Citizenship

Supreme Court Integrity and the Useless Times-CBS Poll

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

If you dislike these people,but haven’t read their actual opinions, don’t know their names and are basing your opinion on what other people say, I don’t care what you think, and neither should anyone else.

I suppose there may be could be some uses for the recent New York Times-CBS poll measuring public attitudes about the Supreme Court. It could be used to launch, for example, a discussion about how little the public understands about the Court and how it operates. It might prompt a discussion about the recklessness of the two parties, which regularly attack the integrity of the Court every time it arrives at a decision that one of them doesn’t like. It might even prompt a refresher course on what went on during the 2000 Florida vote recount, and why that case required the Supreme Court to play a unique role that had nothing to do with helping George Bush “steal the election.” All of these would require an unformed and responsible newsmedia. however, so what the poll is prompting instead  misleading debates among talking heads about what the Court needs to do differently.

The Supreme Court needs to do nothing at all differently. Continue reading →

New York’s Stop and Frisk Ethical Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The problem with racial profiling is that it is wrong and unfair, but it works.

Crime rates, especially gun-related killings, have dropped precipitously in New York City since Mayor Bloomberg approved an aggressive “stop and frisk” policy.  Stop and frisk, where police are allowed to stop, question and pat down an individual whom the officer has reasonable suspicion may be involved in the commission of a crime, was approved by the Supreme Court long ago. The rub is that, as documented by the ACLU, New York cops seem to automatically find blacks (54%) and Hispanics (31%)  suspicious, as they account for 85% of those stopped. Bloomberg is under fire to ease up on the program, which he says demonstrably saves lives, even though the vast majority of those stopped and frisked are innocent. Bloomberg, using statistics derived from pre-policy shooting deaths and the numbers of illegal guns the frisks have discovered, told the press that 5,600 New Yorkers live today because of police suspicions. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Peter, who is a physician, a libertarian, and one of my oldest friends (we met in the 6th grade) from Arlington, Massachusetts, generously responded to my request for his professional expertise and philosophical perspective regarding the New York City soda ban.  Here is his thoughtful response, the Comment of the Day, on the post The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban: 

“It has become a reflex response to answer adverse circumstances with more regulation. To a lawyer, there is always a law, or regulation for any and every misstep in human behavior. Of course, we forget that we cannot predict the unintended consequences, not even to mention reviewing the effects of the laws we pass to determine if they are even having the INTENDED effect. Somehow, we believe that it is appropriate to pass laws to deny other people’s freedoms due to the “discomfort” of whiny types who have the connections and persistence to keep whining until they can get someone to pass a law. The consequence of such legislation’s continued passage, at ever more confiscatory levels of our liberties, is that we are legislating our way into a police state, and the widespread acceptance of the idea that it’s OK to deny personal liberty because it makes someone else “uncomfortable.” Again, as RR so aptly pointed out, “the government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” And this goes for not just your personal assets, but your freedoms as well.

“That said, in this context, yes, drinking lots of sugary sodas will make you fat, smoking will kill you, too much alcohol will kill you, doing extreme sports can kill you, and so on. And as long as one’s decisions affect only himself, have at it. However, when you want me to pay, through my insurance premiums, and my taxes, for the consequences of your stupidity, you cede the sovereignty of your decision to others beside yourself. If you want to ride your motorcycle without a helmet, while drunk, sure, do it. Just don’t expect me to pay the costs of your head injury. Continue reading →

On Tolerance, Religious Freedom, and “Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven”

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

It is generally true, as the indignant members of Greensburg, Indiana’s Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church say, that what they include in their church’s services is nobody’s business, and the fact that the congregation loudly applauded the horrific spectacle of a 3-year-old boy singing the hate anthem, “Ain’t no homos gonna make it to heaven!”would have never bothered a soul if it hadn’t been videorecorded and placed on YouTube. At this point, however, that no longer matters. The cat is out of the bag, the horse has left the barn and the beans are spilled, and now millions of Americans know that this church teaches hate, indoctrinates young and vulnerable children with its poison, and sows the seeds of prejudice and the active deprivation of American citizens of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Since millions of people know this now, a critical number of them will go out of their way to make life in this country a living hell for members of that church and the church itself by demonstrating at every turn that we don’t want churches like that in America, or people like that in America. They aren’t good for society, they cause positive harm without any compensating benefits, and they need to change their ways or suffer the consequences. And to that I say: Good. Go to it. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The “Lady in Red”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Now that the John Edwards trial is over—it ended with an acquittal on one charge and deadlocked jurors on the rest—it’s time to heap some deserved contempt on the so-called “Lady in Red,” the alternate juror whose courtroom demeanor became such a distraction that it prompted the judge to send all the alternate jurors home. From the Washington Post:

“She walked in flipping her hair, smiling broadly at [Edwards], batting her long eyelashes, cocking her head playfully. She was just an alternate juror, but suddenly she was the most watched person in the cramped federal courtroom. Commentators had dubbed her the “Lady in Red” after she bopped into the courtroom last week in a revealing, off-the-shoulder red top. Others just called her the “flirty one,” interpreting her vivacity as some kind of courtship dance, though no one can say for sure whether that was her intent.” Continue reading →

Reporting the Confessed Killer in Your Midst: An Ethical Dilemma That Isn’t

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Pedro Hernandez, now under arrest for the murder of Etan Patz, the  6-year-old boy whose 1979 murder was a national mystery, confessed that he had strangled the child just a few years later to his prayer group at St. Anthony of Padua, a Catholic church in Camden, New Jersey.  No one, including Hernandez’s relatives who learned of his confession and the prayer group leader, reported the confession to authorities.

Hernandez’s sister, Milagros Hernandez, confessed what she described as a “family secret” to a reporter for the New York Daily News over the weekend, setting off “What would you do?” internet polls and blog posts, as if there was any question about the proper conduct for a family member or church group member who hears a murder confession. There is no question.  You report it. There are no debate issues, no competing considerations, no claims of loyalty or confidentiality.  It isn’t a Golden Rule dilemma, as in “Would I want someone to report me if I confessed to him in confidence that he had strangled a little boy?”  It isn’t a dilemma at all. There is only one right thing to do, and if you think otherwise, you missed a couple of key meetings when the ethics were being handed out. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Francesca Eastwood

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Go ahead, make me ashamed I spawned you.”

Stipulated: you have every right in the world to dispose of of your personal belongings as you see fit.

Also stipulated: if you intentionally buy a steak dinner, eat half of it in front of a homeless woman and her infant, and feed what you didn’t finish to a stray dog as she looks on, salivating, you are a cruel, unsympathetic, sadistic creep.

With so many Americans  jobless or in financial distress, with charities short of funds and government social services facing budget cut-backs, to buy a $100,000 alligator handbag and then destroy it for “art”—-as Francesca Eastwood, Clint’s daughter, recently did—is hardly better than the steak dinner stunt. It’s even an insult to the alligator. Essentially this was an eloquent statement that Francesca would prefer to throw her money away than help people with it, people for whom a hundred grand is three years of family income.

That tells us all we need or want to know about Clint’s spoiled little girl.

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Facts: Telegraph

Graphic: Wn

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

The Ethics Verdict on the Chris Hayes Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

To be fair, while Chris Hayes is ill-informed, ungrateful and arrogant, at least he’s incoherent.

As anyone could have predicted, MSNBC host Chris Hayes had to issue an apology after his fatuous and inarticulate comments about Memorial Day. If you were lucky enough to miss them, here they are:

“I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable — uncomfortable — about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.’

With so many interesting, thoughtful, perceptive and provocative statements being written and uttered every day that vanish forever, never to be repeated or published, it is cruel irony to confer immortality on cretinism like that, but I digress. My commentary on Hayes’ statement is here. His apology was pre-ordained, because he insulted so many, so deeply, so pointlessly and so arrogantly, at the worst possible time, that a national outcry was guaranteed, and the eventual directive, “Apologize or pack!” from his MSNBC overlords was a forgone conclusion.

As forced apologies go, how did Hayes’ rank? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Michael Fumento

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“As a conservative, I disagree with the political opinions of liberals. But to me, a verbal assault indicates insecurity and weakness on the part of the assaulter, as in “Is that the best they can do?” This playground bullying – the name-calling, the screaming, the horrible accusations – all are intended to stifle debate, the very lifeblood of a democracy.”

—-Michael Fumento, writing powerfully in Salon about the increasingly viscous rhetoric of too many conservatives, and how it has left him estranged from his own political philosophy.

He writes,

“Civility and respect for order – nay, demand for order – have always been tenets of conservatism. The most prominent work of history’s most prominent conservative, Edmund Burke, was a reaction to the anger and hatred that swept France during the revolution. It would eventually rip the country apart and plunge all of Europe into decades of war. Such is the rotted fruit of mass-produced hate and rage. Burke, not incidentally, was a true Tea Party supporter, risking everything as a member of Parliament to support the rebellion in the United States.

“All of today’s right-wing darlings got there by mastering what Burke feared most: screaming “J’accuse! J’accuse!” Turning people against each other. Taking seeds of fear, anger and hatred and planting them to grow a new crop.”

You can read his whole essay, “My break with the extreme right” in Salon, here.

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Pointer: Volokh Conspiracy

Source: Salon

Graphic: Sleepless heretic

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Memorial Day Ethics Dunce: MSNBC Host Chris Hayes

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

My hero.

Yesterday, the day before Memorial Day, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said this:

“Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow.  Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke , who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible].  Um, I, I, ah, back sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable  about the word “hero”?  I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”

   Well, yes, Chris, you’re wrong about quite a lot.

Chris was wrong, for example—as well as disingenuous—to say that “you don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen” and then come out with this insulting and fatuous gibberish that disrespect the memories of the fallen. And to do it on the very weekend when millions of families across the nation are honoring their fallen, or, in the case of my family, a father who braved combat in World War II, was wounded, decorated, and regarded his service in defense of his country the greatest achievement of his life.

Hayes was also wrong, as well as incompetent and unprofessional, to utter such a half-baked and incoherent opinion without having the respect to think it through carefully, express it articulately, and in general without meeting his obligations as a broadcaster to be worth listening to. If a commentator is going to make a statement that he knows will offend and upset grieving families, he should at least know what he wants to say and have the skill and courage to say it clearly. As it was, all he managed to do was to make a gratuitous slur against patriots who put their lives at risk because their nation asked them to, instead of taking morally craven positions from the security of a TV studio that only exists because of the sacrifices such heroes made. Continue reading →