Law & Law Enforcement

Now THIS Is An Unethical Lawyer…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

And yet he’s running to be elected judge!

No, I don’t understand this at all.

Matthew Leveridge, the commonwealth’s attorney for Russell and Wayne counties in Kentucky, should have been disbarred.  He admitted to impregnating a criminal defendant, Latisha Sartain, whom he prosecuted for drug trafficking in 2011. A motion filed on Sartain’s behalf in 2014 alleged that Leveridge filed a motion to revoke her five-year pretrial diversion agreement after she ended their relationship and revealed her pregnancy to Leveridge’s wife. For some reason, this didn’t result in any bar discipline, or an episode of “Law and Order.”  But wait! There’s more! Continue reading →

It is Apparently “Bizarro World Race Ethics Day” On Ethics Alarms: The BIPOC Only Debate Tournament

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

There goes my head. I find this story incredible. Northeastern and Boston College co-hosted a debate tournament last Fall restricted to students who “do not identify as white.”

Here is the announcement, tracked down by Campus Reform (hence the logo in the background):

Analysis: What the hell?

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Over 60 American Companies Want To Ignore The Constitution For “The Greater Good”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

You’re on, Geena!

Indeed, be very, very afraid.

Next term, the Supreme Court will hear two high-profile cases challenging affirmative action policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard College. The court just barely upheld affirmative action in 2016, but it seems likely that the current Court’s composition is unlikely to allow it to continue. This is a good thing, though those who benefit from racial discrimination not surprisingly are horrified by the prospect. John Roberts mysteriously shocking quote the last time around— “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”—is pretty much indisputable. As in a growing number of areas, the American Left simply does not like the U.S. Constitution. In the area of colleges and grad school admissions, this is because the document requires that all races be treated equally under the law. Continue reading →

Well Waddya Know! Harvard Undercuts A Core Progressive Big Lie!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I can’t let this pass. I’ve been bashing my embarrassing alma mater here for years, and it finally is responsible for something that almost makes me want to hang the ol framed diploma up again, with the back of it to the wall again.

Almost.

The Harvard Crimson reports:

In the most comprehensive study to date of what motivated the Trump supporters to attack the Capitol, Shorenstein Center researchers found that 20.6 percent of the rioters, a plurality, were motivated to take part in the riot because they supported Trump. Another 20.6 percent of the rioters cited Trump’s fraudulent claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged as their primary reason for participating in the Jan. 6 riot.

The authors of the study — Joan Donovan, Kaylee Fagan, and Frances E. Lee — wrote that their analysis found that the largest proportion of defendants “were motivated, in part, to invade the US Capitol Building by Donald Trump.”

The third most common reason for attacking the Capitol: a desire to start a civil war or an armed revolution, according to the study. Almost 8 percent of defendants indicated it was their main motivation.

In an interview, Fagan said she was surprised by how frequently support for Trump and concerns about the election were cited as primary motivations for joining the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“I don’t think I expected the result to be this stark,” Fagan said. “I also certainly didn’t expect those two motivations to come up nearly exactly as often as they both did.”

Though more than 800 have been federally prosecuted for their participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the study focused on 417 defendants charged with federal crimes in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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Last-Ditch Ethics Catch-Up, 8/1/2022: Strange Questions And Answers

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This was a strange day that kept me out of the office and Ethics Alarms from morn til dusk. Sorry: couldn’t be helped. It will stand in my memory as the day I was asked, in an official appearance as an ethicist in a bar deliberation over the fitness of a young man to be allowed into the august profession of “lawyer,” this question: “Do you believe character should be taught in law school?”

It might be the most bizarre question I have been asked by anyone over the age of 9 in my life. “Character” isn’t a subject or even a definable feature. If someone hasn’t developed character by the age of 21, I cannot imagine how a law school would teach it.

1. Quickly approaching “Julie Principle” territory is The Nation’s Elie Mystal, who has a long dossier at Ethics Alarms from the days before his mind snapped like a dry twig in the wind, leaving him a perpetually furious, racist, hatemongering fool. Yet that’s good enough for MSNBC, which would feature a drooling lunatic in a straitjacket if he or she spouted sufficiently venomous insults about Republicans (and Donald Trump, of course).

Here’s what poor, mad Elie said on MSNBC today:

“It’s going to be a close election in Georgia because Walker has the backing of the Republicans. You ask why are Republicans backing this man who’s so clearly unintelligent, who so clearly doesn’t have independent thoughts, but that’s actually the reason. Walker is going do what he’s told, and that is what Republicans like. That’s what Republicans want from their Negroes: to do what they were told. And Walker presents exactly as a person who lacks independent thoughts, lacks an independent agenda, lacks an independent ability to grasp policies, and he’s just going to go in there and vote like Mitch McConnell tells them to vote.”

I am definitely not a Walker fan, but the denigrating “Negro” slur should have been flagged and reprimanded by the MSNBC host, except that it was Tiffany Cross, who is almost a female version of Elie. Moreover, it is hilarious for a Democrat to mock any Republican for “doing what he is told,” when the current Democrats in the House and Senate have voted in lockstep with their leaders’ demands almost without exception.

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Why Must I Be A Blogging Ethicist In Ethics Zugzwang?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I was going to sing it, but it doesn’t fit the music…

Here is my problem…

Describing the ugly developments arising out of the Democratic Soviet-style show trial aimed at neutralizing Donald Trump by criminalizing his post election excesses, and, if possible, intimidating and harassing his supporters past and present, esteemed former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy writes in part, Continue reading →

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 →