Law & Law Enforcement

Further Musings On The Tucker Carlson Car In The Capitol Riot Aftermath Ethics Train Wreck [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Having read more in the last 24 hours about this fiasco layered on a fiasco, I have reached the following conclusions:

1. I was right: Speaker McCarthy choosing Tucker Carlson as the vehicle to educate the public regarding the bias and slanted coverage of the January 6 Capitol rioting was a truly incompetent decision. If Rush Limbaugh weren’t dead, it was the equivalent of that, giving all of the Trump Deranged, progressive brain-washed and dishonest propagandists all they needed to spin the security footage into incoherence. Carlson is a proven liar and a cynical, untrustworthy charlatan who can’t even be trusted to believe in what he says on national TV. McCarthy walked into a cognitive dissonance perfect storm: if you wanted to ensure that no one who already hadn’t swallowed the “resistance”/Democratic Party/mainstream media (aka The Axis of Unethical Conduct) “insurrection” narrative would dismiss the new video, that was the way to do it.

2. Sure enough: Carlson and the Republicans are being widely accused of trying to excuse the riot, which was inexcusable. Chuck Schumer’s lie—on the Senate floor— that Carlson claimed the attack on the Capitol was not violent has more currency with those who don’t watch Fox News than anything Carlson said, and those who do watch Fox News already had concluded that the insurrection narrative was garbage. What is essential to begin clearing away the deception and corruption this episode epitomizes is to find someone whom the non-Fox News watchers will trust to carry the message. Handing the job to Carlson was simply dumb—but about what I expect of Kevin McCarthy.

3. The Big Lie is not that the 2020 election was stolen, but that the riot was an “insurrection.” Schumer and the Axis are using a Big Lie while accusing their adversaries of using a Big Lie. You have to admire the audacity: the 2020 election was a lot closer to “stolen” than the riot was to an insurrection.

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Official Progressive Deceit: The Equality/Equity Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

In describing to lawyers what deceit is in my ethics seminars (it is amazing how many layers don’t know what deceit is, though it is forbidden in the ethics rules), I often say that deceit is the official language of Washington, D.C. It’s a reliable laugh line, but it’s not funny. Using linguistic tricks to deceive and mislead the public is a tool of dangerous and untrustworthy governments, movements, leaders and politicians. I don’t know if this age old practice has become worse in recent years; to me it seems that way, but it could be an illusion. In the Sixties, leftists like Abbie Hoffman liked to use “liberate” as a synonym for “steal.”

The success of “Black Lives Matter” relied on a linguistic disorientation, like the old gag about a lawyer asking a witness, “When did you stop beating your wife?” What has been dismaying is how few people have the wit and courage to call out the trick and refuse to back down. The use of “immigrants,” “migrants,” “undocumented workers” and other deliberately misleading terms to hide the reality that the subject is law-breaking aliens has also been largely successful in bamboozling the public. “Affirmative action,” a nice and deceptive way to say “racial quotas,” is finally going down, but it kept the Constitution at bay for half a century. The all-time most sinister linguistic cheat, perhaps, is the use of the benign word “choice” to describe the right to kill unborn children.

Lately, the most prominent verbal deceit is embodied in the “Diversity-Equity-Inclusion” mantra, with “equity” serving as the cornerstone of the cheat. Most Americans—hey, thanks, public education system!—think that equity is just another word for equality. Now that Democrats and progressives are fully committed to socialism (while denying it—that’s not deceit, it’s just lying) they have been bombarding the public with the word without clarifying its implications. Equality means equality under the law; it means that every citizen has the same opportunity to accomplish what his or her talents, effort, ingenuity, determination, laws and the vagueries of fate and fortune allow without obstruction by the government. Equity means that every citizen should be guaranteed the same success to the extent government power can make such “equity” possible. It is based on the socialist/communist ideal that it is unfair that life provides unequal benefits , ability and advantages, so central power must ensure fairness by artificially eliminating as many disparities in these benefits , ability and advantages as possible.

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Reflections On The First Stupid, Virtue-Signaling Lawn Sign Of Spring….

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

obxoxious sign

For the second time this week I find myself grafting substantial sections of an archived Ethics Alarms post to a new one. (I promise not to make a habit of it.) The occasion is the appearance on one of my Alexandria, Virginia neighbors’ lawn the idiotic sign above. Once again I was seized with the desire to ring the house’s doorbell and cross examine the residents. Can they explain and justify what’s on that sign? I am almost certain that they cannot, just as my other neighbor who STILL displays a medieval suit of armor next to a 5 x 4 hand-made, painted wooden sign reading BLACK LIVES MATTER in block letters could not justify that obnoxious lawn ornament, since it is, after all, more indefensible than ever now that the movement it stands for has been exposed as cynical hustle.

In 2021, New York Times’ woke propaganda agent Amanda Hess was given a rare slot on her paper’s front page to opine on the sign above, which was apparently the beginning of the the viral Announce to your neighbors that you’re a smug, simple-minded idiot!” epidemic. Ethics Alarms has had several posts about similar signs, but I did not realize that I had missed Patient Zero.

Hess’s analysis by turns informed readers that the sign has “curious power” (to make me detest the homeowner?); that the mottoes are “progressive maxims” (so progressives really are that facile and shallow!), that “Donald Trump is out of office…But nevertheless, this sign has persisted” (Oh! It’s all Trump’s fault?), that the sign is “directed at the adults in the room, reminding them of their own mission” (Really? Open borders? Man-boy love? Anti-white discrimination? Marxism? Why is a sign aimed at adults so naive and childish? ), that it is “the epitome of virtue signaling: an actual sign enumerating the owner’s virtues. There is something refreshing, actually, about the straightforwardness of that.” (There is something refreshing about smug idiots placing signs on their laws that say, “I am a smug idiot”?).

I learned other things from that article:

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Murdaugh Trial Ethics: No, Judges May Not Punish Defendants For Taking The Stand In Their Own Defense…Can They?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

More dubious “expert” testimony this morning: this is why I watch less and less TV news.

Judge Clifton Newman sentenced disbarred South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh to two consecutive life sentences in his sensational trial for the murders of his wife and son, after a jury found Murdaugh guilty yesterday in the 2021 slayings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. Murdoch already faced life in prison for an astounding number of financial crimes. In fact, the alleged motive for his killing his family was to take attention away from those offenses. (This strikes me as similar to the guy who fired a nail-gun into his skull to distract from the pain of his inadvertently sawing off his own hand in his workshop, but never mind…)

On Fox News, a legal analyst told viewers that Murdaugh was likely to get the maximum non-capital punishment penalty from Judge Newman because he took the stand in his own defense to assert his innocence. “Since the jury found him guilty, that means he lied under oath,” the “expert” explained. “Judges don’t like that. His testimony guaranteed a harsh sentence.”

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Ethics Mash-Up! Cross Today’s Post On Unethical Laws With The Post On Tolerated Cheating And You Get…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…the Minnesota District Court ruling that biological males must be allowed to compete in women’s powerlifting competitions if they “identify” as female. (The posts referenced above are here and here).

The decision, which declared USA Powerlifting’s 2019 policy barring biological men from competing against women illegal in the state a violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act. That it is, because the Minnesota Human Rights Act is unethical in its treatment of the transgender issue, not to mention bats. The ruling requires USA Powerlifting to amend its policy to allow transgender people to compete along with other members of their self-identities sex. As a result, female power-lifters who didn’t have the advantage of going through puberty as males are going to be squashed in competition with newly minted ex-men. If ever there was a sport where allowing transexual competitors was unconscionable, this is it.

But Minnesota is right up there (down there?) with California, Washington, Oregon, New York and Vermont when it comes to placing woke ideology over reality.

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Ethics Heroes: The Mid Vermont Christian School Girls Basketball Team [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball team, the Eagles, were set to play against the Long Trail Mountain Lions in the fourth game of state championship tournament playoffs last week. But the Eagles forfeited the game and lost their place in the tournament, taking the position it was unfair and unsafe for a high school girls team to have to play against a team with a biological male on its squad.

Which, of course, it was and is.

[That’s another trans member of a women’s basketball team above, but illustrative of the problem…don’t you think?]

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Gee, Who Would Have Predicted That Legalizing Pot Would Put Children At Risk?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Sorry, I have no sympathy, zero, zilch, nada, for any parents and grandparents of the rebellious toking generation who are horrified at the effect widespread pot legalization is having on the young. Any idiot could have and should have predicted it. For example, I predicted it when I was 18, and being prodded, mocked, urged and wheedled (perhaps that should be “weedled”) into taking “just one puff” almost every day in college. (It was also against the law, which stodgy old me took too seriously, I was lectured, by a lot of students who went to law school.)

Here is how the New York Times’ “Kids Buying Weed From Bodegas Wasn’t in the ‘Legal Weed’ Plan” begins…

Not long ago, a mother in Westchester learned from her teenage son that he and his friends had gone to a nearby bodega and bought weed. She understood — they were kids, stifled and robbed by the pandemic of so many opportunities for indulging the secretive rituals of adolescence…

But it was deeply troubling to her that a store was selling weed to kids — New York State’s decriminalization statute makes it illegal to sell to anyone under 21 — so she embarked on an investigation. Predictably, when she confronted the bodega owners, they denied that they were distributing to anyone underage, so her next stop was a visit to the local police precinct, where she did not encounter the sense of urgency she had hoped for.

The cops greeted her with a kind of smug indifference, she said, an affect of I told you so, suggesting that liberals were now faced with the downstream impact of values that law enforcement had always disdained. Mothers in earthy, expensive footwear from the River Towns to Park Slope had supported the legalization of marijuana on the grounds that it needlessly funneled so many young Black and brown men into the criminal justice system. But now it was ubiquitous, and in the worst case scenarios possibly laced with fentanyl, and all too easy for their children to access. The bodega, in this instance, was a short distance from the local high school.

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Actress Glenn Close

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Nixon was pardoned, and the gut punch to our body politic turned into a festering cynicism about our leaders, which has only grown in the years since. Nixon should have been held accountable. And so should Donald Trump. Another gut punch may prove fatal.”

—-Esteemed actress Glenn Close, who was raised in a cult, whose only jobs have involved performing before and after college (where she majored in theater), and who has no more expertise or authority on these issues than anyone else, including my favorite Harris Teeter check-out clerk, in a letter to the editor  that was given op-ed opinion status by the New York Times….because, you see, she’s a great actress, so of course her opinion is special.

Boy, am I sick of writing versions of this post.

Hollywood “resistance” culture and cant notwithstanding, there are no parallels between President Richard Nixon and President Donald Trump, other than the fact that most journalists hated both of them. Even in that respect, there are material differences: the journalists who hated Nixon at least made a pass at objective reporting, though they were thrilled when he provided them with an opportunity to attack. As has been documented here so often that even I’m bored with it, the tactics of the resistance/Democratic Party/ mainstream media regarding Trump was to assume he had committed heinous acts, and to see their task as removing him from office (or making sure he never again runs for office) by searching for some justification. This was the strategy that led to the two weak and unconstitutional impeachments and that produced the list of Big Lies fed to the public throughout Trump’s term in office (and after). It is an unethical and sinister strategy, and the approach of various prosecutors—“Let’s search for something we can get this guy on!” is a breach of legal and prosecutorial ethics as well.

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Update: “Vermont Law School’s Craven Art Censorship”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Slavery mural

UPDATE: The Ethics Alarms post below ran in 2021. Now the revolting controversy is back in the news: the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont still seeks to remove the artwork above and below depicting the history of slavery in the U.S. As I wrote in 2021, the school simply capitulated to irrational, power-seeking student complaints alleging a racist message being conveyed by anti-racist art. To his credit, the artist has fought back, and the school has wasted resources intended for education to support the worst kind of mindless race-hucksterism.

At the end of the post, it noted that the case was headed to an appellate court, and it finally reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, where the two sides presented arguments on January 27. For two years, the law school has covered the paintings with white panels suspended just above their surface so as not to damage them, pending the outcome of the court appeal.

I still think Kerson is likely to lose. I do not see how a Court can compel a school to display an artwork it doesn’t want to display. The federal law at issue says artists can prevent modification of their work if the change would harm their “honor or reputation.” The law school says that covering the murals, even permanently, is not a modification. An attorney representing the law school states simply, “If you own a painting, of course you have the right to decide whether or not to display it.”

The white artist, Sam Kerson argues that his reputation will be scarred if his work is falsely treated as “racist.” “He must suffer the indignity and humiliation of having a cover put over his art,” his lead attorney, argued to the Second Circuit.

Nothing much has changed since the 2021 post, but some of the quotes cited in the New York Times article this week are demonstrate how thoroughly race issues have become unmoored from rationality and fairness:

  • “If someone is saying to you, ‘How you’re depicting me is racist,’ for you to live in your own ignorance, and further aggravate the situation — now you’re showing us who you are,” said Yanni DeCastro, a second-year student. [In other words, if someone claims your art is racist, disagreeing with that assessment is racist.]
  • “We need to stop protecting white fragility,” said another student. [Another transparent tactic to ban disagreement with race hucksters! Kerson isn’t uncomfortable talking about race: his painting is an invitation to face racial history. It’s his black critics who are “fragile.”]
  • The same student told the Times:  “The mural is covered, but what’s really changed? What is the plan to ensure that students of color feel safe and welcome?” [Yes, students are threatened by a covered painting. What kind of lawyer can someone like this become? My guess: a poor one.]
  •  A second-year student told the Times: “What is real to me is a painting to you The artist was depicting history, but it’s not his history to depict.” [Only blacks can write about, make movies about, or paint pictures regarding black history. Why wouldn’t the converse also be true, then?]

Here is the original post:

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It Really Is True: A Disturbing Number Of Elected Democrats Don’t Understand Or Support The First Amendment

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Do the voters who elect these opponents of democracy understand the implications of what they are doing in states like California, Massachusetts, Washington and, in this case, New York? I hope not. I sincerely hope the voters are just lazy and stupid, not genuinely in favor of curtailing individual rights.

Once again, a judge has had to step in and remind a government that “Congress shall make no law–– abridging the freedom of speech” as applied to the states through the 14th Amendment. New York’s dangerously woke governor Kathy Hochul happily signed into law last December “The Hateful Conduct Law,” entitled “Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited.” She had personally called for the law, declaring that “[o]nline platforms should be held accountable for allowing hateful and dangerous content to spread on their platforms” because the alleged “lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability of these platforms allows hateful and extremist views to proliferate online.”

It is thought control Democrats and progressives like Hochul want, and prosecuting those who “spread” ideas that their mob calls hateful and dangerous is essential to that goal. The law, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 394-ccc(1)(a) defines  “hateful conduct” as

“[T]he use of a social media network to vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

Naturally, since the “beauty part” of such a law for aspiring totalitarians is that all-wise, ever-virtuous overseers like Hochul can decide any conduct or expression is “hateful” if they want to silence and punish the speaker. “Vilification, humiliation, or incitement” is undefined, but if whatever it is is directed toward an individual or group based on their “race”, “color”, “religion”, “ethnicity”, “national origin”, “disability”, “sex”, “sexual” orientation”, “gender identity” or “gender expression,” then it’s illegal. Continue reading →