Ethics Train Wrecks

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ex CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I saw a lot of brave men and women deciding to take somebody on who had a tremendous amount of power and who had come at them by name too and that’s a scary thing.”

—-Disgraced CNN star Chris Cuomo, celebrating himself and CNN for slanting new reports in order to oppose Donald Trump.

Cuomo could not have made a stronger case against the left-biased news media if that had been his objective. Many of his statements to Bill Maher in Cuomo’s appearance on HBO’s “Real Time” would serve as well as the above to prove just how arrogant and unethical Cuomo’s previous profession has become. For example, there is this: Continue reading →

The Incredible Sabrina Caldwell Ethics Train Wreck, Part I

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

At the end of last year, CBS’s “48 Hours” broadcast an update of a horrifying episode from two decades ago. I missed both programs, but I stumbled upon a rerun of the December 2021 follow-up last night. The tale is a true ethics train wreck that, incredibly, had a happy ending, making it also an abject lesson in moral luck.

The story had special resonance for me because it involved the aftermath of an American couple adopting of a Russian orphan, a process my wife and I went through as well.  In 1997, Crystal and Jesse were a young married couple who had tried and failed to conceive. They fund Russian adoption agency’s website and were smitten by a photo of a beautiful 9-year-old girl. The couple began the adoption process.  The child’s medical records from the adoption agency, were concerning, though: they described developmental problems.

CBS made a big deal about this, but essentially all older Russian orphans have developmental issues. Crystal told CBS that the “were assured that this child was healthy and that in a good home … with the best doctors in America helping her with the developmental issues, that she should be fine.” That was accurate advice (and she and her husband should have known that by doing responsible research before deciding to adopt a Russian orphan). I should also mention here that Russian medical records regarding orphans are notoriously unreliable. Our son, who has been freakishly healthy, came with ten pages of supposedly serious medical problems. Our pediatrician literally laughed at the document. Continue reading →

Why Must I Be A Blogging Ethicist In Ethics Zugzwang?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I was going to sing it, but it doesn’t fit the music…

Here is my problem…

Describing the ugly developments arising out of the Democratic Soviet-style show trial aimed at neutralizing Donald Trump by criminalizing his post election excesses, and, if possible, intimidating and harassing his supporters past and present, esteemed former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy writes in part, Continue reading →

“Freefall” Ethics Reflections: “Is This It?”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

British novelist William Golding, whom you probably know best as the author of “Lord of the Flies,” wrote a disturbing novel the year I was born called “Freefall.” It was on the reading list of a literature course I took as a college junior, and though it was easily the least well-known of the novels we studied (and is one of Golding’s least-known books as well), “Freefall” is the one that has most echoed back to me at various times over the decades.

The first-person narrator is a miserable and depressed man, an artist, imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II and awaiting torture in a small, dark store room. In fear and isolation, he finds his mind reviewing the minutiae of his life, as he searches for the exact moment when his life went horribly and irretrievably wrong and he lost control. In flashbacks, he constantly stops, sometimes after re-living what seems to be the most trivial event, and asks “Was this it? Was this the moment?’

I thought about “Freefall” once again this morning, as I tried to process a series of absurd and incomprehensible recent occurrences and statements. “Is this it?” I found myself wondering, like Golding’s pathetic hero, “Is this it? Is this the moment The Great Stupid completely obliterates all reason and leaves the United States public wandering around aimlessly moaning like the zombies in ‘The Walking Dead’?”

No, it’s not a particularly momentous chain of events, just one that can’t happen anywhere that has sturdy values, trustworthy leadership, and functioning ethics alarms.

Continue reading →

Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

Is being transgender a mental disorder? A lot of news and controversies around the suddenly militant minority seems to compel honest consideration of the question. It is definitely not a formal disorder, but that doesn’t deal with the issue. The medical profession, which is, as has been periodically documented on Ethics Alarms, is now politically-driven and in the directing of progressive positions and agendas.

Up until 2012, transgenderism was labeled a mental disorder; that year, the American Psychiatric Association revised its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and struck transgenderism from the list. Now, woke institutions like the Cleveland Clinic state outright, “Being transgender is not a mental illness. But people who are transgender face unique challenges, such as gender dysphoria and discrimination, which can affect their mental health….” The Clinic then adopts whole cloth the familiar transgender narrative, uncritically, as if it is scientific fact rather than an ideological position:

Healthcare providers assign a baby a sex at birth. Babies may be assigned female at birth (AFAB) or assigned male at birth (AMAB) based on their external physical genitalia. The term “cisgender” describes people who identify as the gender that matches their assigned sex. (For example, if you’re born biologically female and you identify as female, then you’re cisgender.) But for some people, as they grow up and understand themselves better, they find that their gender doesn’t match their assigned, biological sex.

Continue reading →

Oh Yeah, This Should Be Worth A BLM Riot…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Eight police officers in Akron, Ohio, fired nearly 100 bullets into Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old black man after they attempted to pull the car he was driving over shortly after midnight. Walker hit the accelerator resulting in a high-speed chase. Then Walker attempted  to flee on foot and, according to police, fired a gun.   weapon.

According to the Akron Police Department Facebook page, “actions by the suspect caused the officers to perceive he posed a deadly threat to them. In response to this threat, officers discharged their firearms, striking the suspect.”

He died shortly thereafter. Continue reading →

“The Cassidy Hutchinson Fiasco”…Addendum

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Lest I be accused of minimizing the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony before the House January 6 Star Chamber this week, I direct EA readers to to this National Review article by the usually fair and perceptive Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor. He calls the testimony “devastating” and inveighs, “Things will not be the same after this.“

I don’t know what he thinks isn’t going to be the same; maybe you can enlighten me. Are there really people out there who will be surprised that Trump threw tantrums, objects and ketchup bottles, or that when he was angry and excited, he was irrational? Does McCarthy really not know that many Presidents, in private, with staff, in meetings, and similarly dealing with the most stressful jobs imaginable, have behaved outrageously, except that in their case did not have dozens of leakers, disloyal aides and other staff and others determined to undermine them as well as an almost unanimously hostile press to publicize rumors, gossip, suspicions and facts indiscriminately? Really? Presidents, as a group, are not normal or emotionally healthy: if they were, they wouldn’t have sought the Presidency or achieved it. Is Trump worse than most, or even all in this regard? Maybe, probably; why do you think Ethics Alarms kept repeating for over a year that he must never be elected? Does McCarthy not know the history of the Type A CEO personality in this country? About Henry Ford employing a guy whose sole job was to chop the desks of fired Ford Executive into kindling so they would know they had been fired? Nevertheless, the fact that Trump acted and talked like anyone paying attention knew he would act and talk doesn’t mean he committed crimes.

Furthermore, once again we are getting “Trump wanted to do X” and “Trump said Y” while his staff and the Secret Service obstructed him when his stated desires were extreme, rash, an abuse of power, or just plain nuts. The staff did their jobs, in other words, just like dozens of Presidential staffs have done in other administrations. I’m impressed, in fact: Trump, thanks to the most competent old hands in the Washington swamp being bullied away or scared off for fear of becoming pariahs and not getting invited to swank Capital Hill wine parties, had a distinctly sub-par batch of advisors. They came through when they had to. Good for them. They were far from the first to stop a POTUS from doing stupid or reckless things.

Continue reading →

Failures Of Proportion Make Failed Leadership Inevitable

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I am torn: this post screamed out for a Major Clipton introduction though the head-exploding tweet above by President Biden’s Chief of Staff (or head puppeteer) arguably needs no introduction. I think I’ll settle on both: we haven’t heard from the major for a while…

Proportion is an important ethical value that we don’t talk about enough. That idiotic tweet demonstrates a disastrous ethics flaw—not the only one, heaven knows–that underlies so much of the ongoing tragedy that is the progressive movement currently being inflicted on the nation by Biden and the Democrats.

Inflation is reaching crisis levels, harming virtually all Americans not candidates for a reboot of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” The national debt has reached and exceeded and then exceeded more any rational level that a responsible country should tolerate. Yet the White House wants a victory lap because two women instead of the traditional one will have their signatures on the currency. Continue reading →

January 6 Commission Witch Hunt Update

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The January 6 Commission, as many have pointed out, branded itself as nothing more than an extension of all the “Get Trump and Punish His Allies!” plots, lies an and conspiracies that began almost from the moment he was elected. The mark was indelible as soon as Nancy Pelosi refused to allow any Republican to participate who had not already proved to be a NeverTrumper, eager to pin something on the ex-President. Lots of investigations are called witch hunts in Washington, D.C., but this really is one: the goal is to keep digging until the commission finds something new to use as a metaphorical stake to thrust into Trump’s political heart. This is, of course, unethical. deciding that someone must be guilty of something and spending more than a year and millions of dollars to figure out what is the essence of unethical prosecution as well as totalitarian instincts.

I keep wondering when the public will figure out just how rotten the exercise is. Televising the fiasco in prime time may well be a major blunder.

Here are two recent noxious developments:

Continue reading →

KABOOM! There Goes My Head! A Convicted Murderer Is Admitted To Law School

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Just when I think The Great Stupid has reached peak stupid, there is a new high. I don’t see how society can get more stupid than this, but I now know that it will. You know in movies when someone says, “There’s no good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it”?

Here is as much of the announcement by Mitchel Hamline Law School, an institution I was mercifully unaware of until now, that I can re-post without gagging:

Mitchell Hamline School of Law will welcome Maureen Onyelobi into its juris doctor program this fall, making Mitchell Hamline the first ABA-approved law school in the country to educate currently incarcerated individuals.

It’s a moment nearly three years in the making as part of a collective effort by the Prison to Law Pipeline, a program of All Square and its newly formed subsidiary, the Legal Revolution. The effort aims to transform the law through initiatives that center racial equity, wellness, and the expertise of those most impacted by the law…

“Learning the law is a vital vehicle for freedom and lasting change in our community,” said Elizer Darris, chair of the board of the Legal Revolution. “Maureen’s acceptance is social proof that the time for change is now and the energy is here to change it.”

…“Mitchell Hamline has a long history of looking for ways to expand the idea of who gets to go to law school,” said Dean Niedwiecki. “It’s important for people who are incarcerated to better understand the criminal justice system, and this is one important way to do that. Our students will also benefit from having Maureen in class with them.”

…A series of factors made Onyelobi’s acceptance to law school possible. The American Bar Association recently granted a variance to allow her to attend classes entirely online, which she will do from Shakopee. The variance will allow Mitchell Hamline to admit up to two incarcerated students each academic year for five years. Onyelobi’s tuition will be paid through private fundraising and the same scholarship assistance available to all Mitchell Hamline students.

The Prison to Law Pipeline also has the full support of Commissioner Paul Schnell of the Minnesota Department of Corrections…

Guess what the official announcement conveniently leaves out! Oh, only the fact that Onyelobi was convicted as an accomplice to first-degree murder, received a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole. Continue reading →