Recent Accountability Commentaries

Featured image for “I’ll take ‘Best Penalties’ For $1,000, Alex”
I’ll take ‘Best Penalties’ For $1,000, Alex
While the incredible streak by Jeopardy! champ James Holzhauer has come to an end, one issue remains unresolved. Jeopardy’s streak of integrity, intact for decades, was crushed Sunday evening when some bonehead revealed Monday’s winner on social media. As regulars familiar with the show know, Jeopardy! is taped weeks in advance, and contestants must sign an agreement whereby they are...
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June 5, 2019
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Mitch McConnell: Pillar of ‘Principle’
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has always excelled at partisanship, but his most recent remark should clinch his enshrinement in the hypocrites hall of fame. Ensconced in the safety of Paducah, Kentucky where the welcoming waters of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers meet, the Senate Majority leader was asked a question at a town hall meeting; a question that delighted and...
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June 3, 2019
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Fish Story
I’ve written ethics-related stories regarding baseball, football, golf and tennis. But this story fished me in! When Lincoln, North Dakota resident Tom Volk dropped his line in the Heart River on Easter Sunday, God must’ve been smiling down on the 41-year-old fisherman as he reeled in a 16-pound, 9-ounce walleye, crushing a state record set last year. “Volk caught the...
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May 31, 2019
Featured image for “That Night in Vietnam… And Those That Followed”
That Night in Vietnam… And Those That Followed
One night in December 1968, SP4 Dennis E. Haines’ life changed literally in a flash. “Our mission was to encircle a village,” his buddy John Miller recalls. “It was on this path that Dennis and I were sent to act as a listening post, waiting for darkness until the rest of the company would join us. “There was a problem....
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May 27, 2019
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Republicans are Lost
At best, the presidency of Donald Trump is bad soap opera. At worst, it undermines everything the country stands for. Lately, that’s constitutional oversight and the rule of law. Republicans in Washington are, for the most part, lost. A majority don’t work for the people they represent. They work for their own political interests. On the soap opera side, Trump’s...
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May 24, 2019
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“Consensual Rape.” Really?
Last Friday, during the debate in the Missouri state House on a new bill designed to ban abortions for women at eight weeks of pregnancy, Republican Representative Barry Hovis said that the majority of sexual assaults he dealt with in law enforcement were not strangers “jumping out of the bushes” but instead “date rapes or consensual rapes.” according to an...
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May 20, 2019
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Textbook Corporate Integrity
In August 2001, I interviewed Johnson & Johnson Chairman James Burke for my book, What Do You Stand For? In the wake of the poor decision-making and crisis management from Boeing CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, it’s worth recalling the time when, in the fall of 1982, Burke and Johnson & Johnson were confronted with a nightmare scenario. Seven people in the...
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May 15, 2019
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They Knew
On October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 took off from Jakarta, Indonesia in a brand-new Boeing 737 Max 8. Within moments, without a cloud in the sky, the plane “repeatedly bucked downward,” The New York Times reported (Mar. 20). Lion Air 610 crashed into the Java Sea, losing all on board. According to The Times report, the plane “should...
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May 13, 2019
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Maximum Challenge
“I tried to handle this in a nice, quiet way, and I didn’t think there was enough said about the trip our horse had. Now, given some of the recent comments, I’m pissed off.” That’s War of Will trainer Mark Casse in an interview with The Louisville Courier Journal (May 8), in response to Gary West, owner of Maximum Security,...
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May 9, 2019
Featured image for “The Mueller Report, Conclusion”
The Mueller Report, Conclusion
An ABC News/Washington Post poll on the Mueller report (Apr. 26), found that 58 percent of those polled believe that Trump did not tell the truth about the investigation. A slimmer margin, (47 percent vs. 41 percent), believe the President obstructed justice. And 56 percent believe that Congress should not begin impeachment proceedings. Nonetheless, 31 percent believe the report “Cleared...
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May 1, 2019