Ethics Dunces

The ABA Is Defending Its Racially Discriminatory Scholarships…Of Course It Is.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Res ipsa loquitur, no?

In April, the American Alliance for Equal Rights led by Edward Blum, the scourge of affirmative action and “good discrimination” policies, filed a complaint in an Illinois federal court alleging that the American Bar Association’s 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship discriminates against white applicants. Since their skin color renders them unable to apply, this contention seems beyond debate. The question is whether, as a trade association, the ABA has a right to discriminate.

The Alliance said it is representing an unnamed white male law school applicant who says that he would apply for the $15,000 Legal Opportunity Scholarship were he not prevented from doing so because he is the “wrong” race. The ABA awards between 20 and 25 such scholarships annually to incoming law students, according to its website, which is excerpted above.

I should have covered this in April: sorry. [Believe me, if I could find a way to work on the blog full-time without ending up living on cat food and in a shack by the docks, I would.] Anyway, this kind of thing is why I do not pay dues to the ABA, and why I am suspicious of any lawyer who does. It is an interesting case. I assumed that Blum would lose if the case proceeded, and that his main objective was to shame the ABA into opening up the race-based scholarships to all. But the ABA has no shame. And I knew that.

The American Bar Association responded to Blum’s suit this week, arguing that a scholarship program designed to boost diversity among law students is protected free speech. The 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship, the largest lawyer association in the nation asserts, is protected under the First Amendment. In its motion to dismiss the ABA also claimed that plaintiff American Alliance for Equal Rights lacks standing to sue.

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Kudos To The New York Times For Finally Eliminating All Doubt That It Is a Democratic Party Propaganda Organ And Not a “Newspaper”…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This would be an Unethical Quote of the Week if there were any reason to believe what the New York Times says about President Trump, and if the Times didn’t make equally unethical quotes every day.

Here’s part of the Times editorial titled, “Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses”:

“…The political right, including President Trump, deserves substantial blame. Yes, he has led a government crackdown against antisemitism on college campuses, and that crackdown has caused colleges to become more serious about addressing the problem. But Mr. Trump has also used the subject as a pretext for his broader campaign against the independence of higher education. The combination risks turning antisemitism into yet another partisan issue, encouraging opponents to dismiss it as one of his invented realities.

Even worse, Mr. Trump had made it normal to hate, by using bigoted language about a range of groups, including immigrants, women and trans Americans. Since he entered the political scene, attacks on Asian, Black, Latino and L.G.B.T. Americans have spiked, according to the F.B.I. While he claims to deplore antisemitism, his actions tell a different story. He has dined with a Holocaust denier, and his Republican Party has nominated antisemites for elected offices, including governor of North Carolina. Mr. Trump himself praised as “very fine people” the attendees of a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Va., that featured the chant “Jews will not replace us.” On Jan. 6, 2021, at least one rioter attacking the Capitol screamed that he was looking for “the big Jew,” referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Mr. Schumer has said.”

It gives me great pleasure to know that Times boot-licker ” “A Friend,” the long-banned EA commenter who has set a nearly unbreakable record for unauthorized posts here, most bleating about how unfair I am to the noble Times, will be desperately searching for a way to rationalize that verbal offal without having to admit, “Okay, the Times editors are partisan hacks.”

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Some Ethics Alarms Have Failed To Ring Here…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I am not passing judgment on the SNAP controversy, and Felicia may be a nice person and a wonderful mother.

However, rudimentary thought and consideration regarding perceptions, personal responsibility and common sense ought to make all but the hopelessly obtuse realize that a morbidly obese woman is a self-rebutting advocate for food stamps, as well as a meme waiting to be posted. Moreover, why is a single mother who has to work three jobs having four children?

Is Sen. Klobuchar really so dense (well, yes) and crippled by tunnel vision that the flaws in this particular advocate’s position never occurred to her? I have to believe Felecia exposes the astounding immunity progressives seem to have to reality, unless they are cynically convinced that the American public really is dominated by morons.

Any other theories?

Message to Simone Biles: “Shut Up and Vault!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It shouldn’t matter than cute little Simone Biles isn’t very bright. She’s a talented gymnast, and has parlayed that skill into a fortune, a brand, and enough fame to last her a while. There was that choking episode at the 2020 Olympics, but never mind: she’s won enough championships and medals to qualify as one of the all-time greats.

Unfortunately, Biles, like so many other jocks and celebrities,, has let her popularity and acclaim in a very narrow field go to her head. She thinks she has something to contribute to national debates that have nothing to do with floor exercises and the balance beam, and she doesn’t. I’d love to know what books, if any, Biles has read while being essentially a full time gymnast since she was knee-high to a praying mantis. The fact that she never attended high school (she was home-schooled) and eventually got a college degree from a non-profit, online college doesn’t mean Simone necessarily is lacking in critical thinking skills, but her engaging in a name-calling battle with Riley Gaines—the former competitive swimmer who has become a critic of trans men who still have to shave every morning throttling girls and women in women’s sports because they can— does.

To begin with, Gaines is smart, articulate and knows her topic. Biles’ contribution to the debate has consisted of social media posts the equivalent of “Oh yeah?” and “Well, I’m better at my sport than you were at yours, so there!” Here’s one…

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Ethics Dunce: The 100-Year-Old Psychotherapist

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yes, this topic again: the aging professional who lacks the courage, integrity and common sense to “hang it up” before too much harm is done.

Ethics Alarms had explored the issue with judges (Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, among others), baseball players (Albert Pujols, for example), lawyers (Rudy Giuliani), actors (Bruce Willis), singers (Joni Mitchell, and so, so many others) and Presidents of the United States. It’s always the same tragic tale with different details: someone who has always been remarkable at a difficult, powerful and often high-profile job can’t bring herself or himself to retire with dignity, even when it should be obvious that age is leaching their abilities from them.

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ABC to Terry Moran: It’s OK For You To Be Biased Like the Rest of Us, But For God’s Sake Don’t Be So Obvious About It!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

ABC News suspended senior national correspondent Terry Moran for, shall we say, a revealing but undiplomatic post on Twitter/X that gratuitously attacked both President Trump and top aide Stephen Millers as “world-class hater[s].” Nice!

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

“Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran wrote. “You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.” Moran continued, “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”

If you say so Terry. Amazingly, Moran apparently saw nothing unprofessional about his outburst, which he subsequently deleted. Talk about living in a bubble!

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement shortly thereafter that Moran had been suspended, pointing to the post as the impetus for the disciplinary action.

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage”—Excuse me, but HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA–<breath>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!—“and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” ABC said in a statement. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

More Thoughts and Observations on the LA Pro-Illegal Immigration Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

1. This morning, while CNN and MSNBC were raging about the riots, Fox News had an extended feature about how to make faux cocktails using coffee. Gee, it would be nice to have a responsible, trustworthy broadcast news network that was both unbiased and that didn’t assume that is viewers dropped out of junior high school.

2. I am surprised that so few readers have commented on this morning’s introductory post. Was everyone at church? “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

3. Here’s the comment on Facebook by an old friend, a retired journalist, and, of course, a Trump Derangement sufferer:

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Ethics Dunce: Anyone Who Buys Karine Jean-Pierre’s Book [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

You would have to put a gun to my head to make me buy Ethics Villain Jake Tapper’s book about the Biden dementia cover-up, but at least Jake has a somewhat less despicable co-author and two-brain cells to rub together. What possible excuse is there for buying and reading the book Biden’s ex-paid liar, Karine Jean-Pierre announced yesterday: “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines”?

I can think of two: brain damage and excessive admiration of chutzpah.

In order to get some buzz yesterday, Jean-Pierre announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party to be an “independent.” “I think we need to stop thinking in boxes, and think outside of our boxes, and not be so partisan,”she said in an Instagram video. Her publisher risibly insists that Jean-Pierre’s book will offer “clear arguments and provocative evidence as an insider” about the importance of dismantling misinformation and will argue that it “can be worthwhile to carve a political space more loyal to personal beliefs than a party affiliation.”

Ethics estoppel doesn’t begin to describe how unethical it is for this fool to criticize “misinformation.” She was not only paid to lie for the apparently all-lies-all-the-time Biden administration, she was one of the most flagrant liars about Biden’s incapacity, including claiming that videos showing the President babbling, wandering off or freezing were all fake.

Every White House Press Secretary lies, but Karine was shockingly bad at it, and at talking, which would seem to be the minimum skill someone in that position should have mastered. How could she possibly offer “clear arguments and provocative evidence” about anything?

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Oh Dear! Patti Lupone Took My Advice and Now Broadway Wants Her “Cancelled”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Back in November of last year, I wrote about the silly–but instructive—Broadway feud between diva Patti Lupone and performer Kecia Lewis, who is black, and who has received some accolades herself. Lewis was starring in “Hell’s Kitchen,” a 2024 jukebox musical about the life and career of Alicia Keys in a theater that shared a wall with the theater featuring “The Roommate,” a quiet, two-actor drama starring Mia Farrow and LuPone. The amplified sound in “Hell’s Kitchen” at two points in the musical could be heard by the audience LuPone’s show, so LuPone sent a polite note to the “Hell’s Kitchen” producers asking them to turn down the volume at those points in the sound design that were loud enough to interfere with her show. (The producer of “The Roommate”should have handled that, but Patti has power and influence and has never been shy about using them.) “Hell’s Kitchen” complied. LuPone, in gratitude, sent a thank-you note to the producers and flowers to the stage management and sound staff.

But Lewis decided to play the race card, because that’s what so many of the Woke of Color have been taught to do, because it works. She posted a video on Instagram reprimanding LuPone for supposedly engaging in race-based “microagressions.” I wrote in “Dear Patty LuPone: Please, PLEASE Tell Kecia Lewis ‘Oh, Bite Me!’” that I was ” hoping against hope that LuPone, who is the epitome of a diva (as this Ethics Alarms post demonstrates), either issues an emphatic “Bite Me!” to Lewis or ignores her completely as not worthy of attention from Patti’s perch on Broadway Olympus. Lewis is the racist here; she is the one who is stereotyping a white performer as insensitive and dismissive.”

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In a Competitive Commencement Season, Evelyn Harris Makes a Strong Bid For Most Unethical Speech of 2025

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Favorites Tim Walz, Scott Pelley and Kermit the Frog may have fallen to an underdog: “musician and activist” Evelyn Harris (whoever she is) may have succeeded in embarrassing her host school the most of all with her 2025 commencement speech.

For some reason, Smith College, which has apparently become too woke to function, included Harris, a relatively obscure singer (but more importantly, an activist) among its all female honorees this year. The most prominent one of these would probably be far-left historian Danielle Allen, who has several items in her Ethics Alarms dossier. Or maybe it would be the (historic!) highest ranking trans official in US history, former assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Rachel Levine, one of Biden’s DEI appointments. Then there was new age-y guru Preeti Simran Sethi, the only one of the four who is a Smith grad. All of these, however, whatever their issues, at least managed to compose their own speech to give to the graduates.

Harris didn’t. Smith officials learned that her entire speech had been cribbed from other sources without attribution (you know, like Joe Biden once did), and had to inform the Smith community that it had been deceived. “It has come to our attention that one of our honorary degree recipients — musician Evelyn M. Harris — borrowed much of her speech to graduates and their families from the commencement speeches of others without the attribution typical of and central to the ideals of academic integrity,” the letter read in part.

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