Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

The Sequel to “Is It Ethical to Continue to Slam Former President Biden Now That It Has Been Revealed That He Has Metastatic Prostate Cancer?”— Unethical Quote of the Week: David Axelrod

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“I think those kinds of discussions are going to happen, but they should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s sort of struggling through this.”

—Former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod on CNN, speaking of the reporting on the cover-up of Joe Biden’s dementia for four years by Democrats and the news media

You have to say this for horrible human beings like Axelrod: at least they don’t do a very good job at hiding their cynicism, corruption, and shameless efforts to keep Americans from knowing just how little regard for democracy they have.

Many believe that the news of Biden’s rapidly advancing prostate cancer was released specifically to distract the public from the dawning realization that he was a puppet President and that persons unknown were operating the levers of power Americans thought they had elected Biden President to handle. There is substantial justification for such suspicion, as well as the belief that Democrats also withheld Biden’s cancer diagnosis in the hope that they could get him a second term so Kamala Harris would become President without having to be elected.

So Axelrod comes right out and says, “Please be distracted by the ‘Awww, poor Joe!’ strategy, and stop trying to find out who was really making decisions and policy in the White House!” Thanks, David! It’s good to remove any doubt about just how stupid your party thinks we are.

See How They Spin! One Axis Hack Interviews Another To Try To Rationalize Away The Media’s Complicity in the Biden Dementia Cover-up

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Axis hack #1…

Ezra Klein!

Axis hack #2…

Ethics Villain, CNN’s Jake Tapper!

Almost exactly a year ago, I excoriated the New York Times and Public Enemy Ezra Klein, the infamous “advocacy journalist” responsible for founding uber-Axis propaganda organ Vox, for a wildly unethical Klein disinformation piece titled, “Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It).” Guess what Klein didn’t see as a reason Biden was behind in the polls. Somehow, the fact that the alleged President was obviously suffering from dementia escaped his notice. (Suuuure it did…). The closest Klein got to that flaming, throbbing, flashing red alarm was “Voters think Biden is too old.” Just voters, mind you! I wrote, “[Biden’s] obviously declining mentally, and any fool can see he’s too old to hold any job, much less the most difficult one in the country.” But Ezra Klein, who was not declining mentally (and couldn’t possibly decline ethically, except into negative numbers), actually argued that Biden should do more debates with Trump, not just two, and that “all Biden needs to do is persuade enough voters that he is more capable than the erratic criminal defendant across the stage, who turns 78 next month.” What Klein meant was that all the complicit partisan media hacks—like Klein—had to do was to hide Biden’s incapacity from voters until election day. And that’s what they tried to do, except that Biden couldn’t even get through one debate without making it plain that his brain was mush.

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Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Banners

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

This isn’t the quiz question, but are we entering Julie Principle territory here? Should I keep flagging this very Trumpian conduct as ethically dubious, or just resign myself to “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Trump’s gonna troll ’cause he likes to, that’s why”?

Those banners are currently hanging at the Department of Agriculture building in Washington, D.C. Naturally, my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends (and certainly the rest of that zombie herd that I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting), is triggered. “This is SHOCKING,” writes one of the TDS inflicted (whose posts I have noted before). “Authoritarian craziness is now on full display. What happened to DOGE? We now have Soviet style banners. POTUS is a very ill man.” A reply asserts, “Unfortunately, the ‘uneducated’ would never see this.”

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CNN Gathers Enemies of the People to Sit Around and Lie Among Themselves To Fool Its Audience..What IS That?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I mean, other than “disgusting?”

From “Real Clear Politics”: Ethics Villain Jake Tapper hosts Lying Racist Van Jones and Obama Propagandist David Axelrod on CNN in a discussion of the “shocking” revelations regarding how Joe Biden was a walking vegetable while he was supposedly the “sharp as a tack” President of the United States….

TAPPER: Van, I remember how emotional you were in the immediate moments after the June 27, 2024, debate because of what you saw on the stage. And with all this new reporting coming out — and I should disclose that I gave both of you copies of the book so you would have a little bit more information. Do you feel like you were duped, Van? Like, how do you feel?

JONES: First, this book is extraordinary. I don’t care who you are, left, right, or otherwise. Anybody who cares about this country and about just the dynamics of power, this is “the emperor’s new clothes” playing itself out in real time. Everybody knew, but everyone was afraid to say — except for David Axelrod, for two years — that something was wrong here. I was shocked. I love Joe Biden. I don’t like him. I love him. I got a chance to work with him when I was a part of the Obama administration and loved him more every day. I was shocked to see his condition when he came out. And so was the world. And that wasn’t the first time he was in that condition. The book makes it very, very clear. There are people who knew and said nothing. And that is a crime against this republic. And I think the Democrats are going to pay for a long time for being a part of what is now being revealed to be a massive cover-up.

Here, let me fix that for you, asshole: “….for being a part of what is now being revealed to be a massive cover-up” in which all of us were complicit. I’m sure that’s what you meant to say, you shameless totalitarian hack.

Conservative pundit Stephen Green adds, “Biden’s decline was obvious in 2020 — for those with eyes — and yet Democrat insiders still thought that Biden was better than any of the alternatives in 2020.” And I’ll add to that: last February I wrote, regarding President Trump’s attendance at the (yecchh) Super Bowl,

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Ethics Dunce: James Comey and Anyone Who Defends Him

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

James Comey, the partisan, dishonest, unethical former FBI Director whom Trump was right to fire (but he should have fired him earlier) posted on Instagram, with approval, a message that consisted of the numbers 8647, meaning “rub out the 47th President,” Donald Trump, delineated with sea shells. …

 Nice! It didn’t take long for Comey to realize that this was, to say the least, a tactical error, and he took down the post. In doing so, Comey proved what a mendacious creep he is again by claiming that it never occurred to him that 8647 might be interpreted as a call to have the President of the United States eradicated, offed, murdered, killed…you know assassinated. Never mind that there have been two near misses by the “Kill Trump” club already, that some Democrats and “the resistance” have openly advocated violence, and that for a former head of the FBI to join their ranks is, to put it mildly, unseemly. Comey said he was sorry.

Not good enough. Not nearly good enough. A former high law enforcement official calling for the assassination of the sitting President is a big deal, attention should be paid, and Comey should suffer more than the indignity of having to channel Emily Litella (“Never mind!”)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X on Friday evening that the Secret Service had “interviewed disgraced former FBI Director Comey regarding a social media post calling for the assassination of President Trump.” Good. There is no valid justification for taking criminal action against Comey (who wrote coyly under his shells photo, “Cool shell formation”), but there also is no good reason not to thoroughly humiliate this Ethics Villain either.

Naturally, because they are the enemy of the people, most journalists reporting on the incident adopted the reflex “Republican pounce” approach rather than the well-earned “Can you believe that Trump was attacked for firing this guy in his first term?” framing.

Ethics Dunces: “More Than 150 Former State and Federal Judges”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

One aspect of the legal community that has become (disturbingly) clear to me since I entered the weird field of legal ethics full time about 25 years ago is that judges stick together even when it is obviously unethical to do so. I don’t know why this is so—lawyers certainly don’t have this proclivity—but it doesn’t matter why judges close ranks and circle their metaphorical wagons any time one of them is being held accountable for unethical conduct. It matters that it is unethical, and they know it. But in these situations they are like cops erecting the “blue line.”

I have written about the case of a lawyer in Seattle, Washington whose client revealed to him that a state judge was accepting bribes. The lawyer felt it was his duty to report the judge to authorities (especially after the judge ruled against another client after one such bribe), and indeed the judge, who was corrupt, ended up being removed from the bench and prosecuted. But the colleagues of that judge made sure that the lawyer was disbarred, because the evidence he had acted upon was a client confidence. The message sent by the action, however, was clear: don’t mess with judges, even the crooked ones.

I recalled that ugly episode when I read that “More than 150 former state and federal judges have signed a letter to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, condemning the Trump administration’s escalating battles with the judiciary and calling the recent arrest of a sitting state court judge in Milwaukee an attempt to intimidate.” That was the Times version; most news sources just emphasized the last part: How dare the Trump administration arrest a judge?

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On Qatar, Air Force One, And the Lying News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Another week, another fake news story designed to undermine President Trump.

I must say, I admire the New York Times headline: “Trump is said to be planning to accept a luxury 747 from Qatar for use as Air Force One.” You see, “Trump” isn’t getting a 747 from the Middle Eastern Arab nation at all. The United States is. But, see, “Trump” is said to be getting the gift by Democrats and slimy journalists, so that’s the news. But people lying about what the President does isn’t news, it’s SOP, so why would this be worth a story? In fact, the headline only tells us someone or someones are saying that Trump is planning to accept the gift. That’s another one of my favorite kinds of fake news: psychic fake news, with the sources being unknown “sayers.”

ABC’s Jonathan Karl tweeted out a perfect example of how the news media distorts the news by manipulating the context. He tweeted yesterday,

“ABC EXCLUSIVE: President Trump is poised to accept a luxury jet as a gift from Qatar. It’s to be used as Air Force One and then transferred to the Trump library by January 2029. Perhaps the biggest foreign gift ever. DOJ insists it’s legal, not bribery, not violation of emoluments clause.”

Let’s see: the President will be accepting the jet on behalf of the nation, as Presidents do. The DOJ doesn’t have to “insist” that it’s not bribery, not illegal and not a violation of the [dead, inapplicable and never enforced] Emoluments Clause, because gifts to the U.S. are not personal gifts to the President, are legal, are not bribery, and the Emoluments Clause, one of the Axis’s Big Lie impeachment theories [Plan C], “has nothing to do with the price of beans,” as my father liked to say. Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8 of the Constitution prohibits federal officeholders from receiving any gift, payment, or other thing of value from a foreign state or its rulers, officers, or representatives without Congressional approval. Again, Trump personally isn’t being given anything.

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So….the Cardinals Couldn’t Find a Pope Who WASN’T Part of the Predator Priest Scandal? [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Good to know, don’t you think?

I’m stunned that Robert Prevost, who just became became the American pontiff, had been accused by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) of failing to act upon allegations of abuse in the U.S. and Peru. The group says that Prevost ignored allegations of sexual abuse by predator priests in Chicago after Augustinian priest Father James Ray was allowed to live at the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park despite being removed from ministering to the public over credible evidence that he had sexually abusing children. SNAP says Provost didn’t notify the heads of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic school, an elementary school half a block from the friary on the grounds that Ray was being “closely monitored.”

You know, like the Church closely monitored all of its priests to make sure they weren’t molesting altar boys.

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Ethics Observations On the Allied Injury Group’s “Your Favorite Attorney” TV Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Ethics Observations:

1. Yecchh! It is both icky and unethical, indeed technically (under the Rules of Professional Conduct) so, and generally.

2. In case you couldn’t figure it out (I had to check myself), the spokesperson calling himself “Your Favorite Attorney” is an actor, indeed a stand-up comic named Shaun Jones. All of the jurisdictions prohibit lawyer advertising in any form that is misleading or that includes false information. A sole practitioner can’t call her firm “X & Associates,” for example, if she’s the only lawyer in the firm. Putting a non-lawyer in front of a camera and calling having him call himself an attorney is an undeniable violation, and an intentional one.

3. Another technical point: although I suppose it is (slightly) possible that the stand-up comic has a law license, he can’t call himself an attorney unless he has clients. Jones also says that if the client doesn’t make money, “I” don’t make money. That is deceit. The firm will argue that the actor is only saying that if the firm doesn’t win its cases, the actor won’t get paid. But his statement is intended to refer to contingent fees for attorneys, and he isn’t one.

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I Think It’s Admirable That the Pulitzers Are So Transparent About Their Blatant Partisan Bias, Don’t You?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The announcement of the Pulitzer prizes were broadcast live on the organization’s website, and what everyone should be able to agree was the photo of the year was snubbed. That, of course, is the second photo above, shot by Evan Vucci of the Associated Press and generally appreciated as a masterpiece of composition, story-telling and drama. But, of course, the photo is alao widely believed to have helped Donald Trump get elected President, so by definition the photo is bad, and must not be honored. Another photo related to the assassination attempt, the first one above taken by Doug Mills, won the prize instead. After all, that one had the good people thinking ruefully, “Damn. Missed him by that much!”

The snubbed photo will be in history books and regarded as one of the most memorable moments captured on film, along with the GI kissing the nurse in Times Square, Harry Truman holding up the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline, the naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack, and the Frenchman weeping as Hitler’s army swept down a Paris street. An angry Monica Showalter writes at American Thinker,

The picture turned up on t-shirts, coffee mugs, stickers and posters, signaling how much the public was moved by it….But it was hardly propaganda — it was the work of an experienced photographer able to act with split-second instincts in a dangerous situation with events still unfolding….I have no inside line on why this photo didn’t win the Pulitzer, despite being so deserving of it. Did the AP not promote it, or did the Pulitzer board shun it, on what could only be political grounds? Either way, it’s a disgrace. The photo had Pulitzer written all over it, and the judges could only view the thing through wokester-impaired eyes.

As for me, I an neither disappointed nor surprised, not after this now thoroughly corrupt organization awarded a Pulitzer prize for the racist, fake history lesson of “The 1619 Project.” In truth I am impressed: the deliberate decision to ignore such a deserving photo says to all, “Yes, the Pulitzers are partisan and politically biased. We don’t care. In fact, we’re proud. Suck it!”

Thanks for your candor. We get the message.