Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: Grandstanding Or Justice?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I didn’t provide my answer to the ethics quiz about the propriety of charging and trying the woman whose accusation against 14-year-old Emmett Till resulted in his infamous lynching in 1955. Jim Hodgson’s Comment of the Day nicely explains what it would be, though.

I also heard an interesting angle from my lawyer sister that is probably worth a full post. What Carolyn Bryant Donham said in 1955 would be literally nothing today. It was only in the warped Jim Crow culture of 1950s Mississippi that a woman false claiming a black teen touched and flirted with her could lead to violence, or could be considered provocation for a violent crime. How do you justify prosecuting someone 67 years later for an act that would no longer be considered a crime?

Here is Jim’s post, in response to “Ethics Quiz: Grandstanding Or Justice?”…

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My answer to the ethics quiz is that no, she should not be prosecuted. It just isn’t feasible to achieve any fair degree of justice at this point.

As a retired deputy sheriff, the first thing that struck me as odd in the news reports that I read concerning this “discovery” was the clear implication that the “lost” warrant itself was somehow a bar to her being arrested and prosecuted at some time during the past 67 years. It may be news to many people, but paper warrants get lost (or at least temporarily “misplaced”) with some regularity. In my state, any officer of the court with knowledge of the original warrant could have asked for the warrant to be re-issued by the same court that issued the original. In my state this is referred to as issuing an “alias warrant” or an “alias writ.” Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/5/22: Medium, The New Yorker, Brandons, Not-So-Dumb Dogs, And Carlin [Corrected, And Corrected Again!]

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

I’m pretty sure that’s a setting rather than a rising sun, but as you recall, Ben Franklin mused that where the U.S. was involved, the two were nearly indistinguishable.

Here’s part of the apocalyptic rant of a writer on Medium last week:

I don’t get the acceptance of what is happening to our nation and how so many people can be so utterly clueless. Right now, though, I am not writing about the fascists on the right — and that is what they are, folks. I am writing about people who will for the most part agree with this article and yet do nothing to prevent the end of our great experiment. Many have no idea that these few weeks in June launched the end…

Let’s do a quick run through the past five years: A stolen Supreme Court seat; Trump’s presidency; COVID is just the common cold/anti-vaxxers; the Big lie/January 6th; two impeachments; Republican silence in the face of Trump’s crimes; Republican continued obstructionism; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine thanks to Trump presidency; SCOTUS June coup; and, let’s add for good measure another five years lost in the battle to slow the effects of climate change…. Embedded in all of the points above is the right-wing hatred of everyone not aligned with Trump and his racist views. Embedded also is the hatred and fear the right expresses about queer and transgender America. Embedded is how Colin Kaepernick was declared an America-hating terrorist by the right for his peaceful protests…

[T]oo many of our fellow citizens now believe that America can only be great if it is aligned with Jesus, “their savior.” .These “other Americans,” the ones I tell you probably failed American history in high school, also believe that corporations have the same rights, if not more, than humans. They believe that a zygote has more rights than a child living in abject poverty. They believe that it’s okay kids get slaughtered in schools by armed teens…

This hard-wired ideologue actually has the gall (or lack of self-awareness) to write in his or her profile, “Be curious, not judgmental at least until you have all the facts.”

Such people are almost certainly beyond help, reasoning, persuasion, education and reality. And the relentless, barely-countered propaganda from mainstream media is producing more of them every day.

I know, I know, I could write a 10,000 word debunking of just that section (who called Colin Kaepernick a “terrorist”?), and so could you, I suspect. But Sock Drawers Matter….

1. Here’s a fun game: find the bias in the New Yorker cover!

Continue reading →

Independence Day Ethics Fireworks, July 4, 2022…But First, A Song! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

There is actually a lot to celebrate and remember on July 4th. It was on this date in 1776, of course, that the delegates began signing the final version of Mr. Jefferson’s document. Also, perhaps the two most crucial Founders, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  Both men were desperately ill, and clearly held on with the intention of passing on the day that means to much to them. The fifth President, James Monroe, also died on the Fourth, in 1831.

On July 4,1827, New York officially banned slavery. The same day Monroe died, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” was first performed at an Independence Day celebration in Boston. In my elementary school (Parmenter School, in Arlington, Mass.) that was the patriotic song we learned first and sang most often. I was shocked to learn, years later, that it was really “God Save the Queen” with different lyrics.

In 1863 on the Fourth, the Siege of Vicksburg ended with a Confederate surrender. Combined with the Union victory at Gettysburg the day before, the news of Grant’s triumph rescued the North from despair, and probably saved Lincoln’s presidency.

1919’s Independence Day saw Congress approve the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote. The amendment was sent to the states for ratification, and ratify it they did.

All in all, a good day.

1. And yet we have come to this…

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Ethics Observations On President Biden’s Most Unethical Tweet Yet

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Less than two weeks ago, President Biden made a speech in which he commanded oil companies to lower their gas prices.

“To the companies running gas stations and setting those prices at the pump, this is a time of war, global peril, Ukraine. These are not normal times. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump. Do it now,” he said.

Then, on Fourth of July weekend, he repeated the order.

Observations: Continue reading →

The Drudge Report’s Lying Headline, And Related Attacks On The USA On Independence Day 2022

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I wanted to keep all of today’s posts positive and appropriately celebratory of the official birthday of the greatest country on earth. It’s impossible, unless I just pretend “it isn’t what it is” out there, and I am distraught.

Let’s start with the shock headline that bannered the Drudge Report last night. Here is what it looked like:

GALLUP SHOCK: ONLY 38% PROUD TO BE AMERICAN

The information is pure clickbait of the worst kind. The headline on the linked Gallup article is “Record-Low 38% Extremely Proud to Be American” (my emphasis). The piece goes on to say that an additional 27% were “very” proud to be Americans, making the “extremely/very proud” number 65%. In fact, only 4% of those surveyed said they were not proud to be Americans.

I found that part of the poll surprising. Not surprisingly, Democrats lead the not-very-proud group, and since the party’s entire thrust recently has been to try to transform the nation into a European-style socialist nanny state while denigrating the U.S. as racist to its core. I would have expected the un-proud, as in “ashamed,” to be much higher. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Grandstanding Or Justice?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Weird.

A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the infamous lynching of black teenager Emmett Till in 1955 stumbled upon the unserved arrest warrant charging Carolyn Bryant Donham— identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document—with the 14-year-old boy’s abduction. Donham was the young woman who falsely claimed that Till had whistled at her and grabbed her, causing a mob of white men to murder him. The warrant was never served, apparently because the Jim Crow-era Mississippi sheriff didn’t feel a mother with two children should be prosecuted. Now Till’s family wants Donham, 88, arrested and tried...almost 70 years after the crime.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz on this Independence Day weekend is…

Would it be ethical to do this? 

Continue reading →

Dictionary Of The Great Stupid: Our Leftist Institutions Of Learning Think Controlling Speech Is The Secret To A Better Society

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Campus Reform, a conservative site with the depressing job of tracing the ethics rot in our educational institutions, has covered some truly nauseating examples of colleges and universities (or influential figures in them) encouraging  censorship and language manipulation as legitimate methods of indoctrination, or, as they call it, “education.”

Here are some highlights:

Not “inclusive” enough….

You know why. Now there will be a “Spirit of Pitt” award to avoid acknowledging the existence of genders.

Continue reading →

Pre-Independence Day Ethics Warm-Up, July 3, 2022: What Might Have Been [Broken Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Typically, Ethics Alarms has highlighted July 3 with reflections on the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, for which the 3rd was the dramatic last and decisive day. I know it must be hard to believe, but I do get tired of writing the same things over and over again, an occupational hazard of being an ethicist during a mass ethics breakdown in our democracy and among the increasingly corrupt people we have put in power to protect it. I still can’t ignore Pickett’s futile charge and Custer’s charge as well, so I direct you to last year’s post on both events and their ethics implications.

However, this year I am introducing the July 3 warm-up with another crucial anniversary, one that may have had even more impact on the history of the United States, its prospects and its values than Gettysburg. July 2, 1776 is when the Continental Congress finally agreed to take the leap and forge a new nation (John Adams thought the 2nd would be the day we celebrated) and July 4, 1776 was the date the document was signed. But in-between those more noted dates the Continental Congress began debating and editing Jefferson’s draft Declaration, eventually making 86 edits that cut the length by about a fourth. 

Because the Declaration of Independence is the mission statement of America, framing and sometimes compelling what followed, especially the Constitution, the editing decisions of July 3, 1776 affected our laws and culture in many ways that are unimaginable after more than 200 years. You can read the original here. It is this deleted paragraph, however, that most inspires reflections on what might have been (and what might not):

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

Now on to the present day’s ethics concerns...

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New York’s New Gun Law To Counter The SCOTUS Bruen Ruling Is Unconstitutional, The State’s Democrats Know It, And They Don’t Care

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Conclusion: this is not a political party (nor are is progressivism an Ideology) that supports or respects democracy or the Rule of Law.

In the process of passing a restrictive law that bans legally-licensed guns in “many public settings such as subways and buses, parks, hospitals, stadiums and day cares…[and] Times Square Guns as well as on private property “unless the property owner indicates that he or she expressly allows them,” New York legislators included this language in the law:

THE APPLICANT SHALL MEET IN PERSON WITH THE LICENSING OFFICER FOR AN INTERVIEW AND SHALL, IN ADDITION TO ANY OTHER INFORMATION OR FORMS REQUIRED BY THE LICENSE APPLICATION SUBMIT TO THE LICENSING OFFICER THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION: (I) NAMES AND CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE APPLICANT’S CURRENT SPOUSE, OR DOMESTIC PARTNER, ANY OTHER ADULTS RESIDING IN THE APPLICANT’S HOME, INCLUDING ANY ADULT CHILDREN OF THE APPLICANT, AND WHETHER OR NOT THERE ARE MINORS RESIDING, FULL TIME OR PART TIME, IN THE APPLICANT’S HOME; (II) NAMES AND CONTACT INFORMATION OF NO LESS THAN FOUR CHARACTER REFERENCES WHO CAN ATTEST TO THE APPLICANT’S GOOD MORAL CHARACTER AND THAT SUCH APPLICANT HAS NOT ENGAGED IN ANY ACTS, OR MADE ANY STATEMENTS THAT SUGGEST THEY ARE LIKELY TO ENGAGE IN CONDUCT THAT WOULD RESULT IN HARM TO THEMSELVES OR OTHERS; (III) CERTIFICATION OF COMPLETION OF THE TRAINING REQUIRED IN SUBDIVISION NINETEEN OF THIS SECTION; (IV) A LIST OF FORMER AND CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS OF THE APPLICANT FROM THE PAST THREE YEARS TO CONFIRM THE INFORMATION REGARDING THE APPLICANTS CHARACTER AND CONDUCT AS REQUIRED IN SUBPARAGRAPH (II) OF THIS PARAGRAPH; AND (V) SUCH OTHER INFORMATION REQUIRED BY THE LICENSING OFFICER THAT IS REASONABLY NECESSARY AND RELATED TO THE REVIEW OF THE LICENSING APPLICATION.

What the hell is “good moral character”? Is any Constitutional right dependent on “good moral character”? The answer is no, because first, citizens have certain guaranteed rights regardless of their character, second, the right to bear arms is one of those rights, and third, opinions on what constitutes good moral character is subjective. For example, I think elected legislators in the United States who deliberately pass unconstitutional laws have terrible character. Could voting or freedom of speech be made contingent on a government agent’s judgment of a citizen’s character? No—it’s not even a valid question. No. Obviously no.

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Ethics Quiz: The Secret Service Defies Orders!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

As soon as I saw the headline to Prof. Turley’s latest post on his blog, “Res Ipsa Loquitur” I knew we had an ethics quiz: “Presidential Protection or Abduction: Why Secret Service Wrong for all the Right Reasons on Jan. 6.”

Turley’s article was prompted by one aspect of the Jan. 6 Commission testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson that President Trump ordered his official SUV to take him to the U.S. Capitol to be on hand with his supporters as they rallied (it turned out to be a “mostly peaceful” rally) against what Trump had told them was the stolen 2020 election. According to the witness, that she was told that T his Secret Service security team refused, causing the President to become furious.

Turley’s take, in brief:

…the Secret Service is trained to take immediate action to protect a president. On the other hand, it cannot effectively control the presidency by controlling a president like a modern Praetorian Guard. In the end, if this account is true, the security team was likely wrong in refusing the order of the President to be taken to Capitol Hill….Trump intended to do exactly what he promised and ordered the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol. But Tony Ornato, White House deputy chief of staff for operations, and Bobby Engel, who headed Trump’s security detail, reportedly refused.

…If true, the security team’s motivation certainly was commendable. It probably prevented Jan. 6 from getting much, much worse…what was the authority of the security team to refuse a direct order from a sitting president to go to Congress?

…The Secret Service has always assumed discretion in seizing a president to protect him from immediate harm [but there was no immediate harm threatened]…Trump reportedly decided he wanted to lead the protests to the Capitol and didn’t care about the security uncertainties — and he actually had a right to do so. Presidents can elect to put themselves in harm’s way… The Secret Service has no authority to put a president into effective custody against his will… In Trump’s case, he reportedly said he did not want to go back to the White House but was taken there anyway.

…This act of disobedience may have saved the country from an even greater crisis…

In the end, the security team was correct on the merits but probably wrong on the law. This was not an unlawful order, and a president must be able to control his own travel. In other words, the agents were wrong for all the right reasons.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is: Continue reading →