Character

Pro-Abortion Ethics: Amanda Marcotte’s Defense Of The Planned Parenthood Fetal Organ-Harvesting Video Is Even Uglier Than The Video Itself

/ Jack Marshall / 75 Comments

Planned Parenthood is hustling to deal with the public relations embarrassment of a sting video (above) by an anti-abortion group, catching a PP executive enthusiastically discussing the harvesting of tiny livers and other fetal organs.

Over lunch at a Los Angeles restaurant, two of the group’s activists, posing as employees from a biotech firm, met with Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical research. They made a surreptitious video capturing Nucatola over a three-hour span as she chatted about Planned Parenthood’s work providing fetal tissue to researchers. The hit job—these stings are per se unethical, no matter what they reveal, no matter who they target, and no matter how virtuous their motives—emerged as a shortened, edited version of the session featuring the most disturbing  of Nucatera’s comments. The group responsible, the Center for Medical Progress, is accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally trafficking in aborted fetal organs.What is more significant from an ethical perspective, however, is the stunning callousness of this executive’s attitude toward unborn human beings.

She casually describes “crushing” fetuses so that their internal organs remain usable for research. “I’d say a lot of people want liver,” she as she munches on a salad. ( I wonder if she a vegan, since it’s, you know, unethical to kill animals for food, and we’re so cruel to cattle and chickens. ) “And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.”

Nucatera later boasts, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

I continue to believe that a tipping point may lie ahead for the abortion controversy. When a cultural equivalent of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” cuts through the deceit and fantasy, forcing the public to confront the ethical and moral depravity of the most extreme pro-abortion position, civilization may come to view the current period with shame akin to how we now look at the slavery era.

Maybe not, however. I don’t understand how the ghoulish rhetoric of abortion advocates hasn’t already had this effect. Perhaps the ethical corruption of the culture on the topic of destroying innocent human life in the womb has already proceeded too far. Perhaps groups like Planned Parenthood have succeeded in imbedding the factually untenable concept that the welfare and life of only one individual is at stake in an abortion choice, rather than two. Continue reading →

Baseball All-Star Game Ethics Musings: Taking Confirmation Bias Out Of Appeal Plays, and More

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Max-Scherzer

Some baseball ethics musings on the night of the All-Star Game:

1. Why is MLB going ahead with letting Pete Rose take a bow at the All-Star Game? This made sense–barely–when it was announced, since Pete is a hometown hero despite being a rest-of-the-world slime-ball. But after that announcement, it was revealed that Rose had bet on baseball as a player, thus rendering all of his statements to the contrary the lies they were. He should have been banned from the game just to make sure this latest revelation of his sliminess adds something to his punishment.

2. The best ethics controversy of the 2015 season’s first half? This: Washington National pitcher Max Scherzer was one strike away from a perfect game, leading  the Pirates in a 6-0 win, but hit Jose Tabata with a pitch to make it “only” an-hitter. A perfect game is 27 consecutive, outs, and the most difficult feat in baseball. Tabata had fouled off four pitches, before he  was hit on the elbow. Many believed that he that Tabata allowed the ball to hit him intentionally, just to wreck the masterpiece. This violates one of the “unwritten rules” of baseball, which are ethics rules. After all, any perfect game could be ruined the same way, and the pitcher is powerless to stop it. This is correctly deemed to be unfair to the pitcher, the fans, and the game.

Real rules also are involved. A batter hit by a pitch is supposed to be awarded first base only if he attempts to avoid a pitch or doesn’t have an opportunity to avoid it. If the ball is in the strike zone when it hits the batter, it should be called a strike, according to the Rule Book:  “If the ball is outside the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a ball if he makes no attempt to avoid being touched.” (Rule 6.08(b).)

Thus  home plate umpire Mike Muchlinski could have awarded Tabata a ball to make it a 3-2 count if he felt Tabata should have gotten out of the way.

Seven points:
Continue reading →

Of Atticus Finch, “Go Set A Watchman,” And Icon Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

AtticusToday Harper Lee’s “sequel” to “To Kill A Mockingbird” is officially released, though reviews have already been published. The big story is that the new novel’s now grown “Scout” discovers during the civil rights upheavals of the 1950s that her father and hero Atticus Finch is a racist, had attended a Klan meeting, and is prone to saying things like …

“Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

The new Atticus is providing ammunition to those who enjoy tearing down American heroes and icons. Finch is perhaps the most revered fictional lawyer in American culture, admired by the public as well as the legal profession. The American Bar Association named its award for fictional portrayals of lawyers in films and literature after Finch, whose pro bono defense of a wrongly accused black man in a bigoted Alabama town forms the central conflict of Lee’s classic. Burnishing Atticus’s reputation further was the beloved portrayal of the character, reputedly based on the author’s father, by Gregory Peck in the Academy Award winning film adaptation. Peck received the Award for Best Actor as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and as a civil-rights activist often stated that he admired Finch over all his other roles. In 2003, American Film Institute voted Finch as the greatest hero in American film.Wrote Entertainment Weekly, “[Finch] transforms quiet decency, legal acumen, and great parenting into the most heroic qualities a man can have.”

Atticus, however, has had his detractors through the years, notable among them the late Monroe Freedman, a  habitual iconoclast and contrarian who wrote two law review articles declaring that Finch was neither hero nor a particularly admirable lawyer. He wrote in part: Continue reading →

A Brief Statement Regarding Hillary Clinton And Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

An ethics professor just wrote to announce that he was ceasing to follow the blog because

“you have become a one note Hillary basher and compromised your disinterest.”

1. I do not bash Hillary Clinton. I accurately point out her serial unethical conduct and statements. I am an expert in non-profit ethics, and her foundation is unethical. I an an expert in government ethics, and her conduct in relation to both her foundation and her State Department e-mails was unethical. I am an ethicist, and she could not get through her first substantial interview without multiple deceits, misrepresentations and lies. Pointing these out, especially when the news media is not doing its job, is my duty and mission. Apparently a lot of people don’t know this woman is unethical. I am obligated to enlighten them if I can.

2. My main area of scholarship and my personal passion, is leadership and the American Presidency. The Democratic Party, to its shame, is trying to make this unqualified and corrupt woman President of the United States. Naturally this is of deep concern to me, as it ought to be for every American.

3. Even considering this, the blog has hardly been all-Hillary. I just checked: there have been exactly  three Hillary-themed posts in the last 50. FIFTY. Five-O. Gee, sorry, Professor, that the ethical corruption of the presumptive President of the United States occupies my ethics blog’s attention 6% of the time.

4. The Clintons’ master strategy for escaping all of their schemes and deceptions is to deny, obfuscate and throw up smokescreens until the public gets sick of the controversy, and tunes out. It’s a good, if cynical strategy, but it won’t work with me.

5. I will cease writing timely blogs about Hillary’s Clinton’s unethical conduct when

  • She stops lying.
  • The new scandals, schemes, and cover-ups stop materializing.
  • The news media starts doing its job.
  • The public shows sufficient comprehension of how corrupt she is.
  • She is no longer running for President.

And not before.

 

Tragic, Corrupted, Complicit Camille Cosby

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Camile Cosby: author, psychologist, corrupt accomplice to a sexual predator

Camile Cosby: author, psychologist, corrupt accomplice to a sexual predator

Apparently Bill Cosby’s wife Camille is telling confidantes that she believes all the woman drugged by her husband consented to sex, and that he is being unfairly treated by the news media as well as being unfairly accused by…what is it now, 40 women? I haven’t checked in the last few days.

She also admits that she always knew about her husband’s “infidelities,” and accepted them. Translation: she accepted creature comforts, status and money to enable her husband’s wrongdoing.

That this is a very old, ugly tradition that includes mothers who allow their husbands to sexually abuse their children, and even more horrific examples where wives look the other way while husbands kidnap and murder. In Mrs. Cosby’s case, she has made a deal with the devil, accepting the benefits of a spouse’s wealth and celebrity in exchange for placing her conscience in deep freeze. She has been covering up for her husband, lying by her silence, and sometimes lying out loud, as when she said last year , “He is the man you thought you knew.”

Did you think you knew that that the man who played Cliff Huxstable and wrote books about ethics cheated on his wife and had sex with young women under the influence of the drugs that he gave them? Well, actually I did: maybe Camille was referring to me.

Camille Crosby allowed and enabled Bill to engage in these activities, which were wrong no matter how they are interpreted: Continue reading →

The Bad News: Supporting Hillary Clinton Is Turning People Into Sociopaths. The Good News: It Revealed A New Rationalization For The Ethics Alarms List

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

shrug7

This is rationalization #49, The Apathy Defense, or “Nobody Cares.”

I encountered this rationalization in a roundabout way. I was reading the Mediaite account of Clinton paid liar Lanny Davis attempting to explain away Hillary’s blatant lie in the Recent CNN interview about how she “never had a subpoena” regarding the e-mails on the personal server she used to avoid transparency. The subpoena she was sent in March was promptly mad public by House Republicans, so Lanny was dispatched to the media dutifully spin Hillary’s lie away.

After hearing Davis argue that Clinton was speaking of a time when she had not received a subpoena yet, or maybe that she misunderstood the question,

Newsmax TV’s Steve Salzburg unfairly played the video of Clinton specifically saying “I’ve never had a subpoena.” Unfortunately for Hillary and Lanny, words have meaning.  It is true that Hillary didn’t have the subpoena when she destroyed the e-mails involved; it is also true that she knew the Benghazi committee wanted them. PolitiFact, biased and Democratic excuse-making “fact check” service, tries to cover for Hillary by claiming…

“On the other hand, House Republicans seized on Clinton’s claim without regard for the nuance of the question she was responding to — leading people who did not watch the interview in full to think Clinton said something that she really didn’t. They should be very familiar with the timeline here, as well. Suggesting that Clinton deleted emails while facing a subpoena contradicts what we know about the controversy so far.”

But she WAS facing a subpoena when she deleted the e-mails, because she knew one was coming. And “I’ve never had a subpoena” is what Clinton said. Regardless of the “nuance” of the question asked, that statement means I HAVE NEVER HAD A SUBPOENA.  She didn’t say “I didn’t have a subpoena.” She didn’t say “I never HAD a subpoena,” both of which would have sustained the interpretation Lanny and PolitiFact—who aren’t all that different, come to think of it—are trying to claim. But I HAVE NEVER HAD A SUBPOENA is unambiguous. It means not then, not now, not ever—never. That’s what it means. It cannot mean anything else. See, this is where Hillary is no Bill. Bill’s deceit is plausible; his sneaky sentences can be translated fairly to mean what he claims they meant, even though what he said was meant to deceive listeners into believing something else.  “Oh, you thought that by “sex” I meant oral sex?   Oh, no, I don’t consider oral sex to be sex. Sex is sexual intercourse where I come from!”  That’s Bill. Hillary’s statement, however, means only one thing. That one thing is demonstrably untrue. Thus, when Salzberg confronted Davis with the video, Lanny hung up.

It’s going to be a long, long year for Lanny. Pray for him. Continue reading →

Observations On The George W. Bush Speaking Fee Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
Paying George to speak is a little like paying Hillary to tell the truth...

Paying George to speak is a little like paying Hillary to tell the truth…

Former President George W. Bush was paid a speakers fee of $100,000 to address a charity fundraiser for U.S. military veterans severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The  Texas-based Helping a Hero charity also confirmed  that W. was also provided with a private jet to travel to Houston at a cost of $20,000.

Observations:

  • Neither the former President, nor anyone, is obligated to donate his time and effort any time a charity whistles, regardless of its worthy mission. He is also within his rights to charge whatever he chooses: nobody has to pay it.Would it be an ethical act to donate that fee back to the charity, or waive it entirely? Sure. Is it unethical not to do so? Of course not.
  • Why is this story suddenly all over the news and internet? Why, to protect Hillary Clinton, of course. This is another res ipsa loquitur example of the news media acting like Democratic Party operatives. They are trying an “everybody does it” excuse for Hillary’s greed; in turn, the former President’s defnders counter with #22, “It’s not the worst thing.”
  • “For him to be paid to raise money for veterans that were wounded in combat under his orders, I don’t think that’s right,” former Marine Eddie Wright, who lost both hands in a rocket attack in Iraq in 2004, complained to ABC News “You sent me to war. I was doing what you told me to do, gladly for you and our country and I have no regrets. But it’s kind of a slap in the face.” I’m sympathetic, but the argument is absurd. Wright was soldier, and had his duty; Bush was Commander-in-Chief, and had his. Wright wasn’t doing Bush a favor, and Bush owes him no more and no less than any other American. Wright’s argument would obligate Bush to appear, on demand, free of charge to every military and veterans group, or be accused, variously, of playing favorites, not properly respecting non-wounded veterans, and dozens of other equally unavoidable complaints.
  • Is $100,000 an unreasonable speaker’s fee for a former President? Well, if his presence on the dais raises a lot more than that, and the charity seems to think it does, then from a strictly economic standpoint, it is not unreasonable, nor unethical for him to charge it, nor unethical for a charity to pay it.

Continue reading →

“You Know I Can’t Hear You With All Those Ethics Alarms Ringing”: Hillary Clinton’s CNN Interview

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Hillary_Clinton_2016

The frightening thing—it should frighten Democrats more than anyone, but if they have let Hillary get this far, they may be beyond frightening—is that Hillary Clinton had a long time to prep for this interview—her first substantive one since announcing her candidacy, about five or six scandals ago—had a hand-picked, friendly interviewer, was not pressed to clarify any of her non-answers, obfuscations or incomprehensible blather, and she still came off looking defensive, evasive, and basically like Tommy Flanagan in drag.

Ethics Alarms were ringing so loudly that the interview was almost inaudible. My observations in bold….

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:  Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for talking to us today.  You’re here in Iowa for a couple of events.  You’re the front-runner in this state but we’re also seeing Bernie Sanders attract a lot of attention.  He has had big crowds here, 10,000 people in Wisconsin last week, 7,500 people in Maine last night. Why is it, do you think, that someone who is a self-described Democratic socialist is really attracting this organic interest that your campaign seems to be struggling a little bit with?

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE:  Well, first of all, I always thought this would be a competitive race.  So I am happy to have a chance to get out and run my campaign as I see fit and let other candidates do exactly the same.

Non-responsive. Also a lie: Clinton has always assumed she could get the nomination by just showing up.

I feel very good about where we are in Iowa.  We are signing up thousands of volunteers, people committed to caucus for us.  We have a committed supporter in every one of the 1,600 precincts.  And one of the things that I learned last time is it’s organize, organize, organize.  And you’ve got to get people committed.  And then they will follow through and then you bring more people.

Non-responsive.

So I feel very good about where my campaign is.  It’ll be three months and a few days that we’ve been at this.  I think I’ve learned a lot from listening to people in Iowa.  And it’s actually affected what I say and what I talk about on the campaign trail.

Non-responsive.

So I couldn’t be happier about my campaign.

Non-responsive. Pretending to open yourself to a candid question and answer session and then refusing to answer the very first question while pretending you did: Dishonest. Disrespectful.

KEILAR:  Senator Sanders  has talked about how, if he’s president, he would raise taxes.  In fact, he said to CNN’s Jake Tapper, he would raise them substantially higher than they are today, on big corporations, on wealthy Americans. Would you?

CLINTON:  I will be laying out my own economic policies.  Again, everybody has to run his or her own campaign.  And I’m going to be telling the American people what propose and how I think it will work and then we’ll let voters make up their minds.

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself actually let voters know what I stand for. After all, I’m a vagina. That’s what really matters.”

KEILAR:  Is raising taxes on the table?

CLINTON:  I’m going to put out my policies and I’ll other people speak to their policies because I think we have to both grow the economy faster and fairer so we have to do what will actually work in the short term, the medium term and the long term.  I will be making a speech about my economic proposals on Monday.  And then I look forward to the debate about them.

If Clinton made a speech Monday (July 7) about specific economic proposals, she did it in her closet, because all anyone actually heard was this.

KEILAR:  I’m wondering if you can address a vulnerability that we’ve seen you dealing with recently.  We see in our recent poll that nearly six in 10 Americans say they don’t believe that you’re honest and trustworthy. Do you understand why they feel that way?

CLINTON:  Well, I think when you are subjected to the kind of constant barrage of attacks that are largely fomented by and coming from the Right and –

The vast right wing conspiracy again! Ironic, because one very good reason people shouldn’t, and  many sane people actually do not, trust Hillary is when she made teh same accusation on the Today Show to Matt Lauer, claiming that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had been “largely fomented by and coming from the Right,” when in fact she knew otherwise and was lying for her husband.

KEILAR:  But do you bear any responsibility for that?

CLINTON:  – well, I – you know, I can only tell you that I was elected twice in New York against the same kind of onslaught.

“I got away with it before, didn’t I?” Continue reading →

Of Shoes and Socks, and the Soothing, Unethical Device of Lowered Obama Leadership Goals and Aspirations

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

shoes and socks

I had a friend in college named David, a talented musician and a funny guy, who one regaled me with his new theory of how to be a success and eliminate anxiety and stress in the bargain.

“See, we make ourselves miserable and guarantee failure by setting our goals impossibly high,” he said. “The secret to a happy, successful, care-free life is to set one’s goals extremely low. Last week, I was depressed because I had aimed at attending all my classes, writing 50 pages on my thesis, and finishing my reading assignments. I didn’t come close to accomplishing this, and I was miserable and guilty as a result.”

“Then I had an epiphany! Today I set my goal, my only one, as putting on my shoes and socks,” David explained. “That was it, the whole thing. Look! I did it! And it’s only noon!” He laughed and skipped away, not a care in the world.

I’m pretty sure he was kidding. Yet the Obama Administration, and its increasingly zombie-like, denial-motivated supporters, appears to have adopted this approach to leadership. Continue reading →

More All-Star Vote Cheating: A Lesson In How Corruption Spreads

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

KC-Royals-logo

Using computer technology to exceed the voting limitations of Major League Baseballs (sloppy, naive, badly-conceived) on-line voting rules to elect the American and National League All-Star teams, some Kansas City hackers managed to flood the virtual ballot box with enough votes to elect four Royals players to the squad (after a brief, frightening period when it looked like they would elect eight). Two of the starting Royal All-Stars, shortstop Alcides Escobar and catcher Salvador Perez, are clearly bogus victors who owe their slots and bonus provisions to the cheating ways of a couple of computer savvy fans—or, perhaps, a couple of assholes who distorted the vote, weakened the team, lessened the quality of the game and forced deserving players off the team because they could, to puff up their little pigeon chests with hacker pride.

Every year, MLB hold a supplemental election to let the fans choose among five candidates in each league who have impressive records but haven’t made the All-Star squad. That one is online only, and unlike the main vote, there are no limits to voting. With typical sensitivity (I don’t think the MLB’s leadership could define what cheating is with a gun at their heads), the brass ignored the obvious fact that someone in Kansas City was making a travesty out of the process, and paved the way for him/them/it to do it again. Sure enough, the one Royal on the list of candidates for the final slot, 3rd baseman Mike Moustakas, is leading the early returns. There are already six Royals on the team, not counting the manager, Ned Yost. Of course, MLB could have avoided this obvious problem by leaving Royals off the American League’s final five. Naaaa. That would make sense. Continue reading →