That chart represents the relative number of employees, including lawyers, in the largest U.S. firms to contribute to Republicans. I have written several posts about the “ideological capture” of major U.S. professions and institution, and opined that the extreme progressive bias in the legal profession is among the most threatening to U.S. society and democracy itself. Two examples are here and here.
Right now the D.C. Bar is fighting with the Justice Department over the Trump administration requiring some major law firms to demonstrate that they are not biased against the President and his policies, an effort the Axis (and the D.C. Bar’s staff) calls making them “bend a knee.” The major law firms are biased against this President and his administration, and are increasingly willing to show it. The civil justice system will not work if the legal profession is politicized. Increasingly, it is.
The reason is pretty clear: the vast majority of law schools have almost no conservatives or Republican on their faculties, and my alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center, is typical of the top tier law schools. You can peruse GULC’s disturbing EA dossier here.
I really didn’t want to post again so soon on this, but the frantic denial and blame-shifting efforts by the Mad Left regarding a disaster of their own making is beyond anything I anticipated, and I anticipated a lot.
Lord Woolley, the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, said Arday had been subjected to the “most horrendous, toxic, vicious witch hunt” leading to his death. Woolley is supposed to be a scholar. A witch hunt describes an effort to pin vile deeds on a victim who is innocent of such deeds. Arday did exactly what he was accused of doing, and he was in the process of being appropriately held accountable for what he did. Cambridge was also appropriately criticized and condemned, and will continue to be.
Today, Lord Woolley said: “We need an investigation into the media onslaught, the vicious media onslaught.” It’s called journalism, you dolt. For once, the left-biased news media did its job and exposed a DEI fraud as well as the institution that betrayed its standards, students and reputation by promoting and defending him. This is rich: the Left wants to investigate its captive news media for reporting the truth.
The hilariously named “Good Law Project” got thousands of idiots to sign an open letter. I’ll bold the most insane parts. It reads,
We, the undersigned, are appalled by the sustained and malicious attacks on the academic integrity of Professor Jason Arday.
Entirely false allegations of plagiarism were made against Professor Arday and referred to two universities. Investigations have found no evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing. The relevant academic journals also found no basis for the claims.
Yet despite these unequivocal findings, rightwing media have attempted to smear Professor Arday’s reputation and undermine his career. That should concern everyone who believes in academic freedom, fairness and due process.
It is difficult to ignore the question of motivation. When a distinguished Black academic is repeatedly subjected to baseless allegations after being fully exonerated, it signals there is an attempt to undermine Black people who hold positions of influence.
Professor Arday, a working class Black man, became the youngest Black professor in the University of Cambridge’s history. His remarkable journey, scholarship and leadership should be celebrated, not overshadowed by campaigns built on allegations that have been comprehensively rejected.
Professor Arday has contributed to public life for many years, building a distinguished record of charitable and community service. This latest smear campaign and the spread of misinformation are deeply alarming – not only because of the impact on one individual, but because of the message they send to aspiring Black and Brown young people who seek to attain positions of leadership.
The demonisation of Professor Arday, and recently on Misan Harriman, risks creating a chilling effect, signalling that success and public service may be met with hostility, misrepresentation, and disproportionate scrutiny.
We stand in unwavering solidarity with Professor Arday. We call on universities not only to defend academic freedom and robust scholarship, but also to confront racism wherever it manifests itself, whether overtly or through persistent attempts to discredit exceptional Black academics.
There can be no place in higher education for campaigns that weaponise baseless accusations to damage reputations and careers. Universities must ensure that excellence is protected and that every scholar is judged on the merit of their work, not the colour of their skin.
How many times have you read or heard Axis “journalists,” Democrats, the Trump Deranged and your smug and brainwashed social media friends mock any suggestion…especially those by Donald Trump…that our election results are untrustworthy and the 2020 election may have been stolen, by saying the claim is “baseless”? I can find that denial in new online content still, and would, if my sock drawer wasn’t in such bad shape.
Since that election in the teeth of The Great Stupid, the assessment here on Ethics Alarms has remained the same, to wit: It is impossible to prove the election was stolen, but the suspicion is far from “baseless.” Moreover, the fact that the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s rote rebuttal continues to be that the claim is “baseless” is itself justification for that suspicion.
Democrats held their primary election for Wisconsin governor last week with the party terrified that Democratic Socialists of America candidate Francesca Hong would be the victor, putting what the party considers to be a flippable U.S. Senate seat in the hands of a nut case who wants to eliminate Thanksgiving and defund the police. Despite all pre-primary pollsters declaring that Hong had a double-digit lead over Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Cowley managed to win the primary in the early morning hours. But something was clearly amiss.
Milwaukee Election Commissioner Paulina Gutierrez said when she arrived at the courthouse in Milwaukee County, 5 out of the 9 USB drives she brought with her did not have the absentee vote results they were supposed to contain. That amounted to 15,000 ballots, and Crowley won by only 3,783 votes. Election officials re-downloaded the missing information, or that’s what they said they were downloading, and brought the drives back to the courthouse. Crowley was declared the winner by the Associated Press at 2:34 a.m.Meanwhile, NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki was on camera, so stunned he couldn’t speak.
The video of Kornacki learning about the USB debacle was posted to Twtter/ X. His long moment of stunned silence has been making its way around social media. The Daily Mail posted a section where Kornacki could not help but laugh and asked NBC News national politics reporter Ben Kamisar, “Are you serious?” when the two learned that restarting the process might take hours.
“We’re kind of, indefinitely waiting for them to get their act together here,” Kornacki told Kamisar later. “It really is coming down to this one giant update in Milwaukee, but man, we waited 90 minutes for them, they did this whole procession, and then they find out there’s nothing on the sticks,” he said. “The audience has been with us for four, six hours in some cases, for this moment that didn’t happen…I think we are gonna wrap it here, for the reasons we’re saying here … I want you to know, I hate doing this to you.”
Who would have thought that Bert from “Mary Poppins” might have had a career in law firm marketing?
Trantolo & Trantolo, a small law firm in Hartford, Connecticut that also has offices in New York and Massachusetts, has been cited for more than a dozen “unauthorized sidewalk advertisements.” Put on the pavement using either power-washing or temporary chalk over stencils, the firm legal services marketing innovation violated a city ordinance that banned such messages without written consent. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam told the media that the city has discovered at least 15 sidewalk messages promoting the firm. Unauthorized law firm promotion from the firm also appeared on 24 Hartford crosswalks before the West Hartford Department of Public Works powerwashed them into oblivion. I bet it looked sort-of -like at the end of the Chalk World sequence where Bert, Mary and the kids ride on merry-go-round horses, participate in a fox hunt and sing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and then the rain washes Bert’s pictures away.
One message with the firm’s name attached said, “Look both ways before you cross.” Who could object to that public service message? But the firm has “an angle.” As Bing Crosby told Rosemary Clooney in “White Christmas,” everyone has an angle. Well, lawyers and law firms, anyway. Trantolo & Trantolo explained that one by explaining that Hartford “has a serious road safety problem.”
“Working with an outdoor advertising company that has executed similar temporary sidewalk campaigns in cities across the country, Trantolo & Trantolo recently placed a series of temporary stencils throughout Hartford and West Hartford highlighting important local and statewide safety statistics,” says the firm. Trantolo & Trantolo also promised that it would remove all the messages ” at the end of its campaign.”
You have to give the firm’s marketing department credit for creativity. However, the stunt violates the Kantian ethics test of considering what the world would be like if everybody did it, or even every law firm. Thank goodness this stunt didn’t occur to Morgan and Morgan.
Again, I don’t know how any thoughtful, ethical person could question the outcome in this case. Apparently the “intended parents” refused to agree that they would seek appropriate medical care for the child after he was born with a serious but medically correctable heart problem. Having been unsuccessful in their efforts to have the child aborted late term, these ghouls were going to get custody of the child and perhaps have a hospital administer “palliative care”…that is, let the baby die. Pleasantly, of course,
A legal battle, at least regarding the life of the child, was averted when the child was born ahead of the September 3 due date.
As with some of the other cases discussed in Part 1, how could a typical pro-abortion advocate who uses the standard pro-abortion rhetoric about women’s “bodily autonomy” argue that the parents could force the surrogate to undergo an abortion? Yet abortion activists are apparently immune to integrity, logic, and decency. The main thing is to get the unborn child disposed of.
The surrogate’s contract contained a clause obligating her to submit to an abortion if the “intended parents” demanded it. The lawyers who drafted that contract should be sued for legal malpractice, and there are arguable ethical violations as well. I am wondering how common such contracts are, and how often they are enforced. For human beings cannot sell themselves into slavery or otherwise contract away their “unalienable rights.” That contract provision is unenforceable as against public policy, and should be made illegal by statute.
Republicans should pass the bill in the House and make Democrats show their lack decency when they vote it down.
Yesterday, an ugly abortion controversy was resolved by the birth of “Baby Gabriel.” Here the legal/ethical gray areas involving hired surrogate mothers and the legal/ethical not-quite-so-gray areas regarding legal abortion mated to create a monster.
Upon learning that the baby gestating in their surrogate’s womb was not perfect (the unborn boy had a congenital heart defect), a California couple decided to exercise a provision in the surrogacy contract and force the mother-by-proxy to undergo an abortion. Instead, the surrogate fled to Texas, where abortion is illegal. Thanks in part to the intervention of Texas AG Ken Paxton (who is running for governor), the baby in question was born. Now there is a dispute over who gets custody. The birth mother has decided she wants the child anti-abortion activists have named “Gabriel.” The couple that wanted to have him killed wants him too.
Guess which I would choose, were I the infant.
I’ll examine that mess in Part II, but ahead, from the EA archives, is the last post Ethics Alarms had regarding the generally messy ethics issue of surrogate motherhood, from 2016, Pre-Unethical Conditions: Surrogate Mother Contracts And Making Babies With Jerks…
“I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”
—-Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her cynical and ominous reply to ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl after he asked how Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong would “get around” her past radical and unpopular positions on abolishing policing among others.
Later, she said, laughing, “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy.'”
[A quick digression before the commentary starts. Ten years ago, I swore off using deliberately unflattering photos of public figures, especially Hillary Clinton, as unfair and akin to ad hominem attacks. I recognize that I broke from that pledge regarding Joe Biden, primarily because the mainstream media was unethically protecting him from public scrutiny of his galloping dementia, and photos like this one…
…conveyed important information. I will now officially declare that AOC will be another exception to that EA policy. She is a silly, light-weight, unethical Dunning-Kruger victim, yet the Axis keeps claiming she is charismatic and “cute.” Ignorance and dishonesty are not cute. The woman is a dangerous fool, and photos like the one above help clarify that.]
Digression over. Now, regarding that quote… the two quotes, in fact.
The main quote above, though the Axis of Unethical Conduct is working mightily to spin it, is a deceitfully worded admission that AOC and her ideological allies are now prepared to disavow their intentions and beliefs as expressed openly during the peak of The Great Stupid, highlighted by the duel afflictions of the George Floyd Freakout and the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck, because it is no longer politically expedient to reveal those intentions. So now they intend to lie.
The big story on CNN and MSNOW this morning is that Democratic-Socialist Francesca Hong lost the Democratic primary for Governor in Wisconsin. CNN is relieved, MSNOW is kind of sad. Meanwhile, Fox News wants to focus on the WNBA, because everything about it makes progressives, women, blacks, lesbians, and supporters of trans-males look terrible.
You can see the results above: Hong conceded a bit before 95% of the votes had been counted. Ann Althouse finds that susp…interesting. The Wisconsin bloggress observes,
“Why did Hong concede so quickly, with such a narrow margin? Why not wait at least until all the votes are in? Why not ask for a recount? She’s entitled to a recount if the margin is 1% or less, but it’s only paid for by the state if it’s less than 0.25%. To drag out the process after the primary would help Tiffany. That’s good reason not to indulge in a recount, but why not wait until all 100% of the votes are counted? She conceded when it was less than 95%.”
There is certainly a lot to trigger conspiracy theorists about this result. The winner, David Crowley, the black Milwaukee County executive, barely eked out a victory after his candidacy was resurrected late in the campaign. Democrats decided that Hong couldn’t win the general election, so Gov. Tony Evers (D), who had pledged to stay out of the race to replace him, became active in the effort to beat Hong. In July, Crowley had dropped out of the race, saying that it was “clear that I will not be the Democratic nominee for governor.” Then Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who was the leading “establishment” candidate left, dropped out of the race.
Crowley was being pressured to re-run, and said he was praying for guidance. His wife asked for a “sign”that her husband should rejoin the race: if she saw a red bird, her husband should jump back in to the primary. I’m not kidding, unfortunately. She said she did see a red bird, and so 10 days after quitting, he spouse was in the race again. This is how seriously American take democracy in 2021. Who would vote for a candidate for governor who makes decisions like that? Not me. I’d rather vote for the bird.
I have two simple questions for pro-abortion (or perhaps “pro mothers and doctors being able to kill viable infants at will” is a more accurate label…a bit long, I admit) advocates.
How can you honestly and sincerely defend the new Massachusetts abortion law? If you can, how do you look yourself in the mirror or sleep at night?
Abortion will now be allowed at any time before birth in Massachusetts after Governor Maura Healey (D, or course: what other party would do this?) eliminated the state’s abortion limits yesterday. Previously, the Bay State had allowed abortion only up until 24 weeks. Now a fully developed unborn infant can be killed any time during the 40-week gestation cycle, even second before birth. That means that the child could be delivered via C-section and instantly be protected by law as a living human being, but an unborn infant at the exact same state of development and fully viable can be murdered in the womb after the mother’s water has broken and contractions have begun.
To be fair, now, the home of my birth and happy childhood isn’t the only barbaric state with such an immoral law. Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia of course, also believe that being able to kill living and viable infants in the womb is a human “right.” Peter Singer, the Princeton ethics professor, once caused an uproar when he said that as long as we were allowing abortions up to birth, why not let the mother see her baby first after it is born and then have the option to kill it? He was right: morally and ethically, either homicide is exactly the same. The distinction between born and unborn at that point is arbitrary and a legal fiction, created to let mothers feel better about a monstrous act.
Here is how National Public Radio reported those statistics on D.C. crime on the one-year anniversary of President Trump ordering the National Guard to patrol the National Capital.
“Multiple studies have since found that the National Guard presence in D.C. has had no effect on violent crime, although there has been a decrease in opportunistic crimes like petty theft and vehicle break-ins.”
When I read that [Aside: NPR had the gall to send me a solicitation for a contribution via email, signed by the NPR host who blackballed me as its ethics commentator for telling the truth about late-hit sexual harassment complaints, because I “seemed to be defending Donald Trump.] this morning I was genuinely puzzled. When I surfed past Fox News last night, Laura Ingraham was declaring that the statistics proved that Trump’s use of the National Guard was prudent and has been a great success. Two completely divergent news reports. This is why our journalism has become untrustworthy and dangerous. This is why civil discourse is nearly impossible, with citizens operating under competing distortions of reality.
And this is why President Trump was and is right to call our news media “enemies of the people.”
However, NPR’s distortion and deceit qualifies the network as a media Ethics Villain and an Ethics Corrupter. Note the chart above from the D.C. police site. A 32% decrease in murder is not “no effect” on violent crime. That isn’t just spin or bias, that’s a lie. NPR also plays language games, because that’s the Left’s specialty. “Opportunistic crimes like petty theft and vehicle break-ins” is the euphemism this nauseating excuse for a news organization uses to describe the following crimes that have decreased significantly in the past year in the District:
