More Evidence Of Ethics Rot In The Legal Profession

The combination of The Great Stupid washing over the land, woke indoctrination and bullying, and the politicization of everything has perhaps taken its greatest toll on the trustworthiness of the professions. One after another has succumbed to ethics rot to an extent that one would have been unimaginable. The legal profession has been especially ravaged.

A depressing and horrifying op-ed in the Wall Street Journal told the first-hand account of how the writer was fired from her law firm, Hogan Lovells, for daring to express an opinion that was not deemed compliant with current progressive cant. She wrote in part,

After the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June, global law firm Hogan Lovells organized an online conference call for female employees. As a retired equity partner still actively serving clients, I was invited to participate in what was billed as a “safe space” for women at the firm to discuss the decision. It might have been a safe space for some, but it wasn’t safe for me.

Everyone else who spoke on the call was unanimous in her anger and outrage about Dobbs. I spoke up to offer a different view. I noted that many jurists and commentators believed Roe had been wrongly decided. I said that the court was right to remand the issue to the states. I added that I thought abortion-rights advocates had brought much of the pushback against Roe on themselves by pushing for extreme policies. I referred to numerous reports of disproportionately high rates of abortion in the black community, which some have called a form of genocide. I said I thought this was tragic.

The outrage was immediate. The next speaker called me a racist and demanded that I leave the meeting. Other participants said they “lost their ability to breathe” on hearing my comments. After more of the same, I hung up.

Someone made a formal complaint to the firm. Later that day, Hogan Lovells suspended my contracts, cut off my contact with clients, removed me from email and document systems, and emailed all U.S. personnel saying that a forum participant had made “anti-Black comments” and was suspended pending an investigation. The firm also released a statement to the legal website Above the Law bemoaning the devastating impact my views had on participants in the forum—most of whom were lawyers participating in a call convened expressly for the purpose of discussing a controversial legal and political topic. Someone leaked my name to the press.

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Best of Ethics Award 2022, The Ethics Hero of the Year: Elon Musk

I know that it’s relatively easy to be bold, principled and even reckless when you have billions of dollars to play with, but that should not diminish the admiration due to Elon Musk for sinking 40 billion dollars into what might be a quixotic effort to bolster freedom of public discourse and information online by reforming one of the worst partisan offenders in that crucial area.

As with the mainstream media’s abandonment of democratic principles to become a progressive/Democratic Party propaganda tool, the major social media platforms have engaged in outright censorship based on viewpoint discrimination, and, like the mainstream media, have dismissed complaints about bias as “conspiracy theories.” In addition to opening up Twitter to all viewpoints, Musk has also vowed to publish Twitter records demonstrating exactly how biased its previous content vetting process was. Wonderful.

As I’m sure he predicted when he threw down this gauntlet, the attacks on him have come from all angles and directions. The Biden administration darkly warned that it would be “watching” him closely—nah, no intimidation attempt there! Glenn Greewald writes of the media’s attacks,

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Where Did That Post Go?

I just took down the post showing how David Portnoy was unethically slimed by the New York Times. When I tried to add the link to his video (which I did not feel was necessary to make the point, but several readers asked for it), WordPress went rogue and eliminated the headline, even though it showed on my draft. (The mysterious “draft that doesn’t match what appears when the draft is published” problem is always a nightmare.) I tried everything to fix it—new version, re-editing, copying, going back to the original version. After way too long spent on a minor post, I decided to hell with it. You can check out what I regarded as res ipsa loquitur here, at Instapundit.

A few comments went away with the post; I’m sorry, except for Steve Witherspoon: his comment prompted me to do whatever I did that made WordPress turn on me. I blame him.

More Tales Of The Great Stupid: Legal Jaywalking

Guess why California just legalized jaywalking. Go ahead, guess. You know why.

The misleadingly titled “Freedom to Walk Act”—gee, would the old Twitter regime ban a “Red State” that a called a law that? Because we al have the freedom to walk, except where we know it’s not permitted. Are Californians free to trespass now? I think not—decriminalized jaywalking, which used to carry a fine, as long as the jaywalker isn’t deemed to be putting themselves or others in danger. It goes into effect January 1. Think about what such a law means: violating clearly indicated pedestrian rules that everyone is taught in childhood is now legal. So what are those rules, then? When a rule isn’t enforced, it isn’t a rule. It’s unethical to violate rules, but then California has such shattered and malfunctioning ethics alarms that it’s foolish to expect the government or the public to understand that.

Oh, right, that question: give up? Here’s the answer: the bill’s author, state Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco—I bet you could have guessed where such a law’s author came from too, right?) says jaywalking laws “are arbitrarily enforced and tickets are disproportionately given to people of color and in low-income communities.” Of course that was the rationale. That’s the reason petty theft is legal now in Ting’s city, and why shoplifting is OK. If there’s a law that “criminal of color” violate in numbers disproportionate to their demographic percentages, the easy solution is to just eliminate the law! By this logic, Chicago needs to make murder legal.

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Holiday Craziness Ethics Kick-Off, 11/28/2022: Poop In A Pringles Can Ethics

I finally figured out how I can resuscitate the Ethics Alarms Awards after a five year drought. What made them impossible beginning in 2017, after eight years of announcing the Best and Worst of ethics every year, was their sheer size and the time it took to assemble them, essentially keeping me from effectively covering developing ethics events and issues in order to review old ones. I usually couldn’t get the job finished until February. Starting today, I’ll be posting at least one award each day through mid-January, 2023. Then I’ll gather them up for two summary posts. Nominations are encouraged: if you want a review of the categories—and I will always consider news ones, the 2016 Worst in Ethics awards are here, here, here; the “Best” categories can be recalled here and here.

1. I might as well get started: Here’s the Ethics Alarms 2022 Asshole of the Year.Yes, it has to be Donald Trump, though it was a closer race than I expected. The dinner with “Ye” and the ridiculous Nick Fuentes, plus Trump’s changing stories about how the dinner came to pass, locked the honor up, but the threats directed at Gov. DeSantis after Trump’s obsession with his 2020 loss helped cost the GOP the Senate had already made him the presumptive champ in this category—again.  What really clinched it was that Mediaite’s Trump-Deranged, blatantly biased reporter Tommy Christopher reported today that Trump asked Kanje “Ye” West to be his running mate in 2024. I don’t believe anything Christopher writes, but I still found myself wondering if the story could possibly be true. Trump is that big an asshole. Runner-up: Liz Cheney.

2. The ethics value missing here: proportion. A real headline today: “Alcohol-fueled family game of Monopoly turns violent as furniture is overturned, gunfire erupts — and man goes to jail on assault with a deadly weapon charge” Continue reading

Comment Of The Day: On The State of Feminism (Open Forum, 11/25/22)

Another Comment of the Day from CD-VAPatriot, who has to cope with the increasingly annoying glitch at WordPress that cases in to spam certain commenters’ posts for no apparent reason.

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I think it all depends on one’s definition of “feminism.” I used to think the term simply meant that women were overall equal to men in terms of career opportunities, earning potential, deciding whether or not they wanted to get married and/or have kids, etc.. These days it seems that a lot of women I know feel that being a feminist means that “women are the SAME as men”. Well, forgive me for being a traitor to my gender (which yes I have been called) but I believe that there ARE significant differences between the sexes. Oh, and I’m also apparently a traitor and a woman-hater for being pro-life. (Who knew?)

As the female half of a boring old married, heterosexual couple who has been trying to get pregnant for over a decade, I really don’t think my hubby and I fit the “norm” anymore. We’ve noticed that in just the last decade, our friends and the couples we’ve met during that time have significantly changed their overall outlook quite a bit. Fewer couples are getting married: “who, like, needs a stupid piece of paper or like, some rando God to decide if our love is like, legit?”

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Historical Ignorance Is Dangerous: This Isn’t The Low Point In American Political History

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while now.

I’ve been reviewing some Presidential history as I prepare to continue the Ethics Alarms search for the Worst President Ever, as more evidence of Joe Biden’s proper ranking accumulates. what has stood out is now much worse things have been in the past than they are now by any objective measure. The pundits and other hysterics currently opining daily that the nation is on the verge of unraveling either don’t know our turbulent history, or are deliberately trying to stir up fear and unrest.

They are underestimating the United States of America, and the intrinsic strength of its mission and values.

Take the 15 year period immediately after the Civil War—“Please,” as Henny Youngman would say:

  • Following a catastrophic conflict that left 2% of the population dead, the nation shattered, a whole region’s economy and society destroyed and the nation faced with somehow dealing with more than four million newly freed black slaves, President Lincoln, the one individual who had the brilliance and political skill to—maybe—navigate this confluence of crises was assassinated in a conspiracy that may have included powerful members of the government itself, or so it seemed.
  • The Vice-President who took over as President, Andrew Johnson, was a Southern Democrat who was distrusted and disrespected by the overwhelmingly Republican Congress. Worse, he was stubborn and averse to compromise. The nation’s work, at a critical time, with the nation divided and struggling,  quickly deteriorated into all-out political war between the Executive and the Legislative Branches, with Congress passing laws, some of which were unconstitutional, Johnson vetoing them, and Congress over-riding the vetoes. Members of Johnson’s own Cabinet, actually Lincoln’s Cabinet, were working with Johnson’s enemies in Congress and against him—talk about the “Deep State” !  Congress finally contrived reasons to impeach the President, who had no defenders in the press either, basing the action mostly on one of those unconstitutional laws. Johnson refused to follow it or obey it (the law prevented a President from firing a Cabinet member without Congressional approval, a clear breach of the Separation of Powers), and there it was: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”! The Senate failed to convict Johnson by a single vote, with many believing that the pro-Johnson votes had been bought (and they might have been!).

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The Worst Sequel To “Home Alone” Yet

Here I was, all ready to shut down Ethics Alarms posting for the day, and I ran across this awful story, which I honestly don’t understand at all. There have to be some basic equipment ethics alarms that have to work in everyone, right?

Charleston, South Carolina police were called to investigate the home of 24-year-old Donald Gekonge when an apartment manager reported that he had found a child alone in the apartment yesterday. They discovered the child sleeping in a bed in the living room. When they walked into the room, the child “immediately reached for an empty water bottle.” The child seemed to be in good condition. Police then spoke to an unnamed person who said Gekonge had sent a message that he was in New York City. Eventually police reached him, and he said that someone was caring for his son, he just wasn’t certain who.

This is always a bad sign.

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Friday Open Forum, “But It Feels Like Sunday” Edition

I apologize: I didn’t focus on the fact that this was Friday until just now. Even at ProEthics, which never rests or takes a vacation, it has been so quiet that I was lulled into weekend mode. All the l-tryptophan didn’t help either. But there is still time to…

Ethics away!

(Ugh. I hate that fad Madison Avenue use of nouns, as in “Let’s movie!” I had to try it once to be sure just how much I hated it. Sorry.)

Pre-Thanksgiving Ethics Warm-Up, 11/23/2022: Dead Ethics Alarms, Good Ethics Advice From An Unexpected Source, And Other Appetizers

I know my wedding to Grace Bowen Marshall 42 years ago was important because virtually nothing else genuinely significant in world history happened on November 23. The date is amazingly weak on important birthdays too: the most impressive are Franklin Peirce, our tragically weak 14th President (just when the nation needed a strong one), and, in 1921, Jack Marshall, the Hollywoord musician, arranger and composer who wrote the theme music for “The Munsters,” among other things.

The calendar this year is, as it happens, like it was the year we got married. We had changed the date from the 22nd to the 23rd because neither of us wanted Kennedy’s assassination on our minds. After a wedding presided over by Grace’s dad, a Methodist minister, we enjoyed a wild reception highlighted by a performance by the combined talents of the two musical revue groups I had performed in and directed, The Showstoppers and the political satire group, The Music Lobby. Then it was off to a romantic evening at the historic Hay-Adams hotel, across the park from The White House. The next day was Thanksgiving, which we celebrated by having a turkey picnic on the floor of our just-purchased, unfurnished home in Alexandria, Virginia. Then it was off to Zion’s Crossroads, near Charlottesville, for a brief honeymoon at an inn converted from an old plantation. They had a honeymoon cottage, and today we would be expected to be horrified by its history as the slave overseer’s residents. We weren’t then, and I’m not now.

As Gus says to Woodrow call as he dies in “Lonesome Dove,” “It’s been a hell of a party.” And we still haven’t opened all the presents…

1. When Ethics Alarms don’t ring: Fashion company Balenciaga has withdrawn a really oogy advertisement campaign featuring children with sexualized teddy bears, but such an ethics botch is signature significance. In one photo, one of the little girls poses on a sofa by one of plush bear bags, surrounded by wine glasses and branded bondage gear.

A sharp-eyed viewer spotted a copy of a Supreme Court opinion declaring pornography protected speech in another photo with a child. Here’s another one in the series:

The company’s apology as it abandoned the ads also doesn’t suggest familiarity with basic ethics alarms. “We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused. Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms,” the apology posted on its Instagram page read in part. “We take this matter very seriously and are taking legal action against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our Spring 23 campaign photoshoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children’s safety and well-being.”

Someone just sneaked those ads into publication without the company’s knowledge, eh? Sure.

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