There is so much crazy and stupid ethics stuff out there I just woke up from a crummy night’s sleep and am exhausted already.
Last night, trying to have an intelligent discussion with a lawyer friend who used to be intelligent, I raised the incident I wrote about yesterday and which I continue to think is an unusually important one for the legal profession today: the ABA’s president refusing to be honest-–in front of cameras and under oath—when asked in a Congressional hearing about its extreme woke positions. My friend started screaming at me, literally screaming, with a “whataboutism” attack: what about Trump, what about Todd Blanche, what about the Supreme Court, what about the ballroom, what about the Kennedy Center. It was scary. I was tempted to have her sedated.
Weird things keep appearing on my screen too. Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has no qualifications whatsoever to be a U.S. Senator (and maiden names don’t count) announced that getting appointed to a position she has no business being in isn’t enough, she now is going to run for a full term. A female sportswriter suggested that WNBA star Caitin Clarke complaining about being mugged on the basketball court by the black lesbians who have virtually put a hit out on her has put them at risk of ending up like Emmit Till. Megan Rapinoe, the over-the-hill women’s soccer star who thinks she has something to contribute to society besides hitting a soccer ball with her head, actually said that President Trump was responsible for the U.S. losing in the World Cup and that opposition to biological men playing women’s sports is “an attack on women in society.”Prof. Turley has a post up about how Democrats are now referring to belief in the Constitution as “nostalgia.” The Secret Service has opened more than 10,000 threat investigations this year, which is 40% increase from the same period last year. Yesterday Whoopie Goldberg, on ABC’s “news ” show “The View,” ended the program by ranting, “We need to get out and make changes, because we need to block [Trump’s Presidency] every way we can! That’s all. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.Don’t wait until November. Start looking now.” That is a pure violation of FCC rules, and if the FCC dared to act on it, we would be hearing about Trump trying to censor the press.
But by all means, write about what you want to.
This cheered me up yesterday for about 30 seconds…
Ethics Alarms 
Has anyone been following the Shiloh Hendrix case? Can someone explain to me (a non-lawyer) how it only went to trial, but a jury was able to deliberate for 9 hours and find a guilty verdict? How is this not a free-speech violation?
They charged her with disorderly conduct after a tirade in which she repeated the same racial slur repeatedly and after the child’s father started filming which was foolish of her.
Disorderly conduct is a legitimate charge – whether it should have been filed in this case I can’t say.
I would say that people are far too quick to start filming others at their worst and the father did tell her they would see what the internet says which demonstrated his intent to cause her problems.
So, the ethics issue:
Child taking things that don’t belong to him. Unethical. He is a child, though, and apparently autistic (though I don’t know how severe the autism is).
Victim calls him a racial slur. Unethical. He’s a child. He shouldn’t be called names. There are better ways to handle it.
Father taking video and expressing his intent to put it on the internet. Unethical.
Victim doubling down on her racial slurs on video. Unethical and idiotic.
Police arresting and charging woman after the viral video based on the video evidence. I’m going to say they are skirting ethics here. Her conduct may have been disorderly but I’m pretty sure she was arrested and charged to send a message about her words. This is Rochester, after all.
Jury finding her guilty. I don’t know what evidence they saw. I’m leaving them out of it.
It looks like a mini ethics train wreck to me.