Month: August 2025

Worst Woke Position of Them All…

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Ethics Alarms conflict resolution guru Extradimensional Cephalopod purports to believe that that there really are two (or more) legitimate points of view on all policy and political disputes. He expounds on this utopian vision in a comment here. I am pretty confident that he knows otherwise, but that he thinks this fantasy is worth embracing in the interests of societal comity, which is another topic.

In reality, many political and social policy positions are indefensible. Such positions are typically supported entirely by appeals to emotion, deliberate distortion of reality, and dishonest use of “facts” and “statistics.” No dispute illustrates this better than illegal immigration. Pro-illegal immigration advocacy should be accorded no respect at all.

Fact: No nation in the 21st Century can survive with open borders, especially a wealthy, free, superior nation like the US. The Woke rebuttal to this is that open borders aren’t really open borders, or “It isn’t what it is.”

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WaPo “Factchecker” Glenn Kessler Is Out…Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Glenn Kessler, the biased “factchecker” who has a dossier on Ethics Alarms as long an your metaphorical arm, accepted a buy-out from the hopelessly unethical newspaper and then, after starting his substack (where disgraced pundits go to die), issued an article that proved, as if there was ever any doubt, what an utter hack he is.

Pompously titled ‘“Democracy Dies in Darkness’ — but what if the lights are going out from within?,” his screed whines that he had to leave the Post as a matter f principle because he was urged to do what he could so the Post would “appeal more to Fox News viewers.” Gee, tough one. What would that be? Maybe not beginning every inquiry with the assumption that the Axis narrative is the correct one? Not working so hard to appeal to the Post’s 90% Democratic readership’s biases? Actually checking facts rather than opinions?

To Kessler, of course, appealing to Fox viewers means tacking news analysis to appeal to racist, ignorant fascists—you know,

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Early Open Forum (Sorry)…and a Census Note

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’m sorry to have to default to this format now; I’m really and truly feeling better, but getting posts up has been more laborious than I imagined. Up here in my office I can’t elevate my wounded leg, and I still haven’t mastered my new laptop sufficiently to where posting there isn’t frustrating. Everything, it seems, takes five times longer than it should right now.

Meanwhile, the ethics topics I should be writing about, like the sudden battles over gerrymandering with the Democrats being shocked—shocked!—that Republicans would consider such treachery, require the kind of nuance and detail I can’t muster for a while.

I will make an ethics observation about today’s Trump Deranged freakout over the President’s decision that we need a new census. Of course, like everything he has done or will ever do, this proves the President is an autocrat and violates the Constitution.

I very much doubt that the ultimate decision will be that the U.S. can’t have a census for good cause more frequently than every ten years. The Constitution’s requirement of one every ten years can be (and should be) read as a minimum. If I decide to have a physical six months after my last one, should my doctor forbid that, saying that the best practices limit me to only one a year?

Trump’s larger problem is the inclusion of illegal immigrants in the census. This is an anomaly ( there were no such things as illegal immigrants when the Constitution was written), but the courts have upheld the counting of illegals; it would take a Constitutional amendment to fix this, or maybe a law declaring that illegals do not “reside” in the U.S.

It is wrong that states and cities defying federal law by their “sanctuary” status should benefit from it, but that’s what the current system permits. If Trump thinks we can deport sufficient numbers of illegal immigrants to make a difference in the apportionment of House seats, ICE has got to get a lot bigger, and fast.

I swear, I’ll get back to the traditional 3-4 posts a day soon…

Two Quotes That No Member of Congress Should Utter, Ever.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Quote #1: “I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL). She added to this declaration of disloyalty her assessment that the U.S. has been characterized by “imperialism, militarization, conquest, control, competition in its attempt at domination.”

Quote #2: “Listen, Donald Trump is a piece of shit, OK? We know that! Yes, he is! He is! He is!” You can guess this one, right? Yes, it’s Dunning-Kruger victim Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx), once again descending into vulgarity as a lazy substitute for reasoned discourse, of which she is incapable.

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Observations on the Cincinnati Beatdown

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

While languishing in the hospital, this was the story that I felt most frustrated about not being able to post. Not that I could get a single, clear, spin-free account of what happened. In the aftermath of some Cincinnati event or festival or something, a black man and a white one got into a verbal altercation. The white guy seems to have uttered a racial slur, precipitating a brawl that was quickly joined by a mob of black youths who beat up the white guy and then turned their anger on a white woman who tried to intervene, knocking her unconscious and kicking her as she lay helpless on the ground. An estimated hundred bystanders, most or all of them black, stood by taking videos, laughing, and cheering the mob violence on. There was only one call to 911.

1. Almost all of the national coverage of this incident has been on Fox News. The New York Times, interestingly, hasn’t reported the story at all. The natural question has been raised: If a black man and woman had been attacked and beaten by a mob of young whites as 100 white bystanders cheered them on, there would be protests in the streets and calls for “justice.” Why the double standard?

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As If Any More Proof Was Needed, Trump 1.0 Nemesis Jim Acosta Reveals Himself Beyond All Question To Be An Unethical Hack

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

You see, no decent, ethical journalist would even think of doing this. No intelligent journalist—or pest removal professional—would either. Yet this is the guy CNN sicced on President Trump and his press secretaries in his first term. This irredeemable partisan hack became a broadcast news star with neither the common sense, acumen, professional skills or decency to justify such status, which he is making a living off now.

This is CNN. This is Jim Acosta. This is the state of American journalism.

Former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta released the video of him interviewing an AI-generated version of Joaquin Oliver, who is dead. He’s one of the 17 victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the tragedy that also inflicted David Hogg on the world, as if the shooting itself wasn’t horrible enough.

The avatar was animated from a photograph of the late 17-year-old who appears wearing a beanie while speaking in a monotone digital voice. Acosta begins by asking, “What happened to you?” to which the AI version of Oliver responds, “I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.”

Let’s pass on the conduct of the parents in creating the creepy thing, which is right out of an episode of “Black Mirror.” The topic is journalism ethics. Today’s reporters are so estranged from the concepts of honesty, respect, objectivity, responsibility and trustworthiness that no ethics alarm pings when someone says, “Hey Jim! Apparently there’s an AI version f one of those dead Parkland kids. Why don’t you interview him? Maybe he’ll say something nasty about Trump!”

True, Acosta is pretty much the bottom of the barrel in the profession that is already the bottom of the profession barrel, but still, it wasn’t that long ago that a stunt like this would be considered outrageous if attempted by a shock jock like The Greaseman or Howard Stern. I would say that this is the canary dying in the mine, except that then Chris Cuomo or Don Lemon might interview an AI version of the canary.

[Even WordPress is disgusted; it won’t let me download a photo of this asshole.]

Well, This Is Awkward

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

I’m back from five days in the hospital trying to beat back a whole leg infection stemming from, I swear, a single bump on my shin two weeks ago. I didn’t have a laptop and my phone isn’t set up to post (or even get email), so I was cut off from Ethics Alarms as well as other essentials. I talked my way out of the place when they made it sound like I would be stuck there for another few days. Now I’m trying to master a new laptop with my still unwell foot elevated and my brain addled from painkillers, antibiotics, and a lack of sleep. (It is impossible to sleep in this hospital.) I’m sorry; a real post is beyond me right now. But here are some scattered thoughts, since all of my thoughts are scattered.

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