Jennifer McKendrick is my favorite Ethics Hero of 2011.
An Indiana County freelance photographer of sensitivity, courage and principle, McKendrick engaged in classic ethical behavior—seeing wrongful conduct that harms others, and taking affirmative action to address it. Her conduct is a template for all of us, and not merely regarding the specific problem she decided to confront: online bullying.
The ultimate descent of character for any elected leader is when he or she places the retention of political power above core governing principles and the best interests of the governed. I did not expect Barack Obama to sink to that state, but with the announcement yesterday of his cynical and unethical refusal to enforce the immigration laws, he has.
His administration declared yesterday that it will grant an indefinite reprieve to thousands of illegal immigrants facing deportation, and permit them to stay and work legally. This, of course, does more than effect those apprehended illegals: it signals millions more that they are in no danger of having to be accountable for ignoring U.S. immigration procedures, and signals future illegals that the borders of the United States are essentially open. Continue reading →
Jerry Buell, a veteran high school teacher recently named his district’s ‘Teacher of the Year,” was suspended indefinitely by Lake County, Florida’s Mount Dora High School for posting an anti-gay marriage rant on his Facebook page. In the post, prompted by New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage, Buell said that the news made him want to throw up, that gay marriage was “a cesspool,” and that homosexuality was a sin.
He is welcome to his opinion. He has an absolute right to it. However, he does not have a right to be allowed to teach students, several or many of whom may be gay, after voluntarily allowing it to become public knowledge that he is disgusted by gays and considers them sinful. The school is right to remove him from his teaching duties, and it will be right to tell him that he will not be permitted to teach in the school again. Continue reading →
Don't trust him, Roy...he's doing research for a book!
Luis Castillo became a batboy for the New York Yankees at the age of 15, and for eight baseball seasons shared the clubhouse with his hometown heroes. Now he’s cashing in, having written a tell-all memoir of his experiences that dishes on Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and others, all of whom trusted him to be fair, respectful, and discreet.
The recurrent theme from the media’s commentators, which I heard repeated on CNN this morning as it hosted Castillo in his book-hawking efforts (in this case he told an embarrassing anecdote about Yankee catcher Jose Posada) is that “Castillo is able to divulge Yankee secrets in his new memoir because he was part of the last group of batboys who did not have to sign confidentiality agreements.”
This is accurate, but wrong. It is also typical of what passed today as journalistic ethics. Continue reading →
The odd part? Hoffman practices employment law , specializing in sexual harassment cases. Sexual harassment law is explicitly designed to ensure that employees are not exploited, debased or discriminated against because of their gender.Needless to say, rape, sexual battery and forced oral sex would qualify as extreme sexual harassment. Continue reading →
I awoke this morning to read that a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official has credibly claimed that the S.E.C. destroyed thousands upon thousands of records of enforcement cases in which it had decided not to file charges or to launch full-blown probes. The case records dumped included prominent Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and SAC Capital.
“Forget about what might have been if the SEC had followed up in earnest on all of those lost MUIs(“Matters Under Inquiry”). What if even a handful of them had turned into real cases? How many investors might have been saved from crushing losses if Lehman Brothers had been forced to reveal its shady accounting way back in 2002? Might the need for taxpayer bailouts have been lessened had fraud cases against Citigroup and Bank of America been pursued in 2005 and 2007? And would the U.S. government have doubled down on its bailout of AIG if it had known that some of the firm’s executives were suspected of insider trading in September 2008?” Continue reading →
Like ham and eggs, Abbott and Costello, or motherhood and apple pie, “dunce” and Christine O’Donnell will forever be paired. Why her embarrassing run for the U.S. Senate didn’t consign her to permanent obscurity I do not know, but she was back in the public eye again tonight, on an apparently slow day for getting guests for Piers Morgan, to talk about her new book. When the host dared to stray into subject matter O’Donnell didn’t want to talk about, however, she quit the interview, leaving Morgan with dead time and an empty chair.
There is no excuse for this abominable behavior. Morgan was not being rude, nor was he straying from ethical interview practices. An interviewee does not have the right to control an interview, and a public figure who is asked about public statements and the contents of a book bearing her name may not call “foul” with any justification. As for walking out in the middle of a televised interview, O’Donnell conduct is indefensible–unfair to her host, disrespectful of her audience, uncivil, and cowardly
Morgan deserves some of the blame for agreeing to waste airtime on someone who has proven beyond any question that she possesses neither the skills, talent, intelligence, character or judgment to even qualify for D -list celebrity status, much less to be taken seriously as a political figure.
She is, in short, a dunce–ethically, socially, and intellectually. After this performance, anyone who books her for anything other than a “Dunk the Witch” carnival attraction deserves whatever they get.
Ah, if only Joseph Welch and his well-aimed indignation were here today!
We knew, way back when President Obama was running for his first term, that the temptation to paint any opposition to his leadership or his policies as proof of racism would be irresistible for the less ethical among his supporters in the Democratic Party and among the media. This came to pass, but we should prepare for much worse. Now that the President has a thoroughly wretched record and is, to an extent I personally haven’t seen since the paranoid days of Richard Nixon, attempting to avoid accountability by blaming everyone in sight—a thoroughly unleaderly display—the race-baiters have served notice that they will be out in force this time as well, more shameless than ever. Continue reading →
As further proof of evolution, the chimp is behaving exactly like his distant relatives, the adminsitrators of Calvin College
I don’t know what the exact point is that marks where a religious school’s departure from legitimate adherence to its core beliefs metastasizes into a nuisance to society and civilization by affirmatively encouraging life-crippling ignorance. I do know, however, that Michigan’s Calvin College has passed that point.
Two religion professors at Calvin wrote scholarly papers suggesting that new discoveries in genetics and evolution raised questions about the literal reading of Genesis that could no longer be brushed aside. Neither professor questioned the existence of God or the role of their church, but they argued that the findings of rigorous, modern science may require a theological re-examination of literalist Biblical teachings. Readers of The Banner, the publication of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, promptly blew a Biblical gasket:
“To protect the church and college from false teachers and contrary orthodox beliefs it would be right to let these guys go,” said one commenter. “Clearly, professors who deny the scriptures as interpreted by our creeds and who have broken the promise they made when they signed the Form of Subscription should be fired,” said another. From yet another: “Why is it that so many Christians and academics in Christian colleges seem more concerned about keeping in step with what the world teaches than they are about what God’s Word teaches? Are we ashamed of God’s Word in the face of the beliefs of our worldly peers?”
Calvin investigated the two professors, and as a consequence one of them, John Schneider, resigned the tenured position he had held for 25 years, as part of a settlement with the college. Continue reading →
Rick Perry has Jenny McCarthy's vote back...and that's worth a little more cervical cancer, right Governor?
It didn’t take long for newly-minted GOP presidential contender Rick Perry, now leading in the polls, to tell us what we needed to know about his values and integrity.
He doesn’t have them.
Back in 2007, I awarded Perry an Ethics Hero designation for leading Texas to become the first state in the nation to mandate vaccination of young girls for the human papilloma virus, or HPV, which is sexually transmitted and can cause cervical cancer. “Requiring young girls to get vaccinated before they come into contact with HPV is responsible health and fiscal policy that has the potential to significantly reduce cases of cervical cancer and mitigate future medical costs,” Perry said then in a news release explaining his executive order. Now, however, Perry is declaring what I thought was a courageous decision four years ago “a mistake.”
Ethics Alarms 