Charles Hood has been on Death Row in Texas since 1990, when he was convicted of murder in the shootings of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace at Williamson’s home in Plano, Tx. Hood had worked for Williamson and was living in his home. There was plenty of convincing evidence that Hood committed the murders; his defense was essentially based on mitigating circumstances. Nonetheless, it was by any logical and ethical standards, an outrageously unfair trial. Why? In a scenario that would have been laughed out of a “Law and Order” writers’ conference, the trial judge, Verla Sue Holland was sleeping the prosecutor, county district attorney Tom O’Connell. Continue reading
ethics
Rush vs. Clinton: Who’s Right?
Former President Bill Clinton has sounded an alarm he has sounded before, warning that the intensity of the rhetoric on conservative radio emboldens fringe radicals to violence. As he did in 1995, when he was in the White House, Clinton lays the Oklahoma City bombing at the feet of big-government critics, a strategy that then managed to halt the momentum of Republicans in their assault on Democratic policies. Also as in 1995, King of the Radio Right Rush Limbaugh has countered that Clinton is using revisionist history to avoid his administration’s own responsibility for Timothy McVeigh’s attack, which wasn’t timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Branch Davidian massacre by accident. Limbaugh’s argument that the conduct of Federal agents in Waco (as well as Ruby Ridge) had a lot more to do with McVeigh’s anger than anything he heard on talk radio is persuasive on the merits.
Nevertheless, Clinton’s general point that talk radio is playing with fire is a legitimate one. Continue reading
Progress, with a dash of…WHAT???
Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of its new cook book, Pasta Bible, last week,when it was discovered that the recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto called for “salt and freshly ground black people.” (“It’s a cook book!!!!!“—“To Serve Man,” The Twilight Zone)
Guess what it was supposed to say. That’s right. Continue reading
Ethics, Unfairness and the Palin Problem
Is it worse for an elected official, leader, public figure or opinion-maker to be dishonest, irresponsible, or stupid? Fortunately, any of three should disqualify an individual for power or influence, so answering the question is not essential. This too is fortunate, because it is sometimes impossible to determine which disqualifying characteristic is on display.
Take, for example, Sarah Palin’s recent comments, made to a religious gathering in Kentucky, that…
“Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our Founding Fathers, they were believers.” Continue reading
No More Presumption of Good Will For Unethical Prosecutors
The horrible Duke lacrosse team rape prosecution in 2006 had one very bright silver lining. It finally forced the majority of Americans to accept that prosecutors are as capable of being unethical as any other attorney, and that because their misdeeds carry the extra weight of government power, prosecutorial misconduct must be exposed and condemned.
Thus it is a relief that the recent blatant abuse of power by Commonwealth of Virginia Attorney Martha Garst is being roundly attacked. Continue reading
The Hannity-Fox-Tea Party Connection
When you don’t stop something that is obviously unethical until people start screaming and pointing fingers, the reasonable presumption is that it wasn’t the fact that it was unethical that made you take action, but that you were going to be criticized for it. Thus Fox honcho Rupert Murdoch’s last-second cancellation of Sean Hannity’s appearance at a Tea Party event get no ethics brownie points—in fact, quite the contrary. Continue reading
On Obvious Lies and Sen. McCain
I have long been fascinated by the self-evident public lie. Sometimes the product of desperation, sometimes arrogance, sometimes contempt, each example poses a set of equally unattractive interpretations. Does the liar really believe the obvious lie is true, in which case he or she is deranged? Does the liar think that enough people will believe something so demonstrably false, meaning that he or she holds a deplorable lack of respect for the intelligence of the public? Is the liar so fearful and cowardly that he or she cannot summon the integrity to admit what is obvious, even though doing otherwise looks ridiculous? Or, as is surprisingly often the case, does the liar have so little regard for the truth and such a deficit of shame for lying that he or she doesn’t care that the lie is obvious?
When elected officials and others holding high office resort to the obvious lie in a matter of any importance, it should disqualify them from continuing in office. An obvious lie obliterates public trust. For example, when Janet Napolitano had the gall to pronounce department’s anti-terror airplane security measures a success because, be sheer luck, passengers foiled the so-called “Underwear Bomber,” she forfeited any future trust in her honesty of competence. (She is still Secretary of Homeland Security, however.)
The excuse sometimes offered by obvious liars after the fact is an ethics “Catch 22.” They argue that an obvious lie is a harmless lie, because nobody could possibly believe it. (Over on “The Ethics Scoreboard,” a spectacular version of this argument launched the continuing feature of “The David Manning Liar of the Month,” after Sony tried to justify its use of a fictional movie critic, “David Manning,” to attach glowing—but fake— blurbs to lousy films, like the Rob Schneider comedy “The Animal.” When its deception came to light, Sony protested its practice was harmless because nobody believed critical praise in movie ads anyway.) The defense conveniently ignores the question of why anyone would offer a lie they didn’t expect anyone to believe. It is really a consequentialist scam: if I try an outrageous lie and it works, great; if it doesn’t, then it wasn’t a lie.
What do we make, then, of Sen. John McCain’s stunning claim in a recent Newsweek interview that “I never considered myself a maverick” ? Continue reading
Is Immortality Unethical?
When a writer posits an intriguing theory and then fails to support it credibly, there are only a few alternate conclusions the reader can reach. One is that it is a viable theory, but the advocate didn’t have the skills to explain it. Another is that it is a mistaken theory, and the advocate is wrong. A third is that the failure of the writer to make a case for his theory shows how wrong it is.
A recent article in The Guardian is in the last category, I suspect. It is an argument so inadequate and dominated by flaccid rationalizations that it nearly disproves the proposition it is supposedly defending. The thesis: “Immortality isn’t unethical.” Continue reading
Leonard Sedden, Dying for an Ethics Hero—Or a Caring Human Being
In Philadelphia, a Metro Bus driver called her supervisors…
Driver: I have a passenger that’s not responding to me…It looks as though he had peed on himself and he had drooled a lot. I can’t get any actual response.
Control: Just come on down the street, the supervisor will pick you up on the line and give you some assistance.
Driver: OK, so just leave him on the bus and pickup passengers when I leave on 4:18?
Control: That’s correct. I don’t want to delay service. The supervisor will assist you on the line so we don’t delay service for the passengers.
A bit later, the Driver called in again… Continue reading
Obama’s Coal Mine Tragedy Verdict=Abuse of Power
There are two disturbing implications of President Obama’s premature condemnation of Massey Energy for the recent tragedy at its Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where an explosion killed 29 miners on April 5. The first is that the President appears to have a flat learning curve, as this repeats his error in the Professor Gates fiasco in Cambridge, Mass, in which Obama condemned the conduct of a Cambridge police officer without getting all the facts. The second is that for a former law professor, Obama has a rather loose grasp on the concept of Due Process. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 