Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

The War Against Wonder Woman

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Wonder-Woman-Flying

For a lot of reasons, I have avoided commenting on this story until now. First of all, it is so stupid that if there is someone who wants to defend the conduct of the school in the matter, I don’t want to know them or read them, and I generally don’t post about the obvious. Second, we still don’t have a name of the victim of the anti-Wonder Woman attack, the school involved, or the teacher or administrator involved. Finally, I’m suspicious: a Wonder Woman movie is nearing release, and this seems awfully convenient.

The tale began with a post by someone claiming to be the parent of a little girl named Laura who was sent home is shame because her Wonder Woman lunch box violated school policy. The letter sent home with Laura, which someone supposedly photographed, is head-explosion worthy: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Washington Redskins Quarterback Robert Griffin III And Any Other Celebrity Who Has Somebody Other Than The Celebrity Send Out Social Media Messages In His Or Her Name

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

RGIII

I’m really sick of the “an intern did it” or ” a low level employee did it” explanation when a social media tweet, re-tweet, “like” or message goes wrong and causes an uproar that causes trouble for a celebrity or politician. It’s your name, the person sending the message is your employee and agent who you have authorized to communicate in your name. For the purposes of social media, they are you. Take your medicine, be accountable, own what “you” say online, or get off social media. It’s really as simple as that.

Robert Griffin III is the central figure of a pro football drama that many of those outside of Washington, D.C. or, better yet, those who recognize that pro football is ethics rot put in colorful uniforms to maim minds and and make money every Sunday for more than half the year. Once an NFL rookie of the year, a blooming super-star black quarterback in a majority black city, and the lord of all he surveyed, RGIII, as he is almost exclusively called locally, has fallen far, brought low by bad coaching, injuries, and his own hubris. His one great advantage has been the Skins’ owner’s infatuation with him, as Croesus-like Daniel Snyder runs his franchise like Fantasy league team, and also into the ground.

So how does “RGIII,” a.k.a. the anonymous kid who sends out his tweets and other messages when the star is busy doing what young millionaires do, decide is a great is a great way to show his loyalty to his patron and the man who pays his salary? “He” likes a post from an angry fan that features the hashtag, #inpeachdansnyder.

RGIII, recognizing that this was an especially bad time to tick off his guardian billionaire (he had just been benched by the Redskins’ coach), sent out his own, genuine, reallyreallyreally what he thinks post blaming his intern:

@rgiii I just wanted to set the record straight on this one. I did not “like” that IG post ridiculing our team. I have not been social media active consistently for awhile now and am ultra-focused on working to get back on the field and trying to help this team. One of our interns who helps with Instagram liked the post. As soon as I was made aware of it, it was immediately unliked. That is not how I feel and I appreciate your understanding.
#HTTR

No, actually “you” did like that post, Mr. Star. And if you have “not been social media active,” stop paying someone you obviously don’t supervise to keep you socially media active.

I’m glad they benched you.

(At least Donald Trump makes his own offensive tweets.)

Unethical Quote of the Week: Kim Davis

/ Jack Marshall / 132 Comments

“I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience. I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s Word. It is a matter of religious liberty, which is protected under the First Amendment, the Kentucky Constitution, and in the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Our history is filled with accommodations for people’s religious freedom and conscience. I want to continue to perform my duties, but I also am requesting what our Founders envisioned – that conscience and religious freedom would be protected. That is all I am asking. I never sought to be in this position, and I would much rather not have been placed in this position. I have received death threats from people who do not know me. I harbor nothing against them. I was elected by the people to serve as the County Clerk. I intend to continue to serve the people of Rowan County, but I cannot violate my conscience.”

—-Kim Davis, Rowan County Kentucky Clerk  and hero of the addled, who has been making an ass out of herself while inconveniencing and insulting citizens of the State of Kentucky who only wish to get a marriage license, as is their right, in an official statement today released by her lawyers.

Stop in the name of arrogance and ignorance!

Stop in the name of arrogance and ignorance!

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to extend a temporary stay of a federal court order directing Davis to stop grandstanding, do her job and issue marriage licenses to a same-sex couples. One of the couples that Davis sought to deny the equal protection of law sued her, hence the order.   Davis’s lawyers, who have been giving her lousy advice, appealed  that order to the Court of Appeals, which stayed the lower court order until August 31. Now the stay of the order is no longer in effect, she’s out of even semi-rational options, and the courts are out of patience.

Davis, expressing certainty regarding her gross misinterpretation of law, religion, the Bible, and what it means to have a job, embraces a version of the Rule of Law that would lead directly to a theocracy. She is doing more damage to Christianity by her high profile idiocy than any gay couple possibly could. Continue reading →

“When The Ethics Alarms Don’t Sound” Files: Auschwitz

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

auschwitz-showers

From The Jerusalem Post:

Israeli tourists who arrived at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland on Sunday expressed shock and outrage over what appeared to be the placement of showers near the entrance to the site. Asked about the outcry, a spokesman for the Auschwitz memorial told The Jerusalem Post that “no showers were placed at the parking lot of the museum.” “Because of the heat wave in Poland, sprinklers which cool the air were placed near the entrance to the museum. They are located near the area where – in the open sun and without any possibility of hiding in the shade – a queue of people who collect the entry cards to the memorial site is formed. “Among visitors there are many people who come from countries where such high temperatures as we have this summer in Poland do not occur. We have noticed cases of fainting among people. Therefore we must do everything possible to minimize the risks connected with the heat and high temperatures and take care of the safety of health of our visitors. The sprinklers are installed on the days of highest temperatures and removed with the temperature drops.”

“As a Jew who has lost so many relatives in the Holocaust, they looked like the showers that the Jews were forced to take before entering the gas chambers,” Meir Bulka, 48, told the Post . According to Bulka, he was not the only one deeply disturbed by this unusual scene. “All the Israelis felt this was very distasteful,” he said. “Someone called it a ‘Holocaust gimmick.’” Bulka decided to do something proactive about the situation rather than let it go. He went to the main office and asked the management for an explanation to the strange scene.

“The management decided that it was a good way to cool people off on a very hot day,” Bulka said.

There is something very wrong when those in charge of the Auschwitz historical site decide to erect nozzles misting water downwards at visitors outside the notorious death camp and nobody in involved in the decision detects the obvious problem. Whether the problem is with the administrators, the post-WWII generations, non-Jews, or something else, like Europe and the world, I am not sure. I do know that ethics alarms should have been ringing loudly. Did they malfunction? Or are they not installed?

Clues to what is wrong are suggested by the comments made by Ann Althouse’s readers to this story. I’m still trying to figure them out. Her audience is, I presume, ideologically-mixed, tilting to the left, and on the young side, since she is a law professor and many students read her posts. Is the utter insensitivity bordering on hostility to Jewish sensitivity on the little, insignificant matter of the Holocaust displayed here  attributable to ignorance (an excuse the Polish curators of the museum cannot claim), callousness, distance from the events memorialized, antipathy to Israel or anti-Semitism?

Here are 17 out of the 20 comments so far: Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

What’s the matter with this guy?

Rep. Salmon is apparently obsessed with the coming Congressional showdown over the President’s marvelous “Let’s not let the Iranians get nukes until  15 years from now when I’ll be long gone, assuming they don’t cheat and get them earlier which they almost certainly will” treaty with Iran, a jewel in the crown of his proud legacy.  The Congressman is so obsessed that he couldn’t stop himself from fear-mongering about the dangers of the agreement while doing a civics presentation at the San Tan Charter School. He also apparently was so passionate that he thought he was talking to teeny voters rather than  second and third-graders.
Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: The Democratic National Committee

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

blm

“[T]he DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming ‘Black lives matter’ and the ‘say her name’ efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African-American men, women and children.”

—-The Democratic National Committee, in a resolution passed last week endorsing #Black Lives Matter”

You think that having Donald Trump running (temporarily and momentarily) as a front-runner in the race for the 2016  Republican Presidential nomination is embarrassing for Republicans? That’s nothin’! The official endorsement of the racist, violence-promoting, anti-police and anti-rule of law movement Black Lives Matter ought to disqualify the Democratic Party as a trustworthy political organization until it stops pandering and apologizes for this statement.

Black Lives Matter is a racist, anti-white, hate-fueled organization that considers any law enforcement involving black criminals presumptively racist. The movement continues to rely on false and discredited media and activist narratives (“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”), citing “victims” like Michael Brown as the justification for its existence, presuming guilt in cases where the facts are uncertain or in legitimate dispute (Eric Garner was not “choked to death,” nor was he intentionally killed; Sonny Gray’s death is still unexplained; there is no evidence that Tamir Rice’s death was related to race). The primary result of the group’s efforts so far have been to increase racial tensions, to spark deadly attacks on police officers, and to cause a catastrophic rise in urban murders as police avoid proactive methods and stops involving black suspects to avoid becoming the next Darren Wilson. Continue reading →

Three Florida Lawyers Discover How Reporting a Crime Can Be Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

DUI_setup

How can you get disbarred for reporting a drunk driver? Three Florida lawyers were up to the task.

Stephen Diaco, Robert Adams and Adam Filthaut were found to have “maliciously” set up the drunken-driving arrest of their opposing counsel in a  high-profile defamation trial, and Judge W. Douglas Baird,  the referee in their legal ethics case,  wrote  that Stephen Diaco, Robert Adams and Adam Filthaut should lose their licenses permanently under the legal ethics standards of the Florida Bar.

In 2013, C. Philip Campbell was representing radio shock jock Todd “MJ” Schnitt in his slander suit against another DJ, “Bubba the Love Sponge” Clem. Clem was represented by the Adams and Diaco law firm. Campbell  left court and went to Malio’s Steakhouse in downtown Tampa, near his home and office. While Campbell was at the eatery, he was spotted by Melissa Personius, a young paralegal who worked for Adams and Diaco.

According to testimony, Personius called her boss, Adams, to report that Campbell was in the restaurant. Then Personius sat next to Campbell and the two bought each other drinks. As the night proceeded, Personius periodically relayed information to Adams. Adams then contacted Diaco and Diaco constacted Filthaut to agree upon next steps. The key was that Filthaut was friends with Sgt. Raymond Fernandez, who was then head of the Tampa police DUI unit, thus was able to sic  the DUI unit on the unsuspecting opposing counsel, who was in the process of being plied with liquor by Adams and Diaco’s attractive paralegal.

When it was time to for the targeted lawyer to leave, Campbell told Personius that she was too tipsy to drive and offered to call her a cab. Personius protested that she didn’t want to leave her car at the restaurant overnight and asked Campbell  if he would move the car for her. “Of course,” he said, nice guy that he is. As Campbell drove her vehicle up the street, he made an illegal turn and was pulled over by Fernandez officers, who were lying in wait. He was arrested and charged with DUI. Continue reading →

Why Obama’s Re-Naming Of Mount McKinley Is Unethical, And Why It Matters

/ Jack Marshall / 118 Comments

McKinley

Probably not one in 20 Americans could tell you three facts about William McKinley, our 25th President. He was thoroughly overshadowed by Teddy Roosevelt, the flamboyant and transformative Chief Executive who succeeded him when he was assassinated—that, by the way, is the one fact that one in 20 probably do know. Probably three-fourths of those ignorant 20 know the name Mount McKinley, however, and that it is the tallest mountain peak in the United States.

That alone was one very good reason to keep the mountain named as it was. A nation and its culture requires continuity, tradition, reverence and respect to its past, and it is important for a nation to have abundant reminders of  important historical figures who would be forgotten over time without landmarks, memorials, monuments, holidays, town names, statues and streets that prompt this kind of exchange with one’s children and grandchildren:

“Who was McKinley, daddy?“

…Or Lincoln, or Washington…or Obama. A nation that respects and strengthens these bonds with its own history helps ensure that the public maintains a common understanding of the nation’s character and mission. In the case of the United States, it reinforces the vital concept ours is a nation of one people, not warring tribes and factions. This is especially true of our Presidents, who were and are the leaders of the entire nation, not just specific regions, states and nationalities. Continue reading →

Tales of The Corrupted: David Ignatius’s Hillary E-mail Scandal Whitewash

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
This is how the world ends. The ethical world, anyway...

This is how the world ends. The ethical world, anyway…

I am charting the Clinton Corruption of the Democratic Party and how it spreads to other populations, like progressives, feminists, journalists and voters. I fear that a map of the projected progress will look like one of those scary plague or zombie computer progressions in scenes from movies like “Outbreak,” showing the entire nation turning blood red over a series of progressions beginning with a single carrier in Montana or someplace. “We have 72 hours, gentlemen, until the whole nation is infected!”

Still, there is hope. Last week I was struck by the sad cast of Clinton surrogates that her campaign trotted out to argue that it is ridiculous for anyone to think that a Secretary of State should be expected to follow her own department’s best practices, take proper steps to protect sensitive communications or tell the truth. The most raving was Howard Dean, who essentially adopted the Big Lie approach employed by James Carville. “Look,” Dean told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd last week, “this is, in fact, manufactured partly by a press that’s bored and partly by the Republicans….She can’t be blamed for this. So I look at this as the usual press frenzy, the pack journalism, and I think it’ll go away, because there’s no sense to it.” Dean should have also mentioned the bored FBI, the bored judges, and the hundreds of bored lawyers I have discussed the issue with in ethics seminars. If there is one of the latter group who agrees with Dean (who isn’t being paid by the Clintons), he or she hasn’t had the guts to say so out loud. Then Hillary sent a sacrificial lamb to Fox News, a poor ex-Bill Clinton State official named Ellen Tauscher who looked terrified…

Tauscher

….spoke in a shaky voice,  stumbled and stuttered and made no sense at all, teeing up junk like this…

TAUSCHER: Look, Secretary Clinton has former foreign service officers, civil servants. I did as undersecretary too, that make sure all of this information is protected. It is physically impossible to move things from the classified system to the unclassified system. We are only talking about the classified system, unclassified system. Everything on the classified system is where it belongs and there is no question about that. The Federal Records Act makes very clear that the person that transmits the information is responsible for the classified — classification of the information. And is it possible that Secretary Clinton was passed something by somebody and somebody and somebody? Yes. That would have been true if it had been on the state dot-gov e-mail system. But I mean, I think that we all understand that Hillary Clinton is held to a different standard. But let’s get it straight. Let’s be lawful and let’s be smart about this. We’re talking about unclassified e-mails. We’re not talking about classified e-mails, we’re talking about unclassified e-mails and they are clearly subject to what people interpret…. And there are differences between the State Department and the intelligence community right now.

As Olsen Johnson said in response to Gabby Johnson’s “authentic frontier gibberish” in “Blazing Saddles,” “Now who can argue with that?”

My impression was that no articulate, honest, credible Democrat was willing to defend Clinton, hence the campaign’s reliance desperate resume peddling hacks like Tauscher and principle-free madmen like Dean and Carville.

This week, it was more of the same. On “This Week With Martha Raddatz Pretending To Be George Stephanopoulos,” Hillary’s designated liar was a state senator I had never heard of who refused to answer Raddatz’s questions. My favorite exchange: Raddatz asked her about polls showing that a majority of the public believes that Hillary lies and isn’t trustworthy, and whether this wasn’t a serious concern for the campaign?

“Well, I certainly don’t feel that way!” the surrogate answered, with that frozen smile these people get when they have to stick to talking points and admit nothing.

Still, the Clinton Corruption Contagion (CCC) is spreading to the thoughtful and credible. The venerable Cokie Roberts, on the ABC roundtable today, has embraced the deceptive and misleading media spin that the only issue is whether the e-mail revelations ultimately costs Clinton significant support. No, that’s not the issue at all, at least not the one the news media should be concerned with. The issue is what Clinton did and what she said, and whether being incompetent, conflicted, reckless with sensitive communications and lying about it repeatedly, plus destroying evidence, disqualifies a former Secretary of State from being considered as a legitimate Presidential contender. Cokie Roberts’ analysis has now deteriorated into “Will Hillary’s lies and blame-shifting work?”

Hearing her talk like that is like watching Dana Wynter open her cold, inhuman eyes post-podding in “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers.”

Then there is David Ignatius, one of the Washington Post’s more trustworthy pundits, who authored an op-ed some CCC infected staffer headlined “The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t.” Continue reading →

The Nurturing Of Race Hate, Part Two: The Daniele Watts Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

daniele-watts

Last September, African-American actress Daniele Watts (“Django Unchained”) engaged in lewd, if non-felonious, public conduct, then exploited the tensions arising out of Ferguson to claim victim status, police harassment and race prejudice. When the police were exonerated by the recording of her arrest and she was ordered to apologize by a judge (and asked to apologize by civil rights leaders, who were embarrassed after they rallied to her support only to find that she had played the race card without  justification), she failed—twice—to deliver a sincere apology. She is defiant and intoxicated by her martyrdom, another young African American who has been convinced of her entitlement to be an anti-white racist.

To appreciate the tale, we have to go back to September 11, 2014, when the actress and her white boyfriend, a “celebrity chef,” were visibly engaged in sexual conduct in their car in broad daylight on an LA street. Neighbors complained—we have not yet reached the point where rutting in public is legal and acceptable, but give progressives time—and police responded. Naturally, as this was at the height of the Ferguson controversy, the news media immediately reported the story as more police harassment of black citizens, this time for “kissing while black.” Here’s a typical account from  September 14: Continue reading →