I have been given the ridiculous assignment of trying to produce a useful legal ethics presentation to lawyers association in 75 minutes this morning. On top of that, I can hardly ignore the metaphorical elephant in the room, the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and yet the connection between that event and legal ethics is attenuated. The chief one is that lawyers who defended some of the alleged terrorists were and still are vilified in the conservative news media and by other ignorant critics.
Rule 1.2 (b):
(b) A lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social, or moral views or activities.
Anyway, I’m off to downtown D.C. in the rain. More posts when I get back, I promise…
Ethics Alarms 
Here’s my question for today: September 11th seemed to temporarily unite this country behind the presidents and whatever needed to be done. I won’t say we absolutely stayed United, but would it be fair to say that George Floyd was September 11th in reverse, splitting this country apart to the point where it probably won’t ever reunite?
I don’t think that’s a completely unfair thing to say. I can’t think of anything else in my life that’s driven a bigger wedge into American society the whole George Floyd thing. 911 drove everyone to rally around the flag and sing God bless america. George Floyd drove everyone away from the flag and made everyone sing the black national anthem in the hopes of appeasing angry people who threatened violence.
The mass militant stuff ended after a year or so when a lot of people were able to go back to work and decided that earning money was preferable to getting involved in riots. I think it also helped that Trump was no longer the president and that’s really what a lot of them were looking for. However, 4 years later, the students who had been kids during covid saw their chance to turn everything upside down and embraced anti-semitism. As unimpressed as I am with the behavior of some of the University leadership, most of them actually did expel the major trouble makers here. Also, the police have learned a few things about how to handle this kind of nonsense and it ended relatively quickly. There was no Kent State and no Chicago 8 this time out.
Things did right themselves as Trump returned. Most of this country had had enough anger and chaos. However, because it’s trump, there are still a fair amount of people who will oppose anything he does. That can’t be helped. It’s the folks you can help that get you out of bed in the morning.