hypocrisy

Rep. Gill’s Question To Rep. Pressley: More Than a “Gotcha!”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

An exchange yesterday between Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) and Republican Representative Brandon Gill during a House hearing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is rapidly going “viral” this morning, no thanks to any left-leaning news aggregators and the Axis media, which are trying to ignore it.

During the hearing, Representative Pressley criticized Republican anti-DEI policies as harmful to women (translation: not discriminating against men is harmful to women) and in her usual obnoxious “I wish I didn’t have to deal with these racist idiots” air asked Representative Gill to support her legislation to support the justly dead-in-the-water Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Gill immediately responded, “Does it define what a woman is?” and was met with crickets by Pressley, who pretended he hadn’t said that and muttered weakly, “I look forward to your signing on.” Gill, triumphant, replied, “I just was hoping for some analytical clarity, but thank you.”

Gil’s question was deft and significant. It instantly drew attention to the intellectual dishonesty, internal contradictions and the procrustean nature of so many progressive obsessions, including affirmative action (violating laws against discrimination in order to remedy discrimination), trans-female sports competition (harming biological women by warping Title IX) and, of course, DEI.

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My Legal Ethics Association Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
Great. Unethical legal ethicists....

I have gradually discovered, over the past few months, that the association of legal ethics lawyers in which I am a card-carrying member is, in fact, biased, partisan, and not particularly ethical at all.

Membership in the group is considered a credential and an important one, especially since few legal ethics experts have degrees in the field. (My mentor in the area, Michael Daigneault, is one of the few who do.) I don’t belong to the association because of the credential—membership in the ABA ethics section is regarded as a credential too, and that association is crippled by bias, so to hell with it—but because it once seemed like a useful network and because the listserv keeps me relatively informed of major developments in the field.

I knew the group was overwhelmingly left-biased because the whole legal profession is left-biased. Conservative members generally foxhole during discussions that turn political, and they often do. When I have decided to be Popeye (“It’s all I can stand, ‘cuz I can’t stand no more!”) and point out a particularly annoying outbreak, I receive sheepish emails off site from members who tell me that they agree with me. They just don’t have the guts to say so on the site.

Last month, as I have mentioned here, I raised for discussion the difficult problem of how to square the legal profession’s protection of its many (MANY) alcoholic and substance-addicted lawyers with the duties of candor and communication to clients, supposedly a core legal ethics requirement. The group’s reaction was to “circle the wagons,” deny the problem, and attack me. When I responded in words I believed were appropriate to the attacks, I was singled out and threatened by the group’s president, who said that he had received complaints about my “incivility.”

Translation: Non-conforming positions that made some members uncomfortable are not welcome. Shut up, Jack.

I haven’t participated since. I had already been disillusioned twice in the previous weeks, once when the consensus was that ethics lawyer somehow get an exception from the legal ethics duty to report lawyers they know are unfit to practice ( it would take too much time, you see) and that the fact that bar associations, contrary to the public’s belief, not only do a terrible job policing the profession but intentionally make it difficult for the public to flag unethical lawyers. “How dare you!” would be my summary of the group’s reaction to my pointing out that fact.

Today I saw a post on the listserv by an esteemed member whose signature contained this as a feature:

“A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.” —-Declaration of Independence

So now I have to put up with partisan, No Kings, Trump Deranged virtue signaling. I am sorely tempted to drop a note with the coda, “These people are crazy.” —President Donald J. Trump, 2026 State of the Union Message.

I’m sure I would again be the target of censorship, and maybe, finally, banned. On one hand, I still find the listserv a valuable resource. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, they are hypocrites and unethical., and somebody ought to tell them.

Now what?

Oh, NOW Platner Isn’t An Acceptable Candidate? [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Exactly a month ago, I wrote “I Would Say Graham Platner Poses An Integrity Test For Democrats, Except They Have Already Flunked.” From that post…

“The fact that the Democratic Party is rallying around an unequivocal scumbag like Graham Platner is damning. So desperate is our aspiring totalitarian party to pack the Supreme Court, add automatic Democratic states like Puerto Rico and D.C. to the stars on the flag, open the borders and lock up their political opponents that they are willing to betray their duty to the political system not to present untrustworthy candidates to voters. It doesn’t matter that Platner, about to be nominated as a Senate candidate in Maine, is a liar, a Nazi admirer, a serial sexual offender and has no qualifications for office.”

But for some reason Platner being accused of “rape rape” (in Whoopi Goldberg’s immortal parlance) is too much. What a ridiculous, repellent, disgusting party the Democrats have become! Now, after the latest revelations, previous supporters of this unequivocal scumbag are running for their lives like the rats on board the Titanic.

“I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible. Graham Platner should drop out from the race. I am withdrawing my endorsement,” tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna, who is quite a scumbag in his own right. Democrat Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego wrote, “The allegations against Graham Platner are troubling and deeply serious. I am rescinding my endorsement.”

Wait, the earlier established facts about Platner weren’t troubling and serious? Democratic anti-gun hysteric David Hogg also withdrew his Platner endorsement today. So did Hollywood Democratic Party lackey Jon Favreau. Finally, The Maine Democrat Party has called for Platner to withdraw from the race.

George Will would call this “condign justice.” Nelson Muntz would say “Ha Ha!” And I channel Connie Corleone when I say, “That’s your party! That’s your party!” No one should let these hypocrites escape accountability for their open contempt for ethics, decency, voters, Maine, Congress or the Republic. Platner’s unfitness for office was already undeniable before Jenny Racicot accused him of rape, but Democrats were willing to hold their noses, cover their eyes and inflict him on the nation anyway. Never mind Platner, this tells us all we need to know about their character, their trustworthiness and their fitness to govern.

__________________

Added: Senator Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer have withdrawn their endorsement of Platner.

Amish Integrity? Nope. Amish Hypocrisy!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I always thought of the Amish as a devout religious sect with thee courage of their faith’s convictions, notably that technology is a tool of Satan, and the way to be closer to God is to eschew the modern developments that slowly but surely corrupt us all. That describes an ethical culture to me, if one that I personally find extreme and illogical. Google tells me that “The Amish are a traditionalist Christian group of Swiss-German Anabaptist heritage known for their pacifism, simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt modern conveniences. Numbering roughly 411,000 across North America, they primarily reside in rural settlements in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.” That’s nice. I’ve seen “Witness” several times, and assumed that Harrison Ford film more or less accurately portrayed Amish society.

I was also vaguely aware that there were variations withing the sect, based on, to some extent, relative isolation because of the general rejection of modern communication methods. Every local congregation operates under an unwritten set of rules called the Ordnung. These dictate daily life, acceptable technology, and community standards.

Today I realized that the Amish are not, in fact, a conservative religious sect that believes it can best maintain traditional values by rejecting technology. It is, in fact, a cult without integrity regarding technology. The Unabomber had more integrity.

According to New York Magazine (Stipulated: I am relying here on a source that I have found to be unreliable before, but unless the piece by Eric German is a flat-out lie as well as an attempt to defame the Amish, I believe it is trustworthy.), “The Amish Are Falling in Love With AI: Cars and TVs might be banned, but some sects are all-in on ChatGPT.”

What the hell? From the article:

“Holmes County, Ohio, has the highest concentration of Amish people of any county in the U.S. Visitors expecting to see traditional horses and buggies, bonnets and Abe Lincoln beards, won’t be disappointed. Still, they’ll find Amish entrepreneurs plugging into the digital economy and one clan of early adopters weaving generative AI into their knowledge work without much hesitation. Of course, none of this sounds like the tech-shy Amish life in the popular imagination. However, there’s no such thing as a single Amish approach to technology. There are some 2,600 Amish churches across the country, and each makes its own, separate decisions about what sorts of new hardware and software church members can use. The Wengerd’s church is Old Order Amish. Its married members dress plainly, don’t drive cars or own TVs, and don’t connect their homes to the electrical grid….Daniel is a minister in his church and has played a role in the congregation’s collective decisions to interdict smartphones and social media but to allow e-bikes, flip phones, solar-generated electricity, and religiously curated internet access. “I don’t want to paint a picture that we’re pushing for new technology and we don’t have respect for our traditions and our values,” he tells me. “We’re not just opening the door to anything.”

Sure they are. In fact, I can see no legitimate argument that a sect that embraces artificial intelligence can be taken seriously when it simultaneously rejects standard electricity, television and automobiles. Ethics is based on integrity, and requires holding to consistent standards subject to continuous testing and re-evaluation based on observed experience. Morality, in contrast, requires obeying clear rules of conduct that will be enforced by an authority, in the case of religion, God. The Amish appear to have neither a moral code nor ethical principles regarding technology. “We believe modern technology is a corrupting force in modern society and that it is not sanctioned by God, unless the technology is really cool and can save us time, like chatbots” is not a coherent code of conduct.

This is religion as Calvinball, the satirical “Calvin and Hobbes” game where the rules are made up as you go along. In Mark Harris’s novel “Bang the Drum Slowly,” a team’s baseball players fleece gullible fans by luring them into a gambling card game called “Tagwar.” It’s an acronym for “the amazing game without any rules.” It’s cheating.

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Boy, That Double Standard Became A Thing So Fast I Didn’t Even Notice…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

During the #MeToo phase of “The Great Stupid” and even before, the Woke and Wonderful were lecturing men that to take any pro-active romantic action that involved touching required express consent, otherwise a mere impulsive kiss would constitute sexual assault. So now Clark Gable, Richard Gere, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and the rest are sexual predators because they didn’t say “please.”

I am watching the (excellent) series “The Madison,” and, as I had noticed in another Taylor Sheridan vehicle “Landman,” in an awkward moment of sexual tension between a man and a woman who were virtual strangers, it was the woman who instigated the surprise, passionate kiss.

That’s all right, see. If a man kisses the woman, it’s assault and battery, but the other way around it’s exciting, romantic and natural.

Got it.

Assholes.

Ethics Quiz: Life Incompetence

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Favour Ogechi Ani, a young Nigerian woman, has shattered the 18-year-old staggering stupid Guinness Book of Records mark for….wait for iiiiiiiiiiiit…the highest number ever counted out loud.

Starting in October 2025, Favour spent 70 days confined to her home, counting out loud to 1,070,000. The old record was “only” one million, but she was determined to break the record as when in October 18, 1968, American long-jumper Bob Beamon broke the long-jump record at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City by two feet in a sport where records are usually set by centimeters.

“Honestly, it was tough, but my passion for counting kept me going,” Favour said. “I had a lovely team supporting and cheering me up, and it was fun despite the challenges. My determination to achieve this project was a burn-the-boats mission. I never thought of giving up for any reason.”

Wow.

What an idiot.

Ani started live-streaming her daily counting on YouTube, which helped validate her record-setting attempt. Guinness started eliminating dangerous records decades ago, but the pointless, seldom-read (by people with a life) record book continues to tempt desperate people who view celebrity, even the most degrading kind, as worth pursuing at any cost, to do dumb things in the hopes of establishing their places in history. To establish their places in the history of wasting life.

Did you know about this epic achievement? If not, I am cheered: an American news media that is debating Gwyneth Paltrow’s obscene dress at the Oscars is still not so worthless as to publicize the breaking of the “counting out loud” world record.

EA has derided self-centered, objectively useless and wasteful activities in other posts, including running marathons, climbing Mt. Everest, swimming from Cuba to Florida without the protection of a shark cage, or breaking the record for “most tattoos of the same musician (Maddona) on the body.” Still, this is special. I’m singing “September Song” these days, imagining what I could have accomplished with a better use of my time and talents. I see someone wasting 70 days of precious life counting just to get her name in tiny print in a record book, and it ticks me off.

This isn’t like complaining that a wealthy mogul has chosen to spend his or her millions on a luxury yacht when they could have been saving the snail darter. Favour Ogechi Ani is young and healthy: there are literally 1,070,000 things she could have done with her time that could have helped others, inspired others, made the world a teeny bit better, hell, something. Make herself more knowledgeable. Learn a skill. In 70 days, you can learn to do slight of hand card tricks to amuse sick kids in a hospital.

Or am I completely wrong to find unethical a woman spending every waking hour doing something objectively useless for 70 days…not just wrong, but hypocritical? Heck, how much time have I spent watching or listening to baseball games, like I will watch the World Baseball Classic finals tonight between the USA and Venezuela while I have billable work to do for paying (theoretically, anyway) clients?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this, which I dread asking…

Is it ethical for someone to spend 70 days doing something that is neither enjoyable, productive, or useful just to set a record nobody in their right mind cares about?

Ethics Quote of the Month: Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth K. Lee

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“District courts cannot stand athwart, yelling ‘stop’ just because they genuinely believe they are the last refuge against policies that they deem to be deeply unwise.”

—Judge Kenneth K. Lee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, writing  separately as a panel overruled a district court and held that the President had the power to suspend the Refugee Admissions Program.

Of course he did. The law and Constitution is clear on that point, but a woke District Court halted the President’s decision anyway. This was unethical as well as illegal, but, as Prof. Josh Blackman writes,

“President Trump is back in office, progressives still challenge virtually every action he takes, and judges in blue states continue to grant relief. No surprise there. But there is a new dynamic. Now, not only are lower court judges resisting the President, but they are also resisting the Supreme Court. In August, Justice Neil Gorsuch rebuked an attempted . Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts managed to get reversed twice by the Supreme Court in the same case. “When this Court issues a decision,” Gorsuch wrote, “it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.” Gorsuch added that “[t]his Court’s precedents, however, cannot be so easily circumvented.” 

Remember, it is Trump’s opponents who keep accusing him of breaching “democratic norms,” yet the Axis of Unethical Conduct ( the “resistance,” Democrats and the media that carries on their propaganda) is literally defying the greatest democratic norm of all, the Constitution. Blackman calls this attempted usurpation of power by activist, partisan judges “judicial resistance,” in other words, an abuse of judicial power for partisan objectives. It is—this is me and not the professor saying this—grounds for impeachment. President Trump is not exceeding his Presidential authority as the Trump Deranged scream, but rather the judges and courts that are interfering in the Constitutional hierarchy. Unethical, you think? Damn right.

Blackman:

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Welcome To Unethical Rationalization 31A, “The Hypocrite’s Balm,” or “Any Port in a Storm!”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is the first new rationalization added to the rationalizations list in a long time, though I have at least two others I have been pondering for a while. Rationalization #31 A, however hit me like Pete Buttigieg’s imaginary maul when a respected legal ethicist wrote on the listserv for the Association of Professional Liability Lawyers today that “Lefties” like him were suddenly embracing state’s rights in response to the need to “resist” President Trump, and attempted to justify this reversal by shrugging, “Any port in a storm!”

And there it was. I could hardly believe that wasn’t on the list already, but it wasn’t. I assigned “The Hypocrite’s Balm” as a sub-rationalization to the infamous #31, The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.” I also could have placed it under #25. The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!,” but it is distinct from both.

#31 stands for brutal Utilitarianism, “the ends justify the means.” #25 is the whine of someone who is too cowardly to make the kind of tough ethical choice that has unpleasant non-ethical consequences. But “Any port in a storm” is the motto of activists who decide that their minds are made up, facts and logic no longer appeal to them, and they are willing to ally themselves with beliefs, organizations, individuals and missions that they have previously reviled in order to avoid admitting they may have been wrong, or that they should reassess their position based on new information, experience, or the metaphorical ice water of reality being thrown in their faces.

Rationalization #31 A describes the warped, desperate and destructive mindset of the Axis of Unethical Conduct today along with the Trump Deranged. So obsessed are they with their hatred of Donald Trump and the fact that he has at least temporarily derailed the Mad Left’s march to single party, nanny state, multicultural, anti-American DEI dominance that they are willing to anchor themselves in “ports” sane liberals would have avoided like ebola in the recent past.

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Ethics Villains: Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (D), Gov. J.B. Prizker and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
New Juliana Stratton Ad “Fuck Trump, Vote Juliana”
byu/GeckoLogic inillinois

Stay classy, Juliana, Tammy, Governor, Illinois, Democrats.

There is no excuse for this.

Stratton is seeking retiring Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) seat, with the state’s primary taking place on March 7. This is impressive in one respect: she is actually giving voters a chance to replace the objectively awful Durbin with someone even worse. the At least Polling averages from Decision Desk HQ show Stratton trailing behind Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) with 18.5 percent compared to Krishnamoorthi’s 30.5 percent. So I guess Stratton decided that the best way to make up ground is to energize the Trump Deranged vote and say “fuck.”

Right on cue, later last week there was another foiled assassination attempt on the President whom Democrats call racist, a dictator, Hitler and a fascist, all provocation for the weak of mind and ethics to view as justification to murder our nation’s leader. As a Fox News history-reading reporter noted, they want Donald Trump assassinated just like Benjamin Harrison.

Since anyone likely to be persuaded—or even entertained—by this bottom of the unflushed toilet bowl political offal, it’s unlikely that any of them will be bothered by the candidate lying to their faces in the ad, smirkingly saying. “They said it, I didn’t!” That’s deceit, and deceit is lying. This miserable excuse for a public servant is openly lying in her campaign ad, and thinks it’s funny.

I’m so old I remember when the Democratic Party and its zombie media accused Sarah Palin of causing Rep. Giffords to be shot because Palin put her face in cross-hairs on a campaign map to indicate that the Arizona Democrat could be defeated. In addition to their other anti-virtues, Democrats are hypocrites on a level previously unapproached by mortal man or woman. As in 2024, they deserve to lose in the mid-terms, and if Republicans can’t accomplish that against such a vile, destructive, divisive and ugly party, they should just give up and start pottery barns or something. Maryland. Oregon. California. Minnesota. Illinois.

Not just unethical.

Not just irresponsible.

Disgusting.

Bite Me, “Doomsday Clock”!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

If anyone or anything ever deserved an Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!,” it’s the ridiculous Doomsday Clock and the pompous, biased, fear-mongering scientists who set it.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the clock each year since 1947, and to say it does not have a sterling record, whatever standards one uses, would be an understatement. Well, I’ll take that back: they have a sterling record for being wrong. Still, once again the thing is in the news. “The ‘”‘Doomsday Clock'”‘ — a symbolic clock that supposedly represents how close humanity is to global catastrophe according to “experts” — “has moved closer to midnight,” ABC News tells us. “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that the clock is now 85 seconds to midnight, with midnight representing the apocalypse.”

That’s the closest its ever been! AAAAIIIIIIIIII!!!

[Watch out now, you have to click on “2” below to keep reading…]

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