Law & Law Enforcement

Stop Making Me Defend Justice Alito!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Ugh. The old “public officials are responsible for keeping their wives in line” canard, which for some reason is only applied to conservatives by the mainstream news media. Or we could file this under “Hail Mary attempts to get the Supreme Court’s conservative Justices to recuse themselves so SCOTUS won’t strike down the totalitarian Left’s conspiracy to “get” Donald Trump by any means necessary, and law, ethics and democracy be damned.”

A New York Times headline yesterday shouted, “At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display.” Wow, what symbol was that? It was an upside-down American flag, seen flying over (much reviled, almost as much as Clarence Thomas) Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house for a few days in January 2021. Because the flag was up in the period between the January 6 riot at the Capitol Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Times infers that the flag meant that Alito thinks the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump.

Of course the Times dredged up some unethical ethics experts to deceive their readers about the seriousness of this. “Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot,” writes the Times, ostentatiously avoiding mentioning the names of the experts who said, as I would have, “What? This is nothing!”

“It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Professor Amanda Frost at the University of Virginia law school. This is “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard, which is a problem if you’re deciding election-related cases,” she said.

Uh, no it’s not, but that analysis is the equivalent of the professor wearing an “I am a partisan hack!” sign on her forehead.

Continue reading →

Alternate Realities in the Manhattan Trump Trial, Except Only One of Them Is Real…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump for 34 felonies that are exactly one misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations has run is not just an unethical case, it’s a revealing one. It should let the objective members of the public know, if they have the opportunity and inclination to pay attention, just how undemocratic and trustworthy the 21st Century mutation of the Democratic Party has become.

“Dangerous” is also an adjective that belongs in that sentence.

I’ve been beginning mornings lately jumping back and forth between the coverage of the trial on CNN and MSNBC—you know, the Pravda channels—and Fox News, which would be claiming that Trump was as innocent as the driven snow even if he were as guilty as O.J. It is astounding how completely divergent the impressions one is given from the Left and Right sources are—that, and horrifying. The public has no reliable way to get the information it needs to figure out “What’s going on here?” because all of the coverage is agenda-driven. Very few members of the public have the time (or education) to puzzle it out either.

Interestingly, Abe’s observation—the one that begins, “You can fool some of the people…“—again seems to be holding true, and God Bless America for that. A recent poll suggests that a majority of the the public regard Democrats and the Biden administration as the true existential peril to American liberties and freedom, and not Donald Trump. Might it be that the spectacle of four dubious prosecutions in Democratic Party strongholds by Democratic prosecutors all taking place in an election year and aimed at putting the likely GOP nominee and former President behind bars before an election the Democratic resident of the White House looks poised to lose suggests a slight totalitarian bent, mayhap? Perhaps? Ya think?

Continue reading →

I Don’t Understand This “Niggardly Principle” Story At All…Or Maybe I Do and Am Just Afraid To Accept the Truth

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-odlCalifornia teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well. 

A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.

I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.

Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”

Continue reading →

“DEI? What DEI?”

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

This is so typical that it’s mordantly amusing.

The diversity, equity, inclusion fad arising for no coherent reason out of the death of an overdosing small time hood under the knee of a bad cop in Minneapolis has rapidly iembarrassed itself and its adherents. The discriminatory and intellectually indefensible movement still managed to be profitable for a lot of scam-artist consultants while screwing up too many organizations to list in the process (but Disney quickly comes to mind). It inflicted flagrant incompetents like Kamala Harris, Karine Jean-Pierre, most of Biden’s Cabinet, deposed Harvard President Claudine Gay and so many more on our government and institutions. It produced absurd spectacles like the TV liquor commercial purporting to show a Boston bar’s patrons singing “Sweet Caroline,” the Boston Red Sox 7th inning anthem, with barely a white patron in sight. (When my family would go to Fenway Park, “Find a non-white fan” was a popular game, usually instigated by my mother.)

DEI is justly acquiring a toxic reputation, so the Left’s response is to change its name and start all over again. The plan is to use rhetorical deceit to disguise its intent and meaning while blurring the concept. Of course! DEI fouled itself faster than I expected, but sure, everyone should have seen this coming. Abortion is now “reproductive health.” Using drugs, surgery and indoctrination to turn biological boys into sort-of girls and biological girls into kind-of boys is now “gender-reaffirming care. The cover-word for illegal alaines became “undocumented workers,” then became “migrants,” and now it’s “visitors.” Now the acronym DEI is on the way out. Anti-DEI legislation is gaining traction in several states, and the racial, ethnic and gender preference industry is getting the message. No, it won’t stop advocating and facilitating discrimination against whites and males. The plan is to call the practice something else. After all, the trick has worked before.

Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: 13 Federal Judges

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Thirteen federal judges—appellate Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, Matthew Solomson of the U.S Court of Federal Claims, District Judges Alan Albright and Matthew Kacsmaryk, Stephen Vaden, who sits on the United States Court of International Trade; plus judges David Counts, James W. Hendrix, Jeremy D. Kernodle, Tilman E. Self, III, Brantley Starr, Drew B. Tipton and Daniel M. Traynor—have all announced in a letter to Columbia University’s president, that beginning with the entering class of 2024, they “will not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or law students.”

“Since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, Columbia University has become ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, anti-semitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses across the Nation, ” the letter begins. “Disruptors have threatened violence, committed assaults, and destroyed property. As judges who hire law clerks every year to serve in the federal judiciary, we have lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education. Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry. As a result, Columbia has disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”

After suggesting measures that need to be taken to restore trust in the institution, the judges conclude, “Recent events demonstrate that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution of Columbia has destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic and intellectually diverse country. Both professors and administrators are on the front lines of the campus disruptions, encouraging the virulent spread of antisemitism and bigotry. Significant and dramatic change in the composition of its faculty and administration is required to restore confidence in Columbia.”

It is a responsible, powerful, and much needed response, both to the institution and the students who have demonstrated both an absence of critical thinking and judicious temperament as well basic respect for their fellow students, liberal education, and the law.

Now do Harvard.


RFK Jr. Supporters Are Going To Sue Meta (Facebook, Instagram). Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Oopsie! Meta, the monster (in many senses of the word) parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram, blocked the link to a new, 30-minute infomercial supporting the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the rebel independent Presidential candidate whom Democrats wish they could vaporize with their bad thoughts. Meta says it was a “mistake.”

Maybe it was. The embargo didn’t last long: the ad was only unavailable from late afternoon last Friday to the middle of last Saturday. A spokesman for Meta said the link had been incorrectly flagged as spam. For some reason, RFK Jr.’s campaign and supporters don’t trust Meta. Tony Lyons, a founder the super PAC that paid for the ad, says his group plans to sue Meta in federal court for censorship and First Amendment violations.

“When social media companies censor a presidential candidate, the public can’t learn what that candidate actually believes and what policies they would pursue if elected,” Mr. Lyons said. “We are left with the propaganda and lies from the most powerful and most corrupt groups and individuals.”

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: The Columbia Law Review

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I gave a legal ethics seminar 90 minutes after finding my wife dead, and these infants are too traumatized to take their exams because of a “horrific time on campus” and their “level of distress”:

Continue reading →

From the Babylon Bee: Ignorant Misinformation That Will Get Dogs Killed Even If Kristi Noem Isn’t Around…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ugh. More ignorant pit bull hysteria, as usual spread by someone who knows little or nothing about dogs.

“Not the Bee” is supposed to be a site the highlights bizarre events from a conservative perspective, so how its concluded that advocating a “pit bull ban” was a legitimate topic escapes me. However, people using false and misleading statistics to stampede lawmakers happens to be a topic of great interest to an ethicist. I’ve written about this annoying and recurring phenomenon before, many times. The primary post about the pit bull breed-deranged website Dogsbite.org, an Unethical Website of the Month back in 2015, and one of the all-time Ethics Alarms comment champions with 354 comments so far.

Ian Haworth wrote the irresponsible Not The Bee piece today, “Is it time to ban pit bulls?” I should title this post, “Is it time for people who write about pit bulls to learn what a pit bull is?” As soon as this article began, I knew readers were in the grip of someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about:

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Wake-Up Call, May 4, 2024: Campus Anti-Semitism Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’d say anyone celebrating Star Wars Day today (“May the Fourth be with you!”) on this May 4 needs to get out more.

In addition to being a day that promises further depressing developments on college campuses as the decades of progressive, anti-American, and Marxist indoctrination have their predictable (and probably intentional) consequences—though somehow the ivory tower revolutionaries in charge of those campuses were oddly unprepared for them!—this date has an ominous history.

The Vietnam protests reached their violent zenith with the National Guard shooting four Kent State students on May 4, 1970, a tragedy eerily reminiscent of the Boston Massacre. I’ve been surprised that there hasn’t been a student fatality in the current unrest yet: as always, the protest organizers are hoping for one to “radicalize” the campuses. Another development that seems inevitable is a terrorist attack in support of Gaza and Hamas. Today is a date that portends that, too: during a huge labor protest at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois on May 4, 1886, a someone threw a bomb among the 200 police officers attempting to break up the demonstration. Police then started shooting at the pro-labor crowd, killing more than a dozen protestors and wounding nearly a hundred, several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more. The protest had been organized by pro-labor activists to protest (and exploit) of the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before, and about 1,500 workers participated. That episode galvanized both the labor movement and the progressive movement that produced Teddy Roosevelt, Eugene V. Debs, Clarence Darrow, and Woodrow Wilson.

The anti-war rioting at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 also took place in Chicago, and where do you suppose the Democrats are holding their nominating convention this year? If nothing else, you can accuse the party of being superstitious. That call is the equivalent of naming a new cruise ship “Titanic.”

But wait! There’s more! On May 4, 1994, then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat reached an agreement in Cairo on Palestinian self-rule, following the Oslo Accords signed in Washington, D.C. on September 13, 1993. The agreement acknowledged Israel’s right to exist! Israeli agreed to withdraw from most of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, all land won by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 when the Arab nations collectively tried to wipe Israel off the map. The Palestinians agreed to avoid terrorism and maintain peace. and prevent violence in the famous “land for peace” bargain. The agreement transferred authority from the Israeli Civil Administration to the newly created Palestinian Authority, its jurisdiction and legislative powers, a Palestinian police force and relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Sounds promising, no? Almost immediately after the Israeli military withdrawal, the Palestinians began attacking Israel and its civilians. The periodic terrorism continued: there was never real “peace.” The promise to accept Israel’s right to exist was just words. Seven years later came the “Second Intifada” in 2000, a violent Palestinian uprising against Israel that left over a thousand Israelis dead and thousands injured. The schism was complete when the Palestinians elected the openly terrorist organization Hamas to lead Gaza in 2006. The fable of “The Scorpion and the Frog” comes to mind.

I wonder how many of the campus protesters are conversant in this history?

Continue reading →

Ethics and Constitutional Dunces: The 320 House Members (Mostly Republicans) Who Voted for the “Antisemitism Awareness Act”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

You know, or should, that your conduct is unethical and outrageous when it makes Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) look good by comparison Gaetz voted against HR 690, as every member of the House should have since it is throbbingly unconstitutional on its face, no question, no argument, a flat out First Amendment violation. Gaetz told his followers on Twitter/X that he voted against the proposed legislation because it is a “ridiculous hate speech bill.”

“Antisemitism is wrong, but this legislation is written without regard for the Constitution, common sense, or even the common understanding of the meaning of words,” he wrote. Bingo. The bill, in weasel words remarkable even by recent Congressional standards, declares that “anti-Semitism” is a violation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.), and embraces an expansive definition of the term “adopted on May 26, 2016, by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State; and… includes the “[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism” identified in the IHRA definition.”

The IHRA definition includes examples of pure speech, and I would expect any junior in high school to know that these cannot be criminalized:

Continue reading →