Mother’s Day Morning Ethics Bouquet, 5/11/2025

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day to all those who should be so greeted on May 11. I’m never quite sure, myself. Thinking about the four mothers in my immediate family, three of whom are gone now (and one is bitter about how her children turned out), makes me sad. Mother Grace was cynical about the celebration, in part because she always said that she was a lousy mother (she wasn’t), in part because she missed her own mother (who died in our home after we converted it into a hospice for her), and in part because “it’s a fake holiday invented by the greeting card industry.” Is it? If I were Ann Althouse, who appears to be going nuts again (she’s been obsessed with having conversations with Grok lately, the Twitter/X AI bot), I would muse about why it’s “Mother’s Day” and not “Mothers Day” or even “Mothers’ Day”. Mother Eleanor, my mother, regarded Mother’s Day as an opportunity to be appreciated when she tended to feel unappreciated (middle child hangover, I have decided). Dad always made a big deal out of the day—he cared so deeply about her—and would remind my sister and me about it weeks in advance.

Meanwhile…

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“The Ethicist” and Ethics Alarms Agree For Once. The Topic: Registered Sex Offenders

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A none-too-bright inquirer and perhaps an officious busy-body who wants to ruin people’s lives writes “The Ethicist” (Prof. Appiah to his friends and students at NYU)…

“I recently reneged on an offer to buy a house because I discovered that a registered sex offender lived across the street….Now that I know about it, should I keep it a secret…? ….I feel uncomfortable telling my friends the truth about why I dropped out of the contract that I had entered for this house, because I feel I have discovered private information that I should keep secret. In the end, I think I would rather not have made this discovery in the first place.”

That last sentence is what strongly suggests that the writer is an idiot. It’s a childish sentiment: in “War Games,” the teen who discovers that a rogue computer program is about to start W.W. III says that he wishes he didn’t know, and that he would just be suddenly fried in the coming nuclear Armageddon. But because he does know, the kid is able to stop the disaster. More knowledge, even knowledge that creates dilemmas and conflicts that must be dealt with, is preferable to ignorance and misapprehension.

The writer’s reaction to learning that the individual (whom he has never met and knows nothing else about) is to be feared and shunned is also an ominous sign. It has been 14 years since Ethics Alarms delved into the problem of registered sex offenders. My coverage of the topic reached its climax with a guest post, from a friend, who authored, “’I Am One of Those Untouchables’ : The Unethical Persecution of Former Sex Offenders.” My introduction read, “No ethical person can read this and conclude that such treatment by society is fair, responsible, compassionate or American. It is the ethical duty of every citizen who believes in our society’s commitment to the freedoms guaranteed by the Declaration and the Constitution to oppose efforts to persecute former sex offenders, because our elected officials will not oppose them. It is, in the end, a matter of choosing national integrity over bigotry and fear.”

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Short Version of Ethics Verdict on Pentagon’s Elimination of Race, Gender and Ethicity As Legitimate Considerations For Admission to the Service Academies: “Good!”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The Washington Post’s snotty headline is “Hegseth escalates targeting of race, gender in military’s academic settings.” That’s because he’s a racist and sexist, see, like all of the Trump allies, appointees, voters and supporters.

Oh, dear. “[T]he nation’s prestigious military academies” have been ordered “to end consideration of race, gender and ethnicity in their admissions processes” and ‘begin a purge….of educational materials focused on those “divisive concepts,” gasps the Post, as if this isn’t a completely practical and fair policy. The military’s job is to protect the nation and, when necessary, to fight and fight effectively. Race, gender and ethnicity are completely irrelevant to the capability of performing those tasks, so it should be beyond debate that such considerations have no place in the determination of who should gain admission to the military academies.

There is a much stronger case to be made that “diversity” is deleterious to military morale, cohesiveness and performance, but okay, discrimination is contrary to the culture and national values, so we won’t say that women categorically don’t belong in male battle units. But they better be as capable as any of the men.

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Joe Biden Takes the Lead In The Ethics Alarms “2025 Asshole of the Year” Competition

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Ethics Alarms assessment of Joe Biden as the Worst U.S. President Ever looks better and better as more information regarding his disastrous Presidency comes out (after either his corrupt government tried to hide it or the corrupt news media refused to report it).

For example, remember that idiotic pier Biden ordered to be built in Gaza? You know, the plan to send “humanitarian aid” to the people in the region that the U.S. was handing over dollars and weapons to help Israel devastate so it would get rid of its Jew-hating terrorists? The brilliant maneuver that was akin to the U.S. sending humanitarian aide to Berlin during World War II if FDR had been insane or Sherman handing out CARE packages to Atlanta residents during his army’s “March to the Sea”? That stunt? As stupid, wasteful and cynical as it seemed at the time, the reality was even worse. One American soldier assigned to the job, Sgt. Quandarius Stanley, was injured in the process of Biden’s virtue signaling (to his anti-Semitic base) and died five months later for the injuries: that was reported. Now it has been reported that 62 more soldiers were injured during the construction of a floating pier that cost U.S. Taxpayers $230 million to build, that was operational for barely twenty days, that damaged millions of dollars worth of equipment, that was supposed to help the murderous enemy of a U.S. ally that we were supporting while it tried to defeat that enemy, and that literally accomplished nothing.

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Twin Ethics…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

When I read this story in the New York Times, I checked to see what I had posted in the past regarding twin ethics and was shocked that I could find only two essays on the topic. After all, twins deliberately impersonating each other for their own benefit has been a theme from ancient Greek comedies and Shakespeare right through to “The Jackson Twins” comic strip, “The Parent Trap,” and “The Patty Duke Show.”

There was a “Columbo” episode where twins used their ability to impersonate each other to pull off the “perfect murder,” which naturally Columbo solved anyway. But just because twins switching identities can be clever, funny, effective, or cute doesn’t make it ethical.

The first of my twin ethics posts involved a twins who impersonated his brother to win $50,000 in a contest. The other one came from Brazil, where twin brothers had used their resemblance to impersonate each other and date as many women as possible, and then defend themselves from allegations they were cheating on girlfriends. These twins were ducking child support one of them owed by refusing to say which one of them had fathered a child (DNA tests proving inconclusive because they their were identical twins)  assuming they would escape having to pay. It didn’t work: a judge ordered that they both had to pay child support and that the names of both men ended up on the girl’s birth certificate.

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So….the Cardinals Couldn’t Find a Pope Who WASN’T Part of the Predator Priest Scandal? [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Good to know, don’t you think?

I’m stunned that Robert Prevost, who just became became the American pontiff, had been accused by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) of failing to act upon allegations of abuse in the U.S. and Peru. The group says that Prevost ignored allegations of sexual abuse by predator priests in Chicago after Augustinian priest Father James Ray was allowed to live at the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park despite being removed from ministering to the public over credible evidence that he had sexually abusing children. SNAP says Provost didn’t notify the heads of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic school, an elementary school half a block from the friary on the grounds that Ray was being “closely monitored.”

You know, like the Church closely monitored all of its priests to make sure they weren’t molesting altar boys.

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Open Forum (With a Pope Note…)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Funny, after watching “Conclave,” I found myself wondering when the Roman Catholic Church would select an American pope, not that I really cared. The New York Times saw yesterday’s surprising decision as justification for more Trump-bashing and an appeal to authority (a logical fallacy) that the Times’ acolytes—Democrats—overwhelmingly don’t acknowledge as an authority. Thus we got “The Pope Appears Uneasy With Trump Immigration Policies: Before Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became pope, a social media account under his name shared criticisms of the Trump administration’s positions on immigration. “I…Don’t…Care,” and no one should care even if the social media posts in question came from the guy, which is unlikely. Sharing any opinions or positions without one’s own commentary is lazy, ambiguous social media conduct. But apart from that, becoming Pope creates a hard, black border around whatever the individual elected may have thought, said or done before becoming Pope, making all of that “non-operative,” as the used to say in the Nixon Administration. Furthermore, if this Pope tries to interfere with U.S. law, policy and values like the last one did, the proper response of Americans ought to be the same as I expressed here. The short version: “Mind your own business.”

I was amused yesterday when three waggish baseball pundits were discussing which Chicago baseball team Pope Leo followed, as he hails from the Windy City. The White Sox, one of them claimed. “No, his team is the Cubs!” another insisted. “I’m pretty certain he roots for the Angels,” said the third, ending the debate.

They forgot about the Padres!

Enough from me: This is your post…get opining.

Yes, Actors Who Refuse to Perform With Trump In The Audience Should Be Blacklisted

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Grennell is absolutely, 100% correct. For actors to withhold their talents and services from an entire audience because they may have ideological differences with a member of that audience (or many) is unforgivably unprofessional and a breach of ethics deserving punishment, condemantion and shunning.

Howard Sherman, an author and critic whose existence I had been blissfully unaware of before this day, issued an insufferable essay on Facebook that naturally my many show biz friends, Trump Deranged all, rushed to share and applaud. The post is as nauseating as it is overlong and unethical: I read it so you don’t have to, but here are some lowlights to “How the Blacklisting Starts.”

See, he’s saying that an industry deciding that members who are unethical and refuse to do their jobs is the same as an industry putting members on a blacklist for their political beliefs, as Hollywood did to Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and asd Hollywood does now to conservatives (like, say, James Woods). That’s bonkers, and exactly backwards. It is the misguided artists linking their art to political views who are emulating those blacklisters of yore. I’ll pick out some of the more pernicious misrepresentations in Sherman’s post… Continue reading →

Today’s Unethical Political Cartoon Posted By A Trump Deranged Facebook Friend…

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Come on. Really?

There is no excuse for drawing this, paying someone to do it, publishing it, or treating the opinion it represents with anything but contempt. It is the epitome of the simple-minded, reductive, dishonesty that typifies the political cartooning genre, which deserved to die decades ago, as I’ve stated here for years. As for the once thoughtful, fair, analytical friend who posted it to get cheers from his fellow Trump Deranged, his loved ones have reason to worry.

So do those of another FBF, a retired lawyer of note, who posted today a question: “Can anyone recall Trump ever saying anything that was true?” In a sane world, I would have rocketed back, “Sure: ‘Journalists are the enemies of the people.'” Now I just shake my head in the privacy of my office.

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Bleeding Heart Test: Who Feels Sorry For These “Good Illegal Immigrants”? (I Don’t.)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The New York Post has a tale that is guaranteed to make “Think of the Children!” fans and “They just want a better life!” defenders of illegal immigration swim in a lake of tears like shrunken Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was a Dalton State Community College ( in Dalton, Georgia) student driving without a driver’s license when she failed to obey to a “no turn on red” sign. After police pulled her vehicle over, she claimed to have an “international driver’s license” (Nice try, kid!). One thing led to another, and eventually it was determined that she was not a citizen, having been brought here illegally by her Mexican parents when she was four, that they were here illegally too and had been for 15 years.

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