Ethics Quotes

Ethics Quote Of The Week: American Thinker…(With A Flashback And Regrets)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“If this were just a scam that conned myriad wealthy corporations and celebrities, BLM could have been forgiven. But their influence has been damaging to the social fabric of the U.S.”

Conservative blog America Thinker, in a post by Rajan Laad called “BLM is Imploding”

The post was foretold last week on Ethics Alarms, when it featured “Observations On What Appears To Be An Epic Black Lives Matter Scandal.” The unfolding story has still been tamped down by the news media, further fulfilling its toxic role as “enemies of the people.” Laad has some additional details:

Indiana’s attorney general slammed BLM as a “scam” whose “house of cards may be falling” amid the growing legal attention. The states of Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Virginia have all revoked BLM’s charitable registration, while California and Washington are threatening to hold the nonprofit’s officers personally liable for its lack of financial transparency.

The rest of the article is truly damning, and I can’t find anything substantially inaccurate in it. The review is also infuriating. Ethics Alarms correctly saw this movement/scam for what it was from the beginning. That’s no great accomplishment: it should have been obvious. What was lacking weren’t sufficient clues, but sufficient courage and responsibility by the politicians, journalists, pundits, celebrities, elected official and corporations that enabled BLM’s despicable scheme to succeed. It not only raised millions through virtue-signaling extortion, it got itself endorsed by one of the two major parties, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and strategically positioned so that any criticism was immediately used to brand the critic as a racist.

For the record, I want to state that those who fell for this con branded themselves as fools. Those who knew what BLM was and still supported it are worse; the label “unethical” doesn’t begin to do them justice. Continue reading →

It Reveals The Dire State Of U.S. Higher Education Culture That Dean William M. Treanor Of Georgetown University Law Center Isn’t The Most Unethical Law School Administrator Of The Past Year (It’s Close, Though…)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That distinction still has to go to Yale Law School Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik and Associate Dean of Student Affairs Ellen Cosgrove, who persecuted, and and threatened a student in this infamous episode last Fall. Their victim is a student, which gives them an edge over Dean Treanor whose target is Ilya Shapiro, GULC’s newly hired director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and vice-president of the Cato Institute.

Just two days ago, I described Shapiro’s foray into the debate over President Biden’s looming Supreme Court nomination, which will have to be a black woman because race and gender are more important to the Far Left than qualifications, ability and experience in the branch of the government that protects the Constitution, but mostly because Joe promised he would while in Full Pander Mode as he fought for his party’s nomination to oppose President Trump in 2020. Shapiro issued a series of tweets that were crystal clear to anyone reading them rationally and honestly, making his case that Biden should be nominating Justice Breyer’s replacement on the basis of qualifications, ability and experience. A careless choice of words, however—this was Twitter, after all—gave race-baiters and progressive censors an opportunity to pounce, and they did.

Shapiro was accused of being a racist (of course); the law schools black student association demanded he be fired (also of course); and GULC’s ostentatiously woke Dean capitulated to the anti-free speech and anti-academic freedom mob, announcing yesterday to me and other “alumni/ae”, as the marvelous Dean I worked for, the late David McCarthy always called them…

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Unethical—And Ignorant!—Quote Of The Month: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“The air in humid, hotter environments contains more water, which can condense onto the virus particles, make them bigger and theoretically fall to the ground faster. Wu compares the particles to a rock in this case — the more mass, the faster it falls.”

—-Washington Post Reporter Kasha Patel, forgetting about Galileo and gravity in an alleged science article headlined,  “Covid-19 may have seasons for different temperature zones, study suggests.”

Her editors also seem to have missed 6th grade science. In truth, I believe I learned about Galileo’s experiment with the Leaning Tower of Pisa before the sixth grade, after Santa left a children’s book about “great moments in science” in my sister’s stocking. We shared it, and it ended up with me: it’s around the house somewhere. I think about the book every time I end up on Walter Reed Drive in Arlington, which is often. His story is also in it; I wish I could think of the title.

The full quote is… Continue reading →

Not Just An Unethical Statement, But An Unbelievable One: The New York Times

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

There’s nothing quite like starting the day with a head explosion.

A New York Times story today about the start of Sarah Palin’s libel suit against the New York Times—Conflict of interest? What conflict of interest?—contained this astounding statement:

The Times has denied those allegations, rebutting the notions that it would ever knowingly print something false…

The thrust of the Times objective, unbiased analysis of the lawsuit against the Times is that “Ms. Palin’s evidence is weak,” but she might win anyway, thus creating one more danger to democracy by weakening freedom of the press.

The evidence is weak? The Supreme Court decision in The New York Times Company v. Sullivan held that for public officials to prove defamation, they had to show not only that a news story was false and harmed their reputation, but that the story resulted from “actual malice,” involving printing a claim or allegation with “reckless disregard for the truth” or knowing it was false. Palin is suing because a Times editorial in 2017 stated that when Rep. Gabriel Giffords was shot by a lunatic in 2011, the crime had “clear[ly]“ been incited by a map circulated by  Palin’s political action committee showing 20 congressional districts that Republicans were hoping to win, including the one held by Giffords, labeled by stylized cross hairs. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Golden State Warriors Owner Chamath Palihapitiya

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line.”

—–Golden State Warriors owner Chamath Palihapitiya, in an interview.

This statement, classic signature significance, neatly explains why the National Basketball Association remains metaphorically in bed with the brutal regime in China, why the Biden Administration refuses to hold the country responsible for its role as an international outlaw (and inflicting its virus on our population,economy and the world), and if you change just one word, why the United States allowed Hitler’s Final Solution to proceed as far as it did.

Give credit where it is due: at least Palihapitiya is being honest. As for his fellow owners, we can see that they feel exactly the same way through their conduct, but prefer not to say so out loud. It might cut down on the profits from souvenir NBA jerseys. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Signature Significance): Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Few people have done more for this state and this country than this driven, brilliant, sometimes irascible, deeply good man from Searchlight, Nevada.”

—-Former President Barack Obama, speaking at former Democratic Party Senate leader Harry Reid’s funeral.

Harry Reid was asked about his repeated lie during the 2012 Presidential campaign that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes over the previous decade.  Reid even made that allegation from the floor of the Senate.

Reid’s accusation was an outright, brazen lie. Romney released his tax returns for those years. In 2011, Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes; in 2010, he paid slightly more than $3 million in taxes. The Washington Post Fact Checker, a reliable defender of unethical conduct by Democrats, gave Reid Four Pinocchios for his “no taxes” claim. Another inveterate left-biased factchecking group, PolitiFact, gave the claim a “Pants on Fire” rating.

Reid’s answer to the query became infamous: he responded, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” Later, he insisted  that the lie was “the best thing he ever did.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

manchin

“Why did they hope for so much when they had a 50-50 Senate? Why did they think they’d won the support “to realize [the liberal leaders’] longtime policy goals”?

—-“Politically neutral” blogger/ former law professor Ann Althouse, commenting on the Democrats’ expressions of anger, disappointment and betrayal after Sen. Joe Manchin scuttled their multi-trillion social policies spending bill.

Why indeed. There have been a couple of Ethics Alarms posts about this general topic already, but Althouse’s reaction is particularly deft, since it functions as both a “What the hell’s the matter with these people?” legitimate query and a rhetorical question in which the answer is implicit.

That answer is that the Democrats have abandoned the basic tenets of how this republic is supposed to work as well as the principles of democracy that have served it so well. Never before in our history has the attitude of a political party been that once they have been granted power they have leave to put in place whatever policies and laws their most radical and extreme members can imagine irrespective of the clear expectations and beliefs of the American public.

The closest I can recall is the immediate prelude to the Civil War on the subject of slavery, and even then, the South revolted because it anticipated that the Republican Party would behave this way. The sweeping New Deal policies were undertaken by Democratic control of Congress and the White House with overwhelming support of a frightened public in the grip of The Great Depression. Lyndon Johnson’s extensive reforms followed his landslide victory over a conservative candidate whose views has been resoundingly rejected.

The fact that the House and the Senate are almost evenly divided reflects the lack of consensus or even a clear plurality of public opinion favoring many of the measures in the now-dead “Build Back Better” bill. Democracy exists on a foundation of respect and trust: a closely divided public compels elected officials to proceed carefully and to avoid the appearance of the government running roughshod over half the nation. If a party in power believes fervently in policies so much of the public opposes, then it must lead and persuade, not mandate and decree.

This Democratic Party’s strategy, instead, has been totalitarian in both method and spirit. The pandemic response of Democrats has been constitutionally dubious restrictions on personal liberty, mobility, and autonomy. Those who oppose their policies in this and other areas have been vilified, insulted, denigrated, bullied and threatened, and from the highest levels. Instead of legitimate debate and persuasion, the party has relied on propaganda, and a complicit news media that is expected to mislead the public while enhancing an extreme partisan message. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Comic Sarah Silverman [Corrected…It’s Ron De Santis, Not “Jim.” Sorry, Ron. Sorry, Everybody…]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

1551

“The truth has to matter.”

—–Sarah Silverman, actress, comic, progressive activist, rebuking MSNBC’s Joy Reid for a typical fact-free and inflammatory statement.

Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor, announced a proposal last week that would allocate $3.5 million in state funds toward re-establishing the Florida State Guard.

As an announcement explained:

The establishment of the Florida State Guard will further support those emergency response efforts in the event of a hurricane, natural disasters and other state emergencies. The $3.5 million to establish the Florida State Guard will enable civilians to be trained in the best emergency response techniques. By establishing the Florida State Guard, Florida will become the 23rd state with a state guard recognized by the federal government.

Somewhere a memo went out from Democratic Party Cheap Shot Hysteria Headquarters encouraging disgraceful reactions like this, from Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo, who is running for governor:

DeSantis smear tweet

On the plus side, it’s good for voters to know that Annette can’t read: note that the information that 23 states already have a state guard is right in the announcement.

Can’t read, or won’t stop trying to confuse the public? Here’s former Florida Governor Charlie Christ, making a solid effort to surpass Taddeo’s idiocy:

Crist tweet

A “secret police” with a public announcement!

Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Craig Calcaterra

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Legal-Career-Suicide

I wish I could bring myself to subscribe to Craig’s baseball newsletter, I really do. (If you are vaguely intrigued, you can do so here.)

I used to be something of a web friend of Craig’s in his earlier incarnations, first as a part-time sports pundit who was mainly a lawyer (over at “The Baseball Prospectus,” for whom I eventually contributed baseball ethics essays until I got sick of being treated like an afterthought—an occupational hazard of my field) and later after Craig made the brave choice to ditch law and work as a baseball blogger for NBC Sports. But Craig’s political biases ultimately ruined his commentary for me, despite the fact that when he could keep his knee-jerk wokism out of it (which was and is increasingly rare) he still is among the best, smartest and wittiest analysts of the game I love. (Imagine a sane Keith Olbermann, if you can).

I still get a courtesy free edition of his “Cup of Coffee” substack product once a week, as Craig trolls for subscribers. In today’s edition, he was moved to describe what he learned from Kurt Vonnegut, his favorite novelist. Craig’s full of crap on a lot of topics, but regarding what constitutes an ethical life, this quote is excellent.

Describing the moment when he decided to give up the practice of law, he wrote,

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Virginia House of Delegates Member Chris Hurst (D) Hits The Ethics Alarms Trifecta!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Chris Durst

That would be “Ethics Dunce,” “Incompetent Elected Official of the Week” and “Unethical Quote of the Month.” If I had an official “Asshole of the Month” designation, he’d have that wrapped up too.

The day before the Virginia elections, Democratic Virginia House of Delegates Member Chris Hurst and his girlfriend, Emily Frentress, were pulled over by a deputy who spotted them tampering with campaign signs at a polling location. (The 12th District incumbent was also cited for or driving with a suspended license and given a “driving while suspended notification.”) Here is his exchange with the officer as recorded by the officer’s bodycam:

Officer: “I think what you need to do after I deal with you here is go back and fix those signs. What do you think? You try to resort to doing this? Instead of doing a fair election? Chris, quit playing. Quit playing. Y’all are up there turning over signs at the polling area and you’re sitting here acting like you don’t know what’s going on?”

Hurst: “…Here’s what I would say. I would think that something that was a little hijinks and steam blowing off is exactly what everybody over on the other side of the mountain does and people all over this district do.”

Officer: “So you’re going to resort to that and represent us?”

Hurst: “I need you to just do your job here tonight and I’ll do mine. I have nothing more to say to you, officer. I’m sorry for actions that I may have done or my partner may have done, but I think you’re getting a little emotional here.”

Officer: “I’m not getting emotional at all, you’re supposed to be representing us. You’re supposed to be out here representing us and not out here acting like a school kid. How am I supposed to vote for you if you’re out here doing this?”

Hurst: “Were you planning on voting for me?”

Officer: “Well, that’s all up in the air now.”

Hurst: “I’m sorry if I lost your support, sir.”

Continue reading →