U.S. Society

Conservative Stories, Liberal Stories: Isn’t a Drunk Senator Just Plain News?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A Youtube video shows Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) giving a rambling rant of a speech from the Senate floor, waving his arms and slurring his speech like Uncle Billy in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as he condemns Republicans for being overly partisan in the run-up to the health care bill vote. Was he drunk? It sure looks like it to me, based on some considerable experience with such things, but no, the real reason he looks drunk to me must be my right-wing political bias, because only conservative blogs and media seem to see anything intoxicated about the good senator’s speech at all.

This isn’t just silly; it is harmful. Continue reading →

The Wrong Lesson from Tiger’s Fall

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

So that’s the lesson, is it?

As the year end lists almost unanimously “award” Tiger Woods the distinction of engineering the Scandal of the Year, pundits also seem to be nearing consensus on the lesson we should take from the golfer’s fall, which is: “Don’t make athletes and celebrities your role models or heroes. They are human beings like everyone else, and are guaranteed to disappoint you.”

Oh, I see…it’s all our fault. Continue reading →

Illinois: A Clash of Law, Ethics, Christmas and Festivus

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Any one with lingering doubts about whether law is capable of navigating the nuances of ethics should ponder the Christmas display at the Illinois State Capital, where an effort to avoid state support of religion has resulted in an offensive mockery of it that is inappropriate for any season.

The collision of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause (and the Supreme Court’s  broad interpretation of it) with the cultural, traditional. historical, artistic and commercial aspects of Christmas have created an annual fiasco that looks silly, irritates everyone, and accomplishes nothing constructive. It would be better to have no Christmas display at all, and that fact proves the limitation of law, and the subordination of ethics. Continue reading →

Well, It’s Better Than Senator Burris’s Version…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

[An Ethics Alarms reflection on the Christmas Eve Senate vote passing that esteemed body’s version of health care reform…in the tradition of “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” because 1) you haven’t read enough parodies of that poem this year, 2) it seemed appropriate, but mostly 3) the version Sen. Burris read on the Senate floor was so terrible that I had to get its taste out of my mouth.]

Continue reading →

Punishing Pregnant Soldiers

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The outrage expressed by women’s groups over the Army’s announced intention to discipline and even court-martial female soldiers who become pregnant in war zones was as predictable as a sunrise. It also carries political firepower, and public appeal.

The complaints are, however, ethically nonsensical. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms and the Brooklyn EMTs

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The astounding indifference to both human life and their duties displayed by the EMTs in yesterday’s incident in Brooklyn relates directly to the title of this blog. Why…why…didn’t their ethics alarms go off when they knew that a young, pregnant woman was fighting for her life a few yards away? What could have dulled their senses of duty and humanity, disabled them, to this extent? Continue reading →

A Mother Dies as EMTs Munch Bagels: Why?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In Brooklyn, New York, a pregnant woman went into cardiac arrest in front of  two EMT’s having breakfast at a coffee shop. They did nothing to help her, despite entreaties from others at the shop, reportedly because they were “on break.” And she died.

You can bank on hearing a lot more about the horrific incident in the coming days and weeks. Normally an obvious example of miserable human conduct wouldn’t be mentioned here, because there is no ethical controversy to consider. This one, however, raises important questions that have to be answered:

  • What kind of cultural values are lurking beneath the surface of our society that would lead two individuals to be so callous to endangered human life when they had the skill and responsibility to act? One person could be an aberration, but two suggests a much larger problem.
  • How can people capable of such conduct be recruited and employed by any Fire Department, anywhere?
  • It will be easy to heap condemnation on the two EMT’s who preferred to finish their bagels rather than to save a mother’s life. That won’t address the more important question of what we can and must do, not just to prevent anything like this happening again, but to identify and eradicate the toxic values in our society that could allow this to happen even once.

One thing seems certain: New York’s famous Christmas spirit isn’t what it used to be.

The Legal Ethics Forum’s Top Stories of 2009

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

It is the time for year-end lists—Ethics Alarms will post its 2009 ethics award winners  soon—and one of the best is out. From the always excellent Legal Ethics Forum comes legal ethics ace John Steele’s list of the Top Legal Ethics Stories of 2009. Even though John left out my personal favorite, it is a thorough and enlightening compendium. Even if you aren’t a lawyer (perhaps especially if you aren’t!), it is worth reading. Something on his list will affect your life sooner or later, if it hasn’t already.

Why the SEALS Must Stand Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It is one of those stories where Americans have to get stop thinking with their guts and use their brains instead. Guts can be useful, but not this time.

Three Navy SEALs who captured a highly sought terrorist in Iraq are facing court martials because of allegations that they abused him—speaking of guts, they supposedly punched him in his. It is unfortunate that the SEALS are being prosecuted rather than decorated, and it makes the Navy look unappreciative of their own men. The terrorist, Ahmed Hashim Abed, is believed to be behind the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. Yes, capturing him was a good thing. Continue reading →

When Experts Aren’t: The Ethics of Competence and “The Elements of Style”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Ethics Alarms, and apparently few others who don’t have their TV stuck permanently on Fox News, expressed its outrage of at the revealed ignorance of Al Gore, whose opinion on climate change policy carries weight and influence far beyond his demonstrated ability to comprehend the natural forces underlying his own opinion. (This week Al came up with another howler, stating that the polar ice caps would be gone in a couple of years. The scientist he erroneously quoted regarding this quickly announced that Al must have been talking about some other ice caps.) Experts who are really incompetent cause great harm, which is why competence is a critical, though often ignored, ethical duty for all professionals, from Albero Gonzalez to Bernie Madoff to Ashley Simpson to White House social secretaries.

This excellent article, a long time coming, finally exposes the incompetence of William Strunk and E.B.White, whose 1918 mini-book  “The Elements of Style” was uncritically adopted as gospel by generations of English teachers, many of whom were incompetent themselves. This over-reaching duo was to blame for all the perfectly appropriate split infinitives and passive voice sentences that you were marked down for using in the 9th Grade, and I have a book editor I’m sending this link to as soon as I finish this post who has been quoting  Strunk and White to get me to stop beginning sentences with “And” or “But.”  How many promising, lively young writers were throttled into mediocrity by this book we will never know, but it stands as vivid and tragic lesson on why experts have an obligation to be at least nearly as smart as they claim to be.