Ethics Train Wrecks

Ethics Quiz: The Despicable Representative From The Great State of South Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is a bit of departure from the usual Ethics Alarms quiz. I’m not going to ask whether conduct is ethical or not, or what the ethical response is to a particular conflict or dilemma. No, I’m going to ask what a fair and proportionate description would be of the latest vile, racist crap emitted by this serial hate-mongering demagogue.

That’s Rep. James Clyburn—recognize him? He took credit for getting Joe Biden nominated in 2020, and thus has blood on his hands from the carnage out country has suffered from four years of governance by faceless, unelected woke bureaucrats pulling the strings of a senile President. Gee, thanks, Jim!

Check out Clyburn’s EA dossier, easily one of the most damning short of Nancy Pelosi or the late Rep. Barbara Lee. Clyburn’s 85 now, and an “icon,” because he marched with Martin Luther King (but then so did Marion Barry). But he’s always been an flagrant anti-white racist and hyper-partisan liar. Nonetheless, Clyburn topped himse;f while appearing in “The View,” which itself is showing symptoms of dementia. He told the ignorant ladies, and the even more ignorant viewers who watch their daily idiocy, that the modern GOP is trying to bring back slavery. “Anything that’s happened before can happen again,” Clyburn said, as the Trump Deranged of “The View” sat rapt, as if at the feet of the Buddha. “They were trying to set up a process that will allow this country to return to what it was in 1876 when the election got thrown into the House of Representatives and they were able to overturn what Abraham Lincoln and the Congress had done successfully getting rid of slavery. That is what they’re attempting to do today. I get sick and tired of hearing people say this ‘it’s never been like this before,’ Yes, it has!”

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Lawyer Kimberley Hamm, Spinning For The Clintons

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“There’s an accommodation process when you’re talking about a President or a former President.Contempt is punitive; it’s not about enforcement. If you want to get the information, agreeing to accommodations is one way of getting it.”

—Kimberly Hamm, a partner at Morrison Foerster, after being cherry-picked by the New York Times to excuse Bill and Hillary Clinton for trying to defy a Congressional subpoena.

For some strange reason (I’m being facetious) Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to think that they are excused, unlike any other Americans (or, say, Michael Corleone) from obeying a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee. Hamm, as we know how these things work, was tracked down as a putative objective “expert” by the Times to excuse the Clintons and impugn Republicans who are not inclined to accept their offensive and arrogant defiance, as Ethics Alarms highlighted last week.

There should be a “heightened standard” when it comes to a subpoena of a former President, Hamm said. Oh really? Show me your authority for that assertion, Counselor. But first show me where you made a similar statement about armed raids on former Presidents’ homes over disputes regarding classified documents.

What utter balderdash: “contempt is punitive and not about enforcement.” How dumb does this lawyer (and the Times) think we are? Punishment is always about enforcement. A law that has no penalty for its violations isn’t a law at all. You know, like immigration laws during the Biden Administration.

The Times reports that negotiations between Representative James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and the slippery Clintons over their refusal to testify before his Committee in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation broke down today, “hours before a scheduled vote to hold the couple in contempt of Congress.” Read the whole thing if you like (gift link), but the basic facts are clear: the Clintons feel they have a special right to avoid being grilled in public, and they don’t.

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Calling “A Friend”! Tell Us Again How The New York Times Is Non-Partisan, Fair, and Trustworthy…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yeah, I’m trolling. So sue me.

A mob of Minnesota pro-open borders, anti-Rule of Law, insurrection-minded, Jacob Frey toadies and crazies invade a church service and harass parishioners on the pretense that the minister supports immigration enforcement, and the framing of the event by the nation’s alleged “newspaper of record” is to call the trespass and mass assault a “protest” and to focus on I.C.E. tactics when the issue is anti-I.C.E. tactics. The immigration control agency was not involved in this criminal act in any way, yet it is in the headline.

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

For readers new to Ethics Alarms, “A Friend” is an unfriendly, denial-soaked ex-commenter here who banned himself from the comments, an act that is addressed specifically in the blog Comment Policies. Unlike even the most disrespectful and defiant bannees of the past, who typically issue a one or two finals shots and then sink into the obscurity they so richly deserve, this jerk has adamantly refused to comply with the site’s owner and moderator, me. Thus for years he has repeatedly blog-bombed posts with comments that I have to delete while also sending me emails that also go directly to spam, because he is somehow convinced that he’s smarter than everyone else. You know,

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Wisconsin’s Governor Perfectly Exemplifies The Pro-Illegal Immigration Mob’s Logical, Legal and Ethical Disconnect

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Ponder this brief news item from the state’s WBAY. I’ve footnoted it for reference and easy mockery:

“MADISON, Wis. (WBAY) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says he’s “very concerned” about immigration officials targeting farm workers, [1]especially as ICE arrests ramp up across the Midwest.

“Evers says his team is keeping an eye [2] on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s presence in the state.

“According to the most recent data, a University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers survey found 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms is performed by people living in the country illegally. [3]

“’I can probably say in my sleep [4], our state will be destroyed economically if suddenly we decide anybody undocumented [5] is going home or has to leave [6]Wisconsin,’” Evers said.

“‘When asked if ICE is welcome in Wisconsin, Gov. Evers said he doesn’t see the need for the federal government to come here.'”[7].

“He believes the state can handle immigration enforcement itself.” [8]

Riddle me this: How many internal contradictions can one fit in a single news article?

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Ethics Quote of the Day: “Adams Rib”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I see something in you I’ve never seen before and I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I hate it…Contempt for the law, that’s what you’ve got — it’s a disease, a spreading disease -… You think the law is something that you can get over or get under or get around or just plain flaunt. You start with that and you wind up in the…Well, look at us! The law is the law, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad the thing to do is to change it, not just to bust it wide open! You start with one law, then pretty soon it’s all laws, pretty soon it’s everything.”

—Adam Bonner, assistant district attorney, played by Spencer Tracy in the great Hepburn-Tracy comedy “Adams Rib” (1949). The lines were written by the movie’s screenwriting team, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon

I was re-watching the film this week because I needed a laugh, not because I expected to be yanked kicking and screaming into the into 2026 Anti-I.C.E. madness. But Tracy’s impassioned speech shocked me out of my amusement: When did that rational, pure American, self-evident and irrefutable statement about the society’s crucial fealty to the Rule of Law become controversial?

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month, Ethics Villain Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Gaza)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

We will know that the nation is recuperating from The Great Stupid when voters no longer elect anti-American members of Congress like Tlaib and her fellow infiltrator, Rep. Omar. This week Omar and similarly corrupt Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal chaired a so-called hearing, completely partisan and without balance or dissent, regarding lawful activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minnesota and the death of activist Renee Good when she interfered with their efforts, almost running over an agent with her car. Tlaib decided it would be an ideal time to pitch a hissy fit over the image above, Department of Homeland Security recruitment post.

“We will have our home again!” the Congresswoman said as she displayed the photo. “What does that evoke in you when you see this? It literally, when I see it, as a Muslima, as a Palestinian, as a child of immigrants, I see that this is something that is evoking like I’m not welcome here.”

Well….

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Comment of the Day: “Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today became Frightening Mainstream Media Bias Saturday without my intention, so I’m going to shift gears to the other site of the massive Leftist societal and cultural manipulation, our conquered educational system. This Comment of the Day from one of EA’s resident authorities on the topic, will do quite nicely. Incidentally, I am a bit behind in my Comment of the Day posting. I’ll catch up, I promise.

In the meantime, here is Michael R.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?”…

***

There is a solution, but it cannot be implemented because of the corruption of the judiciary. The state schools are clearly in violation of numerous discrimination laws and they should be held to account.

Boys are being discriminated in schools. Look at the current performance of boys vs. girls in GPA and test scores below.

Now compare this to the 1975 – 1995 figures here. This is clearly a Title IX violation.

It is claimed that 20% of elementary school teachers are male, but I haven’t seen that and I doubt you have either. The real number is probably closer to 95% female. I am pretty sure this is clear evidence of sex discrimination by the schools and needs to be remedied. The 4 elementary schools my son went to had no, zero, male employees. Not even a janitor was male. This is clearly sex discrimination and should be remedied immediately.

Surveys show that at least 65% of public schoolteachers are Democrats. In the universities, it is MUCH higher. This type of viewpoint discrimination should not be allowed in public schools and the states need to outlaw it. The problem is, if you allow Democrats to be hired and they are allowed to determine hiring, the place becomes all Democrat eventually because Democrats are a cult that puts cult loyalty before merit. The concept of merit is considered evil to them. A solution would be to exempt Republicans from the taxes that support the schools (“Here is my Republican Card. This entitles me to a 60% property tax discount and a 3% sales tax discount”) or state-paid tuition at the private school of their choice. Since the schools are partisan, only that party should be required to support the schools.

The college population has been majority female since 1973 or 1974 (depending on if you define it as 50/50 or percentage of the population. Women are currently 61% of college students. The number in many surveys is below 60%, but it has been above 60% for some time in my experience. This is a massive Title IX violation.

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What’s the Ethical Way To Deal With Minnesota?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Perhaps the best rejoinder to anyone who wants to condemn an acquaintance for voting for Evil Donald Trump is to gently (or not so gently) remind said fool that the alternative was to put Minnesota Tim “Knucklehead” Walz a heartbeat from the White House. Showing the impeccable judgment he displayed on the campaign trail, this incompetent allowed massive fraud to take needed funds from law-abiding Minnesotans, admitted that he did nothing about it because he didn’t want to upset the Somali voting block most responsible for it, decided to end his quest for re-election because he knows he’s going to eventually have to face the metaphorical music, and now is trying to go out with a bang by inciting deranged Minnesotans to fight Federal officers in defense of illegal immigrant criminals, among others.

Good plan!

Yesterday, some commentators observed, Walz may have “crossed the line.” Gee, ya think?

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Ethics Observations On the President’s Latest Unpresidential Conduct

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

President Donald Trump was caught on camera “flipping the bird” and shouting “Fuck you!” to a heckler who called him a “pedophile protector,” presumably referring to the contrived Epstein files obsession being used in desperation by Democrats. Of course the White House flacks are defending this latest indefensible outburst by the Vulgarian in Chief, but there is no defense. (The stated defense is just Rationalization #2A, Sicilian Ethics, or “He had it coming!”)

Further observations:

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What’s This? A TV Show Satirizes Woke Obsessions?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

And rather nastily, too.

I’ve been watching the Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series “Landman” starring Billy Bob Thornton as a cynical oil drilling executive with the most non-feminist wife in TV history and a bimbo daughter. In the episode that just dropped, the daughter finds herself paired at TCU with a roommate from Hell: a militant, non-binary extremist who demands a “safe space” in “their” dorm room without music, light, fragrances…life, basically. Ainsley, the bimbo daughter who doesn’t know what her roommate’s pet ferret is (“What’s a ‘weasel’?”) despite an IQ around 80 (That’s a guess, and it might be generous) and a vocabulary to match, is shown winning a brief argument over the validity of gratuitous pronouns, with the grim roommate saying, not in jest, that without instruction she wouldn’t know what Ainsley “identifies” as.

I found the portrayal of the non-binary character unfairly negative, playing into the worst stereotypes imaginable. I know several non-binary individuals and trans men and women, and none of them is anything like the monster this character is. How is that character any different from a fairness perspective than a Steppin Fetchit character denigrating blacks as lazy, shuffling dolts, or the many ridiculous gay characters who lisp, flop their hands from limp wrists in Mel Brooks movies?

Of course, Ainsley Norris, Billy Bob’s bimbo slut daughter, is an absurd stereotype too, but at least she’s nice, sweet, and benign. What surprised me about the episode is that the writer and producer were willing to oppose their super-woke community’s knee-jerk, absolute support of the LGBTQ community, including its excesses, particularly as a trans rights controversy hits the Supreme Court.

The ethics question is whether such an extreme slap in the metaphorical face of the non-binery/trans social trend is a welcome ethical course correction for a biased popular culture, or unethical punching down at a troubled group that already has a lot to cope with, including body dysphoria, indoctrination by the Left in crippling beliefs, hostile, even violent bigots, and arguably, mental illness.

What’s going on here?