The Internet

Web Hoaxes: Would You Trust This Lawyer?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In an earlier post this month, I related the story of Ethan Haines, an unemployed, newly-graduated lawyer who was staging a hunger strike, he said, to protest the fact that law schools misled their recruits about the employment prospects of their graduates. I was not sympathetic, and concluded:

“Law degrees still are valuable credentials, as is a good legal education, and if Haines got a good legal education, he received everything a law school is obligated to provide. Turning the degree into a career is his responsibility, and it is wrong for him to claim that anyone but himself is accountable for his present unemployed state.”

His stunt was more than an avoidance of responsibility and accountability, however it was a lie. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Shirley Sherrod, Striking a Blow for Accountability

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The Department of Agriculture, in a desperate effort at damage control (and to make amends for its unprofessional and unfair treatment of her), offered Shirley Sherrod another job. She has turned it down, saying, “I know [DOA Secretary Tom Vilsack] apologized, and I accept that. And a new process is in place, and I hope that it works. I don’t want to be the one that tests it.”

Excellent.  Brava! Continue reading →

Summer Rerun: “Ending the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Trust in America”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[TV is full of reruns these days, and sometimes I am grateful for them, for it gives me a chance to see episodes of favorite shows I had missed for some reason or another. Back in early March, I posted the following essay about the origins of America’s current crisis of trust in our government, and how it might be cured by our elected leaders. Since then, the crisis has deepened, and as I was doing some routine site maintenance, I reread the post. It is still very timely (unfortunately), and since far fewer people were visiting Ethics Alarms in March, I decided to re-post it today, with just a few minor edits. I promise not to make this a habit. Still, trust is the reason why ethics is so important in America: if there is a single post of the more than 700 I have written here since October 2009  that I would like people to read, this is it.] Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Prof. Monroe Freedman

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald failed to convict Blagojevich on 23 of 24 multiple counts.  But not to worry.  Fitzgerald succeeded in convicting Blagojevich, and destroying his reputation and career, three years ago with a vicious press conference — and without having to bother himself with due process and trial by jury.”

—Prof. Monroe Freedman, blogging at The Legal Ethics Forum.

In his press conference announcing the charges against the then-Illinois governor, Fitzpatrick memorably said that Blagojevich’s conduct had Abe Lincoln “rolling in his grave.” He also said: Continue reading →

Celebrity Jerk in Training: Justin Bieber

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

It’s good to know teenie-bopper idol Justin Bieber is already practicing for the day when he will be a full-fledged, arrogant, self-absorbed, celebrity jerk, assuming his career survives puberty.

Apparently a kid tried to hack the Facebook page of one of Bieber’s pals, in a failed attempt to get tickets to a concert or something—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the pop star took his revenge by tweeting to his 4.5 million Twitter followers, “Everyone call me or text,” and included the would-be hacker’s phone number. Continue reading →

What is the “Worst” Behavior? Don’t Ask Conservative Bloggers!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

John Hawkins of Right Wing News persuaded 43 conservative bloggers to send him their list of the twenty worst Americans in history. He then compiled a list of “The 25 Worst Americans” using their responses, with the rankings based on the number of blogger who listed an individual.

The list is disturbing, but not for the reasons you think.  What does it say about the priorities and values of conservative bloggers that the “worst American” among all the criminals, serial killers, scoundrels and sociopaths America has produced is, by this method of measurement...wait for it…

...Jimmy Carter? Continue reading →

When the President Agrees With Me, He’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Let’s see if I can make this both coherent and succinct.

President Obama was ethical, responsible, and brave to weigh in on the Ground Zero Mosque (more accurately called “The Two-Blocks From Ground Zero Mosque”), and reaffirm America’s commitment to freedom of religion for all faiths by declaring that the Islamic group has the right to build its planned Islamic center.

After being roundly (and predictably) slammed by conservative talking heads, blogging bigots, and ranting reactionaries for stating the obvious, however, the President (or his advisors; the advisors are the ones who thought this was a dandy time to send Michelle and the kids on a luxury vacation in Spain, and can be identified by the large dunce caps on their heads…) decided to come back and clarify his remarks, lest anyone think he was actually endorsing the idea of an Islamic monument so near the spot where thousands of innocent Americans perished at the hands of Islamic extremists.

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Obama told reporters in Panama City, Fla.  “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.” This statement isn’t quite “I didn’t inhale” or “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” but it is still a solid candidate for the Presidential Weasel Words Hall of Fame. By saying he would not comment, President Obama was commenting, and implying, by saying what he would not comment about, that if he did comment, it would be that the mosque was probably not such a hot idea, since fairly or not, it was bound to be misunderstood as an insult to the victims of 9-11.

It was inappropriate and wrong for Obama to suggest this, in weasel words or otherwise. (It would be more honest and forthright to eschew the weasel word method, however.) Continue reading →

Headline Deceit, the N-Word, and Dr. Laura

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Curse you, Gawker, for making me defend Laura Schlesinger!

Radio talk show host/advisor/scold Laura Schlesinger, a.k.a. “Dr. Laura,” has a target on her back for liberal sharpshooters, thanks to her persistent demonization of gays and her advocacy of female subjugation in marriage. Outside of those two areas (“And aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”), Schlesinger’s ethical instincts are usually sound, and her advice to troubled callers is usually good. But she has a lot of enemies, and proof of that is today’s eye-catching headline on the gossip website Gawker, which can fairly be described as “ethics-free.”

The headline:

Dr. Laura Apologizes for Shocking, N-Word Filled Radio Rant Continue reading →

Ethics, Ethics, Everywhere…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Stories with ethical implications are popping up everywhere, in many fields. I’m running hard to keep up; if you want to join the race, here are some recent developments and notes:

  • A prominent Harvard professor and respected researcher just retracted a major paper and has been put on leave, as an investigation showed irregularities in his methods and results. “This retraction creates a quandary for those of us in the field about whether other results are to be trusted as well, especially since there are other papers currently being reconsidered by other journals as well,’’ wrote one scientist. “If scientists can’t trust published papers, the whole process breaks down.’’
  • A Wisconsin lawyer bought a farm from his own client in a bankruptcy matter, a classic conflict of interest. The lawyer’s defense was amusing: since his license had been suspended, he no longer had a fiduciary duty to his now former client. The court canceled the sale. The story is on the Legal Profession Blog.

Worst Ethics Article Ever!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

On a very strange blog called “Approaching Women is An Art” appears an even stranger post called “Creationism in Schools: an Unethical Approach,” apparently imported from another blog. This essay suggests several possible conclusions: that illiteracy is apparently no bar to writing what purports to be a scholarly essay; that the American educational system has hit rock bottom; that English is an endangered language, and that Ed Wood is alive and blogging. It is also possible, I suppose, that the article was originally written in Mongolian and translated by a fifth grader. Continue reading →