“bias makes you stupid”

Open Forum, “I Wasn’t Going To Have One But Then My Head Exploded” Edition….

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

We just had an open forum a few days ago, so I was going to skip the Friday Forum. Then I read this, my head exploded, I already was struggling because I didn’t sleep at all last night, so I need some time to mop up and repack my head:

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Minnesota Wednesday for its laws that provide free and reduced tuition rates to illegal aliens. The laws, a DOJ press release contends, unconstitutionally discriminate against out-of-state U.S. citizens, who are not afforded the same privileges at Minnesota’s public colleges and universities….According to the lawsuit [“…which names Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Minnesota Office of Higher Education as defendants”], federal law prohibits states from providing illegal aliens with any post secondary education benefit that is denied to U.S. citizens….The lawsuit explains how a 2013 state law allows illegal aliens who establish residency in Minnesota to benefit from reduced, in-state tuition rates….Additionally, the DFL-controlled Minnesota Legislature established in 2023 a free tuition program for students whose families make less than $80,000 annually. Illegal aliens are eligible for the program. The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court to declare the laws unconstitutional and prohibit their enforcement.

“We are reviewing the lawsuit and will vigorously defend the state’s prerogative to offer affordable tuition to both citizen and non-citizen state residents,” a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said.”

KABOOM!

A few rueful points, and then you write about whatever you want…

  • Why are we just hearing about this now, when the knuckleheaded governor of Minnesota was running from August 2024 to November to be a heartbeat from the Presidency? Why didn’t Trump confront Harris with that insanity? Why did no one in the news media, Axis or not, report on it?
  • These laws are the equivalents of “Welcome, illegal immigrants!” invitations to break the law, with Minnesota being a “sanctuary state.” Minnesota citizens are that stupid, or in the alternative, that clown car crazy? How did they get that way? Can they be treated? 
  • What logic can possibly justify this?
  • Note that the Minnesota AG is still obfuscating, not having the honesty of integrity to call a metaphorical spade a spade. “Non-citizen state residents”! The state lies, cheats and steals under Walz, but this is what the Democratic Party now stands for. No wonder he thinks he has a shot at the Presidential nomination in 2028.

Back to brain clean-up…

Unethical Rendition of the National Anthem Ethics: Regarding Broadway Diva Kristin Chenoweth

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Kristin Chenoweth, the long-time Broadway soprano who has won accolades for, among other triumphs, her performance as Glinda in “Wicked, has been getting flamed on social media and elsewhere for her performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” before the NBA’s Championship Finals.

Another performing soprano I know and trust was horrified at Kristin’s rendition, writing me, “She needs to be put out to pasture for this. There’s not a single redeeming quality about it. I can’t believe how amateur her technique and choices are. Shameful and disappointing.  I used to think she was talented. Now I just think she’s made a career out of being a hack.”

Continue reading →

Do You Have Any Clue Regarding Whether the US Bombing of the Iranian Nuclear Facilities Were Successful or Not? I Don’t.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I just heard President Trump at his press conference, rambling as only he can, declare that the news outlets claiming his surprise bunker-busters attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not as effective as the U.S. claimed were “losers” and liars. Meanwhile, a CNN article, followed by the New York Times, citing leaked classified documents, and thus unnamed sources of those illegally retrieved materials, announced that “Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say.” Reporters Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, and Zachary Cohen wrote that “the US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by four people briefed on it.” It continued, “The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Anti-American Professor

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I know, I know…there are a lot of these, probably many thousands, but most manage to pretend to not be likely to mold vulnerable young minds in to wanting their own fellow citizens dead. Georgetown Professor Jonathan Brown, however is special.

He is a full professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University [above] and the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization. He is clearly the campus cheerleader, one of them anyway, for Islam, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I would personally have Brown frisked for strap-on bombs if he was ever a guest at one of my dinner parties, however. Fortunately, I am as likely to ever be in a position to hold a dinner party as I am to clone a passenger pigeon.

On Twitter/X he wrote last week, among other things, “I’m not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops…I’m surprised this is what these FDD/Hasbara people have been auto-erotically asphyxiating themselves for all these years…Ironically, the main takeaways (in my non-expert opinion, and I’m happy to be corrected) from all this have nothing to do with a US attack: 1) Iran can take a licking; 2) if Israel attacks Iranian cities, it gets fucked up pretty bad. I mean I’ve been shocked at the damage Iranian missiles caused; 3) despite his best efforts, Reza Pahlavi HVAC repair services still only third best in Nova.”

When his post came to light and some harsh criticism began coming his way, Brown quickly made his account private so nobody but fellow Jihadists could see what he’s thinking, and wrote, “I deleted my previous tweet because a lot of people were interpreting it as a call for violence. That’s not what I intended. I have two immediate family members in the US military who’ve served abroad and wouldn’t want any harm to befall American soldiers” Brown later deleted that post too.

Imagine anyone thinking that his published hope for an Iranian strike on a U.S. base was a call for violence! What’s the matter with these people?

Fox News did some journalism and revealed that Brown is married to a journalist for the television network Al Jazeera and that her father was deported to Turkey for supporting and aiding an Iranian terrorist organization.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Should there be any adverse consequences to Brown, or any similarly behaving professor, for his social media outburst?

Continue reading →

Harvard Tries To Save Face; the Problem Is That It Is the Ethics Villain Here, Not the Trump Administration

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

We are learning that in spite of its grandstanding and feigned defiance of the Trump demands that it stop engaging in left-wing indoctrination, allowing an anti-Jewish environment to fester on campus, and engaging in viewpoint discrimination in hiring (along with other unethical conduct), Harvard is quietly (it hopes) negotiating some level of reform along the lines of the Trump Administration’s letter of April 11.

Quietly, because Harvard’s overwhelmingly leftist, totalitarian-tilting, progressive activist faculty wants to have their campus advance only one world view, the “right” one, and because of the sinister influence of that faculty, its student body overwhelmingly believes likewise. In the Trump Deranged world where most academics, scholars, journalists, lawyers and, of course, Democrats dwell, publicly deriding and defying the President of the United States is simply opposing fascism and the forces of darkness, even if the least intellectually crippled of them recognize deep down that President Trump is on the correct side of an issue. He is on the right side of this one.

Continue reading →

Popeye Time: I Am Finally Forced Into Responding To Woke Nonsense on Facebook…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

A genuine, respected and dear friend re-posted this on Facebook:

Dr. Kristina Rizzotto created that thing; she is apparently a professional musician, so her doctorate isn’t in philosophy, public policy, law, or, clearly, linguistics. Shut up and play, Kristina.

Like Popeye, that was all I could stands ‘cuz I can’t stands no more, and I finally posted, after a good ten minutes of self-wrestling, this in response:

“Ugh. I don’t even want to wade into this, but come on. DEI is not the equivalent of three ethical virtues in a vacuum, and sure, diversity is nice; not not necessary or necessarily beneficial: the NBA doesn’t seek out white and Asian players to make it more “diverse,” because diversity doesn’t win basketball games. “Equity” means fairness, but the nation is built on equality of opportunity, not guaranteed equality of results, which is what “equity” means in the context of DEI. “Inclusion” is also nice, if it means the absence of deliberate arbitrary exclusion. If it means inclusion for the sake of inclusion, who said that’s virtuous or sensible? Who made that rule?

“Dr. Kristina is ducking the issue with intellectual dishonesty. Inclusion should be based on merit. Excluding anyone who would qualify for inclusion on merit, based on their sex, ethnicity, skin color, sexual orientation or physical characteristics is per se bias and illegal discrimination, and playing word games to deceive the inattentive and gullible into thinking otherwise is unconscionable. Similarly, black lives matter, but Black Lives Matter is a racist movement and a scam organization. Do better, Dr.”

I’m sure I’ll regret it.

And Another “Good Illegal Immigrant” Sob Story From the Times…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I feel constrained to post this after someone suggested that in the Bret Stephens essay I was bestowing Ethics Hero status on the Axis media’s top propaganda mouthpiece. The op-ed by professional illegal immigration romanticizer Isabel Castro (above) is a far more representative piece in a genre the Times is particularly fond of: demanding sympathy for individuals facing deportation entirely because of their own choices and conduct.

The title is a hoot: “How the ICE Raids Are Warping Los Angeles.” It is like a Chicago paper during the Prohibition and Capone’s zenith publishing a column called “How the FBI is Warping Chicago.” A sample..

Continue reading →

The U.S. Bombing of Iran Is Not an Ethics Issue

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It’s a leadership issue.

I generally don’t want to wander into policy debates unless there is a clear ethical component. Competence. Honesty. Responsibility. Results, as we discuss here so often, are usually the result of moral luck. All we can do, in situations involving high-level leadership decision-making, is evaluate what the basis of the decision was, and the process under which it was made. What happens after that is moral luck, chaos, essentially. As an ethicist, I try not to base my analysis on whether I agree with the decision or not from a policy or pragmatic perspective.

In military and foreign policy decisions, the absence of clear ethical standards are especially rife. There are some who regard any military action at all except in reaction to an attack on the U.S. as unethical, and sometimes not even in that circumstance. They are absolutists: war is wrong, killing is wrong, “think of the children,” and that’s all there is to it. Such people are useless except as necessary reminders that Sherman was right.

President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities is a matter of leadership, not ethics. Leaders lead, and are willing to make tough, often risky, decisions. The U.S. Presidency requires leadership, and strong leadership is not only preferable to weak leadership, it is what the majority of Americans has traditionally preferred. The Constitution clearly shows the Founders’ preference for a strong executive branch, particularly in the area of national defense. Yesterday, the President took advantage of the Constitution’s general approval of executive leadership when national security is involved.

Continue reading →

Off With Their Heads! The Unsustainable Echo Chamber of Bluesky

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Guest Column by A M Golden

[From your host: I held this excellent guest column submission for about a week, waiting for a propitious time to post it. JD Vance’s adventure on the platform, which I discussed here, was exactly the context I was waiting for. And it gives me an0ther chance to feature Bing….JM]

Anyone who doubts the uniqueness of the American Revolution need only to look to France several years later when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille and set up a Republic.  As revolutions were wont to do, those who replaced the guys in charge eventually demanded that everyone follow their ideas in lockstep.  Those who did not were accused of lacking sufficient revolutionary fervor and risked literally losing their heads.  The self-righteous Jacobins who forced this pure ideology eventually devoured themselves as, again, revolutionaries are wont to do, until the head Jacobin, Robespierre, eventually lost his own head and disenchantment led to the installation of Napoleon as Top Dog.

That should have happened in the United States, too.  Despite the passions of the Federalists and the Jeffersonian anti-Federalists, though some nasty words were printed and spoken aloud, no one was murdered for his lack of purity (unless you count Alexander Hamilton, which I don’t because that was less an ideological battle than a personal grudge).

Ever since talented-but-socially-awkward Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X and antagonized all those people who bought his so-called climate-friendly vehicles, those same Tesla owners have flocked to every other faddish social media that promises 24/7 Trump/Musk hate in addition to freedom from having to be exposed to the opinions of those who disagree with them.

It was one of our illustrious commentators here (I do not remember which one.  I apologize.  It’s been three years and I’ve slept since then) who suggested that many of the Hollywood types would realize their mistake when they exchange 80,000 followers for 80.  That person was right.

I have belonged to Facebook for years.  I’ve tried Instagram but find it unwieldy and boring.  I couldn’t help it, however, when one of my favorite performers made the Grand Announcement that he was headed over to the new Post.News in 2022, which promised conversations “moderated for civility”.  It took ten days to get me onboarded and I found the place to be overwhelmingly progressive….and small. 

Don’t get me wrong, there was a huge influx of members.  Then nothing.  Some of them even proposed that members try to make a positive platform there by building a community not based on complaining about the platform they’d just left.  I heavily curated what I followed and then began contributing content on a daily basis: I recommended books on history that I’d read myself.  I amassed over 30 followers over the next 18 months; the favorite performer barely broke 100.

Ultimately, though, it was not a sustainable platform. It folded.  Once again, members were looking for places to hide from the world, including Favorite Performer, and were pulled into Bluesky.  This time, I didn’t take the plunge.

Now, it appears that Bluesky has reached its ideological saturation point.  This week, Megan McArdle wrote this entry in the Washington Post: Bluesky’s decline stems from never hearing from other side .

Continue reading →

The ABA Is Defending Its Racially Discriminatory Scholarships…Of Course It Is.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Res ipsa loquitur, no?

In April, the American Alliance for Equal Rights led by Edward Blum, the scourge of affirmative action and “good discrimination” policies, filed a complaint in an Illinois federal court alleging that the American Bar Association’s 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship discriminates against white applicants. Since their skin color renders them unable to apply, this contention seems beyond debate. The question is whether, as a trade association, the ABA has a right to discriminate.

The Alliance said it is representing an unnamed white male law school applicant who says that he would apply for the $15,000 Legal Opportunity Scholarship were he not prevented from doing so because he is the “wrong” race. The ABA awards between 20 and 25 such scholarships annually to incoming law students, according to its website, which is excerpted above.

I should have covered this in April: sorry. [Believe me, if I could find a way to work on the blog full-time without ending up living on cat food and in a shack by the docks, I would.] Anyway, this kind of thing is why I do not pay dues to the ABA, and why I am suspicious of any lawyer who does. It is an interesting case. I assumed that Blum would lose if the case proceeded, and that his main objective was to shame the ABA into opening up the race-based scholarships to all. But the ABA has no shame. And I knew that.

The American Bar Association responded to Blum’s suit this week, arguing that a scholarship program designed to boost diversity among law students is protected free speech. The 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship, the largest lawyer association in the nation asserts, is protected under the First Amendment. In its motion to dismiss the ABA also claimed that plaintiff American Alliance for Equal Rights lacks standing to sue.

Continue reading →