Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Today’s Unethical (and Stupid) Headline of the Day: “Ten Year-Old American With Brain Cancer Deported Because She Fell Out of the Wrong Vagina”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

To be fair, that headline is supposed to be funny: it is the work of the humorous news aggregator and satire site “Fark,” which posts links to stories that can support snarky, sarcastic, vulgar or wise-ass headings. I don’t find that headline anything but obnoxious, however, especially since a large number of “Think of the children!” saps and pro-open borders activists will be shaking their heads sadly after reading it.

The linked story is by NBC News which sports the only slightly less obnoxious header, “U.S. citizen child recovering from brain cancer deported to Mexico with undocumented parents.”

A fair, un-biased headline would read, “Illegal immigrant couple deported, along with their children.” That’s what happened. The fact that one of those children has a medical condition is irrelevant. (That’s the girl above. I would think her blurry face problem is at least as serious as her brain tumor…). The implication that the child was the focus of the action rather than her parents is deliberately misleading (that’s deceit, by definition). And the parents aren’t “undocumented,” they were here illegally. The use of “undocumented” is always a tell: anyone who uses it it trying to glide over the illegal status of someone who has no ground to complain if they are sent back to their nation of origin.

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Marketing Ethics: “That’s Some Bad Hat, MLB!”*

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

We shall see if the ethical value of accountability is completely dead in our culture by how many people are fired by Major League Baseball in the aftermath of the Great Baseball Cap Disaster of 2025. It should be a lot.

Baseball finally figured out that the clubs could make a lot of money by constantly adding new uniforms and baseball cap options to each team. (I blame former Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth, whose entire function during his tenure was to modernize the sport’s merchandising and public relations.) I thought this hustle had reached its apotheosis with the dreadful “City Connect” uniforms that were inflicted on the teams a few years ago, creating inexplicable eyesores like this for the RED Sox…

but the sport’s greed and lack of taste knows no bounds. Fans and collectors actually bought those jerseys and caps (to be fair, some of the redesigned uniforms aren’t quite that bad), along with the “vintage” uniforms and caps, the Mother’s Day uniforms and caps, the stupid “nickname” jerseys, the boring All-Star team jerseys and caps, “turn-back-the clock” uniforms….As P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

So someone got the bright idea to foist these ugly team caps off on the public, since obviously baseball fans will buy anything:

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KABOOM! My Head Just Exploded! Biden’s Executive Orders Used an Autopen???

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Wait, what? An Executive Order can be legal and go into effect without a President actually signing it? A so-called “autopen signature” counts? EVEN WHEN THE PRESIDENT MAY NOT BE CAPABLE OF KNOWING WHAT HE’S “SIGNING”?

A Heritage Foundation investigation has discovered that the majority of official documents signed by President Joe Biden used the same autopen signature. The Oversight Project, which is an initiative within the conservative Heritage Foundation that investigates the government, announced, “We gathered every document we could find with Biden’s signature over the course of his Presidency. All used the same autopen signature except for the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the race last year. Here is the autopen signature,” the group said, attaching photo examples like these:

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They Make Such a Nice Couple! Ethics Dunce: Texas A&M University; Ethics Hero: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Texas A&M students started holding “Draggieland” (“drag” mixed with “Aggieland,” get it?) at the campus theater complex in 2020. Five years later, however, the tradition was slapped down as the school’s Board of Regents voted to ban all drag events on the 11 Texas A&M campuses.The board’s resolution reads in part,

“The board finds that it is inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow special event venues of the universities to be used for drag shows [which are] offensive  [and] likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.”

I’d guess a pre-law student with a closed head injury could correctly explain what’s wrong with that silliness, but luckily the student body at Texas A&M will have a better champion than that, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE. FIRE moved in to fill the breach when the ACLU decided to be woke rather than defend free speech and expression regardless of which side of the partisan divide was attacking them, and this low-hanging fruitcake edict prompted the organization to file a federal lawsuit. It backs the Queer Empowerment Council, a coalition of student organizations at Texas A&M University-College Station and the organizers of the fifth annual “Draggieland” event that was scheduled to be held on campus on March 27, and aims at blocking the policy as a clear violation of the First Amendment. Which it is. FIRE asked a court in the Southern District of Texas to halt Texas A&M officials from enforcing the ban.

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Regarding Those “Adults in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, THAT quote didn’t age well…

House Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (MA) joined Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA), and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA) for a press conference in May of 2023 that began with Clark declaring, “It is Democrats who’ve been the adults in the room. It is Democrats who’ve prioritized Americans over political gamesmanship.”

Last night I rewatched “All the President’s Men.” I was struck by how similar Nixon’s attempts to cripple potential Democratic Party challengers resembled the various unethical measures taken by President Obama’s minions and President Biden’s puppeteers to bury Donald Trump, but that’s a different topic. What I was immediately impressed with was how an archival film of Nixon’s State of the Union Address in 1972 showed the entire audience consisting of both parties of both houses of Congress rising and applauding the President as he entered the chamber. They did this because Nixon, as divisive and loathed as he was by the American Left, was the goddamn President of the United States, had been elected by the American people, and it was every member of Congress’s duty to show the office due respect.

And it still is. Today’s Democrats (and, tragically, their Trump Deranged supporters), however, choose to behave like spit-ball shooting grade-schoolers, debasing the nation and its institutions in the process. Jonathan Turley said yesterday that when he was a House leadership page, every member of the House of Representatives would have voted to censure a Congressman who behaved like Al Green, because, quite simply, his disgusting conduct deserved condemnation and it was crucial for Congress to insist of standards of decorum. Today’s Democratic House members saluted Green as a martyr, and behaved like the student protesters of the Sixties. You know, adults.

Here are a few other notable examples of Democrats and their anti-Trump cult followers behaving like adults in the past few days:

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Ethics Dunce (Again): Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[Psst! It’s Georgetown University Law Center, not “school.” The Hill and other lazy publications keep calling it the law school, which was what the institution’s name was before it moved from the Georgetown campus (in Georgetown, a picturesque section of D.C.) to Capitol Hill near all the courts, including the Supreme Court. If you saw the place, you would know that “center” is an appropriate description. The name was the inspiration of then Dean Paul Dean, visionary, a respected lawyer and talented fund-raiser. He was also a good friend of mine as well as a cherished mentor]

William Trainor has been criticized on Ethics Alarms before notably during this fiasco, when he punished an incoming faculty member, Illya Shapiro, for daring to question Joe Biden’s wisdom of narrowing his choice of Supreme Court nominees to fill a vacancy to women of color, the same criteria that worked out so, so well with Kamala Harris. Following the lead of his radically indoctrinated students (it’s supposed to be the other way around), the GULC dean suspended Shapiro pending…well, something, and then after letting him twist slowly in the wind for months, finally let him back into the fold whereupon Shapiro quite properly told him to take his job and shove it, as I would have under like circumstances.

There were other instances when Trainer allowed his institution to be more woke than responsible; he is largely the reason my Law Center diploma is turned face to the wall in my ProEthics office. Here is an episode that didn’t directly involve the Dean but that occurred on his watch.

Now comes another skirmish. Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to GULC last month asking if the Law Center had eliminated its commitment to DEI. “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote.

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House Democrats Emulate Al Green En Masse Just So There Is No Mistaking The Party’s Descent Into…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Early during President Trump’s State of the Union Message [See footnote below], Texas Representative Al Green, who already filed articles of impeachment against the President, shook his cane and shouted, refusing to stop disrupting the speech until Speaker Mike Johnson had the House Sergeant of Arms escort him out of the chamber. Green then went to the first camera he saw and declared, “I’ll accept my punishment! It was worth it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson had issued several warnings. “Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” he said. Then, “That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum. And the Chair is prepared to direct the Sergeant at arms to restore order to the joint session. Take your seat,” Johnson said. Finally, “The members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum. The chair now directs the Sergeant at Arms to restore order. Remove this gentleman from the chamber.”

Green’s official censure was assumed to be a certainty, and sure enough, Green was censured the next day. The vote was 224-198, with 10 Democrats joining all Republicans, so we know that at least ten Democrats have a shred of dignity and respect for the institution of Congress. (Green and freshman Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., voted “present”) As the vote proceeded, Green sat by himself along the center aisle as tradition dictates.

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Never Mind “The Appearance of Impropriety,” Democrats Need To Avoid The Appearance of Stupidity

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Let’s see: the ethical values that Congressional Democrats spat upon last night were competence, responsibility, integrity, respect, civility, courtesy, decency, dignity, self-restraint, prudence, fairness and patriotism. That’s quite an accomplishment in a single event. The party’s decision to challenge the GOP’s well-earned title as “The Stupid Party” last night during the State of the Union address was, in turn,

  • Foolish
  • Juvenile
  • Desperate
  • Embarrassing (to their party, the  nation and the institution of Congress)
  • Damning
  • Damaging to democracy
  • An appeal to the Trump Deranged while simultaneously proving how crippling the malady can be…and…
  • …a gift to the man they hate so much, President Trump.

In “True Grit,” the villain Tom Cheney is shot by young Maddie Ross after he taunts her by telling the girl how to cock the giant pistol she has aimed at him. He is stunned when she shoots him, and cries out, “I didn’t think you’d do it!”

I might make “The Cheney” a new Ethics Alarms distinction. I had read about the ridiculous college campus protest-level tactics Democrats were considering, and posted about them yesterday, as well as noting that the party’s leader in the House, Hakeem Jefferies, had advised them to eschew such nonsense in favor of a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” Jeffries was right for a change, and I really thought all of the stories about the Democrats bringing props and dressing up would prove to be false alarms. I didn’t think they’d do it! Yet when the time for the yearly Presidential “speech “state of the nation” speech arrived, there were the Democrats, looking like the studio audience in a particularly ugly episode of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

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Ethics Dunce: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (and Further Observations on the Oval Office Fiasco) [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments

I worked for many years for a fascinating man, a brilliant negotiation specialist and consultant, Richard Halpern. My first thought yesterday after watching the astounding argument that broke out among the President, Vice-President Vance and Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was, “Boy, I wish Rich was still here to analyze what went wrong.” Rich died in 2009, but I learned enough about the art of negotiation from working with and observing him to be confident in how he would have reacted to what occurred on live television yesterday. My thoughts also reached back across the decades to the seminar I took on negotiation in law school with Adrian Fisher, then Dean of Georgetown Law Center after a career as a top arms control negotiator for the United States.

Both Richard Halpern and Adrian Fisher would have agreed that Zelenskyy was incompetent. I would add that he behaved like a deluded fool who had come to believe his fawning press notices.

First, Zelenskyy did not sufficiently research his negotiation partners, their preferences, their character, and their “hot buttons” that should never be pressed without sound reasons. Second, he did not properly prepare to insulate his own hot buttons from making him behave against his country’s best interests. Third, he did not comprehend why he was in the Oval office and what was expected of him.

Finally, he did not understand that as a supplicant nation seeking critical aid from the United States, he was not on a level playing field, particularly since he was in the U.S., on the President’s home turf. His job was to be respectful, compliant and non-confrontational no matter what occurred or was said.

The previous press conference with a foreign leader that President Trump had completed just the day before should have served as a guide. Keir Starmer was content to stay in the background and barely speak while the President rambled on in his inimitable fashion, and Great Britain has accumulated far more credits and greater good will with the U.S. than Ukraine. One commenter said that yesterday Zelenskyy failed to “read the room.” It was far worse than that: he failed to read the room, whom he was talking to, why he was there, and what he had to accomplish.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Verdict: Justified, Necessary, and Ethical”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This refreshing Comment of the Day by EA Ace AM Golden concludes with a trenchant point: Why does someone need to be reading Ethics Alarms or doing their own research to be properly informed of the context of a news event rather than misled by selective reporting?

I should have included the historical precedents for the recent Trump White House decision to exercise its own discretion over what news organizations and other news sources should be included in briefings, but my point was that it didn’t matter what the “precedent” was because today’s news media and the unethical way they have covered this particular President have no valid precedents. However, AM’s perfectly illustrated point is equally important: as usual, the news media is framing anything Trump does as a “threat to democracy” rather than giving the public the information it needs to make up their own minds.

Once I read AM’s COTD, I was even more disgusted with the New York Times than I usually am. Pure deceit: the piece says that it’s a “decades long” precedent to not pick and choose among news organizations, see, so if AM’s precedents are waved in the Times editors’ smug faces, they can say, “Well, those examples were still many decades ago, so what we wrote is correct!”

But even if the Times reporters and lazy editors had been aware of the precedents AM reveals (I’d bet anything that they didn’t bother to check), they still wouldn’t have mentioned them because Trump is following the examples of two revered figures, one of them on Mt. Rushmore and the other unanimously regarded as our greatest President in the last hundred years.

And just to preempt the usual excuse that self-banned Times defender “A Friend” would typically post until I sent the comment to Spam Hell, those Times readers who are the reliable epitome of erudition, fairness and oversight saving the biased Times from itself, I checked all the nearly 2000 comments to the news story. Most agreed that Trump is an aspiring dictator, but not a single one mentioned the Roosevelts.

Here is AM Golden’s illuminating Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Verdict: Justified, Necessary, and Ethical”…

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