Author: Jack Marshall

Most Insincere Apology Of The Month: “Snow White” Star Rachel Zegler

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This over-opinionated actress even looks like a smug jerk, doesn’t she? And she is! But not so smug that she is willing to accept the consequences of what she says when it jeopardizes her career. Like so many jerks on the Left, Zegler had to vent her poisoned spleen at everyone who didn’t vote her way—guess which!—on November 5. She took to Instagram and wrote,

“I find myself speechless in the midst of this. another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world i do not want to live in. I shouldn’t be this shocked. but i am. i am heartbroken for my friends who awoke [in] fear this morning. and i am here with you. to cry, to yell, to hug. to wax poetic on how the left continues to fail us in forging a new path forward. this loss should not have been. and it certainly should not have been by so many votes. May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace. Another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world I do not want to live in. Leaning us towards a world that will be hard to raise my daughter in.”

She didn’t stop there. In subsequent Instagram posts, she added that added there is a “deep, deep sickness” in the United States because so many citizens voted for a “man who threatens our democracy.” Harris’s loss, the keen political analyst wrote, was “one that should not have been… and it certainly should not have been by so many votes,”  Later she wrote, “It is terrifying the number of people who stand behind what this man preaches. it is a foolish subscription to a false sense of security, of masculinity, of intelligence, of patriotism, and of humanity. there is no help, no counsel, in any of them. i could go on. i won’t. i feel sad. you probably do, too. fuck this.”

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Ethics Quiz: The Maori MP Protest

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Wow. Now THAT’s a protest!

New Zealand’s Parliament was temporarily suspended yesterday when Māori lawmakers suddenly launched into a haka, a traditional group dance. It was intended to demonstrated the nation’s Indigenous people’s community’s passionate objections to a bill that would reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with the Maoris.

When the proposal was read, and Māori lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke was asked how her party, Te Pāti Māori, would vote on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. The response was what you see above.

‘So, you’re not in favor of it, then?”

Other opposition members joined the performance on the floor, and onlooker is the gallery also started dancing. The chamber’s speaker, Gerry Brownlee, temporarily stopped the session. Maipi-Clarke was suspended over the protest.

I’m not going to get in the high weeds of the bill, but will only present…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day, which is…

Was this an unethical demonstration—disrespectful, disruptive, and a breach of proper decorum—or an ethical one?

I am decidedly undecided on this one. I sure don’t want to give AOC any ideas. The routine was cool, though, and effective.

Trump Shakes Things Up! Friday Open Forum…

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

By the time you comment here (on what ever ethics matters move you), James Woods is like to have been nominated as Secretary of Transportation, and Hulk Hogan as Secretary of Commerce. Interesting times….

Jerry Lee Lewis was amazing, wasn’t he?

Confronting My Biases, Episode 15: Pete Hegseth’s Tats (Corrected and Revised)

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I just saw the photo above on the web.

I’m sorry, I know its a generational thing, I know, I know.

But I cannot stop myself from believing that anyone who gets themselves tattooed like that is an idiot. I always will.

The idea of the United States having the Secretary of Defense with those tattoos is almost too jarring for me to bear. Some are writing that the chest tattoo is a white supremacy symbol. Is it?

This is a big correction: I was hit with two equivalent photos claiming that was Matt Gaetz, and I posted this originally about the ex-Congressman. Gaetz and Hegseth do look a little alike.

For some reason, the idea of an Attorney General being self-branded like that bothers me a lot more than having a Secretary of Defense with them underneath his suit. Hegseth fought “infidels” in the Middle East. Heck, maybe those tattoos will endear him to the military. You know, like if he had a tattoo reading, “Indiannapolis.”

Ethics Alarms regrets the error (kudos to Jg in SF for flagging it.

But the bias remains.

And I’m afraid to think about what Gaetz’s tats look like...

On the Other Hand (As Capt. Hook Liked to Say), There Are Columnists Like The Appropriately Named Sabrina Haake….

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Once again, I find myself asking, how can an alleged opinion writer issue utter crap like this and live with herself? How can a newspaper justify publishing it, or pay someone so dishonest or rock-dumb to write it? How can anyone with two brain cells to rub together read it and say, “Duhh..yup! Sound’s right to me!“?

This fraudulent authority is a trial lawyer who claims to specialize in First Amendment cases, though her screed here tells us that she doesn’t get that free speech thingy. Sabrina is also a failed Democratic candidate for Congress. Her essay is called, “Trump didn’t win; disinformation did.” If I didn’t write an ethics blog, that headline alone would be sufficient for me to eschew the pleasure of reading it.

Just listen (well, metaphorically) to this woman…

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Oh Look! Now That The Axis Has Been Slapped Down By A Majority In An Election, The Washington Post Is Factchecking Nancy Pelosi About Trump!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Wait, I thought it was Donald Trump who lied all the time?

I pay as little attention to Nancy Pelosi as possible, and missed her ridiculous statement after the election, “I don’t think we were clear enough by saying fewer people came in under President Joe Biden than came under Donald Trump.” The Deranged , currently trying to get through life with their heads exploding constantly, will believe just about anything Democrats say in denial of their accountability for Harris’s election faceplant (after all, Trump voters are all racist, sexist, ignorant garbage), and dozens of lies were spread on their behalf during the campaign without factcheckers raising an eyebrow.

But that Pelosi nonsense was apparently too much. It was too much even after the usual “He/She didn’t say what she said or if she did she meant something else” squad, which reliably follows a Democrat’s whopper as reliably as the little man with mustache, the broom and the trash can who followed the Parade of History that began the “Mr. Peabody” segments on “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” rushed to rescue the ex-Speaker. She didn’t mean illegal border-crossers, she mean those deported,” they said. Well, not deported, maybe, but arrested.

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Stay Classy, Secret Service!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

No wonder Trump has nearly been assassinated twice.

Koryeah Dwanyen, in her self-published book “Undercover Heartbreak: A Memoir of Trust and Trauma”revelas that she succumbed to the alluring pick-up line “Let’s have sex in Michelle Obama’s bathroom!” and travelled to Hawaii with a Secret Service agent she calls“Dale.” “No one will know. If anything, I’m the one who could get in trouble,” she quotes Dale in her memoir. “Like a mile-high club!” he allegedly told her.

And she did have sex in the former First Lady’s bathroom. The story has been confirmed by the Secret Service, according to ABC News. (“Dale” is now otherwise employed.) Meanwhile, Dwanyen says she submitted to his bathroom fantasy because she was in love with the agent. She discovered later that he was married.

Imagine that! Someone assigned to protect a former First Lady and who secretly uses her bathroom as a secret love den would lie. What is the world coming to?

After “Dale” came clean about his marital status, bathroom buddy Koryeah became patriotic and reported the agent to his superiors. He also had revealed classified information to her.

I think Trump should appoint Stormy Daniels to run the Secret Service.

Fact: Matt Gaetz Really Is the Worst Nomination For Attorney General In U.S. History [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

For once, the over-the-top criticism of a Trump decision is completely justified, and maybe even understated. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), just nominated by the President-Elect to be his Attorney General, has no legitimate qualifications for the job at all, which requires managing a 115,000-person agency. He has no management experience. He has no prosecutorial experience. He is a licensed lawyer, but has very little legal practice experience. No previous Attorney General, going back to Edmund Randolph, Washington’s first AG, had such a sparse legal resume. Randolph had been governor of Virginia.

I am more qualified to be the Attorney General than Matt Gaetz, and I can think of many personal friends and colleagues who are more qualified for the job than I am. If I threw a rock into a cocktail reception at the D.C. Bar, I would hit a more qualified lawyer.

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Two Stupid Questions and One Damning Answer

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If there areany lingering doubt about why the news media has no credibility with the American people and its influence is diminishing like an ice cube left of the sidewalk on a hot summer’s day, ponder these two questions at yesterday’s White House press briefing.

#1. TIME’s correspondent Brian Bennett asked the President’s incompetent paid liar, “President Trump has promised to launch the largest deportation in American history when he becomes president. Are there steps that President Biden is taking in the next 70 days to try to protect certain populations in the United States from deportation? Does he want to extend parole or take other steps that would protect people from that deportation?”

Good one, Brian. “What steps is the President taking to prevent President Trump from enforcing laws that his administration has refused to enforce?” To members of our woke journalistic cabal, this makes perfect sense.

#2. Bloomberg’s Skylar Woodhouse asked, “President-elect Trump — there’s reports that Elon Musk is having a lot of sway in terms of his decisions, in terms of who President-elect Trump is, you know, having come into his administration, sitting in on meetings with — with foreign leaders, and Elon Musk has said, you know, there’s parts that he wants to sort of reshape maybe the government. Is President Biden concerned at all over Elon Musk’s influence over President-elect Trump and potentially what that could look like for our country?”

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Ethics Dunce: Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Nominee To Be Defense Secretary

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

This will not end well.

Oh, I get it. Trump ran through six Defense Secretaries in four years (a record) and had an adversary relationship with the Pentagon. As with so many other Departments, entrenched resistance to Trump’s leadership flourishes there, and there are cultural issues as well.

The sort-of new President has learned a hard lesson, and wants a loyal outsider to tackle the Defense Department. Harry Truman once described the department as a feather bed where you punched a problem in one part of the bed and another problem would pop right up.

DOD is huge, a labyrinth of interlocking bureaucracies, and managing it requires superb leadership skills, diplomacy, organization and more. There is no reason to believe that Pete Hegseth possesses any of these.

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