Law & Law Enforcement

Ethics Quiz: The Secret Service Defies Orders!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

As soon as I saw the headline to Prof. Turley’s latest post on his blog, “Res Ipsa Loquitur” I knew we had an ethics quiz: “Presidential Protection or Abduction: Why Secret Service Wrong for all the Right Reasons on Jan. 6.”

Turley’s article was prompted by one aspect of the Jan. 6 Commission testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson that President Trump ordered his official SUV to take him to the U.S. Capitol to be on hand with his supporters as they rallied (it turned out to be a “mostly peaceful” rally) against what Trump had told them was the stolen 2020 election. According to the witness, that she was told that T his Secret Service security team refused, causing the President to become furious.

Turley’s take, in brief:

…the Secret Service is trained to take immediate action to protect a president. On the other hand, it cannot effectively control the presidency by controlling a president like a modern Praetorian Guard. In the end, if this account is true, the security team was likely wrong in refusing the order of the President to be taken to Capitol Hill….Trump intended to do exactly what he promised and ordered the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol. But Tony Ornato, White House deputy chief of staff for operations, and Bobby Engel, who headed Trump’s security detail, reportedly refused.

…If true, the security team’s motivation certainly was commendable. It probably prevented Jan. 6 from getting much, much worse…what was the authority of the security team to refuse a direct order from a sitting president to go to Congress?

…The Secret Service has always assumed discretion in seizing a president to protect him from immediate harm [but there was no immediate harm threatened]…Trump reportedly decided he wanted to lead the protests to the Capitol and didn’t care about the security uncertainties — and he actually had a right to do so. Presidents can elect to put themselves in harm’s way… The Secret Service has no authority to put a president into effective custody against his will… In Trump’s case, he reportedly said he did not want to go back to the White House but was taken there anyway.

…This act of disobedience may have saved the country from an even greater crisis…

In the end, the security team was correct on the merits but probably wrong on the law. This was not an unlawful order, and a president must be able to control his own travel. In other words, the agents were wrong for all the right reasons.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is: Continue reading →

End Of Week Ethics Wrap-Up, July 1, 2022: Freakouts, Freakouts Everywhere….[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Prelude: Why is the President of the United States attacking the Supreme Court in Madrid? His comments about a judicial body deliberating on the Constitution is not only wildly inappropriate for a President speaking abroad, his words were either calculated to make ignorant Americans even more ignorant about what the Court is, or show that he doesn’t understand himself (or no longer does). Biden called the Dobbs decision “outrageous behavior.” A SCOTUS ruling isn’t “behavior”; even Dred Scott wasn’t “behavior.” These are scholarly judicial analyses. Then he accused the Court of being “the one thing that has been destabilizing” to the nation. The Supreme Court? Upholding the Constitution is maintaining the foundation of the democracy: how is that destabilizing? Holding political show trials to try to find something that the previous President can be jailed for is destabilizing. Threatening parents who challenge indoctrinating school boards is destabilizing. Not enforcing U.S. laws at the border is destabilizing. Attacking the Supreme Court is destabilizing.

Then Biden said that Dobbs was “essentially challenging the right to privacy.” No it wasn’t, but let’s reflect back on an earlier incoherent and dim-witted statement Biden made about abortion after the Alito opinion leaked:

“I mean, so the idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say no one can make a judgment to choose to abort a child based upon a decision by the Supreme Courts, I think goes way overboard.

Of course, the decision didn’t say, in May or now, that “no one can make a judgement to have an abortion.” I think Biden was and is shooting off his mouth without reading the opinion. But never mind that: he said “abort a child.” Not only does he approve of abortion, but regards it as killing a child, and must think that “privacy” includes virtual infanticide. Oh, I know, he doesn’t know what he thinks: he used to claim that there was no right to abortion. But if he’s that muddled on the issue, and he is, what business does he have impugning the decision of SCOTUS justices wrestling with difficult topic—in Spain—at all?

1. Oh, why not? Here are some more Dobbs freakouts:

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Madeline Brame

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Take that restorative justice bullshit and shove it up your asses! Not for murder!”

—-Madeline Bram, mother of murder victim Hason Correa, 35, a vet and married father of three who was beaten and stabbed to death by a gang in 2018, when the Manhattan Supreme Court handed down a seven year prison sentence to one of the killers.

Well said.

Bram erupted after hearing that the absurdly light sentence had been agreed to by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (above). Bragg is one of several big city DA’s elected with the assistance of George Soros contributions (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who stand for leniency in the justice system as a solution to “over-incarceration.”

The solution to “over-incarceration” is for African Americans to commit crimes in rough proportion to their numbers in U.S. society. Minimizing the consequences of committing these crimes will not achieve that end.

Duh. Continue reading →

“The Cassidy Hutchinson Fiasco”…Addendum

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Lest I be accused of minimizing the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony before the House January 6 Star Chamber this week, I direct EA readers to to this National Review article by the usually fair and perceptive Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor. He calls the testimony “devastating” and inveighs, “Things will not be the same after this.“

I don’t know what he thinks isn’t going to be the same; maybe you can enlighten me. Are there really people out there who will be surprised that Trump threw tantrums, objects and ketchup bottles, or that when he was angry and excited, he was irrational? Does McCarthy really not know that many Presidents, in private, with staff, in meetings, and similarly dealing with the most stressful jobs imaginable, have behaved outrageously, except that in their case did not have dozens of leakers, disloyal aides and other staff and others determined to undermine them as well as an almost unanimously hostile press to publicize rumors, gossip, suspicions and facts indiscriminately? Really? Presidents, as a group, are not normal or emotionally healthy: if they were, they wouldn’t have sought the Presidency or achieved it. Is Trump worse than most, or even all in this regard? Maybe, probably; why do you think Ethics Alarms kept repeating for over a year that he must never be elected? Does McCarthy not know the history of the Type A CEO personality in this country? About Henry Ford employing a guy whose sole job was to chop the desks of fired Ford Executive into kindling so they would know they had been fired? Nevertheless, the fact that Trump acted and talked like anyone paying attention knew he would act and talk doesn’t mean he committed crimes.

Furthermore, once again we are getting “Trump wanted to do X” and “Trump said Y” while his staff and the Secret Service obstructed him when his stated desires were extreme, rash, an abuse of power, or just plain nuts. The staff did their jobs, in other words, just like dozens of Presidential staffs have done in other administrations. I’m impressed, in fact: Trump, thanks to the most competent old hands in the Washington swamp being bullied away or scared off for fear of becoming pariahs and not getting invited to swank Capital Hill wine parties, had a distinctly sub-par batch of advisors. They came through when they had to. Good for them. They were far from the first to stop a POTUS from doing stupid or reckless things.

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Both Parties Are Hereby Ethically Estopped From Accusing Each Other’s Officials Of Violating The Hatch Act

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

However, such violations are still unethical and illegal…but laws are for the little people. Bush officials violated the Hatch Act. Obama Cabinet members Kathleen Sibelius and Julian Castro violated the Hatch Act. Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pompeo, among others, violated the Hatch Act in the Trump administration. Ethics Alarms explained,

The Hatch Act is a perfect example of the principle that if people can cheat to obtain power or keep power, they will, if they know the penalties will be minimal or less….The Hatch Act isn’t enforced, so all administrations allow their officials to violate it. I don’t know if the law is enforceable. It is naive and irresponsible to expect …any Presidential underlings regardless of party to eschew this unethical practice when they know they can get away with it, and the potential benefits of the violations are significant….enforce the Hatch Act, or get rid of it.

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Once Again, An Analysis Of A SCOTUS Decision Is Distorted By Emotion And Ignorance

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

This is a problem. And I’m just talking now about the previous SCOTUS ruling that launched a freak-out yesterday. As you probably know by now, the leaked SCOTUS ruling rebuffing Roe v. Wade is no longer a leak.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down a restrictive “needs-based” concealed carry laws in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.  Even though Justice Thomas’s majority opinion was tight and clear as well as consistent with SCOTUS precedent as well as, of course, the Bill of Rights, such worthies as President Biden claimed that, in the President’s words, the ruling contradicted “common sense and the Constitution.”

What are the odds that Joe read the opinion before declaring that? I’d say “none.” Making such a statement while carrying the presumed authority of President without knowing what the Court’s analysis was is completely unethical and an abuse of position.

David Harsanyi, writing at RealClearPolitics, accurately writes,

The modern left doesn’t even bother pretending they believe the Supreme Court has a responsibility to act as a separate branch of government and adjudicate the constitutionality of law. Rather than even ostensibly offering legal reasons for their ire, Democrats simply demand the Supreme Court uphold public sentiment (or, rather what they claim is public sentiment), even though SCOTUS exists to ignore those pressures. The fact that that attitude has congealed as the norm in one of our major political parties does not bode well for the future of the Republic.

It is particularly disheartening that the three liberal justices in their dissent stooped to fueling this distortion of the Court’s role. Their arguments were almost all irrelevant to the  constitutional issues and the Court’s previous rulings regarding the Second Amendment. Instead, Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan took the low road of evoking recent shootings and incidents of gun violence as if current events should permit the limiting of explicit Constitutional rights. 

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PM Ethics Pie, 6/23/2022: Guns, Mostly

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On this date in 1972, the eventual ethics train wreck known as Title IX was passed. Its stated purpose was to prohibit sexual desecration on federally funded campuses, but since most of that discrimination was against women, the law was eventually weaponized to be an anti-male measure, notably by the Obama administration and its pressure on schools to employ a presumed guilty approach to student accusations of sexual harassment and assault. Title IX or something like it was clearly needed, but the law stands as a useful example of how, when a failure of ethics makes it necessary for law to step in, the law too often mucks things up.

1. Pop Ethics Quiz!

That’s a fantastic duo-costume at a cos-play convention: Peter Pan and his shadow! But is it offensive? Isn’t that “blackface”? If not, why not? Of course it isn’t supposed to evoke minstrel shows or be denigrating to blacks, but neither was Laurence Olivier’s make-up to play Othello on film. Define the rule for me. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/22/2022: Let’s Hit The Ground Running!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. It’s a joke!!! That tweet is just the tip of the moronic iceberg for Republican Senate candidate in Missouri Eric Greitens. In a new fundraising video for his U.S. Senate campaign released this week, Greitens, a former Missouri governor who resigned before he could be impeached on multiple grounds including sexual assault, holds a pump-action shotgun and introduces himself as a Navy SEAL. (He is not a Seal: he resigned shortly before announcing his Senate run this year.) The video then shows him with a group of men in tactical gear hunting “RINOs”—Republicans who are not conservative enough for his tastes. He says, “Join the MAGA crew! Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country!”

And Sarah Palin was once accused of inciting murder by having little gun-sights on a campaign map!

Predictably, the irresponsible ad is being used by the mainstream news media and Democrats to characterize all conservatives and Republicans while hyping more anti-gun hysteria. Here’s CNN:

Some of history’s leading fascist movements used the strategy of armed volunteer militias intimidating, threatening and attacking political opponents. And the implications of Greitens’ ad are stunning: Line up behind the most extreme right-wing policies — and implicitly behind former President Donald Trump — or be hunted down by armed, jackbooted thugs.

Right. The implications of Greitens’ ad are that he’s a liar and an asshole, and that he is only slightly more fit to serve in the Senate than Herschel Walker, who defines the bottom of the bottom of the barrel… but presumably Missouri voters know that already. The ad and Greitens himself are metaphorical albatrosses around the GOP’s neck, but the party hung them there. He has been endorsed by several GOP luminaries, though so far, not by Trump.

2. Poll check: President Biden’s latest Civiqs approval rating hit 32%, with 56% disapproving of Joe. Again I ask: Who are those 32% that approve of Biden? What is it they approve of? What democracy can function if fully a third of the electorate have the IQs of flatworms and are happy to see the country rot?

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Can Of Waning Work Week Ethics Worms: Race-Based Justice And Other Revolting Creatures [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1. I hate to take pleasure in anyone’s career setbacks, but...the word that CNN’s unethical media watchdog, Brian Stelter, is about to get dumped is good news for everyone but him. It also means that CNN will have rid itself of its two most flagrantly partisan and dishonest talking heads, the other being Chris Cuomo. Stelter took over “Reliable Sources” from the flawed but qualified Howard Kurtz, who had covered media conduct for the Washington Post, and at least tried to be objective (and still does at Fox.) Stelter immediately transformed the Sunday show into a CNN-fawning, Fox News-bashing epitome of what a news ethics show must not be. The last hack standing among CNN’s worst is now Don Lemon, who because he is black, gay and cute apparently is immune from his just desserts. As Meat Loaf memorably observed, however, two out of three ain’t bad.

2. Wait, what? Tim Allen isn’t the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the new Pixar film? The Buzz origin film, which has Chris Evans as the new voice of the popular character from “Toy Story” 1-4 is already creating controversy because it features a lesbian kiss. You know: that’s Disney’s way now. The movie’s director Angus MacLane “explained” that the recasting was necessary because the new animated film called for a more serious Buzz. Does anyone believe that? Allen was replaced because he’s an outspoken conservative, and Disney/Pixar wanted a star who would vigorously defend lesbian smooches in a kids movie, because that is apparently it’s priority these days. If the director wanted Buzz to sound more serious, he could direct the voice actor to voice him that way.

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Res Ipsa Loquitur: The Ugly And Unethical Pro Abortion Mob

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Well that doesn’t leave much question about where CNN stands, does it? These health centers being targeted for violent attacks by the domestic terrorist group Jane’s Revenge (“If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you”) are pregnancy clinics which help expectant mothers seek other solutions to their plight that don’t kill anything. “Anti-abortion” is an accurate and direct description of political efforts to limit abortions, but clinics are medical, not political, and are correctly called crisis pregnancy centers. CNN’s use of “anti-abortion” is a deliberate effort to rationalize the bombings. I don’t know why I’m surprised…. Continue reading →