The Bible story of Daniel and the lions’ den, recounted in the Old Testament, is widely known. But few remember what got him there in the first place: a good king caught up in bad policy.

Daniel, we’re told, served as prime minister to King Darius — to the envy of the other courtiers. They inveigled the king to sign an inalterable decree that punished anyone found worshiping anything other than Darius himself. When Daniel put his religion first and continued his daily worship, he was reported. The king worked every way he could to save his friend, only to be forced by his own policy to throw him to the lions.

The story exemplifies courage, divine action, and just deserts — Daniel stands his ground, the lions shut their mouths, he’s rescued, and his accusers are thrown in instead. In a contemporary way, it’s also a story about the need for sound policy — as is the story I heard recently from the assistant head of a well-regarded independent day school for boys.

John (not his real name) told me he’d been chaperoning the annual prom. Held on the school campus, it was a kind of joint event with a nearby school for girls. As John walked the hallways that night, he fell into conversation with one of the prom-goers, a student leader he liked very much who had an exemplary record. To his surprise, John smelled alcohol on the boy’s breath.

On several issues, including drinking, the school took a very strong stand: Under its “two-strikes-you’re-out” policy, out literally meant expulsion from school on the second offense. So John confronted the student, who confessed that his date had brought liquor to the prom and shared it with him. John sent them both home, but took no further action that night. This was the first time the boy had been caught drinking, so whatever needed to be sorted out with his parents could wait until the following week.

Back in his office on Monday, John spoke to the boy’s mother. To his great relief, she wasn’t angry or defensive, but friendly, apologetic, and grateful for the school’s stand. Then, as they continued their amicable chat, she began recounting a recent conversation with her son, who told her that some weeks before the prom a friend had hidden a bottle of liquor in his school locker and given him a drink.

The moment she began the story, John told me, his heart sank. “Why is she telling me this?!” he said to himself, “I don’t want to know!” Without that knowledge, the prom event was strike one. Now it was suddenly strike two — and the punishment was inalterably explicit. Under the school’s rules, a fine young man must be expelled despite an exemplary college-bound career.

John’s right-versus-right dilemma pitted truth against loyalty and justice against mercy. On one hand, he had every reason to come down hard on the boy: The glaring truth was that this was indeed a second offense for someone who, while he hadn’t been the instigator, had on both occasions been a willing co-conspirator. Was a trend developing here that John, as a matter of justice, needed to squelch firmly and dramatically?

On the other hand, John had learned of this earlier lapse only because of the mother’s admirable candor. What kind of signal would it send to the other parents when it became known (as it surely would) that the reward for such honesty was a devastating penalty that could significantly affect her son’s future? With this precedent, would any parent ever again speak up to the administration about things that most mattered? Would they fear retribution when they were seeking assistance? Didn’t John owe her some loyalty, some appreciation for her helpfulness? Wasn’t this a case requiring mercy, where a punishment was needed that better fit the circumstances?

Unlike Daniel’s story, this was not a matter of life and death, nor did it require divine intervention. But John, too, was caught in the vice-grip of a policy that left him little room for creativity. Why? Largely because of the way the school defined the word “out.” Did “out” have to mean expulsion? Or should the policy have been, “Two strikes and you will be subject to a punishment that is swift, sure, and more severe than you had hoped.” Granted, that’s a less catchy phrase than the original, which is borrowed from baseball’s three-strikes rule. The problem is that in the borrowing, the phrase ran afoul of its own metaphor. All “out” means in baseball is that you retire from the plate, to come back again later. The school had turned it into a terminal, life-changing condition — perhaps without ever giving the word the thought it deserved.

But that’s what any good policy should offer to good executives: room for thought. In the realm of ethics, each case will be different and the differences may or may not matter. Justice properly sets up expectations about behaviors and penalties for infractions. By contrast, mercy is all about exceptions, of which John’s story may have been one.

Bottom line? Well-crafted policy takes off the table any number of otherwise agonizing right-versus-right dilemmas. Poor policy, by contrast, can generate them by the thousands.

What do you think John should have done? Click here to share your thoughts.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.”

– Excerpt from an interim report released last week by the House Oversight Committee, which found that at least 88 White House officials have been using email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC) during the presidency of George W. Bush. The White House previously said only about 50 officials had such accounts.

The House Oversight Committee found that the RNC has not preserved the emails sent and received by 51 of these officials, some of whom may have used the RNC accounts to bypass security measures and to “conduct overtly political, and perhaps improper, activities such as planning which U.S. prosecutors to fire and preparing partisan briefings for employees in federal agencies,” reports the Associated Press.

RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt told the AP that there is “no basis for an assumption that any e-mail not already found would be of an official nature.”

A commentary in Slate notes that “the oversight committee’s investigation into convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s contacts with the White House unearthed the following e-mail exchange between Rove’s then-executive assistant Susan Ralston and Abramoff’s associate Todd Boulanger: ‘I now have an RNC BlackBerry, which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH e-mail.’ ” Ralston resigned in 2006 and Abramoff is now in prison.

WASHINGTON
Congress finds itself in the midst of an intense moral debate as it squares off against President Bush after he again vetoed a stem cell research bill last week.

The Associated Press reports that Bush urged lawmakers to look into what he called more “ethically responsible” means of research.

Following Bush’s veto, the Senate responded by advancing another spending bill that again proposes funding for stem cell research, a measure the Associated Press predicts will be the first of several waves of Democrat-driven attempts to reverse the effects of Bush’s rejection of the measure.

But leaders in both houses acknowledge that they are still shy of the votes needed to override future presidential vetoes, reports Scientific American.

Bush based his veto on the argument that the legislation would “compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos,” reports Newsday. “I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line,” he said.

Stem cells, the so-called master cells of the body, could develop replacements for human tissue damaged by disease or accident, according to advocates, who maintain such therapy holds imminent promise for treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Opponents complain that using human embryonic tissue, often left over from in-vitro fertilization procedures, is akin to abortion. Supporters counter that using the embryos in support of possible life-saving medicine instead of simply destroying them is a moral good.

Bush’s veto, his second restricting federal funding stem cell research, has resulted in states and private institutions assembling a patchwork of other sources of support, but many argue that lack of federal support will stand in the way of possible cures.

“I don’t think that philanthropy or the state of Maryland is really going to be enough to fund the kind of clinical trials to help patients,” Dr. Chi V. Dang, vice dean of research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told the Baltimore Sun. “It’s sufficient to do some of the groundwork, but once we start clinical trials we are going to need much more.”

LONDON
The clash of religious symbolism in Britain is stirring a moral debate in one of the most cosmopolitan of societies.

As the International Herald Tribune reports, the increasing presence of Muslim women covered head to toe with flowing black gowns is “testing the limits of tolerance in this stridently secular nation. Many veiled women say they are targets of abuse. At the same time, efforts are growing to place legal curbs on the full Muslim veil, known as the niqab.”

The Herald Tribune notes that in the past year, several prominent cases have brought the controversy to a boil, including a lawyer dressed in a niqab who was told she could not represent a client because the judge could not hear her speaking through the veil, and a teacher prohibited from wearing the garment in class.

At the same time, a case that surfaced last week has focused attention on the propriety of Christian symbols. ITV News reports that a Christian schoolgirl is bringing a court case over a prohibition against wearing what is called a “purity ring.”

Lydia Playfoot, 16, has accused her West Sussex school of discrimination because she cannot wear her ring, a symbol of commitment to chastity, even though Muslim and Sikh classmates were allowed to wear symbols of their religion, the London Daily Mirror reports.

School officials say the ring violates a code prohibiting most jewelry, including silver bands.

The case is now before the British High Court.

According to an analysis from the London-based Independent, Playfoot’s case is not the first such incident to gain notoriety. Earlier this year, a 13-year-old student was told by officials at a nondenominational school in Kent that she could not wear a crucifix.

According to the Independent, she was told that the school would make exceptions to its uniform rule only if the jewelry was an “essential part” of a particular religion, which they maintained was not the case in the incident in question.

NEW DELHI
A bizarre medical-ethics case is dominating headlines in India, where a 15-year-old boy reportedly performed a cesarean section in a bid to get into the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s youngest surgeon.

The Economic Times of Calcutta reports that Dileepan Raj, the son of two doctors, performed the surgery before video cameras while his parents watched.

According to a report from the BBC, many people in India perform sometimes-bizarre feats in order to win a place in record books. But in this case, says the BBC, commentators and the medical community are expressing outrage, with the head of the Indian Medical Association’s academic division calling the action “shocking and extremely unethical.”

The Times of India adds that the incident has focused attention on the fact that Indian medical colleges, “known,” the paper says, “to produce the world’s most qualified doctors, do not teach medical ethics.”

While there are proposals to integrate an ethics course into the curriculum and put ethics questions on the national qualifying test, the measures are still pending, reports the Times.

BEIJING
China is embroiled in a debate over the discovery that migrant laborers in a northern province worked under brutal conditions, with members of the ruling Communist party railing against the corruption they say made inspectors turn a blind eye.

According to a report from the Associated Press, farmers, children, and mentally disabled people were “snatched into a grim rural underworld” in Shanxi, where they were forced to work in exhausting, often unpaid positions and beaten — sometimes to death — if they did not comply.

The Washington Post reports that outrage welled up after newspapers across the nation printed pictures of dirt-smeared workers covered with bruises and burns. Their living conditions, often under guard by armed men with dogs, came to symbolize the treatment of as many as 90 million peasants who have migrated from various impoverished parts of the nation in search of construction work.

Six civil servants alleged to have sanctioned the arrangement are currently under investigation, reports the official Chinese government news agency Xinhua. About 35 others are under arrest.

The ITN Television network reports that the conditions originally were made public by parents who believed their children had been sold into slavery, and claim the government ignored their pleas for help until secret footage filmed in Shanxi province emerged and was circulated on the Internet.

ITN notes that to the surprise of most observers of this notoriously secretive nation, the story has been widely reported throughout the state-controlled media “as a sign of just how frustrated the Beijing government has become with endemic local corruption.”

PHILADELPHIA
In an incident that has drawn attention to the responsibilities of businesses to provide for the safety of customers, a Philadelphia judge last week sentenced the owner and the operator of a pier that collapsed, killing three women, to house arrest and probation.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the judge ignored the prosecution’s request to jail Michael Asbell, 65, who owned the pier, and Eli Karetny, 66.

The men were sentenced to nine to 18 months of house arrest, followed by five years’ probation, and ordered to form a business program and teach business ethics, according to a report from the Philadelphia Daily News.

Both men pleaded guilty or no contest to a variety of counts, including involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and conspiracy.

The case evolved from the May 2000 collapse of a pier that supported a popular nightclub. More than 40 people were injured and three young women died when the club plunged into the Delaware River.

After the sentencing, families of the victims expressed their dissatisfaction with what they viewed a light sentence, with some claiming that the businessmen’s connections with local society and politicians intimated the judge, the Daily News reports, noting that one of the letters asking for leniency had come from Philadelphia mayor John Street.

Prosecutors claimed that the owner and operator had, over a period of several years, received notice that the pier was deteriorating and would eventually collapse, but did not repair the facility because of the expense, according to the Associated Press.

The defendants claimed that they had never received explicit notice of imminent danger, saying they would not have opened the club if they knew the pier could collapse.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week dealt what is viewed as a setback to investors who want to sue companies and executives for suspected fraud.

According to the ruling, before a case can move forward, shareholders must show substantial evidence that a firm intended to commit a fraud, reports Forbes, which notes that the 8-to-1 decision is expected to shield companies from many so-called nuisance suits.

In last Thursday’s decision, the court backed Tellabs, a maker of fiber-optics equipment, and its former chief executive. Investors had sued, claiming that they were misled about the company’s declining finances, the Dow Jones News Service reports.

In its ruling, the High Court said it was concerned about the burden of what it called “frivolous, lawyer-driven litigation,” according to the Financial Times.

It was the second Supreme Court pro-business decision of the week, reports the New York Times, coming on the heels of a decision on Monday that held that Wall Street securities underwriters generally are immune from civil antitrust lawsuits.

The rulings came in concert with a push by senior administration officials for limits on shareholder lawsuits, according to the Times, because they claim that the suits, based on laws and regulations written in the aftermath of corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom, tend to discourage investment and are prompting firms to look overseas for investment capital.

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.
A new survey shows that about one in five people admits pilfering items from work — and only 21 percent say they regret it.

“It’s amazing how many people admit to this,” said Brent Short, managing director of Spherion, the Florida-based based staffing company that conducted the survey of more than 2,000 people, according to a report from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “A lot of them really don’t think of it as theft.”

The Scripps News Service cites Duquesne University ethicist James Weber as saying that attitudes about theft of minor items such as pencils or Post-It notes are a “textbook case” of how people view ethics from the standpoint of consequences or principles.

“From the perspective of consequences, taking a pencil home, perhaps to give to your child for school the next day, will probably cost your company mere pennies — making it easy to justify. But from the standpoint of ethical principles, it’s still theft — and it’s wrong.”

The Kansas City Star notes that of the surveyed workers, the highest-paid typically stole more than the ones who earned less.

LONDON
One of the hottest accessories this summer is a banner of environmental consciousness — a trendy cloth bag emblazoned with the slogan, “I am not a plastic bag.”

Customers lined up outside some chic L.A. boutiques — some arriving at 4:00 A.M. and others skipping work — to be the first to own one of the cult canvas creations, according to reports from the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine.

Christian Science Monitor correspondent Mark Rice-Oxley reports that the movement apparently started in Britain where a filmmaker documented how plastic bags foul shorelines and kill sea life. Stores across Britain began using bags made of substances other than plastic, and the retailer Sainsbury introduced the reusable “I am not a plastic bag” tote, selling 20,000 of them in one hour.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the popularity of the bag mirrors eco-consciousness nationwide. Sears, for example, noticed a surge in sales of its “French Market Basket,” which is marketed with the slogan, “Fight plastic bag pollution and look Oh-So-French at the same time.”

From the University of Oregon:

“Want to light up the pleasure center in your brain? Just pay your taxes, and then give a little extra voluntarily to your local food bank. University of Oregon scientists have found that doing those deeds can give you the same sort of satisfaction you derive from feeding your own hunger pangs.

“A three-member team — a cognitive psychologist and two economists — published its results in the June 15 issue of the journal Science. The scientists gave 19 women participants $100 and then scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they watched their money go to the food bank through mandatory taxation, and as they made choices about whether to give more money voluntarily or keep it for themselves….

“Researchers found that two evolutionarily ancient regions deep in the brain … fired when subjects saw the charity get the money. The activation was even larger when people gave the money voluntarily, instead of just paying it as taxes. These brain regions are the same ones that fire when basic needs such as food and pleasures (sweets or social contact) are satisfied.

” ‘The surprising element for us was that in a situation in which your money is simply given to others — where you do not have a free choice — you still get reward-center activity,’ said Ulrich Mayr, a professor of psychology. ‘I don’t think that most economists would have suspected that. It reinforces the idea that there is true altruism — where it’s all about how well the common good is doing. I’ve heard people claim that they don’t mind paying taxes, if it’s for a good cause — and here we showed that you can actually see this going on inside the brain, and even measure it.’

“The study gives economists a novel look inside the brain during taxation, said co-author William T. Harbaugh, a UO professor of economics and member of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass…. ‘On top of that,’ Harbaugh added, ‘people experience more brain activation when they give voluntarily — even though everything here is anonymous. That’s a very surprising result — and, to me, an optimistic one.’…

“There remain a lot of unanswered questions, Harbaugh said. ‘We show that people liked paying a tax that went to a food bank. But suppose the tax had been unfair. What then?’ Or suppose that people voted to make other people pay the tax, too.’ That would help other people even more, so would the voter get a bigger neural reward?’…”

“The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet and dramatist, 1749-1832)

If you don’t live in Texas, chances are you’re not aware of William Krar. You may not know that an FBI raid on his property in April 2003 netted more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs, and nearly two pounds of sodium cyanide, along with antigovernment and white supremacist literature.

Krar’s case “ranks at the very top of all domestic terrorist arrests in the past 20 years in terms of the lethality of the arsenal,” terrorism expert Daniel Levitas told the Christian Science Monitor in December 2003. Yet “outside Tyler, Texas, the case is almost unknown,” the Monitor reported, noting that there had been “two government press releases and a handful of local stories, but no press conference and no coverage in the national newspapers.”

Now suppose Krar had been a Muslim. Does anyone doubt that this story would have topped the national news, making his name a household word?

That disparity in response lies at the heart of a soon-to-be-released report on “Violent Extremism and Radicalization.” Prepared by the EastWest Institute, it cuts through the popular equation “terrorism = Islam” to search for deeper answers. The report’s authors — Levitas is one — looked at extremist violence in three communities based in the Abrahamic faiths: extremist Jewish settler movements in the West Bank, Christian Identity militias in the United States, and Muslim radicals in Great Britain.

“What is most striking,” the draft report finds in comparing the three, “is the similarity of the worldview and the rationale for violence.” That rationale centers on “a Manichean outlook,” by which the authors mean an apocalyptic dualism that reduces everything to a mortal struggle between good and evil. Such an outlook produces “a case of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ where members of the same faith can be branded apostates and enemies if they are perceived as too willing to compromise ‘pure’ beliefs.” In each faith, violent actors claim that “God did not intend for civilization to take its current shape; and that the state had failed the righteous and genuine members of that nation, and therefore God’s law supersedes man’s law.” In their minds, that failure justifies violence in God’s name.

The report develops a number of recommendations for dealing with extremist violence wherever it crops up. Among them:

• Act consistently. Unless “the spectrum of existing laws” is fully enforced, a selective lack of response exacerbates the feeling of injustice upon which extremism thrives. Case in point: William Krar, whose 11-year sentence would almost surely have been far more severe had his literature promoted al Qaeda.
• Don’t militarize the conflict. Avoiding the terminology of war when discussing terrorism, as well as responding with police instead of soldiers whenever possible, sends the signal that extremist violence is mere criminal activity, undercutting the extremists’ cherished claim to political legitimacy.
• Respond proportionately. By ensuring that every government response is “consistent, fair, and proportionate,” operating in “geographic areas where extremist sentiment is known to exist,” governments can preserve civil liberties and the rule of law — two things to which extremists are violently opposed.
• Avoid Manichean rhetoric. To condemn terrorism simply as evil accepts the extremists’ own terms. “Trying to engage in a competition with religious extremists over who can offer a simpler answer to complex problems will be a losing proposition every time,” the authors note. Instead, the counter-message should be shaped to “address specifically how extremists are violating the tenets of their faith.”

Discussing the report at a prepublication conference in New York last week, an international and interreligious group of experts gravitated toward this last point, and for good reason. Each of the three extremist groups takes the recruiting of new members very seriously. For each, the pitch depends on the same core arguments. You reduce the complexities of the world to black-and-white, we/they polarities. You emphasize that “we” have a long history of humiliation and disrespect which “they” have perpetrated. You define the struggle as an ultimate, cosmic Armageddon upon which the future of the world depends. You use selective religious texts to support that argument. And you convince the recruit that he or she has a glorious destiny in fighting to save the world.

To students of extremist violence, these points aren’t new. But this report usefully puts them into a cross-cultural, interreligious context. It also emphasizes the need to focus (in one researcher’s words) on the “flow” rather than the “stock” of extremists, disrupting future growth rather than simply eliminating current actors.

Bottom line? While the authors don’t directly say so, there’s a powerful moral message here. To the extent that we ourselves indulge a public discourse that is Manichean, simplistic, and polarizing — on talk radio and television, through inflammatory campaigning and politicking, and in street-corner and barbershop chats — we’re making extremist recruiting easier than it should be. Terrorism isn’t simply an Islamic phenomenon. Nor is it something that governments alone fight “over there.” It’s something we all address right here, as we choose whether to imagine a merely right-versus-wrong world or see a bigger-picture reality.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

In last week’s commentary, Rushworth Kidder speculated on three things that must change in order for the perception of the nation’s moral barometer to rise. He also invited readers to share their suggestions.

Well, share you did. We received many thoughtful letters, some quite lengthy, and it would be difficult to present them in their entirety. What follows are some of the areas for improvement you suggested, edited down to bullet points with an extracted sentence or two for context:

• “Increased respect for human life.”
• “More and improved role models in society. They could be parents, employers, politicians, teachers, coaches, whatever — but the world really needs them now.”
• “Increased number of absolutes that the majority can adopt. This would facilitate agreement on what is moral and what is not.”
• “A government of the people and for the people, and government leaders/politicians who truly represent us and not work only to gratify their own ego and pocket book.”
• “A paradigm shift toward: ‘We are all Brothers/Sisters and there is enough to go around for everyone of us, and we don’t have to hoard and grab.’ “
• “Demand that companies pay their CEOs in accordance with their value, not an over-inflated salary with huge stock options, etc.”
• “Place more value on honesty and ethical behavior by refusing to bow to popular culture.”
• “Greater personal responsibility. We are still blame-shifting, everything from frivolous lawsuits to paying our bills.”
• “An honest free press. Our media seeks the sensational. They build mountains of controversy in order to sell more air, more paper.”
• “Our lack of unity. We are boxed into reds and blues, young and old, black and white, or believers and nonbelievers. Our common ground is rarely, if ever, articulated by our leaders, our press, our educators, or our parents.”
• “Corporate Ineffectiveness. Corporations have fallen back into the rut of a ‘command and control’ mentality (to borrow the expression from Margaret Wheatley). This mindset treats people as ‘things’ and human beings only relate to corporate executives as ‘cost to serve’ margins.”
• “Allow mistakes. Leaders in all arenas — schools, the community, politics, the media, corporations, police departments, parents, whatever — must allow the people/children whom they lead, mentor, or are developing to make mistakes.”
• “Value people who contribute every day to our society as a whole and its future.”
• “Return to traditional moral codes. Our nation continues to drift away from a common definition of morality, and as long as divergent measures of morality exist (and replicate), surveys will continue to show a large block of disenfranchised Americans with a falling moral barometer.”
• “Affirmation of the reality of absolute truth. Our government education system is force-feeding a new generation of Americans with the fallacy that a pluralistic society requires all members to affirm truthfulness of conflicting systems of belief, eliminating their ability (and will?) to discriminate between truth and error.”
• “Be honest enough to be willing to learn more; self-righteousness is a dead end, detrimental to one’s own well-being and also to collective good. Especially learn more about all religions; the effect would reduce fear and promote respect for and appreciation of others.”
• “Be intelligent about the difference between that sense of fairness that benefits all equally, and religiously biased opinions that tilt the balance unequally when allowed to insidiously influence the actions of those in positions of power and authority.”
• “More honesty at the top [in government].”
• “More honesty in business.”
• “More honesty in our personal relationships.”
• “A societal emphasis on collaboration instead of competition. By its very nature, competition not only sends the message that the most important thing is to win, but winning always comes at the expense of another — someone has to lose for me to win.)”
• “Increased tolerance of Christians. While not all who state that they are Christians do not maintain a high moral code in their own lives, true Christianity as taught and practiced by Christ and as observed today by Christ-followers does in fact embrace a very high moral level. Increasing, as a minimum, the media’s tolerance of Christianity would go a long way to encourage greater moral behavior indirectly, if not directly.”
• “Congress must make earmarks transparent to all, instead of having the gall to continue to play earmark hide-and-seek with the public.”
• “Congress must consent to having an external committee monitor its ethics instead of fooling itself that it can correct misdeeds internally.”
• “Greater financial equity.”
• “Comity, which goes beyond civility.”
• “Relativism. We need a ‘dash’ or ‘pinch’ of it. While recognizing the difficulty of creating a line not to be crossed off of an absolute, the strength of a group is in the conversation to define that softer line.”

There were many overlapping responses, some of which were embraced in the list above. To give you an idea of the relative weight of the responses: Several readers cited adherence to the Constitution, in various contexts, as something in need of improvement. Financial equity, especially in terms of executive compensation and corporate greed, was repeatedly cited and woven into at least half a dozen replies. A sizeable percentage of readers cited integrity and truth telling as an area in need of improvement, along with tolerance, both in terms of others’ political beliefs and religions. Topping the list was civility, a quality seen as lacking in entertainment, politics, and the workplace.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the constitution — and the country.”

– Excerpt from a 2-1 decision last week by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the right of the government to detain indefinitely a legal U.S. resident without filing charges. The ruling comes in the case of an alleged al Qaeda sleeper agent, Ali al-Marri, who was arrested in 2001. The White House says it will appeal to the full court, notes the Associated Press.

DURHAM, N.C.
A legal ethics committee last week disbarred Mike Nifong, the North Carolina prosecutor who waged a relentless and ultimately disastrous rape prosecution against three Duke University lacrosse players.

The Charlotte Observer and Associated Press report that the panel determined that Nifong lied and cheated and exploited the case to boost his reelection campaign for district attorney of Durham County.

According to the News and Observer of Raleigh, the decision marked the first

time in the history of the state that a prosecutor has been disbarred for deceptive courtroom activity.

Nifong brought charges against the players when he was embroiled in a tight reelection campaign, reports the International Herald Tribune. He continued to pursue the case even as it crumbled, and was accused of pressing trumped-up charges against the Duke players, who are white, in an effort to solidify support among Durham’s black voters.

The woman who made the rape charges, which later were determined to have been fabricated, is black, reports the Herald Tribune.

Nifong’s disbarment came one day after he admitted that he “unwittingly” lied to judges and made prejudicial statements in the case, the Los Angeles Times News Service reports. Nifong, who said he planned to resign as Durham D.A., apologized to the players “to the extent that my actions have caused them pain,” and said that continuing in office “is not furthering the cause of justice.”

Nifong had no comment on his disbarment.

His lawyer, David Freedman, told the McClatchy news service that Nifong will not appeal the decision.

At the same time, Freedman struggled to explain the actions of the man who had spent his entire 28-year career as a Durham prosecutor.

“Why, why did we get to the place we got?” Williamson asked, according to the McClatchy report. “At the root of it is self-deception arising out of self-interest…. His self-interest collided with a very volatile mix of race, sex, and class, a situation which, if it were a plot in a John Grisham novel, would be considered to be too contrived.”

LOS ANGELES
The death of a California woman who lay bleeding on an emergency room floor and died after 9-1-1 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics to take her to another hospital has focused attention on the ethical responsibilities of emergency personnel.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of an intestinal perforation on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles. Relatives charged that she was bleeding from the mouth and in extreme pain for the 45 minutes that she languished in the waiting area, according to reports from Time magazine and Bakersfield TV station KGET.

Her death in May went all but unnoticed until the Los Angeles Times gathered security-camera footage and 9-1-1 tapes to document how witnesses unsuccessfully pleaded with sheriff’s dispatchers for help.

The case, according to Los Angeles Times writer Charles Ornstein, has become a “symbol of bureaucratic indifference,” and has “crystallized people’s fears that even in their most desperate moments, the emergency system won’t take them seriously.”

The Times quotes University of Pennsylvania ethicist Arthur Caplan as questioning, “What kind of a society are we when we can’t even render aid to someone who’s in their own blood and vomit on the floor and you’re mopping around them? It’s a kind of morality tale of a society gone cold.”

Officials in Los Angeles County have threatened to shut down the hospital if administrators cannot come up with a plan to correct deficiencies that were identified in a previous federal inspection, the Associated Press reports.

The emergency room employee who failed to arrange an examination has resigned, according to the AP, and “written findings” have been placed in the files of several others.

OTTAWA
Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper last week nominated a constitutional lawyer and longtime government official to take over as the new federal ethics commissioner.

Mary Dawson will administer the new Conflict of Interest Act, which lays out ethics guidelines and post-employment rules for public office holders, the Vancouver Sun reports.

Political observers say Dawson’s tenure probably will determine whether the ethics commission becomes a credible institution or remains mired in political squabbling, according to an analysis from the Toronto Globe & Mail.

The previous ethics commissioner, Bernard Shapiro, was accused by Harper of political bias and had run-ins with several members of Parliament, according to the Toronto Star.

Harper also forwarded the nomination of Christiane Ouimet as public integrity commissioner, responsible for enforcing the Canadian law that protects government whistle-blowers.

Both nominations are subject to approval by various parliamentary committees, CTV reports.