The American Bar Association’s own website says, “All of us have implicit biases.” I asked its president which groups she holds bias against. pic.twitter.com/Pebduv8lVL
— Congressman Brandon Gill (@RepBrandonGill) July 22, 2026
“This is embarrassing,” Rep. Brandon Gill said, as Michelle A. Behnke ( from Madison, Wisconsin—of course she is), the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, was infuriatingly evasive and displayed nauseating hypocrisy and dishonesty as Rep. Brandon Gill questioned her regarding DEI, bias and discrimination. It was embarrassing, for Democrats, progressives, fans of permanent anti-white discrimination, members of the ABA (the largest American bar association, which I refuse to join expressly because of the organization’s lack of integrity ) so flamingly displayed by Behnke, and especially all lawyers. How can the public trust a “profession” that allows such a shifty, pusillanimous, dishonest individual to represent it by leading its members’ largest and most prestigious organization?
Trinity College has the gall to charge over $72,000 per academic year to students, and yet passes woke, divisive, fact-free mumbo-jumbo (aka. Authentic Frontier Gibberish) off as “education.”
“White supremacy and racial capitalism structure our world, setting in motion the systems of domination that Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly describes as a ‘racially hierarchical political economy constituting war and militarism, imperialist accumulation, expropriation by domination, and labor superexploitation’…Students will learn to turn their anthropological gaze upon whiteness itself and understand its insidious modes of self-and-other construction thus destabilizing its ocular power to define others. We will pay special attention to how the white colonial gaze has operated in the liberal discipline of anthropology and explore ethnographic methods for studying whiteness and white supremacy,”
Oh. What??? And who the hell is Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly, and why should what she says matter to me any more than what, say, Adam Sandler says? [I just checked. It shouldn’t matter. She’s an obscure anti-white ideologue. Dropping in an appeal to authority using an obscure race-baiting academic is pretty desperate; then again, would any respectable scholar say something like “racially hierarchical political economy constituting war and militarism, imperialist accumulation, expropriation by domination, and labor superexploitation” ?
Not to pile on too much, but gaze at her faculty photograph. A professor choosing to radiate such ‘tude—“Bring it on, whitey!” is to be avoided at all costs.
Ugh.
Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot,Assistant Professor of Anthropology, teaches “Unsettling the White Gaze,” and she is obviously an Authentic Frontier Gibberish master herself. She describes herself as a “white, disabled, trans anthropologist whose work focuses on how criminalized people who use drugs envision and experiment with abolitionist horizons of transformation, healing, self-determination, and solidarity beyond incarceration and forced-cure.” She also explains that she “participates in abolitionist, harm reduction, and transformative justice organizing projects in NYC and beyond.”
Okaaaaaay…
If students are willing to sign up to take such self-evident crap and parents will pay for it, there’s not much that can be done. There were really silly, obscure courses at my college too, but they weren’t political indoctrination courses. These offenses to common sense and democratic society won’t dry up and blow away until there is sufficiently competent secondary and primary education to ensure college freshman have a sufficiently solid foundation in critical thinking to recognize a course like this one for what it is: pseudo-social science contrived to fulfill a political agenda.
Several Ethics Alarms reader alerted me to this gobsmacking story, further evidence that the political left in this country is in the process of suffering a nervous breakdown. I am still not certain I am glad they did.
The court alluded to in the title is the Hawaii Supreme Court. That state needs to be given a bit of leeway for its excesses and delusions: Hawaii, even after more than half a century as our 50th state, is still a very different culture from the other 49. That’s part of its charm when you visit there, but it also has allowed a problematic mindset to linger. Hawaiians just don’t think the usual rules should apply to them, even in relation to the Constitution. Two years ago, in State v. Wilson, the Hawaii Supreme Court wrote that “[t]he spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons,” and that Hawaii would read the Second Amendment “differently than the current United States Supreme Court.”
Oh. Except that a state can’t do that.
More recently, the same justice who wrote that defiant legal nonsense authored a full-on attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, tacked onto a rather mundane case about prosecutorial misconduct. I will re-publish the whole amazing section below, but KABOOM! It is head-exploding. The diatribe, because that’s what it is, covers voting rights, campaign finance, abortion, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, the major questions doctrine, Chevron deference, the spending power, the removal power, and birthright citizenship, while accusing the Roberts Court of being racist.
Such tangential rhetoric is known as dicta, parts of a legal opinion that carry no substantive legal weight at all since it is pure opinion without definitive case authority. Even dicta, however, is subject to certain professional and ethical constraints. The Hawaiian Supreme Court rantis a bright line breach of several tenets in state’s Code of Judicial Conduct.
Canon I states, “A JUDGE SHALL UPHOLD AND PROMOTE THE INDEPENDENCE, INTEGRITY, AND IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDICIARY AND SHALL AVOID IMPROPRIETY AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY.“
Under that banner are three mandates: Rule 1.1. Compliance with the Law, Rule 1.2. Promoting Confidence in the Judiciary, and Rule 1.3. Avoiding Misuse of the Prestige of Judicial Office. A statement that announces that a judge does not feel bound by U.S. Supreme Court decisions violates Rule 1.1. A judge attacking the integrity and motives of the U.S. Supreme Court undermines confidence in the judiciary, as prohibited by Rule 1.2. A judge using the prestige of his office to impugn a higher court is by definition an abuse of office, breaching Rule 1.3.
But wait! There’s more!
Canon 2 states, “A JUDGE SHALL PERFORM THE DUTIES OF JUDICIAL OFFICE IMPARTIALLY, COMPETENTLY, AND DILIGENTLY.”
The anti-SCOTUS section shows a judge giving priority to his partisan and political beliefs over his duties as a judge, violating Rule 2.1. His unhinged attack on past SCOTUS jurisprudence indicates that he is incapable of “upholding the law,” and that he is also incapable of “impartial” conduct. Moreover, the opinion constitutes a flagrant bias based on political affiliation, breaching Rule 2.3.
The outburst is even worse than the many rules violations suggest. The logic is tortured, the law is bad, and the arguments are hysterical as well as not based in reality; worst of all, the Hawaiian judges appear not to understand how SCOTUS fits into the Constitutional governance formula. The core goal underlying the tantrum is an arrogant belief in judicial activism and judges usurping legislatures, as the Warren court did habitually.
As a final rotten cherry on this putrid sundae of unethical judicial conduct, The National Review noticed that a bot probably wrote the text. Nice. My position is that judges using AI to write their opinions is impeachable conduct, but then so is issuing such an attack on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here is the section, and I must add, having just read it through again, the naked Trump Derangement and partisan extremism is shocking. This isn’t just unethical. It is judicial insurrection. Luckily, progressives don’t read court opinions…
Has any conservative law professor—there aren’t many, but I can think of a few—ever argued that scholars, lawyers and legal commentators who advocate positions disfavored on the professor’s side of the ideological divide should be punished and “forced to recant” their stated opinion? If there has been any example of that, I must have missed it. Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, however, did exactly that after the Supreme Court, in Trump v. Barbara, held that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship.
After the decision, Professor Pfaff went on BlueSky—I regard posting on that platform prima facie evidence that the poster doesn’t believe in pluralism and freedom of speech— to announce his contempt for and desire to discipline any law professor who disagreed with his obviously unchallengeable analysis of the issue, writing,
“There MUST be repercussions for the lawprofs who advanced such untenable arguments. Their behavior is — and I mean this literally, not dehumanizingly — parasitic. They exploit norms of collegiality and presumptions of integrity to advance trash. Which undermines the work of ALL of us.”
Those “untenable arguments” and “trash” were supported by four Supreme Court Justices in the minority, but never mind. The fascists of the Left believe that it is in the best interests of society to enforce “goodthink” and punish “wrongthink;” to prevent dissent and open civic discourse from threatening its power.
Pfaff was responding to similar sentiments posted by Georgia State University Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, and he’s an Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development. In his BlueSky posting, Kreis wrote that he considered it loathsome that any Justices disagreed with what he, like Pfaff, considers the only position on birthright citizenship that it is honorable and legitimate to hold:
SURPRISE LANDING An insect crashed @KTLA reporter @RachelMenitoff's live shot last night, and we must praise her professionalism. Who else could remain this cool!? pic.twitter.com/a0naM2zxq9
— KTLA 5 Morning News (@KTLAMorningNews) July 15, 2026
This is a companion piece to yesterday’s celebratory post honoring the DoorDash driver who completed her delivery after being hit by a car. With her “the show must go on!” exemplary professionalism, Menitoff’s composure under extreme “EW!” has to be cheered, and, arguably, was even more impressive than Miracle’s performance under duress.
Menitoff was reporting live for KTLA in Los Angeles on the lingering effects of Southern California’s heat wave when a huge flying cockroach landed on her shoulder and crawled across her chest.
“And it’s a lot more comfortable at this hour, but we’re still in the 80s here in the Valley,” Menitoff was saying, “So overnight temperatures aren’t necessarily dropping, and this leads to less recovery time from the daytime heat…” Meanwhile, the ugly thing was visible as it scurried across her stomach, chest and neck before jumping onto her microphone, presumably to make a statement.
Only after the live shot ended did Menitoff exclaim, “Oh gosh! Oh, I feel something,” and try to deal with the bug. “I knew it was on me,” she said later. “But I knew if I took notice of it, I wouldn’t be able to continue on with the report. So I said to myself, just get through this moment and then kind of shake it off.”
Brava. Unfortunately, since everything is political now, even this incident was quickly exploited for partisan effect. In a classic of over-reach, Vigilante ex-mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt shared the clip on X to criticize Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is challenging incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 mayoral race. Pratt said the insect symbolized conditions in Raman’s council district, where the Rachel’s report took place.
I have gradually discovered, over the past few months, that the association of legal ethics lawyers in which I am a card-carrying member is, in fact, biased, partisan, and not particularly ethical at all.
Membership in the group is considered a credential and an important one, especially since few legal ethics experts have degrees in the field. (My mentor in the area, Michael Daigneault, is one of the few who do.) I don’t belong to the association because of the credential—membership in the ABA ethics section is regarded as a credential too, and that association is crippled by bias, so to hell with it—but because it once seemed like a useful network and because the listserv keeps me relatively informed of major developments in the field.
I knew the group was overwhelmingly left-biased because the whole legal profession is left-biased. Conservative members generally foxhole during discussions that turn political, and they often do. When I have decided to be Popeye (“It’s all I can stand, ‘cuz I can’t stand no more!”) and point out a particularly annoying outbreak, I receive sheepish emails off site from members who tell me that they agree with me. They just don’t have the guts to say so on the site.
Last month, as I have mentioned here, I raised for discussion the difficult problem of how to square the legal profession’s protection of its many (MANY) alcoholic and substance-addicted lawyers with the duties of candor and communication to clients, supposedly a core legal ethics requirement. The group’s reaction was to “circle the wagons,” deny the problem, and attack me. When I responded in words I believed were appropriate to the attacks, I was singled out and threatened by the group’s president, who said that he had received complaints about my “incivility.”
Translation: Non-conforming positions that made some members uncomfortable are not welcome. Shut up, Jack.
I haven’t participated since. I had already been disillusioned twice in the previous weeks, once when the consensus was that ethics lawyer somehow get an exception from the legal ethics duty to report lawyers they know are unfit to practice ( it would take too much time, you see) and that the fact that bar associations, contrary to the public’s belief, not only do a terrible job policing the profession but intentionally make it difficult for the public to flag unethical lawyers. “How dare you!” would be my summary of the group’s reaction to my pointing out that fact.
Today I saw a post on the listserv by an esteemed member whose signature contained this as a feature:
“A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.” —-Declaration of Independence
So now I have to put up with partisan, No Kings, Trump Deranged virtue signaling. I am sorely tempted to drop a note with the coda, “These people are crazy.” —President Donald J. Trump, 2026 State of the Union Message.
I’m sure I would again be the target of censorship, and maybe, finally, banned. On one hand, I still find the listserv a valuable resource. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, they are hypocrites and unethical., and somebody ought to tell them.
The zombie speculation is because I’m sure I’ve seen that expression on “The Walking Dead” or “World War Z.”
The Florida Supreme Court wants to fine Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge Diana M. Tennis (she’s in Orlando) after she admitted making more than 900 donations to left-leaning political causes, we learn from Law.com.
The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission discovered last month that Judge Tennis gave nearly $30,000 in more than 900 separate donations to progressive candidates and those aligned with the Democratic Party.
A Judge or Candidate for Judicial Office Shall Refrain From Inappropriate Political Activity
A judge…shall not:
…make a contribution to a political organization or candidate.
Tennis told the commission that she mistakenly thought that the rule only applied to donations to candidates for state office, not federal ones. That means that she can’t read or understand statutes in plain language. Nothing in that rule above limits the restriction to state political activity. This judge is either dishonest or incompetent. Why would the Florida Supreme Court allow such a hack to continue sitting on the bench at all? She’s partisan, conflicted and untrustworthy.
The more I examine the issue, the more I realize that there are an unacceptable number of incompetent and unethical judges rotting our justice system, indeed an unacceptable percentage of bad judges that I fear equals a critical mass. Tennis is far from the worst, and she has no business judging anything more challenging than the state fair apple pie competition.
It’s been a long time since Ethics Alarms had one of its trademark Naked Teacher Principle tales or even one of it’s many variations, like the Nearly Naked Teacher’s Volunteer Principle, the Drag Queen School Principal Principle, the Naked Porn-Performing Political Candidate Principle, and the Too Sexy Firefighter Principle, to name just a few. This one, from Alexander, Georgia, has nothing to do with July Fourth, except that I discovered the story this morning. It is certainly past time for one of these posts: the last one under the tag was here, and it was only about the related Naked Mayor Principle, involving the moronic mayor of Minot, North Dakota who accidentally sent an explicit nude video of himself to the city’s attorney.
Above is Maris Nichols, 25, a married Georgia high school teacher, who really likes having sex with students: she’s been indicted for showing at least six students the sweet mysteries of life in her classroom, at a golf course, and in a closet). Two of the teenagers were younger than 16. What puts Maris into the Naked Teacher Principle category is that she is a very provocative OnlyFans performer, and was being blackmailed by some of her students—it is unclear if they were among the one she was boinking—for better grades. They had discovered the OnlyFans channel she owns, operates, and uses to display her excellent Linda Lovelace impression, among other things.
I didn’t venture an opinion on whether President Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship would fly with the Supreme Court (I did post about Justice Jackson making a fool of herself during oral argument), but I would have been surprise if today’s decision had turned out differently than it did.
The Supreme Court ruled today that President Donald Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional. The ruling was announced just as I was preparing commentary on earlier decisions this week: that post will arrive later today.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the 6-3 ruling. “If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Roberts wrote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the result but dissented on the reasoning. Such concurring opinions are for professors and geeks, to be cited in law review articles and wild-hair judicial opinion dicta.
Justice Samuel Alito made some interesting points in his dissent about how birthright citizenship has very different, and potentially perilous implications today that never occurred to the Founders, writing,
I know these technical legal ethics issues don’t interest a lot of readers, but it is my field, and this one is an all-time oldie-but-goodies.
A lawyer is in the midst of a divorce. He represents himself (a “pro se” representation); his wife has a lawyer. In all jurisdictions, Rule 4.2 or its equivalent declares that a lawyer may not meet with an adverse party in a matter without that party’s attorney present unless that counsel has been alerted and consents. The self-representing lawyer meets with his wife, whose attorney hasn’t learned about the meeting.
Is the lawyer-husband violating the rule?
The Supreme Court of Texas held last week that Rule 4.2 (Texas 4.02) does not prohibit a pro se lawyer from communicating directly with opposing party in a divorce . Ruth v Commission on Lawyer Discipline, 2026 WL 1699920. But in Missouri, the recent opinion regarding the exact same issue was the opposite. Here is that whole opinion, Informal Opinion Number: 2026-02, April 21, 2026:
Question: Lawyer is divorcing Spouse. Lawyer is pro se in the dissolution. Spouse is represented by counsel. Lawyer and Spouse had reached an informal agreement about the division of property before filing the dissolution action. Lawyer and Spouse continue to reside together while the dissolution is ongoing. Spouse discussed with Lawyer repairs needed at the marital home and payment for the repairs. Spouse initiated the conversation. After Lawyer spoke with Spouse regarding the repairs, Spouse’s lawyer advised Lawyer that all communications concerning the dissolution should be made through Spouse’s lawyer. As a party, Lawyer believes Lawyer has a right to communicate directly with spouse. Lawyer bases this belief upon a reading of Rule 4 dash–4.2 and Comment [4] to the Rule. Rule 4 dash–4.2 prohibits a lawyer who “is representing a client” from directly communicating about the subject of the representation with any other represented party. Comment [4] to the Rule provides that parties may communicate directly with each other.
Is Lawyer correct in the interpretation of the rule and its comment?
Is the interpretation the same, regardless of whether Lawyer is pro se or Lawyer has engaged counsel to represent Lawyer?
Answer 1: No, Lawyer’s interpretation is incorrect. Interpretation of the Rule and Comment [4] require consideration of both the Rule’s plain language and the policy purposes behind the Rule. The Rule protects a represented person against overreaching by other lawyers, interference with the client-lawyer relationship, and the uncounseled disclosure of information relating to the representation. See Comment [1] to Rule 4 dash–4.2. Direct communications between a represented party and a pro se lawyer create the same risks that Rule 4 dash–4.2 was designed to prevent. So, the pro se Lawyer is considered “self-representing” or, i.e., “representing a client,” and direct communication with the spouse regarding the dissolution is prohibited. See Informal Opinion 2011 dash–03. This is true even if Spouse initiated or consented to the communication. See Comment [3] to Rule 4 dash–4.2.
Answer 2: The same risks exist with direct communications for the represented party regardless of whether Lawyer is pro se or has counsel. Consequently, Rule 4 dash–4.2 prohibits direct communication between the parties unless counsel for the parties consent to direct communications or the communication is authorized by law or court order.
The consensus among legal ethicists is that the Texas approach makes sense and the Missouri version does not. A spouse in the midst of a divorce should not be prohibited from talking things out with his partner if she consents just because he happens to have a law degree. The non-lawyer party can always say refuse the meeting. I would add, however, that best practice is for the pro se lawyer to advise his spouse to check with her attorney before agreeing to the meeting.
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