Recent Ethics Commentaries

Featured image for “Seattle’s Best”
Seattle’s Best
Psychiatrist and radio personality Frasier Crane is wrestling with an ethical dilemma. Dr. Honey Snow is not only a pop-psychologist, best selling author and knockout blonde, she also has a crush on Seattle’s resident narcissist and relationship expert. (That’s not the dilemma.) When the stunning Snow asks him to write the forward to her new book, Frasier struggles to craft...
Read More
June 17, 2008
Featured image for “Teddy Roosevelt’s “True Americanism””
Teddy Roosevelt’s “True Americanism”
“The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average...
Read More
June 2, 2008
Featured image for “The Price of Integrity”
The Price of Integrity
Washington Post, May 29 – “Air Force Colonel Morris Davis said he was denied a medal for his two years of work building military commissions cases against terrorism suspects because he resigned and later spoke out about problems in the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions.” (see “Courage Under Fire,” May 2). Sadly, this is the fate of many who choose honesty...
Read More
May 28, 2008
Featured image for “Out of Whack”
Out of Whack
In one keystroke Countrywide Financial’s Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo lived up to the worst traits of a corporate executive. It started when homeowner Daniel Bailey wrote a letter addressed to Mr. Mozilo and sixteen other Countrywide staff: “I am writing this letter to explain my unfortunate set of circumstances that have caused me to become delinquent on my mortgage,” Bailey...
Read More
May 27, 2008
Featured image for “The Subprime Inheritance”
The Subprime Inheritance
“Why is it so hard for a man to see clearly beyond the letter of the law?” This deft piece of rationalization comes courtesy of Mr. Voysey, Sr. to his son, Edward, Jr. from a play by English dramatist Harley Granville Barker, edited by David Mamet. “The Voysey Inheritance” is a 103-year-old morality play that gives proof to the notion...
Read More
May 19, 2008
Featured image for “Two Words”
Two Words
In the early 1940’s, Norman Corwin was nearly as well known as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and much admired. Author Ray Bradbury calls Corwin, “…the greatest director, the greatest writer and the greatest producer in the history of radio.  His brilliant dramas, fantasies, and documentaries reached into American homes – and across an ocean – as far as the radio could...
Read More
May 12, 2008
Featured image for “The Insider – 12 Years Later”
The Insider – 12 Years Later
There’s a moment near the end of the 1999 movie The Insider where Jeff Wigand is watching his whistle-blowing interview on 60 Minutes with his two daughters.  During the interview, one of his daughters looks over at him and slowly smiles. Between 1995 and 1996, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand lost his job, his house, his wife and for a time, his...
Read More
May 10, 2008
Featured image for “Operation KAOS”
Operation KAOS
Cue the summer movie, world-in-peril music, followed by a deep-voiced narrator. “There has always been a delicate balance between chaos and control.  Now, with that balance threatened, it’s time to turn to one man…” CUT TO: A ROTUND MAN SITTING AT A MICROPHONE – “Rush Limbaugh had listeners register as Democrats for one day to go vote for Hillary… This...
Read More
May 8, 2008
Featured image for “Courage Under Fire”
Courage Under Fire
Air Force Colonel Morris Davis chief prosecutor at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba resigned last October due to political interference. “…we’ve really taken ‘military’ out of military commissions and inserted politics in its place,” Morris said in a December, 2007 interview on National Public Radio. “I took the job… with the agreement that I’d stay… as long as...
Read More
May 2, 2008
Featured image for “Inflammation vs. Inspiration”
Inflammation vs. Inspiration
Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama spoke out against the inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Last Friday, Wright gave a performance before the National Press Club in Washington that can politely be described as all show and no substance.  He blustered, he shouted, he postured and puffed, he drifted, he wandered and along the way he...
Read More
April 30, 2008