Journalism & Media

And Another “Good Illegal Immigrant” Sob Story From the Times…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I feel constrained to post this after someone suggested that in the Bret Stephens essay I was bestowing Ethics Hero status on the Axis media’s top propaganda mouthpiece. The op-ed by professional illegal immigration romanticizer Isabel Castro (above) is a far more representative piece in a genre the Times is particularly fond of: demanding sympathy for individuals facing deportation entirely because of their own choices and conduct.

The title is a hoot: “How the ICE Raids Are Warping Los Angeles.” It is like a Chicago paper during the Prohibition and Capone’s zenith publishing a column called “How the FBI is Warping Chicago.” A sample..

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Surprise! NYT Columnist Bret Stephens

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I did not see this coming. Has any New York Times pundit ever written anything regarding Donald Trump that wasn’t pure venom? Has there ever been a Times opinion piece that said, “Wow! President Trump handled this problem perfectly”? If so, I must have missed it.

True, if any one of the Axis-biased Times stable of progressives, Democrats and the Trump Deranged were capable of such a composition, it would have to have been Stephens. Along with David Brooks he is one of the token sort-of conservatives on the staff usually displaying symptoms of the Stockholm Syndrome. Brooks is beyond hope now, but Stephens is at least unpredictable. He’s a weird sort of conservative, having opined once that the Second Amendment should be repealed, and he takes part in annoying transcribed anti-Trump snark-fests with Gail Collins, which reads a bit like what the old “Point-Counterpoint” would have been like if Shauna Alexander and James J. Kilpatrick were secretly boinking each other. (Gotta get THAT image out of my brain, quick.) Still, I am pledged to give credit where credit is due.

Today Stephens’ name was under a column headlined, “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision.” It begins,

Continue reading →

The U.S. Bombing of Iran Is Not an Ethics Issue

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It’s a leadership issue.

I generally don’t want to wander into policy debates unless there is a clear ethical component. Competence. Honesty. Responsibility. Results, as we discuss here so often, are usually the result of moral luck. All we can do, in situations involving high-level leadership decision-making, is evaluate what the basis of the decision was, and the process under which it was made. What happens after that is moral luck, chaos, essentially. As an ethicist, I try not to base my analysis on whether I agree with the decision or not from a policy or pragmatic perspective.

In military and foreign policy decisions, the absence of clear ethical standards are especially rife. There are some who regard any military action at all except in reaction to an attack on the U.S. as unethical, and sometimes not even in that circumstance. They are absolutists: war is wrong, killing is wrong, “think of the children,” and that’s all there is to it. Such people are useless except as necessary reminders that Sherman was right.

President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities is a matter of leadership, not ethics. Leaders lead, and are willing to make tough, often risky, decisions. The U.S. Presidency requires leadership, and strong leadership is not only preferable to weak leadership, it is what the majority of Americans has traditionally preferred. The Constitution clearly shows the Founders’ preference for a strong executive branch, particularly in the area of national defense. Yesterday, the President took advantage of the Constitution’s general approval of executive leadership when national security is involved.

Continue reading →

“What’s Going On Here?” I Have No Idea, and Neither Do You

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Two maybe major news stories have broken on conservative news media this week, but neither of them appear in the nation’s most prestigious newspapers this morning. I haven’t checked, but I’m reasonably certain that I won’t hear about those “BREAKING!” developments on NPR, PBS, CNN or MSNBC either.

Why would that be? Well, one explanation is that the stories are fake news. The other…Come on now, you should be able to figure it out by now!

In Story One, FBI Director Kash Patel turned over to Congress a declassified intelligence report involving a Chinese plot to mass-produce fake U.S. driver’s licenses to facilitate Chinese nationals in the U.S. obtaining fake mail-in ballots that would be cast for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The intelligence reports from August 2020 weren’t corroborated or fully investigated, but were taken back from intelligence agencies by the FBI at about the time that then-FBI Director Chris Wray testified there were no known plots of foreign interference ahead of the 2020 election. Some sources report that the FBI tried to destroy the evidence. The investigation was stopped even though U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted nearly 20,000 fake licenses, a possible corroboration of the buried report.

Continue reading →

Case Study: How Broadcast News and “Experts” Deceive the Public

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

As I have mentioned here before, I usually sample broadcast news by simultaneously watching CNN, Fox News, BBC America and MSNBC on the DirecTV “News Mix” channel, never staying with any of them for more than a few minutes because they all are unethical, biased, and untrustworthy and it drives me CRAZY!

Just now, I saw Wolf Blitzer (has anyone ever parlayed a cool name into such a long, undeserved TV career despite persistent mediocrity?) interview an “expert,” clearly another Trump-hating law professor. She opined that President Trump “might” be violating the Constitution ( “KING! FASCIST!”) by directing ICE to again focus their illegal immigrant raids on restaurants, farms and hotels. It’s a likely violation of the Tenth Amendment, she opined. “The Tenth Amendment reserves the policing power to the states.”

That’s funny, I thought. I don’t recall the Tenth Amendment saying anything about police, and indeed, it doesn’t. What it says is that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Like the Second Amendment, the Tenth was not the Founders’ most shining hour in terms of clear, unambiguous language. The Tenth continues to be a rich and never-ending target for the Supreme Court controversies, but SCOTUS did rule, in McCulloch v. Maryland, that there is a principle of implied powers where the federal government (Congress or the Executive) can exercise powers not explicitly listed in the Constitution if they are necessary and proper for carrying out its enumerated powers. Obviously the ability to enforce federal law would fall under that category, but okay ICE foes, take your best shot and see what SCOTUS says.

However, what the “expert” implied was that the Tenth explicitly included policing as one of the powers reserved to the state. Wolf, either as a deceitful accomplice or as an ignorant boob (I’m guessing the latter to give him the benefit of the doubt) just sat there nodding. Thus any viewer who wasn’t moved to check the Bill of Rights (I’m guessing that’s 99.9% of CNN’s audience) was left with the false impression that President Trump is being a dictator again by directing a Federal Agency.

Let’s see: fake news, misinformation, partisan spin, deceit. Take your pick. No wonder the Axis was able to gull thousands of citizens into wasting time on “No Kings” day.

Look! The House’s Dumbest Member Filed a Smart Bill On Judicial Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Rep. Hank Johnson, the Democratic Congressman who famously expressed the fear that “Guam might tip over” because of all the U.S. military equipment on the island, filed his ‘‘Transparency and Responsibility in Upholding Standards in the Judiciary Act’ (or the ‘‘TRUST Act’’ to its friends). The bill aims to deal with a serious ethics problem in the judiciary, one of many.

Under the Judicial Conduct & Disability Act, the law that supposedly governs judicial discipline, investigations into misconduct are terminated when a judge retires, resigns, or dies. How convenient! The mere departure of a judge from the bench is enough to halt any inquiry into alleged abuses of their office, misconduct, even crimes. This system shields bad judges from accountability

With life tenure and unchecked power, judges have lots of opportunity to engage in outrageous behavior, and many do. Berating and demeaning (or sexually harassing) law clerks, forcing them to watch pornography, firing clerks on a whim, and judged concealing serious cognitive decline are among the offenses that have resulted in zero consequences for judges in recent years: all a judge needs to do to keep his or her pension and reputation is to quit. If they are not senile, they can often nab high-paying jobs with law firms.

Continue reading →

Kudos To The New York Times For Finally Eliminating All Doubt That It Is a Democratic Party Propaganda Organ And Not a “Newspaper”…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This would be an Unethical Quote of the Week if there were any reason to believe what the New York Times says about President Trump, and if the Times didn’t make equally unethical quotes every day.

Here’s part of the Times editorial titled, “Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses”:

“…The political right, including President Trump, deserves substantial blame. Yes, he has led a government crackdown against antisemitism on college campuses, and that crackdown has caused colleges to become more serious about addressing the problem. But Mr. Trump has also used the subject as a pretext for his broader campaign against the independence of higher education. The combination risks turning antisemitism into yet another partisan issue, encouraging opponents to dismiss it as one of his invented realities.

Even worse, Mr. Trump had made it normal to hate, by using bigoted language about a range of groups, including immigrants, women and trans Americans. Since he entered the political scene, attacks on Asian, Black, Latino and L.G.B.T. Americans have spiked, according to the F.B.I. While he claims to deplore antisemitism, his actions tell a different story. He has dined with a Holocaust denier, and his Republican Party has nominated antisemites for elected offices, including governor of North Carolina. Mr. Trump himself praised as “very fine people” the attendees of a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Va., that featured the chant “Jews will not replace us.” On Jan. 6, 2021, at least one rioter attacking the Capitol screamed that he was looking for “the big Jew,” referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Mr. Schumer has said.”

It gives me great pleasure to know that Times boot-licker ” “A Friend,” the long-banned EA commenter who has set a nearly unbreakable record for unauthorized posts here, most bleating about how unfair I am to the noble Times, will be desperately searching for a way to rationalize that verbal offal without having to admit, “Okay, the Times editors are partisan hacks.”

Continue reading →

The Proud Illegal Immigrant Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I almost made this an Ethics Quiz, but I ultimately decided that I know the correct answer. The right course of action is clear. Derek Guy, above, and all long-time illegal immigrants who come forward to say, “I’m illegal and I’m proud” are ficks. And their candor should place them at the top of the deportation list.

I pay no attention to fashion, fashion mavens, and fashion world news, and I don’t have a lot of respect for those who do. So I was blissfully unaware of Derek Guy’s existence [“Derek Guy, also known as Menswear Guy, who is well-known on on X for his men’s fashion tips and analysis…”] and that he has been thrilling the Trump Deranged for his mockery of J.D. Vance’s and the President’s attire. Nevertheless, the completely trivial celebrity posted this screed on Twitter/X that has “gone viral,” as they say…Don’t worry, it ends eventually:

Well.

The thing is full of every rationalization, straw man, appeal to emotion and unethical spin that you and I have ever seen regarding open borders and illegal immigration. In no particular order…

Continue reading →

What Is the Ethical Significance of ABC Firing Terry Moran?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

ABC News today essentially fired senior correspondent Terry Moran after he wrote derisive comments on social media, as Ethics Alarms discussed here. Moran had already been suspended for making gratuitous personal comments about the character of Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, and President Trump, using the term “world-class hater” to describe each.

Moran had worked at ABC News for 28 years, and his contract was up for renewal.

“We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran, and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision to not renew,” the network said in a statement. “At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”

Riiiight.

Continue reading →

Update on “The LA Pro-Open Borders Riots Ethics Train Wreck”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

This morning, CNN pinged me with an alert that read, “CNN analysis: Trump’s deployment of the National Guard is a warning to other cities opposing his migrant policies.” You know, just like arresting and locking up serial killers is a warning to others who want to murder people, and giving tickets to speeders is a warning to irresponsible drivers who like to speed. Of course, CNN uses the deceitful cover-word “migrant” to avoid reminding dim-wit readers that these are law-breakers.

The news is that both California Governor Newsom and LA’s incompetent mayor showed that they were supportive of the rioting just as they have been supportive of illegal immigrants, and since the violence is aimed at blocking ICE from doing its job, the situation demanded Presidential action. In short, the riots are not about Trump, but the direct result of the refusal of the previous administration (whoever was in charge of it) to enforce the law (unless it was enforced against perceived political foes).

Meanwhile, in the hopes that I can make “A Friend” [see comments to this post]choke on his shredded wheat, here is how the New York Times is rolling out the Axis propaganda:

Continue reading →