Professions

Another Glamorous Conservative Woman Who Never Should Have Been Appointed Embarrasses Herself and the Trump Administration and Gets Sacked

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wait, isn’t that Kristi Noem? No, too young; it has to be Pam Bondi, right? No? It can’t be Kimberly Guilfoyle, she’s a brunette. I’ve got it: that’s Katie Zacharia! No?

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sick of this pattern. The Biden administration may have put a lot of incompetent, unqualified women in various positions based on DEI bias, but hiring women because somebody thinks they are hot and have sexy hair is just as unethical, and arguably even worse.

“MAGA Barbie” is a derisive moniker these days used to describe Indiana Fever WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham, but she’s actually very good at her job (playing women’s pro basketball) as well as her avocation (calling out the racist, anti-white lesbian thugs in her league and reminding the public that biological males have no right to play women’s sports). I think it would be wise to apply expand the employment of the term to professional bimbos like former ESPN reporter and Fox News personality Britt McHenry, who was just fired as a US State Department press adviser.

How hard is it to behave in a dignified, professional fashion when you know you represent the United States and also know that everyone has a camera at the ready to record your behavior in public? Too hard, I guess, for people like McHenry—you know, morons.

McHenry, 40, was hired as the Trump State Department press adviser covering Europe and Africa. Despite the fact that she also was responsible for handling press for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s text message scandal (Heluva job, there, Britt!), she was promoted three days ago to a new job managing External Affairs & Press for Under Secretary Jacob Helberg’s team. Then she did this, according to the New York Post:

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Oh Look! “The Ethicist” Is Wrong. Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This one is easy. A son, racked with guilt because he missed his dying father’s last moments in a hospice because he was drunk, asked his father’s physician if Dad had suffered. The doctor answered that he had died in his sleep, peacefully. In reality, though the doctor wasn’t present, there was some indication that the father had been “in distress” before he shuffled off these mortal coils, according to some in the shift on duty.

“Did I betray a position of trust by lying to him?,” the doctor asks The Ethicist, aka. Kwame Anthony Appiah. “What, if anything, makes a lie morally acceptable?”

No, the doctor didn’t betray a position of trust because the dead father was the patient, not his son. The MD had no professional duty to the son in this situation, any more than it would have been unethical for him to bluff the son into folding a winning hand in a poker game. What makes a lie morally acceptable, that is, ethical, is when it accomplishes more good than the truth would, particularly when the truth would achieve no good at all except in an ethical system where the truth is always the best course. Which is to say, Fantasy Land.

Let’s consider the various options open to the doctor.

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A Halloween Season Ethics Dunce For Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Doris Kearns Goodwin is probably about as well known as any historian right now, thanks to her frequent appearances on TV (48 times on Charlie Rose’s PBS show alone). In addition to being a much published and acclaimed Presidential historian, she went through a period where she was often talking and writing about baseball, so yes, I have a warm spot in my cold heart for her. Goodwin is perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize -winning book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, much of which was adapted by Tony Kushner into the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film “Lincoln.”

Doris taught the American Government course on The American Presidency when I took it, succeeding Richard Neustadt who literally wrote the book on the subject, His “Presidential Power” is considered a masterwork even today. I got Doris in her first year teaching before “Goodwin”: she wasn’t very good, but she was cute, a pert redhead who arrived at Harvard with a whispered reputation of being one of LBJ’s conquests when she worked as a White House Fellow. A professor like Doris was a rarity at Harvard back then, for she was less than half the age of the typical Government Department prof.

Doris is in her 80s now, and yet that photo above is still the one she sends out for her appearances. She has a gig in a couple of weeks: the Humphrey School of Public Affairs will host her as she gives the 2026 Distinguished Carlson Lecture at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, titled, “Leadership for a More Perfect Union: Lessons from America at 250”. I think it’s mildly unethical for people to use photos of themselves that make it seem like they have the equivalent of the “Picture of Dorian Gray” in their attic. Kearns hasn’t looked like that in 40 years.

All of this is just a prelude to her Ethics Dunce exploits, however. I was watching an episode of American Horror Story Season Six, “Roanoke,” about a legendary mansion in North Carolina with a bloody and ghostly history. Imagine my surprise to see my old college professor showing up in an interview about the house, explaining its origins, the owner, Edward Philippe Mott, whose actions sent the house on its way to damnation, the many horrible demises of subsequent residents. The interview concluded with Doris saying that she doesn’t believe in ghosts but wouldn’t want to spend a night there—like the recent reality “ghost hunters” show crew that had been found slaughtered.

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Why Does Katie Zacharia Still Have Her Job? [Update: She Doesn’t!]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

UPDATE: Literally minutes after I posted this, I saw reports that she is “transitioning” out of the White House Press Secretary role. Good.]

***

There’s no excuse for this.

The new details on the latest White House paid liar’s misrepresentation of herself as a “lawyer” or “attorney” make her (and the decision to appoint her) appear worse and worse; she’s either a fraud or an idiot. In either case, she has lost all credibility. A paid liar must have credibility, as strange as that sounds.

Katie Zacharia confirmed yesterday that she had never passed a bar exam or and has never been an “attorney.”Then she claimed that she had not misrepresented her legal career by saying she “is” a lawyer. As I have explained already, she’s not. If many members of the public—you know, morons—think that a JD or LLB degree means one is a lawyer, that doesn’t excuse the holder of a law degree thinking or saying that. “Lawyer” means one can act as a lawyer—Duh!—and a mere law school graduate cannot. It is against the law for such a person to practice law, which is what lawyers do—again duh.

In interviews with The New York Times and Real America’s Voice, Zacharia said she had consulted Pepperdine’s president and “others” about how to describe her qualifications before appearing on television, and was told she could use the term “lawyer,” but not “attorney” or “esquire.” Zacharia hasn’t said which “president of Pepperdine” advised her. She graduated from law school there in 2011. Andrew K. Benton was the university’s president at that time. In 2019, Jim Gash became the president told the Times that he was not the one who advised her, though he did call her “a young woman of high integrity.” You know, a a young woman of high integrity who represented herself a lawyer without having a law license. Gash’s representative said “he does not comment on private conversations,” but a statement from Gash said: “Pepperdine is proud to count Katie among our alumni, former colleagues and friends. As she takes on this significant responsibility, we pray that God will grant her wisdom and courage. We look forward to seeing her use her incredible gifts and extensive experience in service to our nation.”

Got it. A non-responsive answer. A law degree from Pepperdine isn’t worth the paper it is printed on, and the school’s presidents are cowards and suck-ups.

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Let’s Cut Through The Media Feeding Frenzy: No, Katie Zacharia Is Not A Lawyer. Yes, That Means She Has To Go.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

You can read all about the investigations and arguments over terminology many places. The Washington Post’s is a good as any, but its headline is crap. “Katie Zacharia calls herself a lawyer. Legal experts aren’t sure.”

Really? Ethics experts are. She’s a JD, meaning she has a diploma from a law school. That no more allows her to practice law than a diploma from medical school allows a grad to do brain surgery. She hasn’t passed a bar exam in any jurisdiction. She’s not a lawyer. Representing herself as a lawyer is a misleading statement and dishonesty (or stupidity). All by itself it is grounds for a bar association to decide that she lacks the character to practice law.

Trump’s Truth Social post about her selection to replace Karoline Leavitt described Zacharia as “a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, an attorney, and a frequent Commentator on outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax.” Wrong. Either Trump was misinformed or he doesn’t know what an attorney is. Technically, an attorney is a lawyer who represents a client, but the distinction between lawyer and attorney has gone the way of the distinction between “implied” and “inferred.” Either way, a JD degree doesn’t allow you to practice law and you aren’t either a lawyer or an attorney until you pass a bar exam and get a license. Fox News has identified Zacharia as a lawyer at least 18 times since March 2025. Same as with Trump: Fox News is misinformed or stupid. She isn’t a lawyer.

Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile says she was “General Counsel” for a nonprofit organization called “Fix California.” If she was, she was practicing law without a license, a bright-line ethics violation as well as illegal. She also claims to have been licensed to practice in China, which is interesting but irrelevant. It would not make her a lawyer in the U.S. any more than being chef in China does

The conclusion here is clear and unavoidable. Zacharia has been misrepresenting herself. It is no less serious than lying on a resumé. Such a gross misrepresentation is a serious ethical breach, and in my view, disqualifies her from getting a law license. She may have the job of White House paid liar, but even that job requires some level of credibility and trustworthiness. She doesn’t have either; she can’t have either.

She’s got to go, and now.

Whoever vetted her needs to go too.

Morons.

The Legal Profession’s Self-Policing Myth

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

If you watch any legal-themed TV shows, sooner or later a lawyer will say, “I can’t do that. I would be disbarred.” That is a scriptwriters fantasy. Probably they think it’s true; almost everyone does. In the vast majority of cases, violating the Rules of Professional Conduct, the so-called “Law of Lawyering,” will not result in disbarment, or a long suspension, a short suspension, or any bar discipline at all. this is true even for serious and repeated violations.

I have been dealing with the issue for more than a year, and will soon go public, meaning public beyond Ethics Alarms, which is, as I am constantly told, an obscure, little-read, typo-prone dinosaur mostly frequented by irrelevant Boomers like myself. The lawyers are permitted by the courts to be self-regulating on the heart-warming theory that it is a profession, and thus worthy of public trust. Many years ago the legendary and wise Judge Richard Posner, the legal scholar who was until his retirement a star United States circuit judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, observed that bar associations were unacceptably conflicted as the supposed enforcers of legal ethics standards. Like all associations, he said, their main concern is the welfare of their members, not the public. I have discovered that he was more right than I, or anyone who would admit it, ever suspected.

Maybe Judge Posner didn’t know how much of a sham the legal discipline system is. Now I do.

Bar associations are grievously under-funded and understaffed to perform the job of policing the profession with even minimal proficiency. They also don’t try very hard. The bar association websites are usually badly designed, and the pages devoted to the disciplinary system are so confusing and verbose I suspect the intention is to make filing a complaint so burdensome for members of the public that they will just give up. Lawyers have contempt for client complaints, and so do bar association officials. The public doesn’t understand legal ethics, and confuses malpractice with ethics violations. Client complaints tend to be badly written, rambling and over-long, and arrive with the presumption of incompetence. Phone calls for guidance will never reach a live person, just infuriating phone trees now made more annoying with “AI agents.” You leave a number and are promised a call back, which may never come.

Lawyer complaints, which the rules (Rule 8.3) say bar members must file when they have substantial reason to believe that another lawyer has committed acts that “call into question the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice in other respects,” are a tiny percentage of the number of complaints reality should demand. That rule is derisively called “the Snitch Rule,” and lawyers seldom report colleagues, firm members or friends. They do report adversaries, and thus the state bars take those complaints with many grains of metaphorical salt, just as they do complaints from clients

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Life Ethics, Professional Ethics, Family Ethics, Baseball Ethics: Paternity Leave During A Crisis

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This issue, which I feel strongly about and have so written, more than once, reared its ugly metaphorical head again this week.

The San Diego Padres were added to the National League in 1969. The team has been in two World Series, losing both quickly; the last time was in 1996. They have only made the National League Championship Series three times. The team closed the season hot, and faced the best team in baseball, at least based on their record, the Milwaukee Brewers, with high hopes. Among the team’s many stars (more, in fact, then Milwaukee) is Mason Miller, by consensus the best 9th inning relief pitcher (aka “closer”) in the game.

The Padres lost the first game of the five game series due to a fluke, as described here. They lost Game #2 as well, and faced elimination in Game #3. It was “all hands on deck,” the Alamo, Custer’s Last Stand. Nevertheless, before the game, Mason Miller chose to take paternity leave, a privilege the players won in a contract battle with owners in 2011.

My ethics analysis of this conduct begins with “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” The entire season, 162 games, many millions of dollars, millions of fans, a city’s economy and community, players’ careers and income, managers’ and coaches’ jobs, team sponsors and more ride on which teams win in the post-season. My position is that Miller’s decision was selfish, irresponsible and a breach of duty. His team not only needed him, but depended on him. His wife’s pregnancy had had hit no crisis (I checked); she also had other support available. If I were a team mate or the management, I would conclude that Mason Miller could not be trusted. An employee who flees in a crisis is not a desirable employee, especially when the employee is paid $4 million dollars for eight months of service.

Moral Luck Alert! The Padres won the game without Miller, then lost the next one, ending their World Series quest.

Ethics Alarms hosted an intense debate on this exact topic in 2021. I wrote in part,

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Ethics Hero: Brit Hume

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today is the 30th anniversary of the debut of Fox News, a day that will live in infamy for the Totalitarian Left, much as Elon Musk’s rescue of Twitter is reviled. Americans under the age of about 50 never reflect upon what broadcast news was like before October 7, 1996, and most of them can’t imagine how crucial the conservative news network has been to our democracy.

The emergence of Fox News has had some unfortunate and unanticipated consequences too, but those who argue that the United States, its public, culture and society would be better off with no TV news options other than the liberal Democrat monopoly of reporting and opinions, which was the state of the medium before Rupert Murdoch’s daring innovation, is revealing their own bias.

The revolution may well have failed without Brit Hume, so today seems like an appropriate time to honor him. Hume started his career in national broadcast news with ABC—you know, the company that now calls “The View” a news program. In 1989, he became ABC’s chief White House correspondent and was prominent in that role until he quit in 1996 to join the new rebel network. A thorough professional, a recognizable face and a respected name, he instantly gave credibility and visibility to the Roger Ailes-led project.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

That’s tainted Special Counsel Jack Smith wearing an anti-Trump shirt last week.

Nothing says independent, non partisan, fair, objective and unbiased like appearing in public billboarding a message attacking the official you were supposed to investigate.

At least he’s a defiant, transparent unethical prosecutor.

What an asshole.

<Sigh!> The White House Axis Press Ban Is Unconstitutional, Which Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Justified

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Can’t do that!

“Journalists” from MSNOW, CNN and Politico had their access to the White House grounds denied today, after President Donald Trump said on social media that he had banned the news outlets over what he called their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”

He’s not wrong. And MSNOW, CNN and Politico are not by any stretch of the imagination the “independent” news organizations they say they are, or even genuine journalists, since it is remarkably obvious that they are really “Democratic Party surrogates with press credentials,” as one wag accurately describes them. And they are, as the President stated in one of his most audacious, bold and correct assessments, “enemies of the people.”

It is also true that as pivotal mid-terms approach, those three outlets and many others are throwing a major portion of the weight of the news media into spinning, concealing, misrepresenting and and prioritizing news stories in the manner most likely to push votes to Democrats and Socialist/Communists, not based on facts, law, common sense, logic or the best interests of the nation, but based on an ideological agenda.

Never mind. Trump’s actions here are futile, and I assume he knows it; if he doesn’t, then he has a bunch of lawyers to fire. He’s doing this to focus attention on the Axis news media’s unethical and corrosive efforts to manipulate elections, as it did in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Yes, it’s unethical for a President to deliberately violate the Constitution knowing that his actions will be struck down. It’s also unethical for journalists to use First Amendment protections to abuse their power and undermine democracy, but there is nothing in the Constitution that stops them from doing it

“The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” MS NOW said in a statement posted on X. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalists in our democracy,” it added. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.

Yada yada. That’s all the right rhetoric. Too bad it’s such a scumbag organization using it.

“We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hinderance or interference from the government and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right,” CNN said in a statement posted on X. “We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account, and we will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear or favor,” the statement added.

Of course, CNN made virtually no effort to hold the Obama and Biden administrations “to account,” but were, instead, complicit in their unconstitutional behavior. The Constitution, however, doesn’t say what biased and unethical news organizations can’t do, just what the government can’t do to them.

Politico Press, the publication’s communications team, said that “POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them.”

The funny word in that statement is “continue.”

Nevertheless, President Trump doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, making the metaphorical ethical leg mighty weak as well.

Too bad.