Law & Law Enforcement

Don Lemon Was Never A Real Journalist, and He Can’t Claim to Have Been One When He Invaded That Church

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Not to say I told you so, but I told you so: Ethics Alarms flagged Don Lemon as an unethical, biased, arrogant, preening disgrace as a journalist long before he was finally canned by CNN, and he has done nothing but live up to my assessment, indeed, show how restrained it was, since. See? I’m smart!

Over the weekend an anti-ICE mob stormed a church in St. Paul on the theory that one of the pastors was an ICE agent. I know, that makes no sense to me, either. They interrupted the service, chanting Renee Good’s name, “Hands up, don’t shoot” and other nonsense that had nothing to do with the service was shut down. Lemon was part of the mob.

The administration has been investigating the disruption at the church as a violation of the Face Act, a law that makes it a crime to physically obstruct or use threats of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking to participate in a service at a house of worship. It seems pretty clear that this is what the mob did, and that Lemon is as guilty and any of the thugs who did this.

Lemon filmed the event and claimed he was just there as a journalist. No, he’s an ex-journalist, as am I: I was on the staff of my high school newspaper. Lemon made his claim of being at the illegal intrusion as a reporter rather than a participant is weak, and made weaker by his comments on the podcast “I’ve Had It” with Jennifer Welch. “And there’s a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are, you know, in the religious groups like that,” Lemon said. “It’s not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they’re entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, white supremacy, and they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country, when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It’s religious freedom, but only if you’re a Christian and only if you’re a white male, pretty much.”

Doesn’t sound like he was in that church as an objective observer to me. Lemon is such an idiot. Listen to him in the clip above, implying that there is a Constitutional right to burst into a church, stop a service, and protest something that has nothing to do with the service or the parishioners at all.

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From Uvalde, The Message Is “Don’t Criminalize Incompetence and Cowardice”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A deranged gunman massacred 21 people at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary three years ago. The murderer is dead and someone must be held accountable, so a former school police officer was tried for abandoning or endangering children. Adrian Gonzales (above, checking his phone like he probably did as the kids were being shot), the first officer to arrive at the school, faced 29 counts of abandoning or endangering children, 19 for the dead and 10 more for survivors. A jury found him not guilty yesterday. Soon the pretty clearly incompetent school former school police chief Pete Arredondo will face trial later on similar charges, and we should expect the same result.

One of Ethics Alarms’ encomiums is that when ethics fail, the law steps in and usually makes a mess of things. If people won’t do the right thing because it’s the right thing, making them do what the state says is the right thing because they’re afraid of being punished is a very poor substitute. Those following the law may not have any concept of what the right thing to do is.

The Uvalde prosecutions arise out of anger and frustration, and reasonably so. Emotions, however, are not reliable motives for law enforcement. The school’s police pretty clearly failed the children of Robb Elementary because Gonzales and Arredondo choked when an unexpected crisis required them to place themselves in harm’s way. As much as we find it disheartening, lack of courage in a crisis cannot be criminalized. These officers thought they had accepted a relatively low-stress job in a quiet community. They hadn’t dealt with a gun-wielding madman before. Sure, we’d like to know that a Dirty Harry is ready to let an active shooter “make his day,” but in the real world—and, I will say without more than my own assessment, increasingly a nation of weenies—that is probably not going to happen. Gonzales had received active shooter training and was also a co-instructor in such a course, but training, however, is one thing, and the a real gun-wielding killer is another.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Lawyer Kimberley Hamm, Spinning For The Clintons

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“There’s an accommodation process when you’re talking about a President or a former President.Contempt is punitive; it’s not about enforcement. If you want to get the information, agreeing to accommodations is one way of getting it.”

—Kimberly Hamm, a partner at Morrison Foerster, after being cherry-picked by the New York Times to excuse Bill and Hillary Clinton for trying to defy a Congressional subpoena.

For some strange reason (I’m being facetious) Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to think that they are excused, unlike any other Americans (or, say, Michael Corleone) from obeying a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee. Hamm, as we know how these things work, was tracked down as a putative objective “expert” by the Times to excuse the Clintons and impugn Republicans who are not inclined to accept their offensive and arrogant defiance, as Ethics Alarms highlighted last week.

There should be a “heightened standard” when it comes to a subpoena of a former President, Hamm said. Oh really? Show me your authority for that assertion, Counselor. But first show me where you made a similar statement about armed raids on former Presidents’ homes over disputes regarding classified documents.

What utter balderdash: “contempt is punitive and not about enforcement.” How dumb does this lawyer (and the Times) think we are? Punishment is always about enforcement. A law that has no penalty for its violations isn’t a law at all. You know, like immigration laws during the Biden Administration.

The Times reports that negotiations between Representative James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and the slippery Clintons over their refusal to testify before his Committee in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation broke down today, “hours before a scheduled vote to hold the couple in contempt of Congress.” Read the whole thing if you like (gift link), but the basic facts are clear: the Clintons feel they have a special right to avoid being grilled in public, and they don’t.

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Calling “A Friend”! Tell Us Again How The New York Times Is Non-Partisan, Fair, and Trustworthy…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yeah, I’m trolling. So sue me.

A mob of Minnesota pro-open borders, anti-Rule of Law, insurrection-minded, Jacob Frey toadies and crazies invade a church service and harass parishioners on the pretense that the minister supports immigration enforcement, and the framing of the event by the nation’s alleged “newspaper of record” is to call the trespass and mass assault a “protest” and to focus on I.C.E. tactics when the issue is anti-I.C.E. tactics. The immigration control agency was not involved in this criminal act in any way, yet it is in the headline.

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

For readers new to Ethics Alarms, “A Friend” is an unfriendly, denial-soaked ex-commenter here who banned himself from the comments, an act that is addressed specifically in the blog Comment Policies. Unlike even the most disrespectful and defiant bannees of the past, who typically issue a one or two finals shots and then sink into the obscurity they so richly deserve, this jerk has adamantly refused to comply with the site’s owner and moderator, me. Thus for years he has repeatedly blog-bombed posts with comments that I have to delete while also sending me emails that also go directly to spam, because he is somehow convinced that he’s smarter than everyone else. You know,

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Wisconsin’s Governor Perfectly Exemplifies The Pro-Illegal Immigration Mob’s Logical, Legal and Ethical Disconnect

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Ponder this brief news item from the state’s WBAY. I’ve footnoted it for reference and easy mockery:

“MADISON, Wis. (WBAY) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says he’s “very concerned” about immigration officials targeting farm workers, [1]especially as ICE arrests ramp up across the Midwest.

“Evers says his team is keeping an eye [2] on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s presence in the state.

“According to the most recent data, a University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers survey found 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms is performed by people living in the country illegally. [3]

“’I can probably say in my sleep [4], our state will be destroyed economically if suddenly we decide anybody undocumented [5] is going home or has to leave [6]Wisconsin,’” Evers said.

“‘When asked if ICE is welcome in Wisconsin, Gov. Evers said he doesn’t see the need for the federal government to come here.'”[7].

“He believes the state can handle immigration enforcement itself.” [8]

Riddle me this: How many internal contradictions can one fit in a single news article?

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Ethics Quote of the Day: “Adams Rib”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I see something in you I’ve never seen before and I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I hate it…Contempt for the law, that’s what you’ve got — it’s a disease, a spreading disease -… You think the law is something that you can get over or get under or get around or just plain flaunt. You start with that and you wind up in the…Well, look at us! The law is the law, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad the thing to do is to change it, not just to bust it wide open! You start with one law, then pretty soon it’s all laws, pretty soon it’s everything.”

—Adam Bonner, assistant district attorney, played by Spencer Tracy in the great Hepburn-Tracy comedy “Adams Rib” (1949). The lines were written by the movie’s screenwriting team, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon

I was re-watching the film this week because I needed a laugh, not because I expected to be yanked kicking and screaming into the into 2026 Anti-I.C.E. madness. But Tracy’s impassioned speech shocked me out of my amusement: When did that rational, pure American, self-evident and irrefutable statement about the society’s crucial fealty to the Rule of Law become controversial?

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Comment of the Day: “Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today became Frightening Mainstream Media Bias Saturday without my intention, so I’m going to shift gears to the other site of the massive Leftist societal and cultural manipulation, our conquered educational system. This Comment of the Day from one of EA’s resident authorities on the topic, will do quite nicely. Incidentally, I am a bit behind in my Comment of the Day posting. I’ll catch up, I promise.

In the meantime, here is Michael R.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?”…

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There is a solution, but it cannot be implemented because of the corruption of the judiciary. The state schools are clearly in violation of numerous discrimination laws and they should be held to account.

Boys are being discriminated in schools. Look at the current performance of boys vs. girls in GPA and test scores below.

Now compare this to the 1975 – 1995 figures here. This is clearly a Title IX violation.

It is claimed that 20% of elementary school teachers are male, but I haven’t seen that and I doubt you have either. The real number is probably closer to 95% female. I am pretty sure this is clear evidence of sex discrimination by the schools and needs to be remedied. The 4 elementary schools my son went to had no, zero, male employees. Not even a janitor was male. This is clearly sex discrimination and should be remedied immediately.

Surveys show that at least 65% of public schoolteachers are Democrats. In the universities, it is MUCH higher. This type of viewpoint discrimination should not be allowed in public schools and the states need to outlaw it. The problem is, if you allow Democrats to be hired and they are allowed to determine hiring, the place becomes all Democrat eventually because Democrats are a cult that puts cult loyalty before merit. The concept of merit is considered evil to them. A solution would be to exempt Republicans from the taxes that support the schools (“Here is my Republican Card. This entitles me to a 60% property tax discount and a 3% sales tax discount”) or state-paid tuition at the private school of their choice. Since the schools are partisan, only that party should be required to support the schools.

The college population has been majority female since 1973 or 1974 (depending on if you define it as 50/50 or percentage of the population. Women are currently 61% of college students. The number in many surveys is below 60%, but it has been above 60% for some time in my experience. This is a massive Title IX violation.

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Ethics Quiz: The Woke Law Dean

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Why this has morphed into “Dubious University Firings Friday” I don’t know, but here goes…

The University of Arkansas rescinded its appointment of Emily Suski (above), a professor of law and Associate Dean for Strategic Institutional Priorities (whatever that’s supposed to mean) at the the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, as its new University of Arkansas Law School dean. It had previously announced on January 9 that Suski would become dean on July 1, beginning a five-year contract with a $350,000 annual salary, according to The New York Times.  At the time, University of Arkansas provost Indrajeet Chaubey praised Suski’s “extensive experience in leadership roles in legal education and practice” and said she “is an accomplished scholar” who “has also been very successful in establishing medical-legal partnerships in South Carolina to support children’s health and overall well-being.”

Sounds great! Then an Arkansas state senator and others registered their objections to Suski based on her stated support for trans female athletes competing against biological women in women’s sports, and the fact that she was among 850 law professors who signed a letter urging the US Senate to confirm the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

In response, university officials announced that they had rescinded Suski’s offer because of “feedback from key external stakeholders.” It appears that the school acted because of veiled threats from Republican state legislators that having such a progressive law dean would endanger the University’s funding from the state. (“Nice little law school you have here…be a shame if anything were to happen to it…”) After all, Arkansas law was the first state in the US to ban “gender-affirming care”—gag!— for minors. 

I’m about 85% certain what the right answer to this one is, but out of respect for that 15% of doubt,

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was it fair and responsible to dump the new dean because of two public positions on controversial legal topics?

What’s the Ethical Way To Deal With Minnesota?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Perhaps the best rejoinder to anyone who wants to condemn an acquaintance for voting for Evil Donald Trump is to gently (or not so gently) remind said fool that the alternative was to put Minnesota Tim “Knucklehead” Walz a heartbeat from the White House. Showing the impeccable judgment he displayed on the campaign trail, this incompetent allowed massive fraud to take needed funds from law-abiding Minnesotans, admitted that he did nothing about it because he didn’t want to upset the Somali voting block most responsible for it, decided to end his quest for re-election because he knows he’s going to eventually have to face the metaphorical music, and now is trying to go out with a bang by inciting deranged Minnesotans to fight Federal officers in defense of illegal immigrant criminals, among others.

Good plan!

Yesterday, some commentators observed, Walz may have “crossed the line.” Gee, ya think?

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Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Greg Lukianoff is the president and chief executive of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has taken over the non-partisan role of First Amendment protector that the ACLU abandoned over a decade ago. In an essay for the New York Times titled, “This Is No Way to Run a University” (gift link), he easily smashes some low hanging conservative fruit: Texas A&M University introducing policy changes aimed at a sweeping review of course materials aimed at purging state disapproved assertions about about race and gender ( according to a bill passed last spring by the Texas Legislature) from woke curricula.

The bill is almost certainly unconstitutional as state forbidden speech. Lukianoff highlights the fact that the law was interpreted at Texas A&M as mandating the elimination of some Plato works from a philosophy course on how classical ethical concepts apply to contemporary social problems, including race and gender. That is clearly a ridiculous result. The free speech activist writes in part,

“Texas A&M seems to have concluded that the safest way to handle the ideas contained in a classic text is to bury them. This is no way to run an institution of higher education. University administrators and state lawmakers are saying, in effect, that academic freedom won’t protect you if you teach ideas they don’t like. Never mind that decades ago, the Supreme Court described classrooms as the very embodiment of the “marketplace of ideas”: “Our nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom…Within the Texas Tech University system, which has more than 60,000 students, a Dec. 1 memo warned faculty members not to “promote or otherwise inculcate” certain specific viewpoints about race and sex in the classroom. These include concepts like “One race or sex is inherently superior to another”; “An individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”; and “Meritocracy or a strong work ethic are racist, sexist or constructs of oppression.” The point isn’t that these concepts should just be accepted or go unchallenged; it’s that challenging them through a robust give-and-take is what universities are for.”

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