Speaking at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual National Tribute Dinner held each year on April 15th, FBI Director James Comey took time to make clear why he requires agents to visit the Holocaust Museum. Director Comey is a special breed of law enforcement official who not only sees and understands the big picture, but encourages his agents to...

In a moment that sounded like a clip from a TV courtroom drama, Atlanta Judge Jerry Baxter vents his frustration at the defendants: “All I want from any of these people is just to take some responsibility, but they refuse.” “Eight former city public-school educators were sentenced to prison Tuesday,” The Wall Street Journal reports (Apr. 15), “for inflating student...

Where do you go when the court of last resort turns you down? For the past several years I’ve been researching a couple of aspects of the Office of Independent Counsel headed by Kenneth Starr and succeeded by Robert Ray. I interviewed Jo Ann Harris, the former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division under then-Attorney General...

Once again, friend and colleague Colman McCarthy hits the nail on the head in his commentary regarding sexual assaults in the military. A former Washington Post columnist, McCarthy directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington and teaches courses on nonviolence at four universities and two high schools. It was Groucho Marx, and it usually was, who had it right:...

In his closing argument in the George Zimmerman murder trial, Florida state prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda told a jury of six women that Trayvon Martin  “is dead because another man made assumptions, because his assumptions were wrong.” That statement pretty much sums up the entire Martin/Zimmerman incident. From the outset, as soon as the shooting death of the 17-year-old,...

President Obama formally nominated former Justice official James Comey to succeed Robert Mueller as the next director of the F.B.I. However, it was in 2004 that Comey nearly resigned his position as acting attorney general under George W. Bush. In March 2004, a gravely ill Attorney General John Ashcroft had been taken to a Washington hospital for gallbladder surgery. At...

Political pundits and experts love to predict. In the case of conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, it would seem all the experts had a better chance of going to their local carnival, dropping a nickel in Mr. Predicto, and reading the response on air from that little pop-out card. When it came down to a final decision on President...

During a session of Contemporary Ethical Issues, a class taught by me and Professor Stephen Ambra at the New Hampshire Technical Institute, the subject of bullying came up, which prompted me to ask, “Show of hands, how many of you have ever been bullied?” Out of 36 students, I was surprised to discover an overwhelming majority had faced ridicule, coercion, harassment,...

It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one pointing out the lack of a clearly defined ethical code followed by justices on the Supreme Court. “Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.,” the NEW YORK TIMES writes in an editorial (Judicial Ethics and the Supreme Court, Jan. 5) “skirted the heart of the problem: the justices are the only American...

A few years ago, I was called for jury duty. After being selected as a finalist, the judge explained that the case we would be deciding had to do with spousal abuse. He asked if we, as potential jurors, had anything in our personal lives that might cause us not to be impartial in this case, to speak up. I...