U.S. Society

Rep. Wu and the Scourge of Government by Ventriloquist Dummies

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I have a 90% completed post tentatively entitled “Why We Are Doomed” sitting in my drafts file, and I can’t bring myself to finish or post it. I don’t want to believe we are doomed, so the Golden Rule keeps telling me that I shouldn’t be trying to convince others we are doomed. I believe in hope. I believe that cultures, especially this culture, can do the right thing and still be successful, provided that they can find leaders and role models who represent and encourage ethical values.

On the other hand, I really do believe we, that is to say, the United States of America, are probably doomed.

A story unfolding now, a sad saga that has really been unfolding for a long time, illustrates one of the factors I lament over in my languishing draft. Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) has been accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend. We have to be careful here, but there seems to be little doubt that the “encounter” occurred.  The Oregonian has reported that sources aware of the incident say that Congressman Wu, who is 56, “acknowledged a sexual encounter to his senior aides but insisted it was consensual.”

Wu has been a train wreck waiting to happen for a long, long time. Continue reading →

Haboob By Any Other Name

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

"The haboobs are coming! The haboobs are coming!"

The line between national pride and patriotism on one side and small-mindedness and bigotry on the other can be perilously thin. Some Arizonans, however, have stumbled over the line where it is thicker than the annotated Federal tax regs,

The Arizona natives are objecting to local weathermen adopting the Middle Eastern term haboob to describe the small dust storms that have bedeviled Arizona this summer.  Haboob is a wonderful word, considerably more colorful than its Arizona equivalent, which is—-wait for it—“dust storm.” Nonetheless, the newspapers and local talk shows have been been awash recently with complaints like this letter to the editors of the Arizona Republic: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Criminal Defense Lawyer Gerard Marrone

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

If defending the Constitution means you can't look in the mirror, you're in the wrong profession.

Levi Aron was charged this week for abduction and death of Leiby Kletzky, an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy who disappeared while walking home from a Jewish day camp last week. Surveillance video showed the child  asking a stranger, alleged to be Aron, for directions and then getting into his car. A city-wide search for the missing child ended when police found the boy’s body parts, leading to Aron’s arrest.

Now Gerard Marrone, one of the two lawyers defending Aron, has withdrawn from the representation. There is, in theory, nothing wrong with that. A lawyer can withdraw from any representation for good cause, as long as the withdrawal doesn’t harm the defendant. Marrone’s withdrawal, however, was done in such a way that it almost certainly harms the defendant, because the lawyer told the press why he was withdrawing.

“I have three little boys,” he told the Daily News,“You can’t look at your kids and then look at yourself in the mirror, knowing that a little boy, who’s close in age to my eldest son, was murdered so brutally.” Continue reading →

“Here’s Our Chance!” Congressional Black Caucus Member Mel Watt Exploits the Debt Crisis to Gut House Ethics Oversight

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Don't fool yourself...a lot of our leaders would be happy to turn the US "red."

Although Speaker Nancy Pelosi hardly “drained the swamp” regarding corruption in Congress as she extravagantly promised, she did do more to establish genuine, non-partisan oversight of the genuine, non-partisan sleaziness in the House of Representatives. Last year, 20 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep Mel Watt, co-sponsored legislation that would have gutted and neutralized the Pelosi-created Office of Congressional Ethics. Why did the Congressional Black Caucus have it in for the OCE? Well, a disproportionate number of its members were being investigated for ethics problems. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who crafted that bill, suggested that this was because the office was racist. In fact, it was because the Congressional Black Caucus has a disproportional number of wheeler-dealers whose definition of “ethics” is self-serving at best, and the OCE, not being subject to political intimidation like the House Ethics Committee, just followed the money and raised the appropriate questions about members’ activities, Republican or Democrat, black or white.

Fudge’s bill died, never coming to a vote in committee or on the House floor, since the House realized that effectively ending ethics oversight after the disgraceful Rangel affair would not look good to voters. Now, however, ethics isn’t the main focus; cutting spending is. So Congressional Black Caucus member (and one-time target of an OCE investigation) Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) is seeking to add an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill that would cut OCE’s funding by 40 percent. Continue reading →

Tardy and Biased Ethics Half-Hero: National Organization for Women (NOW)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Well, better late, confused, ineffective, biased and hypocritica than never, I guess.

Well, what do you know! The National Organization for Women, after sitting back and tolerating (or perhaps enjoying) comedian Bill Maher’s repeated use of misogynistic language to denigrate women as long as the women—Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin—were anti-abortion and conservatives, finally spoke up and followed their mission when Maher’s show, as it was bound to do, went too far even for NOW.

NOW issued a release condemning Maher and his guests on HBO’s “Real Time” for endorsing rape and sexual abuse, or “angry fucking,” as proper punishment for Bachmann for the crime of not seeing the world as Maher and guests Dan Savage and Marc Maron do. While discussing Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus’s controversial gay Christian therapy clinic, the panel and Maher discussed “Mr. Bachmann’s” sexuality and marriage with Michele.  Marc Maron declared that he hoped Marcus “takes all that rage that comes from repression and denial and brings it into the bedroom. . . I hope he fucks her angrily, because that’s how I would, and I’ve thought about it.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Dear God: Stop Calling”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I haven’t posted many Comments of the Day of late, and that is due to my recent schedule and sloth, not the quality of the comments. Michael’s comment below on my recent post about politicians announcing that they have been “called” to the presidency shook me from my torpor, for it usefully details how not all divine callings are equally objectionable. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“I know many people who feel (or say) they have been called by God to do various things. These generally fall into three categories:

“Category 1. A person who feels that God has called them to do something that will benefit many people (other than themselves). The thing they are called to do requires a lot of training, hard work, and results in very little money or praise. They don’t generally tell people they were called to do this except as a response to the question “Why would someone as talented and smart as you be doing something so thankless and impoverishing?”

“Category 2. A person who feels that God has called them to fill a position of power, authority, or extreme skill. Such people pour themselves into preparing to best fill said position. They only admit that they are doing this in close confidence or when asked why they are going to such extreme measures to prepare themselves.

“Category 3. Someone who loudly announces they are called by God to do something. This something is usually something grand, resulting in money, fame, power, or a combination of the three. They generally tell people they were called in response to the question “Why should you be allowed to do this when you don’t appear to have the qualifications, experience, or work ethic required for such a lofty position?”

“People in two of these categories have much more of my admiration than people in the other.”

Something For the Casey Anthony Lynch Mob to Think About

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

So they cut some corners....

The New York Times reports that John Bradley, a software designer who testified at the Casey Anthony murder trial that Anthony had visited a website regarding the use of chloroform 84 times, now says that he made a mistake, and that in fact Anthony only accessed the site exactly once. The finding of 84 visits was used by prosecutors repeatedly during the trial to suggest that Ms. Anthony had planned to murder her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

The designer realized his mistake after reworking his software.  Bradley told the Times that he immediately alerted a prosecutor, Linda Drane Burdick, and Sgt. Kevin Stenger of the Sheriff’s Office in late June to make them aware of his new findings. Yet the prosecutors never corrected the record or alerted the defense, as they are required to do under the law.

What does this mean? Continue reading →

Dear God: Stop Calling!

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

We now have heard two pretenders for the Republican nomination, Rep. Michele Bachmann and unannounced tease Texas governor Rick Perry,suggest that they have been “called” to run for the White House. In other words, God told them to do it. Apart from the fact that this posits the existence of a rather disloyal and mischievous deity who enjoys starting fights among the faithful for the fun of it, a politician claiming to be endorsed by the Almighty is unsettling in many ways—so unsettling, in fact, that I  think the statement alone is grounds for disqualification for high office, since it strongly argues for a diagnosis of deranged.

Besides that, it is also unethical:

  • If not an indication of insanity, it shows dishonesty, and a frightening willingness to manipulate the gullible and trusting.
  • It is immodest and disrespectful to competitors, like baseball players saluting God after a home run, as if He decided to give a boost to his favorite player on his favorite team. (I have sometimes wondered why  players don’t make the same “Thanks, God!” gesture when a player on the opposing team gets injured on the field.) It takes a trivial and self-centered view of God to presume that the all-powerful creator of the universe has nothing better to do than to mess with the run spread in a baseball game, and only a slightly less trivial and self-centered attitude to believe that He is handicapping the GOP presidential field, and finds the other choices so flawed and sinful that He has to play kingmaker— just like with David in the old days. Continue reading →

Shocking Report: “Zero Tolerance” Policies Are Stupid and Destructive. Who Knew?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If you wanted proof of the utter stupidity and recklessness of no-tolerance policies in the schools, your search is over.

A study of the effects of  ‘Zero Tolerance’ programs in Texas public schools by the Council of State Government’s Justice Center reveals that:

  • Six out of ten Texas high school students have been suspended for expelled or suspended from class at least once over the past six years.
  •  15 % of students were removed from the classroom eleven or more times for disciplinary reasons.
  •  83% of African-American students in Texas have been expelled at least once by the time they graduate
  •  African American students and those with educational disabilities experience a disproportionately higher rate of removal from the classroom for disciplinary reasons. Continue reading →

James O’Keefe—Still Faking, Still Recording, Still Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This is all your fault, Allen Funt!

The latest James O’Keefe Candid Camera stunt is supposed to show corruption in the Medicaid system. As in his earlier video hit-jobs on ACORN and NPR, O’Keefe’s colorful crew of community theater rejects pose as outrageous and unsavory stereotypes—this time, drug-smuggling Russians with the worst accents since “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” who are pimping out their “sisters” for sex. The O’Keefe Players manage to find a jolly, badly-trained, none-too-swift Ohio Medicaid worker who giggles away their confessions of wanting to defraud Medicaid and dealing illegal drugs. The video of the dumb encounter—dumb charade, dumber government employee—has been posted on YouTube. More of the same, presumably, is on the way.

If you’re as bored with this as I am, please tell O’Keefe to stop. Of course his act is as unethical as his “Russians'” accents are embarrassing: Continue reading →