“bias makes you stupid”

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Jump Ball” (or “Brilliant Guest Post by Ryan Harkins”)….

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yesterday, in near shock that a good and once wise friend posted on Facebook the head-exploding meme by a simple-minded activist named Jenny Carter, above, I challenged Ethics Alarms readers to perform the thorough defenestration of that smug brain-garbage it deserves. I had neither the time nor energy. Responding to my metaphorical Bat Signal, erudite veteran commenter Ryan Harkins came through like a champ, authoring the masterpiece below, a Comment of the Day if there ever was one. Here is his rebuttal, really a guest post in length and quality, in response to the post, “Ethics Jump Ball”:

Dear Jenny,

You can make strawmen of our principles all you want, and argue all day against them, but all that will gain you is a smug feeling and “likes” from your friends, and make absolutely no inroads with the MAGA crowd whatsoever.  But I know that your entire intent is to make me waste my time answering you.  So, perhaps foolishly, I will oblige.

To begin, a little groundwork.  A dilemma is only a dilemma if you really only have the two options.  If there is any other alternative, such argumentation falls apart.  Second, if you are going to address our principles, maybe you should determine what those principles actually are.  For example, being pro-Second Amendment is not about shooting people.  It is about the right to bear arms against, especially, an overbearing, tyrannical government.  Being pro-life does not mean that you believe that no one should die, ever.  Third, in any given situation, there may be more than one principle in play, and to ignore that to score rhetorical points is arguing in bad faith. 

So let’s get into it.

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I’m Shocked…SHOCKED!…That Mayor Mamdani’s Wife Is A Flaming Anti-Semite!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I have a very good friend, an actor, a lawyer, a Jew and a “useful idiot” for progressives, who recently wrote a passionate and articulate Facebook post about however one felt about Israel, there was no excuse, justification or salvation for people who hated Jews. And I recalled that he had been among my misguided and ethically-crippled Facebook friends who actually celebrated the election of Communist Zohran Mamdani, as had others of my friends as well as Democratic Party Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and this august crew (from Mamdani’s website):

But it’s even worse. With the exception of the disgraced ex-Governor of New York who was running against Mamdani, not a single national Democratic leader would say publicly, “What???? Are you all out of your minds? This guy hates Jews! What has our party become?”

What indeed.

Of course there was plenty of evidence that the Mayor-to-be’s wife was a Jew Hater, but the Axis media went to its usual great lengths to bury that fact like a cat buries its turds in a cat box. Today the Washington Free Beacon did the public a favor with a metaphorical bucket full of ice water to the faces of all of Mamdani’s enablers, deniers and useful idiots. The post is headlined, “Zohran Mamdani’s Wife Celebrated Palestinian Terrorists, Including Plane Hijacker, In Social Media Posts From Early Adulthood…Rama Duwaji also boosted a post that said Tel Aviv ‘Shouldn’t exist in the first place.’” There’s no paywall: read it. Send it to your Trump Deranged friends, and all your blind Facebook friends who thought this Marxian demagogue was so charming and passionate.

Better yet, shake the Free Beacon story in front of their smug, stupid faces like a Jack Russell Terrier shakes a rat—you know I love that image—or even better YET, do this..

Now, they will huminahumina that just because someone marries the love of his life who happens to want Jews wiped from the face of the earth doesn’t mean Mayor Mamdani feels the same way. Right. Heck, we don’t know that Eva Braun was bad, do we? Riiiight. Mayor Mamdani just used St. Paddy’s Day to compare the Irish Republican Army to Palestinians, who want Jews wiped from the face of the earth. This isn’t hard.

As for the Mamdani-chering Jews, like my friend, a smart and compassionate man, who celebrated Mamdani because he opposes Donald Trump, there are no excuses. They should be ashamed of themselves. He should be ashamed of himself. I am ashamed of him. People should turn their backs on these ethically corrupted fools like the jurors in “Twelve Angry Men” turn their backs on Juror 10 (Ed Begley) when he erupts into his final bigoted rant..

The irony? I cast that pro-Mamdani actor-friend in one of my productions of “Twelve Angry Men.”

“A representative for Mamdani did not respond to a request for comment,” notes the Free Beacon. Of course not. What would he say?

Update! “A ‘Great Stupid’ Court Case SO Stupid That It Makes “The Great Stupid” Look Almost Smart…”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The story that the great radio story-teller Paul Harvey would now tell us the rest of was the subject of the post below, from August 2024. As you will see, it made my head explode, but there has finally been a resolution, and ethics and common sense prevailed. Review the horrible case. Will voters really hand power back to the party that not only responsible for such things, but that still wants to establish them as our national standards? Really?

But I digress. Here is the original post, and I’ll add the recent developments at the end…

That crude, ambiguous drawing above got a first grader—we’re talking six-years-old here—suspended. That’s almost all you have to know for your head to explode if it is properly wired.

The Ethics Villains and Dunces are so thick in this fiasco you could use it to lay bricks. I’m almost embarrassed to tell the story, which I first saw at Reason…

In March of 2021, a first grader referred to as “B.B.” ” drew a picture we are told was intended to show people of different races, representing “three classmates and herself holding hands.” (I’d save the money the family was planning on spending on art school for B.B., if that was their intent.) Above the drawing, B.B. wrote “Black Lives Mater” (Latin!) with the words “any life” stuck in-between the slogan and the jelly beans, or whatever they were. B.B. then gave the drawing to a black classmate, as what B.B. testified was intended as a friendly gesture. But the classmate either ratted out B.B. or the principal was told about it by the teacher, or something (because school administrators don’t have anything better to do than to police the political correctness of kids’ drawings).

The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, admonished B.B., saying that the drawing was “inappropriate.” B.B. was ordered to apologize to her classmate, prohibited from drawing any more pictures in school, and prevented from going to recess for two weeks.

Continue reading →

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“District courts cannot stand athwart, yelling ‘stop’ just because they genuinely believe they are the last refuge against policies that they deem to be deeply unwise.”

—Judge Kenneth K. Lee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, writing  separately as a panel overruled a district court and held that the President had the power to suspend the Refugee Admissions Program.

Of course he did. The law and Constitution is clear on that point, but a woke District Court halted the President’s decision anyway. This was unethical as well as illegal, but, as Prof. Josh Blackman writes,

“President Trump is back in office, progressives still challenge virtually every action he takes, and judges in blue states continue to grant relief. No surprise there. But there is a new dynamic. Now, not only are lower court judges resisting the President, but they are also resisting the Supreme Court. In August, Justice Neil Gorsuch rebuked an attempted . Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts managed to get reversed twice by the Supreme Court in the same case. “When this Court issues a decision,” Gorsuch wrote, “it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.” Gorsuch added that “[t]his Court’s precedents, however, cannot be so easily circumvented.” 

Remember, it is Trump’s opponents who keep accusing him of breaching “democratic norms,” yet the Axis of Unethical Conduct ( the “resistance,” Democrats and the media that carries on their propaganda) is literally defying the greatest democratic norm of all, the Constitution. Blackman calls this attempted usurpation of power by activist, partisan judges “judicial resistance,” in other words, an abuse of judicial power for partisan objectives. It is—this is me and not the professor saying this—grounds for impeachment. President Trump is not exceeding his Presidential authority as the Trump Deranged scream, but rather the judges and courts that are interfering in the Constitutional hierarchy. Unethical, you think? Damn right.

Blackman:

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Unethical Quote Of The Day: MSNOW Talking-Head Antonia Hylton

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“The other piece of this that I found really disturbing in the messaging around the war recently…is some of the language in the description of their opponent. “Sort of the way they seem to create this image of the Iranians and all of their sort of proxies or allies, the sort of imagery that they conjure up,. And I think that it takes a certain amount of arrogance and I’m also going to say it, a bit of racism, to constantly talk about people like they are savages. That is a word that we have heard Hegseth use.” 

—MSNOW hostess Antonia Hylton, during Saturday’s broadcast of “The Weekend: Primetime.”

Apparently all you have to do to justify being made a co-host of a show on MSNOW is to demonstrate enmity to one’s own country’s leaders and support for its enemies. Oh, before I forget, “enemy” is the proper term for a nation your country is currently at war with, not “opponent.”

Furthermore, calling Iran’s leaders “savages” is not racism but a fair and accurate diagnosis. Savage as a noun means one who is vicious and uncivilized. Iran is currently a brutal, murderous and ruthless regime that murdered many thousands of its own citizens for daring to protest their harsh treatment from their government. Since the Islamic takeover in 1979, 258 Americans were killed in a suicide bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and a truck bombing in the same city in 1983. The Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah killed 19 U.S. Airmen in Saudi Arabia at the Khobar Towers in 1996. It is estimated that Iranian proxies have killed nearly 700 Americans between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 50 Americans were killed by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists during the attack on Israel that took place October 7, 2023, and that attack was as savage as one could be even if one ignores American casualties and only focuses on the Israeli civilians killed, raped and taken as hostages

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A Brief But Trenchant Baseball Ethics Note…[Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Above you can see the final pitch of the USA-Dominican Republic semi-finals last night in the ongoing World Baseball Classic. That 2-out, 9th inning pitch was called a strike on a 3-2 count, meaning that the Dominican shortstop Perdomo was out, and the U.S. had won a tight 2-1 victory sending it into the championship game against either Venezuela or surprise “Cinderella” squad Italy.

Winning is nice; winning legitimately is better. That pitch was a ball, as you can see. if the umpire had called the pitch correctly, Perdomo would have advanced to first, and the DR’s best player in the tournament, Fernando Tatis, would have come to the plate with the tying run on third base and the winning run on third.

In the 2026 MLB season that starts soon, the new ABS system will be underway. After a botched call like that one, the batter will touch his cap and say “Challenge!” and the image of where the pitch was relative to the strike zone will flash on a screen, showing that the umpire was wrong, reversing the call.

No baseball game, especially an important one, should end on a terrible call like the one that eliminated the Dominican Republic team. If this doesn’t convince the bitter-enders and “traditionalists” who oppose getting ball and strike calls right when the technology exists to do so, nothing will.

UPDATE: ESPN’s Jeff Passan just posted,

“That was a wonderful baseball game. Tension. Drama. Passion. Pride. Everything baseball can be. Everything you want baseball to be. So, for it to end on a called strike three by home plate umpire Cory Blaser on a Mason Miller slider that was clearly below the zone was such a gut punch, not just to the Dominican Republic players, whose country cares more about the WBC than any, but to a game that deserved better. ABS cannot come soon enough because this should be about the quality of the game, which was tremendous, and not the bitter taste left due to human fallibility.”

Unethical Website of the Month: “Caffeinated Politics (Opinions And Musings By Gregory Humphrey)”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Veteran EA commenter Steve Witherspoon reads this steaming pile of cripplingly-biased progressive delusions so I don’t have to, but the most recent example of Humphrey’s smug doltery was too much to bear. As a result of Steve bringing it to my attention (again), the site put me in mind of yesterday’s post about how professionals—strictly speaking, those who eschew worldly pleasures in order to do good for the public, civilization and the human race—ought to have a baseline, minimal level of intelligence to qualify for roles that must be filled by trustworthy people. Stupid, ignorant people are not trustworthy. That’s the concept in a metaphorical nutshell.

It’s possible, even likely, that Gregory Humphrey hasn’t always been stupid, but his self-description makes it clear that he has been the victim of Left-infused bias for a very long time, so it would be remarkable if his brain hadn’t atrophied as a result. He describes himself as “a book author…podcaster… political blogger…historian…former radio broadcaster…and former Admin. Asst. WI State Assembly, Gay American.” No field has jumped the political shark any worse than historians, gays of Humphrey’s generation are almost all alienated from the Right because of its stubborn refusal to reject the ancient justification for regarding them as “sinful,” and well, you know, Wisconsin. To be fair, I should probably give Greg a pass for being made stupid by bias, except that in his full-throated advocacy of woke insanity, he is making other people stupid. I can’t forgive that.

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Unethical Quote of the Month and Axis Media “Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much” Tweet of the Century”: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Ethics Alarms had flagged CNN’s incompetence and bias too often already this week: it was getting boring. Then the network, damn them, forced me to write about its crummy ethics again, by posting that ludicrous protest above.

Here is the “journalism” CNN stands behind:

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March Madness Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3-14-2026

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A brief “The Unabomber Was Right” update: yesterday I explained how changes to my Apple phone caused me to miss a planned appointment because I couldn’t figure out the new “improved” alarm setting process. Later, the phone creeped me out. I had intentionally not put my email account on my phone because of security concerns, because people scrolling through their messages when I’m with them annoys the hell out of me, and because I didn’t know how to install it even if I wanted to. At exactly 5:47pm, my email inbox appeared on my phone anyway, without any directive from me, at least not a deliberate one. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation, but I don’t think I’ll like it.

Meanwhile…

1. Professor Turley is alarmed at the quality of faculty members elite universities are hiring now. “Welcome to the party, pal!” He writes in part,

“Professor Muhammad Abdou, who until recently taught students at Columbia University, appeared online this week to spread calls for religious-based violence and glorify the murder of Jews. He did so as part of an event at the Union Theological Seminary, an institution associated with Columbia. While the university recently ended Abdou’s teaching, it is important to remember that this unhinged fanatic was previously chosen by Columbia faculty and administrators to teach their students. Those individuals remain at Columbia… The Islamic studies scholar called on students to “be a threat” as part of the event titled “Death to the Akademy: How to be a thorn in their throat amidst snakes in the grass.” …Abdou told the students: “Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don’t engage in wanton violence, but we don’t accept the negative peace either.”…He praised Elias Rodriguez, the man facing multiple charges for the murder of a young Jewish couple. In what Abdou called the “assassination of two Zionists,” Rodriguez is accused of murdering Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, the two Israeli employees in 2025 in Washington.

“He then reportedly praised their accused killer: “God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives.” [His speech] is reminiscent of the speech of other radical faculty like Cornell Professor Russell Rickford, who celebrated the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7th. Their extremism was not a barrier to being hired. It was likely an enhancement.

“They are examples of why faculty members are unlikely to change the overwhelmingly liberal appointments. Conservatives and libertarians have been largely purged from most departments. While even a moderately conservative faculty candidate will often face organized opposition, radicals like Abdou and Rickford find an eager audience on faculties….Abdou offers just pure hate. There is no discernible intellectual content or insight. Just rage masquerading as scholarship.”

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Julia Angwin

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“I guess it’s no surprise that Superhuman believed it could, in my opinion, break the law. We live in a world where A.I. companies are grabbing every bit of writing, art and music without consent. Where our president is launching wars without the consent of Congress that our Constitution requires. Where Jeffrey Epstein spent years coercing girls too young to provide consent into sexual relations”

—NYT “investigative journalist” Julia Angwin, dragging a flase and ignorant attack on President Trump into her op-ed about a lawsuit having nothing whatsoever to do with him.

Once again, I challenge the oblivious defenders of the New York Times and those who insist that the Axis news media isn’t a full-time Democratic propaganda operation to defend a passage that should never have made it into print.

The essay was headlined, “Why I’m Suing Grammarly,” and the writer had a valid and interesting story to tell on a hot topic: the failings of artificial intelligence. The A.I. editing service Grammarly apparently attaches the names of prominent writers to some of its re-write suggestions. Not only have the writers “quoted” not agreed to the use of their names and authority, the suggestions attributed to them might make them sound like unpublished hacks. Angwin writes,

“Like all writers, I live by my wits. My ability to earn a living rests on my ability to craft a phrase, to synthesize an idea, to make readers care about people and places they can only access through words on a page. Grammarly hadn’t checked with me before using my name. I only learned that an A.I. company was selling a deepfake of my mind from an article online. And it wasn’t just me. Superhuman — the parent company of Grammarly — made fake editor versions of a range of people…In my home state of New York, the century-old right of publicity law prohibits a person’s name or image from being used for commercial purposes without her consent. At least 25 states have similar publicity statutes. And now, I’m using this law to fight back. I am the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Superhuman in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that it violated New York and California publicity laws by not seeking consent before using our names in a paid service…”

Fascinating and informative…and absolutely irrelevant to President Trump, the Iran War and the Constitution. But Julia couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t help herself because she is surrounded all day by Trump Deranged hysterics and bubble-dwelling boobs who spend every waking hour hating everything the President of the United States says or does, so she couldn’t resist inserting an attack on POTUS in her column, even though it was as wrong as it is was gratuitous.

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