open forums

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!

Nightmare Make-Up Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The Verizon attack on Ethics Alarms, my business and sanity also wiped out the planned Friday Open Forum on May 16. Rather than wait for another Friday to roll around—after all, who can tell if my incompetent internet provider will still be functioning four days from now?—I’m going to open up the floor now.

I’m hoping the commentariate can help me get back on track while I have to deal with multiple projects that sat languishing while a hostile time machine sent me back to the 1990s.

Open Forum (With a Pope Note…)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Funny, after watching “Conclave,” I found myself wondering when the Roman Catholic Church would select an American pope, not that I really cared. The New York Times saw yesterday’s surprising decision as justification for more Trump-bashing and an appeal to authority (a logical fallacy) that the Times’ acolytes—Democrats—overwhelmingly don’t acknowledge as an authority. Thus we got “The Pope Appears Uneasy With Trump Immigration Policies: Before Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost became pope, a social media account under his name shared criticisms of the Trump administration’s positions on immigration. “I…Don’t…Care,” and no one should care even if the social media posts in question came from the guy, which is unlikely. Sharing any opinions or positions without one’s own commentary is lazy, ambiguous social media conduct. But apart from that, becoming Pope creates a hard, black border around whatever the individual elected may have thought, said or done before becoming Pope, making all of that “non-operative,” as the used to say in the Nixon Administration. Furthermore, if this Pope tries to interfere with U.S. law, policy and values like the last one did, the proper response of Americans ought to be the same as I expressed here. The short version: “Mind your own business.”

I was amused yesterday when three waggish baseball pundits were discussing which Chicago baseball team Pope Leo followed, as he hails from the Windy City. The White Sox, one of them claimed. “No, his team is the Cubs!” another insisted. “I’m pretty certain he roots for the Angels,” said the third, ending the debate.

They forgot about the Padres!

Enough from me: This is your post…get opining.

First May Open Forum, or “The Ethics That Bloom In the Spring (Tra-La)”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Suddenly there are more stories and events of interest ethically than I can handle, so your contributions to the weekly free-for-all are even more needed than usual.

This is especially true because I am still picking bits of brain and skill off the walls, ceiling and computer screen after the jolt generating today’s first post.

So please, emote here early and often.

Where’s that Windex?

Post Script: That version of the famous song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado,” by the late, lamented D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1966 is 1) way, way too slow 2) exactly the kind of stodgy staging that killed the Victorian pair’s original production company and that gives G&S a bad reputation. I’ve played Ko-Ko in that number four times, and it should be a romp. (When I played the part in high school, I did an Adolf Hitler imitation in one of the encores…)

Friday Open Forum: Trying to Remember

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Ugh. I woke up this morning, immediately got into a substantive discussion, and found myself unable to think of not one but two names I believe are important to remember. The most important of the two was Kurt Gödel, whose “Incompleteness Theorems” led me to the Ethics Incompleteness Theorem, which is an important concept I haven’t discussed lately but is in the Ethics Alarms concepts and special terms list above.

The other name that I had to dig into my neurons to locate was Jill Corey, whom I had vowed to remember because it is so unfair that she has been almost totally forgotten. I wrote about her in 2023, here, on the occasion of Corey’s death.

Try to remember what you have been thinking about in the world of ethics over the last week and share it with us, will you?

(Incidentally, almost nobody except musical theater geeks remember that before he starred in “Law and Order,” Jerry Orbach was the star of “The Fantasticks,” the longest running musical ever. That’s him singing in the video above, when he was in his twenties, in the original Off-Broadway production.

Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Ethics Alarms Friday Forum…

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Last week’s open forum was wild, man, and I hope today’s can be as lively.

Based on the early returns, there’s a lot to bloviate about in the ethics world. The amateur golf champ playing in the Masters was caught pissing into a creek on n the 13th hole at Augusta National golf course. Pennsylvania judge Sonya McKnight was just convicted of shooting her sleeping boyfriend in the head. (Seems awfully judgmental…). Almost all Democrats in the House voted against the bill requiring voter ID in Federal elections. Yes, their determination to prove the cognitive dissonance scale wrong continues apace! A black Congressman tried to discuss issues with a Trump-Deranged white female and was called a “race traitor”…

…and we learned that after VP JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, issued a gratuitous email to the base’s personnel stating that he did not speak for her of the base. What an idiot. (She was fired.) Finally, we have this stupid incident, in which Frontier Airlines let a woman fly to Puerto Rico with her “emotional support parrot” but wouldn’t let the bird on the return flight. (Gift link.)

Be careful. It’s stupid out there…