One of my oldest (in both senses of the word) friends is a history professor at a major university here in the D.C. area. The things he posts on Facebook are head-exploding: like the mutation of his former rational self that EA expatriate Curmie has morphed into under the gamma rays of Trump Derangement, my scholarly friend frequently makes arguments I would expect from Ben Stiller’s character in “Tropic Thunder.”
Today he posted several defenses of Anthony Fauci, who is literally indefensible, comparing Rand Paul’s correct, factual and fair evisceration of the villain to a Soviet show-trial. Before that, the Professor posted with approval the following attack on the late Lindsay Graham by professional snot Andy Borowitz. I knew Andy in college. He was a standard issue Harvard Lampoon guy, overly convinced of his own wit and a sucker for a cheap shot. Whatever formula he developed over the years obviously works: he’s created and written successful sit-coms, has been a successful stand-up comic, and his satirical columns have been syndicated all over. That his major employers have been The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The New Yorker should tell you all you need to know about Andy’s biases, and partially explains this effort which my Trump Deranged friend found so trenchant.
I think I’ll footnote it to make my commentary more accessible…
I have concluded, over the past year of almost constant disillusionment, that the public is being deliberately deceived regarding the legal profession’s “self policing” duties. To watch TV or legal-themed movies, one would think that any significant violation of a lawyer’s jurisdiction’s Rules of Professional Conduct is likely to result in disbarment. That isn’t true. It isn’t close to true. The overwhelming majority of unethical lawyers, even flagrant, criminal unethical lawyers who prey on trusting clients, are never disciplined. Not only that, lawyers use their bar associations to make certain that is the case.
I have two clients who have been victimized by the same D.C. lawyer. A detailed and fully competent complaint by one of those clients, a non-lawyer, was ignored. I am a recognized legal ethics expert, and after I learned the facts regarding a second client’s victimization by this predatory lawyer, I realized that as a D.C. lawyer myself, I was ethically obligated to file a complaint to the D.C. bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, as well as the lawyer’s other bar association. Rule 8.3 in almost all U.S. jurisdictions requires lawyers to file complaints when they know that another lawyer has engaged in conduct calling into question his or her honesty, integrity, or fitness to practice law in other respects.
A third bar association in a jurisdiction where this unethical lawyer has practiced law without a license refused to receive my complaint, arguing that since this crooked lawyer wasn’t licensed to practice law there, they had no jurisdiction. I’m not making this up.
In undertaking this task, I was shocked at how deliberately burdensome it is in every jurisdiction. You are forced to use websites which are written in jargon, with unduly verbose instructions and explanations. You are forced to fill out on-line forms which freeze and often don’t work. It is almost impossible to get anyone in the appropriate offices to answer the phone, so questions are not answered. The process is confusing for lawyers; non-lawyers are likely to find it impossible.
I believe this is intentional. I know the contempt lawyers have for client complaints; they are open about it. And it is true that a lot of clients think lawyers must be unethical because they didn’t prevail in a case. Therefore there is an institutional bias against complaints against bar member by non-lawyers, and that presumption that they are just a nuisance. Apparently the complaint system has been made so confusing and user-unfriendly in order to make all but the most determined victims of lawyer misconduct give up, throw up their hands and say, “Oh, the hell with it.”
But I am a lawyer and an ethics expert, and I was and am determined to get this spectacularly unethical lawyer where he belongs, ideally in prison, but at the every least in some other occupation where he will do less damage.
It was suggested that I lead this post off with this now well-circulated meme…
…but to me, it is too kindly and trivializes the villainy of the man. The old Ethics Alarms reliable, the unmasking of Lon Cheney in “The Phantom of the Opera,” better expresses just how repugnant his conduct has been.
If you are shocked—shocked!—to learn that Fauci is a celebrity-obsessed liar and unapologetic villain, you haven’t been paying attention or you just aren’t very bright. You certainly haven’t been following Ethics Alarms very long. I’m embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to write a full post about how despicable Fauci was, though by mid-summer 2020 I had figured it all out thanks to the photo of him maskless with two companions at a Nationals baseball game, where he had ostentatiously thrown out the first pitch (like a little girl) while wearing his virtue-signaling mask at least 60 feet from any other human being.
Here is Fauci’s EA dossier, more negative than that of almost any public figure, including the Clintons. I already took a victory lap for pegging Fauci for what he was this April, so I will spare you another “I told you so.” That month, Anthony Fauci’s former adviser David Morens was indicted and charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records relating to the origins of the Wuhan virus. He faces up to 51 years in prison. I wrote, “If Morens is guilty so is Fauci, who denied under oath that he funded ‘gain of function’ experiments that modified bat coronaviruses in the same city where the pandemic started.”
Sen. Rand Paul came to the same conclusion, not that it was elusive. In his excellent recitation of Fauci’s betrayal of trust and the public this morning as the doctor who proclaimed himself the personification of science was called to account, Paul said in part,
“There will be another pandemic. There will be another crisis. And there will again be officials that insist uncertainty must be hidden for the public’s own good. They will demand obedience. They will invoke science. “I am the science!” as though it were a commandment. They will argue that government officials cannot be questioned, because questioning them would undermine public trust. They have it backwards. It is secrecy that destroys trust. It is arrogance that destroys trust. It is censorship that destroys trust. And it is the refusal to admit error that destroys trust. That loss of trust may be your most damaging legacy.”
[Note: Flushed with unexpected good health, I promised yesterday to post on the unraveling Fauci scandal. 1) I wasn’t quite as recovered from the previous day’s cold, especially energy-wise, as I thought I was, and 2) I realized that today would be the more appropriate day for that post given that the arrogant Ethics Villain is testifying before Congress and Sen. Rand Paul would be, as the saying goes, “tearing him a new one.”Fauci gets his EA excoriation next, I promise.]
Just as a depressing number of people, either captured by the fascists of the Left or intimidated by them, deny that the Axis news media manipulates, censors and distorts facts and events to gain their ideological allies power “by any means necessary,” so do similar victims refuse to acknowledge the ideological capture of our educational institutions, with a few exceptions. My own two almae matres (Miss Rounds would never forgive me for writing “alma maters”) are prominent and despicable examples: Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center, as I have documented extensively on EA.
Now comes a particularly egregious example of this dangerous phenomenon from Mt. Holyoke, one of the cluster of woke private colleges in northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont along with Amherst, Williams, Smith, Wellesley, Dartmouth and Bennington.
Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts mandates that student organization leaders complete Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training, and that they must develop “anti-racist plans” before the college administration will recognized them and allow them to hold sanctioned events. Without proof that an organization will be a full participant in promoting the Left’s anti-white, anti-male, anti-straight discrimination agenda, an organization will not be eligible for college funding. Chess club, drama club, Young Republicans, football team…it doesn’t matter: all the leaders of student groups must complete the required training before receiving official recognition from the college.
After a minimum of two student officers complete the training, each organization must create or update an “anti-racist plan.” Seriously? Did I just accidentally type the plot of a dystopian science fiction novel, like “1984” in reverse? I can’t believe I’m writing this.
The latest revolting development is that a Minnesota jury convicted Shiloh Hendrix of a single charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct last week for repeatedly calling a black man who confronted and filmed her at a Rochester playground “nigger.” Hendrix also directed the slur at an 8-year-old black boy who had been going through her purse.
Because Hendrix’s speech was the conduct underlying the disorderly conduct charge according toMinnesota law, we have a controversy over whether using “nigger” as this awful woman did falls within the narrow “fighting words” exception to speech protected under the First Amendment.
The six-person jury returned its verdict after four days of testimony in Olmsted County District Court, finding Hendrix, 37, guilty on the count involving using “nigger” in her exchanges with videographer Sharmake Omar. She was not found guilty on the count involving the child. The full sentence: a stayed 90-day jail sentence, supervised probation, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.
We are told Hendrix did not speak before sentencing. Good.
Yesterday, I woke up with the first truly terrible cold I have had in years. A while ago Ann Althouse was boasting about how long she had blogged without ever failing to get at least one post up, but the possibility of a similar achievement for me was blown to smithereens last July, you may recall, when I ended up in the hospital for a week with a monster hematoma in my leg. So I didn’t even visit my office or a computer on Monday, and decided to try to sleep all day, at least as much as possible between all the hacking and sneezing (and the day began at 7 AM with an MRI).
I did worry about Ethics Alarms, wondering how many comment bombs “A Friend” would leave without me being able to spam them, and also about kawaii65c843be72, who has taken over for mermaidmary (where has she gone?) as WordPress’s random punching bag with every attempted comment ending up in the moderation queue for no discernible reason. The lately AWOL Alizia’s comments also tend to land in spam or moderation, but that’s only because her opuses usually are approximately as long as “Don Quixote.”
Last July one of you actually sent the Alexandria police to my home on a status check, so this is official notice that such concern isn’t necessary. Come on—would I shuffle off these mortal coils while the Boston Red Sox are in the midst of an 18-2 run?
Post Script: A real friend immediately started bugging me to get a “COVID test.” You mean a Wuhan virus test? I know what my colds feel like, thanks, but she was one of millions so terrified and brain-washed by The Great Stupid’s most destructive trick, the pandemic panic, that she will literally never be the same. My first substantive post today will deal with the recent revelations proving that Dr. Fauci, that asshole, was even more of an Ethics Villain than I thought.
EA discussed “ideological capture” earlier today focusing on the law and academia, but as Americans who were paying attention (and who don’t rely on the Axis news media for the news), we were introduced last week to the desperate straits of the Smithsonian Institution, saddled with a woke ninny who gives “land acknowledgments” at every opportunity, and who pretended, under oath, not to know just how obsessed with promoting racial division and public contempt for their own nation the museum under her charge is.
On July 4th, the White House released a thorough and nausea-producing report on just how much “ideological capture” has infected the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). Titled SAVING AMERICA’S STORY: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage, the report, which you can and should read here, presents a damning case.
I had written earlier about this monstrosity,
…on the Smithsonian website, but there is so, so much more. For example, here is the Smithsonian insinuating, in text-book fake news fashion, that Ben Franklin may have used “enslaved persons” (the new, approved woke-speak for “slaves”) in his research, though there is absolutely no evidence of it.
The full segment on FOX this morning where I went after @NYCMayor. It includes the back and forth with me and @GriffJenkins which eventually led to FOX apologizing twice FOR me after I left! By the way I like Griff a lot:) pic.twitter.com/hef9LMRCoT
Some commenters were exercised that I called Whoopi Goldberg’s exhortation on “The View” for her audience 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” a pure violation of FCC rules, which it is. Broadcast networks are permitted to use the airwaves only if they hew to the public interest. Editorials are in the public interest when they are labelled as such, and political endorsements are permitted. However, a network, in this case ABC, using the privilege of a government-owned and regulated broadcast channel to call on its audience to block the elected government of the United States is not in the public interest, and no news program with an FCC license has ever crossed that line before.
Now comes Fox News, swinging to the other extreme. Radio host Sid Rosenberg joined “Fox News and Friends” last week and launched into a rant against New York’s Muslim, Hamas-supporting, anti-Israel, communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as you can see above. The trigger was the Mayor’s grandstanding about wanting to arrest Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes.
Rosenberg was a guest, and as a guest, was not speaking for Fox News, nor was Fox News responsible for his opinions. Nonetheless, “Fox and Friends” co-host Griffin Jenkins felt it was necessary to distance the network from Rosenberg’s opinions and to disavow them directly to the Fox viewers.
“We know there are heated feelings around this war last hour, while discussing the role anti-Israel is playing in the rise of antisemitism, one of our guests labeled New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a quote, “terrorist,” Jenkins said. “Now that word carries an extremely serious meaning, it should not be used freely and its important we distinguish between strong political criticism and factual allegations.”
All Fox News needed to say, if it really needed to say anything, was to repeat the hoary disclaimer that the opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of Fox News. Who in broadcast news ever distinguishes between strong political criticism and factual allegations? On the other networks, guests, contributors and sometimes hosts routinely call President Trump a racist, a fascist, a pederast, a criminal, a dictator, demented, a murderer and worse. Virtually never does a representative of the program apologize or disavow these extreme accusations, and I only say “virtually” because I can’t monitor all the networks all the time.
Jenkins is right: enabling terrorists, encouraging or rationalizing terrorism doesn’t make someone a literal terrorist. However, he pushed back on that position when Rosenberg stated it. That was all that is necessary. He was engaging in responsible news analysis moderation. The other networks seldom even meet that standard.
The values and priorities of the people responsible for this display of warped ethics are so alien to me that they might as well come from a different dimension.
It all begins with the fatal shooting of Corey Ruiz this week in Madison, Wisconsin. At this point, it’s difficult to get the facts of the shooting without it being framed by anti-law enforcement and pro-perp narrative. As far as I can determine, Ruiz was another habitual thief, thug and scofflaw: Wisconsin public records show that Ruiz had 40 misdemeanor and felony convictions from 2009 to 2025, including robbery by force, strangulation, drug possession, vehicle theft and battery of a public safety worker, according to the records. He was most recently convicted of resisting law enforcement and drug paraphernalia possession.
[The source I was able to get that information from adds, “Jazzman Brown, a community organizer in Madison, said Ruiz was a father who was experiencing homelessness and mental health struggles.” Oh! Well, that means he can rob and beat up people then. Never mind. Seriously: I don’t care how much of a troubled life the deceased may or may not have had.]
Police officers were dispatched to Madison’s Marquette neighborhood in response to reports of someone stealing bicycles and checking vehicle doors. It was Ruiz. When officers attempted to approach him, he fled on a bicycle, riding through backyards to escape, Ruiz either fell or was pulled off the bicycle, then fought with officers to resist arrest. During the struggle, Ruiz pulled out a substantial fixed-blade knife and injured one of the officers. Ruiz was tazed, but it appeared to have no effect. Then an officer fired three shots into the man, killing him.
I have no sympathy for the deceased at all. Anyone who believes his death justifies a protest (or worse, a law suit, or worse still, the prosecution of a police officer) is crippled by poor logic, bias, and absurd anti-law enforcement attitudes.
The decision in Louisiana v. Callais represented a straight, non-liberal activist reading of the Constitution, which prohibits racial discrimination for any purpose. Naturally, brain-washed progressives pronounced the SCOTUS ruling this year an abomination, a claim based in bias and ignorance as I explained here.
Never mind: the news media and legal websites have overwhelmingly attacked the decision, as has the legal academia sector. The latter is especially ominous. The SCOTUS ruling was the right one, I believe, but certainly one that can support serious, good faith debate. On the scholarly side, however, the analysis of the issues only go one way. Is that the kind of expert “consensus” the climate change hysterics maintain exists on that topic? How could that be?
In his essay “The case for Callais” on SCOTUSblog [“This publication has been inundated with essays by academics critical of Louisiana v. Callais, but has not published a single one in defense of it. So I decided to take it on in my column”] Brian Fitzpatrick explains how. He writes at the start,
“When I was thinking about becoming a law professor – I am sorry to say this was something like a quarter century ago now – I went to go see one of my favorite former law professors, Elena Kagan, for advice. She was then the dean at Harvard Law School, but I had known her merely as my Administrative Law professor. She asked me what field I wanted to pursue and I told her race discrimination law. It was the reason I went to law school to begin with. It was what I had written my law school thesis on.
“Her response: don’t do it. She explained that, in order to get a job as a race discrimination scholar at any school, I would have to win over the other scholars at that school who worked in that area. Kagan said that at every school the scholars who worked in that area all supported racial preferences. The problem was that I was against racial preferences. She said for that reason alone no one in the field would support hiring me. She told me to choose something else.
“So I did. I decided to pursue class action litigation instead. It’s been a perfectly pleasant career. But it also explains why the academy is monolithic – and, frankly, untrustworthy – on race issues: you aren’t allowed to specialize in these issues unless you toe the party line. Today, we call this “ideological capture” of the academy. I think it’s a pretty sad state of affairs and I am not the only one.”
“Sad” doesn’t begin to describe what is wrong with this phenomenon, but it does explain the process whereby colleges and universities slowly but relentlessly eliminated objectivity and balance in entire fields—education, of course, but also history, journalism, political science, law, and, based on what I have experienced this year, ethics. The consequences of that strategy are readily apparent, but how to undo the process and return to independent and ideologically diverse thought essential to a democracy is not so clear.
Ethics Alarms 