Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Quiz: Christmas Eve At Kamala’s

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

They aren’t “migrants,” they are illegal immigrants, breaking the laws of a nation where they don’t belong. They are, however, people.

About 130 illegal immigrants, fresh from Texas, were off-loaded from buses in front Vice President Kamala Harris’s home on one of the coldest Christmas Eves ever in Washington, D.C.

They arrived after a 36-hour journey, many without clothes or blankets to gird against the weather, though non-profit groups arrived to coordinate travel and housing and provide food, coats, gloves and shoes to cope with the sub-twenty degree temperatures. The buses were sent by the Texas Division of Emergency Management, directed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

“They have been doing that for a few months now; it’s all for the spectacle,” a pro-illegal immigration activist told the New York Times. “The cruelty is the point. It’s awful to use people in this manner, for political reasons.”

Kant held that it is unethical to “use people” for any reasons. Then again, Vice-President Harris, charged with dealing with the administration’s border-crossing fiasco, has agreed with the Department of Homeland Security that the border is secure. Washington, D.C. is blandly repeating that talking point, and the news media is spinning it.

We had a similar ethics quiz in September, and many of the issues are the same, but I regard the distinction between sending the border-jumpers to the charming and elite resort of Martha’s Vineyard in the Fall and busing them to D.C. to arrive in freezing December weather material.

Your Ethics Alarm Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is Abbott’s shipping illegal immigrants from sunny Mexico to freezing Washington unethical?

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Thoughts While Reading Classmate Entries In My Alma Mater’s Anniversary Report, #1

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As I have noted, I deliberately missed my class’s big reunion intentionally, disgusted with what the school has become and the unethical values it now imposes on its students, alumni, applicants and other sho rely upon it to be a force for enlightenment in the nation. Interestingly, several classmates (none of whom I ever met) sent me their approval of my protest and the stated reasons for it in my class report, but none emailed. All arrived in handwritten letters. Either they think my views are so out-of-date that I communicate in quill and parchment only, or they do.

Anyway, I am slowly working my way through the hardbound tome, which is over a thousand pages long and in small print. Its statements by members of the class provide a fascinating and useful set of clues about the current state of mind the more pampered, “privileged” Boomers are in—for one thing, those who did write (a lot of them didn’t) are even more verbose than I am. Also notable is how many of the survivors of the original campus protests are just as vulnerable to facile conventional wisdom among their peer groups now as they were when they were praising Ho Chi Minh, promiscuous sex and the habit of being stoned much of the day.

I have always thought that maturity is a myth.

With this post, I’m launching what might be a continuing series, but who knows what horrors lie in those 1000 pages? I have already been horrified by the number of my classmates who feel that the Earth is endangered by global warming, which they view as the Most Important Thing Ever, though none of the people writing that appear to be in the scientific community.

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Stop Making Me Defend President Biden!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In his Christmas speech on December 23, President Biden said, referring to Christmas’s religious significance,

“How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is given. There is a certain stillness at the center of the Christmas story. A silent night when all the world goes quiet and all the glamour, all the noise, everything that divides us, everything that pits us against one another, everything — everything that seems so important but really isn’t, this all fades away in stillness of the winter’s evening. And we look to the sky, to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child—a child Christians believe to be the son of God; miraculously now, here among us on Earth, bringing hope, love and peace and joy to the world.”

Many conservative blogs, pundits and celebrities “pounced,” attacking the President for not mentioning Jesus by name.

The headline at The Daily Wire was “Biden Delivers Christmas Address Without Mentioning Jesus By Name: ‘A Child Christians Believe To Be The Son Of God’” Father Gerald Murray of the Archdiocese of New York told Newsmax that it made “no sense” for Biden to omit the name of Jesus from his annual Christmas address to the country. “President Biden is always talking about his Catholicism and how it inspired him,” Murray said. “If you’re going to honor the birth of Jesus, you should mention his name. I was very sad to see that. That’s not anything that should be imitated in the future.” Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican and former member of the House,said, “Not saying the name of Jesus—look, there are other holidays to celebrate, but Christmas is the birth of Christ. When we celebrate the birth of Christ who came and gave us the gift of life. That’s what we celebrate and to take that out is just sad.” The Heritage Foundation’s Kara Frederick, complained, “America’s lost its sense of God, it’s Judeo-Christian values, and I think this is just a manifestation. This speech not mentioning Christ, talking about how divided this nation’s been for so long, it’s all part and parcel of the secularization of America and we need to return to our faith.”

The United States is not supposed to have a stated “sense of God,” and for the President of the United States to officially espouse the beliefs of any particular religion is, according the the line of judicial interpretations of the Establishment Clause and the First Amendment, a violation of the Constitution.

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Fad Ethics, 2022

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Fads occur when the culture embraces a concept for emotional, selfish, foolish or otherwise irrational reasons. Usually they are harmless; sometimes they are not. This meme crystalized the reality of a current fad, an especially destructive one being advanced in pursuit of a social and political agenda, so deftly that Ethics Alarms is momentarily suspending its opposition to memes.

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Pointer: Powerline

Catching Up On The Twitter Files, Part 8: So Twitter Basically Has Acted As An Agent Of The U.S. Government!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From now on, I’m going to use that clip from “The Naked Gun” for all of the Twitter Files reports.

The fact that the mainstream media still is determined to bury this story that has serious implications for health of our democracy, public trust in the government, the apparent independent agendas of government departments and agencies, the threats posed by the “Deep State” and social media’s efforts to control whose opinions  and what information the public is able to receive and assess is itself a major revelation, making the “Twitter Files” one of the most urgent and important news stories of the year.

And it is being ladled out on Twitter in short tweets, which is why the mainstream media thinks its efforts to suffocate the story may work.

The messenger this time is Intercept reporter Lee Fang. This is Part 8; Part 9 came out on Christmas Eve, and I’ll get that posted later today.

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Comment Of The Day: “At Least This Time They Didn’t Blame Pitbulls…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Happy Boxing Day, for those of you who have servants, butler and and the like! Do make sure your underlings enjoy a Christmas-like experience a day late, after caring for you and your family yesterday!

Ethics Alarms will kick off its Boxing Day festivities with another terrific Comment of the Day by Mrs, Q. I’m hopping it over two other COTD in waiting, in part because I feel guilty: her post was stuck in moderation because I was “making a bit merry yesterday” (Source?) and neglected the blog comments. I apologize to Mrs.Q and my readers. Her comment was stuck because it included many invaluable links to additional information.

She addressed the horrible incident discussed in yesterday’s commentary regarding a fatal dog attack last week that took the life of a couple’s newborn child. Mrs. Q concentrates her ethics marksmanship on an aspect of the story that I mentioned, but only broadly: the parents’ accountability for the tragedy.

Here is Mrs. Q’s Comment of the Day on the post, “At Least This Time They Didn’t Blame Pitbulls…“

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Perhaps I’m being harsh, but I do think the parents and every parent or guardian this happens to, should be charged.

We have an incredibly irresponsible ethos going on in the world of dog ownership. People who willingly choose to have a dog, of any size dog, around small children, without educating themselves on danger behavior signals, is complicit in spreading such violence.

The killings of children is just a part of it. 50% of kids under 12 have been bitten by dogs. Most dog bites children experience happen over 70% of the time on the face and neck. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another Twitter Files Summary”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m a bit behind in posts covering the Twitter Files; I’m also behind in posting Comments of the Day. Ethics Alarms veteran Glenn Logan authored one more than a week ago, and had it not been for a recent comment that rang my “Glenn Logan” alarm, this one might have been lost.

Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another”Twitter Files” Summary”…

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Jack wrote:

“Musk can’t run Twitter by poll, though, if he is truly devoted to promoting free and open public discourse.“

No, you’re right about that. It needs to stop. The optics are very poor to anyone not invested in Twitter at the expense of rational thought.

“The past seven years (or more) make the conclusion unavoidable that the FBI is untrustworthy, partisan, corrupt,dangerous, and a threat to undermine the Republic. That is not a news that easy to process or accept, but it can’t be ignored or shrugged off any more…”

The FBI has always been a problematic venture. It was corrupt nearly from birth, and we are surprised that it somehow has changed its spots over the decades? Sure, there have been a few stretches where it was less corrupt than at others, but at its core, it is a functioning federal bureaucracy with a law enforcement component, largely governed by political partisans.

That partisanship has clearly been allowed to filter down to at least middle management and even the rank-and-file. Throw in the “You’re either with me or against me” politics of the social media age, and how can you not have a corrupt catastrophe?

Disbanding the FBI root and branch would be a huge public service. Continue reading →

At Least This Time They Didn’t Blame Pitbulls…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is such a horrible Christmas story that even my fecund imagination couldn’t devise an appropriate graphic for it, yet attention should be paid.

On December 23 in Cave Spring, Arkansas, a family’s dog attacked and killed a four-day old infant girl. The dog bit the baby’s head, fatally injuring  the infant’s skull. When I read the story, my second thought after the obvious first one was “Now watch: this will be called another pit bull attack.” Amazingly, it wasn’t: the dog was a Siberian Husky. That didn’t stop the news media from attaching alleged pit bull horror stories to this one, like the attack by two Staffordshire terriers, one of several breeds called pit bulls, that killed two small children and injured their mother in October. I did learn something from the various articles: 32% of all fatalities from dog bites in the U.S. are children 4 years-old and under. Continue reading →

Christmas Eve Ethics Gift Wrapping, 12/24/22 [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Christmas Eve Ethics Gift Wrapping

Ever heard that one before? It’s the late Art Carney, best known for his reliably brilliant portrayal of sewer worker Ed Norton as Jackie Gleason’s foil on “The Honeymooners” pioneering Christmas rap. Carney also won an Oscar, like a lot of comics managing a successful late career pivot from clowning to drama, and had another Christmas credit on his CV. Art starred in “The Night of the Meek,” a memorable “Twilight Zone” episode in 1960 that aired on December 23. Carney played a drunk and depressed department store Santa who, through wishes, fate and the regular “Twilight Zone” magic, becomes the real Santa Claus in the show’s climax. Rod Serling, who wrote the episode, ended it thusly,

A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There’s a wondrous magic to Christmas and there’s a special power reserved for little people. In short, there’s nothing mightier than the meek.

Some politically correct idiot at CBS deleted Rod’s Merry Christmas wish from the episode in the 1980s. Can you believe that? “And a Merry Christmas to each and all” is not heard in reruns, VHS releases and the five-DVD set “The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Edition.”

1. Here’s as good as an apology as you can make when you are videoed trying to kill someone.  New England Patriots great Willie McGinest, a three-time Super Bowl winner, issued an abject mea culpa on  social media after an ugly incident in which he attacked someone in a restaurant this month in California turned up streaming  on the web. The onetime star linebacker was seen on video obtained by TMZ Sports  punching a man in the face and then attacking him with a bottle. McGinest was arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon, then was released on bond. He wrote on Instagram:

This apology would rate a #1 on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale, as it hits all the marks. It also convinces me that the scale needs to be revised, something that has been suggested by several commenters over the years. There has to be a special category for professionally-crafted public apologies designed to avoid the natural consequences of outrageous conduct. Can one adequately and credibly apologize for attacking someone in a restaurant? Should they be trusted again? Attacking someone with bottle in a public place is signature significance, is it not? Someone with adequate ethics alarms doesn’t do that even once.

Oh, I’m sure Willie is sorry: that video can cost him a great deal…much more than he paid his PR firm to draft it. [Pointer: Arthur in Maine] Continue reading →

More Evidence That The Public Is In Need Of Basic Education Regarding The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The online petition can demand until it is blue in the face, if petitions could be blue in the face, or had a face, for that matter.

The comments of the citizen in the video clip are 100% First Amendment protected speech. There is no valid argument to the contrary. Signatories of such a petition have announced that a) they don’t believe in free speech; b) they want the government to censor individual opinions they disagree with and c) they are unfit to participate or benefit from a democratic republic, preferring a totalitarian government provided its agendas aligns with those of the petition-signers.

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