Author: Jack Marshall

Sanctuary! Well, Not So Much…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

It is mordantly amusing to listen to progressives on MSNBC bemoan the incursion of ICE into the “sanctuary” of churches attempting to extend their invisible force field around illegal immigrants. These are the same people who have shown no respect or reverence for Americans who assert their religious beliefs regarding, to take one infamous example, compelled speech.

In the case of church sanctuary, they are oh, a couple centuries behind the times. Allowing a church to harbor criminals and others sought by the state is a tradition that goes back to Roman times, and here and there it has been bolstered by the law. Not here and now however. The tradition makes no sense in modern times, and if churches have no legal grounds to protect lawbreakers, the claims of so-called sanctuary cities and states are weaker still.

The political and ideological Left has dashed itself on the rocks of illegal immigration, and based on some of the talking head nonsense I saw on MSNBC and CNN today, they are still dashing. When they are not crying “Think of the children!” (Note: law-breaking parents who put their children in untenable positions by their parents’ conduct are 100% accountable for those children’s plight) the apologists for illegal border-crossers are asserting that they are “human beings” and deserve to “have their humanity respected and recognized.” That’s fine: nobody denies that they are human beings. They are also human beings who do not belong in the United States.

This, for some strange reason, seems difficult for some progressives and Axis hacks to grasp. One of the two women I saw rending their garments over the Trump deportation policy, stuttered, babbled, shrugged, sighed and finally said, “I just can’t believe that this is happening! It’s so cruel!” Her partner in absurd “Good Illegal Immigrant” rhetoric nodded and agreed that deporting illegal immigrants who weren’t violent criminals is a violation of human rights.

There is apparently, according to these revolutionaries, a human right to live anywhere you want to. This is pure “Imagine-ism,” probably caused by hearing John Lennon’s fatuous paean to brainless utopianism one time too many. Both women also bemoaned the “collateral damage” of deportations. All law enforcement has “collateral damage” to families and others who depend on the law-breakers. That is a reason not to break laws, not to stop enforcing them.

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Bonus cultural literacy quiz: Who is that lovely young actress playing Esmeralda in that clip from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”? No cheating, now: this is an ethics blog…

Well, I Guess There Won’t Have To Be A Revolution THIS Time…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Trump Deranged really do think this President is capable of being Hitler.

In a post on his usually rational and excellent blog “Simple Justice,” criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield embroils himself in an apocalyptic scenario where President Trump decides to break the law, defy the courts, and impose his will on the nation. Greenfield writes in part,

What mechanism exists to prevent a president from simply doing whatever he pleases? I gave the short list of how this works on the twitters.

There are three primary checks on presidential power:

1. Virtue
2. The military’s refusal to support unlawful action
3. Revolution

Some replied that this was wrong, ignoring the constitutional separation of powers, court rulings, Congress’ laws, even elections and impeachment. They missed the point. Honoring all the guardrails built into the system falls within the first check, virtue. It only matters if the president respects the law and the Constitution. Andrew Jackson realized this when he mumbled, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” What if the president just says “no”?

What is Congress or the Supreme Court going to do if the President tells them to kiss his executive butt? Congress may have the spending authority, but it’s the Treasury that holds the cash and writes the checks. The Supreme Court may have the authority to hold an action unconstitutional, but the military serves under the Commander in Chief.

If the president abides by the limitations of law or constitutional authority, as has generally been the case up to now despite the occasional overstep, then the mechanics of our society work. But what if he doesn’t?

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Caroline Kennedy’s Unethical Hit Job On RFK, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is one of President Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet that I would not be disappointed to see rejected. His nomination is transparently the fulfillment of a political quid pro quo between him and Trump. There is nothing shocking about that: it is a standard tactic in a strange arena that often embraces Bizarro World ethics. Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines in general has exploded the number of anti-vaxxers in the U.S. and undoubtedly caused unnecessary deaths. Democrats won’t mention his extreme climate change positions, including RFKJ’s advocacy of criminal penalties for “climate change deniers,” but that is also, in my view, a disqualifying feature of his career in the public eye. I would not be surprised if Trump himself is hoping Kennedy’s nomination is rejected. I would not be surprised if he has taken steps behind the scenes to ensure that it is. I hope he has.

Nonetheless, Caroline Kennedy’s public letter to four ranking Democratic Senators condemning her cousin and attacking his character as well as his positions is a particularly odious betrayal and Machiavellian political shiv in the kidney. The letter is also spectacularly hypocritical, and an excellent, if nauseating, example of abuse of celebrity and influence as well as a stunning lack of self-awareness.

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Jim Acosta, Ethics Villain (Axis Journalism Division) Quits CNN In a Snit

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This rates a Nelson. Mr. Muntz has been getting a work-out on Ethics Alarms lately. The Nelson, as frequent readers here know, is used when condign justice arrives for some ethics miscreant of note, or when such an individual beclowns himself or herself. Nelson Muntz, for the culturally ignorant, has been a regular character on “The Simpsons” for more than two decades. His function is to issue a mocking laugh when he encounters the misfortunes or witnesses the embarrassments of other Springfield residents.

Jim Acosta is a long-time CNN reporter with delusions of grandeur. He is an “advocacy journalist” (which means, ironically, that he’s not a journalist at all) who fashioned himself as Dan Rather to Donald Trump’s Richard Nixon, or Sam Donaldson to Trump’s Ronald Reagan, the dogged liberal reporter knight pledged to slaying the conservative President dragon. Unfortunately for Jim and the rest of us, Acosta isn’t as smart as Rather or as careful as Sam, and is more unethical than either.

Though Acosta led the broadcast media siege of fake and spun news along with Big Lies and double standards to cripple Trump’s first occupation of the White House, CNN figured out that his act was not going to play this time around. Trump 2.0 took over after a decisive electoral win and a higher approval rating from the public than he had at any time in his first term. CNN, seeing its ratings sinking and trying to tack to the center after thoroughly discrediting itself in 2024 (along with the rest of the mainstream media that insisted Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign, Tim Walz wasn’t a boob and Donald Trump was an insurrectionist) decided that Acosta was a liability (“Welcome to the party, pal!“) so they moved his show to the midnight slot, which is the CNN equivalent of Hitler sending an officer to the Russian front.

So Acosta, laboring under the delusion that he deserves better, quit. Here was his astoundingly pompous farewell:

I just wanted to end today’s show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network.

You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing in alternative timeslots CNN offered me, I’ve decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I’ve spent here doing the news.

People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump.

Actually, no. That moment came here when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island’s political prisoners.

As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.

I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on doing all of that in the future.

One final message. Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope.

Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. “I will not give in to the fear!”

Post it on your social media so people can hear from you, too.

I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days. But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your home for all these years.

That’s the news. Reporting from Washington. I’m Jim Acosta.

Bye! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, you self-righteous, arrogant hack.

I know that the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome describes people who are so stupid that they don’t know they are stupid, but what do you call the syndrome when you think you are brilliant at your job when you really stink at it? That’s Acosta. Reading his nauseating statement from last night, I took a tour of the Ethics Alarms dossier on Jim. It is necessarily much thinner than it could be: Acosta quickly identified himself as belonging in the same group with Joy Reid, Don Lemon, Charles M. Blow, Courtland Malloy, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and others, openly biased pundits and broadcast journalists who viewed bringing down Donald Trump by any means necessary as their Holy Grail. I ignored his predictable dishonesty and lack of professionalism except when it was too egregious to let stand (or when I was short on topics).

Let’s see:

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Brevard County School Superintendent: “We Hold Our Leaders to the Highest Standards…” Yeah, RIGHT.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Roosevelt Elementary School (in Cocoa Beach, Florida) principal Elizabeth Hill-Brodigan (above, right) held a party with more than 100 teens in attendance. Alcohol was flowing, joints were being puffed. When police arrived at Hill-Brodigan’s home after a tip on January 19, they discovered the wild underage party, one teenager having an alcohol-related medical episode on the front lawn, and Roosevelt Elementary teacher Karly Anderson (left), who was drunk as a skunk. They also found alcoholic beverages in coolers. Now police have learned that these parties have been occurring for a while, once or twice a month.

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New York Magazine Is Caught Manufacturing Fake Evidence Of “White Supremacy”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Once upon a time, the news media would get away with this kind of blatant dishonesty.

The story itself that New York Magazine used this deceptively cropped photo to introduce (The Cruel Kids Table: Out late with the young right as they cultivate cultural domination”) states that “Almost everyone is white” after beginning the story by quoting a party attendee as observing, “Have you noticed the entire room is white?” Promoting the piece, the NY Mag X account wrote that the story was about “the young, gleeful, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on the rest of America.” This was a hit piece about a supposedly all-white conservative influencers Trump inauguration party, yet the party’s host was black Gen Z Republican strategist CJ Pearson. Others pointed out, like black conservative pundit and “influencer” Rob Smith, also a guest at the party, that there were many Hispanics, blacks and Asians there. He posted this photo…

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Abuse of Celebrity: Selena Dumb Gomez’s Virtue-Signaling

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The video of former Disney star Selena Gomez weeping over the deportations of illegal immigrants who should be deported is a brilliant reminder that Hollywood makes you stupid. Gomez posted it on her Instagram which has 424 million followers and I want to kill myself.

Gomez is difficult to understand amid all the sobbing and histrionics, but here’s the text: “I just want to say I am so sorry… all my people are getting attacked [by Trump’s deportations]. The children. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something, but I can’t, I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”

To state the obvious, being subject to law enforcement isn’t being “attacked.” It is breathtakingly obnoxious for Gomez to call illegal immigrants “her people”—she’s an American citizen, and we are her people. Of course she plays the always popular “Think of the children!” card. And the hubris necessary for a B-list celebrity—she was okay in “The Dead Don’t Die”— to apologize for something she has no power over whatsoever, and to promise to “try everything” to stop it when there is nothing she can do is especially staggering.

“Entertainment Tonight” isn’t much better, saying in that clip that the deportation policy mostly “targets Latinos.” No, you hacks, it entirely targets illegal immigrants.

You can say this weepy virtue-signaling is harmless, but the fact that an ignorant woman like Gomez has over 400 million followers means that a political, cultural and ethics dunce can influence a dangerous number of people, making them stupid, fearful, and bad citizens. It has always been thus that our most talented artists (not that Selena is one of those) usually lack intellectual and critical thinking abilities on par with their performing abilities. They also tend to be emotionally frozen somewhere between the 6th and 11th grade. There are exceptions, of course, but social media has given these Dunning-Kruger victims a way to spread their juvenile politics and poor civics literacy far and wide, usually infecting the young most of all, and most damaging of all.

Maybe I’ll make a video of myself weeping over this…

Ethics Dunce (Again): Snopes (Again), And A Related Mystery

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Snopes, the once-trendy and amusing “Urban Myths” website that morphed quite a while ago into an almost comical Democratic party shill, may have hit peak Poe’s Law status (that’s PPL for short, like in the Barbra Streisand song) this time. I last moved these hacks out of my Julie Principle corner in June after somebody made the executive decision that the Axis site needed more ammunition when someone accused their political factchecks of partisan hackery. That month Snopes decided to point out that “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People” after ignoring this Big Lie used repeatedly by Democrats for seven long years.

Snopes needn’t have bothered if it was going to stoop to new depths of outrageous bias as it did in a post last week. Climbing on the disgraceful bandwagon of the Trump Deranged who called Elon Musk’s awkward arm gesture as he signified that his “heart went out” to his fans a “Nazi salute,” it gave us “No, These Politicians Did Not Make the Same Gesture as Elon Musk.” A short summary of its intended message: “Apologists for Trump acolyte Musk who found photos of Democrats who also appeared to make a Nazi Salute in photos taken out of context are passing along misinformation, because the Democrats (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris) are not Nazis, but Elon Musk, because he supports Donald Trump, might be.”

The post could be a Babylon Bee satire on Snopes (which has “factchecked” some of its satire). In truth, Musk’s gesture was exactly like the non-Nazi salutes of the Democrats Snopes always rushes to defend, because he also wasn’t giving a Nazi salute, as any non-Musk-hating, non-Trump Deranged, rational human being with a semi-functioning brain should be able to figure out all by themselves.

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Monday Morning Trump Presidency First Week Ethics Update

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

1. A norm is born! In November, I wrote again about Harvard’s unethical and dishonest propagandists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt after earlier pronouncing them Academic Ethics Villains. “These two favorites of the New York Times are substantially responsible for the Axis of Unethical Conduct‘s Big Lie #6: “Trump’s Defiance Of Norms Is A Threat To Democracy,” a cornerstone of the Harris Campaign’s desperate “Trump is Hitler” strategy. They had just issued another one of their fear-mongering and academically indefensible Times op-eds, banging that same metaphorical drum with their (profitable!) argument that any genuine student of Presidential history (like they claim to be) knows is 100% hooey, and using the beat to argue for Democrats taking unprecedented measures to block Trump from the presidency….all of which defy previous democratic norms! The Levitsky and  Ziblatt hypocrisy has nonetheless become, apparently, a standard weapon for the Axis to use against Trump, as increasingly absurd as it.”

Trump, like all functioning Presidents who understand the office, creates new “norms.” (Fortunately, the Joe Biden innovation of the President being a hollow shell maneuvered by hidden hands does not look like it will become a norm.) During Trump’s first term, he created a norm by using social media to make the case for his own leadership while competing with the Axis news media’s efforts to debase him. Such direct contact with the public hearkened back to the days of FDR’s “fireside chats” on the radio. Trump is no Roosevelt, and his often hasty tweets in ALL CAPS often did more damage than good. Still, the use of social media as an unfiltered means of reaching the public without the spin of media partisans is destined to become standard operating procedure, at least for President bold enough to do it, and not delegate their social media accounst to 20-something nerds. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence bots. Trump, or any President, can create his (or her) own political cartoons via the meme-maker function, and get more circulation via social media than most news sources can give to outdated hacks like the self-righteous ex-WaPo cartoonist discussed here.

The viral “Trump as bad-ass gangster” meme above, following nicely on the “Melania as gangster” talk around her flashy Inauguration fashion statement, also guarantees that “FAFO” will enter the lexicon beyond its Gen X origins. FAFO is short for “Fuck around and find out,” or, in Tony Barretta’s words, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”…. or, in my father’s generation’s words, “Actions have consequences.”

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Pundit Malpractice, Part II: A Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Masterpiece From “The Hill”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is truly a “Hold my beer!” moment to savor from “The Hill.” David Brooks’ fake history lesson, draped in his usual smarty-pants rhetoric, was unforgivable, but The Hill’s opinion piece with the click-bait title, “Blue Alert: Why Democrats are poised to win in 2028 and 2032” is so silly, lazy and idiotic that even Brooks gets leave to make fun of it.

Authored by GOP operatives Gary D. Alexander and Rick Cunningham, the thing makes it crystal clear how the Republican Party got the moniker “The Stupid Party” if it pays for advice from people capable of writing such junk. To state the obvious, Democrats aren’t “poised” to do anything at this point. The party has no leader; its President just exited the White House with one of the worst six months in Presidential annals; its Senators made asses of themselves in the hearings on Trump’s nominees so far, and its House members have declared themselves fans of biological men spiking volleyballs that crush women’s faces and illegal aliens who rape and kill. Its DEI Presidential candidate ran an embarrassing campaign while the party’s platform became “Abort more babies” and “Having a rally in Madison Square Garden proves Trump is Hitler.” Poised? Poisoned is more like it.

The article flags itself as bonkers by the third sentence, asserting that Democrats were already in an advantageous position to win in 2032. That’s eight years from now: I’m going to forgo the amusing but needless exercise of pointing out how unpredictable American political fortunes have been even two years in the future for most of our history. In eight years, the little fifth grade girl next door will be on the pill and registered to vote. Ah, but these two swamis write that their entrails readings “are deeply rooted in history and strategic realities.” You know, like Brooks’ one-term Presidents proving that populism doesn’t work.

Let’s examine these “realities”:

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