open forums

Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Three weeks after I inflicted a giant hematoma on (in?) my leg, I’m still having trouble getting past the two-post-a-day barrier, in great part because I’m hopeless on a laptop, and sitting at my desk in the office is still painful. I’m sorry: I’m missing a lot; the EA runway looks like a Reagan National flight stop due to high winds and thunderstorms.

A needed observation on the Trump Presidency so far: wow. That wow isn’t about what Trump and his team are doing, but the fact that they are doing it. I’ve compared Trump II to Andrew Jackson, but I now believe he is channeling my favorite President of all (again, in terms of Oval Office conduct, not policy), Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy, like Trump, was a Presidential activist and believed in using the power he had to do things, fix things, and project American power abroad. He also believed fervently in American exceptionalism, as all Presidents (and citizens) should. Like TR, Trump is trying to stop international conflicts that don’t directly involve the United States: Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Trump has already exceeded his accomplishments in that sphere.

You would think he could get some praise from the Axis for this. Nah. The news media is still relentlessly attacking him and everything he does, and there are enough Stage 5 Trump Derangement victims and gullible, manipulated fools among the public to keep Trump’s polling numbers under water.

To his great credit, President Trump doesn’t seem to care. Among the many ways his second term is breaking with conventional wisdom, he has turned his lame duck status into a weapon. Fascinating. There is so much to see and learn from going on. Those who refused to pay attention are missing a great show and a transformational Presidency, as Trump joins the lofty company of Washington, Andy, Honest Abe, Teddy, FDR and the Gipper.

Over to you…

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Just one question before I surrender the con to you…

Can anyone think of a more ridiculous, desperate, annoying Axis “Get Trump!” engine than the current obsession with the “lists/files/whatever” of dead sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein? Because I can’t. The “Breaking!” headlines are like smoking gun evidence that the nation’s median IQ has dropped into double figures….low double figures. Trump wrote a naughty birthday card to Epstein! That does it: I am no longer responding to email requests for birthday messages and videos from relatives of distant friends and acquaintances until I have done a background check on what they have been up to lately. Trump went to Epstein’s wedding!

As I stated before (when I thought this nonsense would at worst be a week-long distraction), there is some condign justice in Trump being bedeviled by this since he allowed his campaign to crow about Epstein conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, any non-Trump Deranged citizen who expends any energy getting upset about this guilt-by-association assault needs a priority inventory.

Morons.

July 4th Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Light whatever ethics fuses you choose here today. As usual, traffic is minor on a long weekend. I have only one matter to pass on: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ dishonest and aburd criticism of the Paramount/CBS/”60 minutes” settlement, which would be an “Unethical Quote of the Week” if so many Axis hacks and liars hadn’t been saying the same thing. Quoth Bernie,

“Paramount’s decision will only embolden Trump to continue attacking, suing and intimidating the media which he has labeled ‘the enemy of the people.’ It is a dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press — an essential part of our democracy. It is a victory for a president who is attempting to stifle dissent and undermine American democracy.”

Asshole.

In order:

1. Trump should be “emboldened.” The media has been indulging in fake news, manipulated reports, partisan bias and anti-democratic fact-hiding for far, far too long, and a reckoning is overdue as well as necessary.

2. The press should be intimidated to make it stop abusing the freedom of the press and deliberately misleading the public.

3. The news media is the enemy of the people. The “60 minutes” scandal showed why.

4. The dark day for independent journalism arrived the first time a major news source like CBS set out to elect one candidate over another instead of reporting objectively and fairly on both. Making it clear that journalists face some adverse consequences when they betray their public trust this brightens the day.

5. The essential part of democracy is the public being reliably informed about the world, the nation and its elected officials objectively, responsibly and fairly. so they can competently participate in their own government. When the free press decides to misuse its power and special privileges to mislead the public, that’s an attack on democracy.

6. How can anyone describe what CBS did with the Harris interview (or NBC, with “Saturday Night Live,” giving Harris an illegal free campaign commercial three days before the election) as “dissent”? Answer: They can if they are dishonest, unscrupulous, shameless Machiavellian leftists like Bernie. This is the guy who said outright that Harris was pretending to be more moderate in her views to get elected, and that was fine with him. “By any means necessary,” after all!

Did I mention that Sanders is an asshole?

7. Bernie and anyone else who stood by and allowed a demented Democratic President be manipulated by unelected back-room aides is estopped from ever using the term, “undermine American democracy”again. Channeling Albert Brooks in “Lost in America,” I’d say that they can’t even use the components of that phrase, “undermine,” “American,” and “democracy.”

8. And can we please stop tolerating the “Paramount settled because it wants the merger to be approved” lie, the agreed-upon narrative the news media has pushed to shift the blame from “60 minutes” to Trunp? Paramount and CBS settled because they did not dare go through discovery, which would reveal high level emails in which various executives openly discussed how to make sure Harris won and Trump lost. Those would create a professional scandal from which CBS might never recover.

Open Forum, “I Wasn’t Going To Have One But Then My Head Exploded” Edition….

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

We just had an open forum a few days ago, so I was going to skip the Friday Forum. Then I read this, my head exploded, I already was struggling because I didn’t sleep at all last night, so I need some time to mop up and repack my head:

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Minnesota Wednesday for its laws that provide free and reduced tuition rates to illegal aliens. The laws, a DOJ press release contends, unconstitutionally discriminate against out-of-state U.S. citizens, who are not afforded the same privileges at Minnesota’s public colleges and universities….According to the lawsuit [“…which names Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Minnesota Office of Higher Education as defendants”], federal law prohibits states from providing illegal aliens with any post secondary education benefit that is denied to U.S. citizens….The lawsuit explains how a 2013 state law allows illegal aliens who establish residency in Minnesota to benefit from reduced, in-state tuition rates….Additionally, the DFL-controlled Minnesota Legislature established in 2023 a free tuition program for students whose families make less than $80,000 annually. Illegal aliens are eligible for the program. The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court to declare the laws unconstitutional and prohibit their enforcement.

“We are reviewing the lawsuit and will vigorously defend the state’s prerogative to offer affordable tuition to both citizen and non-citizen state residents,” a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said.”

KABOOM!

A few rueful points, and then you write about whatever you want…

  • Why are we just hearing about this now, when the knuckleheaded governor of Minnesota was running from August 2024 to November to be a heartbeat from the Presidency? Why didn’t Trump confront Harris with that insanity? Why did no one in the news media, Axis or not, report on it?
  • These laws are the equivalents of “Welcome, illegal immigrants!” invitations to break the law, with Minnesota being a “sanctuary state.” Minnesota citizens are that stupid, or in the alternative, that clown car crazy? How did they get that way? Can they be treated? 
  • What logic can possibly justify this?
  • Note that the Minnesota AG is still obfuscating, not having the honesty of integrity to call a metaphorical spade a spade. “Non-citizen state residents”! The state lies, cheats and steals under Walz, but this is what the Democratic Party now stands for. No wonder he thinks he has a shot at the Presidential nomination in 2028.

Back to brain clean-up…

Open Forum! [And One More Complaint About “The View”…]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I woke up today with so much already happening on the ethics front that I immediately knew I had no chance of making a dent in it, especially since I am facing deadlines and crises on other fronts. Let me get one minor matter out of the way before I turn it over to you, dear EA contributers.

There were two items in yesterday’s potpourri post relating to the persistent insanity on “The View.” I wonder if I should just ignore that idiot program from now on, applying the Julie Principle. Occasionally the thing makes news, but it is a blight on the culture and social discourse. Barbara Walters, who started it, needs to be marked down in critical assessments of her career because her creation inflicted Joy Behar, Whoopie and Sunny Hostin and the rest on our social and political discourse.

Here is one last “View”-related ethics ugliness. Speaking on the “Behind the Table” podcast this week (who listens to these things?), Hostin, arguably the worst of the worst on the current panel, discussed the moment when Kamala Harris declared on the show that she wouldn’t change a thing her alleged boss, Joe Biden, had done during his Presidency. Harris’s fatuous response—did she ever say anything that wasn’t fatuous?—came after Hostin tossed the Democrats’ DEI nominee the softest of softball questions: what would she do differently from Biden? “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” said Kamala.

Many believe that Harris lost the 2024 election in that moment, which is scary to think given how many other reasons she gave the voters to vote Republican. Hostin, in the podcast, said, “I knew it instantly when she answered it. Which is why I asked the follow-up question, ‘is there one thing?’  Because I knew, I could see the soundbite and I knew what was going to happen, but I thought it was a really fair question and I thought it was a question that she would expect… I feel terrible.” 

Bob Hoge writes at Redstate, “Such are the depths to which our mainstream media has sunk, that a professional pundit doesn’t have regrets about trying to push an incompetent candidate on the country; no, her real regret is that Kamala was exposed.”

Sad but true.

Your turn!

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Gee, I don’t know what ethics news and issues you could want to discuss today…

Me, I’m just trying to decide which is more fatuous, the drivel I am reading from the Trump Deranged among my D.C. showbiz friends, who once had functioning brains even as you and I, on my Facebook feed (Did YOU know that there was a First Amendment right for illegal immigrants to riot?) or the selection Ann Althouse posted from Reddit regarding the crowd reaction to Trump’s appearance in the audience at the Kennedy Center performance of “Les Miserables”: “Honestly it sounds like a mix of both? Boos and cheers/clapping together. Because as disappointing as it is, there is a lot of people who literally reside up Trump’s ass crack & worship this man. I fully despise him and everything he stands for. And the fact that he simultaneously, gets to go to the theater and exist peacefully while terrorizing the immigrant populations in LA & around the US.”

That last could have been written by many of my friends, from whom I would withhold my comment that many Americans have the courtesy to treat the President of the United States with formal respect, as Americans have done since George Washington, without “literally” residing up the President’s ass crack…

June’s Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

I will be in a fascinating meeting much of today among various professionals, lawyers and activists seeking to address interlocking corrupt practices in the legal profession, particularly in mass torts. I am primarily focusing on the legal ethics facets, but the victims of these practices include hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent injured victims, including veterans, as well as ethical lawyers and law firms that find themselves facing programmed financial disaster.

Thus I don’t know how much time I will have to catch-up on ethics events and issues here until this evening.

One brief note: Isn’t it nauseating to read the anonymous attacks from White House staff and other Axis hacks on Karine Jean-Pierre now that Biden’s paid liar is trying to cash in?

NOW they are saying that she was incompetent at her job? It was obvious that the mop-top was incompetent literally from Day One, and she never improved. She is a walking, talking, embarrassing, Dunning-Kruger Syndrome suffering personification of what was and is so wrong about DEI policies, but before the Biden scam exploded and the other awful DEI mistake, Kamala Harris, helped drive the Democratic Party into disaster, anyone who pointed out the obvious about Jean-Pierre was risking being called a racist.

That’s enough from me for a while.

It’s your post now…and if you don’t know why that photo marks this post, your cultural literacy needs an infusion. Meanwhile, this is the anniversary of D-Day. Presumably everyone knows the significance of that.….

“Welcome Summer!” Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Last week on YouTube’s “The Morning Meeting,” Mark Halperin and Dan Turrentine appeared to acknowledge Ethics Alarms’ “Julie Principle.” They just didn’t know what it was called.

President Trump had delivered the commencement address at West Point while wearing a red MAGA cap (Oh NOOOO! He’s violating “norms” again!) and on Monday published a Memorial Day Truth Social post like some of his previous holiday wishes—you know, one of his “Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!” style shots. Halperin noted that many Democratic critics and pundits, right on cue, were freaking out.

“If you read [historian] Heather Cox Richardson or the emails and texts I get from my Democratic sources, as I said before, the Trump administration’s over. And it’s just a bankrupt, you know, corrupt mess and he’s already a failed president and he’s not getting anything done. That’s their point of view. They also are very taken with his wearing a MAGA hat … to give … a West Point graduation speech,” Halperin said. “They’re taken with his tweet, his Truth Social post, saying ‘Happy Memorial Day’ and criticizing Joe Biden. And they’re back to a Adam Schiffian and [biased and Trump Deranged historian] Heather Cox Richardson point of view, which is everything Trump does is an epic disaster and that the American people will turn on him and Republicans in the midterms because he’s impolite.”

Continue reading →

Memorial Day Weekend Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Thanks to my still resonating Verizon services disaster last weekend, this is the second Open Forum in a week. I deem it important to at least try to get back to normal, however, and so here we are.

As a bit of inspiration, I present the tale of a most unethical public servant, former L.A. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Brian K. Williams, shown above. Democrats have become this crazy: on Oct. 3, 2024, while he was in an online meeting involving his official duties, Williams picked up an incoming call on his city-issued phone, excused himself, and called the L.A. Police Department’s Chief of Staff. Williams reported he had just received a call from an unknown man who was threatening to bomb L.A. City Hall. Ten minutes later, Williams texted Mayor Karen Bass and other city officials, writing,

“Bomb threat: I received phone call on my city cell at 10:48 am this morning. The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the city support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda.’ I immediately contacted the chief of staff of LAPD, they are going to send a number of officers over to do a search of the building and to determine if anyone else received a threat.”

But there was no threat. The call Williams had received, an investigation revealed, was from Williams himself, who had used the Google Voice application on his personal phone to place a call to his work phone. The threatened bomb threat was his own.

The Department of Justice announced that Williams, 61, has been charged with the felony of reporting a false bomb threat, and has pleaded guilty. The crime carries a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

Nice.

Your turn!