Animals

On Lady Gaga’s Frenchies: Not Surprisingly, Criminals Don’t Comprehend “The Unclean Hands Doctrine” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

[In the original version of this post I confused readers by forgetting to erase pieces of the source article that I had pasted to the draft to save me the time of jumping back and forth between screens. My fault. Then I compounded the problem by leaving out the link. Fixed. It was all my fault; can’t blame WordPress this time.]

What a moron.

But then if criminals were smart, we’d be in even more trouble than we are…

Lady Gaga promised to pay a $500,0000 reward for the return of her two kidnapped French Bulldogs Gustav and Koji (two of the three above: sorry, I don’t know which). The pop icon’s dogwalker was shot and injured during the theft. Emulating the plot twist in the Mel Gibson thriller “Ransom,” however, one of the participants in the kidnapping scheme decided to collect the reward, arguing that because Gaga had said she would pay for the dogs’ return “no questions asked,” she was obligated even to pay someone who was involved in the crime.

Seeking the outlandish reward, Jennifer McBride was arrested when she turned in the dogs at a police station. She pleaded no contest to knowingly receiving stolen property and was sentenced to probation. I suppose the scheme was to have her collect the reward and split it with the dognappers.

After Lady Gaga warbled, “You’ve got to be kidding!’ when McBride asked for the money, McBride sued her for breach of contract.

Uh, no.

In rejecting the claim, Judge Hollie J. Fujie of Los Angeles Superior Court cited the ancient “unclean hands doctrine,” which holds that a litigant cannot benefit from a situation he or she deliberately helped to bring about by illegal or unethical conduct.

“The unclean hands doctrine demands that a plaintiff act fairly in the matter for which he seeks a remedy,” Fujie wrote, adding that the UHD “is an equitable rationale for refusing a plaintiff relief where principles of fairness dictate that the plaintiff should not recover, regardless of the merits of their claim.”

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Spain Demonstrates Why We Have The First Amendment, And Why The US Must Protect It

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Spain’s Parliament, in its wisdom, has declared dwarf bullfighting illegal. Not because the bulls are treated cruelly, mind you: oh no, that part is fine. It’s the small bullfighters the legislators find intolerable. (That’s a group of them rehearsing above.)

Comic bullfighting shows in which individuals with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, fight with juvenile bulls are now illegal. A new law bans “shows or leisure activities” employing a disability “to provoke public mockery, ridicule or derision.” As a result, the performers who earned their living putting on such shows are now forbidden from plying their craft, and citizens willing to pay to watch them can no longer do so. This is also embarrassing: the same law directs that “people with disabilities will participate in public shows and recreational activities, including bullfighting, without discrimination.”

Spain’s law arises from a failure to distinguish “Ick” from ethics, the same problem that has led some states to try to ban drag shows. There is no question that the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights would absolutely prohibit a law such as the Spanish dwarf bullfighting ban, and we should be grateful for that. The ethical principles embodied in freedom of expression include autonomy as well as intrinsic fairness and the Golden Rule validity of allowing others to have the same right to make their living as they choose without others deciding that because they wouldn’t make the same choices, those choices shouldn’t be available to anyone.

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Can’t handle criticism, can’t take a joke, believes that effective rhetoric that counters their assertions should be silenced.

In short, PETA reveals itself as typical of progressive activists in 2023.

2023’s Most Insulting Made-Up Excuse For Unethical Conduct So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I had assumed this story from last month had wrapped up the prize: A Colorado man was pulled over by police for speeding and swapped seats with his dog so he could claim, or at least try to claim, that the dog was driving.

“The driver attempted to switch places with his dog who was in the passenger seat, as the SPD officer approached and watched the entire process,” the official statement reads. “The male party then exited the passenger side of the vehicle and claimed he was not driving.” The suspect showed “clear signs of intoxication,” and when the officer asked about his alcohol consumption, he tried to run away but was quickly caught.

The dog told the officers that he was grateful for their intervention because he “thought that idiot was going to kill us both.”

OK, I’m kidding about that last part. There have been some really weird ethics stories involving dogs lately. I ultimately decided not to write about this one, the Penn State professor caught having repeated sex with his dog to “blow off steam” because there are so many tasteless—but funny!—jokes that come to mind and I might not be able to resist making some of them.

But I digress. Almost as revolting as that story is the new leader for worst 2023 excuse, Dr Nicholas Chapman, 55, a British general practitioner, who has been convicted of putting his semen into coffee he served to a female acquaintance in September of 2021. The court was told that Chapman was accused of adding his semen to drinks he made for the victim on several occasions. When the woman kept a sample of some of the cofee he had made for her, tests confirmed the secret ingredient and the DNA matched Chapman’s.

The doctor swore he was innocent. He had a rare condition that causes him to ejaculate while urinating, he said, and he just keeps forgetting to wash his hands after finishing up in the loo.

[I used a photo of Porter, the first driving dog, above instead of a picture related to Chapman’s excuse because…well, you know why…]

Ethics Quiz: The “Chicken Orb”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is how far Ethics Alarms has to go to avoid Trump-related ethics-issues…

The website for the Chicken Orb boasts,

Chicken Orbs are a supervised chicken foraging enclosure. With a diameter of 55cm, they are perfect for medium-sized pampered pet chickens to allow them to roam the backyard, or to take them on foraging adventures beyond the backyard boundaries. A modern tool for urban farmers to take control over the when, where, and how the hens forage.

No, I’m not making this up.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is this any (ethical) way to treat a chicken?

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Ethics Dunce: Ireland

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Boy, if Ireland thought they had mad cows before….

Ireland’s government is reportedly seriously considering plans to destroy 200,000 cows to meet its mandatory climate change targets from the nutsy-cuckoo European Union. Farmers will be offered financial inducements participate in the bovine holocaust. Thus the collateral damage of net zero emissions insanity, a sub-category of The Great Stupid, is extending to cows, just as AOC wants it to in her “Green New Deal.”

There shouldn’t be a lot to argue about here: killing 200,000 Irish cows now will have exactly no effect on the climate even if the most apocalyptic and hysterical scientific models are correct. It’s like the Biden and Obama killing pipelines: it’s just climate change theater and virtue-signaling, except that the pipeline decisions just killed jobs and brain cells of rational people thinking about them.

And yes, in this case, just seriously considering such an obviously wasteful policy is sufficient to justify Ethics Dunce honors even if ultimately rationality prevails. Even pondering such idiocy is signature significance, as when grandpa says, “Yeah, I was thinking about flapping my arms and flying out the window to visit Neverland, but decided it was too far away.” You call the rest home and double quick, even if Gramps had seemed lucid before.

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See? Someone Is “Doing Something” About Gun Violence!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The gun you see below…

…. was duly taken from its owner for illegal use: shooting fish (though not in a barrel, which is even more unethical). A Finney County Game Warden seized the 9 mm handgun because it was “being used to take fish in Garden City,” Kansas game wardens said.

You would expect officials in Finney County to be protective of fish, wouldn’t you?

The wardens issued written violations, reminding citizens that “firearms are not a legal means to take fish.”

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A Ripley From Canada: Barking Is Banned At A Dog Park

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This would also qualify as an Ethics Alarms res ipsa loquitur file item, but the EA category reserved for conduct so astoundingly stupid that it beggars belief is the right place for this one.

Imagine: according to a new sign posted on the gate to the long-standing dog park at the corner of Jean-Talon Street and Provencher Boulevard in Montreal’s Saint-Leonard borough…

…. “it is forbidden to let your dog bark, whine, or howl.” Violators —well, the owners of the violators—could be fined between $500 and $2,000.

Will Canadians put up with this? The totalitarian virus seems to have gained a stronger foothold in Canadian culture than in the U.S., and thank heaven for that. However, the City of Toronto installed similar no-barking signs at dog park in March but had to remove them after a strong negative reaction from the public. The difference is that at this point no local U.S. government would dare put up such a sign in a dog park. I offered the hypothetical to the owners of some of Spuds’s pals, and the reaction to the idea bordered on violent.

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Pet Goat Ethics: Is There Anyone Behaving Ethically In This Mess?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Are they just not installing ethics alarms any more?

Above you see Cedar the Goat with his 9-year-old owner, now grief-stricken because Cedar ended up on a State Senator’s menu thanks to a series of unethical acts that could have been short-circuited if anyone with power or authority had been a little more ethical, but no.

Jessica Long bought Cedar last year as a pet for her nine-year-old daughter, but for some reason decided to hand the beloved pet over to a livestock auction at a district fair, which stipulated that the all sales were final and Cedar, like all the other farm critters, would be sold for meat. The fair’s brochure clearly stated “no exceptions.” But Long’s daughter was distraught about the prospect of losing Cedar, so her mom begged the fair to give him back before bidding started.

“Pet schmet,” the fair’s rulers essentially replied. “Making an exception for you will only teach our youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants,” Shasta District (that’s in California) Fair Chief Executive Officer Melanie Silva lectured in an email. So Cedar was duly auctioned off to a representative of California State Senator Brian Dahle for $902. Just $63.14 of that goes to the state fair and the rest, $838.86 to Long.

Thinking hard (but not well) about how to please her daughter, Jessica kidnapped the goat and decided to “take the goat that night and deal with the consequences later.”

Oh, good thinking there, Mom!

The fair’s livestock manager contacted Long warning of “serious consequences” if the goat wasn’t returned. Then a sheriff from Shasta County, filed a search warrant, a judge signed off on it and officers used “breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers in pursuit of their target.” Cedar was the target. Clever Long, however, had sent Cedar into hiding at a distant farm in Sonoma County, but it still didn’t work: authorities got her goat anyway and drove him 200 miles to Shasta County for slaughter.

It is believed that the little goat was served at a community barbecue to which he had been donated as a gesture by Senator Dahl. And that he was delicious.

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Visiting Dog Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A question to the New York Times’ “The Ethicist” raised multiple issues, perhaps the least interesting of which was the subject of the letter:

My brother-in-law and his wife adopted a dog a year ago. Since then, every time they have come over to our home, they have brought the dog too. My husband and children aren’t incredibly fond of pets. This creates some uncomfortable situations for us. I don’t think we truly enjoy their company, because they are always running around after the dog while they are with us. I have tried to indirectly hint that getting a dog sitter may be an option, but that’s hit or miss.

Nowadays we don’t feel that comfortable inviting them over as often. I feel sad, because it’s creating a distance between us. Shouldn’t they just accept the fact that not everyone is comfortable with a pet and find ways to leave it at home (for a few hours) instead of taking it with them everywhere they go? I hate bringing this up with my husband, because I know he is torn as well. How can we delicately and politely let them know without hurting their feelings?

“The Ethicist,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, issued the obvious answer: it is ethics blindness for visitors not to seek permission to bring their dogs to another home (even if the dog isn’t a Caucasian Shepherd like the one above), but also irresponsible for a family being inflicted with an unwanted canine guest to keep its resentment secret so it can fester. The brother-in-law should be told that his family dog isn’t welcome.

I was bothered by other things in the letter: Continue reading →