integrity

Ethics Hero: Surprise! NYT Columnist Bret Stephens

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I did not see this coming. Has any New York Times pundit ever written anything regarding Donald Trump that wasn’t pure venom? Has there ever been a Times opinion piece that said, “Wow! President Trump handled this problem perfectly”? If so, I must have missed it.

True, if any one of the Axis-biased Times stable of progressives, Democrats and the Trump Deranged were capable of such a composition, it would have to have been Stephens. Along with David Brooks he is one of the token sort-of conservatives on the staff usually displaying symptoms of the Stockholm Syndrome. Brooks is beyond hope now, but Stephens is at least unpredictable. He’s a weird sort of conservative, having opined once that the Second Amendment should be repealed, and he takes part in annoying transcribed anti-Trump snark-fests with Gail Collins, which reads a bit like what the old “Point-Counterpoint” would have been like if Shauna Alexander and James J. Kilpatrick were secretly boinking each other. (Gotta get THAT image out of my brain, quick.) Still, I am pledged to give credit where credit is due.

Today Stephens’ name was under a column headlined, “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision.” It begins,

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Integrity Test For Climate Change Hysterics

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Well waddya know! The U.S. is on the verge of setting records for all-time low temperatures in May. That’s funny. I thought humanity was doomed because the world is burning up.

Of course, I don’t think one unseasonally cold month has any more significance than one unseasonably cold day, but that’s not how the climate change cabal has been playing their game. No, every time the temperature seems especially high anywhere in the USA, the activists, most of whom know as much about climate science as I know about fixing a carburetor, start screaming, pointing, and crying out, “See? SEE?” They do the same thing with seasonal wildfires, hurricanes, floods and, at least on The View, earthquakes and eclipses. They get away with it too, because the unscrupulous politicians they elect and the dim-bulb progressive pundits and reporters who work for those politicians always endorse and rationalize the climate change hysterics’ propaganda, even after every prediction, every projection, every deadline to save humanity proves to be hooey.

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In the Rear-View Mirror: “Reflections On President’s Day, 2012: A United States Diminished in Power, Influence and Ideals”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

On President’s Day in 2012, I wrote a dispirited assessment of where the United States stood regarding spreading American ideals and values to other nations. This was in the context of Barack Obama’s feckless foreign policy, which, as with his puppet stand-in later, Joe Biden, consisted of threats and warnings (remember Obama’s “red line” in Syria?) without credibility of resolve. I thought about the post as I was contemplating how J.D. Vance was getting mockery and criticism from the Axis because he exhorted our allies in Europe to begin a new commitment to freedom of speech.

The main thrust of the essay was the question of whether the United States should be “the world’s policeman,” a situation that now has fallen into ethics zugzwang: it is irresponsible for the U.S. not to accept the role of world policeman, and irresponsible for us to accept it either.

“Quite simply, we can’t afford it,” I wrote. “Not with a Congress and an Administration that appear unwilling and unable to confront rising budget deficits and crushing debt with sensible tax reform and unavoidable entitlement reductions.” I found the 13-year old post useful and thought provoking for perspective purposes. It raised many questions. Is the U.S. better off today than in 2012, when I was so depressed about its prospects and integrity? What does it mean to “make Amerca great again” in 2025?

I’ll have some more 2025 thoughts at the end. Here is the rest of that post:

***

Yesterday Congress and the President passed yet another government hand-out of money it doesn’t have and refuses to raise elsewhere, among other things continuing to turn unemployment insurance, once a short-term cushion for job-seekers, into long-term government compensation for the unemployed. Part of the reckless debt escalation was caused by the last President [George W. Bush] unconscionably engaging in overseas combat in multiple theaters without having the courage or sense  to insist that the public pay for it. The current administration [the Obama Administration] is incapable of grasping that real money, not just borrowed funds, needs to pay for anything. The needle is well into the red zone on debt; we don’t have the resources for any discretionary military action.

Ron Paul thinks that’s a good thing, as do his libertarian supporters. President Obama, it seems, thinks similarly. They are tragically wrong. Though it is a popular position likely to be supported by the fantasists who think war can just be wished away, the narrowly selfish who think the U.S. should be an island fortress, and those to whom any expenditure that isn’t used to expand  cradle-to-grave government care is a betrayal of human rights, the abandonment of America’s long-standing world leadership in fighting totalitarianism, oppression, murder and genocide is a catastrophe for both the world and us. Continue reading →

Again, Hall of Fame Ethics, and Again, Ethically Inert Sportswriters Want To Elect Steroid Cheats

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I know I’ve written a ridiculous number of posts about the logical, institutional and ethical absurdity of electing baseballs’s steroid cheats to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but I have sworn to slap this down every time it rears its metaphorical ugly head until my dying day.

The 2025 Baseball Writers’ Association of America voted Ichiro Suzuki (one vote shy of being a unanimous selection), CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner into the Hall. Three quick ethics notes on this. First, whoever it was who left Suzuki off his ballot should be kicked out of the association using the equivilent of the Ethics Alarms “Stupidity Rule.” He is not only a qualified Hall of Famer, but belongs among the upper echelon of Hall of Famers with the likes of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Rogers Hornsby.

Second, I have no problem with CC Sabathia making the Hall, but that he was elected just a couple of months after Red Sox star Luis Tiant was rejected by a veteran’s committee, probably ending his Hall of Fame chances for good, shows just how arbitrarily the standards for Hall admission are applied. Tiant was objectively better than Sabathia, a bigger star, and while CC was a flashy presence on the mound, Tiant was more so. Luis (or “Loooooie!” as he was known in Fenway Park) died last year, and had said that if they weren’t going to let him into the Hall while he was alive, they shouldn’t bother after he was dead. Maybe the voters were just honoring his wishes…

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Curmie’s Conjectures: Musings on Returning to the Classroom

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

by Curmie

[This is Jack: Yikes! I didn’t realize that EA had been Curmie-less for a full four months! The second Ethics Alarms featured columnist has been both busy and seeking respite from politics, which unfortunately has been disproportionately rampant here during the Presidential campaign drama and related horrors. I’m hoping Curmie can leads us out of the dark into the light. Welcome back, Curmie!]

I’m not sure if this is sufficiently ethics-related for this blog, but since Jack posted it, so be it.

I retired from full-time teaching in August of 2021.  It was August instead of May because I was hoping—to no avail, as it turns out—to do one more iteration of a Study Abroad program in Ireland; the trip had already been postponed from the previous summer.  I did teach one course per semester in the 2021-22 academic year, but then not at all for two years.

I assumed that I’d never be in a classroom again except for an occasional guest appearance to be, apparently, the local authority on absurdism.  But then a colleague got a one-semester sabbatical to work on her book.  It would be extremely unlikely to find someone who had both the ability to teach all the courses in question and the willingness to move to small-town East Texas for a one-semester gig at crappy pay.  The powers-that-be then decided to try to staff those courses locally.  I suspect I was the only available qualified person in a 75-mile radius, so I was asked if I’d teach Theatre History I and II this semester.  I agreed.

There were a lot of changes for me, completely apart from the two-year hiatus.  I’d taught both courses numerous times, but never in the same semester, and always on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule; this time it was Tuesday/Thursday.  Back in the days when I was the only person teaching these courses I could insist that one of the research papers be on a certain type of topic; that’s no longer a requirement.  And I ditched the expensive anthology I’d used for years, switching to things that were available online.  This also allowed me to choose the plays I wanted to teach instead of necessarily the ones in the anthology: critics may agree that the The Cherry Orchard is Anton Chekhov’s best play, for example, but there is absolutely no question that The Seagull is far more important to theatre history, so I used that.

Anyway… what caught my attention?

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A Show Of Hands, Now: Who’s Shocked That A “Technology Misinformation” Expert Used A.I. Generated Fake Information?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

geewhatasurprise. But as Mastercard would say, this story is priceless.

Professor Jeff Hancock is founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, and his faculty biography states that he is “well-known for his research on how people use deception with technology.” Apparently he knows the subject very well: Hancock submitted an affidavit supporting new legislation in Minnesota that bans the use of so-called “deep fake” technology in support of a candidate (or to discredit one) in an election. Republican state Rep. Mary Franson is challenging the law in federal court as a violation of the First Amendment (which, of course, it is). But Democrats don’t like the First Amendment. Surely you know that by now.

But I digress…

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Megyn and Mika and Joe, Oh My! Three Ethics Dunces

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Not merely social media chatterers but many others (like Nikki Haley, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Fox News (of course) and CNN’s John Berman, and, if anyone cares, Keith Olberman) are castigating MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who chattered away yesterday about how they had flown to Mar-A-Largo to kiss the ring, or ass, or whatever, of President-Elect Trump. This seemed like a craven reversal of their stance during the entire campaign, one that became more extreme and shrill as Election Day approached, that Trump was a fool, a racist, an enemy of democracy, a threat to the nation, and literally an American Hitler. The pilgrimage to Florida seemed like a craven reversal because that’s what it was. Joe and Mika proved that they are, at heart, “Good Germans.”

Trump has done nothing since his election that would warrant the Trump-Deranged from abandoning their hysterical position, since he had done nothing to justify it in the first place. All the obsequious reversal by the “Morning Joe” duo indicated was hypocrisy and a complete lack of integrity, not that we didn’t already know that. To be fair to Joe and Mika, they work for MSNBC, where nobody knows the meaning of integrity, honesty, or “ethics.” It’s a propaganda arm of the Angry Left. All “Morning Joe” does is follow orders. This spectacular double-reverse backflip in mid-air (I’m mentally humming “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”) however, is despicable even by MSNBC’s wretched standards.

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Wait, I’m Sorry, I’m Getting All Confused: WHICH Is the Party That Is An Existential Threat To Democracy?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yesterday, Ethics Alarms noted [Item #6] that Democrats in Pennsylvania had voted in favor of counting mail-in ballots that were ruled invalid by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and will be counting those disqualified ballots to try to overturn the apparent victory of GOP Senator-elect Dave McCormick over incumbent Sen. Bob Casey in the upcoming recount. The Associated Press called the race for McCormick on November 7, and he is now leading Casey by over 17,000 votes.

This fondness for counting void votes is, of course, passing strange conduct from the party whose captive journalists keep saying that President-Elect Trump’s four years of claims that the 2020 Presidential election was “stolen” from him are “completely groundless.” Pennsylvania’s electoral college votes are among those the incoming President felt were stolen. Call me crazy and paint me puce, but I’d say deliberately and openly counting votes the state Supreme Court says are invalid is prima facie evidence that this a party not above cheating to hold onto power.

Now, after the Republican National Committee sued last week after several counties decided to openly cheat by counting ballots with incorrect dates, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court today reiterated its decision from November 5. Justice David Wecht wrote in his concurring statement that it is “critical to the rule of law that individual counties and municipalities and their elected and appointed officials, like any other parties, obey orders of this Court.” Justice Kevin Brobson likewise wrote that local election officials do not “have the authority to ignore Election Code provisions that they believe are unconstitutional.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed on November 1 that requiring mail-in ballots to have handwritten dates is constitutional.

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Oh Look! Now the LEFT Is Complaining About Lawyers Being Reluctant To Represent Unpopular Clients!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In 2020, as discussed here, The NeverTrump Lincoln Project joined the anti-Trump Democrats in targeting law firms hired by the Trump campaign to challenge alleged irregularities in the election. Election law specialists Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and its lawyers were threatened with professional ruin and financial disaster, as they were told that daring to support the President of the United States constitutes a “dangerous attack on our democracy.” The firm, showing a dearth of legal ethics and integrity, withdrew, whining that the assault on its reputation created a conflict of interest, was disrupting the firm, and had prompted at least one lawyer’s resignation. Other firms dropped the campaign as a client, and the reason was fear—of losing clients, of being shunned in the legal community, of losing money. Mostly the latter.

How times had changed. When Bush Department of Defense Deputy Secretary Cully Stimson, a lawyer, gave a radio interview in which he condemned attorneys from large law firms who were representing Guantanamo Bay detainees pro bono and suggested that corporations avoid employing those firms because they were aiding the nation’s enemies, the legal profession reacted with indignation and horror. Karen J. Mathis, then the president of the American Bar Association, said, “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.” Prof. Stephen Gillers, the media’s favorite legal ethicist thanks to his penchant for being hard on conservatives and lenient on liberals, wrote, “This is prejudicial to the administration of justice. It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.” Christopher Moore, a lawyer at the New York firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton continued the profession’s defense of core lawyer ethics, telling the New York Times, “We believe in the concept of justice and that every person is entitled to counsel.”

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Squirrel Ethics: The P’Nut Saga [Corrected and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

State government officials this week seized and ultimately destroyed P’Nut, a pet squirrel with a popular Instagram page, in Pine City, New York. Somehow, conservatives have decided to make this incident some kind of watershed for state abuse of personal liberties , not to mention pet squirrels. Thus P’Nut has become an election issue; Hey, why not, everything else is from McDonald’s to Liz Cheney. First pet squirrels, next guns and free enterprise. “First, they came for P’Nut, and I said nothing…”

Give me a break.

Mark Longo adopted P’Nut seven years ago in New York City as an orphaned baby squirrel that crawled up his leg after his mommy was squished by a car. The squirrel ended up with his own room, and when Longo and his wife were at home the furry friend wandered wherever he wanted in their house. Longo described P’Nut as “the most charismatic, sassy animal.”

P’Nut also was a profitable animal. The rodent became the face and name of P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit Longo and his wife started in April. The Longos contribute half of the organization’s roughly $20,000-a-month expenses to run the sanctuary and donors supply the other half, with most of those donations raised largely through cute P’Nut videos posted on Instagram. “We have rescued over 300 animals in our sanctuary already,” Longo said. “Cats, dogs, horses, goats, sheep, donkeys and pigs.”

Ah! The ends justify the means! Here is the problem: it is illegal to keep wildlife like squirrels as pets, in New York as well as many other states. The full list is here. (Pointer: jeffguinn) According to that source, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming all allow people to own pet squirrels. [Note: This is a correction from the original post, in which I assumed that all states would have prohibited P’Nut.]

None of which is relevant to the law in New York and it’s enforcement.

“Following multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets, D.E.C. conducted an investigation,” the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement after P’Nut was seized. “Investigation” is a bit sanitized: the operation has been described as a raid, and sure sounds like one. Before the officers left with P’Nut (and a raccoon, which nobody seems to care about), they “ransacked my entire house,” Longo said. “They made me sit outside for five hours.”

Presumably they were making sure that the house didn’t contain any other illegal residents. “We have had P’nut for seven years without a single complaint,” Longo said. “Now it’s suddenly an issue? It’s not like we were hiding him.”

Well, yes. That’s the problem. Longo and his wife were openly violating a law, and the argument for letting P’Nut keep hiding his nuts under their rugs is simple: the law is the law, there is no exception for cute law-breaking or profitable law-breaking. Regardless of the squirrel’s popularity and use in fundraising for a worthy cause, a law that isn’t enforced when it is broken for reasons some people think are justifications isn’t a law at all.

This isn’t just one slippery slope, it is several. Today it’s P’Nut the Squirrels, then it’s whenever that raccoon was, and tomorrow it’s Chewy the Wolverine.

“To the people who filed complaints, thank you for taking away the best part of me, thank you for taking away my best friend,” Longo whined online.

Conservatives have to stop flipping their values any time they see a chance for political point-scoring. This is called lacking integrity. Taking away P’Nut is based on the same principle that says “good illegal immigrants” should still be deported, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t get away with mishandling classified materials, and that if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling documents, Joe Biden should be as well.

The King’s Pass is a rationalization even if the king is a squirrel.

A grace note: P’Nut had to be euthanized after he bit one of the officers as they removed him from his happy home, so they had to see if the squirrel had rabies. Good for P’Nut: he didn’t go down without a fight. We can’t blame him for not knowing the law.