Law & Law Enforcement

That Arizona Abortion Decision…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This story is straightforward and ethically simple. Apparently neither Republicans, nor Democrats, nor abortion activists, nor the President, not the news media is capable or willing to say so. I guess that leaves it up to me.

When the constantly legislating Supreme Court of the Sixties and Seventies illegally made up a Constitutional right that didn’t exist—the right to have an abortion limited only by the Supreme Court’s arbitrary limit based on that decade’s belief regarding “viability”,””— in its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, it stole away the power to make laws regulating abortion in the states. This, in turn rendered unenforceable a law in Arizona dating from its days as a territory in 1864 (Arizona didn’t become a state until 1912) that almost completely banned abortion. The law was still valid in 1973; laws passed by the territorial government were all grandfathered into the state statute book, and nobody disputed that they had to be treated like any other law until such laws were amended or repealed.

When the Supreme Court correctly if ridiculously tardily declared Roe to be the bad law, bad theory and irresponsible power grab by SCOTUS that it was in the Dobbs decision overturning it, that Arizona law was, as Dr. Frankenstein would say, “Alive! It’s alive!” And so it was. The beginning of the majority opinion in Planned Parenthood et al v Kristin Mayes/Mayes Hazelrigg tells you pretty much all you need to know, though reading the whole opinion and its dissents in the 4-2 ruling is worth the time. The opinion begins,

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Rueful Observations on a Former O.J. Juror’s 2016 Admission

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

O.J. Simpson’s death this week brought back lots of bad memories—I can’t think of a good one—and a lot of familiar spin and dubious exclamations. One disturbing moment it brought back into the spotlight was the moment above, when in 2016, the ESPN series “O.J.: Made in America” showed Carrie Bess, one of the Simpson jurors, stating that her jury voted to acquit O.J. not because the jury didn’t think he was guilty, but because they sought “payback” for the police beating of Rodney King.

The whole exchange after the interviewer asks, “Do you think there are members of the jury that voted to acquit OJ because of Rodney King?”

Bess: Yes.
Interviewer: You do?
Bess: Yes.
Interviewer: How many of you do you think felt that way?
Bess: Oh, probably 90% of them.
Interviewer: 90 %! Did you feel that way?
Bess: Yes.
Interviewer: That was payback.
Bess: Uh-huh.
Interviewer: Do you think that’s right?

And the ex-juror shrugs.

Nice.

Observations:

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More Naming Ethics: Oakland’s Airport

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Among the eight posts on Ethics Alarms officially filed under “naming ethics” controversies there are four children (“Hades,” “Adolf,” a suicide in the family…), college buildings, helicopters, a mountain, and a law school. To that select group we now add an airport, and this case looks suspiciously like deliberate mischief if one is conspiratorially inclined.

I am not, of course.

Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland that “There is no there there,” and apparently the Port of Oakland Commission wants to embrace that description. It is preparing to rename the Oakland airport, currently “Oakland International Airport,” to “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport.” This would seem to intentionally encourage confusion with the better-known (and more heavily used) San Francisco International Airport, just across the bridge and 25 miles away. Before it started falling apart in chunks thanks to being nearly at Grand Zero in The Great Stupid, San Francisco was the glamorous, popular, golden girl on campus and poor Oakland was her fat, homely girlfriend.

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This Lawyer’s Incredible Ignorance Prompts Me to Propose a New Standard For Disbarment

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That’s the outspoken, racist, Dunning-Kruger suffering lawyer on “The View,” Sunny Hostin, saying out loud and on national TV that climate change causes eclipses (yes, also earthquakes, but we’ve already heard public figures make fools of themselves on that topic, like here and here…). This was so bad that even Whoopie felt compelled to correct her: Whoopie’s problem is that she’s uneducated, but she’s still easily the smartest lady on “The View,” which admittedly is faint praise.

We could have an entertaining debate over whose statement is more idiotic, Rep. Jackson Lee’s claim that the moon is “mostly gas,” of this head-exploder from Hostin. But that’s not the point of this post.

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I Am Almost Glad Grace Can’t Read This Post…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

…because it would have made her cry. Heck, it very nearly made me cry. But as much as I hate posting this awful story of animal cruelty on what would have been my wife’s birthday (I guess it still is) attention must be paid. Attention must be paid, and this vicious asshole needs to be shunned by all decent people.

It is things like this that prompted me to designate Animal Kind International as a charity Grace would be proud to have someone give to in her memory.

That’s Wyoming ethics villain Cody Roberts, 42, smiling and raising a can of beer in the picture above. Next to him is the cowering, terrified, injured wolf he disabled by running it over with his snowmobile. Instead of putting the wolf out of its misery, Cody, who calls himself a hunter, dragged it to a bar with the wolf’s mouth taped shut to show it off in front of his friends, all of whom are obviously assholes too since they didn’t tell him to stop. After everyone had a good laugh, Cody took the suffering beast behind the building and killed it, but not before reportedly torturing it some more, you know, for fun.

After an anonymous tip was received from some weenie who witnessed this atrocity but who didn’t have the guts, integrity or decency to intervene, Wyoming Game and Fish investigated. Roberts was fined only $250 for a a”wildlife violation,” the only penalty that Game and Fish said it had the power to enforce because animal cruelty is only applied to cases involving pets and domestic animals. Yes, in Wyoming it’s not a crime to torture wild animals. No wonder Cody Roberts lives there.

I guarantee Grace would have adamantly argued that Roberts deserves to tortured and shot himself. He’s a monster, after all.

Be proud, Wyoming…as if Liz Cheney wasn’t embarrassment enough.

I don’t think I want to write about this any more. Grace’s birthday made me too sad already.

Remember That Texas Couple Who Want To Alter Their Home in a Historic District Because The Famous Owner Promoted His Theater’s Screening of “Birth of a Nation”? A Canadian Couple Says “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

You should remember: it was less than a month ago when I posted this Ethics Quiz with the question, “Should the government protect historic structures and artifacts that relate to dark events and less than admirable figures (by today’s values) in local and American history?” Something stupid is in the air, and that air has clearly reached Canada. For there is another controversy there about a couple wanting to erase all references to their historic home’s “less than admirable figure” by today’s [woke] values.”

Dr. Arnold Mahesan, a wealthy fertility specialist of Sri Lankan descent, and his wife, entrepreneur and former “Real Housewives of Toronto” actressRoxanne Earle, whose family comes from Pakistan, bought a house for $5 million in 2022 with a Toronto heritage designation in an affluent midtown Toronto neighborhood. The couple is adamant that the city should remove the heritage restriction from their home because, in their view, the original owner held racist opinions. Opinions.

Stapleton Pitt Caldecott, a former Toronto Board of Trade president, built the two-and-a-half story, 9,000-square foot house in 1906. He was opposed to immigration—the current residents of the home the descendants of immigrants, you will note—and also he believed immigrants should assimilate into their new country’s society and culture. Imagine that!

Oh-oh. I agree with that aspect of Caldecott’s beliefs. Well, there goes the prospects of 2707 Westminster Place being designated the “Jack Marshall House”!

“Stapleton Caldecott would’ve been appalled by us living in the house he commissioned,” Mahesan told a meeting of the Toronto Preservation Board, using a variation of Rationalization #32, “The Unethical Role Model.” He also complained that he and his wife only discovered that their home was a designated heritage property last year, when they decided that they wanted to modify the house’s steep stairway from the sidewalk. That fact means that they must have the city’s permission before making any major changes to the property. To this, I say: “Tough noogies!” (and old Arlington, Mass. playground expression). “Let the buyer beware” has some unreasonable applications, but not this one. They paid millions for a house without checking its history and legal status. That’s their misfortune.

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Ethics Quiz: Dignity For Arrested Lawbreakers!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

OK, maybe I just telegraphed my personal bias in reaction to this quiz, so I’ll keep my opinion to myself until the commentariat weighs in. I’ll try, anyway.

New York City has agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed in a 2018 class-action lawsuit by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, two Muslim women who claimed their rights were violated when police forced them to remove their hijabs for the police to take their “mug shots.”

The financial settlement requires approval by Judge Analisa Torres of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and I fervently hope…never mind! My mouth is zipped!

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A Real Life “Jumbo” of a Different, Indeed Fatal Kind

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In the Zambia’s Kafue National Park, at 8,600 square miles one of Africa’s largest animal reserves, an 80-year-old American woman, doubtlessly filling out her bucket list, was killed when a bull elephant charged the truck containing her and five other tourists on a morning tour to see wild game up close. They got close, all right: That relative of Ethics Alarms favorite Jumbo upended the truck (above) and precipitated the woman’s demise. The other tourist were injured but survived.

The story was sent to me by commenter JutGory, who pronounced it an assumption of the risk by the deceased woman and the others, which it is provide the safari company was crystal clear about what the risks were. I wonder. This has been an obsession with me lately, as lawyers require consent and waivers from clients after what is supposed to be full disclosure and I am convinced that most of the time the supposedly “informed consent” and “knowing waivers” are anything but.

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A Tragedy in the Czech Republic Reveals the Pro-Abortion Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This is a terrible story, but from an ethical enlightenment and focus perspective, I am grateful for it.

A four months pregnant patient at a Prague’s Bulovka University Hospital received an unwanted abortion procedure when doctors got her confused with another woman. (Both patients were not native Czech speakers.) The woman who lost her baby was at the hospital for a routine check-up, but nurses, doctors, a gynecologist and an anesthesiologist all became convinced she was another patient seeking an abortion. They subjected their victim to a surgical cleaning of the uterus without her consent consent or knowledge. She miscarried following the procedure.

Prague police are treating the matter as a case of negligent “bodily harm.” Is that what it is? A woman losing her unborn child is the equivalent of her losing a kidney? Is the unwanted invasion of her body is the issue here, and not the death of whatever that thing is that their outrageous mistake killed?

One of the clearest pieces of evidence that the entire pro-abortion case is built on intellectual dishonesty is the weird and mystical convention that if a mother wants her unborn child to be regarded as a nascent human being, it is in the eyes of the law, in most states. Someone ripping the unborn baby out of the womb of its mother will be usually charged with a crime against two human beings, not one. But if a woman has been taught to regard a gestating fetus as a wart, a tumor or a “mass of cells,” killing it is no crime at all…just a “choice,” or “reproductive care.”

I want to read or hear an abortion activist, or anyone screaming about how the Supreme Court removed a woman’s “right” to control her own body when her body includes a genetically distinct human being, explain how the law should treat a situation like the atrocity in the Czech Republic. Was a child involved or not? Were two human beings harmed, or one?

Were the doctors and the hospital guilty of a negligent tort, as if they had amputated the wrong leg, or was this negligent homicide?

Ethics Hero: J.K. Rowling, or “Now THAT’S How to Practice Civil Disobedience!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Scotland’s has passed a bonkers hate crime law that went into effect this week. It makes it a crime potentially punishable by up to seven years in prison to “stir up hatred” regarding age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and “variations in sex characteristics.” The law would be such a flagrant violation of the First Amendment in the U.S. that even Democrats would be embarrassed to vote for it, but Scotland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has been hit particularly hard by The Great Stupid. (This would be a propitious time to say a silent but heartfelt “Thanks, guys!” to Tom, Ben, George, John and the rest of the much maligned Founders.)

Being is an especially good position to do so, J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, has decided to lead the principled opposition to the unethical law. Yesterday, as the crime of “stirring up hatred” went into force, Rowling publicly defied it by listing a convicted rapist, several ex abusers and trans activists in a post on Twitter/”X,” asserting that they were all, in her view, men.

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