Law & Law Enforcement

Pet Goat Ethics: Is There Anyone Behaving Ethically In This Mess?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Are they just not installing ethics alarms any more?

Above you see Cedar the Goat with his 9-year-old owner, now grief-stricken because Cedar ended up on a State Senator’s menu thanks to a series of unethical acts that could have been short-circuited if anyone with power or authority had been a little more ethical, but no.

Jessica Long bought Cedar last year as a pet for her nine-year-old daughter, but for some reason decided to hand the beloved pet over to a livestock auction at a district fair, which stipulated that the all sales were final and Cedar, like all the other farm critters, would be sold for meat. The fair’s brochure clearly stated “no exceptions.” But Long’s daughter was distraught about the prospect of losing Cedar, so her mom begged the fair to give him back before bidding started.

“Pet schmet,” the fair’s rulers essentially replied. “Making an exception for you will only teach our youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants,” Shasta District (that’s in California) Fair Chief Executive Officer Melanie Silva lectured in an email. So Cedar was duly auctioned off to a representative of California State Senator Brian Dahle for $902. Just $63.14 of that goes to the state fair and the rest, $838.86 to Long.

Thinking hard (but not well) about how to please her daughter, Jessica kidnapped the goat and decided to “take the goat that night and deal with the consequences later.”

Oh, good thinking there, Mom!

The fair’s livestock manager contacted Long warning of “serious consequences” if the goat wasn’t returned. Then a sheriff from Shasta County, filed a search warrant, a judge signed off on it and officers used “breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers in pursuit of their target.” Cedar was the target. Clever Long, however, had sent Cedar into hiding at a distant farm in Sonoma County, but it still didn’t work: authorities got her goat anyway and drove him 200 miles to Shasta County for slaughter.

It is believed that the little goat was served at a community barbecue to which he had been donated as a gesture by Senator Dahl. And that he was delicious.

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Ethics Quiz: Michelangelo Porn

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Oh, let’s start out this rainy weekend (here in Northern Virginia, at least) with an ethics quiz on a theme that will be recurring on Ethics Alarms today if all goes as planned (which it seldom does).

Tallahassee (Florida) Classical School principal Hope Carrasquilla was given a choice between being fired or resigning following complaints by parents over a recent art lesson in the charter school that included Michelangelo’s famous “David” statue and his Sistine Chapel “Creation of Adam” fresco painting.

After all, pee-pees were involved.

The stated mission of the Tallahassee Classical School is “training the minds and improving the hearts of young people through a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue.” The school also maintains that “reform of American public education, to be successful and good, must be built on a foundation of classical liberal arts learning.” Presumably parents who enrolled their children in the school were aware of this orientation.

Moreover, it is fair to say that “David” is just about as iconic a symbol of the classical arts as one could name, with perhaps the Venus de Milo being the only competition. Yet after three parents complained about their 6th graders being exposed to images of “David” (and the naked Adam in the Sistine Chapel painting), the school’s principal was forced out.

Conservative Hillsdale College provides the curriculum, training, and resources for the school as well as for other public schools through Hillsdale’s K-12 support. This was not an example of parents rising up against an extreme left-wing curriculum. Yet one of the parents famously denounced “David” as “pornography.”

Your Ethics Alarms Fine Arts Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is it inappropriate and irresponsible to display “David” in an art course for Sixth Graders?

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Parody Ethics: What Is This Case Doing At The Supreme Court? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Well, KABOOM! There goes my head.

Absurdly, Jack Daniel’s, the largest American whiskey manufacturer, sued VIP Products, one of the principle American dog toy manufacturer (Spuds loves their toys) over a parody plastic squeaky toy modeled on Jack Daniel’s bottles. (Spud likes a squeaky toy that looks like a Coor beer bottle). On the dog toy, as you can see, instead of describing “Old No. 7 Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey” manufactured by “Jack Daniel’s,” the toy is “Bad Spaniel,” “Old No. 2 on your Tennessee carpet.”

Oral argument at the Supreme Court was yesterday. Finding a likelihood that consumers would confuse the “Bad Spaniels” toy with Jack Daniel’s, the trial court ruled in favor of the liquor company and barred VIP from continuing to manufacture the parody toy, ruling, believe it or not, that that consumers would confuse the “Bad Spaniels” toy with Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Yeah, I always have that problem, mixing up dog toys with liquor bottles. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed on both counts, because the trial court’s theory was…well, let Sidney Wang explain:

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Lawyer Jerry Goldfeder

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“You know, it’s not a slam-dunk. But I think that survives a motion to dismiss, and then let the jury decide.”

—-Jerry H. Goldfeder, a special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP and an  expert in New York state election law, to the New York Times regarding Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s supposedly imminent indictment and prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

That is an flat-out unethical endorsement of prosecutorial abuse of power, for not only a lawyer, but a lawyer in a major Manhattan law firm, being quoted as authority in the New York Times, uncritically, of course.

An ethical prosecutor does not bring a case unless he or she is certain that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The issue isn’t whether the prosecution will prevail, but whether the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to justify it prevailing with an objective and fair jury. Surviving a motion to dismiss is not an ethical standard; it’s the bottom-of-the-barrel standard. The judge agreeing that the case has no merit at all as a matter of law, is not the equivalent of holding that the case should not be brought by an ethical prosecutor. “Hey, who knows if the guy is guilty or if we have the evidence to convict? Let’s just get it in front of a jury and see what they think!”

Unspoken in this case: “After all, the point is to make Trump look bad, right? If we can get a conviction, it’s frosting on the cake.”

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Ethics Quiz: The Unmasked 97-Year-Old Driver

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Some background is necessary. Last month, by far the stupidest TV show currently on the air and arguably one of the top ten most ridiculous shows in U.S. entertainment history proved that metaphorical jewels van be found in garbage. On the pile of over-produced, pablum-for-morons, steaming idiot box crap called “The Masked Singer,” the scene in the video above emerged. Dick Van Dyke, now 97, was the secret singer (and dancer) disguised in a full-body costume worthy of a Disneyland character parade. The reaction of the studio audience, judges and Van Dyke himself when he was “unmasked” was unquestionably sincere as well as moving; yeah, it choked me up (though I’m easy.)

The episode, which shows the “Mary Poppins” icon to be something of a freak of nature (but we knew that when he performed a dance routine in the sequel to “Mary Poppins” a few years ago), is relevant to the issue on Ethics Alarms. Yesterday, Dick was behind the wheel of his a 2018 Lexus LS 500 in Malibu when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into gate, sustaining minor injuries.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it responsible for a 97-year-old to be driving, and for society to permit one to drive?

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The First Thing We Do, Let’s Fire All The Principals…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Oh, there are many things that need to happen in the wake of Seattle’s Lincoln High School’s leadership demonstrating that it doesn’t comprehend that government-supported racial segregation is illegal and that openly favoring black students is exactly as contrary to core democratic, Constitutional and American values as openly favoring white students. First, however, we need to fire the smiling, racist, woke-poisoned, incompetent fools above.

Here is what they allowed to be published to students and parents:

Our student leaders in our Black Student Union (BSU), Latino Student Union (LSU), and Asian Student Union (ASU) have been hard at working planning our upcoming Multicultural Week March 13th-17th…On Friday of Multicultural Week, students and staff of color and/or those who identify with any group represented by BSU/LSU/ASU are invited for a lunch potluck.

In other words, white and Jews stay away. These alleged education professionals saw nothing wrong with that, directly in contradiction of Brown v. Board of Education though it was. No ethics alarms sounded, because those alarms are as dead  as Thurgood Marshall in these products of the thoroughly rotted culture currently metastasizing in the state of Washington. Continue reading →

Great Moments In Totalitarian Hypocrisy: Stanford Law Students Who Proudly Shouted Down A Federal Judge Want Their Names And Images Removed From News Reports

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Of course they do!

This reminds me that one of the epiphanal moments in my philosophical development was when the fellow students at my college who took over a building, rifled though records, precipitated a riot and the shutting down of classes that I had every right to attend, included among their demands to allow the school to re-open their immunity from any discipline or adverse consequences whatsoever. At that moment I learned what kind of ethical principles revolutionaries respected: none. I never forgot that lesson, and nothing has occurred in the intervening years to alter my assessment.

Hilariously, the same students who posted the names and faces of the Stanford Federalist Society all over the school prior to disrupting its program featuring a conservative Federal judge’s remarks are now demanding anonymity from the Washington Free Beacon, the conservative news source that has thoroughly covered the law school’s disgrace. “They say we’ve violated their right to privacy by identifying them. You can’t make it up,” tweeted Aaron Sibarium, a Free Beacon reporter.

Well, you don’t have to make it up; the demand was completely predictable and in character with today’s mutant breed of progressive totalitarians.

The school’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the far-left force behind the exercise in the Heckler’s Veto handled so atrociously by the Stanford staff papered the school’s hallways prior to U.S. Circuit Court Judge Kyle Duncan’s scheduled speech with the names and photographs of the Federalist Society’s board members. Nevertheless, when Sibarium quoted the group’s board members describing the censorship exercise as “Stanford Law School at its best” and named those board members, the board’s demanded that that the Beacon redact her name and those of her classmates. “You do not have our permission to reference or quote any portion of this email in a future piece,” she wrote.

Translation: “You do not have our permission to reveal that we behaved like bullies and assholes even though we have said that we are proud of behaving like bullies and assholes.”

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Ethics Quiz: Axis Sally

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Mediocre movies can still raise important ethics questions, and so it is with a 2021 bomb called “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally.” The film dramatizes the bizarre tale of Mildred Gillars, a Maine-born American woman of modest looks and talents who rode her aspirations for a Hollywood career into an infamous gig as an infamous Nazi German radio propagandist during World War II. My father told me about her broadcasts from Berlin, and how she used sexy tones to tell American servicemen that they were doomed, that the Jews, not Germany, were their real enemy, and that their wives and girlfriends were cheating on them while they were in Europe fighting Hitler’s “invincible army.”

Her last broadcast was just a few days before Germany surrendered; Gillars was arrested and charged with being a traitor. In 1948, “Axis Sally” faced a very real threat of being hanged as she went on trial for eight counts of treason. Thanks in great part to a vigorous (if reluctant) defense by famed criminal defense attorney James Laughlin, played by Al Pacino in the film, the jury found her guilty of only one, and what could have been a 30 year jail term turned into ten.

Dad said that American GIs thought “she”Axis Sally” was hilarious, that no soldiers took her seriously, and that her singing was terrible. Her broadcasts were popular in the U.S., as she often relayed news of American prisoners of war to show how well they were being treated by their German captors.

Although I suspect that Pacino’s ringing closing argument in her defense was punched up considerably from the original by Laughlin and maybe even contained some arguments Laughlin did not make, the points he raises in the movie are fascinating:

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Massachusetts On The Civility/Free Speech Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In my home state of Massachusetts, the town of Southborough’s comment policy at town meetings partially read: “All remarks and dialogue in public meetings must be respectful and courteous, free of rude, personal or slanderous remarks. Inappropriate language and/or shouting will not be tolerated.” Southborough resident Louise Barron was accused of violating the civility policy during a town meeting and was threatened with physical removal before she left on her own accord.

In her remarks to the board, Barron had said the town was “spending like drunken sailors” and that the town board had violated the state’s open meetings law. A town official warned Barron against slandering town officials, telling her that the public comment session would be stopped. Barron refused to back down. “Look, you need to stop being a Hitler.” Barron said. “You’re a Hitler. I can say what I want.”

The board called a recess, and told Barron that she would be escorted from the meeting if she didn’t leave, precipitating her exit. That action by the Southborough government, Justice Scott L. Kafker of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote, violated protections for freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, according to the Court’s ruling handed down on March 7. His majority opinion held,

“Although civility, of course, is to be encouraged, it cannot be required regarding the content of what may be said in a public comment session of a governmental meeting. What can be required is that the public comment session be conducted in an ‘orderly and peaceable’ manner, including designating when public comment shall be allowed in the governmental meeting, the time limits for each person speaking, and rules preventing speakers from disrupting others and removing those speakers if they do.”

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An Unethical Quote Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There are a lot of really unethical people saying some astounding things lately. Such as…

1. Incompetent Elected Official Of the Month Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), who completely beclowned herself in the The House Weaponization Subcommittee examination of Twitter Files heralds Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. She was determined to discredit them for daring to reveal the efforts by her party and its allies to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story and censor critics, and apparently did no research into te topic of the hearings at all, announcing that she didn’t know what “a substack” was and showing complete ignorance regarding Bari Weiss. (Ah, if only she read Ethics Alarms!) Meanwhile, all of a sudden Democrats oppose journalists’ desire to protect their sources.

2. Not included in the video above was an offensive question by serial unethical House hack Debbie Wasserman Schulz, the former DNC chair who rigged the 2016 primaries for Hillary Clinton. She accused Matt Taibbi of profiting from authoring the “Twitter Files” reports, implying that he was motivated by persoanl profit, saying: “After the ‘Twitter Files,’ your followers doubled … I imagine your Substack readership … increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk.”

These people really lash out when they’re exposed, don’t they?

3. Over to the Republican side: Jenna Ellis, one of President Trump’s lawyers in the post-election push to have the results examined, admitted in Colorado Bar disciplinary proceedings that she deliberately engaged in the following misrepresentations “for selfish reasons”:

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