Ethics

The series “America at a Crossroads” commissioned a series of films about Islam in America that will air next week. One of the films, “Islam v. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center,” by Martyn Burke, will not be shown. Burke, who was previously the producer of “Pirates of Silicon Valley” and “The Hollywood Ten,” says that his film was dropped for political reasons (including the fact that two of his co-producers, Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev, are neoconservatives from the Center for Security Policy) after “tampering” by PBS and managers from WETA Washington D.C. He listed these examples of tampering: • A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish “parallel societies” in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts. • After grants were issued, Crossroads managers commissioned a new film that overlapped with Islam vs. Islamists and competed for the same interview subjects. • WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an “unparalleled breach of ethics,” Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue.PBS claims that Burke’s film was not completed on time, had “serious structural problems” and was “irresponsible” and “alarmist, and it wasn’t fair." Burke’s film featured Phoenix medical doctor Zuhdi Jasser, head of the Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit that advocates “patriotism, constitutional democracy, and a separation of church and state.” Jasser, a staunch Republican and former U.S. Navy physician, was an internist at the Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol in the late nineties. There are more details and a short clip of Jasser from the film at the Arizona Republic (from which the above bulleted points are quoted). ...

Radley Balko reports at the Agitator on the political reasons behind the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton of Arizona. The only reason for his filing in documents released from the Justice Department is that former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert complained that Charlton refused to pursue marijuana cases unless they involved at least 500 pounds of marijuana. This seems like a reasonable strategy for something that shouldn’t even be illegal in the first place, and certainly should be a lower priority than other issues. But it also seems that the White House was not happy that Charlton and one of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not pursuing obscenity cases that were being sent to them by the Justice Department. The Justice Department’s “porn czar,” Brent Ward, sent a memo to recently resigned DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled “Obscenity Cases” which said: We have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG’s [Attorney General’s] comments at the NAC to ‘kick butt and take names’, what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations."Adult Video News did further investigation, and found that Charlton had taken an obscenity case, but it would be far-fetched to call it a “good case.” It was an obscenity case against an adult video store in Arizona, while simultaneously another video store chain was selling and renting the same titles that the first video store was indicted for selling. The reason the second chain wasn’t also prosecuted? It had recently declared bankruptcy and was being run by trustees from the federal government. And it appears that this inequity in treatment may be the reason why Charlton declined to pursue the original case, after it was brought to his attention by attorneys from the indicted store. More details and links at The Agitator. And there’s more on the other attorney firings at TPM Muckraker. UPDATE (March 26, 2007): Balko has further comments on Charlton’s firing based on the emails that have been released from the DOJ. Charlton was the #1 prosecutor in the nation for number of cases, and had the backing of Sen. Jon Kyl, but was fired anyway. Was it for his refusal to prosecute low-level pot cases, for his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, or was it because he was promoting the idea that the FBI should videotape interrogations and interviews of suspects, an idea which was scuttled because the FBI and DOJ didn’t want juries to see what actually happens in such interrogations. UPDATE (April 27, 2007): The New York Times editorialized yesterday about the connection between Charlton’s firing and his investigation of Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi: ...

Ed Brayton points out Jesselyn Radack’s account of the Bush administration’s dishonest and sleazy retaliation against her whistleblowing about the Justice Department’s deception in the so-called “American Taliban” case of John Walker Lindh. Radack was an ethics advisor for the Department of Justice who was called about whether Lindh could be interrogated without an attorney present. She pointed out that Lindh’s father had already retained counsel, and that counsel needed to be present. The FBI interrogated him without counsel anyway, so she advised that that interview would need to be sealed and used only for national security purposes, not for criminal prosecution. She was ignored, Attorney General John Ashcroft lied about Lindh’s rights being respected, and the DOJ tried to destroy evidence of Radack’s correspondence. She recovered her emails and submitted them in a memo with her resignation. As the DOJ continued to lie, Radack went public. The DOJ responded by applying pressure on Radack’s law firm to fire her; they put her on an unpaid leave which turned into a constructive discharge, which the DOJ assisted her law firm in contesting. The government placed her under a bogus criminal investigation (later dropped with no charges), brought multiple state bar complaints against her (one of which she’s still fighting), and put her on the no-fly list (she’s still on it). She finally managed to find a law firm willing to hire her, after three years. Her story is a horrifying tale of an out-of-control government. Now that the Democratic Party runs Congress, will they take some action with respect to this case?

This post is a followup to my series of ten posts about the finances of creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Discovery Institute, and, though not reported in Cole’s article, I also looked at Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation. As Nick Matzke pointed out in a comment on the last of these, there are other creationist organizations out there of some significance, such as the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (publisher of the creationist/intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People), Probe Ministries (Ray Bohlin’s group in Texas which authored the annotated bibliography of Josh McDowell’s book Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity–the anti-evolution sections of which were ghost authored by an individual who now supports evolution), and Hugh Ross’s old-earth creationist group, Reasons To Believe. There are also five groups that were listed in Cole’s article which I did not cover–these were the five smallest groups, the Creation Education Society of Tennessee, the Creation Resource Foundation of El Dorado, California, the Creation Science Association for Mid-America of Kansas City, Missouri (originators of the “Lucy’s knee joint” argument), the Creation-Science Fellowship of Pittsburgh, and the Genesis Institute of Mead, Washington. And there are still others out there, like the Twin Cities Creation Science Association of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kent Hovind’s organization (which didn’t file anything with the IRS, which is part of why he’s in jail right now), and various online creationist ministries. I may, as Nick suggested, take a look at some of these others in the future. At this point, however, I wanted to see if any conclusions can be drawn from the data in the Form 990s of the groups I’ve covered so far. I took a look at one section of each of the Form 990s which gives income data for previous years, and totaled those amounts up for each year across all the groups for which I had data. In some cases, I had to use other sources which were not quite comparable (such as the revenue figures from John Cole’s article), but are probably good enough for approximation to look at the size of the creationist market each year. (The main difference between the income figures I used versus the revenue figures is that the income figures show money coming in for purchases without subtracting the cost of goods sold, while the revenue numbers deduct the cost of goods sold.) The Discovery Institute’s totals were used, even though the DI does more than creationism, so that may have contributed to an overestimate, while the omission of all of the other groups above would have contributed to an underestimate. Since the DI brings in considerably more revenue than the other groups, it would take quite a few creationist groups making less than $100,000 a year to make up the difference. So this can’t be considered definitive. Given this total size of the creationist market for each year, I then looked at each group’s percentage of that marketplace, and how it has changed over time. Here are the numbers, rounded to the closest $1 million: 1998: $13 million market Institute for Creation Research: 45% Answers in Genesis: 28% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Moments: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 3% Creation Research Society: no data All others: less than 1% each 1999: $13 million market Institute for Creation Research: 41% Answers in Genesis: 30% Discovery Institute: 13% Creation Evidence Museum: 7% Creation Moments: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Research Society: 2% All others: less than 1% each 2000: $16 million market Answers in Genesis: 46% Institute for Creation Research: 34% Discovery Institute: 10% Creation Evidence Museum: 4% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Research Society: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2001: $20 million market Answers in Genesis: 46% Institute for Creation Research: 30% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Research Society: 1% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 1% Creation Moments: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2002: $19 million market Answers in Genesis: 49% Institute for Creation Research: 31% Discovery Institute: 12% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Research Society: 2% Creation Moments: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2003: $21 million market Answers in Genesis: 52% Institute for Creation Research: 28% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Research Society: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2004: $22 million market Answers in Genesis: 59% Institute for Creation Research: 20% Discovery Institute: 16% Creation Research Society: 1% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Evidence Museum: no data Creation Illustrated Ministries: no data Even with these approximations and limitations, there are a few things that stand out clearly: 1. The marketplace for creationism has been growing. 2. Answers in Genesis’ market share has grown and dominates the market. 3. The Institute for Creation Research has had a declining market share. 4. The Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture has had a fairly static market share (overrepresented here, as well, since their numbers include other branches of the DI). 5. Other creationist groups have tended to lose market share in the face of Answers in Genesis’s dominance, even if their overall revenue has grown.

I figured as much from his performance at this year’s Skeptics Society conference, where he refused to defend the scientific claims in his book State of Fear, but here’s how he’s responded to Washington journalist Michael Crowley’s critique in The New Republic–by putting Crowley as a character into his most recent novel, as a child rapist with a small penis: Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. … It turned out Crowley’s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]–as was his custom–tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child’s mother as “fantasizing feminist fundamentalists” who had made up the whole thing from “their sick, twisted imaginations.” This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley’s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler’s rectum.) ...

A former House page who was sent an instant message by Mark Foley asking him his penis size forwarded it to Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe back in 2001. When the scandal broke, that former page called Kolbe and asked him what he should do. He says Kolbe told him that “it is best that you don’t even bring this up with anybody…. There is no good that can come from it if you actually talk about this. The man has resigned anyway." The House ethics committee found out about it anyway, prompting Kolbe to call the former page and leave a message saying, “it looks like you did some talking." More detail and excerpts from the House ethics committee report at TPM Muckraker. UPDATE (December 9, 2006): Here’s Kolbe’s response.

Susan Ralston has resigned as Karl Rove’s personal aide due to an ethics investigation which showed that she accepted thousands of dollars worth of gifts from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff in violation of White House policy. Ralston has worked for Rove since 2001, and “Abramoff reportedly bragged to others that [she] was his ‘implant’ at the White House." How can anyone avoid coming to the conclusion that the George W. Bush administration and the Republican leadership is riddled with corruption?

One of the pages who received inappropriate messages from Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana). Alexander was notified of the problem, and he brought it to the attention of the House leadership (Dennis Hastert and either Tom Delay or Roy Blunt) 10-11 months ago. And they did nothing about it. UPDATE September 30, 2006: Alexander notified Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois), who says “We ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact with this former House page to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.” Also informed was Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who blocked a vote yesterday on a resolution from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calling for a preliminary investigation into the matter and the Republican leadership’s response to it by the House Ethics Committee. Boehner nixed the latter part, and a motion was passed to investigate Foley’s conduct but not the Republican leadership’s handling of the matter. It’s also now been verified that Dennis Hastert was told about this issue “months ago”.

Rep. Rick Renzi (Republican, Arizona District 1) has made the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress. Renzi has engaged in self-dealing, sponsoring legislation that has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to his father’s business, ManTech International of Fairfax, VA. His father is an executive vice president at ManTech, which also has offices in Sierra Vista, AZ. A more detailed report on Renzi’s ethical lapses may be found here (PDF). The other Congressmen on the list, with links to more information: Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)Rep. J.D. Hayworth (Republican, Arizona District 5) makes a “dishonorable mention” for his Jack Abramoff connections and payment of $145,212 to his wife through his PAC. Hayworth’s report may be found here (PDF). Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

At Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has an excellent fisking of Seth Cooper, former attorney for the Discovery Institute. Cooper tries to argue that Judge Jones (of the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case) displayed bias and hostility towards Jon Buell of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics both in his behavior and by refusing to allow the FTE to intervene in the case. Brayton points out that there’s no evidence of any hostility in the questioning of Buell and that the facts and legal precedent strongly supported the refusal of FTE intervening one month before the end of discovery. He points out dishonesty by Buell, who falsely stated that “Neither “Creationism” nor its synonym, “Creation Science” was ever used in any Pandas manuscript, as alleged." The post is a pleasure to read, go see it here.