Ethics Train Wrecks

Virginia’s Democrats Push More Viewpoint Censorship From The Left (Psst: That’s Unethical. Also Illegal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia has signed into law a bill that ends tax exemptions for Confederacy-honoring organizations in the state.

Huh. Funny, I thought the Democratic Party was the one that was running on a platform of protecting civil right, like freedom of thought, association and speech from that eeeevil, fascist Republican king, Donald Trump. Did I get that mixed up somehow? I guess I did.

“The signing by Ms. Spanberger on Monday is the culmination of a years long Democrat-led push to shake off the state’s legacy as the capital of the 11 Southern, slaveholding states that seceded from the country in the 1860s,” sayeth the New York Times in a sympathetic news story [Gift Link]that again proves there is no Democratic Party initiative so indefensible that the Times won’t try to spin it into virtue.

Awww, is Virginia all sad because of its history, and trying to erase it so nobody remembers? Tough. History is history and facts are facts. It is totalitarians and the followers of Orwell’s Big Brother who try to alter the past to confuse the public. Virginia was at the very center of the Civil War. Its citizens and soldiers were courageously trying to defend their “country” as they understood it. Those alive today who see those patriots as worthy of praise, study and honor have a fully defensible position, and even if it weren’t defensible, it is as worthy of non-profit status as any other position.

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More Trump Deranged Fake News From The Times..

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’ve decided that I’m going to keep posting these “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” essays until one of the bias-deniers who hangs out in these parts finally screams, “All right! All right! We’ve been lying! Of course the mainstream media is actively trying to undermine the President, especially the Times!“

This one is especially timely after a prominent member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers pleaded for support in arguing that Trump should be removed from office because he was mean to the Pope. The member also had the—something—to insist that this was not a partisan issue. I wrote, before refusing to read the many replies supporting the “non-partisan” who wants the 25th Amendment used…you know, like the Axis was claiming during Trump’s first term—to forcibly remove him from office,

“Oh for heaven’s sake. This is not a non-partisan issue, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, dishonest or being paid by the Democrats. 
And it is not a proper topic for conversation here, not that this has stopped the majority Left-leaning political bias on this listserv from leaking out with regularity. Did anyone here ever breathe a bit of concern that the previous President was showing ominous signs of being unfit for office? I don’t recall any, but I’d take seriously their arguments on why this is a legitimate APRL concern now.  Anyone else is prohibited by what I call “ethics estoppel.”

But I digress. Here is yesterday’s headline on a large Times feature (Gift link):

Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

“As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

The second I read that, I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if I can guess who the ‘former allies and advisers’ are. Let’s see if you can guess: I’ll give you 30 seconds..

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It Looks Like The Biden Administration May Have Killed My Wife…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I feel like Mrs. Kintner in “Jaws.”

A Senate investigation confirms that Biden administration officials at the FDA and CDC knew about a significant stroke risk tied to Pfizer’s bivalent Wuhan virus booster in people over 65. They decided not to let the public know about it….might make them hesitant to get the shot, after all. Can’t have that!

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent a formal notification letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. along with about 2,000 pages of federal documents. “I am sharing my preliminary findings to provide HHS and the public with even more evidence of the Biden administration’s unsupported and unyielding devotion to a harmful vaccine at the expense of the public’s health,” Rep. Johnson begins.

The letter goes on to described how as early as Nov. 2022, the vaccine safety surveillance systems operated by Biden health officials began detecting statistically significant evidence of “ischemic stroke among individuals age 65 and older following injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 bivalent booster.” They did not issue a formal warning to the public. Instead, the Biden White House and HHS pushed to “increase uptake of the booster” for people 65 years and older. In Jan. 2023, a draft Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “communications plan” emphasized the Biden administration’s intention to “increase uptake of the booster.” White House edits buried the significance of the safety signal, for example, changing a sentence that stated that the “signal is moderately elevated” to the “signal is slightly elevated.”

Even as a safety surveillance system continued to detect a statistically significant safety signal for ischemic stroke, Biden health officials posted on the FDA website that “no change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice.”  While Biden health officials continued to let the public believe the vaccine was safe, they initiated multiple studies and statistical analyses including a “Stroke Project” to investigate whether the vaccines really were safe for the population at risk, and the investigations continued through at least September 2025. 

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Briefly Noted….

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Note: Every one of them is a moron.

It is a breach of civic duty to be this ignorant of history and reality and to spout off on social media while cheering on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel news media. In other words, unethical and inexcusable.

Ethics Villains: Yes, The New York Times Again…And Its Biased, Ignorant, Pro-Terrorism Readers

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The gift link to the NYT article at issue is here.


I’m not going to quote it or summarize it. I will characterize it: the opinion piece, Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future, by Ghada Abdulfattah, “a writer who lives in Gaza,” is anti-Israel, pro-Hamas propaganda that the Times has handed a large amount of space to promote. This is a “poor Gazans being victims of genocide by those inhuman, cruel Jews” essay. The writer never comes right out and says that, but her chronicling of the devastation in Gaza since the Israeli assault began three years ago is definitely aimed at conveying that misleading message.

All right, I will offer a quote:

“It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence — the violence of being forced to live with destruction. Rubble doesn’t just destroy the past; it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today.”

Gee, I guess launching a sneak terror attack on civilians in your neighboring state, killing over 1200 people, including infants, raping woman and taking 250 hostages isn’t such a good idea, eh? Huh. Who knew?

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The Drip Drip Drip Of Trump Derangement Evidence…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Seen on social media (with over 6,000 “loves”:

“Name one thing this administration has done that it promised it would.I can name a dozen ways this admin has backstabbed his base. I can’t name single accomplishment other than feeling good the day he won.”

It’s one thing to be deliberately obtuse, continue with absurd Axis narratives (“Trump is senile”) and to deny facts right in front of your face, which is what my Trump Deranged Facebook friends do daily. It is quite another to put a statement as fatuous as the one above in the web like a hanging curve over the middle of the plate to Aaron Judge.

Conservative lawyer Will Chamberlain replied as I might have,

“Border crossings to near zero. Net negative migration. 95% reduction in asylum grants. Lawsuits against a slew of woke universities. DEI getting crushed everywhere. Massive, beneficial deregulation. No tax on tips. No tax on overtime. Venezuela turned into an American ally. And that’s just off the top of my head.”

He left out winding down the Dept. of Education, finally getting rid of public funding for NPR and PBS, using tariffs to negotiate more favorable trade deals, making major progress in ending the war in Gaza, seriously addressing crime in major cities, gutting idiotic climate change policies, and making America Great Again, which means, in part, going to the Moon again, demonstrating American military power, and ending wokey military policies that have nothing to do with defending the country. And that’s just off the top of MY head. It is also relevant that Trump has only been in office less than 15 months.

As for the alleged “endless wars” betrayal, any President who would not do what Trump did in Iran after assessing new developments and intelligence because of a campaign promise has breached his oath and his duty. That’s unethical as well as cowardly.

I know, I know…I promised to do an exhaustive and thorough post about what constitutes Trump Derangement beyond disapproving of the Presidents tweets, rhetoric, style and dubious taste in appointees. I hope I find time to do it (living up to my promises)…in the meantime, I’ll be addressing the issue piecemeal.

How Another Hour Of My Life Was Just Consumed By A Conspiracy of Incompetence…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I wonder if I can create a mass tort claim against the people responsible for episodes like this. Behold:

1. On March 28, I received a threatening letter from First Source, LLC, a debt collector. It alleged that I had an account with something called AfterPay U.S., which I have never heard of, for $750, that I never spent, for something that I still have no idea what it was. The letter also said that I now only owed $590.64, since I had paid $187.50, which I have not. My bank doesn’t thinks so either.

2. I called First Source, which …Hallelujah!…has an automated system that got me to a human being almost immediately. That human being was Rhea. She was cordial and professional, and did not constantly read from a script. She heard me out, and said that she would initiate a fraud investigation. I didn’t have to do anything more.

3. Yesterday I received two cheerful emails from AfterPay. Both involved alerting me that I had changed my email associated with my imaginary account. I hadn’t done anything regarding AfterPay, because I still don’t know what the hell it does other than charge people for stuff they never bought, and my email has been the same for 20 years. “Please log into your AfterPay account to view these changes. If this information is incorrect, please update so we have the most up to date information for you,” “Shiara” of Customer Support informed me. “Have a great day.”

Bite me, Shaira.

4. This morning I called FirstSource back to ask what’s going on. But instead of Rhea, I reached Michael, who appeared to be an idiot. As I tried to explain what had happened, he kept reading disclaimers and asking me for the same information I had already given to Rhea and that was already in my file, since it was repeated in the letter FirstSource had sent me. I told him, “I have a simple question you need to answer,” and he replied, “I can’t answer it because you keep interrupting me!” “No,” I said, “I keep asking you to stop reading a script that I have heard already, and to talk to me like a human being, and listen to what I am trying to tell you.” He hung up.

5. I called back and got Michael again. He acted as if we hadn’t just spoken second earlier. He read the same script, an asked me for the same information: my full name, my date of birth, my mailing address, and my “reference number.” It was literally de ja vu: a near exact replay of our previous conversation. This time, he said, “We have closed your account, so you will have to contact AfterPay.” Progress! He then gave me a phone number.

6. I called it. It didn’t work.

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Anyone Who Genuinely Couldn’t Figure Out That Trump’s Threats and Deadline For Iran’s Annihilation Weren’t Bargaining Ploys Should Shut Up… Forever

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

…or at least stop weighing in during this President’s term.

What does it take for the Trump Deranged and hopelessly biased (or hopelessly stupid, or hopelessly dishonest) to be embarrassed? Surely there has to be a tipping point where the public starts pointing and laughing. Surely. Surely.

No? Wasn’t it obvious that Trump’s “war crime” ultimatums were designed to get Iran to make concessions? I don’t mean just obvious to me (“I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everyone says!”) but obvious to doctors, lawyers, beggarmen, thieves and Indian chiefs along with anyone else who has watched this guy operate since his real estate days? Seriously? Really? No? Wow.

I’d like to make Rep. Ro Khanna the poster fool for this malady. Shortly after this EA post, Trump announced the two week cease-fire and Khanna did a double back-flip with a twist, stood on his metaphorical head and called the President a TACO, as in “Trump Always Chickens Out”! This is another clear Trump Derangement symptom. Attack the President on the presumption that he is doing or will do one thing, then attack him when he does the opposite.

Why isn’t this embarrassing to those exposed again and again as reflexively criticizing whatever the President does? Let’s see: the ethical values here are fairness, honesty, integrity, accountability, consistency (being consistently inconsistent doesn’t qualify), prudence, proportionality, humility…there are more, but I don’t feel like looking up the list. Ethics, analysis, logic and reality has nothing to do with how these critics react. It’s all emotion and the Cognitive Dissonance Scale:

Imagine, however, that sub-zero section reaching down forever to infinity, with Trump there rather than only at -10. Prof. Festinger’s theory holds that a negative bias that strong is enough to pull anything…literally anything, people, ideas, books, policies, bunnies, rainbows, babies, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Nancy Guthrie, opposing cannibalism…into negative territory. What’s going on here? THAT’S what’s going on.

Podcaster Dave Rubin wrote on X: “Trump has been running the same negotiation playbook forever. Pressure, escalation, chaos… then leverage a deal. We’ve watched it happen again and again. This wasn’t complicated. It was basic pattern recognition.” Yup! What does this tell you about people who refuse to see that pattern? Go ahead: come up with a kind description. I can’t think of any.

While Fox News and even CNN were properly reporting on the developments in Iran (Not a word about Nancy Guthrie!) do you know what MSNOW decide was the big news? The danger that Trump was going to come up with some way to steal the mid-terms! Yes, that well-used “future news” subcategory of fake news.

Anyone who watches MSNOW for anything but amusement or intelligence on what the Axis of Unethical Conduct is plotting next should also be embarrassed. How I long to post an entry like this on Facebook…but that would be mean. But fun. But mean…

Over at the New York Post, conservative pundit and law prof Glenn Reynolds wrote, before yesterday’s late developments,

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Ethics Observations on the National Debt…

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

Citizen Free Press, the conservative news aggregator that grabbed the niche from The Drudge Report after the latter went Trump Deranged, is constantly highlighting the National Debt’s explosion. This is legitimate news. Here is an item that appeared today:

“10 years ago today Trump promised to eliminate the national debt.Instead it has doubled to $39 trillion.“

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Nation Debt was suddenly important to the Axis again, as those who were horrified over the minuscule number of casualties in the Operation Epic Fury were desperately looking for some way to criticize the amazing rescue of the downed pilot in Iran. All of a sudden, the Left was grousing about Trump spending all that money to rescue a single soldier (The Axis has no integrity at all. I hope that’s clear by now) and citing the National Debt.

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An Axis Trump Derangement Case Study: The White House Ballroom Tantrum

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Above is how a federal judge and all my Trump Deranged friends would like to see the White House East Wing look for the next three years or more.

How dignified and reflective of America’s history and greatness! This makes sense to them, you see, because President Trump took the initiative and decided to fix a long-standing deficiency of the White House, where he lives. Any previous President could have done this without uproar or significant opposition, you see, but as an example of the continuing 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, when the Left decided that it wasn’t going to accept the shocking election of a political outsider to foil their presumed coronation of a corrupt Democrat (but a historic one, see, so it was okay) and set out to obstruct literally anything he decided to do, big or small, important or trivial.

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