November Ending Ethics, 11/30/21: Unethical Appeal, Buried Corruption, The Usual Hypocrisy, A Supreme Court Threat, And That’s Not All…

Bye November

I’m currently weighing whether to try to get up the Ethics Alarms Best and Worst of 2021 this year, after several years in a row of failing to find the time and energy…I am also re-watching “Clickbait” in preparation for the special Ethics Alarms Zoom discussion that, I hope, will soon be scheduled for some tome in the next 31 days. As regular readers here know, my ambitions sometimes exceed my grasp.

Heh. Sometimes...!

1. Oh look, a frivolous appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, because #MeToo, or something…The prosecutors who unethically used improperly obtained evidence to put Bill Cosby prison are now asking the United States Supreme Court to throw out the appellate court ruling earlier this year that overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault on due process grounds. Cosby was released in June after serving less than three years of a three-to-10-year sentence. He should not have served any time at all. A ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that Cosby’s rights had been violated when the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office pursued a criminal case against him despite a binding “non-prosecution agreement” given to him by a previous district attorney. Cosby’s rights were violated, raping scum that he is.

Notice how feminists, civil rights activists on the left, anti-Trump fanatics and others who have a monopoly on Truth and Right (or think they do) increasingly want the law to yield to “justice”? There is no valid basis for this appeal. Zip, none. The lawyers filing it should be sanctioned for unethical conduct, just as Trump lawyers who filed suits to flip-flop the 2020 election without evidence have been sanctioned.

2. Speaking of the 2020 election, the shady dealings of Joe Biden’s son, quite possibly with Joe’s knowledge and even facilitation, were, we now know, kept from the public just long enough to ensure Donald Trump’s defeat. Today, Senator Chuck Grassley took to the Senate floor to expose more smoking gun documentation. Here’s the video:

Of course, none of the news networks, except maybe Fox, will run it, and I assume the major print sources sill ignore it. The situation is not helped by the fact that Grassley is 88 and has no business being in the Senate. He’s pretty sharp for 88, which is like saying Jane Fonda is pretty hot for 83. I don’t want to see her do a sequel to “Barbarella”, and I don’t want to have to watch Grassley stumble through an important presentation.

Continue reading

Indoctrination And Intimidation At The University Of Arizona: Who Will Say, “So What’s The Matter With That?”

I feel the same way, Lucy…

There is a dumb joke in an old “I Love Lucy” episode that this story brings to mind.

Lucy is outraged when she reads that there is am all- filly race at the local race track and misunderstands. Horrified, she erupts, “How long  has this been going on? They’re racing little girls at Churchill Downs!” Ricky promptly explains why she was being an alarmist.

I hope that somehow the news item’s reporter got the facts wrong or I am missing something, because this story is far worse than racing little girls, and nowhere near as funny.

The University of Arizona is accepting student applications for what administrators call “social justice advocates.” The job requires the students to “report any bias incidents or claims to appropriate Residence Life staff,” and pays the student workers $10 an hour. They’re expected to work 15 hours a week, earning $600 a month in taxpayer funds—this is a public university—to police their fellow students speech and conduct.

Part of the job description reads:

“The position also aims to increase understanding of one’s own self through critical reflection of power and privilege, identity and intersectionality, systems of socialization, cultural competency and allyship as they pertain to the acknowledgement, understanding and acceptance of differences. Finally, this position intends to increase a student staff member’s ability to openly lead conversations, discuss differences and confront diversely insensitive behavior.”

Their #1 job, however, is to report “bias claims” so the student miscreant involved can face a Star Chamber, or the university equivalent. Such a claim can be what someone regards as  an outright act of “racism,’ which presumably could include anything from using a racial epithet to saying Maxine Waters is an idiot,  to  “microaggressions” like “cultural misappropriation,” or calling a transgender student by the wrong pronoun. The social justice advocate’s job will also include “fostering dialogue” related to “diversity, multiculturalism and social justice”—in other words, to be a full time left-wing scold— and  to “increase  awareness of diverse identities” while “promoting inclusive communities.”

I wonder if being stuffed in a closet or hung on a hook will be considered a “biased incident” by these paid political correctness snitches? That is, after all, what would happen to them on a healthy campus. Will they have little badges and whistles? I think they should get badges and whistles. Or get a uniform like Rolf at the climax of “The Sound of Music.”

They’re racing little girls at Churchill Downs! Continue reading

What Do You Do With The Racist Frat House?

Arizona frat party

Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at the University of Arizona decided that hosting an African-American stereotype party on Martin Luther King Day was a cool idea, and soon thereafter posted photos of the bash on various social media, showing drunk students posing like rappers,wearing baggy pants around their knees and drinking liquor out of watermelon cups.  The college community was appropriately horrified, and many are calling for the fraternity to be expelled for the incident and the students who attended the party punished. The Detroit Free Press story about the incident is headlined, “Racism or Free Speech”? This is the equivalent of a headline saying “Stupidity or Freedom of the Press?” It’s both. That’s the conundrum. Continue reading