Marlon’s been getting a workout here lately, and that’s even with me trying hard to avoid him by periodically using Geena Davis’s iconic movement from “The Fly” as a stand-in. In more positive Halloween news, this morning’s musical Halloween ethics seminar for New Jersey Lawyers went beautifully. Mike Messer decided to replace his Boris Karloff riff for “The Monster Mash” with a New Jersey mobster impression for the parody I shared yesterday on the famous New York ethics case from the Seventies, “The Dead Bodies Case” (Also known as “The Buried Bodies Case.”). It was so funny that we’re going to try to get a YouTube video of it for law schools to use when they cover the case, as most do.

If you are not familiar with that case, which has been referenced on “Law and Order,” “The Practice” and other legal TV shows of yore, go here.

1. Now THAT’s an unethical wife! In Connecticut, Donna Marino, 63, is charged with forging her husband’s signature on legal documents, pension checks, monetary settlements, and social security checks after she convinced him that he had Alzheimer’s Disease. He didn’t, although he obviously is none too bright. Investigators concluded that she forged her husband’s signature on his checks and legal documents, then deposited the funds—$600,000 worth—in a secret bank account. This went on for 20 years before John figured out that something was amiss. Donna kept him believing that he had the dreaded dementia illness by telling him that he didn’t remember wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood and not knowing her earlier in the day.

Sounds a little like the plot of “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” one of my favorite Halloween movies.

2. Speaking of horror—Terry McAuliffe’s campaign. One piece of signature significance for a politician is how he or she reacts when facing defeat. McAuliffe, the Clinton fundraiser and acolyte who may be even more ethically challenged than they are (if that’s possible), is losing the battle with Republican Glenn Younkin (who is no prize himself) thanks to the Democrat stating outright that parents should stay out of the policy decisions regarding what their children are taught in public schools. As the old knight memorably said,

Now McAuliffe’s poll numbers are imitating John Malkovich at the end of “In the Line of Fire,” so he’s trying more and more blatantly dishonest tactics:

• As I wrote earlier, he has hired one of the Clinton lawyers who facilitated the Russian collusion hoax, and when this was discovered, McAuliffe’s staff sent out emails in all directions asking presumably friendly media outlets to “kill this.” And I mean all directions: Jonathan Turley reports getting one. (I’m insulted.)
• They even sent one to Fox News, which is remarkable given that the eeevil news network recently discovered and revealed that McAuliffe has spent nearly $100,000 advertising “fake news” websites on Facebook. The  advertisements have been viewed about to 3.5 million times, and are hidden on a Facebook page with a similar name to a local news website. The ads link to third-party websites that that promote Democratic candidates with partisan spin and propaganda. Fox is the only organization revealing this.
• I was just informed by a reader that she recieved a false flag promotion now being sent to Virginia voters. “Today we received a ‘pro Youngkin’ flyer that appears to come from the GOP because it features Trump,” the reader writes, ” ….but just above the address box is a dark black line – look very closely at the faded lettering (I had to use a magnifying glass) and you’ll see it is funded by the Democrat party with the approval of McAullife.” Nice one! I may have received one of these, but all campaign literature goes directly from my home’s floor to the trash. A genuine Youngkin mailer warns of McAuliffe attempting to place Virginia under “dictatorship.”

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No tricks, just ethics treats…

For those in a Halloween Legal Ethics mood, I will be presenting a special Halloween edition of Ethics Rock tomorrow at 9:00 am, for the New State Bar Association. The great Mike Messer will be singing my legal ethics parodies of pop songs with a Halloween flair. Here’s the parody of “The Monster Mash” (by Bobby Pickett) telling a version of the story all law students cover in their ethics classes, the famous “Dead Bodies Case,” from New York…”The Mobster’s Trash”:

Representing T. Soprano, late one night

He confessed to killing a famed playwright

A missing person and a fortune’s heir

“Want to see his body? I’ll show you where!”

[Chorus]

I saw his trash!

It was the mobster’s trash!

The mobster trash!

It was a body stash!

It was his trash!

The body’s throat had been slashed

And all for cash!

It was the mobster’s trash!

Tony found himself suspected of the murder but

There wasn’t any evidence that seemed clear-cut

The playwright’s daughter came to me and begged

Could I tell her I saw her Dad’s head crushed like an egg?

[Chorus]

In Tony’s trash?

It was the mobster’s trash!

I saw his trash!

Where her Dad’s corpse was stashed!

In Tony’s trash!

And his head had been bashed

And all for cash!

It was the mobster’s trash.

[Bridge]

***

Then Tony went to trial

I kept his secret all the while!

But under cross examination

Tony confessed and with a smile.

***

He said he killed the playwright and that he was glad

The guy owed lots of money, which made Tony mad

And worst of all, that playwright’s plays

Were derivative, self-indulgent and ran on for days!

[Chorus]

So he got trashed!

Thrown in the mobster’s trash!

I saw his trash!

Where bodies all got stashed

In Tony’s trash!

The playwright’s skull had been smashed

And all for cash!

It was the mobster’s trash.

After Tony spilled the beans I admitted to all

I had seen the dead playwright, but made the call

That I couldn’t let on that I had viewed the nightmare

And not just because I could end up there…

In the trash!

In the mobster’s trash!

With a gash

A fatal bloody gash

In Tony’s trash!

Cause my  throat would be slashed

I’m not that rash

To risk the mobster’s trash

Well they charged me with not handling a body right

And my law practice dwindled, almost out of sight

As for all you reporters, I’ll answer your quiz

But  don’t you dare ask where Jimmy Hoffa is!

Cause Jimmy’s ash!

In some mobster’s trash!

First he got smashed

Up like corn-beef hash

And he was trashed

Incinerated to ash

Yes he was trashed

They made him mobster trash.

1. This slippery slope leads right to the cancel bin for every jurist and politician of the 18th, 19th, and much of the 20th Century. Rutgers University Board of Governors approved a resolution October 6 to strip the name of Joseph P. Bradley from “Bradley Hall,” which houses two academic departments, a learning center, theater and campus post office.

Bradley, who graduated from Rutgers College in 1836, was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1870. In 1971, the Board of Governors approved naming the building after Bradley, but that was before the culture decided that any prominent figure who hadn’t anticipated 21st century race cant and women’s rights orthodoxy had to be a vile and evil person, unworthy of honor. Bradley’s discredited views were especially noxious to students who had the benefit of more than a century and half of history and debate as he expressed them in two opinions. In 1883, he declared the first two sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 “unconstitutional.”

The law would have outlawed discrimination against African Americans in restaurants, public transportation or other private establishments. Bradley argued, however, that such protections do not apply to private businesses, only the actions of state governments, arguing that to “deprive white people the right to choose their own company would be to introduce another kind of slavery.” In 1872, Bradley backed the Court’s decision in Bradwell v. Illinois, finding that the Illinois State Bar could deny a qualified woman a law license because she was a woman. Bradley argued that the right to practice law was not constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. He also pointed to “the laws of nature,” arguing that women have a responsibility to care for their families, as the “timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.…The harmony, not to say identity, of interest and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband,” Bradley wrote.

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This is the birthday of my favorite President of the United States, by far. I’ve seen a lot of Presidents in my day, and find it hard to imagine (especially with what we are enduring now) having the nation led by someone so intellectually vibrant, rhetorically gifted, educated in history and philosophy, convinced of American exceptionalism, innovative, dedicated to ferreting out corruption, personally trustworthy and politically skilled. Theodore Roosevelt had many flaws; to begin with, he was an extreme narcissist, an occupational hazard of political leaders, but few reachTeddy’s level. He loved war, a malady of manhood at the time, one that looks bad in the rear-view mirror, and there’s no getting around it: he was a white supremacist. And as one commentator put it in the Ken Burns documentary “The Roosevelts,” he was “quite mad”—but he knew it, and managed his problem very well.

All leaders are flawed, indeed being flawed is one of the factors that make them leaders,. The great ones still deserve honor and study, because we can learn much from their lives, including their failures. I doubt today’s students leave high school knowing anything about Teddy other than, perhaps, his creation of the National Parks, because environmentalism GOOD.

The other birthday that occupies my thoughts today is that of my son, Grant, 27. He began life in the wreckage of the communist tragedy in Russia, an orphan given up by his birth mother, in one of the grim, underfunded and over-crowed state orphanages in Samara, a hell-hole by anyone’s standards. He grew up in the USA a thoroughly American young man, independent, confident, suspicious and defiant of authority (including mine), choosing his own path and not bowing to peer pressure or conventional wisdom because that is what this nation was created to foster.

Happy birthday, Grant. I’m very proud of you.

1. Bill Buckner, martyr to moral luck. Yesterday was the anniversary of the iconic moment in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series when Mookie Wilson’s bouncing grounder rolled under Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs. The play completed a nightmarish 10th inning Mets comeback rally that won the game and stopped Boston from finally ending a World Series “curse” that had endured since 1918. [Notice of Correction: before commenter Curmie alerted me to the error—much worse than Billy Buck’s—I had erroneously cited the 9th inning rather than the 10th. I am awash with shame.]

That streak of failure finally stopped 18 years later with the Sox beating the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 Series on this date, October 27. Buckner was singled out by unethical sportswriters and vindictive fans as the scapegoat for the ’86 loss, which was as unfair as it was absurd (if the Red Sox had won the next game, which they led 3-0 at one point, nobody would remember Buckner’s error.)

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I am no longer inclined to be charitable or passive about the facemask nonsense. Yesterday I accompanied my sister to a clinic and waited while she had a medical procedure, requiring me to sit a couple of hours. The waiting room had enforced “social distancing” (though we now know that’s arbitrary), and there was no one closer to me than ten feet anyway, because only four other people were in the room, all much younger than me, and all vaccinated (I asked). However, when I took off my mostly useless mask (which was paper—I was handed it when I entered) because I was reading a court document and my glasses were fogging up,the woman behind the counter gestured to me that I had to put my mask back on. That did it: I jumped out of my chair and asked why. “It’s our policy,” was her non-explanation.

“But why is it your policy? Nobody’s near me. I’m fully vaccinated. I’m not talking to anyone. I have to wait here, and I can’t read or breathe with this thing on,” I asked, not hiding my pique.

“We’re just trying to be careful,” she said. Now I had her! “Really?” I said. “Then why is the young woman three feet from you wearing the mask under her nose?” (I had noticed that when I checked in.) The cheater quickly pulled it into position and turned towards me in a silent “”Mask out of place? What mask out of place?” gesture. The first woman then repeated, “It’s policy. We don’t make policy.”

“You don’t make policy, you just enforce policy you can’t explain or justify even though you’re the sole representatives here for us to question. Okay. I’ll be sitting outside.” And I picked up a chair and left.

I didn’t even bother to mention that the two staffers I could see through the door to the room adjoining the space behind the counter weren’t wearing masks and were giggling about two feet from each other.

I did say “Morons!” audibly as I left.

1. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the unethical tree…The oldest Trump son, Donald Jr., is promoting the $27.99 T-shirt below on his official site.

Anyone wearing or endorsing such apparel is signaling to the part of the world that isn’t vicious, vindictive and full of hate for vocal progressives that such an individual doesn’t believe in the Golden Rule, civility, or basic decency. Yeah, it’s funny in an extremely nasty way, and I wouldn’t advocate censoring it or banning a Netflix routine in which the comedian said the same thing. But Donald Trump’s spawn isn’t Dave Chappelle, and as a political statement, which the slogan on the shirt is, that line is below the belt..much like much of the criticism that was aimed at Don Jr.’s father, and yes, by Baldwin among others. Still, that’s not how a society makes public discourse better or defuses division and hate. It just feels good.

Jake Tapper of CNN opined that Baldwin deserves “basic decency” from Republicans. No, he doesn’t deserve decency; he deserves to be treated with exactly the same callousness as the arrogant, wise-ass thug treated Donald Trump specifically and conservatives in general for decades. Society, however, not only deserves civil discourse but needs it. (Not that anyone who represents CNN, a prime offender, isn’t estopped from calling for fairness for the foreseeable future.)

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The baseball post-season ended for the Boston Red Sox last night, but I won’t miss seeing regular pop-up ads during the games that encourage viewers to bet on whether the batter coming to the plate will hit a homer during the game or the odds on whether the pitcher will have six strikeouts. This doesn’t enhance the game or entertain viewers; it just fulfills MLB’s despicable deal with an online gambling company who wants to make betting on games while they are in progress the national pastime.

1. Alec Baldwin update…Since there seems to be little question that Baldwin pointed the prop gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins before the gun discharged and killed her, it is possible that he could be charged with involuntary manslaughter. I view that as extremely unlikely, given Baldwin’s celebrity status (unfortunately laws are only for the little people when prosecutorial discretion is involved, unless the subject is an associate of Donald Trump), but attorney Andrew Branca provides a useful and thorough examination of the law on the subject of such accidents here.

2. “Fuck Joe Biden” developments. “Fuck Joe Biden” chants have become regular phenomena at weekend sporting events. After Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, Red Sox fans outside Fenway Park disrupted the live post-game show by chanting the mantra so loudly it was hard to hear what the panelists were saying. “Fuck Joe Biden” took the place of the more traditional “Yankees Suck” refrain, which had been employed in the previous game whenever Alex Rodriguez tried to speak. It was not Boston’s finest hour, but then I predicted we would end up where we are, in Boston and everywhere else.

Meanwhile, I obviously wasn’t paying attention to the “Let’s go Brandon!” phenomenon. I kept seeing references to it, and was puzzled, but since it appeared to be spreading via Tik-Tok, which doesn’t interest me at all, I didn’t bother to investigate. I am an idiot. I wrote about the beginning of “Go Brandon” myself, here, on October 4, noting how another knee-jerk network agent for the Democrats lied to her audience after NASCAR driver Brandon Brown won at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast tried to interview Brown while fans were loudly chanting, “Fuck Joe Biden!” in the background, so she told the driver, “As you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon!’” Just like that, a new coded vulgarism was born. “Let’s go Brandon” now means “Fuck Joe Biden.” Nice.

The Ethics Alarms position, as with similar uses of obvious substitutes like “N-word” and “F-word,” the code is exactly as uncivil as the word being avoided. For now, “Let’s go Brandon” can be fairly called a joke, but not much longer. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) ended a floor speech this week with “Let’s go Brandon!” He should be disciplined by the House for that.

3. I don’t understand this story at all, so if you can explain it, please do. A woman was raped on a Philadelphia subway train, and the story spread that it was another Kitty Genovese episode of bystander apathy. A local prosecutor disputes those accounts, as related in “Prosecutor Casts Doubt on Account of Train Passengers Not Intervening in Rape.”

There were, by all accounts, about ten passengers on the train when the rape took place. The woman was raped, and nobody on the trains took sufficient action to stop the rapist. It is undisputed that two passenger videotaped the assault. What doubt can there be that the passengers did not intervene in the rape?

4. “Yoo’s Rationalization” Champ of the Month! Paul Begala, the worst of the Clinton henchmen (though the competition is close) channeled the Left’s favorite rationalization, #64 “It isn’t what it is,” with this risible tweet:

This is notable even for Begala, who earlier maintained that President Clinton did nothing wrong beyond a “personal indiscretion” and that President Obama’s administration was 100% scandal-free. Begala issued that tweet after the horrifying CNN Town Hall where Biden showed he was “on top of his game” by lying repeatedly and having to be rescued by CNN’s Anderson Cooper when he couldn’t fetch the word he was looking for. Here was Joe’s wit and command of details explaining why he hadn’t bothered to go to the border:

“But the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down. I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion worth of damage done by hurricanes and floods and weather and traveling around the world. My wife Jill has been down. She’s been on both sides of the river. She’s seen the circumstances there. She’s looked into those places. You notice you’re not seeing a lot of pictures of kids lying on top of one another with what looks like tarps on top of them. We’ve been able to deal with that. We’ve been able to significantly increase funding through the HHS to provide shelter for these kids and people. But, there’s much more to be done. It is a thing that concerns me the most about being able to get control of it.”

We’re supposed to be dazzled by that. Incidentally, the President hasn’t surveyed hurricane damage for a month, but time passes so quickly when one is in one’s Golden Years.