SOUND OFF: OPRAH'S KARAOKE CHALLENGE
Singer BeBe Winans taped several appearances on Oprah Winfrey's talk show. After promotions showing Winans aired, however, as well as one of the taped shows, some viewers complained about his appearance because domestic-violence charges brought against him by his ex-wife are still pending. Winfrey had banned singer Chris Brown from her show after he battered the singer Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, and in response to the complaints Winans was removed from the show.Was it right for Winfrey to ban Winans, given her long-standing concern about domestic abuse? Or

THE RIGHT THING: DINING BY THE CLOCK
Every other Sunday, a reader in southern California heads to Hometown Buffet restaurant, the local franchise in a national chain that serves more than 160 million people a year at its buffet-style restaurants. He goes there to leisurely read his Sunday newspaper as he dines."I love the food and the atmosphere," he tells me.Lately, however, he's been wondering whether his approach to dining there passes muster ethically."I time my arrival to occur just a few minutes before they stop serving breakfast and begin serving dinner," he writes. "I admit that I have no intention of eat

THE RIGHT THING: TAKING THE HIT
About a month ago I was sitting at my desk at my home office in Boston when the phone rang. It was my insurance broker."Mr. Seglin," my broker said, "we just got a call that your parked car has been hit."Not the kind of call that one enjoys getting, but this one could have been much worse.It turned out that some fellow had lost control of his steering and rammed full speed into the back of my vehicle.My insurance broker had been called by an officer of the Boston Police Department. She wanted to make sure that I got the note that the driver had left tucked in the driver's-side door of m

SOUND OFF: OUT OF THE PAST
On Sept. 26 Swiss authorities arrested Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, a French citizen who was wanted in the United States on an old conviction for having sex with a 13-year-old girl: In 1978, in California, Polanski had pled guilty to one count of unlawful sex with a minor, but fled the country before being sentenced.Of those readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 88 percent believed that the nature of Polanski's crime requires that he pay the penalty, even 32 years after the fact and despite the fact that his victim has long since forgiven him and called for the dismissal of all remaining charges."He

SOUND OFF: NEWLY MINTED ETHICS
Disgraced former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, whose fabrications and plagiarism wreaked havoc on his readers, on his colleagues and on the newspaper industry as a whole, has tried to shift careers to become a "life coach." Recently Washington and Lee University's Journalism Ethics Institute invited him to deliver a talk called "Lessons Learned" in which he would discuss his misdeeds and what he has learned from them. The university presents Blair's talk as an opportunity for students to hear from someone who can speak to the "pressures and temptations"