Unethical Quote of the Month: Ethics Villain Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“[H]e’s just a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth.”

—-Former Speaker of the House, current House member and Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi, describing Donald Trump and doing her part to amplify hateful partisan rhetoric and point the public toward from political violence.

Pelosi was even challenged on the assertion that the President of the United States is “the worst thing on earth”during her interview with CNN’s Elex Michaelson last night. “You think he’s the worst thing on the face of the Earth?” Michaelson asked incredulously. Worse than war, cancer, child rape, ebola, cannibalism, terrorism, “Fear Factor,” pineapple on pizza and Sydney Sweeney?

“I do, yeah, I do,” Pelosi, who is a disgrace, responded, doubling down. “Because he’s the President of the United States, and he does not honor the Constitution of the United States. In fact, he’s turned the Supreme Court into a rogue court. He’s abolished the House of Representatives. He’s chilled the press.” 

Why, says Nancy, the President has chilled the press so much that CNN broadcasts disgusting and denigrating hyperbole by his political foes! (Did you know that Donald Trump lies all the time?)

Continue reading →

Ethical Quote of the Week: Actress Jennifer Lawrence

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions,” she added. “I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing. And if I can’t say something that’s going to speak to some kind of peace or lowering the temperature or some sort of solution, I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I don’t want to make the problem worse.” 

—-Actress Jennifer Lawrence, finally, in her maturity, figuring out that it’s not part of an artist’s job to be public pundit, and that abusing celebrity in that fashion risks undermining that artist’s professional mission.

Lawrence prefaced her remarks by saying on The New York Times’  The Interview podcast,“During the first Trump administration, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.”

And, may I add, as it would be expecting a lot for a Hollywood star to mention this, her opinions regarding politics and social issues deserve no more attention that that of the local barfly, and conceivably less.

Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Threads of the Year: Reparations and Guaranteed Minimum Income

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Well, I’m defeated! Two rich and lively threads this week have produced more Comment of the Day-worthy commentary and more essays worthy of guest columns than I can possibly do justice to without them swallowing the blog.

I’m sorry. For the first time ever, I am reduced to linking to the post that sprung these exchanges, and sending interested readers to them rather than my reposting them all.

The first: Friday Open Forum, Halloween Edition. Last week’s open forum was especially lively with many topics covered, but the epic thread, started by Extradimenensional Cephalopod, began with “Premise: The United States institutes a universal basic income of $1000 per person per month, except for people who opt to remain in existing welfare programs.” Many engaged, including Sarah B, AM Golden, Old Bill, CEES VAN BARNEVELDT and Michael Ejercito.

The second: Unethical Quote of the Month: Un-Named California Lawyer. The most prolix combatants in the discussion of slavery reparations are jdkazoo123 and Chris Marschner, but there is enlightening commentary by many others as well.

Ethics Alarms thanks and salutes everyone involved in both of these discussions. They are exactly what I hoped to inspire when I started Ethics Alarms.

President Donald Trump Can’t Even Be An Ethics Hero Properly…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Yesterday, at the last possible minute, President Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo in a typically antic Truth Social post. From that perspective, it’s an act of ethical heroism. He’s doing something that is not in his best interests or those of his party. Trump clearly loves New York City even though it doesn’t love him. He is choosing the future welfare of the city’s mostly Democratic residents over what will benefit his party, the Republican Party, by throwing the weight and prestige of his office behind a Democrat (running as an Independent, but never mind) rather than the GOP spoiler, Curtis Sliwa.

Kudos for the President. Making sure as few people as possible vote for Sliwa, who is on the way to becoming New York City’s Harold Staasen, is contrary to principles of party loyalty but the right thing to do. Trump’s endorsement:

“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival! It can only get worse with a Communist at the helm, and I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad. It is my obligation to run the Nation, and it is my strong conviction that New York City will be a Complete and Total Economic and Social Disaster should Mamdani win. A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani. Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Trump being Trump and reflexively perverse, he just had to do the right thing in the worst possible way, threatening the city and its residents in the process. Thus did he cross over the line from endorsing a candidate (normal, ethical) to threatening the city if it doesn’t do what he wants. That’s election interference, because he is applying coercion, or what feels like it.

Continue reading →

Nah, There’s No “Deep State”…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Among the furious “It isn’t what it is” gaslighting that the Mad Left routinely engages in—“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!”; “Nah, Biden wasn’t suffering from dementia in the White House, he was sharp as a tack!”; “Nah, Kamala Harris wasn’t a DEI nominee!”; “Nah, there’s no such thing as the Antifa!” and so on, and so on—the Trump Deranged refuse to admit that there is an embedded progressive “Deep State” (and often not so deep) that set out to sabotage Trump in his first term and to do everything possible to prevent his re-election in 2020.

One of many metaphorical smoking guns regarding the efforts of the Deep State was the organized effort by U.S. intelligence officials to make certain that the evidence of Biden family influence peddling on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop was discredited and avoided by the Axis media prior to the 2020 election. Shortly after The New York Post’s broke the story in October 2020 51 then current and former intelligence officials signed an open letter challenging the authenticity of the laptop.

Though they had no direct knowledge of the situation, the 51 abused their positions, authority and intelligence credentials to undermine The Post’s reporting weeks before the 2020 election. Politico’s headline was typical of how the letter was interpreted by the news media and the public :“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” Twitter banned the Post’s story from its platform. During the second 2020 presidential debate held on October 22, 2020, Joe Biden repeated the narrative, saying, “Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan!” (Fact check? Of course not.) Biden later repeated the claim in a “60 Minutes” interview held on October 25, 2020. No fact check then, either. Mission accomplished! The letter did its job (it worked) and Biden was elected.

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Un-Named California Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

Gail Herriot is Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights since 2007. She is a conservative, so much of the civil rights racket (“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer) objects to her existence.

Herriot recently posted the following jaw-dropping letter that she received from a member of the California Bar:

Dear Ms. Heriot,
 
This letter serves as a formal cease and desist demand regarding your ongoing, public, and targeted efforts to undermine and harass the Black community and its advocates for equity, in direct violation of state and federal civil rights laws and your ethical obligations as a member of the bar.
 
Your activities—including those publicly associated with the California Foundation for Equal Rights (CFER) (among others) and campaigns explicitly opposing Black-focused equity —constitute racial targeting and harassment under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and applicable state hate crime and anti-discrimination statutes. Such conduct is not protected expression when it rises to the level of coordinated intimidation or bias-based obstruction of legally protected programs. It is particularly egregious that your public campaigns have focused solely on efforts benefiting the Black community, while remaining silent on or even supportive of state and federal allocations to other racial or ethnic groups. 
 
For example: In 2021 and 2022, the State of California directed substantial funding—over $165 million—to AAPI anti-hate initiatives, a commendable effort to address rising hate incidents against Asian Americans.
 
In 2024, the California Legislature authorized over $300 million in support for Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community, recognizing their suffering and need for continued support.
 
Despite these allocations, your campaigns have not targeted or criticized these initiatives—only those aimed at repairing centuries of harm done to Black Americans, who remain the most frequent victims of race-based hate crimes nationwide according to federal data. Your selective and racially targeted opposition to Black equity initiatives, combined with your public standing as an attorney, member of a federal civil rights commission and educator, magnifies the discriminatory impact and constitutes a pattern of bias-based harassment under both state and federal law.
 
Accordingly, you are hereby ordered to immediately cease and desist from any further direct or indirect harassment, public misinformation, or racially targeted advocacy directed toward the Black community or programs designed to support it. Continued actions of this nature may result in:
 
Formal referral to state bar disciplinary authorities for violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct concerning bias, harassment, and discrimination; and
 
Referral to appropriate civil rights enforcement agencies for investigation under state and federal hate crime and civil rights statutes.
 
Please provide written confirmation within ten (10) business days that you have received this notice and that you will comply fully with its terms.
 
Warmest Regards,

Continue reading →

The President’s “60 Minutes” Interview

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

President Trump sat down for a full interview with “60 Minutes” yesterday, and was grilled by CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell (as I was once, though not on that show). The transcript and the video are here. Under the new regime of CBS News Czar (“Editor-in-Chief”) Bari Weiss, there were no deceptively edited sections as in the infamous and unethical (and, I believe, illegal) Kamala Harris interview a year ago when the network switched around her responses to try to deceive voters into believing that the Democrat isn’t, you know, a babbling idiot.

This post’s purpose isn’t to critique O’Donnell’s questions. She was appropriately respectful, aggressive and professional except that her facial expressions conveyed her hostility, which is unprofessional but now common practice among Axis broadcast journalists. The shot above was typical: she looked at the President of the United States as if he were a six-foot talking cockroach. Nor am I going to praise or criticize the substance of Trump’s responses, though I note that he showed an excellent knowledge of American Presidential history when he pronounced Joe Biden as our Worst President Ever.

It is simply to point out that the Trump Derangement narrative that this President is mentally failing and as cognitively disabled as Joe Biden (“Just in a different way” as one sufferer told me on Halloween) is either delusional or deliberately dishonest. The interview was slam-dunk proof of that, and yet this slander/libel is Axis cant now. I regard the claim as evidence of a genuine disruption of thinking ability. Bias makes you stupid, and in this case, bias is making these poor people ridiculous.

Continue reading →

End of the Baseball Season Ethics Recap, 11/2/25, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

For those readers who ignore the EA baseball posts: this isn’t one, except for this brief note on baseball competence. Isiah Kiner-Falefa of the Toronto Blue Jays pulled a (as it turned out) game-losing brick in the 9th inning when he was out by a mini-micron trying to score the winning run from third base. He was out in a force play, with the catcher barely scraping home plate before the base-runner’s shoe hit it. At the time, I thought, “Why is he sliding?” then forgot about it in the excitement of the play and all that followed the rest of that incredible game. But it is being pointed out in some post-game articles this morning that if Kiner-Falefa had just run straight to the plate, he would have been safe….and there was no reason for him to slide. It isn’t hindsight. The bases were loaded. It was going to be a force play at home if the ball was hit on the ground, and it was. A slide always gets a runner to a base a bit slower than running through. The catcher, Will Smith, didn’t need to tag him, and a slide is only necessary to avoid a tag. The Jays infielder’s mental mistake lost the Series as surely as “Snodgrass’s muff” or Bill Buckner’s error (more than that one, actually), but I bet nobody remembers it in the wild collage of everything else that happened. Poor Jays catcher Kirk will feel like the goat for hitting into a DP with the tying and winning runs on base with only one out to lose the game in the 10th. . But the #1 culprit was Kiner-Falefa. An MLB player should know the rules.

Now on to more mundane matters…

Continue reading →

End of the Baseball Season Ethics Recap, 11/2/25, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

If you missed last night’s Game 7 of the epic World Series just completed, you have my sympathy; if you missed it, or the entire Series really, because baseball isn’t part of your life you have my pity. Let me quote here the late, great Roger Angell, baseball’s Bard, writing about the only better World Series I’ve ever watched, the 1975 edition where the Cincinnati Reds beat (barely) the Boston Red Sox, also in seven games. He was effusing specifically about Carlton Fisk’s famous home run in the 12th inning (I was there!) in his New Yorker essay “Agincourt and After”:

“Carlton Fisk, leading off the bottom of the twelfth against Pat Darcy, the eighth Reds pitcher of the night—it was well into morning now, in fact—socked the second pitch up and out, farther and farther into the darkness above the lights, and when it came down at last, re-illuminated, it struck the topmost, innermost edge of the screen inside the yellow left-field foul pole and glanced sharply down and bounced on the grass: a fair ball, fair all the way. I was watching the ball, of course, so I missed what everyone on television saw—Fisk waving wildly, weaving and writhing and gyrating along the first-base line, as he wished the ball fair, forced it fair with his entire body. He circled the bases in triumph, in sudden company with several hundred fans, and jumped on home plate with both feet, and John Kiley, the Fenway Park organist, played Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” fortissimo, and then followed with other appropriately exuberant classical selections, and for the second time that evening I suddenly remembered all my old absent and distant Sox-afflicted friends (and all the other Red Sox fans, all over New England), and I thought of them—in Brookline, Mass., and Brooklin, Maine; in Beverly Farms and Mashpee and Presque Isle and North Conway and Damariscotta; in Pomfret, Connecticut, and Pomfret, Vermont; in Wayland and Providence and Revere and Nashua, and in both the Concords and all four Manchesters; and in Raymond, New Hampshire (where Carlton Fisk lives), and Bellows Falls, Vermont (where Carlton Fisk was born), and I saw all of them dancing and shouting and kissing and leaping about like the fans at Fenway—jumping up and down in their bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms, and in bars and trailers, and even in some boats here and there, I suppose, and on backcountry roads (a lone driver getting the news over the radio and blowing his horn over and over, and finally pulling up and getting out and leaping up and down on the cold macadam, yelling into the night), and all of them, for once at least, utterly joyful and believing in that joy—alight with it.

…What I do know is that this belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”

Caring is an ethical value.

I’ll get to the other ethics news in Part 2…

Ethics Quiz: The Third Candidate

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

New York City, which has not had a competent mayor since Michael Bloomberg, is about to punch itself in the face and elect Communist, anti-Semitic, charismatic demagogue Zohran Mamdani as its latest fiasco. One aspect of the perfect storm that is about to allow the City That Never Sleeps to fall into an abyss of its own making is that Mamdani is running in a three-way race, which often helps elects a candidate who would lose in a two-person race. Another is that the only viable alternative to Mamdani is disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who in addition to killing hundreds of rest home residents by stashing Wuhan virus victims in close proximity to them, whereupon they sickened and died, was a serial sexual harasser. I wouldn’t vote for the guy to be dog-catcher. There is at least a chance, however, that as mayor of New York Cuomo will make a good faith effort to redeem himself and not leave the Big Apple a smoldering pile of broken dreams. With Mamdani’s proposed policies, disaster is a near certainty.

Continue reading →