Character

Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote of the Month, Incompetent Elected Official of the Month—Wow, What An Idiot!—Sen. Tammy Duckworth

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

If you can watch Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth in that CNN segment without your head exploding at the 3:43 mark, you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

After stating that the the so called “double-tap” bombing of alleged Venezuelan drug-smugglers was a war crime and murder, Duckworth is asked by Dana Bash, inadvertently practicing journalism, whether the Senator in fact knows what the hell she is ranting about, and gets the equivalent of “no,” “I just know what I’ve read online” and “I only know what I read in the newspapers.”

What Duckworth answered can be fairly translated as “I don’t really know anything the average channel-surfing short-order cook knows about this, and maybe less only I just tuned in to MSNBC, but I’m a Democrat, we have to criticize anything the Trump administration does, and I’ve got some talking points that my staffer was emailed from the DNC—maybe the same ones you were sent, Dana—and I’m just going from those.”

Duckworth was on CNN to discuss the incident as a purported expert: she’s built her entire political career by relying on her Army National Guard veteran status and losing her legs when her helicopter was hit by a missile during the first Iraq War. It’s an insult to viewers for her to go on the air and accuse the Department of War of “murder” without doing more than checking “what’s available in the media,” whatever that means in her case. I bet she got a summary of “what’s available in the media” and what she “knows” is double hearsay.

If I am asked on a radio show to give my opinion as an ethicist about, say, a law firm firing a member for a social media post denigrating Charlie Kirk and President Trump, I’d better have read the various analyses by my colleagues in the field, looked at the relevant ethics rules and legal ethics opinions, kno what the fired attorney wrote, and be ready to provide some trustworthy analysis other than “I only know what I read on ‘Above the Law.'”

This is the very epitome of political hackery. The Senator goes on CNN with no preparation at all, and spews a predetermined and predictable position because Trump Bad, while not even pretending to have any special insight into what occurred.

Clarence Darrow’s Reflections on His 61st Birthday

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Last night I suddenly recalled this speech that I first read when Ed Larson and I were considering what to include in our book, “The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow.” It seems like an appropriate item to publish today on Ethics Alarms.

I am considerable older than Clarence was when they gave him a gala birthday party in Chicago on April 18, 1918, even if one doesn’t take into consideration the Spanish Flu that was then ravaging populations here and abroad. The average age of mortality for men was about 55 in 1918, so Darrow was past his pull date. I’m almost as far under the 2025 average mortality number for men as Darrow was over his. Darrow, however, made it clear in his speech that he didn’t feel old. Neither do I.

One should note that Darrow, despite issuing his own testimonial, had not yet participated in the three sensational cases upon which his current reputation as the Greatest American Trial Lawyer Ever rests: the Scopes trial, the Sweet case, and the defense of “thrill killers” Leopold and Loeb. His career still had a lot of “kick” left. It is also revealing that Darrow was already considered a major celebrity before his legal exploits shifted into territory that would be mined extensively by books, plays and movies over the next century.

I find it fascinating that Darrow claims to be modest—-he always thought he was the smartest one in the room, because he usually was—and that he claims to despise “moralizing.” Darrow, whose secret weapon in so many of his trails was jury nullification, promoted his vision of right and wrong aggressively and effectively; it was what drew me to Darrow as a student of ethics. The speech is remarkable in how completely Darrow neglects to mention, thank or acknowledge his long-suffering wife Ruby, his virtually abandoned son, or even any friends. Not surprising, however. Darrow was a narcissist. I am not sure that he had any close friends for any length of time, or missed having them.

Darrow didn’t prepare this speech, evidently. It rambles and leaps from topic to topic, but Clarence Darrow rambling is more entertaining and thought-provoking than all but our most brilliant historical figures speaking after days of preparation. By today’s standards the speech is far too long, but these were times before attention span had been decimated by modern media, the speeding up of life and inferior education. And this was a lawyer who once won a case with a twelve-hour closing argument. Guests at the party probably weren’t even squirming in their chairs.

Darrow (he hated being called Clarence) was by all accounts a riveting speaker, and that certainly helped. As you will see, he also was incapable of speaking for long without uttering a memorable quip or a trenchant observation.

Now enough from me…Here’s Darrow:

***

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Employee Ethics and Professonalism: The Anthony Rendon Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Los Angeles Angels (it’s a baseball team. Sheesh…) are in talks with long-time disappointment third baseman Anthony Rendon about buying out the final year of his contract. Rendon wants to retire, but doesn’t want to forfeit the final year, $38 million bucks of it in his seven-year, $245 million long-time contract that has become an albatross for the Angels and a bonanza for him. Rendon spent the entire 2025 season recovering from hip surgery, as was typical of his Angels tenure. He was paid all the same.

The 35-year-old has been limited to playing in only 205 of a potential 648 games since 2020, due to injuries to his left groin, left knee, left hamstring, left shin, left oblique, lower back, both wrists and both hips. He has never played as many as 60 games in any of the four 162 game seasons. When Rendon was able to play, he wasn’t very good. The Angels had made Rendon the game’s highest-paid third baseman in December 2019, whereupon he performed well in the pandemic-shortened 2020 MLB season (which I don’t think counts) and that was the end of his productivity.

Rendon has famously stated that he doesn’t really like baseball, he just happened to be good at it. It’s just a job to him, not a passionate pursuit that he cares about; he doesn’t care about the accolades or attention either. Did his lack of passion contribute to his failure to suit up and take the field because of all the injuries? Nobody can say.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: “Good Illegal Immigrant”Rahel Negassi

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she told him. “The only thing I’ve done is that I am Eritrean.”

—-Illegal Eritrean immigrant Rahel Negassito to her son, in the latest “Feel badly for illegal immigrants who finally get what they deserve” feature by the New York Times.

Rahel looks smug and defiant in the photo, as indeed she is. She did nothing wrong, but the (revoltingly) sympathetic story of her problems relocating to Canada from the U.S., where she has been residing illegally for 20 years, reports that she got into the country by

  • “…paying a smuggler who eventually got her to Britain, where she bought a fake British passport” to get her into the U.S.
  • …getting caught by ICE when the passport was recognized as fake
  • …being released after her application as a refugee was rejected, as a “paroled undocumented migrant.” 
  • ….living with her citizen sister for 20 years, counting on America’s slack and, for most of the period, law-ignoring immigration process to protect her.

Then as the story tells us, cruel Donald Trump was elected and set out to fulfill his campaign promise to clear as many illegal immigrants out of the U.S. as possible. A gift link is here.

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The Ethics Alarms 2025 “It’s A Wonderful Life” Ethics Companion

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

2025 INTRODUCTION

Once again, the annual Ethics Alarms posting of my guide to watching the 1946 classic is in Thanksgiving week, first, because I concluded a few years ago that it is a Thanksgiving movie, and second, because I personally need the movie right now. It’s a Thanksgiving movie because a man learns through divinely orchestrated perspective that he has a lot to be thankful for, even if it often hasn’t seemed like it in his life of disappointments and dashed dreams. He’s married to Donna Reed, for heaven’s sake! He has nothimg to complain about.

I just finished re-reading last year’s version and making some additions and subtractions. You know what? It’s worth reading again. I wrote the thing, and I still get a lot out of it.

Last year was a particularly gloomy one for me, and I’m afraid my annual introduction reflected that. It was hard for me to even watch “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was my late wife’s favorite movie (well, tied with “Gone With the Wind” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”) last year, and, though I have had 364 days more to get used to existence with out her, I’m more resigned than better.

This year, in September, I had an “IAWL” moment when a lawyer whom I had only known for a few days pulled me aside at a gala celebration of the 52nd year of continuous operation of a student theater group I had founded my first year in law school. He said that his two young children, who I could see playing in the courtyard, wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t started the organization  where he met his wife, and he wanted to thank me.

The reunion of lawyers who  participated in the over 150 plays, musicals and operettas produced by the group revealed that dozens of lasting marriages and their children had been an unanticipated result of the unique organization, the only graduate school theatrical group in the U.S. “Strange, isn’t it?,” Clarence says to George as the metaphorical light finally dawns. “Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving this year for too many reasons to go into, but I guess I’m thankful that I’m here instead of a hole. It’s a lowly measure of success, but I’ll take it.

Grace so loved the final scene when Harry Bailey toasts, “To my big brother George, the luckiest man on earth!” and everyone starts singing  “Auld Lang Syne.” She always started crying, and, to be honest, I think I’ll skip that part this year. When I watched it last year, it almost killed me. 

Besides, Billy Crystal (actually Nora Ephron, who wrote his lines) pretty much ruined “Auld Lang Syne” for me with his observations in “When Harry Met Sally.” The song really doesn’t make any sense, it just feels right. One might say the same thing about “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

I won’t, however.

PREFACE

Frank Capra must have felt that the movie was bitterly ironic. It was a flop, and destroyed his infant project with some other prominent directors to launch a production company called “Liberty” that would give directors the liberty to put their artistic visions on the screen without interference from the money-obsessed studios. “It’s A Wonderful Life” was the first and last film produced by Liberty Studios: it not only killed the partnership, it just about ended Capra’s career.

James Stewart was, by all accounts, miserable during the shooting. He suffered from PTSD after his extensive combat experience, and the stress he was under shows in many of the scenes, perhaps to the benefit of the film.

It is interesting that the movie is scored by Dmitri Tiompkin, a Russian expatriate who is best known for scoring Westerns like “Red River” and “High Noon.” He wasn’t exactly an expert on small town America, but his trademark, using familiar tunes and folk melodies, is on full display. Clarence, George’s Guardian Angel (Second Class), is frequently underscored with the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” because he is represented by a star in the opening scene in Heaven. The old bawdy tune “Buffalo Girls” is another recurring theme, an odd one for a wholesome film, since the buffalo girls were prostitutes.

Donna Reed is a revelation in the film. She is best remembered as the wise and loving Fifties mom in “The Donna Reed Show” (in the brilliant satiric musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” doomed heroine Audrey singing about her dream of domestic bliss “somewhere that’s green” sings “I cook like Betty Crocker and I look like Donna Reed.”) But she was an excellent dramatic actress, and Hollywood did not do her talents justice. She was also, I am told by my freind and hero Paul Peterson who played her young son Jeff, as nice and admirable in person as she seemed on the show.

Lionel Barrymore, once described by a critic as an actor who could overact just by sitting still, is nonetheless a memorable villain. It was no coincidence that he was known at holiday time for playing Scrooge in an annual radio prouduction of “A Christmas Carol.” Barrymore was an alcoholic like his two siblings, John and Ethel, both regarded more highly as actors but less able to work reliably through their addiction. Lionel was in a wheelchair for his latter career; he wouldn’t have been if he had been born a few decades later. He needed hip replacements and those weren’t possible for his generation. As a result, he is the only memorable wheelchair-bound film actor of note.

Thomas Mitchell, George’s pathetic Uncle Billy, was one of the greatest Hollywood character actors of his or any other era. He is memorable in many classics, including “High Noon,” “Gone With the Wind,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Stagecoach” and more, while also starring in several successful Broadway plays.  On stage he created the role of the rumpled detective “Columbo,” his final role.

The cop and the cab driver, Bert and Ernie (names borrowed by “Sesame Street” in a strange inside joke) were played by Ward Bond, another prolific character actor who shows up in key roles in too many great movies to list, and  Frank Faylen, who made over 200 movies with IAWL being the only certified classic. Both Bond and Faylen found their greatest success on TV, Bond as the cantankerous wagonmaster and star of “Wagon Train” and Faylen as the apoplectic father of highschooler Dobie Gillis in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” I don’t think any character on TV made my father laugh as hard as Faylen’s “Herbert T. Gillis.”

Now that the introductions are over with, let’s go to Bedford Falls…but first, a stop in Heaven…

1. A Religious Movie Where There Is No Religion

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KABOOM! I Never Thought We’d See a U.S. President (Or Senator, or Governor, or Judge) Stoop To This…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Do I really have to explain what’s unethical about this?

I hope not.

It’s something special, all right. Talk about shattering “norms.” Also good taste, the respect for the office, the line between celebrity and public service, and… well, you fill in the rest.

I’ll be in my bathroom, throwing up.

Ethics Dunces: 98 Democratic Party House Members

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

One would think that a Congressional resolution calling for the condemnation of communism and socialism would be an easy one to vote for, but one would be wrong. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), the daughter of Cuban refugees, introduced a non-binding resolution to Congress this past week called “Denouncing the horrors of socialism.” Most of the historical villains referenced in the resolution —Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolás Maduro—were Communists. Nevertheless, not only did 100 members of the Democratic Party vote against a statement of principles that flows directly from our founding documents and core values (Jefferson wrote, “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it,” and Madison added that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest…), they were confident enough of the effectiveness their party’s pro-socialist propaganda to go on the record as opposing that statement. All the worst villains are there: the “Squad,” Pelosi, Jaimie Raskin, Maxine Waters.

The number of Democrats unwilling to condemn socialism, and therefore its nasty offspring communism, was even more damning: in addition to the 98 naysayers, two Democrats voted “present” and 47 weenies refuse to vote at all.

Democrats are now telling us exactly who they are and what their agenda is.

And This Is Supposed To Be A Rising Leader of the Democrat Party…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Unbelievable. Or at least it should be unbelievable that an elected member of Congress would behave like this. That the party such an indefensible hack belongs to—and who is regarded as a leader of???— wouldn’t collectively disclaim any responsibility for said hack and wear paper bags over their heads in penance. That…oh, never mind. Why do I bother?

Diving in to try to defend Virginia Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D) after the Epstein files revealed that she had been reading texts from the convicted sex-trafficker during a House hearing, Crockett got up and accused Mitt Romney, John McCain, Sarah Palin and Trump official Lee Zeldin among other Republicans officials of receiving political contributions from “someone named Jeffrey Epstein” as she claimed that Republicans were exacting a double standard—you know, like Democrats do routinely. But the Jeffrey Epstein she was tying to Romney et al. was a completely different person.

Was the ethically-inert Texas Congresswomen shooting off her mouth using false information because she is irresponsible and incompetent, or was she engaging in despicable deceit (that is, lying) to mislead the public? Who knows, and I don’t care: her declaration was a bright-line ethics breach and sanctionable in either case, as well as signature significance both for an untrustworthy member of Congress and a hyper-partisan asshole.

Ah, but this in-your-face blot on the U.S. Legislative Branch wasn’t done. When her false innuendos were raised in a CNN interview, Crockett exploded in double-talk to try to weasel out of her indefensible conduct:

“Listen, I never said that it was that Jeffrey Epstein. Just so that people understand, when you make a donation, your picture is not there. And because they decided to spring this on us in real time, I wanted the Republicans to think about what could potentially happen because I knew that they didn’t even try to go through the FEC,” this awful woman humina-humina-ed. “So my team, what they did is they Googled. And that is specifically why I said, ‘a Jeffrey Epstein’. Unlike Republicans, I at least don’t go out and just tell lies.”

Somebody pleas explain to Crockett what a lie is.

” Because it was not the same one, that’s fine,” she continued, spinning like Dorothy’s cyclone. “But when Lee Zeldin had something to say, all he had to say was it was a different Jeffrey Epstein. He admitted that he did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein. So at least I wasn’t trying to mislead people. Now, have I dug in to find out who this doctor is? I have not. So I will trust and take what he says is that it wasn’t that Jeffrey Epstein, but I was not attempting to mislead anybody. I literally had maybe 20 minutes before I had to do that debate.”

Right. Of course she was trying to mislead.

Kaitlin Collins responded (more equivocally than she should have): “Yeah, but people might see that say, well, you’re trying to make it sound like he took money from a literal sex offender.”

“But I literally did not know,” Crockett answered.

Jasmine Crockett is a walking, jive-talking insult to the nation.

Incompetent Elected Official and Ethics Dunce (But You Knew That, I Hope): Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene amazed Washington, D.C last night when she announced that she will resign from Congress after the first of the year, refusing to meet her obligations to the (dumb) voters who elected her and leaving them without a voice in Congress—an obnoxious and foolish voice, true, but still—for months.

As is often the case with the ethically-challenged, Taylor-Greene has managed to exceed the worst expectations of her. She has been a disgrace; now she is further disgracing herself and doing so with the vacant stare of the IQ-deficient and the phony smile of the bad liar. Like other recently departed creeps (George Santos, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Matt Gaetz) elected by exactly the kinds of voters the Founders were worried about when they decided to try the republic thingy, Taylor-Greene (henceforth just “Green” because I resent having to spend any more time typing her name that I have to) will leave Congress and our government a better place by leaving them.

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No, Rachel Maddow Did Not Demonstrate a Sudden Attack of Decency and Bi-Partisanship By Attending Dick Cheney’s Funeral

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Oh come on. Does anyone really believe this? Seriously?

Dishonest and frighteningly biased like the paper he works for, New York Times pundit Peter Baker actually had the gall to post this on “X”:

To which Sidney Wang quickly responded,

“Changed” since when? Maddow has been allied with the Trump-hating Cheneys and Bushes since at least 2015.

Maddow was invited to Chaney’s funeral, a gathering one wag described as a meeting of the “I Hate Trump” club, by Liz Cheney, who became a favorite of MSNBC’s talking heads once she voted for the second of Nancy Pelosi’s partisan impeachments against President Trump and was complicit in the rigged Star Chamber hearings on the so-called J-6 riots. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is an ancient proverb that has turned up in many cultures and in the mouths of many philosophers since the dawn of speech. It is simple Cognitive Dissonance Scale reality. Glenn Greenwald gets it, but then do Elmo and the cast of “Jackass!”, I bet:

It isn’t Maddow’s presence at the funeral but the absence of President Trump and Vice-President Vance that shows the collapse of professionalism, mutual respect, decency and decorum in today’s politics. Neither were invited to attend. Trump recklessly (and, as I have written before, stupidly) insulted the Bush-Cheney political machine when he was running for President in 2016, and it wreaked its revenge by abandoning the supposed conservative principles its members stood for to become bitter and fanatic NeverTrumpers. Dick Cheney and his daughter endorsed Kamala Harris, proving that personal vendettas were more important to them than the welfare of the nation. 

If Maddow’s smirking presence at the funeral showed how “politics have changed in America,”it only demonstrated that they have become more petty and and vicious, with its institutions being weakened and the public trust in its motives justly reduced to vapors.