Add Two Unethical and Irresponsible Progressive Policies Together And This Is the Result

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Great—even a dyed-in-the-wool conservative gadfly like Ian Miles Chong is adopting coded woke-speak now. Those aren’t migrants, kicking and beating on NYC police. They are illegal immigrants.Darwin Andres Gomez Izquiel, 19, Kelvin Servat Arocha, 19, Juarez Wilson, 21, Yorman Reveron, 24, and Jhoan Boada, 22, were chased down, arrested, and charged with assault. They they were released without bail, because, as we know, the criminal justice system is racist letting criminal go while depending on an honor system to get them before a judge or jury is the sensitive policy. Illegal immigrants have demonstrated that they have no respect for our laws, and ny attacking cops, these illegals have demonstrated that they have no intention of being law abiding citizens. Writes fire-breathing conservative columnist Athena Thorne in response to that video:

“In New York City, Biden and Mayorkas’s legacy plays out daily. Asylum scammers continue to romp around the Big, Rotten Apple, merrily shoplifting businesses into oblivion, burning down buildings with their off-brand lithium-ion batteries, and mowing down New Yorkers with their e-bikes and uninsured vehicles in hit-and-run incidents. Lawlessness breeds lawlessness. And we taxpayers have the privilege of bankrolling all of it.

At the beginning of her column, she describes the video as “Trump’s latest campaign ad.”

It’s hard for me to see how she’s wrong. When people vote for the almost incredibly flawed Donald Trump, they are voting against scenes like what we see above.

Surprise! Early Friday Open Forum…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I have a two-hour session on professionalism and legal ethics to teach this morning, so I’m going to ask readers to submit and discuss their own ethics stories, issues and observations a day early. Surprise!

Pop Quiz: Without cheating, can you identify the handsome Confederate general above, and why he’s an appropriate symbol of today’s Open Forum?

Ethics Quiz: Hating Satan

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Michael Cassidy, the former Mississippi candidate for Congress who destroyed the Christmas seasonal display put up by Satanists at the Iowa State Capitol building , was ultimately charged not just with criminal mischief, which is a misdemeanor and what such vandalism would usually draw as an offense, but felony third-degree criminal mischief. The enhanced charge was justified, according to the prosecutor, because the act was committed “in violation of individual rights” under Iowa’s hate crime statute.

The statue Cassidy attacked was of Baphomet, who isn’t exactly Satan but close enough for horseshoes, or goatshoes. The ancient pagan deity is used as a symbolic trademark by the Satanic Temple, a largely satirical pro-atheism and anti-religion organization. He’s a little like Mickey Mouse is to Disney. Understandably, however, serious Christians regard using Ol’ Baphy’s image to “celebrate” the Christian holiday of Christmas as blasphemy, which it is, because that’s how the Satanic Temple rolls. It think blasphemy is a joke. To that group, all religion is a joke.

Michael Cassidy is one of millions who don’t get it.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Should a hateful act against a statue that mocks Christianity be treated as a hate crime?

“Evidence shows the defendant made statements to law enforcement and the public indicating he destroyed the property because of the victim’s religion,” triggering the violation of individual rights enhancement, said Lynn Hicks, a spokesman for the Polk County Attorney’s Office.

Wow, an entire office of assholes! The man committed a crime and an act of civil disobedience, protesting what he views as the absurdity of the state having to give a supposed Satanic organization equal representation with other religions in a holiday display. I have no idea what is gained by over-charging and taking the apparent position that it’s illegal to hate the personification of evil. Some legal commentators have climbed into the high weeds about whether atheism or Satanism are legitimate religions; the same weeds are available for debates over Pastafarians (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) and Scientologists. It’s an unnecessary issue here.

Hate crimes are thought crimes and, at Ethics Alarms, unethical to charge whatever they involve. Michael Cassidy should be allowed to hate Satan, Baphomet, their followers real or satirical, those who mock Christianity and Christmas and anyone or anything else he chooses, as long as he doesn’t also destroy property.

I, for example, hate grandstanding prosecutors.

R.I.P. Chita Rivera, an Ethical Star

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Chita Rivera, veteran musical comedy star, actress and dancer extraordinaire, has died at 91. She had a remarkable career and an unusually long one. I saw Chita perform live but once, long after her prime in a West End production of “The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a not-so-great and over-hyped musical. Rivera had major roles in the hit Broadway productions of ”West Side Story,” “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Chicago,” among others. The Times obituary is full of information, though it skirts over what I recall as being a particularly cruel career blow, when Rivera was passed over for the role of Anita in the film version of “West Side Story” for Rita Moreno, even though Rivera had won a Tony for her performance in the role on stage. It also doesn’t mention an unusual altruistic act by Rivera when she was co-starring with Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde in the 1960 musical, “Bye Bye Birdie.”

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“Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” An Ethics Movie That Seems Disturbingly Relevant Today

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

How I missed the 1995 HBO film “Indictment: the McMartin Trial” for almost 30 years, I don’t know, but I did. The Oliver Stone produced legal drama about the insane events surrounding what turned out to be the start of a nation-wide freak-out over supposed Satan worship and widespread child abuse at day-care centers is unusually accurate for a docudrama. For this reason it is also infuriating. How could this have happened even once?

In August of 1983, the mother of a 2-year-old boy phoned the Manhattan Beach (California) Police Dept. claiming that her son had been sexually abused at the family-run McMartin Pre-School. That accusation prompted a series of sensational and inflammatory reports from an unscrupulous broadcast journalist (or “journalist,” for short) at WABC-TV. It also prompted the police to contact other parents with children at the school to ask if their children had been molested. Those children were, in turn, interviewed by a crusading social worker named Kee MacFarlane, who used controversial techniques to persuade the young children that they had seen and experienced terrible things, escalating from sexual abuse to having to witness ritual rapes and human sacrifices. (This was one of the seminal cases in the psychiatry profession’s “implanted memories” scandal.)

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Ethics Hero: EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Well this was certainly refreshing and unexpected!

Donald Trump-knockoff billionaire Mark Cuban stated in gratuitous tweet that he has “never hired anyone based exclusively on race, gender, religion,” but that “race and gender can be part of the equation” because he believes “diversity is a competitive advantage.”

What virtue-signaling claptrap! What does that last part even mean? Does Harvard consider that its acceptance of diversity as a substitute for genuine credentials and ability has given the university a “competitive advantage” as it competes for the best students, faculty and donors? Yesterday, in addition to having it revealed that its top DEI officer is a DEI hire herself who rose to predominance with the assistance of bogus scholarship, a wealthy donor who last year gave the university $300,000,000 dollars announced that he was through. “Will America’s elite university get back to their roots of educating American children – young adults – to be the future leaders of our country or are they going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions [and]a DEI agenda that seems to have no real endgame…?” Ken Griffin asked in response to being asked if he could be lured back as a donor. Continue reading →

KABOOM! Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer Is a Worse Plagiarist Than Even Claudine Gay!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

And there goes my head. I just painted the ceiling of my office, too.

Unbelievable! The Washington Free Beacon, in an exclusive (hey, you wouldn’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Boston Globe of “Spotlight” fame to do any investigative journalism that might embarrass a black, female DEI officer at Harvard, would you?), revealed that Harvard University’s Sherri Ann Charleston appears to have “plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks” and even taking credit for a study done by her own husband according to a complaint filed with the university yesterday. Charleston was the chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then joined Harvard in August 2020 as its first chief diversity officer—you know, because the negligent death of an overdosing career crook in Minnesota meant that Harvard had to launch a new bureaucracy. And what to you know? Charleston contributed to the fateful selection of former Harvard president Claudine Gay!

Charleston’s Harvard bio describes her as “one of the nation’s leading experts in diversity,” whatever that means. Oh wait…it means that she’s aces at “translating diversity and inclusion research into practice for students, staff, researchers, postdoctoral fellows and faculty of color.”

The allegations against Charleston look irrefutable and damning. From the Free Beacon report:

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The Russian Figure Skating Olympics Scandal Finally Is Resolved After Everyone Stopped Paying Attention.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m thinking about establishing an organizational version of The Julie Principle. When an entity, company, organization or government has shown that its culture is sufficiently corrupt and unlikely to change for the better, maybe it’s a waste of time and ethical analysis to keep complaining about the inevitable misconduct. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.” Either just give up on trusting that entity, company, organization or government, or resolve to live with its flaws. Like Hollywood. The National Football League. Or, as in this ridiculous episode, the Olympics and Russia.

Kamila Valieva, the teenage Russian figure skating star, was banned from competition for four years yesterday by a three-member arbitration panel at the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. The reason was her positive doping test that messed up the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics beyond all reason, confusing everyone and keeping more than a dozen other athletes from receiving their medals.

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Well You Know, God DOES Work in Mysterious Ways…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Denver, Colorado pastor Eli Regalado announced in a YouTube video last April that he would be selling cryptocurrency. The pastor said he was “setting the rails for God’s wealth transfer.” Regalado and his wife then began selling cryptocurrency, dubbed INDXcoin, to members of his Victorious Grace Church and other Christian communities in the Denver area using his “the “Kingdom Wealth Exchange,” an online cryptocurrency marketplace he set up for the purpose. They peddled the holy investment with prayers, quotes from the Bible, and entreaties to have faith in their product. Sure enough, the plan was a godsend, at least for the pastor and his wife: the Regalados raised more than $3.2 million from over 300 investors.

Unfortunately, the INDXcoin was worthless, except for the purpose of making the pastor and his wife rich. The Regalados used around $1.3 million of the supposedly “investment funds” on a Range Rover, jewelry, cosmetic dentistry and vacations, while renovating their Denver home. Hallelujah!

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The Rest of the Story: The Latest in the Alex Murdaugh Murder Trial Train Wreck Has Me Depressed About the American Justice System

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is bad for me: after all, my profession is substantially involved with the justice system and the law. I keep learning things that make me increasingly cynical regarding the fairness, competence and integrity of the American justice system, and lately it has been

…right in the kisser. (I’ll have another horror story for you later today, if all goes according to plan.)

Yesterday, a judge refused to grant a new trial for Alex Murdaugh, the former South Carolina lawyer, now disbarred and convicted of murdering his wife and son. His defense team argued that a court clerk had improperly influenced the jurors in his case, which, if she did not, was only moral luck. I wrote about the unethical clerk here last Fall. Even before the allegations were made about the clerk, Rebecca Hill, signaling and sometimes prompting jurors that they needed to convict Murdaugh, the trial and his conviction looked like a travesty of justice.

Here is what I wrote about the case after the trial…

“Reviewing the astoundingly thin evidence, I do not understand why the trial judge didn’t throw out the jury’s verdict and declare Murdaugh acquitted because there was not enough to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt as a matter of law. There wasn’t. This was an example of a jury convicting a defendant of murder because they decided he was a bad guy and there were no other suspects. Alex Murdaugh lied repeatedly regarding the deaths of his wife and son and he was undeniably a thief and a sociopath—but prosecutors couldn’t and didn’t present much more than theories about whether he was the killer. Judges are understandably, reluctant to over-ride juries, but in this case it was necessary. If the Trump Deranged reasoning that the conclusion that someone is just an untrustworthy bounder is sufficient to assume guilt of criminal activity is becoming a cultural norm, our justice system is approaching a crisis, if it isn’t in one already.

The only motive that the prosecution could come up with for claiming Murdaugh was behind the double murder of his wife and son was that the lawyer thought he would be more leniently treated for the other crimes he was being charged with if juries and judges felt sorry for him as a result of their deaths. That’s just bonkers, and if I were a member of the jury, I’d regard the prosecution having to resort to such a theory as per se reasonable doubt. But as if that weren’t enough, Murdaugh’s trial was tainted by a fame- and fortune-seeking law clerk. (I recently wrote about the carnage triggered by another unethical law clerk scandal. What the hell’s going on out there?)

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