Law & Law Enforcement

Ethics Bulletin! Hillary Apologizes! And It’s Pathetic!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
I just can't bear to put up another Hillary photo, and the graphics for "fake apologies" are all memes, so here's an adorable bull dog puppy.

I just can’t bear to put up another Hillary photo, and the graphics for “fake apologies” are all memes, so here’s an adorable bull dog puppy.

I really, really wanted to be through with Hillary Clinton today…this week…as long as possible. You’ve got to believe me!

Then comes this breathless announcement from ABC News: Hillary finally apologized!

Of course, when you have said repeatedly that there was nothing to apologize for, and you aren’t going to apologize, see no reason to apologize, because you did nothing wrong, and it was allowed, and lots of others had done similarly without anyone making a fuss, and the whole thing is nonsense, and made up by Fox News and Republicans, and then you apologize because you can’t stop the criticism and your advisors are saying “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HILLARY, THE MEDIA IS  BEGGING YOU TO APOLOGIZE AND MAYBE IF YOU GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT WE CAN BURY THIS!!!!,” what kind of apology is it?

An insincere apology. A desperate apology. A cynical, dishonest, Machiavellian apology, containing no contrition, humility, acknowledgement of wrongdoing, remorse or acceptance of consequences. In other words, not an apology at all. Just another tactic,

Is anyone really fooled by this? If you are, what’s the matter with you?

Even by fake apology standards, this was awful. Clinton said (my comments in Hillary Soul Black):

“I do think I could have and should have done a better job answering questions earlier.

You mean better as in not using one rationalization after another, lying , falsely claiming that the e-mails of the Secretary of State contained no classified information before you adopted the Clintonian “no e-mails marked as classified?” Or better as in doing a better job lying?

“I really didn’t perhaps appreciate the need to do that.

Because Clintons never appreciate the need to tell the truth unless they are about to be exposed. Because Hillary is only running for President—why would she appreciate the need to be transparent and honest to the public? Why, though, was the alternative to doing a better job answering questions sending out one smirking, talking-point programmed surrogate after another to say that the issue was a sham? Why didn’t she appreciate the need not to do that?

“What I had done was allowed, it was above board.

In other words, she still refuses to admit she did anything wrong! What’s she apologizing for?  And no, it was not above board, because it was a secret private server specifically designed to keep Clinton’s communications hidden when she wanted them to be. “Above board” means “in open sight; without tricks, concealment, or disguise.” Her handling of the e-mails  was the opposite of “above board” by definition. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Conundrum Of The Wrong Color Baby

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

mixed race child

[ I wrote about this case last fall, before the decision in the case. This Ethics Quiz is a follow up. No fair cheating by going back and reading the older post until you have your answer]

Jennifer Cramblett, one half of a white same-sex couple that wanted a child, went to Midwest Sperm Bank and chose adeposit from donor No. 380. The sperm bank made that ol’ “8 looks like 3” mistake, so instead of the white donor the couple wanted, they were given sperm from donor No. 330, a black man. Cramblett filed suit against the sperm bank in 2014 for damages because she gave birth to a mixed-race daughter, and that was not what she paid for.

The sperm bank apologized but refunded only part of the cost to Cramblett and her partner Amanda Zinkon, and denied that damages were warranted.  Cramblett’s suit alleged that the mistake caused her and her family stress, pain, suffering and medical expenses, and that she feared that her daughter, Payton, now 3, would grow up feeling like an “outcast.” Attorneys for the sperm bank argued that “wrongful birth” suits should only apply to cases where a child is born with a birth defect that was predictable. In this case, the girl, Payton, is normal and healthy. Being black, of course, is not a defect.

The judge threw out the case, but headlines have been misleading. The original suit—why, I don’t know—failed to allege negligence, which I would think would be a slam dunk. The suit can and presumably will be refiled with a negligence claim, and that’s res ipsa loquitur.  (If a black child is born to a white couple, someone goofed somewhere.) There will be damages, but the question is how much and on what basis.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this:

Would it be ethical for a court to hold that having a child that is the “wrong” color is a hardship, injury, or misfortune worthy of damages?

Continue reading →

Unethical Presidential Candidates Sunday (EXTENDED): Hillary Clinton’s Amazing Unethical, Ethical, Unethical, Unethical,Unethical, Unethical Non-Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

fireworksWOW!

Jethro Gibbs, the hero of CBS’s long-running hit procedural drama NCIS, enlightens his charges with “Gibbs’ Rules.” As I have mentioned before, I like Gibbs’ Rules, but one of them is almost always dead wrong. The most cited of the rules is #6: “Never apologize — It’s a sign of weakness,” a rule that Gibbs and the show’s writers borrowed from John Wayne’s character in “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.” ( “Never apologize, mister, it. It’s a sign of weakness.”). Sincerely apologizing for genuine harm, mistakes or misconduct is not weakness, but a sign of character, accountability, honesty, courage, respect and fairness.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t believe in accountability, honesty, courage, respect and fairness, so it’s not surprising that she never apologizes. Neither does Donald Trump. It’s a clanging, earsplitting ethics alarm for anyone seeking a leader, for this means that they do not have the integrity or decency to admit genuine wrongdoing, and seek instead to maintain the illusion that they are infallible. It is even possible that they are in the throes of Rationalization #14, Self-validating Virtue, the mark of narcissists. Refusing to apologize is a terrible sign for a leader, a manager, even a friend.

Out of this ominous character flaw has come one of the most remarkable non-apologies in decades. When prompted by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell to apologize for her mishandling—her intentional mishandling, remember— of the e-mails she sent and received while Secretary of State, the Remarkable, Astounding, Ethics-Defying Candidate Hillary Clinton told her…

“At the end of the day, I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions, but there are answers to all these questions.And I take responsibility, and it wasn’t the best choice.”

Sound the trumpets and summon the sculptors! That is an unethical non apology for the ages: Continue reading →

Welcome To “Unethical Presidential Candidates Sunday”! First Up, Rationalization 19 A: The Insidious Confession, Or “It Wasn’t The Best Choice”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Presidential cnadidates

I have tired of suppressing legitimate ethics issues regarding the various Presidential candidates, especially the most obviously unethical ones, Hillary and The Donald, for fear of having this pan-ethics blog mired in the swamp of politics. For this day, at least, I’m going to stop wrestling myself to the ground and stop holding back my rising gorge, and focus specifically (though maybe not exclusively: you never know) on the 54—or is it 22? I get the number of Bill Cosby victims mixed up with the announced Presidential candidates sometimes—on the pack of Republicans and Democrats with designs on the White House. So look out, Jeb, Ben, Chris,  Ted, Carly, Jim Gilmore), Lindsey, Mike, Bobby,  John, George, Rand, Rick, Marco, Rick, Donald Trump, Lincoln, Hillary, Martin, Bernie, Professor, Jim (Webb)….this is

Unethical Presidential Candidates Sunday!

First up…Hillary Clinton gave us a new rationalization! Say hello to Rationalization 19A, the latest addition to the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List, #19A The Insidious Confession, or “It wasn’t the best choice.”

When Hillary Clinton first used her poll-tested, Campaign War Room generated description of her arrogant, defiant, incompetent and irresponsible (and possibly sinister) choice to send official communications on a private email server as not “the best choice,” I recognized it as misleading and dismissive, but assumed it was just a wan variation on my least favorite rationalization, the dreaded #22, “It’s not the worst thing.” Hillary used the same phrase this week, cementing my conviction that it is a talking point, but also making its real meaning clear.

“It wasn’t the best choice” is really a sneaky sub category of Rationalization #19:
 Continue reading →

A Brazilian Mugger Picks The Wrong Victim: Someone Please Send This Story To That School That Bans Images Of People “Who Solve Problems Using Violence”

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

mugger caught

This story proves…

  1.  That Wonder Woman dissing school is run by idiots, but we knew that.
  2.  Life has a sense of humor.
  3.  Some problems—many, even— are best solved by violence.
  4.  Trying to mug Wonder Woman would be safer than trying to mug Monique Bastos, and
  5. Nothing could start this long weekend better, at least for me, than a news item  where justice prevails  and anti-violence nuts have a lesson in why it’s better to be strong than meek.

I love it.

Wesley Sousa de Araujo and a fellow punk decided to rob two women on a street in on a street in Acailandia, western Brazil. They didn’t expect one of their victims to be this woman.. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Lawyer’s Ned Beatty E-Mail

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

miss piggyArizona Supreme Court Rule 41(g), permits attorney discipline based on the bar’s determination that an Arizona lawyer has engaged in “offensive conduct.” Now Dennis Wilenchik, an Arizona lawyer who got in a nasty e-mail exchange with a client over a fee is challenging his “admonishment,” a significant form of bar discipline, based on the surprise declaration of his contentious client that he was never offended. An admonished lawyer will usually accept discipline by consent, which in Wilenchik’s case includes a one-year probation period and anger management treatment.

The e-mail exchange began getting heated when Wilenchik called his client, who owned a medical marijuana consulting business, a “cheap asshole.” Later he threatened to sue for his fee, to which his client replied,“Bring it, bitch!”

Wilenchik’s evocative response: “OK drug dealer—I look forward to the many nights and mornings when you think of my name and squeal—you mean nothing to me. Check out the movie Deliverance.”

You know, like in this classic film moment…

Yes, cultural references to film classics are very useful. Still, it was this reference that clinched it with the disciplinary committee.

Wilenchik’s lawyer says there is newly discovered evidence showing that the client’s complaint to the bar was based on a claim that the client feared he would be gang raped because of the reference to “Deliverance.”

In a declaration, the complaining client now says he wasn’t offended by anything in Wilenchik’s emails:

“In fact, I thought that Mr. Wilenchik’s last Deliverance email to me was rather humorous actually, and stated in such a manner that neither I nor any reasonable person would or could seriously construe this to be a real intent to harm me or my family. Moreover, Mr. Wilenchik’s last Deliverance email to me was exactly what I would expect anyone, including a lawyer, to write after I sent an email saying, ‘Bring it bitch.’ In other words, these emails were harmless banter which I instigated and therefore it is impossible for me to have been offended.”

Your Ethics Alarms Labor Day Weekend Ethics Quiz is this:

Does someone have to be offended for a lawyer’s conduct to be sufficiently offensive to warrant discipline?

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Disqualified For High Office: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx)”

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments
legs

(Some of the many legs Kim Davis and Ted Cruz don’t have to stand on…)

My posts are long enough, I think everyone will agree, and often a lot more than that. Believe it or not. I’m always debating whether to include more detailed and footnoted arguments that make the blog more like the New Yorker, and I usually opt for the shorter version. I am always grateful when an articulate commenter expands on the post expands, at any length, on what I present and adds some of the sources I have read and others, putting more flesh on the bones of my position.

johnburger2013 has done Ethics Alarms a service by doing this regarding my posts about recalcitrant Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, now known as Inmate 8522901, and hosanna to that. In particular, I am grateful for his Scalia reference. The Volokh Conspiracy is the best reference for issues like this, as Prof. Volokh and his cohorts lean libertarian but brook no nonsense. You know, like Ted Cruz’s rant. Thanks to jvb also for using that site deftly.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, Disqualified For High Office: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx): Continue reading →

Disqualified For High Office: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx)

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
See, Ted, it's crazy to keep criticizing Iran while suggesting that the US should be come LIKE Iran. Never mind. Just stay in the Senate, and you can say stupid things you don't believe with minimal harm.

See, Ted, it’s crazy to keep criticizing Iran while suggesting that the US should be come LIKE Iran. Oh, never mind. Just stay in the Senate, and you can say stupid things you don’t believe with minimal harm. Deal?

Eventually, I may have to post a full list of the current Presidential candidates who have definitively disqualified themselves, by evidence of character, integrity, honesty, temperament, trustworthiness, leadership ability  and core values (or, in the cases of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the absence of them), from the very office they seek. Frankly, I’m afraid that no one will be left.

Senator Ted Cruz’s recent statement about Kim Davis, the now correctly jailed Kentucky clerk who cites God’s authority to justify defying the law, is so irresponsible, dishonest and cynical that he has to be moved to the top of the list.

Here it is. My comments are in bold.

“Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America…

This is a lie, and a gross mischaracterization of the facts. Kim Davis can live and worship any way she chooses. She objects to same sex marriage, and she may refuse to associate with gay married couples, refuse to attend gay weddings, make whatever statements opposing gay marriage she chooses, picket gay weddings, lobby for a Constitutional amendment and more.

What she cannot do is refuse to perform the duties of her office, and withhold from citizens the government services they have a right to receive because of her religious beliefs. It is beyond legitimate question in law and ethics that she does not have the right to do this. She has been arrested for defying a court order and being in open contempt of legal judicial authority. This is not unprecedented, this is America, and must be America if democracy and rule of law is to function. Continue reading →

Now A Judge Is Punishing Innocent Citizens Because He Doesn’t Like Gay Marriage

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

atherton

Meet Hamilton County (Tennessee) Chancellor Jeffrey Atherton, a local judge who is throwing a high-profile tantrum to show that he doesn’t agree with the U. S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision. Atherton denied a divorce petition last week, but not really because of the case at hand.. After hearing from seven witnesses and going through 77 exhibits, he rejected the requested divorce by Thomas Bumgardner and his wife, Pamela, stating that the Supreme Court’s ruling declaring gay marriages a right destroyed Tennessee’s ability to determine what constitutes marriage or divorce.

No, it doesn’t make sense.

 

Atherton said the Supreme Court must clarify “when a marriage is no longer a marriage”  and until it does, Tennessee courts are unable to handle  marriage and divorce litigation.  “The conclusion reached by this Court is that Tennesseans have been deemed by the U.S. Supreme Court to be incompetent to define and address such keystone/central institutions such as marriage, and, thereby, at minimum, contested divorces,” Atherton wrote.

 Or the short version: “I am an asshole with power!”
Continue reading →

JFK’s Death, Hanlon’s Razor, And How Truth Gets Buried Forever

/ Jack Marshall / 104 Comments

JFK Hickey

I am a student of Presidential assassinations (as you might guess by the posts on McKinley and Garfield), and have been most of my life, ever since I saw a TV special called “Web of Conspiracy” when I was 10, about the Lincoln murder. That led me to read the  best-selling book the special was based on, an 800 page, sensational analysis of the mysteries behind Lincoln’s death, by mystery writer Theodore Roscoe, who dabbled in history. The book’s theories and insinuating style are more convincing to a ten-year-old than an adult (I read the book many years later, and it drove me crazy), but the book still has a lot of fascinating tales and theories in it. I was hooked.

Oddly, the one Presidential assassination that has interested me least in recent years is the one I lived through, the assassination of President Kennedy. Blame Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner and Jim Garrison: “JFK” was the most dishonest movie I had ever watched (still is) and I walked out of it when its lies and distortions got too much for me about a third of the way through. Even before Stone’s brilliantly directed piece of crap. I was sick of the conspiracy theories, though Stone manufacturing a link to Lyndon Johnson was the final straw. Yes, the bitter Vietnam veteran really got back at LBJ; I hope it made him feel better. I, however, was soured on the whole topic.

I should have been paying more attention. Netflix is showing a documentary with the generic conspiracy theory title of “JFK: The Smoking Gun,” which was shown on cable two years ago. I missed it; if I had been aware of the film, the title and the subject matter—Oh, who’s behind it now? The Mafia? Nixon? Woody Harrelson’s father?—would have kept me away. But while I was on the road for a couple days doing ethics seminars for VACLE, my wife watched the documentary, and when I returned, sleep deprived, weak and submissive, she made me watch it.

Fascinating. And troubling. Continue reading →