abuse of power

The FIRE To The Rescue Again: But How Can This Keep Happening In U.S. Schools?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

MontclaireThe FIRE, admirable campus First Amendment watchdog and champion that it is, is once again charging to the rescue of an innocent student being subjected to censorship, oppression and mind-control by a Stalinist state university…in new Jersey. Its victory is pre-ordained, as you will shortly see. The troubling questions are: Why are there schools in a democracy that act like Montclair State, presuming to tell students how to speak to each others and what views they can communicate in public? How do administrators that make and enforce such manifestly unethical and unconstitutional rules get hired in higher education—indeed, how are they bred at all? Finally, what vile and totalitarian principles does a school run by such dictators teach its students?

The facts of the case warrant little debate. Montclair State, in northeastern New Jersey, suspended Joseph Aziz, a 26-year-old graduate student, for comparing another student’s legs to “a pair of bleached hams” in a YouTube comment and defying a resulting ban on his internet speech. After his YouTube comments came to the attention of the school, Montclair State Coordinator of Student Conduct Jerry S. Collins  barred Aziz from all physical, verbal, and electronic contact with the student he had referred to in his YouTube comments. He also issued a virtual gag order, forbidding Aziz from posting on “any social media regarding” the student in question. Continue reading →

Political Correctness, Abuse of Power, the Redskins, and Spite

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’m sure glad I don’t own the Washington Redskins.

Boston RedskinsI say this without even considering the current problem of having a head coach who let the franchise player ruin his knee. I’m glad I’m not Dan Snyder because the annual sniping about his team’s unfortunate name pulls me in opposite directions ethically and emotionally, and I don’t enjoy being Rumpelstiltskin.*

If I owned the Washington Redskins and was being pragmatic as well as ethical, I’d just bite the bullet (oops! Is that phrase banned now?) and change the team’s name. The debate is stupid, but it’s a distraction no sports franchise needs. I would dig in my heels against political correctness zealots who demand that the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, Chicago Blackhawks and other Native American-themed names get tossed in the ash heap of history, but “redskins” is undeniably a term of racist derision, despite the fact that it isn’t that in the context of football. In football, it just means those NFL players in red and gold that a whole city worships year round.

If, however, I wanted to take a much needed stand against the unethical tactics of political correctness bullies everywhere, refuse to yield to an argument that is as dishonest as it is illogical , I might well do what Snyder has done so far out of pure orneriness and spite, which is to say to the team’s critics, “Stick it!” Continue reading →

New Year’s Ethics Quiz: Is It Ethical To Order A Woman Not To Have Children?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
(This is my favorite judge picture, and I like to use it every year)

(This is my favorite judge picture, and I like to use it every year)

Kimberly Lightsey, 30, was being sentenced on four counts of child abuse for leaving her four children, ages 2 to 11 at the time, at a hotel while she went out to play. She had an arrangement with another mother in the hotel to watch the children, but that woman also was partying hard, it seems—so hard that she forgot what room Lightsey’s children were in. Meantime, one of Lightsey’s children, who was confined to a wheelchair, rolled out into the hallway and fell over.

Prosecutors asked for a 32-month jail sentence, but Judge Ernest Jones Jr. offered Kimberly a chance to avoid jail time. He would give her two years of house arrest and 13 years of probation, provided this aspiring Mother of the Year agreed not to have any more kids during that period.

She took the deal, but now The American Civil Liberties Union and her lawyer are wondering if the sentence is legal. My guess: it’s not, but that isn’t the issue. Let’s say this is within a judge’s power, and the sentence is legal. Your Ethics Alarms Quiz Question, the first of the new year, is this:

Is it ethical? Continue reading →

Update: Six-Year-Old Deadly Finger-Shooter Exonerated! (But It Doesn’t Matter)

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

 

Montgomery County school officials really think this picture is relevant to this story!

Montgomery County school officials really think this picture is relevant to this story!

Responding to community and media pressure, not to mention internet, radio talk show and cable TV ridicule, school officials in Montgomery County rescinded the suspension of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy who they said had endangered the school when he pointed his finger like a gun.  I think the harm is done, and the fact of the suspension is signature significance that the administrators lack judgment, reason and proportion.

We learn some new facts in the Post story. The boy had apparently been reprimanded for using objects as imaginary guns in class, so there was an element of legitimate discipline in his punishment. There is some controversy over whether he may have said “Pow!” when he pointed his finger. If anyone thinks that should make any difference whatsoever, please sit in the back of the class with the silly Montgomery County administrators. Sure…saying “Pow!” makes that finger-gun even more realistic.

Idiots. Continue reading →

The Montgomery County Finger-Gun Massacre of 2013: Who Didn’t See THIS Coming?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

And speaking of the Curmies…

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if finger's that can be be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can't be right...

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if fingers that can be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can’t be right…Stop me when we made our kids dumb enough…

Take post-Sandy Hook hysteria, add school no-tolerance idiocy, mix well in one of the most knee-jerk liberal communities in the nation, and what do you get?

A six-year-old in Maryland’s Montgomery County suspended from school for making a finger and thumb gun gesture, of course.

The NBC story concentrates on  “whether the boy understands the implications of the gesture.” What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.

This is, in order of importance,

  1. Child abuse. This young boy is being treated like a wrongdoer because the adults around him are acting like babies. Will they suspend him for making really scary faces next? Biting his pizza slice into threatening shapes?
  2. Proof of incompetence on the part of the school administrators. Why incompetence? They are stupid, that’s why. Only certifiably stupid people would think it is fair, sensible or reasonable to punish a First-grader for making a gesture kids have been making on playgrounds for hundreds of years, without a single casualty.
  3. Why many people lose respect for anti-gun zealots early in life. They forfeit all respect by acting like ninnies.

The dismaying aspect of this is ridiculous episode is that it has happened before in other schools, and clearly the message wasn’t sent clearly enough to the previous offenders–that is, the fools who victimized innocent children for miming, drawing or otherwise suggesting guns—that this kind of conduct is a career-ender. It should be; it has to be. Such irrational fearfulness, bad judgment, panic, disregard for the sensibilities of the young, lack of proportion and brain dysfunction forfeits all right to trust, and such fools must not be allowed to have power over young bodies and minds.

UPDATE: The school rescinded the suspension.

Ethics Dunce: Facebook

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

facebook-big-brotherLet us be clear that Facebook is not engaged in “censorship,” properly defined. Nor does Facebook infringe on the First Amendment by limiting, even severely, irrationally or based on political bias, what a user may post. Facebook can set whatever conditions for use of its services that it chooses. Facebook isn’t the government.

It should, however, set fair and reasonable conditions, and be capable of enforcing them without bias and in an even-handed fashion—if it wants to be the ethical entity it claims to be. This would also seem to be in the company’s best interest. If I think Facebook is going to swoop down and cancel my account because I dare to disagree with political correctness sanctioned by the Facebook management, I have better uses for my time. So do you.

Thus it is puzzling to read that Facebook purged the account of Natural News for posting this:

Gandhi quote

Continue reading →

The Ethics of Christmas Shaming

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Ethics Alarms participant Jeff Hibbert asks my reactions to this photo:

Blurry face boy

[The sign reads: “I have to take back my PS3 that I was getting for Christmas because I wasn’t grateful to receive a Captain America action figure (That I received from Church) so I’m going Christmas shopping for other kids with the refund money!”  The actual photo on the web shows the unblurred face of an unhappy boy, and that is how I originally posted it. However, after some prompting by Jeff, I concluded that I was adding to the boy’s plight by helping to publicize his identity. Ethics Alarms commenter texagg04 kindly provided this version, as well as three others that gave me some Christmas mirth by replacing the boy’s face with Bart Simpson’s, a smiley face, and most inspired of all, the face of recent Ethics Alarms’ subject John Dillinger.]

I can’t find any context for it, back-story, or the name of the family involved. (I’m glad about that last part, by the way.)  If it is what it appears to be, a young boy’s parents are subjecting him to rather harsh punishment for displaying inadequate gratitude for a gift he didn’t care for, by forcing him to return his favorite gift, a Play Station 3, and use the money to buy gifts for presumably needy children. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Month: Ken At Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Evil exists. Good people should fight evil. But government is often the wrong instrument to fight evil. The people doing sick and contemptible things to children in the name of “curing” homosexuality very likely feel as strongly as I do, and might — if they got their way — use government to achieve their ends. People who love liberty must fight with their heads, not just their hearts.”

—– Ken, the First Amendment besotted lawyer/blogger/libertarian/wit who reigns at Popehat, writing about his doubts regarding California’s ban of so-called “conversion therapy.”

I recommend that you read the whole post, and everything Ken writes, basically.

I’m somewhat less conflicted than Ken in my opposition to this legislation, and wrote about the ban earlier this year, here, and here.

Judge Norman’s Dilemma Becomes The ALCU’s Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Cruel and unusual punishment? Guess again…

You’re a judge. You have power, in your sentencing, to make various miscreants suffer all sorts of creative punishments, as long as they fall well short of the rack and wheel. For example, a judge in Cleveland recently sentenced a woman (who had driven her car up the side-walk to get around a stopped school bus carrying special-needs children) to carry a sign proclaiming herself an idiot. You are faced with a troubled young man who appears to have received almost no instruction, in his 17 years, in the particulars of right and wrong. You see no productive purpose in locking him up and throwing away the key, for what he needs is a transfusion of ethics. What do you do?

In the throes of this very dilemma, Oklahoma district judge Mike Norman was sentencing Tyler Alred  for DUI manslaughter. Alred was driving his Chevrolet pickup drunk in  2011 when he hit a tree, ending the life of his passenger and friend, 16-year old John Dum. The judge gave Tyler a deferred prison sentence provided that he attend church every Sunday for the next ten years, as well as graduate from high school and welding school. Both Alred’s attorney and the victim’s family agreed to the terms of the sentence. Continue reading →

More Advice Column Malpractice: “Dear Prudence,” Elder Abuse and Voter Fraud

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I have to wonder about the values, ethics and trustworthiness of any publication that employs an advice columnist as deeply incompetent and unethical as Emily Yoffe, a.k.a “Dear Prudence.” I’m sure that I would be compelled to correct her regularly if I read her responses with any frequency, which is one of the reasons I don’t read the column. 2011 Ethics Alarms Commenter of the Year tgt just flagged this horrific example of Emily’s craft, and correctly guessed my reaction, writing, “get ready to facepalm.”  Now that my visage is permanently concave, allow me to retort.

The query comes from a woman whose mother has filled in absentee ballots for her parents, voting her own preferences and not consulting them. Worse, the grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, is a life-long partisan of the party her daughter voted against on her behalf.  The questioner asks “Prudence,” “Should I attempt to intervene in some way?” Continue reading →