“bias makes you stupid”

ProPublica Really Thinks Revealing That Florida Actually Executes Convicted Murderers Will Turn Americans Against DeSantis, Trump and Republicans

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

(That’s a famous photo of the execution of the John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators)

Ah, the ethical delusions of the woke and biased!

ProPublica is another one of those supposedly “non-partisan” watchdogs that somehow only finds the conduct of Republicans and conservatives worth criticizing, with enough rare exceptions to let them say, “But what about…?” to rebut that verdict sufficiently for those who aren’t paying attention.

Being reflexively progressive, ProPublica has long been an opponent of capital punishment, though the position is misplaced absolutism. Now it announces, “Early last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis began signing death warrants at a faster rate than ever before. What followed was the most intense period of executions the state has carried out in more than eight decades.”

This supposedly horrific “period of executions” meant that a grand total of 19 murderers who had forfeited their rights to live in a civilized society were dispatched instead of being kept alive at taxpayer expense. Let’s look at the killer ProPublica picked to have us weep for in the first half of the long article: Frank Walls, whom Florida executed last year.

Walls committed his first murder on March 26, 1985, at the age of 17. He noticed 19-year-old junior college student Tommie Lou Whiddon sunbathing at the beach, went over to her and slashed her throat. Walls then stole her car. Whiddon’s body was discoveredthe next day lying in a pool of blood on the beach. On September 16, 1986, he killed 24-year-old Cynthia Sue Condra by stabbing her 21 times. He left her body on the side of a road.[4] On May 20, 1987, Walls broke into the mobile home of 47-year-old Audrey Gygi. Walls raped her, left, but later decided to come back and murder her.He stabbed her to death, stole a fan and a radio, and left her nude body to be found after she failed to show up for work. On July 22 that same year, Walls committed a double murder. He broke into another mobile home inhabited by 22-year-old airman Edward Alger and his girlfriend, 20-year-old Anne Louise Peterson. Walls forced Peterson to tie up her boyfriend, then tied her up as well. Alger managed to get partially free and attacked Walls. In the fight, Walls cut his throat with a knife, but Alger bit Walls on the hand, causing him to drop the knife. Walls then shot Alger three times in the head. After sexually assaulting Peterson, he shot her in the head too, and when the first shot didn’t kill her, Walls put a pillow over her face and shot her again, killing her. The couple’s bodies were found the next day.

The story, as is de rigueur in such sobfests, is told from the perspective of death penalty activist Father Dustin Feddon, who has nothing better to do than “administer” to condemned prisoners like Walls. ProPublica never informs its readers of the details of why Walls was on Death Row. It just arrays the usual anti-death penalty rationalizations:

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July 4th Ethics: How Far Gone Do People Have To Be To Think This Is A Rational Way To Celebrate America’s Founding, And What Would Make Them Become That Way?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That is really and truly the official schedule for the Fourth of July celebration in San Diego County.

Nothing more needs to be said except perhaps,

And Speaking of Fake News: NPR!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

See? “I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says! I’m smart, and I want respect!“

Excuse me while I gleefully gloat over pointing out once again what a rotten, biased, disgrace of a news organization NPR is (and has been for a long while) right before it beclowned itself spectacularly yesterday by breaking the imaginary story that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring from the Supreme Court.

No, you can’t excuse this putrid example of the variety of fake news I call “Wishin’ and Hopin’ News” (in honor of the late, great Dusty Springfield) with the rationalization (#19 on the list) “Anyone can make a mistake!” For a professional news organization that has any scruples or legitimate editorial procedures literally never makes a mistake like this. NPR didn’t check its “facts” with the subject of the story. It didn’t get confirmation from the Supreme Court. It literally broke a story that didn’t exist because the Axis and the Axis propaganda network and the Trump Deranged and so, so many fans of NPR wanted this to be true so badly that NPR decided that Ethics Don’t Matter….though, to be fair, NPR decided this long, long ago, as when, oh, just to pick a random example out of the air, they blacklisted me as the network’s go-to ethics expert after a woke hostess deemed my 100% accurate explanation of how celebrities are vulnerable to late-hit sexual harassment accusations intolerable because, she told me, “I thought you were trying to defend Donald Trump.”

I may use the Alito episode from now on as my routine example of confirmation bias. The fiasco is so wonderful for Ethics Alarms in so many ways!

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SCOTUS Reaches The Only Fair, Factual, Logical, Ethical, and Legal Decision Regarding Biological Males in Women’s Sports

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Late yesterday, while everyone was concentrating on the Supreme Court’s rejection of the President’s Executive Order on birthright citizenship, the Court upheld two state laws barring the participation of biological males “identifying” as female (a.k.a. “transgender females”) in girls’ and women’s sports teams. Although the 6-to-3 ruling involved upholding laws in West Virginia and Idaho, 25 states also restrict biological males from cheating in women’s sports, and the decision represents a decisive splash of ice water in the faces of those who support one of the silliest and most unpopular of the Woke Left’s delusions.

Of course it is unfair, dangerous and absurd to allow individuals who have gone through puberty as males to compete with girls and women in sports involving strength and speed, and where size and weight are an advantage. That the radical Left insists otherwise (because life ought to be different than it really is, a prime driver of so much progressive cant) should be one of the most damning tells on the whole ideology as well as strong evidence that the Democratic Party has jumped Fonzi’s metaphorical shark. The Democrat-stuffed U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 9th and 4th Circuits struck down sensible “no biological males in female sports” laws, but it was inconceivable that their biased and partisan reasoning would prevail at the U.S. Supreme Court. Sure enough, it didn’t.

West Virginia v. B.P.J. should have been a unanimous, 9-0 decision, but the Left’s fealty to the LGBTQLMNOP++ wing of the Democratic party is so strong that the three knee-jerk progressives on the Court just couldn’t manage it. Before noting Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion which didn’t need a judge, a legal scholar or a lawyer to write, just, you know, someone reasonablyintelligent with functioning eyes and brain cells, I have to begin with the Authentic Frontier Gibberish of Justice Jackson. Again. She wrote a remarkable dissent which, perhaps in a SCOTUS first, makes a persuasive argument for the opinion she’s railing against in its incoherence and “Don’t confuse me with facts my mind’s made up!” obtuseness. Seriously: what the hell is she babbling about?

“But there is reason to doubt the soundness of the concession that Title IX’s reference to “sex” means only sex assigned at birth….A transgender woman penalized for being perceived as aggressive has experienced discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ just as much as a cis-gender woman has, no matter that the transgender woman’s behavior matches expectations of her sex assigned at birth. Either way, the institution has imposed its gender-based expectations upon her. And either way, the institution may have violated Title IX. In short, the majority is wrong to suggest that the term ‘sex’ in Title IX ‘ cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.’ Title IX makes room for individuals to live in the gender they choose; it cares not just about sex assigned at birth but also about individuals’ ability to match (or not) their gender presentation to their gender identity…”

No wonder Jackson infamously said in her confirmation hearing that she could not define what a woman is. After reading that mess, neither can I. I’m not sure I can understand English any more, either.

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Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note, NPR Division

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is hack, bottom-of-the-barrel journalism at its worst.

The statistics show that the “The United States almost certainly had the lowest murder rate ever recorded in 2025” according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher. “And the available evidence suggests that we’re going to go even lower this year,” he predicts based on the numbers and trend so far.

Here is how NPR starts its story:

“As the U.S. nears its 250th birthday, it’s doing pretty well by at least one measure: the national murder rate.”

That’s not news reporting. That’s partisan damnation with faint praise, while also engaging in deliberate misrepresentation. The story states that President Trump has achieved the best result in reducing the murder rate since at least 1960. That’s not, by any reasonable use of the English language, doing “pretty well.” It is an extraordinary success, and should be reported as such.

Then there is “at least one measure,” because, you see, everything else is terrible, but NPR’s Trump Deranged listeners assume that, so a major Trump accomplishment has to be minimized in the reporting. The technique is called “poisoning the well” and it isn’t journalism, it is pure bias. NPR, like the rest of the Axis, can’t tell a straight news story fairly, directly or honestly without applying a negative spin if President Trump is involved. You can almost hear the sneers: the outlet might as well had written,

“Well, how about that, the asshole did something right!”

“Look! Trump lucked out this time!”

“Hey, I guess everything the President does can’t blow up in his face!”

“Even a blind squirrel will find a nut now and then!”

As Clarence Darrow memorably said at the end of his closing argument in the Sweet case,

“I am the last one to come here to stir up race hatred, or any other hatred. I do not believe in the law of hate… I believe in the law of love, and I believe you can do nothing with hatred.”

So I am wrestling my brain to the ground to fight hating these awful, arrogant, unprofessional, smug and destructive people. They refuse to extend even moderate respect and decency to the President of the United States. They do everything in their power to distort facts, data, reality and analysis to confuse the public and turn it against their own leader. They will not give credit when it is due, and they will not assign responsibility where it belongs, if there is any way to twist the facts to impugn President Trump.

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This Ethics Story Is Bad Enough, But The Conservative Media Ignoring It Is Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The New York Times “breaking news” story from the weekend begins, “Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit: An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the President and the Commerce Secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.”

You can read it all here, at a gift link. From my reading, the story seems well sourced and fair, though it is the Times, and the Times has been doing everything in its power for over a decade to undermine Donald Trump. The Times isn’t the only one reporting the story, though: The Nation pounced on it with glee; I’ve also found the story reported by Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, MSN, India Today, various leftist substacks (Paul Krugman loves this story), Yahoo Finance, Mediaite, the Financial Times, and more obscure platforms. I expect CNN, PBS, MSNOW and the alphabet networks to be along any minute.

What I can’t find is any reporting on this apparent conflict of interest and Trump family self-dealing by the conservative media. (As of this moment it is also missing from news aggregator “memeorandum,” I assume because this partisan site is so excited about the Supreme Court upholding the $5 million jury verdict against the President regarding the E. Jean Carroll affair.)

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A Fine Example of “Legal But Unethical”: Gwar’s Trump Massacre— The Justice Department Should Know the Difference

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Gwar, an American heavy metal band, has been contacted by the Secret Service because it held a mock execution of President Trump onstage. A theatrical “science-fiction musical project” formed in 1984, the satirical band has been doing this kind of thing at its concerts for decades. Fake Trump was “killed” during the group’s performance at Warped Tour in Washington, D.C. this month. There’s a video: someone in a Donald Trump costume walks onstage and is disemboweled by the band, fake blood spurting.

The Band’s mock murders of public figures have offed such prominent figures as former President Barack Obama, former President Joe Biden, Queen Elizabeth, Elon Musk, Hillary Clinton, and Kanye West, and others. This is clearly non-partisan sick humor.

Trump’s Justice Department does itself, Republicans and conservatives no favors when it engages in dumb abuses of process and power like this. It is even more futile and less defensible than arresting James Comey for posting a numerical threat to President Trump written on the beach in sea shells. Demonstrating a sense of proportion as well as humor would be wise as well as endearing. I mean, Gwar’s manager is named Sleazy P. Martini. Reacting with fear as if a theatrical bad joke is a genuine threat makes the Administration and the President look weak, thin-skinned and foolish.

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Bravo! Ethics Hero Sen. Fetterman Civilly Points Out That Trump Deranged Ethics Dunce Larry David Is An Asshole…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Perfect!

Larry David, who has managed to make millions with the meta stunt of portraying himself as a toxic asshole on HBO when he in fact is a toxic asshole, dug deep into his warped character and told “Variety” the White House Flag Day UFC event was a “travesty.” “What else can you say about it?” the “Seinfeld” co-creator added. “It was embarrassing. I was embarrassed to be an American.”

TMZ ’s Jacob Wasserman tracked down Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa) on Capitol Hill yesterday and asked his reaction to David’s outburst.

“I’d say ‘Lighten up, Francis,’” Fetterman replied. That’s a 1980s film reference to the cult Bill Murray comedy “Stripes,” making Fetterman a man after my own heart. In a famous scene the ridiculous recruit named Francis (played by Conrad Dunn) tells his fellow soldiers he wants to be called “Psycho” and that he’ll kill anyone who calls him by his right name. He then tries to demonstrate his psycho creds by running off what he would consider justifications for murder.

Sgt. Hulka (played by Warren Oates) deflates the rant by saying, “Lighten up, Francis.”

Wasserman proved himself culturally ignorant by not getting Fetterman’s allusion, so Fetterman had to spell out his meaning. “Hey, I’m proud to be an American, and if you are embarrassed or whatever because of a UFC thing, get over yourself, dude!” the Senator said.

Such a light, civil way to tell David “You’re an asshole”!

“It Can’t Happen Here”? Brazil Gives Us A Glimpse Of What The Woke Passionately Wish For America

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In April, Brazilian father and mother, Audato and Ieda Denardi were found guilty of the crime of “intellectual neglect” and were sentenced to 50 days in prison for homeschooling their two daughters without sufficient instruction on“gender and sex education” or “tolerance and diversity.”

The court also found that the girls, aged 15 and 11, not enjoying popular Brazilian musical genres such as “trap” or “sertanejo” was evidence of a criminal deficiency in their cultural education.

Even though the prosecutors in the São Paulo trial requested an acquittal after concluding that the minors were not suffering from any neglect and were demonstrating appropriate academic and social development, the conviction was handed down. It is currently under appeal before the Seventh Criminal Court Chamber of the São Paulo State Court of Justice. The Christian legal organization ADF International is representing the family, and it denounced the case as “a grotesque abuse of criminal law.”

Ya think?

Despite the fact that both girls are pianists with advanced training and are fluent in several languages, the judge accused the parents of “using their daughters as pawns in an ideological struggle, subjecting them to a form of unregulated education, the effectiveness and quality of which lack adequate metrics within the Brazilian legal system, while completely excluding the state’s involvement.” Julio Pohl, legal counsel for Latin America at ADF International, neatly pointed out the obvious: to be concise, the verdict is crackers.

“An independent educational psychologist found no sign of neglect. The girls themselves described rigorous daily education,” Pohl said. “The judge convicted anyway because a fifteen-year-old said she finds some music lyrics morally questionable, and because the curriculum didn’t include state-approved content on gender. A parent has been sentenced to prison not for failing to educate her children, but for educating them according to her own values. This is a grotesque abuse of the criminal law, and we will not let it stand.”

Let’s go through the occupants of Congress, the Senate, state houses and mayors’ offices and speculate which of them secretly (or not so secretly) would like to see similar “justice” in the United States. Do we even have to speculate on the how the leadership of the teachers unions would regard the Denardi case?

Ethics Dunces: “The Today Show” and Savannah Guthrie

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I was briefly tempted to make the latest Savannah Guthrie sympathy porn outbreak on NBC’s “Today” show an Ethics Quiz, but to heck with it: I have no doubts about this. “Today” show is abusing its position as a news or an entertainment show to exploit the disappearance of co-host Savannah Guthrie’s almost certainly dead mother for cheap publicity and reality show appeal. As for Guthrie, it’s simple: she is unprofessional, self-indulgent, and incompetent.

The New York Post reports from “Page Six,” which catalogues celebrity news, gossip, and other matters that waste time and thought,

“[On]“Today” show on Tuesday… Savannah Guthrie broke down in tears while discussing the ransom note her family received in February allegedly claiming her missing mom, Nancy Guthrie, had died. “A lot of people at ‘Today’ are affected by it,” says a source. “There was a sense of sadness today. Everybody just feels so bad for her. There is a lot of uncertainty.” “There is a lot of admiration and praise for her that she is still able to do her job,” says our source. “People really support her and care about her, and people are heartbroken.” During the show, Guthrie said she had “no comment” on the headlines and is “not involved in … coverage” of her mother’s abduction, but that she couldn’t “pretend” to not be present for the conversation. “I just wanted to take the opportunity to really ask people and really beg people to come forward because somebody knows something,” Guthrie continued.“This is a news story today that is on your radar, but this is the life my sister, [Annie Guthrie], lives, that I live, that my brother, [Camron Guthrie], lives, that our extended families live, that our children live every day,” she explained. “We cannot be at peace,” the journalist said. “No matter how much I try to come out here every day and smile and find that joy — and I will, I promise I will — this is a moment to say we need your help. … I’m not gonna miss that opportunity.”Guthrie ended her emotional plea with a promise: “We love our mom, and we’ll never stop looking for her. Ever.”

Ugh.

Ethics Alarms flagged the news media’s Guthrie obsession as unethical special treatment for the rich and famous in February, when the apparent kidnapping was at least new:

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