Quizzes

Ethics Quiz: The Despicable Representative From The Great State of South Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is a bit of departure from the usual Ethics Alarms quiz. I’m not going to ask whether conduct is ethical or not, or what the ethical response is to a particular conflict or dilemma. No, I’m going to ask what a fair and proportionate description would be of the latest vile, racist crap emitted by this serial hate-mongering demagogue.

That’s Rep. James Clyburn—recognize him? He took credit for getting Joe Biden nominated in 2020, and thus has blood on his hands from the carnage out country has suffered from four years of governance by faceless, unelected woke bureaucrats pulling the strings of a senile President. Gee, thanks, Jim!

Check out Clyburn’s EA dossier, easily one of the most damning short of Nancy Pelosi or the late Rep. Barbara Lee. Clyburn’s 85 now, and an “icon,” because he marched with Martin Luther King (but then so did Marion Barry). But he’s always been an flagrant anti-white racist and hyper-partisan liar. Nonetheless, Clyburn topped himse;f while appearing in “The View,” which itself is showing symptoms of dementia. He told the ignorant ladies, and the even more ignorant viewers who watch their daily idiocy, that the modern GOP is trying to bring back slavery. “Anything that’s happened before can happen again,” Clyburn said, as the Trump Deranged of “The View” sat rapt, as if at the feet of the Buddha. “They were trying to set up a process that will allow this country to return to what it was in 1876 when the election got thrown into the House of Representatives and they were able to overturn what Abraham Lincoln and the Congress had done successfully getting rid of slavery. That is what they’re attempting to do today. I get sick and tired of hearing people say this ‘it’s never been like this before,’ Yes, it has!”

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Ethics Quiz: The Woke Law Dean

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Why this has morphed into “Dubious University Firings Friday” I don’t know, but here goes…

The University of Arkansas rescinded its appointment of Emily Suski (above), a professor of law and Associate Dean for Strategic Institutional Priorities (whatever that’s supposed to mean) at the the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, as its new University of Arkansas Law School dean. It had previously announced on January 9 that Suski would become dean on July 1, beginning a five-year contract with a $350,000 annual salary, according to The New York Times.  At the time, University of Arkansas provost Indrajeet Chaubey praised Suski’s “extensive experience in leadership roles in legal education and practice” and said she “is an accomplished scholar” who “has also been very successful in establishing medical-legal partnerships in South Carolina to support children’s health and overall well-being.”

Sounds great! Then an Arkansas state senator and others registered their objections to Suski based on her stated support for trans female athletes competing against biological women in women’s sports, and the fact that she was among 850 law professors who signed a letter urging the US Senate to confirm the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

In response, university officials announced that they had rescinded Suski’s offer because of “feedback from key external stakeholders.” It appears that the school acted because of veiled threats from Republican state legislators that having such a progressive law dean would endanger the University’s funding from the state. (“Nice little law school you have here…be a shame if anything were to happen to it…”) After all, Arkansas law was the first state in the US to ban “gender-affirming care”—gag!— for minors. 

I’m about 85% certain what the right answer to this one is, but out of respect for that 15% of doubt,

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was it fair and responsible to dump the new dean because of two public positions on controversial legal topics?

It’s Time To Play That Exciting Game Show, “Worth Confronting or Too Trivial To Bitch About?”!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Hello everybody! I’m your ethics game show host Wink Smarmy, and welcome to “Worth Confronting or Too Trivial To Bitch About?”,” the popular ethics game show where our contestants try to decide whether clearly unethical conduct is worth only a shrug and a giggle, or is serious enough to try to stop.

Here’s our special guest, Touchy McCrankface, with the problem he encountered recently…

“Hello, panel. My name is is Touchy McCrankface. For some reason I am still a Facebook user despite that platform banning my favorite blog Ethics Alarms for almost two years because one of their censors decided that it was racist to even discuss the topic of blackface’s appearance in some classic movies. When a Facebook friend  I actually care about has allowed his or her birthday to be announced on Facebook, I will sometimes, as I am prompted, wish that friend a “Happy Birthday.”

“I do not use the stupid and juvenile pre-programmed emojis Facebook tries to stick on my message, the little cakes, candles and party hats. Recently I sent just such a birthday message to an old friend. Let’s call him “Mike.”

After I sent my “Happy Birthday”,  Facebook sent me the equivalent of a receipt. I have no idea why. Maybe it has always done this, but I’ve never noticed one before, or if I have, I never bothered to read one. The message to me read,

“You wished Michael XXXXX a happy birthday on their profile.”

This, frankly, ticked me off. First of all, I knew that. But most of all, I don’t use the pronouns “they” and “their” for single individuals, as in “non-conjoined twins.” If you seem to be male to me, I will use the pronouns “You/he/him. If you seem to be female, I will use “You/she/her.” If I can’t tell, I won’t use any pronoun, constructing a sentence so that “misgendering” isn’t necessary, since men and boys don’t typically like being mistaken for women and girls, and vice-versa. If someone informs me that “he” wants to be refereed to as “she,” that’s fine: I aim to please. Similarly with 250 pound bearded bald guys who want to be called “she.” I’ll call you a pangolin or an Archaeopteryx if that’s what you want, as long as you don’t try to make me eat insects or worms with you. (Archaeopteryx is described as an “early bird,” and as we all know, the early bird catches the worm.)

But I will NOT agree to utter a grammatical monstrosity by using a plural pronoun in reference to one individual. And if you tell me you haven’t decided on your gender, or that it switches back and forth without warning, I will respond, most politely, “Please let me know when you make up your mind or get psychiatric help. Until then, you’ll be “him” or “her” to me.

But back to Facebook….My friend Mike has been married trice, has two grown kids and is as male and heterosexual, as well as unambiguously so, as anyone I have ever met. Who or what is Facebook to impose a plural pronoun on him, or to suggest that it is appropriate to do so in either his case or anyone’s case? 

I view this as subtle cultural indoctrination regarding a societal practice that is at best a stupid fad and at worst ‘grooming’.” 

Thanks, Touchy! Before I throw the challenge over to you, contestants, let me ask our resident ethicist, Jack Marshall, about Touchy’s dilemma. Jack, is this worth bitching about?

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Ethics Quiz: The Teenage Anti-Semite

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Catherine Almonte Da Costa resigned from her post as NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s director of appointments. The Anti-Defamation League dug up comments she made as a teenager that registered as anti-Semitic; this happened just a day after Mamdani announced her appointment. Da Costa, 33 (above) is married to a deputy city comptroller, and he is, ironically enough, Jewish. When she authored the social media posts in question, however, she wasn’t married and couldn’t imagine that her dumb posts would come back to sideline her career.

“Money hungry Jews smh,” she wrote in one 2011 post, when she was 18, using the abbreviation for “shaking my head.” “Far Rockaway train is the Jew train,” she wrote in another post. “I spoke with the mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements,” Da Costa said in her resignation statement. “These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused. As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.”

Long-time readers here may remember Ethics Alarms posts about the “Hader Gotcha,” named for a young Major League Baseball pitcher of note (he’s still pretty good) who was forced to grovel an abject apology for tweeting offensive things when he was in high school that almost nobody read. I wrote in one of the early EA posts on the phenomenon,

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Ethics Quiz: My Father’s Dream Prank

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My father, Jack A. Marshall Sr. was always remarkably fatalistic about death, much to the chagrin of my mother. She was never amused when he repeated his supposed desire to be displayed sitting in a chair, eyes open, at his wake with a metal plate in the floor in front of his casket that would trigger a recording when mourners stepped on it. Then a recording would boom out in his voice saying, “Hello! I’m so glad that you came!”

Dad was half-kidding, but only half. My father hated the solemnity of funerals and found open casket wakes barbaric. Yet I have to believe he would have been secretly honored by the send-off the military gave him when he was buried at Arlington, with the horse-drawn caisson, the riderless steed and the 21-gun salute.

Today I learned that someone actually carried out my father’s threatened posthumous prank, but even in worst taste than what he proposed. The Wills, Trusts, & Estates Prof Blog reveals that Irish grandpa Shay Bradley, a Dublin native, arranged that after his death in 2019 a recording of his voice would be played at his funeral from inside his grave. Mourners heard repeated banging noises that sounded like they were coming from the interior of the coffin. “Hello? It is dark in here! Let me out! I can hear you! Is that the priest I can hear? I am in the box, can you hear that?” his voice could be heard shouting, in apparent panic.

Hilarity ensued.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is executing such a prank at a funeral ethical?

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It’s Ethics Alarms Hybrid Day! Part 1: Confronting My Biases #24 & Ethics Quiz of the Day: Monthly and Daily “Honors”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, which is what triggered Part 2 of Ethics Alarms Hybrid Day, 2025. Most Americans are aware barely aware of DSMAD, however, since it shares its distinction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month,National Disability Employment Awareness Month, ADHD Awareness Month, National Physical Therapy Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month.

But wait! There’s more: It’s also National LGBTQ+ History Month, Filipino American History Month, Hispanic History Month, Italian American Heritage Month, and Polish American Heritage Month too. It’s also Cookie Month! And I’m sure none of us neglect celebrating American Archives Month, celebrating the work of archivists and the value of historical records, and my personal favorite, Black Speculative Fiction Month, which honors the achievements of black authors in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, because since stories and novels are so much more fascinating when the author has the right skin color.

Of course, October also has special days set aside to honor such boons as…well, why not give you the whole list? There’s Halloween and Columbus Day, of course, but also…

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Ethics Quiz: Fairness to AOC

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Ethics Alarms only covers a fraction of the statements by prominent people that prompt the response, “What, if anything, were they thinking?” For example, I was torn today whether to mention Kamala Harris saying in a recent interview (with Axis journalist Kara Swisher, whom I have been calling out for her hackery for 30 years) on her book tour (What were they thinking to send Kamala out on a book tour?), that “some have said” that she was “the most qualified candidate ever to run for President.” Because Swisher is such a hack, she didn’t have the integrity to burst out laughing and tell Harris, “Oh, Kamala, you are so funny!” Yeah, and some have said, “I am the Lizard King!” and “Of course dogs can talk, they just don’t have anything to say!” Maybe, MAYBE, and I am giving her the benefit of the doubt here, Harris was only the second least qualified Presidential candidate of a major party in U.S. history. But I digress.

In last night’s predictably horrifying town hall meeting on CNN featuring American communist Bernie Sanders and Dunning-Kruger victim Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), AOC went for the Gold and may have said the stupidest thing that not only she has ever said in public but perhaps the stupidest thing any elected official has said in public, though Rep. Hank Johnson expressing a fear that so much U.S. military personnel and equipment on the island of Guam might cause it to “tip over” creates a daunting challenge.

Ranting in her usual pop-eyed hysterical style about how evil corporations were polluting the nation and that “rivers were on fire” because they were “pouring chemicals” into waterways and killing people, AOC was quick to name the first corporate villain to pop into what she audaciously calls her “mind.” Was it Monsanto, mayhap? Dow Chemical? Dupont? LyondellBasell Industries, the largest U.S. chemical company? Oh no. The Congresswoman, regarded by many pundits as the rising leader of the Democratic Party, has bigger game in her sights, and she immediately, without hesitation, named the vile polluter.

“Deloitte.”

Yes, the accounting firm. I’ve been trying to think of a company that she could have named that would be less guilty of pollution. The Boston Red Sox? I dunno, the team flies a lot. Hey, but anyone can make a mistake. Right? It was just a “speako.” It isn’t really evidence that Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about half the time, is it?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it unfair to hold such an obvious brain fart against AOC?

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Ethics Quiz: FREEDOM

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments

Libs of TikTok…you know, that account that progressives call racist and homophobic and transphobic even though it only re-posts damning evidence of woke lunacy from TikTok and other platforms?…posted an email exchange between Arbor Creek Elementary Principal Melissa Snell and an (unnamed) individual in which Snell indicated that “Freedom” T-shirts were banned in her school.  “I just want to make sure that you have told your staff to not wear those ‘Freedom’ shirts to school anymore. Thank you.” Jonathan Turley confirmed that there is such a ban, though it may be temporary. Superintendent Brent Yeager confirmed the emails that Libs of TikTok had postedbut suggested that it was temporary as Snell “reviewed district practices.”

Turley says there is nothing to review.”I fail to see why Snell had to suspend the wearing of such shirts pending review. “This is clearly a content-based limitation on speech,” he writes.

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Ethics Quiz: The Lawyer’s Facebook Post

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Insurance litigator Bradley Dlatt was fired by law firm Perkins Coie and has been erased its website after he posted on Facebook,

“Charlie Kirk got famous as one of America’s leading spreaders of hatred, misinformation and intolerance.The current political moment—where an extremist Supreme Court and feckless Republican Congress are enabling a Republican president to become a tyrant and building him a modern-day Gestapo for assaulting black and brown folks—is a result of Charlie Kirk’s ‘contributions’ to American media and politics. Hell, Kirk would likely be flattered by the underlying claim. His Turning Point USA began as a sort of Misbehaved Young Republicans and eventually overshadowed traditional right-wing organizations like CPAC in dictating the shape of American conservatism. Not to diminish Donald Trump’s media instincts, but when polls suggest young men turning more conservative helped get Trump to this point, that’s all Kirk. And he can take credit for all that flows from that, including the current Supreme Court making a straightfaced proclamation that forgiving student debt is executive tyranny and then deciding that sending people to South Sudan without due process is just “practicing executive authority the right way.” It’s not “celebrating” a murder just because you decline to whitewash Kirk’s legacy by acting like he “was practicing politics the right way” as Ezra Klein belched out onto the pages of the New York Times. Klein apparently believes saying that the guy who tried to murder Paul Pelosi with a hammer should be bailed out by some “patriot” or responding to the murder of George Floyd by calling him a “scumbag” is “the right way.” It’s a stunning display of pathological centrism brain: a compulsion to champion an angle that almost no one in the real world shares and then preen as though being an outlier is a sign of genius. Because while liberals didn’t think Kirk practiced politics the right way… neither did conservatives! If they’re being honest with themselves, the highest compliment conservatives give Kirk is that he broke politics. He saw the dusty, genteel norms of the post-War political divide and tossed them aside to build a following. He took Rush Limbaugh’s model and pushed it beyond its limits. That said, no one in this country should be murdered for their political speech. Wishing comfort to his wife and children in this difficult time. “

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Congress’s D.C. “Bananas” Law

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” one of those comedies that struck me as hilarious when it came out and now seems obvious and juvenile (though the courtroom scene is still inspired), the new dictator of the banana republic of “San Marcos” decrees that all citizens under the age of 16 are 16. I thought of that moment when I read that the GOP House voted Tuesday to allow 14-year-olds to be tried as adults for serious crimes in the District of Columbia.

This is one of several bills to follow-up on President Donald Trump’s (overdue) crime crackdown in D.C., in which he declared an emergency and asserted control over D.C. police while sending in armed National Guard troops to make the message beyond ignoring.

Th emergency expired last week as House Republicans advanced the 14 bills, since Congress can pass or overturn D.C. laws because it has constitutional authority over the city. The bill treating 14-year-old as adults resonates because D.C. teens have accounted for more than half of robberies and carjackings so far in 2025.

The legislation passed by the House yesterday would allow 14-year-olds to be charged as adults for murder and armed robbery without a judicial hearing. Currently that authority only applies for offenders for ages 16 and up.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is prosecuting young teens as adults ethical?

In other words, is it fair? Does it address the real problems involved, or is it just a “Do something!” measure? Given the wide variation in maturity levels among teens, does the bill even make sense? There are 14-year-olds who are shaving and are bigger than their fathers, and other who appear to be 10. Does one size fit all?