Month: January 2026

Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Greg Lukianoff is the president and chief executive of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has taken over the non-partisan role of First Amendment protector that the ACLU abandoned over a decade ago. In an essay for the New York Times titled, “This Is No Way to Run a University” (gift link), he easily smashes some low hanging conservative fruit: Texas A&M University introducing policy changes aimed at a sweeping review of course materials aimed at purging state disapproved assertions about about race and gender ( according to a bill passed last spring by the Texas Legislature) from woke curricula.

The bill is almost certainly unconstitutional as state forbidden speech. Lukianoff highlights the fact that the law was interpreted at Texas A&M as mandating the elimination of some Plato works from a philosophy course on how classical ethical concepts apply to contemporary social problems, including race and gender. That is clearly a ridiculous result. The free speech activist writes in part,

“Texas A&M seems to have concluded that the safest way to handle the ideas contained in a classic text is to bury them. This is no way to run an institution of higher education. University administrators and state lawmakers are saying, in effect, that academic freedom won’t protect you if you teach ideas they don’t like. Never mind that decades ago, the Supreme Court described classrooms as the very embodiment of the “marketplace of ideas”: “Our nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom…Within the Texas Tech University system, which has more than 60,000 students, a Dec. 1 memo warned faculty members not to “promote or otherwise inculcate” certain specific viewpoints about race and sex in the classroom. These include concepts like “One race or sex is inherently superior to another”; “An individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”; and “Meritocracy or a strong work ethic are racist, sexist or constructs of oppression.” The point isn’t that these concepts should just be accepted or go unchallenged; it’s that challenging them through a robust give-and-take is what universities are for.”

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Now THAT’S An Unethical Judge!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Amy L. Zanelli, an elected Magisterial District Judge in Lehigh County in Pennsylvania, is in a peck of trouble due to some unjudicial conduct that can only be responded to with “What was she thinking?”

For example, when a court employee tried to whisper to her that she had made an erroneous statement in court about a defendant’s sentence, the judge first ignored the staffer, then when the woman tried to get her attention again, exploded with “I am the judge, and you are just a fucking secretary! I will decide and make the determination about what happens in this courtroom!”

Judge Zanelli has habitually used vulgar rhetoric, apparently being especially fond of the word “cuntrageous.”

Classy! The judge also brought into her office a desk calendar that contained explicit sexual messages”evidently intended to be humorous” in the words of the ethics complaint, such as “Bedroom Plants He’ll Have to Slice Through With a Machete If He Wants That Pussy.” This was displayed in the general work area until Judge Zanelli removed it after complaints from her staff.

But here’s my favorite: Zanelli possessed what she termed a “Book of Grudges” in her office, which had the appearance of an ancient leather-bound tome with papyrus pages. The “Book of Grudges” bore an inscription written by the judge which stated, “Upon this day, we shall begin to record within our Book of Grudges.” Zanelli entered notes in her book, like describing a local attorney as “Just a Dick.” The judge encouraged her staff to make additions to the notes in the “Book of Grudges” about other individuals doing business in Zanelli’s court. They declined, though Zanelli placed the “Book of Grudges” in a general work area accessible to all staff for them to add notations to it to it, if they wished.

Eventually she was persuaded to remove it, but judges are not supposed to advertise their “grudges.” Canon 1, Rule 1.2 of the Code of Judicial Ethics states:

“A magisterial district judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.”

    Judge Zanelli also was routinely late for court, skipped work, often choosing not to preside on Fridays. The whole eye-popping complaint is here.

    A question: Has our judiciary always contained so many unethical, corrupt, biased, incompetent and just plain lousy judges, or is it just because of the internet that this is now so obvious?

    A Confederacy of Dunces at the Golden Globes

    / Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

    The sock drawer isn’t small enough not to keep me from watching the annual Golden Globes broadcast, the parade of awards from people I don’t know or respect to performers I’ve barely heard of for shows I haven’t seen. Nonetheless, Hollywood (and others) managed to disgrace itself once again, reminding us that the artists who make our mass entertainment have the critical thinking skills of paper clips.

    Once again the “Hollywood progs” (the name used by critics too genteel to call them “Hollywood assholes”) promoted the misguided latest woke cause. Last year it was the anti-Israel position insisting that nation should stop fighting Hamas and let the terrorists re-stock for the next massacre. This year, stars were wearing the fatuous anti-ICE pin, “Be Good.” Yeah, let’s all demand open borders, interfere with law enforcement, use our cars to block I.C.E operations, resist arrest, nearly run down and officer and get shot! Oh-oh, Sidney Wang is demanding a word…

    Yeah, we know, Inspector.

    We also know now that the late neighborhood open-borders fan was not good, as she was a contributor to Black Lives Matter, signature significance for someone who supports anti-white racism, lies (Michael Brown was murdered, you know!), riots, anti-law enforcement violence, dishonest news and scammers.

    But never mind! The ACLU, among other principle-free organizations including communist groups, funded the creation and distribution of that tiny salute to idiocy. Talk about minds: the ACLU has genuinely lost theirs, along with any claim to respectability and credibility. The organization used to stand for free speech. Now it is deliberately using its reputation and resources to mislead the public into thinking Good was engaging in it by blocking law enforcement and defying the law.

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    Right Into The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The Dumbest Anti-I.C.E. Meme Yet…

    / Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

    What else is there to say?

    A Facebook Communist friend posted that, and I know he believes it. What kind of indoctrination, propaganda, and unethical social bubble makes an intelligent man think that bigoted analysis is true, fair, reasonable or responsible?

    And I guarantee that no one will criticize or argue with that asinine post.

    It’s Reassuring To Know I’m Not The Only One With Hopelessly Trump Deranged Facebook Friends…

    / Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

    One of Ethics Alarms’ five commenters, indeed one whom I have had the pleasure to meet in person, took the plunge I will not take and wrote a Facebook post focusing on the Minneapolis I.C.E. shooting, noting that so many critics of the agent involved are displaying ignorance regarding the kinds of instant decisions “first-responders” must make in unpredictable and dangerous situations.

    Since his was, typical of his contributions here, persuasive, measured, articulate and non-confrontational, one might assume that the responses to his post might reflect thoughtful consideration. In most cases, one would be wrong in that assumption.

    One bright commenter wondered why the agent who fired on I.C.E.-defying protester Good didn’t “shoot out a tire” as her car came at him. Another analogized the Good scenario to this: “So when a masked man with no identification breaks down your door in the wrong house, brandishing a gun and yells at your terrified wife to drop to the ground and it takes her 5 seconds to understand the situation as she is frozen in fear, then turns to run it is perfectly fine for her to get 3 headshots because she might have had a weapon?”

    I don’t know how it is possible to respond to someone who thinks that is a valid argument, except with the “Cheers” classic. “What color is the sky on your planet?”

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    Confronting My Biases #27: Middle-Aged Men Wearing Basball Caps Backwards

    / Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

    I started really being annoyed at this when “The Gilmore Girls,” an annoying chick TV series to begin with, began featuring the single mom’s boyfriend who wore his cap like the guy in the photo. The graphic is a screen shot from a Tik-Tok video in which the guy is railing against wearing caps like that because you look like an idiot when you do. Verdict: True. In fact, I assume anyone who wears a baseball cap that way IS an idiot. It looks stupid, it defeats the purpose of the brim—there is no excuse for it whatsoever, except, in the opinion of the guy in the video, it is an attempt to look “like a ‘bad boy.'”

    Oh. Well that’s all right then!

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    More Thoughts On “Trump Derangement”

    / Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

    [The Powerline weekly meme collection is especially deft today]

    Again I was preparing a detailed analysis of why I believe Trump Derangement is important as a category, a diagnosis, and an acknowledgement of spreading national psychosis, not as an insult or an ad hominem attack. Again I was derailed by what I laughingly call “life.” But at the risk of piece-mealing a topic that deserves serious focus: I was reminded of the issue when a good friend wrote on Facebook last night to the usual unanimous praise and agreement of the Bubble after another fact-free rant, “If you voted for Trump, de-friend me and fuck yourself!”

    You see, I view that post as signature significance for clinical Trump Derangement. She doesn’t know how many of her friends voted for Trump in 2024, or why, but no matter what her relationship with them may be, however much they may care about her, how many acts of kindness or love they may have blessed her with, regardless of what they have achieved or suffered and who they have helped in the other spheres of their lives, the simple, civic act of voting for the current President of the United States is sufficient justification in her jaundiced eyes to condemn them and demand that they cut themselves out of her life.

    That’s nuts.

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    Comment of the Day: On the I.C.E. Shooting Ethics Train Wreck ( “Friday Open Forum, Depicated To Major Tipton”)

    / Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

    Ace EA commenter Ryan Harkins, as he often does, flags the ethics conflict in the current escalating controversy over President Trump’s mass deportations, a.k.a, “Enforcing the immigration laws after a rogue Presidency refused to do so for four years.” The point he raises is not only a valid one but an important one, not just regarding this issue but others. I’m going to append a fairly long addition to Ryan’s excellent work, but first of all, here is his Comment of the Day from “Friday Open Forum, Dedicated To Major Tipton…”:

    ***

    Here’s my concern about the situation we’re in. I would liken it to inconsistently disciplining your children. If you only irregularly discipline your child for a particular infraction, the child learns that most of the time, he can get away with that infraction. When that infraction is then punished, the child reactions disproportionately because he’s used to getting away with the infraction, and he believes that if he makes noncompliance painful enough, it will discourage further disciplinary action.

    That seems to be the case we’re in with illegal immigrants. We’ve been very poor at enforcing our immigration laws, and so many said illegals and the communities around them grew complacent about the laws not being enforced. When the laws are enforced, it comes as a great shock, and the immediate reaction is to scream about how unfair it is. And to a certain extent, I do agree that it is unfair. It is unfair to cultivate the expectation that a law won’t be enforced, only to turn around and enforce it. But it is unfair because of cultivating that expectation, not because of the subsequent enforcement.

    The significant problem is the whiplash effect of enforcement/non-enforcement depending upon who is in charge. We’ve run the gamut of no enforcement (even inviting in illegals), to soft enforcement, to promises of citizenship, to harsh enforcement. To anyone watching from outside the country, it is like dealing with a schizophrenic or someone suffering from multiple personality disorder. Worse, because we keep seesawing back and forth, the expectation right now is that by keeping up a defiant stance against the current administration, illegals and their allies can simply wait for the winds to change and go back to their lives as they’ve been.

    I know this aspect of the situation glosses over the deliberate effort of radicals to the destabilize the nation, the outrage over the money spigots that are being closed, the efforts to import in reliable Democratic voters, and the genuine concerns over destabilizing families that had, admittedly against the law, put down roots and became productive members of their communities. But it is a serious problem that we seem to be lurching one direction, and then back the opposite way, with every swing of political power. This has been exacerbated by most policy changes coming from executive orders, which are easily undone, rather than congressional legislation, which is much harder to walk back.

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    Yup, Mayor Mamdani Is a Deluded Utopian and This Will Not End Well For New York

    / Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

    At all.

    Ethics Alarms has repeatedly pointed out that it is unethical to waste time, passion and civic debate on nice, hopeful, idealistic policy objectives that are literally impossible. The anthem for these positions, again as I have noted ad nauseam, is my least favorite John Lennon song, “Imagine.” Yes, I regard anyone who takes that tripe seriously as mentally-challenged and historically, economically and politically illiterate. The official political ideology of these misty-eyed utopians is, of course, Communism.

    Utopians, which include at the lower levels of delusion progressives generally, persist in the belief that human nature isn’t an immutable constant and that certain principles of reality can somehow be wished away if we all close our eyes and hope hard enough. Thus we keep hearing that there shouldn’t be wars, violence, hunger—President Franklin Roosevelt, in his cynical, pandering “Four Freedoms” speech, actually said that there should be freedom from “want.” Riiiight, Franklin, like that’s going to happen.

    New Yorkers, in their infinite ignorance, elected utopian (and communist) Zohran Mamdani as their mayor. The charismatic demagogue ran on all sorts of claims that various things should be achievable by government without his having any experience whatsoever in making and executing policy. Yesterday, the New York Times reports, Zohran engaged in a signature significance example of irresponsible wishcraft, handing out vouchers for free tickets to a theater festival featuring experimental works. “The shared laughter in a crowded theater, the eager debrief after a musical, the heavy silence that hangs over all of us in a drama — these are moments that every New Yorker deserves,” Mamdani said.

    Got it. Everyone deserves live theater, see, so there. It costs too much, though, so “POOF!” let’s make it cheaper.

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    Just Because She Can’t Be Sued For It Doesn’t Make Hillary’s Latest Shameless Lie Less Damning

    / Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

    My sympathy for Hillary Clinton has finally run out.

    For a long time, I have wanted to give Clinton every bit of leeway imaginable since her fluky, statistical anomaly Electoral College loss to Donald Trump in 2016. It’s an ethicist thing; the Golden Rule is strong here. What must it feel like to be that close to achieving your dream and to have it yanked from your grasp at the last moment? Oh-oh…I’m making Hillary sound like Moonlight Graham.

    Still, I can understand why she has been so bitter and angry ever since. On the other hand, to go from “Field of Dreams” to “The Godfather”: this is the life she has chosen. “Politics ain’t beanbag.” It’s been 10 years. Time to grow the hell up.

    Hillary’s latest outburst of Trump Hate—always wrongly placed because her own ineptitude, corruption and foolishness lost her that 2016 election—-came on the anniversary of Teddy Roosevelt’s death—wait, no, that was the worst thing that ever happened on a January 6th, but Hillary was using the date to misrepresent the stupid January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. Clinton posted a comment on X, declaring, “Five years ago today, Donald Trump urged his supporters to attack Congress and the Capitol over a proven lie.”

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