Government & Politics

Yes, My Conservative Facebook Friends Can Be Just As Irrational As the Progressives…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A usually wise and measured conservative Facebook friend posted with approval a tweet by conservative pundit Matt Walsh, complaining about the father of a 15-year-old school shooter who killed two people and injured six others being charged after the tragedy. The killings (the girl shot herself as well, and died) occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, in December.

“Let’s just be honest about the pattern here,” Walsh wrote. “This is the third time that a parent has been charged for violence committed by their child. In every case, the parent has been white. There is violence committed in the streets of every major city every single day. You could blame the crappy, neglectful parents in literally all of those cases. And yet none of them have ever been charged.”

Wow, talk about the wrong hill to die on! Both of those other cases involved criminally negligent parents, and the father of the late shooter in Wisconsin may have been the worst of the three.

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Pope Leo Says “Ramalama-Ding-Dong” In His First Sunday Blessing [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Okay, what he really said was “Never again war.” Same thing.

The reference is to the immortal episode of “The Simpsons” when Lisa heard her father singing along with a popular recording containing a gibberish chorus that is really “Join the Navy” backwards. “You gotta love that crazy chorus,” said Homer. “What does it mean?” asked Lisa. “Eh, it doesn’t mean anything,” he replied. “It’s like “ramalama-ding-dong,” or “give peace a chance.” I have referred to the exchange frequently on Ethics Alarms.

Why? Because empty virtue-signalling is unethical. It is dishonest, cynical and substitutes sentiment for substance. When the Pope said the equivalent of “Give peace a chance,” or “Make love, not war,” or “Let there be peace on earth” or “War is Hell” or FDR’s “I hate war!,” the assembled thousands cheered. It’s an applause line. If the Pope isn’t going to do better than applause lines, what good is he?

The only way to end wars is to end nations and religions, just as John Lennon said in his other fatuous hit, “Imagine.” The only way to do that, is to have a world dictator who is also, unlikely as it seems, benevolent….well, like a Pope! Brilliant!

Influential world figures admired and regarded as serious and thoughtful abuse their position by defaulting to such useless nostrums. They are supposed to make people wiser, not naive and confused. War will not go away, and the Pope knows that, unless he’s an idiot. He is not an idiot.

Raising false hopes and seeking popularity by seeming to advocate the impossible is not ethical behavior. It is the equivalent of a lie.

I officially award Pope Leo the second ever “Imagine” Award, unveiled here, which will be periodically bestowed upon the public figure, pundit , journalist or academic whose pronouncements most reflect virtue-signaling of the late John Lennon.

Ethics Quote of the Month: Yeah, It’s Bill Maher, Much As It Pains Me To Admit It

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“If the thought leaders in the Democratic Party keep encouraging and not rebuking the idea that America is cringe and the people who run Gaza are great,” he warned, “the Democrats are doomed.”

—HBO’s “clown nose on/clown nose off” comic Bill Maher on his weekly political commentary and discussion show “Real Time.”

I have made it clear in the past few months that I do not take professional asshole Bill Maher’s recent criticism of progressives and the Democratic Party to be sincere or particularly admirable. He is obviously making self-serving calculations regarding where his own best interests lie, and the comic is smart enough (not as smart as he thinks he is, but smart enough) to recognize a declining brand when he sees one. Nevertheless, we should always try to judge a message independently of a flawed messenger.

Maher is right. Last month a Harvard poll found that only 24% of young Democrats said they were proud of being American compared to a 76% of young Republicans. (I find it alarming that a quarter of young Republicans aren’t proud of the U.S.). The poll surveyed 2,096 Americans from 18 to 29 years old nationally, and among Democrat respondents, an amazing 54% said they are embarrassed to be Americans while 21% said they were neither proud not embarrassed. With Republicans, it was 8% embarrassed and 16% neither proud nor embarrassed

Yeah, yeah, “polls” and “Harvard.” Still.

In addition to his Quote of the Month, Maher told his audience after citing the results,

“Seriously, this is a serious problem for Democrats,” Maher said during his Friday monologue. “Less than 1 in 4 Democrats under 30 say they’re proud to be an American. 54% say they’re embarrassed by it. Embarrassed? Like America is your mom picking you up at school? You’re embarrassed to be an American? Well guess what — the feeling’s mutual, because you have no perspective. Is America perfect? No, of course not. No country is. But the US is leagues ahead of the rest of the world on most of the progressive issues that are important to young people.  America has 14-million women-owned businesses. Seventeen percent of black women are starting businesses, which is faster than white women or white men. Gay Americans are free to marry and 49% of them own property. Yes, in America gays buy buildings. In other places, they get thrown off them….And we proudly live in a land where every TV commercial features a mix-raced couple, including the ones where it makes no sense. Mom’s black, dad’s white, and the kid’s Asian.”

Well, I’m embarrassed by that last part, but Bill’s over-all analysis is valid.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the Children of the Left hate America, because for decades our education system, news media-celebrated activists and elected leaders have been assiduously indoctrinating children from kindergarten through college to believe that the U.S. is defined by slavery, racism, colonialism, bigotry, murder, unjust wars and robber barons. And for much of that period, Bill Maher and his ilk have been cheering the anti-Americanism on. But New Bill is absolutely correct about the Democrats committing cultural suicide and trying to lead the public off the cliff with them.

Whether he means it or not.

Short Version of Ethics Verdict on Pentagon’s Elimination of Race, Gender and Ethicity As Legitimate Considerations For Admission to the Service Academies: “Good!”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The Washington Post’s snotty headline is “Hegseth escalates targeting of race, gender in military’s academic settings.” That’s because he’s a racist and sexist, see, like all of the Trump allies, appointees, voters and supporters.

Oh, dear. “[T]he nation’s prestigious military academies” have been ordered “to end consideration of race, gender and ethnicity in their admissions processes” and ‘begin a purge….of educational materials focused on those “divisive concepts,” gasps the Post, as if this isn’t a completely practical and fair policy. The military’s job is to protect the nation and, when necessary, to fight and fight effectively. Race, gender and ethnicity are completely irrelevant to the capability of performing those tasks, so it should be beyond debate that such considerations have no place in the determination of who should gain admission to the military academies.

There is a much stronger case to be made that “diversity” is deleterious to military morale, cohesiveness and performance, but okay, discrimination is contrary to the culture and national values, so we won’t say that women categorically don’t belong in male battle units. But they better be as capable as any of the men.

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Open Forum (With a Pope Note…)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Funny, after watching “Conclave,” I found myself wondering when the Roman Catholic Church would select an American pope, not that I really cared. The New York Times saw yesterday’s surprising decision as justification for more Trump-bashing and an appeal to authority (a logical fallacy) that the Times’ acolytes—Democrats—overwhelmingly don’t acknowledge as an authority. Thus we got “The Pope Appears Uneasy With Trump Immigration Policies: Before Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became pope, a social media account under his name shared criticisms of the Trump administration’s positions on immigration. “I…Don’t…Care,” and no one should care even if the social media posts in question came from the guy, which is unlikely. Sharing any opinions or positions without one’s own commentary is lazy, ambiguous social media conduct. But apart from that, becoming Pope creates a hard, black border around whatever the individual elected may have thought, said or done before becoming Pope, making all of that “non-operative,” as the used to say in the Nixon Administration. Furthermore, if this Pope tries to interfere with U.S. law, policy and values like the last one did, the proper response of Americans ought to be the same as I expressed here. The short version: “Mind your own business.”

I was amused yesterday when three waggish baseball pundits were discussing which Chicago baseball team Pope Leo followed, as he hails from the Windy City. The White Sox, one of them claimed. “No, his team is the Cubs!” another insisted. “I’m pretty certain he roots for the Angels,” said the third, ending the debate.

They forgot about the Padres!

Enough from me: This is your post…get opining.

Yes, Actors Who Refuse to Perform With Trump In The Audience Should Be Blacklisted

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Grennell is absolutely, 100% correct. For actors to withhold their talents and services from an entire audience because they may have ideological differences with a member of that audience (or many) is unforgivably unprofessional and a breach of ethics deserving punishment, condemantion and shunning.

Howard Sherman, an author and critic whose existence I had been blissfully unaware of before this day, issued an insufferable essay on Facebook that naturally my many show biz friends, Trump Deranged all, rushed to share and applaud. The post is as nauseating as it is overlong and unethical: I read it so you don’t have to, but here are some lowlights to “How the Blacklisting Starts.”

See, he’s saying that an industry deciding that members who are unethical and refuse to do their jobs is the same as an industry putting members on a blacklist for their political beliefs, as Hollywood did to Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and asd Hollywood does now to conservatives (like, say, James Woods). That’s bonkers, and exactly backwards. It is the misguided artists linking their art to political views who are emulating those blacklisters of yore. I’ll pick out some of the more pernicious misrepresentations in Sherman’s post… Continue reading →

Bleeding Heart Test: Who Feels Sorry For These “Good Illegal Immigrants”? (I Don’t.)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The New York Post has a tale that is guaranteed to make “Think of the Children!” fans and “They just want a better life!” defenders of illegal immigration swim in a lake of tears like shrunken Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was a Dalton State Community College ( in Dalton, Georgia) student driving without a driver’s license when she failed to obey to a “no turn on red” sign. After police pulled her vehicle over, she claimed to have an “international driver’s license” (Nice try, kid!). One thing led to another, and eventually it was determined that she was not a citizen, having been brought here illegally by her Mexican parents when she was four, that they were here illegally too and had been for 15 years.

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The Unethical Attack On SNAP Expenditures On Coca-Cola Products and Junk Food

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Back in my first year of law school we studied a case involving poor D.C. residents spending financial assistance checks on non-essentials like furniture thanks to a special deal offered by a local store. My contracts professor, the legendary Richard Alan Gordon, gave an impassioned speech decrying the court’s conclusion that the store’s promotion was wrong and the money was misused. “Why is sustenance for the soul less essential than sustenance for the body?” he asked in his famous stentorian tones.

Okay, food stamp recipients spending them on Coca-Cola products is not quite in the same exalted territory as the life enhancements at the center of that case (I can’t recall it the case cite), but to me, the principle is the same. Conservatives are on the wrong side of this ethics debate. I don’t care if Coca-Cola makes a lot of money off of food stamps. People enjoy their products. They make people happy. Poor people deserve to be happy too now and then in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, and Brooke Rollins, the Agriculture Secretary, both advocate stripping soft drinks and junk food from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. RFKJ has called for the government to stop allowing the nearly $113 billion program that serves about 42 million Americans to be spent on “ soda or processed foods.” “The one place that I would say that we need to really change policy is the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches,” Kennedy told Fox News. “There, the federal government in many cases is paying for it. And we shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.”

Well, one man’s poison is another man’s pudding. Rollins has said, “When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who perhaps need something more nutritious?” No, the correct question is whether Americans think that the poor and low of income should have taxpayers lightening their burden and allowing them to make the same choices regarding the pursuit of happiness that anyone else has, within practical limits.

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I Think It’s Admirable That the Pulitzers Are So Transparent About Their Blatant Partisan Bias, Don’t You?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The announcement of the Pulitzer prizes were broadcast live on the organization’s website, and what everyone should be able to agree was the photo of the year was snubbed. That, of course, is the second photo above, shot by Evan Vucci of the Associated Press and generally appreciated as a masterpiece of composition, story-telling and drama. But, of course, the photo is alao widely believed to have helped Donald Trump get elected President, so by definition the photo is bad, and must not be honored. Another photo related to the assassination attempt, the first one above taken by Doug Mills, won the prize instead. After all, that one had the good people thinking ruefully, “Damn. Missed him by that much!”

The snubbed photo will be in history books and regarded as one of the most memorable moments captured on film, along with the GI kissing the nurse in Times Square, Harry Truman holding up the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline, the naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack, and the Frenchman weeping as Hitler’s army swept down a Paris street. An angry Monica Showalter writes at American Thinker,

The picture turned up on t-shirts, coffee mugs, stickers and posters, signaling how much the public was moved by it….But it was hardly propaganda — it was the work of an experienced photographer able to act with split-second instincts in a dangerous situation with events still unfolding….I have no inside line on why this photo didn’t win the Pulitzer, despite being so deserving of it. Did the AP not promote it, or did the Pulitzer board shun it, on what could only be political grounds? Either way, it’s a disgrace. The photo had Pulitzer written all over it, and the judges could only view the thing through wokester-impaired eyes.

As for me, I an neither disappointed nor surprised, not after this now thoroughly corrupt organization awarded a Pulitzer prize for the racist, fake history lesson of “The 1619 Project.” In truth I am impressed: the deliberate decision to ignore such a deserving photo says to all, “Yes, the Pulitzers are partisan and politically biased. We don’t care. In fact, we’re proud. Suck it!”

Thanks for your candor. We get the message.

Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

You know: Minnesota.

Leaping down a particularly slippery slope, the The Minnesota Supreme Court last week overturned the conviction of Eloisa R. Plancarte for indecent exposure after she bared her breasts in a parking lot in 2021. Olmsted County prosecutors charged her with a misdemeanor after police responded to a complaint about a woman walking around topless. Judge Joseph Chase found Plancarte, 28, guilty of indecent exposure and the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld Plancarte’s conviction in 2024. Now the woke Supreme Court in the Land of Lakes has reversed the conviction.

Writing for the majority, Justice Karl Procaccini wrote that Plancarte had not engaged “in any type of overt public sexual activity….the State has not met its burden of proving that Plancarte’s exposure was lewd, because none of the evidence in the record suggests that her conduct was of a sexual nature.” In her concurring opinion, Justice Sarah Hennesy wrote that criminalizing the exposure of female, but not male breasts “fails to recognize the more nuanced physical realities of human bodies.”

Whatever that means…

“Would a transgender man be prohibited from exposing his chest?” Hennesy continued. “What about a transgender woman who has had top surgery? Where do the chests of intersex and nonbinary persons fit within this dichotomy? And how do we treat the exposed chest of a breast cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy? Interpreting this statutory scheme as differentiating between male and female breasts is not sufficiently clear and definite to warn Minnesotans of what conduct is punishable.”

Great. Clearly, in Minnesota the conduct of a man walking around with his naughty bits hanging out would also be deemed non-sexual. There is nothing improper about reasonable laws upholding and enforcing societal standards of decency, decorum, respect, civility and modesty. Would the result have been different if a male motorist had been distracted by the bare-breasted pedestrian and run down a child in a crosswalk? That this didn’t occur is only moral luck.

Using the Ethics Incompleteness Principle examples of transgender conduct to eviscerate the law involved is intellectually dishonest: those cases would be difficult, but would also be recognized as narrowly applicable. If Sydney Sweeney’s conduct in walking bare-breasted in a parking lot would be legitimately seen as sexual—and it would—then a law prohibiting such conduct by women generally is reasonable. The pursuit of happiness is not without borders in a civilized society that wants to stay that way.

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Pointer: Jutgory