Stipulated: Judge Jackson is a fully qualified choice to succeed Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Also stipulated: she should be and will be confirmed and by a large majority, unless Republicans are as petty and foolish as I think they are.
However, the soon to be Justice Jackson has an unwaivable conflict of interest in the contentious Harvard admissions case, which I would term a “scandal.” Harvard unambiguously discriminates against Asian-American applicants to inflate the numbers of lesser qualified black and Hispanic students admitted to the college. In the era of The Great Stupid, when racial discrimination is treated as “antiracism,” this SCOTUS case is a high profile and significant one, and Future Justice Jackson has a dog in the hunt, as they say. Jackson serves on Harvard’s board of overseers, one of the University’s two governing boards. The board plays “an integral role in the governance of the university.” End of controversy. She’s integrally involved with a party in the case. It is a classic conflict, and cause for recusal. Continue reading →
I was struck this morning by the presence of yet another Donald Trump-related headline and story on the front page of the New York Times. The phenomenon really is remarkable. The man currently holds no elected position; there is no campaign he is currently involved in; he has been banned from social media (no mean tweets or typos to mock!) and the last public incident he was even tangentially involved in was more than three years ago. In the Times’ features, op-eds and news stories, the paper does everything it can to minimize his importance; for example, the Times review of Bill Barr’s book describes Trump as “an ostentatious, thrice-married reality television star who bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.” (No bias there!) Why is such trivial figure still daily front page news?
I wish I had been counting the number of Trump-bashing stories and reports the Times has published over the period since he left office. Like the current House of Representatives witch hunt to try to find a way to prosecute Trump for a riot he neither directed nor called for (and that couldn’t have possibly benefited his interests), the Times’ choice to keep negative news reporting about him front and center can only be called obsessive partisanship and unethical journalism.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr did an admirable and courageous job navigating the metaphorical shoals of holding the position in the Trump Administration. Because his boss was so roundly maligned and hated by the “resistance”/Democratic Party/ mainstream media alliance, he was accused of being everything from a toady to a criminal accomplice, though Barr was one of the least partisan AG’s in recent memory, especially when compared to Barack Obama’s two full-fledged consigliares, Holder and Lynch.
Of course Barr didn’t care for Trump; virtually no one who ever worked with or for Trump got along with him. Nevertheless, I did not expect Bill Barr to join the venal opportunists who rushed to cash in with books betraying a President’s confidences with back-stabbing tales “out of school.” Once such books were understood to be unethical (if not illegal), at least until the President in question was dead. But once David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s disgraced budget director, broke the taboo, many similarly flawed former White House employees and appointees followed. Trump’s subordinates, however, have been the worst by far.
Before we get to today’s ethics, we mustn’t let remembering the Alamo cause us to forget other ethically significant events in U.S. history. Yesterday marked the date in 1770 when a mob of American colonists gathered at the Customs House in Boston and began taunting and throwing objects at were protesting the occupation of their city by British troops, who had arrived in Boston two years before to enforce unpopular taxes passed by a British parliament. Young British private Hugh Montgomery was hit by a rock or an icy snowball, and he discharged his musket at the crowd. Other soldiers began firing, and the result was five “Patriots” were dead or fatally wounded. In a landmark moment for the American legal profession, John Adams and Josiah Quincy defended the hated soldiers and got all of them off except two who were found guilty of manslaughter. Their thumbs were branded with an “M” as their punishment.
Protesters and rioters have always prospered by provoking authorities into excessive force (or what the protesters were able to convince the public was excessive) ; the cause doesn’t matter. Incidentally, none of the Boston mob were prosecuted for “insurrection,” nor was the primary protest instigator, Samuel Adams.
1. Well waddya know! Hollywood celebrities who broadcast their political views are often incompetent and ignorant! Consider this tweet by actress Patricia Arquette:
Lessons:
If Twitter doesn’t make you stupid, it will show everyone how stupid you are.
This tweet got 1,156 “likes.” Twitter also makes tweet readers stupid.
Celebrities like Arquette really think their opinions on issues not connected to the reason for their fame should be taken more seriously than anyone else with two-digit IQs and a 7th grade-levl education.
These irresponsible celebrities include the “internet influencers.” They drive the opinions of those who don’t have the attention spans to read more than a dozen words or so at a time. This is a substantial, even decisive portion of the American public.
Arquette has had minimal education, so it was the news media’s duty to make sure she and people like her were informed about what this “NATO” thingy was that everyone was always talking about.
I hope a lot of you are enjoying Michael West‘s generous labor of love during the countdown to the Alamo’s fall. It is, as I’ve said here often, one of the most vivid and fascinating of all ethics chapters in U.S. history, and the fact that it is neglected in popular culture and public education to the degree it is disgraceful, like much of this nation’s negligent and cavalier attitude toward history.
I want to apologize to readers and especially Michael for a mistake I have made. One of my sources, echoing others, printed the Mexican dictator’s name as “Santa Ana,” with one “n.” Convinced that I had been perpetrating an error, i began lnocking off the second “n” in Michael’s posts and my own, though I always had assumed that “Anna” was correct.
Well, it was and is correct. His full name is Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón. Now I have to go back and correct the correction.
Here is Michael’s focus on Day 11 of the siege, March 4, 1836.
***
It was cold that evening that the Mexican Artillerymen of the 1st Brigade under command of General Gaona settled down into their camp somewhere south of modern day Yancey, Texas. They had been on a forced march since late January. The moon was full that evening, perfect for night operations – and despite the Texans being bottled up about 45 miles away, Native American raiders were still a possible threat. Reports had been received that straggling soldiers had been ambushed. Continue reading →
Certain themes and issues are certain to recur on an ethics blog and never be resolved. Among them are abortion, “hate speech,” illegal immigration, reparations for slavery, drug legalization, gun control, war (HUH! What is is good for?], climate change and capital punishment. From the captain’s chair at Ethics Alarms, some of these seem more difficult than others. Capital punishment is not among them. [Above is the sensational and illegal photo in 1925 of the first woman ever sent to the electric chair as the switch was pulled. Ruth Snyder, a housewife from Queens, New York, took a lover and recruited him in a plot that ended with her husband’s brutal death; a reporter had a secret camera device strapped to his leg. Her story was the basis of many fictionalized versions, including the classic film noirs “Double Indemnity” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and the brilliant expressionist stage drama “Machinal” by Sophy Treadwell.]
I’ll play: I believe non-lethal crimes that ruin lives to the magnitude that Bernie Madoff did with his Ponzi scheme ethically support a death sentence. Last week the late investing whiz’s sister and her husband were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide that was probably another consequence of his crime.
I read the Bucklew case, where the SCOTUS decided, quite sensibly, that there is no right to a painless execution. What stuck out to me is the penultimate paragraph in Breyer’s dissent, in which he states that as we move forward there may be no constitutional way to implement the death penalty. That, I submit, is one more reason we needed to either get that sixth conservative justice on the Court or get Breyer out of there. Continue reading →
The New York Times is the main focus of my ongoing lament about the unethical journalism in a nation that desperately needs better. This is in part a function of the fact that it is the paper I subscribe to (at great personal expense despite being in the ambit of the Times’ rival, the Washington Post, which I could have on my lawn for the proverbial song), but mainly because it is, by far, the best of mainstream journalism, so its bias and consistent dishonesty is particularly telling (and frightening.) Ethics Alarms does under-examine the Post, though, and I have to work on that.
I considered this while reading a post by John Schroeder at conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s website triggered by a Post “news story.” The WaPo piece said in part,
A father’s runaway political rage and his son’s revulsion at lawlessness enthralled a federal jury Thursday as the first criminal trial stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack revealed a nation and a family plunged into ruinous conflict by former president Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.
Really? It’s Trump’s fault? You sure about that? So, The Beatles really did make Charles Manson do it? Jodie Foster is the actual reason John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan?…[P]eople are responsible their own actions and their own responses to events. We have a will and just because somebody or something pushes our buttons, it does not mean we are not responsible for what we do when the buttons are pushed….This is not reporting on the trial, this is Beltway bubble obsession with Trump hatred. Unlike the Congressional hearings on Jan. 6 which are pure political theater and completely devoid of any actual meaning, the criminal trials are where justice is to be served, and yet the press is reporting on them as if they were just more political theater.
Well, I think the trials are also political theater, as they have made clear that only conservative rioters get prosecuted in the current version of American “justice.” But I digress. The Post publishes more of these kinds of reports, and that is why I subscribe to the Times.
1. A measure to protect women’s sports, and progressives are attacking it. Integrity is one of the hardest of all ethical values, as the supporters of allowing trans athletes to make female sports competitions unfair and futile continue to prove. Prodded by the news of a biological male transgender member of the UPenn women’s swim team crushing all competitors with his male-puberty-generated physique, Iowa became the 11ths state to ban biological males from competing inwomen’s sports when Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law last week. “This is a victory for girls’ sports in Iowa. No amount of talent, training or effort can make up for the natural physical advantages males have over females. It’s simply a reality of human biology,” Reynolds said in a statement. “Forcing females to compete against males is the opposite of inclusivity and it’s absolutely unfair.” Continue reading →
“A perpetual concern, particularly in criminal defense, is that the next generation of lawyers will lack the skills needed to do their job, to zealously represent their clients. They struggle to tolerate the language we encounter in the ordinary course of our work. They are blinded by hatred of their prosecutorial adversaries, the law enforcement witnesses, the judge who denies their pleas for “justice.” Can they mount effective arguments against their clients if they can’t tolerate hearing arguments with which they disagree?”
—Criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield, on his blog “Simple Justice,” reacting to the law students at UC Hastings shouting down Georgetown Law professor Illya Shapiro, who was supposed to be engaging in a civil debate with a Hastings professor.
Ethics Alarms discussed the Hastings incident here [#4]; I should have probably made a solo post of it, because as Greenfield correctly points out, it has wider implications. Later he writes,
The reaction to these students was split, with many woke law students and baby lawyers applauding their action while more experienced lawyers were appalled at what they viewed as a failure of a law school, of law students, to demonstrate the minimal capacity to engage in the manner that will be expected of them as lawyers. If tactics like this are what law students deem acceptable, will they ever be capable of being lawyers?
Michael West’s dedicated account of the last days of the Alamo in 1836 continues with Day 10 of the siege, March 3. Michael’s mention below of the Alamo couriers reminds me of what I found to be the most moving of the commemorative bronze plaques at Alamo National Monument in San Antonio. It lists the couriers, and reminds us that every one of them headed back to the make-shift fort, knowing what was probably in store for them.
As far as I can determine, two of Travis’s final couriers didn’t arrive in time to participate in the final battle, and thus lived to tell the tale. James L. Allen (1815-1901) was probably the last courier to be sent by Travis, as he carried a final appeal to Fannin at Goliad. He reached Goliad on March 8, and was preparing to return to the Alamo when he learned that it had fallen. John William Smith (1792-1845), who had been sent out from the Alamo by Travis previously, was sent again on March 3 1836. Smith was returning with 25 volunteers from when the Alamo fell. In John Wayne’s movie, Smith is played by Frankie Avalon, and is a composite of Allen, who was young (21) like Frankie, and the real Smith, who actually made it back only to find that the battle was over. Frankie’s big scene occurs when, having delivered a message relaying the fort’s dire situation to Sam Houston (Richard Boone), Houston offers him food and rest. “No sir!” “Smitty” says, turning his horse. “I gotta get back to the Alamo!”
Here’s Michael’s Comment of the Day on Day 10 of the Alamo story...
Good, and also legal, ethical, just, fair and necessary.
Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Tsarnaev. It is, like most Thomas opinions, long, careful, thorough, and persuasive. The dissent by Justice Breyer, in contrast, is uncharacteristically weak, and the other two “liberal” justices did themselves no favors by joining it. Essentially, it is an example of exactly the judicial legislating that conservatives rightly complain about. Breyer grasps at a dubious legal straw to do indirectly what he cannot do directly: ban capital punishment, which is both legal and constitutional. His whole argument in his own nutshell:
During the sentencing phase of his murder trial, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev argued that he should not receive the death penalty primarily on the ground that his older brother Tamerlan took the leading role and induced Dzhokhar’s participation in the bombings. Dzhokhar argued that Tamerlan was a highly violent man, that Tamerlan radicalized him, and that Dzhokhar participated in the bombings because of Tamerlan’s violent influ-ence and leadership. In support of this argument, Dzho-khar sought to introduce evidence that Tamerlan previously committed three brutal, ideologically inspired murders in Waltham, Massachusetts. The District Court prohibited Dzhokhar from introducing this evidence. The Court of Appeals held that the District Court abused its discretion by doing so…. This Court now reverses the Court of Appeals. In my view, the Court of Appeals acted lawfully in holding that the District Court should have allowed Dzhokhar to introduce this evidence.
