Rights

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

battery

“To everyone who likes that Lewandowsky got charged: Will you agree that everyone who does nothing more than that should undergo criminal prosecution? Are you willing to pay the taxes to cover that? Are you ready to find out that you’ve already done it and you’re going to be needing to hire a lawyer? Oh, but it’s so funny when it happens to somebody else, somebody you don’t like. If that’s what you think, please just admit to yourself that you are entirely morally corrupt.”

––Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse, taking the popular position among the talking legal heads on CNN and elsewhere that charging Trump’s campaign manager for the technical crime of battery for for what appears to be minor contact on videotape is an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.

Ann is playing law professor here, and it’s hard to tell if she is asking these questions to provoke thought from the knee-jerk partisans and virulent Trump-haters, or if she really believes everything she wrote. I;m a fan of Professor Althouse, so I want to find  a way to justify this post of her’s, which raises valid points and ignores others equally valid.

Do I “like” the fact that Lewandowsky was charged? I probably wouldn’t have charged him, but I’m not sorry he was charged. Why was a campaign manager grabbing a reporter? Why did the Trump organization react to the reporter’s complaint by attacking her honesty and character? I know the law shouldn’t be used to inconvenience people who act badly, and that doing this is usually an abuse of power. Still, do I like the fact that one of Trump’s thugs isn’t getting away with the thuggishness encouraged by his boss? Yes, I guess I do.

The charge can be justified on utilitarian grounds. Today I saw a cable TV news exchange regarding Fields’ complaint on CNN, where a lawyer explained that any unconsented touching is battery, and the interviewer was shocked. “What?” she said. Yes, I remember a lot of classmates in first year of law school being surprised at that too.

It’s the Common Law: nobody has a right to touch anybody else. I love that principle, myself: I don’t touch people unless I have permission, and they better not touch me. It’s  per se battery, and while we usually don’t press it, we might if the batterer is enough of a jerk, or does more harm than he intended. If charging Lewandowsky makes people think twice before laying their hands on me or anyone else, good. Sending a message to discourage others from wrongful acts is always a valid reason to charge someone. Continue reading →

Unethical Website Of The Month: “Vote Trump Get Dumped”

/ Jack Marshall / 123 Comments

 

votetrumpgetdumped

Ugh.

See, ladies, “Lysistrata” was a satire, and its charms and political wisdom have long escaped me anyway. Threatening to withhold sex to force men to vote for who you want is neither fair, smart or democratic, and is exactly as ethical as trading sex for votes, which is a particularly weird form of prostitution.

Today’s unethical website calls itself “Vote Trump Get Dumped,” and it argues…

Those who vote Trump should understand this: No sex. No dates. No chance.

To cast a vote for Trump is to agree with his sexist, perverted, demeaning, backwards, offensive treatment of women. Learn what’s at stake.

Join us by wielding your influence. Until Trump is defeated, we don’t date, sleep with, or canoodle with Trump supporters.

The Greeks did it. Women during the temperance movement did it. This is a tried and true method of getting men’s attention when they’re being dumb.

Actually the Greeks didn’t do it, it’s not “tried and true,” and it is itself dumb, as well as undemocratic. Citizens have the right to vote as they see fit, badly reasoned or not. Using any form of coercion to take away what should be a free choice is irresponsible, disrespectful and unfair, not to mention a breach of democratic principles and process.

This kind of divisive political tactic, punishing citizens for their political views, tears at the fabric of society and threatens human relationships and communities. It is akin to bars that only serve Republicans,  Facebook users who defriend Hillary supporters, and mayors who set out to punish states that pass laws they don’t agree with.

Our political choices, like our sexual choices, should not be subject to extortion and coercion. The Golden Rule applies.

__________________

Pointer: Fred

Georgia’s Religious Liberty Bill Was An Ethics Abomination, But So Is Letting Corporations Dictate Laws In A Democracy

/ Jack Marshall / 74 Comments
...and corporate pressure had nothing to do with it. No, really.

…and corporate pressure had nothing to do with it. No, really.

Ethics Abomination I: Georgia’s HB 757

Gov. Nathan Deal  vetoed the controversial  “religious liberty” bill yesterday. Well, good. HB 757 was an ugly, ignorant, unethical  law in many ways, and almost certainly unconstitutional on its face.

It began with outrageous fear-mongering, appealing to right-wing hysteria and ignorance…

[R]eligious officials shall not be required to perform marriage ceremonies, perform rites, or administer sacraments in violation of their legal right to free exercise of religion; to provide that no individual shall be required to attend the solemnization of a marriage, performance of  rites, or administration of sacraments in violation of their legal right to free exercise of religion;

Ridiculous. No law, state or national, can require a pastor or minister to perform a wedding, nor could any citizen be required to attend one. These are both unalterable First Amendment no-nos, and any legislator who doesn’t know that is too ignorant to hold office. Laws should not be sops thrown to slobbering mobs, and that’s what this part of the law is—unless it’s proof that Georgia legislature is itself a slobbering mob.

Then the law ends by greasing the wheels for outright anti-LGBT discrimination:

Except as provided by the Constitution of this state or the United States or federal law, no faith based organization shall be required to hire or retain as an employee any person whose religious beliefs or practices or lack of either are not in accord with the faith based organization’s sincerely held religious belief as demonstrated by practice, expression, or clearly articulated tenet of faith.

A refusal by a faith based organization to hire or retain a person pursuant to subsection (b) of this Code section shall not give rise to a civil claim or cause of action against such faith based organization or an employee thereof or result in any state action to penalize, withhold benefits from, or discriminate against the faith based organization or employee based on such refusal.

You have to really, really hate and fear gay citizens not to reject such a bill. Continue reading →

Documentary Ethics: Is Pulling An Anti-Vaxx Documentary A Freedom of Expression Breach Or Simply Responsible?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

tribeca_film_festival_ny

Until yesterday, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe” was an entry in the 2016  Tribeca Film Festival. It was directed and co-written by Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor and researcher whose study purporting to show a link between vaccinations and autism was published in the British medical journal “The Lancet” in 2010 and then retracted. Wakefield subsequently lost his medical license because of undisclosed conflicts of interest and misrepresentations in his paper, and has been wandering the earth wearing the metaphorical sackcloth robe of the outcast ever since.

The decision by the festival and its founder Robert De Niro to screen the film was the focus of a furious controversy. Many consider Wakefield a murderer because his work has convinced parents to eschew vaccinations out of irrational fear sown by his false research conclusions. De Niro insisted that the film deserved a screening to provoke dialogue, but has had a change of heart, mind, or self-preservation instinct. He pulled the film yesterday, writing,

“My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”

Translation: “When it comes to standing up for free expression, Andrew Wakefield and the anti-vaxxer delusion is not a hill worth dying for.” Continue reading →

Indiana’s Unconstitutional, Unethical, Thoughtful, Subversive Abortion Law

/ Jack Marshall / 115 Comments
If you want to kill this no matter what, it's legal and ethical. If you just don't like its skin color or gender and want to kill it because of that, you're a monster....

If you want to kill this no matter what, it’s legal and ethical. If you just don’t like its skin color or gender and want to kill it because of that, you’re a monster….

Feminists, pro-abortion enthusiasts (They like it! They really like it!), the biased, brainless news media and kneejerk progressives who haven’t given abortion and its many ethical problems one-thousandth of the careful, objective thought it deserves are just dismissing the new Indiana law restricting abortion as one more “war on women” maneuver and yet another mindless attack on abortion rights. It is an attack on abortion rights, but hardly a mindless one, and Indiana deserves respect and some ethics points for aiming a law right at the fault line of dishonest pro–abortion logic.

Maybe the law will provoke some quality discussion before it goes down in flames, and maybe some abortion supporters will slap their heads and realize that the rhetorical and rational behind abortion is at its core intellectually dishonest. If so, it will have done some quantifiable good.

Maybe the law will be the tipping point that finally makes a significant number of ethical people who have blindly accepted the tortured logic behind the nation’s casual acceptance of millions upon millions of aborted human lives open their minds.

Maybe if I flap my arms really hard, can fly to the moon. Continue reading →

Emory Update: University President James Wagner Vows To Punish Perpetrators Of “Trump 2016” Grafitti, And Reason Whiffs On Why That’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
Nice equivocating, Reason.

Nice equivocating, Reason.

To avoid burying the lede, let us understand right off that this is known as “chilling free speech,” and is un-American and wrong.

Following the revelation that Emory chief James Wagner ratified the complaints of ideology-disabled students that the expression of support for a major party political candidate was an unacceptable assault on student “safety,” Reason now informs us that Wagner is reviewing security tapes so the students can be subjected to the “conduct violation process.” Although the University has not demonstrated similar verve when chalk-scrawled messages contained more popular content, it is making the disingenuous argument that the manhunt is only about policies requiring prior approval of such chalk campaigns, and that prohibit chalk graffiti that won’t be washed away by rain like the itsy-bitsy spider.

The problem with swallowing that malarkey is that mere chalking has never prompted security camera footage examinations or presidential concern before. This is about condemning and squelching mainstream political speech that the prevailing majority of the campus doesn’t like.  This wasn’t swastikas or “hate speech.” “Trump 2016” at Emory is no different from “LBJ 1968” at Berkeley.

Being gentle and oh so careful to avoid sounding too much like he doesn’t sympathize with Trump-despisers,  Reason reporter Robby Soave writes, Continue reading →

A Brief Note On The Site’s Background Images

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Limp wrist O

The Ethics Alarms web design uses backgrounds to illustrate ongoing ethics issues in the news. For some time, the background has featured a photo of Donald Trump, whose candidacy I regard as a long-running ethics train wreck of uncertain destination. I could justify leaving it up until sanity regains control and he is finally subdued and returned to the Crackerjack box from whence he came. That could take eight years, however.

Sorry. I know that made you throw up in your mouth a little. Me too.

Lately, readers whose gorges react similarly to mine when forced to view Mr. Trump’s visage have been calling on me to take him down, which I have reluctantly done. I can’t promise that he won’t be back, but the new background is the very strange photo from yesterday of President Obama letting his hand and arm go limp as it is raised by Cuba’s dictator—but his health care is grrrrreat!— Raul Castro.

I’m not sure what exactly is unethical here, or who is the unethical one, but something is. I would only suggest that if an American President chooses to boost the credibility and prestige of a ruthless tyrant, he can’t simultaneously act like his host has cooties. It certainly looks like Obama is saying, “Oops! I don’t want to look as if I am friends with this guy!”

I would suggest that this awkward moment is something that should have been worked out well in advance, as it was wholly predictable.

Ethics Quiz: The Smokeless Tobacco Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Chicago recently became the fourth city—Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco—to enact a ban on using smokeless tobacco in sports stadiums. I initially ignored it, in part because I never use the stuff and have never known anyone who did, and in part because I knew that Major League Baseball has been trying, with some success, to discourage its ballplayers from chewing and especially spitting on camera, since it is a) disgusting and b) encourages impressionable tykes to take up an ugly and perilous habit. I’m inspired to make the issue an ethics quiz because of the pronouncements of law professor-blogger Jonathan Turley on the issue and the vociferous debate his comments sparked on his blog.

Turley wrote…

This is a lawful product like smoking tobacco. People have a right to make choices about their lifestyle so long as they do not harm others. That is why I always supported the bans on smoking in public areas due to the second-hand smoke research. That is an externalized harm. What is the externalized harm of smokeless tobacco?

…I happen to deeply dislike smoking and I find chewing tobacco disgusting. I also do not question the link to serious health problems like cancer. However, that should be the subject of an educational campaign by the government and MLB. Yet, in the end, people need to be able to make choices in our society rather than go down the path to paternalistic legislation regulating our good and bad choices.

His supporters on the blog were typified by this comment by Beth (not our Beth, I presume)…

“Tobacco, in all forms, is NOT a singular activity that affects no one else. Tobacco use weighs very heavily on the public at large in the form of health care costs, higher insurance premiums, toxic litter, poisoned air and ground spit. To suggest that limiting tobacco, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes should not be controlled substances goes against all manner of policy for the public good. Wrong stance, Mr. Turley.”

This comment, from “wonderer,” is a fair summation of the other side, which mostly came from the libertarian side of the metaphorical aisle:

“The efforts to ban “icky” behaviors are of a piece with the bans or taxes on sugared beverages. What seems to be happening is that some people want to push bans on behaviors of “out of favor” groups. Those “big soda” people are Walmart denizens, so they clearly need to be told what to do. But keep hands off urban bicycling. As risky as that is, it’s one of the things “enlightened” people do. Bans (at least here in California) seem to be all about the condescension.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is a ban on smokeless tobacco in ballparks an abuse of government power and an unethical breach of personal choice, autonomy and liberty, or is it a responsible use of government power to encourage public health and safety?

I’ll hold my fire on this one until sufficient numbers weigh in. Remember, the issue here isn’t policy, but ethics.

 

 

Ask Ethics Alarms: “Why Is It Unethical For A Prosecutor To Say That A Witness Is telling The Truth?”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
"Would I try to convict an innocent man?"

“Why would I try to convict an innocent man? He has to be guilty.”

The primary Ethics Alarms topic scout, the Amazing Fred, has posed a question about this case, in which a child pornography conviction was overturned because the government prosecutor repeatedly stated that his witnesses were stating the truth, and that the government doesn’t prosecute defendants who aren’t guilty.

Fred asks the question this way:

“A prosecutor told a jury that prosecution witnesses were credible…Isn’t a defense attorney allowed to discredit prosecution witnesses? Why shouldn’t a prosecutor be free to argue the opposite?

The problem isn’t arguing that prosecution witnesses are credible, but rather the prosecutor appearing to personally vouch for the witness. Lawyers aren’t witnesses, and their opinions aren’t testimony or evidence. A lawyer can tell a jury that a defendant is guilty or innocent, but a lawyer cannot say “I believe “ a witness or “I believe” the defendant is guilty. It doesn’t matter what the lawyers believe, and they prejudice the jury by making their own credibility part of the case. Lawyers don’t have to personally believe in the positions they argue. Continue reading →

Bernie Sanders Fails An Integrity Test…and Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

Sanders protest

At the conclusion of yesterday’s post in reaction to the violent protests in Chicago that shut down a planned Donald Trump rally, I wrote, as my final observation…

8. Ethics test: Let’s see if Bernie Sanders, without prompting,  has the integrity to condemn the conduct of his fervent fans.

My guess?

No.

Well.

Bernie Sanders has escaped much scrutiny of his character thus far, in a crowd of frighteningly flawed competitors. He’s not as corrupt or dishonest as Clinton, nor as ruthless as Cruz, nor as weak as Rubio, nor lacking any redeeming qualities of character at all,  like Donald Trump. Here, however, Berrnie betrays the moral rot of the leftist revolutionary, willing to excuse violence to overturn the established order for “the greater good.” We saw this during the last Democratic debate, in which he refused to condemn the Castro regime in Cuba nor repudiate his past praise of Fidel’s accomplishments.  Hillary Clinton, given an under-hand soft-ball pitch to hit out of the park, swung from then heels and launched it into the stands:

“You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear, you imprison people, even kill people, for expressing their opinions … that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”

Bingo. But Bernie Sanders, like the Communist totalitarians he admires for their health care and distribution of wealth, is willing to put up with some violence to achieve his revolution, and he proved it here. Abetted in some respects by the biased news media that were thrilled to blame an example of violence squelching political speech on the victim rather than the true offenders—because they don’t like the victim, you see, and if journalists and pundits don’t like someone, they discard the basic standards of decency and fairness that they will rush to demand for their political favorites—Sanders released a telling defense of the actions of his supporters, even though his supporters had admitted their deliberate mounting of a near riot to silence Trump: Continue reading →