Ethics Quiz: How Jean Carroll Got To Sue Trump For A Sexual Assault Allegation Over Two Decades Old

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

When I was discussing the recent jury verdict finding Donald Trump liable for defamation and sexual assault with an astute trail lawyer friend, he expressed surprise that the sexual assault civil case wasn’t barred by the statute of limitations, as the criminal case was. Among the glaring problems with the jury verdict was that it found by a preponderance of the evidence that the sexual assault—not the rape allegation , which, strangely, is what Trump called a lie on social media, prompting the defamation suit—took place even though Carroll couldn’t say what year it had occurred in. “This is the reason we have statute of limitations,” my learned friend said. “Memories fade, evidence is lost, testimony becomes unreliable. I’m amazed New York’s statute allows this.”

Well therein lies a tale. The statute didn’t allow it until, coincidentally <cough> last year. The Adult Survivors Act was passed by the New York legislature and signed by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022. It created a “one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual assault” to legally pursue their alleged abusers, irrespective of when the abuse took place.

It was and is a blatantly political measure, pandering to the #MeToo crowd, which itself is deeply conflicted and corrupt. Now bad, bad men like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and…surprise! Donald Trump, can be sued during a convenient one year window no matter how long ago their alleged sexual misconduct took place, or how blurry memories of the details may be. Never mind that the protection against unfair sexual assault and sexual harassment lawsuits based on accusations that only surface when the accuser calculates that there are forces at play in society (like “Believe all woman”) making a victory likely should be available to all citizens. Never mind that such late-hit lawsuits rely on emotion and politics as much as evidence.

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Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Gee, I can’t imagine what the commentariat might want to bat around today. Freak-outs over CNN daring to host a forum with a the leading candidate to oppose the President in 2024, the news media rushing to dismiss evidence of the Biden family’s access peddling, Rep. George Santos being indicted, the stampede at the border, the Marine who interceded with a rampaging homeless man on the subway indicted, a Squad member holding an anti-Semitic event at the Capitol…yeah, just another sleepy Friday.

Personally, I’m rooting for you to avoid all that stuff and leave me something to write about.

More Weird Tales From The Great Stupid: Oh Yeah, This Will Work Out Well…

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

It’s getting really, really weird out there. Today this headline actually appeared on the Newsweek site: “Couple Assaulted Outside Liquor Store Over Suspected Bud Light Purchase.” Yes, Major Clipton will make his obligatory appearance, but here is the story, which I could not believe when I first learned about it:

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation has created a draft plan to have unarmed civilians enforce traffic laws instead of the Los Angeles Police Department. The plan, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, has been on the drawing board for nearly three years but has yet to be officially released. This, I suspect, is because those who created this thing are in fear of ending up in a padded room.

As the story proves, however, all of California is now a padded room.

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: Brian Stelter

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Will anyone be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point? Is it just a free for all?”

—CNN exile Brian Stelter on NBC, reacting to the news that Tucker Carlson is moving his opinions and demagoguery to Twitter, where Elon Musk refuses to censor views Stelter and his ilk don’t agree with.

I know this keeps coming up, but when did the supposedly liberal side of the ideological divide start opposing free speech rather than defending it? How did it happen? Stelter just casually endorsed speech “policing” as if there is no problem with the concept. No ethics alarms pinged at all. I can see many reasons why a news network, even a conservative-biased one like Fox, wouldn’t want Carlson to be its public face, but Twitter’s purpose is to create a town square. Stelter’s complaint is like advocating for speakers in Hyde Park’s veritable Speakers Corner to be tackled if they offend the majority.

Stelter went on to say, “I think this is the point. It is a free-for-all. It’s what Elon Musk wants to provide. This move from Tucker may cement Twitter as a right-wing website.”

Wow. If a platform doesn’t censor speech, it must be “right-wing.” (How did this happen?)

Imagine: NBC hired this hack. By all means, as long as he’s roaming free, he should say whatever comes into his dishonest, biased, intellectually corrupt little mind. It’s informative: now we know the kind of news analysis the Peacock Network endorses.

You Want “Takeaways From Trump’s CNN Town Hall”? Ethics Alarms Will Give You Takeaways…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

  • The mainstream media’s Trump-derangement/hate/obsession/phobia/negative bias is so overwhelming that it is incapable of controlling it or even attempting to be professional. Ann Althouse apparently had the exact reaction to the Memeorandum array of outraged headlines from the most important partner in the Axis of Unethical Conduct this morning as I did: she screen-shotted it all and used it as a post, writing only, “You can see an image of outrage….… if you go to Memeorandum right now, but I’ve saved it for you…” Indeed, this evidence says much more about the state of journalism and punditry in the nation than anything it reveals about Donald Trump.
  • The one unstated but implicit message of the media reaction was that CNN was breaching some kind of imaginary, 21st Century journalism ethics tenet by televising the thing. That’s totalitarianism creeping out: like it or not, Trump is the current front-runner to be the GOP nominee for President, and there is an obvious valid news objective in letting the public see him in a spontaneous forum and hear what he has to say. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fine representative of the Big Brother wing of the Democratic Party, condemned CNN over its programming: of course she did. A depressingly large contingent of Democrats would avoid elections entirely if it could keep them in power, just as Joe Biden avoids press conferences. Too dangerous! The Daily Beast was kind enough to provide almost a parody of anti-Trump spin about the town hall, calling Trump a lair while recycling the mainstream media’s Official Democratic Party Talking Points, like describing the Jan. 6 riot as a “failed coup” and the George Floyd riots as “overwhelmingly peaceful and simply demand[ing] that police officers refrain from shooting and killing innocent Black people.”

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Integrity Test For The Mainstream Media: Will It Remind The Public That Biden’s New Immigration Policy Is What He Mocked Trump For In 2020?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That’s a silly headline, isn’t it? First, the MSM has already established that it has no integrity, so any tests are superfluous. Second, the mainstream media sees its job as protecting Democrats, not calling attention to their lies, distortions of facts, embarrassments, failures and hypocrisy.

Still, if ever Donald Trump was handed an opportunity to say, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, I told you so, you big dummy!” this is it. During their final debate in the 2020 campaign, Biden expressed disgust at the Trump policy disqualifying aspiring illegal immigrants from applying for asylum in the U.S. if they neglected to first apply for asylum in the other countries they traveled through on the way here, saying,

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A Hanlon’s Razor Challenge: Is The Decline Of History Literacy Among U.S. Students Due To Malice Or Incompetence?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[I apologize for using that Sam Cooke song to introduce this topic, as it is lazy and obvious, but 1) we don’t hear enough of Sam Cooke, one of the many great voices of the Fifties, and 2) I’ll always take a video over a picture, and I’ll always choose a song over just words.]

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released last week showed that about 40% of eighth graders scored below the basic level in U.S. history in 2022, compared to 34% in 2018. Only 13% of students performed at or above the “proficient” level in U.S. history. In addition, Eighth graders’ average civic scores decreased by 2-points compared to 2018, the NAEP results show. They are comparable to results from 1998, which is the first assessment year for civics under the current framework.

Why this should surprise anyone is a mystery. Although the decline is being attributed to the pandemic and the beyond idiotic (but politically unavoidable) lockdown, it has been clear for years that indoctrination according to partisan and woke agenda items had taken priority over teaching history and civics as the teaching ranks have become increasingly populated by ideologues and proto-Marxists who themselves don’t know much about history. It is deemed more important today to teach children that they are either the victims of systemic racism or complicit in it as well as the complex joys of alternate sexual orientations rather than the content of the Constitution, the U.S. role in winning World War II, or the issues underlying the Civil War.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Statement Regarding His Reparations Task Force’s Final Recommendations

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I see another politician is envious of John Kerry’s Lifetime Weasel Award! Just consider this head-exploding response by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who appointed a task force that was under the impression that its—ridiculous, but never mind, let’s say good faith—recommendations for financial reparations to black Californians would be accepted as well as taken seriously:

“The Reparations Task Force’s independent findings and recommendations are a milestone in our bipartisan effort to advance justice and promote healing. This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country. Dealing with that legacy is about much more than cash payments. Many of the recommendations put forward by the Task Force are critical action items we’ve already been hard at work addressing: breaking down barriers to vote, bolstering resources to address hate, enacting sweeping law enforcement and justice reforms to build trust and safety, strengthening economic mobility — all while investing billions to root out disparities and improve equity in housing, education, healthcare, and well beyond. This work must continue. Following the Task Force’s submission of its final report this summer, I look forward to a continued partnership with the Legislature to advance systemic changes that ensure an inclusive and equitable future for all Californians.”

If there are any African-Americans in California—or the universe, for that matter—who see Newsom’s statement as anything but an insult to their intelligence, well, their intelligence deserves the insult.

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Observations On The Trump Defamation and Rape Civil Trial Verdict [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Former President Donald Trump has been found liable in the rape and defamation civil suit brought by Jean E. Carroll’s civil suit, and Carroll is to be awarded a total of $5 million in damages. This was not a criminal case, because the statute of limitations for rape had run: the alleged sexual assault occurred in 1995 or 1996.

A federal jury of six men and three women found that Carroll, now 79, had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The jury did not, however, find that Trump raped her, as she claims.

But because the former President on his Truth Social platform called her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie,” the jury also found that he had defamed the plaintiff. His lawyer said he would appeal; no witnesses were called on behalf of Trump’s defense.

The ex-President’s reaction was characteristic:

Ethics observations:

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Welcome To Masterpieces Of Bad Analogy Theater…Today’s Featured Performer: Matthew Dowd! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Matthew Dowd is one of an elite group of pundit grifters who pretend to be conservatives or Republicans so progressive propaganda news networks can put them on panels for “balance,” deceiving viewers into believing that their consistent agreement with the Left’s talking points arises from fair and objective analysis. It’s a small but growing group encompassing the cynical members of the Lincoln Project as well as the shamelessly Trump-deranged Jennifer Rubin, the pathetically intellect-challenged ex-RNC chair Michael Steele, and Ana Navarro, who demonstrates her uselessness by not walking off the set of “The View” muttering, “Life’s too short to waste hanging around idiots like Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin.” Dowd is smarter and more credentialed than any of them (faint praise, I know), which makes his act even more unethical than theirs are.

On one of many—with many more to come I’m sure—MSNBC “do something!’ panels on gun control in the aftermath of the most recent Texas shooting, Dowd offered this brilliant analysis:

“Three children died from lawn darts. They banned lawn darts after three children died from lawn darts. Texans will record 4,000 gun deaths or more this year as we move forward in this. And so, yes, it’s frustrating, it’s incredibly disappointing, but we have get to a place where it gets to anger and then anger motivates us to action.”

Anyone who compares laws darts with guns is either a fool or a liar. I’ve listened to Dowd for many years; he’s no fool. He knows damn well that this is a stupid and misleading analogy, but he is trying to convince people whom he knows are gullible and easy to mislead. Lawn darts were toys, a game. They were marketed to parents for their children, and were absurdly dangerous. Toys are never supposed to kill anyone, and three deaths from a lawn game was two too many. Ever hear of someone being killed playing croquet? Badminton?

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