25th Amendment

Forget “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” The Proper Reaction Should Be “What the Hell Is the Matter With You Hacks?”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The furious wagon-circling by left-biased journalists (or “journalists,” for short) in response to the DOJ Special Counsel’s stunning “Look! The Emperor has no clothes!” declaration in his report is another smoking gun in the “controversy” over whether Donald Trump was as right as he has ever been to call the media “enemies of the people.” It might even be the smokiest gun of all—more damning than the news media’s blatant cheer-leading for Barack Obama’s candidacy and destructive Presidency, more damning than its Black Lives Matter pandering during the BLM riots and its fearmongering during the pandemic, even more damning, perhaps, than its successful efforts to hide the evidence of Hunter Biden’s laptop until Donald Trump was safely defeated.

Confirmation bias and willful blindness still have their limits. How can any American with two brain cells to rub together observe the shameless gaslighting compiled in the video above and not be offended, disgusted, and angry?

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Justice Dept. Special Counsel Robert Hur

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

From the report issued today by the DOJ Special Counsel tasked with investigating Joe Bden’s storing boxes of classified documents in his garage:

Holy guacamole.

Well, I assume this document will authoritatively put an end to the dissembling Democratic narrative that President Biden is as sharp as a tack. The status of Biden’s mental facilities was relevant in making the determination of whether charges should be filed, if prosecutors were doubtful about whether and jury would convict someone who is described as a doddering old man, as in this passage:

“…We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

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“God Save The Queen, Man!”: An IIPTDXTTNMIAFB And An Integrity Test

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Remember Plan E? That was the designation on the Ethics Alarms list of resistance, Democrat and news media impeachment or removal plots for the 25th Amendment theory, which was that President Trump was mentally disabled and thus should be declared incompetent. The catalysts for this intellectually dishonest effort were Trump-hating hack author Michael Wolf and now-fired Yale psychology instructor Bandy Lee, but many in the “Get Trump!” mob quickly embraced their nonsense, as Ethics Alarms discussed here. I wrote, “Ethics Dunce is too mild a name here. We have the mainstream news media proclaiming to the world that the President of the United States is mentally deficient based on tweets, gossip, leaks, unethical diagnoses by discredited professionals, an author who has admitted making things up and lying to the White House to get access, and Steve Bannon.” Prominent among the 25th Amendment-pushing journalists, if you can call him that, was CNN’s fake media ethics watchdog, Brian Stelter. Of course, my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends were also convinced that Trump had dementia.

Last week, as he ended his remarks at a “gun safety summit” in Connecticut, President Biden said, for no apparent reason, “God save the Queen, man!” The video was instantly all over social media.

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No, No, NO, Biden Must NOT “Go”: Biden Must Stay, And All Responsible For Putting Him In The White House Must Be Made Accountable

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Joe confused

Over at the Spectator, conservative pundit Dominic Green writes in a piece titled Biden Must Go,

“If Trump had confused his Vice President with a ‘general’ or fumbled with his cue cards because he couldn’t match a scripted question to a scripted answer, as Biden did at his press conference on Thursday; or shown the bizarre callousness and failure of short-term memory in his ‘That was four days ago, five days ago!’ outburst; or spontaneously abandoned the policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan in an interview with ABC, as Biden did with George Stephanopoulos on Thursday, the psychiatrists would be lining up outside the cable stations to explain why the 25th Amendment needed to be deployed now. It’s that simple. The buck really does stop with the President. The world has always seen Biden’s incapacity, and now the American people can see it too. He carries direct responsibility for a disaster so undeniable that even a partisan media can no longer deny it. He can neither speak truthfully nor accurately. Not so much the emperor with no clothes, as Lear’s fool on the heath, naked and shivering as the kingdom comes to the ‘great confusion’.”

Oh no you don’t! “The resistance,” progressives, Democrats and the news media can’t be let off that easy. It is essential to restoring the nation’s principles and the integrity of the political process that Joe Biden remain in office to do all the damage and inflict all the embarrassment on the nation he will undoubtedly can and will. It will be painful for him to be sure: good. He was irresponsible and unethical to allow himself to be used by his party when he knew—and I’m sure he knows—that he had become a shadow of his already mediocre self. It will be even more painful for his party and its supporters, which will not be able to blame anyone but themselves for the disaster at the border, the stuttering response to the latest virus strains, the exploding national debt, the creeping inflation and the disgraceful embrace of racial discrimination. And, of course, it will be painful for the public, and again I say, good. They were dupes, fools and incompetent citizens. They deserve to suffer. There are consequences to being lazy, gullible, biased and stupid. They are about to learn them. Hard.The Democrats and media tried to brainwash America with the dangerous idea that when we elect a President that enough people don’t like and the news media decides to destroy, there are constitutional ways to ignore elections and get rid of him. There are not. Impeachment, contrary to the undemocratic plots endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and the rest, requires actual “high crimes and misdemeanors,” not mean tweets, contrived violations of dead letter provisions and conduct routinely engaged in by other Presidents that are suddenly repurposed into “crimes” to avoid the trouble of defeating an incumbent at the polls.

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Seeing Ethics In September, 9/1/2020…

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

1. Well, THAT’s an easy question! At St Xavier Catholic Church in NYC over the weekend, the priest asked his flock, : “Do you affirm that white privilege is unfair…will you commit to helping transform our church culture” and embrace “racial justice.”?

The answer, of course, is “‘Bye!” No one should accept partisan and racist talking points from the clergy. This is an abuse of power, trust and position.

I think I’ll watch “Spotlight” again…

2. In case you were wondering, Ethics Alarms will have nothing definitive to say about the Kyle Rittenhouse saga, and won’t until I read a trustworthy account of what really happened. There seems no question that the original mainstream news media narrative that this was a white supremacist gun nut hunting peaceful protesters is the MSM misbehaving again. The backlash characterization of Ritterhouse as a brave citizen protecting local businesses from rioters also seems overly convenient. The video available suggests an element of self-defense, but it seems clear to me that the kid irresponsibly placed himself in a perilous position while provoking members of a less-than-rational mob. In the situation he voluntarily placed himself, Ritterhouse was likely to be killed or kill somebody. He was also violating the law by carrying his weapon when he was underage. Of course, the failure of the Kenosha police and the state to keep minimally endurable order also added to the deadly conditions.

3. Hey, Coup Plan E, good to see you! Where have you been?

The 25th Amendment arguments have  been relatively scarce lately, although Maxine Waters mentioned it a week ago without referencing any disability. She appears to think that the Cabinet can just remove the elected President with a vote. My God, she’s such an idiot.

If the President had three strokes, he sure recovered quickly. And doesn’t it take astounding gall to try this chestnut again now, when the Democrats are running a candidate who could be legitimately removed by the 25th Amendment ten minutes after he took the oath of office? Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 4/26/2020: Face Masks, Face-Saving, Faceplants, And Truths Too Awful To Face

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

1. Mask ethics:

See, when someone complains, she tells them they must be too close to her. Heck, why not decorate a mask with accident photos, abortion pics and fellatio snapshots?

  •  Michigan State Senator Dale Zorn, a Republican, was photographed wearing  a mask with a  Confederate flag design. I’d say the First Niggardly Principle applies: people are irrationally emotional about the flag, which is part of our history, still included in a couple of state flags, and a bold design, but there are less inflammatory design options. One has to wonder if someone deliberately displaying the flag is making a political statement, and since many of the possible statements are repulsive and divisive, it seems the ethical move is to choose another design. Like penises.

Zorn, however, not only wore the mask, he denied that it was  the Confederate flag, using a Clintonian argument ( it was more similar to the Kentucky or Tennessee flags, he said), then issued this apology:

So if he didn’t support what he knows the design represents to many people, why did he display it in a political forum?

  • I don’t know about you, but I’m thoroughly sick of conflicting information about the value of facemasks. This expert, for example, says they may make you sick.

Maybe that explains this confounding photo, from a recent flight into New York’s LaGuardia airport…

2. Trump’s face-saving tactic is a half-truth. In the wake of the latest fiasco, the President is going to limit the daily Wuhan virus press updates, and this is his explanation:

What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!

He’s right about the media, which is why the White House briefings were suspended before the pandemic. But the President is leaving out half the reason: he is over-exposed, not playing on a field he’s qualified to play on, and stumbles like the “Are we exploring using disinfectant as medicine?” followed by “I was just kidding!” are reckless self-inflicted wounds in a Presidential campaign. Trump needs less exposure, not more, and apparently someone persuaded him to cut back. Good.

I will never get used to the President of the United States using juvenile, hackneyed insults like “lamestream media.” Continue reading →

Biden’s Brain, Part I: The Awful Truth

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Let’s begin this topic with a stipulation: if your point is that Joe Biden’s evident dementia (or whatever it is) and the phony claim that Donald Trump is “disabled” within the very specific meaning of the 25th Amendment (this is Resistance Impeachment/Removal Plan E on the Ethics Alarms list) are equivalent issues, then you don’t want to be taken seriously in this discussion.

I yield to  few in the strength of my conviction that someone with the character, abilities and proclivities of Donald John Trump should never be elected President because such a person is a risk to the office and the nation as well as my blood pressure. However, the determination of whether such a person should be President is not mine to make alone, but the public, in what we call an election. President Trump was elected by an electorate with eyes wide open, indeed, there have been very few men, perhaps none, elected President in American history whose personalities and weaknesses were as well known to as many for as long as Trump’s. Anyone who claims that this man  has shown himself more “unfit” to hold office in any substantive way than he was when he was elected, or ten or 20 years before he was elected, is, to be blunt, lying through his or her teeth.

The 25th Amendment is about the onset of genuine disability—Lincoln as he lingered between life and death, Garfield as doctors tortured him for weeks trying to find Charles Guiteau’s bullet, Woodrow Wilson after his crippling stroke, Ike immediately following his stroke and heart attack, Reagan following his assassination attempt, not inbred inadequacy of longstanding, not Donald Trump acting like the impulsive, chaotic, intellectually sloppy asshole he has been all or most of his life. Continue reading →

A Show Of Hands, Now: Who Thinks Brian Stelter Is Telling The Truth This Time?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

CNN’s laughable “media critic,” Brian Stelter, who has distinguished himself and embarrassed his field—supposedly media ethics—by devolving into a mere shill for CNN and a dependable scourge of Fox News, may have hit a new low yesterday. I say “may” because  its hard to make qualitative distinctions in the murk at the bottom of the barrel.

Stelter brought on the former chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Duke University, Dr. Alan Frances, apparently because he has a raging, Level 5 case of Trump Derangement. This is sufficient qualification  for a national news media platform now. No enlightenment necessary, no reasoned analysis, just good, old fashioned, bat-shit Trump hate, with plenty of spittle and that wonderful “Is he going run off on all fours biting people?” suspense. On Stelter’s show with the doctor was Bandy Lee, who defied her profession’s rule against diagnosing political figures from afar throughout the 2016 campaign, saying that she was  “obligated to break [the rules] in times of emergency,” thus evoking eleven rationalizations by my count. That’s right, Lee and Francis were the representatives of the psychiatric profession CNN’s “media ethics” authority decided would give a balanced assessment of the practice of psychoanalyzing the President.

Really.

Dr.  Frances pretended to criticize his professionally irresponsible colleagues like Lee for assisting in the resistance’s Plan E, trying to illegitimately apply the 25th Amendment allowing a disabled President to be removed from office.   Oh no, he said: doing this was just plain wrong:

“Well, I think ‘medicalizing’ politics has three very dire consequences. The first is that it stigmatizes the mentally ill. I’ve known thousands of patients, almost all of them are well-behaved, well-mannered good people. Trump is none of these. Lumping that is a terrible insult to the mentally ill and they have enough problems and stigma as it is. Second, calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist… Now, it’s absolutely impossible, you can bet the house that the Congress, that Pence, that the cabinet will never ever remove Trump on grounds of mental unfitness. That will never happen. Discussing the issue in psychological name-calling terms distracts us from getting out to vote. The important thing is to get Trump out of office.”

Is that your expert opinion, doctor? Simply wanting to defeat the President is all it takes to get on CNN, apparently.

Ah, but it was within those ellipses that the doctor really came through, saying, Continue reading →

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 2/16/2019: The King’s Pass And Kool-Aid

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Good morning…

1. A literal “King’s Pass”! The King’s Pass, #11 on the Ethic Alarms rationalization list, was acted out with perfection in Great Britain, where Prince Philip, despite causing an automobile accident that injured another driver, was not charged or ticketed by authorities. The nonagenarian royal has been persuaded to surrender his driving license, however.

2. Politics do not belong in the sports pages...but don’t tell the New York Times. In another King’s Pass-related story,“Patriarch’s Racist Emails Stagger Cubs Owners” (the print version), in which the Times subtly lobbies for the Chicago Cubs and Major League Baseball to take punitive action against Joe Ricketts, the billionaire whose family owns the team, we had the following statements…

  • “The false assertion that Obama, who identifies as Protestant, was Muslim and born outside the United States were prevalent in right-wing politics during his presidency.” This is just false. The birthers were a radical fringe of the conservative opposition to Obama, and that weak conspiracy theory was never “prevalent.” Nor can the birther claims be fairly called “racist,” though certainly many of their adherents were racist. Among the “racist” sentiments attributed to Ricketts in the article were “we cannot ever let Islam become a large part of our society.”  At worst that’s religious bigotry, not racism. At best it’s a defensible point of view.

In fact, I tend to agree with it, and the experience of Western Europe supports the position.

  • The article approvingly cites the mandatory grovel by Tom Ricketts, chairman of the Cubs, who denounced his father’s emails in a statement, saying, “We are aware of the racially insensitive emails in my father’s account that were published by an online media outlet. Let me be clear: The language and views expressed in those emails have no place in our society.”

Let me be clear: any language and all views have a place in a society founded on the principles of freedom of thought and expression. The casual and routine endorsement of thought-crime and censorship by the mainstream news media (and academia) is far more alarming than any private emails by an elderly billionaire. Continue reading →

Homeward Bound Saturday Morning Ethics Catch-Up, 9/8/2018: Not Spartacus, Not Good Citizens, Not Trustworthy

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Good Morning!

1 Good job, everybody. Lots of comments yesterday despite scant new content. Thanks. I am in the process of organizing a new D.C. law firm, Bergstein, DeCailly and Marshall, PLLC. I’m the ethics partner. It shouldn’t interfere with the activities of ProEthics or Ethics Alarms, except for the occasional conflict of interest that raises its hoary head, and time, like yesterday. I was in meetings down here in Ft. Lauderdale from early morning through dinner, meeting with a large group of some of the most fascinating and diverse professionals I’ve ever been involved with. I arrived back at the hotel too fried to even consider posting anything. I have responded to some comments while I’m waking up today.

The lack of participation by those of a more liberal orientation is disappointing, and rankles me daily. I hate being rankled. I guess I should be able to sympathize with why a omitted progressive or Democrat would want to have a bag over his or her head after the last few days of self-immolation by Senate Democrats, or would be paralyzed by embarrassment at hearing Barack Obama, of all people, complain that the Republicans are divisive. The most divisive occurrence in American politics is when the previous President actively works to undermine the current one. There is a reason that hasn’t happened since Teddy Roosevelt turned on President Taft, and the result was the election of one of the most disastrous Presidents of all time, Woodrow Wilson.

2. 16 places you can retire to if you’re a lousy American. The entire attitude underlying this article, 16 countries where you can retire ‘happier’ than in the US. is selfish and irresponsible. You are an American citizen and this is a participatory democracy. I don’t care if you’re retired; you still have a lifetime obligation to contribute to society, your community, and the nation. Happier nations for the retired, according to the article, are rated according to how the happiness of retirees is trending. Of course that method shows the U.S. in a bad light: retirees are justifiably pissed off watching one party set out to rip the country in two, open borders, and undermine the Bill of Rights, the election of Presidents, and our institutions, and the other being led by an irresponsible narcissist. That doesn’t mean that the patriotic and ethical response is to leave the country that got them this far to the antifa and “the resistance.” Continue reading →