Soccer Dad

Barbaric ethics

Pillage Idiot (Attila) has deconstructed a recent "ethics" column by Randy Cohen in "Martha Vineyard's Morality. The problem one questioner has is what's the best to deflect suspicion from her friend - who's guilty - and herself - who's innocent - of adultery. Pillage Idiot concludes:

So not only does he not suggest for a minute that anything is wrong with the friend's adultery -- it's more a matter of the questioner's personal taste -- but he goes so far as to offer "just in case" advice about lying to cover up the affair.

I really enjoyed his deconstruction of Randy Cohen's relative ethics, but I was really impressed to see that he was Instalanched for Jimmy Carter once again refuses to shut up in which he writes:

He should have added: "What happened? We thought you used to do nothing when you were attacked by Islamic fundamentalists."

And you know Carter's right that the people he speaks to everywhere he goes -- college campuses, left-wing churches, third-world dictatorships -- liked it a lot better that way.

Meanwhile Instapundit notes that the Justice Department is cracking down:

President Bush's administration has threatened to sue Southern Illinois University, alleging its fellowship programs for minority and female students violate federal civil rights laws by discriminating against whites, men and others. . . .

"The University has engaged in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities and males,'' says a Justice Department letter sent to the university last week and obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The letter demands the university cease the fellowship programs, or the department's civil rights division will sue SIU by Nov. 18.

(He credits Josh Clayburn.)

And the Washington Post reports that the Justice Department is cracking up:

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which has enforced the nation's anti-discrimination laws for nearly half a century, is in the midst of an upheaval that has driven away dozens of veteran lawyers and has damaged morale for many of those who remain, according to former and current career employees.

Nearly 20 percent of the division's lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration's conservative views on civil rights laws. Longtime litigators complain that political appointees have cut them out of hiring and major policy decisions, including approvals of controversial GOP redistricting plans in Mississippi and Texas.

Of course the third paragraph might be the most important:

At the same time, prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have declined 40 percent over the past five years, according to department statistics. Dozens of lawyers find themselves handling appeals of deportation orders and other immigration matters instead of civil rights cases.

Well if that's the case maybe the folks who were offered generous buyouts (remember a buyout is not forced on anyone) were not needed anymore. This happens all over government. Of course if you want to make a federal case out of not having enough federal cases, you go to the Washington Post and complain that politics is interfering with serious work.

And if the government isn't helping enough already, Jeff Jacoby hails our legislators for saving us from excess profits:

In fact, the real gas and oil profiteers weren't represented by the CEOs getting grilled on Capitol Hill last week, but by the demagogues doing the grilling. Over the past 25 years, according to the Tax Foundation, oil companies paid state and federal taxes of more than $2.2 trillion (in inflation-adjusted dollars). During the same period, the companies' profits totaled $630 billion -- less than a third of the government's take. Government revenue from gasoline taxes alone has exceeded oil industry profits in 22 of the past 25 years.

See they're trying to save us from the big, greedy oil companies and keeping all those excess profits for themselves. And in case you hadn't noticed, most politicians haven't suggested that to make things better for ordinary Americans they'd temporarily cut some of the oil taxes. Nope. Their business of deciding how they best ought to be spending our money is too important to mess with.