After 5 Years In Power, The "Values Party" White House Will Hold Ethics Classes

For a White House that has claimed to represent "values", and constantly seeks to drive that point home with constant reminders exploiting issues such opposition to Gay marriage or to abortion, basic values such as honesty and character seem to have been left far behind somewhere.

With the indictment of "Scooter" Libby, White House Attorney, and former Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers made the recommendation that ethics classes be mandatory and held next week. But many, including conservative commentator, Pat Buchanan find this ethics crisis an absolutely embarrassing fact about this administration.

And according to James Paul of the New York based Global Policy Forum, "This is an administration that is not hestitant to torture, invade, break international law and break trreaties. And now they're suddenly figuring out that they need some ethics lessons?"

A U.N. watch dog organization has recommended that Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney reimburse Iraq for $208 million in overcharges for repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure. Cheney apparently failed to leave ethical leadership at Halliburton upon leaving the company if the claims of the U.N. organization are true.

And for the first 40 years of his life, biographers such as Kitty Kelley claim that George Bush had abuse problems with alcohol or cocaine. In fact Kitty Kelly claims that these problems existed until 1988. Disputed stories of Bush involvement in a scandal while a young man supposedly getting a 15 year old girl pregnant and supposedly resulting in an abortion or an attempt to get a 14 year old girl drunk while attending the Houston Hemisfair exist on the Internet. Disputed facts do exist in one of the stories. And stories of a sexual affair with a married woman by Bush also exist on the Internet. Bush is the only president ever convicted of a crime to serve in office. While in college he was arrested and convicted of theft. There is a futher allegation that Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972, but his father who was a congressman helped to arrange a ple bargain deal with a judge who gave him community service time at Houstn's Martin Luther King House. Bush admits doing some work there while he was supposed to be serving National Guard duty, but claims that the Guard stationed him there, which is a highly suspect claim never investigated by the media. And some drunk driving arrests have been claimed as well. As governor of Texas, a scandal involving the funeral industry existed, and if the facts were followed by a prosecutor could have resulted in a ethics conviction or other sanction for Bush, removing him from office as unfit. A current national poll finds that 58% of respondants do not feel that Bush is honest or trustworthy. His low poll ratings are drawing closer to that of Richard Nixon, the President most recognized for lies to the public and character shortcomings.

When running for office in 2000, Bush sought to politically capitalize on the ethics problems of Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Yet given his own history of alcohol, drug or alleged sexual excesses, was his character any improvement over the moral letdown of Clinton.

Former President Jimmy Carter is lamenting that the Christian Right with roots in Southern racism that started back 40 or 50 years ago, believes itself to be infallibly right about all matters and is promoting a blind faith in the current White House and Republican Party despite huge moral lapses of character and ethics.

A correct Biblical standard for Christian conduct is that ethics and character are constant and unchanging values, and ethical lapses and sin are not movable for political reasons. Some in the current White House claim to respect Biblical values, yet their deeds prove little of this actual respect, so now ethics classes are needed as though these White House adults have not yet learned that to lie, cheat or steal or morally wrong. Apparently the self proclaimed "values party" has much to learn about ethics. The moral problems confined to Bill Clinton have given way to a larger system of wholesale moral lapses in this curent administration. This is certainly no improvement for those concerned about government character or ethics. This is not the "values" government that was promised.