“Democracy Dies In Dickness”*: The Washington Post’s Racism

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This article in the Washington Post yesterday, authored by two “reports of color,” Cleve R. Wootson Jr., a White House reporter for the Post, and Marianna Sotomayor (no relation to that other Sotomayor) who now covers the House of Representatives for the Post after coming over from NBC, gained quite a bit of notice from the conservative news media (and none at all from the much larger other side, for this passage when it was first published:

 
 
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Nice! The two post reporters managed to insult Thomas by reducing his legal opinions to knee-jerk bias, and to attack conservatives based on their race. The obvious rejoinder to this slur would be whether the Post would tolerate an article that criticized, say, Justice Kagan as issuing opinions that are in lockstep with the advocacy of “black progressives.” What does race have to do with either observation, the actual one or the hypothetical reverse negative?

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/17/2022: Let’s Celebrate Aaron Burr Never Became President Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Those who like to maintain that the Founders were infallible and the Constitution flawless would do well to remember this date, when the U.S. narrowly averted a disaster entirely made possible by bone-headed drafting of our road-map to a republic. On February 17, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was elected the third president of the United States, the first peaceful transfer of power from one political party in our history, as Jefferson’s fledgling Democratic-Republicans upset the Federalists of Washington, Adams and Hamilton. It was a close call, however, because Jefferson was nearly defeated by hos own Vice-President, the sinister Aaron Burr (That’s him on the left above.)Though Jefferson and Burr ran on the same ticket, the Constitution required state elector votes for both men to be counted separately. As a result, Jefferson and Burr emerged from the process tied at 73 electoral votes apiece, while the sitting President, John Adams, came in third at 65 votes. This sent the final vote to the House of Representatives. Of course, if Burr weren’t a sociopathic cur, he could have solved the botch by simply withdrawing from the Presidential race since nobody voted for him to be President. The Federalist-controlled House of Representatives, meanwhile, was happy to see Jefferson enmeshed in the controversy, and were delighted in the dealock  In the end it was Federalist Alexander Hamilton who saved the day and the nation, as he persuaded the House to vote against Burr, whom he called unfit. (This moment of high principle—Jefferson and Hamilton were far from pals–led to the duel with Burr in 1804 that resulted in Hamilton’s death.)  As for the ridiculously incompetent voting system, it was cleared up by the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804. The fact that the first version didn’t inflict Aaron Burr on the still-vulnerable United States, however, was pure moral luck.

1. “Best Excuse for Unethical Conduct” of the Month: Bruce Lee, a Chicago ticket broker, was convicted of fraudulently selling tickets to White Sox games and  sentenced to prison this week. The  federal judge rejected his defense that he had actually helped the team, because it wasn’t going fill those seats anyway and the fans who bought his fake tickets spent money on food, drink, and souvenirs. The judge called the argument that nobody was harmed “delusional,” and saying that it was important to make the point to others who might try similar schemes that getting caught would have negative consequences.

The judge must be a Republican, since that line of reasoning appears to be taboo on the other side of the aisle regarding “minor” crimes. Continue reading →

“Hmmm…The ‘Threat To Democracy’ Theme Doesn’t Seem To Be Working. Guess It’s Time To Go Back To “Anyone Who Opposes Us Is An Evil Racist Trying To Preserve Racist Systems In This Racist Country…”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Hot on the heels of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ quick default to the routine Democratic Party playbook racism defense comes the utterly predictable response of Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton to the public voting three uber-woke members of the San Francisco school board out of office this week in the city’s first successful recall election in nearly 40 years. School board president Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga are out after more than 70% of voters rejected each of them.

Like parents in so many other municipalities, parents in San Francisco—yes, even there!—showed that they were mad as hell about school closures and seeing political correctness and leftist indoctrination rule their children’s education, and they weren’t going to take it any more. The real reason, though, according to Walton, was that Donald Trump, racism, and “closet Republicans” with “conservative values” have corrupted the city.

“Trump’s election and bold prejudice brought a lot of that out, even in our Democratic and liberal city,” Walton told the news media. “There are a lot of people who do not want people of color making decisions in leadership, even though the voters said that is what they want.”

Yes, no one can legitimately conclude that the decisions and policies made by elected “people of color” in a particular situation are just wrong because they don’t work. People of color only make the right decisions, sayeth Shamann Walton, a person of color himself. Believing otherwise is proof positive of racism, and besides, Donald Trump.

We’ll see how this strategy—denying basic respect to those with opposing views and instead declaring opponents’ motives to be based on racial hatred rather than legitimate differences of philosophy— works for flailing Democrats in the coming months.

After all, it’s worked so far.

Pop Ethics Quiz: The “Offensive” Mask

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Apparently a passenger was kicked off an Allegiant Airlines flight for wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon!” mask. he was told to remove the mask and replace it. He refused.

Let’s make this quick:

Was the airline fair and reasonable to insist that he remove the mask?

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I Hereby Solemnly Pledge, With My Hand On My 1967 Boston Red Sox Yearbook Turned To The Photo Of Tony Conigliaro, That I Will Vote For All African-American Politicians, Regardless Of Policies Or Party, Who Declare That They Will Not Exploit Racial Divisions, And Will Never Blame Criticism, Justified Or Not, On The “Racism” Of Their Critics

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

That politician would not be new New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Adams yesterday ranted at reporters for not being sufficiently laudatory regarding his performance so far in his still-young term. “If you want to acknowledge or not, I have been doing a darn good job and we just can’t live in this alternate reality,” Adams fumed. To what does the Democrat attribute what he says is this lack of appreciation? Of course!

“I’m a black man that’s the mayor but my story is being interpreted by people that don’t look like me. How many blacks are on editorial boards? How many blacks determine how these stories are being written? How many Asians? How many East Asians? How many South Asians? Everyone talks about my government being diversified, what’s the diversification in the newsrooms? Diversify your newsrooms so I can look out and see people who look like me.”

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The Curse Of The Great Stupid: This Woman Was A Journalist At The New York Times, Received A Pulitzer Prize For Fake History, And Now Indoctrinates Students As A Howard U. Professor

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

If what’s ethically objectionable about Howard Journalism professor Nikole Hannah-Jones isn’t immediately obvious, you’re probably already beyond hope.

Hannah-Jones was furious at MSNBC covering an example of serial shoplifting because it undercuts the argument for reduced policing and law enforcement . “This drumbeat for continued mass incarceration is really horrific to watch,” said the major force behind the racist propaganda screed “The 1619 Project.”  “A person stealing steak is not national news, and there have always been thefts from stores. This is how you legitimize the carceral state,” she tweeted indignantly.

This woman pretended to be a journalist. She is now a tenured journalism professor. That is the level of her quality of thought and reasoning. She is advocating keeping facts and destructive national trends from the public because they disprove a far-left narrative that is contrary to history, facts and common sense. As always with Hannah-Jones, she leads with dishonesty: MSNBC did not show the video of a brazen shoplifting incident in the middle of an epidemic of such crimes because of the item stolen. Then she resorts to the hoariest of rationalizations—‘This isn’t new’ (“Everybody does it!”), plus another lie: everybody hadn’t shoplifted as frequently and destructively before cities like San Francisco decided not to enforce the laws against it. In fact, the kind of shoplifting, including “smash and grab” mobs, we saw in 2021 were unprecedented.

Finally, she declares that showing the truth will undermine the movement to stop “over-incarceration,” which means that it is unjust to have disproportionate numbers of imprisoned members of a group just because members of the group  commit a disproportionate amount of crimes. This is the “disparate impact” theory at its least defensible.

The professor has a right to flog whatever idiotic leftist talking points she chooses, but people of good faith have a similar right to point, laugh, and demand that institutions we entrust with informing and educating the public do not celebrate, empower or enable an advocate of deceiving the public to achieve her radical ideological ends.

In related news, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Crazytown) whose mind is made up regarding the wisdom of defunding the police and reality will not dissuade her, tweeted

With a mandate to end police brutality, why oppose redirecting money from racist policing into social programs proven to save Black lives? Our movement for racial justice helped deliver the White House & Congress. We won’t stop until we get justice.

As with Hannah-Jones, this is dishonesty squared with a deceitful cherry on top. There has always been a mandate “to end police brutality,” but what the wild-eyed activists like Bush and Hannah-Jones call “brutality” is often the act of law enforcement itself. (Sixties radicals were taught to scream “Police brutality!” when they were physically dragged from property where they were trespassing.) Bush, like Hannah-Jones, regards enforcing the law when black criminals are involved as “racist.” The assault on policing is costing lives, not saving them, with blacks being disproportionately the victims.

Finally, claiming that the BLM rioting in the summer of 2020 and demands to defund the police “helped deliver the White House & Congress” is pure fantasy.  Both were among the reasons President Trump outperformed the polls predicting a Democratic landslide, as well as why Republicans narrowed the Democratic majority in the House.

Facts literally don’t matter to ethics corrupters like Hannah-Jones and Bush. Those who support, employ or vote for such individuals are complicit in the damage they inflict on society.

 

Ethics Hero (“Socking It To Georgetown University” Div.) #2: Federal Judge James Ho

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

As a graduate and former employee of Georgetown Law Center (and, though I say it myself, a living legend there), I have found the recent disgraceful episode where conservative scholar Illya Shapiro was suspended by the Dean at GULC for a tweet expressing the view that President Biden’s announced plan to make race and gender his primary criteria for filling Justice Breyer’s soon to be vacant seat on the Supreme Court particularly discouraging. (My JD diploma was already face to the wall for previous embarrassments, however.) I have been particularly disgusted by the failure of the GULC faculty to speak up in support of Shapiro in public, though other academics across the country have done so.

Thus it was with particular pleasure that I learned how Judge James Ho of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, slated to speak at GULC yesterday on “Fair Weather Originalism: Judges, Umpires, and the Fear of Being Booed,” saw the obvious relevance of his topic to Shapiro’s ordeal and shocked his hosts by giving a different lecture than the one announced. He said in part,

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Ethics Hero (“Socking It To Georgetown University” Div.) #1: Student Jessica Costescu

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

No weenie she.

Costescu is a junior at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the president of the Network of Enlightened Women chapter on campus. Her parents fled communism in Romania. She has been shocked and disturbed by the growing hostility to free speech, and indeed to freedom itself, that she has encountered at what is supposed to be an elite and distinguished institution of high learning in our nation’s capital.

As a vocal conservative, she has been threatened “so much so that [she] now fear[s] to speak freely and voice [her] conservative beliefs.” She reports that she has been cyber-bullied by other students “in such a menacing way” that she is “afraid to engage online, or even during class” with her “left-leaning peers.”

However, instead of hiding, or, as is the response sought by such tactics, conforming, Jessica wrote about her experiences on the conservative website College Fix, not anonymously but under her own name, not pathetically but in defiance. She writes in part, Continue reading →

Ethics Clean-Up On Aisle Tuesday, 2/15/2022: And What A Mess It Is…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

1. There were three interesting developments on the legal front today with ethics implications:

  • Royal slime-ball Prince Andrew, already shunned by the Royal Family, agreed today to pay an undisclosed sum to a victim of Jefferey Epstein’s sexcapades who accused the younger brother of Prince Charles of sexually abusing her when she was a minor. David Boies, showing his versatility after representing Harvey Weinstein, is the lawyer for  Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre. The amount of the out-of-court settlement will be not disclosed, Boies revealed.  Giuffre sued the Duke of York in August 2021, claiming that he abused her on multiple occasions in 2001 when she was a 17-year-old victim of the sex trafficking ring Epstein ran for decades. Of course, a settlement doesn’t mean that Andrew is guilty. Then again,

  • The New York Times was found by a jury not to have defamed  Sarah Palin when it maliciously accused her of inciting murder with her campaign map. The jury didn’t know it, but the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, had already announced that he would dismiss Palin’s complaint regardless of what they decided, as a matter of law. “We’ve reached the same bottom line … but it’s on different grounds,” the Judge said upon hearing their verdict. “You decided the facts; I decided the law. As it turns out, they’re both in agreement in this case.”

Too bad, but both the jury and the judge were right. The problem wasn’t malice despite the Times’ absurd claim that no malice was intended, a key element of the standard for finding defamation when the media attacks a public figure. The problem was that the editorial in question was still opinion, even though it stated Palin’s guilt as a fact. Had the same statement been in an alleged news story, it would have been a different matter.

  • Insurers for the bankrupt Remington Arms Company and its subsidiaries agreed to pay the Sandy Hook Elementrary School families the maximum amount of damages available to them, $73 million. The settlement deal will also allow them to release thousands of documents that the plaintiffs obtained in discovery. A settlement isn’t precedent, and both sides had good reason to be wary of a trial. The victims in the Sandy Hook massacre raised the possibility of a jury persuaded more by emotion than law. Still, he unbroken record of attempts to find gun manufacturers liable for shootings made going to trial a risk for the anti-gun forces. As is typical, both sides claimed that they were pleased with the deal.

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The Russian Figure Skater And The Beijing Olympics’ Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ethics Call

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I suppose it should not be a surprise that these most unethical of all Olympiads (since the Olympics should never have been held in this totalitarian, ethics-free nation to begin with) would feature the most unethical decision imaginable. If I cared one whit about the disgusting charade in China and who wins what, I might really be upset. As it is, I’m just going to point out, dispassionate, the ethics rot on display.

Fifteen-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva  tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance that improves athletic performance, in the  urine sample that Valieva submitted at the Russian national championship on Christmas. The drug, known as TMZ, is a heart medication that can increase endurance. But the result was not confirmed and relayed to Russian officials or to her for more than six weeks. Russia’s antidoping agency said it learned of the failed test on February 7. On that day, the teen led the Russians to a gold medal in the team event.

Let’s stop right there. She tested positive for a banned substance, and that should have stopped her from competing in the Olympics. It doesn’t matter why the test results were delayed (the Russians cheat, and have always cheated). It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. Valieva was ineligible, and whenever it was discovered that she was ineligible, the only fair and ethical response was to disqualify her. This also meant that her team would be disqualified, because a disqualified skater helped it win the team event.

Ethics can be hard, but this conclusion isn’t hard. It is obvious and irrefutable. Because she shouldn’t have been competing at all, and would not have been had either someone in Russia not cheated or was incredibly incompetent, the skater had no right to be skating, and any athlete or athlete who would have won had she not been illicitly permitted in the Games has been treated unfairly, robbed, cheated, pick your term.

That ought to have been the immediate decision. Instead, Olympic “arbitrators” (Arbitrators are supposed to have impeccable ethics alarms, and not the ethical instincts of Hillary Clinton. Who are these fools?) ruled that Valieva not only wouldn’t be disqualified but could continue competing, but that any medals in any event in which she places the top three will not be awarded. The question of who wins what medal, and whether Valieva wins any, will wait until after her doping case is definitively settled, which may take months. 

Ethics Dunces. Irredeemable cowards. Morons. Continue reading →