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« Previous Entries Next Entries »Will the next President clean up the Justice Department?
Friday, August 8th, 2008In a recent report to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Inspector General Glenn Fine said that one of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ top advisors violated federal civil service laws by regularly considering political affiliations in screening candidates for career positions at the Department of Justice. According to Fine, Gonzalez aide Monica Goodling chose candidates whom [...]
How will the next President handle the $482 billion budget deficit?
Friday, August 1st, 2008The White House raised voters’ eyebrows and heart rates this week when it hiked its estimate of the 2009 budget deficit to $482 billion. Yes, folks, that’s an all-time record, and it gets even more spectacular when you realize that the country had a $128 billion budget surplus during the President’s first year in office. Together, [...]
Will the next President challenge election fearmongering?
Friday, July 25th, 2008This week I heard from a friend (let’s call her Ellen) about a political fundraising gambit that left her hopping mad. An older widow who has difficulty getting around, Ellen returned home one day to find that the Post Office had tried to deliver a certified letter to her. Fearing the worst (certified letters often contain [...]
How will the next President handle reconstruction in Iraq?
Friday, July 18th, 2008On a recent trip abroad, I happened to be watching BBC television when the network rebroadcast an investigative series titled, “The Baghdad Billions” that first ran in November of 2006. BBC reporter Mark Gregory described how the U.S. government apparently mismanaged private contractors who were brought in to rebuild post-war Iraq. The program described alleged improprieties [...]
Should “New Yorker” magazine apologize to the Obamas?
Monday, July 14th, 2008This week’s New Yorker magazine cover, a cartoon depicting Presidential candidate Barack Obama in Muslim robes and his wife, Michelle, as a gun-toting terrorist, may have been intended as a satire, but the joke fell horribly flat. The cartoon is titled “The Politics of Fear” and, according to the New Yorker, “combines a number of fantastical [...]
How will the next President conduct terrorism surveillance?
Friday, July 11th, 2008Continuing my series on ethical issues facing the next President, let’s discuss the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that were approved by Congress this week. The new law was developed in the wake of revelations that, after 9/11, the Bush Administration eavesdropped on American computer and phone lines for almost six years without [...]
How will the next President deal with Guantanamo prisoners?
Sunday, July 6th, 2008Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the prisoners in detention at Guantanamo Bay have the right under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in American federal courts, we will probably see a flurry of litigation from detainees seeking release. According to NPR, the Pentagon believes that about eighty of those prisoners [...]
How will the next President interact with Zimbabwe?
Friday, June 27th, 2008In honor of the 90th birthday of civil rights giant Nelson Mandela, I want to devote this post to an ethical dilemma facing the next U.S. President in future diplomatic relations with Zimbabwe.
Tomorrow, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is expected to be reelected in a “run-off” election that world governments are decrying as an outright sham. [...]
Will the next President apologize to Native Americans?
Friday, June 20th, 2008A few weeks ago, I wrote a post asking whether the next President would apologize to America’s ethnic minorities. The trigger for that post was the heartfelt apology that Australia’s Prime Minister delivered to his country’s aboriginal natives for the abuse they suffered at the hands of Caucasian settlers. Now, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has upped the ante [...]
How will the next President handle emergency aid?
Friday, June 13th, 2008Environmental disasters around the world carry with them interesting ethical questions when humanitarian needs and international politics collide. The recent devastation in Myanmar made headlines when the generals who head the Myanmar government declined to accept emergency supplies from the United States because they were being delivered by military ships and aircraft. While the Myanmar [...]
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