This is hack, bottom-of-the-barrel journalism at its worst.
The statistics show that the “The United States almost certainly had the lowest murder rate ever recorded in 2025” according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher. “And the available evidence suggests that we’re going to go even lower this year,” he predicts based on the numbers and trend so far.
“As the U.S. nears its 250th birthday, it’s doing pretty well by at least one measure: the national murder rate.”
That’s not news reporting. That’s partisan damnation with faint praise, while also engaging in deliberate misrepresentation. The story states that President Trump has achieved the best result in reducing the murder rate since at least 1960. That’s not, by any reasonable use of the English language, doing “pretty well.” It is an extraordinary success, and should be reported as such.
Then there is “at least one measure,” because, you see, everything else is terrible, but NPR’s Trump Deranged listeners assume that, so a major Trump accomplishment has to be minimized in the reporting. The technique is called “poisoning the well” and it isn’t journalism, it is pure bias. NPR, like the rest of the Axis, can’t tell a straight news story fairly, directly or honestly without applying a negative spin if President Trump is involved. You can almost hear the sneers: the outlet might as well had written,
“Well, how about that, the asshole did something right!”
“Look! Trump lucked out this time!”
“Hey, I guess everything the President does can’t blow up in his face!”
“Even a blind squirrel will find a nut now and then!”
“I am the last one to come here to stir up race hatred, or any other hatred. I do not believe in the law of hate… I believe in the law of love, and I believe you can do nothing with hatred.”
So I am wrestling my brain to the ground to fight hating these awful, arrogant, unprofessional, smug and destructive people. They refuse to extend even moderate respect and decency to the President of the United States. They do everything in their power to distort facts, data, reality and analysis to confuse the public and turn it against their own leader. They will not give credit when it is due, and they will not assign responsibility where it belongs, if there is any way to twist the facts to impugn President Trump.
CNN’s summary of yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling that President Trump could fire heads of Executive Branch agencies went like this: “Supreme Court expands Presidential power.” That’s absolutely false. The ruling held that the law blocking Presidents from firing heads of agencies in the Executive Branch was unconstitutional, as many legal scholars have argued for decades, and that the 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had upheld the law at the center of the dispute, was wrongly decided and violated the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. The Constitution has always held that the President, not Congress and not the Supreme Court, has the power to manage the Executive Branch. Fans of judicial activism and our “shadow government” by unelected agencies liked to call this the “unitary executive” theory, as if the idea that the President should have control over the his own branch of government is just a theory. It’s not a theory. It’s the law. SCOTUS was not “expanding” Presidential power by affirming it.
The Supreme Court expanded its own power when it green-lighted a Constitutional amendment in the form of an unconstitutional New Deal law.
The news media, your friends, and even some Supreme Court Justices seem to misunderstand the essence of the judicial review thingy, as well as the Constitutional role of the Supreme Court itself. It doesn’t help that some of the Justices on the Court have similar misconceptions. The two immigration decisions hostile to the Left’s open borders agenda handed down yesterday are causing SCOTUS to be condemned when all they have done is rule that the current administration of the law is legal. And the news media—fuggetaboudit.
Notable was the caterwauling over the Supreme Court ruling this week that the openly abused and distorted Temporary Protected Status really and truly is supposed to be “temporary.” Here is Jake Tapper of CNN “objectively” grilling DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin over deportations of Haitians with that “temporary protected status”:
Tapper: “Will you be deporting all of them?Will they be all deported back to their home countries, Haiti and Syria? And when will these deportations start? Will it be immediately?”
Mullin: “Well, Jake, first of all, Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent. And there’s a lot of people that came over here 15, 20 years ago underneath TPS that’s already changed their status.The whole time these individuals have been here underneath the Temporary Protected Status, they could have applied for a visa. They could have applied for LPR. They could have applied for different directions. But the status itself can be ended in its name itself by saying temporary.”
Tapper: “The Trump administration’s argument is that this was only supposed to last 18 months. My understanding of how the process works is, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has the discretion to extend it if the U.S. State Department says that the countries that these people are from are still considered unsafe, which is why they were afforded TPS status to begin with. Is it the position of the Trump administration that Haiti is a safe country to send these people to?”
Mullin: “Well, we take a lot of things in consideration. Secretary Rubio, the President and I have had multiple conversations about this, obviously… The qualification isn’t quite just that simple. And keep in mind, a lot of these individuals haven’t been here 18 months. They have been here 18 years. Some of them have been here 20 years, 30 years. They have had plenty of time to reestablish their status inside the United States. They have just chosen not to. Then there’s some that has been here the underneath the Biden administration that took advantage of an open border. And those individuals didn’t really come over here because they needed protective status. They came over here because they were taking advantage of a weak leadership. So what we want, and the President has made this very clear, those that are coming to this country legally, they need to be able to contribute to the United States, not be a burden on the taxpayers. And so we are continuing looking at our Temporary Protected Status. Those individuals that do need assistance because of the country they’re in, we’re always looking at them. There isn’t a more generous country in the world than the United States, but we don’t want people to take advantage of it.”
Tapper: “But do you maintain that it is safe in Haiti to send these people back?…The reason I ask is because I heard Stephen Miller, who is driving a lot of this, say that Haiti is safe for Haitians. And I just looked at the State Department’s website, and they have a level four do not travel advisory for Haiti just from a few months ago, from April, and it says, ‘Violent crime is rampant. The expansion of gang organized crime and terrorist activity has led to widespread violence. Crimes involving firearms are common. Crimes include robbery, carjacking, sexual assault and kidnappings for ransom.’ That doesn’t sound safe to me.”
Mullin: “Well, that “do not travel” is not for Haitians.That’s do not travel for the United States, because they are kidnapping or trying to kidnap individuals from the United States because they feel like their family has the money to pay the ransom.”
Tapper: “I understand that. But based on everything I have read, including the U.N. and Human Rights Watch, it doesn’t sound safe for Haitians. More than 8,100 killings documented last year, those weren’t Americans. Haiti is among the top five countries with the highest rates of rape and sexual abuse, with more than 1,200 cases of sexual violence last year. That’s not Americans; 1.4 million people have been displaced. Those aren’t Americans.”
Fascinating! Because of woke logic like Tapper’s, the Supreme Court decision that it was long past the time when Haitians and Syrians permitted to enter the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status based on conditions of decades ago could be told to go home is being called racist and “cruel” by the Axis of Unethical Conduct. The sad (and apparently permanent) fact that Haiti cannot get itself civilized or secure does not make everyone on that perpetually dysfunctional island nation the responsibility of the United States forever. Nor is the reality that Haiti probably will never be safe for Haitians the concern of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The job of the Court is to determine what laws require and prohibit,, not whether one is a good law or a bad law, or whether it is being administered in the most kind and caring manner possible. What is Tapper advocating? He seems to think that SCOTUS should have ruled that all Haitians have a right to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, as long as the U.S. is safer than Haiti. If that’s true for Haiti, it’s true for Syria. If it’s true for Syria, it’s true for Gaza. Somalia. Ukraine. Heck, it’s true for the U.K. If that is the policy our nation wants to embrace, crazy and irresponsible as it is, fine—one of the Communist wackos who won her primary in New York this month advocates that policy—but it is not the Supreme Court’s role to render such an edict. The Court’s job is to declare whether it is illegal for the U.S. to end Temporary Protected Status decades after the events that caused Haitians and Syrians to be temporarily admitted into the U.S.
I didn’t venture an opinion on whether President Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship would fly with the Supreme Court (I did post about Justice Jackson making a fool of herself during oral argument), but I would have been surprise if today’s decision had turned out differently than it did.
The Supreme Court ruled today that President Donald Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional. The ruling was announced just as I was preparing commentary on earlier decisions this week: that post will arrive later today.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the 6-3 ruling. “If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Roberts wrote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the result but dissented on the reasoning. Such concurring opinions are for professors and geeks, to be cited in law review articles and wild-hair judicial opinion dicta.
Justice Samuel Alito made some interesting points in his dissent about how birthright citizenship has very different, and potentially perilous implications today that never occurred to the Founders, writing,
The major MLB baseball rules addition this season, and one that is, as I so sagely predicted many years ago, both popular and beneficial to the game’s integrity, is the ability of players to challenge ball and strike calls instantly and have a computer image almost immediately appear that either confirms or overturns the home plate umpire’s call immediately. The results of many games have already been affected by the new technology. Of course umpires hate it, especially bad umpires, like the infamous Angel Hernandez, who is an embarrassment to the game. For the best umpires, the system is mostly beneficial, because it shows how accurate they are. Umpires in general have tightened up their pitch calling because of the technology. In the past, they used to defiantly talk about “my strike zone.” The ABS system makes it indisputable that there is just one strike zone, and that’s the one in the rule book.
In yesterday’s game between the Washington Nationals and the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park, Boston’s best hitter, Willson Contreras, was called out on strikes after the first base umpire Nick Lentz ruled that his attempted check-swing had indeed crossed the plate. That call is (currently) unappealable and entirely within the umpires’ discretion. But as Contreras walked away from the plate to the dugout, he tapped his helmet in the manner in which a player signals that he is challenging a ball or strike call. Lenz threw him out of the game.
Contreras and Red Sox manager Chad Tracy were shocked, and came out of the dugout to argue against the ejection. Red Sox broadcasters were initially confused, since Contreras hadn’t said anything to the home plate umpire. (There are a few “magic words” that will guarantee a player’s exit). Then they saw that the video showed Lentz indicating the ejection and tapping his head to explain why.
“I called him out on appeal for the check swing, and as he was walking back to the dugout, he started gesturing, tapping his helmet, like he wanted to challenge something that is not a challengeable call,” Lentz explained to reporters. “And so [it was] disrespect, and again gesturing towards what he thought was an incorrect call, got him removed from the game.” The umpire claimed that it is an automatic ejection if a player makes that gesture in a mocking way. “It’s a lot like drawing a line in the dirt,” Lentz said.
No, it’s really not. Players standing at the plate and drawing a line to show how far a ball was out of the strike zone was obviously an attempt to show up an umpire and always resulted in an ejection, as did a batter curling his fingers around his eyes to say “you need glasses.” Those gestures neverfhappen any more, because the computer settles the issue. Most fans in the stands didn’t even notice Contreras’s gesture, nor did TV viewers, because the camera wasn’t on Contreras when he tapped his helmet.
Hello everybody! I’m your host, Wink Smarmy! [APPLAUSE] Welcome to “How Stupid Do They Think We Are?,” the popular ethics game show where our panelists try to puzzle out just how stupid the usual suspects—we all know who they are, don’t we?—-think we are based on their lies, poses, flagrant misrepresentations and embarrassing efforts to deceive! [APPLAUSE]
Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…
UC at Berkeley has announced that it is launching a nonpartisan academic institute in the political science department will become a hub for research, teaching and civic engagement.
The Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy, or NPI, will be a hub for research, teaching and civic engagement rooted in a shared commitment to advancing the public good. Through faculty research initiatives, undergraduate courses and a visiting fellows program, the institute will explore what impedes progress and how best to solve political problems, from polarization to the future of artificial intelligence.
Chancellor Rich Lyons said the institute aligns with Berkeley’s commitment to fostering civil discourse, advancing democracy and preparing students to lead with integrity.
“The purpose and impact of the NPI will be defined and strengthened by Berkeley’s ability to bring together world-class faculty and extraordinary students and by our commitment, as the country’s preeminent public university, to advancing the greater good,” Lyons said. “We intend to do more than simply study democracy; we are building this institute to strengthen it.”
Before I throw the challenge over to you, panel, let me ask our resident ethicist, Jack Marshall, just how stupid does UC at Berkeley think we are?
“Thank-you, Wink. I have to say, to answer your question, so stupid I’m having trouble processing it. To begin with, Berkeley is one of the most left-leaning institutions in the country, as well as one of the most egregiously partisan. One landmark study by “Econ Journal Watch” found that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans at UC Berkeley by a ratio of roughly 9.9 to 1.
“But putting that beside, Nancy Pelosi was one of the most partisan Speakers of the House in U.S. political history. She green-lighted two impeachments against a Republican President purely because she had Democratic votes to do it, though the intent of the Constitution’s provision envisioned non-partisan consensus regarding actual “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Later, she violated both House rules and Congressional norms by rejecting Republican nominations to participate in the so-called “J-6” Committee, ensuring a purely partisan witch hunt constructed as a political weapon. Pelosi is the only House Speaker to deliberately show disrespect to a President, ostentatiously ripping up his State of the Union speech on camera.
“Calling an institution “non-partisan” that is named after Nancy Pelosi is head-explodingly cynical. Who could possibly believe that, except someone who is completely ignorant of recent political history, or someone who would lose Scrabble game to a mollusk?”
Thank you Jack. I see your point. In light of that, panel, let me re-frame the question a bit. Fill in the rest of this sentence: “Claiming The Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy is non-partisan insults the public’s intelligence as much as….
Jack, do you have an example to get us started?
“Hmmm. Okay, Wink, how about this: Claiming The Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy is non-partisan insults the public’s intelligence as much as The Kristi Noem Institute for the Ethical Treatment of Pets?
Perfect! OK, panel, now its up to you! how stupid does UC at Berkeley think we are? Answer by finishing this sentence:
“Claiming The Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy is non-partisan insults the public’s intelligence as much as….???
Good Luck! You have 30 second to come up with the best answer! The clock starts…NOW
The New York Times “breaking news” story from the weekend begins, “Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit: An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the President and the Commerce Secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.”
You can read it all here, at a gift link. From my reading, the story seems well sourced and fair, though it is the Times, and the Times has been doing everything in its power for over a decade to undermine Donald Trump. The Times isn’t the only one reporting the story, though: The Nation pounced on it with glee; I’ve also found the story reported by Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, MSN, India Today, various leftist substacks (Paul Krugman loves this story), Yahoo Finance, Mediaite, the Financial Times, and more obscure platforms. I expect CNN, PBS, MSNOW and the alphabet networks to be along any minute.
What I can’t find is any reporting on this apparent conflict of interest and Trump family self-dealing by the conservative media. (As of this moment it is also missing from news aggregator “memeorandum,” I assume because this partisan site is so excited about the Supreme Court upholding the $5 million jury verdict against the President regarding the E. Jean Carroll affair.)
The Texas State Board of Education has voted to make Bible passages required reading in public schools. The GOP dominated education board voted to pass a new required reading list on last week. Now required literature includes sections of the Book of Exodus for fifth graders, “The Shepherd’s Psalm” for seventh graders, and more. Naturally, Democrats, progressives and Muslims who want the U.S. to become an Islamic society like England and much of Europe are freaking out. And, also naturally, conservatives can’t keep their mouths sufficiently shut to give the law a chance when it gets to the Supreme Court, which it certainly will.
A Republican member of the Texas education board, Julie Pickren, told The Texas Tribune before the 9-5-1 vote that the readings will give students “important insight into the moral and philosophical traditions that have shaped Western civilization. When students engage directly with original writings, speeches, sermons, and foundational texts, they can evaluate ideas and develop a deeper understanding of the principles that have shaped the USA and Texas.”
Them’s fightin’ words to the Left. Board member Evelyn Brooks objected to the list, saying,
“Teachers need to have their autonomy. They’ve been selecting books for decades, for years. This is nothing new. This is not a new concept to teachers. We are simply giving them a mandated list, which I believe is unconstitutional, but regardless of what I believe, let’s not take their autonomy away.”
That isn’t a very persuasive argument either. Democrats and the teachers unions have turned the public schools into progressive indoctrination centers. Today’s teachers can’t be trusted to have “autonomy.” Mandated reading lists are not unconstitutional (Julie’s an ignoramus); even if the Bible section of the list gets struck down, we should take teacher autonomy away from the mountains to the prairie, to the oceans white with foam.
Gwar, an American heavy metal band, has been contacted by the Secret Service because it held a mock execution of President Trump onstage. A theatrical “science-fiction musical project” formed in 1984, the satirical band has been doing this kind of thing at its concerts for decades. Fake Trump was “killed” during the group’s performance at Warped Tour in Washington, D.C. this month. There’s a video: someone in a Donald Trump costume walks onstage and is disemboweled by the band, fake blood spurting.
The Band’s mock murders of public figures have offed such prominent figures as former President Barack Obama, former President Joe Biden, Queen Elizabeth, Elon Musk, Hillary Clinton, and Kanye West, and others. This is clearly non-partisan sick humor.
Trump’s Justice Department does itself, Republicans and conservatives no favors when it engages in dumb abuses of process and power like this. It is even more futile and less defensible than arresting James Comey for posting a numerical threat to President Trump written on the beach in sea shells. Demonstrating a sense of proportion as well as humor would be wise as well as endearing. I mean, Gwar’s manager is named Sleazy P. Martini. Reacting with fear as if a theatrical bad joke is a genuine threat makes the Administration and the President look weak, thin-skinned and foolish.
Ethics Quote of the Month: “If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive through it.” Unidentified German World Cup fan and first time U.S. visitor.
The conservative news media have been writing a lot about the positive reactions of foreign World Cup fans as they finally get to experience our country first hand. Because of our hopelessly biased and partisan journalism, in which one side holds that the U.S. can do no wrong and the other paints the U.S. as a racist, sexist, land-stealing hellhole ruled over by a mad orange king, I have no idea how accurate this “surprise” is. Bill Maher seems to believe it, but then who can trust Bill Maher?
“Freddy” is a young German soccer fan who has become an internet sensation as he joins Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and Alexis de Tocqueville as heavily-read foreign commentators who documented their first road trips across the United States. His viral social media posts have attracted tens of millions of readers as Freddy has raved about Americana like Waffle House , Taco Bell, Buc-ee’s, Bass Pro Shops, the size of American homes and more. Freddy the German is not the only one, however. World Cup visitors from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America have hit social media with similar shock and awe, full of wonder at Walmart and Costco, small town diners, Texas barbecue, the extravagant abundance in grocery stores and the stunning options and variety we take for granted in the most prosperous country in world history.
“The average American rarely pauses to consider how extraordinary our country remains today. We gripe about suburban sprawl while living in homes that would be considered luxurious by the standards of much of the world. We roll our eyes at chain restaurants that millions of foreign tourists eagerly seek out. We treat abundance as ordinary because abundance is all most of us have ever known. That familiarity breeds a certain blindness.But the World Cup tourists are not blind. They see an America that remains dynamic, entrepreneurial and welcoming. They encounter strangers eager to offer travel advice. They find communities proud to share local traditions. They discover a country that is far friendlier than the caricatures would suggest.” The America they are experiencing bears little resemblance to the negative stereotypes they had long imbibed back home.”
Yeah, but that Reflecting Pool still isn’t right…
Meanwhile:
1. Somebody sent me the Google AI’s description of this blog. It reads,
“Ethics Alarms is a popular ethics and commentary blog founded by lawyer and ethicist Jack Marshall. It focuses on examining daily news, politics, and pop culture to analyze right from wrong. The site’s name originates from Marshall’s concept of “ethics alarms”—the gut feelings, twinges of conscience, and cautions that trigger when faced with an ethical dilemma. It evaluates current events, politics, pop culture, and sports through a traditional, often conservative-leaning ethical lens.
Criticism: Detractors sometimes find the author’s perspective dogmatic, combative, and inflexible.
The Tone: It is conversational yet highly opinionated, combative, and staunchly “no-nonsense”. The writer is quick to point out “Tales of the Great Stupid” and the perceived decline in cultural reasoning.
The Content: Marshall dissects everything from political bias and sportsmanship to the ethical implications of horror movies like It Follows.
Community & Rules: The site encourages open discussion. The creator has strict Rule Book criteria, often calling out “rationalizations” and logical fallacies used by both public figures and commenters. The sometimes polarizing blog is designed to help readers recognize, debate, and improve their ethical reasoning skills. It breaks down complex moral dilemmas and often features categories like “Ethics Quizzes” and “Ethics Heroes.”
Not bad! I never thought of Ethics Alarms as “popular,” however. And I had forgotten that I had written about “It Follows”!
2. Can “The View” be called a news program when it disseminates false information and rather than informing viewers, makes them less informed? Last week the ladies unanimously claimed that “no one wants voter ID laws.” In fact, a 2025 survey by Pew found that 83% of U.S. adults favor photo ID mandates. Even assuming error because polls are biased, inaccurate and generally suck, I think it’s fair to say that “no one” is untrue. And stupid. The ladies also claimed that “half” of America would be prevented from voting if the SAVE act was signed into law. Whoopi Goldberg led the discussion of the “SAVE America Act,” saying “He [Trump] torpedoed the [housing] bill because he wants another bill signed. And it seems to me no one wants to sign this bill.”
Whoopi never got out of high school, so she can perhaps be forgiven for not understanding how laws get made, but shouldn’t a host on a news show know that? Only the President signs the bills into law. It is unethical to criticize what you don’t understand. Am I being polarizing to say that?
3. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently published a report, “A Broadside for the Nation: Preparing College Students for Informed Citizenship,” calling for mandatory college civics courses. Teaching civics before college would seem to be a better idea, since 18-year-olds can vote and not everyone goes to college. The Council claims the requirement would help the nation’s future “schoolteachers, business leaders, professionals, and government leaders.” Gee, ya think?
[I suspect that you’re going to see a lot more of that crazy lady who freaks out on Tippi Hedren in “The Birds” over the next few months…]
Let’s see: the hysterical, Trump Deranged Axis of Unethical Conduct is rooting for Iran, calls Israel genocidal because it is fighting Gaza, is supporting a woman-abusing former (?) Nazi admirer who makes the President’s truth-telling skills seem like Honest Abe’s by comparison, has extolled a kid who stabbed an unarmed white teen to death because the killer is black, worships illegal immigrants, cheers the assassinations of Charlie Kirk and an insurance executive who was shot in the back, opposes voter ID, believes that trying to unscum the Reflecting Pool, which has been an embarrassment for decades, as D.C. becomes a national destination for our 250th anniversary as a nation is an outrage and just selected an openly anti-American, anti-Semite Congressional candidate in New York who wants to abolish borders, police, prisons and deportation even for violent criminals.
Did anyone expect the Axis to be anything but critical of Trump’s Great American State Fair, or to even try to exhibit Fair Fairness in a spirit of union, comity and national pride?
The event opened in D.C. three days ago. The weather in the area has been sweltering or rainy. Never mind: the Axis media has already pronounced it a failure. The Daily Beast—ah, how I remember the days when, as with the Huffington Post, that site was a semi-reliable source of useful news and commentary from left-of-center!—pronounced Trump’s fair as “tacky.” All state fairs and carnivals are tacky: that’s why they are fun. The Atlantic grumps, “The Great American State Fair Isn’t Very Great.” Lots of headlines about “sparse crowds”: Gee, I wonder if the rain (the planned Vanilla Ice concert was rained out yesterday), the heat, and the news media telling people to stay away might have some effect on that. This morning, a Sunday when crowds would be large under decent conditions, it’s raining. When the rain stops this afternoon, the Mall will be soggy and hot.
One of the most relentless of my Trump Deranged Facebook friends reposted this whine from a Smithsonian employee:
Ethics Alarms 