Law & Law Enforcement

Wow! Extreme Ideology And Resistance To Stubborn Reality Leads To Astoundingly Unethical And Irresponsible Policies…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand how intelligent officials—and by “intelligent” here I only mean “smart enough to put their socks on before their shoes”—-can possibly convince themselves that ignoring common sense and the collected wisdom of centuries as well as the acquired knowledge of recent decades will have anything but disastrous results. But here we stand:

  • In June, the California Highway Patrol arrested two men after a search of their vehicle revealed a stash of cocaine and 150,000 fentanyl pills. Based on the amount of drugs involved, they were booked into jail with an initial bail amount of $1 million each. (Fentanyl kills people.) But a pre-trial risk assessment of the suspects resulted in the men being classified  “low risk,” so they were released on their own recognizance without either the local D.A. or law enforcement officials being consulted. The two men, 25-year-old Jose Zendejas and 19-year-old Benito Madrigal, faced up to 14 years in state prison. They were expected to show up back in court on July 21. Shockingly, they did not. Nobody knows where they are.Their release is part of the social justice movement to eliminate bail because it discriminates against poor people. It also helps with the over-incarceration problem, because it allows criminals to get away with their crimes and harm society again, while broadcasting the message to other would be criminals that they are in a low-risk, high rewards profession as long as they stay where fantasy-blinded progressives run things….like California.

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Afternoon Ethics Woolgathering, 7/20/2022: Conspiracies And Condign Justice

/ Jack Marshall / 93 Comments

July 20 should be permanently recognized as Conspiracy Theory Day. It’s the anniversary of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969, and the event spawned one of the most hilarious of all conspiracy theories, that the whole thing was faked by NASA. Many believe it still. This one is an anti-government conspiracy theory, so perhaps the “Truthers” fantasy that George W. Bush bombed the Pentagon and Twin Towers on 9/11 has passed it. Or maybe the theory that a Kennedy assassination conspiracy involving President Johnson and the CIA is at the top of the list. My 8th grade history professor told our class that it was a fact that FDR conspired to let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor so the U.S. would enter the war.

A friend from childhood, smart to the point of brilliance, who once commented here often, sincerely believes that Barack Obama’s natural born citizenship is a hoax.

These conspiracy theories that cause people to believe their own government is a malign force are very harmful. More harmful yet is the current environment, where both political parties are vigorously pursuing conspiracy theories against the other.

It does not help the situation that some conspiracy theories, like the one that long held that the government was withholding evidence of unidentified flying objects, turn out to be true.

1. Condign justice dept. “Condign justice” was a term I never heard or read before George Will started using it. Then I stopped reading George Will, whose NeverTrumpism revealed him to be a classist hypocrite, requiring me to use it. Today’s example is the mayors of New York City and Washington D.C. complaining bitterly about being inundated with illegal immigrants. New York is suffering in great part because of its proud position as a “sanctuary city,” thus encouraging illegals to violate our laws. NYC Mayor Eric Adams demanded yesterday that the federal government help pay for what he said was a wave of illegal immigrants pouring into the city, as he whined about the city’s “safety net” being strained by busloads of people coming from border states and elsewhere. (CBS News helpfully apes Adams in calling the border-breachers “asylum-seekers,” hoping to cover-up what they really are.)  Awww. Well gee, Mayor, if you didn’t openly invite them and say they would be welcomed and protected from our mean old laws, maybe there wouldn’t be so darn many.

Some old saw about making beds seems to be appropriate here. Idiot. Continue reading →

Learning Curves: The Supreme Court Successfully Teaches Democrats A Crucial Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

This is progress.

The lesson is: Legislate and pass Constitutional laws the public supports, and don’t depend on courts to do your job for you.

The House of Representatives, with Democrats being joined by 47 Republicans, voted yesterday to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, 267-157. The bill would codify same-sex marriage into federal law.

Good. That’s the way it’s supposed to be done, and that’s what should have been done with abortion as well, had not the activist Supreme Court of 1973 unethically contrived an abortion right that didn’t exist. Democrats frequently had the votes and White House support to codify abortion in the years between 1973 and 2022, but preferred to use “choice” as a wedge issue to hold on to the feminist vote. Good plan!

Of course, the vote yesterday is being framed in such a way that the public may never comprehend the good reasons to pass laws the old fashioned way rather than wait for a deliberately undemocratic and non-partisan referee—SCOTUS—to rule by edict. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blamed her Democrats having to step up and legislate on a single Justice’s outlying concurrence in Dobbs. “Make no mistake, while his legal reasoning is twisted, and unsound, it is crucial that we take Justice Thomas and the extremist movement behind him at their word. This is what they intend to do,”she said.

I don’t think there is a chance in the world that same-sex marriage will be overturned. One thing about reversing Roe: it didn’t magically undo millions of abortions so there were suddenly all of these unaborted kids running around. Only Thomas (and maybe Justice Alito) are so doctrinaire that they would advocate a ruling that would either undo existing same sex marriages or create the unstable situation where some gay Americans are married with all the advantages of marriage while others are blocked from marriage. Furthermore, the argument for same sex marriages does not rely on the unenumerated right of privacy alone, but also Equal Protection, which was the basis on which several state courts ruled that restrictions on same sex marriages were impermissible.

The speculation is that the new bill will fail in the Senate because of a filibuster by Republicans. Republicans would be wise (and ethical) not to use the filibuster on this issue, but any sentence that begins with “Republicans would be wise” is flirting with fantasy.

Tuesday Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 7/19/2022: Harvard, Redheads, Uvalde, Bad House Guests And More

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

A lot of people find images like this, and the motto, offensive, presumably because of the association with Ronald Reagan, who brilliantly appropriated optimistic patriotism as a conservative value in response to Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” vision of the nation. Being negatively triggered by one’s own flag and expressions of pride and enthusiasm regarding the nation it represents is not a healthy state of mind, and therefore it is unethical conduct to actively promote such an attitude…which we now see being done every day.

1. It may be unethical, but Harvard at least has gall…In April, Harvard University set out to exceed its previous record for virtue signaling, committing $100 million to “redress its ties to slavery” after a report concluded that slavery played an “integral” role in shaping the University. This is the Cambridge version of reparations, and the flagrant act of misusing donated non-profit funds wasn’t even controversial. The whole board signed on without dissent, which shows how Borg-like the Harvard leadership is. “Diversity” of thought when wokeness is at issue is not welcome. In this month’s alumni magazine, amusingly, Harvard begs for contributions to keep the magazine operating at a high level (it is an excellent alumni magazine), as if  tossing away 100 million dollars on non-educational matters didn’t make the appeal ridiculous. As one contrarian alum noted in a letter to the editor, if Harvard can give away all that money to assuage its conscience about supporting and benefiting long ago from a legal and predominant practice that had gone on for centuries, “it doesn’t need mine.”

In other damning news from Old Ivy, the Harvard  web site calls Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard,  currently pending before the Supreme Court, as a “politically motivated lawsuit.”  That’s the case in which Asian-American students allege that Harvard discriminates against them (like it discriminates against whites) in its admissions policies.  The web site states, “Harvard College does not discriminate against applicants from any group in its admission processes.” This is pure “it isn’t what it is” gaslighting. One can argue that affirmative action, which is the real issue  in the case, should continue and that it passes ethical standards via utilitarian balancing, but it cannot be denied that  the practice isn’t discrimination. The statement is a lie. Continue reading →

Broadway’s “Funny Girl” Fiasco’s Conflicted Agent

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

You can be forgiven if you haven’t followed the massive Broadway crack-up saga of the “Funny Girl” revival; after all, Broadway is an elite, increasingly culturally irrelevant dinosaur where 80% of those on stage are gay, 90% of those in those in audience can afford hundred dollar tickets, and half of the shows first premiered when Joe Biden was in braces. You can be excused even more if you missed the massive ethics scandal at the crack-up’s core; after all, most theater reporters have no ethics alarms, just like most theater professionals. Still, to quote a character in an ancient Broadway classic that had an significant ethical impact, “Attention must be paid.”

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: UC Berkeley Law Prof. Khiara Bridges

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I’m answering a more interesting question to me”

—-Insufferably arrogant and disrespectful witness Prof. Khiara Bridges, after being told  by Senator John Cornyn (R-Tx) during today’s Senate hearing,regarding the fall of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision, that she hadn’t answered the question he asked.

The question Cornyn asked was, “Do you think that a baby that is not yet born has value?” She answered, “I believe that a person with a capacity for pregnancy has value.”

And there it is. A flat-out, defiant refusal to acknowledge the existence of the other life in the abortion equation. Her response to Cornyn’s protest that she hadn’t asked the question insulted both the Senator and the professor’s supposed area of expertise, the law. No witness in a trial could say that she was answering a question of her own conceit that interested her more than the one she was asked. No witness at a Congressional hearing can ethically do it either. Nor could a law student in class or on an exam. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Kathryn Rubino, And, As Usual, “Above The Law”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

What a vile website Above the Law is! The legal gossip cyber-rag, which belched forth the hateful Elie Mystal (who once argued on the site that black jurors should always refuse to vote “guilty” regarding black defendants regardless of the crime or the evidence), covers the progressively rotting legal profession with gusto, and does everything it can to make the profession even more left-biased than it already is. As a recent article by one of Elie’s successors, Kathryn Rubino, shows, a lack of fairness and decency helps the rotting process a lot.

The headline that caught my eye was “On Second Thought, Maybe Federal Judges Shouldn’t Have Hired The Law School Student Famously Accused Of Saying ‘I HATE BLACK PEOPLE’” I was immediately tempted to headline this post, “On Third Thought, Maybe A Site Run By Lawyers Shouldn’t Promote The Concept That Accusations Alone Justify Wrecking A Lawyer’s Career.”

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Just Because Someone Is An Idiot Doesn’t Mean It’s Ethical To Make A Fool Out Of Him: The Roy Moore Libel Suit Dismissal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New York refused to revive a lawsuit filed by former Alabama Chief Justice and failed Senate candidate from Alabama Roy Moore (and his wife) against  comedian comedian Sasha Baron Cohen. Moore v. Baron Cohen  had its genesis when the “Borat” satirist and actor tricked Moore into traveling to Washington, D.C. to receive a fictional award for supporting Israel and to be interviewed for Israeli TV. It was all a set-up to ridicule Moore on an installment of Cohen’s Showtime production, “Who Is America?”

Cohen presented himself to Moore as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert with a high-tech military intelligence device ( he’s holding it above) that supposedly was able to detect pedophiles. Moore’s Senate run was crushed by credible allegations that he had sought relationships with underage teenage girls: the episode of the program in which the interview aired was introduced with news clips reporting those allegations, including one involving a fourteen-year-old girl at the time. In a cringeworthy confrontation, Cohen’s character waved “the pedophile-detector” over Moore as it beeped loudly. Moore then walked out of the “interview.” Moore and his wife sued for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Continue reading →

The Tracey Harris Murder Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I stumbled across a year-old CBS “48 Hours” episode that depressed me about the state of ethics alarms in the culture, but to be fair, almost everything is doing that right now.

Tracey Harris (with her daughter, above) vanished from her home in Ozark, Alabama on March 7, 1990. A week later, her body was found in the nearby Choctawhatchee River, and the autopsy revealed that Tracey had drowned, though she had marks on her neck consistent with strangulation. Her death was ruled a homicide. Suspicion immediately fell on her ex-husband Carl, who had continued to live with Tracey and their young daughter after their divorce. He was rumored to be abusive, and had been having an affair with a local teen. Investigators believed, but could not prove, that Carl was the last person to see Tracey alive.

Police and prosecutors interviewed over a dozen neighbors and acquaintances of the Harrises, but there was never sufficient evidence to arrest Carl or seek an indictment. However, the community hostility inflamed by the widespread belief that Carl had murdered his popular former wife drove him to leave the county. Tracey’s parents adopted his daughter, who remains permanently estranged from him.

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Ethics Quiz: Travails Of A Transgender Sex Offender

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As Samuel L. Jackson would say if he were preparing to delve into this ethics quiz:

“Ella” is transgender woman now, whatever that means, but back when Ella was a 15-year-old boy, and stood 6-foot, 5-inches while weighing in at more than 300 pounds, she, though then a he, joined another teen in sexually assaulting a 110 pound autistic 14-year-old boy who was blind in one eye and autistic. The Pre-Ella then taunted the kid on Facebook. The male predecessor of Ella pleaded no contest to one count of sexual assault of a child under 16 years of age and spent time in two juvenile detention and treatment centers. Somewhere along the way Ella decided she needed to transition to female-hood, so when, in her new female-identifying edition, she was ordered to register as a sex offender, she objected. Under Wisconsin law, sex offenders must register a legal name and any aliases they use, and they may not legally change their name. That seems reasonable, since there is no point to legally registering as a sex offender to alert the community of sex offending proclivities if one can just foil the measure by using a different name.

Ella has been “Ella” since her teens and is now 22. She argued that requiring her to register as a sex offender under her male name given at birth violates her First Amendment right to express her true female identity. She also contended the registry requirement, as applied to her, amounted to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, in essence making her out herself as a former him, or a former him trapped in a female body, or something.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals rejected Ella’s claims,  and last week, four mean old conservatives outvoted the court’s liberal members on the Wisconsin Supreme Court also denied Ella’s attempt to change her name after hearing arguments in the case in February. Continue reading →