Professions

An Unethical Quote Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There are a lot of really unethical people saying some astounding things lately. Such as…

1. Incompetent Elected Official Of the Month Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), who completely beclowned herself in the The House Weaponization Subcommittee examination of Twitter Files heralds Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. She was determined to discredit them for daring to reveal the efforts by her party and its allies to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story and censor critics, and apparently did no research into te topic of the hearings at all, announcing that she didn’t know what “a substack” was and showing complete ignorance regarding Bari Weiss. (Ah, if only she read Ethics Alarms!) Meanwhile, all of a sudden Democrats oppose journalists’ desire to protect their sources.

2. Not included in the video above was an offensive question by serial unethical House hack Debbie Wasserman Schulz, the former DNC chair who rigged the 2016 primaries for Hillary Clinton. She accused Matt Taibbi of profiting from authoring the “Twitter Files” reports, implying that he was motivated by persoanl profit, saying: “After the ‘Twitter Files,’ your followers doubled … I imagine your Substack readership … increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk.”

These people really lash out when they’re exposed, don’t they?

3. Over to the Republican side: Jenna Ellis, one of President Trump’s lawyers in the post-election push to have the results examined, admitted in Colorado Bar disciplinary proceedings that she deliberately engaged in the following misrepresentations “for selfish reasons”:

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Who Would Have Suspected That A Group Of Judges With An Average Age of 62 Would Not Be Competent At Cyber-Security?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I jest, of course.

Who couldn’t see this coming—years ago? A decade ago?

Long before the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade,  Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts instead of secure servers designed to protect sensitive information. Security lapses by the justices apparently were routine, making the embarrassing and public-trust-wounding leak all but inevitable while also rendering an effective investigation difficult as well.

Supreme Court employees used printers that didn’t produce logs. They were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking. So-called “burn bags” containing materials that needed to be shredded were left open and unattended in hallways. Employees could remove documents, including draft opinions, from the SCOTUS building Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

No, the former CNN host of “Reliable Sources” isn’t necessarily the most biased, hypocritical and unethical journalist I could use to illustrate Curmie’s Comment of the Day but he is the most ridiculous, as the hack whom mean wags on the right call “Potato” regularly flaunted his biases while he was allegedly examining the ethics of his profession, a task he was spectacularly unqualified to perform. His real job, as anyone could discern after about five minutes of listening to him, was to obfuscate regarding his employer’s manifest breaches of fair and objective journalism, and to impugn CNN’s competition, especially Fox News, regularly calling the kettle black in strong terms.

When I read Curmie’s typically adept commentary, I realized that a regular reader here might be able to program a computer to write a response to an Ethics Alarms post on rotting journalism ethics (and, to be honest, many other recurring themes here) that I would almost be certain to select as a Comment of the Day. That would be unethical, of course, and I can vouch for the fact that Curmie isn’t a computer, having had the pleasure of meeting him in person.

Here is real, live, human being Curmie’s Comment of the Day on objectivity, subjectivity, the nature of bias, and the post,  “On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…”

***

I dabbled in journalism as an undergrad. Admittedly, that wasn’t exactly last week: the newsroom was stocked with manual typewriters, if that gives you a rough idea. There was no journalism department, and, I believe, only a single introductory course–which virtually no one on the staff of the newspaper took. A bunch of my colleagues turned out okay, though: three that I worked with ended up in senior management positions: one with the Wall Street Journal, one with the International Herald Tribune, one with Newsweek.

I did some day editing, mostly on the arts page; I had a weekly column, and I did a little news reporting. I never sought an upper-level editorial position. It’s possible, perhaps even probable, I could have been arts editor if I’d really wanted the job; I didn’t.

But I did have a lot of conversations about journalism with some people who were subsequently to be very successful in that business. The consensus was that objectivity was a goal, but one it was impossible to achieve. The reasons for this were two-fold. First, you can’t entirely suppress your own life experience, perspectives, and (yes) prejudices. Second, you inevitably interpret the significance of events. If X happened and Y also happened, there are manifold ways of framing the story, using variations on the theme of “despite” or “therefore,” for example. Even saying “X and Y” instead of “Y and X” often betrays a bias.

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Cultural Illiteracy Meets Judicial Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This was resolved in September 2022, but I missed it, and attention should be paid.

An Illinois lawyer was representing a client in an age discrimination lawsuit that arose out of an attempt to purchase property and, chagrined at the judge’s ruling at one point, uttered the Elizabethan era word, “gadzooks!” under his breath. The judge admonished the lawyer not to make comments “under your breath,” and the attorney replied, “I said, ‘gadzooks!'”  The judge shot back, “If you make one more comment that’s offensive to this court, I will hold you in contempt of court.”  The lawyer, apparently astonished, said: “Gadzooks is offensive to the court?”

The judge stated: “You are now in contempt of court. I’m fining you $1,000.” When the the lawyer replied, “May I ask the court.”  The judge stated: “You are now (at) $2,000!”

During the eventual disciplinary hearing—the episode tied up the lawyer for years—the judge testified that she did not know what “gadzooks” meant but found it offensive, and that she regarded the exclamation an attempt to impugn her ruling.  The lawyer testified that he did not consider “gadzooks” to be offensive, and also  testified that he did not yell or shout “gadzooks” as the judge claimed. When he did raise his voice during the trial, it was so his 83-year-old client could hear him, he said. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The 2022 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here it is…

Those polled were asked, “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low or very low?” Continue reading →

These Are Poisonous Fruit Of Squandered Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

A just-released Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey concluded that 49% of American adults believe it is likely that Wuhan virus vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths. Twenty-eight percent think it’s “Very Likely” that the side effects of the vaccine have been deadly to many  in contrast with 37% who don’t believe that a significant number of deaths have been caused by vaccine side effects. Fourteen percent are not sure, the usual group that isn’t sure of anything.

You can question the accuracy of this poll or all polls, you can believe that the vaccine skeptics are hysterics, you can believe that these numbers are in large part the result of “misinformation.” However, there is no question that even if they are inaccurate, the numbers show a shocking level of distrust in the pandemic vaccines, and, by extension, vaccines in general as well the health professionals and elected officials who have promoted them. When asked if there are legitimate safety concerns surrounding the shots, or whether doubts have been seeded by conspiracy theorists, 48% said there that concerns are valid. Only 37% indicated that false conspiracy theories were behind the public’s fears.

Glenn Reynolds, the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law and one of the most widely read conservative blogger, has it exactly right, writing, Continue reading →

Does The Medical Profession Think That “Shoulder Width Reduction Surgery” Is The Ethical Practice Of Medicine?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Shoulder width reduction is an extreme form of surgery designed to allow men transitioning to glorious womanhood look the way they feel. The procedure involves a surgeon sawing sections of the patient’s clavicle off and  fusing the remaining pieces back together with a metal plate. The surgery generally costs  thousands of dollars;  you can see it being performed here. There is also the reverse procedure for women who have decided to be male, or who want to look like Joan Crawford.

Once upon a time, before the medical profession was completely perverted by fear of lawsuits and the love of money, surgery that served no functional purpose was regarded as unethical. The gold mine that is cosmetic surgery changed all that, along with greasing many slippery slopes. If a teenage girl’s parents felt she would be more popular and happy with a cute little turned up nose, then that was sufficient benefit to make the surgery ethical. Next it was just a few slips down the slope to similarly justify surgery to give some whacko pointy ears like an elf, or a split tongue like a lizard, or to make someone look like a doll…

Or a cat….

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Unethical Asshole Of The Month: MSG Entertainment CEO James Dolan

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The Ethics Alarms 2022 Award for Asshole of the Year will be awarded to Donald Trump, natch, later today, and this episode involving the CEO of MSG Entertainment won’t threaten Trump’s honor. I could see Trump doing this. I could see Elon Musk doing it; indeed, he came close.

But James Dolan’s conduct is still pretty disgusting. Lawyer Kelly Conlon was accompanying her daughter and her daughter’s Girl Scout troop to a performance of the “Christmas Spectacular” show with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York City when a facial recognition system identified her in the lobby. After walking into the theater Conlon was flagged by security and told to leave because of she works for Davis, Saperstein & Salomon, a law firm representing clients in litigation against MSG, a large entertainment holding company overseeing live events at venues including Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater and the Hulu Theater. CEO Dolan has a policy of banning attorneys at any law firm that sues an MSG venues from attending MSG events.

Conlan isn’t alone in being harassed; another lawyer, Nicolette Landi, was on her way to Mariah Carey’s “Merry Christmas To All Show” at Madison Square Garden last week, when she was denied entry too. All the members of her law firm, Burns and Harris, had received letters banning them from events at all of MSG’s properties. Lawyer Larry Hutcher, a Knicks season ticket holder for nearly 50 years, also found himself on the blacklist because his firm, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP, is in litigation against Dolan’s properties.

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No, Anti-Kavanaugh Obsessives, Attending A Holiday Party Does Not Constitute “An Appearance Of Impropriety” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Ooooh, scary! Politico reported that Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended a private holiday party last week at the home of Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC). Attendees included Stephen Miller, whose group America First Legal Foundation, it reported, “has interests in cases now pending before the court.”

Bloomberg Law seems to think social engagements over the holidays aree suspicious actions triggering “the appearance of impropriety” prohibitions all judges are told to avoid. They are not. The problem is that now there is a glut of committed ideologues determined to intimidate, neutralize and delegitimatize the Supreme Court, and to those biased critics, virtually anything a conservative justice does appears improper. In Kavanaugh’s case, unsubstantiated juvenile conduct while in high school was cited as sufficiently improper to overshadow his impeccable record as an adult judge.

Attending a party with people who “live, eat, and breathe conservative political action” is either reflective of a level of insensitivity to that development or indifference to it, says Charles Geyh, an Indiana University Maurer School of law professor. “This is the worst possible time for this,” he said. “That development” is the Court being unjustly and disingenuously attacked for legitimate and legally justifiable decisions that the Left hates. The prohibition against “the appearance of impropriety” means conduct that could be reasonably and objectively seen as improper, not conduct that partisan fanatics find convenient to call improper. Professionals like lawyers, politicians and judges should be capable of interacting socially with those they may disagree with, and there should be no adverse inferences from accepting a private party invitation. As the late Justice Scalia insisted, even Supreme Court Justices are entitled to a social life. If the job requires living like a cloistered monk, no one will want the job.

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More Evidence Of Ethics Rot In The Legal Profession

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The combination of The Great Stupid washing over the land, woke indoctrination and bullying, and the politicization of everything has perhaps taken its greatest toll on the trustworthiness of the professions. One after another has succumbed to ethics rot to an extent that one would have been unimaginable. The legal profession has been especially ravaged.

A depressing and horrifying op-ed in the Wall Street Journal told the first-hand account of how the writer was fired from her law firm, Hogan Lovells, for daring to express an opinion that was not deemed compliant with current progressive cant. She wrote in part,

After the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June, global law firm Hogan Lovells organized an online conference call for female employees. As a retired equity partner still actively serving clients, I was invited to participate in what was billed as a “safe space” for women at the firm to discuss the decision. It might have been a safe space for some, but it wasn’t safe for me.

Everyone else who spoke on the call was unanimous in her anger and outrage about Dobbs. I spoke up to offer a different view. I noted that many jurists and commentators believed Roe had been wrongly decided. I said that the court was right to remand the issue to the states. I added that I thought abortion-rights advocates had brought much of the pushback against Roe on themselves by pushing for extreme policies. I referred to numerous reports of disproportionately high rates of abortion in the black community, which some have called a form of genocide. I said I thought this was tragic.

The outrage was immediate. The next speaker called me a racist and demanded that I leave the meeting. Other participants said they “lost their ability to breathe” on hearing my comments. After more of the same, I hung up.

Someone made a formal complaint to the firm. Later that day, Hogan Lovells suspended my contracts, cut off my contact with clients, removed me from email and document systems, and emailed all U.S. personnel saying that a forum participant had made “anti-Black comments” and was suspended pending an investigation. The firm also released a statement to the legal website Above the Law bemoaning the devastating impact my views had on participants in the forum—most of whom were lawyers participating in a call convened expressly for the purpose of discussing a controversial legal and political topic. Someone leaked my name to the press.

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