More on the Kamala Harris Book Plagiarism Episode

In a post three days ago, Ethics Alarms examined Christopher Rufo’s claim that Kamala Harris engaged in plagiarism in her first book, and concluded, based on the New York Times reportage, that unlike, for example, the substantial plagiarism indulged in by ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay, prompting her exit, Harris’s uncredited lifting and copying (in a book written with a co-writer, or maybe not written by Harris at all) was careless and accidental rather than deliberate.

Now another metaphorical shoe has dropped.

The Times claimed to show plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey the passages Rufo cited as plagiarized. It reported that he ruled that the material taken without attribution “were not serious, given the size of the document.” Now Bailey writes that he was unaware of a full dossier with additional allegations.” That means that the Times gave readers the impression that he had seen all of the questionable sections when he had not.

Now that he has reviewed everything, Bailey’s conclusion is a bit different. He writes that he now believes that the “case is more serious than I commented to the New York Times.” And with that, we are thrust into a sick version of Johnny Carson’s launching pad quiz show, “Who Do You Trust?” I will not leave you in any unnecessary suspense : the answer is “Nobody.”

Continue reading

Now THIS Is Incompetence…

I don’t believe a lot of commentary is needed here…

The town of Stadtallendorf in western Germany lost its state-of-the-art fire station, which cost the municipality tens of millions of euros, when it burned to the ground yesterday in part because the building had not been equipped with a fire alarm. A fire started in a vehicle and quickly spread; although about 170 firefighters battled the blaze—that’s one advantage a fire at a fire station has: it doesn’t take long for the firefighters to get to the fire—10 fire engines were destroyed and the building was a total loss. Members of the local volunteer fire brigade tried to help.

At least no one was injured although, though the town planner will have to wear bags over their heads for the foreseeable future.

Ethics Alarms Awards a “Nelson” to the Guy Who Inadvertently Threw Away $527 Million

I guess this seems a bit harsh, but then, I never let my late wife forget that she threw out our Paul McCartney concert tickets, and that was only $500 down the metaphorical drain.

$527 million! And it’s really worse than that, believe it or not.

James Howells, 39, accidentally threw out a hard drive containing his bitcoin stash in 2013. It was worth around $1 million then but now has an estimated worth of about $527 million.

Since that epic “Oopsie!” Howells has requested, demanded and implored the Newport, Great Britain, Council, which oversees the landfill where his hard drive ended up, to retrieve it for him. The body has refused; after all, the necessary excavation will take between 18 and 36 months followed by a year of area restorative work, and the council says that all of this would be environmentally irresponsible. Now Howells is suing the council for $646 million in damages because it won’t remedy his mistake. Hoping that the lawsuit will leverage the council into being “reasonable,” Howells has assembled a team to carry out the $13 million excavation. On the team is the council’s former head of landfill, who claims to know the exact area where the hard drive is. He’s also dangling the prospect of a 10% commission to the Council when the hard drive is found.

The Ethics Verdict here: Howells’ dumb mistake is not the Council’s responsibility. Their duty is to the community, not him. The appropriate and ethical response to Howell’s threats is “Bite me!” He and the former landfill head can get shovels and dig for the thing themselves. Who knows? They might get lucky.

Half-Ethics Hero: Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris is going into the metaphorical lion’s den and will be interviewed on Fox News by news anchor Bret Baier. Earlier in the campaign, she rejected a Fox News debate with Donald Trump, to which he had already agreed. Good for her.

The official Democratic Party position has long been to denigrate Fox because it does not follow the pro-Democrat/progressive propaganda mission of the other major networks. Barack Obama said, more than once, that it didn’t qualify as a legitimate news source. The Party has long shown hostility toward Fox News; it formally barred the network from hosting a primary debate in 2020. Hillary Clinton, as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, had one Fox News interview and that was the last one by a POTUS candidate from her party in the last eight years. President Biden refused to appear on Fox.

Harris gets only a half-Ethics Hero not because hers is an act dictated by crisis. If one has any doubt that internal polls, external polls, and basic vibes show Harris’s cynical, gossamer campaign on a losing flight path, her decision to have an interview with a journalist who might not be planning on voting for her should dispel it.

Continue reading

Unethical (And Stupid) Columbus Day Quote of the Decade: Kamala Harris

“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.”

—Kamala Harris in 2021, pandering to the “America is a blight on the Earth and the world would have been better without it” bloc in the Democratic Party  in a Columbus Day address.

Boy, what an idiot.

But to be fair to Kamala, I’m sure she would now say that she loves Columbus, and grew up in a middle class neighborhood.

What the European explorers ushered in was discovery, freedom from religious oppression, innovation, progress, and let’s just to cut to the chase, civilization. Had there been no United States, Harris and her relatives would probably be grease spots or serving as Nazi slaves today. But never mind, why should a basic comprehension of history, science and anthropology get it the way of a candidate for President of the United States vilifying the nation she aspires to lead? When does her campaign start handing out the “Make America Primitive Again” caps?

Glenn Reynolds wrote today in part,

“I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.

“Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.”

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today…”

Kamala Harris is an embarrassment.

Oh, Great. It’s Bad Enough That Harvard Is Woke and Incompetent, But Its “Ten Minute Rule” Proves That The University Is Now Stupid As Well

I at least expected my thoroughly disgrace alma mater to always maintain some vestige of intelligence, as misapplied as it frequently has been lately.

Guess not.

Before student group-sponsored speakers at the college are allowed to begin, the following official statement from the administration must now be read to the audience:

“A quick note before we begin—Harvard University is committed to maintaining a climate in which reason and speech provide the correct response to a disagreeable idea. Speech is privileged in the University community. There are obligations of civility and respect for others that underlie rational discourse. If any disruption occurs that prohibits speech the disrupters will be allowed for up to 10 minutes. A warning will be issued to all disturbers at the 5-minute mark explaining that the protesters are disrupting the event and ask them to stop. Any further disruption that prevents the audience from adequately hearing or seeing the speakers will lead to the removal of the disrupters from the venue.”

Brilliant.

How smart do you have to be to figure out what’s wrong with this? Let’s see:

Continue reading

“Holy Fuck” Indeed. Stereotyping? What’s That? [Updated]

Update: This video may be a parody, which raises further ethical issues that I discuss in the follow-up post. For now, I will leave this as written.]

_________________________

The most incompetent Presidential campaign in modern history hits a new low, raising the question, “How low can it go?” In addition to the hilarious selection of actors (these are all actors, you know, although that guy talking about how much weight he can lifts is terrible) to represent manly men, the ad is predicated on the theory that men are morons and won’t be turned off by the demeaning stereotypical assumptions it represents.

The equivalent ad aimed at women would have Vegas showgirls, strippers and Sydney Sweeney talking about the rights of the unborn.

What an insult. And what an indictment of Harris’s advisors and staff.

Ethics Dunce: Tender Miami Weatherman John Morales

Aw, isn’t he caring! A supposedly professional meteorologist gained fans and social media hits by choking up as he covered Hurricane Hurricane Milton. Oooh, it was so big and scary!

Time to retire, John.

Now we know the professionalism rot that has crippled law, science, journalism, academia, politics, the judiciary and so many other fields has struck meteorologists. Morales’s job is, or was supposed to be, relaying information about weather phenomenon, not to show everyone how sensitive and frightened he is. There is no excuse for this, none, never. If you can’t broadcast the explosion of the Hindenburg, a fire, a bomb blast or a murder without either losing control of your emotions or, worse, virtue-signaling with them, then you are in the wrong job.

Furthermore, such a reaction seeds panic. It is as irresponsible as it in incompetent.

Continue reading

Just To Be Clear, Tim Walz Really Is a Knucklehead

Democratic Party VP nominee Tim Walz told Democratic donors at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home in Sacramento this week that the Electoral College should be eliminated, with the national popular vote determining who is elected President.

What an idiot.

Continue reading

Two Faint Cheers For the Colorado Supreme Court in “Jerk vs. Jerk”

It looks like the political correctness Furies who have been swarming around Jack Phillips, the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner whose refusal to bake, decorate and sell same-sex wedding cakes had him targeted for destruction have finally been foiled.The Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed the latest lawsuit against him, though not on the merits. Legal Insurrection has detailed coverage and a retrospective on this almost decade-long drama here.

Remember the old Mad Magazine series called “Spy vs. Spy”? This has been “Jerk vs. Jerk.” I sided with the baker in the original lawsuit over the same-sex wedding cake, though holding even then that the adversaries were being unreasonable. Ethics Alarms advised one, “Oh, bake the damn cake!” and the other, “So find another bakery!” That battle got all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the baker won on what non-lawyers call “a technicality.” Then Phillips was targeted again, as LGTBQ activists apparently considered it a matter of honor to bend him to their will.

Continue reading