Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

I Love It! The Perfect Cap on the Unethical, Damning, “Let’s Get Alito!” Flag-Flying Fiasco!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Oh, this is too good. If the Ethics God is responsible for this, she’s a genius.

You know that supposed “Stop the Steal”-connected flag that the Alito vacation home had flying over it briefly last summer? The flag that “proved” that the conservative Justice was either a serial mad flag-flyer who had engaged in “the appearance of impropriety” by showing his sympathies for the January 6 Capitol rioters twice, previously with an upside-down U.S. flag, or had wrongly “permitted” his wife to express such sentiments via flag twice, the first time almost four years ago? That flag?

That flag, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, has been displayed along with other historic U.S. flags outside San Francisco’s City Hall for more than half a century. Along with 17 other flags representing different moments in American history, the flag favored by Mrs. Alito (of course the flag conspiracy purveyors are certain that the Supreme Court Justice is lying and that he is the real culprit, just because) appears in the Pavilion of American Flags in Civic Center Plaza.

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So It’s Come To This: Baseball Destroys Its Hallowed History and Statistics To Signal Its Abject Wokeness, DEI Complaince and White Guilt

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

How sad. How transparent. How self-destructive.

Major League Baseball announced yesterday that it is now incorporating statistics of the Negro Leagues and the records of more than 2,300 black players who played during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s into its own record books. This, of course, makes no sense at all: it is The Great Stupid at its dumbest. It is the epitome of DEI fiction and manipulating history. And, naturally, when everyone wakes up and realizes how brain-meltingly stupid this was, it cannot be reversed.

Because doing that would be “racist.”

Thus, lo and behold, legendary catcher Josh Gibson (above) becomes Major League Baseball’s career leader with a .372 batting average, surpassing Ty Cobb’s .367. Gibson’s .466 average for the 1943 Homestead Grays became the season standard, followed by the immortal (I’m kidding) Charlie “Chino” Smith’s .451 for the 1929 New York Lincoln Giants. These averages surpasse the .440 by hit Hugh Duffy for the National League’s Boston team in 1894.

Gibson also becomes the career leader in slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177), moving ahead of Babe Ruth (.690 and 1.164). Gibson’s .974 slugging percentage in 1937 is now the MLB season record, with Barry Bonds’ .863 in 2001 dropping to fifth (that stat is also corrupted, but for a different reason). Bonds now trails legendary (kidding again) Mules Suttles’ .877 in 1926, Gibson’s .871 in 1943 and Smith’s .870 in 1929. Bonds’ prior OPS record of 1.421 in 2004 dropped to third behind Gibson’s 1.474 in 1937 and 1.435 in 1943.

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Final Ethics Observations on the Media’s Alito Flag Set-Up

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…the main one being that the distress signal is appropriate, because the Axis of Unethical Conduct proved with this fiasco that it is ruthless, shameless, untrustworthy, and will do anything in 2024 to mislead the public if it might mean a few extra votes for Democrats. Or maybe the main one is that your friendly neighborhood ethicist was right about this story from the very start, which is why Fredo asked to make another appearance as my spokesman.

And this, my friends, is why we can’t have nice things.

Or a functioning republic.

Let me not get to far ahead of myself. Right now, the whole, biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, anti-conservative, Biden-protecting propaganda-spewing mainstream news media, the third partner in the Ethics Alarms-dubbed Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” and Desperate Democrats completing the troika) is doing a mass Jumbo (“Flags? What flags?”) regarding what was its favorite earth-shattering scandal a week ago. This sudden amnesia was brought on because the Washington Post, perhaps seeking to embarrass its old rival, effectively eviscerated the Times’ “Get Justice Alito!” scoop, which EA first discussed here, and subsequently here, here, and here. (Don’t make me describe it again: I was sick of it days ago.)

Two days ago, the Post revealed that it had known about the first flag episode more than three years ago and had decided that it wasn’t newsworthy (because, as the revealed facts showed clearly, it wasn’t). Now-retired SCOTUS reporter Robert Barnes traveled to the Alito’s home on January 20, 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, to follow-up on an anonymous tip he had received from some Alito-hating asshole neighbor about the flag. After investigating, Barnes and the Post concluded there was no story, because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, Alito’s wife, not the Justice, as part of her dispute with her neighbors.

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Ethics Villains: Ireland, Norway, and Spain

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This revolting development tempts me to write a dark parody of “Abraham, Martin and John” called “Ireland, Norway and Spain.” it would end with…

Anybody here not like terrorism?
Would you care to explain?
I guess it’s OK as long as it kills Jews
Say Ireland, Norway and Spain…

Spain, Norway and Ireland announced this week that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state. The coordinated announcements from the leaders of the three countries said that Palestinian independence should not have to wait for a negotiated peace deal with Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel immediately condemned the announcement as validating Hamas terrorism, which it undeniably does. Netanyahu has always held that the establishment of a Palestinian state would pose an “existential danger” to Israel, called the decision by the three nations “a prize for terrorism” that would “not stop us from reaching a victory over Hamas.” Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, said that Spain, Norway and Ireland had decided “to award a gold medal to Hamas terrorists.” The announcements were made just days after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on suspicion of war crimes.

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Note to the “Wise Latina”: There’s No Crying on the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, where she was being honored….for what, I can’t imagine.

Awww! Poor Sonja! What’s she crying about? That she’s obviously over her head on the Supreme Court with actual legal scholars and experts who can make persuasive arguments about what the law is and what the Constitution means instead of just relying on warm, fuzzy feelings and mandatory progressive sentiment? That mean old conservatives aren’t buying her “But…but…it would be nicer if we decided this way” routine?

Did Sandra Day O’Connor, when she was in the minority on a liberal majority court, ever say she just went into her office and wept when a SCOTUS vote didn’t go her way? Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she was on the losing end of a 5-4 ruling? Did Scalia? No, but this Justice not only weeps over her defeats, she thinks its something to be proud of.

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Nikki Haley, 2024 Weasel of the Year [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Honestly, I don’t know how this woman can look at herself in the mirror.

Much of the American public is fed up and disgusted with what I call the Four W’s: the woke, the weak, weenies, and weasels. All are labels for ethical voids. The woke are incompetent and irresponsible. The weak lack the “enabling virtues,” the character traits that permit one to be ethical: courage, fortitude, valor, sacrifice, honor, humility and forgiveness. Weenies lack integrity, and weasels, in some ways the worst of the bunch, are dishonest and untrustworthy, as well as operating under the unethical delusion that the ends justify the means. If one wants to objectively comprehend why so many people support Donald Trump for President, despite his dazzling array of disqualifying character traits, look no further than the Four W’s. For a current day politician, he is remarkably free of those crippling characteristics, not entirely and not in all cases, but substantially, and impressively in comparison to almost any other public figure.

Yesterday, Nikki Haley said she would be voting for Trump in the upcoming election. Let’s see [This is a corrected version of what I first posted: I missed some twists and turns]…first she was Trump’s U.S. Ambassador, and apparently a booster. She resigned in 2018 for mysterious reasons, then, after serving on the Boeing board just long enough for that to register as a black mark, she initially defended Trump after the rioters hit the Capitol in January of 2021 (saying it was not “his best” moment—you know how I hate that rationalization). Then, just bit later in the same month, told an interviewer, “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

What is “we can’t let that ever happen again” supposed to mean, if not “Don’t support this man”?

Then, as Biden’s slow-moving car crash proceeded and it looked like Donald Trump wasn’t finished as a political force yet, Haley started trying to edge back into his good graces…until she thought she saw an opportunity to be the GOP nominee herself. Then she was again condemning Trump, insulting him relentlessly, questioning his mental fitness, saying that he is, like Biden, “too old,” and calling Trump and Biden “equally bad.” She accused him of having disrespect for the military, indicating that “he’s not qualified to be the president of the United States, because I don’t trust him to protect them.” After signing the required GOP pledge to support whoever was nominated by the party to run in November as a condition predicate to participating in the debates (and criticizing Trump for not signing the pledge and boycotting the debates himself), Haley then reneged on that pledge once it was clear that nobody would stop Trump. She argued that she wasn’t bound by it (au contraire: lawyers are ethically obligated to be true to their pledges) because the party she thought she was supporting wasn’t what the Republican Party now is in its embrace of Donald Trump, or something.

Why all the flip-flopping, back-tracking, reversals, double-talk and hypocrisy? She makes John Kerry look like Sir Thomas More. She makes Bill Clinton look like George Washington, and if Bill was asked who chopped down the cherry tree, he would say, “It depends what you mean by ‘chopped’.” But Haley now thinks she has a shot at being chosen as Trump’s running mate: after all, she never shot her dog. Nikki Haley has made it clear that she will say anything at that she thinks will benefit her ambition and quest for power. No one should ever believe her, trust her or rely on her, ever.

She would have been the perfect running mate for Trump, about five reversals ago. Trump has a flat learning curve, but he was betrayed by so many so often since 2016 that he would no more tie his fates to Nikki Haley than shoot a nail gun into his skull.

Nikki Haley is indisputably a weasel. I can’t imagine a worse one.

“Justice-Impacted Individuals”? Seriously?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Even a bracing cup of Italian Roast in the morning can’t quite get your juices flowing and your mind ready for the day like a good old-fashioned head explosion! This is what triggered mine today:

Item: “Illinois is moving forward with a bill that would reclassify some “offenders” as “justice-impacted individuals“…House Bill 4409 changes the word ‘offender’ to ‘justice-impacted individuals.'”

The bill has passed both state houses, and awaits Democratic Gov. Pritzker’s signature. Don’t worry, though: he’s such a sober, rational, reasonable elected official that I’m sure he’ll veto this nonsense…

…right?

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Well, At Least He Didn’t Get Shot: Observations On An Unethical Confrontation On All Sides

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Reginald Burks’ vehicle was pulled over for speeding in Alabama last December as he was driving his two children to school. The officer told Burks that he had exceeded the speed limit, but when Burks asked how fast he was going, the officer said he wasn’t sure because his radar gun was broken. He told the motorist that he had used his cruise control to estimate the speed.

Burks replied that the officer “ was full of crap” because he didn’t believe the cop could clock a car’s speed by cruise control. The officer gave him the ticket anyway, and was standing stood in front of Burks’ car. Burks said he asked the officer “politely at least twice” to get out of the way; the officer told Burks to go around him.

So Burks said, “Get your ass out of the way, so I can take my kids to school. That’s why y’all underpaid because y’all act dumb!”

Oh, good one.

Burks has already paid more than $200 to resolve the speeding ticket. A judge, however, has ordered him to apologize to the police officer in writing, and Burks refuses, calling it compelled speech and a First Amendment violation. Judge Nicholas Bull of the Ozark Municipal Court in Alabama says he’ll put Burks in jail for up to 30 days if he continues to refuse to write the ordered mea culpa letter.

As EA”s periodic columnist Curmie might say, “Oh bloody hell!”

1. Let’s assume arguendo that Burks was speeding. With kids in the car, that is unacceptable—it’s unacceptable without kids in the car. Speeding justified the officer pulling the car over. If his radar gun was broken, depending on the speed, a ticket might be successfully challenged in court. Maybe the officer was just going to issue a warning…until the driver decided to argue with him.

2. It’s unethical to use the process as the punishment, which is what the cop would be doing if he knew cruise control pacing would not stand up in traffic court. (I have no idea if it would in Alabama: it wouldn’t in Alexandria.)

3. It’s bad citizenship to escalate a police stop by telling an officer he’s “full of crap.” Citizens should treat police with respect, even when they are mistaken, or even full of crap. Why is that such a difficult concept to grasp? Or teach children before they become adults (or juvenile delinquents)?

4. By standing in front of the car, the officer was engaging in conduct I have experienced myself: deliberately inconveniencing a driver to “teach him a lesson.” That conduct is also unethical and unprofessional. It is also daring a motorist to misbehave.

5. OK, the cop was being an asshole. It doesn’t matter: that doesn’t justify Burks’ shifting into full asshole mode himself. Police officers should be treated with respect and civility because of the institution and mission they represent.

6. What a dangerous lesson Burks was teaching his children! He should apologize to them.

7. Burks is correct, however: a judge has no power to demand that a citizen say or write anything. Burks is willing to spend money on lawyer fees and go to jail to fight for this principle. The sound of one hand clapping for that: the judge shouldn’t order him to apologize, but Burks should want to apologize voluntarily.

8. So should the police officer.

Did I neglect to mention that Burks is black and the officer is white? Silly me. Yet why should that change the analysis here?

My exit question: How many lives would be saved if black Americans resolved to obey police orders and instructions (let’s forget about obeying the law for now) without incivility, hostility and resistance regardless of the circumstances?

Worse Than A Mere “Unethical Quote,” Lawrence O’Donnell’s Rationalization For Theft Marks Him As An Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has all sorts of red flags in his resume. He went to Harvard for one thing, and describes himself as a “European socialist.” At Harvard you can’t major in journalism: you work on the daily paper, The Crimson. O’Donnell didn’t do that: he wrote for the fake news satirical student publication, the Lampoon. O’Donnell became an openly biased and agenda-driven MSNBC news anchor by making TV contacts while writing scripts for TV’s imaginary leftist nirvana White House fantasy, “The West Wing.” Later he was Keith Olberman’s stand-in on MSNBC, which should tell you all you need to know.

And yet…much as I fart in his general direction, as he personifies just how vile MSNBC is and just how self-lobotomizing anyone is who uses it to get their “news,” I am shocked at the degraded character and shame-free embrace of ethical relativism O’Donnell displayed yesterday.

The big news coming out of the “Get Trump!” fiasco in Manhattan was that the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen, already a disbarred lawyer and a convicted perjurer, further enhanced his credibility by admitting that he had stolen $30,000 from his employer and client, Donald Trump. Here is how O’Donnell described it:

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Florida’s Unethical Ban on Under 21-Year-Old Strippers

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7063 which raises the age limit for performers and other employees of adult entertainment establishments—you know, strip clubs— from 18 to 21. DeSantis claims this legislation will “combat human trafficking.” Baloney. It is pure grandstanding, pandering to his supporters who object to sex shows generally on moral grounds, and more to the point, it is unethical age discrimination.

The issue is simple: are 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds adult citizens with all the rights of adult citizens, or aren’t they? (Hint: they are.) Since they are, there is no justification for a state telling them that there are activities, occupations and modes of expression that they cannot engage in until they are 21.

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