History Channel, constitutes two race barrier landmarks. On August 30, 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford became the first African American to be shot into space on this date in 1983. I get it: there were clearly social and legal barriers to black Americans for a very long time, and both of those achievements represent progress for the race and the nation. Still, I find myself wondering if the marking of such “trailblazers” hasn’t become a sop to race-obsessed victim-activists who want American society to forever pay reparations to blacks, and for that matter all minorities and women, at the expense of the merit based society the U.S. aspires to be.

Thanks to computers, it is now possible to find all sorts of records and distinctions that nobody dreamed of commemorating before. The Boston Red Sox just went 7-1 in a short road trip, and we learned that it was the first time in the team’s history that it won seven games in a road trip of eight games or less, and so what? Wait, let’s check: Yes! There has never been a gay, Portuguese-African-American intellectual property specialist under 5’8″ hired as an associate at a major D.C. law firm! Obviously that should elevate an applicant in the hiring competition, no?

No.

Enough musing…

1. Pam Bondi fired a Justice Department intern paralegal for middle-fingering a member of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., on her way to work earlier this month, adding “Fuck the National Guard!” to her outburst. Bondi explained, “This DOJ remains committed to defending President Trump’s agenda and fighting to make America safe again.If you oppose our mission and disrespect law enforcement — you will NO LONGER work at DOJ.” I see nothing inappropriate in this, particularly in the atmosphere fostered by the Left in which working within the government to undermined policies the Axis deplores is being lionized and encouraged. The Justice Department can’t and shouldn’t trust such an individual. It is too bad we have come to that: once, lawyers and other good citizens could be trusted to do their jobs without allowing political biases and dissenting opinions to lead them to abuse their positions. No longer.

In related news, Sean Charles Dunn, the DOJ paralegal who was fired for throwing a sub sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent, has been charged with a misdemeanor after a D.C. grand jury refused to issue felony charges. A D.C. grand jury would probably refuse to indict President Trump’s assassin. I can see the argument that a felony for assaulting an officer with a non-lethal missile isn’t felony-worthy, but I hope this jerk gets jail time.

I’m sure he won’t.

2. The Ethicist answers an infuriating question: “Should I Report My Neighbor’s Animal Abuse?” Of course you should, you trepidatious idiot! This is a pure “Fix the problem!” situation. The inquirer ladles on all the reasons why he has allowed the poor animal to be abused for months, and the conduct described absolutely shows abuse. He had seen the dog kicked. The dog is kept outside on a short chain in freezing and hot weather. The writer sputters, “I can’t take him in; my own dog is elderly and won’t accept another. And while I believe [the dog] is neglected, nothing I’ve seen clearly violates the law. I feel trapped: afraid of overstepping with unpredictable neighbors, afraid of doing nothing and regretting it if [the dog] suffers or dies...What, ethically and practically, should I do to safeguard this dog’s well-being?“

Oh, fix the problem, you revolting weenie! How much has the dog suffered while you do things like whine to advice columnists? Tell the neighbors that you will buy the dog, and then give it to a humane dog rescue group. My dog Spuds was rescued from abuse by one rescue volunteer going up to the door, knocking, and saying, “Either turn that dog over to me or I’m calling the police.” The Ethicist gives his usual prolix response to fill up the column and comes around to the right answer eventually, but what would this pathetic inquirer do if he saw the neighbors abusing a child?

3. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! This is classic. Most of the news media reported the President curtailing Kamala Harris’s Secret Service detail so that the usual semi-illiterate, gullible readers would see it as more of Trump’s “revenge tour.” CBS: “President Trump has revoked former Vice President Kamala Harris’ U.S. Secret Service protection.” Ditto ABC, NBC, BBC. Only the Associated Press included the rather relevant information that former VP’s, unlike former Presidents, typically only get six months of Secret Service protection, and Harris’s would be up under normal circumstances. But President Biden, or his autopen, extended Harris’s detail to 18 months for no discernible reason. Writes Ed Morrissey: “So the actual story is that the Biden administration gave Harris a stealth extension of taxpayer-funded benefits to which she was not entitled. If Congress wants to extend those benefits for former VPs, then let Congress propose and pass those into statute as amendments to the pension system for former presidents and VPs. Otherwise, Harris is no longer a public servant, and she can use her own resources for personal protection rather than sponge off the taxpayers. Trump simply canceled the illegitimate extension and restored the normal post-office benefit limitations to which all VPs are subject.”

But most of the public won’t see it that way, and this is intentional. Enemy of the people.

4. Look, the evil EPA fired employees who made it clear they couldn’t be trusted to carry out the policies of the agency! Yes, the EPA has started firing some of the144 employees it placed on leave for endorsing a public letter that said the changes President Donald Trump and his appointees had made at the agency “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.” More than 270 employees initially signed the letter, with over 170 choosing to be named. The open letter “contains information that misleads the public about agency business,” an EPA official said. “Thankfully, this represents a small fraction of the thousands of hard-working, dedicated EPA employees who are not trying to mislead and scare the American public.” “This is to provide notification that the Agency is removing you from your position and federal service consistent with the above references,” said one termination notice. “I have determined that your continued employment is not in the public interest.”

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What Is An Ethical Response To What The Democrats Have Become?

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I have never been a loyal member of any party, as my opinions do not depend on group loyalty or ideology, but upon what I try to keep dispassionate, objective, history- and fact-based analysis of issues. However, the rapid ethical rot and totalitarian bent of the Democratic Party is causing me anguish. I am being pulled toward a conclusion that the only rational and patriotic political position now is to be committed to a Beware the Democrats! position. But that is, superficially at least, indistinguishable from the Trump Deranged “Trump is Satan” position that the Machiavellian Axis of Unethical Conduct has been using for almost a decade now, with no sign of changing course.

What’s the difference? Well, call me reductionist, but it’s this: Trump isn’t Satan, though Trump is an infuriatingly flawed individual and leader, but the Democrats are corrupt and untrustworthy. They have intentionally poisoned a critical mass of Americans—yes, the dumb ones, the gullible ones, the badly educated ones and the weenies, but still—against their own system of government using a level of fear-mongering that evokes the McCarthy era here and Hitler’s Final Solution in Germany.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: MSNBC’s Jen Psaki

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

“Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayer does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

—-Former Biden paid liar (no, not her, the smart one) Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC propagandist, joining in the mandatory Axis spin following another mass shooting.

For some reason a memo went out from Totalitarian Central in the Axis network telling all loyalists to attack the obligatory references to prayer after two children were killed and more than a dozen others were injured this week when a shooter opened fire during Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.

Psaki’s anti-prayer outburst on Twitter along with several other progressive anti-gun demagogues can go in to a dictionary definition of “straw man.” Nobody suggested that prayers were sufficient to address mass shootings and criminal gun violence. Nobody suggested that praying would bring the dead back either. Nor does anyone seriously believe that the victims were killed because they were praying: churches and schools have become crime scenes of choice by the murderously deranged because those are places that ban or prohibit fire arms, so a law-abiding gun owner is not as likely to be around to stop the carnage. Never mind: the Usual Suspects were instructed (no, I don’t think it is a coincidence) to denigrate Americans of faith—after all, too many of them support Evil President Trump.

“These children were probably praying when they were shot to death at Catholic school. Don’t give us your fucking thoughts and prayers. Trump got rid of the Office of Gun Violence and Prevention. Trump gutted the resources that were in place to keep our communities safe,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., wrote on social media. Good one, Max! There is no evidence that the Office of Gun Violence and Prevention prevented any gun violence or could: it was just another “do something” waste of government funds. Meanwhile, WHAT resources “that keep communities safe”? Frost didn’t say, because anything he said would be idiotic or a lie. He did get a chance to say “fuck,” though, since that proves that a Democrat is serious.

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Professor Jacobson Asks, “What Happened To Tucker Carlson?” EA’s Answer: Nothing! He Was Always Like This!”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Prof. William Jacobson of Cornell oversees an excellent, well-researched conservative blog that often delves into the world of ethics, often from a legal perspective. One of his current posts is titled “What Happened to Tucker?,” as the Prof. laments what he sees as Carlson’s turn to the Dark Side. “He’s turned out not to be the person I thought he was,” Jacobson writes. “After leaving Fox News, he has done more to normalize Jew-hatred and bring it into the MAGA movement through the “woke right” than any other major ‘conservative’ personality…Something has gone very wrong. Maybe his true self finally was freed of the constraints of corporate news, or maybe something else influenced him. But now he is — in my estimation — a malign force and not just as to Jews and Israel, but also to the Trump agenda which he seems determined to undermine.”

You see Fredo above in his pathetic protestations of intellectual acumen from “Godfather II,” one of my favorite entries in the EA Hollywood Clip Archive, because in this instance, I was way ahead of Prof. Jacobson. Last December I issued this post, in which I quoted from an earlier “Why can’t everyone see that Carlson is an untrustworthy asshole?” essay that said in part,

“ [Tucker Carlson is] a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it.…since Fox News fired him (one more example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons), several publications have noted that Carlson’s focus has descended into cheap tabloid territory as he desperately seeks publicity, clicks and eyeballs. Of course he has! Carlson doesn’t need the money (he’s a trust fund kid and has a net worth estimated at $30 million); he could easily maintain whatever integrity he had and present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side on whatever platform he used as he waits for his Fox contract to run out. Nah, he wants fame and power.”

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Open Forum, and a Note Having (almost) Nothing to Do With Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It’s Friday, time for the last Open Forum of the month, and my infected leg is much better, thanks, so EA should be returning to normal soon.

Probably not quite to normal, because from now until mid-September all of my nights and weekends will be occupied as I return to my theatrical side, in mothballs for a decade, to direct and write a musical revue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Georgetown Law Center Gilbert and Sullivan Society, the only student-run theatrical organization at an grad school in the country. Alums will be flying in from all over; the show itself is going to have a student-alumni cast of more than 70, and it promises to quite an adventure.

I’m overseeing the show because I unwittingly started the tradition with a guerilla production of “Trial by Jury” when I was a first year student, directed the next six yearly shows after that, and have returned to the scene of my former triumphs (that’s a Gilbert quote: which show?) for the 20th, 30th, 40th and now 50th anniversary blow-outs (actually this is the 52nd anniversary because of two postponements.)

That’s a cast photo from the 1977 production of “H.M.S Pinafore” that I directed in GULC’s Hart Moot Courtroom above. (Can you spot me?)

The lesson of this saga is that you never know what the things you do in life will prove to be most significant. That organization has launched successful show business careers, sparked romances, marriages, and lifetime friendships, changed the culture of the school, and made many thousands of people laugh and cheer over the course of over 150 productions including the G&S canon, Broadway musicals, dramas, comedies, Shakespeare, and a production of “Twelve Angry Men” (my first) that is credited with starting the process of turning the classic movie into a successful stage show.

Me, I was just trying to address my boredom with law school and had no idea what I was starting. Yet if I get squished by a piece of space junk tomorrow, I’m pretty sure that theater organization will be my most lasting legacy.

Go figure.

But that’s enough about me. Time to write about ethics…

Finishing Wars in a World of Weenies [Photo Replaced]

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

[Apparently the previous graphic I sued to represent a nuclear bomb explosion either intentionally or by happenstance resembled Bozo the Clown. Amusing, but in this case, a distraction. That’s Hiroshima above. Not funny…]

I don’t know when the United States began its disastrous slide toward weenie-ism, but it’s just got to stop. Unfortunately there are so many cultural pathogens running amuck that the Trump Presidency has to try to solve—multiculturalism, transmania, gun-phobia, censorship, the death of journalism, the corruption of the professions, “the good illegal immigrant,” DEI, and on, and on—getting around to the weenie epidemic will be a long shot at best. But I can dream…

The latest example of the Weenies making trouble is the Israel-Gaza war. Israel’s situation could not be clearer: it has to eliminate Hamas once and for all, or else resign itself to more attacks on citizens in perpetuity. To eliminate Hamas, Israel will have to kill some citizens, destroy some buildings, harm children. Hamas wants to make them do that. But the responsibility for the war lies with Hamas, as does the responsibility for ending it. Hamas can surrender.

Ah, but the Weenies are out in force, condemning Israel for doing what nations that are attacked have to do: strike back decisively, and make certain that the aggressors are never in a position to attack again. The United States understood this in World War II, but a confluence of factors that I have neither the time nor patience to expound on now—though a major one is the ascendancy of women in politics, punditry and the professions—has blurred the clarity of that principle, resulting in such fiascos as the Vietnam War, the first Iraq war, the second Iraq War, and Biden’s Afghanistan debacle.

Arguably, the situation facing Israel is even clearer than any of those, but even in Israel itself, weenie-ism is rotting the moral and ethical core of society. That is another nation, like the U.S., which one would think would have the guts, determination, and courage to do the right thing even when, as the poet said, all about them are losing their heads and blaming it on Israel, and can trust itself when everyone doubts them.

I hope Israel does, but the Weenies are powerful in their weakness, and people will die if they gain the upper hand.

   

Trump Is Heckling MD. Gov. Wes Moore Over His Bronze Star Lie. Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I wrote about Md. Governor Wes Moore’s long-term lie about being a Bronze Star recipient in August, when another Democratic Governor who had lied about his military service, Tim “Knucklehead” Walz, was running to be a heartbeat from the Presidency. Apparently Marylanders—Democrats? Progressives?—don’t care about politicians pretending to be war heroes when they weren’t. Interesting. I know my Dad, who was awarded a genuine Bronze Star for battlefield valor as well as a Silver Star, would have considered Moore’s lie disqualifying for public office, and I’d agree with him.

Now, as Trump feuds with various Democratic governors over his threat to send in the National Guard into their crime-ridden cites represented as otherwise with fake statistics, he’s stooped to his usual ad hominem methods regarding Moore, referencing his stolen valor history. Normally, I would regard such tactics as a cheap shot: Moore’s position on the Baltimore crime rate has nothing to do with his military record.

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