“bias makes you stupid”

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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Once Again, “The View” Raises the Issue of Whether There Needs to Be a “Stupidity Rule” For Professions

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Back in 2024, I posited, only half in jest, that “The View’s” resident lawyer on the all-female idiot panel, Sunny Hostin, had made such a stupid assertion on the program that it should trigger legal ethics Rule 8.3, which mandates that a lawyer who has knowledge of another lawyer’s conduct that substantially calls into question that individual’s fitness to practice law must—must—report that unfit lawyer to bar authorities for professional discipline. Hostin had surmised that “climate change” causes earthquakes and eclipses, and stated this cretinous conclusion on national television, on an ABC News program, which is what “The View” purports to be.

I wrote in part (and in disgust):

“[S]ome people with law licenses are demonstrably too stupid to be trusted by clients. Hostin is screaming proof of the validity of this conclusion, yet there is nothing in the disciplinary rules governing the minimal ethics requirements of lawyers that mentions basic, personal intellectual competence as a mandatory component of professional, legal competence.

There should be. One would think that the challenge of graduating from law school and passing the bar exam would be sufficient to ensure that a lawyer is at least smart enough to come in out of the rain, but in extreme cases like Sunny, one would be wrong….believing that climate change causes solar eclipses is signature significance. You can’t come to such an idiotic conclusion and not be an idiot. This delusion [shows] a crippling deficit in critical thinking skills. One cannot be a trustworthy lawyer without minimal critical thinking skills. When a lawyer demonstrates such a deficit beyond a shadow of a doubt, that ought to be considered a legitimate reason for disbarment.”

Remember, professionals are special members of society whose important roles require that they be trustworthy. True professionals include the clergy, doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officials, military leaders, public servants, accountants, psychiatrists, and teachers, and though it sounds absurd today, journalists. Really, really stupid people are not trustworthy, in fact it is dangerous to trust them. If they are sufficiently stupid, they should not hold any of those societal roles and positions.

Ethics Alarms, as those of you who have read the commenting rules here know, has among its provisions that the moderator, that’s me, may at his discretion ban a commenter who has demonstrated to my dissatisfaction that said commenter is too intellectually deficient to contribute substantively to the discussions. I believe that I have only had to invoke it twice.

Which brings me back to “The View”…

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The Ignorant Axis “Lobstergate” Nonsense

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I’m going to rely heavily on Michael West’s commentary on this morning’s Open Forum, because 1) I was all set to post on this when my computer crashed 2) when I finally got it up and (sort of) running, I saw that he had covered the topic well in the first entries on our weekly ethics free-for-all.

The National Review, still a pit of NeverTrump die-hards, did a good job covering the latest desperation Axis bile, the petty criticism of the Trump War Department for giving the troops steak and lobster dinners. A disgusted veteran on the staff wrote in part,

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The Rest of the Story: CNN’s Abbe Phillip Forced To Issue On Air Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

As chronicled here, CNN’s talking heads lied repeatedly in an attempt to blame the attempted terrorist bombing in New York City on anti-Muslim, right-wing bigots. First Abbe Phillip repeated the Big Lie that had already been proven false, then she deceitfully continued it with a misleading “clarification” on X, and then “The View’s” fake conservative Ana Navarro repeated the fake Axis narrative a day later. The criticism of Phillip’s lie was so loud on social media that CNN apparently told their incompetent (but black and female, so she will be hard to fire) to do an on air apology, so we got this:

Verdict: 1. Too late. 2. Not good enough. She’s still lying.

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Jesse Jackson Jr. Properly Slams Obama and Biden for Trying To Turning His Father’s Funeral Into An Anti-Trump Campaign Rally

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Well good for him.

Jackson said, during a private memorial service at Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago, that “[Y]esterday, I listened for several hours to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson.”

He continued,

“He maintained a tense relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were white or black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these — those who are disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected — demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent, prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as people. And it speaks volumes about who the Rev. Jesse Jackson was.”

Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Joe Biden all used their eulogies to attack the President and his policies, though, as you might have guessed, Harris was the most obnoxious and made the least sense. “Let me just say I predicted a lot about what’s happening right now,” Harris smirked. “I’m not into saying I told you so but we did see it coming.” I’d love to ask her what it was exactly that she “saw coming.” The forceful repudiation of the weak, zombie administration she was part of? The voters’ rejection of her embarrassing DEI candidacy? Her running mate’s utter disgrace and exposure as a corrupt hack?

Jackson’s was a subtle and measured rebuke, so subtle and measured that most of the Axis media felt it necessary to ignore it. Many, realizing how inappropriate it was for Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to turn attention away from Jackson’s father and onto their hatred of Donald Trump at Jesse Jackson Sr.’s funeral, also worked to hide the Democrats’ nauseating conduct from the public…after all, there’s an election coming!

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Personal Taste Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In a Sunday post on Powerline, Scott Johnson, an unrepentant Hall & Oates fan, begins a review of a recent John Oates concert by writing, “John Oates is one-half of what is generally recognized as the most successful duo in music history.” And thus did he fall into the eternal trap awaiting those who state matters of personal taste as fact.

I’ve fallen into it myself. It is hard not to: once your mind has locked itself into an opinion about what is “best” and what/who/where is better than whatever/whoever/wherever, confirmation bias takes over, and objective thought is nearly impossible.

Johnson was, as I knew the second I read that sentence, dragged to the metaphorical woodshed by his readers. Wrote one, in the second comment on the post, “John Oates is one-half of what is generally recognized as the most successful duo in music history? Maybe by sales. But in terms of their work, let me introduce you to the music of Simon & Garfunkel. Then the Everly Brothers. Then the Carpenters. Then Ike & Tina Turner.” Another wrote, “My guess is that Scott included that appraisal just to raise some feathers.
‘Maybe by sales.”‘Actually, I’d guess that the first three you mention sold way more records than Hall and Oates. Musically speaking, my candidate for the most successful duo might be Steely Dan, which, for most of its tenure, was really the duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker with various backing musicians.”

Next came this: “Yes to Simon and Garfunkel. Yes to Phil and Don. No to the Carpenters and heck no to Ike and Tina.”

Now in my case, and by my tastes, I would rank Simon and Garfunkle way ahead of Hall and Oates, and the Everly Brothers as well. No, of course The Carpenters aren’t in the same league, though Karen Carpenter was the greatest vocalist ever to sing with any rock or pop duo. Another group didn’t last as long, and perhaps this is because my college room mate played their Greatest Hits album day and night, but I rank the Righteous Brothers ahead of Hall and Oates as well.

Such absolute verdicts also risk being incomplete and ill-informed because of bias blindness. I wondered about another duo who made their mark in the decidedly uncool genre of “easy listening” music, but they were damn good, and lasted a long time. The piano duo Ferrante & Teicher recorded over 150 albums, were fixtures on the variety TV shows of the Fifties and Sixties, and sold over 90 million records worldwide during their career. From the 1950s until they retired in 1989, they earned 22 gold and platinum records, dwarfing the output of both Hall and Oates and Paul and Artie.

You have to admit, as that video of them playing one of their biggest hits, “The Theme From Exodus,” the piano boys did what they did as well as it was possible to do it, for a long time, and with a lot of admirers.

Be Proud, Democrats! This Is The Face of Your Party:

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Nice! And Carville speaks for if not all, a majority of the Axis. I defy anyone to justify this with facts and logic as opposed to an appeal to emotion. There is no justification, and Carville’s party’s determination to make hatred for the nation’s elected leader viral and controlling of our nation’s fate and policies is ethically indefensible.

Nor do I care to hear protests that Carville is an outlier. A showboat, yes, but he is expressing exactly what the American Left has allowed to sustain its agenda. Hate. Ugly, corrosive, irrational, destructive hate. We saw the antics of Democrats during the State of the Union, and it was only a slight escalation of Speaker Nancy Pelosis despicable conduct during Trumps 2020 SOTU. The democrats are all Carvillized. Some just hide it better than others.

Amazingly, most of the hate is rooted in bitterness and bad sportsmanship. Democrats lost power because they proved themselves dishonest, corrupt and incompetent…and their reaction to losing is anger? Fury? Hatred of the man who beat them? How juvenile. How embarrassing.

How unethical.

How sad.

Welcome To Unethical Rationalization 31A, “The Hypocrite’s Balm,” or “Any Port in a Storm!”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is the first new rationalization added to the rationalizations list in a long time, though I have at least two others I have been pondering for a while. Rationalization #31 A, however hit me like Pete Buttigieg’s imaginary maul when a respected legal ethicist wrote on the listserv for the Association of Professional Liability Lawyers today that “Lefties” like him were suddenly embracing state’s rights in response to the need to “resist” President Trump, and attempted to justify this reversal by shrugging, “Any port in a storm!”

And there it was. I could hardly believe that wasn’t on the list already, but it wasn’t. I assigned “The Hypocrite’s Balm” as a sub-rationalization to the infamous #31, The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.” I also could have placed it under #25. The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!,” but it is distinct from both.

#31 stands for brutal Utilitarianism, “the ends justify the means.” #25 is the whine of someone who is too cowardly to make the kind of tough ethical choice that has unpleasant non-ethical consequences. But “Any port in a storm” is the motto of activists who decide that their minds are made up, facts and logic no longer appeal to them, and they are willing to ally themselves with beliefs, organizations, individuals and missions that they have previously reviled in order to avoid admitting they may have been wrong, or that they should reassess their position based on new information, experience, or the metaphorical ice water of reality being thrown in their faces.

Rationalization #31 A describes the warped, desperate and destructive mindset of the Axis of Unethical Conduct today along with the Trump Deranged. So obsessed are they with their hatred of Donald Trump and the fact that he has at least temporarily derailed the Mad Left’s march to single party, nanny state, multicultural, anti-American DEI dominance that they are willing to anchor themselves in “ports” sane liberals would have avoided like ebola in the recent past.

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A Quick Ethics Villains Inventory…[Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

A lot of unethical junk has been flying around lately, and just to keep my brain clear (and yours) I feel the need to take stock. This isn’t a complete list, of course, just one that includes miscreants whose conduct and/or character I feel need additional attention here…

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