Law & Law Enforcement

One More Time: Hold Gun-Owners Criminally Liable When Something Like This Happens

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

We have covered such incidents before, but it bears repeating.

Tiffany Callaway, a Miami-Dade Corrections officer, left her five children unsupervised in her home while she was working. While she was gone her 13-year-old son got a shotgun out of a firearm case in the master bedroom closet. He accidentally discharged it. His eleven-year-old brother was fatally shot in the chest, and died.

In a masterpiece of gall, Callaway started a GoFundMe page to attract donations. “Imaging life without him is something we never thought we’d have to do as a family,” she said.

“Only goes to show it can impact anybody in the community,” said Miami-Dade Police Director Alvaro Zabaleta in another fatuous pronouncement that misses the point. “It” won’t “impact” anyone who doesn’t leave young children alone with access to deadly weapons.

Apparently no charges will be filed against the officer. Ridiculous.She is 100% responsible for the death of her child and the trauma to the older child who fired the weapon. She was negligent to leave them alone in the house, negligent in not training them regarding gun safety, and negligent in not having the gun secure, Police say they are investigating whether the gun was properly secured—what is there to investigate? A kid got a hold of the gun, which was loaded, and fired it! Of course it wasn’t properly secured: it it were properly secured, no one would have been killed.

No wonder anti-gun fanatics think guns just kill people all by themselves.

Watermelon-Smashing Ethics: The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Gallagher

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Prop comic Gallagher, once a college campus comedy superstar, died last week, reviving memories of a classic ethics family drama with many life lessons attached.

Gallagher (first name, never used professionally: Leo) was an acquired taste that I never acquired, but he had many TV specials, a famous bit (smashing things, especially watermelons, with a sledgehammer), and even ran for Governor of California. In 1987, researchers at Loma Linda University in Southern California took blood samples from medical students while they watched Gallagher’s antics. Their white blood cell levels increased the more they laughed at him. His comedy, the study concluded, strengthened their immune systems.

Why hospital staffs don’t smash watermelons in cancer wards, I don’t know. But I digress.

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Suspend Sunny Hostin’s Law License

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A mere Ethics Dunce designation for The View’s Sunny Hostin isn’t sufficient, because she’s a regular co-host on ABC’s daily cultural offal pile where all of the women are ethics dunces at best. Hostin’s one of the worst, which is quite an achievement, but she’s also a lawyer, making her admission yesterday especially despicable.

I’ve seen the video several times but can’t find a way on Word Press to embed it. Sorry: you can view the evidence on Twitter here. Babbling on about voting with the ladies, Sunny expressed suspicions regarding how absentee ballots were being handled, because, she explained, she had an odd experience while dropping off her son’s absentee ballot which she had filled out for him.

Hostin is a different kind of idiot than the other idiots on the panel: she’s an arrogant, cocky idiot who thinks her law degree means that her idiotic opinions aren’t idiotic. Thus she admitted committing a federal crime on national TV and didn’t even realize it. I’d guess the average first year law student could figure out that this is a serious violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct in every U.S. jurisdiction. Not Sunny, though.

It isn’t a technical violation either; it’s serious. Usually unethical conduct by lawyers when they aren’t practicing law are ignored by bar disciplinary committees, but Rule 8.4, Misconduct, holds that “It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:

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Oh! Now After Eight Years Of Accusing A Renowned Law Professor And Lawyer Of Sexual Assault, You Now Think You “May Have Been Mistaken!” Sure, OK!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Wait, what?

Someone here has been very unethical, and probably criminal. I wonder who?

From the New York Times:

Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey E. Epstein who for years maintained that the law professor Alan Dershowitz had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager, settled a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Dershowitz on Tuesday and said that she might have “made a mistake” in accusing him.

In a joint statement announcing the settlement, Ms. Giuffre said, “I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations.

“I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz,” her statement said.

The joint statement announced the end of litigation between Ms. Giuffre and Mr. Dershowitz — who had also sued her — as well as of two other lawsuits between Mr. Dershowitz and the lawyer David Boies that stemmed from Ms. Giuffre’s accusation….

The terms of Ms. Giuffre’s deal with Mr. Dershowitz were not immediately clear on Tuesday, though the statement and the court filing said that no payments were made by any of the parties.

I don’t understand this at all. Is there any doubt that there is a lot, including a secret, back room agreement, that we are not being told about? My mind is still a bit foggy, so I can’t recall all of the movies I have seen where crucial witnesses in mysteries, crimes and conspiracies making almost the exact same statement Virginia Giuffre is quoted as making, recanting previous accusations and assertions they appeared to be absolutely certain of but suddenly had second thoughts after finding their dog hanging from a tree, or a horse head in their bed, or receiving a third party check for a lot of money. But boy, there are a lot of them. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/7/2022: Approaching Dread Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Speaking of threats to democracy: this is the anniversary of the day in 1944 that voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a fourth consecutive term. There is little question in my mind that had FDR been healthier, he was perfectly capable of deciding to run for fifth and sixth terms too; this was a looming American dictator who wasn’t hiding it, and Americans still blithely voted for him. Everything about Roosevelt made him the template for a democracy-busting, cult-of-personality Big Brother USA, including his ruthlessness. We were lucky: another of the many examples proving Bismarck right when he said, “There is providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.”

Oh, he probably didn’t say it, but I’ve taxed quote maven Tom Fuller enough for one week…

1. For my own mental health, I’m going to eschew reading the pre-election freak-outs by New York Times pundits showing up today with titles like “Republicans Have Made It Very Clear What They Want to Do if They Win Congress” and “Dancing Near the Edge of a Lost Democracy.” Still, I couldn’t resist starting to read “What Has Happened to My Country?” but quit when Margaret Renkl made me read, “…Right-wing politicians and media outlets have turned American democracy upside down through nothing more than a lie. They put forth Supreme Court candidates who assure Congress that they respect legal precedent but who vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade the instant they have a majority on the court….”

There is nothing inconsistent about respecting precedent while deciding that a particular case precedent is too misguided and destructive to uphold, Margaret.

“…They endorse political candidates who openly state that they will accept only poll results leading to their own election….”

No candidate has stated that, openly or otherwise, Margaret, you hack.

“They denounce calamities where no calamities exist…”

That was it! I quit. A mouthpiece for the party claiming that electing Republicans will destroy democracy, whose #3 ranking official in Congress compares the U.S. today to Germany in the 1930s when Hitler was on the rise [Pointer: Other Bill], that thinks “The Handmaiden’s Tale” is about to become reality because of the Dobbs decision, and that has gone all in on speculative climate change doomsday predictions does not get to say that about Republicans and be taken seriously.

2. Dangerous slippery slopes ahead….NBA superstar Kylie Irving shared a tweet that promoted the “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” documentary and book. Both are, by all reports, pretty vile, with familiar anti-Semitic tropes like Holocaust denial and claims of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. There is nothing inappropriate about employers disciplining employees who put their organizations in unflattering light that might hurt reputations and profitability, nor with the Brooklyn Nets suspending Irving for “at least five games” without pay over the controversy. That’s reasonable, even a bit lenient. He responded with a publicist-drafted apology. Then Nike announced that it is suspending its relationship with Irving and will not release Irving’s highly anticipated new shoe, the Kyrie 8, which was scheduled to be released this month.

That’s also fair. A celebrity who represents a corporation and its products can’t engage in high profile prejudice and expect to keep the gig. The loss of the Nike deal will cost Irving many millions of dollars, and that’s what happens when you embarrass a business partner. However, now the Nets have given Irving an ultimatum of sorts: in order to rejoin the team and start collecting his salary, he must.fulfill six requirements:

  • Apologize and condemn the film he promoted
  • Make a $500,000 donation to anti-hate causes
  • Complete sensitivity training
  • Complete anti-semetism training
  • Meet with the ADL and Jewish leaders
  • Meet with team owner Joe Tsai to demonstrate an understanding of the situation

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Weird Tales Of The Great Stupid: The “Ghost Horses”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

We haven’t had Sheriff Bart and the Waco Kid as guests here for a while, and this story seems like an appropriate one for their illumination. I know I keep saying that The Great Stupid has reached Peak Stupid only to find something worse, but I don’t know how one gets dumber than this. The tale out of Lake County, Ohio is even more ridiculous than Biden’s speech last night.

For some reason known only to the rogue neurons involved, the Lake County mounted police decided that it would be a grand Halloween gesture to costume their horses as “ghost horses.” Never mind that nobody knows what a ghost horse looks like. My only clue is the various versions of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” in which the ghostly Headless Horseman rides a black steed with red glowing eyes. Then there were the ghost horses in Disney’s “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” which were just horses you could see through. It would never occur to me, if I were asked to imagine a ghost horse, that one would look like a normal horse under a sheet with little eye holes cut in it. Nonetheless, that’s what those whimsical cops came up with, as you can see:

Now, since the ghostly steeds made their appearance on Halloween, I admit that was a big clue to the cognitively engaged regarding what the cops were going for.  Nonetheless, many residents, we are credibly informed, were alarmed because they thought these were Ku Klux Klan horses.

“That was poor execution for a ghost,” said one offended resident. “You go back and look at pictures of the Ku Klux Klan, it’s like the exact replica of what the horses looked like.”

Well, now, that’s not exactly accurate. It is true that the Klansmen sometimes had their horses in white sheets… Continue reading →

Mark Your Calendars: The Next Anti-Supreme Court Freak-Out Is Scheduled For June

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In 1978’s Bakke decision, a fractured majority of the Supreme Court found that universities could consider race to build a diverse student body, agreeing that educational benefits could flow from diversity. At the same time, the opinion prohibited quotas, requiring universities to undertake a “holistic” review of each applicant in which race could be a factor. The Supreme Court affirmed this foggy principle in 2003’s Grutter v. Bollinger and again in 2016’s Fisher v. Texas. Schools, meanwhile, became adept at making sure that holistic approach resulted in the desired racial proportions.

Now the Supreme Court appears ready to rule that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unlawful. Five hours of arguments and questioning in the two cases’ oral presentations before the justices made that abundantly clear, but it was already clear long before. The cases’ decisions won’t be handed down until June 2023 (unless that majority opinion gets leaked too), but the Left is already laying the groundwork for a Dobbs-like freak-out.

The clear media talking point memo apparently requires all stories to call such a decision ” a move that would overrule decades of precedents.” But this is deliberately disingenuous. From the beginning, the Supreme Court allowed colleges and diversities to use race in their admission procedures while acknowledging that it was a special exception to the equal protection requirement of the 14th Amendment that was necessitated by the unusual circumstances of slavery and Jim Crow. (It was, in fact, a perfect example of the Ethics Incompleteness Principle, where a valid rule did not work well in a unique situation, and thus s special, unique solution had to be crafted that does NOT serve as a precedent.) Justice Sandra Day O’Connor admitted as much in her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), concluding that affirmative action in college admissions is justifiable, but not forever: “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.”

It was a bad and confusing opinion: if the law and the Constitution is the same, why would it be acceptable to violate it then but not 25 years later? It is now 19 years later; 25 years was not a scientific estimate, but just wait: one of the arguments that will be aimed at the SCOTUS opinion in June will be that it’s “too soon.”

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Paging The ACLU! But Will They Answer?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Another integrity test for the biased and rotting American Civil Liberties Union. According to their long-standing mission, coming to the defense of two students being prosecuted for saying bad word would be automatic. So far, though, not a peep. Will the ACLU stand up for the Bill of Rights when the breach is so clear?

I’m not holding my breath.

In Houma, Louisiana, Two high school students have been arrested and accused of hate crimes after video circulated on social media of them using the term “nigger” on the high school grounds. Their words were not directed at any individual, yet they face charges of inciting a riot, hate crimes, and cyberbullying.

You can’t do this, you know. The government can’t punish anyone criminally for mere words, and it doesn’t matter what they are. OK, you have my obligatory agreement that “nigger” is a haeful epithet (when used as an epithet) and it’s use cannot be condoned and shouldn’t be encouraged or ignored, yadayada, but if that’s the reason almost nobody is pointing out the more essential truth that the Constitution protects us from sanctions by the government for ugly, mean, hateful or controversial speech, a lttle emedial instruction on core civil liberties is greatly neededd.

Yoooo Hooo! ACLU-hooo! Where the hell are you-hoo?

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“This Is Larry. Tragically, Though He Was Once A Renowned Law Professor, Bias Has Made Him Stupid. Won’t You Give A Tax-Deductable Donation to Help Us Find A Cure For Larry And Victims Like Him?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Tragic. Since retiring as a Harvard Law professor, Laurence Tribe has destroyed his reputation for integrity and intelligence by sending out one irresponsible, idiotic and politically-deranged social media post after another. It is sad and it is destructive.

The tweet above is Tribe’s latest, a despicable reaction to Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul being “violently assaulted” in a home break-in. There is no evidence, none, that the attack was politically motivated, and it’s not as if San Francisco is a community where people don’t lock their doors: thanks to the progressive madness of the far left ideologues who have taken over the city’s government, the once lovely “city by the bay” has become such a pit of crime and violence that residents and businesses are fleeing. Once, before his mind fled, Tribe was undoubtedly well-versed in Occam’s Razor. Which is more likely, that a wealthy home-owner was the victim of violent crime in a city infested with it, or that the husband of a Democratic leader was beaten by an angry conservative?

Tribe is a lawyer, though I doubt he could pass a bar exam today, or even one of his old exams. What kind of lawyer leaps to a conclusion without evidence, saying in a public forum that “this has to stop” when he can’t possibly know what “this” is? A bad lawyer. An unethical lawyer. A senile lawyer whose embarrassing partisan outbursts need to stop.

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Another Damning IIPTDXTTNMIAFB: President Biden Intentionally Violates The Constitution, Hoping He Can Get Away With It

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

IIPTDXTTNMIAFB are the Ethics Alarms initials for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.” The phenomenon has been a theme of the Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck so far: The Washington Post isn’t keeping an archive of Biden’s lies like they did for President Trump (and most of what they archived weren’t lies anyway), and Biden has arguably engaged in far more substantive and deliberate untruths in less than two years than Trump did in four. It was a recent Biden lie of breathtaking audacity that reminded me to write about this issue: over the weekend just passed, Biden told an interviewer regarding his student loan debt bailout: “It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two.”

No, this was an Executive Order. It wasn’t a bill, it wasn’t voted on by Congress, and it didn’t “pass”—that’s exactly why it is unconstitutional. The scary possibility is that Biden actually thinks it did pass, but I refuse to accept “He’s senile, and doesn’t know what the hell is going on” as a defense for such blatant falsehoods.

Prof. Turley, who is becoming increasingly outraged at the Democratic Party’s disregard and disrespect for the Constitution, blasted away at Biden’s deliberate defiance of the law of the land in a recent post. Noting that Biden falsely (or ignorantly) boasted that the courts “are on his side” regarding the illegal EO despite the fact that the initial law suits blocking it were rejected on procedural and not substantive legal grounds (amazingly, Biden went to law school), Turley fumed…

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