Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

No, Dr. Gelman, Just Because You Think Your Toaster Is A Lawyer Doesn’t Mean What You Say To It Is Privileged

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Its continues to amaze me whom the New York Times will give a platform to. Take Dr. Nils Gilman (please!), a historian who “works at the intersection of technology and public policy,” whatever that means.

He has written a supposedly learned column for the Times [gift link] claiming that human beings should have something akin to attorney-client privilege when they shoot off their mouths to their chatbots. His cautionary tale:

On New Year’s Day, Jonathan Rinderknecht purportedly asked ChatGPT: “Are you at fault if a fire is [lit]because of your cigarettes?”… “Yes,” ChatGPT replied…. Rinderknecht…had previously told the chatbot how “amazing” it had felt to burn a Bible months prior….and had also asked it to create a “dystopian” painting of a crowd of poor people fleeing a forest fire while a crowd of rich people mocked them behind a gate.

Somehow the bot squealed to federal authorities. Those conversations were considered sufficient evidence of Rinderknecht’s mind, motives and intent to start a fire that, along with GPS data that put him at the scene of the initial blaze, the feds arrested and chargeed him with several criminal counts, including destruction of property by means of fire, alleging that he was responsible for a small blaze that reignited a week later to start the horrific Palisades fire.

To the author, “this disturbing development is a warning for our legal system.” You see, lonely, stupid people are using A.I. chatbots as confidants, therapists and advisers now, and the damn things cannot be trusted. “We urgently need a new form of legal protection that would safeguard most private communications between people and A.I. chatbots. I call it A.I. interaction privilege,” he pleads.

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No Surprise: Prince Harry Is An Ethics Dunce, and Also an Idiot

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On the superb Showtime series “Ray Donovan,” actor Dash Mihok played Ray’s sad, stupid, easily manipulated brother, “Bunchie.” I always thought self-exiled Prince Harry was disturbingly Bunchie-like in appearance and intellect, and he proved the latter resemblance spectacularly in recent weeks.

As I discussed in an earlier post, Prince Harry attended one of the World Series games in L.A. with he and his insufferable wife wearing blue-and-white Dodgers caps. Harry’s father, King Charles, is the official ruler of Canada, a part of the British Commonwealth, and given that the Dodgers’ opposition in baseball’s ultimate series was the Toronto Blue Jays, many Brits and Canadians were upset that a member of the royal family would publicly favor the American competitor over the Canadian one. Of course they were. Imagine the scandal if one of Trump’s sons ostentatiously cheered on a Russian athlete in the Olympics.

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A Law Student Production of “Hamlet”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society is the now half-century old theater organization I inadvertently spawned as a first year law student (before they were called “1Ls”) at Georgetown University Law Center. Right now, the group, which calls itself “The only theater group with its own law school,” is nearing an all-time peak in student participation, interest and talent, making this old lawyer-theater guy proud and happy indeed.

Last night I attended closing night of the group’s ambitious, full production of “Hamlet,” which most community theater groups wouldn’t dare attempt. It was a modern dress version (period set “Hamlet’s” are the exception rather than the rule and have been for decades) with an “emo” concept that worked just fine. The student director staged with skill and intelligence, the casting was spot on, and it even gave me some new insights into the work despite having see the play too many times to list. Yes, a woman played the Danish prince, but the 1L actress was excellent, and female Hamlets first appeared in 1899, when the great Sarah Bernhardt played the role.

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Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Month: Zohran Mamdani [First in a Long, Long Series…]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”

—Zohran Mamdani‘s marathon victory speech on Election Night, after the Democratic Socialist (that is, Communist) was elected as New York City’s mayor.

A commenter asked my opinion regarding Mamdani’s speech and I demurred, because it was standard commie tripe that I’ve read and heard from everyone from Lenin to Castro, and now this guy. He speaks well, and I’m always in favor of that as a key leadership skill. So did David Koresh. However, as I kept seeing that quote being published by the disgracefully uncritical mainstream media, my inner Popeye scratched to get out (“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”) Who does he think he’s kidding?

Perhaps more importantly, what is the proper reaction to any American who wasn’t raised in a cave who doesn’t hear that insane claim and conclude, “Oh, brother! So much for that guy. He’s either lying, ignorant or a moron”? At very least it’s “RUN AWAY!”

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Ethics Quiz: My Father’s Dream Prank

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My father, Jack A. Marshall Sr. was always remarkably fatalistic about death, much to the chagrin of my mother. She was never amused when he repeated his supposed desire to be displayed sitting in a chair, eyes open, at his wake with a metal plate in the floor in front of his casket that would trigger a recording when mourners stepped on it. Then a recording would boom out in his voice saying, “Hello! I’m so glad that you came!”

Dad was half-kidding, but only half. My father hated the solemnity of funerals and found open casket wakes barbaric. Yet I have to believe he would have been secretly honored by the send-off the military gave him when he was buried at Arlington, with the horse-drawn caisson, the riderless steed and the 21-gun salute.

Today I learned that someone actually carried out my father’s threatened posthumous prank, but even in worst taste than what he proposed. The Wills, Trusts, & Estates Prof Blog reveals that Irish grandpa Shay Bradley, a Dublin native, arranged that after his death in 2019 a recording of his voice would be played at his funeral from inside his grave. Mourners heard repeated banging noises that sounded like they were coming from the interior of the coffin. “Hello? It is dark in here! Let me out! I can hear you! Is that the priest I can hear? I am in the box, can you hear that?” his voice could be heard shouting, in apparent panic.

Hilarity ensued.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is executing such a prank at a funeral ethical?

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Ethics Hero: Singer Tish Hyman

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In an ethics seminar I recently described how conduct could be legal but unethical (example: lying) and ethical but illegal (civil disobedience). Singer Trish Hyman decided that a little disturbance of the peace in a Gold’s Gym’s cafe area was the best way to draw attention to the gym’s unethical (and stupid….but woke, so it’s okay) practices regarding dangling penises in women’s changing rooms, so she shouted out her complaint raucously and made sure it was recorded.

The Beverly Center Gold’s Gym revoked the singer’s membership after she complained that a transgender wannabe woman (“with a big dick”) being in the women’s dressing room. “Today I was naked in the locker room. I turned around, and there was a man there. Boy clothes, lip gloss, standing there looking at me, and I’m butt naked,” Hyman said in a video posted on TikTok.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Un-Named California Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

Gail Herriot is Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights since 2007. She is a conservative, so much of the civil rights racket (“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer) objects to her existence.

Herriot recently posted the following jaw-dropping letter that she received from a member of the California Bar:

Dear Ms. Heriot,
 
This letter serves as a formal cease and desist demand regarding your ongoing, public, and targeted efforts to undermine and harass the Black community and its advocates for equity, in direct violation of state and federal civil rights laws and your ethical obligations as a member of the bar.
 
Your activities—including those publicly associated with the California Foundation for Equal Rights (CFER) (among others) and campaigns explicitly opposing Black-focused equity —constitute racial targeting and harassment under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and applicable state hate crime and anti-discrimination statutes. Such conduct is not protected expression when it rises to the level of coordinated intimidation or bias-based obstruction of legally protected programs. It is particularly egregious that your public campaigns have focused solely on efforts benefiting the Black community, while remaining silent on or even supportive of state and federal allocations to other racial or ethnic groups. 
 
For example: In 2021 and 2022, the State of California directed substantial funding—over $165 million—to AAPI anti-hate initiatives, a commendable effort to address rising hate incidents against Asian Americans.
 
In 2024, the California Legislature authorized over $300 million in support for Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community, recognizing their suffering and need for continued support.
 
Despite these allocations, your campaigns have not targeted or criticized these initiatives—only those aimed at repairing centuries of harm done to Black Americans, who remain the most frequent victims of race-based hate crimes nationwide according to federal data. Your selective and racially targeted opposition to Black equity initiatives, combined with your public standing as an attorney, member of a federal civil rights commission and educator, magnifies the discriminatory impact and constitutes a pattern of bias-based harassment under both state and federal law.
 
Accordingly, you are hereby ordered to immediately cease and desist from any further direct or indirect harassment, public misinformation, or racially targeted advocacy directed toward the Black community or programs designed to support it. Continued actions of this nature may result in:
 
Formal referral to state bar disciplinary authorities for violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct concerning bias, harassment, and discrimination; and
 
Referral to appropriate civil rights enforcement agencies for investigation under state and federal hate crime and civil rights statutes.
 
Please provide written confirmation within ten (10) business days that you have received this notice and that you will comply fully with its terms.
 
Warmest Regards,

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Unethical Rant of the Year: MSNBC Left-Wing Propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Lawrence O’Donnell, right up there with the most shameless Axis media hacks in captivity even compared to the rest of MSNBC, usually goes his merry way slamming Republicans, conservatives and President Trump, avoiding inconvenient facts, objectivity and balance at all costs, appealing only to American who don’t want news or fair analysis, just confirmation of their own world view. When people decry the harsh division in American society today, O’Donnell is one of the prime villains, in part because he has been championing “advocacy journalism” ( as in unethical journalism) for so long.

Here’s his Ethics Alarms dossier. The last time I bothered to mention him at all (he’s always biased and unethical: The Julie Principle applies), was last year when I elevated him from mere Unethical Broadcast Journalist to Ethics Corrupter. Yes, I defended O’Donnell once…for being caught on video screaming at the MSNBC staff and shouting “fuck” among other epithets. I don’t think anyone’s most embarrassing private moments should be made “viral.”

However, this time attention should be paid, as Willy Loman’s widow says at the end of “Death of a Salesman.” O’Donnell snapped on the air yesterday and began denigrating Scott Jennings, the articulate, restrained token conservative and Donald Trump advocate on CNN’s on-air team. Jennings does a superb job vivisecting the usually emotional, knee-jerk, woke Trump-Deranged fury that he encounters on the various panels and in the numerous discussions he participates in, providing a much-needed counterpoint on CNN, which has evolved into MSNBC lite: reliably unethically biased, but with occasional outbreaks of non-partisan reality.

For some reason a sole voice of non-Axis perspective on a rival network is deeply offensive to O’Donnell. How dare Jennings defend President Trump? How dare he undermine the perpetual efforts of the news media to destroy him and defeat his policies? The Unethical Rant of 2025 was the result. Here is the whole amazing thing:

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Ethics Hero: Bill Gates, Who Finally Figured Out That Climate Change Doom Is Hype

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Bill Gates, nerd and “on the spectrum” sufferer that he is, also has the advantage of being sufficiently rich that he is insulated from Leftist fury when he defies wokist cant. Today the climate change scam collective is presumably freaking out because Gates has issued a memo saying, in effect, “Oopsie! What a stupid I am! I let a bunch of agenda-driven scientists and lying (or ignorant) activists convince me to waste billions of dollars on their dishonest hustle! Oh well, live and learn…”

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Bullying? Capricious? Stupid? Ominous? Autocratic? Whatever Trump’s Punishing Canada For Ontario’s Anti-Tariff Ad Is, It’s Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Last week, President Trump called off trade negotiations with Canada because the government of Ontario, one of the nation’s provinces, released a deceptively edited advertisement using former U.S. President Ronald Reagan to criticize American tariffs.  It was the beginning of the Ontario provincial government’s public relations campaign in the U.S. opposing tariffs, which of course have been a prominent feature of Trump 2.0.

In a typically restrained response, Trump erupted in fury against the spot, using all caps to call the ad “FAKE” as he announced the suspension of trade negotiations with Canada.  “Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote on his personal social media platform Truth Social.

Ugh.

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