Author: Jack Marshall

Serious Question: Has Vice-President Harris Not Read The Bill of Rights, Or Does She Just Want The Government To Ignore It?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This would be an “Incompetent Elected Official” post, except a) we already know Kamala Harris is incompetent, and b) her penchant for talking nonsense, gibberish or idiocy long ago reached Julie Principle proportions. But other Democrats, notably Hillary Clinton, have appealed to ignorance, emotion and hysteria by doing what Harris did yesterday as part of the wholly predictable Democratic Party/progressive/mainstream media attack on gun rights after a mass shooting tragedy. This one, as you probably know already, was in Maine, and unusually deadly, so the gun-grabbing fanatics and the “Do something!” crazies were really licking their chops.

On stage with Australia’s Prime Minister at an event yesterday, Harris blathered, “Gun violence has terrorized and traumatized so many of our communities in this country. And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.”

As usual, Harris required a translator. It doesn’t have to be “this way” in Australia? Have our communities been terrified there? How has Australia demonstrated what is possible or desirable in the United States? It hasn’t, of course: it hasn’t even demonstrated that it is possible to eliminate mass shootings in Australia, where the National Firearms Agreement of 1996 made semiautomatic weapons and shotguns illegal and mandated the confiscation of close to 650,000 firearms.  The NFA requires Australians to wait 28 days before they purchase a gun to allow extensive background checks. Applicants must obtain a license and a permit, be over 18 years old, provide documentation that the weapon will be stored securely and complete firearms safety training. They must also provide a “justifiable reason” for owning the gun, and self-defense doesn’t qualify. A requirement less stringent than this was just struck down as unconstitutional in New York.

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Ethics Quiz, TV Talk Show Dept.: Unethical Or Well-Known Standard Practice? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Ann Althouse posted that video as genuine. Is it possible that Ann has never been on a TV talk show or news show? I sure have, and there is no chance, none, that Graham Norton sprung a surprise request on British theater and movie icon Judy Dench, who is 88, that she deliver a Shakespeare speech or sonnet on the spot.

Guests on talk shows are always prepped; they are told what the interview is going to cover, and no competent host, certainly not a veteran like Norton, would dare risk embarrassing a guest by putting them on the spot without notice and adequate preparation time.

Of course Dench knew she was going to be asked to recite some Shakespeare, and was ready. Being an actress, she also was ready to act as if the request was a surprise. And, of course, knowing little or nothing about how show business works, most of Norton’s viewers were impressed and fell for the stunt. Norton wins. Dench wins.

And someone who styles herself a truth-teller passes along the sham as genuine.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is Norton and Dench’s put-on ethical?

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Cultural Literacy Competence Fail!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As frequent vistors here know, I would argue that competent citizens should be sufficiently aware of cultural history to know who Bill Russell, Bob Feller and Bob Gibson are at very least. The elderly female contestant was alive and conscious while Bob Gibson and Bill Russell were active and frequently in the news. Surely someone presuming to appear as a contestant on “Jeopardy!” should have this level of U.S. sports history knowledge.

But perhaps you disagree…

So: When Does The Supreme Court Get Its Apology From The Dobbs Hysterics?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Statistics based on research by the Guttmacher Institute seem to indicate that legal abortions increased slightly in the United States in the first six months of 2023 compared with 2020. The assumption is that states with more permissive abortion laws absorbed patients traveling from states with more restrictive laws, and access to abortion pills increased.

Thus the feminist and progressive narrative that Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year created a “Handmaiden’s Tale” hellscape where women were compelled to give birth to children they did not want was, as those inclined to be rational realized, inflammatory propaganda designed to support unhinged attacks on the six Justices in the Dobbs majority. The lie also proved to be a useful Democratic Party election weapon.

As Justice Alito stated clearly in his opinion, the ruling over-turning Roe v. Wade was not a pro- or anti-abortion ruling, but a necessary decision to uphold core Constitutional principles while striking down a badly reasoned precedent. The Constitution does not include a right to abortion, and the Founders would have been horrified at the very thought. Nor is abortion a proper matter for a national law, other than a Constitutional amendment.

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Ethicist’s Diary: A Father Encounters His Son’s Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yesterday was my son’s birthday (also the anniversary of the Boston Red Sox finally winning the World Series after 86 years, but that’s just why I can remember my son’s birthday), but he gave me the best present: a window into his ethics and values.

I had barely seen Grant for several months, despite the fact that he has an apartment in the lower levels of our home; we’ve both been busy. When he came upstairs last night to get our birthday greetings and a few presents, he apologized for not being in closer touch, explaining that he had been promoted to a management position at the dealer where he is an auto tech.

He said that he had long been frustrated at the inefficiency and mismanagement there, and had set up a meeting with the vice-president to quit. They’ve invested a lot of training in Grant, and the exec said that they could pay him more money. Grant told his superior that his issue wasn’t the money, that his primary concern wasn’t what he was paid but what he could accomplish. (Uh-oh..ominous signs of paternal influence there…) He laid out the aspects of the operation that he found frustrating and unconscionable, and, Grant said, he “wasn’t very nice about it.” Then he described what needed to be done, and that he had suggested many of these solutions without seeing any action.

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Ethics Quiz: Beer Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The video above tells the whole story.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it fair to stop drinking Tsingtao beer in response to this incident?

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The Unalterable Ethics Alarms Position: Robert E. Lee Was A Complex And Important American Who Deserves Public Recognition, And Destroying His Statues Is Unethical And Foolish

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The New York Times turned to a biased art historian to discuss the melting down of the Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee that was the focal point of the infamous 2017 riot. Ethics Alarms has spilled too much metaphorical ink over statue-toppling and historical airbrushing already—you can find most of them under this tag or this one. I can summarize them all easily: tearing down statues betrays a totalitarian-mentality and undemocratic values, an intolerance of unpopular beliefs and ideas, and a favorable attitude toward thought-control and censoring history. I hate it, it’s unethical, and I’m not even a fan of Robert E. Lee.

Rigging the commentary (what were the chances that an African-American art historian would object to destroying a Lee statue?), the Times got what it evidently wanted: an almost obscenely gleeful account of Lee’s symbolic melting down. “Acrid fumes penetrated the respirators we had been issued,” Erin Thompson writes. “When the foundryman finally turned off his torch and tapped at the head with a mallet, Lee’s face fell clattering to the floor.” She quotes a founder of the statue-toppling group that helped accomplish the destruction as saying, “It feels like witnessing a public execution.” Clearly, it was a good feeling. You know, like the “reform Communists” felt when they tore down Stalin’s statue and threw his mummified corpse in a hole. “Stalin? Who’s Stalin?” Now the same people who helped the dictator murder millions could pretend it all never happened. It is traditions like this that ensure that Russians never learn from its history, because they don’t like to acknowledge history.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month & Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Many of these lawmakers on the other side of the aisle who had their hair on fire about what appears to have been an inadvertent action taken by Congressman Bowman, to which he is now being held accountable for, within the criminal justice system, regularly defend violent individuals who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, as part of an effort to halt a peaceful transfer of power. And these violent individuals brutally beat and seriously injured 140 police officers, on the day of the insurrection. And many of them, who are having a panic attack, publicly, about Jamaal Bowman have actually defended or refused to comment on the violent mob on January 6.”

—House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the man every Democrat in the House voted for to be Speaker, “explaining” why Rep. Bowman shouldn’t be censured by the House for breaking the law, indeed two laws, as well as violating the House ethics code. 

To be blunt, this statement by Jeffries exhibits the approximate ethical comprehension of a Cocker Spaniel. It reveals him to be a shameless liar and an ethics corrupter:

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Friday Open Forum! Find Me Some Good News, Please…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

My sister traditionally ends our phone conversation by suddenly blurting out—lately the impetus has been the prospect of a Presidential contest between Biden and Trump—“Everything’s going to Hell!” and hanging up. I am constitutionally disinclined to be that pessimistic (unlike some who comment here of late), but boy, I sure could use some good news beyond the ACLU deigning to protest a judge muzzling a major political candidate that her pals disapprove of.

Here’s my latest Ethics Alarms worry: increasingly, my story sources are demanding paywall fees. Most of the formerly free bloggers have moved to substack and subscription newsletters. The New York Post, CBS, NBC and others hit me with a block asking for ad-blockers to be disabled, then don’t remove the block until I’ve disabled the ad-blocker and refreshed three times or more. CNN has joined the group that make it difficult to copy text. Now The Blaze is going full subscription. I pay for the digital versions of the Washington Post and New York Times, but as we all know by now (I hope), they can’t be trusted.

I can only be Scarlet O’Hara for so long, but I guess I’ll worry about that tomorrow…

Enough bitching from me: Over to you, Clarence…

The Rest Of The Story, Or At Least Some Of It: Rep. Bowman Pleads Guilty

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In the midst of more pressing matters like the House not being able to elect a Speaker, the Hamas attack and so many Democrats revealing their dark anti-Semitic side, it is understandable that “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman’s law-breaking to disrupt a House vote on the budget and his subsequent ridiculous lies to minimize his responsibility might have been pushed to the back of our brains. (You can review this clown show here, in the first seven posts listed). But justice has, sort of, prevailed.

Bowman was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and processed by the U.S. Capitol Police today, after D.C. prosecutors charged the Democrat with setting off a false fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building adjacent to the Capitol, a misdemeanor.

Bowman has agreed to plead guilty to the single false fire alarm charge. He will pay the maximum fine of $1,000, and all charges will be dropped in three months provided that Bowman provides a formal apology to the Capitol Police along with the fine. The New York Times says this is the standard policy with such charges.

“I’m thankful for the quick resolution from the District of Columbia attorney general’s office on this issue,” Bowman said in a statement yesterday responding to the charge. “I am responsible for activating a fire alarm, I will be paying the fine issued and look forward to these charges being ultimately dropped.” His statement did not address the fact that by pleading guilty, he is admitting that his act was intentional, despite saying repeatedly at the time that he thought the obvious fire alarm apparatus would open the doors of the building, which are always locked on weekends, and that included signs clearly explaining the situation. But Bowman is still lying: in his statement he said that he was “grateful” that the Capitol Police general counsel’s office “agreed I did not obstruct nor intend to obstruct any House vote or proceedings.” There was no such statement by authorities indicating that. Obstructing House business is a felony, and no determination has been made public about whether charges will be brought for that. Gabriel Shoglow-Rubenstein, a spokesman for the D.C. attorney general’s office which announced the charges, said, “Congressman Bowman was treated like anyone else who violates the law in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Shoglow-Rubenstein said in a statement. “Based on the evidence presented by Capitol Police, we charged the only crime that we have jurisdiction to prosecute.”

The D.C. attorney general’s office—Full disclosure: I have done a yearly ethics training for the office for more than a decade—does not handle obstruction charges.

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