U.S. Society

“Trump Is Having an Unethical Week” Sunday Continues With This Foolishness…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Wait, what? If this is accurate, and I hope it’s not, someone has gone loco at the State Department. Reports say that the State Department, presumably with the assent or at the behest of President Trump, has sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine.  This freezes any assets Albanese has in the US and restricts her travel to the U.S.

As justification for the sanctions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty.”

Albanese is an affiliate scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University and teaches a course on “humanitarian, legal and political responses to the Palestinian forced displacement” as a non-resident professor at a number of foreign universities. Albanese worked for  two years at the UN Development Programme in Morocco as well as four years in Geneva as a human rights officer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Outside of the UN, she provides research and legal assistance on migration and asylum seekers for the think tank called “Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development,” and co-founded the Global Network on the Question of Palestine, a group of experts and scholars engaged in the issue of Israel and Palestine.

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Ugh. Is This The Most Unpresidential, Unethical and Stupid Trump Outburst Ever?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Is it the most unpresidential and stupid outburst by any President ever?

There is no excuse for this. I guarantee the Trump Deranged on my Facebook feed will be wetting themselves over this. It’s proof that Trump is senile! It shows that he’s insane! It proves he’s Hitler! No, it only proves once again that Trump has a flat learning curve and no self-restraint, that he’s his own worst enemy, that he’s petty and foolish and can’t resist demonstrating just how petty and foolish when it suits his mood.

The nation doesn’t have time for his silly feuds. He doesn’t have political capital to throw away like this, either. That post isn’t just punching down, it’s punching WAY down: Rosie O’Donnell is nobody, a has-been, washed up, irrelevant. And she’s in Ireland! Trump gives her the publicity she craves by pretending that she’s significant: surely he understands the Streisand Effect by now.

Trump can’t take away anyone’s citizenship on a whim; he sounds like an idiot when he announces fantasies like this. Ann Althouse writes, “If it’s a joke, he shouldn’t be making that joke. He has too much power. If it’s not a joke, it’s terrible. I know he’s much more confident — to the point of overreaching as political theater — the second time around and after his 4 years in the wilderness, but he needs to channel himself toward true greatness, not get entangled in this kind of smallness.”

Yeah, that too.

On the Supreme Court, Conflicts, and Cashing In

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Embarrassing and hyper-partisan as it was, Senator Whitehouse’s rant on the Senate floor last week was not entirely without its valid points. He is right that the U.S. Supreme Court has been having too many ethics breakdowns (the leaking of Justice Alito’s draft of the Dobbs opinion was one of them) and as I noted in the EA piece, (AGAIN) there is no defending Clarence Thomas. He is not, however, the only Justice with some ‘splainin’ to do, as Ricky so often said to Lucy.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson published a memoir shortly after being placed on the Supreme Court as a DEI coup, though she hadn’t really done anything to justify such an ego trip. “Lovely One” is now going for half-price on Amazon, but Jackson received a $893,750 advance for the book reported $2 million in profits last year. Since there is no indication that the memoir is flying off the shelves, the numbers are puzzling. Penguin Random House will soon be publishing Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book and it paid her a $2 million advance. Why? The majority of the country can’t name a single Supreme Court justice, but the ones who are willing to cash in are receiving celebrity level book advances. [Full disclosure: the book I co-authored with Ed Larson was also published by Random House, in 2007. We received approximately $6.78 each as our advance…okay, a bit more than that.]

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The ABA Doubles Down On An Unethical SCOTUS Ruling

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Begining with Batson v. Kentucky, 476 US. 79 (1986), trial lawyers in both criminal and civil cases have been officially forbidden from exercising peremptory challenges to potential jurors based on the prospective juror’s race or gender on the theory that this violates prospective jurors’ equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. It was a utopian ruling and grandstanding by the Supreme Court in deliberate defiance of the Sixth Amendment right of citizens to a fair trial as well as contradictory to the legal profession’s duty of zealous representation.

The majority in Batson fantasized that in many cases racial or gender bias, positive or negative, is will be likely based on the jurors’ characteristics alone. There is a scene in “Airplane! II” where a man on trial for abusing his ex-wive, and all of the jurors are women nursing babies. The film came out a few years before Batson. Courts have permitted lawyers to strike jurors based on a prospective juror’s age, marital status, disability, or socioeconomic status, but especially since the infection of critical race theory and the destruction of race relations initiated by Barack Obama, the fact that an attorney can’t decide in a particular case that he wants as few blacks/whites/ women men as possible without risking a verdict being overturned or being subjected to a disciplinary complaint is one more way progressives have managed to distort the rule of law.

So, naturally, the American Bar Association, having now become a full member of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, has decided to bolster the Batson decision, which really needs to be ove-turned, For this it relies on its controversial and arguably unconstitutional Model Rule 8.4 (g) (which Ethics Alarms has been discussing for years), which reads,

“It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law. This paragraph does not limit the ability of a lawyer to accept decline or withdraw from a representation in accordance with Rule 1.16. This paragraph does not preclude legitimate advice or advocacy consistent with these Rules.”

It’s a really bad rule, vague and insidious, which is why only a minority of states have adopted it and why some courts struck it down when their state bars tried. How can any lawyer, or anybody at all, “know” what kind of conduct is going to be found discriminatory today, when, for example, criticizing an incompetent Presidential candidate for sounding like a vaudevillian’s doubletalk routine is likely to be called “racist”? (I’m sorry to keep picking on poor Kamala, but I didn’t nominate her…). But the ABA is now more devoted to the woke overhaul of society than it is law or ethics—see this recent post–so ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 517 was inevitable. The only mystery is what took the ABA so long.

Here’s the gist of it:

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Addendum to “The Supreme Court Rules That The President Is In Charge of the Executive Branch, Just Like the Constitution Always Said.”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

When I wrote the last post, I could not find a link to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sole written dissent in the 8-1 SCOTUS decision today to, you know, let the President of the United States run the Executive Branch, which the Constitution says he controls. Well, I finally did find one here, and the dissent is exactly what you would expect if you’ve read her recent hysterical, legally incompetent rants because her party isn’t getting away with its various efforts to cripple the Trump Administration. She is distinctly echoing the primal scream of frustration that the Axis is emitting because its dreams of a Woke paradise are evaporating by the hour.

She wrote in part, “In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground. This case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened. Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”

This is a policy complaint, not a legal one. Remarkably, even the pathetic Justice Sotomayor went along with the majority. The fact that Presidents have sought authority to do what the Constitution makes clear that they already have the power to do does not amend the Constitution. The Court lifted the say because it believed it likely that the President’s reorganization of his own Branch would be found lawful. It’s a good bet, given that the Constitution backs him up and there is no progressive majority on the Court more concerned with blocking Republican policies than following the law.

The coalition of unions and activists that sued to block the cuts said in a statement, “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.”

Are you sick of this narrative yet? It’s a grave thret to democracy to allow the elected President of the United Sates do what he said he would do if elected. More…

“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution.”

But it is. Nothing in the document requires Congressional approval for Presidential control of his own Branch. The Founders do not mention “federal workers” at all, and envisioned a government that would not have departments and agencies multiplying like rabbits. Jackson’s tell is the use of her term “wrecking ball.” That’s a political bias without relevance to the law or the Constitution. She is the one advocating an abuse of power, not the majority.

Ethics Observations on President Trump’s White House Cabinet Meeting/Press Conference

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

1. Well, Biden didn’t have Cabinet meetings at all for the most part, so I hate to complain. But a public Cabinet meeting is not a real Cabinet meeting. True, Trump proved in the epic confrontation with Zelenskyy that the presence of cameras won’t always inhibit him, but still: a true Cabinet meeting must be private and permit candid and open discussion from all involved.

2. This leads to the second problem: because it is a PR exercise and not a real Cabinet meeting, everyone except Trump comes off as scripted. Worse, they all come off as yes-people and sycophants. However, in front of cameras, Trump’s appointees can’t exactly start arguing with each other or the President. That should be obvious, but I’ve already had one Trump-Deranged colleague get on the phone to say, “See? It’s just like Stalin!” That’s the narrative, and all of the obsequious “Yes, under your leadership, Mr. President, the improvement in this area has been remarkable and America is truly great again!” boot-licking supports it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Trump should hire me to train his team to be more convincing and less obsequious.

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President Trump: The Kennedy Center, NPR, PBS…Now Fix The Smithsonian, Please

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I knew there was a reason I hadn’t been to the Smithsonian Institution for so long. Like so many other crucial institutions the apathy of sane and patriotic American allowed to become leftist propaganda weapons over the last 50 years or so, the Smithsonian, along with most of the major museums across the country, “stress on narratives over artifacts.” That’s a quote from Jonathan Turley in his annoying understated mode.

White House official Lindsey Halligan condemned the new National Museum of American History’s Entertainment Nation exhibit, writing, “American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives. The Smithsonian Institution should present history in a way that is accurate, balanced, and consistent with the values that make the United States of America exceptional.”

Gee, ya think?

That Star Wars exhibit above would have prompted me to walk out of the building. Turley comments, “I was one of those who went to the movie when it came out, and I cannot recall anyone thinking, let alone connecting, the film to Nixon or Vietnam.” Nor can I, because nobody thought that, even the most politics-obsessed. Even film reviewers, always mostly left-leaning and desperate to find hidden messages in the most apolitical films, didn’t think Jabba the Hut was meant to suggest Spiro Agnew, or something.

We’ve known this about the Smithsonian for a long time, of course, but just shrugged it off because so many other example of insidious political corruption are worse. The Institution tried to slap a war crimes narrative on the Enola Gay. It left Clarence Thomas out of the National Museum of African-American History because being conservative means that he doesn’t count.

Among the flagrant propagandizing noted by Turley:

  • The commentary tied to a 1923 circus poster, reads: “Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.” Ah. So those clowns were supposed to be scary…
  • The Smithsonian declares “One of the earliest defining traits of entertainment in the United States was extraordinary violence.” You know, because United States BAD. One of the earliest traits of HUMAN entertainment for thousands of years was “extraordinary violence”! That one would have also had me running for the exits. Gladiators? Bull-baiting? Public executions? Grimm’s Fairy Tales???
  • The Lone Ranger display states: “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger.”

Oh for God’s sake…

Fix this, Mr. President. Fire the administrators and curators, all of them. Start from scratch.

“Can The Princess Treatment Go Too Far?” Answer: No, If Your Ethics Alarms Function…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I heard the term “The Princess Treatment” for the first time last week, then right on cue the New York Times produced a feature called, “Can the ‘Princess Treatment’ Go Too Far? A popular video has prompted discussions about how to treat your significant other, what qualifies as “the bare minimum” and how this all relates to traditional gender roles.” It begins in part,

A husband opening the car door for his wife. A boyfriend surprising his girlfriend with flowers. Remembering her birthday. Tying her shoes. Paying for her nail appointment. Are these normal expectations or examples of the “princess treatment”? A recent slew of popular videos on social media have debated the concept, and what it means for women in relationships…Last week, Courtney Palmer, 37, reignited that discussion with a video that has garnered more than three million views. In it, she describes how princess treatment informs her relationship, including how she will sometimes defer to her husband. “If I am at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors and I do not order my own food,” she says in the opening of the nearly six-minute video, which has prompted a wide-ranging discussion about gender roles, restaurant etiquette and relationship expectations…

You can read it all: it’s a stupid debate. Not only with “significant others” but with all women (and, for that matter all men), how I treat them in private and social situations is based on 1) how I would like to be treated, Golden Rule 101, 2) how I have been told or discerned that they would like to be treated, and 3) what I have concluded is basic manners, and ethical societal norms that I believe should be cultivated. Why is this hard? Continue reading →

Revisiting “I Don’t Understand This ‘Niggardly Principle’ Story At All…Or Maybe I Do and Am Just Afraid To Accept the Truth”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The Rest of the Story: I’m reposting this essay from almost exactly a year ago because the Free Press has a disturbing update on Holden Hughes (“He Was Falsely Accused of ‘Blackface.’ It Derailed His Life.”), one of the boys whose 2017 selfie was used by an unidentified woke ethics villain to have the children tarred as racists during the George Floyd Freakout in 2020. That ethics villain was an ideological compatriot of my friends who are raving about MAGA and Trump today. That is their “side.”

He’s an adult now, but Holden’s life plans were seriously derailed when the private school he was attending expelled him, not because he really was wearing “blackface” in that photo (he and his friends were smeared with green anti-acne facial masks) but because the woke head of the school believed that appearances mattered more than reality. Last year, a successful law suit by his family against the school ended in a one million dollar verdict for him and another one of the boys. That was just money, however, the damage remained

Everyone should reflect on this cautionary tale (which the mainstream media scrupulously avoided reporting on, and you know why) when the Trump Deranged claim that progressives defend democratic values and deplore ideological bullying. The piece ends,

Last year, shortly after the lawsuit was settled, he started dating a girl he liked. On their second date, he told her about his past and after that, he said, she stopped responding to his texts. He told me that it’s hard to accept that “something completely out of my control kind of inhibits that relationship from going farther.” But he can’t change the past.

“It’s my life, and there’s no avoiding that. It made me who I am today.”

Throughout the entire ordeal of the last five years, Holden told me he would remind himself: “I know who I am. I know my values. I know the real story.” He knows the other story—the one that isn’t true—will continue to haunt him. “I don’t think it’s ever gonna leave me,” he said. But he wanted to speak to me because he believed that putting his story in print, knowing it would be on the internet forever, would be cathartic. For him, it is a chance to finally set the record straight, after trying to hide the lies for so long.

“I am not ashamed of anything that happened,” Holden said. “I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I make them every single day, but doing an acne face mask in eighth grade was not one of them.”

Here is the post, from May 11, 2024:

Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-old California teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well. 

A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.

I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.

Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”

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