U.S. Society

Stupid Lawyer Tricks…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This really happened, based on the reliability of the lawyer who reported it to me.

In one of those petty organizational battles over control of a book club or something of similar weight, one faction tried to kick a member of the other faction off the organization’s board without any authority to do so. The other faction quickly insisted that the member be put back on the board, and is trying to oust the offending faction from the group entirely. The fight has erupted on social media, mostly on the club’s Facebook page, in angry and ugly posts.

The ejected faction has hired a lawyer who sent a Cease and Desist and Demand letter to the rest of the membership, threatening a defamation suit. The Demand Letter ended with the following:

THIS LETTER IS A CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL COMMUNICATION AND IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION. ANY PUBLICATION, DISSEMINATION OR BROADCAST OF THIS LETTER OR ANY PORTION OF IT THEREOF, WILL CONSTITUTE, INTER ALIA, A VIOLATION OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT. YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO PUBLISH THE LETTER IN WHOLE OR IN PART.

Well..

1. The letter is obviously not confidential client communication as it has been communicated to non-clients.

2. Sure it’s technically copyrighted like anything you write is, but fair use of such a letter makes the implied threat deceitful. The recipients don’t need authorization to re-publish the letter, and neither do I.

3. Where do lawyers like this get their law degrees from, Bazooka gum comics? “Draw Skippy” ads?

4. My immediate suspicion upon receiving a demand letter like this would be that someone is engaging in the unauthorized practice law or using a dumb AI bot.

Port script: I’m trying to find a standard graphic for this topic. I’m considering using Michael Cohen, Trump’s perjurous, disbarred former fixer. You know, this guy…

What do you think?

From Maryland, A “When Ethics Fails, The Law Steps In” Verdict

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I recently re-watched “Runaway Jury,” the ethically and legally repugnant film adaptation of a John Grisham legal thriller. It’s one of the most unethical movies extant, and before the last couple of years I would have said such egregious lawyer conduct as depicted in the film was unlikely to the point of impossible (as in most of Grisham’s books). The novel and movie involved a high-profile civil suit: the widow of a man murdered when a fired employee “goes postal” seeks to hold the manufacturer of the gun used by the killer liable for millions in damages. A pair of anti-gun zealots conspire to both rig the jury verdict and ruin the evil jury consultant (Gene Hackman) who helped defeat their home town in a similar case years before. In the end the “good guys” win (that is, Hollywood’s idea of “good”); I have mentioned the film before in the context irresponsible films and TV shows that actively misinform the public about a lawyer’s ethical responsibilities. Now comes a jury verdict from Maryland where a jury delivered a multi-million dollar verdict against Walmart for allowing an employee to buy a shotgun before he used it to blow his head off.

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Pre-Blizzard Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This weekend will be a good time to work on those guest posts you’ve been meaning to write for Ethics Alarms while you’re snowed in. Or, if you don’t live in the storm zone, or are not snow-phobic like everyone in the D.C. area but me, it will still a good time to work on those guest posts you’ve been meaning to write for Ethics Alarms.

I have to go to a funeral of a good friend at Arlington this morning, and don’t know when I’ll return. It’s a bad day for that, as I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, but as Yogi Berra sagely said, “You gotta go to your friends’ funerals. If you don’t go to theirs, they won’t come to yours.”

One more note on the previous post: while drinking my first cup of coffee, I saw the Two Guys on the Couch with a Blonde in the Middle on Fox News talking about one reporter at the Australian Open who was asking the American tennis players, “How does it feel representing the United States right now?’ If the athlete answered with an obviously pre-set, “I am always proud to represent my country,” the guy pressed on with, “I mean, you know, considering everything that’s happening,” fishing for an anti-Trump statement.

The Blonde in the Middle made the right point: it’s too bad one of the tennis pros wasn’t prepared to answer, “Oh, you mean Trump’s first year? Yeah, wasn’t that awesome? He finally got rid of public funding for NPR and PBS, the Education Department is toast, so maybe our kids will be educated instead of indoctrinated, inflation is down, the White House really needed a ballroom, we’re getting illegals off the streets, and even the tariffs are working!”

OK, gotta go. I’m going to visit Mom and Dad while I’m at the cemetery. It’s been a while.

What Virginia Democrats Consider “Moderate”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Virginia was told by the local news media that Democrat Abigail Spanberger was a “moderate Democrat,” and enough suckers believed that spin that she was easily elected Governor over GOP candidate Winsome Sears. On the way to her “moderate” rule, Spanberger refused to condemn the Democratic candidate for Attorney General when text messages came to light in which he appeared to condone violence and murder as legitimate political tools. (He was elected too.)

Spanberger is only moderate in a political world where the middle-of-the-road Democrat cheers the death of Charlie Kirk, wants the Second Amendment repealed, thinks illegal immigrants are the salt of the earth, want men to be able to slaughter women in athletic contests by waking up one morning and deciding they are women, and think “hate speech” should be prohibited by law. Thus it is that the now Democrat-dominated Virginia legislature has filed bills that will likely reach her desk and that…

  • Bans future attempts to clean up voter rolls (HB111)
  • Makes it illegal for state agencies distributing federal dollars to NGOs to investigate whether they’re engaged in fraud (HB1369)
  • Makes it illegal to hand-count ballots (HB968)
  • Allows mail-in ballots to be counted one week after election day (HB773)
  • Allows for absentee ballots to be received and counted for three days after election day (HB82)
  • Eliminates the requirement that large last-minute campaign contributions have to be publicly reported at least 24 hours before election day (HB1348)
  • Removes the State Board of Elections’ ability to dispatch law enforcement officers to collect vote tallies from a locality that refuses to publish them (HB1321)
  • Joins the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for allocating Virginia’s electoral college votes in presidential elections (HB965)
  • Automatic restoration of voting rights for felons after they’re released from prison
  • Allows for votes to be cast “electronically through the internet” (HB493)
  • Creates public funding of political campaigns at the local level (HB162)
  • Abolishes all mandatory minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter, assaulting a law enforcement officer, possession and distribution of child pornography, and all repeat violent felonies (HB863)
  • Makes it harder for judges to deny bail, even in the case of things like aggravated assault, armed robbery, and drug trafficking (HB357)
  • Gives convicted murderers, rapists, and terrorists a chance to get out of prison early (HB853)
  • Drastically reduces the criminal penalty for robbery (HB244)
  • Bars prosecutors from mentioning a criminal’s prior convictions during the guilt phase of a trial, even if it’s for the same crime (HB1070)
  • Transfers the Department of Juvenile Justice from the Secretary of Public Safety’s purview to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (SB21)
  • Reduces the amount of time that the Commonwealth can compel a convicted criminal to pay court fees from 60 years to 10 (SB180)
  • Taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries (HB1245)
  • Bans most discretionary state contracting under $100K from going to businesses owned by White men and allows state agencies to award contracts to women or minority-owned firms that are 5% more expensive than a bid from a business owned by a White man (HB61)
  • Punishes VMI for adopting an anti-DEI stance (HB1374 & HB22)
  • Abolishes all Confederate-themed license plates (HB1344)
  • Eliminates the tax-exempt status for all Confederate history groups (HB167)
  • Renames Columbus Day to “Indigenous Peoples Day.” (HB858)
  • Makes it illegal to approach within 8ft of somebody within 40 feet of an abortion clinic (SB137)
  • Enshrines the Axis narrative about January 6 and teaches it in public schools (HB333)
  • Allows localities to adopt rent control measures (HB1177)
  • Increases the sales tax in Northern Virginia, adds an additional sales tax for home deliveries, raises the car tax for electric vehicles, and imposes new sales taxes for streaming services, concerts, gym memberships, nail salons, barber shops, tanning beds, tattoo parlors, dry cleaners, shoe repairs, carpentry, painting, plumbing, electrical, HVAC.

But wait! There’s more!

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Now THIS Is Trump Derangement…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

A brief note:

Two retired lawyers in the D.C. area who I respect and consider good friends posted a photo of themselves, smiling and standing in the freezing cold at a street corner holding a “No King’s” sign. About 20 more of my friends “liked” or “loved” the post.

What earthly good is such a pointless protest? Are these lives so empty and without purpose that they couldn’t find something more productive and beneficent to do? Like..oh..anything? Make a pot-holder. Memorize “The Highwayman.” Learn chess.

Is this virtue-signaling? Is this insanity? Both of these friends could engage on Ethics Alarms, for example, and learn something. Maybe teach something, make someone smile, make a freind, have their assumptions challenged. A trained chimp or a 6-year-old could hold a “No Kings” sign.

Madness.

Ethics Quote of the Day: “Adams Rib”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I see something in you I’ve never seen before and I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I hate it…Contempt for the law, that’s what you’ve got — it’s a disease, a spreading disease -… You think the law is something that you can get over or get under or get around or just plain flaunt. You start with that and you wind up in the…Well, look at us! The law is the law, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad the thing to do is to change it, not just to bust it wide open! You start with one law, then pretty soon it’s all laws, pretty soon it’s everything.”

—Adam Bonner, assistant district attorney, played by Spencer Tracy in the great Hepburn-Tracy comedy “Adams Rib” (1949). The lines were written by the movie’s screenwriting team, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon

I was re-watching the film this week because I needed a laugh, not because I expected to be yanked kicking and screaming into the into 2026 Anti-I.C.E. madness. But Tracy’s impassioned speech shocked me out of my amusement: When did that rational, pure American, self-evident and irrefutable statement about the society’s crucial fealty to the Rule of Law become controversial?

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Comment of the Day: “Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today became Frightening Mainstream Media Bias Saturday without my intention, so I’m going to shift gears to the other site of the massive Leftist societal and cultural manipulation, our conquered educational system. This Comment of the Day from one of EA’s resident authorities on the topic, will do quite nicely. Incidentally, I am a bit behind in my Comment of the Day posting. I’ll catch up, I promise.

In the meantime, here is Michael R.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Banning Thoughts, Positions and Ideas in Higher Education Is Unethical and Unconstitutional….But Is Cultural and Values Surrender the Only Alternative?”…

***

There is a solution, but it cannot be implemented because of the corruption of the judiciary. The state schools are clearly in violation of numerous discrimination laws and they should be held to account.

Boys are being discriminated in schools. Look at the current performance of boys vs. girls in GPA and test scores below.

Now compare this to the 1975 – 1995 figures here. This is clearly a Title IX violation.

It is claimed that 20% of elementary school teachers are male, but I haven’t seen that and I doubt you have either. The real number is probably closer to 95% female. I am pretty sure this is clear evidence of sex discrimination by the schools and needs to be remedied. The 4 elementary schools my son went to had no, zero, male employees. Not even a janitor was male. This is clearly sex discrimination and should be remedied immediately.

Surveys show that at least 65% of public schoolteachers are Democrats. In the universities, it is MUCH higher. This type of viewpoint discrimination should not be allowed in public schools and the states need to outlaw it. The problem is, if you allow Democrats to be hired and they are allowed to determine hiring, the place becomes all Democrat eventually because Democrats are a cult that puts cult loyalty before merit. The concept of merit is considered evil to them. A solution would be to exempt Republicans from the taxes that support the schools (“Here is my Republican Card. This entitles me to a 60% property tax discount and a 3% sales tax discount”) or state-paid tuition at the private school of their choice. Since the schools are partisan, only that party should be required to support the schools.

The college population has been majority female since 1973 or 1974 (depending on if you define it as 50/50 or percentage of the population. Women are currently 61% of college students. The number in many surveys is below 60%, but it has been above 60% for some time in my experience. This is a massive Title IX violation.

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Again, A Flaming “It Isn’t What It Is” Lie From the Mainstream Media To Deceive the Public…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The late, great Michael Kelly, a brave journalist who was on to the corruption of the Clintons about 20 years before it began to sink in for the less-biased Democrats , would write, even before Linda Tripp blew the whistle on Monica, “Where is the outrage?” It is time, past time, way past time, for the few honest journalists we have now, elected officials and patriotic Americans who are really concerned about the future of democracy, to call out our news media, shame and condemn them, and refuse to be silenced or back down. If Democrats succeed in winning the midterms and foiling the crucial policies of the Trump administration, including the undoing of the illegal Biden era policy of open borders and a commitment to the rule of law, it will be for two primary reasons: a corrupt mainstream media, and Trump Derangement deliberately fueled by that corrupt media.

This took place on CNN: The DOJ is investigating Tim Walz and Jacob Frey for obstructing federal immigration operations, because they are. CNN’s panel, led by the incompetent and openly biased Abby Phillips, was, naturally, hell bent on portraying these just desserts as examples of Republicans being fascists because that’s their assignment from the Axis of Unethical Conduct. All, that is, except for CNN’s house contrarian, Scott Jennings…

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The Clintons’ Head Exploding Letter

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Just when Tim Walz and Minneapolis’s insurrectionist mayor Jacob Frey seemed to have an insuperable lead in the 2026 “Political Assholes of Year” race, around the turn come perennial contenders Bill and Hillary Clinton!

The world’s strangest married couple refused this week to testify in the House’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and its Republican leader, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, quickly said he would take steps to hold them in contempt of Congress. That’s good: they are in contempt of Congress, but the letter is outrageous for other reasons. Being completely shameless, as we all know they are, they refused their civic duty to come testify when their government calls by loading up their missive with Trump Derangement-nip, turning it with every Axis of Unethical Conduct Big Lie and talking point they could think of (yes, the missed a few) while styling themselves as heroic for desperately trying to stop Bill’s metaphorical Jeffrey Epstein chickens from coming home to roost. Naturally the New York Times is trying to cover for Bill, writing,

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

I begin with my favorite John Wayne punch-in-the-mouth clip of all time because I am experiencing increasingly powerful urges to set my Facebook page on fire by directly confronting my Trump Deranged Facebook friends, whose outbursts are getting increasingly hysterical, separated from reality, and depressing.

Do friends let friends make utter fools of themselves in public? Yet I know with near certainty that if I finally do what needs to be done by emulating Cher…

…I will end my days friendless, despised and alone.

But I digress. I am eager to see what my five commenters come up with “in these difficult times”….