Professions

The Most Unethical Prosecutor Of All: Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Mosby

In a legal ethics seminar I taught this week for government attorneys, the vast majority of them voted that Marilyn Mosby’s vainglorious announcement of charges against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray was prosecutorial abuse, and a blatant violation of professional ethics rule 3.8, which directs that (this is the Maryland version)…

The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:

(a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;

…
(e) except for statements that are necessary to inform the public of the nature and extent of the prosecutor’s action and that serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose, refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused and exercise reasonable care to prevent an employee or other person under the control of the prosecutor in a criminal case from making an extrajudicial statement that the prosecutor would be prohibited from making under Rule 3.6 or this Rule.

Of course it was a breach of ethics, and an outrageous one. Her statement, which I discussed here, not only overstated her justification for bringing the charges, which were rushed and announced before a careful investigation was completed, it also stated that the officers were guilty, and worse, that the charges were being brought because the demonstrating and rioting protesters has demanded it. Mosby’s words suggested that she stood with the mob. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On A Nashville Police Arrest Video

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

I encountered this video on CNN this morning:

Observations:

1. No police officers should have to work under these conditions. This requires courage and tolerance above what any professional should have to muster on a regular basis.

2. Every urban mayor, district attorney, police chief, civil rights advocate and journalist should be asked to comment on the video regarding the principles of respect, civic responsibility, and citizenship.

3. If the question is asked why crime rates are rising in several cities due to a cessation of proactive law-enforcement, this video is a nearly complete answer.

4. What prominent U.S. African American officials, leaders and celebrities are condemning this conduct by the friends of the individual being arrested, and conduct like it all over the nation? I haven’t seen or heard a single one.

5. Allowing this phenomenon to continue without addressing it directly is community malpractice, irresponsible, destructive, and almost certain to be deadly.

6. When such a situation escalates to violence, as this one easily could, who will be responsible, and who should be held responsible?

Discuss.

Let’s Take The “Deranged And Unethical Ideologues” Test!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

keep-calm-it-s-only-a-test-2

Recognizing insanity shouldn’t be that difficult, or impeded by political orientation. Yet as the Rachel Dolezal fiasco proves, it can be. (Now that we know that she previously claimed to be discriminated against because she was white, and heard her tell Matt Lauer that a black man was her father because she thought of him as her father, will all the loyal left culture warriors who chose to die on that silly hill after I warned them that they would regret it learn anything? I doubt it.)

Now, in the interest of improving everyone’s non-partisan wacko-detection and rejection skills, I offer these two examples, one from the left, and one from the right. If either seems reasonable to you, you flunk.

First, from the right, we have… Continue reading →

The Embarrassed Management Apologizes—Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

man_with_his_head_in_his_handsI just cleaned up about ten typos, some of them truly horrible, in the latest Sweet Briar post, which was up on the site including them for three days. The Sweet Briar grads must really think I’m illiterate. I made a note of the repaired carnage on the post, and have nominated it for a year end award, in the category of “Most Typo-Riddled Post.” Boy, I hope it wins.

Still, that’s not enough. I am thoroughly discouraged and chagrined. Thanks to diligent efforts by Ethics Alarms reader Penn and others, I have been catching typos faster of late and even refining my own, miserable proofing skills. The number of errors had been decreasing…and now this. Thus I am reprinting the following post from December of 2010 on this same topic. Back then, Ethics Alarms was averaging 600 views a day. Now the average is close to 4000 a day, meaning that the number of those literate readers inconvenienced by my incompetence every day is almost seven times greater. I’m reprinting it in part because I deserve the humiliation of knowing that I have to make the exact same apology five years later, and in part because I know there are no typos in it.

I apologize profusely for the sloppiness. I am the world’s worst proof-reader, and when I am rushing to get a post finished under a deadline, I am even worse than that. Nonetheless, this is no excuse, and readers who are kind enough to come here shouldn’t have to endure extra or missing words and illiterate spellings, most of which, by the way, are because I can’t type, though my rotten spelling doesn’t help any.

I am so grateful to those of you who continue to flag the more egregious typos for me. Finding out that an article has been hanging out there with these errors is exactly like learning that you’ve been smiling at people with a piece of spinach on your front teeth all day. So I mean it: it isn’t because I don’t care. I’m trying. Obviously I have to try harder.

The Tamir Rice Fiasco: A Step Toward Embracing Mob Justice In Police Shootings

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Oh, yeah, THIS is going to work...

Oh, yeah, THIS is going to work…

Because they believe that law enforcement officials did not move fast enough to indict (or not) the officers involved in the tragic, mistaken shooting of Tamir Rice, community activists are going  to seek the indictment and arrest of the Cleveland police officers involved by using a little-known and eccentric Ohio law that permits citizens to go directly to a judge with affidavits to seek murder charges. We can only hope that the judge chosen for this end-around has the courage and integrity to reject the petition as the attack on due process that it is.  I would not want to bet the farm on that happening.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice’s death is one of the most horrible among the spate of police shootings that have caused local and national outrage in the past year. On November 22, 2014 two police officers, 26-year-old Timothy Loehmann and 46-year-old Frank Garmback, responded to a city park after receiving a police dispatch call about “a male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people.” A 911 caller had reported that an African American male was pointing “a pistol” at random people in the Cudell Recreation Center and that “he is probably” a juvenile .The caller also said the gun was “probably fake,” but was unable to tell whether the weapon was real or not because the orange barrel markings used to identify toy weapons had been removed. This information was never relayed to the officers. Continue reading →

Now THESE Are “Feminazis”…Melissa Harris Perry and Kamila Shamsie

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments

feminazi

Rush Limbaugh assured himself of a permanent place in the Feminist Hall Of Villains when he coined the term feminazis to describe militant women’s rights advocates two decades ago. Limbaugh’s use of the term was excessively broad and unfair to be sure—to Rush, all feminists are feminazis— but it has become newly appropriate and useful as the Left increasingly advocates fascist tactics when it sees no quick route to its objectives using such repugnant means–to them—as the free market, open debate, merit-based advancement, and individual autonomy.

Is tarring these arrogant ideologues who favor enforced “equality” over basic Constitutional rights such a pejorative label uncivil, unfair or hateful? Why no, in fact. Sadly, tragically, frighteningly, it is entirely accurate. Here are two examples:

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry

Bemoaning the fact that male professional sports pay their athletes more than female sports(because they are more popular, because more men follow sports and because male athletes are, on average, bigger, faster, stronger and better) Harris-Perry made this statement on her far-left even for MSNBC show on the network:

During the break I was trying to think up a solution to the problem of building audience (for women athletes), so my solution is in 2016 we go completely dark on all media coverage of men’s sports, just for one year. We have the only televised sports, the only print sports, it’s only women’s sports, and we’ll just see whether or not women could get a fan base if in fact they were the people who were constantly on our televisions and in our newspapers.

That’s a reasonable “solution” to this TV personality, scholar, teacher, author, pundit, feminist, fascist. Cripple lawful businesses. Restrict communications. Limit commerce, advertising, marketing, merchandising. Restrict the public’s entertainment choices, and male athletes’ earning capacity. After all, it’s all about the vagina, right? If women can’t compete against men, then just eliminate the men, their rights, and their advantages by edict. The First Amendment, the right of contract, equal protection, due process, enjoyment of life—why should they stand in the way of the progressive, feminist agenda?

This is how fascists solve problems.

Melissa Harris-Perry is a feminazi.

PS: In the comments, esteemed reader Charles Green chides me for not taking Harris-Perry suggestion as a joke. First of all, the woman is humorless. Second, the fact that she knew her suggestion could never happen isn’t the same as a joke. That would be a solution to her, because she is squarely in the ends justify the means camp, like all extremists. I am sure readers could concoct “jokes” similar in spirit about “solutions” (facsists love “solutions,” you will recall) to other “problems” involving ethnic, racial or gender designations that Harris-Perry, for one, would condemn in the harshest terms. I know Rush could…

Continue reading →

The Marco Rubio Traffic Ticket Story: Is The NY Times’ Anti-GOP Bias Finally Undeniable…and Unmanageable??

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
The New York Times thinks you need to know about this woman's driving record. Really?

The New York Times thinks you need to know about this woman’s driving record. Really?

The New York Times matters, even as newspapers continue their march to oblivion. Centuries of outstanding journalism tend to carry weight, so despite the fact that the paper has befouled itself with hypocrisy, dubious reporting, partisan bias and an inexcusable imbalance among its pundits, it nonetheless still functions as a news media role model and icon. The infuriating debate over whether the news media is overwhelmingly biased in its news coverage (that would be biased in favor of Democrats, progressives, and liberal policy objectives in case you haven’t picked up on it) has special importance now, as again we head into a Presidential election and most Americans—I hope?—would like to see the public’s opinions on the matter prevail, not the biases of journalists, operating through selective or slanted reporting

Last week’s Times investigative scoop that Marco Rubio and his wife had a combined 17 traffic citations since 1997 thus is important, not regarding Sen. Rubio, who is running for President.  Though the Times still defends it—and that’s significant too—pretty much everyone else, Left, Right, and  anywhere, has condemned the Rubio hit. The story told us nothing newsworthy about Rubio,  but told us a lot about the Times, and perhaps whether the U.S. news media plans on placing its heavy thumb on our campaign scales…again. Continue reading →

Most Unethical Principal Of The Year? Maybe. Dumbest Unethical Principal Of The Year? Definitely

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
Principle Stenner giving David McCullough's speech. You can't see that his pants are on fire from this angle...

Principle Stenner giving David McCullough’s speech. You can’t see that his pants are on fire from this angle…

[NOTE: the original post’s headline ended with the creative word, “defeinitely,” I know not why. My demon proofer caught it yesterday, but I just read his alert. I’m sorry.]

Principal Mark Stenner delivered the commencement address for the May 22 graduation ceremonies for West Boca High School. It may have sounded faintly familiar to some of the those in the audience; after all,  Massachusetts’ English teacher David McCullough gave virtually the same speech to the class of 2012 at Wellesley High School.  That speech went viral on YouTube with more than 2.5 million views. Known as the “You Are Not Special” speech, it got McCullough, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, a book deal. Principal Stenner repeated this famous, extensively circulated speech almost word for word,  never mentioning McCullough. He did make slight word changes and altered locations examples when necessary, but it was the same speech, and the plagiarism was noticed almost immediately.

Stenner still insisted that he didn’t  plagiarize the address . “I liked his idea. I should have said this was in part taken from him, ” he said. “In part,” in this case, means cutting some of the original, but including  details like referencing  ‘batty Aunt Sylvia” and the “maternal caped crusader,” and citing the same philosophers as McCullough, like Sophocles and Thoreau, but not crediting the man who wrote almost every word of the speech.
Continue reading →

Inexcusable Political Reporter Incompetence: “Inalienable Rights? What Inalienable Right?”

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
Quick, Will, Meredith: Who is this guy? Is he a} Harpo Marx b) Bruce Jenner or c) Thomas Jefferson?

Quick, Will, Meredith: Who is this guy? Is he a} Harpo Marx b) Bruce Jenner or c) Thomas Jefferson?

This isn’t about bias, although a good case could be made that bias is at the root of the problem. It is about supposedly experienced political reporters not knowing, understanding or respecting the Declaration of Independence.

Lat week, the Associated Press’s Will Weissert wrote AP’s report on Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement of his candidacy for President, and included this:

“In a nod to the tea party, he said: ‘Our rights come from God, not from government.'”

This is ignorant, embarrassing, and wrong. He should be sent back to school, fired, or suspended, and so should the editor that let this pass. That our rights (our “inalienable rights”…ring any bells, Will?) come not from government but from God (“their Creator”…Will?), or, if you will, nature, innate humanity, the cosmos, or however you roll, is not the invention of the Tea Party, nor is citing the concept pandering to conservatives. Perry’s statement simply shows that he is familiar with and has proper reverence for the mission statement and founding document of the United States of America, as this AP reporter clearly does not.

Here, Will, you dolt, let me refresh your recollection:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Got that? Your inexcusable, factually, legally and philosophically mistaken idea that governments grant rights is in direct contradiction with the basis of this nation’s founding, and the Constitution created to enable the mission as stated by Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress in 1776. The segments of the news media and the progressive community that make assertions like Weissert’s–call them the Ignorant Left—are arguing for a system in which government dictates what rights we have or don’t have—you know, like the King of England. This is specifically un-American, because it was the exact basis on which the United States declared that being part of the British Empire was intolerable.

Meredith Shiner at Yahoo Politics did the same thing in March, tweeting in reaction to Ted Cruz’s announcement of his candidacy:

“Bizarre to talk about how rights are God-made and not man-made in your speech announcing a POTUS bid? When Constitution was man-made?”

Bizarre, is it, Meredith? Do you live here? Did you attend college, or high school? The Constitution represents the human beings making up a democratic government securing  rights that every human being are born with and that may not be taken from him or her. Did you miss class that day when the Declaration of Independence was being taught? Or can you just not read?

Is it God that’s the hang up? I bet it is, since Democrats, progressives  and journalists (but I repeat myself) have utter contempt for religion and the concept of God. Well, you badly educated fraud of a “political analyst,” Thomas Jefferson was not exactly Martin Luther. This is why he used the term Creator. Creator—did you miss all of your English classes too? Creator can mean God, as well as designer, builder, designer, inventor, founder…but Jefferson was a terrific writer, and knew that words can mean different things to different people in the same context, so he used a word that also can suggest agency, a beginning, causation, determinant, a catalyst, genesis, inducement, instigation, origin, root or source. Jefferson was also a scientist, and understood more than most–certainty more than you—that we do not have all the answers. What he said, and what the Founders endorsed, and what the Constitution was written to execute and establish for all time, was that human beings have certain rights from the instant they are born, and that no government has to grant them or take them away.

Whatever their flaws, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry understand that, as anyone qualified to seek the Presidency must. Shiner and Weissert do not understand that, and thus are unqualified to vote, much less to be political reporters.

___________________

Pointer: Newsbusters

Choosing Race Over Ethics, Fairness, Common Sense, Duty And Our Children’s Future: “Disparate Impact” And The New York Teachers Exam Decision

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Fine. If you can teach, you can teach. I don't care that you're blue.

Fine. If you can teach, you can teach. I don’t care that you’re blue.

How much, I wonder, will American society be willing to distort its values, reality and duties to the public in order to accommodate false standards of racial justice? How many innocent people will be harmed before this destructive trend dissolves as the truth suddenly dawns, and we ask, “What were we thinking?” If a computer program was designed to invent the perfect example of a court decision that shows how divorced public policy regarding race has become from anything approaching logic, it could not come up with better than this.

Judge Kimba M. Wood (Remember her?) of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled last week that the New York’s teachers  exam was racially discriminatory, and the results had to be thrown out.  The exam, the second incarnation of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, called the LAST-2, was administered to New York teaching candidates from 2004 through 2012 and was designed to test an applicant’s knowledge of liberal arts and science.  Now, the exam was not found discriminatory because anyone could show, or suggested, that certain questions favored one race’s experience over the other. It was not found discriminatory like those infamous Jim Crow exams, or because experts were able to show how African Americans were uniquely unable to do well on particular questions for identifiable reasons. No, the test was found to be discriminatory because minority teaching candidates failed at a higher rate than white candidates, and that’s the only reason.

In order to eliminate the gap, those questions on which minority applicants did significantly worse will have to be eliminated. Wrote Wood:

“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts.”

We are supposed to immediately grasp that this is a bad thing. Continue reading →