Brad Rourke

Category: ethics

  • Ethics Scenario: All The News That Fits

    Tomorrow, I will be leading a four-day candidate training program with the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. More on that program here. The program is an ethics-based soup-to-nuts campaign school, and I provide the ethics training piece. My bit is part lecture, part case study, and part small group exercises. I thought…

  • Election Laws Coming for Facebook, Twitter

    The state I happen to live in is at the forefront of an interesting wave in public policy, one which is inevitable. The Maryland Board of Elections is considering taking actions to regulate the social media usage of candidates and campaigns. A quick scan shows that many candidates and campaigns have begun to tap into…

  • The Plain Dealer And The Ethics Of Disclosure

    My latest article on my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live: The Plain Dealer And The Ethics Of Disclosure. Here it is: One of may favorite newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is embroiled in a controversy that raises some important questions, few of which have easy answers. Reporters at…

  • The Ethics Of Coming Clean

    Visiting from Gawker’s Valleywag? Welcome! Please consider signing up for my occasional (free) email. If you’re not in the tech world, you probably have never heard of the Silicon Valley blog called TechCrunch. This is a widely-read and frequently-updated blog on happenings throughout the tech world. It is among the handful of top news sources…

  • Toyota Needs Action On Three Levels

    My latest article at my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live: Toyota Needs Action On Three Levels Last night I gave a talk on ethics and leadership and I based a large section of it on a reading of Akio Toyoda’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece apologizing for his…

  • LaHood's Dilemma And The Difficulties Of Evaluation

    Yesterday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in response to a question at a congressional hearing, suggested that Toyota owners ought to avoid driving their cars. Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”…

  • The Morality-Free Zone: Wall Street and the New American Dilemma

    Guest article by my friend Allison Addicott: In The Beginning Remember films such as Robin Hood or others that depict tax collectors for the landed gentry repeatedly riding into small villages demanding more money? In such films, often the final manifestation of unabashed moral corruption on the part of the landed oligarchy was the torching…

  • Whelan Apologizes For Publicizing Anonymous Blogger's Identity

    I don’t ordinarily run “updates” to earlier stories, but this news shifted on of the the points made in  Monday’s posting about the controversy between Ed Whelan and a pseudonymous blogger named “publius.” Whelan had discovered publius’ identity and revealed it. I used the occasion to make a broader point about being anonymous (which I…

  • Why I Am Not Anonymous

    There’s a controversy right now over an exchange between two notable bloggers, each from opposite sides of the liberal/conservative divide. An author at the “moderate” liberal Obsidian Wings blog who writes under the pseudonym “publius” has long criticized conservative Ed Whelan, who writes at the National Review’s Bench Memos and is the president of the…