Ethics Dunces

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The Hypocrisy of the Climate Change Racket

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

From the BBC:

“A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém. It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.

“The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact. The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

[Insert snide Ethics Alarms aside: Ya think??]

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Why DEI Must DIE: Exhibit A

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On the bright side, I suppose its reassuring to know that The Great Stupid is even worse “across the pond” than it is here…

Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, which cares for buildings in the immortal playwright’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, has announced that it wants to “create a more inclusive museum experience.” Therefore, the center of Great Britain’s essential public appreciation of the fact that it was so fortunate to be the birthplace of the greatest writer the world has ever known (unless the Bard was really a visitor from another planet, which has been my personal theory since I had to study “King Lear” in detail in order to direct a production of it) will seek ways to act on the diagnosis that Shakespeare’s works have been used to advance white supremacy.

Yes, these are morons. The legacy of one of the most vital catalysts of Western civilization is in the hands of morons. Now what?

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Marketing Ethics: “That’s Some Bad Hat, MLB!”*

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

We shall see if the ethical value of accountability is completely dead in our culture by how many people are fired by Major League Baseball in the aftermath of the Great Baseball Cap Disaster of 2025. It should be a lot.

Baseball finally figured out that the clubs could make a lot of money by constantly adding new uniforms and baseball cap options to each team. (I blame former Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth, whose entire function during his tenure was to modernize the sport’s merchandising and public relations.) I thought this hustle had reached its apotheosis with the dreadful “City Connect” uniforms that were inflicted on the teams a few years ago, creating inexplicable eyesores like this for the RED Sox…

but the sport’s greed and lack of taste knows no bounds. Fans and collectors actually bought those jerseys and caps (to be fair, some of the redesigned uniforms aren’t quite that bad), along with the “vintage” uniforms and caps, the Mother’s Day uniforms and caps, the stupid “nickname” jerseys, the boring All-Star team jerseys and caps, “turn-back-the clock” uniforms….As P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

So someone got the bright idea to foist these ugly team caps off on the public, since obviously baseball fans will buy anything:

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Monday Ethics Catch-Up, 3/10/25

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

That meme above was just posted on my Facebook page today by a previously functional Georgetown Law Center lawyer of mu acquaintance. Could the whining of the Trump Deranged be any more humiliating and irrational? How tragic: a duly elected President of the United States is following through on his campaign promises in record time. Or is the whiny Democrat on the verge of tears because her party is behaving like seven-year olds? I doubt it.

In a comment I made to this post, explaining why some of my friends whom I know well, respect, and have seen fall into the pit of despond since Trump 2.0 got underway, I wrote in part,

First, there are many liberals, many of them devout Christians, who really do think that the United States should be in the business of income re-distribution and hard government over-sight of virtually all individual activities. Even though they know government is untrustworthy and incompetent as well as corrupt, they won’t give up—or are in denial about–the dream. They also somehow thought that the US was really on the way to this Nirvana, and living in a bubble—the arts, education, academia, the non-profit sector, they have been bombarded for years by one-way propaganda. They also tend to trust the news media, which is dominated by people with a similar orientation. Such individuals, who may be wise and perceptive in most other areas, shift to pure emotion now because they were under the influence of the mirage that the country was overwhelmingly in favor of the nanny state, and it isn’t and never was. Trump is the most jarring human splash of ice water in the face that these people could experience, so their reaction is visceral, emotional (angry) and irrational.

We need to learn from people who react this way. My sister, for example, is essentially furious now all the time. It’s all rooted, unfortunately in hatred for Trump, some of it legitimately based on one comment or another, some on class prejudice and intellectual snobbery, a lot on ignorance of history and leadership, and too much on getting lied to by the news media. My sister, for example, insisted that the GOP was to blame for the illegals tidal wave because Trump killed the bill that was the best that anyone could do to stem that tide. But that was just an Axis lie, as Trump made clear in his SOTU. He didn’t need that law, and neither did Biden. My sister is also very intelligent about most things, but regarding Trump she is a fully programed useful idiot.

I don’t know how these people can be saved.

Then there are the completely ethically crippled Trump Deranged responsible for these bumper-stickers…

I have yet to discover what group or collection of psychopaths is responsible for them, but the way Democratic officials have been acting of late, I would not be surprised to find their origin to be from some pretty damning places.

In other ethics news…

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Oh Great. “Hamilton” Again. Where’s Aaron Burr When You Need Him?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I haven’t seen “Hamilton” yet, which is embarrassing for me, as I consider it my duty to try to keep abreast of theatrical phenomena with cultural implications. I thought I would finally see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s creative re-imagining of the life of one of America’s most important Founders with an all “of-color” ensemble singing rap next year when the touring company had a scheduled month-long run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., but no. The touring company announced that it is canceling the gig, which had been scheduled to be part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The show and its creator are throwing a tantrum, punishing the audiences of the Washington D.C. area because Donald Trump is Hitler, or something.

President removed Democratic members from the Center’s board, became its (temporary) chairman and replaced the venue’s president, so the uniformly leftist cast and production company decided to boycott the place. Well, you know, theater types…

“This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” Lin-Manuel Miranda, who originated the title role on Broadway, said in an interview last week. “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.”

The show’s producer, Jeffrey Seller, whined that Trump “took away our national arts center for all of us.” “It became untenable for us to participate in an organization that had become so deeply politicized,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is for all of us, and it pains me deeply that they took it over and changed that. They said it’s not for all of us. It’s just for Donald Trump and his crowd. So we made a decision we can’t do it.”

The claimed justification for this hissy-fit insults the intelligence of Democrats and Republican alike. The Kennedy Center has, since its opening in 1964 as a memorial to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, been a stronghold of Democratic power-brokers and liberals in general and the Kennedy family in particular, whose members and allies have always controlled the place. Although its inception was an order by President Dwight Eisenhower calling for a non-political arts venue in the Nation’s Capital, once the three theater complex was under the control of the Democratic Party’s First Family, bi-partisanship got the hook.

The “Hamilton” Axis allies had some gall referring to the Kennedy Center as apolitical and “neutral.” Nothing is neutral in Washington. I experienced first-hand the partisan influence of the Center when my theater company in nearby Arlington, VA. presented the premiere of a drama, “The Titans,” about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It had originally been slated to be presented at the Kennedy Center, but was vetoed by the Center’s board when the Kennedy family protested that the script was not sufficiently supportive of the myth that it was JKF who saved the world from nuclear war (rather than the one who almost blundered us into it).

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They Make Such a Nice Couple! Ethics Dunce: Texas A&M University; Ethics Hero: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Texas A&M students started holding “Draggieland” (“drag” mixed with “Aggieland,” get it?) at the campus theater complex in 2020. Five years later, however, the tradition was slapped down as the school’s Board of Regents voted to ban all drag events on the 11 Texas A&M campuses.The board’s resolution reads in part,

“The board finds that it is inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow special event venues of the universities to be used for drag shows [which are] offensive  [and] likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.”

I’d guess a pre-law student with a closed head injury could correctly explain what’s wrong with that silliness, but luckily the student body at Texas A&M will have a better champion than that, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE. FIRE moved in to fill the breach when the ACLU decided to be woke rather than defend free speech and expression regardless of which side of the partisan divide was attacking them, and this low-hanging fruitcake edict prompted the organization to file a federal lawsuit. It backs the Queer Empowerment Council, a coalition of student organizations at Texas A&M University-College Station and the organizers of the fifth annual “Draggieland” event that was scheduled to be held on campus on March 27, and aims at blocking the policy as a clear violation of the First Amendment. Which it is. FIRE asked a court in the Southern District of Texas to halt Texas A&M officials from enforcing the ban.

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Regarding Those “Adults in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, THAT quote didn’t age well…

House Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (MA) joined Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA), and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA) for a press conference in May of 2023 that began with Clark declaring, “It is Democrats who’ve been the adults in the room. It is Democrats who’ve prioritized Americans over political gamesmanship.”

Last night I rewatched “All the President’s Men.” I was struck by how similar Nixon’s attempts to cripple potential Democratic Party challengers resembled the various unethical measures taken by President Obama’s minions and President Biden’s puppeteers to bury Donald Trump, but that’s a different topic. What I was immediately impressed with was how an archival film of Nixon’s State of the Union Address in 1972 showed the entire audience consisting of both parties of both houses of Congress rising and applauding the President as he entered the chamber. They did this because Nixon, as divisive and loathed as he was by the American Left, was the goddamn President of the United States, had been elected by the American people, and it was every member of Congress’s duty to show the office due respect.

And it still is. Today’s Democrats (and, tragically, their Trump Deranged supporters), however, choose to behave like spit-ball shooting grade-schoolers, debasing the nation and its institutions in the process. Jonathan Turley said yesterday that when he was a House leadership page, every member of the House of Representatives would have voted to censure a Congressman who behaved like Al Green, because, quite simply, his disgusting conduct deserved condemnation and it was crucial for Congress to insist of standards of decorum. Today’s Democratic House members saluted Green as a martyr, and behaved like the student protesters of the Sixties. You know, adults.

Here are a few other notable examples of Democrats and their anti-Trump cult followers behaving like adults in the past few days:

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Ethics Dunce (Again): Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[Psst! It’s Georgetown University Law Center, not “school.” The Hill and other lazy publications keep calling it the law school, which was what the institution’s name was before it moved from the Georgetown campus (in Georgetown, a picturesque section of D.C.) to Capitol Hill near all the courts, including the Supreme Court. If you saw the place, you would know that “center” is an appropriate description. The name was the inspiration of then Dean Paul Dean, visionary, a respected lawyer and talented fund-raiser. He was also a good friend of mine as well as a cherished mentor]

William Trainor has been criticized on Ethics Alarms before notably during this fiasco, when he punished an incoming faculty member, Illya Shapiro, for daring to question Joe Biden’s wisdom of narrowing his choice of Supreme Court nominees to fill a vacancy to women of color, the same criteria that worked out so, so well with Kamala Harris. Following the lead of his radically indoctrinated students (it’s supposed to be the other way around), the GULC dean suspended Shapiro pending…well, something, and then after letting him twist slowly in the wind for months, finally let him back into the fold whereupon Shapiro quite properly told him to take his job and shove it, as I would have under like circumstances.

There were other instances when Trainer allowed his institution to be more woke than responsible; he is largely the reason my Law Center diploma is turned face to the wall in my ProEthics office. Here is an episode that didn’t directly involve the Dean but that occurred on his watch.

Now comes another skirmish. Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to GULC last month asking if the Law Center had eliminated its commitment to DEI. “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote.

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House Democrats Emulate Al Green En Masse Just So There Is No Mistaking The Party’s Descent Into…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Early during President Trump’s State of the Union Message [See footnote below], Texas Representative Al Green, who already filed articles of impeachment against the President, shook his cane and shouted, refusing to stop disrupting the speech until Speaker Mike Johnson had the House Sergeant of Arms escort him out of the chamber. Green then went to the first camera he saw and declared, “I’ll accept my punishment! It was worth it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson had issued several warnings. “Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” he said. Then, “That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum. And the Chair is prepared to direct the Sergeant at arms to restore order to the joint session. Take your seat,” Johnson said. Finally, “The members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum. The chair now directs the Sergeant at Arms to restore order. Remove this gentleman from the chamber.”

Green’s official censure was assumed to be a certainty, and sure enough, Green was censured the next day. The vote was 224-198, with 10 Democrats joining all Republicans, so we know that at least ten Democrats have a shred of dignity and respect for the institution of Congress. (Green and freshman Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., voted “present”) As the vote proceeded, Green sat by himself along the center aisle as tradition dictates.

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Never Mind “The Appearance of Impropriety,” Democrats Need To Avoid The Appearance of Stupidity

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Let’s see: the ethical values that Congressional Democrats spat upon last night were competence, responsibility, integrity, respect, civility, courtesy, decency, dignity, self-restraint, prudence, fairness and patriotism. That’s quite an accomplishment in a single event. The party’s decision to challenge the GOP’s well-earned title as “The Stupid Party” last night during the State of the Union address was, in turn,

  • Foolish
  • Juvenile
  • Desperate
  • Embarrassing (to their party, the  nation and the institution of Congress)
  • Damning
  • Damaging to democracy
  • An appeal to the Trump Deranged while simultaneously proving how crippling the malady can be…and…
  • …a gift to the man they hate so much, President Trump.

In “True Grit,” the villain Tom Cheney is shot by young Maddie Ross after he taunts her by telling the girl how to cock the giant pistol she has aimed at him. He is stunned when she shoots him, and cries out, “I didn’t think you’d do it!”

I might make “The Cheney” a new Ethics Alarms distinction. I had read about the ridiculous college campus protest-level tactics Democrats were considering, and posted about them yesterday, as well as noting that the party’s leader in the House, Hakeem Jefferies, had advised them to eschew such nonsense in favor of a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” Jeffries was right for a change, and I really thought all of the stories about the Democrats bringing props and dressing up would prove to be false alarms. I didn’t think they’d do it! Yet when the time for the yearly Presidential “speech “state of the nation” speech arrived, there were the Democrats, looking like the studio audience in a particularly ugly episode of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

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