Law & Law Enforcement

Breaking: Trump Has A New Attorney General Nominee, and Arguably, She’s Worse Than Matt Gaetz…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

It’s Pam Bondi.

Ugh.

  • She was the Ethics Alarms Unethical Prosecutor of the Year in 2016.
  • That year I wrote,

    “Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump while she considered joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates, AP reports Trump’s $25,000 donation to Bondi came from a Trump family foundation in a likely violation of rules surrounding legitimate activities by 501 C (3) charities, which are not allowed to engage in political grant-making. And Justice for All, a political group backing Bondi’s re-election,  reported receiving the check on Sept. 17, 2013 — four days after Bondi’s office publicly announced she was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University’s activities.”

  • Still later, after the 2016 election, I wrote,

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Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Maybe The Year): Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia [Updated and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”

—Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, excusing Bucks County’s decision to count misdated or undated mail-in ballots after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clearly stated that such ballots were invalid.

[Expanded commentary is below, after the original post.]

You can’t get much more unethical than that in so few words.

1. The edict about the invalid ballots wasn’t a court precedent, it was a ruling.  If she doesn’t know the difference, she has no business being a commissioner. If she does know the difference, then she was lying.

2. Next she invokes the hoariest unethical rationalization of them all, #1 on the list,, “Everybody Does It.”

3. The statement that people violate laws any time they want is false and a direct attack on the Rule of Law as well as the character of Americans. In fact, the vast majority of American obey the law. Continue reading →

Wait, I’m Sorry, I’m Getting All Confused: WHICH Is the Party That Is An Existential Threat To Democracy?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yesterday, Ethics Alarms noted [Item #6] that Democrats in Pennsylvania had voted in favor of counting mail-in ballots that were ruled invalid by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and will be counting those disqualified ballots to try to overturn the apparent victory of GOP Senator-elect Dave McCormick over incumbent Sen. Bob Casey in the upcoming recount. The Associated Press called the race for McCormick on November 7, and he is now leading Casey by over 17,000 votes.

This fondness for counting void votes is, of course, passing strange conduct from the party whose captive journalists keep saying that President-Elect Trump’s four years of claims that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen” from him are “completely groundless.” Pennsylvania’s electoral college votes are among those the incoming President felt were stolen. Call me crazy and paint me puce, but I’d say deliberately and openly counting votes the state Supreme Court says are invalid is prima facie evidence that this a party not above cheating to hold onto power.

Now, after the Republican National Committee sued last week after several counties decided to openly cheat by counting ballots with incorrect dates, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court today reiterated its decision from November 5. Justice David Wecht wrote in his concurring statement that it is “critical to the rule of law that individual counties and municipalities and their elected and appointed officials, like any other parties, obey orders of this Court.” Justice Kevin Brobson likewise wrote that local election officials do not “have the authority to ignore Election Code provisions that they believe are unconstitutional.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed on November 1 that requiring mail-in ballots to have handwritten dates is constitutional.

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In New York, Dishonest Progressive Math: Not Charging Commuters As Much As Was Originally Proposed Saves Them Money

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What is this? Gaslighting? Misdirection? Whatever it is, it’s unethical.

But typical.

“I always have and I always will fight to put more money in the pockets of everyday New Yorkers,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, as she imposed a new 9 dollar commuter toll on New Yorkers who drive into the Manhattan business district. How is a new toll that will go into effect in January 2025 for the first tine saving New Yorkers money by putting more money in their pockets? It isn’t.

Follow closely, now. The original “NYC congestion plan” was supposed to cost $15 when it was proposed, but the plan was suspended by Hochul until after the election, because she was afraid it would cost her party votes. Now that the election is safely over in the state, she’s reinstating the plan, but at a lower cost. Nonetheless, lowering the cost of a new state expense being imposed on commuters isn’t putting more money in anyone’s pocket but the state’s. The new toll takes money away from commuters, just not as much money as was originally announced.

I’m not evaluating whether the toll is a responsible and fair policy; I don’t care. I do care about the apparently never-ending “It isn’t what it is” addiction of elected officials who try their damnedest to confuse and mislead the public. Hochul is literally saying to the public, “Be grateful that I’m not taking more of your money than I might. Why, it’s almost like I am giving you money!”

No, charging commuters more than nothing, which is what they had been paying to come into Manhattan, is taking money, not giving it. War is Peace, and the state taking your money is putting money in your pocket, because it could be taking even more.

Got it.

______________
Sources: NYT 1, 2, and 3.

An Arizona Judge Does The Right Thing And Recuses, But Not Until He Shows That Bias Has Made Him Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What does it say about a judge’s competence and judicial temperament when he can’t restrain himself from posting attacks on conservatives while presiding over a politically-charged trial? It says, I think, “Time to retire!” In the case at hand, it also said; “Your recusal light is flashing.”

Maricopa County Judge Bruce Cohen, the judge overseeing Arizona’s case against allies of Once and Future President Donald Trump based on their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, recused himself last week after it was revealed that he had emailed colleagues urging them to speak out against conservative attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.

In an email sent to fellow judicial officers on August 29, Cohen criticized those who labeled Harris a “DEI hire” and said he was “sickened” when Fox News host Jesse Watters said on air that if she were elected, she would “get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”

“White men…must speak out,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by state Rep. Travis Grantham (R) and reported by local news media. Based on the email, one of the defendants’ lawyers called for his dismissal. Based on that email I conclude that the call for the judge’s recusal was a proper response. Even if the message didn’t prove that he would be biased against the pro-Trump defendants, it definitely proves he is incapable of processing information, either because bias has made him stupid, age has crippled his faculties, or because he was dumb to begin with.

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Ethics Dunce: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[And with this, Frank Drebbin becomes the first star of an Ethics Alarms film clip to be featured in consecutive posts!]

Speaker Mike Johnson is saying he does not think the House Ethics report into the conduct of Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz should be released, even though Gaetz must face a Senate confirmation hearing. “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson said. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”

“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee,” Johnson said, when asked if the public has a right to see the report. “And so I don’t think that’s relevant.”

Of course the report is relevant. In fact, what the report contains is essential to determining whether President Trump has nominated a pedophile, criminal drug users and general slimeball as the nation’s top lawyer or not. “That is not the way we do things in the House” is no argument at all. How many times as a member of Congress been nominated for Attorney General with an ethics investigation pending? “Never”is the answer, so “how they do thing in the House” in this situation will be decided by the House. The House has a duty to the American people first, not to its members, or in Gaetz’s case, non-members. It wouldn’t be a terrible precedent—why does Johnson think that? For the House to willfully withhold relevant information from a Senate confirmation hearing for a key position in a President’s Cabinet would be the terrible precedent. Johnson’s position looks like part of a cover-up operation.

Now, if Gaetz were really a trustworthy and admirable nominee, he would publicly request that the Hose Ethics Committee release the results of their inquiry, since there wouldn’t be anything damning in it.

But he isn’t, so he won’t, because there is.

Oh Look! Now the LEFT Is Complaining About Lawyers Being Reluctant To Represent Unpopular Clients!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In 2020, as discussed here, The NeverTrump Lincoln Project joined the anti-Trump Democrats in targeting law firms hired by the Trump campaign to challenge alleged irregularities in the election. Election law specialists Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and its lawyers were threatened with professional ruin and financial disaster, as they were told that daring to support the President of the United States constitutes a “dangerous attack on our democracy.” The firm, showing a dearth of legal ethics and integrity, withdrew, whining that the assault on its reputation created a conflict of interest, was disrupting the firm, and had prompted at least one lawyer’s resignation. Other firms dropped the campaign as a client, and the reason was fear—of losing clients, of being shunned in the legal community, of losing money. Mostly the latter.

How times had changed. When Bush Department of Defense Deputy Secretary Cully Stimson, a lawyer, gave a radio interview in which he condemned attorneys from large law firms who were representing Guantanamo Bay detainees pro bono and suggested that corporations avoid employing those firms because they were aiding the nation’s enemies, the legal profession reacted with indignation and horror. Karen J. Mathis, then the president of the American Bar Association, said, “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.” Prof. Stephen Gillers, the media’s favorite legal ethicist thanks to his penchant for being hard on conservatives and lenient on liberals, wrote, “This is prejudicial to the administration of justice. It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.” Christopher Moore, a lawyer at the New York firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton continued the profession’s defense of core lawyer ethics, telling the New York Times, “We believe in the concept of justice and that every person is entitled to counsel.”

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Wait, What? Disciplined For Objecting To WHAT at a Law School?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I don’t understand this story at all. Of course, it would help a bit if the news media thought it was worthy covering. Instead the story gasps in the rarefied and suffocating atmosphere of a few conservative websites. I get it: this idiocy makes progressive extremism look bad. But then, it is bad.

Third-year Scalia School of Law students Selene Cerankosky and Maria Arcara (that’s the George Mason U. law school in Northern Virginia) have been sanctioned by the school in the following bizarre scenario. On September 27, 2024, a classmate solicited their opinions in a “Scalia Law ‘25” GroupMe chat regarding their support for his proposal that the student government put tampons in the men’s restrooms. (Yes, this again.) Cerankosky was critical of the proposal, arguing that “allow[ing] biological females into male restrooms to access period products as ‘trans men,’” would mean “female bathrooms will welcome male occupants.” She found that development unacceptable because female students might be “considerably uncomfortable if there are males using private women’s spaces on campus.” “Women have a right to feel safe in spaces where they disrobe,” she added. Arcara posted her agreement with that assessment.

The male classmate then ridiculed their concerns and called the two women anti-trans bigots. Two weeks later, on October 11, both Cerankosky and Arcara received “no-contact” orders from GMU’s Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion prohibiting them from having any contact with the male classmate, aka “Asshole,” who had complained to the administration alleging harassment. Neither of the women had ever spoken to the guy, other than to exchange messages in the chatroom.

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Squirrel Ethics: The P’Nut Saga [Corrected and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

State government officials this week seized and ultimately destroyed P’Nut, a pet squirrel with a popular Instagram page, in Pine City, New York. Somehow, conservatives have decided to make this incident some kind of watershed for state abuse of personal liberties , not to mention pet squirrels. Thus P’Nut has become an election issue; Hey, why not, everything else is from McDonald’s to Liz Cheney. First pet squirrels, next guns and free enterprise. “First, they came for P’Nut, and I said nothing…”

Give me a break.

Mark Longo adopted P’Nut seven years ago in New York City as an orphaned baby squirrel that crawled up his leg after his mommy was squished by a car. The squirrel ended up with his own room, and when Longo and his wife were at home the furry friend wandered wherever he wanted in their house. Longo described P’Nut as “the most charismatic, sassy animal.”

P’Nut also was a profitable animal. The rodent became the face and name of P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit Longo and his wife started in April. The Longos contribute half of the organization’s roughly $20,000-a-month expenses to run the sanctuary and donors supply the other half, with most of those donations raised largely through cute P’Nut videos posted on Instagram. “We have rescued over 300 animals in our sanctuary already,” Longo said. “Cats, dogs, horses, goats, sheep, donkeys and pigs.”

Ah! The ends justify the means! Here is the problem: it is illegal to keep wildlife like squirrels as pets, in New York as well as many other states. The full list is here. (Pointer: jeffguinn) According to that source, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming all allow people to own pet squirrels. [Note: This is a correction from the original post, in which I assumed that all states would have prohibited P’Nut.]

None of which is relevant to the law in New York and it’s enforcement.

“Following multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets, D.E.C. conducted an investigation,” the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement after P’Nut was seized. “Investigation” is a bit sanitized: the operation has been described as a raid, and sure sounds like one. Before the officers left with P’Nut (and a raccoon, which nobody seems to care about), they “ransacked my entire house,” Longo said. “They made me sit outside for five hours.”

Presumably they were making sure that the house didn’t contain any other illegal residents. “We have had P’nut for seven years without a single complaint,” Longo said. “Now it’s suddenly an issue? It’s not like we were hiding him.”

Well, yes. That’s the problem. Longo and his wife were openly violating a law, and the argument for letting P’Nut keep hiding his nuts under their rugs is simple: the law is the law, there is no exception for cute law-breaking or profitable law-breaking. Regardless of the squirrel’s popularity and use in fundraising for a worthy cause, a law that isn’t enforced when it is broken for reasons some people think are justifications isn’t a law at all.

This isn’t just one slippery slope, it is several. Today it’s P’Nut the Squirrels, then it’s whenever that raccoon was, and tomorrow it’s Chewy the Wolverine.

“To the people who filed complaints, thank you for taking away the best part of me, thank you for taking away my best friend,” Longo whined online.

Conservatives have to stop flipping their values any time they see a chance for political point-scoring. This is called lacking integrity. Taking away P’Nut is based on the same principle that says “good illegal immigrants” should still be deported, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t get away with mishandling classified materials, and that if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling documents, Joe Biden should be as well.

The King’s Pass is a rationalization even if the king is a squirrel.

A grace note: P’Nut had to be euthanized after he bit one of the officers as they removed him from his happy home, so they had to see if the squirrel had rabies. Good for P’Nut: he didn’t go down without a fight. We can’t blame him for not knowing the law.

Comment of the Day: “Is This the Level of Critical Thinking Devoted To Pro-Abortion Advocacy?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Sarah B.’s excellent Comment of the Day on the post, “Is This the Level of Critical Thinking Devoted To Pro-Abortion Advocacy?” stands on its own and makes any introduction from me supoerflous beyond, “Here it is.”

Here it is…

***

I believe that the reasons many women want abortion to be legal are, when delving down deeply: fear and guilt. Please note that my argument is not meant to absolve anyone of responsibility, especially as I am dang near an anti-abortion absolutist, but instead what motives I have seen in my argumentation with pro-abortion (they hate that label because “we aren’t for abortion, we’re for women having the right to choose what is best”) advocates before the argument degenerates into some form of the above as their “knock down, undeniable” argument to shut me up. (Tearing it apart just turns into accusations of me being brainwashed and the conversation devolving into at least one side calling names, though my temper has occasionally dropped me to their level.)

I’m going to start with guilt, because it is the easiest to explain. Many women know someone who has had an abortion. My cousin had one for reasons that are at least sympathetic – the child was diagnosed with a genetic mutation that is always fatal if the diagnosis was correct (many are not) – even if I think she was completely in the wrong. She is hardly the only person in my circle that has had an abortion or helped someone obtain one. Most people who do this recognize somewhere that this may have been a “choice,” but it was the wrong choice. Many people are nearly eaten-up with guilt about the child they know they killed. I know people who have broken down in tears in private over this, even though they are pro-abortion in public.

They have pro-abortion stances that seem to cover up the guilt. They often act as though they believe that if everyone supports abortion and allows it up to birth or beyond, they will finally not feel guilty because the only reason they feel guilty is the societal pressure to accept that abortion killed a baby.

Fear, however, is the primary reason so many women want abortions to be legal. Men, since time immemorial, have gotten away with consequence-free sex, while women bear most of the negative consequences. Men don’t get pregnant. When it comes to STDs, women are far more susceptible then men, being the penetrated rather than the penetrator. Frankly, men (as a whole) desire sex more than women. It is a generality, but one that I have found to be true, as iin the saying, “Men trade love for sex and women trade sex for love.” This puts an unequal spin on the consequences.

Men, again generally speaking, desire sex more. Women bear a higher cost for sex than men. This lack of equality is a breeding ground for fear. Women who have regular sex will get eventually face pregnancy, contraceptives or no, if it continues over a long enough time span, assuming they do not have fertility issues,

There are many fears that women can have regarding pregnancy, and today’s society has bred even more. Men have the advnantage of consequence-free or at least consequence-reduced sex. See “The Scarlet Letter” or any dead-beat dad to prove my point. Women can fear that the trials of parenthood, and there are many, will leave them holding the bag when the man responsible bolts. This is exacerbated in today’s society when many of the Y-chromosomed fail to grow out of acting like boys and never develop into men.

Another fear is that having a baby ties you down to marriage to a man whom you should not be with. A girl’s crush on the wrong boy whom she then decides to sleep with so she can keep him can suddenly become horrible marriage, bound together with children when she becomes pregnant even when he actually does take responsibility. Sure, you can get divorced if things are too bad, but you are back to being a single mom, maybe with child support. The system also has a number of loopholes that can wreck any chance of acquiring a decent amount of money to help with the kids. Again, if you get pregnant and have a baby, the odds seem stacked against you.

There is also the fear of what kids will do to your education and career. If you have to pay for a babysitter, it hurts your chances of being able to afford college, and feeding two mouths while paying off student loans is harder than just feeding yourself. Of course, having to be up at night with a teething child rather than studying or sleeping before a test is its own struggle. How can you make it? And all those career women? If that is what you want out of life, you will struggle when you have to take time off because the kid is throwing up or has a fever, something that happens all the time when kids are little. Even when they are older, is your presence at their piano recital or sporting event more important than your presence working the hours needed to get that big promotion? A child makes achieving your goals harder.

What about all the things and experiences you want out of life? Society is pushing so many different concepts now of what happiness is, but very few of them work with children. You can’t reasonably take small children to many concerts. Sporting events are expensive and now you have to buy not one, but two tickets, or pay for a babysitter who costs a decent fraction of those tickets? The money that you spend on diapers, wipes, formula, clothes, medical care and the rest could have gone towards you having fun and enjoying life. Or maybe you are a minimalist and for you good times are possible living with the bare minimum. Well, that bare minimum is now cluttered with toys, covered in spit-up, and smelling like pooped diapers. There go your dreams.

Then there are the fears surrounding pregnancy itself. Honestly, maternal mortality rates aren’t that bad, if you ignore those who didn’t receive prenatal care, weren’t able to give birth with medical care at least nearby if not in the hospital, and who haven’t already had an abortion (which increases the chances of life-threatening complications in future pregnancies). However, women do die when pregnant, even in the best of circumstances. Therefore pregnancy is an elevated risk. What about complications? What if you really need an abortion to survive?

Adoption has its own fears. Assuming I do go the adoption route, what if the child has anything other than the perfect childhood? What about if they end up in foster care? What happens if they or, assuming I keep the child, we end up in poverty? All of that misery is avoidable with abortion.

There are other fears. There is the fear of rape. If you get raped, you could get pregnant. Surely you can’t be expected to have the baby of your attacker. What about the fear of disabled children who may or may not live as long as you want or fear? Birth defects happen, incest or not, but that fear is especially true if you were raped by a relative. What happens if you fall in love with this baby and it dies? Then you are left with heartbreak.

What happens if you have a special needs child? That could mean you have to care for that child all of its life and yours; you can never retire and might die in poverty. How about any horror story you hear about on social media that may or may not be the full truth? We NEED abortion to deal with this! If we can’t decide to end a pregnancy when something is wrong, we are not equal to men.

Again, these are not my beliefs, merely a summary of the beliefs I have heard whenever I speak with a pro-abortion believer. I can think of responses to most if not all of these. However, the response this post was based off of is essentially about getting rid of some of the fears. Usually I see that response coupled with a guarantee that men will no longer rape women, that medical care will be so advanced that women never have a problem with pregnancy, and that no woman will ever have to have a job she doesn’t want or is beneath her. The fears that drive women’s desire for abortion make for some illogical outcomes and arguments.

That being said, I am ashamed of my sex for our illogical outbursts that demand the deaths of our own children. The demand that started this post is just one of many of those illogical outbursts, and I apologize for my sex for their saying it.