ethics

Florida, Facebook, and Teacher Conduct

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Two teachers are out of a job. Both share some responsibility for their fates. The question is how much, and whether their school districts over-reacted to their conduct.

The easier of the two tales, and by far the funnier, took place in Prairie Village, a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas.  A Mission Valley middle school teacher (make that ex-teacher) named Ryan Haraughty was drawing a map of the United States on the blackboard and drew Florida out of proportion. The extra-long, engorged Florida drew snickers from his teen age students, which Haraughty acknowledged by quipping, “Florida got excited.” Hilarity ensued. Continue reading →

Race, Eleven Bodies, and the Media’s Disgrace

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

They are finding decomposed bodies in the Cleveland home of  Anthony Sowell,  eleven lat last count. Police had visited the house before the discovery and noticed the smell, but never followed up, even though they knew the owner was a violent sex offender. No ethics controversies so far: the police were obviously careless and incompetent, and Sowell was, well, a serial killer. There are no ethical serial killers.

The ethics issue that screams to me in this story, however, is all about the women: all missing for months or years, all young, from poor families, and  black. Did you see any national media stories about them when they were missing persons and not abused corpses? I didn’t. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: the Rosewood School

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Rosewood Middle School in Goldsboro, North Carolina needs money, so it decided to sell the one thing that it knew parents and students would pay for.

Grades.  I’m not kidding. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“”Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be Kanye,” they sang. “Let them pick guitars and drive them old trucks, ’cause cowboys have manners,they don’t interrupt..”  

Country Music Award show hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood,  in a parody of the song, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” giving a much-deserved shot to rapper Kanye West for disrupting  Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV awards.  Swift also was  a big winner at the CMA’s, but West was nowhere to be seen.

Government Lawyer No-No’s

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, two Environmental Protection Agency attorneys based in California,  posted a YouTube video criticizing the Obama administration’s climate change policy, citing a Washington Post op-ed piece. When the EPA told them to either take down the video or edit out references to their work with the EPA, some organizations cried “censorship.” Continue reading →

Rep. Cao: Profile in Something or Other

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Wow. One lone House Republican voting for the reviled Democrat healthcare bill.  Talk about conscience! Talk about courage!

Well, maybe. The vote by Louisiana Republican  Anh “Joseph” Cao could have been a truly ethical act, or a completely  cynical one. The fact that it is almost impossible to tell which explains a lot about the funhouse mirror version of “ethics” in use of Capitol Hill.  Continue reading →

Ben Franklin’s Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Why do good people do bad things? Usually it’s because they aren’t thinking about good and bad at all. They are thinking about more immediate issues, like getting through the day, keeping a job, making a child happy, paying the bills, enduring a crisis. When good people—most of us, I believe–actually focus on doing the right thing, doing good, they tend to do it. The trick is  focusing, when emotions and basic human needs are so powerful. Continue reading →

The Death Penalty At Its Best

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Virginia executed the D.C. Sniper tonight, and I am not sorry. Apparently not very many others are either: in stark contrast to past executions, like that of Gary Gilmore, anti-death penalty protests regarding the execution of John Muhammad have been minimal.

A responsible society is obligated to have a death penalty to set an appropriate upper limit for state imposed punishment. Without such a ceiling, the punishment for every other crime must be ratcheted down, and this tends to lower the penalty for capital crimes as well. The Lockerbie Bomber would never have been released after a short prison term in the U.S., as he was by Scotland; in all likelihood, he would have been executed. As with Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, and Muhammad, it would have been a case of the punishment fitting the crime. Continue reading →

Finally, a Backlash Against Lip-syncing

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Audiences at Britney Spears’ “Circus” concert are complaining that the singer is lip-syncing all of her songs, and not dancing energetically or well enough to justify it.

Good!

Continue reading →