Ethics Dunces

2026 Flagrant Deflection, Cowardly Doubletalk and Desperate Gibberish Award: The WNBA

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is it really so hard for officials in the Womens National Basketball Association to come clean and admit “Of course we don’t think males who just decided one day “POOF! We’re females!” should play against women in sports. We were just virtue-signaling to knee-jerk progressives and we don’t want to publicly agree with anything the Trump Administration supports. That would put the WNBA out of business!”?

Apparently. Now the league looks like silly bunch of hypocrites and woke morons, which it is. Permit me to mock and excoriate them.

Last week former NBA mediocrity Royce White declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft shortly after former first round draft pick and Knicks center Enes Kanter Freedom’s had doen the same earlier in the day. White was the more entertaining by far.

White, 35, a Republican candidate for US Senate, announced, “I’m transgender! I’m a woman… I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purposes of… professional basketball,” to Fox News. “I think I’d be unstoppable,” White continued, tongue sort-of in his metaphorical cheek. “But I’m a team-first guy. I’m a pass-first kind of player. I do the little things. I led my team in all five major stat categories at Iowa State University, so I do a little bit of everything. I’ll do whatever the coach needs me to do. I’ll do whatever the girls need me to do.”

Freedom, in his own “POOF!” moment, had been all technical and stuff, which is no fun. He said he had reviewed the WNBA’s eligibility criteria, and and that he meets all the requirements. Article XIII of the WNBA’s 2026 collective bargaining agreement says, “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA,” but the 409-page document diesn’t define “women” and has no policy on transgender eligibility, including never  stating whether self-identification alone is sufficient sufficient to make everyone call a player “she” or “they” and allow the biological male to change in WNBA locker rooms and smash the girls on the court.

Royce took the pass and scored. The WNBA just has to be honest about the absurdity of biological men playing in women’s sports, Royce said.  “I think the WNBA could come out and make a definitive statement about guys with a pair of balls playing in the Women’s Association,” he said. His plan: he is serious about wanting to be drafted and will proceed until the WNBA’s leadership stops trying avoid throbbing reality.

If he isn’t drafted, Royce says, he vows, he’ll sue.  “I have to file a discrimination lawsuit, right? I mean, that’s, that’s ridiculous,” he told the Fox New. “We’re gonna have to have a huge legal battle about discrimination if I can’t play.”

Gotcha!

The WNBA only ethical and practical option now is to admit it, but its pusillanimous leadership doesn’t have the integrity, intelligence, courage and respect for the public to do it. Instead, it released a rare example of official “huminahumina.”

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert sent this ridiculous memo to WNBA teams:

“I know many of you have received questions in recent weeks regarding transgender athlete participation in women’s basketball, and I expect this topic will continue to receive significant attention. I wanted to reach out to share how we are approaching these conversations at the league office and to thank those of you who have responded to questions from the media with thoughtfulness and professionalism. [The WNBA will] always approach this topic thoughtfully, respectfully, and in alignment with the longstanding values of our league. Second, our player eligibility rules, unlike the eligibility rules of some other leagues and governing bodies, are collectively bargained. Lastly, preserving the integrity of our game and ensuring fair competition will always remain among the league’s highest priorities. We recognize that this is a complex and nuanced topic, and we will continue to have important conversations with all of you and the Players Association in the weeks and months aheadWe also plan to convene additional discussions and offer listening sessions for any team leaders who would like to participate. Your perspectives and feedback are invaluable, and I appreciate those who have already reached out to share their thoughts.”

Ramalama ding-dong! The statement means absolutely nothing. Ralph Kramden’s famous “huminahumina” is actually more articulate. It isn’t a complex or nuanced topic at all, and Engelbert’s league epitomizes why, as Royce and Freedom make crystal clear. If males can be female just by deciding that they are, the WNBA is toast. If men can’t do it, boys can’t do it. She is defaulting to the infamous but ancient tactic of avoiding an inevitable conclusion with unpleasant ramifications (like admitting that people she hates are right, and obviously so) by calling for “discussions” when there isn’t anything to discuss other than “How the hell do we get out of this?”

Players who have responded to questions from the media with thoughtfulness and professionalism number exactly two: Caitlin Clarke, who said she didn’t want to talk about it, and the now iconic Sophie Cunningham, who has repeated her opposition to biological males playing against women in all sports because it is unfair, dangerous and stupid. The rest, if they said anything at all, echoed Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White, who blathered that she didn’t have the scientific background to have an opinion on the issue. Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said earlier this month, fatuously,”We need to protect trans kids. To me, it’s a human rights issue. Every kid has a right to sports.”

Are you willing to let biological men squash your female players flat to “protect trans kids,” you idiot? Are you willing to wipe out women’s basketball and sacrifice girls to protect them? Do you think before you speak?

The WNBA players union also resorted to self-contradictory gibberish:

“We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion .Those are the values that unite this Union and allow it to protect women’s sports while creating transformational change. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.”

Translation: “We embrace slogans that keep us aligned with the radical progressive bubble, but have no interest in living up to them when they are adverse to our own self-interest. We know we can’t simultaneously protect women’s sports and allow trans-women top dominate them, but we’re hoping the public is so stupid that they won’t see the obvious hypocrisy in our rhetoric. As with the rest of the ideological Left, we’re going to attack the messengers who carry the facts that reveal our absence of integrity, and hope it works for as long as possible. We trying the “pawns” analogy because it distracts from reality, which is that we leaped into this hopeless cause to signal our virtue, and made the WNBA combatants on the losing side of one of the Left’s dumbest obsessions.”

Popcorn popped, as the saying goeth. I can’t wait to see how the WNBA tries to extricate itself from its self-made mess.

Just Because The NYT’s “There Are So Many Reasons to Reject Todd Blanche. Here’s Another One” Is Completely Biased Doesn’t Mean Todd Blanche Should Be Confirmed…[Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

UPDATE: After this was posted, the Senate confirmed Blanche despite the fact, and it is the fact, that doing so was indefensible and irresponsible.

So much that it horrifying from an ethical perspective has occurred lately in all sectors and in both political parties (actually “all three” might be more accurate, with the socialist/communists slowly but surely stomping out the Democratic part like the Cro-Magnons wiped out Neanderthals) that I am searching through the thesaurus for synonyms. I’m sick of writing unethical, unconscionable, inexcusable, unforgivable, indefensible, disgraceful, nauseating, shameful, corrupt, incompetent and irresponsible, so I can only imagine how sick of reading it you must be. Let’s see: Execrable. Gotta use that one more. Untenable? Not strong enough. Of course, I could always default to Prof. Turley’s academic weenie-speak, with “troubling” and “problematic.” I’ll work on it. Meanwhile, here’s what I posted before Republicans mortified themselves…

***

I was just about to write a post about how confirming Todd Blanche as the new U.S. Attorney General is so unethical and unconscionable that any Senator voting for him should put a paper bag over his or her head. Then I was compelled to click on the above titled op-ed [gift link!]today by a former Trump first term Justice Department official. His analysis is so biased and frequently full of…beans that it made my stomach hurt. Nevertheless, Blanche is a disgrace. He should not only be be unanimously rejected, he should be disbarred. There are others, but one reason is enough. And EA has written about it several times.

Let me refresh your memory, as they used to say on “Perry Mason”:

“In May, Ethics Alarms expressed its horror here, here and here over the unethical, conflicted deal engineered by Trump’s acting-Attorney General and Trump’s Treasury Dept. to bestow undeserved benefits on the President, his family, and the Trump Organization. I wrote at the end of the last of these, “I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense”…U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her 56-page order yesterday that the President and his fellow plaintiffs, his adult sons and the Trump Organization LLC, may not refer in any judicial, administrative or other official proceeding to the “purported ‘settlement agreement’” that gave them broad protection from federal government audits and investigations. The judge then sanctioned the attorneys that represented Trump in his personal capacity, Daniel Z. Epstein of Epstein & Co. LLC and Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC.Good. They should be sanctioned. They should be suspended. If I had the choice, I would disbar them. They are both a disgrace to the legal profession.”

An so is Blanche, who approved this illegal, unconstitutional, monstrosity. Senator Lisa Murkowski, the nepotism RINO Senator from Alaska, proved that, like a blind squirrel, she can find a metaphorical acorn when she became the second Republican to oppose Blanche’s confirmation. Murkowski said in a statement that she feared that Blanche would “fail to check the worst impulses of this administration,” and cited, among other less convincing examples (like the Epstein Files), the settlement agreement that included the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. “The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Ms. Murkowski said. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”

Ya think? That he agreed to that deal at all is smoking gun proof that Blanche is a political hack who will ask “How high?” when the President says “Jump!” GOP Senators are, idiotically, saying that they will support Blanche if he promises that he won’t pursue that deal. So Blanche issued documents narrowing or dissolving aspects of the settlement that he shoould have never approved in the first place. So what? I don’t care if he groveled an abject apology, wore a hair shirt, flagellated himself and ate dirt in penance. He approved the evil thing: it’s signature significance for an untrustworthy, corrupt, incompetent wimp. Would he be worse than his predecessor Pam Bondi, whom Ethics Alarms flagged as one of Trump’s worst appointments from the start? Gee, I don’t know: was “Bay Watch” dumber than “Hart to Hart”? We are still talking about a level below reasonable tolerance.

Pages: 1 2

Friday Open Forum, And Yes, Pompous Pseudo Intellectual Far-Left Propagandists Make Us Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I was blissfully unaware of Joseph Fasano’s existence until one of my dear, Trump Deranged, progressively-addled friends posted that junk above to Facebook, to be greeted (of course) by all sorts of likes and frowny faces. He’s a poet, primarily, which means that Fasano expounds on reality from a perspective of sentimentality and idealism, and of course he is woke as woke can be. (He teaches at Columbia, where he couldn’t if he weren’t ideologically acceptable.)

I don’t know who “the Billionaire” is (I can guess), but of course billionaires are evil because capitalism is evil. Interestingly, when a rare commenter on Fassano’s own Facebook page challenges his facile pronouncements, Fasano refuses to engage and typically tells the writer to buy his next book. I’m sure he gives all his royalties to STOP ICE organizations.

But that’s only on my mind because I just stumbled on the meme above as I posted on Facebook about the incredible Red Sox game last night. (Baseball is my life.) I have to be out for a while, so I hope to return to a welter of fascinating new ethics issues.

Ethics Alarms Challenge: Name All The Ways This Meme Is Misleading and Breathtakingly Stupid….

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

My Facebook friends really like it!

This is the level of intellect at which foes of enforcing immigration laws are functioning. The director of the Smithsonian American History Museum gives land acknowledgements, meaning that she must think that map is profound.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep.Chuck Edwards, R-N.C.

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Is it really that hard to not be a total asshole while you are an elected representative supposedly serving the public good? Members of Congress represent the nation, our Constitution and the Founders while they have that honor. Why can’t they all recognize their duties, which include being a role model and not bringing disrepute upon the institution, and conduct themselves accordingly? (To turn it around a bit: why are voters so lazy and inattentive that they elect such creeps?)

Today’s featured creep is GOP Rep.Chuck Edwards, who just dropped out of the race for his seat, leaving his party with no candidate and no incumbant going into a crucial mid-term election that will determine whether Congress spends the next two years impeaching the President. He wrote on “X” yesterday,

“After much prayer and reflection, I’ve decided to withdraw from my re-election campaign. I will complete my current term. Serving Western North Carolina has been the honor of my life. Thank you for your trust, prayers, and support. God bless WNC and America.”

Gee, he mentioned prayer twice and God once in a 43 word post; I guess that means he must be a good man. (I’m sure a disturbing number of people believe that.) If serving was such an honor, why did he behave like Harpo Marx ? The House Ethics Committee recommended this week that Edwards be censured for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.” Translation: he engaged in sexual harassment in the workplace.

Pages: 1 2

Seattle’s Self-Inflicted Police Chief Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I don’t understand this at all. Even for Seattle, the current controversy over the ex-chief of police is nuts.

The city’s far left Mayor Katie Wilson is under fire for the city’s botched handling of the Bite of Seattle mass shooting, which saw seven people shot with three dying. A toddler was among those wounded. Seattle Police issued a brief report to the public shortly after the shooting, urging everyone to stay away from the area, but nothing more for five hours, when a press conference was called. The city’s emergency alert system wasn’t activated, though this is exactly the kind of situation it was designed for.

Meanwhile, Police Chief Shon Barnes was out of town, as he is remarkably frequently. He was at a police convention in Dallas; since March, he’s also attended police gatherings in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Baltimore. Barnes doesn’t reside in Seattle full time, you see. He lives part-time in Chicago, where his family is. Over the last six months, Barnes has been out of town for about seven weeks, including four trips to Chicago.

When he got back to his place of employment, Barnes got in the face of a reporter who dared to ask him whether reports were accurate that Barnes planned to be away from Seattle until mid-August, and whether his travel schedule might be a bit problematic. Barnes stepped into his questioner and said, “I don’t have to tell you where I go…,” before a city employee pulled the chief away from the reporter and out of the room. At another news conference, Barnes denied that he frequently travels or is routinely absent from the city, and said that he doesn’t travel as much as he would like to. He really said that.

Subsequently Mayor Wilson announced that Barnes had “resigned.” Incredibly, the Seattle City Council was troubled by that. City Councilman Bob Kettle said working with Barnes was going well—yeah, it all seemed to be going swimmingly!—and that firing him would just increase the city’s feeling of insecurity. Barnes lasted a year, and the city has had four police chiefs in just two and a half years.

Wait, let’s back up a bit. Why would any major city—Seattle is one, or at least used to be until it was engulfed by The Great Stupid—hire a police chief who wasn’t prepared to reside full time in that city, or at least nearby? Unless the individual was some kind of miracle worker, it makes no sense. Based on his biography Barnes is an anti-policing police advocate, a social justice warrior, and, of course, he’s black:

Pages: 1 2

The Revolting Shiloh Hendrix Case

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

The last time I wrote about this Minnesota ethics train wreck more than a year ago, I began with “Yecchh! Pooey!” I would now like to add, “Ick! Barf!” I hate this story.

The latest revolting development is that a Minnesota jury convicted Shiloh Hendrix of a single charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct last week for repeatedly calling a black man who confronted and filmed her at a Rochester playground “nigger.” Hendrix also directed the slur at an 8-year-old black boy who had been going through her purse.

Because Hendrix’s speech was the conduct underlying the disorderly conduct charge according toMinnesota law, we have a controversy over whether using “nigger” as this awful woman did falls within the narrow “fighting words” exception to speech protected under the First Amendment.

The six-person jury returned its verdict after four days of testimony in Olmsted County District Court, finding Hendrix, 37, guilty on the count involving using “nigger” in her exchanges with videographer Sharmake Omar. She was not found guilty on the count involving the child. The full sentence: a stayed 90-day jail sentence, supervised probation, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.

We are told Hendrix did not speak before sentencing. Good.

Pages: 1 2

In Madison, Anti-Cop Woke Virtue-Signaling Beats “The Show Must Go On”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The values and priorities of the people responsible for this display of warped ethics are so alien to me that they might as well come from a different dimension.

It all begins with the fatal shooting of Corey Ruiz this week in Madison, Wisconsin. At this point, it’s difficult to get the facts of the shooting without it being framed by anti-law enforcement and pro-perp narrative. As far as I can determine, Ruiz was another habitual thief, thug and scofflaw: Wisconsin public records show that Ruiz had 40 misdemeanor and felony convictions from 2009 to 2025, including robbery by force, strangulation, drug possession, vehicle theft and battery of a public safety worker, according to the records. He was most recently convicted of resisting law enforcement and drug paraphernalia possession.

[The source I was able to get that information from adds, “Jazzman Brown, a community organizer in Madison, said Ruiz was a father who was experiencing homelessness and mental health struggles.” Oh! Well, that means he can rob and beat up people then. Never mind. Seriously: I don’t care how much of a troubled life the deceased may or may not have had.]

Police officers were dispatched to Madison’s Marquette neighborhood in response to reports of someone stealing bicycles and checking vehicle doors. It was Ruiz. When officers attempted to approach him, he fled on a bicycle, riding through backyards to escape, Ruiz either fell or was pulled off the bicycle, then fought with officers to resist arrest. During the struggle, Ruiz pulled out a substantial fixed-blade knife and injured one of the officers. Ruiz was tazed, but it appeared to have no effect. Then an officer fired three shots into the man, killing him.

I have no sympathy for the deceased at all. Anyone who believes his death justifies a protest (or worse, a law suit, or worse still, the prosecution of a police officer) is crippled by poor logic, bias, and absurd anti-law enforcement attitudes.

Nonetheless, AtwoodFest, an annual music and crafts festival with free admission featuring 3 stages, and 30 bands with food and craft vendors, was cancelled by organizers with this nauseating announcement:

Pages: 1 2

Today’s Trump Derangement Report: The Pinky-Peewee Affair

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

This is depressing.

A really, really smart friend whom I respect a great deal just posted on Facebook that the President, on one of his sophomoric name-calling jags, had mocked Sen. Ossoff (whom I just posted about today, coincidentally) as “Pinky Herman.” My friend wrote that Trump was obviously mixing up Peewee Herman with Pinky Lee, a vaudeville kids TV star in the Fifties. “More proof of dementia,” my friend wrote.

I never thought of it before, but it seems to me that Pinky Lee might well have inspired Paul Rubens’ decades later kids’ show character. Pinky and Peewee are pretty similar names. Confusing the two is hardly evidence of dementia, unless the one making the mistake is Donald Trump.

But as usual, everyone on Facebook laughs, likes, and acts as if this stupid smear is a profound diagnosis. Fifteen years ago, I confused Aaron Burr and Raymond Burr while teaching a seminar and didn’t even realize it. Another time I said “Helen Keller” when I meant to say “Anne Frank.” I have mixed up my Jacksons on occasion: Jesse, Reggie, Andy, Michael and Stonewall. I assuredly do not have dementia. I think claiming that Trump does based on mixing up two fey comic kids show stars with similar names is more evidence of mental decline than anything either Trump or I have done.

I really detest this stuff. It is so petty, disrespectful, ungenerous and obnoxious. And, you know, Trump might have deliberately merged Pinky and Pee-wee, which would have been clever. Nah, it couldn’t have been that…

I remember Pinky well. I even remember the words to his song:

Yoo hoo, it’s me!
My name is Pinky Lee.
I skip and run bring lots of fun
To every he and she!
It’s plain to see
That you can tell it’s me!
With my checkered hat
And my checkered coat,
The funny giggle in my throat
And my silly dance
Like a billy goat!

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC)

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Clyburn is already presumptively a blight on the body politick since he is widely regarded as responsible for “saving” Joe Biden’s candidacy in 2020. And didn’t that work out well!

Even aside from his role in the Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck, Rep. Clyburn has one of the worst Ethics Alarms dossiers of any politician. Most recently, EA noted that Cliburn told the dim-bulb ladies “The View” that Republicans were trying to restore slavery, and that isn’t even necessarily the dumbest thing he has said in public over the years. Cliburn is neither honest, ethical, fair or bright, but he did walk shoulder-to-shoulder with the sainted Martin Luther King in civil rights protests, and that is sufficient justification, according the the Left’s addled value system and his South Carolina district, to guarantee the man a lifetime sinecure in Congress.

Every now and then Clyburn says something so outrageous that it even has to make progressives and Democrats doubt the wisdom of letting the 86 year-old hang around to make Congress dumber. This week, he was asked by a Vox reporter about artificial intelligence and its tremendous influence on the workplace, education, and the economy. Not only did Clyburn answer that he’s never used AI, he admitted that he hadn’t heard of ChatGPT before this month. The exchange in part:

Reporter: “No ChatGPT, no Claude for you?”

Clyburn: “Believe it or not, I didn’t know what that was until about a week ago. ChatGPT, or whatever it is.”

Reporter: “You didn’t know ’til a week ago? Wow. I mean, I’m jealous. You’ve kept yourself in a bubble.”

Clyburn: “That may sound strange to you. I didn’t know what that was.”

…

Reporter: “How do you effectively legislate as a member who is distant from some of those technological shifts that are affecting folks’ lives right now?”

Clyburn: “I have a great staff. I wish I could know everything. I don’t know everything, and I don’t spend my time trying to learn everything. What I spend my time doing is trying to surround myself with people who do know stuff. I know how to legislate. I know how to build relationships, and I hire people to bring knowledge into the game that I can put to practice.”

Give him credit for one thing: Clyburn is at least transparent about how clueless and incompetent he is. He wishes he knew everything? How about knowing that massive technological changes are occurring right now and that the AI revolution erupted in 2024? Clyburn really said that he knows how to legislate while admitting that he doesn’t keep informed of what he needs to legislate about.

Nobody who pays any attention to the news, the culture, social media, the law, education, the economy…anything current, really, could have missed “ChatGPT, or whatever it is.” Ah, but Rep. Clyburn still marched with MLK Jr., and that’s what really counts in 2026.