Oh So NOW the Axis Cares About Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

One of the most important and brave missions of the second Trump administration is its determination to root out the “Deep State,” or to be less portentious about it, to eliminate as many entrenched lifetime partisans, almost all progressive, Democrat and left-leaning, as possible.

What we witnessed in Trump’s first term was a literal sabotaging of democracy and the Constitution by furious partisan hacks and activists who were just certain that they knew what was best for the country, and if they had to accomplish it by cheating, manufacturing fake scandals and obstructing the President by any means necessary, so be it. Having succeed, as demonstrated by the dubious election of 2020, these nascent totalitarians were further emboldened. Next we got the passionate, Soviet-style effort to lock Trump up before he could be re-elected, the excessive political prosecutions of the J-6 idiots, the further weaponizing of the Justice Department to intimidate dissenters (as in threatening parents who dared to challenge woke school boards), and the Puppet Presidency. Who knows what would have been in store if the Left’s babbling, DEI, empty pants suit Presidential candidate with her anti-free speech knucklehead running mate had squeaked into the White House? Perish the thought.

Continue reading →

Smug, Self-Satisfied Progressive Asshole of the Year: David Litt

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

The obnoxious screed “Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?,” authored by an obscure writer I never heard of (three of his better-known mentors are above) and hope I never hear of again, was deemed appropriate content for New York Times readers, and not as satire either.

Litt epitomizes the type of insufferable elitist jerks that have made the modern Left the pit of despond that it has become over the last decade or so. Yuck. Was this guy ever a tolerable human being? The Times should be required to publish a full analysis of how Litt got this way as a public service, kind of like that episode of “I Love Lucy” where her book draft was sought by a publisher to use in a how-to tome to illustrate what writers shouldn’t ever do.

The column is about how Litt “felt a civic duty to be rude” to his wife’s younger brother because he hadn’t seen the light and surrendered his mind to the Woke and Wonderful. A few excerpts will tell you all you need to know about Litt, but I may add a little commentary here and there:

Continue reading →

Nah, There’s No Anti-Israel, Anti-Jewish Mainstream Media Bias…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Britain’s media regulator (Great Britain doesn’t have a First Amendment, remember, so the government can punish dishonest, biased journalism. This is not a good thing…) said today it is investigating a BBC documentary about the dire fate of children in Gaza. The BBC removed the program, “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone,” from its streaming service earlier this year after it was revealed that the 13-year-old narrator, “Abdullah,” is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.

Oh. Sounds fair and objective to me! The media reports says this information “emerged.” Translation: the BBC was caught. News programs purporting to be factual must not materially mislead the audience in Great Britain, or so they claim. Imagine if the U.S. had such a regulation and enforced it. There would be no broadcast news.

The independent production company that made the program didn’t share the background information regarding the father of the young narrator’s Hamas ties, claims the BBC. Hoyo Films, which produced the documentary, claims it didn’t “intentionally” mislead the BBC. The BBC meanwhile, was wonderfully trusting and incurious—you know, like good journalists are supposed to be. After all, it’s not like anyone is out to vilify Israel as it tries to survive while protecting its citizens from being raped, murdered and kidnapped by terrorists.

Continue reading →

So Was Biden Lying, or What?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

The word “lie,” one of the more basic terms in the ethics field, has been thoroughly blurred by a malign combination of ignorance, poor analytical skills, and partisan rhetorical dishonesty. A lie is an intentional misrepresentation of facts and truth in order to deceive. Genuine mistakes aren’t lies. Deliberate hyperboles made for effect but still obvious exaggerations are not lies. Jokes are not lies. Delusions aren’t lies. Opinions are not lies. Asserting a belief that one cannot reasonably know to be true is not a lie. A broken promise is not a lie if the promise was made sincerely. A prediction that does not prove accurate is not a lie. One contradicting what he or she once asserted as a strongly held belief does not prove hypocrisy—a variety of lie—if the individual has generally changed his or her belief in the interim.

In his brief interview with The New York Times last week former President Biden said that he orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term. Those who have suggested that the Presidential autopen was used without his knowledge by aides for such edicts are “liars,” Biden said.

“I made every decision,” Biden insisted.

What value is that interview? First, we know that Biden lies to enhance his own reputation: surely he wouldn’t admit that he was a cardboard cut-out POTUS if that is indeed what he became. Given what we know about Biden’s mental state, he may believe he made every decision, even if he didn’t. If fact, how would he know one way or the other?

Ethics Quiz: The Non-Star All-Star Game Selection

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is fun: a different kind of MLB annual All-Star Game ethics controversy! We’ve never seen this one before: usually the controversies over baseball’s “mid-summer classic” (This is All-Star Game week, with the teams taking a break around Wednesday’s game televised on Fox News.) involve fairness in the selections (there are always more deserving players than the limited rosters can hold, whether every team should have at least one representative even when that means selecting a mediocre player having a so-so season, whether there was bias in the selection of the reserves, whether aging great players should be included on the squad because they really are the players the fans want to see, whether the fan voting system is absurd, stuff like that. (Some past controversies are discussed here,)

Never this, however: MLB added Milwaukee Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski to the National League All-Star team last week. “Who?”you well may ask? Misiorowski is a highly touted rookie who has only been in the major leagues for about a month. He’s been the starting pitcher in just five games, and now holds the record for fewest games ever played in by a player making an All-Star team—by a lot. Wails Yahoo Sports,

“The main goal of the Midsummer Classic is to recognize the players who have performed at a high level through the first half of the MLB season. With that, it also allows fans to see the stars of the game they might not watch on a regular basis. But by adding Misiorowski to the NL All-Star roster, MLB has sent a message to players that not only does the game not matter, but performance doesn’t matter, either.”

Misiorowski is what baseball jargon refers to as a “phenom.”

He’s viewed as a future superstar, and has looked like it, beginning his career with 11 perfect innings, no hits, no walks. Nobody had done that in the history of the game, He regularly tops 100 mph on his fastball, which has been clocked as speedy as 103. Yes, he’s an exciting newcomer who may do great things…eventually.

But picking him for the All-Star Game is like, oh, let’s pick an absurd hypothetical, like giving a Nobel Peace Prize to a newly elected U.S. President before he’s actually done anything related to peace at all. Not that such a thing could ever happen….

Your Ethics Alarms All-Star Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it unethical for Misiorowski to be selected for the All-Star Game?

Continue reading →

“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.

Continue reading →

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.

Regarding the Stupid Epstein Client List: the Phrase “Hoist by Their Own Petard” Comes to Mind…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Observation the First: Morons!

More…

1. So…Director of the F.B.I. Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino are throwing public hissy fits over the Justice Department stating in an unsigned memorandum that there is no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, the dead convicted sexual predator, had a client list and used it to blackmail elected officials, celebrities, and other powerful people. The memo also declared that Epstein committed suicide. Patel and bongino are behaving this way because they are unprofessional and untrustworthy, though everyone should have known that already. The professional manner in which to demonstrate a serious disagreement with one’s superior, organization or client is to resign, stating why to the extent permitted by the terms of your job. The President should fire both of them immediately.

2. I don’t care about Jeffrey Epstein or his alleged client list. Nobody should at this point. He was a walking, talking ethics train wreck, and now he’s dead. Good! A collection of documents, including emails and schedules revealed by The Wall Street Journal showed, among other things, that Woody Allen frequently socialized with the billionaire. Gee, what a surprise. So what are we supposed to do with such information? We already know that Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, creepazoids both, were pals with the sex maniac (I’m talking about Epstein, now, not Woody…). Other than as tabloid fodder, what value does such intelligence have? I have the Red Sox winning streak to worry about and a sock drawer to alphabetize. Shut up.

Continue reading →

There’s No Crying In Tennis!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Poland’s No. 8 seed Iga Świątek beat the U.S.’s 13th seed Amanda Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 in the Wimbledon women’s final yesterday. That’s a slaughter in tennis, ending Anisimova’s feel good story as an underdog in humilation.

Świątek is one one of the best players in the world; though this is Świątek’s first Wimbledon title it’s her sixth Grand Slam title. She was favored to win, but no one has won the Women’s finals 12 games to none in a Grand Slam tournament since 1988. Anisimova’s wipe-out is being attributed to nerves; if she were a male player, the explanation would be “choking.”

Worse, however, is that after the match Anisimova started weeping, covered her head with a towel and left the court. When she came back to a huge reception from the crowd, she was still sobbing. After receiving the runners-up’s plate at center court, she cried some more as she addressed the crowd.

Continue reading →

An Incomplete Preview of Coming Attractions (Or Upheavals, or Reforms, Depending on One’s Point of View…)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I have hinted here at various times recently of a major ethics project that I am working on relating to a growing and so far barely recognized scandal in the civil justice system. It is time to reveal a few details.

There are corrupt tactics and practices in the legal world centering on the litigation of mass torts. They are responsible for losses totaling billions of dollars inflicted on the victims of injury, plaintiffs, corporate shareholders, and taxpayers. These have metastasized over the last decade, spread by the opportunities created by too-loosely regulated law firms being allowed to include non-lawyer partners (in D.C., Arizona, and Utah), the rapid explosion of litigation financing provided directly to lawyers and law firms after a century of being regarded as an unethical practice to be avoided, and a tsunami of unethical and deceptive maneuvers that have been largely ignored by or unreported to the legal profession’s ethics watchdogs.

Quite by accident, I became aware of these practices in my legal ethics practice, frequently by being retained by lawyers and law firms who were the victims of them, and whose clients were at risk as a result. I was stunned at the depth of ignorance of this scandal among most lawyers, which, of course, is one major reason why it continues unabated. I began having regular discussions with legal ethics authorities, and, upon finding a whistleblower who had been an architect of many of these practices, began assembling a coalition, still growing, to expose the bad actors, tighten up the laws, regulations and legal ethics rules that have allowed them to thrive, and to overhaul the system itself that is neither trustworthy nor safe.

Continue reading →