Friday Open Forum! Find Me Some Good News, Please…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

My sister traditionally ends our phone conversation by suddenly blurting out—lately the impetus has been the prospect of a Presidential contest between Biden and Trump—“Everything’s going to Hell!” and hanging up. I am constitutionally disinclined to be that pessimistic (unlike some who comment here of late), but boy, I sure could use some good news beyond the ACLU deigning to protest a judge muzzling a major political candidate that her pals disapprove of.

Here’s my latest Ethics Alarms worry: increasingly, my story sources are demanding paywall fees. Most of the formerly free bloggers have moved to substack and subscription newsletters. The New York Post, CBS, NBC and others hit me with a block asking for ad-blockers to be disabled, then don’t remove the block until I’ve disabled the ad-blocker and refreshed three times or more. CNN has joined the group that make it difficult to copy text. Now The Blaze is going full subscription. I pay for the digital versions of the Washington Post and New York Times, but as we all know by now (I hope), they can’t be trusted.

I can only be Scarlet O’Hara for so long, but I guess I’ll worry about that tomorrow…

Enough bitching from me: Over to you, Clarence…

The Rest Of The Story, Or At Least Some Of It: Rep. Bowman Pleads Guilty

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In the midst of more pressing matters like the House not being able to elect a Speaker, the Hamas attack and so many Democrats revealing their dark anti-Semitic side, it is understandable that “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman’s law-breaking to disrupt a House vote on the budget and his subsequent ridiculous lies to minimize his responsibility might have been pushed to the back of our brains. (You can review this clown show here, in the first seven posts listed). But justice has, sort of, prevailed.

Bowman was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and processed by the U.S. Capitol Police today, after D.C. prosecutors charged the Democrat with setting off a false fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building adjacent to the Capitol, a misdemeanor.

Bowman has agreed to plead guilty to the single false fire alarm charge. He will pay the maximum fine of $1,000, and all charges will be dropped in three months provided that Bowman provides a formal apology to the Capitol Police along with the fine. The New York Times says this is the standard policy with such charges.

“I’m thankful for the quick resolution from the District of Columbia attorney general’s office on this issue,” Bowman said in a statement yesterday responding to the charge. “I am responsible for activating a fire alarm, I will be paying the fine issued and look forward to these charges being ultimately dropped.” His statement did not address the fact that by pleading guilty, he is admitting that his act was intentional, despite saying repeatedly at the time that he thought the obvious fire alarm apparatus would open the doors of the building, which are always locked on weekends, and that included signs clearly explaining the situation. But Bowman is still lying: in his statement he said that he was “grateful” that the Capitol Police general counsel’s office “agreed I did not obstruct nor intend to obstruct any House vote or proceedings.” There was no such statement by authorities indicating that. Obstructing House business is a felony, and no determination has been made public about whether charges will be brought for that. Gabriel Shoglow-Rubenstein, a spokesman for the D.C. attorney general’s office which announced the charges, said, “Congressman Bowman was treated like anyone else who violates the law in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Shoglow-Rubenstein said in a statement. “Based on the evidence presented by Capitol Police, we charged the only crime that we have jurisdiction to prosecute.”

The D.C. attorney general’s office—Full disclosure: I have done a yearly ethics training for the office for more than a decade—does not handle obstruction charges.

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Surprise! The ACLU Takes A Break From Partisan Advocacy And Defends Free Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I guess the erstwhile “non-partisan” individual rights organization has to do this once in a while so it can claim it hasn’t become the Democratic Party ally that it is, but the gesture is still welcome.

Yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the gag order the judge overseeing former President Trump’s federal 2020 election criminal case in D.C. slapped on him is unconstitutionally broad and vague….which, of course, it is.

“Former President, and now Defendant, Donald Trump has said many things,” the ACLU wrote in a court filing. “Much that he has said has been patently false and has caused great harm to countless individuals, as well as to the Republic itself. Some of his words and actions have led him to this criminal indictment, which alleges grave wrongdoing in contempt of the peaceful transition of power. But Trump retains a First Amendment right to speak, and the rest of us retain a right to hear what he has to say.”

Naturally, the ACLU doesn’t have the guts to weigh in on Trump’s side without including a gratuitous attack on: can’t have the group’s Trump Deranged supporters taking offense, after all !

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Schadenfreude Bonus: Watching Harvard Face The Consequences Of Its Own Hypocrisy and Corrupted Values

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

New Harvard President Claudine Gay can be expected to issue a fourth clarification of her initial reactions to the University’s large anti-Semitic contingent cheering on the Hamas massacre of Jewish citizens on October 7. To read Gay’s inaugural speech upon becoming the new president of America’s oldest and most storied educational institution, one would think “all is well” at Harvard, as Faber College student Kevin Bacon futilely screamed in the epic finale of “Animal House.” In marvelous ramalama-dingdong fashion, the standard issue race-obsessed progressive scholar babbled, predictably as Harvard’s first black President, about “this institution’s long history of exclusion and the long journey of resistance and resilience to overcome it.” Then she proved incapable of reacting forcibly when Harvard’s long history of anti-Semitism suddenly revealed itself not to have been resisted enough. Indeed, Harvard’s relentless efforts at woke indoctrination guarantee that it will flourish.

As discussed here, 31 Harvard campus organizations famously announced that Israel was fully responsible for all the violence erupting in and out of Gaza. Then, after efforts were made to reveal the names of the participating pro-terrorism and historically ignorant students so potential employers could cross them off their lists, we learned how well Harvard imbues its students with the ethical virtues of integrity, accountability, honesty, loyalty and prudence, along with such enabling virtues as fortitude, courage, and sacrifice. At least ten of the groups announced that they no longer endorsed the letter, now that there might be consequences attached to signing it. Some student members swore that they never approved the letter that their groups signed; others proclaimed that they didn’t really mean to say what the letters said, or that they hadn’t read it carefully.

Got it: you’re incompetent, irresponsible and cowardly fools. These reactions do not enhance your attraction as potential employees.

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Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck Update: The Left’s Mask Falls Away…Part 2: Ugly Faces [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It serves me right: in planning a second part on this topic, I never suspected that the Left’s embrace of anti-Semitism, fact-free excuses for Hamas, and rationalizations against Israel defending itself would metastasize the way it has. I can’t possibly cover all the significant examples now; there are too many. But I’ll do the best I can with some recent low-lights…

  • This is what indoctrination in woke victim mentality has wrought: a Harvard Harris Poll shows that a slight majority of 18-24-year-olds, just under half 25-34-year-olds, believe that Hamas’s terror attack is justified. 51% of the rising generation told the pollsters that the the October 7 attacks on civilians, children, babies and hostages “can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians.”
  • Say what you will about Trump (or Nikki Haley), we can be confident of how he would have reacted to this: United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres,  said that “it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” as he referenced “56 years of suffocating occupation” for the Palestinian people. Israel has demanded his removal. New York Sun got it right, saying,

    “The speech today by the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, blaming Israel for the attack on it by Hamas is one of the most shocking moments in the history of the world body. It absolutely infuriated Israel, its diplomats, and the Jewish community world wide. It is hard to imagine that the UN, already a deeply corrupted institution obsessed with Israel, can continue with business as usual. We grasp that there was a certain diplomatic subtlety to the way Mr. Guterres couched his libel — a blood libel, at that.  There is no justification for the October 7 attack by Hamas, he said, and then justified it by claiming it “did not happen in a vacuum.” As our Benny Avni reports, he enumerated hardships inflicted on Palestinian Arabs. His remarks smacked of attempts by enemies of the Jews to suggest that the Jews deserved the Holocaust.”

The US should withhold any payments or funding for the United Nations until he resigns or is replaced. Continue reading →

Minneapolis’s Woke And Deluded DA Foiled By An Ethical Judge

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Good.

In 2019, 39-year-old Steve Markey, sitting in his car in Minneapolis, was murdered during an unsuccessful carjacking attempt. The two teenage suspects both fired shots at Markey. They were arrested the next day after a string of other violent crimes. Both confessed to the murder.

Minneapolis’s DA before the current woke District Attorney Mary Moriarty said he would try the defendants as adults. One of the defendants, Husayn Braveheart (above), now 20 years old, fought to have his case remain in juvenile court where the punishment would be more moderate than in adult court: his co-defendant received a 22-year sentence when tried as an adult. In November 2022, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Braveheart should be certified for trial as an adult after determining the State had met the burden of proof on a series of public safety factors including Braveheart’s culpability and his history of failing to participate in diversion programs and other therapy.

But at a pretrial hearing in August, Moriarty announced that she had entered into a plea agreement in which Braveheart would serve just 1 year in a workhouse and 5 years of probation.  Under the deal, the 20-year-old would serve no prison time for murder.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region….”

—–Former President Barack Obama, sticking his nose into a matter that he should have no say in, and further enhancing his established record as a foreign policy incompetent.

The former President’s advice comes in an annoying post on Medium titled, “Thoughts on Israel and Gaza.” Primarily, his comments are stupid, but individuals with out-sized influence on public opinion, like irrationally popular ex-Presidents, have an ethical obligation to avoid allowing their stupidity to infect public affairs. How could anything “further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations” when for generations Palestinians have wanted to kill as many Jews as possible and wipe their nation from the map? Is Obama warning Israel that they risk really, really making Palestinians hate them? And nothing Israel does that isn’t suicidal will assist “efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.” There will be peace and stability when the Palestinians genuinely condemn terrorism and accept that Israel is a legitimate nation…in other words, never.

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Case Study:”When Ethics Fail, The Law Steps In”— The 2023 Major League Baseball Season

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

After the Arizona Diamondbacks win tonight, everything but the World Series will has been settled in the 2023 MLB season. (The Texas Rangers had already defeated the cheatin’ Houston Astros for the American League pennant, thus proving that the Baseball Gods read Ethics Alarms.) The season will be most noted in history notable for the fact that several game-changing new rules were introduced, all designed to cut down on dead time and speed up the games, which had gradually stretched out to an average of more than three hours.

MLB had tinkered around the edges of the rules in recent years in an effort to fix the dragging games problem. It (finally) banned one-batter mid-inning pitching changes, a curse visited on baseball by a combination of statistics-obsessed managers and the rise of left-handed pitching specialists, by requiring relief pitchers to face a minimum of three batters. It also made intentional walks automatic, with batters being sent to first with pitchers actually having to throw four balls outside the strike zone (that one shaved about 3 seconds off the average game time, maybe).

These new rules had little measurable effect, however, so for 2023, baseball dropped The Big One by instituting a pitch clock that limited the time pitchers had to throw a pitch to 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base. Rules were attached limiting the number of time-outs a batter could call during his at-bats to one and requiring batters to step up to the plate when a pitcher was ready to throw the ball, thus ending psychological stalling tactics. Baseball had always taken pride in the fact that it was the one major sport without time limits, but that virtue had become a liability as players increasingly abused the privilege. Another rule stopped more tactical abuse: pitchers had begun throwing alleged pick-off throws to first base sometimes for no apparent reason, again, stalling to compose themselves are to unsettle the batter. Starting in 2023, a pitcher got three shots at trying to pick-off a baserunner, and if the third failed, the runner advanced to the next base anyway.

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David Mamet On The Self-Destructive Opposition To Israel By American Jews

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I have concluded that there are three categories of Americans calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and blabbering on about a “peaceful and humane” resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. First, there are the anti-Semites, who willfully pretend that the plight of Palestinians isn’t tied to the group’s stated determination to wipe Israel from the map. Then there are the Lennonites, whose brains have been turned to mush by the fantasies of John’s “Imagine.” They want to eliminate war, and stubbornly think that is possible when terrorists and evil-doers like Hamas have forced a reckoning from the beginning of nations. Finally, there are the idiots, ignorant of history, distracted only by loyalties, biases, mob passions and emotion.

It is fascinating to speculate which of these three categories explain Jewish American peace activists like the thousands who marched on Capitol Hill, where they carried Palestinian flags and called for support of “Palestinian rights.” In a related display, hundreds of activists held a sit-in inside one of the Capitol buildings, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, who claim to want a just and peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Playwright, screenwriter and author David Mamet has written a deft analysis of the phenomenon called “How the Democrats betrayed the Jews: The sick thrill of antisemitism has a price.”

Mamet is thoughtful commentator whose mind is usually occupied with ethics problems (almost all of his plays and movies have ethics at their core), and who is currently unpopular with the artistic left ever since he proclaimed that nobody but him had any business deciding what was a good enough reason to buy a gun. Do read the whole piece, but here are some jewels…

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