Ethics Dunces

Ethics Verdict: It Is Unethical For President Trump To Attend The SCOTUS Oral Argument On Birthright Citizenship

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

As I write this, the Supreme Court is hearing a case challenging the tradition that nearly all children born in the United States, whoever their parents may be and how they came to be here, are automatically citizens.

On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order stating that babies born on U.S. soil to illegal immigrants and temporary foreign visitors were ineligible for birthright citizenship. That was an obvious shot across the bow of the U.S. Supreme Court as it challenged an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that has stood for over a century. The President knew his EO would be also challenged, and would eventually end up on the Supreme Court docket.

Because this is an important question that would, if SCOTUS agreed with the President’s interpretation of the Constitutional intent (there were no such things as “illegal immigrants” when the Constitution was written) have massive consequences in many areas, the oral argument is attracting blow-by-blow analysis. That is not my purpose here.

The issue for Ethics Alarms is President Trump’s decision to attend the oral argument. No previous President has done this, although nothing prevents the President from attending. Trump’s predecessors all avoided the option, though there have been many, many cases over the years that the President knew would have a major effect on his policies as well and the matters he had to deal with. President Pierce did not attend the Dred Scott oral arguments. To be fair, he was barely engaged at any time in his miserable four years in the White House. But FDR didn’t sit in while the Court was determining the fates of his many New Deal programs. Nixon didn’t listen to the Pentagon Papers arguments.

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How Ignorant and Biased Are Reporters? This Ignorant and Biased…

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Oh great: “war crimes” again. I’m afraid to check Facebook because I am sure that about 20 of my Trump Deranged show biz friends will be ranting about this.

Yesterday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that a number of Iranian targets would be obliterated if Iran does not allow the Hormuz Strait to be opened immediately. NBC White House correspondent Garrett Haake channeled his inner John Lennon and mewled to White House Paid Liar Karoline Leavitt,

“The president posted this morning about his threat that on leaving Iran he said, ‘Blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, hard island, and possibly all desalination plants,’ Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited. Why is the President threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the US military? And how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the US does not target civilians?”

My metaphorical hat is off to Leavitt, who was appropriately diplomatic and did not smite this Axis idiot with the rhetorical barrage that I would have.

“Look,” she said. “The President has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that their best move is to make a deal, or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination and the President is not afraid to use them.” Shethen denied that that Trump was contemplating “war crimes.”

I would have said, “Garrett, the United States is in a war, and the Geneva convention, which is an imaginary set of pacifist edicts that the United States does not feel bound by when the interests of the nation, Americans and civilization itself are at risk, will not restrain the United States in its efforts to conclude this conflict or any conflict as quickly as possible. Moreover nothing in the President’s message suggested that he was “targeting civilians.” But if civilians are at risk because it is necessary to remove facilities and resources that Iran needs to continue fighting, and if the real threat of losing these prompts Iran to surrender or make a good faith effort to negotiate a peace settlement, that is regrettable but unavoidable. This is a war. The United States will not limit its options to prevail.”

I might have been able to avoid concluding with, “you idiot.”

Several commentators have noted that the Axis media and the anti-American Left are using the same playbook and propaganda to support Iran against their own country that they embraced to support Gaza (Hamas, terrorists…) against Israel. I still await the tipping point when the public turns decisively and permanently against these people.

Surely it must be on the horizon.

“MAGA, Stupid, And Believing An AI Avatar Is An ‘Influencer’ Is No Way To Go Through Life, Son…”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Ugh.

I put this story in the category of “signature significance.”

Jessica Foster joined Instagram in late December of last year and in just a few month she has managed to become a conservative ‘influencer,” with a following on the social network surpassing 1 million. She is blonde, beautiful, serves in the US Army, and is a Donald Trump supporter who doesn’t go overboard in her posts. Here is Jessica in a stroll with President Trump…

What a pity she doesn’t exist. Jessica is an AI-created fake model designed to lure horny young men with IQs below freezing to Only Fans, the pay-for-porn website. “Public servant by day, troublemaker by night 🤍 i’m new to this, don’t be rude please 😭👉🏼👈🏼 btw i respond to every message, but be patient since I’m not a robot haha,” Jessica’s Only Fans bio reads, lying through her imaginary teeth.

Maybe she was designed to prove just how dumb a certain demographic of Trump supporters are. If that was the mission, I’m sold. Anyone who pays attention to any “influencers,” even real ones, needs to get a brain transplant, but following a bot-influencer because she has a pretty fake face and a nicely engineered rack takes a special kind of idiocy.

Well, that democracy thingy was a nice idea while it lasted.

The ethics of such creatures is so basic I’m embarrassed typing it. Putting a fake human being on the web without revealing that it (okay, “she”) is fake is more unethical than circulating web hoaxes, and almost as unethical as presenting a shambling, senile old man to the public as a functioning President who is “sharp as a tack.”

This scam is particularly diabolical because the Right can’t counter with an AI model of its own to attract gullible progressives. What would that avatar look like? Don’t get my over-active imagination started or I will have nightmares for a week.

Morning Ethics Nausea: Four Offenses

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

1. The Great Stupid won’t go down with out a fight! Especially in California. The University of Southern California canceled a debate among candidates for governor less than 24 hours before it was supposed to take place this week. The reason was that there weren’t any non-white candidates. I kept seeing that in headlines and couldn’t believe it. I just assumed it was right-wing spin, and really dumb spin at that.

Nope. Eight Democrats and two Republicans are currently leading a typically huge field running in the Golden State June 2 primary. The debate was scheduled to include the six candidates who were leading in the polls, plus an extra Democrat, the Mayor of San Jose, who has been raising a lot of money for his campaign lately. If he had been black or Latino, that may have saved the debate, but he’s just another white guy. Students objected, and the school, being run by cowards and woke weenies like most universities today, chickened out.

The controversies over who got a place on the stage “have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” the university said. And so rather than hold a debate that would help voters distinguish between the candidates who currently have a chance to win and maybe teach students something, the fact that none of the candidates are “of color” means that there won’t be a debate at all.

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Addendum To and Ethics Quote of the Week on “The EA ‘Imagine’ Award Goes To Pope Leo, Who Should Put A Bag Over His Head…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The quote is from Steve-O-in NJ’s most appropriate comment on Pope Leo’s call to “ban” aerial bombing in his response to last night’s post, “The EA “Imagine” Award Goes To Pope Leo, Who Should Put A Bag Over His Head…”.

Steve’s comment begins with “This is an embarrassment”—it is—and ends with a declaration for the ages:

“…[T]he leader of the world’s largest Christian sect needs to do better than be absurd.”

Exactly. Pope Leo is in a particularly important role not to misuse by shooting off his mouth irresponsibly, because millions of people around the world assume that he has moral authority, more wisdom than they, inherent virtues, and a pipeline to God. When I hear someone say something that stupid, I assume that they are stupid, or posturing, which is a type of lying. That is not a good look on the Pope.

Steve’s bon mot also follows neatly on what I wrote in the post, which was, “The more revered and powerful the advocate for virtue-signaling nonsense, the more unethical such demagoguery is.” There is far too much of this flagrant abuse of position and authority going around.

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The EA “Imagine” Award Goes To Pope Leo, Who Should Put A Bag Over His Head…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

How I wish he had sung it! That would have been funny and maybe entertaining. Otherwise this kind of pronouncement is 100% useless and insulting, while making too many people dumber.

Speaking to executives and staff from Italy’s ITA Airways, the first U.S. Pope proved he could be as fatuous as other Popes by saying, “No one should have to fear that threats of death and destruction might come from the sky. After the tragic experiences of the 20th century, aerial bombings should have been banned forever. Yet they still exist … this is not progress; it is regression!”

Well, if we could have the marshmallow world John Lennon imagined, “nothing to live of die for” and no countries or religion, that might be slightly less ludicrous, but only slightly. Now that I’ve roused those banished brain cells where I store “Imagine,” let me take a few minutes to run “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” in my mind to cleanse it.

There! Much better!

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Jump Ball” (or “Brilliant Guest Post by Ryan Harkins”)….

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yesterday, in near shock that a good and once wise friend posted on Facebook the head-exploding meme by a simple-minded activist named Jenny Carter, above, I challenged Ethics Alarms readers to perform the thorough defenestration of that smug brain-garbage it deserves. I had neither the time nor energy. Responding to my metaphorical Bat Signal, erudite veteran commenter Ryan Harkins came through like a champ, authoring the masterpiece below, a Comment of the Day if there ever was one. Here is his rebuttal, really a guest post in length and quality, in response to the post, “Ethics Jump Ball”:

Dear Jenny,

You can make strawmen of our principles all you want, and argue all day against them, but all that will gain you is a smug feeling and “likes” from your friends, and make absolutely no inroads with the MAGA crowd whatsoever.  But I know that your entire intent is to make me waste my time answering you.  So, perhaps foolishly, I will oblige.

To begin, a little groundwork.  A dilemma is only a dilemma if you really only have the two options.  If there is any other alternative, such argumentation falls apart.  Second, if you are going to address our principles, maybe you should determine what those principles actually are.  For example, being pro-Second Amendment is not about shooting people.  It is about the right to bear arms against, especially, an overbearing, tyrannical government.  Being pro-life does not mean that you believe that no one should die, ever.  Third, in any given situation, there may be more than one principle in play, and to ignore that to score rhetorical points is arguing in bad faith. 

So let’s get into it.

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Update! “A ‘Great Stupid’ Court Case SO Stupid That It Makes “The Great Stupid” Look Almost Smart…”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The story that the great radio story-teller Paul Harvey would now tell us the rest of was the subject of the post below, from August 2024. As you will see, it made my head explode, but there has finally been a resolution, and ethics and common sense prevailed. Review the horrible case. Will voters really hand power back to the party that not only responsible for such things, but that still wants to establish them as our national standards? Really?

But I digress. Here is the original post, and I’ll add the recent developments at the end…

That crude, ambiguous drawing above got a first grader—we’re talking six-years-old here—suspended. That’s almost all you have to know for your head to explode if it is properly wired.

The Ethics Villains and Dunces are so thick in this fiasco you could use it to lay bricks. I’m almost embarrassed to tell the story, which I first saw at Reason…

In March of 2021, a first grader referred to as “B.B.” ” drew a picture we are told was intended to show people of different races, representing “three classmates and herself holding hands.” (I’d save the money the family was planning on spending on art school for B.B., if that was their intent.) Above the drawing, B.B. wrote “Black Lives Mater” (Latin!) with the words “any life” stuck in-between the slogan and the jelly beans, or whatever they were. B.B. then gave the drawing to a black classmate, as what B.B. testified was intended as a friendly gesture. But the classmate either ratted out B.B. or the principal was told about it by the teacher, or something (because school administrators don’t have anything better to do than to police the political correctness of kids’ drawings).

The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, admonished B.B., saying that the drawing was “inappropriate.” B.B. was ordered to apologize to her classmate, prohibited from drawing any more pictures in school, and prevented from going to recess for two weeks.

Continue reading →

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Sen. Paul: Allow Me To Introduce You To The Concept Of “Professionalism”…Perhaps You Are Unfamiliar With It [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Yecchh.

Senate Homeland Security Chair Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) angrily confronted President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Homeland Security Department based on Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s insulting Paul in the past.

Uh-uh. Wrong. Bad. Unethical! Paul’s job is to assess whether Mullin is qualified for the important job he needs Senate approval to step into, not to settle old scores. The confirmation process is not supposed to be personal, because those engaged in it are allegedly professionals. Professionals, as I have been reminding people a lot lately, are worthy of the public trust because they do not let personal grievances and non-ethical instincts like anger, revenge, hate and retribution enter into their decision-making process.

Clearly, Paul does not agree. He began the hearing saying that the Oklahoma Senator might not qualify for the role of Homeland Security Secretary because last month Mullin called Paul a “freaking snake” for trying to block the passage of a funding bill. Worse, Mullin had said he understood why a neighbor attacked Paul in 2017, when he sustained broken ribs and a punctured lung.

“Tell it to my face, tell the world why you believe I deserved to be assaulted from behind, have six ribs broken and a damaged lung!” Paul said in his reserved, dignified, fair and decorous opening statement. “And while you’re at it, explain to the American public why they should trust a man with anger issues” to be head of Homeland Security, Paul added.

“In fact, let’s duke it out right here if you’re man enough, dick-head!” he contin…Okay, I’m kidding; he didn’t go that far.

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Ethics Dunce: President Trump. Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

He’s the President of the United States, and thus, I have determined, must be disqualified as a beneficiary of “The Julie Principle.” (“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Trump’s gonna say stupid and self-destructive things by and by…”) What an infuriating, unteachable, incorrigible man he is!

From the New York Times, just reporting facts for once:

“President Trump claimed on Monday that a former president told him privately that ‘I wish I did what you did” in attacking Iran and killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Trump would not identify which of the four living predecessors he was referring to.

“He said, ‘I wish I did what you did,’” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t want to get into ‘who,’ I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

A reporter asked if it was President George W. Bush, the only Republican on the list, but Mr. Trump said no.

What an asshole…but I repeat myself. If it wasn’t Bush, and of course it wasn’t because the Bushes all hate Trump, and we know it wasn’t Obama, whose approach to Iran was to give back billions of dollars and “trust” it the untrustworthy, Machiavellian Islamic nation. We know it wasn’t Biden either. who, if he tried to talk to Trump would only be able to get out “Bvuh?” or something similar.

That only leaves Bill Clinton, who in fact might have shared such a confidence with Trump. Naturally all the speculation on which Ex-POTUS confessed his regrets has fallen on Bubba. Also naturally, Clinton denied that he said anything of the sort.

Of course he did! We know Clinton: he would deny it if he didn’t say it, and he would deny it if he did. He’s like those competing tribes in the old conundrum, where the members of one tribe always lie and the members of the other always tell the truth. If you ask the members of either tribe “Will you lie to me?” both will give the same answer: “No!”

So there are two alternatives, both of which are unflattering to Trump. Either Clinton confessed his regrets in confidence, and Trump betrayed that confidence, or Trump is lying.

Well done, Mr. President.

Jerk.