Axis of Unethical Conduct

Unethical Quote of the Week: Jeffrey (Ew!) Toobin

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“This criminal crusade against political adversaries is completely unprecedented in all of American history.”

–—CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin (and why is he still allowed on the air by an allegedly respectable news network?) regarding the so-called Trump revenge plot against Democrats.

It is amazing that any journalist, pundit, progressive or Democrat would have the gall to say that. It is true that weaponizing the justice system to attack, hobble, and eliminate political foes is a totalitarian tactic that the United States had been wise to avoid, but if there was ever a valuable “democratic norm” the Left must take full responsibility for shattering, it is this one. “Unprecedented!” Incredible.

I would say “You’ve gotta hand it to Toobin,” but that would lead me into a joke that I would hate myself for making…

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A Little Compassion, Please, for Jill Ciminillo…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A young woman and Chicago resident named Jill Ciminillo has become the target of coast-to-coast mockery and ridicule after she reacted to President Trump’s stated intention of making Chicago next on his list of urban hellscapes to make safe with federal intervention.

The conservative media (including Fox News) and blogosphere gleefully pounced, digging up her old social media posts…

and pronouncing Jill the poster girl for irrational Trump Derangement. “Dear leader trying to protect me,” one social media wag wrote in a tart “translation,” “I admit there is a serious problem here with crime and violence, but because of my hatred of you, we would rather suffer in our own self inflicted suffering. Signed – A Liberal white woman.” Ciminillo quickly deleted all of her social media accounts, surely hoping against hope that her 15 minutes of infamy won’t last any longer than that.

I feel sorry for Jill, and while it is appropriate for the absurdity of her post to be discussed and debunked, she is a victim, not a villain. She is infected with the Trump Derangement Virus because she has been the target of relentless, irresponsible, dishonest fear-mongering by the Axis of Unethical Conduct, including some once-admirable Americans who have allowed themselves to be pulled into the conspiracy.

Here, for example, was Ralph Nader, in many ways an American hero (who, like so many narrow-focus activists, got way out in front of his metaphorical skis), in March of this year. This is long, but it is the kind of unhinged hysteria from a once respectable liberal voice that convinces people like Jill (and my once astute Facebook Friend who just posted it) that “resistance” is the only moral, ethical and patriotic course. Here’s Ralph… Continue reading →

Psst! Progressives! It’s What You Mean That’s The Problem, Not How You Say It…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is pretty funny, as Ethics Duncery goes. Third Way calls itself “a national think tank and advocacy organization that champions moderate policy and political ideas,” acting as “a critical bulwark against political extremism.” Right. It’s latest project is an attempt to train their fellow travelers not to “use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.” The feature “Was it Something I Said” continues, “The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.”

Smoking guns abound in this thing, beginning with the use of “we” in that sentence above. “Was it Something I Said” begins, “To: All Who Wish to Stop Donald Trump and MAGA.” Not stop a particular policy or project, mind you, just the elected President of the United States and all those who support him, “The Third Way” is in fact the same old way: the Axis has a dearth of rational policy ideas and principles, so hating Trump, treating Republicans as plotting Nazis, and adopting “It Isn’t What It Is” as their primary operating principle (also known as “Sure. we can fool all the people all the time” remains the plan.

The objective here is to employ more soothing, vague and seductive language to accomplish it. Amazing: every time the Left encounters the perils of imposing reality, its reflex solution is to hide the problem by cooking the rhetoric. The public doesn’t like racial and gender discrimination? Hey, let’s call it “diversity, equity and inclusion!” Normal people think amputating the penises of boys who have been confused about their gender by pro-trans indoctrination? No problem! Call it “gender-affirming care”! Most citizens find the idea of open borders repugnant, not to mention stupid? Ah, but if we all call illegal immigrants immigrants or migrants, then we can confuse them completely! I assume you can continue this theme without my assistance.

“In reality, most Democrats do not run or govern on wildly out-of-touch social positions,” claims Third Way. “But voters would be excused to believe we do because of the words that come out of our mouths—words which sound like we are hiding behind unfamiliar phrases to mask extreme intent.”

Yes, this moderate, centrist, Democrat “think tank” doesn’t think promoting illegal immigration, using radical surgery and hormone blockers on children and institutionalizing anti-male, anti-white discrimination qualify as “wildly out of touch.” “[I]f we don’t think more carefully about our language, many in America will be banking on help from Donald Trump and Republicans, because Democratic levers of power will be few and far between,” the introduction to the NewSpeak guide says. Oh, no! Americans might end up trusting a President who has clearly opposed the Axis’s ridiculous, divisive damaging obsessions, which is, after all, why he was elected over the Democrats’ DEI candidate. Translation: “Let’s be smart about this, and hide what we really mean and what we really want to do. You know, like saying Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack,” and calling videos of him wandering vacantly like a zombie “deep fakes.”

You may want to wade into the whole thing, but here are some examples of what you’re facing:

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Who Didn’t See the “Whataboutism” Defense of the Biden Dementia Cover-up Coming?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I call this pathetic, and depressing evidence of just how low the Axis and its supporters are willing to stoop to avoid admitting their obvious wrongdoing.

Desperate Democrats in my life started resorting to this in early 2024, despite its being strained and unethical. Trump, you see, was just as mentally fading as Biden. Sure, whatever you say, Trump Derangement Face! Maybe they even have convinced themselves that they believe this. “Listen to his rambling! The crazy things he says!”

Of course, Trump has always been like this, at least for as long as I’ve paid attention to him which has been several decades now. Nevertheless, no one can miss his extraordinary energy, his willingness to be seen and interviewed, and his resilience. There is, literally, no comparison with Biden’s obvious physical and mental deterioration, nor does it seem plausible that anyone would be able to hijack Trump’s power in the White House like Biden’s aides did to poor Joe.

But here’s Mediaite this week with a headline identical to several other Axis propaganda sites—yup, a memo must have gone out!—“Trump Drops Papers He Just Signed and Mistakenly Refers to the U.K. as ‘The European Union.’”

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It’s About Time: CNN Gets Called On Its “It Isn’t What It Is” Rhetorical Dishonesty and Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

and…

Good.

All ethical and aware Americans should treat their Axis-supporting friends, relatives and colleagues similarly. What both Miller and Hamill did was to label propaganda what it really was, and not allow it to falsely present itself as “journalism.”

“Jake Tapper, Ethics Villain” Continues—Today’s Episode: “Jake Is Unethical, But He’s Not Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

In a just released video, conservative scholar and commentator Victor Davis Hanson adds his perspective to the Jake Tapper scandal, a sub-scandal to the Biden Dementia cover-up conspiracy of which he was a part, itself a sub-scandal of the Democratic Party’s descent into aspiring totalitarianism. From the transcript…

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Ethics Hero: Megyn Kelly

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In the clip from her podcast above, Megyn Kelly, who has not always been the exemplar of ethical journalism, deftly eviscerated Ethics Villain Jack Tapper for his role in covering up Joe Biden’s galloping dementia and then turning around after the election (and the failure of his fellow propagandists to defeat Donald Trump) to profit from a book exposing the scandal that he was part of.

Kelly’s coup-de-gras comes when Tapper, cornered, whines, “There is a difference between the clips of Joe Biden falling on a stage… forgetting a Republican congressman had died… Those are embarrassing… but there is a difference between that and the investigative journalism that Alex and I were able to do—and only able to do after the election.”

Kelly goes for the jugular, and get it. “I don’t diminish the importance of the book,” she says. “But there is no way we can have that conversation with an audience that is as skeptical of your ability to tell the story as mine is without addressing your role in this, right?…you’ve watched the coverage since it came out that you wrote this book…. there’s a legion of articles comparing you in some instances to like, O.J. Instead of ‘If I Did It,’ this is ‘If I Hid It.’”

Perfect.

As a side note, should I give Tapper a teeny bit of credit for agreeing to do Megyn’s podcast? Surely he knew what was coming…or did he? I think he is mired in such a bubble and has been so corrupted by his stay at CNN that he really has convinced himself that working for the Axis of Unethical Conduct makes him one of the good guys. Either that, or he’s a moron.

Whatever the case, he’s lucky I wasn’t the interviewer. My questions to Jake would have made Megyn seem like Mr. Rogers….

Ethical Standards Needed, Precedents Lacking

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the gap between a Presidential election where the office is turned over to a new POTUS, and especially a President from the opposing party, a lot of partisan mischief can be done before the lame duck limps out the door. This is legal, of course: every President has a right to serve four full years. However, when the exiting Chief Executive deliberately acts to throw obstacles in the way of the People’s Choice or lock in policies that the incoming President is certain to oppose, the conduct is unethical in my view. It is giving a metaphorical middle finger to the newly elected President.

Ethics Alarms discussed several instances between the November election and January 20 in which whoever was pulling poor Joe’s marionette strings engaged in particularly egregious examples of this kind of divisive conduct, and more have been uncovered since.

Here’s one that made me do a Danny Thomas spit: In the last days of Biden’s administration, a $89 billion, 25-year grant was awarded by the National Institutes of Health to the Alliance for Advancing Biomedical Research. The nonprofit, which “operate[s] exclusively for the benefit of” the University of California system, according to its tax filings has never raised or spent any money since it was formed in 2022. The new regime at NIH is investigating, as well they might, and the massive grant is likely to be cancelled.

Then there’s the board that oversees the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. On January 17, 2025, “Biden” stacked the Holocaust Museum board with Democrats, appointing Ron Klain, his former chief of staff, Susan Rice, Biden’s director of Domestic Policy Council of the United States, Tom Perez, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Anthony Bernal, who was an advisor to former First Lady Jill Biden, and best of all, Doug Emhoff, whose claim to prominence is that he married Kamala Harris. Trump dismissed all of them last week, but he shouldn’t have had to.

The Axis is always blubbering about “democratic norms”: one norm I would like to see solidly entrenched in tradition is for Presidents ending their term to do nothing that will interfere with the agenda of the leader the electorate has made clear that it wants to shepherd the government. That shouldn’t be too hard.

Meet JoAnna St. Germain, the Face of Trump Derangement

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

JoAnna St. Germain, a public school teacher (for a bit longer)at Waterville High School in Waterville Maine, personifies what the decade-long hate, fear and anti-democracy campaign from “the resistance,” Democrats, and the mainstream media has inflicted on the soul of America. Once, presumably, she was a normal, rational human being like you. Now, she posts screeds like this on social media:

The Secret Service has the perfect opportunity, if they choose to step up and take it. You are the ones with power. Coordinate. Take out every single person who supports Trump’s illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts. Look at the sycophants and give them what they’re asking for.
 
Every other country sees what’s happening and they are taking stands.
If you step up, we can avoid a civil war. I’m not talking about assassinating a president. A president is a person duly elected by the American people.
Tr*mp has shamelessly bragged openly about stealing the election. He is making plans to give himself a third term. I’m talking about Americans recognizing a fascist dictatorship and standing against it.
 
Secret Service, you are Americans.My beloved military, you are Americans.
We, the people, are counting on you.

Nice. Even with rampant madness oozing through social media and the op-ed pages every day, calling for the execution of the President of the United States and all of his supporters from someone not in already in restraints like this guy…

…is unusual, especially when the provocateur has been entrusted with molding young minds. A few hours later, the teacher wrote, “I have zero shame about what I’ve said. I’m not backtracking a single thing. I believe Trump and every sycophant he has surrounded himself with . . . needs to die,” adding that she posted “knowing I’d likely lose my job and benefits.” When her call for violence was reported in some media outlets, JoAnna “doubled down,” and quite arrogantly too, writing a week ago on her Facebook page:

Apparently, I have made the news. People are quite angry with me for stating openly that Trump and his cronies need to die. Gosh, I fear I may have “Trump Derangement Syndrome”!
 
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, and I say it with my full chest:
Fuck fascism. Fuck a country that suppresses the media. Fuck a country that moves to weaken the education system in order to produce weak-minded people who will follow orders. Fuck a country that sends innocent women and men to die thinking they’re defending democracy when they’re really defending the rights of corporations to fuck over the very people lining their pockets.
 
If you’re mad at this post, knowing that I just threw away a decade of experience teaching the truth, fully knowing that my superintendent will have to fire me? If you’re mad that I’m speaking truth to power?
 
Fuck you. I’ll still take a bullet to keep your child safe.

Niiiiice!

Later, as she had to know would happen, Waterville Public Schools Superintendent Peter Hallen emailed a statement to parents that said in part, “Please know that I have taken steps to ensure everyone’s safety and am, along with the appropriate authorities, actively investigating the incident.” St. Germain’s reaction:

Well all righty then!

Observations:

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Ethics Quote of the Day: Prof. Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“If you view conservatives judges and justices as “lawless,” then every decision that they issue can be construed as a “crisis” in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.”

—George Washington University law professor and lawyer Jonathan Turley

I decided to ignore the recent open letter signed by approximately 950 law professors declaring the second Trump administration a “Constitutional crisis,” because it was so obviously a mass exhibition of both “bias makes you stupid” and the overwhelming partisan slant of the legal profession, upon which Ethics Alarms has commented many times. The letter is the equivalent of the infamous one in 2020 signed by all those national intelligence experts who wanted everyone to know that the Hunter Biden laptop was really Russian disinformation, but the current letter is worse. Lawyers, as professionals, are required to be trustworthy. Trustworthy lawyers don’t put their names on legal misinformation and political propaganda like this latest “Trump is a dictator” attack. (The American Bar Association has issued a similar statement.)

I’m glad I waited and let Professor Turley eviscerate these disgraces to the law and academia. Cruelly, he has more influence, visibility and credibility than little ol’ me. In his blog post and column for The Hill titled “Panic politics: Law professors’ umpteenth ‘constitutional crisis’ falls flat”, Turley neatly points out,

  • “The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! On my Facebook page, lawyers and even a couple of professors regularly proclaim as fact that President Trump is “defying” the Constitution.

Biased, ignorant and Trump-Deranged is no way to practice law, son.

Read the whole thing, but here are some more excerpts: Continue reading →