Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Quiz: Maryland’s Mass Pot Pardon

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

This is an ethics quiz because I recognize that I am irretrievably biased on the question of marijuana (no, I really don’t care that I’m supposed to call it “cannabis” now: bite me), which I believe should continue to be illegal, though I am under no illusions that this metaphorical horse has left the barn for good.

Maryland’s governor Wes Moore signed an executive order yesterday that pardons more than 175,000 convicted drug-abusers whose crimes were related to marijuana use. Moore said he did this “with deep pride and soberness.”

Yes, he’s proud to announce that Maryland doesn’t think violating laws is anything anyone should be ashamed of.

“Today is about equity; it is about racial justice,” Anthony Brown, Maryland’s attorney general, said. “While the order applies to all who meet its criteria, the impact is a triumphant victory for African Americans and other Marylanders of color who were disproportionately arrested, convicted and sentenced for actions yesterday that are lawful today.” This is because a disproportionate number of blacks broke the pot laws. This in turn acculturated many of them into breaking other laws with impunity as well. The progressive rule is that if laws are violated by larger numbers of a minority group than their demographic presence in the population would predict, it is discriminatory to enforce those laws.

I wonder who thought up that dodge? Whoever he or she is, it’s brilliant.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Maryland pardon fair and responsible?

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Banned EA Commenter “David”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

“Fuck you, you Trump -supporting fascist!”

––Ethics Alarms troll “David” signing off after being banned

Why is this just an “ethics quote” instead of an “unethical quote”? I chose that designation because the line is invaluable information, revealing the crippling delusions at the heart of the implacable Trump-deranged that swarm around us.

“David” entered the fray here demonstrating some rhetorical ability and intelligence. It became clear, however, that he was here only as a hostile adversary and an advocate, not to explore ethics issues but to confront those whose analysis didn’t mesh with his pre-determined ideological and partisan biases, which proved unshakable. They also manifested themselves in trolling and sealioning tactics to relentlessly push a single narrative, the one that the news media, the resistance, Democrats and, to significant extent, Trump himself has fostered by his own incurable trolling habit.

The sequence that produced that quote goes like this. Trump is a bad person, and thus anything he is accused of, anything harmful that is predicted about his future conduct, any malign motives or intent that is attributed to him. must be true regardless of the sources and irrespective of facts. The confluence of these presumed vile acts, confident predictions and bad motives and intent points to racism, lust for power, instability, a thirst for revenge, and determination to topple the democracy. This, in turn, “proves ” that Trump is a super-villain out of Marvel Comics, and driven by fascist aspirations.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Here’s an Example Of a Story Biden’s Captive Journalists Won’t Report

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I waited to see if this discouraging tale ever broke into the national news. It did not.

More than 2,000 musicians from he U.S. and Australia, most of them school-aged children, traveled to Normandy’s Brittany American Cemetery to perform on June 7. Families paid their own way to Europe to watch their children parade and play in an exciting, moving, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The bands had planned this trip a year in advance, and the Brittany event was a prominent feature of the schedule.

President Biden was also in Normandy, however, and Biden’s handlers decided on the fly that the President, who had endured a gaffe-filled D-Day anniversary already, needed one more, final, last-minute photo op that hadn’t been scheduled and couldn’t be screwed up. POTUS’s unscheduled and unnecessary events in election year take precedence over long-scheduled events that a lot of students were looking forward to.

It’s good to be king.

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Ethics Dunce and Legal Ethics Dunce: The Connecticut Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This is concerning, but, frighteningly enough, not surprising. As Ethics Alarms has noted many times, the legal profession has been among the critical institutions most thoroughly corrupted, indeed lobotomized, by partisan bias and Trump Derangement. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I am also getting reports from various quarters about the deep corruption in many state bar associations. This is especially problematic for me, as bar associations are a significant market for my ethics training services (if they ares sufficiently corrupt, such organizations tend to say “We don’t need no stinkin’ ethics training!”). Well, the Connecticut Bar is in the minority of bar associations that have never sought my wisdom, so I am unencumbered by conflicts of interest.

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Ethics Dunce: PGA Star Rory McIlroy

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This one is what the old Ethics Scoreboard (now down again, I think for the count) used to categorize an “Easy Call.”

At Inhurst, North Carolina’s Pinehurst golf course yesterday, Bryson DeChambeau became the PGA U.S. Open champion again after Irish pro Rory McIlroy, to be blunt, choked.

McIlroy blew two short par putts within three holes, the last on the 18th, as DeChambeau nailed a tricky shot to finish 6 under par and a single shot better than McIlroy, who had seemed poised to win his first major tournament in ten years with just three holes to go.

McIlroy disillusioned his fans with his reaction to what ABC Sports used to call “the agony of defeat.” He watched DeChambeau’s winning putt on TV in the scorer’s room, then quickly packed up and sped out the players’ parking lot in a courtesy SUV. He didn’t talk to reporters, who were frantic to hear how he managed to lose. He didn’t even stick around to congratulate DeChambeau on his stunning victory.

Bad.

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This Headline Tells You Everything You Need To Know About the Progressive Wing Of The Democratic Party…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Jamaal Bowman. This Jamaal Bowman. The lying idiot who pulled a fire alarm to stall a floor vote in the House of Representatives and flagrantly lied about it, claiming he thought the “Pull” handle on the wall was there to open the door. After security footage showed him taking down the signs that contradicted his absurd story. And this Jamaal Bowman. He’s a star in the firmament of progressive Democrats. What must the rest of the metaphorical sky look like?

Yet the story quotes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) saying, “I cannot think of a single race that better exemplifies the battle, frankly for our democracy, between everyday people choosing their representation and big money coming in and choosing it for them.” Yes, there we have the strange progressive definition of “democracy”: a member of Congress who stoops to sabotaging a legislative vote that his forces will lose, who lies about it, and who is given The King’s Pass by colleagues like AOC when he should have been prosecuted and censured. It’s not big money making the voters’ choice easy between Bowman and his Democratic primary foe, who is trouncing him in the polls. It is the inescapable fact that Bowman is incompetent, dishonest, unprofessional, not very bright, and a Hamas ally.

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Stupidity Tag On Fox News

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I had the TV on Fox News to keep my dog company, and was downstairs from my office briefly to get a drink when I heard a clip of Joe Biden saying, “The Supreme Court has never been more out of step.”

“Out of step?” What’s that supposed to mean? A President being stupid is bad, but a President who makes the public stupider is far worse. It isn’t the Supreme Court’s function to be “in step” with the times, polls, public opinion, fads or zeitgeist. It’s job is to interpret the law and the Constitution. Because the public’s understanding of the law is about at the same level as my dog’s understanding of “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” their opinion regarding what the Supreme Court should do is literally useless and of no value whatsoever.

The issue at hand was the SCOTUS decision on the bump stock ban discussed here. That opinion was only nominally about bump stocks: what it involved really was statutory construction and the limits of agencies trying to do end-arounds when laws don’t allow them to do what they would like to do.

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A Pro-Life Advocate Is Caught In Hypocrisy: Good. And Good Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

One of the reasons the anti-abortion position has trouble making the inroads on public opinion and policy that it should on its merits is because of supposed pro-life advocates like GOP State Rep. Richard Holtorf. In a TV interview on a local TV station (he is running for Congress—just what we need, another dim bulb hypocrite in the Capitol) Holtorf was forced to justify his indefensible double standard on abortion. Naturally, he couldn’t do it.

In January, the 59-year-old defended footing the bill for his girlfriend’s abortion, which seemed to be inconsistent with a failed 2020 measure he supported that would have banned the procedure in the Colorado after 22 weeks. His girl friend was more than 22 weeks pregnant. “I respected her rights and actually gave her money to help her through her important, critical time,” Holtorf said, that time being 1986.  

9News anchor Kyle Clark asked him the obvious question: “If abortion was the best choice for your girlfriend, why try to deny that choice to other women?” Holtorf”s response can be fairly summarized as “huminahuminahumina,” Ralph Kramden’s immortal retort on “The Honeymooners” when trapped into having to explain one of his habitual blunders.

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Father’s Day Morning Nausea, 2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Waking up this Father’s Day [Thanks, Dad, for 1) being such a terrific, selfless father 2) for continuing to be an inspiration, a role model and a guide during my highs and lows (like now), and everything in-between 3) for loving my wonderful mom and showing it so brilliantly to everyone, especially her, without interruption for almost sixty years; 4) for somehow saving so much money on a modest salary to hand over to my sister, me, and the three grandchildren through sacrifice and smart investing, because without it I would be living in a cardboard box right now, and 5) for surviving the Battle of the Bulge] to the near certainty that my son (who informed me last week that he would like me to refer to him/her/they as my daughter, Samantha. OK! ), is almost certain to ignore this rather contrived holiday (which is fine with me), a mystery in my yard in which someone or something keeps pulling the 15-foot-long heavy plastic, 7″ diameter tubing, installed to send runoff from the gutters into the garden rather than into my home’s foundation, off the down spout and dragging it into my neighbor’s yard, and another fight with a customer service rep, who, I swear, spoke exactly like Andy Kaufmann’s character on “Taxi” but faster than an auctioneer—yes, this IS a long sentence!—I sat down with Spuds to talk myself out of seppuku, drink a cup of coffee, and check what nonsense the various news networks were spouting.

Big mistake.

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NOW Can We Agree That Black Lives Matter Is a Scam and a Blight on America (Which Should Have Been Obvious From the Beginning)?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

(It was obvious to me!)

Records reveal that the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) has unethically and criminally used charitable contributions to enrich family members of the Black Lives Matter cabal, and of course, the leaders of the cabal themselves.

Gee. What a surprise.

Tax filings show that…

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