Law & Law Enforcement

On the Venezuelan Drug Boat “Double-Tap” Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

President Trump’s controversial policy of destroying vessels from Venezuela smuggling drugs into the U.S. is now the latest example of the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s desperation search for bogus issues with which to impugn the President and his administration. Let’s see, we have: not “bringing down prices” that cannot come down after the last Administration caused 9% inflation; “cruelly” deporting illegal immigrants, including criminals; improving the White House with a long-needed ballroom; the President saying exactly, if intemperately, what six Democrats did by urging the military to defy its Commander-in- Chief; the Department of War requiring journalists not to leak sensitive information illegally provided by Deep State operatives…I’m sure I left out some. Now the Trump is defending the legality of a September 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea where a second missile strike was ordered that killed survivors of the first strike.

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Larry Bushart, Justin Carter, Josh Pillault: Martyrs To Anti-Gun Fearmongering and School Shooting Hysteria

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today Greg Lukianoff, the president and chief executive of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, has a guest column in the New York Times about the unethical persecution of Bushart, a 61-year-old retired police officer living in Lexington, Tennessee, who ended up in jail for 37 days for posting a meme on social media post that some hysteric took to be a threat to shoot up a school. His was a particularly head-scratching case of the wild over-reaction to stupid and vicious comments about Charlie Kirk after his assassination. Lukianoff uses his column to condemn all negative consequences of all of those comments, usually by the Trump Deranged and Axis media-indoctrinated.

From the column:

Mr. Bushart’s case would be alarming even if it were the sole instance of institutional overreaction to a response to Mr. Kirk’s killing. But it is not unique. A recent review by Reuters of court records, local media reports and public statements found that more than 600 Americans have been fired, suspended, investigated or disciplined by employers for comments about the Kirk assassination. Mr. Bushart, too, lost his job — because he was in jail.

At my organization, we have tallied 80 attempts to punish academics over their remarks about Mr. Kirk since his killing, resulting so far in about 40 investigations or disciplinary actions and 18 terminations.

The Bushart case is a poor one to send Lukianoff to his soapbox: he wasn’t arrested over what he said about Kirk. I don’t think he was fired, either, since the column begins by telling us he is retired. Moreover, FIRE’s absolutism is misplaced: there are very good reasons to fire teachers who celebrated a man’s death by violence for his political views. To begin with, they are terrible, hateful leftists who shouldn’t be corrupting young minds.

But the column did remind me that I had never learned (or written about…I’m sorry) the resolution of the far worse case of Justin Carter, a Texas teenager (above) who was arrested in 2013 for commenting on Facebook with a fellow gamer, “Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts. lol. jk.” A Canadian jerk who read the exchange decided to report Justin to the Austin police, who then arrested him–he was 18 at the time—searched his family’s house, and charged him with making a “terroristic threat.”

I wrote a great deal about the case in 2013, beginning with this post, “The Persecution Of Justin Carter And The Consequences Of Fear-Mongering: If This Doesn’t Make You Angry, Something’s The Matter With You.” I just re-read it: I blamed the teen’s abuse on the Obama Administration’s exploitation of the Newtown school shooting to create sufficient anxiety among parents to move the metaphorical needle on gun control, and I was right. Where I was wrong was in not keeping Ethics Alarms readers updated on Carter’s fate, though I referred to his case as recently as 2018.

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Thanksgiving Eve Ethics Appetizers

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving this year because I can’t stop things I’m not thankful for imposing on my consciousness and making me miserable. “Get these memories out of this room!” says one of three collegial madwomen in a memorable scene from “The Madwoman of Chaillot.” “I won’t have them sitting around staring at me!”

Exactly.

But enough about me. My friends continue to be frightening in their mental deterioration: that cartoon above was just posted by one of them…with a wave of “likes” of course. How much has one’s critical thinking skills been corrupted to think that perspective is anything but woke garbage? The mind boggles.

Meanwhile,

1. Here’s Biden’s paid liar, (the competent one) Jen Psaki, sounding idiotic on a podcast (Who has the time and tolerance to listen to junk like this? I’d rather watch re-runs of “Three’s Company”) attacking current press secretary Karoline Leavitt:

JEN PSAKI: It’s a very good question. Here’s the challenge of that. If I would say Peter Doocy, bless his heart, is not as bad as Benny Johnson.This is the group we’re living in, we’ve got the rank order of options. Is that if the Associated Press and the Washington Post and the New York Times and ABC News say, you know what, we’re walking out of this White House briefing room. That’s the best thing that could ever happen to Donald Trump and Karoline Leavitt. Because that’s what they’re trying to reshape without saying they’re doing it. And in that room, and this is what I find to be so challenging, is the things that are happening behind the scenes that you can’t always see or know unless you’ve lived it. And I think this is true in law firms, in the Department of Justice and places too, is that in that briefing room, the Benny Johnsons of the world are slowly but surely taking over more and more of the questions in the briefing, right?And having a greater and greater presence in these press pools where you have a smaller group of reporters in the Oval Office. And sometimes Trump and a foreign leader will take 45 minutes of questions. And it’s Benny Johnson and little Benny Johnson, whoever that may be.And yes, maybe there’s one or two other real reporters, but the problem is they’re taking up so much real estate. So if all of these other reporters leave, that’s all the real estate. And then you know what we have?We have what the Kremlin press corps is. And that’s the challenge. So if you’re these reporters, I don’t know what the answer is and what you do. There’s still very smart people in there. They’re just getting overtaken in terms of space and real estate by people the White House selects to say things like, Donald Trump looks so good in his workout. What is his workout?That was literally a question one day.

ANGIE “PUMPS” SULLIVAN, CO-HOST: It’s crazy. Yeah. Okay. And one thing. Okay. So I’m going to tell you what a big nerd I am.

PSAKI: We’re all nerds. It’s a safe place.

WELCH: So I get on social media. And then when I would get home after work, I would watch your press conferences when you worked for Biden.

PSAKI: Oh my God. God bless you. Thank you.

SULLIVAN: It’s just to see like, okay, what’s the real story before I got into the meat of it? Because I was like, okay, what’s the White House saying? Because I’m getting all this disruption. And I think that it’s a, you know, it’s precious for the United States to have a representative of the president to come out and talk about policy. You had a stack of books this tall. I couldn’t even believe all the crap you went through. Now I am enraged every time I see Karoline Leavitt who prays before she goes out there and lies her fat ass off. So she goes out there and lies and it’s propaganda after propaganda. Is there no check on that? Like, is there no, like, I guess there’s no law that the press secretary has to be honest, but like when she acts like, I can’t even believe you would insinuate Donald Trump would make money off of the presidency as the Trump watches are going. So is there no like rules or anything? I guess they don’t care about rules, but does that break your heart to see what it’s been turned into?

PSAKI: It does. And I say this as obviously I worked in Democratic politics for 20 something years. I’m not shy about my views, but even for people who like Dana Perino or dare I say even Sean Spicer, I don’t know if I should use him as an example.It’s a very different briefing room now than it was then. Dana Perino is probably a better example of this, right? I disagree with Bush on a bazillion things, right? But you had to go in there and answer questions from the same type of reporters and often the same reporters I had to answer questions from. And this is a part of how the United States is unique as a democracy is that you do have a person who goes out there at the White House and answers questions even on days and believe me, there are some days where before you walk out into the room, you’re like, “oh shit.” There’s no information. That’s not the reporter’s fault. It’s like, there’s nothing I can offer and they’re going to just yell at me for 45 minutes. It’s sad because there aren’t so many people who’ve ever done that job and what it feels like it is diminishing the job. It is diminishing the role of the press secretary, the honor of being in that job, which is speaking on behalf of the United States of America, which sometimes it’s edgy. A lot of times it’s not. Sometimes people think it’s boring, but it’s important and this is really changing what it is and what the expectations are around it. And that is sad for the White House. It’s sad for the institution. It’s sad for anyone who’s had that job. And it really takes it away as something that the American people can rely on as at least a source of information.

Where to start? Of course Jen thinks the Times, the Post and the rest are journalism gold, since they abdicated all journalistic integrity to cover for her White House and her party. Funny that she thinks Leavitt has debased the Paid Liar job when Psaki never criticized her pathetic successor, Karine Jean-Pierre. And needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, for any former Paid Liar to criticize another one for lying isn’t just hypocrisy, it is lying in a position where lying is unethical.

Then there’s the barely coherent Mean Girls banter. How does that illuminate or entertain?

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Unethical Quote of the Week: “Good Illegal Immigrant”Rahel Negassi

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she told him. “The only thing I’ve done is that I am Eritrean.”

—-Illegal Eritrean immigrant Rahel Negassito to her son, in the latest “Feel badly for illegal immigrants who finally get what they deserve” feature by the New York Times.

Rahel looks smug and defiant in the photo, as indeed she is. She did nothing wrong, but the (revoltingly) sympathetic story of her problems relocating to Canada from the U.S., where she has been residing illegally for 20 years, reports that she got into the country by

  • “…paying a smuggler who eventually got her to Britain, where she bought a fake British passport” to get her into the U.S.
  • …getting caught by ICE when the passport was recognized as fake
  • …being released after her application as a refugee was rejected, as a “paroled undocumented migrant.” 
  • ….living with her citizen sister for 20 years, counting on America’s slack and, for most of the period, law-ignoring immigration process to protect her.

Then as the story tells us, cruel Donald Trump was elected and set out to fulfill his campaign promise to clear as many illegal immigrants out of the U.S. as possible. A gift link is here.

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Now THIS Is An Unethical Judge (Or Just A Nut Case…)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Matthew E.P. Thornhill was the longest-serving circuit judge in St. Charles County, Missouri. A judicial conduct commission recently demanded that he be suspended and then resign, and Thornhill has agreed to retire pending the approval of the Missouri Supreme Court. Why is he leaving? Well…

1. He promoted his election campaigns by asking litigants, witnesses and lawyers if they had seen his “Thornhill for Judge” signs.

2. He gave a personal reference on behalf of the petitioner in an adoption case that was pending before another judge. A judge can’t be a character witness without a subpoena.

3….and then there was the judge’s obsession with Elvis Presley:

  • According to his biography page on the St. Charles County Circuit Court website, he “loves Elvis.” So much so that he would refer to the dates of Presley’s birth or death “when such statements were irrelevant to the proceedings before the court.”
  • He frequently recited Elvis’s song lyrics in court.
  • He asked litigants and witnesses if they wanted Elvis’s songs played as they were being sworn in.
  • He indeed sometimes played Elvis recordings in the courtroom and (Drumroll!)…
  • Dressed up as Elvis during trials, sometimes wearing an Elvis wig.

The state’s Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of Judges found that Judge Thornhill had “engaged in a course of conduct in which he failed to maintain order and decorum in the courtroom, in his chambers and in the courthouse, and further failed to maintain the dignity appropriate of judicial office.”

In a letter to the Missouri Supreme Court, Thornhill wrote that wearing an Elvis wig and playing Elvis songs in court had been to “add levity at times when I thought it would help relax litigants….I now recognize that this could affect the integrity and solemnity of the proceedings.” The Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of Judges has announced that Judge Thornhill had “admitted to the truth and substantial accuracy” of the allegations against him and would be retiring after his suspension.

In a local television interview last year, Thornhill said that he had visited Graceland 13 times. “Burning Love” is one of his favorite Elvis songs.

Me too!

So here it is….

Regarding That “Seditious” Democrat Video…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Who’s kidding whom?

You know that six former members of the military who by chance happened to be Democrats didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to “remind” members of the military that they are not supposed to obey “illegal orders.” They know that: every member of the military is taught the principle, though few have the fortitude to actually defy a superior officer on that basis. (My father did it at least three times during World War II while in the infantry.) This fake public service message or whatever you’d like to call it was a cheap, deceitful, underhanded way of advancing the Democratic Party’s “autocrat”/”threat to democracy”/”end elections” narrative to smear President Trump while exacerbating the brain fever of Trump Derangement Victims. Oh, it’s clever in the same diabolical way the “It’s OK to be white!” signs were, or the whole Black Lives Matter scam, or “Let’s Go Brandon!” Wink-wink. nudge-nudge, you get what we really mean, don’t you?

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BREAKING: Ethics Alarms Galore in New Lawsuit: Is The NFL Colluding Against Its Most Passionate Fans?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It sure looks like it.

The mainstream media is terrible at covering lawsuits, and this one is no exception. Attention should be paid, however. The allegations are serious, and particularly ominous for professional sports, which are all in a perilous state right now thanks to their greedy negligence allowing gambling to taint their credibility. The law suit, which has mountains of evidence to support it, alleges a conspiracy among Fanatics Inc., the National Football League and TikTok “to monopolize the sports memorabilia market, suppress competition, and destroy small business sellers.” The specific allegations are:

  1. Violation of Sherman Act §1 (Conspiracy in Restraint of Trade) 
  2. Violation of Sherman Act §2 (Monopolization / Attempted Monopolization) 
  3. Violation of Clayton Act §3 (Exclusive Dealing) 
  4. Violation of California Cartwright Act 
  5. Violation of California Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code §17200) 
  6. Tortious Interference with Contractual Relations 
  7. Tortious Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage 
  8. False Advertising and Unfair Competition (Lanham Act §43(a)) 
  9. Common Law Unfair Competition 
  10. Breach of Covenant of Good Faith & Fair Dealing 

The victims of the conspiracy are passionate NFL fans, collectors, and families who began lucrative businesss selling NFL souvenir items only to be threatened and blocked, costing them dearly.

If you aren’t a sports memorabilia collector, you may be unaware of the extent to which a company called Fanatics dominates the business. One reason for this is that the part of the memorabilia business at issue exploded in activity and profits fairly recently. During the stupid pandemic lockdown, small business entrepreneurs calling themselves “breakers” devised a new approach to sports memorabilia and collectables marketing by livestreaming so-called “box breaks” on TikTok, eBay and other platforms. The result was billions in secondary-market sales and thousands of everyday Americans profiting while retired professional athletes had income from participating in autograph signings and memorabilia events. 

All was well, and everyone profited, until 2021, when Fanatics, backed by equity funding from Silver Lake Technology Management and with the cooperation of the NFL and other sports leagues, decided to monopolize the collectibles and memorabilia industry. Fanatics acquired exclusive licensing rights from the major sports leagues and players’ associations, purchased the iconic trading card manufacturer Topps, and launched new brands such as Under Wraps. The scheme was to take the autograph and memorabilia markets away from independent dealers and breakers, fixing the profits while freezing the small business memorabilia traders out.

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Observations on the Epstein Drama. Summary: I Don’t Understand This At All.

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Right now, a sniffling groups of women including past victims of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking operations are standing in front of the Capitol before Congress’s vote on releasing “the Epstein files,” whatever that means at this point. One speaker—they are all saying not just kind-of the same thing, but exactly the same thing but in different words (sometimes) said that their lament isn’t about politics. It’s obviously about politics. Both CNN and MSNBC, the most aggressive Democratic propaganda agents broadcasting, are showing the demonstration live, as if it’s important news. Fox News is barely mentioning it.

The issue is political and partisan. The proof is irrefutable. Why didn’t the victims, or whoever organized them, or the mainstream media, insist that the Biden Administration release the files when the power to do so was entirely within its grasp? Nobody thought of it? The Democrats were fabricating ways to “Get Trump” and had been since 2015; everyone knew he had once been pals with Epstein; and the scandal was 20 years old. The Epstein revival only became a thing when the Axis of Unethical Conduct became desperate in its efforts to slow down Trump 2.0 as his administration began dismantling the Obama-Biden nascent totalitarian state. Naturally, Axis media was all in. Naturally, publicity hound Marjorie Taylor Greene, who comprehends neither law nor logic, decided to use it to get cheap clicks. Maybe she really thinks a rehash of the evil deeds of a man who has been dead for six years is a good use of her time; who knows? She’s an idiot.

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What Would We Do Without “Experts”?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Over the last two days, the listserv of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL) had been embroiled in a debate over ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 3.10 and its application to a hypothetical posed by a member. The association, which I belong to, includes law professors, ethics partners, CLE trainers, and ethics consultants, expert witnesses—pretty much all of the legal ethics experts in the United States.

There is no ABA Model Rule 3.10.

Eventually, after a lot of replies, someone figured out that the question really involved California’s Rule 3.10, which neither the ABA nor any other jurisdiction includes. The big clue was that the member who posted the hypothetical practices in California, though the state was not mentioned in the original post. Most of the responses to the post were also California lawyers, none of whom mentioned that this was an issue confined to their state.

Question: are these legal ethics experts unaware that the rule in their state is an outlier? Or is the Golden State such an impenetrable bubble that legal ethics experts there assume that its often bizarre sensitivities are the only ones that count?

[Perhaps relevant (or not): the lawyer who started the debate over the almost imaginary ethics rule includes mandatory pronouns in each post.]

No, Dr. Gelman, Just Because You Think Your Toaster Is A Lawyer Doesn’t Mean What You Say To It Is Privileged

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Its continues to amaze me whom the New York Times will give a platform to. Take Dr. Nils Gilman (please!), a historian who “works at the intersection of technology and public policy,” whatever that means.

He has written a supposedly learned column for the Times [gift link] claiming that human beings should have something akin to attorney-client privilege when they shoot off their mouths to their chatbots. His cautionary tale:

On New Year’s Day, Jonathan Rinderknecht purportedly asked ChatGPT: “Are you at fault if a fire is [lit]because of your cigarettes?”… “Yes,” ChatGPT replied…. Rinderknecht…had previously told the chatbot how “amazing” it had felt to burn a Bible months prior….and had also asked it to create a “dystopian” painting of a crowd of poor people fleeing a forest fire while a crowd of rich people mocked them behind a gate.

Somehow the bot squealed to federal authorities. Those conversations were considered sufficient evidence of Rinderknecht’s mind, motives and intent to start a fire that, along with GPS data that put him at the scene of the initial blaze, the feds arrested and chargeed him with several criminal counts, including destruction of property by means of fire, alleging that he was responsible for a small blaze that reignited a week later to start the horrific Palisades fire.

To the author, “this disturbing development is a warning for our legal system.” You see, lonely, stupid people are using A.I. chatbots as confidants, therapists and advisers now, and the damn things cannot be trusted. “We urgently need a new form of legal protection that would safeguard most private communications between people and A.I. chatbots. I call it A.I. interaction privilege,” he pleads.

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