Ethics Newsline®

Percent of U.S. workers who are completely satisfied with . . .

Source: Gallup News Service survey of 1,017 adults, conducted Aug. 9-11, 2004. Margin of sampling error: 3 percentage points.

The oldest question in moral philosophy is, Why be moral? Why bother, when the rewards of the unethical life can seem so alluring?

The oldest answer to that question — easily predating the Greek philosophers — is, Because that’s what God wants. Morality and religion, in other words, have been intertwined from the beginning.

For many people, that old answer — while not the only answer — is still powerful. Given that fact, what are we to make of the enormous religious issues bubbling to the surface around the world — Islamic fundamentalism, crackdowns on churches in China, even the role of U.S. congregations in the presidential election?

You have only to read nineteenth-century history and literature to realize that religion was, until rather recently, a constant presence in the political and social life of developed nations. That doesn’t mean it was deeply practiced or well understood, or even that its impact was uniformly positive. But religious institutions were an unquestioned part of the moral life of nations, honored and respected and (by today’s standards) widely attended.

But in the twentieth century, the long, slow disenchantment with religious institutions set in. As that process unfolded, two things became clear: We couldn’t do without ethics, but we couldn’t impose a religious rationale for ethics on our secular cultures. And so the search intensified for other answers to that oldest question.

By the final decades of the twentieth century, a new phenomenon had arisen: the growth of secular nonprofit entities (like this one) devoted to research and education in ethics. Such entities are united, consciously or unconsciously, in a common purpose: to articulate powerful but not-necessarily-religious answers to that old question. Important though that work is, it shouldn’t lead us to overlook a salient fact: Morality is still all about God for many people.

How many? In the United States, according to the Gallup Organization, 85 percent still say religion is “very important” or “somewhat important.” Asked another way, 90 percent of those polled by Gallup in 2003 said they believed in God or a universal spirit — down from 99 percent in 1952, but still extraordinarily high by European standards. That same question, asked by Gallup in Britain, drew a response of only 54 percent — down from 84 percent in 1947.

But believing in God is one thing. Giving institutional expression to that belief through organized religion is something else. In recent years, Americans’ confidence in organized religion has been deeply undermined. As the scandals in the Catholic Church hit home in 2002, only 45 percent of the U.S. public said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in “the church or organized religion” — down from 60 percent just a year earlier. Yet similar data from Europe makes the United States look like a paragon of trustfulness. A recent Eurobarometer survey, asking whether respondents “tend to trust” religious institutions, found that Britain, France, and western Germany had significantly lower trust levels than the United States had at its lowest ebb.

What’s the significance of these findings for our ethical life? Three things stand out:

First, given the long intertwining of ethics and religion, we shouldn’t be surprised to find those who profess to believe in ethical principles but don’t put them into action; in religion, too, there are far more believers than doers. So we should temper our astonishment at the moral hypocrisy of those who sign on loudly to codes of ethics and then violate them with apparent relish. Sadly, it has been ever thus.

Second and more important, if the only arguments for ethics were the religious ones, we would expect to see the highest ethical standards in nations where trust in religious institutions is high. There’s little evidence of that. The fact is that cultures can be irreligious and ethical at the same time. Conversely, they can be marinated in religious expression and still behave unethically. Again, history provides plenty of examples of zealotry and fundamentalism running off the moral rails.

Third and most important, the disenchantment with religious institutions runs as a counterpoint to the increased need for setting firmer distinctions between church and state. The ferment in the Muslim world reminds us that religion and politics are uneasy bedfellows, and that democracy simply doesn’t mix well with theocracy. The crackdowns in China, at the other extreme, remind us that when organized religions are seen as competing with governments, the state can lash back with draconian potency.

There’s a lesson here for the U.S. presidential election. As organized religion sails closer to campaign politics, it moves into dangerous ethical waters. The U.S. public, with a majority believing strongly in God, has waning confidence in institutional religion. It also has increasing distaste for theocracy, so when religion is suspected of operating in the same competitive arena as government, the reaction will be to protect the constitutional separation of church and state.

Does that separation doom us to unethical governments? Not at all. Ethics draws mightily from the best of religious traditions, but it does not absolutely require them. Separating church from state, we need not separate ethics from government.

©2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“Consciousness and concern about student behavior is at an all-time high. As study abroad becomes more mainstream, the issues we have been dealing with on campus begin to become more prevalent overseas.”

– Carl Herrin, incoming chairman of the study-abroad committee for NAFSA: Association of International Educators, talking with the New York Times about mounting instances of riotous, violent, and rude behavior by U.S. students on overseas programs. Herrin’s group (formerly, the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers) and others are helping schools institute codes of conduct and standards to prevent troublemakers from studying abroad, ruining universities’ reputations, and souring locals’ impressions of the United States. (“Colleges Tell Students the Overseas Party’s Over,” New York Times, Aug. 23)

WASHINGTON
The U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities was the result of both low-level misbehavior and top-tier mismanagement, investigators alleged in reports released last week.

The latest analyses claimed that while individual soldiers were responsible for the actual abuse and torture, their superiors were to blame for creating an atmosphere of confusion and chaos that enabled such violations.

The conclusions, pinning blame for abuse on a systemic failure and implicating the entire chain of command from military police to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, came in reports from two teams — one led by former U.S. Defense secretary James Schlesinger, the other led by Maj. Gen. George Fay.

The reports noted that both Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, issued a series of memos approving, then rescinding, aggressive interrogation methods. Those conflicting policies, bridged by periods of silence and general confusion, created a situation of uncertainty that led to abuse, the panels concluded.

While neither Rumsfeld nor Sanchez should lose their jobs over the mismanagement, neither should they be allowed to characterize the abuse of prisoners as the doings of rogue soldiers or “an isolated cellblock in Iraq,” former congresswoman Tillie Fowler (R-Florida), a member of the Schlesinger panel, told the New York Times.

“We found fundamental failures throughout all levels of command, from the soldiers on the ground to the Central Command and to the Pentagon,” Fowler said. “These failures of leadership helped to set the conditions which allowed for the abusive practice to take place.”

The Fay report found similar fault, blaming Sanchez’s interrogation decrees and flip-flops for muddying the waters, concluding that his attempts to rewrite official policy “confused doctrine and policy even further,” according to a classified portion of the report obtained by the Times.

“He didn’t close the door [on abusive interrogations], and he should have,” concluded Gen. Paul Kern, the senior officer supervising Fay’s work.

“When you put these reports together, the clear message is that the system failed in a widespread manner,” warned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Car.) of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

SANTIAGO
Chile’s highest court last week stripped former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution for human rights violations, clearing the way for an investigation into his role in the disappearance and murders of thousands.

Pinochet, 88, was declared unfit for prosecution in 2001 by Chile’s Supreme Court after court-appointed doctors concluded that he suffered from mild dementia and other ailments, reported the Associated Press.

With arthritis, diabetes, and three mild strokes added to the list, Pinochet has avoided trial and prosecution in many cases, most prominently in 1998 after being arrested in Britain at the request of a Spanish judge, reported the Washington Post.

While under house arrest in Britain and claiming to be unfit for trial, Pinochet personally managed as much as $8 million secreted away in Washington’s Riggs Bank, according to a U.S. Senate report on money laundering.

That finding, combined with a lucid interview Pinochet granted to a Miami TV station in November 2003, caused Chile’s top judges to change their view last week, rescinding Pinochet’s immunity by a narrow 9-to-8 vote.

Pinochet, who seized control of Chile during a bloody 1973 coup, ruled the country for 17 years, during which more than 3,000 people, many of them political opponents or critics, were murdered or disappeared.

Last week’s ruling specifically applies to a lawsuit accusing Pinochet of involvement in the kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of 19 political dissidents, but may open him up to a wide number of other charges.

Along with Chilean accusers, Belgium, France, Spain, and Switzerland have supported his prosecution, reported the Agence France-Presse.

ABUJA, Nigeria
After years of public debate, Nigeria’s Senate last week demanded that Britain-based oil giant Royal Dutch Shell pay $1.5 billion to a local tribe for causing environmental damage and “sundry maladies.”

The Senate’s order follows a 2001 lawsuit filed by the Ijaw ethnic group from the Niger Delta, where Shell maintains numerous facilities that help make the company the country’s biggest oil firm.

Shell pumps about half of Nigeria’s daily output of 2.5 million barrels, reported the Associated Press.

While such output helps the oil companies get rich, many local Nigerians say they see little to nothing of the wealth, suffering economic and environmental hardships amidst the plunder of petroleum.

While Shell “strongly contested” such charges at a 2002 House of Representatives hearing, the company was held responsible by the Senate last week for causing “severe health hazards, economic hardship, injurious affection, avoidable deaths, and sundry maladies.”

The Senate’s $1.5 billion demand carries no legal weight, leaving its enforcement up to Shell and Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who may not back the penalty, according to Britain’s Guardian.

While the Senate’s ruling is a “very powerful statement,” Nigerian presidential adviser on petroleum Edmund Dakouro called the fine “illegitimate,” saying the Senate “doesn’t have the executive force to carry it out.”

Last month, Shell was hit with $120 million in fines by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over what regulators say was the company’s massive overstatement of reserves. Britain’s Financial Services Authority piled on with a $30 million fine.

LONDON
Nearly 100 multinational companies were taken to task last week for continuing to do business in Burma despite widespread international acknowledgment of that country’s human rights abuses and tyranny.

The list of 95 firms, with 37 new additions, is maintained by the Burma Campaign, a U.K. group committed to naming and shaming firms in a push to get them out of the nation also known as Myanmar.

The group’s efforts highlight the continuing debate over whether economic involvement with corrupt regimes can be a force for good, liberalizing and opening them up via the power of the pocketbook, noted the BBC.

While many business insist that such steps are possible, Burma Campaign director John Jackson says an economic boycott of state-controlled conglomerates is a better step to crippling and deposing dictators.

Among the companies named by the Burma Campaign are mobile phone maker Ericsson, insurer Lloyd’s of London, and Rolls-Royce, which helps maintain the engines of aircraft owned by the government, reported the Independent.

While the U.K. government has asked firms to step back from doing business with Burma, it has declined so far to legislate the policy, leaving some companies to insist that such profits are fair game.

“Policy is set through export licensing regulations, and we adhere to those,” a Rolls-Royce told the BBC. “If we were denied an export license, we would not trade.”

NEW YORK
Nine months after its adoption, the new Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was struck down by a federal judge in New York, who said the law unconstitutionally overrides the right of a pregnant woman to protect her own health.

The anti-abortion law was passed by Congress last November, but was immediately put on hold by three federal judges asked to hear cases testing its legality.

Two of the judges — one in San Francisco, the other in New York — now have found the law unconstitutional. The third, based in Nebraska, is still considering the matter, reported the Associated Press.

In both of the decided cases, the law was found unconstitutional because Congress failed to obey a 2000 Supreme Court finding than any law restricting abortion must allow the procedure if it would protect the health of the pregnant woman.

While at least nine medical associations told Congress that this particular abortion procedure was sometimes necessary for the woman’s health, lawmakers nevertheless approved the measure.

By closing their ears to such arguments, lawmakers overstepped their rights and abrogated those of pregnant women, U.S. District Judge Richard Casey ruled.

While Casey condemned this particular procedure, medically known as intact dilation and extraction, as “gruesome” and “brutal,” he concluded that its use must be protected for the safety of women.

Though the U.S. Justice Department has yet to say whether it will appeal last week’s ruling, it said it would fight the earlier ruling in San Francisco, according to the Reuters news agency.

NEW YORK
British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, under fire for allegedly concealing negative research about its popular drug Paxil, last week agreed to make the data public and pay $2.5 million to New York State.

The settlement comes after New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued the company in June for fraud, accusing it of burying test results that indicated an increase in suicidal tendencies in children taking Paxil.

Of at least five research studies on Paxil and children, Glaxo released the findings of only one, which showed mixed results, reported the Associated Press.

Spitzer and others say the company deliberately suppressed the other tests’ negative results, skewing both public perception and doctors’ prescriptions, and endangering the lives of depressed teens.

While Glaxo insists it made all of the data public, an internal 1999 document said the company planned to “manage the dissemination of data in order to minimize any potential negative commercial impact,” according to the AP.

Glaxo said its settlement last week was simply the most expedient way to end the lawsuit, denying wrongdoing and claiming that it had been planning all along to release the negative data.

The settlement calls on Glaxo to post all of its Paxil data to the web by December 2005. Test results from now on will be posted within 10 months of a drug’s approval, Glaxo spokeswoman Nancy Pekarek told the AP.

Spitzer’s office last week said the settlement sets a “new standard with regard to disclosure of clinical studies” — one the state hopes other drug makers will follow, increasing transparency and trust.

If they fail to follow suit, more lawsuits are likely, Spitzer’s health care bureau chief, Joe Baker, told the AP. “We will continue to do that until we feel this industry as a whole has stopped this practice,” he warned.

Spitzer last week saved some of the blame for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), slamming the agency for failing to require such steps, reported the New York Times.

“We’re asking where has the FDA been all these years when clinical data has been hidden from public scrutiny?” complained Spitzer. “They have simply failed to confront the problem.”

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

VICTORIA, British Columbia
Star Vancouver Canucks forward Todd Bertuzzi has pleaded not guilty to assault causing bodily harm in a British Columbia criminal court for a vicious attack on Colorado’s Steve Moore during a March 2004 home game.

Moore suffered a concussion and a broken neck. Bertuzzi, who was suspended indefinitely by the NHL and missed the rest of the season has lost more than $500,000 in earnings.

Bertuzzi could face up to 18 months in jail if convicted, the CBC reported.

Meanwhile, Bill Daly, chief negotiator for the National Hockey League (NHL) last week lashed out at the NHL Players Association (NHLPA) for stalling in labor and salary negotiations taking place in Ottawa, alleging that the players did not want a full season of the NHL unless it was on their terms.

The present collective bargaining agreement expires on September 15.

The current average salary for a player stands at $1.3 million, and the desire of the NHL to have a salary cap has been the major sticking point.

Mr. Daly also revealed that 20 teams are in the red and that the NHL has lost more than $500 million in the past two years, noted the CBC.

NHLPA representative Ted Saskin has replied that it is ludicrous for the NHL to think that the players want a self-imposed lock-out.

From the Gallup News Service:

“Gallup’s annual poll on work and education shows that workers are most satisfied with their relationships with coworkers and the physical safety conditions of their workplaces, while they are least satisfied with the amount of work-related stress and their incomes.

“Over the past year, workers have become more positive about the amount of recognition they receive for accomplishments, their coworker relationships, their bosses, and their job security. All in all, half of American workers tell Gallup that they are ‘completely’ satisfied with their jobs….

“Additionally, at least half of workers are completely satisfied with the following workplace attributes: the flexibility of hours (62 percent), their bosses or immediate supervisors (60 percent), their job security (54 percent), the amount of work required of them (53 percent), and the amount of vacation time allotted to them (52 percent).

“Less than half of American workers are completely satisfied with the amount of recognition they receive for their work accomplishments (48 percent). Workers are even less satisfied with their chances for promotion (40 percent), their health insurance benefits (39 percent), and their retirement plans (36 percent). American workers are least completely satisfied with the amount of money they earn (28 percent) and the amount of stress in their jobs (27 percent)….

“There are differences in job satisfaction depending on a respondent’s gender, age, and income levels.

• “Fifty-three percent of men say they are completely satisfied with their jobs, compared with 46 percent of women.
• “Older workers (those aged 50 and older) tend to be more satisfied with their jobs than are young workers (those aged 18 to 49) by 59 percent to 46 percent.
• “By 55 percent to 42 percent, higher-income workers (those earning $50,000 a year or more) are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than are lower-income workers (those earning less than $50,000 per year).

“Job satisfaction seems to make little difference among employees of a private company (44 percent completely satisfied) and government or nonprofit employees (49 percent completely satisfied).

“…When looking at partisanship and job satisfaction, the current poll finds a 21-point gap between Republicans and Democrats, the widest gap Gallup has measured. The latest results show that 62 percent of Republicans are completely satisfied with their jobs, compared with 41 percent of Democrats. These differences still persist even when controlling for respondents’ incomes. Last year, 46 percent of both Republicans and Democrats were completely satisfied. With the exception of the 2003 results, Republicans have consistently expressed higher levels of job satisfaction than Democrats have, but never to the extent found in the most recent survey….”

“It’s great to be great, but it’s greater to be human.”

– Will Rogers (U.S. actor, 1879-1935)

Source: Hansard Society

Last weekend, at a final recital for a summer music program, I watched several dozen teenagers play exceptionally fine classical music on pianos, strings, and winds. Part of a local concert series — Bay Chamber Concerts’ Next Generation Program — they took to the stage on a soggy Saturday in Rockport, Maine, with riveting concentration and an unmistakable love of music. Some were better than others, but to a person they embodied a sense of the discipline that had sustained them through years of daily practice on their way to ever-higher standards.

That’s true for Olympic athletes as well. Twenty-one-year-old Paul Hamm’s astounding comeback and 16-year-old Carly Patterson’s lighter-than-air performance in gymnastics’ all-around events last week left no one in doubt about their commitment to a relentless regimen of training. They, too, were seeking the elusive standard just barely within their reach.

What a contrast, then, to a world in which standards too often get fudged. We see it in the classroom, where grade inflation has made it practically impossible in some programs for students to expect, or receive, anything but an A.

We see it more dangerously among some school administrators who, in an effort to adapt to the requirements of the federal government’s No Child Left Behind program, deliberately exclude entire categories of poor students from their assessments, so that the remaining students will have acceptably high scores.

We even see it in the movies. A report last month from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that a steady “ratings creep” in feature films has allowed increasingly violent and sexually explicit content to fly under the colors of PG-13, PG, and even G ratings.

The phenomenon is not new. A decade ago, the scholar-senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan penned a famous article for American Scholar titled “Defining Deviancy Down.” In it he recounted the way in which well-meaning social planners, facing unmanageable levels of institutionalized mental patients, simply reset the standards, declared them healthy enough to be released, and then redefined them as “the homeless.”

“There are circumstances,” Moynihan wrote, “in which society will choose not to notice behavior that would be otherwise controlled, or disapproved, or even punished.” He noted that “over the past generation … the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased” beyond the tolerance levels of the community. Accordingly, “we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”

Why do we do that? The motives, Moynihan recognized, are not bad. Much of the redefinition comes, he said, from “good people [trying] to do good.” That partially explains grade inflation, where teachers fear that anything less than an A can disqualify a student from further study or jeopardize a potential job. It underlies the manipulation of data by educators desperate to prevent school shutdowns that could hurt their students. It even underlies the thinking of the Motion Picture Association of America, which sees itself as trying to keep abreast of ever-shifting community mores.

Behind these motives, however, lies a sad misassessment of the youthful mind. In many ways, young people loathe hypocrisy more than failure. Yet the erosion of standards — even when all it says is, We’re giving you an A for doing C+ work — sucks them inexorably into the very hypocrisy they despise. It makes them appear to be something they aren’t. And they know it.

Is a relaxation of standards the kindest way to raise the next generation? Ask the young musicians and athletes. They know that discipline matters. They admire instructors and coaches who have the moral courage to speak honestly, demand responsibility, and hold to the standards even when the going gets tough. These young people want the authentic thrill of nailing the hardest dismounts and negotiating the toughest duets. They don’t want somebody to simplify Bach or lighten the discus. They don’t want life redefined into life-lite. Most of all, they don’t want to be turned into phonies by the misplaced pity of an elder generation. Neither should we.

©2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“We came into this meet as a team and we’re going to leave it as a team. It’s the right thing to do.”

– U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, explaining his decision to forego his final Olympic swimming event so that teammate Ian Crocker could take his place in the 400-meter medley relay. Crocker, who lost his place in the medley when Phelps beat him in the preliminaries, joined his teammates to take gold in the event, setting a new world record. (“Phelps Gives Up Spot on Relay Team, Done for the Olympics,” AP, Aug. 20)

WASHINGTON
A federal judge last week slapped individual fines of $500 per day on five reporters for their refusal to turn over the names of confidential sources who may have leaked private details about a former Los Alamos nuclear scientist.

The scientist, Dr. Wen Ho Lee, is suing the U.S. government for allegedly violating his privacy in press coverage of the 1999 espionage scandal, reported the Associated Press.

Lee, who ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling secret nuclear data, was cleared of the other 58 felony charges. He is now suing the U.S. departments of Energy and Justice, reported the New York Times.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered reporters to reveal the identities of anonymous officials quoted in their coverage of the Wen Ho Lee case.

Last week, the judge found five of those reporters in contempt, ordering them to pay fines of $500 per day until they hand over the information, which is required before Lee’s allegations can go to trial.

Lawyers for the five reporters — H. Josef Hebert of the AP, Robert Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, Jeff Gerth and James Risen of the New York Times, and ABC’s Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN — have vowed to appeal the fines.

The judge’s decision marks the second time in as many weeks that reporters have been threatened with punishment for failing to expose their sources, highlighting the tension between legal needs, journalists’ rights, and constitutional guarantees of a free press.

While reporters warn that exposing their sources will impede trust and the needed flow of information to the public, others say the recent cases — including the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name — are examples of reporters giving too much play to anonymous sources they then insist on protecting.

Journalists “cannot allow the abuse of anonymity,” former Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser, now a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, told the Boston Globe.

“We’ve allowed people to attack others (anonymously), and that’s a totally inappropriate thing to do. We in the press cannot simply do those things and expect the lawyers to save us,” she added.

Last week’s fines have been suspended while the matter works its way through the courts.

WASHINGTON
Worried that FBI agents may be crossing the First Amendment line, a handful of lawmakers last week asked the Justice Department to investigate the FBI’s questioning of political and antiwar protestors.

The request from three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee follows a New York Times report on FBI efforts to question dozens of protestors in at least six states over the past months.

The interrogations have been timed to preempt violence and disruptive activities at the Democratic and Republican conventions, but critics caution that the FBI may be overstepping in a push to intimidate people from voicing messages unwanted by the federal government.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed at least two recent suits to protest the FBI’s targets and tactics, which the agency defends as necessary to keeping the peace and preventing domestic terrorism.

That view was espoused last April in an unreleased analysis written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the same agency that authored and later disavowed a highly controversial memo approving the limited use of torture against terrorism suspects.

According to the agency, any chilling of free speech by the FBI’s methods would be “substantially outweighed by the public interest in maintaining safety and order during large-scale demonstrations.”

Critics say the government’s aggressive preemption may violate the Constitution, allowing the FBI to monitor and intimidate citizens based solely on suspicions that are too broad and vague to pass constitution muster.

“This looks like it’s much more about intimidation and coercion than about criminal conduct,” ACLU head Anthony Romero contended to the Times. “It’s not enough for the FBI to say that there’s the potential for criminal activity. That’s not the legal threshold.”

FBI assistant director Cassandra Chandler last week denied that her agency was trying to quash dissenting voices ahead of high-profile political events like the impending Republican national convention, saying all of the FBI’s activities have been “within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution.”

TALLAHASSEE, Florida
Florida’s school vouchers program took a hit last week after an appeals court ruled that the state’s Constitution bars Florida from using taxpayers’ funds to support religious programs.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school voucher programs are not in themselves unconstitutional, it also ruled that states have no obligation to fund religious education, essentially leaving the decision in the hands of the state courts.

In Florida’s case, where many school vouchers were being used to pay for religious schools, the First District Court of Appeals ruled 2-to-1 that such funding violates the state’s Constitution.

“Courts do not have the authority to ignore the clear language of the Constitution, even for a popular program with a worthy purpose,” Judge William Van Nortwick wrote for the court.

“The Florida case is really the bellwether that everyone is looking at,” Gonzaga University School of Law assistant professor Mark DeForrest told the New York Times. “It’s something that almost all the other states will look at closely. They’re not going to be bound by it, but they’re definitely going to be influenced by it.”

The decision nixes one of Gov. Jeb Bush’s pet projects — a 1999 law that gives parents the right to pull their kids out of failing schools and fund their education elsewhere with taxpayer-subsidized vouchers.

That program is one of three voucher systems in use in Florida, where an estimated 25,000 students have fled failing public schools for private ones — with nearly 19,000 students moving to religious schools, according to the Miami Herald.

Last week’s ruling could signal the end to that system, although the court noted that lawmakers could alter the state Constitution to weaken the wall separating church and state.

Gov. Bush, whose voucher program has taken heat for lax oversight and accountability, last week pledged to appeal the ruling to the Florida Supreme Court, noted the Herald.

SAN FRANCISCO
A California man ordered to wear a sign advertising his crime appealed his sentence last week, saying the punishment’s goal of shaming him was unconstitutional and stigmatizing.

After stealing U.S. Treasury checks and other mail in 2001, Shawn Gementera was ordered to serve a small stint of prison time and perform various tasks, including standing outside a post office with a sandwich-board sign reading, “I stole mail. This is my punishment.”

At the time, sentencing judge Vaughn Walker told Gementera, “You need to be reminded in a very graphic way of exactly what the crime you committed means to society…. (You need) a wake-up call.”

Such sentences, designed to punish criminals with public humiliation, became popular in the 1990s, with judges reasoning that embarrassment could be used to deter future crime, noted USA Today.

Gementera’s lawyer, Arthur Wachtel, disagrees, arguing that his client’s shaming sentence violates constitutional prohibitions against “cruel and unusual” punishment, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A three-member panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month upheld Gementera’s sentence, ruling that shame can be a useful tool in rehabilitating criminals.

Wachtel last week said he would ask the full appeals court to reconsider that opinion.

BERN, Switzerland
Switzerland last week said it plans to return $500 million to Nigeria after investigators concluded that the funds were apparently looted by former dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

After examining bank accounts frozen in 1999, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice said that $493 million of the funds were “clearly of criminal origin,” reported the CBC.

Another $7 million were found to be of “probable criminal origin,” and will be withheld pending further investigation.

Switzerland already has returned $200 million to the Nigerian government.

The funds are part of an estimated $2.2 billion to $3 billion embezzled by Abacha and his associates during the dictator’s reign from 1993 until his death in 1998, according to press reports.

Enrico Monfrini, a lawyer representing the Nigerian government, last week praised Switzerland’s decision as “courageous and historic,” reported the Associated Press.

Monfrini also praised the efforts of the English Channel island of Jersey, which has agreed to return $168 million in looted assets.

Britain, however, was blasted for an alleged lack of cooperation. “We’re still missing a lot of money which we can’t trace because we have failed to receive the documents which we need from the British authorities, who do not cooperate in the same manner as the Swiss authorities do,” Monfrini told the AP.