Stop Making Me Sort Of Defend Donald Trump!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One reason (out of , oh, a thousand or so) that I dread another four years of Donald Trump is the inevitable avalanche of “get Trump!” stories from the mainstream news media, trying to instill fear based on what he reportedly said or thought or considered as reported by some malign mole, or, as in this case, deliberately spinning some off-the-top-of-the-head careless musings into existential threats to the nation. These are sinister and disgusting breaches of journalistic ethics supporting Trump’s description of the media as “enemies of the people,” or, in the alternative—there’s that darn Hanlon’s Razor again!—move evidence that bias makes you, or in this case, them, stupid.

I have a confession: when I read the multiple headlines screaming that Trump had said that he would prosecute political foes if he was elected President, I just assumed that he really said that. What’s the matter with me? I know all of these sources are corrupt, dishonest, and determined to undermine Trump’s candidacy by any means necessary, and yet I still default to the romantic, Pollyanna notion that journalists can be trusted.

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How Can Any Democrat, Never Mind Anyone Else, Trust House Minority Whip James Cliburn (D-S.C.) After This Op Ed?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Heck, how can anyone trust a political party that would install such a calculated liar (or, in the other Hanlon’s Razor alternative, an utter moron) who would issue such cynical, obvious, “it isn’t what it is” piece of unconscionable gaslighting?

Clyburn has one of the most damning Ethics Alarms dossiers of any member of Congress, which is impressive, considering what an awful collection of corrupt and destructive incompetents “low-information voters” have elected to govern us. He, or more likely a soulless aide—the best defense Clyburn could offer for this thing is that he allowed his name to be attached to it without reading what it said—gave the ludicrous primal scream against democracy to CNN, which dutifully published it instead of handing it back laughing and saying, “Good one. Now where’s the real op-ed?”

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Oh NO! A Powerful Member Of Congress Who Hasn’t Become Rich Somehow! What’s Wrong With This Guy?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

CNN’s not-so-subtle partisan innuendo is displayed in the title: “He’s second in line to the presidency. Financially, he’s just getting by.” Obviously, Speaker Mike Johnson must be incompetent or profligate, or have a drug or gambling problem, or something. After all, as CNN vaguely tells us, his Democratic predecessor as Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has “done very well.” I’ll say: her wealth is estimated at about 180 million dollars. CNN doesn’t try to explain how she has done so well, but it is widely believed that it involves insider trading.

Since becoming Speaker, Mike Johnson has been attacked by Democrats for his vile habit of believing in the Bible and its teachings. Add to that the fact that he apparently isn’t smart enough to turn what is supposed to be selfless public service into a personal fortune like his colleagues have, and it’s easy to see why the Axis of Unethical Conduct is telling the pubic that he can’t be trusted.

I have a clarification for them: a member of Congress who isn’t getting rich from the job is more trustworthy, not less.

Unethical Self-Parody Of The Year: France

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Confirming the fairness of every joke since World War II about the French being “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” (Groundskeeper Willy’s memorable description on”The Simpsons” ), French President Emanuel Macron said in a BBC interview that there is “no justification” for Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive against Gaza and Hamas, although, as Old Blues Once sang so well about love and marriage, “you can’t bomb one without the other.”

“There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop,” Macron said, embracing the suddenly popular “proportional response theory” of war now that Jews defending their nation are involved. You can’t really blame him, I guess, as France saw no reason to keep fighting the Nazis when they attacked his country, either.

Macron added to his fatuous surrender monkey outburst by asserting “all civilians having nothing to do with terrorists.” Even when those civilians knowingly elect those terrorist to run their country!

Is France a great country, or what?

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As If We Already Didn’t Have Enough Of Them Running Amuck Already, An Ethics Train Wreck From 1989 Reappears

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

When I saw this news story, I felt just like the Ghostbusters in the scene above from”Ghostbusters II.” Few ethics train wrecks have been as controversial and as ugly as that set in motion by the rape and nearly fatal beating of the Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, in New York City on April 19, 1989. You can refresh you memory (if you were around then) here. To briefly summarize, six young black and Hispanic men were identified in part by statements from the white victim, who had suffered brain damage and lost most of her blood. All were indicted, though one, Steven Lopez, pleaded guilty to a different assault to have the rape charges dropped. The others came known as The Central Park Five—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise —-were convicted of rape and battery charges and served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years. The way the case had been handled by police and prosecutors had long been criticized, as well as mood of public opinion and the news media, which demanded retribution with little concern for facts, fairness or due process. (Does this sound like any other recent sensational case of more recent vintage?)

Nobody doubted the Five’s guilt: they had all confessed under tough (as in illegal) police questioning, but later recanted. Donald Trump, then only a celebrity real estate mogul, paid for a full page newspaper ad demanding they they be convicted and executed. It read in part, “Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer … Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. … How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their Civil Liberties End When an Attack On Our Safety Begins!”

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Today’s Unethical NYT Headline: “Democrats, No Longer Squeamish on Abortion, Lean Into Searing Personal Ads”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an infuriating, despicable headline, though the story is equally bad. If abortion supporters—yes, it’s the Democratic Party exploiting the issue—weren’t “squeamish” about what they so indignantly and self-righteously support they wouldn’t have spent the past 70 years trying to figure out ways to avoid directly admitting what they are advocating. “Baby? What baby?”

The argument for abortion, that is, terminating a developing unique human life distinct from that of its mother before it can grow to be born and go on to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has been, and still is, deliberately clouded by misleadng rhetoric about “choice” and “reproductive care,” the current dodge. Wait, how is that other human life in the equation assisted with his or her “reproduction”? Is it “care” to have that life’s own chances of reproducing taken away from it?

And what choice does the victim of an abortion have?

If Democrats weren’t “squeamish” about having to deal with those questions, they wouldn’t be trying (and, tragically, thanks to the abysmal level of attention, critical thought and ethical competence of the average American, largely succeeding) to avoid them.

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Comment Of The Day: Regarding The Ohio Right To Abortion Amendment [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

In HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” a character in the midst of trying to persuade his fiance to abort their unplanned pregnancy is visited in a nightmare by his three previous aborted offspring at the age they would have been if they had been permitted to live…

I have another abortion-related post gnawing on the inside of my skull, but just as I was about to get the thing down in print, I remembered Ryan Harkin’s deft comment from two days ago, responding to Here’s Johnny’s argument that “given that we concede to government the right, in limited circumstances, to end innocent human life when a greater good is perceived (by some), why cannot we cede that right to women, in limited circumstances when a greater good is perceived?“ I had been prepared to point out that Kant (as usual, dismissing special circumstances) holds that it is never ethically acceptable to sacrifice a life “for the greater good,” and that the aborted human life would certainly have a different perspective on that conclusion. Ryan Harkins, however, had more and better to say, and did, in this Comment of the Day on “Regarding the Ohio Right to Abortion Amendment”:

[Notice of Correction: For some reason, I attributed this COTD to Null Pointer, who promptly alerted me to the mistake. My apologies to Ryan.]

***

In general, the answer to this is that government and individuals have different roles. Government exists to set the boundaries, enforce the boundaries, and exact penalties for the failure to comply with those boundaries regarding interpersonal interaction. Individuals cede that responsibility to the government so that there is an agreed upon entity to handle those interpersonal disputes, for otherwise everything becomes vigilante justice. Whoever is stronger wins.

The view of government we have is that because the strong and the powerful can impinge on the rights of weaker individuals, government intervenes to protect the rights of the weak. I know there are other forms of government out there, ones that favor the strong and crush the weak, or favor the clan at the expense of outsiders, and so on. But here we formed a government of the people, by the people, for the people, with the thought that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We profess that the government exists to ensure that the enumerated rights of the weak are protected against the strong. To turn and delegate the decision making to the individual returns the power to the strong to crush the weak as they see fit. It is anathema to what our nation stands for.

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Marilyn Mosby Gets Her Just Desserts: Permit Ethics Alarms A Victory Lap

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Ethics Fredo gets his second appearance this month. Ethics Alarms had unethical and incompetent Maryland State’s Attorney pegged for what she was—a virulent, ambitious, anti-law enforcement hack—waaay back in 2015 when she first became the darling of the Barack Obama-led “let’s vilify cops, especially white ones” mob, as she pandered to Baltimore’s rioters slightly more vigorously than Obama’s Justice Department had in the wake of the Ferguson uproar. After her politically motivated prosecution of four Baltimore cops in the Freddie Gray arrest failed, EA further commented, in 2016,

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Yesterday was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi attack on the Jewish community that launched the Holocaust. I found mention of the event rather muted compared to past years; maybe it was my imagination. However, it seems to me that the news media would have been doing its job to make a special point of reminding the public of “The Night of Broken Glass” (which would more accurately be called, “The Night of Brutalized Jews). May be then more Americans would understand why that catchy chant that begins “From the river to the sea” is just a bit more chilling to Jews than “Hey hey, ho ho, LBJ has got to go…”

But that’s just what I’m thinking about. What are YOU thinking about in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of ethics?

Ethics Dunce: North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls [Photo Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct differs little from the judicial codes of the other 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal judiciary. Among its edicts:

  • “A judge should …personally observe appropriate standards of conduct to ensure that the integrity and independence of the judiciary shall be preserved.” [Canon 1]
  • “A judge should respect and comply with the law and should conduct himself/herself at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” [Canon 2]
  • “A judge may speak, write, lecture, teach, participate in cultural or historical activities, or otherwise engage in activities concerning the economic, educational, legal, or governmental system, or the administration of justice….if in doing so the judge does not cast substantial doubt on the judge’s capacity to decide impartially any issue that may come before the judge…”[Canon 4]

Despite all of these strictures, Justice Earls gave an interview to Law360 in which she suggested that the justice system is racially biased, citing the lack of racially diverse clerks, and suggested that white judges and other court personnel discriminate against black and female lawyers. She also stated that her conservative colleagues on the North Carolina Supreme Court are more concerned with advancing the conservative legal movement than with their duty to improve the court system. She specifically singled out her own court’s Chief Judge, citing him as an example of “the general antipathy towards seeing that racial issues matter in our justice system.”

These comments to the media violated all of those ethics provisions above, and arguably some others. A lawyer violates North Carolina ethics rules by impugning the integrity of a judge (NCRPC 8.2), and for a state Supreme Court Justice to do this is infinitely more damaging to the public’s respect for and trust of the justice system. After that interview, the Court launched an official investigation to determine whether she had violated the Judicial Code and undermined the judicial system.

Good.

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