Jonathan Turley

The Boaty McBoatface Affair, And What It Means For Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Boaty McBoatface

Great Britain’s National Environmental Research Council has a new $300 million ship being readied for a 2019 launch. It is a 128-yard-long, 15,000-ton beauty designed to serve as a “new polar research vessel which will deliver world-leading capability for UK research in both Antarctica and the Arctic.”  The Council put naming its new ship to the public, and asked for it to choose a name. Apparently in the grip of a Monty Python hangover, the name overwhelmingly chosen in an online vote was “Boaty McBoatface.”

Uh, no. Science Minister Jo Johnson announced that another, more suitable  name would be chosen.“The new royal research ship will be sailing into the world’s iciest waters to address global challenges that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including global warming, the melting of polar ice, and rising sea levels. That’s why we want a name that lasts longer than a social-media news cycle and reflects the serious nature of the science it will be doing,” he said.

Jonathan Turley, who has written two posts about “Boaty McBoatface,” is expressing dismay that humorless bureaucrats would reject “democracy.”  And I’m sure if George Washington Law School decided to have the public pick a new name for the professor’s employer, he’d embrace whatever whimsical, law-mocking choice they made, like “The Greedy McLieface School of Law.”

Turley thinks the ship’s popular name is funny, ergo he thinks its just fine. Of course, he doesn’t have to justify the agency’s budget, or put the gag name on his resume, or convince people to take the projects of an organization seriously when its flagship presents itself as a lark.

Johnson and his colleagues have a higher ethical duty than blindly accepting a “democratic” vote from people who don’t really care about the National Environmental Research Council’s work. “Boaty McBoatface” would be detrimental to the Council’s public image, self-image, moral and effectiveness. They had a duty to reject it. Prof. Turley thought it would be great for T-shirt sales.

He really needs to get off campus more.

Final thoughts: Continue reading →

Is It Wrong To Laugh At This Story?

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments
"Now, you're sure about this, right?"

“Now, you’re sure about this, right?”

Jonathan Turley found this strange tale, and the professor managed to find a jurisprudence issue in it. Not me: I want to know if finding it hilarious demonstrates unseemly cruelty.

In Zimbabwe, prophet Shamiso Kanyama instructed his followers to bury him alive as part of a ritual to cleanse their house of evil spirits. They did as he asked, and when they dug him up later he was dead.

The family that buried him is charged with murder. “Now the courts have a case where the victim demanded on religious grounds to be buried alive,” writes Turley. “The followers clearly believed that he could survive out of their own religious zeal. What should be the punishment in such a case?”

Oh, I don’t know: a conviction for murder, but a lighter than usual sentence. I don’t really care: this is Darwinism as work. My question is whether it is proof of a lack of empathy that the story reminds me of Monty Python, and makes me laugh.

Yet More Casting Ethics: “Hamilton’s” ‘No Whites Need Apply’ Open Casting Call

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

_hamilton

[ I am back from a speaking engagement that required over eight hours of driving, being in a supposedly “luxury resort” hotel room that had no Wi-Fi for most of my stay and no functioning TV for any of it,  and various other distractions and misadventures that prevented me from posting so far today. I apologize, though it is really the famous Omni Homestead in Hot Springs, VA. that should apologize. The good news is that my seminar was well-received, and that the disappointing trip–this time I was paid only with the supposedly sumptuous two-day  Homestead experience for myself and my long-suffering spouse, including outdoor activities that were impossible due to constant rain and a room with more things in poor repair than a Motel 6—is over.]

 

Broadway’s biggest hit, the Tony-winning  “Hamilton,” is under attack for, of all things, racism.

An open casting announcement on the show’s website read…

“Hamilton” is “seeking NON-WHITE men and women, ages 20s to 30s, for Broadway and upcoming Tours.”

Whaaaat? This joyous musical celebration of America’s founding and its Founders’ inspiration…engaging in racial discrimination? How could this be? Sniffed Actors Equity spokeswoman Maria Somma “The language … is inconsistent with Equity’s policy.”

Yes, this would be because Actor’s Equity has a lot of dumb policies, and like all unions, doesn’t really care about keeping the industry its members work in healthy, productive and profitable, only  making sure as many members as possible have jobs or at least shots at them. There is nothing whatsoever racist or discriminatory about a show that relies on the concept of non-white actors playing the very white Founding Fathers announcing that only actors who can fulfill that conceptual requirement will be considered for roles.

Civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, in an interview with the NY Daily News,  agreed the advertisement might technically violate the city’s human rights law, but that this is because casting is an anomaly. “It’s almost always illegal to advertise on the basis of race, but when you’re casting … it can be a bona fide occupational requirement,” he said. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Smokeless Tobacco Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Chicago recently became the fourth city—Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco—to enact a ban on using smokeless tobacco in sports stadiums. I initially ignored it, in part because I never use the stuff and have never known anyone who did, and in part because I knew that Major League Baseball has been trying, with some success, to discourage its ballplayers from chewing and especially spitting on camera, since it is a) disgusting and b) encourages impressionable tykes to take up an ugly and perilous habit. I’m inspired to make the issue an ethics quiz because of the pronouncements of law professor-blogger Jonathan Turley on the issue and the vociferous debate his comments sparked on his blog.

Turley wrote…

This is a lawful product like smoking tobacco. People have a right to make choices about their lifestyle so long as they do not harm others. That is why I always supported the bans on smoking in public areas due to the second-hand smoke research. That is an externalized harm. What is the externalized harm of smokeless tobacco?

…I happen to deeply dislike smoking and I find chewing tobacco disgusting. I also do not question the link to serious health problems like cancer. However, that should be the subject of an educational campaign by the government and MLB. Yet, in the end, people need to be able to make choices in our society rather than go down the path to paternalistic legislation regulating our good and bad choices.

His supporters on the blog were typified by this comment by Beth (not our Beth, I presume)…

“Tobacco, in all forms, is NOT a singular activity that affects no one else. Tobacco use weighs very heavily on the public at large in the form of health care costs, higher insurance premiums, toxic litter, poisoned air and ground spit. To suggest that limiting tobacco, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes should not be controlled substances goes against all manner of policy for the public good. Wrong stance, Mr. Turley.”

This comment, from “wonderer,” is a fair summation of the other side, which mostly came from the libertarian side of the metaphorical aisle:

“The efforts to ban “icky” behaviors are of a piece with the bans or taxes on sugared beverages. What seems to be happening is that some people want to push bans on behaviors of “out of favor” groups. Those “big soda” people are Walmart denizens, so they clearly need to be told what to do. But keep hands off urban bicycling. As risky as that is, it’s one of the things “enlightened” people do. Bans (at least here in California) seem to be all about the condescension.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is a ban on smokeless tobacco in ballparks an abuse of government power and an unethical breach of personal choice, autonomy and liberty, or is it a responsible use of government power to encourage public health and safety?

I’ll hold my fire on this one until sufficient numbers weigh in. Remember, the issue here isn’t policy, but ethics.

 

 

Prof. Jonathan Turley On The Latest Clinton E-Mail Revelations

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

the_end_justifies_the_means_by_carlos0003

“Highly classified Hillary Clinton emails that the intelligence community and State Department recently deemed too damaging to national security to release contain “operational intelligence” – and their presence on the unsecure, personal email system jeopardized “sources, methods and lives,” a U.S. government official who has reviewed the documents told Fox News.”

The mainstream media is dutifully ignoring this while they can, so you may well say, “Oh, well that’s just Fox News.” However, this bit of leaked information should not be surprising, and assuming that it is accurate, it follows the pattern of each bit of new data further discrediting Clinton’s various defenses for her indefensible handling of communications.

I point you to the analysis of George Washington law professor and blogger Jonathan Turley, who is that rarity in academia, a non-partisan, fair and unbiased commentator. Here, in part, are his recent comments on this matter. Please send it to the unshakable Clinton enablers in your life: a mind is a terrible thing to waste. (The emphasis is mine.)

While I agree with the Clinton campaign that these leaks are themselves problematic (both in terms of their timing and their disclosures from an ongoing investigation), I have long maintained that this was a serious scandal and that Clinton’s evolving defense does not track with national security rules or procedures. I consider the decision to use exclusively an unsecure server for “convenience” to be a breathtakingly reckless act for one of the top officials in our government. I am also deeply concerned about the level of “spin” coming from the campaign that is misrepresenting the governing standards and practices in the field. Much of what has been said in defense of Clinton’s use of the email system is knowingly misleading in my view.

In addition, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who sits on the House intelligence committee, “suggested the military and intelligence communities have had to change operations” due to the presumption that Clinton’s emails were compromised.

… I have previously noted that the decision of Clinton to use a personal server showed incredibly bad judgment that put classified information at risk. The defense that the information was not marked, which the campaign has been using recently, does not address the fundamental issues in the scandal. Clinton has insisted that “I never sent classified material on my email, and I never received any that was marked classified.” The key of this spin is again the word “marked.” I have previously discussed why that explanation is less than compelling, particularly for anyone who has handled sensitive or classified material. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Reminder: Don’t Forget About The Links…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Homemade-Sausage-Recipes jpg

Those links to other websites on the left are seldom accessed, I suppose because most blogs accumulate them on a quid pro quo basis: link to me, and I’ll link to you. Ethics Alarms doesn’t do that. If the link is there, it’s because I use the site to identify ethics issues or as an information resource. I don’t remove links because a site has removed mine or refuses to link to this one; I don’t take revenge on bloggers who write nasty things about me, either.

This isn’t personal, it’s just ethics.

I’ve been meaning to highlight some of the links for a long time, so readers might be moved to check them out. I assume you are familiar with the news aggregation sites, right, left and center, that I use the most: Mediaite, Politico, Drudge, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Google News, Think Progress, memeorandum, and Fark (great for teacher scandals!), as well as the ones that I don’t use, because they are either too biased to trust or have proved untrustworthy, like Breitbart, Buzzfeed, Gawker and The Daily Kos. (I am close to abandoning the Daily Caller as well.) Here are eleven links you should explore; I’ll have other lists of links for you now and then: Continue reading →

The Clinton E-Mail Scandal, Part One: Ethics Corrupter For President! Her Campaign’s “Nonsense” Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I'm just making an analogy here--I'm not saying those tentacle-shooting vamps in The Strain are Clinton supporters. That doesn't mean they aren't, though...

I’m just making an analogy here–I’m not saying those tentacle-shooting vamps in The Strain are Clinton supporters. That doesn’t mean they aren’t, though…

Portraying the currently developing scandal regarding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails while Secretary of State as just politics and the “kind of nonsense” that “comes with the territory,” Clinton flack Jennifer Palmieri  sent out a detailed message to Clinton supporters and Democrats. It is designed to mislead them about the critical issues raised by this matter, which are certainly not nonsense, to coordinate with the news media, which is trying desperately and unsuccessfully to embargo this story because it is damaging to Democrats (more on this in Part Two), to make the public dumber about how leadership and government works, and to provide slick rationalizations to those Clinton supporters inclined to be part of the disinformation campaign.

This is sinister and disgusting stuff, the essence of ethics corruption. For an unethical leader, like Clinton, to gain power, she must make a large proportion of the public insensitive or outright ignorant of basic ethical principles, and, if possible, as unethical as possible. The effort to trivialize this serious example of what’s so wrong with Hillary Clinton as just another “vast right wing conspiracy” is part of this process. Continue reading →

Ethics Verdict: Hillary Clinton, As Well As Her Spokespersons, Directly And Intentionally Lied About Her Emails, And The News Media Has An Obligation To Make That Clear

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

classified

The fact that Hillary Clinton is a serial liar and is preparing to deceive her way to the Presidency of the United States is of utmost importance to the nation. This is a fact, by the way. So far, the news media has allowed the usual Clinton strategy of obfuscating, denying, confusing and blurring instances of their misconduct, as well as distracting attention with new scandals involving them (like this one), succeed as it has in the past. This must stop. Contrary to the Clinton Credo, character matters, and the greater the power a leader has, the more it matters. A leader who engages in blatant lying has no respect for those she leads, and cannot be trusted. Those who cannot be trusted should not lead. The news media has an obligation to let us know who cannot be trusted.

It is as simple as that.

We watched that classic Clinton strategy in action when two inspector generals announced that they were calling upon the Justice Department to investigate Hillary’s alleged mishandling of classified Sate Department materials via her private server, in violation of government policies, her own department’s policies, and responsible stewardship and principles of cyber security. Immediately, Clinton began muddying the water and boring the public by launching a dispute over whether or not it was a “criminal” investigation, using undue influence to get the New York Times to change its story, and suddenly making the controversy about the messenger rather than its message.

Oh, the Clintons are good at this, no doubt about that.

Now here is another example in the same controversy.  Though Clinton has insisted that there was nothing classified on her email system and that any dispute is just a technical dispute “between agencies” 41 of the messages turned over to State by Clinton were recently given classified status by the State Department. Clinton’s word-parsing defense has been that she did not send or receive any material marked classified, but as law professor Jonathan Turley explained succinctly (he has been in the classified loop in the past), virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be automatically considered classified as a matter of course until it was reviewed and determined not to be classified. Clinton’s denials are based on typical deceit designed to fool the uninformed: her exchanges on her illicit private e-mail server weren’t classified because they were made on her illicit private e-mail server!

(Meanwhile, there are all those other e-mails Hillary had destroyed before the State Department could review them and after she knew that they would be subpoenaed.  Who else has them? Never mind: we trust Hillary’s judgment, right?)

Writes Turley in his latest post on this topic (like me, the usually liberal George Washington University law professor professor seems to be especially offended by Clinton’s dishonesty, recklessness and smug denials ): Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On Cincinnati’s Fountain Square Incident And Its Aftermath

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

At a Fourth of July concert in Cincinnati, police had to fight their way through a mob to rescue a white male who had been nearly beaten to death as the crowd made up primarily of African Americans and Hispanic-Americans mocked him. Here is a video of the scene, if it is still up: YouTube has removed it more than once.

Observations:

1. What kind of people act like this? How do they get this way?

2. There is a controversy over whether the incident should be investigated as a hate crime. Idiocy. Madness. The discussion itself shows how silly the entire hate crime concept is. Would a group of whites mocking a bleeding white man be any less offensive to community values than a group of blacks doing so?

3. It is especially silly, not to mention offensive, when the government applies the law in a biased fashion—but then, that was always its intent.  Here is law professor Jonathan Turley tripping over his metaphorical tongue to avoid stating the obvious:

“It is not clear if there was a racial component to the crime and I would not immediately expect a hate crime investigation in such a case. Various blogs however are arguing that the Administration and local officials often immediately pledge to pursue such cases involving a black victim and white officers or assailants as a possible hate crime. I have tended to caution that such early framing of cases can have a distortive or dysfunctional impact absent clear evidence of a racial motivation. For example, while some in this crowd may have been celebrating the fact that the victim was white, it does not mean that the original attack was racially motivated.”

Oh, come on, professor. Stop spinning. The Obama Administration, the Justice Department and local officials in many cities have displayed a hair-trigger readiness to automatically consider any incident a suspected “hate crime” where a white police officer is involved in harming a black victim, absent taunting, absent the kind of revolting evidence present in this case. It isn’t “early framing,” it is racial politics and pandering to the mob and the media. On what basis were George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson subjected to federal hate crime investigations, if this video won’t prompt one? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: University of Missouri

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
Robert Todd Lincoln would have refused this gig...

Robert Todd Lincoln would have refused this gig…

All right, I know this is the lowest of low-hanging fruit, but come on.

The University of Missouri at Kansas City just opened a Women’s Hall of Fame and sought an appropriate female leader to speak at the gala luncheon launching it. It not only chose a non-leader, non-accomplished, non-much of anything except lucky rich kid Chelsea Clinton, but also paid $65,000 for her to speak (she’s also a non-professional speaker) for only ten minutes, and then to answer questions—which carefully crafted limitations on the questions—for another 2o minutes.  The money goes to the Clinton Foundation, which makes no difference to the ethics of the transaction, which are revolting in many ways:

1. $65,000 for a ten minute speech—that rate is about 11 thousand bucks a minute— is outrageous unless the speaker is Abe Lincoln. It is virtually impossible to say anything in ten minutes that is especially valuable, and unlikely to the vanishing point that Chelsea Clinton is one of the rare people who could accomplish it.

2. Any college or university that cannot find a better legitimate educational use of $65,000 than this is too inept to stay open.

3. The school says that Clinton’s fee was funded by private donors, meaning that $65,000 worth of donations that could have gone to, say, scholarships were diverted into the Clinton Campaign and Influence Peddling Slush Fund. Continue reading →