Law & Law Enforcement

Ugh! Ethics Dunce—AGAIN—: University of Houston Law Professor Renee Knake Jefferson

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

This is an example of why I am disgusted with my field and chosen profession. Just last month I designated Jefferson, a legal ethics professor among other things, as an ethics dunce for her blatantly partisan and biased commentary. This time, it’s personal.

Seeking to find a reliable, trustworthy, accurate source of legal ethics news and developments (since the demise of the excellent legal Ethics Forum, I am reduced to the scattershot, overwhelmingly left-biased commentary on the APRL listserv), I subscribed to the professor’s substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, taking seriously her promise that it would supply a “Monday morning tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics.” But the Legal Ethics Roundup I received this morning, like all its predecessors this month, cheerfully informed me that “For the month of August, the Legal Ethics Roundup is on pause.”

Continue reading →

Brilliant: What Israel Is Trying To Do Is Self-Preservation, Not Genocide. So “Genocide” Has To Be Redefined So Israel Can Be Accused Of Doing It…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The case of “genocide” is a classic in the annals of deliberate linguistic manipulation for unethical goals.

A detailed essay in the New York Times explains the machinations around the word, which is similar to what we have seen recently in other cases, like that of “women,” “racism,” “lying,” “ad hominem” (in a debate here on Ethics Alarms), “fascism,”and “insurrection,” to name just a few of many. The proliferation of this Orwellian process should set off not just ethics alarms but evil alarms.

As the article correctly explains, international law addressing genocide was aimed at extreme and unequivocal examples where a nation sets out to exterminate an entire race or ethnic group for no other reason than that group’s existence. It is the ultimate hate crime, and thus was labeled a “crime against humanity.” The Holocaust was the prime example: nothing describes genocide more indisputably than a group of experts, military officials and government leaders sitting around a table and deciding on a “Final Solution.”

But as the article relates, mission creep has invaded the anti-genocide brigade, for example with the United States being accused of genocide in its treatment of Native American and because of the actions of the KKK and others during the Jim Crow era, and now, with Israel being vilified by the genocide label for being determined to eliminate a terrorist organization pledged to commit genocide against Israelis.

Naturally, the United Nations is complicit in this process, and, naturally, so is the I.C.J., the U.N.’s top court. The U.S., among other nations, supports the Geneva Convention but doesn’t accept the authority of the I.C.J. The article doesn’t explicitly explain why, but the reason is obvious: the court is subject to political motives and bias. It can’t be trusted.

“Genocide” has been slowly made a synonym for “human rights violations,” and wars are by definition human rights violations. Thus the U.N. can always use a politicized definition of “genocide” to declare any war, even one triggered by a nation’s right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens, as “genocide”—particularly if the nation waging the war is Israel.

By the standards being weaponized by the protesters at the Democratic National Convention, the U.S. ending World War II with two atom bombs would qualify as genocide.

This is the unethical—but effective—process:

1. Identify a nation, group, individual, or leader that you want to demonize.

2. Find a word universally regarded as describing conduct that is heinous and unforgivable.

3. Redefine that word so that the policies, conduct or stated position of that nation, group, individual, or leader can be described by it.

4. Repeat that word in association with the nation, group, individual, or leader’s policies, conduct or stated positions so that the word itself is defined by those policies, conduct or stated positions, rather than the other way around.

The average member of the public—you know, morons—won’t know the difference.

What makes this tactic so effective, diabolical, and impossible to stop is that there are many examples of pejorative words that should be used and understood to apply beyond their most narrow definitions. Child abuse. Indoctrination. Propaganda. Totalitarianism. Conflicts of interest. The distinction, perhaps, is whether the expanded definition is made in good faith, or it it is only aimed at a particular adversary to achieve strategic political gains.

The article, “The Bitter Fight Over the Meaning of ‘Genocide’” is here for you to read, freed from the paywall.

In Utah, How To Raise An Ethics Dunce

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Police in Brigham City, Utah responded to complaints that a young boy was selling beer at a roadside stand. Sure enough, the kid had a sign at his makeshift stand that said “ICE COLD BEER.” But upon closer examination, the police found that “root” was in tiny print in front of the beer. The admiring police posted on Facebook, “He’s selling beer … ROOT BEER, that is. His marketing strategy has resulted in several calls to the BCPD, but apparently it’s paid off as business has been good.” Indeed. Business is booming, the boy told the fawning news media. “We had to buy another cooler.”

So the child has learned that bait-and-switch along with deceptive advertising not only works, but that he will be praised for it. I’m sure he can make the connection that deceit is also a useful and profitable strategy, and find lots of ways to exploit people’s trust to deceive them for his own benefit.

Yup, his family has the makings of a real little con artist there, and they’ll have the police and the news media to thank. Maybe he’ll end up in jail, or in Congress.

________________

Pointer: JutGory

Stop Making Me Defend Michigan’s Proto-Totalitarian Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Michigan might have the most sinister and anti-American Democratic Party of all. It’s certainly a tough competition, with New York, Minnesota, Washington, California, D.C. and a few others in the race, but Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer is special (she was a particularly heinous enemy of civil rights during the pandemic) and any party that would allow someone like anti-Semitic Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib to run under its banner has decency and integrity issues.

The state just threw independent presidential candidate Cornel West off its ballot, and many conservatives and Republicans see evidence of a conspiracy to rig the election for KAmala Harris. “Call me paranoid if you wish, but it’s almost as if the Democrats don’t want voters to show up at the polls on November 5 and see the name of anyone from any party or no party at all on their ballots except for Kamala Harris,” writes P.J. Media pundit Jazz Shaw.

Michigan elections director Mark Brewer sent a letter to West’s campaign saying that his affidavit of identity submitted with his ballot application was “not properly notarized.” The affidavit was notarized in Colorado and had to be valid in that state to be valid in Michigan as well. “There were apparently a couple of boxes left blank and the notary public stamp for the affidavit was attached on a separate piece of paper rather than on the document itself,” Shaw reveals. More from Jazz, who concludes in part:

Yes, that was it. That was the entirety of the complaint. In fairness to the Michigan elections director, they did send West’s campaign a letter in late July giving him a couple of weeks to respond and West never responded. This should have all been able to be cleaned up easily, but it wasn’t so the Democrats pounced. The original complaint was filed by former Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer in case you’re wondering why I’m generically blaming “the Democrats” here.

So what’s the real reason behind all of this and why would the Democrats care about Cornel West? He wasn’t going to carry any states or win the White House. …But that doesn’t mean that Cornel West’s presence or absence might not have a significant impact on the final results. This would be particularly true in Michigan where the presidential race is tighter than razor wire…That’s the reality of what is going on behind the scenes….West was identified as a potential threat to Biden and now to Harris. So he had to go. They scraped up Mark Brewer to have someone pore over West’s ballot application documents with a magnifying glass and find some sort of flaw to use as a basis for their complaint….They found a compliant judge to go along with a trivial complaint over what amounted to a technicality and West was unceremoniously kicked to the curb. Welcome to the rough and tumble world of modern Democratic politics as they desperately scramble to maintain their hold on power at any cost.

The Democrats cheat, as we have seen repeatedly this year and before. That party, as it has mutated in the 21st century, indeed will do anything and take actions that once were regarded as unthinkable in the American political culture to continue its slow eradication of Constitutional government. This episode, however, is not an example of that.

Continue reading →

Not Frivolous, Just Dopey: Disney’s Wrongful Death Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Wow. Disney is being sued by a man whose wife died from a reaction to severe food allergies at EPCOT. Disney’s lawyers have come up with a creative defense: the $50,000 lawsuit should be dismissed because the plaintiff, Jeffrey Piccolo, signed up for a one-month trial of the streaming service Disney+ in 2019. The deal’s fine print requires Disney+ trial users to submit “all disputes” with the company to arbitration. This, the theory goes, extends to attempts to sue Disney for matters having nothing to do with the streaming service.

Piccolo’s lawyer called Disney’s argument “preposterous” in court filings and said that the idea that signing up for a Disney+ free trial should bar a customer’s right to a jury trial “with any Disney affiliate or subsidiary, is so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience.” He accused the entertainment giant of seeking to block its 150 million Disney+ subscribers from ever bringing a wrongful death case against it in front of a jury even if the case facts have nothing to with Disney+.

Continue reading →

About That Tim Walz DUI…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In 1995, when he was 31, Tim Walz, then a high school football coach and teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, was pulled over by a Nebraska state trooper for driving 96 miles per hour in a 55 m.p.h. zone. There was alcohol on the future Minnesota governor’s and pandemic Nazi’s breath and after Walz failed a field sobriety test and breath test, he was arrested and charged with speeding and driving while intoxicated.

Does it matter? Not the arrest or the drunk driving, in my view, not a single incident so many decades ago. I don’t know anyone who could not have been charged with driving while over the alcohol limit at one point in their lives or another: whether someone gets caught at this frequent violation is largely a matter of moral luck. Tempting fate repeatedly this way—moral luck can also get people killed—and driving while intoxicated when one is in a position of trust and authority is another matter.

By all accounts, Walz was properly accountable and remorseful. He agreed to plead to a reduced charge of reckless driving, a misdemeanor, and paid a $200 fine. He duly reported the incident to his Alliance High School principal, quit his extracurricular activities including the coaching, and offered to resign from his teaching job.

All good. The story just “resurfaced” as they say now, and “Republicans pounced.” I can’t blame them: the tale of George W. Bush’s DUI was held and played by the Democrats as an October Surprise-in-the-hole, and may have cost Bush the popular vote majority in the 2000 Presidential election. Nonetheless, the verdict here is that Walz’s DUI incident itself is irrelevant to his fitness as a potential Vice-President.

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Totalitarian Left’s Reaction To Trump’s Interview With Elon Musk Should Tell Voters All They Need To Know About ‘What’s Going On Here’”

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

I usually don’t elevate to Comment of the Day status comments that illustrate common fallacies and lack of perception. I’ve done it a few times: I know it can seem mean. But Cici’s Comment of the Day so exemplifies the abysmal level of comprehension and critical thought so many of our fellow citizens suffer from, thus making them prime targets of misdirection in this election year, that I felt attention should be paid.

Here was Cici’s comment, one of many she offered, on the post about the foreign and domestic Left arguing that a U.S. Presidential candidate should not be allowed free rein to say whatever he chose to in a discussion with Elon Musk, who owns the platform where the discussion was taking place:

“Third parties decide what you read and hear all the time. And I’m not even arguing for that so I’m not sure where you got that from. I trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to factcheck properly.

I don’t share in your mistrust of “institutions.” I think that leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not. You’re free to disagree with that notion.”

Analysis:

Continue reading →

Look! Now the Secret Service Is Violating the Third Amendment!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Gee, will somebody be fired now? Oh, probably not.

The Berkshire Eagle reports that while the U.S. Secret Service was protecting Vice President Kamala Harris’ during her July 27 visit to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, its agents used Alicia Powers’ hair salon, Four One Three Salon at 54 Wendell Avenue, as a comfort station without her permission. They taped over a security camera on the building’s back porch, broke into her establishment, used the bathroom, ate the mints on the counter and left without cleaning up or locking the back door.

After the Secret Service conducted a security sweep of the building in preparation for Harris’s appearance, Powers went to Cape Cod for a scheduled vacation. On the Saturday morning of Harris’s event, Powers’ phone alerted her at the Cape that there was activity on the salon’s back porch. A female agent had “walked around the porch, walked around the side of the building and then popped back up on the porch, grabbed the chair, hopped up and taped [over] the camera,” Powers said, explaining what her security cameras showed. “[The tape] blacked out the camera completely.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Border Humanitarian

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

I am having a hard time with this one.

This week the New York Times and other publications gave a hero’s send-off to Eddie Canales, who died on July 30 at the age of 76. No doubt about it, he was a caring, selfless, compassionate man.

Unfortunately, his caring and compassion were applied to assist those seeking to break U.S. law. From the Times obituary:

For over a decade, Mr. Canales placed dozens of water stations — giant blue plastic barrels marked “Agua” filled with gallon water jugs — along the region’s routes for migrants evading a checkpoint on U.S. Route 281, about 70 miles north of the border with Mexico. The migrants, who are usually led (and sometimes abandoned) by smugglers, known as “coyotes,” leave the main road and undertake a perilous journey through featureless scrub and bush to evade the Border Patrol.

Some don’t make it. Those who fail succumb to severe dehydration, hunger and exposure to the unforgiving elements in a semi-desert where temperatures can easily reach 100 degrees in the summer and drop below freezing during the winter. Mr. Canales led a campaign to recover, identify and ensure proper burials for the migrants’ remains. The mission required forcefulness and tact. The land is private and belongs to South Texas ranchers, many indifferent or hostile. Some have created armed posses dressed in military gear to hunt up the migrants and turn them over to the authorities, as shown in a trenchant 2021 documentary about Mr. Canales’s work, “Missing in Brooks County.”

…Mr. Canales successfully placed more than 170 water stations across seven counties, the outposts recognizable from afar by flags with a red cross flown high….

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is it ethical to honor someone for intentionally facilitating the efforts of others to violate U.S. law?

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I have neglected Comments of the Day of late I know, and I am sorry about that. There have been many excellent comments, and also many I have not had time to read carefully: the responses to the “What do you believe?” post alone generated many strong COTD candidates (and they are still coming in).

I might as well start with a comment I said I would post under the designation three weeks ago, and whiffed: Michael R.’s brief arguing that the Secret Service’s epic botch in Pennsylvania that only avoided getting Donald Trump killed by the intervention of moral luck was no accident.

Is the EA post that inspired Michael moot? After all, Kim Cheatle finally resigned after the indignity of having Congress members of both parties tell her to. However, the information that has been drip, drip, dripping out about the near-assassination has not disproved Michael’s thesis; if anything it bolsters his argument.

Ultimately, the question, as it so frequently does in the Age of the Great Stupid, comes down to Hanlon’s Razor: Is it intentional malice, or is it incompetence? The COTD concludes, “To cling to an incredibly unlikely incompetence argument in light of a much more likely explanation is only required if you don’t want to acknowledge something you are unwilling to accept.”

Maybe, but I will still cling even while admitting that other recent Hanlon’s Razor mysteries that have been popping up (“Did Democrats and the media just miss the fact that Joe Biden was a proto-vegetable because they are lazy, biased and inept, or did they deliberately participate in a conspiracy to deceive the American people ‘to save democracy’?” is one obvious example) demand the malice label.

Here’s Michael R’s Comment on the Day on the post, “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job, and Only the Prominence of a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces Can Explain That.”

***

You have to make a lot of hand wringing arguments to state:

(1) They didn’t put snipers on the roof that THEY identified as a threat.

(2) They didn’t secure the building despite the threat of the roof.

(3) They didn’t notice the guy on the roof despite the fact that the crowd had been taking pictures of him for 25+ minutes.

(4) They let a 20 year old kid drive up, unload a ladder, climb onto the roof spread out his blanket, assemble the rifle and take 7 or 8 shots accidentally. That is the most generous assessment. If THEY left the ladder to the roof there for access, it is worse.

Continue reading →