“If you can’t handle such a minor inconvenience, perhaps you should stay on the ground.”
—The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, in an editorial called “Shut up and Be Scanned,” dismissing the objections of travelers who find the gonad and breast-fondling patdowns now being used by TSA screeners embarrassing and obtrusive. Continue reading
The misleading use of statistics to deceive, mislead, and confuse the public is epidemic in both the public and the media, with too many examples to cite. Sometimes the statistics are wrong, but just assumed to be correct, like the persistent myth that 50% of all American marriages end in divorce. Sometimes the individual who uses the statistic uses them sincerely but incorrectly to support an argument that the numbers don’t really support, such as columnist Richard Cohen’s recent use of international longevity statistics to “prove” America has an inferior health care system. (Message to Cohen: Freedom includes freedom to take risks, and America has always had a risk-taking culture, which is something to be proud of. Health care is just part of the longevity equation; life-style is a large component, and perhaps the largest. Caged animals live longer than those in the wild, but their quality of life is much worse. The relative merits of the U.S. health care system is subject to debate, but longevity statistics do not settle the issue.)
And sometimes the statistics are just pure, blatant deceit, designed to mislead by the government and relayed uncritically by a news media that is either too eager to support the Obama Administration and too lazy to apply critical reasoning.
Today’s example: as the furor grows over virtual sexual molestation and mistreatment of innocent air passengers under the Transportation Security Administration’s new procedures at airports (such as here, here, and here), the TSA is rushing to defend itself, and has come up with this argument: the complainers are a small minority, and the vast majority of the country—80%, in fact— approves of the new procedures. This morning, the Sunday talk shows cited this statistic over and over again as if it settled the issue.
The statistic is completely misleading. Continue reading
Terrorist and mass murderer Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was acquitted this week of 284 counts of murder , deaths that he unquestionably engineered, planned, a brought about in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa. He was convicted of just one count: conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and buildings. Since one logically cannot conspire to destroy buildings with people in them and not be guilty of murder, the verdicts make no sense. There was indeed plenty of evidence presented to prove Ghailani guilty of all the murder counts beyond a reasonable doubt, but this was just a bad jury, or to be more precise, a jury with a bad juror. We now know that one women held out against the rest, insisting on acquittal for the murder charges for reasons known only to her. Maybe she thought he was Ghailani. Maybe she wanted to make the Obama Administration, and specifically the Department of Justice, look inept, though it hardly needs any assistance. Maybe she’s a fan of terrorism. Maybe she’s just a dolt….who knows? The bottom line is that a terrorist got away with murder. Continue reading
This is how Fox noted the upcoming publication of President Obama’s children’s book, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters (Knopf, $17.99), which pays tribute to 13 diverse Americans whose best traits he sees in his daughters, Malia and Sasha. Among the Americans honored is the legendary Sioux chief Sitting Bull, who, among other achievements, defeated the troops of General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. Sitting Bull earned his status as a great leader and hero of Native Americans, as he tried desperately tried to resist the incursion of the U.S. population into Indian territory. Continue reading
George W. Bush, currently hawking his memoirs, has admitted in the new book and in interviews about it that yes indeed, he approved waterboarding of terrorist suspects, believed it was legal, and moreover offers evidence that the information thus acquired saved American lives. W’s opinion on these matter are hardly a surprise, but they have re-energized the defenders of the Administration’s policies of “enhanced interrogation” and rendition of apprehended terror suspects to foreign locales where the interrogation techniques were “enhanced” even more.
“NOW do you agree with the policy?” they ask, as if the answer was obvious. “The information prevented a horrific terrorist attack on Heathrow Airport (in England). See? See?”
Let us assume, just to simplify things, that everything is as President Bush represents. Waterboarding was, by some legitimate analysis, legal. The information saved American lives and prevented terrorist attacks. Do these facts mean that the use of torture—and waterboarding is torture, whether one defines it as such or not—by the United States of America was justified, defensible, and ethical?
No. I don’t think so. I believe that for the United States of America to approve and engage in the use of torture is by definition betrayal of the nation’s core values, and thus threatens its existence as the nation our Founders envisioned as completely as a foreign occupation. I wrote on this topic in 2009… Continue reading
What sense can we make out of the conduct of Cindy McCain, Senator John McCain’s wife?
In a celebrity video ad, posted online by a gay rights group called NOH8, Cindy McCain has properly linked the bullying of gay teens (and the recent spate of gay teen suicides) with the second-class citizen, undesirable human being status attached to gays by politicians who support the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Then, as the media began speculating about the policy rift in the McCain household, since Sen. McCain still supports the archaic, unconstitutional and unjust policy that forces gays to hide their sexual orientation or be deemed unfit for military service, Cindy McCain sent out a Twitter message that read:
“I fully support the NOH8 campaign and all it stands for and am proud to be a part of it. But I stand by my husband’s stance on DADT.” Continue reading
In his latest post on the National Review website, conservative blogger Jonah Goldberg wonders why the CIA hasn’t had the sense to assassinate WikiLeaks founder and current renegade leaker Julian Assange. That’s right: Goldberg believes that in the national interest (for Assange has gathered and leaked massive amounts of classified information relating to U.S. military operations), the U.S. government should murder an Australian citizen without due process, a trial, or anything approaching regard for law, ethics, and human rights.
I make it a rule, in the interest of civility and respect, to control the urge to sink to pure name-calling, but really: what an idiot. And a dangerous one. Continue reading
Bob and Ray, the great deadpan comedy team that mastered the form of the comedy interview on radio, recordings and TV, once has a routine about a longshoreman without a high school diploma who had written a voluminous “History of the United States.”
“But the book is riddled with errors!” protested Bob Elliott, playing the interviewer. “For example, here on page 214, it says that Abraham Lincoln was born in 1926 in Bailey’s Mistake, Maine!”
“Well, it’s a big book with a lot of pages,” shrugged Ray Goulding, as the longshoreman-historian. “I’m sure I missed some typos. You can’t catch everything!”
I was reminded of the Bob and Ray skit when I learned that a history book used in 4th Grade in Virginia elementary schools, Our Virginia: Past and Present, teaches that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War, a discredited claim often made by groups seeking to play down slavery’s role as a cause of the South’s rebellion. Continue reading
The upcoming election, among other horrible things, will stand as a landmark of ethical corruption, as parties, news sources and voters will have thoroughly abandoned integrity and weakened their core values by excusing damning behavior from their favored candidates, behavior that, if honestly and objectively evaluated, should disqualify them from any office of trust.
We have already seen disturbing examples of this phenomenon in such embarrassing displays as Rep. Charles Rangel’s birthday celebration, as major Democrats lined up to give tribute to a Congressman who has abandoned multiple ethical duties, including an absolute disgrace for any Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, willful tax evasion. Rather than take a stand for honest government and representatives the public can believe in, partisan supporters are blaming Rangel’s self-made problems on Republican attacks, as if they made Charlie do it all at gunpoint.
The same theme is being echoed by conservatives on talk radio, who are making the case that the ridiculous Christine O’Donnell, who has undeniably misused campaign funds and misrepresented her educational background numerous times and ways, is being criticized for these “errors” because of a “media double-standard.” The only way to interpret such a defense is that the people making it believe all lies, misuse of donations and efforts to mislead the public are excusable if the press has ever ignored them when the transgressor was from the other party. Or they really don’t believe that, but are saying that they do. Either way, they are corrupt. Continue reading
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Rich Iott, the Tea Party darling who is the Republican candidate for Ohio’s 9th District, isn’t necessarily unfit to be a U.S. Representative just because he used to dress up as a Nazi soldier, although he would have to come up with a much better explanation of why he thought that was a fun thing to do than he has managed to do so far. And if he’s planning on borrowing Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” campaign video approach—“I am not a Nazi. I’m you!” Worth a shot? Nah—-he should forget it. Still, let’s give him the benefit of a very large doubt.
It doesn’t help. He has still disqualified himself.
The reason—other than the fact that he admires Nazis—Rich Iott has disqualified himself from any elected office of trust is that he never disclosed to his movement, his party, his supporters, the media or the voters an aspect of his background that was absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, “Bet the farm on it, Maggie, ’cause the horse is a sure thing!” certain to embarrass him and anyone who believed in his candidacy if it came to light, before or after the election. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 