What’s fair treatment mean? Treat everybody the same or treat everybody special? Read Mick’s and my latest column for Governing.Read The Ethics Challenge: Strengthening Your Integrity in a Greedy World
Until 1993 homosexuals were banned from the U.S. military, and military investigators worked hard to search out and discharge closet gays and lesbians. Then in 1993 Congress passed the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law (aka DADT) to prevent President Clinton from opening the military to gays and lesbians.
The law frees the military from the obligation to search out and discharge homosexuals (“Don’t ask”), while prohibiting service members from disclosing their homosexuality (“Don’t tell”).
Now the Obama administration has set out to do away with DADT, and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly. The Secretary of Defense has started a year long study into how to best implement the change. America’s military leadership recently testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. (more…)
In the Broadway classic Guys and Dolls Chicago gangster Big Jule loses a bet to Sky Masterson and as a result becomes a recalcitrant participant in a prayer meeting at the Save-a-Soul Mission. When called on to “testify,” i.e., confess his sins, Big Jule says,
“Well, I used to be bad when I was a kid, but ever since then I’ve gone straight, as has been proved by my record: Thirty-three arrests and no convictions!”
That’s the Big Jule ethics standard.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has apparently adopted the Big Jule ethics standard. She’s behaving differently from the person she claimed to be when she promised to “drain the swamp” (more…)
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has rescinded ex-Gov. Tim Kaine’s order protecting gay state workers from job discrimination. This discrimination seems reasonable to people who believe that the Bible is the word of God, because the Bible says that male homosexuality is “abomination,” for which the penalty is to be “cut off from among their people.” (Leviticus 18:22 and 29).
A letter to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who has in the past expressed similar views about homosexuality, has gone viral on the web. Although the letter—author unknown—has been around for at least ten years, and may never actually have been sent to Dr. Laura, its reasoning is worth thinking about, especially in view of Gov. McDonnell’s action and the battles about same-sex marriage. The biblical references in the letter are accurate.
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination… End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, (more…)
Michael Smerconish is the Philadelphia area’s top talk-show host, and a frequent guest host for Bill O’Reilly on his nationally syndicated Radio Factor. Smerconish has been a Republican all his adult life, including a stint as assistant secretary of HUD under Bush I.
He’s had enough. He’s decided to leave a party that he describes as exclusionist and dominated by the religious right, with no room or tolerance for long-standing moderates. He’s no Democrat, either,
He describes why he decided to leave the party on the Huffington Post. Recommended reading for Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike.
Read The Ethics Challenge: Strengthening Your Integrity in a Greedy World
More shockingly blatantly unethical advice from the New York Times “The Ethicist” column. Jack Marshall exposes “The Ethicist” again in his “Ethics Alarms” blog.
Recommended reading, especially if you’re a fan of the New York Times
Sunday, time for poetry. From Irish poet William Butler Yeats(1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
…Things fall apart; the
centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide
is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is drowned;
The best lack all
conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate
intensity…
We’ve written here about the destructive effect of gerrymandering in California, where every legislative seat is safe for the incumbent party: challenge can only come from within the incumbent’s own party. What’s true in California is true for the nation. The respected Cook Political Report sets the number of competitive seats at 50 out of a total of 435. The other 385 members are immune from an attack from the opposite party. Republicans need only appeal to the extreme right to get another term, while Democrats need only appeal to the extreme left.
As a result, “the people’s business is not being done,” to quote retiring Senator Evan Bayh. Our representatives in Washington are failing us, not only politically, but ethically as well. They promised to carry out the people’s business, but they are choosing to look first to their own job security. Non-partisan redrawing of district boundaries, as in Iowa and as proposed for California, would solve the problem, but that’s a long way off.
But in the meantime was Yeats right? Can the center hold? Not as long as the best lack all conviction. If you’re in the center you need a large dose of passionate intensity. And so do our centrist politicians—especially those in “safe” seats. And our President.
Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) shocked the political world Monday by announcing that he is stepping down rather than serve a third term in the Senate, even though he would be practically certain of reelection. Bayh said that while he loved his quarter century of public service he didn’t love the Senate—not any longer.
“Congress is not operating as it should. There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the peoples’ business is not being done.”
Bayh told the truth, I thought. Who could disagree when even a Republican plan for a bipartisan commission to deal with our alarming deficits was scuttled by seven of its Republican sponsors just as soon as President Obama announced his support. Maybe Bayh’s action would spark some change.
Not so fast. In separate interviews with Anderson Cooper Tuesday, both Congressman-Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), darling of the conservative right, and television host-social critic-political commentator Bill Maher, darling of the progressive left, disagreed.
They both told Cooper that the problem with Washington, and with American government, was too much compromise, not too little. That what America needs is more principled progressives/conservatives (take your pick) like them to prevent the conservatives/progressives (take your pick) from continuing to lead America down the path to destruction.
As long as people follow “principled” thought leaders like Paul and Maher Bayh’s gloomy analysis will stand: the people’s business will not be done. Ethics calls for people to do the work they’re hired to do, for our legislators to do the people’s business. They’re failing colossally.
Read The Ethics Challenge: Strengthening Your Integrity in a Greedy World
The Los Angeles Times reports that California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and “more than a dozen Congressional Democrats” have donated $160,000 to a campaign for a voter initiative to overturn Proposition 11. That’s the 2008 initiative that gave a nonpartisan commission the power to set state legislative district boundaries.
Up to now California legislators have designed their own districts (like the California 38th congressional district shown above) to maximize their job security. In effect they choose their voters, instead of the voters choosing their legislators. Result: In California in 2008, every incumbent running for reelection won—51 congressmen, 9 state senators, and 52 assemblymen. And only nine seats have changed parties in 648 California legislative and congressional races in the last four election cycles (2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008) combined. Or looking at it like a betting person, the incumbent party has a 981/2 percent chance of holding on to each seat. Stalin and Mao would have been impressed.
The current system ensures dysfunctional politics. Legislators get a free ride in general elections. They need only win in their primary. So the Democrats appeal to the far left, the Republicans to the far right, and they all get reelected. The vast majority of voters and the non-voters? They get bad government.
The people mustered a 51-49 majority to fix the system with Prop. 11. The politicians are clawing back for their own selfish interests.
Shame on them.
Read The Ethics Challenge: Strengthening Your Integrity in a Greedy World
FoxNews.com headline: Liz Cheney: Biden, Obama Administration Ignoring Al Qaeda Pursuit of WMD.
Fox reports that Cheney “accused Vice President Biden of downplaying the threat from Al Qaeda and suggested the Obama administration isn’t doing everything in its power to stop terror.” Their report quotes Cheney: “Al Qaeda is working very hard to try to obtain weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda armed with any nuclear or biological weapon is clearly one of the gravest threats we face…The notion that this White House and this administration is minimizing that possibility makes you very concerned, I think has to make us very concerned about whether or not they are doing everything in their power to prevent it.”
Huh? Where’s she been for the last few years?
Obama has long stated that the number one threat to our security is the possibility of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. As recently as his speech on Afghanistan on December 1, 2009 he stated that, “we know that al-Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.”
She’s not a recluse or a dummy: it’s hard to conclude that she’s anything but a pants-on-fire liar. Worse, she’s strengthening Al Qaeda’s efforts to sow terror in the Western world.
Ethics Bob 