Free Republic

A conservative-leaning watchdog group has filed an ethics complaint against Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, accusing him of violating the chamber’s code of conduct by pushing to help a politically connected Las Vegas casino project get visas for foreign investors. The complaint, filed with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics by Cause of Action, is based in part on a Washington Times investigation last year. That investigation found that after pressure from Mr. Reid and his staff, the Obama administration overruled career Homeland Security officials and expedited visa applications for about two dozen foreign investors for the casino.... ...The American...

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Harry Reid BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff January 21, 2014 A government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) for allegedly campaigning federal officials to approve visas for foreign Las Vegas investors.The group, Cause of Action, wrote a letter to Senate Ethics Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and Vice Chairman Johnny Isakson (R., Ga.) accusing the majority leader of contacting two U.S. Customs and Immigration Services officials, Watchdog.org reported: “Despite the fact that these applications were ineligible for appeal, Sen. Reid’s efforts to lobby USCIS resulted in the...

Call OSHA. Quick! We desperately need the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to take a look at the incredibly dangerous flooring in the Arkansas State Capitol. This federal agency could determine why the state’s legislators are slipping or stumbling or tripping (that’s it!) so badly that legislative provisions they never, ever intended to enact are flying out of their briefcases or folders (or you-know-what) to land inexplicably into law. Laws they pass without having read. Of course. In last year’s legislative session — the first with both chambers of the state’s General Assembly controlled by Republicans since the century before...

Hillary Clinton might have a pretty hefty scandal brewing. It turns when she was an attorney working on the Watergate investigation, she was fired by her supervisor for “lying, unethical behavior.” Jerry Zeifman, who said he is a lifelong Democrat, was a supervisor for 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. When the investigation was complete, Zeifman said he fired Hillary and refused to give her a recommendation. “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of...

Will there be a scandal if the new political appointees at the IRS sic their auditors on Moveon.org? What will the Washington Post say should the new president keep Guantanamo Bay open for five more years, quadruple the number of drone missions, or decide to double renditions? Will it say that he was shredding the Constitution, or that he found the terror threat too great to honor past promises? Will NPR run an exposé on our next president should she tap into Angela Merkel’s cell phone, or monitor the communications of Associated Press reporters — and their parents? Will investigative...

This is my second article in reply to Tony, who wrote to me with critical observations on my speech What is Uniquely Good about Western Civilisation Derives from Christianity. The first article is Support for Christianity Should Not Alienate People. My reply is in several parts because he covers many issues, although sometimes using too simplistic arguments compared to the attention they would deserve. The problem I have in answering him is that in the space of a couple of emails he enumerates many things which he finds wrong about Christianity, each of which would require a book (and...

The words of Pope Francis and Archbishop Charles Chaput should give us pause this weekend and make us think about the growing trend in our society to devalue human beings and treat them like playthings. We must not only think about the innocent souls we are discarding like trash, but about our own as well. Much has been written about Pope Francis' interviews and insights in last few days. Some of the rhetoric has been respectful, while some not at all. But much of what I have read is insightful. For example, the following excerpt from an editorial by Archbishop...

**SNIP** While Tierney refused to answer questions at the event, FOX 25's Sharman Sacchetti asked Pelosi about why she chose not to wait until the completion of the probe to appear alongside the Congressman. "Our timing is about the timing that works for the American people," Pelosi replied. "To create good paying jobs for them and not to worry about what's happening in Washington D.C., but to meet the needs of what is happening to people out here. Tierney has been under fire since his wife pleaded guilty in 2010 to helping file false tax returns for her brother, who...

The fact that communism, or even socialism, cannot be implemented in reality, is by now widely accepted; even Leftists and liberals, if unhappily and grudgingly, had to surrender to the overwhelming historical evidence which has accumulated especially in the last 2 or 3 decades, showing that a socialist economy is almost a contradiction in terms, and a society based on those principles is barely feasible, and certainly not a happy one. But hardly anyone seems to question the ethical validity of socialist ideas. In the mind of most people, they still inhabit the moral high ground. In fact, I...

This article was published a couple of years ago, but it is important in highlighting prejudice against people with disabilities that was common in the past. (....)There are numerous stories of German doctors under the Nazi regime using disabled patients as subjects for horrific medical experiments. But an obsession with experimenting on disabled people was not confined to Germany. Hospitals in Britain and America were also keen to experiment on disabled people in the first half of the 20th century(....)Some British psychiatric patients were given malaria to see if it would cure their mental illness. Barbiturates were often administered in...

The is–ought problem or is-ought gap, also called "Hume's Law" and "Hume's Guillotine" after the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume who first fomulated it, simply states that from "is" we cannot logically deduce "ought", that is, from the knowledge of reality we cannot derive moral choices, from facts we cannot deduce values.Hume's Law is still undisputed today, and nobody has ever found a way to successfully challenge it.One of its major consequences is that from science we cannot deduce ethics.Science can only be used to put into practice desiderata that we have arrived at by other means, i.e. moral...

"Sex raises no special moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations of honesty, concern for others, prudence and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by having sex.) Accordingly this book contains no discussion of sexual morality." This is from the introductory pages of Practical Ethics (Amazon US) , (Amazon UK)...

Some forty years ago, in his groundbreaking study, Twilight of Authority, sociologist Robert Nisbet observed a disturbing trend in American culture. As respect for authority had declined among the population, he wrote, members of that population became increasingly willing to accept and actually applaud an increasingly powerful, albeit less legitimate, governmentThe notion of true authority, Nisbet wrote, assumes the strength of two essential social qualities—hierarchy, and privacy. Yet both are fading before our eyes.For Nisbet, the egalitarian agenda of the elites—especially the liberal intelligentsia—is a driving engine of social collapse. It crushes a rich, varied, and multidimensional culture featuring an...

Presidential ethics are now situational. Obama is calling for a shield law to protect reporters from the sort of harassment that his attorney general, Eric Holder, and the FBI practiced against Fox News and the Associated Press. Through such rhetoric, he remains a staunch champion of the First Amendment — even though he now has the ability to peek into the private phone records of millions of Americans. The president is outraged that the IRS went after those deemed politically suspicious. So he sacked the acting head of the IRS, Steven Miller, who was scheduled to step down soon anyway....

U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for overseas lobbying that promotes controversial biotech crops developed by U.S.-based Monsanto Co and other seed makers, a report issued on Tuesday said. A review of 926 diplomatic cables of correspondence to and from the U.S. State Department and embassies in more than 100 countries found that State Department officials actively promoted the commercialization of specific biotech seeds, according to the report issued by Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer protection group. The officials tried to quash public criticism of particular companies and facilitated negotiations between foreign governments and seed companies such as...

State Sen. Robert Ford, one of the Lowcountry’s most established and colorful political figures, stepped down today as the Senate Ethics Committee was finishing up its review into his campaign spending. The Charleston Democrat began his political career as an outspoken black leader who butted heads with Mayor Joe Riley and others in Charleston’s political establishment but evolved into a leader who touted his close ties with influential Republican Senate colleagues. His resignation came as the Senate Ethics Committee began discussing the final four of eight allegations today. Its findings are expected to be posted online soon, Sen. John Courson...

Is the Christian faith intellectual nonsense? Are Christians deluded? “If God exists and takes an interest in the affairs of human beings, his will is not inscrutable,” writes Sam Harris about the 2004 tsunami in Letter to a Christian Nation. “The only thing inscrutable here is that so many otherwise rational men and women can deny the unmitigated horror of these events and think this is the height of moral wisdom” (p. 48). In his article “God’s Dupes,” Harris argues, “Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The...

The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in “an artful dodge,” i.e., a cover-up, was that they used the phrase “mistakes were made.” Safire defined it as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.” The phrase became infamous when both Richard Nixon and Ron Ziegler, his press secretary, deployed it to explain away Watergate without explaining who did what and when or whether any ill motive was involved. AdvertisementAstonishingly, the Internal Revenue Service resurrected the Nixonian expression within hours of its clumsy revelation...

Following my article Effects of Atheist Propaganda Come Home to Roost, - although on Free Republic the comments were favourable to my position - readers of my blog have posted comments that need a more analytical and detailed answer than allowed in the comments section. Complex subjects require complex treatment. Furthermore, there seems to be much confusion about the theme of Christianity and ethics. For example, an anonymous reader calling himself "roger in florida" wrote: "I believe you are very misguided if you equate Christianity with morality or cannot understand that atheists, such as myself, are incapable [he then explained that he...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is suing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and six other lawmakers, charging that they mishandled the Ethics investigation that led to his public censure in late 2010. In a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Washington D.C., Rangel claims the Ethics Committee that investigated his alleged wrongdoing are guilty of "numerous flagrant, knowing and intentional violations" of his due process rights. House members who approved his censure were "knowingly deceived" by the committee leaders – including then-Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and ranking member Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) – into thinking that the probe "had been conducted in...