Pennsylvania

Dear Former Rep. Dahlkemper: Oh, Shut Up!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Actually, this is just a cartoon of the former Congresswoman from Erie, but then a Toon could have cast a vote for a bill without reading it too.

Former Democratic congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, a Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, voted for the health care mega-law in 2010. Now she says she would have never voted for the  bill had she known that the Department of Health and Human Services would require all private insurers, including Catholic charities and hospitals, to provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and the “week-after” pill .

In a press release sent out while the HHS ruling was still pending, the pro-life Dahlkemper said,

“I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,. We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage.”

To which I reply, “Oh, shut up!” Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Professional Misconduct!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

 

"Ed, you have to stop blaming yourself...you did nothing wrong!"

Dr. Thomas Wilson is accused of breaching professional ethical standards by having sexual relations with a patient while the doctor was still a student in Oklahoma. Normally a student’s misconduct would not result in sanctions almost two years later, after graduation and certification, but, you see, Wilson is a veterinarian, and his patient at the time of their illicit relationship was a horse.

The good doctor, who now practices at an animal hospital in Pennsylvania, is charged in Oklahoma with a “crime against nature,” but the ethical aspects of what he did go far beyond that. It is a breach of the trust with a patient incapable of  informed consent.  It is an abuse of power. It is animal cruelty. It is really, really, icky.

Are there such things as registered animal-sex offenders? I certainly hope so. Dr. Wilson should not be allowed within 100 yards of a race track, a rodeo, a farm, the Central Park carriages, or the set of AMC’s “Hell on Wheels.” The idea that he will be able to just pay a fine, go to some therapy sessions, and then blithely return to his equine practice without having to tell Mr. Ed’s owner that be has a record of horse-rape is unthinkable. Please tell me, Pennsylvania, that some kind of law protects your horses against sexual predators in sheep’s clothing?

[Thanks, I think, to Drew Curtis’s Fark for the link]

Ethics Quiz: Which Musical Comedy Censor is More Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

How could anyone predict that this show would be risque?

Rick Jones brought these sorry tales to my attention, and they are perfectly suited to an Ethics Quiz.

Your challenge: Explain which of the censors in these two incidents was more unethical.

Censor A: The mayor of Carrollton, Georgia, Wayne Garner, who ruled last week that a city-funded professional production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was not suited for a community production. The city council had contracted with a theater group of actors, singers, dancers, musicians and crew, and had committed $2,500 of taxpayer funds in up-front production costs to prepare for four performances in October. The mayor’s spokesperson said that the production was going to contain racy choreography,despite the fact that it was supposed to be a “PG show.”

How a counter-culture musical specifically about gender bending, kinky sex and transvestites was supposed to be “PG” is anybody’s guess.

Censor B: Thomas Fleming, Superintendent of Schools in the Richland School District in western Pennsylvania.   He prompted District officials to veto the high school’s choice of the classic 1950s Broadway musical Kismet as a 2012 production, because it suddenly occurred to him that the characters in the play, which takes place in old Baghdad, are Muslims. Continue reading →

Judicial Non-Ethics, Pennsylvania Division: Now THAT’S a Conflict of Interest!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The judge apparently found the meter to be in contempt of court.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania District Judge Kelly Ballentine dismissed several of her own parking tickets and an expired registration ticket within the past year, according to court records.

“According to the state Judicial Conduct Board’s rules, district judges should disqualify themselves in proceedings where they are a party,” notes the news report.

Yes, I rather think that’s a good idea, don’t you?

It appears that Judge Balentine’s colleagues understand this not-so-fine point of conflict of interest principles and basic ethics: a check of court records with regard to all of the county’s district judges revealed that those who had parking or traffic tickets had another magisterial judge handle their cases at the district court level. Sometimes we hear objections to court proceedings in which a judge over-stepped his or her proper role and became de facto “judge, jury, and prosecutor.” A judge serving as judge, defendant and defense attorney, however, is much, much worse. Continue reading →

The Sex and Werewolf-Obsessed Novelist (But NOT Naked!) Teacher Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Could YOUR English teacher have written this?

Mild-mannered  Judy Buranich has taught high school English in Pennsylvania’s Midd-West School District for 33 years, always with the accolades of parents and students. Until recently, however, she had successfully kept a very different second occupation secret: under the pen name “Judy Mays,” she has forged a niche in the genre novel field, writing erotic fantasy suspense tales about lusty women who are typically involved in complex love-triangles where one or more participants are outer space aliens, vampires, or especially werewolves. On the Judy Mays website, a synopsis of her latest novel, “Undercover Heat,” reports:

“Melody Gray has a dilemma, two of them really. First, a CIA agent name Nick Price has appeared at her detective agency looking for a former client of hers named Jake Fields….What Nick isn’t telling Melody is that he’s really searching for Jake because his superior believes he’s a werewolf, not that Nick believes in them….What Melody isn’t telling Nick is that Jake Hurley is really Garth Gray, her brother.  She knows exactly why Nick Price is hunting her brother.  After all, Garth is really a werewolf.  So is Melody for that matter…. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Thank God we're not in AFRICA...

Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA), talking to the Scranton Times-Tribune this week, criticized the Obama administration’s actions in Libya.

“Where does it stop?” he said. “Do we go into Africa next? I don’t want to sound callous or cold, but this could go on indefinitely around the world.”

Marino is still a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as the House subcommittee on African foreign policy.

Libya, meanwhile, is still in Africa.

Guest Commentary: “When Children Work; A Dialogue”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

By Paul Petersen

[Paul Petersen is the founder and president of A Minor Consideration, a non-profit advocacy group that seeks to protect the welfare of juvenile performers. Mr. Petersen was a prominent child star himself, most famously as “Jeff Stone” on the long-running TV comedy, “The Donna Reed Show.” The following commentary, also posted on his website, is inspired by the hearings this week on proposed child labor legislation in Pennsylvania, where “Jon & Kate Plus 8” was filmed. The legislation proposed  by State Representative Tom Murt defines reality television and would require all minors to have work permits issued by the state Department of Labor and Industry to ensure all adequate provisions have been made for the minor’s educational instruction, supervision, health and welfare. The bill also provides that minors can only work between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., and sets guidelines for the amount of hours, work, recreation, school and activities per day. A certified teacher would be required on the set of any production to monitor working conditions, and the bill would require 15 % of a child actor’s gross earning be set aside by the employer in a trust.]

Imagine if your boss unilaterally declared that your time spent in a commercial workplace wasn’t work at all but merely “participation.” That might be said of the drug store cat, or a barnyard animal, but to say that about a living, breathing, conscious human being passes all understanding. Yet that is precisely the position taken by reality show Producers and the Networks that broadcast commercial products called “reality shows” that feature children. Continue reading →

The Ethically Obtuse Bauer Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

According to both the Washington Post and the New York Times, the memo from White House Counsel Robert F. Bauer shows that the Sestak/Clinton/White House scandal is nothing to waste time over. Or, as the Times puts it today’s Ethics Dunce-worthy editorial,* “nothing terribly unethical” happened.

I see. Our standards for the ethical conduct of our President and his staff isn’t that they should behave ethically, but that they shouldn’t be terribly unethical.  Certainly that is the attitude conveyed by the Bauer memo, which is unconvincing legally and appears to be written by someone who never heard of the concept “ethical.” Continue reading →

What’s Wrong About the Sestak Caper

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Sestak-White House “Please Force Pennsylvanians to Keep Arlen Specter as Senator” story has officially cracked wide open, and reports are coming out fast and furious while the White House is spinning faster than Kristi Yamaguchi on speed. It began with Rep. Sestak making himself look determined and incorruptible by telling a radio talk show host on the air that the White House had promised him a plum job if he didn’t challenge Specter in the primary. Once Sesatk won, Rep. Issa of the Republican Truth Squad began demanding that Sestak reveal who made the offer, since it would be a Federal crime (as Sestak had described it) and another Federal law requires Sestak to report Federal crimes committed by government employees. The details will be clarified, corrected and spun some more over the next few days, but the following is clear: Continue reading →

Rep. Sestak and That White House Bribe…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Can anyone remember another series of elections in which the winners found themselves in so much ethical hot water so quickly? First we have a U.S. Senate convention nominee in Connecticut (Blumenthal wasn’t really elected, just chosen by delegates) revealed having misrepresented his military record multiple times. Then the victorious Republican Senate nominee in Kentucky goes on TV and radio to prove that he cares more about being true to what the New York Times calls “textbook libertarianism” than its real world human and societal costs. Now Rep. Joe Sestak is being caught in an ethical quandary. Is he going to finger members of Obama’s White House, cover up a Federal crime, or admit he was lying? Continue reading →