Rights

“Chicago Med’s” Stupid Gun Tricks

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

leafblower

Dick Wolf’ (Law and Order) has a new NBC show, “Chicago Med” (one of a series, including “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago Pet Shop,” or something: I can’t keep track). Tonight, the liberal activist’s hospital drama gave its audience a plot involving an NRA member’s wet dream gone horribly wrong. A man with an assault-type weapon bursts into a movie theater, sparking a mass panic and stampede and causing many injuries and at least one death. A mild-mannered, bespectacled young man in the audience (think Bernard Goetz, because that’s who the series wants you to think of) pulls out his pistol and shoots the gunman. He’s interviewed on the scene by an eager news media, and hailed as a fast-thinking hero.

Ah, but all is not what it seemed, or did seem. The “gunman” was a teen prankster with a website, who was filming material, and carrying not a weapon, but a leafblower. The hero, who had a concealed carry permit (he had been mugged in the past), wasn’t a hero at all, but the shooter of an unarmed kid—you know, just like all these trigger-happy cops. (The Mad Leaf Blower almost dies, but is saved by a liver transplant from a woman who died in the panic he started. Give-me-a-break. ). Now everyone at the hospital is looking at the one-time hero like he smells bad. He is overcome with remorse, and being relentlessly attacked on social media.

So he steps in front of a car, and is killed. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Fick Calls Loretta Lynch’s Bluff

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

bluffing

When I read that our Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, made this provocative statement—

“The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence. Now obviously this is a country that is based on free speech, but when it edges towards violence, when we see the potential for someone lifting that mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric—or, as we saw after 9/11, violence directed at individuals who may not even be Muslims but perceived to be Muslims, and they will suffer just as much—when we see that we will take action…I think it’s important that as we again talk about the importance of free speech we make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not America. They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted.”

…my first thought was “oh-oh” and my second thought was, “Boy, Obama’s appointees are as careless with their rhetoric as he is, or Hillary.”

For what really was she saying? It sounds like a threat, but is it?  What does “edges towards violence” mean? Violence? Calling for violence? Or rhetoric anti-gun progressives will blame if there is violence? What does…let me rephrase that…What the HELL does “the potential for someone lifting that mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric” mean? For that matter, what are “actions predicated on violent talk”? Does an action that would not be a crime without violent talk become one based on the rhetoric that inspired it? You’re a lawyer, Ms Lynch, how about speaking precise English? What exactly are you trying to say?

So my third thought was, “Well, we better find out, since is this our top law enforcement official talking and if she is really saying, as one might reasonably interpret her vague and convoluted statement to mean, that she’ll be arresting anyone who dares to venture a harsh judgment of Muslims, it would be good to know.

Donald Trump, I’m sure, would like to know.

And  lo and behold, here comes former GOP tea party congressman turned radio talk show host Joe Walsh to settle the issue! He provides a rant on his Facebook page: Continue reading →

Observations on the New York Times Front Page Editorial Advocating Gun Confiscation

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

new_york_times_logo

The New York Times, in a dramatic action that it has not engaged in since the 1920s, has published an editorial on page one. At such a moment, a newspaper subjects itself to a very high standard, since it is temporarily turning a news source into an organ of advocacy.  Though the Times’ editorial is motivated by good intentions, passion and (I hope) serious and careful thought, it fails that high standard.

Observations:

1. Early on, the Times says, “It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.”

Well, from that position, the Times cannot be doubted or criticized. It believes that citizens (the casual switch to civilians assumes that only police and military have a right to deadly force. The Constitution, thankfully, disagrees), apparently, should only be able to avail themselves of weapons that kill slowly and undependably. I don’t agree with that, and I think to agree with that premise undercuts the entire theory of constitutionally guaranteed individual rights.

2. Using the San Bernardino shooting as the launching point for such as editorial is emotional manipulation and unethical. This was almost certainly a terrorist killing. It is doubtful that any legal measures short of confiscating and banning all firearms would have prevented it. As has been the case with other shootings, why is this incident used to justify advocating laws and regulations that couldn’t stop a similar shooting? It’s simple: because people are upset, fearful, and not thinking straight; all the better to mislead them. By the very act of publishing its editorial now, the Times is making the implicit statement that its policy recommendations are germane to this episode. They are not, however. That’s unethical.

3. Reason has headlined its story about the editorial, “New York Times Calls for Immense Expense and Political Civil War To Maybe Possibly Hopefully Reduce Gun Violence by a Tiny Amount.” That is absolutely fair and accurate, and the Times had an obligation, even in an editorial, to reveal what it is really asking for. I know this was ideological advocacy, but even while acting as activists, the Times still has a duty to inform and be transparent.

4. The Times advocates banning and the confiscation of the weapons used in San Bernardino, even though doing this would not have prevented that massacre. Moreover, Slate estimated in 2013 that about 3.5 million such rifles or substantially similar ones are in in the U.S., so what the Times is demanding would require the government buying, confiscating, and searching residences to find all of those.  Notes Reason, with complete accuracy,

What the Times is calling for is, beyond its countable costs in money and effort and the likely further erosion of civil liberties, also (as they surely know) calling for a massive political civil war the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. The “assault weapon” ban of 1994-2004, though pointless, just barred the future making and selling of such weapons, and didn’t try to confiscate existing ones.

Is this really a responsible policy recommendation, or just an emotional one? The latter, certainly. As such, it takes the editorial out of the category of public service and places it in the range of partisan warfare. Continue reading →

RETRACTED: Unethical (And Head Exploding! ) Quote Of The Month: Atty. General Loretta Lynch

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

head large

RETRACTED WITH APOLOGIES

I’m pulling this post. It was based on bad information; I didn’t check it correctly; I cited the original source without making sure the secondary source had quoted it accurately, and my commentary ended up completely misleading and unfair in every way. Stupid. Incompetent. Careless. Inexcusable.

…

I’m the Ethics Dunce here.

…

The Loretta Lynch statement that I was under the impression that she made was not what she said. Thanks, so much, to commenter Zanshin for flagging my error.

…

I’m pulling this down rather than leaving it up with a correction because as of now the post constitutes web pollution of the sort I rail about regularly. It is the equivalent of a hoax. Those who come to read it should be told immediately that the miscreant in this case was me, and the source that misled me, but mostly me. I’m not even going to mention that source either, though it has been reliable in the past. This is my fault, and nobody else’s.

…

I offer my apologies to Ethics Alarms readers, and anyone they may have misled as a result of my carelessness. I also apologize to Attorney General Lynch, who did not say, for the most part, what I criticized her for saying.

…

Frankly, I’m relieved about that.

…

This is the phenomenon of being so focused on a trend–in this case, anti-gun forces enthusiastically using gun-related tragedies to advance their agenda—that I was primed to accept a pretty outrageous example that was so outrageous it should have sparked skepticism. I allowed confirmation bias to dull my judgment, and let that be a lesson to me, and everyone else.

…

Also: never write a post right after your head explodes.

…

I’m sorry, angry at myself, and embarrassed.

…

You deserve better, and I will intensify my efforts to ensure that you get better going forward. You have to trust me, and this time I let Ethics Alarms down.

…

 UPDATE (12/5): As of 2 PM today,both Instapundit and the National Review are sticking with the   misrepresentation of Lynch’s remarks, either because, like me, they relied on an inaccurate source, or because they want to.

 

Unethical Judge Of The Month: Florida Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox; Runner Up: Wisconsin Judge Philip Kirk

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

JudgeFor a judge, you just can’t get any more incompetent than this.

In Florida, Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox ordered the Palm Beach Post to scrub a previously published story from its website. This is prior restraint, or the government preventing publication based on content. The order violates the First Amendment; it isn’t merely unconstitutional, it is incredibly unconstitutional. Concluded Constitutional Law professor and blogger Jonathan Turley in his usual restrained manner,  “The utter lack of legal judgment (and knowledge) shown by Cox in this order is deeply troubling.”

It’s not troubling. It’s ridiculous. Continue reading →

Hey! GOOD Answer, Hillary! Wait…Oh, Right. Never Mind.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

guilty-until-proven-innocent1

Twice, Hillary Clinton has publicly made the astounding statement—especially for the supportive and enabling spouse of Bill Clinton, an accused rapist himself—that “every survivor of sexual assault” has “the the right to be believed.” Ethics Alarms noted this both times, here and here, and opined the last time, in November:

Is she that deluded? That convinced of her corrupted supporters’ willingness to believe anything she says, or to excuse every cynical, shameless maneuver?  Has she finally reached the point where she has issued so many, many lies that she can no longer keep them all straight, and now blunders into obvious contradictions? Or is she trying to sabotage her own campaign, taking her copious skeletons out of the closet and hanging them from the roof for all to see?

Words have consequences (though following Hillary’s rise, you wouldn’t know it), and as might have been predicted, a questioner at a campaign event in New Hampshire yesterday asked Hillary if believing all “survivors” meant believing Bill’s accusers as well, including Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones. I have to hand it to Hillary; she was ready. She had thought about an answer, maybe even had a meeting with her advisors to craft the perfect response. Here is what she said:

“I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”

What is a lawyer and a candidate for the Presidency doing advocating the un-American principle of “guilty until proven innocent”?  OK, we know what: pandering to the Pro-Vagina vote. Nevertheless, Clinton knows this is not how the law works, so she is apparently advocating a significant and frightening change. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Observations On The San Bernardino Massacre”

/ Jack Marshall / 71 Comments

suspicion

I’m traveling today with scant access to a computer, so it was gratifying to see a substantive and interesting discussion by commenters on this post. Michael Ejercito wins this round with a Comment of the Day that begins by highlighting a disturbing quote by Nick Kristof, taking the hand-off from President Obama. I don’t know how liberals can read this stuff and not get chills considering where their ideology has led them. Once the heralds of freedom and democracy, their leaders and advocates are now calling for citizens to be robbed of core rights based on suspicion rather than due process. And whose suspicion? The party with members who advocate arresting climate change skeptics and expelling college students if there is a 10% chance that a rape accusation against them is warranted used to be willing to fight for liberty. Now it seems to believe liberty is too dangerous.

Here’ s Michael: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Barefoot Bandit Cashes In, Sort Of…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

wanted_blog

You may remember Colton Harris-Moore, aka “The Barefoot Bandit,” who while still a teen in 2009 went on a wild, two-year crime spree involving more than a hundred burglaries, thefts, and destruction, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and property, including a plane, a boat, and automobiles.  When Harris-Moore was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in 2012 , U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan said, “The plea agreement makes very clear that he will not profit directly or indirectly nor will he help anyone else to profit from these crimes.”

I’d like to see the agreement. For Harris-Moore has signed a movie deal with 20th Century Fox, “waiving” the rights to his life story in exchange for the film company paying up to $1.3 million toward the $1.4 million he owes as restitution to his victims. Now I’d call this “profiting.” If someone pays what I owe on my mortgage, I benefit. I profit.

I’m sure the argument for permitting this deal, which is the kind most states and the federal government regard as contrary to public policy and prohibit with so-called “Son of Sam laws,” is that Barefoot’s victims are needy and innocent  beneficiaries, since it is unlikely that they would ever get much, if anything, in payments from the imprisoned felon. Thus the usual objective of keeping criminals from turning their crimes into cash and celebrity should yield to the greater good.

Today’s Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Should the Barefoot Bandit be allowed to make this deal?

I’ll leave this one to you.

But I’m dubious.

Your Ethics Alarms Cognitive Dissonance Guide To The Planned Parenthood Shooter Spin Game

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

 

Robert Dear

Cognitive DissonanceTo the left is a simplified version of Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Scale. Most of the people and institutions who use the scale to mislead and manipulate public opinion neither know this diagram nor have heard of Dr. Festinger, but it is what they are employing in the daily wars to win ideological political converts by distorting the significance of current events.

Robert Dear’s as yet unexplained shooting rampage within a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood facility has immediately created an opportunity for cognitive dissonance manipulation. Festinger’s research showed that our minds will always try to resolve dissonance when something with a high, or positive score—say, “Free Speech,” appears to be closely associated with something else that is low on the scale, such as “hateful speech.” How the dissonance is resolved will depend on the scores of the two dissonant objects or beliefs.

If you want the public to decide that something it approves of is less worthy of approval, attaching it to something the public believes is reprehensible will do the job by creating cognitive dissonance and pulling the well-regarded object down the scale. If you want the public to move its opinion of a person, organization or concept from negative territory into positive, identifying someone or something the public regards far more negatively who opposes the person, organization or concept will tend to move the object of the negative entity’s opposition upward on the scale. In these situations, the mind seeks distance from the reviled entity. I hate broccoli; I learn that Donald Trump hates broccoli; I don’t want to have anything in common with Donald Trump. Pass the broccoli, please.

The latter is the process repeatedly applied by the protesters of police shootings when African Americans are the victims. The public correctly opposes abuse of power and wrongful violence by law enforcement officials; it is far below the mid-point on the scale. It also a opposes criminal activity and resisting legitimate law enforcement. With rare exceptions, every black victim of a questionable police shooting was engaging in or had engaged in criminal activity, and had resisted arrest. These have been criminals, but because the alleged misconduct of the police is far lower on the scale than the criminal activity involved, the criminal victims are propelled by cognitive dissonance into the scale’s positive territory. (The media assists the process by publicizing the most benign images of the victims they can find. The most frequently used photo of Laquan McDonald, who was executed by a Chicago cop, shows him in his high school graduation gown, for example. The cop didn’t shoot a criminal who refused to stop when ordered to, he shot a smiling young man with a bright future. The police officer is thus a monster; the victim a martyr and a hero.)

Now let’s look at the current use of cognitive dissonance in the wake of the shooting by Robert Dear. Continue reading →

Campus Protest Ethics Yin, Yang and Yecchh: Unethical Website Of The Month “The Demands,”Ethics Hero Dr. Everett Piper, And Ethics Dunces, The Occidental Faculty

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

yin-and-yang-yuck

It’s an interesting question: is a website that approvingly lists nothing but unethical and outrageous demands from student protesters in this current round of progressive campus thuggery itself unethical, or is calling it so a case of killing the messenger? The Demands is certainly a useful website, as it displays the full kaleidoscopic display of where indoctrination on campus and the elevation of victim-mongering as a successful political strategy (Go Redskins!) off campus has brought us. Since the site’s stated objective is to support these pro-apartheid, anti-speech, anti-education totalitarian tots, however, I think unethical is a fair description. Some may disagree.

The loony is powerful here. For example…

...Guilford College students demand that the college must prioritize recruitment and retention of undocumented students. Guilford also takes the prize for the most the most deranged “suggestion” among the lists, which is that  “every week a faculty member come forward and publicly admit their participation in racism inside the classroom via a letter to the editor in the Guilfordian.” 

…Every Dartmouth student “must be taught and made aware that the land they reside on is Abenaki homeland” especially at all major ceremonies, and  the school must “incorporate into each department at least one queer studies class.”

…SMU students demand that all students considering initiation into a fraternity or sorority must be subjected to mandatory cultural intelligence and sensitivity training, a.k.a. brainwashing.

…University of North Carolina student activists go full Orwell, demanding “mandatory programming [on] ways in which racial capitalism, settler colonialism, & cisheteropatriarchy structure our world.”  They also demand that“White professors must be discouraged from leading and teaching departments” studying colonized/enslaved people/societies,” and this gem: “We DEMAND that campus police participate in the University-wide political education….Policing as an institution must be abolished.”

…Vanderbilt students want the university to eliminate its policy against “obstruction or disruption of teaching, administration, & University procedures & activities.”

There is so much more, if you have the stomach for it. Please, please make sure some debate moderator makes a list of the most outrageous demands and asks Bernie and Hillary what they think about them, as well as the campus culture and political cant that gestated this virus. Continue reading →