I admit it: I’ve been avoiding this large, stinky elephant in the ethics room because I have nothing good to say about any side of the controversy.
It’s all very depressing. The organization I belong to consisting of just about every legal ethics teacher, lawyer and consultant in the country immediately showed (again) how Trump Deranged and biased the membership is. After the resignation letter of February 12 from then S.D.N.Y. U.S Attorney Sassoon to U.S.AG Pam Bondi refusing to carry out the DOJ’s directive that she move to dismiss the then pending corruption indictment against NYC Mayor Eric Adams (Quote: “It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment….Such an exchange…violates common sense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the [DOJ’s] Justice Manual [for federal prosecutors], and the Rules of Professional Conduct.”), the listserv was immediately awash with comments like this one: “Once the rule of law cease, so does democracy. A client has the right to instruct an attorney; the attorney may seek to be relieved if the client’s directive is offensive. But what do we do when a “client”, or anyone, seeks to end democracy?”
Riiiight: not continuing with what looked a lot like a politically-motivated prosecution of Adams by the Biden Administration threatens democracy.
David Hogg, had he not been a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a mass shooting occurred, might have grown up to be a useful, ethical, productive and emotionally healthy human being. Unfortunately, he is likely to be a lifetime victim of the shooting, for it propelled him into the career path of being a professional single-issue fanatic, America’s Greta Thunberg but on the issue of gun control rather than climate change. In an example of the chaos PTSD can wreak on the vulnerable, Hogg has been transformed into a cynical grifter by a mass-murderer’s bullets. It’s tragic, but that doesn’t mean his unethical conduct should be tolerated, much less rewarded.
Barely two weeks after his election as a Democratic National Committee official, Hogg began using DNC contact lists to solicit donations to his own political action committee, “Leaders We Deserve.” That PAC pays his salary of more than $100,000 a year, according to Federal Election Commission records. “David Hogg here: I was just elected DNC Vice Chair! This is a huge win for our movement to make the Democratic Party more reflective of our base: youthful, energetic, and ready to win,” reads one the texts he sent out to the DNC’s vast database. The texts include a link to his PAC.
Could we possibly have more irresponsible, untrustworthy, detestable broadcast journalists than we have now?
CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins supported the assassin of UnitedHealthCEO Brian Thompson in the “Twitter/X” post above, directing readers to a site set up by the shooter’s lawyer that featured a prominent link to a GoFundMe for the murderer’s defense. Luigi Mangione, who strains the use of the term “alleged” as he was caught on camera shooting the victim in the back and arrested with incriminating evidence on his person has become the darling of the sickest of the sick among progressives. Leftists ranging from Elizabeth Warren to the most unhinged of my Facebook friends have rationalized Mangione’s cowardly crime as “understandable.” “You can only push people so far. And then they start to take matters into their own hands,” slimed Warren (BOY she’s horrible!) Mangione faces charges of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism.
After the disgusting tweet attracted appropriate criticism ( “This is @CNN — pimping the GoFundMe for a left wing assassin,” tweeted Ace of Spades, completely accurately) Collins took it down–this is known as “subsequent repairs” in negligence law—and then employed manifest deceit to defend herself. “In no way did I share a fundraising link for him,” she protested.
No, she posted a link to a website that had the fundraising link displayed at the top of its page. Her claim that the fact the website existed was “newsworthy” does not explain or excuse her promoting it on social media. Jorge Bonilla on Newsbusters rightly asks what the reaction would have been to a Fox News journalist who posted the address of a site that linked to a GoFundMe for J-6 rioters.
The Trump White House has opened the long overdue debate over whether openly biased, partisan, unprofessional and untrustworthy journalists should continue to have press credentials at White House briefings. I would expand that discussion to whether people like Kaitlan Collins should be recognized as journalists at all.
This Comment of the Day from the stellar Harkins household—this is from Ryan Harkins–was just posted three days ago and it seems like eons. It responds to another one of my arguments that sufficient demonstrations of stupidity by lawyers even outside the practice of law should be grounds for disbarment—a suspension isn’t enough, because such a lawyer will not become smarter after a professional “time out.” I think the first time I suggested this reform to legal discipline was when “The View’s” token lawyer, racist Sunny Hostin, suggested that eclipses and earthquakes were caused by climate change. It upsets me just think about the fact that this idiot has a law degree.
A basic and important rule of gun safety, perhaps the preeminent rule, is that you should never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot. Playing around with a gun in the fashion that Medina did shows a disturbing lack of gun safety in particular, but of the principal normalization of deviance in particular.
To delve into a little bit of brain science, in following the cognitive-emotive-behavioral model, we start with a desire. Perhaps in Medina’s case, it was simply to have fun. But how would he possibly conclude pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun is fun?
There are a large variety of ways we can try to satisfy our desires. In the case of hunger, we could seek satiation from a myriad of venues. In the case seeking stress relief, we could seek out a movie, a game, exercise, or any of a host of other options. But there are options we can choose from that are unhealthy, dangerous, or even illegal. When presented with all these options, our brains experience a byplay between thought and feeling. Does this option satisfy? The emotions clamor for a particular avenue, and cognition weighs the risks and benefits. If I eat a salad, I might not feel satiated, but if I eat a Hardee’s Monster Burger, I’ll be consuming far too many calories. But the salad may not be very tasty, and the Monster Burger is delicious. Whichever way I choose, my brain will record the success or failure of the endeavor, and the next time I am hungry, I will have a precedent to fall back on. They byplay between cognition and emotion in subsequent encounters proceeds much more quickly. The Monster Burger was indeed delicious, filled me up, and I didn’t seem to suffer any negative consequences. So the next time, my brain is patterned to lean toward the Monster Burger because of the positive experience.
Some of our elected leaders would like people to believe that the 2+ million workers are doing yeoman’s work keeping our nation secure and running like a well-oiled machine. They will suggest to you that only federal workers have access to sensitive data like your personal information. That is misrepresenting who can get access to your data.
The government uses numerous private contractors to perform all types of specialized services. Essential IT work such as systems engineering, data security, software development and other user support functions are handled by an array of prime contractors and their sub-contractors. To do this work, the contractor must be able to access private data. While some aspects do not require being able to sort through individual records others do. Software engineers must have the ability to parse records to create templates and test and debug systems.
Below are a few of these contractors whose employees are not federal employees. The point I am making is not that these organizations should not be in a position to access private records. The point is that this access happens every day in agencies managed by the Executive branch, whichoversees the agencies that issue contracts to carry out mission-critical services.
To hear Congress bemoan the fact that the DOGE team is somehow unlawful or illegitimate because they are not federal employees is laughable, and it is also misinformation. The person responsible for ensuring that the agencies are carrying out the policies laid out by the President through his Cabinet Secretaries is ultimately the President. As Harry Truman said, “The Buck Stops Here,” “here” being The White House.
[From your host: This is an epic post about something I know absolutely nothing about, except that I received the calls and marketing materials Wall Phone is writing about—JM]
***
“Well, not that. Actually, I have been trying to reach you about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, TCPA for short. If you’re reading this, someone connected to your company, someone who cares about your company, and someone who cares about their career and livelihood, has been told that your company is violating at least one provision of this Federal law.
“If you don’t listen to them, it would be prudent of them to begin looking for another job. They shouldn’t want to go down with your ship. If they need to maintain some kind of licensure, they also don’t want to lose their credentials for whatever wrongdoing was going on that got them in contact with the person who gave them this webpage.“
Have you ever wondered why those auto warranty calls stopped? It’s because the government has fined the people connected to that advertising campaign more than six and a half million dollars. The fine came with a lifetime ban on any form of telemarketing. What would happen to your company if this kind of fine and ban were to be imposed on you?
“But we don’t make outgoing calls, let alone robocalls!”
And yet you have appeared to have done so. What you thought was a prospective customer told you about this page because they want you to stop harassing them.
“But our company is not harassing them!”
And yet you have appeared to be doing so. And worse, much worse, you appear to have been doing this for years.
“Years?”
Yes.
“But we only recently adopted this marketing partner/strategy!”
And you had better stop. Yesterday. Hopefully your contract has some sort of an enforceable indemnification clause that MIGHT protect you, but it probably won’t. If your marketing agreement does have such a clause, its actual purpose is to pacify any possible reservations at the signing stage of your marketing agreement with them, not the actual true purpose of these contractual things–to avoid the creation of moral hazard.
“Moral hazard” is explained below if you’re not familiar with that term. It’s high time you were.
The reason this indemnification clause on your contract won’t help you is the telemarketing company will be gone when the time comes that you’ll need it. They are betting that by the time it takes for you to figure out that you need to use indemnification, it will be too late. This page is here to help you figure it out sooner, help you recover as much as possible, and make their scam less profitable.
You need to—as soon as possible!—FIRST ask your bank how many of the past payments you made to your marketing partner that you can reverse, THEN ask the marketing partner for refunds. If you think you handling this business with them politely will work, then you have already lost. They will transfer all funds out of their accounts. They will disappear. You’ll lose more than if you IMMEDIATELY reverse as many payments as you can, because they’re not operating in good faith and they’re not intending to refund anything.
You are the victim of a scam. Victim of a crime. It’s literally an organized crime syndicate you are dealing with and they hav done this before, perhaps dozens of times before. They’re counting on you being polite and patient so they have time to disappear, whitewash a new business name on their operations, then start over. They don’t care that they destroyed your agency or business, they have thousands of other prospects they can milk this scam on. They have been doing this for years.
I have spent far too much time over the course of my life reading and thinking about the Lincoln assassination and the various conspiracy theories surrounding it. It was not until 1983 that I found a single source that attempted to explain why there is so much uncertainty surrounding Honest Abe’s death in a book I bought at The Smithsonian, “The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.” There has always been trivia game of collecting the “amazing” parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the death of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1962, but one parallel is undeniable: government incompetence, inefficiency, bureaucratic stubbornness and deliberate defiance of law created the fertile soil for conspiracy theories to thrive regarding both events.
In part propelled by his “Odd Couple” ally Robert Kennedy, Jr., President Trump has ordered all of the information, papers and materials related to JFK’s assassination released: after all, it’s only been 61 years since Lee Harvey Oswald sent a bullet through his brain. That release still hasn’t happened, and if past experience holds, it won’t this time either.
The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to the Warren Commission or a later board charged with determining once and for all why Kennedy was killed and who was responsible. The records were discovered among the 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found when they undertook to obey Trump’s order, which I’m sure some of my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends will claim is illegal. (If Trump does it and it undermines progressive power, it is illegal by definition.)
As regular EA readers know, individuals, especially celebrities and elected officials, are found guilty here of resorting to the Pazuzu Excuse, named after that potty-mouthed demon who possessed poor Regan (Linda Blair) in “The Exorcist,” when they attempt to avoid accountability for their own words or behavior by saying, usually in a groveled apology, “That wasn’t the real me! I’ve never believed in saying/doing such horrible things!”
The incident of interest occurred on November 21, 2024. As he participated in a tour of the relic of St. Jude’s at the Queen of Apostles parish in Joliet, Illinois, Catholic priest Carlos Martins, the co-host of “The Exorcist Files” podcast, began behaving…. strangely. Father Martins “grabbed the hair” of a 13-year-old girl, placed it “in his mouth” and used it in a “flossing motion,” according to the criminal complaint. Then he sat behind the teenager girl and started “growling.” That’s Father Martins with his friends above.
His conduct prompted the immediate suspension of the tour, and police were summoned. The Diocese of Joliet staff confronted the priest and told him that “he must depart from our parish and out of our Diocese.” “In an abundance of caution, the veneration of the relic and evening mass were canceled,” the diocese said in a release.
That seems prudent.
Martins was processed by the Joliet Police Department, arraigned, and released awaiting his pretrial hearing. The Companions of the Cross, the religious order that Treasures of the Church is affiliates with, said Martins has agreed to withdraw from his pastoral duties in the wake of the allegations against him.
“He remains entitled to due process, as is any accused,” the church said. “The Companions of the Cross look upon allegations of misconduct as an urgent matter that requires serious attention. We pray for all those who are affected by this painful situation.” The Archdiocese of Detroit now lists Father Martins as “Ministry revoked.”
To be fair, Martins’ associates said that he has always been obsessive about flossing. All right, I made that part up. Sorry.
The attorney representing Martins, Marcella Burke, denied the accusations against her client, telling reporters, “Your mothers suck cocks in Hell!” and adding, “Why you do this to me, Dimmy?”
Okay, I was just kidding about those quotes too. What she really said was,”He did not put anyone’s hair in his mouth, let alone ‘floss’ with a student’s hair or ‘growl’ among other completely false and repulsive accusations. This remains a takedown of a good priest and an attempted shakedown of the Church.”
What’s going on here? I have absolutely no idea. I will opine that it must violate some code of ethics for an exorcist to growl at a teenage girl in church.
That idiocy was posted by a lawyer, former law dean and law professor. How is this possible?
It is like saying that if you believe the French Revolution was a human and political disaster, you should have to explain why you object to each section of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” It is like saying that it’s a cop-out to claim that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free” is a hateful call for the eradication of Israel, unless you explain: “What’s so bad about starting at the river? What’s so wrong about going to the seashore? What do you find so objectionable about freedom?”
Whoever thinks this meme is a devastating rebuttal of opposition to DEI as a social, employment, and organizational policy doesn’t comprehend a foundational principle of language, which is that words in particular contexts and combinations often mean something entirely different from what the words mean individually and in a vacuum.
Sure, diversity can be nice, but not as an enforced value, and not in every context. I don’t see anyone advocating more racially diverse NBA teams, for example. Most of the time diversity isn’t even an ethical value, just a feature that may or may not have benefits to a group. Equity, the only concept of the three that I see on my wall as one of the ethical values, means fairness. But fairness is extremely subjective, making it one of the more tricky ethical values, and when it is used as it is used in the context of the DEI Division of The Great Stupid, what it means is “equal outcomes for all.” That is Marxist Cloud Cuckoo Land garbage. Life doesn’t, shouldn’t and can’t work like that. There are winners and losers; enterprise, talent, diligence, intelligence and skill matters, as well as luck. Trying to fight that fact of existence is a fool’s errand, or, more often a con artist’s scam.
“Inclusion” is the weird one: what it means in context of the DEI movement is that all exclusion is malign and sinister, the result of deliberate discrimination on the basis of invidious factors. False.
Public Service Announcement:Before we start, I want to establish and Ethics Alarms rule: the word is baloney, not “bologna” when I’m around. I’ve never understood why that archaic spelling has persisted.
Oquavious Chandler, a 29-year-old convicted felon, was arrested last week after his stepfather reported him for assault. The alleges victim told police that he had removed a PlayStation system from Chandler’s bedroom because he “was being too loud.” Chandler shouted at his stepfather and “threw a baloney sandwich at him, which ultimately hit him in the center of his chest.”
Ethics Alarms 