threats

UPDATE: Spinning The Woodward-White House Dispute

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
Here's a question, Gene: What the hell is going on???

Here’s a question, Gene: What the hell is going on???

Now that the e-mail that apparently caused Washington Post icon Bob Woodward to feel he was being threatened has been released, several new questions and observations arise:

1. In the e-mail, at least, the senior official, now confirmed to be economic advisor Gene Sperling, never denies the central point of the Woodward column at issue: that President Obama, not congressional Republicans, was the first to propose the sequester, contrary to the statements of Jack Lew and the President himself, in contradiction to the blame narrative being pushed by the White House. This means that either the White House concedes its obfuscation, or that it chose to muddy the waters and undermine Woodward’s credibility by focusing on another aspect of his analysis where it was subject to legitimate challenge.

2. Why did Woodward feel threatened by this ostensibly “friendly” message? He is a veteran of such exchanges and presumably adept at translating Washington-speak and reading between the lines. I yield to his reporter instincts, but frankly, I don’t see it. I presume the threats in his phone argument with Sperling were more overt. I don’t know that, however. Continue reading →

The Sequester Ethics Train Wreck: The White House Shows Its Dark Side To Bob Woodward

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
"Deja vu, Bob?"

“Deja vu, Bob?”

[ UPDATED] It is time to upgrade, or perhaps downgrade is a fairer term, Washington’s sequestration battle to a full-fledged ethics train wreck. This is one that may cause far reaching damage, and anyone, including the White House and the Republicans, who thinks it is predictable or controllable is deluded. You don’t control a train wreck; it controls you, once you are on board. The White House, and thus President Obama, are riding right up front.

Today Watergate-busting journalist Bob Woodward revealed that after he dared to interfere with the White House disinformation campaign—-designed to re-write history and assign Congressional Republicans responsibility for the introducing irresponsible, certifiable and reckless sequester device (voting for it was bad enough)—by writing in a Washington Post column that it was White House staff that initially proposed the gimmick, he was threatened by a senior White House official. “I think you will regret staking out that claim,” the official wrote to him. Woodward told both CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Politico that he regarded the statement as a thinly veiled threat, especially after the same official (now identified as Gene Sperling) had screamed at him over the phone for the cardinal sin of letting the facts interfere with the White House’s public opinion manipulation strategy. Woodward told Politico,

“‘You’ll regret.’ Come on. I think if Obama himself saw the way they’re dealing with some of this, he would say, ‘Whoa, we don’t tell any reporter ‘you’re going to regret challenging us.’ ” Continue reading →

Classroom Indoctrination Again: Enough! I Propose No-Tolerance

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments
"Now class, I'm not going to say this again---no essays about evil guns, or you'll be sorry."

“Now class, I’m not going to say this again—no essays about evil guns, or you’ll be sorry.”

Dewey Christian is an English teacher at Denton High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and on the evidence of this incident, one more example of how our children are being warped by arrogant bullies and fools under the pretense of public education. The teacher told students to write a few sentences about whatever topic they chose—“a fun experience,” one student said.  However, when two seniors turned in papers that referenced guns—the Horror!— Christian scolded and humiliated them in front of the class, and told them that they would receive zeros unless they chose a different topic.

Fired, that’s all—that’s what this teacher should and must be. Continue reading →

“The Judge in the Hat” (With Apologies To Dr. Seuss)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

antonin-scalia hat

The sun did not shine.

Inaugurations are gray.

So reporters sat mocking the people that day.

Senator Claire McCaskill tweeted just what they said.

“Why does Justice Scalia have THAT on his head?”

“It’s a beret on steroids!” one journalist claimed.

“It’s so floppy! It’s silly! He should be ashamed!”

But the mockers just showed what they’d proven  before:

They are dim wits, for the hat honored Sir Thomas More. 

It is seen on his portrait, sitting right on his hair,

And Scalia had chosen his fashion with care.

Brave Sir Thomas fought power abused by a king,

And he died fighting tyranny, beheaded one spring.

For Scalia to emulate More on this day

Meant his hat was a message, and not just some beret.

He was telling this President, as More might have said it,

“Keep abusing your powers, and you will regret it.

Obamacare skated when Roberts’ mind quit,

But  we’ll fight for the Founders, don’t you doubt it one bit!” 

It was clever of Nino, and audacious, and tough

To choose this event to declare, “That’s enough!”

And in such a sly way that he certainly knew

Would go over the heads of all but a few.

Still I’m sorry to say, but I’d say to his face,

“Mister Justice, that symbol was just out of place.

The swearing in isn’t the place for defiance; 

You were bound to show loyalty, just not compliance.”

So as much as I honor More’s ethics and fight,

For Scalia to wear his hat then…

Wasn’t right!

thomas-more

Ethics Quiz: Developing A School Anti-Violence No-Tolerance Insanity Scale

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
More deadly than a spit-ball? Less threatening than a pizza?

More deadly than a spit-ball? Less threatening than a pizza?

The latest example of mind-numbing school no-tolerance hysteria comes from rural Pennsylvania, where a kindergarten student has been suspended for threatening to shoot another student with a pink Hello Kitty bubble gun. I confess that I have nothing new to say about this idiotic and cruel incident that I haven’t said before about, say, the school principal who attempted to punish a 4th grader in 2010 for playing with a LEGO figure who was carrying a two-inch LEGO “gun”:

“The ethical duty being violated here, along with the ethical values of fairness, prudence, proportion and respect, is competence. A school administrator who does something like this is not competent, and any school system that gives such a person responsibility for the education of young children is also incompetent.”

…Or about the school administrators that punished a 10-year-old who had bitten a slice of pizza into the shape of a gun, an incident that admittedly sent me over the edge when I wrote:

“This is the Apocalypse, the bottom of the barrel. This disgraces teachers, schools, administrators, the U.S. educational system, America and the human race. Incompetence, unfairness, abuse of power, irresponsible behavior and stupidity, all flowing from a system that has lost its way and is in despair. We are officially in the Twilight Zone, Bizarro World, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and Oz, all to the detriment of our poor students, needing an education, and encountering only rigidity, cowardice and foolishness.”

In the wake of Newtown, however, with supposedly responsible elected officials running around making absurd statements about how we have to choose between the Second Amendment and “saving our children,” the entrenched no-tolerance fanaticism in the schools has become more virulent and widespread, though it could not have become more damaging, irresponsible or stupid than the pizza episode. Continue reading →

Christopher Fountain, Address Outing And The Golden Rule Distortion

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Here we go again.

If it's unethical to do it to Harry, it's unethical to do it to anyone.

If it’s unethical to do it to Harry, it’s unethical to do it to anyone.

In the pantheon of distortions of the Golden Rule–-“Do Unto Others What They Did Unto You;” “Do Unto Others What You Think They Would Do Unto You If You Gave Them The Chance;” “Do Unto Others Before They Do It Unto You,” “Do Unto Other As You Wish They Would Do Unto You Even Though You Deserve A Hell of a Lot Worse,” and many others—perhaps the most popular is “Do Unto Others What They Did Unto Others, or You.” This is the “Tit for Tat” rationalization, the invalid ethical theory that when someone does something wrong, it waives the ethical rule making it wrong if the conduct is applied to them. I discussed this in the post and the thread about the Right’s “Harry Reid is a pederast” meme, devised as retribution for Reid’s admittedly despicable assertion that Mitt Romney was a tax evader, as vivid a modern example of “Big Lie” politics as we are ever likely to see. I don’t want to repeat myself. You can review it here; this was the most viewed post on Ethics Alarms in 2012. Continue reading →

Gross Abuse of the First Amendment: The Journal News’ Attack on Gun Owner Privacy

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
"Here are the names and addresses of people with blood on their hands, Just thought you might be interested."

“Here are the names and addresses of people with blood on their hands. Just thought you might be interested in paying one of them a little visit.”

New York’s Journal News has published a map showing the homes of pistol permit holders in two New York counties. (They are acquiring data for a third.) Now, on the Journal News website, you can click on any of the dots indicating a permit holder and see his name and address—very useful, should you want to go to the owner’s home and kill him, since we all know gun owners have “blood on their hands” after the massacre in Newtown. The Journal News acquired the personal information through the Freedom of Information Act.

A story like this one renders me depressed, confused and lost. It should not be unnecessary for me or anyone to explain what is wrong with this conduct, and yet not only has a media organization done it, but many Americans undoubtedly will cheer them on. If people can’t figure out on their own what is wrong with this—the ethical offense is “publicizing citizens’ names and addresses in an attempt to intimidate them and expose them to harassment for exercising their legal, Constitutionally protected rights in a responsible fashion”— I suspect that it is a waste of time trying to enlighten them. Continue reading →

Hey Corey Clark, This Streisand Effect’s For You!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Remember Corey Clark? Neither do I.

Remember Corey Clark? Neither do I.

For those of you fortunate enough to have forgotten about Corey Clark: he had a brief fling with celebrity after he was kicked off American Idol in 2003 and later accused then-Idol judge Paula Abdul of secretly helping him advance in the show while they were having a clandestine, and obviously unethical, sexual relationship. He did this, class act that he is, two years later while he was promoting an album release.

I didn’t remember Corey Clark either, until a typical reputation-cleaner (that is, dishonest and threatening) called me on the phone yesterday, misrepresenting himself as working for Clark’s lawyer, and told me that Clark was engaged in litigation regarding “defamatory” material published about him. He said that a post on Ethics Alarms’ predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard, had “defamed” Clark in 2005 by stating that he had been convicted of a felony, and this was a demand that I either retract that post or take it down.

This, is, of course, approaching the patented territory of Ken at Popehat, whose specialty is opposing creeps who try to censor opinion on the internet by threatening spurious but expensive litigation against bloggers. As I told Clark’s paid lackey, who spouted erroneous legal theories and had a rudimentary understanding of defamation at best, I was only recounting what I had read in published reports at the time. There could be no defamation, as 1) Clark was, at the time, a public figure, 2) I wrote what I thought was true and accurate and 3) there was no malice involved. He asked me for my source, prompting me to say that I would have been able to supply him with one and would have done so gladly if his employer’s client hadn’t waited seven years to bring the post to my attention. The Scoreboard has not been active since 2009. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Michigan State Representative Doug Geiss (D-Taylor)

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments
Ah, those were the good old days!

Ah, those were the good old days!

There is a strong likelihood that the Michigan state legislature will pass “right to work” legislation that limits the political power of labor unions, preventing unions cannot from requiring members to pay dues as a condition of employment. Twenty-four states have such measures, all passed through the democratic process, with voter-elected representatives debating and approving the legislation, and bills being signed by duly elected governors.  State Rep. Doug Geiss (D-Taylor), however, a union-supporting legislator in Michigan, has a provocative alternative strategy to offer when debate and democracy fail to reach the result he and his supporters desire: threaten violence. Continue reading →

A No Tolerance Rule For Cabinet Members: Don’t Threaten Reporters

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Intolerable.

I’ll make this simple, and get right to the point: any Cabinet member who threatens a reporter with physical violence for doing the job journalists are supposed to do should be fired. No exceptions. Moreover, that should be obvious and beyond debate.

Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, didn’t like a question he was asked by Colorado Springs Gazette reporter Dave Philipps. The investigative reporter had tried to reach Salazar for months through his press secretary seeking a comment on a story Philipps had written about how a Colorado man with business connections to Salazar had been sold hundreds of federally protected wild horses that have subsequently vanished. The man is under investigation, and one of his businesses is slaughtering horses, not that any of this is germane to how Salazar treated Phillipps.  When Philipps began asking Salazar about the program and possible personal ties he had to the wild horse buyer now under investigation, Salazar abruptly ended the interview. He then pushed The Gazette’s camera aside, got nose to nose with the reporter, and said, pointing, “Don’t you ever…you know what, you do that again… I’ll punch you out.” Continue reading →