The most incompetently-used quote is probably Dick the Butcher’s “The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers” in Act IV, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part II.” Quoted out of its proper context to suggest that lawyers are the bane of society, the actual quote means the exact opposite. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens explained in a 1985 decision: “As a careful reading of that text will reveal, Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

Now our Secretary of Education has secured a niche in the false quotation Hall of Shame with his recent gaffe referring to the resources and technical assistance his department can provide state governors, “I think it was President Reagan said, ‘We’re from the government. We’re here to help.’ ” As anyone with a working knowledge of Reagan’s political philosophy and his memorable quotes—Wait, this guy is in charge of our education?— should know, the context of that quote was Reagan mocking the ability of big government to muck up anything it touched. The full quote was, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

Of course, given the proclivities of the Biden administration, Cardona might have known the actual quote’s meaning, but was deliberately misrepresenting it anyway assuming most of the public are ignorant dupes

(He’s the one on the right, next to the Native American…)

Bishop Talbert W. Swan II, the president of the Springfield, Mass., chapter of the NAACP, wrote on social media regarding Israel’s military response to the Hamas terror attack, “Who would’ve thought that in 2023 Jewish soldiers would be the nazis carrying out ethnic cleansing?” Later, he said, “This isn’t a WAR, it’s a HOLOCAUST.” In a sermon this month, Swan excused the Hamas murder of civilians, children and infants, saying “Violence is the language of the unheard.”

Oh…I forgot to mention that Swan is a member of….wait for it!…. the Massachusetts Task Force on Hate Crimes. I’d say that a Hamas terrorist attack on Jewish citizens qualifies as a hate crime if anything does, wouldn’t you? But I’m not enough of an authority to serve on a blue-ribbon task force. Maybe we shouldn’t assume that members of that task force are necessarily against hate crimes. No, no, I now see that the task force exists to advises the Massachusetts governor on “issues relating to the prevalence, deterrence, and prevention of hate crimes.” That would seem to rule out implying that a terrorist massacre is a good thing, or am I missing something?

Continue reading →

Nothing of ethical significance has happened on November 30 (so far), but this was an especially rotten month for U.S. ethics, low-lighted, of course, by the not-entirely shocking revelation that the progressive movement has spawned a stunning number of anti-Semitics while out college campuses are churning out eventual graduates who don’t know how to distinguish propaganda from history. Isn’t that nice? My own increasingly embarrassing alma mater, Harvard College, under its diversity-obsessed and cowardly new president, continued its support of terrorism, with the Harvard Crimson picking now to again endorse the the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement devoted to ending international support for Israel’s “oppression” of Palestinians. Now Harvard has joined the ranks of schools being investigated by the Department of Education for civil rights violations of its own students, the Jewish ones, of course. Good.

So what ethics horrors do we have to muse over today?

1. Just because I awarded Chuck Shumer an Ethics Hero award because he isn’t excusing his parties bigots doesn’t change the fact that he is a two-faced partisan hack.. Schumer this week took to the Senate floor to warn that a key funding package with Ukraine aid could collapse over battle Republicans pressing for a “partisan border policy” thereby injecting a “decades-old hyperpartisan issue” into the debate. Since when was enforcing existing laws a partisan issue? Old Ethics Alarms friend Joe Concha was unkind enough to point out on “X” that Schumer said in 2009, “People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who enter the U.S. legally. The American people will never accept immigration reform unless they truly believe that their government is committed to ending future illegal immigration.”

2. “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?” To make a dubious point about school security, Casey Garcia (aided by her 4’11” stature) recorded herself posing as her 13-year-old daughter at San Elizario Middle School and posted the results on social media. She dyed her hair, used skin bronzer, wore a hoodie and had a pandemic-hysteria mask on to pass for her teenage daughter. In the video, Garcia claims to have “exposed the dangers of our schools and I am trying to protect my children and yours. If you want to come after me for that, there’s really nothing else I can say.” Because the real problem in schools is short parents pretending to be students, or something.

Casey was convicted of criminal trespassing, and must perform 100 hours of community service and pay a $700 fine.

Continue reading →

The Ethics Alarms accounting of the Big Lies weaponized by the “resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media in order to, in the uncomfortably direct words of Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), “eliminate” Donald Trump, stopped before the 2020 election with “Big Lie #9: “Trump’s Mishandling Of The Pandemic Killed People.” (That oft-repeated whopper now looks even more outrageous than the other eight.) I have been meaning to add the obvious #10, “Trump is an Insurrectionist” for years now, and should have as that counter-factual, law- and language-defying slur has appeared daily in the media and was the focus of the Democratic House’s kangaroo court “investigation” into the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

What finally spurred me to action was a typically fatuous essay in New York Magazine’s “Intelligencer” column, “Melania Trump Adds Awkward Touch to Rosalynn Carter Funeral.” (Doesn’t a column with that name have some obligation to present intelligent commentary?).

The article was just another of the millions of installments of the Left’s mantra since the 2016 election: Donald Trump does not deserve the base-line respect, honor, fairness and decency that every other President has been automatically granted by virtue of simply holding the office. The truth is that Melania Trump was quite appropriately included among those honoring former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, she was invited, and there was nothing “awkward” about it. That her husband at various times has said uncomplimentary things about several of his predecessors made her presence no more “awkward” than the presence of Michelle Obama, whose husband broke previous established standards of White House decorum by repeatedly criticizing his immediate predecessor, President Bush. Then came the last snarky paragraph, “There’s no clear answer here; it seems we’re going to debate whether the Trumps should be included every time there’s a high-profile political event,” Margaret Hartmann wrote. “Unfortunately, Emily Post doesn’t cover what to do when the former president is a boorish insurrectionist.”

Continue reading →

Nah, the mainstream media isn’t a woke propaganda machine! That’s just a conservative conspiracy theory.

Sure.

Subliminal advertising in movies and on TV began in the Fifties with things like this..

…being flashed before viewers’ eyes in fractions of a second. As a result, in 1958, the National Association of Broadcasters banned subliminal ads in 1958. The FTC views such ads as inherently deceptive and therefore illegal. If you look really closely at that screenshot, it says “Try racial justice” in faint grayscale letters.

Sharp-eyed Ann Althouse gets credit for finding this, which she posted and then, being Ann, ignored the real issues the stunt raises in order to go off track about the lyrics of “Try a Little Tenderness,” among other things.

Ooops, gotta run…I’ll have more to say in the comments…

I challenged veteran EA commenter Jim Hodgson to respond to the oft-repeated accusation that “all cops lie.” Here is his response, a Comment of the Day on the post about the retired Boston detective who manufactured evidence to get more than a dozen (at least) innocent people convicted and jailed, “KABOOM!! Apparently There Is No Criminal Law To Charge This Police Detective Under”.…

Oh…I do want to make it clear that the choice of Mark Fuhrman to lead off this COTD is not in any way intended to subvert Jim’s points. I just believe that when asked for an example of a cop lying on the stand to avoid revealing information that might endanger a conviction, Fuhrman is who most Americans would think of first. My mind goes immediately to the corrupt detective played by Orson Welles in “Touch of Evil,” but you know me and old moves….

***

I think a lot of the phenomenon of police corruption (of all types) is dependent on where an officer works (the particular agency and its culture as well as the jurisdiction and its culture, crime rate, etc.), in addition to the moral character of the individual officer. I spent my whole career here in the mid-south, the so-called “Buckle of the Bible Belt,” in small cities and rural counties. The largest agency I worked for (27 years) had about two hundred officers and maybe forty civilian employees when I retired in 2014. Crime rates where I worked were nothing compared to major population centers. Our citizens were typically much more worried about residential burglary than violent crime. We usually had no more than two or three homicides per year, and perhaps six to ten armed robberies annually, mostly traveling criminals off the interstate highway.

I began my career in 1974. New York’s Knapp Commission had just released its final report on NYPD corruption (think “Frank Serpico”) a little over a year before I began. The report of the U. S. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice report was pretty fresh, as well as the multi-volume report of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. Most agencies in this region were trying to overcome the stereotypes of Southern “good-old-boy” knuckle-dragging law enforcement, and embracing new and higher standards in recruitment, hiring, training, retention and performance. Police corruption of all kinds was certainly at the forefront of concern for local politicians and police executives, and that trickled down throughout their agencies.

Continue reading →