Ethics Quotes

Ethics Quote of the Day: Prof. Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“If you view conservatives judges and justices as “lawless,” then every decision that they issue can be construed as a “crisis” in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.”

—George Washington University law professor and lawyer Jonathan Turley

I decided to ignore the recent open letter signed by approximately 950 law professors declaring the second Trump administration a “Constitutional crisis,” because it was so obviously a mass exhibition of both “bias makes you stupid” and the overwhelming partisan slant of the legal profession, upon which Ethics Alarms has commented many times. The letter is the equivalent of the infamous one in 2020 signed by all those national intelligence experts who wanted everyone to know that the Hunter Biden laptop was really Russian disinformation, but the current letter is worse. Lawyers, as professionals, are required to be trustworthy. Trustworthy lawyers don’t put their names on legal misinformation and political propaganda like this latest “Trump is a dictator” attack. (The American Bar Association has issued a similar statement.)

I’m glad I waited and let Professor Turley eviscerate these disgraces to the law and academia. Cruelly, he has more influence, visibility and credibility than little ol’ me. In his blog post and column for The Hill titled “Panic politics: Law professors’ umpteenth ‘constitutional crisis’ falls flat”, Turley neatly points out,

  • “The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! On my Facebook page, lawyers and even a couple of professors regularly proclaim as fact that President Trump is “defying” the Constitution.

Biased, ignorant and Trump-Deranged is no way to practice law, son.

Read the whole thing, but here are some more excerpts: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Year (So Far): Donald Sensing

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

“Finally, hating Trump is merely cheap virtue signaling. It is neither a method nor a plan. But if you feel better about hating Trump than you feel bad about Ukrainians getting killed with no end in sight, then you are morally bankrupt and God forbid you have any say in what happens.”

—-Military expert, commentator and Methodist minister Daniel Sensing concluding his blog post, “‘I stand with Ukraine’ means what, exactly?”

Last night, probably the smartest and most reliably reasonable of my Trump-Deranged lawyer friends published a much-loved diatribe on Facebook condemning President Trump for the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy last week. He doesn’t post often, but every one recently has been to take issue with a Trump, quote, policy or action. I’ve had to wrestle my metaphorical tongue to the floor every time. It would do no good to rebut him, and all my effort would do would diminish the respect he has for me because, on this topic, his powers of reasoning are gone. If I wanted to start a stampede of unfriending on my Facebook page, I would point him to the superb post by Donald Sensing flagged this morning on Instapundit by Prof. Glenn Reynolds. My friend would never see the post otherwise, since Reynolds’ legendary blog is relentlessly conservative and my friend would sooner draw a pentagram on his kitchen floor than sample anything written there. But Sensing, whose fascinating CV is here and who is better qualified to opine on the Ukraine-Russian conflict than either of us, has provided a superb analysis with clarity and logical force.

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Ethics Alarms Generally Ignores Michael Moore But a Quote This Unethical and Cretinous Warrants an Exception…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Who’s really being removed by ICE tonight? The child who would’ve discovered the cure for cancer in 2046? The 9th grade nerd who would’ve stopped that asteroid that’s gonna hit us in 2032? Do we care?”

Yes, activist communist and has-been documentary-maker Michael Moore really and truly made that head-explodingly stupid argument, my candidate for the most ridiculous rationalization for allowing illegal immigrants into the U.S. yet, even topping the “But that poem on the Statue of Liberty!” excuse.

It is so stupid that the theory would be a valuable diagnostic tool on IQ tests. If someone checks the “Sounds good to me!” box, that test-taker’s cognitive ability should automatically be judged as “dangerously impaired.”

As we have explained here many times, consequentialism is the ethical theory for dolts, the concept that a decision or action is right or wrong depending on what happens as a result of it. Moore is saying that an action is unethical or wrong if anything good might have happen if a different choice had be made. I hesitate to give this walking, talking ethics corrupter credit, but he just has to be smarter than to believe that. As usual, Moore is trying to con the dimmer members of the public, a large contingent among Americans who still pay attention to him.

One wag on social media responded to Moore’s insulting question with “Now do abortion.”

Bingo.

Ethics Hero: “Landman” Creator and Writer Taylor Sheridan

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Billy Bob Thornton star vehicle “Landman,” following the stressful life of a West Texas “landman” and operational executive for an independent oil company in West Texas, has a lot going for it, mostly Thornton, who is one of our most interesting and versatile actors. The Paramount streaming series is already better, in my view, then the last two oil dramas I watched, the over-rated “Giant” and the relentlessly unpleasant “There Will Be Blood,” in great part because as with all of his roles, Thornton brings a great deal of humor to the proceedings.

I have not finished the series’ first season (I sure hope there is a second), but I was struck by the long scene above in which Tommy Norris (that’s Billy Bob) gives a quick primer to his company’s attorney on the facile conventional wisdom of the anti-fossil fuel lobby. The rant begins (at the 57 second mark), as Tommy denies the “cleanness” of wind power, and he takes off from there. It was an instant classic that quickly went viral on social media: as soon as I heard it I knew I could find the speech on YouTube and resolved to post it today.

There are also a lot of rebuttals to the speech on line, and that’s great: the ethics point is that for once Hollywood isn’t stuffing smug 21st Century woke politics into its audience’s brains, but is presenting a dissenting analysis. More more amazing yet, this one comes from a series’ protagonist and an appealing one at that.

Taylor Sheridan, who created “Landman,” cast Thornton and wrote and directed the speech deserves thanks and credit for packaging a provocative point of view that is sure to spark debate. Debate is ethical. What isn’t ethical is cultural indoctrination, which is how Hollywood has mostly been approaching the oil issue for decades.

Not surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry linked above states that the series contains “misinformation about renewable energy… “exposed as common propaganda tropes by Big Oil.” This is why Wikipedia should be considered a member in excellent standing with the Axis of Unethical Conduct. If Democrats had won another term in the White House, we would probably see “Landman” forced to include a disclaimer on Tommy’s speech.

I LOVE This Unethical Quote of the Eon From LA Mayor Karen Bass!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“No one said you shouldn’t have gone on a trip.”

—Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in a local TV interview, explaining why she  flew to Ghana as the disastrous wildfires in her city had already started.

In addition to being a spectacularly desperate excuse for irresponsible and incompetent conduct, Mayor Bass’s statement is such a poor use of the English language that it is almost undecipherable. What she was trying to say is that nobody told her not to leave the city she is supposedly in charge of running to go on a junket to Africa as a life-and-death threat loomed.

Still, isn’t that statement great? First, it’s an easy Unethical Quote of—what, the month? The year? The millennium? Second, it is the equivalent of wearing a blinking neon sign that reads, “I am an incompetent!” as if the residents of her city that have two brain cells to rub together haven’t figured that out yet. Third, it’s a rationalization so desperate, impotent and moronic that one has to be about six to try it. (And yes, I must add “Bass’s Lament” to the list.) Let’s see:

Ken Lay, asked why he oversaw the Enron scam: “Nobody told me not to!”

Lance Armstrong, asked why he used banned doping techniques to win all those races: “Nobody told me not to!”

Richard Nixon, asked why he allowed the Watergate cover-up: “Nobody told me not to!”

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, asked why he organized the attack on Pearl Harbor: “Nobody told me not to!”

Bass’s excuse works for serial killers, rapists, cheating spouses, arsonists, and playground bullies. It’s so versatile!

The context of Bass’s instant classic was a recent interview on LA’s Fox 11 in which she explained Bass explained that the Biden administration asked her to go to the Ghana to represent the U.S. “It was going to be a very short trip – over a weekend and two business days.” Now, she told the outlet, she is mounting an investigation into why she was MIA when the city needed leadership most. We need to look at everything about the preparation and all of that for the fires… I think when we evaluate that, we will find that although there were warnings – that I frankly wasn’t aware of.” “I think our preparation wasn’t what it typically is,” the mayor continued, apparently unaware of the axiom, “When you are in a hole, stop digging.”  “That level of preparation really didn’t happen. If it had, I wouldn’t even have gone to San Diego, let alone leave the country…it didn’t reach that level to me.”

If you are wondering whether there is any chance that voters in single-party California will reconsider their knee-jerk political affiliations after the horrible performance of Bass, considered a star on the Democratic Party’s representatives of-color Congressional team (she was on Biden’s short list to be Vice-President), the answer is probably not, in part because Bass’s apparent unawareness of the concept of “accountability” is barely being publicized. I had to learn of it from the British tabloid “The Daily Mail.”

________________

Pointer: Old Bill

Ethics Quote of the Week: Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“When you are flying on an airplane with your loved ones, which every one of us in this room has, do you pray that your plane lands safely and gets you to your destination, or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color?”

—Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, during yesterday’s press briefing that focused on the tragic Reagan National Airport collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter.

Leavitt, the youngest Presidential paid liar in the history of the position (See? She’s “historic” too!), issued more powerful, well-expressed and memorable statements in her first week than her DEI predecessor did during her entire tenure. That fact, which couldn’t escape even the most biased of the reporters in the room, made her Ethics Quote of the Week more striking. [The transcript of yesterday’s briefing, is here.]

The astounding thing to ponder is that there probably are hard-wired woke fanatics who would prefer to plummet to their deaths in a plane flown by a pilot of the “right” ethnicity.

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Unethical Quote of the Month (and Ethics Villain): Sen. Chris Murphy (D.-Conn)

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

“What do you think about Trump’s most visible advisor, Elon Musk, performing a Nazi salute?”

—-Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut and based on this question, a completely unscrupulous one, questioning Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik in her confirmation hearing to be confirmed as U.N. ambassador

Yecchh, ick, ptui, gag, retch! I’m sure it’s theoretically possible to stoop lower than Murphy, but I don’t want to think about what that would be. Urinating on the nominee perhaps?

This is pure Trump hate translated into slander. Musk, while gesticulating yesterday, ended up with one arm outstretched briefly with the palm down, and the still frantically desperate Axis, including PBS, began circulating the absurd Big Lie that Musk gave a Nazi salute for some reason. Oh! I get it! It’s because Trump is a Nazi!

I still can’t get my head around the reality that a U.S. Senator would try to join in on this gang smearing of Musk. CNN’s Scott Jennings X’d, “The only good thing about the Elon salute stupidity is that it adds to the list of people in public life who should never, ever, ever be taken seriously ever again by anyone ever.” Good point, and well said. Now, I’m ahead of Jennings, because I never took Murphy seriously anyway, except that he’s a serious jerk. Murphy is one of the worst of the worst in Congress, and missed my pre-election blacklist only because he wasn’t running. Yet even I, who regard him as an ongoing embarrassment to the Senate and the nation, didn’t see him resorting to this.

The question wasn’t even relevant to Stefanik, though she answered it with appropriate contempt, saying, “That is simply not the case. To say so – the American people see through it. They support Elon Musk.” I wish she had added, “And they are not the morons you seem to think they are. They know he didn’t give any Nazi salute.”

I find it hard to believe that the Democrats and the Trump-hating news media are really going to escalate their craziness as they try to destroy Trump for another term. Is it possible? Do they have a death wish? Are they that deluded? Is their learning curve not just flat, but upside-down? Jennings is not exaggerating. Bias makes you stupid, and hysterical bias makes you ridiculous.

(That’s Superman giving his “Nazi salute” above, courtesy of the Babylon Bee.)

Unethical Quote of the Month: CNN’s Brian Stelter

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here is Brian Stelter, making a fool of himself, and CNN, and the Axis of Unethical Conduct, again:

This is the depth to which this cosmic hack will stoop to bolster his propaganda-spewing pals in the Axis. Censoring free speech is the equivalent of putting out deadly fires! Brilliant, but telling. This is CNN!

And this is CNN: CNN “factchecker” Daniel Dale rushed to try to defend the incompetence of L.A. and California Democrats, saying “There is no shortage of water in the LA area,” and babbling that reports of fire hydrants being dry were due to “technical logistical infrastructure,” whatever that means. You can’t check facts before the facts are known: a major investigation will be required to determine exactly what went wrong, what public officials were at fault, and what factors were in play regarding the devastating Palisades fires. Never mind, though: to those brave factcheckers, a lack of facts won’t dissuade them from rushing into debates and drowning opinions that might singe the Woke and Wonderful.

Janisse Quiñones, chief executive and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that the fire response put immense strain on the water system. That would seem to suggest a shortage of water, no? Or the fact that many fire hydrants were dry, according to the firefighters who tried to use them. The Santa Ynez Reservoir the Pacific Palisadeshas been out of commission since February 2024, meaning 117 million gallons of water was missing, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, desperately saying anything he could come up with to preserve his presumed status as the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s 2028 Presidential nomination, told NBC News that the state’s reservoirs are full. He also said, more accurately, there will be an independent investigation of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

It should come as no surprise that these essential public servants, the Axis factcheckers, didn’t choose to factcheck shameless Biden paid liar Jan Psaki, now a paid liar on MSNBC, who told viewers. completely without facts, that the California fires weren’t the fault of anyone in California at all, but Donald Trump for not doing enough to combat climate change. The Axis of Unethical Conduct (that’s the “resistance,” Democrats, and the left-biased mainstream media for those unfamiliar with the Ethics Alarms term) sense that accumulated incompetence and bad progressive policies on display as homes burn might be a tipping point for ridiculously woke California, causing millions of voters to suddenly slap their foreheads and exclaim, “Why have we been voting for these liars and idiots?” I have my doubts that anything short of mass deprogramming can achieve that result, but still what we are getting from Stelter, Psaki and others reeks of panic and desperation.

Unethical Quote of the Month: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about. We want to tell the truth. We haven’t always done it as a nation. We want to tell the truth.The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say, ‘By the way, we’re not gonna fact check anything,’ and you know, you have millions of people reading, going online, reading this stuff. Anyway, I think it’s really shameful.”

—-President Joe Biden, attacking Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg decision’s to end its biased, censorious fact-checking system that relied on partisan propaganda operations like PolitiFact and Snopes.

What’s shameful is a President of the United States advocating speech censorship. Like many of Biden’s brain-addled outbursts lately, however, he has committed the cardinal political sin of saying what he and his puppeteers really believe out loud. So now we know, at least those of us who weren’t paying attention before and couldn’t read the metaphorical neon signs flashing before our eyes, Joe Biden and his entire party advocates the censorship of free speech on social media, including opinion, adverse positions and anything that might expose its rotting proto-totalitarian party for the threat to democracy it has become. Thanks, Joe! But it was pretty obvious already.

I’m glad that I have waited to post the resolution of the “Worst President Ever” inquiry until tomorrow, because so much applicable information has been flowing regarding just how awful Joe Biden has been. I think all who have read the series carefully have figured out that the finals are going to come down to Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson and Biden, and it doesn’t take a PhD to guess who the last two competitors will be either. Once I thought the ultimate “winner” was clear-cut, but Joe is fighting for the title to the bitter end.

He and his fellow censors circulated lie after lie before and during the Presidential campaign (among them that only Donald Trump lies) yet Biden has the astounding brass to talk about wanting to tell the truth. You know, truth like Biden being sharp as a tack. “Truth” like the border being secure.

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Before We Close the Book On Jimmy Carter…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Cynical Publius,” a practicing lawyer and retired Army colonel who writes under that name at The Federalist, couldn’t stand the Carter record airbrushing flooding in the media yesterday and was moved to post this on his lively Twitter/”X” account:

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