And you thought “Better Call Saul” was disillusioning…
The Orlando Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation found evidence that Gillespie “would initiate women he represented on criminal charges into prostitution or exchange sex acts for legal fees.” A former law firm employee tipped off the agency, explaining that she had helped Gillespie recruit women and girls into sex trafficking. Continue reading →
From the Preamble: “Intrinsic to all sections of this Code of Judicial Conduct are the precepts that judges, individually and collectively, must respect and honor the judicial office as a public trust and strive to enhance and maintain confidence in our legal system.”
“A judge shall comply with the law and should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
“Canon 2: Avoiding Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in All of the Judge’s Activities”
“A judge shall not allow any relationship to influence judicial conduct or judgment. A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.”
“A judge shall perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice.”
“A judge shall not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or conduct manifest bias or prejudice, including but not limited to bias or prejudice based upon race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, and shall not knowingly permit staff, court officials and others subject to the judge’s direction and control to do so.”
A judge shall conduct all of the judge’s extra- judicial activities so that they do not cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge..
“A judge may participate in civic and charitable activities that do not reflect adversely upon the judge’s impartiality or interfere with the performance of judicial duties.”
OK, now you’ve read that, as presumably all Texas judges have. Now, if you were Bexar judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, would your judicial ethics alarms start sounding as you considered displaying a rainbow flag in your courtroom, using a rainbow pen, a rainbow mouse pad and a robe with a rainbow-style strip of Mexican blanket design? Continue reading →
I was talking with a colleague about the most relevant movie to watch these days. As readers here know, the outbreak of elected officials letting power go to their heads led me to designate Woody Allen’s “Bananas” for that honor. (And yesterday I posited the relevance of “Airplane!” )Still, it’s hard to argue against my friend’s position that the right choice is “Groundhog Day.”
In the interest of sanity, I reject “Contagion” and especially “World War Z” or “Quaranteen.” (All good movies though.)
1. Right now it’s turned face to the wall, but today I’m putting a sheet over it…My college diploma becomes more embarrassing by the day. Harvard University has accepted nearly $9 million from the pandemic relief package. With a 40 billion dollar dollar endowment, Harvard is better off financially than the U.S. government.
[Notice of Correction:I wrote “million” instead of billion in the original post. Really stupid typo. I apologize.]
There is no excuse for the school accepting the money. It is getting widely criticized for taking it, and ought to be.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education said ithat Education Secretary Betsy DeVos “shares the concern that sending millions to schools with significant endowments is a poor use of taxpayer money. In her letter to college and university presidents, Secretary DeVos asked them to determine if their institutions actually need the money and, if not, to send unneeded CARES Act funds to schools in need in their state or region.”
In an episode of Spokesman vs Spokesman, a mouthpiece for the Ivy said, disingenuously,
“By federal formula laid out in the CARES Act, Harvard was allocated $8.6 million, with 50% of those funds to be reserved for grants to students. Harvard is actually allocating 100% of the funds to financial assistance for students to meet their urgent needs in the face of this pandemic. Harvard will allocate the funds based on student financial need. This financial assistance will be on top of the significant support the University has already provided to students — including assistance with travel, providing direct aid for living expenses to those with need, and supporting students’ transition to online education.”
This is an exercise in deflection and rationalization. The only issue is that Harvard has plenty of money to do all of this without any hand-outs from the government, and many other institutions need the money more, which is an easy calculation because no institution needs money less than Harvard does. Continue reading →
The U.S. Supreme Court today over-ruled, 6-3, its really bad 1972 holding that rights, like the 6th amendment fair trial requirements, were not necessarily incorporated into the states by the 14th. Oregon and Louisiana, astoundingly, did not require unanimous jury verdicts of guilty in criminal cases, allowing 10-2 convictions. In Louisiana, the anomaly was an 1898 relic of the Jim Crow era; I have no idea what Oregon’s excuse was.
Louisianans voted in 2018 to do away with the practice, passing an amendment to the state constitution requiring unanimous verdicts going forward. But up to a hundred prisoners, like Evangelisto Ramos who was serving a life prison sentence after being convicted of murder in a 10-2 jury vote, will get new trials because their convictions came under the old, unconstitutional law and their appeals aren’t exhausted. The case is Louisiana v. Ramos.
Two aspects of the decision are especially noteworthy, other than the fact that its seems obviously correct. Continue reading →
1. It’s come to this…Commenter Matthew B sent me the link to an article on Facebook, and when I clicked on, it this came up…
Yes, Facebook warned me that Ethics Alarms was a “malicious site.” I especially like the part where Facebook says to contact them if I think they were in error, but also say that they won’t do anything if it is.
2. Meanwhile, regarding my alma materwhose diploma I already have turned to the wall, here is an illustration in the latest Harvard alumni magazine for an article about how bad home schooling is:
Yes, “Arithmetic” is spelled wrong.
I bet Harvard Magazine tries to claim that this was intentional by the artist, to highlight the inadequacy of a home schooling education. That will be, of course, a lie, but there won’t be any way to prove it. You know, when you are America’s oldest and most prestigious university, you really can’t afford to be that careless, especially to your alums, and particularly when your administration has embarrassed itself repeatedly on the last decade. Continue reading →
Chapter I: In Georgia, two Carrollton High School seniors made a truly cretinous video. Filmed in a bathroom, the male and female students students pretend to be doing a cooking show as they pour cups of water into the sink.
Showing their faces in the mirror, she announces, “Hey, today we’re making…”as the camera aims at the sink where there’s a piece of notebook paper with “niggers” written on it. The male student intones the word. The male student lifts cups of water and pours each one into the sink, over the paper. Under each cup is a piece of paper with the name of an “ingredient” written on it, which the young woman reads.
“First we have ‘black,'” she says. He then pours the cup of water into the sink over the paper with the slur. “Next we have, ‘Don’t have a dad!'” Other ingredients include “eating watermelon and fried chicken” and “rob people.”
“Specifically whites,” guy adds as he refills the “robs people” cup over and over using the sink tap. One cup labeled “make good choices” is empty. The couple feign surprise over the cup having nothing in it.
Once their opus was complete, the couple was so proud that they posted it online.
Why this is discouraging: In what alternate universe would anyone from the age of seven up think something like that would be acceptable to publicize? What kind of polluted culture is being fostered in Carollton? What are they teaching in the schools?
Even passing on that, how could anyone be so stupid as to think posting an overly racist video wouldn’t have serious consequences? Again, who is teaching critical thinking in that community? What have the parents been doing for 17 years, getting stoned? Continue reading →
Frankly, at this point, I can’t tell the difference.
1. ARRGH! Trump Calls For An Insurrection! I must say, having a President who is 12 does create problems. The President’s juvenile “Liberate Michigan!” tweet naturally had the “resistance” in an uproar; the Washington Post even dug up a lawyer from the Obama administration who was willing to write an op-ed seriously arguing that he had advocated the overthrow of the government. Oh, great, I can’t wait for Adam Schiff to try to impeach him for a tweet that had the gravitas of graffiti.
If one concedes that the President should tweet at all—and since he refuses to use any filters whatsoever, I don’t concede that; I doubt that anyone who wants to maintain credibility and trust should tweet—then urging the states to start nudging the economy back into operation is a legitimate objective, and so is opposing outrageous meat-axe over-reach by governors. mayors and police that abuse civil rights—like banning the sale of seeds, or being alone in a car. However, as I am sick of saying, the President’s mode of communication does not include nuance, which makes tweets like yesterday’s irresponsible and incompetent
2. “ARRGH! I’ve been infected!” When the going gets tough, the tough get scamming. In Arcata, California, a fake on-line ordering webpage named “Order Hero” copied web pages from local restaurants including phone numbers, addresses and actual menu items. Customers accessed the website through Google, then provided credit card information to order food. When the victims arrived at the restaurant to pick up their order, they learned no such on-line ordering services existed. Continue reading →
“How the Supreme Court Curtailed The Right To Vote For Thousands” is the New York Times headline about the Wisconsin elections fiasco this month. The headline is misleading and inflammatory, insinuating that the Court majority aided and abetted a Republican effort to suppress votes. In fact, the majority, headed by Justice Kavanaugh, followed the law. I don’t know if Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasanti, who wrote the story, actually read the opinion they are criticizing. I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
Luckily, Professor Turley was irritated about this, and explained why the narrative was garbage ten days ago. In a blog post titled, “No, The Supreme Court Did Not Just Help Rig The Wisconsin Election,” Turley wrote in part (but read it all):
…The decision of the Supreme Court to reverse the decision of a district court judge on extending the voting for the Wisconsin election this week has generated breathless headlines and comparisons to the Bush v. Gore decision in the 2000 elections. Such hyperbolic language aside, the decision was actually quite narrow and well-supported. Moreover, the dissent is chastising the majority for denying relief that the Wisconsin Democrats never requested from the District Court in their original preliminary injunction motion.
Translation: the minority, made up of Democratic appointees, were taking a partisan position based on politics, exactly what the Times reporters accused the conservative majority of doing.
The issue in Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee was not whether an election would be held this week in Wisconsin. … the Wisconsin Supreme Court blocked Gov. Tony Evers’ late executive order postponing in-person voting in Tuesday’s elections — specifically postponing the state’s presidential primary and hundreds of local elections. Evers’ took the unilateral action after he was refused his request by a special legislative session…. Evers previously admitted that “my hands are tied” in ordering a delay of the election and the legislature would have to do so. It then proceeded to refuse to do so. Evers then declared that he had the authority after all.
Got that? The Governor fist said that he didn’t have the power, then reversed himself when the legislature, which did have the power, refused to do what he and his party wanted. But as Turley points out, he was right the first time, since “his authority was transparently weak…He does not have that express unilateral authority under existing law.”
Turley goes on to say that he agrees with the governor that holding the election posed “am unnecessary risk and forces citizens to choose between minimizing their exposure and declining to participate in the election. …However, this is ultimately a question for the state legislature.” If the law says it’s the legislature and only the legislature that can postpone an election, the fact that one party really really really wants it postponed doesn’t and can’t change the law, even if that party happens to be right.
Pop quiz: List the ways the above is dishonest and deceitful.
There are some progressive agenda items that are either dishonest or so dumb they defy belief. Open borders is in that category; ignoring immigration laws by letting anyone who slips through our porous security to stay here as long as they don’t kill or rape someone is there too; so is giving these individuals drivers licenses, and rewarding their children for the parents’ lawbreaking. All the arguments for these intellectually indefensible positions are either extreme rationalizations, based on emotion over reality+ or cynical deceptions used to disguise the real objectives.
Yet however unethical the arguments for letting illegal immigrants enter our country and stay here, the position that we should give them financial aid during the pandemic crisis and resulting economic shut-down is worse.
Of course California likes the idea; there are few terrible policy idea that the Golden State doesn’t like.
Last week Governor Gavin Newsom announced he is working on a plan with the state legislature to provide economic relief for illegal immigrants in California. “Californians care deeply about undocumented residents in this state,” Newsom said.
Ooooh, they care! Let’s see if they care when the money going to people who have no justification for being here comes out of citizens’ pockets. Is “undocumented” the deceptive euphemism of choice in California? Interesting. “Migrant” is sneakier, and of course there is the media’s favorite Orwellian “immigrants” to mean “illegal immigrants.”
Yes, it’s true: I am no longer interested in being nice or diplomatic about this destructive idea and the liars, knaves and fools who support it. Continue reading →
1. Incompetent elected official of the moment, since there are so many revealing themselves lately I can’t keep up with them…it’s New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy! Asked by Fox News host Tucker Carlson if he realized the Bill of Rights prohibited his order prohibiting religious gatherings, the Democratic leader said,
“That’s above my pay grade, Tucker.I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this.”
Then he blathered on about how he consulted “experts” and religious leaders.
2. I don’t understand this story at ALL. NASCAR star Kyle Larson was competing in an iRacing event on Sunday when he lost communication with his spotter on his headset.
Larson was participating in the Monza Madness iRacing exhibition race over the weekend. Video from another competitor’s twitch stream caught Larson blurting out “nigger” across the audio channel where drivers can talk to all competitors. When a driver speaks on that channel, their name appears on each driver’s screen. In the video, Larson said: “You can’t hear me? Hey nigger…” Another driver said: “Kyle, you’re talking to everyone, bud.” “Yep, we heard that,” said another. Yet another said, “Yikes.” Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms 