Month: October 2025

Is Harris Really Going With The Absurd Argument That It Is Easier Being President Than Running For President? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Apparently! Which is a mass insult to everyone since it is, you know, obviously nonsense.

That recent interview with an Australian journalist was just the easiest one for me to find: she has said this over and over. Biden may have babbled like an idiot in his debate with Trump, but it just indicated weariness and lack of stamina that made it mandatory to replace him at the top of the ticket. Otherwise, and Kamala’s fellow DEI beneficiary Karine Jean-Pierre has been claiming one her book tour for a ghost-written hack job nobody in their right mind should want to read, Biden was “sharp as a tack.” Never mind that nobody believes Biden was “sharp as a tack” in 2024 (he has never been sharp as a tack in his life), who could possibly believe that campaigning competently is tougher than leading the nation competently?

I guess this fantasy is comforting to Harris, who was one of the most inept campaigners for the White House ever in a tough field that includes Hillary Clinton, Mike Dukakis, John Kerry, John McCain, Al Gore, George H.W. Bush, Walter Mondale and more. But isn’t it sufficiently ridiculous on its face that nobody is so gullible as to believe it? Being President, if one intends to do the job, requires astounding stamina: look at President Trump. It’s a killing job, for most of our history, literally. If being tired robs a POTUS of the ability to think with more clarity than your average dementia patient (“We beat Medicare…”), how can such an overwhelmed leader be trusted to answer the proverbial “3 AM phone call”?

Harris’s repeated assertion, apparently market tested by one of the same consultants whom she relied on during her disastrous campaign, is “It isn’t what it is” on crack. She really thinks the public is stupid.

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Ethical Motive, Stupid Idea: The 6 pound Smart Phone

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

There are quite a few posts on Ethics Alarms about the scourge of smart phones: mothers’ eyes glued to the screen when they should be watching the kids; dog-owners ignoring their canine companions on walks, teens interacting with the web while ignoring the world around them; narcissism-feeding selfies; intrusive assholes looking for social media fame while destroying any semblance of privacy by taking photos and videos of everyone and everything, and more.

But start-up company Matter Neuroscience has a solution! Their masterstroke is to create the most inconvenient smartphone case imaginable to make using one’s phone tiring and uncomfortable. It’s stainless steel phone case weighs 6 pounds, mote than a 16-inch MacBook Pro laptop and light dumb-bell. Two separate pieces that screw together around the phone ensure that you can’t wait to put the damn thing away unless you’re a pro arm-wrestling champ in training.

The stainless steel smartphone case won’t fit in your pocket and becomes more annoying the more you check your phone. The 6-pound smartphone case is currently in the crowdfunding stage on Kickstarter, but you can pre-order one for $210, or opt for the brass version, which is heavier and costs a $500.

I cannot imagine any adult, even one acknowledging that he or she is addicted to cell phones, buying one that is inherently inconvenient to use. Maybe, maybe, giving unwieldy phones to one’s kids will have some appeal, using the “Look, it’s this, two vans with a string, or nothing” ultimatum.

I doubt it, however. The too-heavy phone gets ethics points for good intentions, but loses them and more for incompetence.

Matter Neuroscience has a $75,000 crowdfunding goal, but has raised just $17,000.

Friday Open Forum, Halloween Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 98 Comments

I have a two-hour Zoom ethics seminar to teach this morning as lawyers who have waited until the last minute to get their ethics CLE credits in will be counting on me to rescue them.

Please help me out by leaving some ethics treats here at the open forum.

Meanwhile, if you have access to Disney+ and haven’t seen the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” segment of the Master’s “Ichabod and Mr. Toad” since you were a tot (or ever), I recommend it highly. The first segment (an adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows”) is also excellent but not Halloween-themed.

Ethics Alarms Encore: An Ethics Tale, A Romance, And A Ghost Story…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Happy Halloween, from Ethics Alarms!

***

The Highwayman

By Alfred Noyes

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

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Needed: A Smart Phone and Social Media Code of Ethics (At Least)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Begosh and begorrah! “Rolling Stone” published a useful ethics essay! The topic: Gen Z altering their conduct and becoming wary of social contact because of fear of public shaming.

Eli Thompson writes in part,

At the Chicago high school I graduated from in June, phones were out during private and public moments. It could be in class when someone fumbled a presentation, or the cafeteria when someone tripped. Most clips stayed in private Snapchat group chats, shared among a few dozen kids. But they could spread further, and cut deeper. Last year, a friend from another school was filmed in his attempt to ask a girl out in the hallway. Even though it was awkward, he didn’t do anything crazy in the video and it was mostly just a rejection. But someone recorded him and posted it on a Snapchat story. The video had the caption, “Bro thought he had a chance,” and over 200 people saw it by the time he got to lunch…Trends such as “fail compilations” or “cringe challenges” — posts showing awkward mistakes or uncomfortable situations meant to make others laugh — encourage people to document embarrassing moments…After seeing these moments play out, I realized this was no longer a far-off fear. It changed how young men conducted themselves in real life. The threat of public shaming makes normal interactions risky and at times can lessen the chance young men will pursue relationships or go on dates. Constant fear of embarrassment can leave some young men too hesitant to take the social risks needed for dating. The fear of online exposure doesn’t just stop certain young men from asking girls out — it can plant seeds of resentment that threaten to fracture gender relations for a long time. 

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Ethics Quiz: The Charlie Kirk Statue

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

(See? I spelled “Charlie” right this time!)

Utah Valley University is where conservative activist Charley Kirk was murdered. Reasonably, the school has proposed erecting a statue in honor of Kirk, who was widely admired for his character and legacy, the student group Turning Point USA, a spearhead of the conservative and MAGA movements.

The proposal has sparked furious controversy on the campus, however. UVU Students for a Democratic Society, a progressive group, argues that Kirk is not worthy of such an honor, that students oppose a statue that will make them feel “unsafe” (as in “represents viewpoints that they disagree with.” I know, I know…) and that they don’t want “outsiders” coming on the campus to gawk at a statue.

“We’re out here because we want to protest any sort of Charlie Kirk memorial,” a student protester told reporters at a recent rally. “We don’t want his likeness on campus; we don’t want his likeness sort of immortalized.” Signs at the group’s rally had legends like “No Kirk on Campus” and “Memorial For Unity Not Hate.”

There are dueling petitions pushing for and against a statue to Kirk, with the opposition threatening to tear down a Kirk memorial if one appears. Considering how the Mad Left went on a statue-toppling rampage not long ago, this does not seem like an idle threat—or, if you like, an idol threat.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it respectful and responsible for a school to erect a statue that inspires such strong divisions on campus?

I regard this as a tough ethics call. Even if the protesters represent a vocal minority, even if their hatred for Kirk is based on misunderstandings or extremism, even if not erecting a Kirk statue will constitute a successful heckler’s veto, I question whether insisting on a statue (that is certain to be defaced, vandalized or destroyed) of a political figure in the current polarized environment on campuses and elsewhere is simply fanning flames that need to be extinguished.

____________

Pointer: College Fix

‘Bias Makes You Stupid’ (And Untrustworthy) Case Study: Jonathan Chait

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Oh dear. So disheartening.

Jonathan Chait is a policy analyst and pundit who has, in the course of only writing for progressive and Axis publications and offering opinions on similar platforms in the broadcast news realm, has shown himself capable of principled disagreement with his party (guess which) and progressive cant. On the other hand, he is Trump Deranged, as he demonstrated the last time I criticized him. Then he wrote regarding the first stupid “No Kings” protest in June, “The No Kings protests appear to be a massive success.” (My comment: “Success at what?“) But Chait is clearly intelligent and capable of perceptive analysis, which is why the tweet above is so disturbing aside from the fact that it forces me to again think about Karine Jean-Pierre.

She’s on a book tour hyping her memoir of looking like a fool almost every day as Joe Biden’s paid liar for two years, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.” Jean-Pierre describes what she considers the Democratic Party’s betrayal of Joe Biden: “I watched Democratic leadership abandon, and in the end betray, a man who’d led our country through a pandemic and a time of historic political turmoil,” she writes.

Jean-Pierre’s gimmick is that she claims to be so outraged that the party pushed Biden to step aside as the Presidential nominee after his Presidential debate meltdown against Donald Trump, and that it “couldn’t articulate the achievements of the Biden/Harris administration well enough” that she has decided to leave the Democratic Party and become a political independent.

Talk about chutzpah: this woman is estopped from complaining about anyone’s failure to articulate anything.

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Ethics Hero For The Ages: Elon Musk

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I have long planned on writing a thorough post about how much the United States, its culture, its future as a viable democracy and its avoidance (so far) of a close call with progressive neo-totalitarianism owes to Elon Musk. This isn’t it. However, once again he has used his boundless wealth and creativity to strike down an engine of cultural indoctrination and Orwellian twisting of knowledge and history. Buying Twitter and ending its flagrant partisan bias was a landmark in American freedom of speech, one that may well have made the election of Donald Trump possible. His latest adventure may be even more important.

He has launched Grokipedia, the desperately needed alternative to Wikipedia. It is still a work in progress, as Musk admits, but by being AI-driven (the bot in charge is Elon’s Grok), the online living encyclopedia avoids the progressive bias and vulnerability to partisan manipulation that had caused me to only resort to Wikipedia when the topic was immune from political bias.

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Harvard’s Self-Indicting Grade Inflation Report

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Harvard College’s Office of Undergraduate Education issued a 25- page report sent to faculty and Harvard College students this week. Incredibly, it revealed that more 60% of the grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates are A’s, which, of course, means that the school’s standards of performance are elusive at best. The report concluded that Harvard’s current grading system is “damaging the academic culture of the College.” Ya think? It is more than that. Such low standards of excellence mean that a Harvard diploma, which the world accepts as powerful evidence of merit and superior intellectual skills, is a fraud.

The report drew on years of data on student grades and course evaluations, as well as surveys of faculty and student leaders. A faculty committee found earlier this year that undergraduates often prioritize other interests over classwork…you know, like protesting in favor of terrorists and against Jews. Still, the report found that the amount of time students say they spend on coursework outside of class each week has remained stable over the past two decades.

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Unethical Rant of the Year: MSNBC Left-Wing Propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Lawrence O’Donnell, right up there with the most shameless Axis media hacks in captivity even compared to the rest of MSNBC, usually goes his merry way slamming Republicans, conservatives and President Trump, avoiding inconvenient facts, objectivity and balance at all costs, appealing only to American who don’t want news or fair analysis, just confirmation of their own world view. When people decry the harsh division in American society today, O’Donnell is one of the prime villains, in part because he has been championing “advocacy journalism” ( as in unethical journalism) for so long.

Here’s his Ethics Alarms dossier. The last time I bothered to mention him at all (he’s always biased and unethical: The Julie Principle applies), was last year when I elevated him from mere Unethical Broadcast Journalist to Ethics Corrupter. Yes, I defended O’Donnell once…for being caught on video screaming at the MSNBC staff and shouting “fuck” among other epithets. I don’t think anyone’s most embarrassing private moments should be made “viral.”

However, this time attention should be paid, as Willy Loman’s widow says at the end of “Death of a Salesman.” O’Donnell snapped on the air yesterday and began denigrating Scott Jennings, the articulate, restrained token conservative and Donald Trump advocate on CNN’s on-air team. Jennings does a superb job vivisecting the usually emotional, knee-jerk, woke Trump-Deranged fury that he encounters on the various panels and in the numerous discussions he participates in, providing a much-needed counterpoint on CNN, which has evolved into MSNBC lite: reliably unethically biased, but with occasional outbreaks of non-partisan reality.

For some reason a sole voice of non-Axis perspective on a rival network is deeply offensive to O’Donnell. How dare Jennings defend President Trump? How dare he undermine the perpetual efforts of the news media to destroy him and defeat his policies? The Unethical Rant of 2025 was the result. Here is the whole amazing thing:

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