Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Two Unethical Books: One Not Fit For Toilet Paper But I Want A Crate of the Other

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

What appears to be a controlled experiment to determine “Just how stupid are members of the American public who can read?” the White House risibly claims that Joe Biden “plans to write a book after leaving office giving him an opportunity to try and shape the narrative around his presidency and the tumultuous weeks leading to his historic withdrawal from the 2024 race.” Axios, a card-carrying member of the progressive propaganda machine, writes as if this is credible, when everyone without a see-through head knows it is not. “If the book project comes to fruition, it will be a chance for Biden to lay out, in full, his views on what he accomplished and why he handled the 2024 cycle the way he did,” Axios says. No, it will be a chance for Biden’s spin team, puppeteers, pardoned son and wife to concoct a fantasy worthy of Frank L. Baum.

The Speaker of the House revealed this week in an interview with Free Press that Biden insisted to Speaker Mike Johnson that he never issued an order to freeze new liquid natural gas export permits. Biden had in fact signed it less than a month earlier. Johnson told podcaster Bari Weiss that he believes Biden “genuinely didn’t know what he had signed.” And that account is from January 2024!

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Ethics Verdict: Stanford Law Prof. Mark Lemley and Law Firm Lex Lumina Are Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

…and their conduct in the Facebook matter is damaging to the profession of the law.

Intellectual property expert Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School and a partner at law firm Lex Lumina, represented Facebook in the copyright case brought on behalf of creators claiming the platform infringed their intellectual property. Yesterday he “fired” his client, despite believing that Meta’s case was strong. His stated reason was that he is outraged at Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s “descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness.” His law firm then proceeded to back him up.

Here is Lemley’s Facebook post announcing his decision:

Meanwhile, the managing partner of his woke law firm followed with the statement that “Money can’t buy everyone. We’re proud to be a firm that doesn’t sell out our values. Sadly, it seems this is becoming a rarer and rarer quality in America today.” Another partner said, “When we started Lex Lumina, one of the things we committed to was only taking cases we felt good about, on the law and in terms of who we represented. Proud to be working with my friend and partner, Mark Lemley, who lived out our commitment today.”

This is labeling unethical lawyer conduct as ethical.

Lemley went on to post a reiteration of his decision on LinkedIn. It wasn’t “the right call.” If Lemley and his firm had refused to represent Meta in the case of Kadrey v. Meta Platforms initially, there would be no ethics foul: nothing in the Rules of Professional Conduct mandates that any lawyer accept any client, although the traditional ethos of the profession strongly encourages lawyers to do so. However, dropping a client because of what that client has done or said that has nothing to do with the case of the representation, while not a strict rules violation, is unprofessional and creates a dangerous slippery slope…one that many in the legal profession have been leaping down in recent years.

Noteworthy is the fact that Lemley is no legal ethics expert. His actions demonstrate that vividly, and his post is a flashing sign stating, “I am biased, Trump Deranged, a Democrat, and believe in good censorship.” Got it, Professor.

Naturally, the woke legal hacks at Above the Law love this, and ratioanalizes it with an argument that has been rife since the corrupted legal profession started behaving like the restaurants who won’t serve people wearing MAGA caps. Joe Patrice, the head ideologue at Above the Law writes,

A sanctimonious segment of the legal profession harps on the idea that “everyone is entitled an attorney.” Except no one is entitled to you as an attorney. Frankly, no one is entitled to anything in a civil case and to the extent society needs to extend more protections to indigent clients on the wrong end of life-altering civil actions — landlord-tenant cases for instance — there’s definitely no such entitlement for a multibillion-dollar company in a copyright dispute.

Representing a client is a business decision. Some lawyers thrive as counsel of last resort and model their business around the willingness to represent unpopular clients. Other lawyers build their business on crusading for good causes. A whole lot of lawyers exist somewhere between those poles. In fact, a lot of deep-pocketed clients also don’t want to work with firms associated with unpopular causes — that’s a business decision too.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these approaches. Lawyers should feel free to build their practice however they want.

What is wrong with that argument is that it violates Kant’s Rule of Universality, the “What if everybody did it” test that is part of the philosopher’s categorical imperative. Patrice’s standard, and accepting Lemley’s conduct, would mean that certain citizens and organizations could be left without legal representation entirely because they were regarded by a politicized legal profession (and an ethically addled public) as “bad.” While it is accurate to assert that the Sixth Amendment does not guarantee a citizen legal representation in a civil (as opposed to a criminal) case, the legal professional has long embraced the principle that the same ethical and practical justifications should apply. If we accept Patrice’s ethically ignorant (or deliberately misleading) argument that whether to accept a representation is purely a business decision, that allows lawyers and firms to avoid unpopular clients, leaving them potentially at the mercy of the polls and bias in a rigged legal system.

This is what the actions of Lemley and his firm are pointing to. It is the reason Donald Trump has had difficulty hiring lawyers and getting competent legal assistance. Firms and lawyers get threatened by clients, and in the constant tug-of-war between the profession of law and the business of law, business now prevails. Once, before the progressive bias in laws schools and among lawyers became the status quo, the mission of representing unpopular causes and clients, even when the attorneys for these clients personally disagreed with and even deplored their conduct was seen as part of the legal profession’s mission. Wall Street lawyers represented accused terrorists after the bombings of 9/11 after public figures called for their firms to be boycotted. When Coca-Cola virtually extorted their law firm into dropping its representation of the House Committee defending the Defense of Marriage Act before the Supreme Court, the partner handling the case, Paul Clement, wrote in his letter of resignation in protest of the decision, that “defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do.” Similarly defending unpopular clients is what lawyers must do and be honored for, or we have no longer have an equitable legal system.

The unethical principle Lemley is advocating is worse than opposing taking on an unpopular position: he seeks to justify abandoning a position he feels is valid because his client’s policies no longer please him. I have vowed to promote this section of the Rules of Professional Conduct because it is such a crucial one for maintaining the integrity of the profession and trust in its members:

“A lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social or moral views or activities.”

It should be obvious that if it becomes acceptable for lawyers and firms to refuse representations because they fear being regarded as endorsing a clients’ “political, economic, social or moral views or activities,” the legal profession will have nullified that critical standard in practice, and the public will be correct to assume that if a lawyer or firm represents an unpopular cause or individual, those lawyers agree with and endorse them. This is what ideologues like Joe Patrice want, a legal system as polarized as the political system, where one can tell the “good” lawyers from the “bad” lawyers by whom they choose to represent.

Dropping a client one has already accepted, which is what Lemley has done, is worse still. In his letter excoriating his former firm, Clement quoted Griffin Bell, a judge and former U.S. Attorney General, declaring that once a lawyer has accepted a case, it is the lawyer’s duty and ethical obligation to continue the representation. In 2011, when the DOMA controversy erupted, Clement’s position was almost unanimously praised within the profession. Theodore Olson, the late conservative attorney, praised Clement’s “abilities, integrity, and professionalism”.” Olson, who like Clement was a solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration and was a successful Supreme Court advocate, told the media, “I think it’s important for lawyers to be willing to represent unpopular and controversial clients and causes, and that when Paul agreed to do that, he was acting in the best tradition of the legal profession.” Seth Waxman, who served as solicitor general during the Bill Clinton administration, said, “I think it’s important for lawyers on the other side of the political divide from Paul, who’s a very fine lawyer, to reaffirm what Paul wrote. Paul is entirely correct that our adversary system depends on vigorous advocates being willing to take on even very unpopular positions.” In approving Clement’s stand, The Washingtonian observed, “There are countless examples of law firms taking on and standing by controversial clients, even at the risk of their public images.” There are fewer and fewer examples now, however. This is the dystopian legal landscape that Lemley and his firm are promoting, and it is an unethical one.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about. We want to tell the truth. We haven’t always done it as a nation. We want to tell the truth.The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say, ‘By the way, we’re not gonna fact check anything,’ and you know, you have millions of people reading, going online, reading this stuff. Anyway, I think it’s really shameful.”

—-President Joe Biden, attacking Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg decision’s to end its biased, censorious fact-checking system that relied on partisan propaganda operations like PolitiFact and Snopes.

What’s shameful is a President of the United States advocating speech censorship. Like many of Biden’s brain-addled outbursts lately, however, he has committed the cardinal political sin of saying what he and his puppeteers really believe out loud. So now we know, at least those of us who weren’t paying attention before and couldn’t read the metaphorical neon signs flashing before our eyes, Joe Biden and his entire party advocates the censorship of free speech on social media, including opinion, adverse positions and anything that might expose its rotting proto-totalitarian party for the threat to democracy it has become. Thanks, Joe! But it was pretty obvious already.

I’m glad that I have waited to post the resolution of the “Worst President Ever” inquiry until tomorrow, because so much applicable information has been flowing regarding just how awful Joe Biden has been. I think all who have read the series carefully have figured out that the finals are going to come down to Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson and Biden, and it doesn’t take a PhD to guess who the last two competitors will be either. Once I thought the ultimate “winner” was clear-cut, but Joe is fighting for the title to the bitter end.

He and his fellow censors circulated lie after lie before and during the Presidential campaign (among them that only Donald Trump lies) yet Biden has the astounding brass to talk about wanting to tell the truth. You know, truth like Biden being sharp as a tack. “Truth” like the border being secure.

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This one is too easy.

If anyone really wants to know why the United States has yet to elect a female President, all that is required is to look at the talent pool. Members of Congress who have no executive experience are usually unqualified to take on the toughest leadership job in the world, so women with a background at least theoretically justifying a run for the White House must have shined as a state governor or a big city mayor unless their entire case for being elected consists of “I’m a woman.” When Gretchen Whitmer is the only female governor ever mentioned in the same breath as “President,” that tells you how deep the state house talent pool is…and then we have the female big city mayors. London Breed in San Francisco, a slow motion car wreck. Uber-woke mayor of Boston Michelle Wu. The Black Lives Matter worshiping mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser. Lori Lightfoot was so inept and obnoxious in her term as mayor of Chicago that she was defeated in a landslide by a Marxist.

But the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, makes all of those look like Fiorello La Guardia in a pants suit. In a classic of bad timing, Bass cut her city’s fire department budget for this fiscal year by more than $17.5 million. Then, the National Weather Service warned that Los Angeles would be in peril in the next few days with this announcement:

“..LIFE THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, WIDESPREAD WINDSTORM TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING FOR PORTIONS OF LOS ANGELES AND EASTERN VENTURA COUNTIES– WITH LONG DURATION OF RED FLAG CONDITIONS INTO THURSDAY– POSSIBLY EXTENDING INTO FRIDAY… …RED FLAG WARNINGS IN EFFECT FOR LOS ANGELES COUNTY AND MUCH OF VENTURA COUNTY—SEE TIMINGS IN HEADLINES BELOW… ……Offshore winds are now expected to develop rapidly early Tuesday morning, leading to an earlier start time of the Red Flag Warning for many areas. Confidence is high for a life threatening, destructive, widespread windstorm with dangerous fire weather conditions Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning, especially focused on the San Gabriel mountains and foothills, San Gabriel Valley, San Fernando Valley, Hollywood/Beverly Hills, coastal areas adjacent to the Sepulveda Pass, Simi Valley, and Santa Monica mountains into Malibu. Strong mountain wave wind activity will likely impact many of these areas, resulting in very strong, erratic, and damaging wind gusts, capable of widespread downed trees/powerlines, as well as widespread power outages. This windstorm will likely be as destructive as the 2011 windstorm that impacted Pasadena and nearby San Gabriel Valley foothills. This is a high end Red Flag event. Any new fires will have a high risk for very rapid fire spread and large fire growth, extreme fire behavior, and long range spotting.“

So, forwarned, the next day, Bass took off for Ghana as part of a Presidential junket. When the fires started raging, it took her more than 24 hours to return to do her job. (Ghana has exactly no relationship to being mayor of L.A. at all.) By the time she arrived, more than 5,000 homes were burned or burning, as fire hydrants ran dry because water demand was so high it drained the city’s reserve tanks. She returned to face pointed questions about her leadership, or lack of it as the crisis loomed. Bass chose to shift into political BS boilerplate, saying,

“Let me just say first and foremost, my number one focus—and I think the focus of all of us here—with one voice is that we have to protect lives, we have to save lives and we have to save homes.”

Asked about Bass’s performance, Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, explained that Bass’ specialty is building legislative consensus behind closed doors “Her skills are building coalitions and working with people,” Grose said of Bass, who is in her first term. “This moment demands a true executive who will stand up and say, ‘this is what we’re going to do.’” Yeah, it’s that thingy called “leadership.” Building consensus is a stereotypical form of female management, but it’s not enough. if the stereotypical male leadership style of taking change and giving everyone confidence that there is someone in charge who knows what to do is too confrontational and icky for female mayors, the White House is going to be a loooong way off.

After she crashed and burned in interviews when she finally arrived on the smoky scene, Bass said, “When the fires are out, we will do a deep dive. We will look at what worked, we will look at what didn’t work, and we will let you know. Until then, my focus is on the TV screens behind you that are showing devastation that has continued. Thank you.”

The tone deafness and absence of leadership instincts that such a statement represents is mind boggling. “Don’t worry! After everything has burned down we will do a thorough analysis!” Just what citizens whose houses are in flames want to hear….

Now THIS Is Trump Derangement…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Maybe it would be therapeutic for January 6 to be officially declared “Trump Derangement Victims Day,” in honor of all the otherwise sane and reasonable Americans who were driven to fear, loathing and madness by the very exitsnace of Donald J. Trump. The villains who spread this destructive contagion are too many to list, although our lame duck, dying brain POTUS just awarded several of them citizen honors. Meanwhile, if we had such a holiday, those unfortunate sufferers could use the day therapeutically, and let all of their hate out like a primal scream.

I came to this conclusion after reading the following yesterday on a legal blog that I usually admire:

“There are arguments to be made that many who participated in the insurrection of January 6, 2021 thought they were being patriots defending a nation from a stolen election, even though it was a nonsensical lie fed to the willingly delusional by an amoral narcissist who wasn’t strong enough to endure the humiliation of failure. There are arguments to be made that some sentences imposed on J6 insurrectionists were excessive, even though capital police were beaten and bloodied. But there are no arguments that January 6th didn’t happen as it was seen, experienced and suffered that day, as Trump gleefully watched. Yet here we are, Trump re-elected and promising to pardon or grant clemency to his Hallelujah chorus. Here we are, Trump re-elected and urging the jailing of the January 6th House commission for prosecuting him too well, pretending that most of his own administration’s testimony against him didn’t exist or was somehow the result of tampering by then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney, of the radically progressive Cheney clan. Here we are, Trump re-elected as the former vice president acknowledges that the president demanded he violate the Constitution or be hung by Trump’s most violent sycophants…As his own Republican toadies scampered for cover and condemned his call to “fight like hell” that brought the worst of his followers to the second storming of the Capital, Trump relished in the glory of people willing to kill, or die, for him, not because he cared a whit for any of them but because he cared too much for himself…if you have chosen fantasy over reality, and want desperately enough to believe in the absurd excuses constructed around January 6th, so be it. Time will judge Trump’s administration. Time will judge Trump, the vulgar, deceitful, amoral, narcissistic ignoramus. But January 6th happened.

Yikes.

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Unethical Interview Exchange Of The Decade: “Meet the Press” and Senator Schumer

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

And this kind of thing is why I stopped watching Sunday Morning public events shows more than a decade ago. The disgraceful exchange, on “Meet the Press,” which has fallen apart in chunks since its glory days with Tim Russert:

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‘Nah, Those Prosecutions of Trump Weren’t Political!’

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

One inconvenient aspect of creeping senility is that the sufferers often say out loud what is normally filed in the brain file labeled “Never Speak of This, Ever.” And so it is that, as the Washington Post reports,

“In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general, complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to multiple people familiar with his comments. [….] Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election.’

Of course, we all knew that the plan was to burden Trump with dubious and politically motivated prosecutions in the year leading up to the election, and with a normal human being, it would have worked, or at least caused him to have a stroke or a breakdown. Instead, the Democratic Party’s “democratic norms”-wrecking strategy alienated Americans who don’t like to see their government acting like the Stasi. It showed a strength of character and fighting spirit that Americans still seek in their leaders. It proved how desperate and hypocritical Trumps foes and adversaries were. But the Axis denied it all—and now the intended beneficiary of the plot to make Donald Trump run for President as a “convicted felon” and “adjudicated rapist” has admitted that a better Attorney General would have nailed Trump before he could get elected.

And Donald Trump was the existential threat to the republic, this same man told us.

Has there ever been a time in our history when an entire political party and all of its voters and supporters so deserved to wear paper bags over their heads in disgrace?

In a Fascinating Though Risky Experiment, NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Decides To Test If Anything Can Make Voters Reject The Democratic Party

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I confess, I don’t know what to call this post, how to define NY Gov. Kathy Hochul at this point, or how to explain American citizens who would put up with her.

She’s had quite an exciting December. On the same day and just two hours after a psychopathic illegal immigrant set a sleeping woman on fire in a New York City subway train, Hochel sent out this…

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Comment of the Day: “What, If Anything, Is The Ethical Response To This Trump Derangement Victim’s Letter To ‘The Ethicist’?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sarah B.’s perceptive and eloquent Comment of the Day about the inquirer to the NYT’s “The Ethicist” advice column who asked whether the threat of various catastrophes ahead (as she saw them) concluded with a sentence that reminded me of this famous speech from the film “Parenthood.” I’ve been looking for an opportunity to post it. Thanks Sarah B.

And thanks for this Comment of the Day on the post, What, If Anything, Is The Ethical Response To This Trump Derangement Victim’s Letter To “The Ethicist”?…

***

It is very easy to mock and deride someone who is silly enough to believe the mainstream media and all the horror stories the left has subscribed to.  I like feeling superior for not believing in this version of fantasy land.  I felt superior when I was not one of the wackos who declared themselves part of the Navi in Avatar, and I’m feeling the same general happiness when recognizing that I’m not so far gone as to believe this current set of beliefs.  Indeed, it is tempting to feel even more so, because so many of my contemporaries follow this insane set of beliefs. 

However, I think we need to dig deeper than the mocking laughter this letter so easily inspires.  What is this woman really saying?  First, she is discussing a desire to have children.  This is a desire that fewer and fewer women are subscribing to, usually to their and to societies eventual sadness.  Therefore, this desire should be encouraged.  Second, she is fearing that we are entering a time of tribulation.  Before addressing this in any depth, we should consider what she is probably meaning with these two concerns.  The first worry is likely that she feels that bringing a child into this world in a time of trouble means that her child may suffer.  The second worry is that in bring a child into this world in a time of trouble would cause this woman to suffer. 

The concern of bringing a child into a world in a less than perfect time causing the child to suffer is not a valid one for several reasons.  First, the USA, under Trump or not, is better than many if not most places in the world.  In addition, the world in 2024 is a better place than nearly all of human history.  Less people suffer, and they suffer less than in the past.  The human misery index is very low.  Children are a joy to the human race, and the hope for the future.  Man has always had children, even in tougher times than any we can illogically expect to come about today.  The idea that the child MIGHT suffer in the perfect storm is still less likely than the child having a normal life and enjoying every moment his parents lovingly gifted him.  Besides, in the best of times, a child will get illnesses and injuries.  That is part of growing up.  To quote Calvin, quoting his dad, “being miserable builds character.”  As some say, if it were not for the heat or the hammer, the steel could not be honed.  Adversity is what helps us become the best version of ourselves.

The concern of a parent suffering because they brought a child into a troubled world is ridiculous, because parents will always suffer for their children.  Labor is no picnic.  Sleepless nights when breastfeeding are a form of suffering.  Staying up with a sick kid, or sitting by a kid’s bedside when they are in the hospital for a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, or croup is not exactly enjoyable.  Holding them still so a doctor can give them stitches is incredibly painful, even before they kick you.  I certainly feel greater pain than my children when they are sick and in misery and I wish I could take their suffering from them, even if it is a good suffering.  Heck, it really does hurt me more than my child when I have to discipline them.  And again, in the perfect utopia of a Democratic paradise, a child will still cause their parents suffering.  Children will be born with special needs.  Children will slip past an exhausted or distracted parent and fall into a pool or run into traffic.  Accidents will happen, no matter what we do.  Also, children will grow up and make poor decisions that cause parents all kinds of heartbreak.  (I could mention that many democratic policies make some of those decisions more likely, but that would be of little use talking with this woman.)  In short, being a parent is accepting suffering in the course of bring joy to ourselves and others.

My final thoughts on this involve a song by Garth Brooks.  “Our lives are better left to chance.  I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.”  Today, too many people have become convinced that no dance is worth the pain we may have to suffer, especially if we only imagine what the pain may be.  I choose the dance. 

When Your Trump-Deranged, Slowly Metamorphosing Into Full Leftist Totalitarian Friends and Relatives Deny What Their “Movement” Has Become, Waive This In Their Smug, Red, Contorted Faces…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This must stop, here, there, and everywhere.

As frequent readers here know, Ethics Alarms has been referring to the Axis of Unethical Conduct (an Ethics Alarms term, and a fair one) as a totalitarianism-leaning, anti-American phenomenon for years now, as I have tracked the frightening progress on the 2016 Ethics Train Wreck and all of its many offshoots. I have used made this point frequently and, I recognize, emphatically to the point that many object to those and related labels as inflammatory and biased, which they are not because my assessment is objective and accurate. I could also say, with justification, “If the show fits, wear it,” and even “If the shoe fits wear it, you assholes.”

Today I was sent promotional spam by my old hometown newspaper, the lone surviving conservative #2 paper in Boston (The Dominating Axis representative is the always Democratic Boston Globe) after the slow amalgam of four newspapers with long histories of service to the people of New England: The Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, the Boston Record and the Boston American. That headline above was all I needed to spark a head explosion with several subsequent explosions that left bits of brain and bone on my keyboard and computer screen after I read the entire report.

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