Ethics Train Wrecks

On The Axis Hypocrisy Re Letitia James, Tit-For-Tat, and Trump’s “Revenge”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It is stunning how the Axis-biased legal analysts attacking the recent indictment of NY Atty General Letitia James for mortgage fraud manage to forget, or ignore, or intentionally omit how James campaigned as AG on a promise to somehow, some way, “stop” Donald Trump, meaning to lock him up or cripple him financially so he couldn’t run for President.

The day after she was elected in 2018, Letitia James was asked by a community activist if she was gonna sue President Trump. She said, “Oh, we’re definitely gonna sue him. We’re gonna be a real pain in the ass. He’s gonna know my name personally.” James didn’t hide the fact that she would be emulating Stalin’s henchman Beria, who infamously said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” She wasn’t the only Democrat looking for ways to use political lawfare against Trump: it was basically the primary strategy of the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party as the 2024 election loomed. (Back up strategy: Claim Trump is Hitler.)

James ultimately settled on charging Trump with loan fraud, alleging that he inflated the value of his properties to get bank loans. It was classic selective prosecution (at the trial, the banks agreed that indeed “everybody does it”) and the evidence showed that there were literally no damages: Trump’s organization paid back the loans with interest, the banks made money, and nobody was harmed. Never mind: thanks to a flagrantly partisan judge, Trump was hit with more than a half-billion in damages, which was ridiculous. As every objective commentator predicted, they were thrown out as “excessive.“

Meanwhile, as James was doing her party’s bidding, she was tweeting statements like this: “Roses are red. Violets are blue. No one is above the law. Even when you think the rules don’t apply to you. Happy Valentine’s Day!” How professional. Then there was this:

Boy, talk about putting a “Kick me!” sign on your own back!

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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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Trump Derangement and Professional Ethics Rot Update: The Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

As the American Bar Association amply demonstrates, the American legal profession is overwhelmingly left-leaning and left-biased, not because lawyers are especially informed or intelligent, but because they overwhelmingly graduate from law schools devoted to progressive indoctrination, with law journals that actively discriminate based on viewpoint bias. State and local bar associations are governed and staffed by similarly aligned individuals; reading these organizations’ flagship magazines is an exercise in wading through progressive propaganda. Fighting for the rights of “migrants.” Celebrations of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” White men are a minority among bar association presidents.

I belong to association of legal ethics lawyers, including ethics partners, professors, CLE ethics trainers, those who defend other lawyers accused of malpractice or professional misconduct. Most of the time, the topics discussed on the group’s listserv are interesting and pertinent to my practice (legal ethics experts don’t agree on much). Since 2016, however, the Democratic Party bias of the group and its attendant Trump derangement has increasingly raised its ugly metaphorical head. The conservatives on the list as well as those who realize the inappropriateness of political topics generally stay silent (those ethics referrals are lucrative, after all) until the screaming at the sky gets ridiculous, and the moderator steps in to remind everyone that the discussion is supposed to be confined to legal ethics.

I just renewed my membership, and almost immediately a topic titled “Desperate Times” popped up, launched by (of course) the California lawyers in the group. After waking up to another long post about how “we lawyers” needed to organize to fight all of these terrible policies, I replied,

“This topic has nothing to do with legal ethics, and reinforces my conclusion that the legal ethics profession, like so many others, has deteriorated into a partisan, biased, bubble-dwelling  cabal increasingly incapable of objective and trustworthy analysis. The furious effort to spin Fani Willis’s flagrantly unethical conduct was one of many dead canaries in the mine. Is this listserv moderated, or not?”

If you can’t trust ethicists to be objective and unbiased, who can you trust?

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…

Fact: The Axis Media Is Straight-Up Lying About The Justifications For Trump’s National Guard Use

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

They are doing it, in great part, because their favorite party is lying about it too.

Professor Turley was making the rounds this morning on news stations trying to explain that the Insurrection Act is ambiguous enough to support a President’s judgment that an “insurrection” is occurring in a state when the governor or a state legislature refuses to request such support, and send in the Guard on his own authority. The professor also pointed out that even if Trump were blocked from doing so in a state, he clearly has the power to use other states’ National Guard units in the state that is resisting, if the other states agree. The description of the sanctuary cities and states as engaging in neo-Confederate nullification is quite accurate.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, leading its fellow travelers in Orwellian spin, is doing its damnedest to back the incipient Stars and Bars. Here (gift link), a biased lawyer writes that “No, Trump Can’t Deploy Troops to Wherever He Wants.” How is that for a false framing? But the Times published it anyway. Unethical quote: “Can presidents unleash the armed forces on their own people based on facts that they contrive?” Yeah, that scene above, where the Chicago police deliberately stood down, was “contrived.”

Then we have this consequentialist argument: “In 2020, Trump Intervened in Portland’s Protests. They Got Even Worse.” First, how do “protests” get “worse”? They were riots. Second, the mess in Portland didn’t involve attacks on Federal law enforcement and defiance of Federal law. Third, the Mongo Principle (No, don’t use force, it will only make him mad) is not a valid approach to law enforcement.

Ethics Quiz: FREEDOM

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments

Libs of TikTok…you know, that account that progressives call racist and homophobic and transphobic even though it only re-posts damning evidence of woke lunacy from TikTok and other platforms?…posted an email exchange between Arbor Creek Elementary Principal Melissa Snell and an (unnamed) individual in which Snell indicated that “Freedom” T-shirts were banned in her school.  “I just want to make sure that you have told your staff to not wear those ‘Freedom’ shirts to school anymore. Thank you.” Jonathan Turley confirmed that there is such a ban, though it may be temporary. Superintendent Brent Yeager confirmed the emails that Libs of TikTok had postedbut suggested that it was temporary as Snell “reviewed district practices.”

Turley says there is nothing to review.”I fail to see why Snell had to suspend the wearing of such shirts pending review. “This is clearly a content-based limitation on speech,” he writes.

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How Long Can Harvard Maintain the Myth That It Is a Trustworthy and Resepctable Institution With Stories Like These?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A brief introduction: Last night I attended a lavish Georgetown Law Center reunion gala. I boycotted the previous reunion of my class and would have boycotted this one, but two classmates I hadn’t seen in decades persuaded me to attend. Georgetown being a sort-of Catholic institution there was prayer before the meal, but the cleric involved felt it necessary to lead into the blessing with a long string of dog-whistles to angry progressives, “the resistance,” Democrats and the Trump-Deranged, droning on about “troubled times” and “losing hope” and the need to “navigate the waters of societal division” with kindness, mercy and respect for humanity. I started eating long before she got to amen: another ad for illegal immigration was a good bet to spoil my appetite. Later on, one of my left-wing classmates volunteered the opinion that she was glad that Harvard had stood up to the Evil One. I began listing all of the reasons I have my diploma to that school turned to the wall, and, of course, she was aware of none of them. Why? You know the reason: she only reads and watches the Axis news media, which carefully gives minimum attention to incidents that tend to discredit fellow propagandists and indoctrinaters of the Left…like Harvard. I stumbled across a useful new website last week that highlights embarrassing news and developments regarding Old Ivy, but lost the link. I searched for it using every possible search term, and couldn’t locate it on Google.

Gee, I wonder why…

Sorry for the digression. Back to the topic at hand: here are two bits of damning Harvard news:

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Incident at a Law School Reunion or “The Disturbing Arrogance of the Political Left”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It is one of the big reunion years for my law school class, and I just returned from a very nice luncheon featuring members of my class and older. The new Dean spoke, and during a question and answer period, a strident woman, an alumna, stood up and asked the dean what the school and its alumni association were planning to do to “stand up for the rule of law” and “democratic principles” during the current “crisis.” As usual, the “current crisis” is an elected President who does not approve of or want to continue policies near and dear to leftist hearts.

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Michael Mann Helpfully Continues To Prove Just How Much “Climate Science” Is Warped By Partisan Agendas and Unprofessional Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Climate change hysterics cannot discuss the basis for their passion without mentioning Michael Mann, who must be regarded as the face of whole climate change movement. Wikipedia makes him seem like a master of his domain:

Mann has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years. He has pioneered techniques to find patterns in past climate change and to isolate climate signals from noisy data.

As lead author of a paper produced in 1998 with co-authors Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes, Mann used advanced statistical techniques to find regional variations in a hemispherical climate reconstruction covering the past 600 years. In 1999 the same team used these techniques to produce a reconstruction over the past 1,000 years (MBH99), which was dubbed the “hockey stick graph” because of its shape. He was one of eight lead authors of the “Observed Climate Variability and Change” chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report published in 2001. A graph based on the MBH99 paper was highlighted in several parts of the report and was given wide publicity. The IPCC acknowledged that his work, along with that of the many other lead authors and review editors, contributed to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was won jointly by the IPCC and Al Gore.

Mann was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003 and has received a number of honors and awards including selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. In 2012 he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and awarded the status of distinguished professor in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Mann is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications. He has also published six books: Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming (2008), The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (2012), together with co-author Tom Toles, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (2016) with Megan Herbert, The Tantrum That Saved the World (2018), The New Climate War (2021), and Our Fragile Moment (2023). In 2012, the European Geosciences Union described his publication record as “outstanding for a scientist of his relatively young age”. Mann is a co-founder and contributor to the climatology blog RealClimate.

All the honors and accolades prove is how politicized the scientific community is, and how progressive bias has infected so many of the world’s institutions. His so-called “hockey stick graph,” supposedly a reconstruction of past climate temperatures, was shown to be the product of dishonest statistics methodology; for example, it conveniently ignored the Medieval Warm Period that continues to bedevil the climate change narrative.

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