The NYT Provides A Preview Of Its 2024 Campaign Toadying Strategy, Part I: Gaslight! [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This is nice of them.

Today’s Sunday Times “Review” section, the punditry and analysis collection that once provided diverse political views and included unexpected perspective on modern life (but who cares about diversity and inclusion these days, right?) has two head-explodingly dishonest and diabolically-biased pieces that demonstrate how the paper will do its utmost to boost the Democrats back into the White House for another four years despite their epic incompetence and defiance of Constitutional government during the first three.

The first is epic gaslighting by Times editors and alleged conservative (diversity!) Ross Douthat. Like all conservative columnists that the Times subjects to its Stockholm Syndrome process, Douthat isn’t one anymore, just as the magazine he once edited, The Atlantic, has become a reliable Democratic propaganda mouthpiece (like the Times). He’s religious, believes in the importance of organized religion and opposes abortion, so he makes an effective double agent for the Gray Lady. He has contributed a subversive pro-Biden column with the hilarious headline, “Why is Joe Biden So Unpopular?” It’s a mystery! What could it be?

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The “Immaculate Inning” Conundrum: A Fairness And Integrity Challenge

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Yes, this perplexing ethics issue arises in baseball, but the principles it involves are applicable in other contexts. Attention should be paid.

Although there is no official definition, an immaculate inning in baseball occurs in baseball when a pitcher strikes out all three batters he faces in one inning throwing only nine pitches. This has only happened 114 times in Major League history, and been done by just 104 pitchers. The first immaculate inning was thrown by John Clarkson of the Boston Beaneaters against the Philadelphia Quakers on June 4, 1889. No-hitters, which automatically get a pitcher’s name in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, are three times more common that immaculate innings. Throwing an immaculate inning is a career landmark for any pitcher.

A week ago, Tampa Bay Rays reliever Robert Stephenson threw nine pitches to three Cleveland Indi—I’m sorry, Guardians batters and struck them all out on three pitches each. But whether or not this constituted an immaculate inning is still being debated. Within the controversy is a welter of ethics lessons and problems.

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: The 5th Circuit Court Of Appeals

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely (1) coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

—A three-judge panel of the The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, substantially upholding a lower court’s preliminary injunction in The State of Missouri et al v Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al,

The Per Curiam opinion is here, and its legal and ethical clarity cannot be overstated. The Court wrote in part,

. . . On multiple occasions, the officials coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests—they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP” and accounts “immediately,” and to “slow[] down” or “demote[]” content.

It is uncontested that, between the White House and the Surgeon General’s office, government officials asked the platforms to remove undesirable posts and users from their platforms, sent follow-up messages of condemnation when they did not, and publicly called on the platforms to act. When the officials’ demands were not met, the platforms received promises of legal regime changes, enforcement actions, and other unspoken threats.

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: I Think Mexico Might Have A Teeny Ethics Culture Problem…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I could be wrong, of course.

Out of the 30,000 participants at last month’s Mexico City Marathon, about 11,000 runners have been disqualified for cheating by using illegal means to beat the 26.2-mile course. More than 1 out of 3 racers used various non-foot methods of transportation or other unethical tactics.

Mexico has become a drug and crime infested hell-hole, with large portions of the country run by cartels. Its presidency has been license to steal and accept bribes for a couple centuries now. No wonder illegal immigrants breaching our laws to get here see nothing wrong with their conduct: their nation has been rotting from the proverbial head down for as long as they can remember. What constitutes ethics in Mexico today? In 2015, Donald Trump was accused of racism and bigotry for saying that Mexico wasn’t sending us “their best people.” It is beginning to look like Mexico’s “best” are the ones who are leaving, and even they aren’t trustworthy.

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A Rationalization #22 Mitigation Of U.S. Progressive Racial Spoils: Canada Is Even Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Rationalization #22, in my view the worst of the over 100 rationalizations on the list, is called “The Comparative Virtue Excuse,” or “It’s not the worst thing.” I immediately thought of it when I read the head-exploding account of how a father escaped jail time in Canada for incest that resulted in the birth of a disabled child who has been placed in foster care. The father admitted that he had regularly had sexual relations with his daughter since she was 19 or 20. Incest is typically punishable with a jail sentence of at least two years and as high as 14 years, but a majority of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decided last month that the father shouldn’t have to spend any time in jail at all, just two years of house arrest, with a monitor. That’s nice. He can even continue his loving relationship with his daughter under those rules.

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From The “Eternal Vigilance Is The Price Of Liberty”: A Law Firm Is Caught Inflicting “Good Racial Discrimination” And Backs Down

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The scary part is that a major law firm really thought it would be legal to do this, or perhaps knew it wasn’t legal but thought it could get away with it anyway.

The law firm Morrison Foerster, based in San Francisco, was sued for excluding non-minority students from its so called “diversity fellowships,”described as a program for first-year law students who are members of “a diverse population that has historically been underrepresented in the legal profession,” such as black, Hispanic, Native American and LGBTQ+ individuals. The plaintiff in the suit was the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), founded by same conservative activist who brought the lawsuits that resulted in the Supreme Court finally declaring affirmative action in college admissions what it had always been: unconstitutional racial discrimination.

A few weeks after the lawsuit was filed, the firm removed all references to race from the program page on its website, an implicit statement that “OK, you caught us. Never mind!” The program now is described as

designed to recognize “exceptional first and second-year law students with a demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.” In other words, the firm is substituting viewpoint discrimination for racial discrimination.

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Friday Forum, Open For Business

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

It’s come to this.

I’m playing “The Learned Judge” in a lightly staged concert version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury” this weekend at the Georgetown Law Center. (That’s a different production of the show above.) The cast is made up of current students and alums from the past 50 years. Gilbert’s resolution of the musical law suit in which a jilted bride is suing a rogue for breach of promise of marriage is that the judge (me) decides to marry the plaintiff himself, a decision that she is delighted with. In announcing this “judgment,” I came down to the young woman, a first year law student, playing the plaintiff “Angelina” and placed my arm around gently around her waist, then transitioned to holding her hands in mine as we sang the final bars of the show.

The director asked that I only place my hand on Angelina’s shoulder rather than around the waist, because the production might be criticized for endorsing sexual harassment.

But you all chat about whatever ethics matters are making your lives interesting, exciting, or miserable.

Observations On An Incident At McDonald’s

/ Jack Marshall / 85 Comments

For various reasons the most convenient route to a late lunch was the nearest McDonald’s, so after my wife’s physical therapy session, I reluctantly hit the drive-thu. All went surprisingly well at first: for a welcome change, someone who could speak clear-English was at the mic, and the order was correct on the screen (though the prices for fast food now are absurd). Two sandwiches, one small fries, no drinks, easy-peezy.

The order was simple, Grace didn’t bother to check the bag when I handed it to her at the window, but it felt light, so she checked after we had pulled away. Sure enough, there was only one of the two sandwiches we had ordered.

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What Does It Say About The State Of Higher Education In The U.S. That Its Oldest And Most Prestigious Institution Is The Nation’s Most Hostile To Free Speech?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

It’s a rhetorical question. What this says is that the culture of the United States of America, which has been nurtured for centuries to embrace personal liberty and pluralism, is being threatened by its elite educational institutions and the indoctrinated citizens they graduate.

I suppose I should take some satisfaction that I began blowing the metaphorical whistle on my alma mater years ago, and felt sufficiently embarrassed by the ethics rot overwhelming the ivy there to turn my diploma face to the wall and to explain in my class notes that I would be boycotting the class reunion. Simply put, the American college long considered the exemplar for higher education cannot become fascistically woke without dire consequences to the nation. Harvard alumni, many, maybe even most, of whom recognize this, have been negligent in allowing matter to reach this point. But that point has been reached.

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The Other Shoe Drops In The Alex Murdaugh Murder Trial Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In March, disbarred South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences after a jury found him guilty yesterday of the 2021 slayings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, his wife and son. Murdoch, who already faced life in prison for his financial crimes and who is a compulsive liar, was convicted despite an extremely weak case in which the prosecution barely proved necessary elements of the crime. The only motive for his murdering his family the state could come up with was that he did it to was to take attention away from his other offenses. Okaaaaay…

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 news yesterday suggests that the jury verdict may have another explanation.

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