Rick Santorum explained today why he didn’t challenge the woman who, at a Santorum town hall yesterday, pronounced President Obama a foreigner and a Muslim.

“I’ve said repeatedly that President Obama is not a Muslim and he’s qualified. It’s not my responsibility to defend the President. I’m not here to defend the President against scurrilous attacks. It’s not my job, it’s yours [referring to the media]. It’s your responsibility to defend the president, not mine. When the media and others say lies about me and call me names and do things … it’s OK and, in fact, it’s promoted and encouraged and made fun of when we do it. Stop it.”

Santorum was being questioned on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program by political writer John Heilemann, who then pointed out that John McCain had responded honorably in a similar episode during the 2008 campaign. Santorum responded indignantly.

“It’s very clear. I am not John McCain. I’ve never been like John McCain. I’m not running as a candidate who’s anything like John McCain.”

Amen.

Rick Santorum is no John McCain. I can’t imagine the right word for Santorum—spineless? craven? sleazy? When a woman at a McCain rally in 2008 started to go off on Obama, saying,

“I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s, uh . . ., he’s an Arab.”

 McCain shook his head and scolded her

“No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”

McCain’s rejoinder drew some boos and “C’mon, John” from the crowd, but McCain had done the ethical thing.

Today at a Santorum town hall in Florida one of his fans raised her hand in the Q&A period:

“I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not.”

Laughter and cheers from the crowd, and a smile from the candidate. The woman went on.

“He constantly says that our Constitution is passé and he totally ignores it. He does what he damn well pleases. He’s an avowed Muslim.”

Applause from the crowd, a continued smile from Santorum. She got to her question:

“Why isn’t something being done to get him out of our government? He has no legal right to be calling himself President.”

Did Santorum give her a lesson on citizenship and civility? You judge—here’s his answer:

“Well, yeah! I’m doing my best to try to get him out of there.”

I guess we shouldn’t expect honorable behavior from someone who has compared homosexuality to man-on-child or man-on-dog sex.

Luis Luna, 20, was an illegal immigrant, smuggled here from Mexico at 3. The LA Times tells his story. Luis did well in school, graduated, got engaged to his high school sweetheart, got a job, then got pulled over while on the way to work for a broken headlight. He had no driver’s license, Immigration was called in, and Luis was deported to Mexico.

He tried to get back by riding the undercarriage of a boxcar, scant inches above the train roadbed, until the train stopped at a U.S. border checkpoint, where a German Shepherd sniffed him out, sank his teeth into Luis’s ribcage, and dragged him out. Luis is now homeless in Nogales, hoping to find a way legally to return to his girlfriend-now-wife, his family, friends, and the only life he’s ever known.

Luis’s tragedy could have been precluded under the Dream Act, which would provide temporary residency and a possible path to citizenship to Luis and hundreds of thousands like him who were brought here as small children and have played by the rules ever since.

President Obama supports the Dream Act, which passed the House last year but failed to get the 60 votes needed to avert a filibuster in the Senate. Mitt Romney says he would veto it, Newt Gingrich says he supports it—a principled position that is costing him dearly with Republican primary voters.

Sometimes when a politician says something stupid it’s just something stupid. But Rick Perry’s remarks at last night’s Republican debate are fifteen yards beyond stupid. They’re dangerous and unethical.

Unethical because a Presidential candidate should know something before he maligns an American ally—or anyone, come to think of it. Thoughtless or ignorant words damage America’s power in the world

Debate moderator Bret Baier asked Perry whether he thought Turkey should continue to be part of NATO.

Perry jumped in by calling Turkey’s leaders “Islamic terrorists.”

“Well, obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then yes, not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it.”

Perry further promised to send a message to “countries like Iran and Syria and Turkey” that the United States is serious and will have to be dealt with.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that the Foreign Ministry condemned Perry’s remarks.

The current Turkish government deserves criticism in a number of areas (Stay tuned!), but to call them terrorists or to link them to Iran and Syria is wildly wrong and does America no good. Neither does Gov. Perry, or the people who even imagine him as President. The only mitigating factor is the breathtaking ignorance the governor of America’s second largest state showed.

Perry is standing by his stupidity.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It’s been a holiday in all fifty states only since 2000, when Utah finally adopted it. MLK was a hero, and the holiday dedicated to him is a good time to reflect on his life and on the meaning—and especially the limits—of being a hero.

If we venerate some of our Presidents for their accomplishments, then we surely should venerate King. He arguably did more to make America a better nation than anyone since Lincoln. He dreamt that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

America is not that nation yet—not quite—but we’ve progressed awfully close to it since King’s 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial. And the progress has been largely inspired by King. His insistence on non-violence sealed the commitment of African-Americans to it, and his description of what justice meant captured the conscience and then the heart of much of white America.

Yet when his birthday was first proposed as a national holiday in 1979—just eleven years after his death—it was so controversial that it failed to win a majority vote in the House of Representatives, and it took another twenty-one years for the fiftieth state to recognize it. Many reasons have been cited for the resistance, but surely a major reason is doubts about King’s character.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a communist and an adulterer and a threat to our democracy. He was an adulterer, a strong and bitter opponent of the war in Vietnam, and an advocate for a vision of economic justice that many thought was a rejection of American capitalism. John McCain for one was a bitter opponent of a holiday honoring King.

Those who opposed a King holiday said America honors heroes,  and King was no hero. But they were wrong. They had a flawed view of what heroism means. Jack Marshall explains, in his EthicsAlarms.com blog, why flawed people like Thomas Jefferson, Babe Ruth, and JFK

were still heroes; they just weren’t heroes all the time, in every aspect of their lives. The Greeks knew it and Shakespeare knew it: nobody’s perfect. That doesn’t mean that we can’t admire the best of someone’s accomplishments and conduct. We can. We should.

King is a hero for his leadership of the non-violent struggle that dramatically expanded civil rights in America, and we should revere him for that, with no need to diminish his accomplishments by dwelling excessively on his human flaws.

He described his dream in his Lincoln Memorial speech:

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

On Martin Luther King , Jr Day we should reflect on King’s dream, and on the distance we still have to travel to make it reality.

Millions of Americans, especially on the Left, are scornful of the ruling of the Supreme Court in 2010 regarding Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In that ruling the Court overturned the provision of McCain-Feingold barring corporations and unions from paying for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns.

The ruling opened the door to unlimited expenditures by corporations and unions on behalf of candidates for office. It’s opened the floodgates to anonymous negative ads, and the Left is in high dudgeon.They have mischaracterized the Court’s ruling as “corporations are people and have the rights of people.” This piece of fiction has been enshrined in the dogma of the Left by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Rachel Maddow.

What nonsense!

As much as one may hate the result of the Court’s ruling, one can’t get beyond the Court’s reasoning: The First Amendment to the Constitution is pretty straightforward:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In a 1959 ruling, Justice Hugo Black wrote, concurring with an opinion that overturned an obscenity conviction, that the First Amendment leaves no room for evasion:

That Amendment provides, in simple words, that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” I read “no law . . . abridging” to mean no law abridging.

The Roberts Court reached the same unavoidable conclusion in 2010. Not because they’re conservative, but because that’s what our Bill of Rights demands. Four Justices disagreed because of the likely pernicious effect on our politics. I too decry the effect of Citizens United. But that’s the Constitution that all our government officials are sworn to defend.

Americans may amend it but we may not ignore it.

There were 112 Ethics Bob  posts in 2011, and 14,000 page views. Here are my ten favorites:

• Ex-Auburn Prof Jim Gundlach gets a mythical Sam Goldwyn award* for speaking truth to power—to Auburn football http://goo.gl/x3ro4
• Turks trust strangers, and the trust is repaid http://goo.gl/4UBW6
• Drew Brees: ethics hero and football hero. He lives by “If not me, who? http://goo.gl/RMzsV
• Tim Pawlenty announces for President, grabs third rail of Iowa politics, earns mythical Edmund Burke Award. http://goo.gl/yBdXS
• Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) defends Muslim judge Sohail Mohammed, calls opponents “crazies.” Hooray for an ethics hero http://goo.gl/KtCCQ
• Three cheers for Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and Byron York of Fox News, and for Rachel Maddow of MSNBC http://goo.gl/gsXAx
• Ethics: I’m giving it away http://goo.gl/Rl1jB
• LSU Tigers Coach Les Miles gets a mythical Chip Kelly Award* for suspending three stars for the big game with Auburn http://goo.gl/rjns5
• Report from Zuccotti Park, and what’s next for Occupy Wall Street http://goo.gl/Sk5sV
• Rose Bowl, BCS Bowl, Ethics Bowl http://goo.gl/MxGYu
• The lesson from Penn State http://goo.gl/Tnn03

Israelis staged a massive rally Thursday to protest the assault by ultra-religious Haredim on eight-year-old Naama Margolese, and she was welcomed back to school after the Hanukah break by the Education Minister and several members of parliament. Good.

Meanwhile 15 miles away in Jerusalem more Haredim were practicing their religion, threatening and shouting “Prostitute!” at Doron Matalon, a female Israeli soldier who refused to move to the back of the bus.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted the soldier: “This isn’t the first time this has happened, I just asked for help this time,” Matalon said, adding that she had experienced “worse incidents on this line,” including one in which she was shoved off the bus when her stop arrived.”

Who would spit and curse at a second grader and call her a whore? Haredim, that’s who. The Haredim are considered the extreme of orthodox Jews, although they reject the label: to them they are just “Jews,” everybody else is not. In the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, some Haredim spat and cursed at second grader Naama Margolese (pictured here with her mother), and called her a whore for dressing immodestly. Since the assault Naama.is afraid to walk to her religious school, even when her mother is with her, holding her hand.

“When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting. They were scary. They don’t want us to go to the school.”

But that’s okay, “Moshe,” a Haredi explained to Israeli TV:

“To spit on a girl who does not act according to the law of the Torah is okay. Even at a seven year old. There are rabbis who empower us to know how to walk in the street and how a woman should act.”

To the Haredim women and little girls are unclean, not to be touched or seen, except when they are covered up. Burqas would be fine. Women soldiers are an abomination, not to be heard. And Arabs? Even lower than women: they should be expelled from Israel as well as from greater Israel, which God gave to the true Jews.

Tragically for Israel and its admirers and allies, the Haredim are the tail that wags the dog of Israeli politics. They are part of the governing coalition and control the Foreign Ministry, among other major posts.

The ugliness of the Haredim at Beit Shemesh may well have a good outcome. Thousands of people were expected at tonight’s demonstration against the Haredim excesses. Israeli President Shimon Peres urged the public to attend, saying.

“All of us must defend the image of the state of Israel from a minority that is destroying national solidarity and expressing itself in an infuriating way.”

But in Israel the president is a largely ceremonial position. The power is with the Prime Minister, and PM Bibi Netanyahu has shown little inclination to oppose the extremists. And as long as they are allowed to run wild and make up their own laws and say God told them to, Israel’s future as a Jewish democracy is at risk.

“It is clear that Israeli society is faced with a challenge that I am not sure it can handle,” said professor emeritus Menachem Friedman of Bar Ilan University, considered an expert on the ultra-Orthodox, “a challenge that is no less and no more than an existential challenge.”

(Much of the detail for this piece was reported by the Associated Press)

It’s much more satisfying to point out somebody else’s sins than own up to our own. Thus a year ago the US House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a non-binding resolution calling on US policy and President Barack Obama to refer formally to the World War I mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a “genocide.” No need to bother about American treatment of native Americans or of enslaved black Africans. The bill never went further, as sensible heads prevailed.

But Russia, France, and a dozen other nations have labeled the mass killing of Armenians a genocide. It’s more comfortable to fling the label at Turkey than to consider, for example France’s war on Algerians or Russia’s slaughter of Jews, Ukrainians, Chechnians, and even Russian serfs. And it plays well with ethnic Armenian voters in the Armenian diaspora, who outnumber actual Armenians by three to one.

Now the lower house of the French parliament has voted to make it a crime, punishable by one-year imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros ($60,000), to deny the so-called “Armenian genocide.” The French Senate is likely to take up the bill next year.

Israel too is getting into the act, now that its relations with Turkey have chilled. The Israeli Parliament just today held its first public debate on whether to declare Turkey guilty of genocide. (Actually the killings were perpetrated under the Ottoman Empire in 1915, prior to the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.) The Israeli National Security Council is trying to stop the Parliament from debating the issue in hopes that ties with Turkey can still be salvaged.

An ethicist who is also a Turkophile is conflicted. Was it genocide? This Fourth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide as “the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.” Armenian-Americans say yes, passionately. Some Turks agree, although the Turkish government’s position rejects just about every word of the definition: not systematic, not planned, not extermination, and not entire.

The Turkish government’s position is compromised, however, by its reluctance to open its archives and to permit open debate in Turkey.

So I can’t say—any more than the legislative bodies of the US, France, Israel, or Russia—whether or not it was genocide. I turn to a foreign policy expert and a respected ethicist.

The foreign policy expert is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser, who said,

I never realized that the House of Representatives was some sort of an academy of learning that passes judgment on historical events. History’s full of terrible crimes, and there is no doubt that many Armenians were massacred in World War I. But whether the House of Representatives should be passing resolutions whether that should be classified as genocide or a huge massacre is I don’t think any of its business. It has nothing to do with passing laws, how to run the United States. That’s where the constitution created the House of Representatives for.

And the ethicist is Jesus. His advice is in John, Chapter 8:

8:3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
8:4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
8:5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
8:7 [Jesus] lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
8:9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
8:10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
8:11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

So let the legislatures pass laws to govern their own countries. And let him that is without sin first cast a stone