Character

The Other Shoe Drops On The Collusive Trump-IRS Deal. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

In May, Ethics Alarms expressed its horror here, here and here over the unethical, conflicted deal engineered by Trump’s acting-Attorney General and Trump’s Treasury Dept. to bestow undeserved benefits on the President, his family, and the Trump Organization. I wrote at the end of the last of these, “I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense.”

Well Calloo! Callay! It has been stopped, and very emphatically too.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her 56-page order yesterday that the President and his fellow plaintiffs, his adult sons and the Trump Organization LLC, may not refer in any judicial, administrative or other official proceeding to the “purported ‘settlement agreement'” that gave them broad protection from federal government audits and investigations. The judge then sanctioned the attorneys that represented Trump in his personal capacity, Daniel Z. Epstein of Epstein & Co. LLC and Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC.

Good. They should be sanctioned. They should be suspended. If I had the choice, I would disbar them. They are both a disgrace to the legal profession.

“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,” Judge Williams wrote. “It was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the parties were not adverse.”

“Because the parties were not adverse”! Bingo! On that basis, the case should have been at very least stayed by this same judge until Trump was out of office and not controlling the adversary party, and may I add, DUH! Judge Williams was asleep at the switch in May, and perhaps that adds to her obvious fury now. Her one excuse is that she didn’t realize exactly what was going on because it happened so fast and no President has had the gall to try anything like this before.

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On The Strange GOP Candidate For Governor of Colorado

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

He hasn’t received as much attention as Graham Platner because 1) he has no chance of winning, and 2) so far, no prominent Republicans who aren’t known lunatics have endorsed him. (Rep. Lauren Boebert has. Of course she has…). However, to call Victor Marx, who won the Republican primary for governor in Colorado, the Republican Graham Platner isn’t far-fetched at all.

Here are some “highlights” of this guy:

  • A supporter and associate of the late Charlie Kirk, Marx is a right-wing “influencer.” He has about three million followers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X, where he likes to post videos of himself disarming people holding fake guns.
  • He is the founder of All Things Possible ministries, which he has claimed rescued more than 40,000 women and children from abuse, though the number can’t be substantiated.
  • Platner had said he was a communist. This guy’s father was named Karl Marx.
  • He has made a lot of dubious claims, such as that he once was in a gun battle with ISIS. He has also claimed that he can perform exorcisms over the phone. Cool!
  • Marx served for three years in the United States Marine Corps ,which he said he joined to avoid prosecution for fighting, theft and drug use.
  • Marx has been arrested at least twice for disorderly conduct.
  • In 2023, Marx’s brother-in-law shot at Marx, who was not hit. The brother-in-law is currently awaiting trial for allegedly murdering his girlfriend .
  • Before entering politics, Marx ran a Christian martial arts school.

Marx also was the target of another Michelle Goldberg deceit column, this one with the deliberately deceptive headline, “He Says He Killed a Man. Republicans Nominated Him Anyway.” The headline refers to an unsubstantiated story Marx tells, claiming that at age seven, his abusive stepfather took him to a rural area in Mendenhall, Mississippi, and made him shoot and kill someone. The victim has never been identified.

I think we can agree on this, however: both parties need to stop nominating res ipsa loquitur whack jobs for national positions of trust, and citizens need to stop voting for them.

It is irresponsible and unethical to inflict these lying, unstable, untrustworthy people on the rest of the country, especially voters who take their civic duties seriously. We don’t deserve this. The nation doesn’t deserve this. The Founders don’t deserve this either.

Hypocrisy and Double Standards Like This Show a Corrupt Journalist and a Deeply Unethical Character:

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I expect politicians to be hypocritical and without integrity. Journalists, however, especially those who engage in commentary, must display consistent principles, values and priorities or be disregarded, ignored and reviled as destructive, unprofessional, untrustworthy hacks.

Anahit Misak “Ana” Kasparian styles herself a progressive political commentator, a media host and a journalist. With the blatant hypocrisy revealed in the tweets above—first, her pious condemnation of anyone who would gloat about someone’s death, followed by her tweets today rejoicing in the death of lifetime public servant Lindsay Graham—Kasparian reveals herself to be a monster by her own standards.

Ethics Dunce, Unethical Judge, and Possible Zombie: Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge Diana Tennis

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The zombie speculation is because I’m sure I’ve seen that expression on “The Walking Dead” or “World War Z.”

The Florida Supreme Court wants to fine Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge Diana M. Tennis (she’s in Orlando) after she admitted making more than 900 donations to left-leaning political causes, we learn from Law.com.

The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission discovered last month that Judge Tennis gave nearly $30,000 in more than 900 separate donations to progressive candidates and those aligned with the Democratic Party.

Florida judicial canons explicitly bar judges from making political contributions:

Canon 7

A Judge or Candidate for Judicial Office Shall Refrain From Inappropriate Political Activity

A judge…shall not:

…make a contribution to a political organization or candidate.

Tennis told the commission that she mistakenly thought that the rule only applied to donations to candidates for state office, not federal ones. That means that she can’t read or understand statutes in plain language. Nothing in that rule above limits the restriction to state political activity. This judge is either dishonest or incompetent. Why would the Florida Supreme Court allow such a hack to continue sitting on the bench at all? She’s partisan, conflicted and untrustworthy.

The more I examine the issue, the more I realize that there are an unacceptable number of incompetent and unethical judges rotting our justice system, indeed an unacceptable percentage of bad judges that I fear equals a critical mass. Tennis is far from the worst, and she has no business judging anything more challenging than the state fair apple pie competition.

Then there is that zombie thing…

From The Flat Learning Curve Files: President Trump Unethically Meddles In The World Cup…[Expanded and Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I could write a long post on this, or a short one. The short version is: “After star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun was suspended from playing in the next U.S. match (he got a “red card” for an infraction on the field), President Donald Trump intervened on his behalf by calling FIFA president Gianni Infantino. The red card suspension was subsequently lifted, and now Balogen can play in today’s match against Belgium.”

That summary is all you need to know, and I certainly don’t need to follow or care about soccer or the World Cup (I don’t) to make this easy ethics call: It was unethical for the President to use his influence to interfere with the World Cup for the benefit of the U.S. team. Nothing else is relevant:

  • Not whether the ref’s call that got Balogun the red card was deserved or not…
  • Not that Balogun is crucial to the U.S. team if it is to have any chance of continuing success in the tournament….
  • Not that Trump played a key role in getting the World Cup to the U.S…
  • Not that soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is even more corrupt than the National Football League, which is quite an accomplishment…
  • Not even the fact, if it is a fact, that the suspension was going to be lifted anyway and Trump’s intervention didn’t influence the decision.

What is relevant are these truths:

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The Star Spangled Naked Teacher!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

It’s been a long time since Ethics Alarms had one of its trademark Naked Teacher Principle tales or even one of it’s many variations, like the Nearly Naked Teacher’s Volunteer Principle, the Drag Queen School Principal Principle, the Naked Porn-Performing Political Candidate Principle, and the Too Sexy Firefighter Principle, to name just a few. This one, from Alexander, Georgia, has nothing to do with July Fourth, except that I discovered the story this morning. It is certainly past time for one of these posts: the last one under the tag was here, and it was only about the related Naked Mayor Principle, involving the moronic mayor of Minot, North Dakota who accidentally sent an explicit nude video of himself to the city’s attorney.

Above is Maris Nichols, 25, a married Georgia high school teacher, who really likes having sex with students: she’s been indicted for showing at least six students the sweet mysteries of life in her classroom, at a golf course, and in a closet). Two of the teenagers were younger than 16. What puts Maris into the Naked Teacher Principle category is that she is a very provocative OnlyFans performer, and was being blackmailed by some of her students—it is unclear if they were among the one she was boinking—for better grades. They had discovered the OnlyFans channel she owns, operates, and uses to display her excellent Linda Lovelace impression, among other things.

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Gen. Custer, Pickett’s Charge, and the Seven Enabling Virtues

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today, July 3, in 1863 was the date of Pickett’s Charge, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee ordered a desperate Napoleonic advance against the Union line at Gettysburg in what has come to be a cautionary tale in human bravery and military hubris. The same day marked the zenith of the career of George Armstrong Custer, the head-strong, dashing cavalry officer who would later achieve both martyrdom and infamy as the unwitting architect of the massacre known as Custer’s Last Stand.

I have vowed to do all I can, which admittedly isn’t much, to get the story of what I like to call Custer’s First Stand into our nation’s cultural memory. I wrote much of what you are reading now way back in 2011, and have not adequately fulfilled my pledge since, although I have mentioned “Yellow Hair” (as his Native American conquerors called him) periodically over the years. Many historians have opined that Custer may have saved the Union army from defeat at Gettysburg with his bold actions this day, and therefore may have saved the Union itself. That accomplishment is far more important than the blunder at Little Big Horn that defines Custer’s image and reputation.

Custer’s heroics on the decisive final day of the Battle of Gettysburg teach their own lessons, historical and ethical. Since the East Calvary Field battle has been thoroughly overshadowed by the tragedy of Pickett’s Charge, it is little known and seldom mentioned. That is wrong.

Tell your friends and families the story, which has never been portrayed on screen. It is a really good story.

Continue reading →

An Idiot Test For Conservatives: Tucker Carlson Says He’s Starting A New Political Party

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’m giving my inner Fredo a workout lately, because so, SO many positions that I have emphasized early and often on Ethics Alarms have been proving blazingly accurate. To be fair, it didn’t take an IQ much higher than Fredo’s to figure out that Tucker Carlson was a huckster, a fraud, a hypocrite, a shameless self-promoter, a liar and a weasel, but for some strange reason—maybe it was the hair?—an amazing number of usually smart people couldn’t see it. Glib demagogues and sociopaths are like that, though: they hypnotize people with their verbal facility and shameless audacity

Tucker’s latest grift is that he says he wants to start a new political party, presumably of dim-witted, gullible, anti-Semitic, isolationist Republicans. He even appeared on MSNow right after renouncing the GOP, knowing well what the network is and the America it wants to create, but never mind, Tucker Carlson literally has no integrity. He’s smarter than Marjorie Taylor Greene (who isn’t?), not as obviously bat-house crazy as Candace Owen, not as pathetic as Bill Kristol, but still: the man is not a serious person. He makes Bill Maher seem like Victor Davis Hanson. Carlson is a trust fund rich kid who never had to do a hard day’s work in his life, and is the kind of pseudo-intellectual not very bright people think is brilliant.

I’ve written way too much about this creep, but I’m proud to say that I declared that Fox News needed to fire him in 2013, a full decade before they did. Since then I’ve caught him in conflicts of interest, rigging his debates, promoting anti-vaxxers, leaking to the New York Times, found him to be a race-baiter and a legal ignoramus, a destructive agent of distrust and division like Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, General Edwin Walker, Alex Jones, and Robert Welch, openly racist, a hypocrite, a conspiracy theorist and a liar, a toadying suck-up, a publicity whore, and a anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, and more. Other than that, however, he seems to be a great guy.

That’s going to be some party he starts.

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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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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