At one time or another, all of us have benefited from the inspiration of someone – a teacher, mentor – someone. John McCarthy, a friend and teacher based in Washington, D.C., inspires excellence in his students. “The Manny Burriss Story,” from May 2008, is but one example. USA TODAY – May 10, 2008 – Manny Burriss went 3-for-4 with a...

October is my time of the year for one reason – baseball playoffs followed by the World Series. The critical difference between baseball and politics: baseball is played according to specific rules, and when violations occur they usually get called on it. It’s also a game based on merit. Politics – well, you get the idea. In honor of America’s...

By now most of the world has heard about the heroic, Pakistani human rights activist – 14-years-old, no less – who stood up to the Taliban to encourage girls to get an education. After several threats, a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on October 9th hoping to silence the young advocate.  It didn’t work. In spite of a...

“There are no easy answers’,” Ronald Reagan used to say, “but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” There is moral right and moral righteousness. And there are far too many in Congress who act from the later and not enough of the former who are willing to stand up...

After the 1998 scandal that rocked his presidency, President Bill Clinton was not one of my favorite people. When Clinton cheated with intern Monica Lewinsky he cheated the rest of the country at a time when things were dramatically improving. When he left office, Clinton left the country with the first federal budget surplus in nearly 30 years. However, with much of...

Jack Welch is “one of America’s all-time great CEOs.” Jack Welch is “one of America’s all-time dumbest former CEOs.” Q: Which statement is true? A: Both. That first quote comes from CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper; the second from me. Last Friday (Oct. 5), the Department of Labor released its monthly unemployment report. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor...

Fifty years ago, I came to Mr. Freeman’s freshman Algebra class struggling to understand little x’s and y’s. The Cuban Missile Crisis came into all of our living rooms at a time when the term “Special Bulletin” meant something more significant than “Breaking News.” For thirteen days, two nations stood on the verge of nuclear war and while I was...

James Burke, the Johnson & Johnson CEO whose leadership during the early 80s Tylenol scare elevated ethics over profit, died last week. In giving a talk to a group in Boston, I emphasized his story as an example in ethical leadership that we need to see more of today. In 1982, when several poisonings had been linked to Tylenolcapsules, Johnson &  » Read more about: Integrity Matters...

Who knew the legendary star of screen and Republican conventions was into the great ethical conundrums of the universe! In the years that Dr. Sara Anson Vaux taught religion at Northwestern University, never once did she consider that underneath Clint Eastwood’s gruff veneer was… a gruffer layer, but… underneath that was the heart of “…an ethicist, a theologian even.” Vaux recently published a...

Some students today are getting so good at rationalizing it’s scary. “You could study for two hours and get an 80, or you could take a risk and get a 90.” “When it came to French class, where the teacher had literally taught me nothing all year, and during the final the students around me were openly discussing the answers,...