Trump Derangement Partial Inventory, 9/6/25

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

1. To start off, let’s survey today’s headlines and anti-Trump spin at the President Trump Jeering Society, aka. The New York Times:

  • Grand Juries in D.C. Reject Wave of Charges Under Trump’s Crackdown
  • How Trump’s Blunt-Force Diplomacy Is Pushing His Rivals Together
  • Three Opinion Writers on Whether Congress Can Rein in Trump [Note: All three are vocal anti-Trump pundits]
  • Will Trump’s Caesarism Last? [Quote: “Barack Obama and George W. Bush were far more successful at consolidating presidential power, and Trump 1.0 mostly demonstrated that an inexperienced, incompetent president could still be pinned down like Gulliver….” Response: Well yes, when two partisan impeachments and a lengthy investigation weaponized by his Democratic predecessor effectively made it difficult for him to govern…]
  • Will Trump Have to Run From the Economy?

There are no positive stories about the Administration in the Times at all. A few are arguably straight reporting, like “What Has the Trump Administration Gotten From Law Firms and Universities?”

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The Hyundai Raid: Parallel Universes

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Here is how Fox News reported on the massive ICE raid at a Hyundai factory in Georgia:

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) announced the arrest of 475 illegal migrants during a major immigration enforcement raid on Thursday at a Hyundai electric car battery factory in Georgia. 

HSI Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Steven Schrank noted that while the raid was at a Hyundai facility, not all the migrants worked for the parent company. Some worked for subcontractors at the site.

“We are sending a clear and unequivocal message that those who exploit our workforce, undermine our economy and violate federal laws will be held accountable,” Schrank said during a news conference on Friday.

Here is how the New York Times reported the same story (Gift link!):

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What’s In A Name?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Axis is so consistent in condemning everything President Trump does that it is becoming difficult to define what is really right and wrong. “Who did it” is not a valid or reasonable basis for making the distinction, but I swear, the Left has been so relentless with its warping of language and standards that even I am getting confused.

The current question is this: “Is there anything wrong with re-naming the Defense Department the Department of War, or the War Department, which is what it was called for before 1947 without the mountains falling and the seas boiling?”

As usual, there is a substantial chance that this is Trump Trolling, as he tries to make people’s head explode. I can also conceive of some value to the name change. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. projecting an image of strength and of a nation that is not going to tolerate international outrages because it’s reluctant to use military force. Yet focusing on “defense” has its advantages too.

They are two sides of the same metaphorical coin, one seeming more aggressive (oh-oh! That pesky testosterone again!) and the other more typically feminine: making the priorities accommodation and compromise over conflict and violence.

Is there any basis for ruling Trump’s branding decision unethical? I don’t see one.

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I would be having an Open Forum on Ethics Alarms today no matter what day of the week it was, unfortunately. The massive theatrical project I am involved in to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the student musical theater organization I inadvertently founded as a first year law student is just a week away now, and today in a particularly challenging segment of production week for me.

And that isn’t all I have to do. I feel like Dick Van Dyke in “What a Way to Go!” (above).

If you are in the Washington, D.C. area or going to be here next week and would like to come to the show (there is only a “suggested donation”), email me and I’ll give you all the details.

Today there are at least two stories that are exploding Trump-obsessed heads all over, and both of them raise serious ethical, legal and constitutional issues. I’ll try to write about both, but you might want to start here yourself. Issue one is the reported Justice Department discussions on making it more difficult for trans individuals to obtain firearms in the wake of the second transsexual mass-shooter in recent years. I think that’s the right count. In a related issue, the news media, and even the AI bots, are in full defensive mode regarding trans shooters.

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Unethical Quote of the Week, Ethics Dunce, Incompetent Elected Official, “It Isn’t What It Is” Lie of the Year, and General All-Around Asshole: Rep Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“There’s a free speech crisis in America today. But there’s no free speech crisis in Britain.”

 —Maryland Democratic Rep. Jaime Raskin, proving for all time that he is a shameless partisan whom Marylanders should hang their heads in shame for inflicting on Congress and their fellow Americans.

Raskin really said that. No, I’m not kidding, he really did. He did! I’m not making it up!

The rapid government attack on free speech in Great Britain, where it has never been particularly strong, has been the subject of great concern among civil libertarians in the UK and here, for very good reasons. As Matt Taibbi, the red-pilled former Rolling Stone pundit recently wrote, “The arrest of Graham Linehan for his tweets is one of many examples that show [Great Britain] should not be treated as a free one.” (You can read about the Linehan scandal here.) Indeed. British citizens are being punished for peacefully protesting, for petitioning the government, for critical social media posts, and even for displaying the British flag. Yet Raskin says that there is no free speech crisis. His idea of a free speech crisis is CBS being forced to pay the piper after engaging in election interference to try to get an idiot elected President of the United States. Meanwhile, here in the good ‘ol USA, thanks to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the gradual exposure of censorious Leftist colleges and universities, and the demise of Biden’s proto- fascist Justice Department, free speech is healthier than it has been in quite a while.

After Raskin made his fatuous statement in the House hearing titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation,” was held to discuss EU and U.K. censorship, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) quickly made the obvious rebuttal: “The gentleman alleges there’s no free speech in America under Donald Trump while his staff member holds up countless articles criticizing the Trump administration.”

A Quick Note on the Competence of Artificial Intelligence…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In writing the previous post about the Swiss organization that is paid to help people kill themselves, I was planning on mentioning Phillip Barry’s mysterious cult drama “Hotel Universe.” Barry, whose most lasting work is “The Philadelphia Story” but who was once one of Broadway’s most successful playwrights, wrote a fascinating but perplexing drama about how the suicide of a friend during a group vacation sends his characters on an existential journey into fantasy, madness, or a mass hallucination. My now defunct theater company performed the piece, because that was the kind of non-commercial, crazy productions we gravitated to. The last words of the dead friend were, “Well, I’m off to”…somewhere. I couldn’t remember. The suicidal woman I was writing about had told her family she was off to Lithuania, which is what reminded me of “Hotel Universe.”

But I couldn’t remember where Barry’s character was “off to” when what he meant was “I’m going to kill myself now.” It was driving me crazy, so I thought, “What a perfect question for AI! ” So I asked Google’s bot, “In ‘Hotel Universe,’the man who is going to kill himself says, I’m off to…” Where?” The thing answered quite assertively,

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The Organization That Will Help You Kill Yourself for $20,000…What a Deal! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“People” magazine is carrying the depressing story of Maureen Slough, (above), an Irish woman, 58, who told her family she was going on vacation to Lithuania with a friend. However, she confided to two friends that she would really be traveling alone to Switzerland, where a non-profit there would help her to kill herself.

And that’s what she did, after paying the organization, Pegasos, in Liestal, Switzerland, £15,000 (a bit more than 20,000 U.S. dollars) for the assistance.

A brief digression: Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and had been since 1942. It isn’t euthanasia which is illegal but often isn’t punished here in the U.S. and elsewhere: the patients kill themselves with prescribed drugs, and doctors aren’t involved beyond writing a legal prescription. (Writing a prescription for a drug that the doctor knows the patient will use to commit suicide is, in my view, a violation of medical ethics.)

Maureen’s adult daughter received a text message on WhatsApp from Pegasos informing her that her mother had died. That was nice of them. “What was worse was not only did I get the text on WhatsApp, they had advised me that her ashes would be posted to me in 6-8 weeks,” she said. “In that very moment, because I was alone, I just sat there with the baby and cried… I just felt like my world ended.”

Later, Slough’s ashes arrived.

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The Ethicist Rejects Unconditional Love

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I don’t.

“My Brother’s an Unpleasant Drunk. Can I Cut Him Off?” the headline to The New York Time’s weekly ethics advice column reads. Well, obviously you can cit him off, but this is ethics: should you cut him off? I must confess, I developed a healthy dislike of the inquirer, who may not be a drunk but is also unpleasant. He writes in part…

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More On The Lisa Cook Fiasco…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Yikes.

Jeff Guinn’s comment on the previous post included a link to a Reason report on Fed governor Lisa Cook’s record before Biden appointed her and Congress confirmed her. since the law permitting Trump to fire her specifies “for cause,” and it usually isn’t just firing for cause when the cause is something everyone knew about (or should have) when the employee was put in the job, her extreme woke craziness can’t be used by the President to dump her, but it can be used to conclude that the woman is untrustworthy, is likely to be motivated by a political agenda rather than the public interest, is almost certainly firmly in the Destroy Trump By Any Means Necessary” camp, and is not above manipulating the interest rates to foil the Trump Administration.

From Reason’s Robby Soave:

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Talk About “The Wrong Hill To Die On”: Lisa Cook’s Refusal To Obey The President’s Lawful Dismissal Is Just Defiance

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The woman doesn’t have a metaphorical leg to stand on, except the disgusting (but still reflex), “There goes that racist Trump again, trying to bring down a black woman.”

“I strongly recommend that you suspend Ms. Cook from the Federal Reserve Board immediately,” states senior DOJ Ed Martin’s letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Of course. If he doesn’t suspend her, that’s grounds to fire Powell. “No one believes it’s appropriate for her to remain in her role while serious questions linger,” wrote Martin. That’s not quite right: Democrats and the Trump Deranged believe that everyone should just refuse to acknowledge that Donald Trump is President of the United States.

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