A distinguished lawyer of my acquaintance (though we have not spoken in decades) just posted what follows in a professional forum.
What is it? How did the lawyer come to believe that it should be posted? What would you say in response as a friend? A colleague? A critic?
Kevin Clinesmith, a former senior FBI lawyer who was sentenced to 12 months probation last January after pleading guilty to a felony in connection with the falsified information used to acquire the FISA warrant used to surveil marginal Trump campaign figure Carter Paige in relation to the Trump-Russia investigation, was restored as a member in “good standing” by the District of Columbia Bar Association’s discipline committee.
Maybe there is a a good reason for this, but it seems very strange.
The Bar did not seek Clinesmith’s disbarment which lawyers convicted of felonies involving the justice system typically face. He has not even finished serving out his probation as a convicted felon. After the negative publicity about the apparently rigged FISA process (the objective was to “get Trum”), the bar temporarily suspended Clinesmith pending a review and hearing. In September, Clinesmith’s suspension was ended with time served and his status to “active member in good standing.”
—Sunny Hostin, throwing in her contribution to “The View’s” desperate efforts to offer excuses and rationalization for convicted hate-crime fraud Jussie Smollett and the race-baiting Democrats and pundits that instantly believed his absurd story and blamed his “attack” on Donald Trump.
Hostin, incidentally, is a lawyer. A lawyer actually made an argument that devoid of logic. What does that tell us about the law school that graduated her (Notre Dame), the Justice Department that hired her (Clinton’s), and the news networks that employed her as an analyst (CNN, Fox News, Court TV and ABC). Is there a dumber statement that is even possible to make? “It’s a ‘good thing’ that an obviously made-up hate crime account was believed, because we want everyone to believe even fictional accusations, though doing so wastes money, take police away from investigating real crimes, and increases societal divisions and suspicion.” Brilliant!
All right, all right: I know calling ethics fouls on the blather that passes for debate on “The View” is like beefy ex-male swimmer winning races against life-time females. Nevertheless, people watch “The View,” get fed “logic” like Hostin’s, and become dumber and dumber, until next thing you know they’re voting for Kamala Harris for President. Responsible citizens don’t just need ethics alarms, they need idiot alarms. If you can’t hear a comment like Hostin’s and instantly know what she said was idiotic, you’re not an asset to a democracy. Continue reading
[Nat King Cole’s rendition of this song always makes me smile: his German is so dreadful. But what a voice! It’s like hot cocoa with a marshmallow melting in it.]
Well, the 8-foot Concolor fir tree goes up today, meaning about four hours of prickles and dead light strands lie ahead. Can’t wait!
I have a Christmas ethics dilemma on which advice would be appreciated. As I think I mentioned, Spuds, who is a canine battering ram, was romping at night in the field behind our house with a group of dog pals when one of the owners, a next door neighbor of thirty years, zigged when she should have zagged and Spuds ran right into her. Her leg was broken in two places, and now her 71-year-old husband is facing caring for her for at least several months, also taking care of their two large Belgian Shepherds, as well as a disabled family member who lives a few houses down the street. Lots of the dog-owners have dropped off holiday food for the couple, and we want to send a nice Harry and David package. How do we frame the gift in a way that sends the implied message we want to convey (“We’re thinking of you, and hope you can enjoy the Christmas in spite of everything”) and not “Please don’t sue us!” ? (I am not at all concerned on that score, for reasons social and legal.) Should Spuds sign the card, along with us?
I’ll be damned before I ask “The Ethicist,” or worse still, “Social Qs”…
1. Look! A competent list for a change! The Independent issued a list of “The Magnificent 20: the Top 2O Westerns of All Time.” I’ve lectured and written about this most ethics-minded and American of film genres, and I was pleasantly surprised that almost all of the Westerns I regard as essential made the list. Graeme Ross, the author, knows his stuff. That doesn’t mean I agree with all of it. I am not a Sergio Leone fan, and consider all of the spaghetti westerns as anti-Westerns at heart, so those are two slots I’d fill differently. As usual “The Searchers” is too high (it’s #1), and “Unforgiven” made the list, a film that I thought was over-rated from the second it came out (Sorry Clint.)
Still, only one of the Westerns included is affirmatively dreadful (Brando’s misbegotten “One-Eyed Jacks”) and an unforgivable choice. On my list (which is longer), “Lonesome Dove” is #1 (“Shane” is #2) but it’s not technically a movie, I guess. I also would include “Silverado” in the top 20. “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” is an essential inclusion on such a list; I don’t know how it was missed. Still, a responsible, respectful and fair effort—and John Wayne has more movies on the list than anyone else, even without “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” Good.
Why does Ethics Alarms rate Professor Goodwin an Ethics Villain rather than the more common, and usually forgivable, status of Ethics Dunce? It is because in her op-ed for the New York Times, “I Was Raped by My Father. An Abortion Saved My Life,” she deliberately misrepresents the law and ethics of the abortion issue while using her status as a law professor to mislead readers. She also presents an argument that is purely an appeal to emotion, though as a scholar and teacher she is professionally obligated not to advance a position without basing it in reason and fact.
There is nothing unethical or inappropriate about Goodwin advancing a pro-abortion position if she does so honestly. She is obviously committed on the issue as the founding director of the U.C.I. Law Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and its Reproductive Justice Initiative, and the author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.” Terrific: make your case, Professor! I have an open mind; I look forward to reading it. You obviously have the skill, background, experience and erudition to be enlightening and persuasive on the topic.
But Goodwin doesn’t make a legal case, an ethical case, a moral case or even a logical one in her op-ed. Doing any of those require acknowledging counter arguments and rebutting them with facts and analysis. Instead, her essay goes straight for the heartstrings and viscera, bypassing the brain entirely.
Goodwin was raped by her father when she was 12, you see. How horrible. She courts our sympathy, and, not inappropriately, receives it. However, she never makes the case that a young woman’s (or girl’s) misfortunes, however severe, justify taking the life of another human being.
I’m currently weighing whether to try to get up the Ethics Alarms Best and Worst of 2021 this year, after several years in a row of failing to find the time and energy…I am also re-watching “Clickbait” in preparation for the special Ethics Alarms Zoom discussion that, I hope, will soon be scheduled for some tome in the next 31 days. As regular readers here know, my ambitions sometimes exceed my grasp.
Heh. Sometimes...!
1. Oh look, a frivolous appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, because #MeToo, or something…The prosecutors who unethically used improperly obtained evidence to put Bill Cosby prison are now asking the United States Supreme Court to throw out the appellate court ruling earlier this year that overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault on due process grounds. Cosby was released in June after serving less than three years of a three-to-10-year sentence. He should not have served any time at all. A ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that Cosby’s rights had been violated when the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office pursued a criminal case against him despite a binding “non-prosecution agreement” given to him by a previous district attorney. Cosby’s rights were violated, raping scum that he is.
Notice how feminists, civil rights activists on the left, anti-Trump fanatics and others who have a monopoly on Truth and Right (or think they do) increasingly want the law to yield to “justice”? There is no valid basis for this appeal. Zip, none. The lawyers filing it should be sanctioned for unethical conduct, just as Trump lawyers who filed suits to flip-flop the 2020 election without evidence have been sanctioned.
2. Speaking of the 2020 election, the shady dealings of Joe Biden’s son, quite possibly with Joe’s knowledge and even facilitation, were, we now know, kept from the public just long enough to ensure Donald Trump’s defeat. Today, Senator Chuck Grassley took to the Senate floor to expose more smoking gun documentation. Here’s the video:
Of course, none of the news networks, except maybe Fox, will run it, and I assume the major print sources sill ignore it. The situation is not helped by the fact that Grassley is 88 and has no business being in the Senate. He’s pretty sharp for 88, which is like saying Jane Fonda is pretty hot for 83. I don’t want to see her do a sequel to “Barbarella”, and I don’t want to have to watch Grassley stumble through an important presentation.
Geoff Shepard‘s intriguing new book, The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President , is out today. Shepard, a Nixon aide who turned against his former boss during the Watergate hearings after hearing some of the Oval Office tapes, has assembled a large amount of what he calls “irrefutable” evidence that President Nixon was victimized by extreme prosecutorial misconduct in a “deep state” effort to bring him down. He has even set up a website where those documents can be reviewed.
Shepard, who has been obsessed with Watergate for decades and has written three previous books about the scandal, forced the release of a secret prosecutors’ “road map” used to convince a grand jury to indict key Watergate figures and spur the impeachment inquiry. He also claims his research shows that Watergate prosecutors were coordinating with Judge Sirica, which was one reason many of them, included the sainted Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, improperly took documents with them when they left the case. Amusingly (I guess), the Washington Examiner calls this “a big legal no-no.” That’s one way of putting it, I guess—a stupid way. If true, it’s grounds for disbarment for the lawyers and impeachment for the judge.
In yesterday’s post, And The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman/ George Floyd/ Kyle Rittenhouse Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On….., I wrote in reference to the certifiably terrible closing arguments by both sides in the Rittenhouse trial,
“It looks to me as if Judge Schroeder has stacked the deck: he allowed enough improper summation conduct from the State to ensure a reversal if Rittenhouse is convicted, and also allowed sufficient cheats by the defense to make an acquittal more likely.”
That statement is still accurate as far as it goes, but a friend, colleague and experienced trial lawyer just called to remind me that improper statements or actions in summary arguments in civil and criminal cases that would otherwise justify a mistrial are considered waived if opposing counsel doesn’t make a timely objection.
The judge can (and should) also intervene if an attorney crosses the ethical and legal lines in closing, but my friend emphasizes that most judges won’t, preferring to leave that task to the lawyers. Attorneys, meanwhile, are very reluctant to interrupt an opponent’s closing argument to object. If they do and are over-ruled, they lose credibility with the jury. Mid-closing interruptions are also seen as Golden Rule breaches, though that should not matter: the lawyer’s duty to the client surpasses any obligations to opponents.
Jerry Remy died over the weekend. Unless you’re a Red Sox fan, you may not have heard of Remy, but he was a Boston icon by the time he died at the age of 68. I was trying to come up with an ethics theme to justify writing a post about him: I can’t, in fairness. He was just a normal guy who got to live his dream, some would say: a Boston kid (Fall River, to be accurate) who grew up, like me, loving the home town team with all of its drama and disappointments, and was talented enough to play for it, after being traded by the Angels to the Sox in 1976. Then Remy became part of Sox lore, the frustrating parts, as his team battled the New York Yankees in their most repulsive incarnation for primacy in the late ’70s, always falling short. In the most famous and tragic of those near misses, Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent’s cheap home run became the decisive blow in a single play-off tie-breaker in 1978, making Dent a a Yankee immortal. Only moral luck prevented the hero of that historic game from being Remy. In the bottom of the 9th with the Red Sox trailing by one run, Remy hit a blast to right field that Yankee outfielder Lou Piniella lost in the sun. It landed in front of him and bounced to his left: Piniella threw his glove up in blind desperation, and the ball, somehow, landed in it. Lou later told Remy that he never saw it until it was in his grip. Had that ball gotten by him, Rick Burleson would have scored the tying run from first, and Remy would have had an easy triple. He might even have had an inside-the-park homer, winning the game, the division championship, and immortality for getting the biggest hit in Red Sox history.
Remy’s knees gave out eventually, like many second basemen before base runners were forbidden from breaking up potential double-plays with hard slides. He eventually became the Sox cable broadcast color man for 34 years, until he left the booth in August to battle lung cancer. Remy was warm, informative, candid, modest and funny, all while describing himself as a mediocre hitter who felt honored to play on a team with stars like Jim Rice and Carl Yastrzemski. He also kept doing his job, despite more than his share of tragedy and pain. His oldest son was a drug addict, and murdered his girlfriend in a steroid rage. He is serving life without parole in prison; Jerry and his wife took on shared custody of their infant granddaughter. Remy’s battle with lung cancer began in 2008; he kept fighting off multiple recurrences with operations, radiation and chemo, and it kept coming back. He battled depression as well, and spoke and wrote about the illness, inspiring and comforting many who shared that often crippling condition.
Jerry’s last appearance on a baseball field was, appropriately, when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch on October 4 for another one game play-off with the Yankees, who had ended the season tied with Boston, just as in 1978. I knew he was through: he looked pale and weak, but Remy beamed at the huge ovation he received from the Fenway Park crowd as he lobbed the ball to his frequent NESN broadcast partner and fellow member of that tragic 1978 team, Dennis Eckersley. This time, the Red Sox beat the Yankees.
Jerry Remy made a lot of people happy during his life, was respected and loved by those who knew him and worked with him, and kept fighting his way through what chaos threw at him, becoming a better, kinder, nicer human being in the process. That’s a pretty good legacy, better than many greater baseball players. I know he made me happy lots of times, and did so while he must have been suffering.
Good for you, Jerry. Good job at life. I’ll miss you, and so will everyone else. The more good, hard working, courageous human beings we have around, the better it is for everyone.
A lawyer sent around an ad by a Brooklyn, NY., traffic ticket lawyer (that’s his website above) that read,
This is an opportunity to raise awareness around the causes, risks, and treatment of different types of herpes infections.
Answer: Your traffic ticket doesn’t have to affect you forever!
We here at the Law Office of James Medows would like to bring awareness to
National Herpes Awareness Day!
To celebrate this day, we are offering
$100 OFF your next traffic ticket.
Use Promo Code: Herpes100
Expiration: The sale ends 10/19/2021 and cannot be combined with any other promotions.
Call: 845 – TICKETS or 845-842-5387 now to redeem this offer!
The lawyer who sent the copy of the ad to ethics specialists asked, “Is this the worst lawyer advertisement ever?” The answer is easy: it’s not even close. Nor is the ad unethical under the legal ethics rules of any jurisdiction, including New York. Today IS National Herpes Awareness Day, so the ad isn’t misleading. Unethical lawyer ads are misleading ads. It’s certainly a tasteless ad, but the Old Guard in the legal profession believed all lawyer advertising was in bad taste. Bars know that punishing lawyers because their ad copy is obnoxious risks having the advertising ethics rules struck down as free speech violations.
It might even be an effective marketing ploy for the lawyer, encouraging reckless drivers to go to his website.
Ethics Alarms 