Florida

“Is We Getting Dummer?”*: Special Election Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

BOCA RATON, FL :

“A woman attempting to vote in West Boca Raton this morning was initially prohibited from entering the polling place because she was wearing a t-shirt with the letters MIT. BocaNewsNow.com has heard from multiple sources that an election supervisor at the polling place ultimately realized that MIT stands for “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” — a school where students tend to know how to spell — and was not a campaign shirt for the Republican candidate, who spells his name MITT. Campaigning is not permitted within several yards of a polling place. The woman was ultimately allowed to vote.”

This, mind you, was an election supervisor.

This certainly helps me understand why it is just thinly-veiled voter suppression to insist that voters be able to identify themselves at the polls, because nobody would ever try to try to vote under a false identify when our democratic process is being guarded by our best and brightest.

Once again, let me state that any electoral result is preferable to having another election hinge on the integrity of the system in Florida.

* A quote from “IQ 83” by Arthur Herzog

Grandparent Ethics: Too Drunk and Stupid To Be Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

On the bright side, at least it wasn't a dog...

My parents were intelligent, caring, responsible people. But after they drove my 2-year-old son in their car while he sat on a small, fold-down jump-seat in the back without any seat belt, my wife and I never let them baby-sit him again. It was a generational blind-spot that could have gotten our child killed, and even though this was a source of tension and resentment between us for the rest of my parents’ lives, I didn’t think my wife and I had any other choice. I still feel guilty about it. Luckily, my mother always blamed my wife.

Then there is the case of grandparents Paul and Belinda Jean Berloni, who were arrested over the weekend when a sheriff’s deputy managed not to have a stroke as he watched them tow a plastic Hot Wheels toy car, resembling a Pontiac Solstice, with a 7-year old girl at the wheel behind their SUV. The car was attached to the back by a couple of dog leashes, and the SUV was clocked at between 5 and 10 miles per hour. The child, their granddaughter, was only wearing a swimsuit. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Lake County Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

….or, to be more precise, whoever the Maoist idiot was who approved the above flag.

A group of veterans confronted Democratic personnel and demanded that the Obama flag, which was flying under the U.S. flag at Democratic party headquarters in Lake County,  Florida, be taken down. It was finally removed. Continue reading →

Child Predator Minister? No Problem! Just Tell the Kids To Stay Out Of Church!

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

Every picture I could find to illustrate this story was offensive, so here's a bald guy with a dog on his head.

Combine the comments I’m getting from the “cannibelles” launched at Ethics Alarms from the “Wisconsin Sickness” website (“Personal conduct has no bearing on professional trustworthiness!“), and add the film negative of the recently posted Ethics Hero, the selfless pastor, add some eye of newt, and ABRACADABRA! You get…. Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, whose pastor, Darrell Gilyard, is a registered sex offender! 

And of recent vintage, too. This apparently doesn’t faze the good parishioners of Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist because—well. pick your rationalization…I’m sure they have:

  • “There but the grace of God go I!”
  • “Everybody deserves one mistake!”
  • “Let Him who is without sin cast the first stone!”
  • “Who are we to judge?”
  • “It’s not like he killed someone!”
  • “What he does in his private life is nobody’s business!”
  • Look at the Catholics! At least our pastor molests girls!
  • “Christians believe in redemption!”
  • “It doesn’t matter: he’s an excellent preacher!”

Gilyard’s last church wasn’t so understanding, but then it was that congregation’s underage girls who he pleaded guilty to molesting in 2009. You can’t blame them too much for being intolerant.

But his new church is being reasonable about this as well as broad-minded; they are taking the responsible course. Children aren’t allowed in church while Gilyard is preaching.

Problem solved!

Margaret Ann Haring Would Have Sent Elliot To Guantanamo Bay

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Quick...call 911!

Luckily, when Elliot had that weird mind-link thing with E.T. while the little alien was watching “The Quiet Man” on TV, and not only let all the frogs loose in his biology class but planted a major league lipper on a pre-teen classmate played by Erika Eleniak (later to prove Elliot’s exquisite taste by becoming a “Baywatch” pin-up) when the Duke smooched Maureen O’Hara, it was before the days of “no-tolerance” policies, and Ms. Haring wasn’t his teacher.

Not so lucky was the female student in a real life elementary school, who impulsively kissed a boy during a physical education class at Orange River Elementary School in Fort Myers, Florida. Haring saw her student’s vicious sexual assault, and called child welfare officials, who, rather than telling her she was out of her frickin’ mind, directed her to contact the sheriff. The school then reported the pre-teen moment of passion as a possible sex crime, according to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Veteran commenter Tim LeVier updates an older Ethics Alarms post about the ethics and law regarding the practice of flashing headlights at oncoming cars on the highway to warn them of speed traps. Police had been ticketing the flashers; I said that this was wrong, there being no law against the practice, but that warning law-breakers of a police presence was poor citizenship and unethical nonetheless.

I still feel that way, but insufficiently considered other reasons, ethical ones, that might prompt the same conduct. Tim, while pointing us to a more recent story on the topic, remedies my failure….as he has before. As usual, I am grateful.

Here is his Comment of the Day on Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!:

“…A couple of points: Continue reading →

“Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!”

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Who is your ally, the speeding motorist, or the traffic cop?

A lawsuit filed this week claims that 2,900 motorists were illegally ticketed in Florida between 2005 to 2010 for flashing their lights at oncoming, and speeding, cars to warn of speed traps ahead.  Apparently the police have been giving tickets to drivers sending a friendly “Cheese it! The cops!” message to scofflaws, in solidarity against the hated men and women in blue without benefit of an applicable statute.  The matter came to light when a college student on her way to school  spotted two  police officers on the side of the road and flashed her headlights to warn other drivers about the speed trap ahead. A police car pulled her over and the officer wrote her a ticket, saying she’d just broken the law by flashing her lights. She challenged the ticket and won, giving an enterprising lawyer an idea for class action lawsuit.

There is no Florida law that prohibits light-flashing, says Oviedo, Florida attorney J. Marcus Jones. He claims officers are simply misapplying a law that was designed to prohibit drivers from adding after-market emergency lights to their vehicles. He also claims that  officers writing those tickets are violating a driver’s constitutional right to free speech. If motorists want to flash their lights to warn about a speed trap ahead, they are free to do so, according to his suit.

Hmmmm. Continue reading →

Now THAT’s Bad Sportsmanship!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

After a 16-year-old Florida boy lost a black belt taekwondo match, he bowed to his opponent, shook his hand ...and then kicked him in the face. The blow knocked his surprised adversary’s front teeth out.

The sore loser was booked on a felony assault charge. The sore winner ended up in the hospital.

National taekwondo organizers are reportedly considering serious sanctions, including banning the suspect from the sport for life.

I think that’s a reasonable response.

The Ethics of “No-Body” Murder Prosecutions.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Oh! THERE's the body!!!

Texas lawyer Robert Guest has opined that a Texas jury would have convicted Casey Anthony in a heartbeat, and cites as proof the February conviction of Charles Stobaugh in Denton County. He was accused of killing his  estranged wife, though no body has ever been found at all.

Maybe.  There are a lot of differences in the circumstances of the two cases, not the least is that finding a badly decomposed body with a piece of electrical tape across her mouth has a big advantage over never finding any body at all: at least you are certain that the victim is dead.  Stobuagh, like Anthony, engaged in a pattern of lies and strange statements; for example, he suggested that his wife, who suddenly vanished and stopped using her bank account, credit cards and cell phone, was “playing a prank.”  He also began seeing a new girl friend more or less the moment his wife vanished. I’d say the biggest difference is the presumption of a motive: husbands killing their wives, especially their estranged wives, is a common and well-recognized form of homicide, with a motive that any married person immediately understands. A mother killing her young child, in contrast, is very unusual, and the presumption is that no mother would do it. The Anthony prosecution was more difficult than the prosecution of Stobuagh, even with Caylee’s body. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Broward (Florida) Circuit Judge Barbara McCarthy

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Come on! How can you put a guy like this in jail?

Many Americans don’t comprehend the meaning of “justice.”  It is unfortunate that some of these Americans are  judges.

Ryan LeVin, 36, is a drunk, a drug abuser, a playboy, a scofflaw and a killer. He killed Craig Elford, 39, and Kenneth Watkinson, 48, as they were walking to their beachside hotel in 2009. LeVin was driving recklessly in his $120,000 Porsche 911 Turbo, ran them down, and  fled the scene. That was only the latest of his offenses: LeVin was already on probation in Illinois for crashing into a Chicago police officer and instigating a high-speed chase. He has more than 50 traffic violations. What really matters, however, is that Ryan LeVin is rich.

Because he is rich, when LeVin offered enough money to the widows of the two men he killed in his act of vehicular homicide, a Florida judge agreed to let him off with two years of house arrest rather than the 45 years in prison that you or I would serve for a similar crime. Continue reading →