Law & Law Enforcement

Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/21/2019, Because Nobody Reads The Blog On Saturdays After Noon

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Have yourself a Merry Little Four Days Before Christmas!

1.  Miss America Ethics. Wait…the winning Miss America’s “talent” was performing a chemistry experiment? I read that, but Ann Althouse picked up on the absurdity:

Now, I think pouring those chemicals into flasks could be done by just about anyone. It’s not like playing the piano, singing, and dancing — all of which take at least some talent and a lot of practice, but the woman in question, Camille Schrier “has two undergraduate science degrees and is studying a doctorate in pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University.” She made a stage show out of real achievements that just happened not to be in the performing arts.

That wasn’t the main ethics problem with the whateveritis, though. The problem is that this thing is an archaic beauty contest pretending to be something else, just like the winner’s “talent” wasn’t a talent. Did you see (if you were foolish enough to watch it) any plain, overweight or unattractive women up on the stage? I didn’t. Does that mean there aren’t any smart, talented women who don’t look like they belong in a Victoria’s Secret special in feathers and wings? Gee, I guess so.

2. There has been a lot of comment here and elsewhere about this weird story…the man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing an LGBTQ flag hanging at the United Church of Christ in Ames near Des Moines, and set it on fire outside a strip club. Much of the commentary involves finding it inconsistent that burning an American flag is considered free speech, but this guy burned an LGBTQ flag, so he was sent to jail.

Weeelll, that’s not quite accurate. Flag-burners bring their own flags; this guy stole one. Flag burners do their conflagration in demonstrations; you can’t just burn stuff in public. Prosecuting this as a hate crime, however, nicely shows what’s wrong with hate crime laws. And 15 years is indefensible. I assume that sentence won’t stand. This isn’t a freedom of speech case, though. Continue reading →

In The Baseball Dead Of Winter, An Old And Unresolved Ethics Problem Glows Bright

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

From left to right: MLB, players, and the union.

…as Major League Baseball ignores it, as usual.

Ethics alarms test: Scott Boras, lawyer and player agent, represents two Washington Nationals free agents in their prime. One is Stephen Strasburg, one of the best and most sought after starting pitchers in the game. He was seeking, on the advice of his agent, a long-term contract of more than 30 million dollars a year. Another is Anthony Rendon, third-baseman, and the Nationals’ best player in 2019, their championship year. He also is seeking a salary of at least 30 million per year, over many years. He is a fan favorite in Washington, D.C., and obviously enjoys playing there. Contrary to popular belief, however, Major League baseball teams do not have endless supplies of money, though they have a lot. Mike Rizzo, Washington Nationals general manager, told the sports media and Washington fans that the team could not afford to sign both Strasberg and Rendon at the rates they were demanding and the marketplace dictated.

Is there a problem, and if so, what is it?

You shouldn’t need much time to answer, but then again, thousands of baseball sportswriters and the entire baseball establishment havn’t figured this out over many years, do I’ll give you a “Jeopardy!” period of reflection:

OK, contestants,what’s your answer? Continue reading →

Friday Ethics Sigh, 12/20/2019: Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Rowling, And An Idiot.

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Tomorrow the dreaded tree lights hanging begins….

I’m not a big Sinatra fan, but I’ve always thought it a shame that the two Christmas songs he “owns” are both mediocre: “The Christmas Waltz” and “Mistletoe and Holly (which he co-wrote.) Frank sang the whole canon, of course, and well, but still, Judy Garland owns “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” Nat King Cole owns “The Christmas Song” (even though Mel Torme wrote it), Bing has “White Christmas” (and others,), Gene Autry has “Rudolph…” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” even after Bruce Springstein stole “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” away from him, but Ol’ Blue Eyes is second or third best to lesser singers on the really great songs, leaving him with those two wan ditties to call his own. It’s unfair.

1. The social media mobs are after J.K Rowling. Her offense? British Researcher Maya Forstater was fired last year by a London think tank for her “gender critical” views, including the position that “it is impossible to change sex.” Forstater filed a lawsuit earlier this year alleging discrimination, but an employment tribunal in London ruled against her this week, holding that her views were “not a philosophical belief protected” by British law but were instead “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others. It is also a slight of hand to suggest that the claimant merely does not hold the belief that trans women are women. She positively believes that they are men and will say so whenever she wishes.” The court  added that Forsater held beliefs that are “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

No, they don’t believe in freedom of speech or thought in the UK. Remind people of this when they make one of those fatuous “the U.S. is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t do X” arguments. We are special.

Harry Potter’s mom criticized that ruling and said she supported  Forstater: “Dress however you please,”  Rowling  tweeted  to her more than 14 million followers (this makes me want to hurl myself into a shredder, as I desperately try to recover the lost Ethic Alarms followers since 2016). “Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya.”

Oh, sex, gender, whatever. I know that to trans individuals the distinctions are a matter of honor, identity and self-esteem, and as far as I’m concerned, if an XY individual has changed everything but her chromosomes and wants to be regarded as, treated as and referred to as a woman, I will accommodate her in the interests of comity, kindness, and the Golden Rule. However, if someone as a matter of linguistic or biological rigor (or pedantry) wants to insist that such an individual is still technically female, that’s a legitimate, if unpopular, position.  This is a dispute about manners and definitions, not facts.

The researcher should not have been fired, and Rowling’s tweet was not “transphobic.” Continue reading →

Ethics Round-Up, 12/18/2019: The Day Before An Invasive Procedure Edition [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yuck.

Even the satisfaction of knowing that the President reads Ethics Alarms, or at least thinks like I do…wait, that came out wrong. Anyway, today I expect to be uncomfortable, hungry and distracted, so who knows what might appear here today?

You were warned.

1. The Ethics Quote of the Day comes from ex-Marine and TV talk show host Montel Williams (who was very nice to me when I was on his show), on the “scandal” of some cadets flashing the dreaded “OK” sign during the Army-Navy Game:

 

“Both West Point and Annapolis are investigating, and it strikes me as defamatory that some in the media have branded these young people as racists without a shred of evidence. I understand that a handful of racists (perhaps living in their parents’ basements) attempted to co-opt the ‘OK’ sign as a symbol of white power … but that is not evidence that these kids were motivated by racial animus. We owe these young people, who had the courage to sign up to be part of the 1% who defend this democracy, better than this,”

I would say that we owe them better than even investigating such trivia. A ambiguous gestures are ambiguous, and no student, in a military academy or anywhere else  should have to defend or explain them. The students are entitled to the benefit of the doubt.  As with the “It’s OK to be White,” flyers, the rational, responsible approach by administrators is to ignore them, rather than to make a scandal out of nothing.

When will we see the first “It’s OK to make the OK sign” flyers? Heck, I may put some up myself…

2. Nah, there’s no progressive “war on Christmas,’ and there’s no mainstream media bias, either. And CNN’s Brian Stelter isn’t the most incompetent and absurd “media critic” since the term was coined! Imagine: Stelter asked on Twitter,

“Justice Neil Gorsuch is on “Fox & Friends” right now. The Q: How is it appropriate for a Supreme Court justice to try to goose sales of his three-month-old book by chatting on one of the most partisan shows on TV?”

More “Q’s”: Would it be appropriate for Gorsuch to chat on another network, like, say, CNN? Would “wtachdog” Stelter bitch about that? What does the level of partisanship of a show have to do with whether a Supreme Court Justice should appear there? Is there any rule or precedent holding that it is unethical for a sitting Justice to promote a book? (I’ll answer that one: no.)

Stelter’s whining wasn’t close to the most contrived objection to Gorsuch’s visit to the Fox and Friends couch, though. This was: Continue reading →

Impeachment Ethics Update, Holiday Edition, Part Two: The President’s Letter

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

The President’s epic and historic letter to Speaker Pelosi on the eve of the vote to impeach him is nothing if not audacious and to someone who has been making many of the same points the President’s letter does, satisfying. I bet Bill Clinton wishes he had thought of it, except that he had a problem Trump does not: Clinton had in fact committed felonies by lying under oath, something a President must not do. (As I said at the time, without ever hearing a satisfactory rebuttal, if a lawyer would be disbarred for such conduct, as Clinton essentially was—he was forced to quit the Arkansas bar before he was fired from it—how can a President be held to a lower standard?).As President Trump’s letter correctly states, “The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever.”

Well, they are recognizable under some bad and dangerous Constitutional theories, many of which have advocates in the House and among the “resistance” punditry. For example, even now, prominent Democratic House leader Maxine  Waters admits that she has no facts to back up her conviction that the President had a deal with Putin, she’s just sure he did. Waters said she was “ready to talk about” impeachment in February 2017, three weeks after Trump was sworn into office.Her theory later became that an opposing party House majority could impeach a President at will, and didn’t need any reasons other than as assertion that he was “unfit.”

That appears to be what Nancy Pelosi allowed her team to settle on, lacking anything better.

Naturally, the letter has prompted the Democratic Party/”resistance”/mainstream media coup team (what Ethics Alarms calls “The Axis of Unethical Conduct,” or AUC) to have a collective head-explosion orgy. The mainstream print media would not even report on the letter  fairly, in most cases not giving readers the chance to make their own assessment and publishing it with “factchecks” attached, many if not most of which were just partisan spin as rebuttals. For example, in the New York Times version, the section I quoted above was linked to this: “The articles charge Mr. Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But an impeachable offense does not have to be a specific crime.” Well…

  • That’s an opinion, not fact. Every previous impeachment has involved a specific crime.
  • As Prof. Dershowitz pointed out, the “obstruction of Congress” referred to in the Articles of Impeachment  cannot be called misconduct, since the Supreme Court has deemed the President’s power in this regard an open question until they rule on it—next June.
  • As Jonathan Turley (and Trump) pointed out, “abuse of power” is too subjective a standard to use as an excuse for impeachment.

Characteristically, as we have seen the past three years, the attacks on the letter have focused on style at least as much as substance. (On substance, however, the letter is difficult to rebut.)

On yesterday’s CNN Newsroom,  the spectacularly hypocritical John Avlon (who once pretended to lead a “no labels” movement as a neutral non-partisan) claimed  that the President’s letter  would cause Republican Senators to raise questions about his “mental state.”  This is rich: Impeachment Plan S is blowing up in Democrats’ faces, so Avlon pivots to good old, evergreen, Plan E : ”Trump is mentally ill so this should trigger the 25th Amendment.”

Yeah, boy, putting out that letter laying out exactly what the impeachment is in language anyone can understand was crazy.

Avlon’s foolishness does raise a question: did the President really write the letter himself? I doubt it. I think someone–Steven Miller has been mentioned as a prime suspect—did an excellent job channeling the President’s unique style and tone, but the letter is too well constructed to be Trump’s alone. Hey, John: if someone else authors a letter for the President that he signs, and you think it’s an “unhinged rant”  and “the definition of not presidential,” does that mean he’s crazy? Can you delegate crazy?

As with so much that has gone before, the President has triggered his foes into broadcasting their own derangement.

A typical, measured, lawyer-checked, restrained Presidential letter would be far less effective. Ann Althouse figured this out, writing, Continue reading →

Impeachment Ethics Update, Holiday Edition, Part One

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

1. A recent exchange in a Facebook debate: I challenged someone who said that the President had extorted a foreign government to get “dirt” on a likely opponent in the election, thus personal gain. This, he said, was impeachable. After pointing out that the evidence of “extortion” is speculative at best, since a) no money was ultimately withheld,  b) the government at issue says they did not feel extorted, and c), as many have pointed out, using such goodies as foreign aid and state visits as carrots to persuade governments to agree to various U.S. requests and demands that, among other results, might help a President or his party win an election is international politics as usual, and has only been called sinister during this administration.

Then I asked, “If all the facts were the same, except that Joe Biden had not entered the Presidential race, would there be anything wrong, much less impeachable, about the President asking the Ukraine to investigate what appears to have been possible illicit influences on the Vice President of the U.S. through benefits being showered on his son?”

No answer was forthcoming.

So much for impeachment article #1.

2. Alan Dershowitz explained last week  that the Supreme Court “pulled the rug out of part two of impeachment”  by agreeing to hear a trio of cases involving subpoenas for the President’s financial records. He is quite right; I would say inarguably so.

Dershowitz explained that by granting certiorari in three cases where Trump had challenged a congressional subpoena, SCOTUS had made a statement that there was a legal question regarding whether the subpoenas were valid.  Because the Supreme Court said the issue needed to be settled, the message was that the President was right,, that he does not have to comply with a subpoena by Congress unless a court orders him  to comply.

“Now, we don’t know how the court is going to come out,” the former Harvard professor said. “But they made it clear that’s a viable issue. So, that charge, that ground of impeachment, should be immediately removed by the House and not sent to the Senate. There’s nothing to it anymore after the Supreme Court today said you’re entitled to a review on an issue when the President challenges the subpoena power of Congress.”

And that’s it for #2. “It’s all done. It’s over,” says Dershowitz . Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 12/14/19: Insulting George Washington And Other Annoyances”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

There goes Professor Morrison!!!

This is the third (in three days) and final, for now, of a series of  impeachment-related Comments of the Day by Ethics Alarms loyalist and ace  Glenn Logan. He’s authored a couple more COTD-worthy posts since this one went up two days ago; at this rate, I might just turn the blog over to him and Mrs. Q (whose latest column is coming!) and retire to beachcombing and directing satirical musical reviews.

In his latest, Glenn did me a favor and defenestrated George Washington law professor, Alan Morrison’s depressingly lame attempt to rebut Jonathan Turley’s superb explanation of why the House’s impeachment ploy was misguided and wrong.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 12/14/19: Insulting George Washington And Other Annoyances”:

Morrison complains that the House cannot obtain the information they need to impeach Trump or not because Trump insists on is right as the head of an equal branch of government to have the House demands on the executive subjected to judicial scrutiny.

Therefore, his claim is that the House has no choice but to infer whatever it can from the witnesses who have testified so they can get the President impeached before the election.

This is not just a weak argument, but a completely specious one. The President:

a) considers the investigation illegitimate and partisan, and;

b) has a duty to protect his office against just such an illegitimate partisan investigation by legitimately referring such demands to the courts. Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Reflections, 12/15/2019: Bad Film Criticism, Bad Journalism, Bad Honors…And Some Really Stupid Stuff Too

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

The late, great, Jerry Vale..

(Also known as “the mob’s favorite tenor”…)

1. And speaking of Martin Scorcese movies, since Jerry Vale is alluded to in several of them…”The Irishman” has been viewed on Netflix by many of my showbiz friends, and most, while complaining about the film’s length, have declared the performances “brilliant.” This reaction, is, I think, bias at work, the so-called “halo effect.” It’s the same phenomenon I witnessed in the D.C. theater community, where certain actors, directors and big theater companies were routinely called “brilliant” in their efforts, when in truth, the exact same product presented by artists with lesser reputations would be shrugged off or ignored.

The three veteran stars of “The Irishman” are being praised by critics across the board, but in truth, with the exception of Al Pacino, they seem weary and channeling earlier, better performances. This is especially true of Joe Pesci, who shows none of the energy we associate with his best performances, and the script requires him to run the gamut of emotions, as the old joke goes, from A to C. He’s as old as Joe Biden, and looks and acts every inch of it, though his character is supposed to be younger. Scorcese has used tech wizardry to give De Niro a younger face when necessary, but it still sits on top of his  80-year-old body. and there is nothing in De Niro’s act that we haven’t seen over and over again (though not so much lately, as Bob has been collecting checks for bad movies in which he appeared to be “phoning it in”).

Pacino, as Jimmy Hoffa, is lots of fun as usual, but he doesn’t appear to be trying to be convincing as the mysteriously disappeared labor boss, who was 62 with he vanished. Pacino is 79. How could anyone call Pacino “brilliant” as Hoffa? Jack Nicholson was far more convincing in the film “Hoffa,” and Pacino isn’t significantly different than he was playing a Hollywood agent in “Once Upon A Time In America.”

It must be nice to reach that stage as an actor when you get paid big checks just to show up, like Marlon Brando in “Superman.” Especially if everyone is going to say you were brilliant.

2.  And now for something completely stupid. This is remarkable in the dual category of incompetence in one’s chosen pursuit (theft) and unforgivable ignorance regarding social media.  Arlando Henderson, 29, who worked for a bank  in Charlotte, North Carolina, stole money from his employer’s vault at least 18 times, for a grand total of $88,000.  He was apprehended and arrested after posting about his robbery hobby on Facebook, including posts showing his new Mercedes-Benz, and this one…

You know, if someone is this stupid, ethics alarms hardly matter…

3. Surely we are missing some crucial information here...The New York Giants, in the midst of a horrible season, fired veteran cornerback Janoris Jenkins last week. Why? He was engaged in an argument with a fan on social media who objected to Jenkins posting  his personal stats after a game that his team lost, and wrote,

“I only can do my job.. retard. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “If I Had Been Able To Swing A Full-Time Impeachment News And Commentary Blog…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Now the second of three Comments of the Day I’m posting this weekend authored by Glenn Logan. Like the first, this one is about the impeachment drama (or farce, if you prefer.)

His specific context is the post, “If I Had Been Able To Swing A Full-Time Impeachment News And Commentary Blog, These Kind Of Things Would Have Been On It…” It begins with a quote from the text. I suppose this is as good a place as any to apologize for floating the idea of launching a separate blog to address what still is infuriating to me, the impossibility of getting accurate, objective information regarding the process, its history, essential legal principles involved, like hearsay and due process, and the context of this particular blot on our history. This would not be needed, except that we have no trustworthy journalism sources today. One stop information is impossible, and few people have the time or inclination to bounce around the web to get a fair snapshot of what’s going on without being misled by misrepresentations on one side and crucial omissions on the other.

Almost as soon as I asked for volunteers to assist in this project, the metaphorical roof fell in on me, and just getting this blog out every day became difficult. At this point in my life I should have been financially independent enough to devote full time to projects like the impeachment site. I’ve got half-drafted books lying around, I have half a dozen other fascinating and important projects that should be moving forward and instead have been on my “To do” list for years. This is nobody’s fault but my own: not enough focus, not enough discipline, too easily distracted by topics that interest me but don’t pay the bills or advance the chess pieces.

What a waste. But the end of the year always sees my mind running in this gutter. Anyway, I’m sorry.

Now here’s Glenn:

“For leaders, those who deal in power, distinguishing between rightful and wrongful acts based on motives is particularly difficult, if not impossible.”

I think the Democrats are being deliberately deceptive here, and can’t really say what they mean. What they mean is that the actions they have ascribed to Trump are crimes because Trump did them. If a person such as former president Barack Obama, or more pointedly former vice-president Joe Biden, had done the exact same thing, they would carry with them a presumption of innocence, validity and indeed, praiseworthiness. Their motives would’ve never been questioned, let alone put forward as the basis for an impeachment.

This just highlights the political nature of the impeachment “process” the Democrats have initiated, and the utter bankruptcy of their argument. If they can define crimes as not the acts themselves, but the combination of and act and who commits it, they will have reached a point that Orwell couldn’t, or didn’t imagine. Continue reading →

Eureka! Here’s One Way To Guarantee Diversity In College Admissions: Eliminate Objective Standards

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Oh, it can’t be you! It’s always the test.

A group of students, advocacy groups and a primarily black and Hispanic California school district filed suit against the University of California last week,  alleging that  the SAT and ACT college admission tests discriminate  against black and Hispanic students and demanding that the school stop using standardized test scores in its admissions process.

The theory that the tests are biased against poor and mainly black and Hispanic students concludes that the system illegally discriminates against applicants on the basis of their race, wealth or disabilities, thus denying them equal protection under the California Constitution. This battle has been fought before, of course. There was a time, decades ago, when foes of standardized testing could point to test questions referring to yachting and Western philosophers, baking in a bias that handicapped students fromracial and ethnic  sub-cultures in America. Those prejudicial questions have been purged, but the long-time disparity between the test scores of white and Asian applicants on one side and black and Hispanic students on the other continues. Continue reading →