Of course, we have seen this coming for a long time, and I will be surprised if the creeping, craven effort to erase George Washington and the legacy of the Founders from the school that now bears his name will stop; it may even accelerate.
The George Washington University Board of Trustees finally decided to discontinue the use of the school’s “Colonials” moniker based on the recommendation of —believe it or not—the “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker.” In case you have the historical literacy of a horseshoe crab, before what is now the United States of America won its independence, it was made up of colonies, and its occupants fighting for their nascent nation were often called “colonials” because that’s what they were. These colonials were completely responsible today for the United States’ existence and everything it has achieved. The leader of the army of colonials was George Washington, and the first President of the radical new nation established by those colonials was that same great man. Thus to conclude that referring to various teams and groups associated with the educational institution named in his honor as Colonials is anything but descriptive, justified, and an honor is, to be blunt, bats.
However a gross majority of the people running the institutes of higher education in the U.S. are shallow, fearful, pandering fools, and GW’s leaders are clearly in that group. Here is the revolting statement by Board Chair Grace Speights: Continue reading →
Having begun today with a convoluted ethics quiz, I feel I owe you a straightforward one. The topic: gravestone etiquette!
The family of “Owens”—didn’t he have a first name?—coded his favorite retort “Fuck off” onto his gravestone. “It was a term he used a lot,” his daughter told a local radio station. “He was very direct: if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t talk to you.” Wow, what a great guy! I don’t know how long it took for someone outside of the family to discover the clever <cough!> arrangement of initial letters that spelled out his cheery slogan, but the cemetery management says that it was always was against the placement of the vulgar marker. “There is no place for swearing in the place where people’s loved ones lie,” a spokesperson said. “Imagine lying next to this tombstone forever.”
Yeah, I’m lying dead in a coffin forever, but what really bothers me is “fuck off” being engraved on the headstone next door. What is this, stupid statement week? While we’re tallying up stupid, why are the letters crucial to the story blurred on that photo? If the story is about the use of “fuck,” why censor the same word in the photo?
Your SECOND Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Your head-exploding Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Should I have made Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s response when he was asked what he would tell the families of the Uvalde victims the Unethical Quote of the Week or an Ethics Quiz?
This is what Paxton said:
“I believe god always has a plan. Life is short, no matter what it is.”
Personally, that response infuriated me. I have no idea how it would strike someone who is religious, which I am not, nor can I be certain how a parent of child who had died in the shooting would react to it. In my estimation, it is a stunningly unethical quote: facile, lazy, dismissive and incompetent.
Paxton is an elected law enforcement officer, the highest ranking in the state. The massacre was, among other horrible things, a massive failure of law enforcement. Paxton’s response, if he had the wit, wisdom and courage to deliver one at all, had to address that aspect of the tragedy, because that’s his job and alleged area of expertise. He wasn’t being asked about the shooting as a spiritual advisor, though I find the “God works in mysterious ways” reflex balm for every tragedy insulting when it comes from the Pope, never mind anyone else. Continue reading →
I don’t care about Amber Heard and I don’t care about Johnny Depp. However, when a celebrity says something this stunningly stupid, attention must be paid.
During an “exclusive interview” on NBC regarding her humiliating loss in her defamation trial versus her ex-spouse Johnny Depp, Heard was asked to comment on the fact that Depp’s lawyer said in his closing argument that Heard was “acting” and gave “a performance of a lifetime.” “What do you say to that?”
Heard’s response: “Said the lawyer of a man who convinced the world that he had scissors for fingers.”
Wait, what? Was anyone over the age of six convinced that Depp really had scissors for fingers, much less “the world”? This is the woman whose allegations “must be believed” and that #MeToo warriors found credible? What kind of thought process would permit someone to think that was a reasonable response to utter on television? If that’s how she thinks, then nothing, literally no fantasy, delusion or distortion is beyond her reach.
I just had to get this out of my brain or, like Louis Black’s story about an over-heard inexplicable comment at a restaurant triggering a fatal aneurysm, it might have festered and killed me.
The January 6 Commission, as many have pointed out, branded itself as nothing more than an extension of all the “Get Trump and Punish His Allies!” plots, lies an and conspiracies that began almost from the moment he was elected. The mark was indelible as soon as Nancy Pelosi refused to allow any Republican to participate who had not already proved to be a NeverTrumper, eager to pin something on the ex-President. Lots of investigations are called witch hunts in Washington, D.C., but this really is one: the goal is to keep digging until the commission finds something new to use as a metaphorical stake to thrust into Trump’s political heart. This is, of course, unethical. deciding that someone must be guilty of something and spending more than a year and millions of dollars to figure out what is the essence of unethical prosecution as well as totalitarian instincts.
I keep wondering when the public will figure out just how rotten the exercise is. Televising the fiasco in prime time may well be a major blunder.
I missed a couple of major ethics landmarks by skipping the ethics round-ups the past few days, so let’s catch up, beginning with today. The Ethics Alarms UK contingent has been AWOL from the comment wars of late, but this one’s for them: In 1215, after England’s rotten King John (you know, Robin Hood and all that) had been breaching tradition and law across the land, the barons rose up in rebellion. John, preferring to compromise rather than fight, agreed to sign a document requiring the king to guarantee rights and privileges as well as the freedom of the church. On June 15, 1215, at Runnymede on the Thames, King John set his seal to the Articles of the Barons, which was formally issued as the Magna Carta. It actually did little to restrain John and other British tyrants, but by standing for the principle that a king’s power could be limited by law, it laid the foundation for our own Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Clause 39, for example, stated that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or [dispossessed] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimised…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
On June 13,1966, the Warren Court announced its landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. This was important, but the Supreme Court should not have been the body to compose the now iconic warning, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you.” A clearer example of legislating from the bench would be hard to find, and though the words were clear and well-conceived, they represent an abuse of power and role.
TV writers will be eternally grateful, however.
1. Well, she’s good at grandstanding, we knew that…Yesterday, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a permanent member of the Ethics Alarms Hall of Unethical Officials since she directed that “Black Lives Matter” be painted on a D.C. street, hadg 51-star flags hung along Pennsylvania Avenue. She thus violated the United States flag code passed in 1947, which states, “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.”
“Ahead of Flag Day, I directed our team to hang 51-star flags along Pennsylvania Avenue as a reminder to Congress and the nation that the 700,000 tax-paying American citizens living in Washington, DC demand to be recognized,” she wrote in a statement. “On Flag Day, we celebrate American ideals, American history, and American liberty. But the very foundation of those ideals, and the basis for our liberty, is representation.” Bowser is correct that the residents of D.C. deserve representation in Congress, but this is not ancient Greece, and city-states don’t belong here. The reasonable solution has always been either for the District to get a voting member or more in the House of Representatives, or, better yet, to become part of Maryland. If DC politicians would drop the non-starting demand to be the 51st state, there might be a workable compromise. DC mayors, however, especially this one, like grandstanding better.
What would it take to make you feel that an insurance company has been treated unfairly? For me the bar is pretty high, but this crazy story may clear it.
The Kansas City Star reports that a woman contracted the sexually transmitted disease while makin’ whoopee in her lover/ infecter’s car. The cur knew he has the STD but didn’t tell her, so she filed a claim against Geico in February 2021, claiming that her liability insurance had to pay her damages. Geico’s lawyers thought the theory was bats, so the case went to arbitration.
The creep was found liable—good—but the arbitrator approved an award of $5.2 million in damages to be paid by the insurance company. The insurance company appealed on several grounds, and was denied on all points.
Now THAT’S a bad precedent. File this one under “law vs ethics.” And thanks to the now presumably kaput couple’s careless sexual proclivities and an anti-insurance company arbitrator, we can all expect our auto insurance premiums to go up, at least until an overly generous loophole is written out of the policies.
“What Senator Schumer was saying was that he was upset. He was alarmed, he was concerned at the prospect that justices would reverse decades of a well-established fundamental constitutional right in our country. What he did not say was let’s go attack them.”
—–Sen. Chris Coons on Fox News, explaining why Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s direct threat to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh that they “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions” was not a call for violence, while President Trump’s address to supporters on 1/6/2020 was inciting an “insurrection.”
Yes, I’ve decided to establish a separate sub-category of Unethical Quotes of the Month until the despicable January 6 Committee blight on ethics and democracy has run its course. Virtually every utterance by a member of that committee is a lie, a veiled partisan attack, or a pretense of legitimate Congressional process in the midst of a disgraceful show trial. The contemptible Rep. Adam Schiff, just as he did (falsely) regarding the Mueller investigation, has promised that he has seen “conclusive” and damning evidence without ever producing it. Liz Cheney is unethical almost every time she opens her mouth, and even when she doesn’t open her mouth: for example, the committee has subpoenaed Bill Stepien, a former Trump campaign manager, who is currently advising Cheney’s opponent, Harriet Hageman, for the Wyoming primary in August. As George Costanza would say, “Worlds are colliding!” Cheney has a direct interest in undermining a political opponent, and that conflicts with her duty to serve on the committee objectively and…oh, what am I saying? The whole J6 effort is a obvious partisan effort to smear Republicans in general and Terrifying Trump in particular. Never mind.
Well, some mistakes have lasting consequences, and result in fair and permanent judgments about an individual’s or an organization’s trustworthiness. I winced a bit at comments in the previous post using the term”mistake” in reference to a grown woman who was selling heroin with her boyfriend, and then after he was arrested and asked her to “take care of” his co-defendant, lured the hit-target into a homicidal ambush by another “business partner” of her and her boyfriend. What is the single “mistake” in that sequence? When did it become a mistake—after she was caught? After she was sentenced to life in prison?
The “mistake” in the case at hand isn’t a crime, just a metaphorical journalistic one. The miscreant is the Associated Press. Last week, the AP published a story about a new group buying up Spanish-speaking radio stations. “The Latino Media Network, a startup founded by two political strategists who worked for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, reached a $60 million deal to acquire 18 AM and FM stations in ten U.S. cities from Televisa/Univision,” it reported. “The agreement announced June 3 still needs Federal Communications Commission approval.”
The piece included comments about the purchase attributed to Martha Flores, who served for years as a host of a show on Radio Mambi. Flores has been dead for two years.
Just when I think The Great Stupid has reached peak stupid, there is a new high. I don’t see how society can get more stupid than this, but I now know that it will. You know in movies when someone says, “There’s no good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it”?
Mitchell Hamline School of Law will welcome Maureen Onyelobi into its juris doctor program this fall, making Mitchell Hamline the first ABA-approved law school in the country to educate currently incarcerated individuals.
It’s a moment nearly three years in the making as part of a collective effort by the Prison to Law Pipeline, a program of All Square and its newly formed subsidiary, the Legal Revolution. The effort aims to transform the law through initiatives that center racial equity, wellness, and the expertise of those most impacted by the law…
“Learning the law is a vital vehicle for freedom and lasting change in our community,” said Elizer Darris, chair of the board of the Legal Revolution. “Maureen’s acceptance is social proof that the time for change is now and the energy is here to change it.”
…“Mitchell Hamline has a long history of looking for ways to expand the idea of who gets to go to law school,” said Dean Niedwiecki. “It’s important for people who are incarcerated to better understand the criminal justice system, and this is one important way to do that. Our students will also benefit from having Maureen in class with them.”
…A series of factors made Onyelobi’s acceptance to law school possible. The American Bar Association recently granted a variance to allow her to attend classes entirely online, which she will do from Shakopee. The variance will allow Mitchell Hamline to admit up to two incarcerated students each academic year for five years. Onyelobi’s tuition will be paid through private fundraising and the same scholarship assistance available to all Mitchell Hamline students.
The Prison to Law Pipeline also has the full support of Commissioner Paul Schnell of the Minnesota Department of Corrections…
Guess what the official announcement conveniently leaves out! Oh, only the fact that Onyelobi was convicted as an accomplice to first-degree murder, received a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole. Continue reading →
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