Ethics Dunces

A Democratic Government Should Not Be Afraid of Words: The Charlie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Ugh. Yesterday, President Trump posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Medal of Freedom. That was an appropriate way to express admiration and appreciation for the martyred conservative activist. (MSNBC, alone among the networks, didn’t feel the ceremony was newsworthy. Now, a newsworthy ceremony for the network was President Biden giving the Presidential Citizen’s Medal to Liz Cheney for running a Star Chamber against American citizens tand her own party o make sure the public understands the difference between bad rioting—the half-day Capitol embarrassment by conservative morons—and good rioting—the nation-wide, May through December 2020 Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful protests” by Democrats—at least according to”MS.” Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias…).

An inappropriate, cheesy, grandstanding pro-Kirk gesture absurdly hostile to freedom of speech was the Trump State Department revoking the visas of six foreigners who made derisive comments about Kirk or who joked about his assassination. Oh no, not THAT! Foreigners making jokes!

The State Department said yesterday that it had determined the six unidentified foreign nationals from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa should lose their visas after reviewing their online social media posts and clips about Kirk. “[We]will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws,” the State Department said. “Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”

Celebrating.

Next up from this weirdly thin-skinned gang: prosecuting whoever celebrates LA Dodger victories in the baseball play-offs. The move hands a metaphorical spiked club to the Trump-Deranged who claim this President wants to cancel the First Amendment. Dumb. Abuse of power.

Unethical.

Morons.

Ethics Dunce: Actor Martin Sheen, and Anyone Who Gives Him a Platform or Who Pays Attention To Anything He Says….

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In Michael Crichton’s terrific 2004 novel “State of Fear,” never made into a movie because it makes a strong case that the purveyors of climate change hysteria are just ignorant hooey-mongers, a character modeled on Martin Sheen travels to a tropical island suing the United States for alleged climate change damages and is eaten by cannibals. I was reminded of this episode when I read excerpts from his “blistering anti-Trump speech” on MSNBC yesterday.

Sheen epitomizes the “Shut up and act!” Hollywood activists, except that he is more afflicted with the Dunning-Kruger than most. He is neither particularly bright or well-educated, and is one of those fascinating actors who is successful playing characters smarter than he is, whereupon he gets confused and thinks that he is the smart one.

This is how desperate MSNBC was yesterday to find someone able to thrill its Trump Deranged audience: they stooped to allowing Sheen to rant interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. What possible enlightenment does Sheen offer anyone on any topic not related to acting (which has been his full occupation since he was a teenager) , and what possible credentials does he have (more than, say, someone you hit with a rock thrown randomly into a crowd) to opine on the Trump Presidency? Does Sheen know he just played a President? Does Wallace? Does MSNBC?

Here is what that sad, sick network thought was worth broadcasting:

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Ethics Dunce: Ethics Villain, the National Football League

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The headline raises an interesting question: can an ethics villain be an ethics dunce, since ethics villains by definition don’t care about ethics, so how can they be judged stupid for ignoring them? Ah well, a topic for another day. Ann Althouse would ask Grok to resolve the issue…if I ever start quoting AI here regularly, someone please come up behind me and bash in my head with a brick.

I’ve been putting off the National Football League announcing that its now iconic halftime show during the 2026 Super Bowl in Santa Clara will star Bad Bunny, a performer I was mercifully unaware of before the announcement. After all, I could write this post any time between now and February 9, 2026, the day after the national sports event that I will not watch again because the sport it involves is deadly.

Today, however, I am in a bad mood, so it’s time. The Super Bowl has evolved as cultural phenomenon that is one of the rare yearly American events that unifies the nation, families, races and commerce. It is supposed to be non-partisan, non-political, and G-rated so families can watch the game and its surrounding hoopla with their children. When Janet Jackson exposed a nipple during a halftime performance, you would have thought that she has performed a human sacrifice by the reaction in the news media.

But now it is 2025, the Great Stupid still stalks the land, Trump Derangement reigns in the corporate suites, and thus the National Football League, which happily pays its players to become brain-injured, has chosen as its star attraction during the Super Bowl half-time show…

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Update on the Jay Jones Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

As related here, Jay Jones is the (black, so he can do no wrong and accusing him of such is racism) Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General who through texts made it clear to a colleague that he believed that his adversaries deserved to be killed, and worse, that their children (“little fascists”) deserved to be killed as well.

To those who, like his desperate defenders, claim this was “just a mistake”—you know, like Joe Biden’s debate meltdown was “just a bad night”—I reply that Jones’ rants were signature significance. He wasn’t joking (compared to Jones’ “jokes,” Jimmy Kimmel’s Charley Kirk comments were comedy gold) and a normal, decent, trustworthy human being never even thinks about wanting his adversaries’ family members dead, much less communicates them to others. No, not even once.

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Late Wednesday Ethics Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1. Ethics Dunce: The New York Daily News, which joined my Rogues Gallery of websites that use unethical tactics to force readers to tolerate ads or pay to subscribe. This was a new one, though: I disabled my ad-blocker, and was returned to the Daily News home page. But now the link I had opened was no longer available. I searched for it: the piece, an editorial, was gone, at least for me. Assholes. If they think I’m going back to that site again or ever link to it here, they can bite me.

2. Damn ethics alarm: I was in a tight time frame this afternoon and had to deposit a check and mail a letter (returning a jury questionnaire saying I was willing to do my civic duty even though getting stuck in a trial is the last thing I need) then get back to the office and handle a problem. I mailed the letter and was rushing to my car when I saw a young black man painfully crossing the parking lot using a walker, with both hands holding plastic grocery bags. So I had to ask him if I could help—I had been stuck using a walker not that long ago—and he demurred…but also wanted to talk. He was so grateful that I, anyone, had cared enough to ask. He wanted to share the horrible sequence of events that had but him in his current state of limited mobility, his bad medical advice, his work interruption, the burden on his family. So I listened. I wasn’t going to walk away saying, “I’m sorry, but I have things to do.” This was a pure Golden Rule situation, Ethics 101, non-ethical considerations vs. the ethical values of kindness, compassion, empathy and respect. Once upon a time, before Ethics Alarms, before I began teaching ethics, I would have ignored that ethics alarm, if it rang at all. The man’s name was Kevin, incidentally.

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Ethics Test For Progressives and Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I had four ethics stories all lined up last night, and then this ugly episode forced its way to the front of the line. I hate that. Still, attention must be paid.

Zohran Mamdani, the presumed next New York City mayor based on polls and the fact that his only viable competition for the job had to resign as New York governor in disgrace, posted a statement on the anniversary of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel. You can see it above.

To his credit, the “Democratic-Socialist” (that is, communist) was crystal clear about who and what he is, and honest observers from both sides of the partisan divide have not been reluctant to react with appropriate disgust. (The statement should not come as any surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Mamdani, the latest example of a charismatic politician emulating Andy Griffith in “A Face in the Crowd” (1957).

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The President’s Quick Quip

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Two permanent fixtures of the Trump Derangement narrative are:

  • President trump has no sense of humor.
  • President Trump is slipping into dementia (like Joe Biden), and should therefore be removed via the 25th Amendment.

Both of these are demonstrably false, even absurdly false. Demented people don’t have the quick wit to pick up on a straight line like that. And Trump even had the sense to “go out on the big laugh,” as the old vaudevillians used to say. When you get a big laugh, it’s time to end your appearance.

That incident today doesn’t prove that this President is wise, right, responsible or even well-intentioned. But the fact that the Axis of Unethical Conduct that has been working without pause to destroy Donald Trump since 2016 may be explained by another fact: that their hate and bias makes it impossible for them to avoid underestimating their foe.

As Sun Tsu said (but in Chinese), “There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent….Never underestimate your opponent or your enemy. Looks can be deceiving. You really don’t know what your opponent knows or what kind of skills he or she may have.” In the same vein, Machiavelli’s writings also repeatedly warned against underestimating an opponent, and to assume that your adversary is “always capable and cunning.”

The ethics values at issue here are competence, prudence, objectivity, professionalism, respect, fairness, and perspective.

Morons…

Worst Excuse For A Lawyer and Elected Official Saying That He Wanted Children Killed: Virginia Atty Gen Candidate Jay Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Isn’t that great? It’s a Rationalization #1 classic “Everybody does it!” It is especially impressive when you know what Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General in Virginia, is trying to worm his way out of, which was writing thusly in 2022…

On August 8, 2022, Republican state legislator received a series of text messages from Jones, a former colleague who had recently resigned from the state house after representing Norfolk, Va. He was outraged that Republicans in the legislature were eulogizing a recently deceased Republican lawmaker. “If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.” Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-GOP Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or Hitler and Pol Pot, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time.”

In other text messages, Jones said that he wished the children of some political adversaries would “die in [their] arms.” When chastised by the former colleague for his comments about killing kids as retribution for conservative political views and actions, Jones wrote “Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.” Later he texted, “I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes,” he wrote, referring to Gilbert’s wife and two young children.

Nice.

The recipient of the texts told the National Review in a statement. “Jay Jones wished violence on the children of a colleague and joked about shooting Todd Gilbert. It’s disgusting and unbecoming of any public official.” Ya think? But Jones’s defense was that it’s okay to wish death on political opponents and doom on their innocent children because everybody is irresponsible on social media.

It will be fascinating to see how many Democrats vote for this irresponsible creep; it should give us good data on just how devoid of values that rotting party’s supporters are. Republican Winsome Sears, the underdog candidate for Virginia governor running against extreme abortion fan and certified liar Abigail Spanberger, released this ad today:

Can’t say she doesn’t have a point….

Unethical Tit-For Tat: Great, Now The Trump Administration Is Playing “WrongSpeak” Games…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

This revolting development was completely predictable to the extent of being virtually inevitable. Nonetheless, it is ominous, dangerous and disgusting, not to mention Orwellian, for the government to try to manipulate public opinion by banning words and phrases that can support opinions and beliefs authorities don’t want the public to hold.

The Energy Department last week added “climate change,” “green” “emissions” and “decarbonization” to its list of banned words and phrases at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The WrongSpeak/ThoughtCrime linguistic offenses already included “energy transition,” “sustainability/sustainable,” “‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ energy,” “Carbon/CO2 ‘Footprint’” and “Tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.”

“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid — and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the acting director of external affairs Rachel Overbey decreed.

The order applies to both public and internal communications and extends to documents such as requests for information for federal funding opportunities, reports and briefings. It’s obvious why the Trump Administration is going down this pro-indoctrination path. “It works!” as the late Harry Reid assures us from Hell. The ends justify the means, “They (the Democrats) did it first,” “Everybody does it,” yada yada yada: there are at least a dozen rationalizations on the list including #31. The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now” that will doubtlessly be resorted to by our current ruling censors. The practice is still unethical and the impulse is anti-American.

I believe that the linguistic attacks are encouraged by the reality that the news media is engaged in permanent pro-climate change hysteria propaganda. “Climate change is caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions, which is driven primarily by burning oil, coal and natural gas for energy,” Politico states confidently while reporting on the new language edict at Energy. More:

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Baseball Ethics Dunce: St. Louis Cardinals Manager Oli Marmol

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

On this date in 1941, Ted Williams got six hits in eight at-bats during a season-ending doubleheader in Philadelphia, boosting his average to .406. He became the first player since 1930 to hit .400., and no one has done it since. Of course, Connie Mack, the Hall of Fame A’s manager, could have walked Williams every time up and prevented him from reaching the .400 mark on the theory that he was the best Red Sox batter and that not letting him swing the bat would help Mack’s lousy Philadelphia team win one or two meaningless games. Mack didn’t do that, of course, because it would have cheated Williams, cheated the fans, and cheated baseball

Fast-forward to 2025. Yesterday, the Chicago Cubs led the Cardinals 7-3 with a runner on third and two outs in the bottom of the 8th inning. Michael Busch was up, and he was flirting with baseball history: the Cubs player was 4-for-4 with two home runs already, and needed just a single to complete a cycle—a homer, triple, double and single in the same game. Cycles are for hitters what no-hit games are to pitchers: rare historic accomplishments, in fact, there have been almost exactly the same number of each in baseball history. But Cardinals manager Oli Marmol ordered that Busch be given an intentional walk, ending his pursuit of the cycle. The Cubs fans booed, and I’m pretty sure that Cardinal fans would have booed the decision too if the game had been in St. Louis.

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