In a column several weeks ago (”Two Strikes and You’re Out: Good Policy or Bad Metaphor?“), I wrote about a teacher chaperoning a prom, finding a student who had been drinking, and getting caught in a dilemma about punishing him under the school’s two-strikes policy. At the end, I asked for your thoughts.

In the past, we’ve digested your responses to our columns into single short accounts. But since the responses from readers were particularly rich this time, we thought you’d enjoy seeing them in their entirety. This is a trial, so don’t expect any polished graphics — yet.

Why “yet”? Because we’re also hoping for your feedback on another question: Would you like to see a regular forum feature in Ethics Newsline® for interactive commentary? If we had a weekly bulletin board where readers could post comments about our stories, and read and reply to others’ postings, would you find that attractive? Do you think you’d use it? Do you think it would help promote a better public conversation on ethical issues?

Click here to read these letters and to give us your feedback on a forum. You can even give us feedback on the letters themselves, though without a forum we can’t promise to share them with others — yet.

Our toughest ethical dilemmas arise when two strong moral arguments are pitted against each other. Our most innovative resolutions arise when we find a middle ground between them, turning dilemmas into trilemmas.

But is every trilemma option a winner? Can what looks like a creative accommodation prove to be a craven appeasement? That’s the question raised by president George W. Bush’s commutation last week of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence.

Mr. Libby, you recall, was vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff when he became involved in the Valerie Plame affair. Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written an article critical of the administration. In apparent retaliation, administration higher-ups leaked the fact that Plame was an undercover intelligence operative.

The special investigator for the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, zeroed in on Cheney’s office as the likely source of the leak. Under questioning, Libby lied. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine. Last week, President Bush exercised his presidential privilege to erase Libby’s prison time.

In the ensuing uproar, Bush’s supporters praised him for saving a fine man from an excessive sentence. Bush’s detractors fulminated against his favoritism and his high-handed disregard for the course of justice. Behind the shouting, however, the case reflects a straightforward right-versus-right dilemma, resolved by a trilemma option.

The president’s statement about his decision neatly lays out both sides of this justice-versus-mercy choice. Critics of the investigation, he says, argued that it should never have been pursued once the leaker of Ms. Plame’s name had been determined — which, by the time of Libby’s trial for lying to investigators, it had. Those critics, he notes, also point out that “neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act nor the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation.” Finally, these critics argue that the punishment is inappropriate for “a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service.”

On the other hand, Bush observes, “a jury of citizens” found Libby “guilty of perjury and obstructing justice.” In addition, those supporting the investigation “argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth,” that those who hold “the public trust” must be “held accountable” if they lie, and that “had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.”

Rather than coming down on one side or the other, however, Bush then explains his reason for choosing a middle ground that (unlike a pardon) lets the conviction stand but (unlike a full sentence) relieves the most onerous part. “I respect the jury’s verdict,” he says, but then calls the prison time “excessive.” He explains that his decision “leaves in place a harsh punishment” that includes a “forever damaged” reputation, a significant fine, and “the consequences of his felony conviction” that will be “long-lasting.”

Bush’s statement is a well-argued piece, as far as it goes. But trilemma options are subject to several caveats. First, not every dilemma lends itself to a trilemma option. If you attempt to force-fit one onto a dilemma that cries out for a more black-and-white choice, you can become an unconscionable compromiser, waffling just when you needed to stand firm. Second, because a trilemma option is often a highly creative solution, it tends to come into focus gradually and sometimes incompletely. By the time it must be enacted, it’s not always well tested. And like all things creative, it’s sometimes brilliant and sometimes a flop.

Which was this? The question that still divides the public is not about whether Bush had the legal right to commute. It is about what he left out of consideration:

• Given a recent appeals court ruling upholding a similar punishment in a similar case and given Bush’s record of resisting pardons and commutations while governor of Texas, was this exception based more on personal loyalty than on legal standards?
• Given every administration’s desire to protect its inner secrets, was this decision a way of buying Libby’s silence rather than driving him to write a tell-all book?
• Given his lame-duck status, did Bush have little to lose and much to gain by appeasing his friend Dick Cheney and his party’s vociferous far-right wing?
• Given his visibility as leader of the world’s chief democracy, was he concerned that overseas he could look like any tin-pot dictator bending his nation’s laws to protect his own interests?
• Given the $5 million in funds flowing from admirers into Libby’s legal defense fund, might Libby never be out of pocket for his fine (for which he wrote a check last week), and might those same admirers reward him with a high-salaried position, rendering moot the president’s “harsh punishment” argument?
• Given the president’s professed desire to upgrade the tone of the presidency, following President Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives for lying, has Bush reversed course and signaled that lying in high places is no big deal?

As the Libby trilemma was unfolding, these points needed to be addressed. Would that have forced even more creativity — and a better resolution? Or would that have compelled a retreat to the stark polarities of the original dilemma, and a firm choice for one side (no intervention) or the other (full pardon)? We’ll never know. For all it accomplished, this trilemma left a lot to be desired.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

See this week’s note from Rush Kidder about a recent column and a possible future feature.

“There’s definitely a backlog. Right now, that means we might not get to some cases as quickly as some people might like. If there’s still a backlog in two years when we start running up against the statute of limitations, that’s different.”

– David Dugas, the U.S. attorney in Baton Rouge, talking to USA Today about the mounting pile of more than 11,000 cases of potential fraud related to aid for hurricane Katrina, which hit nearly two years ago. Among the cases being examined by Dugas’s office are “reports of people cheating aid programs, swindling contracts, and scamming charities.” In addition, the Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government misspent $1 billion in aid after ignoring some of its financial safeguards, notes the paper.

WASHINGTON
President Bush last week communed the sentence of former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, setting off a controversy about ethics and accountability.

Bush saved Libby from serving a 30-month prison sentence, while leaving intact a $250,000 fine and two years’ probation.

The commutation was viewed by many as an act of loyalty by an unpopular president who is trying to mend relations with conservative party members calling on him to rescue Libby, the Reuters news agency reports.

Libby was convicted of lying to investigators in the probe of how CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name was leaked to the press. Ironically, notes NBC News, no one was ever charged for the actual leak, and the only person to serve any jail time was former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who was jailed for refusing to tell a grand jury about her sources.

The Miller case itself sparked an ethical debate about the obligations of journalists to protect sources, and about the limits that should be in place to protect reporters from government coercion.

Libby’s indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice poured more fuel on the argument about overreaching government prosecution, with his supporters contending that it was an abuse of power for the government to prosecute a man for lying about a crime that, in the eyes of the law, never happened.

The news media’s opinion of the commutation was mixed. In a summary of newspaper editorials, UPI reports that the Dallas Morning News characterized Bush’s decision as “misguided” and the Arizona Republic argued that the commutation “can only feed a cynical disrespect for the American justice system.”

Many editorial pages complained that the decision sets a double standard of justice for the powerful and well connected.

But the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post favored the commutation, arguing that Bush should issue a full pardon before leaving office, according to UPI.

The Economist contends that “there is hypocrisy on all sides in this matter: Democrats ought to remember that Bill Clinton was never punished for having obviously perjured himself over his activities with Monica Lewinsky. And commuting sentences and issuing pardons are constitutional rights of any president. But they are ones that should be used sparingly: remember the Republican outrage when Mr. Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a fugitive financier, and his own half-brother Roger?”

GENEVA
Three ethics-related issues dominated news from the United Nations last week:

• An anticorruption watchdog agency last week told business leaders at a the U.N. Global Compact summit that graft is costing the global economy $2.5 trillion per year and keeping millions of people mired in poverty. According to a report from the Agence France-Presse, Transparency International head Huguette Labelle said that the amount that could be saved by curbing corruption would be “quite enough to help us remove those that are at the edge of survival around the world to a much different level.”
• More than 150 companies at the same summit pledged to reduce their carbon emissions and meet energy-efficiency targets. The Financial Times reports that the firms signing the “Caring for Climate” pledge included some major international firms with high energy consumption, including Alcan, Anglo-American, and Rio Tinto. Several firms from China and other developing nations also signed up.
• Human rights activists pressed the U.N. to revise its seven-year-old initiative on business responsibility. Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and ActionAid, speaking before the official opening of the Global Compact summit, said the U.N. should work harder to abolish child labor and other human-rights issues, as well as stiffen penalties. “What is needed are legally binding regulations to control corporate activities with respect to human rights,” Aftab Alam Khan of ActionAid told Reuters.

BERLIN
The new CEO of the troubled European engineering conglomerate Siemens says he wants to recover the firm’s “ethical culture.”

Peter Löscher says he will investigate any wrongdoing and “draw the necessary consequences,” the International Herald Tribune reports.

“Performance with ethics — this is not a contradiction, it is a must,” he said.

The IHT also reports that Löscher promised to clean up the complex organizational and reporting structures that are believed to have enabled employees to hide millions in questionable payments that German prosecutors suspect may be bribes.

Löscher also pledged to hire a new compliance officer to enforce “clear lines of responsibility, a high level of transparency, and maximum speed,” CNN reports.

Siemens’ previous compliance officer, Daniel Noa, resigned after only six months on the job, with little explanation offered. Forbes reports that various sources say Noa found himself isolated and with little support within the firm.

The bribery investigation undermined support for Löscher’s predecessor as CEO, Klaus Kleinfeld, whose tenure was cut short when the board balked at renewing his contract in the wake of widely publicized police raids at corporate offices and the temporary jailing of a board member, according to Bloomberg.

BEIJING
China put its anticorruption efforts front and center last week, with a court sentencing a former high-ranking food and drug official to death for approving counterfeit medications.

In an apparent effort to revive confidence in Chinese business amidst a recent crackdown on corruption, state-run media announced that Cao Wenzhuang will face death for taking bribes from two pharmaceutical firms in order to approve bogus drugs, reports the New York Times.

The official party paper Shanghai Daily notes that the ruling comes less than two months after the same Beijing court issued a death sentence against Zheng Xiaoyu, the former food and drug top regulator, for accepting bribes.

The Jurist, a publication of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, reports that four other officials were given lesser sentences in similar cases recently brought before the court.

Last week’s developments highlighted a growing concern about the safety of Chinese goods both within China and in markets to which China exports, reports ABC News. In related news last week, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled three Chinese-made products the agency said could cause lead poisoning or choking due to small parts.

Recent stories in the world press also have focused on high levels of toxins found in pet food and frozen fish exported from China.

DETROIT
A side effect of the information age is focusing our increasingly unfocused attention on the ethics issue of whether to drive while distracted by myriad electronic devices.

In a page-one story titled “New Hazard: Driving While Wired,” USA Today reports that lawmakers across the country not only are cracking down on cell-phone use but also are considering bans on drivers using video games, computers, and fax machines from behind the wheel.

States also are trying to estimate how much of a threat is posed by iPods and front-seat video screens.

Canada is seeing crackdowns on distracted driving, according to the Toronto-based Globe & Mail, which reports that Quebec, the province with the worst traffic-safety record in the nation, is considering a ban on handheld cell phones.

Researchers are characterizing the mix of high-tech communication devices and driving as part of an “an impairment epidemic” particularly acute among teens, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune news service.

“Teens embrace technology,” writes the Tribune’s Ted Gregory, “and that technology — from cell phones to digital music players to illuminated dashboard maps that talk to drivers — is becoming increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous in automobiles and trucks. That is a frightening mix when considering that research shows teens are particularly vulnerable to distraction and tend to think of themselves as both invincible and proficient multitaskers.”

In other road-hazard news, the U.K. Guardian reports that lawmakers in Greece are mounting a campaign to remove billboards containing images of scantily clad women. Local officials blame the risqué displays for 10 percent of accidents in Athens.

LONDON
A new drug that could wipe out painful memories promises relief for those troubled by post-traumatic stress, but carries profound ethical implications, according to reports from the world press.

A drug called propranolol was injected into volunteers, who were then asked to recall a painful memory. According to an abstract of the study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug appeared to interfere with recall of the troubling memory.

The BBC reports that the study, conducted in Montreal and Boston, involved treatment of 19 crash or rape victims for 10 days. Some of the participants received propranolol, while others were given a placebo.

While the results show promise for treatment of stress disorders, they also “raise profound questions about the nature of identity, the meaning of suffering, and the danger of using such drugs as a quick-and-dirty substitute for genuine therapy,” writes Wired columnist Brandon Keim.

Times of London columnist Ben Macintyre ventures that erasing memory has a sinister, Orwellian aspect as well as significant potential for unintended consequences: “Traumatized soldiers returning from the battlefield could be given drugs to make the memory more comfortable one day. But if a pill can numb the guilt and horror of conflict, then the truly horrific nature of war could be obscured: soldiers are no longer human beings but fighting drones, able to sluice away the bloody memories with pharmaceutical forgetfulness.”

Also, notes London’s Daily Telegraph, memory-blocking drugs are virtually unexplored territory for regulators and medical ethicists, who must contend with the question of whether such medications could be abused to delete unwanted memories on a whim.

LOS ANGELES
A recently disclosed romantic affair between Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a local television anchorwoman has raised ethical questions about whether the anchorwoman violated standards by reporting on city politics while she was having a relationship with the mayor, as well as if the media went too far in publicizing the romance.

NBC-Telemundo anchorwoman Mirthala Salinas was placed on leave while her company investigates whether she violated journalistic ethics by reporting on Villaraigosa after their relationship began about a year ago, according to the Press-Telegraph of Long Beach.

“It’s clearly very, very dicey ethical territory when a journalist develops a personal relationship with a government official,” says Bob Steele, the senior ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, according to Los Angeles television station KCAL.

“There are ethical problems of Salinas reading any stories about the mayor in her role as an anchor or an on-air reporter,” Steele said, according to the KCAL report. “To do so compromises not just her journalistic credibility, but the integrity of the Telemundo station.”

For his part, Villaraigosa maintains that the details of his personal life have no relevance to his job as mayor, the Washington Post reports. The mayor, contends the Post, instigated some of the current media frenzy himself by holding a news conference a month ago when he announced his separation from his wife.

Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim Rutten notes that the distinction between what should be private and public is becoming increasingly difficult. On one hand, he writes, the insatiable demands of the 24-hour, technology-driven news cycle compel some reporters and editors to sink to the lowest common denominator and trade in gossip.

But “to an extent seldom recognized,” Rutten writes, “this trend has been abetted by politicians and officeholders themselves. Like nearly every sort of public person in our society, they increasingly and enthusiastically have embraced the culture of celebrity and its indispensable helpmate, the technology of self-promotion.”

HANOI
A four-foot-nine-inch, 88-pound grandmother is fast becoming the scourge of corrupt officials in Vietnam, according to a report from the Associated Press.

AP correspondent Vy Tien Hong writes that while most Vietnamese are intimidated by corrupt officials demanding bribes, Le Hien Duc, a 75-year-old retired schoolteacher, will “take on anyone, from lowly bureaucrats to high-level officials. She e-mails, phones, tracks them down at their offices, confronts them at their homes.”

According to the AP report, corruption has become endemic in Vietnam, in large part because officials earning crushingly low salaries feel it is acceptable to charge kickbacks for virtually any type of service, and traffic cops — known locally as “road bullies” — routinely demand $3 bribes from drivers they have pulled over.

While most Vietnamese are terrified of confronting authority, Duc is not. In one case, a man complained to her about a “road bully” bribe and Duc tracked down the police officer and filed a complaint with the chief of police.

The officer was demoted, the AP reports.

Vietnam, which routinely ranks near the bottom in polls of government and public integrity, has become sensitive to the damage to its business climate and is now promoting anticorruption efforts. Vietnam.Net, a state-owned English-language site, reports that the government has established a website to report corruption.

Complainants must provide their names, email addresses, and phone numbers, as anonymous complaints are not accepted, according to the Hanoi-based Thanhnien News.

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“As Congress prepares to debate reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, Americans express mixed views about the nation’s signature education law. Among those who have heard about the law, 34% say the law has made schools better; 26% say it has made schools worse; and 32% say it has had no impact.

“Parents of public school children have relatively positive views of No Child Left Behind, which uses annual testing to measure school progress and requires schools to raise reading and math test scores. More than four-in-ten public school parents (42%) who have heard a lot or a little about the law say it has made schools in the country better (compared with 34% of the public). However, just 30% of public school parents say that No Child Left Behind has made their children’s schools better.

“Overall, 45% of the public, and about the same percentage of parents with children in public schools (43%) — say the law overemphasizes standardized testing, based on those who have heard a lot or a little about No Child Left Behind. About three-in-ten in both groups say the emphasis on testing is appropriate….

“…Nearly four-in-ten (37%) of those who have heard about the law say the federal government has too much influence over education policy, 31% say too little, and 22% believe that the law gives the federal government the right amount of influence over education policy….

“…[T]here are substantial racial differences in views about the education law’s emphasis on standardized testing, and whether it gives the federal government too much influence over schools. Nearly a third of blacks (31%) say the law places too little emphasis on testing; among whites, just 16% express this view. In addition, a plurality of blacks (45%) say the federal government has too little influence over public schools under No Child Left Behind. The plurality view among whites (40%) is that the education law gives the federal government too much influence over the schools.

“Americans who have different levels of education also have notably different views about No Child Left Behind. Many more college graduates than those with less education say the law places too much emphasis on standardized testing…. In addition, nearly half of college grads (48%) say there is too much federal influence over schools under No Child Left Behind, compared with 37% of those with some college, and 30% of those with a high school degree or less….”

“Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (U.S. philosopher and poet, 1803-1882)