I wasn’t born when Jackie Robinson first stepped onto a major league baseball field on this day sixty-six years ago, breaking the color barrier. Growing up, for the most part, in Southern California, I was already accustomed to integration. It was a given. From the first moment I saw Chavez Ravine in 1962, I discovered a world where sunshine and...

First up: Senate to Debate Gun Legislation – On Wednesday I acknowledged six politically courageous GOP Senators who refused to go along with a proposed filibuster to prevent new gun legislation from being brought to the floor for a debate. We have two Senators to thank for that. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Penn.), “unveiled a bipartisan...

So, political courage does exist in Washington. After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) announced that he would be joining 13 other Republican Senators in a possible filibuster to prevent gun legislation from even making it to the floor for a discussion, yesterday afternoon six Republican Senators announced that they would not support their colleagues. Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Mark Kirk (Ill),...

Scandal or not? You decide. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened the front page of Saturday’s (Apr. 6) Wall Street Journal to learn that that noble organization, The Girl Scouts of America – an organization known for building “girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place,” is under siege from two states that collect taxes...

Tracee Hamilton gets it. The Washington Post columnist jumped ahead of me when she heard about the absurdly ethical lapses in actions and reasoning behind two recent college basketball stories. It was only eleven days ago when I wrote, “college and university presidents need to take a hard look in the mirror and consider just what’s important: winning-at-any-cost, or role-modeling a...

“He was the very, very first to come and apologize to me. For a private citizen to come along and say, ‘I’m the one that attacked you; I’m the one who beat you,’ it was very meaningful…. His story and the way he arrived at his position must be understood, must be told.” That was civil-rights leader and Georgia Representative John...

“Shame,” writes author Richard Reeves (Mar. 15) “is an essential ingredient of a healthy society, particularly a liberal one. It acts as a form of moral regulation, or social ‘nudge,’ encouraging good behavior while guarding individual freedom.” Just when I think that we’re going to politically correct ourselves off the cliff, along comes a breath of fresh air. Reeves asks, “Where and when shame...

Before Sheryl Sandberg there was Sister Mary Benedict. The other night, I settled back to watch an old (1945) classic and was surprised to discover a few ethical indiscretions. The Bells of St. Mary’s tells the story of kindly father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) who is sent to the run-down school of St. Mary’s in a town comprised of only fine,...

Who is Bobby Knight? He’s a legendary coach who ranks third in all-time wins for NCAA Division I men’s basketball. Take the word “wins” out of that description and what you really have is a world-class bully who has used his position as a college coach to badger, bully and demean his student players into winning. For Bobby Knight, winning...

Abraham Lincoln once said, “I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” Lincoln never encountered the remarkable certitude of former Vice-President Dick Cheney. In a new Showtime documentary by filmmaker R.J. Cutler, aptly titled The World According to Dick Cheney, the former vice-president confidently riffs about everything from fly fishing to “enhanced interrogation...