I read “How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation/Their claims of censorship have successfully stymied the effort to filter election lies online” in the New York Times this morning and was properly disgusted with the Times’ lockstep endorsement of Big Tech (and thus federal government) censorship of “disinformation and “misinformation,” cover words progressives use to describe opinions and framing of facts that undermine the Axis’s official narratives or that threaten their policy agendas. I was not, however, surprised. How could anyone be surprised? The Times censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. The Times embargoed the rape accusation against Joe Biden. The Times hyped the Wuhan virus threat with extraordinary misrepresentations and fearmongering while applauding social media efforts to suppress dissenting views that turned out to be correct. The Times took down an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton because its woke staff found his position offensive There are so many more examples that it would be pointless (and boring) to list them.
Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/17/24: Waiting For the Metaphorical Sun to Come Out Eventually
Yes, it’s come to this. Spending almost all of my time with my very confused dog when I’m not sifting through records, emails and bills, fielding kind calls from old friends, worrying myself sick and feeling guilty and lost, I’ve been looking for sources of hope and inspiration in history, culture and entertainment. (Teddy Roosevelt’s wife and mother died on the same night, in the same house.) When one gets down all the way to “Annie,” things are clearly getting desperate.
That clip above of Andrea McArdle at the Tonys is the start of a playlist that shows the actress singing her signature song 34 times from 1977 to 2022. If you skip to the last one, you’ll discover that she sounds remarkably the same. I once staged that song in a revue: on opening night, the dog playing Sandy, a Malamute- Airedale cross named “String,” barked twice at the end of the song, exactly on cue. She had never done it before, and never did it again, but boy, the audience went nuts.
1. Here’s something positive, sort of: The Great Stupid is clearly worse in great Britain than here so far. The Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, decided that as part of its overhaul of its exhibitions to make them more “inclusive,” it needed to slap a sign by a classic British countryside painting noting that such artwork can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland” but that “landscape paintings were also always entangled with national identity…The countryside was seen as a direct link to the past, and therefore a true reflection of the essence of a nation.” This, however, makes such art problematical: “The darker side of evoking this nationalist feeling is the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong.” In another part of the collection, visitors were told that portraits of wealthy and uniformed personages “became vital tools in reinforcing the social order of a white ruling class, leaving very little room for representations of people of color, the working classes or other marginalized people.” Such portraits, the museum insists, “were often entangled, in complex ways, with British imperialism and the institution of transatlantic slavery.”
Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Evidence That the Axis Will Say Anything to Save Joe Biden
Eventually I’ll have to stop paying attention to these, I suppose. There are so many of them, they are intensifying and getting worse, and they represent such insulting gaslighting, dishonesty and “it isn’t what it is” propaganda that these does of brain poison wouldn’t be worth condemning if there weren’t so many gullible, easily manipulated citizens lacking critical thinking skills, adequate civic education, and yes, ethics alarms.
Last week I have sensed an uptick in the desperation from the Axis of Unethical Conduct (you know: “the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media) as its dream of using the politicized legal system to defeat Donald Trump seems to be fading on all fronts. I found Michael Tomasky’s typical screed in the New Republic refreshingly transparent on that score:
We Have to Beat Donald Trump. Clearly, the Broken Legal System Won’t. To people like Tomasky, the legal system is broken because the Left can’t just declare Trump an enemy of the state, lock him up or at least ban him from running without bothering with little details like evidence, non-partisan, independent prosecutors, and due process.
Do Illegal Immigrants Have the Right To Own Guns?
WHAT? My visceral reaction was immediately, “That’s crazy!” My considered conclusion is, “I think they do.”
US District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman ruled yesterday in US v. Carbajal-Flores that the federal prohibition on illegal immigrants owning guns is unconstitutional, at least as applied to Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, an illegal with no criminal record or record of violence. “The noncitizen possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” Judge Colman wrote “Thus, the Court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.” She reached this conclusion after considering the US’s historical tradition of gun regulation as set out in the Supreme Court’s landmark New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling. Breaking misdemeanor immigration laws alone should not be sufficient justification for stripping someone of gun rights, the judge determined.
“[C]arbajal-Flores has never been convicted of a felony, a violent crime, or a crime involving the use of a weapon. Even in the present case, Carbajal-Flores contends that he received and used the handgun solely for self-protection and protection of property during a time of documented civil unrest in the Spring of 2020,” Judge Coleman wrote. “Additionally, Pretrial Service has confirmed that Carbajal-Flores has consistently adhered to and fulfilled all the stipulated conditions of his release, is gainfully employed, and has no new arrests or outstanding warrants….The Court also determined that based on the government’s historical analogue, where exceptions were made that allowed formerly ‘untrustworthy’ British loyalists to possess weapons, the individuals who fell within the exception were determined to be non-violent during their individual assessments, permitting them to carry firearms,” she wrote. “Thus, to the extent the exception shows that some British loyalists were permitted to carry firearms despite the general prohibition, the Court interprets this history as supporting an individualized assessment for Section 922(g)(5) as this Court previously found with Section 922(g)(1).”
The Latest Chaos in Haiti Brings Into Focus a Taboo Ethics Subject
Once again, Haiti is in the throes of violence and upheaval. It has ever been thus. While the nation Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with, the Dominican Republic, has been relatively thriving (the key word is “relatively”) Haiti is in almost perpetual chaos. Florida is expecting another mass flotilla of refugees fleeing the hell-hole, and make no mistake, Haiti is a hell-hole. Under current law, and certainly under the warped Biden administration’s immigration policies, it is hard to imagine any scenario where thousands of Haitians do not enter the American populace.
Here is the ethics dilemma that it is politically incorrect to mention above a whisper: Haiti has a toxic, violent, ugly and undemocratic culture that has been ossifying for centuries. People who come from bad cultures, and this is a truly terrible culture, tend to have values and behavior traits that are antithetical to American society. Many in our “Imagine” subculture refuse to accept the fact that any culture is inferior to any other culture; hence they oppose “assimilation,” celebrating multi-culturalism instead. Multi-culturalism eventually metastasized into the DEI religion, and the success of the United States as a nation and a culture has been built on a once-solid foundation embodying the principle that immigrants come here to become Americans, with all the values and priorities that implies. Much of the division and cultural rot we are witnessing in the 21st century is a direct result of several decades of undermining that foundation.
Fani Wallis Scandal Footnote: A ‘Bias Makes Legal Ethicists Stupid’ Moment
This is disheartening, though not unexpected.
I have written about how thoroughly my colleagues in the legal ethics field are politicized, biased and frequently rendered unable to see the ethical issues through the fog of their peer-reinforced distortions. Yesterday, as my legal ethics expert listserv was buzzing with commentary on the judge’s “split the baby” response to Fulton County Fani Willis’s screaming conflict of interest, prosecutorial misconduct, race-baiting and stunning arrogance. One prominent lawyer in the field, a woman whose commentary is usually perceptive, wrote this in part…
Speaking of Conflicts of Interest and To Prove I’m Occasionally Right: Let’s Revisit “‘Baseball Super-Agent Scott Boras Has Another Super-Conflict And There Is No Excuse For It,’ the Sequel”
I have never recycled a post so soon (this one was was featured in January) but these are special circumstances:
- After my analysis of the Fani Willis conflicts scandal did not jibe with the judge’s decision, my self-esteem is at a low ebb, and I feel the need to point out my prescience in this matter
- This, like Willis’s self-made disgrace, is a conflict of interest, and one involving law as well…but also baseball.
- The conflict of interest I flagged in January has now had some of the adverse results I predicted, and attention should be paid.
- Baseball is one of the few things that has a chance of cheering me up right now, having gone through my first two weeks without Grace’s companionship and support. We followed the seasons (and the Red Sox) together since before we were married, as I taught her the game by taking her to watch the Orioles play Boston in old Memorial Stadium.
Two months after I wrote the post that follows, Spring Training is almost over and the season is less that two weeks away. Yet the two star pitchers I flagged as the victims of their agent’s greed and unethical conduct remain unsigned. I strongly believe that the reason they are unsigned is that the agent/lawyer they foolishly employ has been pitting teams against each other while using each pitcher as leverage to benefit the other, or so Scott Boras would argue. There is no question in my mind that if Blake Snell (above, right) and Jordan Montgomery (above, left), both talented left-handed starting pitchers that fill the same niche, were represented by different agents, both would have signed rich, long-term contracts by now. Because they have allowed themselves to be marketed by the same agent–an unconscionable conflict that baseball should prohibit and Boras’s bar association should sanction—they will not be ready to start the season even if both signed tomorrow. Pitchers who have had to miss large portions of Spring Training have frequently had off-years as a result: Boras’s greedy practice of representing competing talents may result in off seasons and even damage to their careers.
All of this could have and should have been avoided, and would have been, if baseball’s agents were subjected to any genuine ethical regulation.
Now here is the post… Continue reading
Update: I Was Wrong! The Fulton Superior Court Judge ‘Split the Baby’…
Judge Scott McAfee ruled that either District Attorney Fani Willis has to step down or her boyfriend David Wade has to leave the prosecution team. You can read the opinion here. Given the circumstances, this is the best outcome Willis could have reasonably hoped for, and yet I think it also is a gift to Trump. I doubt that Willis will step down, and if she remains, the stench of her conduct, arrogance and likely perjured testimony will cripple her case.
I thought that the judge would have to sever Willis from the case, but he did not. The decision is widely being seen as a political one, preserving the judge’s chances of re-election (which would have been harmed if he was tarred a racist, which Willis’s fans would undoubtedly set out to do), avoiding the accusations of partisanship and corruption if he did nothing, and appearing to be measured and fair. I’ve seen many analysts compare McAfee’s opinion to Robert Hur’s schizophrenic report on Biden’s misuse of classified documents, and James Comey’s wrist slap on Hillary Clinton for her secret server shenanigans, being sharply critical of Willis and then letting her off the metaphorical hook.
When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: The Nebraska Gas Heist
HEY EVERYBODY, FREE GAS!
Weeeell, not exactly free, but close enough, apparently, for a previously law-abiding, 45-year-old Lincoln, Nebraska woman, Dawn Thompson, to embark on a life of crime. I would love to hear what rationalizations she used to convince herself that what she did was okay. I’d bet anything that she employed a bunch of them.
Her gas-stealing rampage began to unravel when Lincoln Police got a call from Bosselman Enterprise’s loss prevention manager on Oct. 20, 2023. A Pump and Pantry had reported that someone was ripping them off. An investigation revealed that the convenience store’s gas pumps had received a faulty software update a year earlier in November of 2022. The update managed orders and reward cards, but it also allowed anyone who swiped a rewards card twice to shift a pump into its “demo mode.” Once it was set in that sequence, gas was free as far as the pump was concerned. One rewards card had been repeatedly used to fool the pumps, and police traced it to Thompson.
Friday Open Forum: Waiting to See If I’m Right…
Judge Scott McAfee confirmed yesterday that he will announce the fate of Fulton County’s designated “Stop Trump!” agent Fani Willis some time today. From the moment your friendly neighborhood ethicist heard the basic facts in this annoying story I was convinced that one way or the other she would have to leave the Trump case. One of my legal ethics colleagues emphatically disagrees, arguing that whatever conflicts of interest she created by hiring her illicit boyfriend to help prosecute Trump were matters of legal ethics discipline but irrelevant to the defendants. He also pooh-poohed the “appearance of impropriety” issue, echoing the American Bar Association’s logic when it took that category out of the ethics rules: actual impropriety matters, the mere appearance doesn’t.
Yet Willis is a government attorney, and employees of the state are required to avoid the appearance of impropriety because it erodes the public trust. If there was ever a prosecution that mandated a squeaky clean leader beyond suspicion or reproach, this is it. Instead, Willis has left an odoriferous trail of conflicts, arrogance, hypocrisy, dubious explanations and likely lies, all supported by her obnoxious reliance on race-baiting. I have been certain that she would eventually go down for all of this, and that my learned friend–who is apolitical— as well as the my myriad partisan-biased colleagues in the legal ethics association I belong to are wrong.
Well, we shall see . If you see Fredo (“I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says!”) leading off a post today, you’ll know I was right.
Meanwhile, talk about whatever interests you in the Wonderful World of Ethics.
Ethics Alarms 