Showing posts with label ETHICS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ETHICS. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
David Steinberg: Tying up loose threads in the curious case (Ilhan Omar)
Posted on July 18, 2019 by Scott Johnson in Ilhan Omar
In four intensely reported investigative columns — here (August 13, 2018), here (October 23, 2018), here (October 30, 2018), and here (November 5, 2018), — David Steinberg has explored the evidence suggesting that Ilhan Omar entered into a sham marriage with her brother in 2009. This is his fifth. He titles it “Meet Leila Elmi: The Missing Link Showing Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother.” Drawing on his research, interviews, and social media evidence he makes the case that Omar has engaged in a variety of fraudulent activities and willful misrepresentations related to her marital arrangements. He writes:
On October 22, 2008, the U.S. State Department stopped accepting applications for the Priority 3/Refugee Family Reunification program — the process by which refugees can apply for asylum if one family member is already a legal U.S. resident. State halted the program because DNA testing — primarily of Somalis — had concluded that perhaps 87 percent of applicants were fraudulently claiming family relationships.
Despite continuing war, Somalia of 2008 was not comparable to the open hell of the early 1990s, when an eight-year-old Ilhan and her family fled to Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camps. She lived there from 1991 until 1995, aged eight to 12. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services then helped Ilhan, her sister Sahra, and their father Nur Said receive asylum in the United States along with thousands of other Somalis.
The complicated moral question of fraud, let alone fault, among this 1990s wave of refugees escaping civil war will never be answered with accurate statistics. We will have to settle for adjectives like “widespread” and “rampant.” Yet the negative outcomes cannot be ignored. Even refugees with strong desire to assimilate with Western civic order are hampered by the possible discovery of conflicting documents. And compromising information becomes leverage in a community already difficult to police.
Twelve-year-old Ilhan had no say on the manner in which she arrived in the United States.
However, U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (D-MN) is now under scrutiny for acts she took beginning in 2009 — not 1995. In 2009, Omar was a 26-year-old U.S. citizen. She had been a U.S. citizen for nearly nine years.
Additionally, the foreign national Omar apparently helped commit fraud was not fleeing hell in 2009, either. Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a long-time citizen of the United Kingdom. He even possessed a high school diploma from the United States: Elmi attended a St. Paul, Minnesota high school for his senior year of 2002-2003, and graduated before returning to London.
We look to 1995 not to incriminate a kid, but to answer questions about what Omar did 14 years later as an adult U.S. citizen.
Please read the verified evidence below — and read it alongside the three years of verified evidence published by Scott Johnson, Preya Samsundar, and myself (our work is linked here). The answers to those questions about 2009 appear to give probable cause to investigate Omar for eight instances of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years of state and federal tax fraud, two years of federal student loan fraud, and even bigamy.
To be clear: The facts describe perhaps the most extensive spree of illegal misconduct committed by a House member in American history.
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Thursday, December 11, 2025
The Curious Case of Ilhan Omar & Her Family
August 08, 2019 JW INSIDE REPORT
The Curious Case of Ilhan Omar & Her Family
On this episode of Judicial Watch’s “Inside Report,” Investigative Journalist and former editor of PJ Media, David Steinberg discusses Representative Ilhan Omar & her family–along with potential fraud she may have committed.
Read about our ethics complaint against Rep. Omar HERE
Read David Steinberg’s article HERE
Saturday, November 08, 2025
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Pope’s Message for International Conference of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church in Sarajevo
‘You yourselves will learn ever better how to be faithful to the word of God which challenges us in history, and to show solidarity with the world, which you are not called to judge but rather to offer new paths, accompany journeys, bind hurts and shore up weakness’
July 27, 2018 13:18
Here is a Vatican translation of the message Pope Francis sent for the opening of the III International Conference of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 26-29, 2018 on theme “A Critical Time for Bridge-Building: Catholic Theological Ethics Today”:
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Dear Brothers and Sisters!
I greet all you taking part in this, your third worldwide conference on theological ethics. It takes place in Sarajevo, a city of great symbolic value for the journey of reconciliation and peacemaking after the horrors of a recent war that brought so much suffering to the people of that region.
Sarajevo is a city of bridges. Your meeting is inspired by this dominant motif, which warns of the need to build, in an environment of tension and division, new paths of closeness between peoples, cultures, religions, visions of life and political orientations. I have appreciated this effort of yours from the beginning, when the members of your planning committee visited me in the Vatican last March.
The theme of your meeting is one to which I myself have often called attention: the need to build bridges, not walls. I keep repeating this in the lively hope that people everywhere will pay attention to this need that is increasingly acknowledged, albeit at times resisted by fear and forms of regression. Without renouncing prudence, we are called to recognize every sign and mobilize all our energy in order to remove the walls of division and to build bridges of fraternity everywhere in the world.
The three focal points of your meeting intersect along this journey of bridge building in a critical time like our own. You have given a central place to the ecological challenge, since certain of its aspects can create grave imbalances not only in terms of the relationship between man and nature, but also between generations and peoples. This challenge – as it emerges from the Encyclical Laudato Si’ – is not simply one of many, but the broader backdrop for an understanding of both ecological ethics and social ethics. For this reason, your concern for the issue of migrants and refugees is very serious and provokes a metanoia that can foster ethical and theological reflection, even before inspiring suitable pastoral attitudes and responsible and carefully planned political policies.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Jesuit “Moral Theology” and the Destruction of Western Morality
Jesuit Moral Theology and the Destruction of Western Morality, PDF format
Introduction
Do you want to know why the West has become a moral cesspool? A major reason is Jesuit “moral theology”, which has been taught for the past four centuries and has spread through western society like leaven. For this order of Roman Catholic priests has worked, since its inception, to conquer Protestantism, and the Protestant-influenced West, for the pope of Rome. And to do that, it has worked to destroy, indeed annihilate, western morality, which was so largely the product of the influence of Protestantism.
What you are about to read will shock and horrify every true Christian! This is not to say that the Jesuits are solely responsible for the collapse of the western world’s morals; but they are most definitely a major cause of it.
In order to analyse the various immoral, vile, perverted and utterly anti-scriptural Jesuit doctrines in the light of the Bible, quotations from the works of Jesuit theologians themselves will be given. These are taken from two books which powerfully expose the Jesuit Order: History of the Jesuits, by Theodor Griesinger,[1] and Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, by Charles Chiniquy.[2] Protestants of previous generations were well aware of the Jesuits and their intrigues, thanks to books like these; but alas, today the situation is very different. Very little is known about them at all, which has had devastatingly tragic results within the ranks of Protestantism, and within western society in general. For this very purpose I wrote my own book, The Jesuits: the Secret Army of the Papacy.[3]
As this pamphlet will show, Jesuit “moral theology” has (for the most part unknowingly) been absorbed into western society, including into what has been called the “Protestant West”. And the results are to be seen all around us. It is no exaggeration to say that the Jesuit Order has played a huge role in altering the morals of the western world.
May the Lord be pleased to use this present pamphlet to open the eyes of many to the disgusting “moral theology” of the Jesuits.
It must be pointed out that although Griesinger refers to these Jesuit priests by their title of “Father”, Christians are commanded not to give this title to any man, in a spiritual sense (Matt. 23:9); and in this present pamphlet I only do so in the imaginary exchanges between a Roman Catholic and a Jesuit in the confessional, where the Roman Catholic will of course call the priest, “Father.”
Sunday, August 07, 2016
The Chimera Quandary: Is It Ethical To Create Hybrid Embryos?
Listen· 5:31
August 7, 20165:00 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
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In this file photo, a professor holds a tray of stem cells at the University of Connecticut. The NIH plans to lift a moratorium on funding studies using human stem cells in animal embryos.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monster that is part lion, part goat and part snake. Far from reality, sure, but the idea of mixing and matching creatures is real — and has ethicists concerned.
That's because last week, the National Institutes of Health proposed a new policy to allow funding for scientists who are creating chimeras — the non-mythological kind. In genetics, chimeras are organisms formed when human stem cells are combined with tissues of other animals, with the potential for creating human-animal hybrids.
In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monster that is part lion, part goat and part snake. Far from reality, sure, but the idea of mixing and matching creatures is real — and has ethicists concerned.
That's because last week, the National Institutes of Health proposed a new policy to allow funding for scientists who are creating chimeras — the non-mythological kind. In genetics, chimeras are organisms formed when human stem cells are combined with tissues of other animals, with the potential for creating human-animal hybrids.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Biden, a Catholic School ‘Kid,’ Praises Nuns Under Fire From the Vatican
POLITICS
By JASON HOROWITZ
SEPT. 17, 2014
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke on Wednesday in front of the statehouse in Des Moines as he helped a group of social justice activists kick off their 10-state “Nuns on the Bus” tour.CreditCharlie Neibergall/Associated Press
DES MOINES — At a Vatican meeting a few years ago, Pope Benedict XVI unexpectedly asked Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for some advice. “You are being entirely too hard on the American nuns,” Mr. Biden offered. “Lighten up.”
Last year, Mr. Biden seized on an audience with Pope Francis as another opportunity to praise the sisters who remained the target of a Vatican crackdown for their activism on issues like poverty and health care.
And on a visit to Iowa on Wednesday, Mr. Biden literally, as he might put it, got on board with the nuns.
“You’re looking at a kid who had 12 years of Catholic education,” Mr. Biden, wearing a white shirt and a red tie, said before a backdrop of the gold-domed Iowa statehouse and a “Nuns on the Bus” coach bus. “I woke up probably every morning saying: ‘Yes, Sister; no, Sister; yes, Sister; no, Sister.’ I just made it clear, I’m still obedient.”
DES MOINES — At a Vatican meeting a few years ago, Pope Benedict XVI unexpectedly asked Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for some advice. “You are being entirely too hard on the American nuns,” Mr. Biden offered. “Lighten up.”
Last year, Mr. Biden seized on an audience with Pope Francis as another opportunity to praise the sisters who remained the target of a Vatican crackdown for their activism on issues like poverty and health care.
And on a visit to Iowa on Wednesday, Mr. Biden literally, as he might put it, got on board with the nuns.
“You’re looking at a kid who had 12 years of Catholic education,” Mr. Biden, wearing a white shirt and a red tie, said before a backdrop of the gold-domed Iowa statehouse and a “Nuns on the Bus” coach bus. “I woke up probably every morning saying: ‘Yes, Sister; no, Sister; yes, Sister; no, Sister.’ I just made it clear, I’m still obedient.”
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The issue of obedience has weighed on those nuns of late, as the Vatican has deemed the women on stage with the vice president radical feminists who pay too much attention to social justice and too little to promoting church teaching on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
Mr. Biden greets supporters in IowaCreditCharlie Neibergall/Associated Press
Mr. Biden’s visit came just weeks after Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Vatican’s enforcer of doctrine, shocked many American nuns with his comments to a Vatican newspaper. As he defended the effort to rein in the nuns, the cardinal remarked, “Above all, we have to clarify that we are not misogynists; we don’t want to gobble up a woman a day!”
So while political reporters focused on Mr. Biden’s appearance as his first foray back into a presidential campaign season, the outing also put the nation’s first Roman Catholic vice president in the middle of a protracted political fight between the pope he admires and the American nuns he reveres.
“All politics begin here in Iowa,” said Sister Simone Campbell, the head of Network, the group that organized the tour and described Mr. Biden’s papal conversations. She expressed delight that the vice president had lent some star power to what she called “our little, teeny event.”
In an interview, Sister Campbell said Mr. Biden had expressed a willingness to join the nuns after their first tour in 2012, “Nuns on the Bus: Nuns Drive for Faith, Family and Fairness.” That was the year that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cracked down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents about 80 percent of America’s 57,000 nuns. The report explicitly cited Sister Campbell’s group, which helped lobby for President Obama’s health care law, as being a particularly bad influence.
The continuing inquiry has prompted tension in the Vatican.
Many Catholic progressives have looked to Francis, who has stripped some of the American church’s most powerful traditionalists of their power in Rome, to end the investigation and affirm that the nuns’ work with the poor is in sync with his own priorities. So far, they have been disappointed.
Sister Campbell said Obama administration officials had offered to help make her group’s case through diplomatic channels and added that the president’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, a Catholic whosebrother is a priest, “is like totally into” the nuns’ approach to the faith.
Mr. Obama himself has long ties to Catholic activism; he began community organizing under the guidance of progressive priests in Chicago.
But it is Mr. Biden who feels closest to the nuns.
At the event on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said, “The Nuns on the Bus fought like the devil for health care.” He then helped kick off their 10-state tour to increase voter turnout by saying, “I know no group of people who bring a greater sense of justice and passion to what they do.”
The prelates of the church, he suggested, would be wise to listen to the nuns, because “guess what, they are more popular than everybody else.”
The Holy See’s press office declined a request for comment. Privately, Vatican officials’ responses to Mr. Biden’s appearance ranged from indifference to annoyance.
“There will be people unhappy in the Vatican if this becomes an occasion for the nuns to get a big vote of support from the White House,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”
After praising the nuns in hushed tones, Mr. Biden abruptly switched to a shouting campaign mode on the bright afternoon, calling for respect for immigrants, protection of voting rights and restoring the middle class before a crowd of about 250 people.
“What happened? Things are out of whack!” he yelled to applause. (He also quoted Thomas Pynchon and, hours after apologizing for his use of the word “Shylocks” to portray craven bankers, described a Chinese leader as hailing from “the Orient.”) Even more so than former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was the star attraction at Senator Tom Harkin’s steak fry on Sunday, Mr. Biden was saddled with the weight of defending the Obama administration. When he did so, the crowd’s energy waned.
After the speech, Mr. Biden hugged the nuns, spent more than half an hour shaking nearly every hand at the rally and then boarded their bus, which was made to look like a campaign flier with the words “We the People, We the Voters” scrawled across the windows. He had a fund-raiser later in the day for congressional candidates, but first the bus dropped him off at the Waveland Cafe, one of Iowa’s best-known campaign stops.
Mr. Biden entered the diner and greeted a small group of local Democratic Party officials seated at a round table and eating cake with white frosting. He answered a question from reporters about Iraq, slipped his credit card to the waitress and, as his aides bounced the press from the diner, took his seat in the middle of a table full of nuns. They ordered burgers and Reuben sandwiches. Mr. Biden ate French toast with peanut butter and maple syrup. Then, for an hour and a half, he shared his views with them on subjects both theological and temporal, including St. Thomas Aquinas, the political origins of papal infallibility and the fallout from the sexual abuse scandal in the church.
He told the sisters that nuns had built his confidence as a stuttering child — “You have no idea of the impact that you have on others,” he said — and that he believed Francis was working hard to bring about reconciliation with them. “Everything will be all right,” he assured the nuns.
After a brief pause, Mr. Biden, who has run unsuccessfully for president twice, added that he had not “always accurately predicted everything.”
A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page A22 of the New York editionwith the headline: Biden, a Catholic School ‘Kid,’ Praises Nuns Under Fire From the Vatican.
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Sunday, June 29, 2014
Facebook secretly experimented on its users
Mandie Sami reported this story on Monday, June 30, 2014 08:15:00
Listen to MP3 of this story (minutes)
| MP3 DOWNLOAD
CHRIS UHLMANN: If you're one of Facebook's more than 1 billion users you might have been part of a social experiment without knowing it.
A new study has revealed that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users in order to change their emotional state.
And it claims it was done for research.
Facebook insists the study was legal, but as Mandie Sami reports, privacy experts say the experiment was dangerous and unethical.
MANDIE SAMI: When users sign up to Facebook, most know the social network will use their information for marketing purposes.
But many don't think that Facebook will use them as guinea pigs in an experiment they're not told about.
FACEBOOK USER: Facebook conducting these experiments without telling people is not okay.
FACEBOOK USER 2: Yeah I don't think it's really okay either; I think informed consent is always really important whenever an experiment is being conducted.
FACEBOOK USER 3: Keep it transparent if you're going to manipulate us.
MANDIE SAMI: A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has revealed that's exactly what Facebook did.
The researchers who carried out the study are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California-San Francisco.
For one week in January 2012, they manipulated what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw in their news feeds when they logged in.
Some people were shown content with only happy and positive words, while others were shown posts that contained sad and angry content.
The point of the experiment was to find out whether emotional states were contagious.
DAVID VAILE: The conclusion was, we can actually manipulate people's feelings by manipulating their news feed on Facebook.
MANDIE SAMI: That's David Vaile, the Co-convenor of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Community at the UNSW Law Faculty.
The study found more negative news feeds did lead to more negative status updates and conversely more positive news feeds resulted in more positive status updates.
David Vaile says, while not illegal, the experiment was unethical.
DAVID VAILE: Any sort of university or established researcher would typically have to take this to an ethics panel and get ethics clearance and first thing they'd ask is, where's the informed individual consent?
So, the issue here as well as not being informed consent for the individuals, is also the question of research ethics that you know they're messing with real people's lives and let's not forget that some you know negative experience online have real consequences for people.
At worst, case people get desperate or get… ending up feeling depressed, people have committed suicide from terrible things that have happened to them online.
MANDIE SAMI: AM contacted Mia Garlick, Facebook's head of Policy for Australia and New Zealand, to ask about the ethical concerns surrounding this experiment and whether informed consent was obtained.
She declined to comment and instead referred AM to Facebook's media enquiries line.
A spokesperson from Facebook is yet to respond.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Mandie Sami reporting.
Source
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| MP3 DOWNLOAD
CHRIS UHLMANN: If you're one of Facebook's more than 1 billion users you might have been part of a social experiment without knowing it.
A new study has revealed that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users in order to change their emotional state.
And it claims it was done for research.
Facebook insists the study was legal, but as Mandie Sami reports, privacy experts say the experiment was dangerous and unethical.
MANDIE SAMI: When users sign up to Facebook, most know the social network will use their information for marketing purposes.
But many don't think that Facebook will use them as guinea pigs in an experiment they're not told about.
FACEBOOK USER: Facebook conducting these experiments without telling people is not okay.
FACEBOOK USER 2: Yeah I don't think it's really okay either; I think informed consent is always really important whenever an experiment is being conducted.
FACEBOOK USER 3: Keep it transparent if you're going to manipulate us.
MANDIE SAMI: A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has revealed that's exactly what Facebook did.
The researchers who carried out the study are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California-San Francisco.
For one week in January 2012, they manipulated what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw in their news feeds when they logged in.
Some people were shown content with only happy and positive words, while others were shown posts that contained sad and angry content.
The point of the experiment was to find out whether emotional states were contagious.
DAVID VAILE: The conclusion was, we can actually manipulate people's feelings by manipulating their news feed on Facebook.
MANDIE SAMI: That's David Vaile, the Co-convenor of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Community at the UNSW Law Faculty.
The study found more negative news feeds did lead to more negative status updates and conversely more positive news feeds resulted in more positive status updates.
David Vaile says, while not illegal, the experiment was unethical.
DAVID VAILE: Any sort of university or established researcher would typically have to take this to an ethics panel and get ethics clearance and first thing they'd ask is, where's the informed individual consent?
So, the issue here as well as not being informed consent for the individuals, is also the question of research ethics that you know they're messing with real people's lives and let's not forget that some you know negative experience online have real consequences for people.
At worst, case people get desperate or get… ending up feeling depressed, people have committed suicide from terrible things that have happened to them online.
MANDIE SAMI: AM contacted Mia Garlick, Facebook's head of Policy for Australia and New Zealand, to ask about the ethical concerns surrounding this experiment and whether informed consent was obtained.
She declined to comment and instead referred AM to Facebook's media enquiries line.
A spokesperson from Facebook is yet to respond.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Mandie Sami reporting.
Source
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Thursday, November 14, 2013
Two Navy admirals suspended amid mushrooming bribery, prostitution scandal
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (July 02, 2012) Rear Adm. Ted Branch, commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, addresses the public regarding the results of its Judge Advocate General Manual (JAGMAN) investigation of the F/A-18D Hornet that crashed into an apartment complex in Virginia Beach on April 6. The aircraft, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106 and based at Naval Air Station Oceana, was conducting a scheduled training exercise when it suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure shortly after takeoff and crashed into the Mayfair Mews Apartment Complex. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ernest R. Scott/Released)
By Kristina Wong
The Washington Times
Sunday, November 10, 2013
The Navy has suspended two admirals in a broadening bribery scandal that already has ensnared three senior naval officials.
Involving charges of prostitution and payoffs, the scandal is the U.S. military’s highest-profile case of officer misconduct this year — part of a trend that has caused deep concern among Pentagon officials. The number of substantiated cases of misconduct has increased steadily since 2008, according to statistics by the Defense Department’s inspector general.
The Navy is investigating Vice Adm. Ted Branch, director of naval intelligence, and Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, director of intelligence operations, on accusations of “illegal and improper relations” with a defense contractor who scammed the Navy of millions of dollars and bribed naval officials with hookers and gifts over several years.
Neither admiral has been charged with a crime or violation, but the Navy said the accusations against them involve “inappropriate conduct prior to their current assignments and flag officer rank.”
So far, three Navy officials have been arrested and charged with giving classified information to Malaysian defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis in exchange for concert tickets, prostitutes and other illicit gifts.
The contractor’s company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., serviced naval ships in Southeast Asia, and the classified information helped him win Navy contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The information included ship movements and scheduled port visits, and data about internal Navy investigations of the company.
The three Navy officials are Cmdrs. Jose Luis Sanchez and Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, and naval criminal investigator John Bertrand Beliveau II. Mr. Francis also has been arrested, along with company executive Alex Wisidagama, of Singapore.
Cmdr. Misiewicz, Mr. Francis and Mr. Beliveau’s attorney appeared for a routine hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Southern California. The next court date is scheduled for Feb. 28.
The bribery scandal is unfolding amid a Pentagon effort to instill and enforce high standards of conduct among senior officers — and to hold them accountable for violating those standards. The effort’s success is debatable.
According to the Pentagon inspector general, 294 cases of officer misconduct were investigated and 40 were verified in 2008 — a substantiation rate of 14 percent. In 2012, 83 of 321 investigated cases were verified — a substantiation rate of 26 percent.
So far this year, 277 cases have been investigated and 95 verified — a substantiation rate of 34 percent.
Criminal convictions under the military justice system increased from 615 in 2008 to 731 in 2011, and dipped to 656 in 2012. The statistics do not include convictions in civilian courts or cases in which non-judicial punishment was administered.
The military’s handling of misconduct has been under fire amid an increase in reports of sexual assaults in the ranks. Reports of sexual assaults rose by 46 percent last fiscal year, the Pentagon announced last week.
Restoring the military’s ethics and professionalism has been a top goal of Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But no major initiatives have been announced since a review of ethics training for senior officers last November that found such training should begin earlier in an officer’s career.
“It remains a priority for the chairman, and we’ll continue to work this issue very hard,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said. “We’re troubled by the allegations surrounding what’s been reported with respect to Navy officers, and we need to continue to grapple with this issue [of misconduct].”
Martin L. Cook, professor of leadership and ethics at the Naval War College, said he thinks the growing number of ethical violations stems from Bathsheba syndrome, in which senior officers begin to abuse the privileges that come with their success.
“Senior officers have been successful for so long, they take it for granted and develop inflated senses of ego,” he said.
Steven Olson, an ethics professor at Georgia State University and co-founder of the Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility, said the type of unethical behavior exhibited in the bribery case usually happens when spending goes unchecked.
“In big buildups, the audit function tends to weaken and there becomes more tendency to engage in those [initial] behaviors that eventually end up in major fraud,” said Mr. Olson, who leads business executives through a military ethics class at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va.
“You see this in business when things are really booming,” he said. “When there’s a lot of money flowing through, it’s hard to keep track of it all, and that’s when people typically engage in fraud. They know the level that will be checked, and they do things just below that level.”
Mr. Cook said the problem could worsen as the military curtails training because of budget cuts.
A course that includes ethics training for new one-star generals has been canceled or curtailed twice this year because of budget cuts and the partial government shutdown in October. The Joint Chiefs’ capstone course, which requires senior officers from across the country to spend five consecutive weeks training together, is mandated by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, but the shutdown forced all of those who were traveling to return home.
“You need to constantly re-prime the importance of ethics, of standards, and the brain will remember what’s been most recently taught,” Mr. Olson said.
Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/10/two-navy-admirals-suspended-as-military-cracks-dow/#ixzz2ke4YXwhv
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.Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Is Sebelius shaking down health-care execs to finance Obamacare?
Geoffrey Cowley, @geoffreycowley
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius speaks during the opening plenary of the National Health Policy Conference organized by The AcademyHealth February 4, 2013 in Washington, DC. Sebelius spoke on the Obama Administration’s health policy priorities. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Health care reform may be President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, but it’s still a work in progress. The Affordable Care Act’s most ambitious provisions—the expansion of Medicaid , the rollout of 50 state-based insurance exchanges, the enforcement of a law requiring everyone to find coverage—are all set to kick in on January 1. The deadlines would be daunting even in a friendly political environment, but the path is now littered with landmines.
A small one exploded last weekend, after the Washington Post reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was soliciting private donations to help implement Obamacare. Congressional Republicans have forced the administration to go begging by rejecting its funding requests. But the same Republicans pounced when the HHS effort came to light—and the critics’ predictable questions have left the administration on its heels.
At issue is whether Sebelius has requested donations from industries her agency regulates—a practice that would be ethically improper and possibly illegal. The Post story forcefully asserted that she has. Under the headline “Sebelius turns to health executives to finance Obamacare,” the paper reported that she had spent the past three months hitting up insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical officials for “large financial donations” to help the government shepherd consumers into the nation’s new health system. The claim was attributed to an anonymous HHS official and an unnamed “industry person familiar with the secretary’s activities.”
The paper quoted agency spokesman Jason Young denying that Sebelius had “solicited funds from industries that HHS regulates.” But the charge set off a flurry of news coverage and righteous outrage. “To solicit funds from health-care executives to help pay for the implementation of the President’s $2.6 trillion health spending law is absurd,” Sen. Orrin Hatch said in a statement. “I will be seeking more information from the administration about these actions to help better understand whether there are conflicts of interest and if it violated federal law.”
Lamar Alexander, the senior Republican on the Senate health committee, went further, likening the secretary’s fundraising effort to the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran and funneled the proceeds to right-wing insurgents in Nicaragua. “Secretary Sebelius’ fundraising . . . should be fully investigated by Congress,” he told reporters in Nashville on Saturday.
Will these charges stick? Is a cabinet secretary really shaking down the very industries she regulates? HHS acknowledges that she has asked them to help raise public awareness. The agency also confirms that she has asked business leaders from outside the health sector to help finance groups like Enroll America, a nonprofit foundation set up to educate consumers about the new health care law. Those activities are all kosher under the Public Health Service Act.
But Young, the HHS spokesman, still disputes the central premise of the Washington Post story and all the criticism it has sparked. “The secretary has made no fundraising request to entities regulated by HHS,” he says. “We’ve worked with a wide range of stakeholders. But when it comes to fundraising, we ask only non-regulated entities”—that is, no one from the health-care industry.
If that’s true, HHS could quickly clear the air by releasing a log of the calls Sebelius has made. Young says the agency is busy preparing one and will release it shortly.
This scandal-plagued administration should hope it vindicates her, but the congressional Republicans calling for her head should reflect on their own role in the affair. After failing repeatedly to repeal or overturn Obamacare, they’re now working to thwart its implementation: that’s why Sibelius is begging business leaders for the funds to secure the nation’s health. The richest country in the world should be able to do better.
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Thursday, February 07, 2013
The Menendez - Melgen investigation continues
For an update on the widening Bob Menendez - Salomon Melgen Case;
Here are a few brief healines:
Comeuppance for Menendez, Obama and Hagel
Washington Post (blog) - 48 minutes ago
And when Melgen needed help with a port security contract in the Dominican Republic last year, Menendez urged U.S. officials to press the country to carry out the multimillion-dollar agreement.” Democrats haven't yet thrown him overboard, but his days ...
Sen. Menendez: No Undue Influence on Behalf of Political Donor
ABC News - 15 minutes ago
Still, Menendez's close ties to Melgen have sparked scrutiny in recent weeks. The Senate ethics committee is investigating two free trips he took to Melgen's residence in the Dominican Republic in 2010. He recently paid Melgen $58,000 from his personal ...
Report cites more ties between Menendez, under-fire doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer (blog) - 1 hour ago
Robert Menendez twice spoke to federal health officials about a Medicare billing dispute involving his friend and donor Salomon Melgen, the Washington Post reported today, raising more questions about the ties between the Democratic senator and South ...
Menendez says he called gov't in way to help donor
Boston.com - 9 minutes ago
The senator called federal health officials in 2009 and met with them again in 2012, each time urging them to change what he called an unfair payment policy which had cost his friend Melgen $8.9 million, according to an official close to the investigation who ...
Sen. Menendez acknowledges he contacted US gov't amid billing fight with ...
Washington Post - 33 minutes ago
This was during a dispute between CMS and Salomon Melgen, a longtime friend and donor. The FBI searched Melgen's Florida offices last week. Menendez says, “The bottom line is, we raised concerns with CMS over policy and over ambiguities that are ...
Report: Menendez pressed officials over donor's federal audit
The Hill (blog) - 4 hours ago
Melgen, a close friend of Menendez's, reportedly overbilled the U.S. government by almost $9 million, inviting a federal audit. Menendez aides said that the senator contacted officials on two occasions to complain that the billing rules were unclear and that the ...
Cough: Menendez Repeatedly Intervened on Disgraced Donor's Behalf
Town Hall - 1 hour ago
Just for reference, Melgen donated $700,000 to Menendez and other Senate Democrats in 2012 alone. It gets better: Other Florida doctors have asserted that Melgen used his close relationship with Menendez to intimidate critics within his profession.
Senator Bob Menendez Is Under Investigation For Sordid Ethics Violations
Business Insider - 1 hour ago
US media reported that the FBI conducted a raid on Tuesday on the West Palm Beach offices of Salomon Melgen, a friend who has made financial contributions to the political campaigns of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez. The Miami Herald said ...
Where could Svetlana be?
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog) - 14 hours ago
The original source of the scandal surrounding Melgen and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, a tipster who goes by “Peter Williams,” first told ABC News' Rhonda Schwartz about this woman in early 2012. “Williams” identified her as “Svetlana B.” ...
Controversy surrounding Menendez deepens.
PolitickerNJ - 34 minutes ago
Melgen has donated heavily to Menendez and last year donated $700,000 to a Democratic PAC that spent more than $600,000 on Menendez's race against challenger Joe Kyrillos. Menendez had a two to one money advantage over Kyrillos in the race.
Sen. Menendez Suggested Feds Shouldn't Be So Hard on His Shady Doctor ...
New York Magazine - 5 hours ago
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez hasn't said much about the various allegations surrounding his relationship with donor/shady doctor friend Salomon Melgen — including claims that he solicited underage prostitutes, failed to disclose $60,000 in flights on ...
Capital Eye Opener, Feb. 7: Menendez Ties to Donor Deepen, Hutchison Joins ...
Center for Responsive Politics - 2 hours ago
As we reported last week, the donor, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen -- who's now under investigation by the FBI -- and his family have given more than $426,000 to federal candidates since 1992. The list of recipients includes Republicans and many ...
Senator Menendez sticks up for his benefactor against Medicare overbilling ...
Human Events - 3 hours ago
The rest of it went into luxuries such as a private jet – which Menendez suddenly remembered he owed Melgen $58,000 for using, just as conservative bloggers began digging into a story the mainstream media had studiously ignored throughout the election ...
Reports: Menendez intervened for Palm Beach donor doc in Medicare dispute
Palm Beach Post - 2 hours ago
North Palm Beach resident Melgen, his family and businesses have given more than $1.1 million to federal and state political candidates and committees over the past 20 years, with the bulk of the money going to Democrats. Menendez has been the largest ...
Robert Menendez Contacted Federal Officials In Medicare Dispute With Top ...
Huffington Post - 25 minutes ago
Robert Menendez Contacted Federal Officials In Medicare Dispute With Top Donor Salomon Melgen. The Washington Post | Posted: 02/07/2013 11:16 am EST. Robert Menendez Medicare. The Washington Post reported ...
Menendez Went To Bat For Florida Eye Doctor In Medicare Dispute
TPM - 3 hours ago
Bob Menendez (D-NJ) reached out to top federal officials on behalf of Salomon Melgen after the Florida eye doctor was audited for overbilling the government, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Menendez aides said Wednesday that the junior New ...
Menendez Waded Into Top Donor's Fraud Case
Newser - 1 hour ago
Robert Menendez twice tried to intervene on behalf of pal and major campaign donor Dr. Salomon Melgen in the optometrist's ongoing battle with Medicare over alleged fraud, the Washington Post and New York Times report. Melgen is accused of overbilling ...
Bob Menendez Sex Scandal Intensifies As FBI Shifts Focus to New Jersey
PolicyMic - 3 hours ago
According to the Daily Caller piece, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, a 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic owned by West Palm Beach, Fla. ophthalmologist Dr. Salomon Melgen. The women, who asked for ...
More on Melgen and Menendez
WJNO - 42 minutes ago
The lawmaker reached out to federal officials back in 2009 about the government's audit into Dr melgen. That audit found the doctor overbilled medicare by nearly $9 million. Menendez reportedly complained to the director overseeing medicare payments, ...
"Bob": A Corrupt Senator
Cubasi.cu - 16 minutes ago
A republican senator for Georgia, Johnny Isakson, declared that a few days back FBI agents raided one of Melgen's residences, located in West Palm Beach, under the suspicion of embezzling the health system for the elder, Medicare. The wealthy oculist has ...
Here are a few brief healines:
Comeuppance for Menendez, Obama and Hagel
Washington Post (blog) - 48 minutes ago
And when Melgen needed help with a port security contract in the Dominican Republic last year, Menendez urged U.S. officials to press the country to carry out the multimillion-dollar agreement.” Democrats haven't yet thrown him overboard, but his days ...
Sen. Menendez: No Undue Influence on Behalf of Political Donor
ABC News - 15 minutes ago
Still, Menendez's close ties to Melgen have sparked scrutiny in recent weeks. The Senate ethics committee is investigating two free trips he took to Melgen's residence in the Dominican Republic in 2010. He recently paid Melgen $58,000 from his personal ...
Report cites more ties between Menendez, under-fire doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer (blog) - 1 hour ago
Robert Menendez twice spoke to federal health officials about a Medicare billing dispute involving his friend and donor Salomon Melgen, the Washington Post reported today, raising more questions about the ties between the Democratic senator and South ...
Menendez says he called gov't in way to help donor
Boston.com - 9 minutes ago
The senator called federal health officials in 2009 and met with them again in 2012, each time urging them to change what he called an unfair payment policy which had cost his friend Melgen $8.9 million, according to an official close to the investigation who ...
Sen. Menendez acknowledges he contacted US gov't amid billing fight with ...
Washington Post - 33 minutes ago
This was during a dispute between CMS and Salomon Melgen, a longtime friend and donor. The FBI searched Melgen's Florida offices last week. Menendez says, “The bottom line is, we raised concerns with CMS over policy and over ambiguities that are ...
Report: Menendez pressed officials over donor's federal audit
The Hill (blog) - 4 hours ago
Melgen, a close friend of Menendez's, reportedly overbilled the U.S. government by almost $9 million, inviting a federal audit. Menendez aides said that the senator contacted officials on two occasions to complain that the billing rules were unclear and that the ...
Cough: Menendez Repeatedly Intervened on Disgraced Donor's Behalf
Town Hall - 1 hour ago
Just for reference, Melgen donated $700,000 to Menendez and other Senate Democrats in 2012 alone. It gets better: Other Florida doctors have asserted that Melgen used his close relationship with Menendez to intimidate critics within his profession.
Senator Bob Menendez Is Under Investigation For Sordid Ethics Violations
Business Insider - 1 hour ago
US media reported that the FBI conducted a raid on Tuesday on the West Palm Beach offices of Salomon Melgen, a friend who has made financial contributions to the political campaigns of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez. The Miami Herald said ...
Where could Svetlana be?
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog) - 14 hours ago
The original source of the scandal surrounding Melgen and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, a tipster who goes by “Peter Williams,” first told ABC News' Rhonda Schwartz about this woman in early 2012. “Williams” identified her as “Svetlana B.” ...
Controversy surrounding Menendez deepens.
PolitickerNJ - 34 minutes ago
Melgen has donated heavily to Menendez and last year donated $700,000 to a Democratic PAC that spent more than $600,000 on Menendez's race against challenger Joe Kyrillos. Menendez had a two to one money advantage over Kyrillos in the race.
Sen. Menendez Suggested Feds Shouldn't Be So Hard on His Shady Doctor ...
New York Magazine - 5 hours ago
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez hasn't said much about the various allegations surrounding his relationship with donor/shady doctor friend Salomon Melgen — including claims that he solicited underage prostitutes, failed to disclose $60,000 in flights on ...
Capital Eye Opener, Feb. 7: Menendez Ties to Donor Deepen, Hutchison Joins ...
Center for Responsive Politics - 2 hours ago
As we reported last week, the donor, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen -- who's now under investigation by the FBI -- and his family have given more than $426,000 to federal candidates since 1992. The list of recipients includes Republicans and many ...
Senator Menendez sticks up for his benefactor against Medicare overbilling ...
Human Events - 3 hours ago
The rest of it went into luxuries such as a private jet – which Menendez suddenly remembered he owed Melgen $58,000 for using, just as conservative bloggers began digging into a story the mainstream media had studiously ignored throughout the election ...
Reports: Menendez intervened for Palm Beach donor doc in Medicare dispute
Palm Beach Post - 2 hours ago
North Palm Beach resident Melgen, his family and businesses have given more than $1.1 million to federal and state political candidates and committees over the past 20 years, with the bulk of the money going to Democrats. Menendez has been the largest ...
Robert Menendez Contacted Federal Officials In Medicare Dispute With Top ...
Huffington Post - 25 minutes ago
Robert Menendez Contacted Federal Officials In Medicare Dispute With Top Donor Salomon Melgen. The Washington Post | Posted: 02/07/2013 11:16 am EST. Robert Menendez Medicare. The Washington Post reported ...
Menendez Went To Bat For Florida Eye Doctor In Medicare Dispute
TPM - 3 hours ago
Bob Menendez (D-NJ) reached out to top federal officials on behalf of Salomon Melgen after the Florida eye doctor was audited for overbilling the government, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Menendez aides said Wednesday that the junior New ...
Menendez Waded Into Top Donor's Fraud Case
Newser - 1 hour ago
Robert Menendez twice tried to intervene on behalf of pal and major campaign donor Dr. Salomon Melgen in the optometrist's ongoing battle with Medicare over alleged fraud, the Washington Post and New York Times report. Melgen is accused of overbilling ...
Bob Menendez Sex Scandal Intensifies As FBI Shifts Focus to New Jersey
PolicyMic - 3 hours ago
According to the Daily Caller piece, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, a 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic owned by West Palm Beach, Fla. ophthalmologist Dr. Salomon Melgen. The women, who asked for ...
More on Melgen and Menendez
WJNO - 42 minutes ago
The lawmaker reached out to federal officials back in 2009 about the government's audit into Dr melgen. That audit found the doctor overbilled medicare by nearly $9 million. Menendez reportedly complained to the director overseeing medicare payments, ...
"Bob": A Corrupt Senator
Cubasi.cu - 16 minutes ago
A republican senator for Georgia, Johnny Isakson, declared that a few days back FBI agents raided one of Melgen's residences, located in West Palm Beach, under the suspicion of embezzling the health system for the elder, Medicare. The wealthy oculist has ...
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Source: Google News
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Source: Google News
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Thursday, January 31, 2013
Complex portrait of doctor linked to Sen. Bob Menendez probe
Posted on Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) in December 2009. | Olivier Douliery/MCT
Amy Sherman, Alfonso Chardy and Daniel Chang | The Miami Herald
MIAMI — By most appearances, Dr. Salomon Melgen embodies the great American immigrant success story: A native of the Dominican Republic, Melgen has earned renown as one of South Florida's leading eye surgeons. He owns a sprawling, waterfront home in North Palm Beach valued at about $3 million. He gives generously to charities and rubs elbows with prominent politicians.
"He's a man that loves the limelight. He always has," said Patricia Goodman, 70, a former office administrator and personal assistant to Melgen, who is now at the center of two FBI probes, one involving published allegations that he provided free trips to the Dominican Republic and prostitutes for U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat.
Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called the allegations a politically motivated smear by a right-leaning website.
FBI agents raided Melgen's West Palm Beach office Tuesday night, apparently seeking records related to the second investigation, one involving possible Medicare fraud. The feds continued to search the premises on Wednesday, joined by agents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, suggesting that the raid was linked to Medicare.
Lawrence Duffy, a criminal defense attorney representing Melgen, said his client is unaware of the reason for the FBI raid.
"The government has not informed Dr. Melgen what its concerns are," Duffy said in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. "However, we are confident that Dr. Melgen has acted appropriately at all times."
Goodman said Melgen never hosted a fundraiser for Menendez during the time that she worked for the doctor from about 1989 to 1999. But she planned all of Melgen's parties during those years, and said he helped raise millions for political campaigns - and had a blast doing it.
"He liked the excitement of it," Goodman said on Wednesday from her home in Palm Harbor on Florida's Gulf Coast. "He liked being with the big shots. That was his thing. He was very impressed with the politicians."
The politicians were equally impressed with Melgen, 58.
Among the politicians whom Melgen has befriended, and for whom he has hosted private fundraisers at his 5,000-square-foot home: former U.S. Sens. Christopher Dodd and Bob Graham, late Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles - who also was a patient of Melgen's - former President Bill Clinton, and Leonel Fernandez, former president of the Dominican Republic.
Goodman noted that Bill and Hillary Clinton vacationed at the doctor's home in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, and that he became good friends with Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman and co-chair of Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
"He used to go to Dr. Melgen's home in Casa de Campo and play golf all the time," Goodman said of McAuliffe.
Behind Melgen's conspicuous success and powerful friendships, though, Goodman said, she also saw a man who behaved recklessly in his private life.
"There were things going on that I didn't like, not necessarily in the office," she said. "His personal life got to take a toll on me."
So much so, Goodman said, that she declined to return to work for Melgen in 1999 after she was diagnosed with cancer.
Melgen could not be reached at his home, office or on cell phones or by e-mail Wednesday, but his office issued a statement regarding Melgen's relationship with Menendez:
"Dr. Melgen has been a friend and political supporter of Senator Menendez for many years," the statement read. "Senator Menendez has traveled on Dr. Melgen's plane on three occasions, all of which have been paid for and reported appropriately. Any allegations of engaging with prostitutes are manufactured by a politically-motivated, right-wing blog and are false."
Menendez, who was first accused of improprieties in the conservative Daily Caller website in November, has denied what he calls the "fallacious allegations." He has not yet directly addressed his relationship with Melgen.
Interviews with Melgen's former employees and acquaintances paint a picture of an exceedingly generous man who struggled to adapt as an immigrant and succeeded wildly in his medical career and in various business ventures, including founding a Latino-themed digital media outlet, VOXXI.com, which is based in Coral Gables.
He donated $15,000 at a recent fundraiser for experimental research into a rare muscular-degenerative disease that afflicts the 2-year-old son of Art Estopinan, the chief of staff of Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen, a Florida Republican..
"He is an angel. I consider him to be an angel," said Estopinan, his voice breaking into sobs. "This is the only hope my son has."
Goodman said Melgen "has got a really big heart for people. We used to see thousands of people that had no insurance, just write it off. He did that. He would never turn anybody away if they didn't have the money."
A woman who holds a high-level position at the Dominican Healthcare Association of Florida, which gave Melgen its lifetime honorary member award in April 2012, said she was surprised about the allegations.
"I was shocked," she said, adding that she always regarded Melgen as a professional totally devoted to his work.
"I see him as a great professional of great trust whose patients hold in high regard," the woman said. The woman remembered that when Melgen accepted the award at a gala dinner at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables he talked about the difficulties he had adjusting to the United States as an immigrant.
No one has a specific date when Melgen immigrated to the United States, but the woman at the Dominican Healthcare Association said it was possible he arrived in the late 1970s.
Melgen graduated in 1978 from the Pedro Henriquez Urena National University in Santo Domingo, and by 1980 was doing an internship at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.
He found professional and financial success in South Florida, where he says he was the first physician to perform out-patient eye surgery in 1986.
But Palm Beach court records show Melgen also has faced financial problems - including multiple IRS liens for millions of dollars.
One lawsuit hints at complications in his personal life. Melgen's company, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, sued Yuddehiris Dorrejo in 2000 amid a business dispute that involved a close relationship with Melgen.
Online records available immediately at the Palm Beach Courthouse Wednesday did not contain the full case file, but a four-page order by Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge John Wessel dismissing the case in March 2002 summarized the details of the legal dispute.
In October 1998 Dorrejo came to Florida and met Melgen at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Palm Beach County.
"Thereafter, an intimate romantic relationship developed," the judge wrote.
Then Dorrejo entered into an oral agreement with Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, which was owned and controlled by Melgen.
Melgen's company had agreed to make a $700,000 loan for Dorrejo's interest in a franchise retail store in the Dominican Republic.
Melgen acknowledged it was his idea to set up an account with Northern Trust Bank in Palm Beach County because his company had a relationship with that bank.
"Melgen claims that such a large sum of money would not be deposited by a normal person as a gift for a romantic relationship," the judge wrote.
But Dorrejo claimed that she was not a resident of Florida and doesn't engage in business in Florida and that "the consideration for the money deposited in Northern Trust Bank was the intimate romantic relationship between Dorrejo and Melgen," the judge wrote.
Dorrejo told the court that she had not breached any contract and that, "The money bestowed upon her by her lover, Melgen, was without any obligation for repayment" wrote the judge, who granted Dorrejo's motion to dismiss it.
Dorrejo, who could not be reached for comment on Wednesday, also reported that Melgen owns property in the Dominican Republic and advertises medical services there.
The doctor cuts an impressive figure on the Caribbean island.
In 2009, Melgen's son was married at Santo Domingo's historic cathedral, the oldest in the Americas, in a ceremony blessed by Dominican Catholic Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez. The wedding was covered by Dominican newspapers, which published photos of the well-heeled guests.
In May 2010 - a date that corresponds with allegations of alcohol- and prostitute-fueled parties at Melgen's Casa de Campo house - Melgen hosted a dinner honoring Menendez in which he said, "For me, Mr. Menendez is not the leader of the Hispanic-American in the United States, but a leader of Hispanics in all the Americas."
(Staff writers Marc Caputo, Carli Teproff and Jay Weaver contributed to this report. Herald special correspondent Ezra Fieser reported from the Dominican Republic.)
Source
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Friday, January 25, 2013
Court Rules Obama Recess Appointments Unconstitutional
- A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board.
A federal appeals court ruled that President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor panel. Aaron Zitner reports on Lunch Break. Photo: AP.
The three-judge panel said that as a result, the labor-relations board has lacked the quorum it needs to conduct much of its business.
The court's decision could also have implications for Richard Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr. Obama also used a recess appointment to name him to his position after Republicans blocked his nomination from coming to a vote.
Previously
Obama Makes Recess Appointments to NLRB (1/4/2012)
Law Blog: Recess Appointments, Technically Without the Recess (1/4/2012)
Republican Leaves Labor Board (7/25/12)
The challenge to the appointments was made in a lawsuit filed against the NLRB by soda bottler and distributor Noel Canning. The company claimed that, among other things, a board ruling against it in a union dispute last year was moot because Mr. Obama didn't seek Senate approval for three members he appointed to the board during recess. The company contended that those members were invalid, so the board, which has five slots, lacked the necessary quorum needed to issue the ruling.
The court ruled Friday that, because it agreed that the appointments were constitutionally invalid and the board therefore lacked a quorum, it also vacated the board's order against Noel Canning.
On Jan. 4, 2012, Mr. Obama appointed Democratic union lawyer Richard Griffin, Democratic Labor Department official Sharon Block and Republican NLRB lawyer Terence Flynn. Mr. Flynn stepped down from the board later in the year.
The Justice Department argued on behalf of the NLRB in the Noel Canning case when the three-judge panel heard the arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last month.
It wasn't immediately clear if the Obama administration plans to appeal the panel's ruling. The Justice Department said it was studying the ruling but had no immediate comment.
If the administration does appeal, it would have two options: It could go directly to the Supreme Court or ask the entire D.C. Circuit Court to rehear the case that so far has only been heard by the court's three-judge panel. Neither body would be obligated to hear the case but typically, the Supreme Court agrees to hear cases when the administration seeks a review.
Though the ruling technically applies only to the Noel Canning case, it calls into question all the other case decisions the labor board has made since the recess appointees were installed. It isn't yet clear if those decisions would remain in force while any potential appeal winds its way through court. The NLRB didn't have an immediate comment on the decision.
REUTERS
Obama speaks during a news conference at the White House on Jan. 14.
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Friday, June 17, 2011
VIDEO of the Special Event with Karen Armstrong
May 04, 2011
VIDEO of the Special Event with Karen Armstrong
Did you miss the "Special Event: Enter the Conversation with Karen Armstrong" last week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine? Well, you're in luck!
Our videographer, Sean McGinn, graciously captured this riveting conversation between the Very Rev. James A. Kowalski and Karen, which is posted on the Charter for Compassion YouTube channel. The discussion centers on religion and ethics in the modern world, and why we must place compassion at the heart of public discourse on religion and morality.
VIDEO of the Special Event with Karen Armstrong
Did you miss the "Special Event: Enter the Conversation with Karen Armstrong" last week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine? Well, you're in luck!
Our videographer, Sean McGinn, graciously captured this riveting conversation between the Very Rev. James A. Kowalski and Karen, which is posted on the Charter for Compassion YouTube channel. The discussion centers on religion and ethics in the modern world, and why we must place compassion at the heart of public discourse on religion and morality.
Uploaded by CharterforCompassion on May 3, 2011
On Wednesday, April 27, Karen joins Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski for a far reaching conversation about religion and ethics in the modern world, and why we must place compassion at the heart of public discourse on religion and morality.
Credits: Sean McGinn, Videographer - Faith House Manhattan.
Special Thanks: Faith House Manhattan - http://www.faithhousemanhattan.org/
On Wednesday, April 27, Karen joins Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski for a far reaching conversation about religion and ethics in the modern world, and why we must place compassion at the heart of public discourse on religion and morality.
Credits: Sean McGinn, Videographer - Faith House Manhattan.
Special Thanks: Faith House Manhattan - http://www.faithhousemanhattan.org/
Karen Armstrong, author, scholar, and journalist, is among the world's foremost commentators on religious history and culture. She has written more than 20 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how our faiths shaped world history and drive current events. Her books include the bestselling A History of God and The Battle for God, as well as Buddha; Islam: A Short History; Muhammed: A Prophet for Our Time; Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths; and most recently Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. In 2008 Dr. Armstrong, recipient of the TED prize, spearheaded the founding of The Charter for Compassion, a document that transcends religious, ideological, and national difference. It proclaims a principle embraced by every faith, and by every moral code.
Karen Armstrong is one of the heroes of the modern interfaith movement and endorsed Samir Selmanovic's recent book It's Really All About God, saying "Samir Selmanovic is asking the right questions at the right time, and refusing the consolations of certainty at a time when strident orthodoxies-atheist as well as religious-are perilously dividing us."
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine is a "house of prayer for all people." Faith House partnered with the Cathedral and GreenFaith last year to host SUSTAIN with Bill McKibben. Bowie Snodgrass is a member of the Congregation of St. Saviour at the Cathedral and her husband, George Mathew, is the Artistic Director of the New Year's Concert for Peace at the Cathedral.
Posted on May 04, 2011
Karen Armstrong is one of the heroes of the modern interfaith movement and endorsed Samir Selmanovic's recent book It's Really All About God, saying "Samir Selmanovic is asking the right questions at the right time, and refusing the consolations of certainty at a time when strident orthodoxies-atheist as well as religious-are perilously dividing us."
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine is a "house of prayer for all people." Faith House partnered with the Cathedral and GreenFaith last year to host SUSTAIN with Bill McKibben. Bowie Snodgrass is a member of the Congregation of St. Saviour at the Cathedral and her husband, George Mathew, is the Artistic Director of the New Year's Concert for Peace at the Cathedral.
Posted on May 04, 2011
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Massa resigns to avoid ethics probe
WASHINGTON
Tue Mar 9, 2010 10:14am EST
Democratic Representative Eric Massa poses in this 2009 official photo. Massa announced his resignation on March 5, 2010, saying an ethics investigation into alleged misconduct toward a male staff member would tear his family and staff apart.
Credit: Reuters/massa.house.gov/Handout
Credit: Reuters/massa.house.gov/Handout
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Freshman Democratic Representative Eric Massa announced his resignation on Friday, saying an ethics investigation into alleged misconduct toward a male staff member would tear his family and staff apart.
Barack Obama
"In the incredibly toxic atmosphere that is Washington D.C., with the destruction of our elected leaders having become a blood sport, especially in talk radio and on the Internet, there is also no doubt that an ethics investigation would tear my family and my staff apart," the New York lawmaker said in a note posted on the Internet, massa.house.gov/.
His resignation is effective on Monday at 5 p.m. (2200 GMT), he said.
Massa was the second Democrat in a week to be hit by damaging ethics questions, and his departure is a further embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had pledged to create "the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history."
Republicans have ridiculed Pelosi over this week's ethics revelations, saying the behavior of Democrats had made a mockery of her promise to clean up Congress.
Massa announced earlier this week that he would not seek re-election because of health reasons. News reports said he was under an ethics investigation for alleged sexual harassment against a male staffer.
"My difficulties are of my own making," he wrote. "I am also aware that blogs and radio will have a field day with this in today's destructive and unforgiving political environment."
Massa's problems follow an ethics probe of fellow New York Representative Charles Rangel, who was admonished by the House ethics panel for taking corporate-paid trips to the Caribbean in violation of the chamber's gift rules.
Rangel gave up his chairmanship of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee this week pending other ethics investigations.
Massa's departure brings the number of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives to 253, with 178 Republicans.
His departure is not likely to have a big impact on Pelosi's ability to round up votes to get a final healthcare overhaul bill to President Barack Obama.
Massa voted against the bill that passed the House in November in a close vote. Four vacancies bring the number of House members to 431, which means 216 votes will be needed to pass the sweeping healthcare overhaul.
(Reporting by Donna Smith; Editing by David Alexander and Eric Beech)
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Pope proposes new financial order guided by ethics
VATICAN CITY -Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown.
In the third encyclical of his pontificate, Benedict pressed for reform of the United Nations and international economic and financial institutions to give poorer countries more of a say in international policy.
"There is urgent need (for) a true world political authority" that can manage the global economy, guarantee the environment is protected, ensure world peace and bring about food security for the poor, he wrote.
The document "Charity in Truth," was in the works for two years, and its publication was repeatedly delayed to incorporate the fallout from the crisis. It was released a day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet to coordinate efforts to deal with the global meltdown, signaling a clear Vatican bid to prod leaders for a financially responsible future and what it considers a more socially just society.
"The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered," Benedict wrote.
The German-born Benedict, 82, has spoken out frequently about the impact of the crisis on the poor, particularly in Africa, which he visited earlier this year. But the 144-page encyclical, one of the most authoritative documents a pope can issue, marked a new level of church teaching by linking the Vatican's long-standing social doctrine on caring for the poor with current events.
While acknowledging that the globalized economy has "lifted billions of people out of misery," Benedict accused the unbridled growth of recent years of causing unprecedented problems as well, citing mass migration flows, environmental degradation and a complete loss of trust in the world market.
He urged wealthier countries to increase development aid to poor countries to help eliminate world hunger, saying peace and security depended on it. He specified that aid should go to agricultural development to improve infrastructure, irrigation systems, transport and sharing of agricultural technology.
At the same time, he demanded that industrialized nations reduce their energy consumption, both to better care for the environment and to let the poorer have access to energy resources.
"One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of 'efficiency' is not value-free," he wrote.
Benedict said that the drive to outsource work to the cheapest bidder had endangered the rights of workers, and he demanded that workers be allowed to organize in unions to protect their rights and guarantee steady, decent employment.
Benedict called for a whole new financial order — "a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise" — that respects the dignity of workers and looks out for the common good by prioritizing ethics and social responsibility over dividend returns.
The Rev. Drew Christiansen, editor of the Jesuit monthly America and a leading social ethicist, said he was most intrigued by the pope's call for a new sector of society to work alongside government, market and civil society: for-profit entities that work for the common good, which Christiansen suggested could include "fair trade" product makers and micro-finance institutions.
"I am not sure these enterprises yet constitute a sector of economic life," Christiansen wrote on his blog. "But they are harbingers of a different, conscientious kind of economics that would not repeat the mistakes of the last 30 years."
Kirk Hanson, a business ethics professor at Santa Clara University, said that while the encyclical went into some detail about the rights of workers and the duties of the state in protecting those rights, there was precious little about how an actual CEO leader should go about business.
"It's almost as if the church has so little trust in business leaders that it speaks to the political leaders urging regulation and the consumers urging voting with their buying power," said Hanson, who chaired hearings leading up to a similar U.S. Catholic bishops' statement on capitalism and social justice in the 1980s.
Benedict has written two previous encyclicals in his four years as pope: "God is Love" in 2006 and "Saved by Hope" in 2007.
The pope's focus on world finance raised questions about the state of the Vatican's own books.
The Vatican was implicated in the 1980s collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Vatican's bank was the major shareholder, and it agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors, while denying any wrongdoing.
At the start of the meltdown in October, a top Vatican bank official assured that its deposits were safe and had no liquidity problems, saying the bank had stayed away from derivatives, the financial instruments blamed in part for the crisis.
Other officials have said 80 percent of the Vatican's investments are in low-yield government bonds and 20 percent in stocks and that the Vatican does not invest in companies that produce arms or contraceptives.
The Vatican in its annual financial statement issued Saturday said it ran a deficit in 2008 for the second straight year, posting a euro900,000 ($1.28 million) loss, compared with a loss of euro9.06 million a year earlier.
In the third encyclical of his pontificate, Benedict pressed for reform of the United Nations and international economic and financial institutions to give poorer countries more of a say in international policy.
"There is urgent need (for) a true world political authority" that can manage the global economy, guarantee the environment is protected, ensure world peace and bring about food security for the poor, he wrote.
The document "Charity in Truth," was in the works for two years, and its publication was repeatedly delayed to incorporate the fallout from the crisis. It was released a day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet to coordinate efforts to deal with the global meltdown, signaling a clear Vatican bid to prod leaders for a financially responsible future and what it considers a more socially just society.
"The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered," Benedict wrote.
The German-born Benedict, 82, has spoken out frequently about the impact of the crisis on the poor, particularly in Africa, which he visited earlier this year. But the 144-page encyclical, one of the most authoritative documents a pope can issue, marked a new level of church teaching by linking the Vatican's long-standing social doctrine on caring for the poor with current events.
While acknowledging that the globalized economy has "lifted billions of people out of misery," Benedict accused the unbridled growth of recent years of causing unprecedented problems as well, citing mass migration flows, environmental degradation and a complete loss of trust in the world market.
He urged wealthier countries to increase development aid to poor countries to help eliminate world hunger, saying peace and security depended on it. He specified that aid should go to agricultural development to improve infrastructure, irrigation systems, transport and sharing of agricultural technology.
At the same time, he demanded that industrialized nations reduce their energy consumption, both to better care for the environment and to let the poorer have access to energy resources.
"One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of 'efficiency' is not value-free," he wrote.
Benedict said that the drive to outsource work to the cheapest bidder had endangered the rights of workers, and he demanded that workers be allowed to organize in unions to protect their rights and guarantee steady, decent employment.
Benedict called for a whole new financial order — "a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise" — that respects the dignity of workers and looks out for the common good by prioritizing ethics and social responsibility over dividend returns.
The Rev. Drew Christiansen, editor of the Jesuit monthly America and a leading social ethicist, said he was most intrigued by the pope's call for a new sector of society to work alongside government, market and civil society: for-profit entities that work for the common good, which Christiansen suggested could include "fair trade" product makers and micro-finance institutions.
"I am not sure these enterprises yet constitute a sector of economic life," Christiansen wrote on his blog. "But they are harbingers of a different, conscientious kind of economics that would not repeat the mistakes of the last 30 years."
Kirk Hanson, a business ethics professor at Santa Clara University, said that while the encyclical went into some detail about the rights of workers and the duties of the state in protecting those rights, there was precious little about how an actual CEO leader should go about business.
"It's almost as if the church has so little trust in business leaders that it speaks to the political leaders urging regulation and the consumers urging voting with their buying power," said Hanson, who chaired hearings leading up to a similar U.S. Catholic bishops' statement on capitalism and social justice in the 1980s.
Benedict has written two previous encyclicals in his four years as pope: "God is Love" in 2006 and "Saved by Hope" in 2007.
The pope's focus on world finance raised questions about the state of the Vatican's own books.
The Vatican was implicated in the 1980s collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Vatican's bank was the major shareholder, and it agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors, while denying any wrongdoing.
At the start of the meltdown in October, a top Vatican bank official assured that its deposits were safe and had no liquidity problems, saying the bank had stayed away from derivatives, the financial instruments blamed in part for the crisis.
Other officials have said 80 percent of the Vatican's investments are in low-yield government bonds and 20 percent in stocks and that the Vatican does not invest in companies that produce arms or contraceptives.
The Vatican in its annual financial statement issued Saturday said it ran a deficit in 2008 for the second straight year, posting a euro900,000 ($1.28 million) loss, compared with a loss of euro9.06 million a year earlier.
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Saturday, May 09, 2009
MPs' prestige at low ebb - Carey
Page last updated at 19:55 GMT, Saturday, 9 May 2009 20:55 UK
Lord Carey said MPs could not police themselves
Parliament's moral authority has slumped to its "lowest ebb in living memory", former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has said.
Lord Carey told the News of the World that leaked reports about MPs' expenses had shaken trust in politics.
He said the revelations had exposed the "clawing greed" at the heart of Westminster's "culture of abuse".
MPs who were the subject of Daily Telegraph articles about expenses have insisted the stories were inaccurate.
'Political betrayal'
In the News of the World, Lord Carey questioned whether public trust in politicians could ever be restored following the exposure of "systematic abuse".
He said many MPs had come to see their allowances as a "right rather than a privilege", and contrasted the spectacle of ministers "cringingly" justifying their expenses while their constituents suffered as a result of the recession.
This threatens to be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back
Lord Carey
"It is not just the clawing greed of painstaking claims for such minor items as tampons, barbecue sets and bathrobes, but also the egregious way some have transferred allowances from one second property to another - enabling them to refurbish homes at public expense, then sell them for profit," Lord Carey added.
"Coming at a time of financial crisis and political betrayal of the Gurkhas, this threatens to be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back."
Lord Carey acknowledged that many MPs had "honour and integrity". He said he had recently met Gordon Brown and been convinced the prime minister was driven by "a desire to serve his country".
But he said the affair had demonstrated that politicians could not police themselves, and called for an independent body to oversee any proposals about reform to the expenses system.
Also in the News of the World, a poll by ICM of 508 adults suggests that more than two-thirds of respondents said they believed the expenses revelations had damaged the prime minister.
Some 89% believed the reputation of parliament had been tarnished, and 91% said they wanted expenses records to be published in full straight away.
Further revelations
However, MPs have hit back over the Telegraph's most recent reports.
Immigration minister Phil Woolas has threatened legal action over "disgusting" allegations he claimed for women's clothing, nappies and comics, and Health minister Ben Bradshaw said the Telegraph's report about his expenses was factually wrong.
Margaret Moran, Labour MP for Luton South, told the BBC that allegations that she claimed over £20,000 for a house in Southampton 100 miles from her constituency were "inaccurate" and "probably actionable".
Labour ministers Phil Hope and Barbara Follett, as well as Tory MP Greg Barker, who were also named, say they have not broken parliamentary rules.
The day before, the Telegraph published details of 13 Cabinet ministers' expenses. It plans to publish further revelations about MPs from other parties in the coming days.
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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8042214.stm
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Monday, February 02, 2009
Great: Ethics Panel Investigating Rangel 'Virtually Disbanded'
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Great: Ethics Panel Investigating Rangel 'Virtually Disbanded'
So nice that were living in the age of openness and transparency where everyone will now be, according to Barack Obama, taking responsibility. Well, it's pretty transparent nothing will ever come of the investigation into Charles Rangel, and the Democrats are openly flaunting it.
Nobody's home at the House ethics committee that's supposed to be investigating Rep. Charles Rangel.
The panel created on Sept. 24 to probe the Harlem Democrat's alleged ethical lapses has been virtually disbanded, after meeting only twice in four months on the matter, The Post has learned.
Of the four congressmen named to look into the powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman, only one remains - Alabama Republican Jo Bonner. The three others left the Rangel probe last month when they were "rotated" off the 10-member Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
The dormant investigation won't be jump-started until three incoming ethics committee members are assigned to the Rangel probe later this month.
Because the committee conducts its work in secret, it is not clear if any progress has been made on the Rangel investigation. In the committee's recently released 100-page report on its work in the 110th Congress, only four paragraphs mention the Rangel probe, listing five alleged ethics breaches and noting that the panel had not been able to complete the investigation.
The panel has already missed Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Jan. 3 deadline for filing a final report on Rangel.
The investigative subcommittee was convened three weeks after a Post exposé reported that the 38-year lawmaker failed to declare rental income on a beachfront villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.
Among other alleged breaches referred to Congress: Rangel's use of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem; his use of congressional stationery to solicit donations for an academic center named in his honor at City College; his storage of a vintage Mercedes at a House parking garage; and a $1 million pledge to the Rangel Center from an oil-drilling company that benefited from Rangel-sponsored tax legislation.
Critics say the shuffling of committee members will delay an already lackluster probe.
"It will clearly slow things significantly to bring the new members up to snuff," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
"The lack of any visible activity, such as interviews with many principals or visits to the Dominican Republic or any progress report, are all discouraging."
The probers should have been required to stay on the investigation to avoid further delays, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group.
"Four months after the investigations started, there is no investigative subcommittee, no public hearings, and no sign of any progress whatsoever," he said.
All this from the most (ahem!) ethical Congress ever.
So nice that were living in the age of openness and transparency where everyone will now be, according to Barack Obama, taking responsibility. Well, it's pretty transparent nothing will ever come of the investigation into Charles Rangel, and the Democrats are openly flaunting it.
Nobody's home at the House ethics committee that's supposed to be investigating Rep. Charles Rangel.
The panel created on Sept. 24 to probe the Harlem Democrat's alleged ethical lapses has been virtually disbanded, after meeting only twice in four months on the matter, The Post has learned.
Of the four congressmen named to look into the powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman, only one remains - Alabama Republican Jo Bonner. The three others left the Rangel probe last month when they were "rotated" off the 10-member Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
The dormant investigation won't be jump-started until three incoming ethics committee members are assigned to the Rangel probe later this month.
Because the committee conducts its work in secret, it is not clear if any progress has been made on the Rangel investigation. In the committee's recently released 100-page report on its work in the 110th Congress, only four paragraphs mention the Rangel probe, listing five alleged ethics breaches and noting that the panel had not been able to complete the investigation.
The panel has already missed Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Jan. 3 deadline for filing a final report on Rangel.
The investigative subcommittee was convened three weeks after a Post exposé reported that the 38-year lawmaker failed to declare rental income on a beachfront villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.
Among other alleged breaches referred to Congress: Rangel's use of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem; his use of congressional stationery to solicit donations for an academic center named in his honor at City College; his storage of a vintage Mercedes at a House parking garage; and a $1 million pledge to the Rangel Center from an oil-drilling company that benefited from Rangel-sponsored tax legislation.
Critics say the shuffling of committee members will delay an already lackluster probe.
"It will clearly slow things significantly to bring the new members up to snuff," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
"The lack of any visible activity, such as interviews with many principals or visits to the Dominican Republic or any progress report, are all discouraging."
The probers should have been required to stay on the investigation to avoid further delays, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group.
"Four months after the investigations started, there is no investigative subcommittee, no public hearings, and no sign of any progress whatsoever," he said.
All this from the most (ahem!) ethical Congress ever.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
New Religion for a New World
New Religion for a New World
By Lorin Smith
Founder of Christian Research Projects
2002
Two developments have become obvious to observers of the rapidly changing geo-political landscape. We have entered a time of accelerated global transformation, and religion will play a major role in how this new world order will be configured. In short, a new world calls for the creation of a new world religion.
In the construction of this new world order, Christianity will face ideological challenges to the central tenets of its faith unlike anything it has experienced in the previous the previous two millennia. In this new world, all religions must be recognized and acknowledged as legitimate pathways to God. Religious exclusivity, absolutism and dogmatism will be viewed as potential threats to world peace and survival.
Hans Kung, director of the institute of Ecumenical Research at the University of Tubingen, makes this point emphatically in his book, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic:
"All the religions of the world today have to recognize their share in responsibility for world peace. And therefore one cannot repeat often enough the thesis for which I have found growing acceptance all over the world: there can ‘be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. In short, there can be no world peace without religious peace.”
At the 1999 annual meeting of The World Economic Forum, an international think-tank of political, business and academic leaders held in Davos, Switzerland, Dominic Peccoud, Advisor for Socio-Religious Affairs at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva, speaking on the topic “Religion as a Global Phenomenon for the New Millennium,” asserted, “Fundamentalism is a worldwide threat.” The way it has to be countered, he maintained, is “to change the view that salvation depends on playing by certain religious rules: everyone is saved.”
Denys Teundroup, Honorary President of the European Buddhist Union, speaking at the same Forum, claimed: “The world is fed up with dogmatic religion but starving for spirituality.”
The Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar shared his vision for a new world order that is free from the threat of religious fundamentalism in the September 21 edition of The Financial Times.
“Our system of values respects all ideas and beliefs. However, we cannot confuse this respect with conferring legitimacy on fanaticisms that prevent us from living together in a civilized manner...We must all contribute to building a system of peace and security without divisions: a system that is today more feasible than at any time in the past. Combating terrorism demands a stronger global order based upon respect for all beliefs."
Andrew Sullivan, writing in the October 7, 2001 edition of The New York Times Magazine, in an article entitled, “This Is A Religious War”, had this to say: “It seems as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to terrorist temptation.” By linking a belief in monotheism to inherent terrorist tendencies, he and other influential reporters make it easier to single out certain groups for espousing beliefs that are seen to be disruptive to world peace and security.
Leaders of transnational corporations also see the value of supporting a global ethic that counters the rise of religious fundamentalism in the new millennium. Reacting to claims that globalization devalues the dignity of the human personality by treating people primarily as commodities to be exploited -- and challenged by the inability of individual nation states to solve the myriad of socio-economic, health and environmental woes with which they are confronted -- both business and political leaders are anxious to forge closer ties with their religious counterparts to work for more equitable and humane solutions. After all, free trade fueled by globalization works best in a secure and peaceful world uninhibited by religious wars and conflicts.
As Patricia Mische, president emeritus of Global Education Associates, in a paper entitled “A World Order Focus for the Role of Religion," explains: "Up until now, antireligious dialogue has focused primarily on developing greater peace and understanding between people from diverse religious traditions, and also, in some cases, on promoting values of peace, social justice, human rights, and ecological integrity. There has not been much focus on the contribution of religions to the development of a more humane world order or more effective global systems. In a period of increasing globalization, such a focus becomes ever more urgent."
At this year’s annual meeting of The World Economic Forum, religious leaders in attendance expressed their desire to work more closely with their business and political counterparts in the building of a just and equitable world order.
"We enthusiastically endorse the project of initiating and continuing dialogue in order to create a framework that integrates leaders of religion, business, politics and civil society. Let us join forces to seize this opportunity.”
However, Alan Morrison, who heads Diakrisis International, a Christian apologetics ministry based in France, in analyzing these current trends, observes:
“What we have here is world governance and world religion beginning to come together in a common utopian purpose to establish a global order without the Christ of the Bible and without the missionary encumbrance of Christian evangelism. The purported reason behind these gatherings is the establishment of peace on Earth," Morrison points out, "but the real intention is the eradication of the Christian gospel."
Since Christianity is essentially evangelistic, there is bound to be an inevitable conflict between the Christian who takes seriously the claims of Jesus Christ that "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes unto the Father but through Me." (John 14:6) and those who believe that all religions are equally legitimate pathways to God.
In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized by the blending together of economies, peoples, laws, cultures, religions and social ethics, these types of dogmatic religious assertions will not be tolerated.
On the other hand, the misguided rhetoric and tactics of the religious right is about to bear its bitter fruit with its dominionist and "Kingdom Now" theology playing right into the hands of the architects of this new world order.
Suffering from the proverbial “head in the sand, don’t confuse me with the facts” approach to reality, especially when it upsets their comfort-zone, many are completely oblivious to the global developments that will profoundly affect the practice of their faith.
Jesus said to the Jews of his day: “You can discern the face of the sky, how is it that you cannot discern the signs of the times?” We are truly living in the times of prophetic fulfillment as we watch these global events unfold.
Source:http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/2002/lorin-smith-9-11.htm
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