Red-Faced & Embarrassed Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/20/25

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I know I keep complaining about this, but I continue to be depressed and shocked at how many people I admire and respect are taking to social media to virtue-signal—as if sounding like an ignorant fool is ever virtuous—about participating in the weekend’s beyond moronic No Kings rallies. The ones who most disappoint me are the lawyers. If you boil down what little of substance there is in the bill of particulars offered by these lobotomized citizens, the residue at the bottom of the pan is “we think law enforcement is cruel.” Really? Gee, my definition of “cruel” is letting poor, desperate, ignorant people over the border in defiance of our laws while giving them the impression that it’s okay and there will never be any negative consequences as long as they keep their heads down, work for pathetic wages at menial jobs and don’t rape anyone (and heck, maybe even if they do.) These people were lied to when Joe Biden and the Democrats said, “Come on over! You’re welcome!” The Democrats really thought that with their weaponizing of the justice system against political opponents and undermining election integrity, there would never again be an administration that didn’t want the country flooded with illegals. They also thought, with some justification, that the gates had been flung open for so long that an illegal immigration crackdown and reckoning would be logistically and politically impossible. As for that miscalculation, I call on Nelson Muntz to say…

Assholes.

I did love the White House comment when asked about the demonstrations. “Who cares?” But I do care. I care that so many of my friends are leaking IQ points out their ears….

Meanwhile…

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Sic Transit Gloria: Lindsay Lohan’s Record For “Worst Excuse Ever” Drops to Third Place

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Back in 2007, when Lindsay was young, hot and seemingly had a long career of Hollywood stardom stretching out before her, I awarded the actress the championship for most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever. She had just been arrested for driving intoxicated and possession of cocaine, which had been found in the pocket of her jeans. Lindsay’s professions of innocence were that 1) she wasn’t driving her own car and 2) “These aren’t my pants!”

But like so many records, this one was short-lived. In 2012, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin police responded to a domestic abuse call to find Mrs. Michael West [Note: NOT the spouse of the Ethics Alarms commenter] bleeding from her face and saying that her husband Michael beat and tried to strangle her. Confronted by the officers, Mr. West (above, next to Lindsay) explained that he was innocent. A ghost did it.

That pushed Lindsay to second place, and those standings held for another 13 years…until this month. Brian and Sara Wilks [above] of Houston, Texas were at Miramar Beach with their four children on October 11when they left their baby alone under a tent for about an hour as they walked up the beach with their more mobile offspring. Officers responded to reports of an unattended infant on the beach, and witnesses told police that the baby had been left alone while the family wandered off. When Brian, 40, and Sara, 37, returned to the scene they found police waiting as some charitable bystanders took care of the infant. Mom and Dad admitted to placing the child under the tent for a nap before leaving with their other children.

Their explanation of how an infant ended up alone on a public beach for more than an hour?

They “lost track of time.”

You know: it can happen to anyone! And up go the Wilkses to the top of the “Worst Excuse Ever” rankings. Sorry Lindsay.

Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Day: Comic/Pundit Jon Stewart

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Fuck You, James Madison!”

—“Clown nose on/clown nose off” Comedy Central comic Jon Stewart, in the course of blaming the Founders for the current Democrat Party shutdown of the Federal government.

Imagine: a large proportion of young Americans look to this fake authority for their news and political analysis. True, they could do even worse: Kimmel or Colbert; MSNBC, NPR, you know, what Capt. Renault in “Casablanca” would call “the usual suspects.” This latest outburst from the smug, intermittently witty know-it-all, failed actor (like Bill Maher), however, may represent his absolute low point, and he has had many previous stinkers.

But with his latest rant, we can see just how useless, ignorant and incompetent Stewart is when he isn’t mugging or being funny. At the end of the latest “The Weekly Show” podcast, Stewart was asked who to blame for the government shutdown. Of course he wouldn’t say “The Democrats, dummy!” though that is the only factual answer. Instead he blamed the Founders. Here’s his “hilarious” answer:

“Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I’m gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it’s very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn’t a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I’m not saying a lot.”

Oh, stop, stop, Jon, my sides are splitting! The funny man went on,

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Inspired By “No Kings,” Sasha Stone Authors the Substack Essay of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

You’re damn right he is. Because you deserve to be mocked….as Sasha Stone devastatingly explains in the sharpest defenestration of the Axis of Unethical Conduct that I have read this year (current company excepted, of course.) 

You can read it all here. I have been burned all three times I subscribed to a substack, but Sasha Stone’s essay on the implications of the “No Kings” tantrum yesterday was so superb that I may subscribe just to reward her, even if she takes a multi-months long posting vacation like Glenn Greenwald did, or go nuts, like Ken White. Not only was her piece virtually exactly what I would write today, I almost thought I did write it.

Stone is a film industry blogger who has lived and worked in the Hollywood progressive bubble. Naturally she was a Democrat, but was red-pilled in 2020, as rational citizens should have been, and increasingly become a critic of her former party and fellow travelers.

These are some highlights from “No Kings: The Lunatics Are Running The Asylum,” but again, read it all…

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The Last Ethics Alarms Word on George Santos, and Let Us Never Speak of Him Again [Clarified]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Frequent commenter JutGory suggested the George Santos commutation as an Ethics Quiz. I don’t think that should be necessary. Yes, Trump pardoned—technically commuted the sentence of— Santos, who was slated to serve 7 years in prison, and the Trump Deranged are freaking out. As usual, they are embarrassing themselves. You may have missed it because my Santos comment was appended late to yesterday’s ‘No Kings’ is Desperate and Stupid post: “This morning one of my once astute Facebook friends, a Harvard grad, was moaning about how Trump pardoning George Santos proves he’s a king. George Santos! The pardon power, which includes commutation, is 100% Presidential, legal and traditional: EVERY President who pardons anyone is acting like a king. (Biden, or his autopen, pardoned his criminal son.) Santos is a petty crook, but he’s not a threat to society, like say, the killers, rapists and drug dealers my friend’s party let into the United States over the previous four years.”

Over to you, Portia:

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Ethics Observations on Another Progressive Academic Meltdown

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

On his usually excellent blog, Prof. Jonathan Turley tells readers about Derek Lopez, a teacher’s assistant and graduate student at Illinois State University. This jerk—-signature significance!—was caught on video attacking a Turning Point USA table on his campus and verbally abusing the conservative students manning it. The 27-year-old Lopez says to the students as he overturns their table, “Well, you know, Jesus did it, so you know I gotta do it, right? Thanks, guys, have a great day!”  Then he tears down a TPUSA flyer on a nearby bulletin board.

He was later arrested. Will he be fired? He should be, but don’t bet on it. He is a part of a dangerous ideological movement in this country that believes that violence and the abuse of political adversaries is justified as the “means necessary” to remake America. He is not an aberration.

Ethics Observations:

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This Is How Websites Get Blacklisted on Ethics Alarms: “Not The Bee’s” #22 Rationalization Orgy

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“Not the Bee” is a conservative commentary site that, in the spirit of The Libs of TikTok, highlights supposedly outrageous news from the political Left. It is already on thin ice with me as a source of ethics stories, in part because its tendency to mix politics with Christian proselytizing is an irritant. Another problem, which the issue at hand illustrates, is that apparently in the proprietors’ jaundiced eyes, the Right can do no wrong.

In this story, much discussed in the Axis media (of course), it was revealed that a disturbing number of leaders in the Young Republican organization are preening, juvenile assholes who think praising Hitler, joking about rape and killing Jews, and making racist slurs is funny or acceptable. These were captured in a leaked series of group chats that, it is fair to day, did not cast the future leadership of the GOP in an encouraging light, nor did it help disabuse progressives of their incessant narrative, highlighted by the previous sort-of President…

…. that Donald Trump, MAGA, conservatives and the Republican Party are aspiring fascists driven by “toxic masculinity.”
I wrote of the revelation in part, “Smoking guns are no less damning whenever they surface. Politico writes, “The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.” I don’t see how anyone can quibble with that.”

So Not the Bee, said, in effect, “Hold my beer!” “The primary point of debate is not whether the comments were morally wrong, but whether or not it should be a national news story,” it intoned. What? It certainly is a national news story, as it casts a harsh and appropriate light on the culture in some of the dark corners of the conservative movement and the mind of its participants as well as its leadership. So did the reaction of NTB, which mirrors the reflex instinct of the Axis, which is that any scandal involving Democrats is a “nothingburger.” You know, like Hunter Biden’s laptop, evidence that Obama helped orchestrate the Russian Collusion hoax, evidence of witnesses called by Liz Cheney et al. to suggest Trump incited the J-6 riot being coached, Fulton County’s DA using her pursuit of Donald Trump to fund a tryst with her adulterous lover, Joe Biden being accused of rape by a Senate staffer, more recently the astounding number of progressives who cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and so on, ad infinitum.

Not The Bees’s device? Why, go right to #22 on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List:

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The A.I. Ethics Problem in News Reporting

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Guest post by Matthew B.

JM Introduction: This excellent post arrived on yesterday’s open forum, and thus was immediately eligible for guest column status. It is especially timely, both because of this story from the legal ethics jungle and this more alarming one:

The top United States Army commander in South Korea revealed to reporters this week that he has been using a chatbot to help with decisions that affect thousands of U.S. soldiers. Major General William “Hank” Taylor told the media in Washington, D.C., that he is using AI to sharpen decision-making, but not on the battlefield. The major general — the fourth-highest officer rank in the U.S. Army — is using the chatbot to assist him in daily work and command of soldiers.

Speaking to reporters at a media roundtable at the annual Association of the United States Army conference, Taylor reportedly said “Chat and I” have become “really close lately.”

Great. What could go wrong? Now here’s Matthew…

***

One of the problems with AI is how often it is confidently wrong. This manifests itself all over the place. One of the most troubling is in the news industry. The news industry under tremendous financial pressure, and the appeal of moving towards AI generated content opens them up to completely BS stories spreading.

There are several great recent examples.

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On the Ridiculous “No Kings” Protest

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Late first post again today, for a very good reason: I’ve been researching and pondering what to write about the sad, pathetic, useless (well, maybe not useless, as I will elaborate on later) “No Kings” protests today. It even took me a long time to settled on the most direct and simplest of the myriad hilarious memes on the topic, as you can see above. (Powerline has a bumper crop in its weekly conservative meme collection, here.)

I was originally going to feature a depressing photo posted on Facebook this morning by two of my favorite people, both retired lawyers, both learned, accomplished and intelligent, and catastrophically Trump Deranged. It shows them smiling in a gathering mob of D.C. “No Kings” protesters, as they hold one of the vague protest signs printed up with George Soros’s money. Sure, I was going to blur out their faces, but I don’t want them to take my criticism (or diagnosis) personally. It’s not their fault that they have lost their frickin’ minds. They live in a bubble, they have always been Democrats, they subscribe to the Washington Post, but they had no way of predicting that their powers of critical thinking could ever be so eroded by hate, bias, and misinformation.

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The Rest of the Story: Update on the Swastika Old Glory Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Several Republican Congressional offices received American flags bearing “obscured” swastika symbols, Rep. Dave Taylor, the hapless boob who is responsible for hiring a Congressional staff that either can’t recognize a Nazi emblem or doesn’t see anything wrong with displaying it, finally explained as he tried to spin how one ended up hanging in his Rayburn Building office by the Capitol.

Taylor, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement yesterday that numerous Republican offices had been targeted by an unidentified group or individual who distributed altered American flags that had a Nazi swastika their center. They were “initially indistinguishable from an ordinary American flag to the naked eye,” he said. “My office was among those that were subjected to this ruse.” And was apparently the only one that didn’t immediately see the swastika and decide, “Holy crap! That’s no American flag! That’s a trap! Burn the thing! Quick!” Do you believe that sinister symbol in the flag above wasn’t visible to the naked eye?

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