Citizenship

Ethics Villain: Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

There is no honest way to spin this, but Murphy, truly one of the most despicable members of the Senate, tried anyway.

Democrats, like Murphy and the ethics-blind citizens who elected him (and many equally terrible people), really and truly hate the President of the United States so much that they are actively rooting for Iran to prevail in the current conflict. This is a half-century-long enemy of the United States that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans as well as terror attacks all over the Middle East, and that has made “Death to America” and the end of the state of Israel its openly stated mission, and that recently massacred tens of thousands of its own people because they demonstrated against Iran’s dictatorial theocracy.

Has any member of Congress publicly cheered the enemy during a U.S. war? Is that not, as Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution defines treason, “adhering” to enemies of the U.S. and, “giving them aid and comfort”?

Then, after the response to Murphy’s stunning declaration of pleasure in a setback for the U.S. and the success of an enemy’s efforts to defeat his own nation, Murphy managed to further prove his warped character by lying, and obviously so:

He really expects anyone to believes he was being “sarcastic,” and is trying to blame the public for not understanding his subtle wit. He’s an asshole, but that label is too good for him.

Murphy should be prosecuted, and if not, then rebuked by his own party.

He won’t be of course. He’s invoking Rationalization 55. The Joke Excuse, or “I was only kidding!”…

“This is a common backtracking strategy when someone has been caught making a hurtful, unfair, false or otherwise unethical statement… defenders of comedian Wanda Sykes apply[ed] the joke excuse to her purely mean-spirited comment about Rush Limbaugh at a White House Correspondents Dinner, when she said “I hope his kidneys fail.” What a knee-slapper! As a general rule, “I hope you die” is not a joke, no matter who says it. Even when it is a joke, the jokester is still accountable for how people react to it. When a Washington D.C.’s shock-jock  made the second of two racially-charged quips…he lost his job and his career, because his employers didn’t want somebody on their payroll who made those kinds of “jokes.” …Nobody should accept the defense that “it was a joke” if it wasn’t a good enough joke to compensate for the damage it did, the people it hurt, or the trouble it will cause. …[P]eople and organizations …make jokes in public at their peril. Professionals. Elected officials. Scholars. People who expect to be taken seriously and trusted.”

 

But he wasn’t making a joke or being sarcastic. You know, I know, and he knows he was pandering to the anti-Americans and Trump Deranged in his increasingly perverted party.

The Democrats have given Republicans and the voting public so much evidence of their party’s ethics rot that the campaign ads write themselves. If the GOP cannot convince its supporters and a wave of progressives with a conscience to reject what the Democratic Party has become, it won’t be able to blame gerrymandering in Virginia or anything other than its own incompetence and the self-destructive ignorance of the American people.

Ethics Quiz: Investigative Reporting Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In this article, (Gift Link) a New York Times investigative reporter explains how he has cultivated a source that he knows is distributing illegal drugs that may be fatal.

He writes in part,

“It was a small-time operation, but one that illuminated a big point for our reporting: A single person, without cartel backing, can order and redistribute potent chemicals.

I wanted to verify his account with others. But I also had to make good on my commitment not to reveal his identity. So I compared the information he was giving me with reporting I’d done with dozens of experts and law enforcement officials who told me what they understood about this market. I also spoke to people in his circle of friends and associates.

All along, I was keenly aware that the drugs Chemical Analyst was selling can be fatal. I asked him about this — as I’d asked other dealers and suppliers — and he professed here to be a libertarian. As a human, I find it terrifying the drugs he sells could kill people. It was painful to watch him use drugs himself, and I often feared for his safety. But as a reporter, I have a responsibility to explain to the public what’s really happening on the drug frontier.”

This is different from most Ethics Quizzes here, because my position is set and unshakable. The reporter’s duty “to make good on [his] commitment not to reveal [the drug pusher’s] identity” must be subordinate to his duty to society as a citizen and responsible human being. Even lawyers are authorized to violate a clients’ confidentiality to prevent death or serious bodily injury to a third party. How many people should die so that the reporter can explain what’s happening on “the drug frontier?” My verdict: none.

The reporter says he’s talked to lawyers and other journalists as well as “experts” and law enforcement officials. I doubt that he has talked with any ethicists.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day(that I have already told you my answer to..) is…

Would it be ethical for the reporter sic the police on this criminal? Could it be ethical not to?

Oh Look: The ABA Wants To Circumvent The Second Amendment (Again)…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As a lawyer who has scrupulously avoided joining the American Bar Association (except when a discounted membership allowed me to feel more comfortable when the ABA invited me to speak about ethics at a convention), I found the recent resolution calling for the repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, (“PLCAA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901–7903, consistent with what I now expect of the nation’s largest legal trade association. Over the last several decades years, the ABA has moved steadily leftward on the ideological spectrum, and signs that bias had made it stupid began turning up as early as 1987, when four members of the association’s special committee evaluating Supreme Court nominees found the extremely well-qualified Robert Bork, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, unqualified purely because of his conservative judicial philosophy. This gave Senate Democrats the ammunition they need to reject Bork, thus beginning the destruction of a crucial “democratic norm” that Presidents should be able to choose SCOTUS justices as long as they were sufficiently qualified and experienced.

You can read Resolution 604 here. Ten states (New York, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington…do you see a pattern?) have enacted “Firearm Industry Responsibility Acts,” and the ABA, being properly woke, is calling for a national version. The resolution purports to be concerned about a “small percentage” of “irresponsible” gun manufacturers who violate consumer protection or engage in deceptive trade practices, and wants the gun industry’s unique immunity from product liability lawsuits to be narrowed and reformed.

Because the latest resolution begins its arguments with the usual scaremongering statistics compiled by anti-Second Amendment activists—“Approximately 46,000 Americans are killed by a gun every year—approximately 125 people every day,” I find the resolution to be disingenuous, a “camel’s nose in the tent” tactic to make gun manufacturers so vulnerable to lawsuits that the business becomes untenable, and guns become so expensive that the right to bear arms is illusory.

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“District courts cannot stand athwart, yelling ‘stop’ just because they genuinely believe they are the last refuge against policies that they deem to be deeply unwise.”

—Judge Kenneth K. Lee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, writing  separately as a panel overruled a district court and held that the President had the power to suspend the Refugee Admissions Program.

Of course he did. The law and Constitution is clear on that point, but a woke District Court halted the President’s decision anyway. This was unethical as well as illegal, but, as Prof. Josh Blackman writes,

“President Trump is back in office, progressives still challenge virtually every action he takes, and judges in blue states continue to grant relief. No surprise there. But there is a new dynamic. Now, not only are lower court judges resisting the President, but they are also resisting the Supreme Court. In August, Justice Neil Gorsuch rebuked an attempted . Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts managed to get reversed twice by the Supreme Court in the same case. “When this Court issues a decision,” Gorsuch wrote, “it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.” Gorsuch added that “[t]his Court’s precedents, however, cannot be so easily circumvented.” 

Remember, it is Trump’s opponents who keep accusing him of breaching “democratic norms,” yet the Axis of Unethical Conduct ( the “resistance,” Democrats and the media that carries on their propaganda) is literally defying the greatest democratic norm of all, the Constitution. Blackman calls this attempted usurpation of power by activist, partisan judges “judicial resistance,” in other words, an abuse of judicial power for partisan objectives. It is—this is me and not the professor saying this—grounds for impeachment. President Trump is not exceeding his Presidential authority as the Trump Deranged scream, but rather the judges and courts that are interfering in the Constitutional hierarchy. Unethical, you think? Damn right.

Blackman:

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The UK’s Frightening Warning On Cultural Pollution From Assimilation-Adverse Immigrants

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

There are some cultures and some immigrants, refugees and illegal aliens that a nation has good reason to avoid letting into its territory. Islamic culture and Muslims are a blazing example. Europe and the UK are learning this hard lesson—that cultural diversity is only a boon if a nation’s traditional culture is nurtured and protected—too late. It remains to be seen if the U.S. will.

The flashing neon sign that the Mad Left will pooh-pooh, shrug off, deny or refuse to acknowledge? This:

Nearly 70 dog breeds in the UK could be banned under proposed new legislation on the sham theory that they are “unhealthy.” A new 10-point checklist of “extreme” physical characteristics will decide which dogs will suffer from health problems due to certain physical characteristics. The excuses for banning the breeds include “mottled coloration,” “excessive” skin folds (like English bulldogs), “fat faces” (like pit bulls and mastiffs), “temperament,” bulging outward-turning eyes (pugs), drooping eyelids, being low to the ground (like Queen Elizabeth’s Corgis) and more.

Don’t kid yourself and believe that this assault on freedom and family has anything to do with canine health. This an assault on dogs by Muslims, who believe that dogs are “unclean,” as Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian Muslim New Yorker and activist, said in a recent social media post. This led Representative Randy Fine (R-Fla.) to reply, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” In response to that, Congressional Democrats are demanding that Fine be censured, because, after all, tearing down American culture is part of the current party’s mission.

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Yet More Evidence Of An Already Self-Evident Proposition: Our Journalists Are Disgustingly Biased and “Enemies of the People”: The NYC ISIS Terrorist Attack

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I have mused several time here that anyone who seriously asserts in a comment that the mainstream media isn’t fatally biased against conservatives, Republicans, and, naturally, President Trump risks being banned from the commenting wars. I have yet to act on that threat, because only one respectable commenter has challenged me on that assertion, one who has earned a multitude of Ethics Alarms brownie points for good faith and courageous arguments that often run counter to the currents here.

Nonetheless, the position is untenable, and has been for years. The latest example days ago when a smoking IED was tossed at a group of protestors outside Gracie Mansion by an ISIS-supporting terrorist yelling “Allah Ackbar!” Since the U.S. is in the process of attacking Iran, and since the mainstream media is committed to elevating the welfare of Muslims (and illegal immigrants, and violent criminals, Somali fraudsters, anti-American elected officials and international foes of the U.S….) over the interests of law-abiding, loyal and patriotic American citizens, the mainstream media immediately framed the attempted terrorist act as a bigoted attack on NYC’s Muslim Communist mayor Zohran Mamdani:

CBS announced, “Improvised explosive found at protests near Manhattan’s Gracie Mansion, Mamdani’s official residence, NYPD says.”

NBC:

UPI: “Suspicious devices ignited at anti-Islam protest in New York”

The Hill: “Device ignited at Gracie Mansion protest was explosive: NYPD.”

I admit it: I was fooled. I thought, based on perusing the reports, that the bombs, which the NYT initially described without noting that they were explosive, were hurled by anti-Islam protesters.

CNN’s framing was so disgusting that the Axis news network had to issue a retraction, which itself was misleading:

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Oh Canada! The Government Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Slippery Slope…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
@the.free.press

One out of every 20 deaths in Canada is now caused by the government’s assisted suicide program. What’s even more shocking is how fast the deaths are approved.

♬ original sound – The Free Press – The Free Press

It is reassuring to know, at least for me, that the ethics issues EA has been most adamant about continue to inspire the same analysis from me. On the topic of legal human euthanasia (assisted suicide), the position here hasn’t changed since the policy, now legal in Illinois, California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, New Jersey,New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington first began to spread. Gee, I wonder what those states have in common? Oh…right. An ideology that devalues life: that’s today’s progressive movement and its Democratic Party.

This toxic and corrupting culture holds that individual life is not precious, but rather is subordinate to the needs of the many. Letting people kill themselves, or, if necessary, allowing their families and care-givers to let them be killed, costs a lot less than letting the old, sick, depressed and poor try to hold on to every last minute of existence. Masquerading as individual “choice,” the versatile word that encompasses letting mothers snuff out burgeoning young life in their wombs for their convenience and career advancement, the right to have the government kill you quickly metastasizes into a cultural norm where autonomy, courage, fortitude, individualism and reverence for life erodes in the interests of affording a nanny state.

Euthanasia is a straight violation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative; it also, in cases where the object of this kind of “palliative care” is forced on victims, as it frequently is in Canada, a Golden Rule breach. The only ethical system it can be squared with is Utilitarianism, but only of the most brutal kind that was used as the justification for the mass murders under Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

I personally authorized the hospital pulling the plug on my 89-year-old mother when she lapsed into a coma after unsuccessful surgery. My father, who always told us that he would not be a financial or other kind of burden on his family, managed to die during a nap, also at 89, apparently by force of will. My ethical assessment of the Left’s fondness for assisted suicide has been aired frequently on Ethics Alarms, most thoroughly in a series of posts in September of 2019: The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study, Comment Of The Day: “The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study”, and Addendum: To “The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study,” Hypothetical And Poll.

In the first post, I wrote, “I believe that permitting an individual to kill another with the victim’s consent is so ripe for abuse—Dr. Kevorkian comes to mind—that it crosses an ethical line that should be thick, black, and forbidding.  The alleged consent of the doomed can too easily be coerced or manufactured for the convenience of others.” That position hasn’t changed one whit.

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Remembering the Alamo, Davy Crockett, and the Butterfly Effect

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Alamo fell just before dawn 190 years ago today. An estimated 220 men died in the furious attack by would-be Mexican emperor Santa Ana’s army of 5,000: once it breached the walls of the fortified mission, a massacrec commenced that was over in 20 minutes.. The defenders had come from many states, territories and nations, and eventually they knew they were going to die if they stayed. Only one of them, Lewis Rose—maybe—decided to leave. Even the messengers sent out by William Barrett Travis to seek rescuing troops returned to the Alamo knowing hope was lost, and they they would be killed. After 13 days, during which the Alamo was pounded by cannon fire, forcing the men to spend the night making repairs, the battle was over. But those 13 days gave Texas General Sam Houston time to raise the army that would defeat of Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Ethics Alarms has posted ethics essays about the Alamo almost every year since the blog began. It is my favorite U.S. historical story, mixing drama, legend, ethics lessons and fascinating personalities, notably Jim Bowie, Travis, and, of course, Davy Crockett. Here is my first post about Davy, from March of 2010, posted to mark the passing of Disney legend Fess Parker, whose portrayal of the frontiersman on TV brought Crockett out of the historical shadows.

Crockett was the most important casualty of the battle, because at the time of his death he was the first modern celebrity, famous in part for being famous, celebrated by dime novels and sensational, and fictional, stage plays. His death focused public attention on Texas as nothing else could. Actress-singer Zendaya is the most popular celebrity in the U.S. today: imagine what the public reaction would have been if an Iran-backed terrorist attack had eliminated her. (Try to imagine it without reflecting on the relative values of a nation whose top celebrity is Zendaya as compared to a nation whose children idolize “The King of the Wild Frontier”). In that 2010 post I wrote in part,

“Like another iconic figure who once portrayed him, John Wayne, what Davy Crockett symbolizes in American culture matters more than his real life story. He built a reputation for being the perfect example of the rugged American individualist, standing tall for basic values, especially honesty and courage, while keeping a sense of humor and an appetite for fun.  In his doubtlessly ghost-written 1834 hagiography, “Narrative of the life of Colonel Crockett,” Crockett stated his credo as

“I leave this rule for others when I’m dead: Be always sure you’re right–then go ahead.”

It is as good an exhortation to live by the ethical virtues of integrity, accountability and courage as there is, and it gained great credibility when Crockett remained in the Alamo to die defending a nascent Texas republic, in complete harmony with his stated ideals. Battling for right against overwhelming odds,remaining steadfast in the face of certain defeat, never complaining, never looking back once he had decided to “go ahead,” Crockett’s legend is a valuable and inspiring, if not always applicable, example for all of us when crisis looms. Nobody who ever saw the final fade-out of the Disney series’ final episode, with Fess Parker furiously swinging “old Betsy,” Crockett’s Tennessee long rifle, like a baseball bat at Santa Anna’s soldiers as they swarmed over the walls, ever forgot the image, or mistook what it meant. Davy knew he was going down, but he would fight the good fight to the end….”

They don’t teach the Alamo in schools any more except in Texas, and the woke historical revisionism of the battle casts it as a minor event and even a shameful one, since many of the Texas settlers Mexico invited to settle its Texas territory brought slaves with them. In our “1619 Project” World they were fighting for white supremacy against a brown army.

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Apparently A Majority Of Younger Americans Think The U.S. Invented Slavery. I’ll See You At The Wood-Chipper…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A few days ago, I saw a chart showing what U.S. demographics believed that the United States invented slavery. I noted it for a future post, and now I can’t find it, but I found plenty of authority that supports that assertion. Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a fellow and contributing editor at their City Journal, has been making this point for years. Way back in 2016, The College Fix wrote in part,

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”…

The origin of these quizzes, which Pesta calls “cultural literacy markers,” was his increasing discomfort with gaps in his students’ foundational knowledge.

“They came to college without the basic rudiments of American history or Western culture and their reading level was pretty low,” Pesta told The Fix….

Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students— six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.

Pesta said he believes these students were given an overwhelmingly negative view of American history in high school, perpetuated by scholars such as Howard Zinn in “A People’s History of the United States,” a frequently assigned textbook.

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Ethics Quiz: No Applause, No Applause, No Applause!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Hmmmm…

In Tacoma Park, one of the most woke and wonderful communities in already insufferably progressive Maryland, Mayor Talisha Searcy ordered the crowd at a recent city council meeting not to applaud the various statements made by citizens as the council sought comments on a study regarding the city’s rent stabilization laws.

“I just want to make sure I’m learning about how to facilitate civility within a community,” the mayor said as she ordered the audience to “refrain from cheering, booing, signs, all that good stuff” as well as applauding. Many in the crowd were not pleased. When a spectator shouted that prohibiting clapping is “undemocratic,” the mayor delivered the stunning theory that “clapping for some and not all is not democratic” and that “we have to allow for people to feel safe to say what they feel.”

Okay, she’s an idiot, an ethics dunce, an expired hippie, and the most obnoxious species of progressive squish. These are the kinds of people,who demand that nobody at a meeting ever condemn even the most brain-dead idea because it might hurt the feelings of the dim bulb who offered it. Searcy is the kind of person who loves the passive-aggressive “I hear you” that usually means, “but I’m going to forget you ever said anything so stupid.”

There is no defending her claim that “clapping for some and not all” is undemocratic. However, I am interested in whether it is ever ethical to ban positive reactions, politely expressed.

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