Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Now THIS Is An Unethical Candidate…And An Incompetent Liar!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Diploma scam

I love this story, and salute Tim Levier for bringing it to my attention. As Tim suggested, it’s got everything. Dishonesty, incompetence, a window on the utter ineptitude of our educational system, the arrogance of unqualified officials believing that they can lie their way to power while having complete contempt for the public…and more, including a journalist actually doing his job and vetting the legitimacy of a Democrat!  A black Democrat, even!

Behold and prepare to be amazed…

Aurora School Board member and Democrat Eric Nelson is running for State Representative in Aurora’s District 42. Unfortunately for him,  a Denver7 reporter decided to check on his claimed credentials, and the hilarious result has his embarrassed party calling on Nelson to stop running for office,  and urging voter to support his opponent.

Nelson’s campaign website and his Aurora School Board biography states that he earned “a Master of Social Work from Northwest Nazarene University.” So Denver7 contacted the school, which said it had no record of Nelson attending. Nelson responded by sending what he said was a copy of his diploma via text message to two local newspapers, The Aurora Sentinel and The Colorado Statesman.

Denver7 Reporter Marshall Zelinger decided to examine the document (above) , and found several, er, problems: Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Unethical Quote Of The Week, By Senator Joe Manshin (D-WV)

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Manshin

“But due process is what’s killing us now.”

—- Democratic Senator Joe Manshin, of West Virginia, on MSNBC bemoaning the fact that the government can’t take away your rights based on “suspicion.”

Naturally, nobody on the network immediately responded, “WHAT???” I wonder if there are any broadcast journalists who would have challenged that crypto-fascist statement by a U.S. Senator. Think about that for a minute.

Just so you are clear that the quote isn’t out of context, here is what Manshin said (you can also watch the video here)

“The problem we have and really the firewall that we have right now is due process. It’s all due process. So we can all say, yeah, we want the same thing but how do we get there?” If a person is on the terrorist watch list like the gentleman, the shooter in Orlando, he was twice by the FBI, we were briefed yesterday about what happened, but that man was brought in twice. They did everything they could. The FBI did everything they were supposed to do, but there was no way for them to keep him on the nix list or keep him off the gun buy list. There was no way to do that. So can’t we say that if a person’s under suspicion,  there should be a five-year period of time of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits, maybe we can come to that type of an agreement? But due process is what’s killing us now.”

Observations: Continue reading →

Fairness To Incompetent Lawyers?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
To be fair, Tamara can blame the fact that she thinks this is a good law suit on her cognitive problems..

To be fair, Tamara can blame the fact that she thinks this is a valid law suit on her cognitive problems…

Why this story didn’t make my head explode, thus rating the KABOOM! label, is a mystery. My theory is that the truly idiotic and ignorant exclamations on Facebook by my usually rational friends about guns in the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack have gradually strengthened my skull’s tolerance to internal pressure.

Once again, I have encountered a news story that required me to check and see if it was a hoax.

Tamara Wyche is a 2013 Harvard Law School graduate who is suing the New York State Board of Law Examiners. She claims she twice failed the bar exam because it refused to provide the same kind of testing accommodations that the law school did for her in her exams there, in recognition of her various cognitive problems. The fact that she flunked while being forced to take the exam under the same rules as everyone else resulted in the large Boston law firm Ropes & Gray terminating her employment. You can read her complaint here.

I confess that I didn’t read all of it: I didn’t want to press my luck with the old cranium.

The 29-year-old Wyche says she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety as a first-year law student at Harvard, and also  suffered several head injuries (?) that resulted in permanent memory problems and cognitive issues, requiring her to take several leaves of absence from her studies. She finally earned her law degree in 2013 thanks to Harvard granting her several doctor-recommended accommodations, including 50% extra time on tests, a separate testing room, and extra break time. She also was exempt from being called on in class, because of a propensity for anxiety and panic attacks.

Allow me to cut to the chase for a second, again in the interest of my dangerously bubbling brains, and perhaps yours. Continue reading →

When Big Corporations Act Exactly As Bad As Bernie Sanders Says They Are..

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Thank you city

Banking behemoth Citigroup is suing AT&T for using  “Thank You” in ads, because Citigroup claims that it owns the trademark on “THANKYOU.” See, it’s not enough that corporations want us to think of them when we go to a baseball game or maybe when we are wishing that our children never existed. They want us to think of them when we are being nice, too

No, this is not a hoax. I wish it were.

Law professor/blogger Jonathan Turley, who hates this as much as I do, has kindly provided links to other examples of this nauseating phenomenon (this , and this, yes, and this , don’t forget this, oh, and this nonsense , this ,this too ,here ,here ,another one here, here as well, and this), but this is really the last straw, or should be. Continue reading →

Ethics (and Legal) Dunces: Hillary Clinton And Everyone Else Who Is Suggesting That The Government Should Be Able To Keep Someone From Buying A Gun By Placing Them On A “No-Fly List””

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

This post would be barely worth writing, except that I have just listened to several cable channels state with great urgency that it is a “controversy.”

It’s no controversy. The government cannot take away a citizen’s rights without due process. Currently, as explained in an ACLU lawsuit, the No-Fly List procedure itself appears to lack due process, so linking it to Second Amendment rights would be similarly unconstitutional:

“There is no constitutional bar to reasonable regulation of guns, and the No Fly List could serve as one tool for it, but only with major reform…. the standards for inclusion on the No Fly List are unconstitutionally vague, and innocent people are blacklisted without a fair process to correct government error. Our lawsuit seeks a meaningful opportunity for our clients to challenge their placement on the No Fly List because it is so error-prone and the consequences for their lives have been devastating.  Over the years since we filed our suit — and in response to it — the government has made some reforms, but they are not enough.”

Continue reading →

An Unethical Obituary Gets Social Media Raves

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Here is the obituary…

Singapore Obituary

The glaring ethics problem is that this was not written by Lye as a personal mea culpa and sincere acknowledgement of the deceased’s shortcomings and failures. It was composed by one of his sons, allegedly “based” on various conversations with his father in his final days. Continue reading →

Now That We’ve Blamed Everybody And Everything—Guns, The NRA, Republicans, Christians, Gay Marriage Opponents, President Obama, Immigration Policy—That Had Nothing To Do With Omar Matteen’s Massacre, Let’s Talk About His Second Wife…

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
It is unknown whether having a child with the tragic "blurry face syndrome" contributed to Mateen's rampage...

It is unknown whether having a child with the tragic “blurry face syndrome” contributed to Mateen’s rampage…

Item: 

“The Orlando gunman’s wife has told federal agents she tried to talk her husband out of carrying out the attack, NBC News has learned.

Omar Mateen’s wife, Noor Zahi Salman, told the FBI she was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster, several officials familiar with the case said. She told the FBI that she once drove him to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out…”

Here’s a helpful Ethics Alarms ethics tip: if your husband, who had been talking about how much he hates gays and admires ISIS, cases a club for a possible slaughter and takes you with him as he buys a firearm and ammunition, you have an ethical and legal duty as a citizen and a human being to inform authorities to prevent a likely blood bath.

Are we clear on that?

Glad to be of assistance.

More:

“Authorities are considering filing criminal charges against Noor for failing to tell them what she knew before the brutal attack, law enforcement officials say, but no decision has been made.”

They should throw the book at her.

Unethical Quote Of The Week (And Nominated For Un-Self-Aware Quote Of The Year): Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

wait_what_logo

“If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun.”

—–Hillary Clinton, forgetting all sorts of things in her speech in response to the Orlando massacre.

Cowabunga, Hillary!!! Do you think, while I am trying to explain why the only responsible course for an ethical citizen is to vote for a horrible candidate like  you in order to stop Donald Trump from becoming President Asshole, you might at least try not to make it harder by talking like an autocratic idiot yourself? Do you think you could do that, please?

PLEASE???

Not for the first time, Hillary Clinton just made one of those boomerang assertions that applies to her as much as those she is supposedly criticizing. Her all-time classic, of course, was when she said that the victims of sexual abuse had the right to be believed (unless, of course, the sexual abuser is her husband and meal-ticket, in which case she personally will see that said victim is discredited and destroyed.)

Was the statement in her speech even worse? Hmmm, close one! Here is Hillary, herself under a criminal investigation by the FBI for violating a federal law or five and still running for President because, after all,  it’s just an investigation, and in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave one does not lose rights and privileges until one is actually convicted in a court of law. And yet here she is saying that an FBI investigation should suspend a Constitutional right.

Talk about throwing blood in the water. Talk about cynically appealing to low information voters. Talk about pandering. Talk about walking into a buzz-saw.

Talk about stupid…

I would not be the first to ask, fairly and accurately, if Hillary also believes that merely being investigated should suspend other rights, like the right to not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to have a lawyer, the right not to have to incriminate oneself, and the right to free speech? Does she know that the right to purchase a gun is also as much of a right as any of these? Or is she really saying that she wants to eliminate that right?

Perhaps she was just speaking carelessly, irresponsibly and in vague generalities–like, oh, just to pick an example out of the air, Donald Trump.

You’re not making it easy for me, Hillary.

Not at all.

The UN Officially Admits It Has No Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
"It is true: I am a weenie, and the U.N. can be rolled..."

“It is true: I am a weenie, and the U.N. can be rolled…”

The United Nations’ 2015 “Children and Armed Conflict” report originally listed the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen under “parties that kill or maim children” and “parties that engage in attacks on schools and/or hospitals.” Based on the work of U.N. researchers in Yemen, the report attributed 60 percent of the 785 children killed and 1,168 injured to the bombing coalition.

But  Saudi Arabia  threatened to stop its funding of other U.N. projects, so, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted,  the U.N. was revising the report to “review jointly the cases and numbers cited in the text,” in order to “reflect the highest standards of accuracy possible” ….and to “temporarily” remove the Saudi-led coalition countries from the report’s annex in the interest of protecting these programs.

Ban said he made a the difficult decision based on the need “to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would de-fund many U.N. programs.”

“It is unacceptable for member states to exert undue pressure,” Ban said, absurdly. If it is unacceptable, why does the U.N. accept it?

The UN published a factual report, and has now announced that the report will be inaccurate because it yielded to extortion in involving the lives of children.

Corruption. What justification is there to trust an organization that allows a member to do this?

The news media should stop quoting United Nations reports on health, climate change, hunger, or anything else. It has admitted that it can be bullied, pressured and bought. It has no credibility, and should not be treated as if it does.

_______________________

Sources: NPR, The Intercept

 

The Flat Learning Curve Again: Obama Signals His Desires In A Law Enforcement Matter Of Some Considerable Consequence

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

curve-flat…and not just any law enforcement matter, but an investigation of a former Secretary of State and presumptive Presidential nominee.

Nice. You see, Barack Obama just doesn’t care. That’s the only possible explanation for this pattern which goes way back to 2009, when he opined on whether his old friend from Harvard, Henry Louis Gates, was the party at fault in an altercation with a Cambridge, Mass, police officer. That was his first year as President, so maybe it’s plausible that this “Constitutional scholar” and allegedly brilliant man didn’t know that the President of the United States warps the justice system and law enforcement when he declares how he thinks they should handle a particular matter, since he is at the tippity top of our rule of law. Obama has done this again and again, however—with Trayvon Martin… in the Big Branch Mine disaster…as Obamacare approached a key challenge in the Supreme Court…in the military sex abuse scandal…regarding Arizona’s illegal immigration laws, and regarding other matters. He has to know by now that it biases the process, but his supporters cheer, the news media makes excuses, only Republicans, the “conservative media”  and Ethics Alarms complain, so he keeps doing it anyway. He can get away with it, so he just doesn’t care.

Nice.

This, however, was special. The same day that the White House admitted that the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s intentional mishandling of official e-mails for her own personal needs–she didn’t want citizens to be able to see her business and political machinations using the Freedom of Information Act—was a criminal investigation, he endorsed Clinton for President in glowing terms.

Fox News’ Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen asked White House Paid Liar Josh Earnest about the appropriateness of this—heaven forfend that any non-conservative-biased news outlet would ask such an obvious and necessary  question, queried “You have other employees of the executive branch, career prosecutors, FBI agents, working this case who have now just heard how the president wants to see this case resolved, in essence. Isn’t there some conflict there?”
Continue reading →