Author: Jack Marshall

Ah! I See That RFK Jr. Is Going After the Idiot Vote…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

In case anyone serious had concluded that senile Joe Biden and untrustworthy Donald Trump were so bad that it justifies considering the Presidential option of Robert Kennedy Jr, the latter’s “short list” of running mates he claims he’s considering ought to end that alternative forever.

Kennedy told CNN this week that he had “made up his mind” on his VP, who would come from this motley crew: NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Republican Senator Rand Paul, former television host Mike Rowe, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, civil rights attorney Tricia Lindsay, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

“We wanted somebody who was aligned with my values, optimistic about our country and its potential and able to run the country at a moment’s notice,” Kennedy explained.

Oh. That list is not nearly short enough. Any group in which Jesse Ventura is arguably the most qualified to be President by definition is ridiculous. Any list of potential VPs that includes Aaron Rodgers and Tony Robbins can only be taken seriously in the sense that its creator has outed himself as a dangerous wacko, though everyone should have known that about Kennedy already. Mike Rowe is “able to run the country at a moment’s notice”? Jesse, who is 71 and has been dabbling in nonsense since his quixotic run as governor of Minnesota ended, is the only one on that list who has any government executive experience. Kennedy outed himself as irresponsible and incompetent by mentioning such a list.

If George Costanza Was in a Rock Band…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m assuming there is nobody reading this post who believes the following conduct is ethical, or that it isn’t justification for being fired.

The Nashville-based hardcore band Llorona ( named after a ghost in Mexican folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning the children she drowned in a jealous rage) announced that it had fired its lead singer Diego after he admitted putting estrogen in the protein powder used by the band’s bass-player Sixx before his work-outs. This caused him to begin suffering various physical problems such as stomach ulcers, weight loss, muscle weakness and fatigue, as well as “notable mental changes” and other developments that Sixx described as too disgusting to describe. Worst of all, he began annoying his band mates by describing himself as “they.”

Okay, I made up that last part. Actually, the band members already used “they” to describe the bassplayer.

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Oh-Oh. Another Ethically Obtuse Question for “The Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it sure seems to me that the questions being asked of the New York Times “The Ethicist” column (or the ones he’s choosing to answer) are increasingly obtuse. This suggests a dangerous trend. Are most Americans really that ethically incompetent? Or are the increasingly frequent (it seems to me) instances of blatantly unethical conduct modeled by our elected leaders and shrugged off by our news media causing galloping ethics rot?

The latest query for “The Ethicist” was, in my estimation, steeped in grade school-level ethics ignorance. A female designer who used to work for a sexually harassing boss when she was just getting started eventually told the bastard off and was fired in retaliation. Now she asks,

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Blogger-Criminal Defense Lawyer Scott Greenfield

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“If Hamas is not destroyed, or at least its capacity to attack Israel eliminated, then it will attack again. Hamas has made clear that it intends to do so, over and over. Until Hamas is destroyed, there can be no peace as Hamas has no interest in peace. There can be no “two-state solution” with one state controlled by terrorists bent on destroying the other state. For those anti-colonialists whose solution is the eradication of Israel, they will be surprised to learn that Israel is not inclined to commit suicide and disappear.”

—-Scott Greenfield, explaining in no uncertain terms why the progressive Left’s support for Gaza and condemnation of Israel is based on its determination to refuse to face facts

There are so many articles, grandstanding declarations and bad punditry bemoaning the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza—Jonathan Glazer’s fatuous speech at the Oscars being the most obnoxious recent example—that when an intelligent voice from the Left points out that the “Give Peace a Chance” whining is utter bunk, attention must be paid. I highlighted Hillary Clinton’s spot on and clear explanation of reality for the cement-headed ladies of “The View,” and now criminal defense lawyer and eloquent blogger Scott Greenfield has performed the same service in print. Bravo. Having read Greenfield for many years, I regard him as a traditional liberal but stubbornly unwoke. Like Althouse, bias seldom makes him stupid.

In an essay beginning with Biden’s foolish “red line” comment (what is it about Democratic Presidents that they think they can assert “red lines” when they have no intention of doing anything should their bluff be called?), Greenfield, like the good Democrat he almost surely is, briefly tries to mitigate President Biden’s cowardly and cynical attempts to mollify his anti-Semite base while still insisting that he supports Israel, recently highlighted as he ordered aid to Gaza while the US supports the Israeli attacks that make the aid necessary. But Greenfield still writes,

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The Grandparents’ Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

As often happens, some click-bait headline sucks me in and I find an interesting ethics topic as a result. This time, the headline was “Woman applauded for demanding parents get noses pierced before they can see granddaughter again.” What???

The story behind that unique description was a woman and her husband took her infant daughter to Mexico to visit her parents. The parents gave the one-year-old girl a pair of earrings for her first birthday, and Mom told them that she would hold on to the gift until her daughter was old enough to have her ears pierced. But when the American couple returned from meeting some friends after leaving the girl in the care of Grandma and Grandpa, they were informed that they “didn’t need to wait [until she was old enough] because they had taken her to get her ears pierced” already.

The couple was furious. The girl’s father said that they could never trust the grandparents alone with their daughter, but his wife announced that she would not take her or any future kids to see her parents in Mexico. The family checked out of their hotel and returned to the States.

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The Democrats’ Orgy of Bad Ethics in the Hur Hearing

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

One of the late Justice Scalia’s favorite derogatory shots was to write that the author of a particularly weak legal argument (in his assessment) should hide his head under a bag. I would hope that any Democrat watching the astounding displays of “whataboutism,” “It isn’t what it is,” “gotchas” and ad hominem attacks by their party’s House members would have bags on their heads this morning. How ugly. How dispiriting. How stupid and desperate! How can they continue to support these people?

Prof. Turley, who has emerged in recent years as one of the very few fair, objective and non-partisan political analysts in academia and the legal profession, correctly but too-kindly described the Democrat attacks on the Special Counsel Robert Hur during the congressional hearing on his report on President Biden as “delusional.” The conduct of the worst of the Democrats was much worse than that.

Rep. Gerald Nadler, for example, thought that Donald Trump’s assorted verbal gaffes were relevant to Hur’s report, so he showed a super-cut of them as a preemptive strike, or something. Hur’s report and investigation didn’t involve Trump (I would have ruled Nadler’s cherry-picked video out of order if I had the gavel), and even if it did, Nadler’s intended message was gaslighting: Biden’s mental decline is literally on display every day, every time he speaks or moves. Democrats like Nadler are committed to denying the obvious and trying to shift attention to Trump, who, unlike Biden, has a typical percentage of verbal missteps for any public speaker who emotes spontaneously or frequently. (A Nadler-style compilation could be made of Barack Obama’s gaffes. Or mine.) Nadler and his minions even stooped to including a clip in which Trump said he did not remember saying he had a great memory. Back in 2015, Ethics Alarms discussed several episodes in which Trump either contradicted what he had said earlier or denied that he said it. Nobody who babbles unfiltered like Donald Trump could possibly remember everything he has said. This “gotcha!,” like the rest of the video, was meaningless.

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DEI Ethics Train Wreck Update: “Where Are the Black People in Shogun?” and More

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

African American writer William Spivey apparently had no compunction about writing a non-satirical essay in Medium and the web magazine “Level” with the title,”Where Are the Black People in Shogun?” This means that he didn’t think the headline and multiple statements in the article would make rational readers laugh coffee out of their noses. It also means, I think it’s fair to conclude, that he has been conditioned/indoctrinated not to be able to enjoy any dramatic presentation that doesn’t include “people like him,” narrowly defined in his case as “people who are the same color or a reasonable approximation thereof” rather than “human beings with emotions, feelings, thoughts and activities that we all can relate to, learn from and find engrossing, entertaining, moving or enlightening.”

I very much doubt that Aristotle, who thought a lot about such matters, would be writing laments headlined, “”Where Are the Athenians in Shogun?” even if he had been bombarded with DEI and woke craziness like we have been. After all, Aristotle had an independent and logical brain that wasn’t easily overwhelmed.

The headline and the essay also mean that the poor guy is incapable of enjoying a good story and dramatic presentation (Everyone’s saying that the “Shogun” remake is good; I haven’t see it). His attention always goes immediately to bean-counting demographics, because he believes that “diversity” must be imposed on every aspect of our existence whether it makes sense or not. I feel sorry for him; I also feel sorry that his ilk are multiplying around us like cancer cells.

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Ethics Quiz: Preserving KKK History

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I find this ethics controversy specially opaque.

In San Marcos, Texas, Kristy Kay Money and Rolf Jacob Sraubhaar own a home in the city’s Burleson Historic District. It has a large metal “Z” bolted to an iron balcony on the front of the house, a reminder of the home’s original owner (and builder) Frank Zimmerman. He was a local businessman and the owner of the city’s historic theater; he also served as San Marcos mayor from 1949 to 1951. Zimmerman is commemorated around the town: a plaque states he “came to San Marcos in 1922, beginning a 47-year career in the theater industry with the purchase of the Grand Opera House and the original Palace Theater.”

But in 2016, it was discovered that a Palace Theater advertisement in the San Marcos Record dated March 28, 1924  proclaimed “KU KLUX KLAN DAY.” A related article titled “Klan Picture Coming” told readers, “A treat is in store for every person within 20 miles of San Marcos.  The Palace Theatre has been fortunate in booking the two-reel motion picture showing the Ku Klux Klan activities at the recent Dallas fair. It will be shown in connection with the regular admission price of 10, 20 and 30 cents, next Wednesday and Thursday.” Zimmerman’s theater also hosted screenings of Woodrow Wilson’s favorite film, “Birth of a Nation.”

Money and Sraubhaar decided they didn’t need a constant reminder of their home’s Klan-tainted history. They now want to remove the balcony and the Zimmerman “Z.” Their home is in a historic district, however, and though it has not been declared a historic structure itself, the San Marcos’ Historic Preservation Commission has to approve the proposed alteration. Last year it voted unanimously to deny their application to make the changes. The couple is now suing, but never mind that:

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Should the government protect historic structures and artifacts that relate to dark events and less than admirable figures (by today’s values) in local and American history?

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More Trust Problems: Defunding’s Not the Answer, But What DO We Do About Our Untrustworthy Law Enforcement?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I guess the first step is admitting that it’s untrustworthy. [ I guarantee the 2022 level of trust represented above has declined.]

Out of Colorado comes the disturbing news that Yvonne “Missy” Woods, a Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA scientist, breached standard testing protocols, manipulated data in the DNA testing process and posted incomplete test results in a staggering 652 cases.The agency called it “an unprecedented breach of trust.” I’m not so sure about the “unprecedented” part, but it certainly doesn’t encourage the trust of the public, or perhaps more importantly, juries. The affected cases occurred between 2008 through 2023, but there may be more: an investigation is reviewing Missy’s work dating back to 1994. She worked for the lab for 29 years, but the CBIonly became aware of irregularities in her work last September. She was placed on administrative in early October and retired a month later. [Pointer: valkygrrl]

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On Shaking Trust: Trivial Episode, Useful Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

My gut reaction to the latest Royal scandal in Great Britain was dismissive: so a snapshot of Princess Catherine was photoshopped: the Horror. But this was just a bi-product of my long-standing lack of interest in the UK’s peculiar institution and a hangover from so many of my female acquaintances reacting to the death of Princess Diana as if their own families had suffered the equivalent of the Cheshire home invasion. The current episode is important for the ethics lesson it teaches, although you would think that this particular lesson would have been learned by the Windsors a long time ago. Did the royal family not watch “The Crown”?

The Prince and Princess of Windsor released the first official photo of Catherine since her abdominal surgery two months ago, a Mother’s Day snapshot allagedly taken by Prince William. Somehow the couple didn’t consider the modern reality that digital sleuths are everywhere, and quickly those annoying common troublemakers discovered that tell-tale signs of photo manipulation were afoot. You can see the various smoking guns above.

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