Note to the “Wise Latina”: There’s No Crying on the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, where she was being honored….for what, I can’t imagine.

Awww! Poor Sonja! What’s she crying about? That she’s obviously over her head on the Supreme Court with actual legal scholars and experts who can make persuasive arguments about what the law is and what the Constitution means instead of just relying on warm, fuzzy feelings and mandatory progressive sentiment? That mean old conservatives aren’t buying her “But…but…it would be nicer if we decided this way” routine?

Did Sandra Day O’Connor, when she was in the minority on a liberal majority court, ever say she just went into her office and wept when a SCOTUS vote didn’t go her way? Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she was on the losing end of a 5-4 ruling? Did Scalia? No, but this Justice not only weeps over her defeats, she thinks its something to be proud of.

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Stop Making Me Defend the FBI!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is truly a 1) blight on the nation; 2) completely incompetent and irresponsible, and 3) an idiot. Her latest outburst of inflammatory and unforgivable rhetoric to mislead the kind of people who would vote for someone like her—you know, morons—is to claim that the FBI was planning on assassinating former President Trump when it raided his Florida residence on August 8, 2022 and seized hundreds of classified documents that Trump had refused to return to the National Archives despite being instructed to do so.

Her basis for this latest freak-out was a newly-unsealed filing including the raid order. It stated, “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.” Being the reckless and toxic half-wit she is, MJG, without doing the minimal due diligence and research required, exclaimed on “X” this week: “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Trump and gave the green light.”

Did I mention that she is an irresponsible idiot? She wasn’t the only one in this case, however. Steve Bannon and Mike Davis issued a video in which they discussed the search of Mar-a-Lago, and Bannon says on it, “They authorized deadly force, they had a medic, they had a plan to triage the wounded, they had a trauma center 18 miles away on a map. This was an attempted assassination on Donald John Trump or people associated with him. They wanted a gun fight.”

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Ethics Dunce: Wells Fargo

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I received the notice above in my email inbox two days ago. Wow! That deal looks almost too good to be true!

It was. When I examined the terms, I discovered that the bank had made a teeny mistake. It didn’t take a deposit of just 25 dollars to earn the $525 bonus. It required a deposit of 25 THOUSAND dollars.

Details, details.

That’s a three decimal point error. It doesn’t exactly engender trust in the bank’s staff, its management, or it quality control procedures, does it?

Wells Fargo has a notable dossier on Ethics Alarms, notably here, but also here, here and most recently here. And the hits just keep on coming: this was an item from yesterday: Wells Fargo Accused of Draining Customers’ Accounts Without Notice or Authorization in ‘Blatant Disregard’ of Consumer Loan Protections: Class-Action Lawsuit.

Yeah yeah, anyone can make a typo (don’t I know it!) but a bank’s business is getting numbers right. I would think that especially after its terrible publicity over the past several years, Wells Fargo would check and triple check a mailing that goes out to all of its depositors to make absolutely certain no unnerving mistakes are in the copy.

I would think that, and apparently I would be wrong.

Being a helpful, responsible customer, I sent a screen shot of the botched email to my banker at the local branch. I got no reply; I also never received any error acknowledgment from the bank.

They probably are still sending that promotion out.

A Serial Killer’s Mother’s Lament

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I was watching an old “48 Hours” episode last night about Todd Kohlhepp, a serial killer convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. He also kidnapped and raped at least two women and claims to have killed many more. The interesting part of the show was the interview with his 70-year-old mother.

Even though she had been told about her son confessing to committing seven murders, including a mass shooting in a bicycle shop where he wiped out the entire staff, she insisted that her son was misunderstood. “He’s not a monster,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “He’s a good person.”

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American Airlines and the Offensive Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Oooh, I’ll be using this one in a legal ethics seminar for sure.

A sicko American Airlines flight attendant (Estes Carter Thompson III, above) allegedly hid a camera under the First Class toilet seat and filmed the nether regions of several little girls between the ages of 7 and 14 during a seven-month span last year. One of the victims, aged 14, spotted a phone’s camera flash underneath the toilet seat, which was covered by tape. She took a cell phone photo of it and showed it to her mother. As you might expect, the girls’ parents were perplexed.

A lawsuit ensued by the parents of another victim, age 9. The American Airlines lawyers came up with a true “Hail Mary” defense theory, stating in court filings, “Any injuries or illnesses alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff, Mary Doe, were proximately caused by plaintiff’s own fault and negligence, were proximately caused by Plaintiff’s use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”

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Nope, Can’t Watch “Bridgerton’ and Respect Myself in the Morning

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I was looking for a new series to stream, as the time it takes on the streaming services for me to choose a movie almost requires as much time as watching the movie. At least with a series, your choice is pre-determined for many sessions. “Bridgerton” has a new season (#3), and I had never tested it; Grace had it on her list for future viewing, because she was an English literature major and knew the Regency period in England well.

I had quite a bit of trepidation approaching “Bridgerton” because it’s another Shandaland production. I eventually baled on every Shonda Rhimes show I’ve ever sampled, including her flagship, “Grey’s Anatomy”: they are all over-heated soap operas with less nuance than “Dallas.”

But what the hell. I started Episode 1 last night and made it maybe a third of the way through. The production values were high, and the acting was Masterpiece Theater-level at least. It had only two gratuitous and vigorous coitus scenes, which is less than the average for a Shondaland production. I could not, however, stomach the African-Americans and British aristocrats-of-color wandering around early 19th Century English social scene.

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A Critical Addendum to the Left’s Alito Flag Freakout

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I had already decided to shut down my commentary for the day (judging from the traffic, I see that a lot of people are starting their Memorial Day Weekend early) when I saw a fascinating note on The Volokh Conspiracy, and I just can’t let it pass, since it puts the two posts (here and here) about the “Get Alito!” flag fixation in proper perspective.

Josh Blackman, a regular contributor to VC, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, and the president of the Harlan Institute, reminded readers about something that occured the day after election day in 2016, November 9. The Supreme Court was in session, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore the jabot she only sported when dissenting from a majority opinion. Ginsberg herself had explained her sly fashion messaging in in 2014:

but in this case there was nothing to dissent from other than the obvious: Donald Trump, whom Ginsburg had called “a faker” before the election, had defeated Hillary Clinton. The Associated Press got the message and reported on it.

Unlike the Alito flags, there is no question about who was making the political statement regarding President Trump: it was Justice Ginsburg. Nobody fooled her into wearing that collar. A relative didn’t wear it, she did. Nor was the symbolism of the collar in question: Ginsberg herself had said exactly what it meant. This was a far less ambiguous and far more serious display of bias by a SCOTUS justice than the contrived flag outrage, yet no Republicans in Congress exploited the incident to call for Ginsburg to recuse herself from future cases, or to move for a Congressional censure.

Ah, but Ginsburg was a news media favorite, female, progressive, Democrat and cute in her casual and repeated crossing of the lines of judicial propriety. I have to check, but I don’t recall the members of my legal ethics expert association registering any problem with Ginsberg’s open protest of Trump’s election, while the listserv has been roiling over Alito’s flags all week, with Ginsberg-adoring female members being particularly indignant.

At the last second I deleted a comment I was ready to make yesterday after following the hypocritical thread. It read, “I’m sorry, but the partisan bias and hypocrisy being displayed here by alleged legal ethics scholars isn’t just depressing, it’s disgusting.”

Blackman concluded, “I have a very, very difficult time taking the outrage over the Alitos’ flags seriously. The Justices routinely convey messages through their words and deeds. Who gets to decide what is an appearance of impropriety? People who are inclined to despise the conservative Justices will draw the worst possible inferences from all of their acts….These people are loathe to co-exist with anything they disagree with, so will take umbrage at the slightest sleights.”

In contrast, I take it very seriously. The Double standard harshly demonstrates how little integrity and honesty exists even among our most trusted professionals.

Oh-Oh! Now It Seems That TWO Historical Flags Someone Else Has Used As Free Speech Were Seen Flying Over a Justice Alito Residence! Clearly, This Violates the “Obscure Flags” Section in the Judicial Code of Ethics….

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The contrived Justice Alito flags controversy has exactly one valid use: it shows that the panicked Axis has lost all sense of proportion and self-preservation, that its ethics alarms are deader than Generalissimo Franco, and that between now and November nothing can be ruled out, from violent uprisings to horrified leftist wackos tearing off their clothes, painting themselves mauve and running amuck coast to coast while shouting dirty limericks. Good to know.

Here’s the New York Times, which launched the previous “Bad flag, BAD flag! “scoop (as of this moment, the Times has published nine—NINE!—articles about the flags):

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google Street View image from late August also shows the flag.

In two words, so what?

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Not Exactly An Ethics Hero (Recovering Ethics Dunce, Maybe?): Comedy Central’s The Daily Show

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Look! The Daily Show is finally choosing to mercilessly mock not just absurd Democrats, but even absurd Democrats of color! See?

Well paint me blue and call me Smurphy! True, it only took almost four years, and a Republican with such rhetorical handicaps and brain fog would have been skewered weekly, indeed daily, by all of the Axis-allied comedy shows. Think of Dan Quayle, or David Letterman’s nightly mockery of George W. Bush, and Trump, of course. Late night TV has left a lot of big laughs on the metaphorical table, but it was worth it, the writers and comics concluded—“it” being to divide the nation, insult half of all potential viewers, and abandon their supposed mission of being as funny as possible without playing favorites, and politics be damned—to “get Trump” and make the world safe for Woke Fascism.

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