Government & Politics

Ethics Dunces: North Carolina General Assembly

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Choose LifeWhy should Federal courts have to waste time on idiocy like this? The North Carolina General Assembly passed a law green-lighting a license plate that had the message “Choose Life” on it, just as there are license plates you can get in my state, Virginia, that endorse everything from birds to college athletic teams. The assembly refused to allow a plate, however, with the adverse message, “Support Choice,” or  “I Like Reproductive Freedom” or “Yay Abortion!” or something similar.

Now, all those Republicans who voted for the “Choose Life” plate are supposedly in favor of a government that doesn’t dictate what its citizens say or believe, that principle being enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Why, then, can’t they see that providing a license plate that supports one side of a contentious issue to drivers, while refusing to allow drivers of a different mind to sport a contrary message, is an abuse of power, or, as the judge that banned the “Choose Life” plate referred to it, “viewpoint discrimination” ?The state can’t give special privileges, like the privilege of annoying other drivers by preaching to them with their license plates, to citizens whose politics or beliefs state officials happen to like. That’s a First Amendment violation, an abuse of personal autonomy, and wrong.

I would say “obviously,'” but clearly that wasn’t true in this case.

I think there should be a North Carolina plate that reads, “Choose Competent Legislators.” Of course, “Choose Stupid Legislators” would have to be available too.

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Facts and Graphics: My Fox 8

 

Comment of the Day: “Jonathan Montgomery: Victimized By An Unethical Tag Team Of A Vicious Teenager And An Officious Attorney General”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

catch-22Reader John Robins provides additional, and depressing, perspective on the Montgomery case, discussed in today’s post, Jonathan Montgomery: Victimized By An Unethical Tag Team Of A Vicious Teenager And An Officious Attorney General. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“It gets worse than this, actually. Although everybody acknowledges that Montgomery is innocent, he must still report to a probation officer and must register as a sex offender until the Virginia Court of Appeals grinds its way through the Petition for Writ of Actual Innocence, which may take several months, and is being handled by the Innocence Project out of D.C. I know what went on in this case and what happened because my office was involved in the defense. Continue reading →

Jonathan Montgomery: Victimized By An Unethical Tag Team Of A Vicious Teenager And An Officious Attorney General

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
What now qualifies as a rising star in the Virginia GOP.

Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli: What now qualifies as a rising star in the Virginia GOP.

Jonathan Montgomery was recently pardoned by Virginia Governor Bob McDonald for a rape he never committed. This inherent contradiction—“We know you’re innocent, and we forgive you” —was made necessary by a sequence of events that could have been devised by Kafka, Stephen King or Mel Brooks, but unfortunately really happened. They happened because of two individuals who were absent the day basic ethics were handed out.

First and foremost in this wing of the Hall of Ethics Shame was Elizabeth Paige Coast, from the Tawana Brawley school of sociopathy.  When she was a teenager in 2007, her parents caught her surfing internet porn. To deflect their anger and avoid punishment, she concocted a story about how her sex drive had been addled as a result of being sexually molested when she was ten by a neighbor hood 14-year-old, Montgomery. She thought, since his family had moved away, that nothing would happen to him. Wrong. He was arrested and she testified against him to avoid telling the truth to her parents, putting him in jail for four years before she finally decided to recant her accusation. We are told that she has been charged with one count of perjury, and was fired from her job with the police department. Not enough, not by a long shot.

Then Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli decided to pick up where Coast left off. Continue reading →

Yahoo Flunks A Confirmation Bias Test

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Just as you always suspected: THIS is the average Fox News viewer.

Just as you always suspected: THIS is the average Fox News viewer.

Be honest now: If you were a news editor and this press release came across your desk, what would you think? What would you do?

Birmingham, Alabama (PRWEB)

December 04, 2012

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence. Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

One test involved showing subjects a series of images and measuring their vitals, namely pulse rate and blood pressure. The self-identified conservatives’ vitals increased over 35% when shown complex or shocking images. The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula. Test subjects who received their news from other outlets or reported they do not watch the news scored an average IQ of 104, compared to 80 for Fox News viewers. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Month: Ken At Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Evil exists. Good people should fight evil. But government is often the wrong instrument to fight evil. The people doing sick and contemptible things to children in the name of “curing” homosexuality very likely feel as strongly as I do, and might — if they got their way — use government to achieve their ends. People who love liberty must fight with their heads, not just their hearts.”

—– Ken, the First Amendment besotted lawyer/blogger/libertarian/wit who reigns at Popehat, writing about his doubts regarding California’s ban of so-called “conversion therapy.”

I recommend that you read the whole post, and everything Ken writes, basically.

I’m somewhat less conflicted than Ken in my opposition to this legislation, and wrote about the ban earlier this year, here, and here.

Ethics Quiz: Censoring a First Grader’s Poem

/ Jack Marshall / 157 Comments

No-GodThis is a different kind of ethics quiz, because the question is where the blame for an unethical result lies. The result is clearly wrong, but I am uncertain who or what should be blamed for it.

A first-grade student in North Carolina wrote a Veterans Day poem honoring her grandfather, a Vietnam veteran. She had been selected to read the poem at a November 8 Veterans Day ceremony.   One of the lines was, “He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength.”

The Horror.

The school forced her to remove the line. Continue reading →

Where Is “Mr. C” When We Need Him?

/ Jack Marshall / 63 Comments
"Sing to me, Mister C!"

Perry in 1993: “Sing to me, Mister C!”

The holiday music is upon us and unavoidable, and one of the recordings that it is annoyingly ubiquitous is Perry Como’s “Home for the Holidays,” though you often hear the Carpenters’ version too. Como was a big TV star in the Sixties— bigger, really, than Andy Williams, who died last month, but who managed to linger in the public consciousness longer. Perry, unlike Andy, never had his “Moon River”—he was just an easy-going, smooth-singing B-list Bing Crosby baritone without the movies,  the comedy, and all the iconic songs, but for a while tuning in to hear “Mr. C” sing the hit ballads of the day was a middle America tradition. As I heard Perry, smooth as ever, sing his one holiday standard, it occurred to me that without that recording, he would be forgotten completely today. Sic Transit Gloria.

Yet Perry Como would still have something to contribute. For example, his last hit record, “It’s Impossible,” could become a useful public anthem to croon to Republicans as we all head over the so-called fiscal cliff.  Here’s Perry:

And here’s what he could croon to the GOP Congress today, changing just a few words:

Irresponsible, take a pledge to never tax, it’s irresponsible!
Irresponsible, and forget about the facts, it’s irresponsible.

Can we pay back all the trillions, and not raise some extra billions?
Cut the budget and not bother with the debt? So irresponsible.

Will Obama make the cuts that must be made? He’s irresponsible.
Does his folly mean you still don’t have to trade? You’re irresponsible.
And tomorrow, when we’re belly-up like Greece, I’m sure you’ll tell us
That your pledge cannot be blamed for what befell us.
You’re a miserable disgrace—and irresponsible.

We miss you, Mr. C.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Ah, yes, those old football injuries that tighten up and cause you to walk like you're drunk after going to a wedding where nobody drank to excess. Who hasn't been in that situation?

Ah, yes, those old football injuries that tighten up and cause you to walk like you’re drunk after going to a wedding where nobody drank to excess. Who hasn’t been in that situation?

Let’s be clear, now: Rep. Ryan is not politically incompetent, no sireee! He’s no fool; he knew that an arrest for public intoxication in August might be a high hurdle on the route to his re-election, especially since the matter wouldn’t be resolved until after the November 7. So when the rising star of a congressman, seeking election, now safely accomplished, to his sixth term, was arrested in Virginia, Ryan’s staff managed to keep the embarrassing incident out of the papers, cable news broadcasts and political junkie blogs. He had been  stopped by a police officer who observed him staggering along the sidewalk, and Ryan refused to take a Breathalyzer alcohol test as the officer requested, precipitating his arrest. The incident, after all, might have been misunderstood. Can’t have that. Continue reading →

The Messy Redemption Dilemma of Greg Hall

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
Redemption is beautiful. And a lot rarer than we'd like it to be.

Redemption is beautiful. And a lot rarer than we’d like it to be.

Maryland belongs in the elite group of states—Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Alaska, D.C. of course, and a few others—where corruption at the local government level is the status quo, and seemingly will always be so. Thus what could have been a straightforward dilemma regarding the character requirements for public office—does a criminal past render a citizen unfit for appointment?—has been confounded by matters of comparative disqualification. Maryland State Delegate Tiffany Alston (D-Prince George’s County) took money out of her campaign funds to pay for her wedding expenses, and stole $800 from the General Assembly to pay an employee of her law firm. She cut a deal with prosecutors to avoid a trial, and, astoundingly, is arguing that since she thus avoided a “conviction” for a crime, under Maryland law she should be able to continue serving as delegate.

Alston is a current crook. Maryland Democrats decided to designate a past crook as her replacement: Greg Hall, who twenty years ago was a crack dealer, spent time in prison, and barely avoided a murder charge for the death of a thirteen-year-old boy killed in the cross-fire of a gun battle he was engaged in. Only in a state like Maryland would Hall be considered an upgrade over the current occupant of a legislative seat, and Maryland’s Democratic governor, Martin O’Malley, has so far refused to follow his party’s directive and seat Hall. The problem is that under the Maryland Constitution, O’Malley has no choice in the matter: it says that the governor shall appoint whomever the party designates to replace a delegate who has been removed. Now there will be two hearings, one to determine whether Alston is correct that she can remain in office because she hasn’t technically been “convicted” of crimes she has admitted to, and another to determine whether the governor can refuse to appoint a convicted felon to take her place. Continue reading →

The Ethics Attic: Notes From Around The Web

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

messy attic

[I’m still feeling lousy, so in an effort to conserve some energy while keeping the torch high, I’m presenting a few links that the ethics-minded might enjoy visiting. Normally I would write about some of these, so consider yourselves lucky.]

  • Historian Paul Finkleman delivers that harshest verdict yet on the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson regarding civil rights and slavery. You should then read David G. Post’s splendid contra essay here. (The last two sentences in Finkleman’s op-ed are pretty much indefensible.)
  • A fascinating reflection, inspired by the movie “Lincoln,” on Utilitarianism and “the ends justifies the means.”
  • In fact, the program is a benign one, but considering the issue raised in my last post, it is hard to imagine more perfect symbolism for the American public trading self-sufficiency for government protection than the trade described here.
  • If you missed the recent George Will column, a frightening one, about the assaults of free speech and thought around the campuses of American universities, you have another chance to read it, here.
  • I only recently learned that 3-D copiers are a reality, and Dr. Chris MacDonald, on his always excellent Business Ethics Blog, has some insight on their ethical implications here.
  • Once again this year, I have an essay in The 2013 Hardball Times Baseball Annual, and publisher Dave Studenmund references my analysis of the Stephen Strasburg affair here.
  • Finally, thanks to Mary Wright on the HR Gazette for posting the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale.