SCOTUS’s 9-0 Smackdown of Democratic State Lawfare to Stop Trump Exposes the Unethical Left for All to See

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

All to see, that is, except those whose eyes have been so jaundiced by hate, indoctrination and lies that they are blind.

A 9-0 decision by an ideologically fractured U.S. Supreme Court, rejecting a cherished partisan fantasy devised to hold on to power that one party has empathically shown that it is unfit to possess, should logically result in frank admissions of error, bias, foolishness and confusion by those who insisted that the tactic thus condemned was correct, legal and wise. But today’s progressives are not logical, nor are they self-aware or particularly smart. The reactions from pundits, left-warped lawyers and others (what are the creatures on “The View”?) really should be viewed as a gift. They are telling us what they are, admitting what they are. It’s ironic: the first post of the day was titled, “Will the Disastrous Results of The Great Stupid Result in Learning, So Behavior Changes, or Will the Fools Responsible Keep Trying To Govern On Dreams Rather Than Reality?,” but it wasn’t about the Trump-Deranged learning from their absurd and intellectually indefensible embrace of the 14 Amendment Trump disqualification plot. The SCOTUS decision hadn’t come down yet. Nevertheless, the headline is apt in the aftermath of the decision and the Axis’s embarrassing tantrums. They won’t learn because they can’t learn, even though refusing to admit their mistakes makes them ridiculous, untrustworthy and unpersuasive.

Here are the kinds of people who have been running our government, journalism, entertainment, law schools and universities:

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Ethics Heroes: The Unanimous U.S. Supreme Court

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I’m proud of them.

In its decision in Trump v. Anderson, just announced, the Court reversed the the Colorado Supreme Court’s indefensible decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot on the grounds that he participated in an “insurrection.” “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.” That’s all that needed to be said, and if simplicity and pure law was what the Court needed to ensure a unanimous decision, then so be it. Ethics Alarms had previously stated that the SCOTUS ruling striking down the “lawfare”-inspired crack-brain theory (that a provision created specifically to deal with former participants in the Confederacy was properly applicable to Donald Trump because a mob of idiots stormed the U.S. Capitol in a tantrum over his loss in the 2020 election) should be unanimous, and mirabile dictu, it was. This ends all state efforts to keep Trump off the ballot.

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Will the Disastrous Results of The Great Stupid Result in Learning, So Behavior Changes, or Will the Fools Responsible Keep Trying To Govern On Dreams Rather Than Reality?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I’m afraid of the answer.

If I were really in a nasty state of mind—and I am mighty close—I could make this post and dozens covering the same territory a chain of Nelsons, as in,

The problem with that approach is that nothing’s funny about the phenomenon. In a ridiculous number of ways, across the culture and nation, states, cities and communities are being forced to reverse policies installed at Peak Stupid that were, or should have been, evidently moronic and certain to lead to disaster when they were devised. Nobody, at least not enough bodies, wanted to pay attention; virtue-signaling was more important to them. They really believed this, and I maintain, with all what’s left of my heart, that this was signature significance: anyone who embraced (or, going forward into the frightening future, embraces) this kind of policy approach is unfit to hold any position of influence and power.

To touch on a current Great Stupid debacle for just a second that I’m too sick and too covered in alligators to deal with in any detail right now, the Democratic Party’s determination to renominate Joe Biden for President, someone yesterday described the decision as the equivalent of the Titanic’s captain that night in 1912 backing up and sailing into the same iceberg again. I really like that analogy, and intend to use it whenever appropriate.

This topic could support a book, let’s just look at two recent examples:

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Ethics Dunce (Again): Nikki Haley

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Nikki isn’t the usual brand of ethics dunce, selected based upon a single episode of throbbing ethical duncery. She’s the other kind: someone who had proven that as a general proposition such core ethical values as honesty, integrity, respect and responsibility have not sufficiently settled in her cognitive process, and likely never will. She is, in a word, untrustworthy. Or, in crude terms, as I have framed the diagnosis before here, Haley is a weasel.

She has flip-flopped repeatedly regarding whether she is a Trump supporter or a Trump condemner. She purports to be a loyal Republican, but the only Republican Presidential candidate in decades who has shattered Ronald Reagan’s so-called 11th Commandment (“Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican”) more egregiously than Haley has been Donald Trump. Her ethical instincts are rotten: she was perplexed when a questioner insisted that she lay at least a portion of the blame for the Civil War on the question of slavery; she airily dismissed the principles of the First Amendment by advocating requirements for citizen use of social media. Haley can’t claim fair combat points, as she has been more uncivil than, again, any candidate since Trump. Of late she has been accomplishing nothing but bolstering the prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats by launching attacks on Trump that could be turned into Biden ads by just changing the name on them.

She just had the audacity to crow about her sole primary victory, getting a majority of Republican votes among a pathetic showing of 2,000 in the District of Columbia. 2,000 is fewer than the population of charming Friday Harbor, Washington, which calls itself a town but is more accurately defined as a village.

Now, the former U.N. Ambassador says she no longer feels bound by a pledge made to the Republican National Committee that she would support the GOP presidential nominee. In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Haley reversed what she had said in July, that she would support Trump if he were the nominee “because I’m not going to have a President Kamala Harris.” Even though she signed a mandatory pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee as a condition of being allowed to participate in primary debates, she told “Meet the Press” today that she would not, because “the RNC is not the same RNC”—it’s now “Trump’s” RNC.

Oh.

That is legal, ethical and logical nonsense. She signed a pledge with an organization that has the same structure and the same organizing articles now as the day she signed. Nothing has happened that permits Haley to renege on a pledge. If she were a lawyer, violating a signed pledge likethat would be grounds for suspension, even disbarment. Of course, maybe she’ll flip-flop again. That’s what she does.

Haley isn’t a lawyer, but she’s also not credible public servant. She’s hanging around the nomination race hoping Trump’s legal problems, the unethical result of the Democratic party’s totalitarian tactics to oppose him, will work.

The last GOP candidate who embraced such disgusting conduct and unethical rhetoric was…Donald Trump.

Talk about becoming the thing you most hate…

Speaking of Wills (I’m Searching for One Now)…”The Ethicist” Wants a Word

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Well, the world here at Westminster Place is getting grimmer and more desperate by the second, so I’m escaping to my office for a nonce to see if a break helps. As it happens, our old friend “The Ethicist,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, had a recent exchange involving death-related matters, and I didn’t care much for his analysis.

But what do I know? I couldn’t even figure out that my wife needed to go to the hospital regardless of what her protestations when in fact she was dying…

But I digress. A questioner asked the Times Magazine’s resident ethics advice columnist (and the fourth to hold The Ethicist title) whether his plan of “giving half of my inheritance to my brother without telling him of his exclusion from [their father’s] will, sparing him any additional hurt feelings,” would be ethical. Mad Dad is 90, the inquiring son is the executor of the father’s will, and he has seen that his brother has been cut out..

His question concludes, “Would this be ethical, or does the need for truth override my plan? To be clear, I would not lie. This would be more a misdirection by omission.”

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Briefly…On Timing and Trials

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m sorry. There was a lot to post on yesterday, and I was barely able to make it up to the office at all. I also had some client work to do, and that was really hard: my brain is in no shape to be scanning legal documents for ethics issues.

My friend is here, and yesterday it was just good having someone to talk to. (How Grace and I managed to raise a son as economic with the spoken word as Calvin Coolidge is a topic for the nature-nurture debate. One theory is that he could never get a word in edgewise.)

This is a segment from a larger post languishing on the drafting board. It’s amusing to read Trump-fearing pundits and analysts as they tie themselves in knots to try to avoid admitting that these are all—all of them—politically motivated prosecutions against Trump that would not be happening now if he didn’t threaten the Democrats’ grand plan. They don’t want to admit that they are desperate to see him convicted of something so it can swing enough votes to save Biden, but everything they write and say eventually leaks that obvious motive.

Here’s an example from yesterday. A Politico writer keeps saying “that that the public has a strong interest in a speedy trial, and indeed, a federal statute requires judges to set trial dates that account for “the best interest of the public.” He adds, disingenuously, that “Americans have repeatedly told pollsters — nearly two-thirds of them, including roughly one-third of Republicans — that they want to see a verdict in the case before the election.”

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A Few Random Thoughts Post Grace…[Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

  • Friends are a problem for me, always have been. Someone wrote that friends come in and out of your life like waiters at a diner, and that no doubt accurate description has always bothered me. For a long time, I prided myself on keeping in touch with friends from grammar school, high school, college—and eventually lost touch with more and more of them, feeling guilty about each one. At the same time, I’m uncomfortable with overt displays of friendship, even as I tear up at the finale of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” My father, who had exactly four close friends over his entire life (not counting his best friend, my mother) was the same way exactly. So I can blame him.
  • It’s hard to gauge heartfelt condolences from the pro forma variety, isn’t it? I’m hearing on Facebook from some people who have mostly ignored me for years. I know this is a ritual of civilization that is important for re-establishing our commonality and bonds as human beings. Yet it sure seems weird that it takes a tragedy to activate the impulse.
  • One of my oldest friends heard about Grace and announced that he was going to drive down from Connecticut to help me cope with everything unless I ordered him not to. So he’s coming. I have a few friends who are like that, just a few. I suppose nobody has too many more, friends who come to one’s aid because they want to and not because they feel obligated.
  • None of the above in any way diminishes my genuine gratitude for the lovely and caring condolences (and even flowers!) I have received   from many of you on EA and privately. I have only met a handful of you face-to-face, after all—and one of the few I ended up banning from the blog. You have no obligations to me: the fact that you would express what you have touches me greatly. I am on the cusp of descending into an all-time orgy of second-guessing and self-doubt, but so far, at least, you have kept me out of the abyss.

Added: I just had my first conversation discussing Grace’s passing with someone who should have felt close to her after a life-long, supposedly close family relationship. I might as well have been relaying a baseball score. By any normal calculus, my wife’s death should have affected this individual nearly as much as it does me. Yet in our conversation I’d guess 25% of her contribution was laughter. (I’m not that funny.)

None of this was exactly a surprise to me after many years of interactions with this woman, but it does give me some insight into Grace’s seemingly inexplicable insecurity and anxiety. It took a great deal of restraint for me to avoid asking, “What is wrong with you?” I know—defensive reactions, everybody deals with grief differently, blattily blah (as Grace used to say).

I really don’t think she cares. She’s a sociopath.

Ethics Tip (To the Biden Administration): You Can’t Resolve an Ethical Conflict By Taking Contradictory Actions Simultaneously

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I would think that would be obvious to mature, competent, experienced and responsible policy-makers. But perhaps that’s not relevant here…

I awoke today to the news that the United States has air-dropped “humanitarian aid” into Gaza. Three US C-130s dropped 66 palettes of food, 22 from each aircraft. Biden complained last week about the slow pace of assistance flowing into Gaza, the Israeli campaign against which the United States is supporting with its funds. Wars against enemies are designed to make the populace under attack less well-off, eventually to the point where their government says “Enough!” and surrenders. Aid to a population under attack is intended to make the population under attack better off. Simultaneously funding an attack on a region and sending aid to that region isn’t ethical. It is offensively cynical, not merely refusing to make a decision, but making contradictory decisions to appeal to groups with diametrically opposing interests. Sending aid of any kind to the enemy of the nation we are supporting in a war can accomplish little more than extending that war. The most ethical way to engage in the unethical practice of warfare is to end it as quickly as possible.

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So It’s Come to This: A Question About Sandwiches Reveals the Insane Ideological Divide and the News Media’s Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’m embarrassed to have to write about this crap.

Earlier this week former New York Times editor Adam Rubenstein published a tell-all about his experiences at the paper in “The Atlantic.” His theme: the oppressive progressive bias that made him feel like an outsider.

Rubenstein related a minor incident when he was criticized for saying that Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwich was his favorite after being asked about his sandwich preferences at his orientation. Rubenstein wrote that an HR rep replied, “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people,” and the other Times employees signified their approval of the rebuke by snapping their fingers.

So the Times hires Beatniks now! Good to know.

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I’m All in Favor of Female Athletes Refusing to Compete Against Transgender Athletes Who Went Through Puberty As Males…But in Pool???

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Activist Riley Gaines has announced that “Any woman who doesn’t compete and loses out on prize money, I will happily pay the fee out of my own pocket. In any sport.” Now she’s putting her money where her tweets are. “At the European Pool Championships, female player, Kim O’Brien, forfeited the women’s final where she was set to play male player, Harriet Haynes,” she wrote. “I am happily paying her the prize money she lost out on. Stop playing their game. More of this!!”

Isn’t this the weakest possible example for Gaines’s crusade? I don’t understand why pool or billiards competitions are segregated by gender. It’s not a strength sport, or an endurance sport. I may be missing something, but I can’t imagine why a woman can’t compete on even terms against any man in pool. Gaines seems to be falling into a sexist trap. Woman aren’t unable to compete on an equal basis with men in everything.