Ethics Train Wrecks

UPenn Capitulates in the Trans Swimming Scandal, If In a Weaselly Way…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Well, it’s still progress. Conservative, Trump cheer-leading outlets are pushing the “So much winning!” line, but anyone progressive, conservative or otherwise who couldn’t see that UPenn’s “transitioning” swimmer Lia Thomas (above: guess right or left) was a cheat had his or her brain eaten by the Woke Virus.

UPenn announced yesterday that it would no longer allow transgender women to compete on its women’s sports teams and erased Thomas’ records from UPenn’s list of all-time school records in women’s swimming. “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season,” the UPenn weasels injected as a footnote. That’s part of UPenn’s spin. A cheating swimming coach (who should be fired) let Thomas, a mediocre male swimmer who saw a loophole to exploit, be the star of the women’s team to enhance his coaching record. But UPEnn could get away with it then, so it was all right.

The change in policy was part of an agreement reached with the Education Department yesterday about two months after the department found that Penn had violated Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting sex discrimination in schools, when it allowed transgender athletes to compete on women’s sports teams. The Trump administration had frozen millions of dollars in federal funding for the school over its transgender athlete policies. AUTOCRACY! No, this is called “using legitimate government power for justice and the public good.” As part of the deal, UPenn says it will “apologize” to the women placed at a competitive disadvantage by its allowing a penised swimmer with male-puberty musculature to slaughter competing female swimmers in one pool after another last year.

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Ethics Villain CNN Pushes the First Amendment Envelope

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

What this despicable “enemy of the people” is doing by deliberately publicizing an anti-ICE app may be legal, but it is undeniably unethical. The Trump administration should prosecute anyway.

Joshua Aaron (above: he looks exactly like I assumed he looks!) is a musician and software developer who, because he’s an anti-American, pro-lawbreaking asshole, created an app called ICEBlock. It’s a descriptive name: it allows advocates of open borders and opponents of law enforcement to post sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers across the country. Then the law-breakers they are seeking can more effectively avoid capture, and those who want to attack, harm, kill, or impede ICE agents have a metaphorical “leg up.” That’s nice.

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A Perfect Example of a “Trump Lie”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

On both MSNBC and CNN today, a big deal was made over the fact that President Trump said that “no other country” confers automatic citizenship on those born within its borders. They were both sneering so hard that I bet they needed a lip massage afterwards, “Of course, 33 nations have birthright citizenship,” said one, with the other making a similar statement.

No question about it, they are right and Trump was wrong. What he meant, however, was “No nations anywhere but the Americas have birthright citizenship, and we are the only major power in the world that does.” Or, “Almost no nations that know what the fuck they are doing have birthright citizenship.” Presidents shouldn’t be that careless, but Trump is, he refuses to change, he’s not going to, and nobody should pretend that they are shocked when he does.

Here’s the list, as represented in the chart above: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

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Open Forum, “I Wasn’t Going To Have One But Then My Head Exploded” Edition….

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

We just had an open forum a few days ago, so I was going to skip the Friday Forum. Then I read this, my head exploded, I already was struggling because I didn’t sleep at all last night, so I need some time to mop up and repack my head:

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Minnesota Wednesday for its laws that provide free and reduced tuition rates to illegal aliens. The laws, a DOJ press release contends, unconstitutionally discriminate against out-of-state U.S. citizens, who are not afforded the same privileges at Minnesota’s public colleges and universities….According to the lawsuit [“…which names Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Minnesota Office of Higher Education as defendants”], federal law prohibits states from providing illegal aliens with any post secondary education benefit that is denied to U.S. citizens….The lawsuit explains how a 2013 state law allows illegal aliens who establish residency in Minnesota to benefit from reduced, in-state tuition rates….Additionally, the DFL-controlled Minnesota Legislature established in 2023 a free tuition program for students whose families make less than $80,000 annually. Illegal aliens are eligible for the program. The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court to declare the laws unconstitutional and prohibit their enforcement.

“We are reviewing the lawsuit and will vigorously defend the state’s prerogative to offer affordable tuition to both citizen and non-citizen state residents,” a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said.”

KABOOM!

A few rueful points, and then you write about whatever you want…

  • Why are we just hearing about this now, when the knuckleheaded governor of Minnesota was running from August 2024 to November to be a heartbeat from the Presidency? Why didn’t Trump confront Harris with that insanity? Why did no one in the news media, Axis or not, report on it?
  • These laws are the equivalents of “Welcome, illegal immigrants!” invitations to break the law, with Minnesota being a “sanctuary state.” Minnesota citizens are that stupid, or in the alternative, that clown car crazy? How did they get that way? Can they be treated? 
  • What logic can possibly justify this?
  • Note that the Minnesota AG is still obfuscating, not having the honesty of integrity to call a metaphorical spade a spade. “Non-citizen state residents”! The state lies, cheats and steals under Walz, but this is what the Democratic Party now stands for. No wonder he thinks he has a shot at the Presidential nomination in 2028.

Back to brain clean-up…

Do You Have Any Clue Regarding Whether the US Bombing of the Iranian Nuclear Facilities Were Successful or Not? I Don’t.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I just heard President Trump at his press conference, rambling as only he can, declare that the news outlets claiming his surprise bunker-busters attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not as effective as the U.S. claimed were “losers” and liars. Meanwhile, a CNN article, followed by the New York Times, citing leaked classified documents, and thus unnamed sources of those illegally retrieved materials, announced that “Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say.” Reporters Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, and Zachary Cohen wrote that “the US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by four people briefed on it.” It continued, “The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.”

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Harvard Tries To Save Face; the Problem Is That It Is the Ethics Villain Here, Not the Trump Administration

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

We are learning that in spite of its grandstanding and feigned defiance of the Trump demands that it stop engaging in left-wing indoctrination, allowing an anti-Jewish environment to fester on campus, and engaging in viewpoint discrimination in hiring (along with other unethical conduct), Harvard is quietly (it hopes) negotiating some level of reform along the lines of the Trump Administration’s letter of April 11.

Quietly, because Harvard’s overwhelmingly leftist, totalitarian-tilting, progressive activist faculty wants to have their campus advance only one world view, the “right” one, and because of the sinister influence of that faculty, its student body overwhelmingly believes likewise. In the Trump Deranged world where most academics, scholars, journalists, lawyers and, of course, Democrats dwell, publicly deriding and defying the President of the United States is simply opposing fascism and the forces of darkness, even if the least intellectually crippled of them recognize deep down that President Trump is on the correct side of an issue. He is on the right side of this one.

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Popeye Time: I Am Finally Forced Into Responding To Woke Nonsense on Facebook…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

A genuine, respected and dear friend re-posted this on Facebook:

Dr. Kristina Rizzotto created that thing; she is apparently a professional musician, so her doctorate isn’t in philosophy, public policy, law, or, clearly, linguistics. Shut up and play, Kristina.

Like Popeye, that was all I could stands ‘cuz I can’t stands no more, and I finally posted, after a good ten minutes of self-wrestling, this in response:

“Ugh. I don’t even want to wade into this, but come on. DEI is not the equivalent of three ethical virtues in a vacuum, and sure, diversity is nice; not not necessary or necessarily beneficial: the NBA doesn’t seek out white and Asian players to make it more “diverse,” because diversity doesn’t win basketball games. “Equity” means fairness, but the nation is built on equality of opportunity, not guaranteed equality of results, which is what “equity” means in the context of DEI. “Inclusion” is also nice, if it means the absence of deliberate arbitrary exclusion. If it means inclusion for the sake of inclusion, who said that’s virtuous or sensible? Who made that rule?

“Dr. Kristina is ducking the issue with intellectual dishonesty. Inclusion should be based on merit. Excluding anyone who would qualify for inclusion on merit, based on their sex, ethnicity, skin color, sexual orientation or physical characteristics is per se bias and illegal discrimination, and playing word games to deceive the inattentive and gullible into thinking otherwise is unconscionable. Similarly, black lives matter, but Black Lives Matter is a racist movement and a scam organization. Do better, Dr.”

I’m sure I’ll regret it.

And Another “Good Illegal Immigrant” Sob Story From the Times…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I feel constrained to post this after someone suggested that in the Bret Stephens essay I was bestowing Ethics Hero status on the Axis media’s top propaganda mouthpiece. The op-ed by professional illegal immigration romanticizer Isabel Castro (above) is a far more representative piece in a genre the Times is particularly fond of: demanding sympathy for individuals facing deportation entirely because of their own choices and conduct.

The title is a hoot: “How the ICE Raids Are Warping Los Angeles.” It is like a Chicago paper during the Prohibition and Capone’s zenith publishing a column called “How the FBI is Warping Chicago.” A sample..

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Lest We Forget: This Was the Most Unethical and Indefensible Partisan Act of 2025 So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Democratic Party seems hellbent on self-destruction, but the Axis media burying, under-reporting and generally spinning its worse transgressions may slow the process a bit. This week, there was a scantly reported act by the party that cannot be defended—-if you have a defense to propose, please send it in—but it came in a week so saturated with consequential news both ethical and otherwise that I’ll wager most Americans missed it.

Senate Democrats refused to participate in the first Congressional hearing regarding the cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline while in the White House, the question of whether his “autopen executive orders” and appointments were valid, and the potential Constitutional breaches these represent. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) attended the first Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on the topic this week. Then almost immediately Durbin, the ranking Democratic member, walked out in protest with Welch behind him, with a lame and cynical whataboutist call for the committee to investigate President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to respond to illegal immigration enforcement rioting in Los Angeles. (The courts took care of that one, Dick, despite the attempts of your party’s captive judiciary.)

Then Durbin blathered, “The Republican majority on this committee has not held a single oversight hearing despite numerous critical challenges facing the nation that are under our jurisdiction.” Desperately, he cited the assassination of a state lawmaker in Minnesota, now pretty authoritatively proven to be the act of a lone wacko, and last week’s handcuffing of Sen. Alex Padilla at a DHS press conference, when the grandstanding jerk was properly treated according to Secret Service protocols. “Apparently, armchair diagnosing former President Biden is more important than the issues of grave concern, which I have mentioned,” Durbin said.

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The ABA Is Defending Its Racially Discriminatory Scholarships…Of Course It Is.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Res ipsa loquitur, no?

In April, the American Alliance for Equal Rights led by Edward Blum, the scourge of affirmative action and “good discrimination” policies, filed a complaint in an Illinois federal court alleging that the American Bar Association’s 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship discriminates against white applicants. Since their skin color renders them unable to apply, this contention seems beyond debate. The question is whether, as a trade association, the ABA has a right to discriminate.

The Alliance said it is representing an unnamed white male law school applicant who says that he would apply for the $15,000 Legal Opportunity Scholarship were he not prevented from doing so because he is the “wrong” race. The ABA awards between 20 and 25 such scholarships annually to incoming law students, according to its website, which is excerpted above.

I should have covered this in April: sorry. [Believe me, if I could find a way to work on the blog full-time without ending up living on cat food and in a shack by the docks, I would.] Anyway, this kind of thing is why I do not pay dues to the ABA, and why I am suspicious of any lawyer who does. It is an interesting case. I assumed that Blum would lose if the case proceeded, and that his main objective was to shame the ABA into opening up the race-based scholarships to all. But the ABA has no shame. And I knew that.

The American Bar Association responded to Blum’s suit this week, arguing that a scholarship program designed to boost diversity among law students is protected free speech. The 25-year-old Legal Opportunity Scholarship, the largest lawyer association in the nation asserts, is protected under the First Amendment. In its motion to dismiss the ABA also claimed that plaintiff American Alliance for Equal Rights lacks standing to sue.

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