Government & Politics

Clarence Thomas Gets A Rare “Double Dunce,” Ethical And Political

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I really don’t comprehend how this can happen with someone like Justice Clarence Thomas. Donald Trump, sure. But Thomas is smarter than this.

Between 2003 and 2007, Ginni Thomas, the Justice’s controversial wife and a hard-Right activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Yet Justice Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years. He checked a box labeled “none” where “spousal non-investment income” is supposed to be disclosed.

Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, meaning that if the information found by Common Cause is accurate, Thomas did not comply with the law. SCOTUS justices are supposed to obey the law, even more than everybody else, in some respects. Legal ethics expert Steven Lubet (I used his legal ethics textbook when I taught the subject at American University!) says that a failure to disclose spousal income by a federal judge “is not a crime of any sort, but there is a potential civil penalty” for it. “I am not aware of a single case of a judge being penalized simply for this,” the professor says.

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Georgia Republican Senate Candidate Herschel Walker

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“You know, he without sin cast the first stone. Does my opponent believe in redemption, being a pastor? That’s what’s so funny. And I say that because I’m not gonna get into what happened with him in his past. I want him to do—what’s going on with his policy. He’s talking about something I was a part of over 15 years ago, maybe even longer.”

—Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, quoting Jesus from John 8:7 while ducking a question about allegations of his past domestic abuse.

Atlanta-based magazine Rolling Out asked Walker about domestic abuse allegations that occurred between 2001 and 2008. In Walker’s primary race against Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, a campaign ad posted online claimed that police reports and court records from 2001 to 2008 indicated that Walker had “a history of physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior” involving his ex-wife, Cynthia Grossman who was   married to the former NFL star from 1983 to 2002. The question is a fair one, since earlier this month, Walker released his own campaign attack ad claiming that his opponent in the Senate race, Democrat Ralph Warnock “hit his wife with his car,” was “accused of neglecting his small children” and “ran from the process server” who tried to serve him court papers. Continue reading →

The Apparent Democratic Party Strategy To Stave Off November Defeat: Lie Their Heads Off

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The problem is that this plan depends on the full collaboration of the mainstream media, and cracks are appearing in that previously reliable alliance.

During a Democratic National Committee event, president Biden once again indulged some of his favorite pieces of misinformation (Did you know that Donald Trump lied all the time?). Biden said that gas prices have fallen by “$1.30 a gallon,” with the average now being “less than $2.99” in 41 states and the District of Columbia. He also said that the current unemployment rate of 3.7% is the lowest it has been in over half a century.

CNN, in the midst of a course correction (as in “maybe we should go back to actual journalism a bit”) debunked both statements. “Biden’s claim about average gasoline prices was false, as the White House acknowledged by correcting the official transcript after CNN inquired about the claim on Friday afternoon,” CNN reported. “In fact, zero states have an average price under $2.99 per gallon, figures from GasBuddy and the American Automobile Association show. As the correction notes, Biden got a key digit wrong: 41 states and the District of Columbia have an average price under $3.99, not $2.99….“But the price of gas is one of the most important numbers in politics. Even if the President made an inadvertent error this time, his incorrect remark was televised live on CNN and MSNBC.”

Later, Biden changed his story to say that “a few” states had average gas prices under $3. That was also a lie.

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: NetChoice LLC v. Paxton (Item #4 In “Sunday Consequential Ethics Epiphanies, 9/18/2022”)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I am enmeshed in a disagreement with esteemed and long-time Ethics Alarms commenter Chris Marschner regarding Texas’ HB 20 signed into law last year. It prohibits social media platforms with over 50 million monthly U.S. users from censoring posts based political positions and viewpoints. To my surprise (although considering the Court, maybe it shouldn’t have been) the Fifth Circuit helding that the right to free speech didn’t include the right to censor speech, a privately-owned platform. That opinion is here. I wrote that I didn’t understand the opinion at all, meaning that while I find the way social media platforms employ bias and partisan favoritism to censor posts using double standards profoundly unethical, I also think the Texas law is screamingly unconstitutional, and is likely to be held to be so by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, I understand the opinion better than I did thanks to Chris’s advocacy.

Here is his Comment of the Day on Item #4 of the post, “Sunday Consequential Ethics Epiphanies, 9/18/2022: On Incompetence, Diversity, Censorship And More..”

***

You and I are in complete agreement on the issue of viewpoint discrimination. I will counter that the service provided is not free. It is true that monetary compensation is not used but the Users barter for the service by providing valuable personal data and rights to the content they post online on an ongoing basis.

While Facebook does not sell users data directly it does so indirectly by serving as a middleman using its algorithm to serve up targeted advertising. That is the foundation of the business model from which the service derives its income.

One might argue that the perceived value of this trade is lopsided in favor of the user because of the billions of dollars needed to create and maintain the platform while all the user exchanges for access is giving the Service intelligence about the User. The problem with that argument is that it only appears lopsided because until the business model was developed the user has no individual means to collect financial compensation for them being subjected to an endless barrage of advertisements. Through this business model Users obtain an exchange of value by creating a social media account. In a sense, Facebook, et al serves as a medium of exchange which is the primary defining characteristic of money. Continue reading →

Today’s Dumb Woke Hollywood Casting Question: “Why Does Hollywood Keep Using Fat Suits?” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The New York Times today decides to try a new frontier in the woke casting double standard adventure—you know, the incoherent theory that minority actors should be considered for all roles and all character types regardless of sex, race, size or physical characteristics, but it is unethical for white performers to play any character that they have to act and use make-up to evoke. You know, like good Hollywood liberal Tom Hanks claimed when he issued his recent  mea culpa for playing a gay, AIDS battling lawyer in “Philadelphia.”  So, using the same logic, Tom must have been equally hostile to “diversity, equity and inclusion” when he took a role away from some brilliant, unknown actor with a 75 IQ to play Forrest Gump, just as an autistic actor should have starred in “Rain Man” instead of Dustin Hoffman.

Suuuure. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Great Stupid often has that effect on me. Sorry.

The Times’ query, in the headline to a column by Arts Section pundit Farah Fleurima, is “Why Does Hollywood Keep Using Fat Suits?” Gee, it’s a mystery! And come to think of it, why does Hollywood keep using make-up? Special effects? Fake blood?

Here’s a much tougher question: why does the New York Times let people who know nothing about performing, entertainment, business, audiences, comedy, and casting write columns like this? Continue reading →

This Is Comforting: “The Great Stupid” Is Greater And Stupider In Canada, As You Can See…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

But for how long?

That’s a male, Oakville High School (about 20 miles from Toronto) “transitioning” shop teacher, parading with his, or her—it really doesn’t matter— gigantic prosthetic boobs. The Halton District School Board defends “her” completely voluntary appearance and attire in the name of “gender rights.” Meanwhile some students have skipped class, some are protesting, and parents are objecting.

My heavens, what could they be upset about?

“This teacher is an extremely effective teacher,” the board’s chair told the media. (Other than creating a completely unnecessary distraction by choosing to wear fake breasts twice the size of his head, of course—picky, picky...)The school board is creating a “safety plan” to ensure this serious professional can continue teaching without incident.

Yes, this Canadian variant of The Great Stupid virus could spread over the border. Continue reading →

A Magnificent Jumbo! “Partisan Bias? What Partisan Bias?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) exposed Colleen Shogan, Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Archives, as both a deep-dyed partisan and a lying Jumbo-ist, and not a very deft one at that. In the video above, he brings up a 2007 academic article she wrote for the American Political Science Association, titled “Anti-intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: Republican Populism.” Shogan resolutely denies that she wrote what she wrote, then that she meant what she wrote, and finally, that she can’t be trusted to behave like someone who would write what she wrote.

She looks and sounds insincere, dishonest and untrustworthy, because she is insincere, dishonest and untrustworthy. On the basis of character alone, no Senator of either party should vote to confirm her.

Jimmy Durante, when he replied (in “Jumbo”) to the sheriff’s query “Where do you think you’re going with that elephant?” with “Elephant? What elephant?,” at least had the sense not to begin his futile deflection with, “Thank-you, Sheriff, for that question.”

Now THAT’S A Threat To Democracy!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“That” in this case, meaning the abysmal, irresponsible quality of individuals both parties present to the public for election to Congress, and the willingness of lazy, intellectually-stunted Americans to vote for them.

Let’s just look at two, a sitting member of the House and a candidate for the job, the former a Democrat, the latter a Republican.

First, the Congressman, Democrat Modaire Jones of New York (that’s him on the left, above). On the floor of the House yesterday, Jones stated that Officer Brian Sicknick was “bludgeoned to death” in the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. That’s an outright, calculated lie, and has been a lie ever since the news media belatedly corrected its false narrative and admitted that Sicknick died of a series of strokes the next day that no physician could tie to his experiences in the riot; the medical examiner ruled his a death of “natural causes.” True, President Biden continued to use the false narrative either because he’s dishonest or because he’s sliding into dementia, but Jones doesn’t have the latter excuse. He made a deliberately false statement to continue the absurd “the riot in the Capitol was the worst thing ever and proves we’re threatened by fascism” theme that Democrats hope will keep them from being wiped out in November. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC.) couldn’t let him get away with it, and corrected Jones on the spot. Continue reading →

Ethics Villains: Documentary Maker Ken Burns And PBS

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

What, you well may ask, is a photograph of Dylann Roof doing in Ken Burns’ latest documentary, “The US and the Holocaust”? Good question.  The answer is, frankly, disgusting.

In the last of three parts in the film, shown tonight on PBS stations nationwide, the now familiar Burns historical story-telling is converted into a partisan, negative, political campaign ad, and not even a fair or respectable one compared to the ugliest attack ads you will see in the coming month. Apparently the tax-payer funded pubic broadcasting corporation decided that the perils facing of its patron Democratic Party in the upcoming election were dire enough to justify turning a legitimate and mostly admirable piece of documentary craft into supplementary material to Joe Biden’s indefensible attack on Republicans as fascists and “clear and present dangers” to democracy.

Burns, to his eternal shame—I will not watch any future Burns works—agreed to betray the trust of his viewers and the integrity of his art by using the last 10 minutes of “The US and the Holocaust” to draw an intellectually dishonest and virtually libelous analogy between the anti-Semites in Roosevelt’s State Department that blocked European Jews from escaping to the U.S. before Hitler sent them to the showers, the Nazis themselves, and those who oppose pro-illegal immigration policies in the U.S. today. Continue reading →

“21” Ethics, September 2022: Betrayal In The Air…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This was the date, in 1780, that Benedict Arnold attempted an abortion on the fetal and vulnerable United States of America. He met with British Major John Andre to arrange handing over West Point to the British in return for money and the promise of a high position in the British army. The plot was foiled, narrowly, but Arnold successfully flipped sides and survived the war, moving to England, but never receiving his promised metaphorical pieces of silver.

Clearly, Arnold had not been sufficiently inspired by General Washington’s letter to him five years earlier, when he was George’s most trusted officer:

George Washington to Benedict Arnold
September 14, 1775.

Sir:

You are intrusted with a Command of the utmost Consequence sequence to the Interest and Liberties of America. Upon your Conduct and Courage and that of the Officers and Soldiers detached on this Expedition, not only the Success of the present Enterprize, and your own Honour, but the Safety and Welfare of the Whole Continent may depend.

I charge you, therefore, and the Officers and Soldiers, under your Command, as you value your own Safety and Honour and the Favour and Esteem of your Country, that you consider yourselves, as marching, not through an Enemy’s Country; but that of our Friends and Brethren, for such the Inhabitants of Canada, and the Indian Nations have approved themselves in this unhappy Contest between Great Britain and America.

That you check by every Motive of Duty and Fear of Punishment, every Attempt to plunder or insult any of the Inhabitants of Canada. Should any American Soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any Canadian or Indian, in his Person or Property, I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary Punishment as the Enormity of the Crime may require. Should it extend to Death itself it will not be disproportional to its Guilt at such a Time and in such a Cause.

But I hope and trust, that the brave Men who have voluntarily engaged in this Expedition, will be governed by far different Views. That Order, Discipline and Regularity of Behaviour will be as conspicuous, as their Courage and Valour. I also give it in Charge to you to avoid all Disrespect to or Contempt of the Religion of the Country and its Ceremonies. Prudence, Policy, and a true Christian Spirit, will lead us to look with Compassion upon their Errors without insulting them. While we are contending for our own Liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the Rights of Conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men, and to him only in this Case, they are answerable.

Upon the whole, Sir, I beg you to inculcate upon the Officers and Soldiers, the Necessity of preserving the strictest Order during their March through Canada; to represent to them the Shame, Disgrace and Ruin to themselves and Country, if they should by their Conduct, turn the Hearts of our Brethren in Canada against us. And on the other Hand, the Honours and Rewards which await them, if by their Prudence and good Behaviour, they conciliate the Affections of the Canadians and Indians, to the great Interests of America, and convert those favorable Dispositions they have shewn into a lasting Union and Affection.

Thus wishing you and the Officers and Soldiers under your Command, all Honour, Safety and Success, I remain Sir, etc….

1. On the topic of letters and betrayals of trust, here’s one written by Sen. Josh Hawley in April  to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding explanations for an academic study finding that Gmail’s spam filtering algorithm was significantly more likely to mark Republican fundraising emails as spam than Democrat fundraising emails. I saw it mentioned again yesterday, but couldn’t relocate the article when I searched on…hey, wait a minute…

Did you notice this in April? I didn’t. I guess the mainstream news media didn’t think it was newsworthy…

Continue reading →